L.A. Starks: Something that really in retrospect gave me a breakthrough was writing for an anthology. This publisher said, well, do you have a book? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I have a book. So they said, we’d like to see it. The anthologies can really sort of introduce you to people, to publishers, not only to other writers, and it can be very much worth doing.

Announcer: This is Story Beat 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, L.A. Starks, is the author of the award winning Lynn Dayton thriller series that includes 13 days, the Pythagoras Conspiracy, the multi award nominated Strike Price, the Second Law and the recently released Winner’s Curse. I’ve read Winner’s Curse and can tell you it’s an exciting adventure into the high stakes world of the oil and gas industry with corporate intrigue, sabotage and ruthless power hungry characters around every turn. If you like thrillers, be sure to check out Winner’s Curse. LA earned a degree in engineering at Tulane University and an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Besides writing high stakes thrillers, she’s also a paid contributor to Seeking Alpha for her energy investment articles. So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a truly great honor for me to welcome the outstanding novelist L.A. Starks to Story Beat today. LA, thanks so much for join me.

L.A. Starks: I’m delighted to be here. Steve.

Steve Cuden: Well, I’m delighted to have you here with me. So let’s go back in time a little bit. Where did you first start to think of yourself as a writer? Did you start as a young person or was it later in life?

L.A. Starks: I had always read a lot and as do most writers and authors were my heroes in high school. I thought, oh, this is something I would really like to do. I grew up, but I grew up in a refinery town like a technical suburb, not unlike maybe perhaps a technical suburb of Pittsburgh, right? So when I started to look around and think, well, what can I do and how can I make a living? The answer was, well, you can’t. And not at least doing freelance novelist. And the examples of lots of scientists and engineers were all around me. So it sounds odd, but it made perfect sense for me that my plan B was to go into engineering. And I did, and I do. I love it. You know, it kind of branched out into finance. You know, that’s the whole energy bit.

Steve Cuden: Right.

L.A. Starks: But I always, you know, uh, in college, I wrote for the paper. I thought about going to journalism school. I finally. I got to a point where I could say, okay, know, I’ve got some time. Let me see if I can do this. So that’s what I did.

Steve Cuden: So you’ve been writing since you were quite young. This was not something late in life.

L.A. Starks: To this full time was later in life. But I’ve always wanted to write.

Steve Cuden: And were you someone who early on in life, you were actually writing things down and creating stories, if not on paper, at least in your head, and this is something that came naturally to you?

L.A. Starks: I was making observations and I was writing things down. I always kept a journal, and I thought, well, these are some interesting people. These are some interesting character situations. And I really did think, and I did initially go kind of in the direction of nonfiction. Um, I wrote a lot of, you know, kind of technical articles. I wrote things about energy, but I always had. I had done like, some short shorts, but I always had in mind that I wanted to do. And I was kind of collecting scenes, I suppose, or chapters, you know, for a book.

Steve Cuden: So you bring up technical articles, which I think is very interesting because it’s still writing. You still have to write it in a way that someone can understand what you’re saying. Do you find that there are similarities between writing nonfiction articles and writing fiction books of the Ly Dayton series? Uh, is there similarities or are they really different?

L.A. Starks: Both. I mean, they are. In technical writing, you’re trying to persuade and kind of line out the facts, and in a way that’s really clear. So you’re always looking for clarity, and that’s common to both kinds of writing. But technical writing is quite analytical. Fiction writing is really about the characters, the emotion, the plot. One example is that in technical writing, you’re talking about risk, but you’re saying, okay, here’s what it is. But, hey, it’s pretty minimal in fiction writing is like, if something bad can happen, it does. And so the risk analysis, if you will, is different.

Steve Cuden: Well, in fiction writing, you want bad things to happen. That’s conflict. And you need that to make the story work, right?

L.A. Starks: Exactly 100%.

Steve Cuden: Was there a point in time when you realized to yourself, yeah, you know what? I am pretty good at doing this thing called writing, and I think I can make a Go at it. Was there a pivotal moment for you?

L.A. Starks: No, would. I wouldn’t say that because. Only because, as many writers do, I encountered lots and lots of rejection. Um, and so it’s kind of like, okay, what am I doing wrong? How. You know, I mean, I read a lot and it’s kind of like, well, why does this work and mine doesn’t? I guess perhaps, you know, each time I have a launch, then it’s kind of like, okay, it’s real. Or each time a reader says, oh, I liked what, you know, so and so character did, I thought, okay, you know, I really kind of made an impression and created something. But it’it’s. A, um, I’m not. I’m still not all that confident.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think that you’re saying something that most writers feel. I’ve been doing this a long time as a writer, and I can tell you, every time I turn the computer on, it’s like, okay, what am I going to do today? And there’s the infamous, uh, the tyranny of the blank page of the blank screen. And you have to fill it up with something. And you may or may not know how you’re going to get there. Is that what you’re saying?

L.A. Starks: That’s exactly what I’m saying. The one thing I have learned is, and this is because I like sort of complicated situations and plots, is that I have to have an outline. In my first book, I wrote myself into so many corners so many times, and it was like, you just, you can’t, you know, a book is sort of complex and so you kind of have to, you know, know where your characters are going.

Steve Cuden: Well, in particular thrillers or detective stories or those kinds of stories, those genres. If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s really easy to get lost down on weird side streets. And that’s what you’re talking about. You got lost.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, exactly. And I would write, there would be these characters and I think, oh, this is like a really cool character. And I want to really put something in about them. And then they would go nowhere. I mean, they wouldn’t come back, they wouldn’t add to the story. You know, all that stuff. You have to. Some of facilities have to grind through it and do it wrong so many ways before we get it right.

Steve Cuden: So why thrillers? How did you get to writing thrillers? Is that something you always read?

L.A. Starks: I did. I liked. I have always liked mysteries and thrillers. It’s fun because thrillers are. They’re global, they’re high Stakes, they’re fast, lots of action. And that’s why the energy business is such a perfect fit. Because the energy business is, you know, very high stakes, global, lots of different characters across lots of different cultures, you know, lots of potential for conflict. And as we discussed, I mean, conflict, you know, really kind of drives any novel. And certainly a thriller.

Steve Cuden: Well, yes, and certainly motion pictures. And we’ll get to that thought in a bit. But I’m wondering, how is it because you grew up near the oil and gas industry that that’s how you got fascinated by it? Or was there something else that drew you to it?

L.A. Starks: That’that’s it exactly. And that’s what makes me comfortable with it, because I knew. I knew the characters, I knew the situation, I knew the people. And I also felt like in all the fiction that I was reading, I didn’t really see, you know, it’s not a lot of what’s out there. Maybe with the exception of Landman right now, it doesn’t really reflect the people that I knew, the characters that I knew, situations that I knew. So that was also, uh, definitely a big part of it.

Steve Cuden: Do you think going to school and earning a degree in engineering has had a huge impact on how you write a thriller?

L.A. Starks: Initially, it had a negative impact.

Steve Cuden: In what way?

L.A. Starks: Well, because all the nonfiction, I mean, you’re kind of driving towards what are the facts, what’s the analysis. And also, when you’re doing engineering projects or any kind of projects in business, you’re trying to get consensus, you’re trying to make things work. You really want everybody in the room sort of nodding their heads. And that’s the last thing you want in a thriller is everybody nodding their heads.

Steve Cuden: It needs to be something that’s. There’s all these corners you’re going around, and we don’t know what’s next. That’s the definition of pretty much any good storytelling, is that it’s a story of suspense. Even if it’s not a thriller, we should not know what’s coming next. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

L.A. Starks: Exactly 100%.

Steve Cuden: And when you’re dealing in nonfiction, many people will sort of know what you’re getting at, and they’re looking for maybe a specific answer to what you’re trying to drive through. But in a thriller, you don’t want the audience to know where you’re going at all?

L.A. Starks: M. No, no, no, not at all. I do dozens of articles for Seeking Alpha, and I read a few, and I read a Fair enough. A Lot of, um, energy industry stuff. And my readers are. I’ve got 4,200 followers or something. They’re looking at the beginning and the end, and they don’t want a story, they just want a few, like, nuggets.

Steve Cuden: You don’t think that your ability to write a thriller has any impact on writing your nonfiction articles? It’s got to have some impact.

L.A. Starks: Well, I’m certainly sensitive to word count. Um, so that’s. I would like to think that, you know, my vocabulary is a little spicier bit. You know, there’s a little bit more variety than there might otherwise be, for sure.

Steve Cuden: In your nonfiction, there’s more variety, more.

L.A. Starks: Than there would be if I didn’t write fiction.

Steve Cuden: You mean it’s more, I’m just guessing now, more technical. Is that what you mean?

L.A. Starks: The nonfiction is technical, but you can still kind of choose your verbs and your situations, you know, kind of carefully.

Steve Cuden: Take that a step further for me. That’s very interesting. I’ve never heard anyone say it quite that way before. What do you mean? What is that differentiation?

L.A. Starks: I guess. For example, one of the things that I’m looking for when I’m doing some analysis is, and it’s typically of a given company, who is this company? What do they say publicly? What can I discern about them from what they’re not saying? And what do the numbers tell me? It’s very much kind of like, okay, let’s summarize this billion dollar mistake that they made and say, hey, this is a mistake, and think about that before you put your money, you know, into this company. And so there’s this aspect of cutting to the chase.

Steve Cuden: So you’re actually writing articles that are for investors in that business, right?

L.A. Starks: Yes, correct.

Steve Cuden: And so it has to be analytical so that they can make a good judgment as to whether they want to spend their money on it or not.

L.A. Starks: Right. You know, and what’s been kind of really nice about that is those are all short cycle. Right. A book is long, takes a long time. Takes me a long time at least to do. And then, you know, you put it out and you market it, and you get the reader feedback and the articles. If, like, I had one last week, I’ll get 100 comments on it, and, you know, they’ll go in all different directions. And that’s exactly what you want. You want these people kind of say, well, what about this? And, um, what do you think about that? And no, I don’t agree with you. And it’s like, okay, you know, tell me why you don’t agree, and so you get. You also, it’s that same sort of like, let’s get a conversation going.

Steve Cuden: Do you ever find that the articles you’re writing and then the feedback you get on them actually feed into your narrative fiction?

L.A. Starks: I would say more generally that the energy background absolutely, absolutely feeds into this. Uh, there are certainly people, character situations that are sort of reflected and composites and all that that are there. But for example, in Winter’s Curse, I’m not gonna weigh much to say that there’s a focus on this water recycling technology. Everybody wants it and everybody’s fighting over it. That’s a real thing. It’s what everybody’s striving for. Um, but at this point, this kind of cheap, wonderful, affordable water recycling technology is still fiction.

Steve Cuden: But you’re getting the idea for the book from this other work that you do.

L.A. Starks: Absolutely. Again, what are the stakes and what’s something that people don’t know about, but it’s big?

Steve Cuden: Well, I certainly, I, uh, live in Pittsburgh, which I should know something about the steel industry, but I really don’t. But I don’t know anything about the oil and gas industry other than I take my car into a place and fill up. That’s as much as I know. Uh, so for you to be that expert in it requires a certain amount of digging and research and so on. Is that something that you enjoy doing? You enjoy the research part of this kinds of articles?

L.A. Starks: Oh, probably too much.

Steve Cuden: Are you saying you’re a bit of a geek on that? Is that what you mean?

L.A. Starks: Ye, this is too much. The very, very important part about writing are the things you don’t know about. So, like the action scenes, you know, having to block out the action scenes or. Um, in this one I used, and I think I’ve used it in the other books, Krav Maga. So I ask a trainer, okay, now, how does this work? And you want to reflect kind of the thrill, the conflict and all that that’s there, but you also have to really compress it.

Steve Cuden: What do you mean by compress it?

L.A. Starks: Compress in time. You know, you excise all the board.

Steve Cuden: You don’t want to take the audience through the entire process of learning Krav Maga and all the details of Krav Maga. Because that’s not necessarily what your story is about. Is that what you mean?

L.A. Starks: Well, yes, yes, but more specifically, you know, they’re like a million meetings in oil and gas. And you’re always. You’re meeting, you’re traveling, you’re meeting, it’s like, oh, what a drag. So, you know, if you can have a mean meeting in the book and lots of people sort of speak up and you know, there’s a big fight, well, that’s great. But even that you can’t do too much of.

Steve Cuden: Not to burst any bubbles, but I’ve been in show business for a really long time and there’s lots of meetings in show business too. They’re kind of a drag as well. You want to get to the heart of it and the meat of it. I’m curious, I asked this question of a lot of writers and I’m wondering if you’re able to define for us what for you makes a good story good. Why do you focus on one story over another? What makes it good for you?

L.A. Starks: I think we all try to go to the common theme and I’m not saying anything that people haven’t said a hundred times before, but it said that every good novel is about family m and about relationships. And so many books that I’ve read, something will be encapsulated and you’ll say, yes, that’s exactly right. And that’s what you’re beyond everything else, that’s what you’re trying to get to. Or, uh, that’s what I’m trying to.

Steve Cuden: Get to is the relationships.

L.A. Starks: The relationships and who’s doing what and why. So that know that becomes an important part of the character. So I mean, when I wrote my first book, you all the characters look alike, sounded alike. And as I’ve developed these books, I’ve thought more about who does what and why and how are they fighting about it.

Steve Cuden: All right, so let’s dig into Winner’s Curse a little bit deeper. Tell the listeners basically what the story is about.

L.A. Starks: Winter’s Curse is, um, a suspenseful thriller. It’s filled with energy intrigue that is ripped from, um, today’s headlines. It’s a story about conspiracies to get control of a valuable oil field technology and to sabotage natural gas plants. Um, as the first woman to lead her company’s drilling division, Lynn Dayton, the protagonist, has challenges and they escalate to thwarting these very deadly conspiracies.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. And where did Lynn Dayton come from? Is Lyn Dayton really essentially you, or is it someone you’ve completely made up?

L.A. Starks: There are definitely parts of Ly Dayton that are me, but there are also parts that aren’t. I have kids. She’s got step kids. In the first book, she’s not married, she’s divorced. She drives a lot faster than I do.

Steve Cuden: It’s a lot easier for her to drive fast in a book than in reality.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And she just, uh, she. I mean, there are s. Certainly things where when she’s thinking something, it would be sort of like my unfiltered. Yeah, that’s right. But she just. I don’t know, she’s taken a different path, I guess, than I’ve taken. So that’s part of it.

Steve Cuden: You’ve obviously written a number of books using her as your protagonist. What is it about her that fascinates you? How did you get to her in the first place?

L.A. Starks: Oh, that’s great. Okay, so some of it is, sure. Um, write what you know. But in writing about her, it was also like, what don’t I know? What are the hard situations she would come up against and you know, how would she deal with them? So I kind of think that that’s it. But, you know, there’s certainly people who would say, oh, it’s just wish fulfillt. Uh, and maybe that’s true too.

Steve Cuden: So she’s taking on the role for you of the character who is confronted by the unknown. And how does she deal with that unknown?

L.A. Starks: Well put.

Steve Cuden: Uh, okay, so are there other authors that you’ve read that you admire that sort of helped you to get to the thinking about Lyn Dayton in a series?

L.A. Starks: There’s so many authors, there’s so many that I like and there’s so many that I admire. I don’t know that certainly there are some with female protagonists and I’TAKEN note of that. So Patricia Cornwell, for example, or, uh, Sarah Poretky is a huge favorite of mine. And this book has a fair amount of Chicago. And it. Sarah Perretky writes about Chicago. Uh, Michael Crichton, he’s my guy. I’m sort of on that path of, you know, science y thriller.

Steve Cuden: That’s right. But he’s a very clever. Because he always. Every book that Crichton writes or wrote really is the definition of what you’re talking about, about either family or relationships or personal issues combined with some kind of science or something on the technological level. And that’s where you are as well. You’re dealing with this personal character along with the technical. And it happens to be the oil and gas industry.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so when you first started to write the first book, did you know then that you were going to write a series of them?

L.A. Starks: No, it was just kind of like, can I do this? And this is so hard. And you know and, um, I’m revising, and I’m just. What was interesting was I started out with a very, very small character in a very small place. And I had people kind of early on say, look, you need to just make the scope a lot bigger. And they were exactly right about that. And so that kind of took some kind of like, okay, you know, I haven’t traveled to Egypt, but I’m going to write about Egypt, for example.

Steve Cuden: Did that force you to travel to Egypt?

L.A. Starks: No, couldn’t afford that.

Steve Cuden: So you just went and did what every other author does, other than the ones that travel is. You did a lot of research?

L.A. Starks: I did a lot of research. I mean, certainly some of the scenarios, like Paris is in the first book. Well, I’ve been to Paris, so there’s some of it that fits. Um, I’ve been to Budapest. But there’s some that. I’m just thinking, well, I need this character in this place. What’s his name? What does he do? How does he sound? What does he think? What are his limitations and his motivations? There’s a fair amount of Russia. I’ve got a Russian guy and haven’t been there. So there’s a lot of just kind of noodling around about that.

Steve Cuden: And where do you look for your research? Uh, do you actually go to libraries? Is it online? Do you watch movies? What do you do for research?

L.A. Starks: Uh, occasionally movies. A lot of it is online.

Steve Cuden: Online and I assume a certain amount of book reading.

L.A. Starks: Absolutely, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Is some of that book reading must be related to the work that you do in nonfiction as well. I assume they have some inner life.

L.A. Starks: Right, right. Although it’s interesting because lot of the nonfiction, curiously over the last couple of years particularly, I’ve got a book of kind of like engineering standards and kind of laws and thermodynamics. I’ve got a whole library of that, but now everything I need is online. So that’s been sort of a weird.

Steve Cuden: Different thing, but that’s been coming toward that for quite some time.

L.A. Starks: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: You can find pretty much anything online at this point.

L.A. Starks: Yeah. And unless you really need it and then it’s not there.

Steve Cuden: Then you have to either you make it up or you got to go find it somewhere.

L.A. Starks: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: So let’s talk about your process of developing a novel you’ve now written. How many of them? 4 or 5?

L.A. Starks: 4.

Steve Cuden: 4. So where do you begin? Do you begin with the characters or do you begin with plot?

L.A. Starks: I start with plot. I also. It sounds odd, but what’s important to me is location. Location has a lot of history and depth and it shapes the characters. And then once I kind of know what I want, then I, uh, I start filling in the pieces with the character. So the protagonist, Lyn Dayton will be in several of them. People have said they like the Hannah Boo character, so she might continue. Um, I have a, A rather frightening character bible by this point because I’ve kind of like, okay, let’s put. We had somebody who does thus and so and they have a little cameo and then sometimes they show back up. In fact, this character, one of the antagonists, uh, is an antagonist early on in another book. So. And then like with this book I wrote the whole it and I worked with this for the second time, this really incredible editor and he’s kind of like, you know, you’re missing some pieces and you got to connect other pieces. So that’s uh, to me a very, very important thing. And there are probably authors who can keep rereading their manuscripts and making them better. But after I get past like five or six rereads, revisions, I’m not one because I stopped being able to read it as a reader. That’s, you know, that’s what you’re trying to do. And so I start kind of like, well, I can.

Steve Cuden: Do you get lost in the forest for the trees at that point where you can’t really see things that are either mistakes or there they need correction or words don’t make sense anymore. Is it that kind of thing? Because I go through some of that.

L.A. Starks: Certainly there’s the little stuff, you know, I have to pay attention to that. But really it’s more like, oh, uh, does this point connect to this point? Did I explain enough what going on here or why this is important or have I included one too many meetings which is, you know, in ah, a technical detail? You know, I’m kind of. I’ve got to be careful about that because it’s kind of like. Okay, I’m sure that everybody actually, you know, really wants to know how you put sand in a. Well, well, maybe. No, maybe not.

Steve Cuden: Do you have an extra burden because of your nonfiction work that, you know, you’ve got to be really accurate in your fiction?

L.A. Starks: Yes, I think, uh, it’s a, uh, responsibility.

Steve Cuden: You can’t make stuff up. You can’t just go crazy.

L.A. Starks: I really, really, really felt that with my first book and now I kind of, I’m confident enough in everything that I’ve done and written and kind of where you can sort of warp time and all that. But I do still Think of my engineering classmates and how you know somebody, they would call bullshit on stuff.

Steve Cuden: So, so you have uh, friends of yours and colleagues of yours who read the Ly Dayton books and theyve called you out on things.

L.A. Starks: Fortunately, no, theyve said, okay, she gets it right. Thats kind of, you know, that’s the little, little star.

Steve Cuden: Well, thats what you worked hard to get to. You worked hard to get it so that she is saying the right things.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, yeah, saying the right things and making the right calculations and you know, all of that.

Steve Cuden: All right, so now you say you need an outline because I think that that’s for me personally, I don’t know how you would write a detective story, a thriller, uh, you know, an action packed something without knowing where you’re going, beginning, middle and end. How long does it take you to develop an outline?

L.A. Starks: Well, a while. I mean it just really is kind of how long does it take to do a uh, book? And I have more time now so I can focus more but I’ve been doing it part time for a long time so it takes me a while. With this one, I had a good part of the manuscript and a very good outline by the end of last year. And so sort of through the beginning of 24 I filled it in, I kind of finished it up and then it still needed quite a bit of revision.

Steve Cuden: Mhm. So you spend you think more time developing the outline than actually writing the book or is there an equivalence?

L.A. Starks: No, no. I spend more time writing than I do outlining with the first book in. Not a mistake, but there were scenes and I thought, okay, I have to have this scene, I have to have this scene, I have to have this scene. And then it’s kind of like, oh, oops, I’got a time allether. And so since then, I mean I still have like scenes that sort of come to my imagination, but I really try to start with an outline.

Steve Cuden: So I know from my experience no matter how much I outline something, when I start to write, whether it’s script or book or whatever, I know that I’m going to make changes along the way that things are going to occur to me and I’m going to alter things. I’m going to move in different directions. Same for you?

L.A. Starks: Absolutely, 100%. It was funny because uh, with this book I was writing and as I was was starting to write it, Russia was invading Ukraine. It’s kind of like, okay, Waite, that changes things.

Steve Cuden: Well, what would you have done if you had completed the book and it were ready to go out, you wouldn’t have gone back and changed it, would you?

L.A. Starks: Probably not.

Steve Cuden: So it would have been in certain historical context. Pre Russia invading Ukraine.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, yeah. But, uh.

Steve Cuden: But then you knew it going into completion of the book, so you were able to adjust.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, I mean, it’s just. It’s just a. Like a little reference. Like, you know, the Russian guy shows up in Budapest and he’s kind of gets the cold shoulder and. Okay, you know.

Steve Cuden: So do you use any classic structural plot points, that kind of thing? Do you do that or you do it off of feel?

L.A. Starks: What, uh, you mean like the Hero’s Journey?

Steve Cuden: The Hero’s Journey. Seven plot points. There’s all kinds of different ways to think of structure. Especially I’m thinking motion pictures, because your story of most thrillers are like motion pictures in that way. And there is a sequence to how story will unfold. In what we, uh. You know, in movies, we talk about the seven plot points. But do you think that way or do you go by feeling how the story lays out?

L.A. Starks: Both. I do. The Hero’s Journey was. Was helpful for me. I like that. What I’m trying to do is. I’m trying to.

Steve Cuden: Now you’re talking about Joseph Campbell, right?

L.A. Starks: Oh, yeah.

Steve Cuden: Okay.

L.A. Starks: But what I really. With this one, I have different situations, and then I’m trying to, like, bring them together and bring the characters together. And so I’m writing in really in sort of three different locations. So I’m kind of moving one story along and then you moving the next and moving the next. And without kind of losing focus on the protagonist.

Steve Cuden: Do you develop the three different locations separately and then bring them together, or do you do it all as you’re moving along in the outline?

L.A. Starks: Kind of do it as I’m moving along. I’m thinking, okay, so this would happen here and then this would happen. This would happen. I mean, certainly there’s some, like, you go back and you fill in and you kind of make sure that there’s some chronology and there’s some explanation for why somebody’s doing something.

Steve Cuden: Would you say that the development of this book has been sort of similar to the way you’ve developed all your books, or have you progressed over time to different way to think about how to develop?

L.A. Starks: This first one was the one that I had the most, of course, problem with kind of structuring it?

Steve Cuden: Well, you were new to it, so you were struggling to understand how it worked.

L.A. Starks: Exactly. Exactly.

Steve Cuden: And then by this time, you had your second and third. You had a little bit of A template going?

L.A. Starks: Yeah, in some sense, a strong sense of what I wanted to write abouteah. I’m very intrigued by cultural conflict. I mean, I talked about locations, but some of that is also cultural. And I love that. I love that in a book. I’m reading a book right now that’s set in Senegal. It’s like, this is great. I mean, it’s a thriller and there’s lots of stuff going on, but it’s fun to read.

Steve Cuden: All right. Now, you said that you have a catalog of characters. Is, um, that what you called it, a catalog?

L.A. Starks: Well, they call it a bible, a character’s bible or something. And it’s this thing of, uh. I’ve forgotten who sets it up, but they say, okay, describe your character. What do they wear? How do they swear? What’s under their bed? Are they married? That. And so certainly with the protagonist, but with each of the characters, I tried to do at least some of that so I can say, who are they? What role do they play? Why are they important? How are they going to enter into the conflict?

Steve Cuden: Do you ever get into a book and realize that you don’t need a character and eliminate him or her?

L.A. Starks: Um, my editor d. You really don’t need five people saying the same thing that one person says.

Steve Cuden: Well, that would be true. You really don’t need five people saying the same thing.

L.A. Starks: You don’t.

Steve Cuden: That’s just sort of, uh, an artifact of writing over a very long period of time. Sometimes you lose track of things. Right?

L.A. Starks: Yeah. Ah, yeah. Go back to the outline. And that really is where your second reader and editor says, you know, o got. You got to tie this all together.

Steve Cuden: So then, do you do detailed character work on pretty much all of your characters?

L.A. Starks: I do probably too much on some of them. I mean, I really, of course, try to focus on the protagonist and, you know, sort of the minor characters with the protagonist and the antagonists. There are several antagonists this time, but I have to have enough to know how the person sounds, kind of what they look like, but definitely how they speak. And one of the things I have fallen into, I like it anyway, is if you have people from different countries or people with accents or they know dialect and dialogue is so. Is so cool. And I love the different words that people use. That’s not a good way to say it, but.

Steve Cuden: Well, you’re saying that you’re trying to come up with the idiomatic expressions, whatever the accent is. That’s very difficult to do. Well, do you spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a certain dialect or the way somebody says something. You think about that a lot.

L.A. Starks: It tends to be for the minor characters. But for example, I mean, I had this character and he just shows up in one scene. And because I thought, well, I kind of like this, and I want to, you know, I like him and I want to put him maybe throughout the book. And he’s this Scottish thug. And after I wrote like a scene with him, I thought, I can’t do this.

Steve Cuden: Too hard.

L.A. Starks: Ah, too hard. And I can’t inflict it on my readers either.

Steve Cuden: What do you do to avoid stereotyped characters or cardboard characters? What do you do?

L.A. Starks: That’s where the character Bible, kind of, what are their motivations? Why are they doing what they’re doing? And to some extent, the research comes in. This was, uh, the hilarious thing. Okay. In my first book, I have the antagonist is this guy who tends like. It’s basically the combination of mit, Stanford, Harvard of France, called X, or a cold polytenique. He attends that he’s graduated from that, and the nuclear engineers, all the elite, uh, excuse me, of France, go to the school. And that kind of plays into who he is in the first book. Well, in this book, I thought, okay, I need to develop this Egyptian engineer and I need to think about who he is. And he’s got some conflict and what makes him the way he is. Well, it turns out that he too went to a Cole polyteique. And that was like, okay, yes, he did. You know, that’s true to life. But that’s. That’s, uh. I had no idea until I started trying to think about who he was.

Steve Cuden: You know, that’s sort of a happy discovery, I guess, or happy.

L.A. Starks: It was easy.

Steve Cuden: It was easy to get in.

L.A. Starks: It was fun. It was a surprise.

Steve Cuden: Well, like you say, you’re going to write what you know, and you’re going to write things that are somewhat easy for you to understand so that you can explain it to the audience in some hopefully entertaining way.

L.A. Starks: Exactly.

Steve Cuden: Can you tell as you’writing during the writing process of the book itself, can you tell whether the story is working?

L.A. Starks: No.

Steve Cuden: You need to wait till you get to the end and look back.

L.A. Starks: Yeah. And it’s the issue with coming at it from an engineering background. It’s kind of like, well, I think this thing about being buried in sand is really cool, but have I really written it in an interesting and exciting and accessible way? You were asking earlier about kind of words and dialect, and that is a fun thing. I do bring in kind of the West Texas and the. The Midland patois. And it is its own language and it’s fun.

Steve Cuden: Do you find that as you’re working through the book, the characters start to talk to you?

L.A. Starks: Yes. Not like while I’m asleep or doing something else, but as I’m. And I think probably lots of writers and screen artists have this. You’just you’re kind of writing. You say, okay, he says this and she says that, and he says, you know, and it’s kind of. So you do get the sort of like the back and forth.

Steve Cuden: Have you spent a lot of time in the oil fields?

L.A. Starks: I’ve spent a lot of time with people who are in the oil field. So my background is I worked as a refinery engineer, so that the first three books really kind of very much pull from that background.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so let’s stop for a moment for the audience that doesn’t know, including me. What does a refinery, uh, engineer do?

L.A. Starks: When you get oil out of the oil field? It’s. You can’t put it in your car, you can’t pipe it directly to a ship, you can’t put it in a jet engine. So what you have to do is you have to clean it up, and you have to take out the metals, you have to take out the sulfur. And then to make these useful fuels, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, marine diesel, you add hydrogen often, particularly for gasoline, and then you separate. So the oil is this mix of, like, material from one carbon to like, maybe 50 carbons, 50 carbon molecules, big mix. And so also what you’re doing is you’re separating sort of by size of molecule. Some of the most useful things that come up with oil and gas are plastics, and they all come out of a C2, an ethane ethylene thing that comes out of oil. So you’re distilling, separating, and making the oil more useful.

Steve Cuden: As an engineer, are you literally doing the distilling? Are you standing there and distilling it yourself, or are you instructing others what they need to do?

L.A. Starks: The oil refineries are, um, most of them are. The oldest ones are about 100 years old, and they get deb bottlenecked and improved and updated constantly. So I was a tech service engineer, and the next step up was an operating engineer. The guy who was my. My mentors were operating engineers, and they instructed the operators. So the operators were the union guys, and the engineers were the ones who said, okay, this is what’s going on. This is. These are the adjustments we need to make. Then the operators would actually make Them.

Steve Cuden: Okay, so now I’ve had a little bit of an education on what a, a refinery engineer does. And how did you think to yourself, I could take that and not make it boring? I guess you do it by making it a thriller. But how did you get from there to writing know, a thriller?

L.A. Starks: Because I had a detour through consulting, engineering consulting. So I did refining engineering, I did planning, engineering consulting, marketing. So I sort of acrossoss the board and in the consulting. One of the things you learn. One of the things I learned is, uh, I worked with these guys who were experts, expert witnesses. And there are many, many things that present safety issues in a refinery. So like when I worked as an engineer, every week you’d have a safety, you’d have a safety talk. It’s like, okay, this is so boring, but you need it, uh, because you’re basically dealing with rocket fuel all the time, every day.

Steve Cuden: You could die real quickly and people have.

L.A. Starks: And so it’s not that much of a leap to say, okay, here are these accidents, here are these problems, here are these things we’re trying to prevent or in some cases, here are things that have happened to go to. Well, what, you know, what if we did that deliberately? What if we sabotaged? And so, so that was, you know, that was ah, an actually pretty easy leap.

Steve Cuden: Unfor, um, now that’s narrative storytelling. What if we actually did something nefarious?

L.A. Starks: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: That’s very good. That’s very good. So what do you think are a few of the things that a successful novelist must do in order to attract a publisher?

L.A. Starks: Well, I think you have to have, you have to have a good story. It has to be um, well done. It has to be attractive. And by that I just mean visually attractive. No mistakes, all that kind of stuff.

Steve Cuden: You’re talking about the physical act of writing itself, the craft of writing.

L.A. Starks: Mhm. Somebody has asked me, what do you mean engineers and writers are similar? And they’re similar because we’re in both crafts. We were very ocd. Engineers are very OCD about math and calculations and will thebridge stand up and all that. Writers are very OCD and reasonably so about words and how they sound and what they mean. And getting that right I think is really important. It’s a real starting point.

Steve Cuden: You think most engineers. I would hope so that in a, uh, case of an engineer that’s working in a place where people can get hurt or killed, that they’d better be OCD to a certain extent.

L.A. Starks: You want them to be absolutely 100% yes. Yes. You want them to be very care. Very.

Steve Cuden: And that also helps as a writer. It really does because it’s all about the details. You want to have it read in a very fast and furious way. You want it to be entertaining. But those details count. And that requires a certain amount of obsession about getting those details right.

L.A. Starks: You know, the mistakes that people can make and half made.

Steve Cuden: So a lot of professional writing and you’re now a professional writer, you know, for after years of doing it. It comes with a certain amount of built in pressures. I assume you have deadlines that you must meet. If you’re working under a contract of some kind, how do you deal with pressure? Or even as an engineer, when you’re dealing a refinery, how do you deal with pressure?

L.A. Starks: By walking away from it.

Steve Cuden: O really? Just walking away?

L.A. Starks: Yeah, well, I mean, I’m oversimplifying. I mean one of the things I do, I’ve made a point. I’m fortunate to have the time to be able to work out. So I run, I’ve run half marathons and that’people uh, say touch grass. I mean it’s ah, getting outside, doing something completely different, something physical. And that has. My whole life has really been, um, important for me.

Steve Cuden: You need separation from the work itself.

L.A. Starks: Absolutely.

Steve Cuden: Got it. I think I alluded to this a little bit earlier in the show. I think Winter’curse read as I read it, to me it read like a movie. Have you tried to get it produced? Have you been approached by producers? Have you gone to producers?

L.A. Starks: That would be the fantasy.

Steve Cuden: No, you have a strong female protagonist and it’s in an unusual setting that we don’t normally see in movies and TV shows. Although there’s a, uh, there’s a new Billy Bob Thornton series out that takes place in the oil fields. But nevertheless it read like a movie to me. It felt like you had thought that through. Were you thinking about a movie as you were writing it?

L.A. Starks: Truly that’s a fantasy. I don’t, I don’t have an agent. So, so it’s not, it hasn’t been pitched, um, as a movie. But it goes back to what you said about thrillers. Thrillers have to kind of move along and have to, you know, and they are global and they are. There is all this conflict and, and there’s lots of fire and explosions.

Steve Cuden: That won’t slow certain producers or directors down. But it is expensive.

L.A. Starks: Yeah.

Steve Cuden: And that’s something they’ll think about when they start to look at this as a potential property. All right, so I want to talk for A moment about publishing. Describe the process of working with an editor. You alluded to that earlier, that you needed the editor to give you that feedback that, that really helped you in some way. What is it that you look for from an editor? What is it that you hope you get from an editor? What is it you don’t want from an editor?

L.A. Starks: O. Um. The only thing that I’ve encountered from an editor that I found a little bit, a little bit distressing was that my manuscript came back just totally smoky. Um, so smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked. I guess when he read it.

Steve Cuden: Well, at least you know, he was working on it.

L.A. Starks: That’s right, absolutely. Yeah. The editor looks at it as somebody who’s seen lots of other manuscripts and knows what works.

Steve Cuden: Sure.

L.A. Starks: The I’m working with is so good and they’re kind of like this character that you’ve fallen in love with. They’re not serving any purpose. Take them out. You need some more action here. It’s a really filling in the gaps. And it’s more than just, you know, you’re getting the first read of critique. It’s really somebody’s just who’s seen a lot and a lot of what works. And the editor that I have worked with, not coincidentally, has done a lot of stage work.

Steve Cuden: The editor is your first audience, unless you’re giving it to family or friends obviously. But uh, in terms of the professional world, they’re your first audience. They’re your first quote unquote reader of import. So they’re giving you their point of view. It may not necessarily be the ultimate point of view, but it’s a point of view and their’s theoretically is professional and like you say, experience. By having read a lot of material, is there something that you want more of from an editor? Are you pretty much getting what you need to make the story work?

L.A. Starks: No, I get what I need. So.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

L.A. Starks: I just feel very, very fortunate with the editor I’ve worked with.

Steve Cuden: What do you think that you did in the beginning that you now do less of because you’re more experienced? Was it overwriting? Was it right into poners writing into corners? Yah, we talked about that a bit.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Cuden: And that’s because you outline, because you’ve got that worked out ahead of time.

L.A. Starks: Mhm.

Steve Cuden: Because once you’re in that corner it’s like very frustrating. How do you get out of the corner? Right.

L.A. Starks: The problem is you don’t even see that you’re in the corner until it’s kind of like, oh wait, I’ve got, you know, 150,000 words and this is terrible.

Steve Cuden: Now that said, it’s also useful sometimes in a thriller, in an action piece, it’s useful to actually find a corner to put yourself in to then work your way out of.

L.A. Starks: Oh, oh, you want, yeah, you want conflict and fights and, you know, issues and. Oh, yeah, yes.

Steve Cuden: Uh, yes, but you’re talking about story corners. It’s like, well, this is. We’re down a dead end here. That’s not going anywhere.

L.A. Starks: Yeah, this doesn’t work. Uh, this character might be interesting, but they’re not contributing. The scene is, you know, you’ve got something else like it. Uh.

Steve Cuden: Have you ever found yourself writing and writing and writing and then realizing that you’re 100 pages in and now you’re just starting where the story starts, so you have to get rid of that 100 pages or something like that. Has that ever happened to you?

L.A. Starks: Not really, no. Mhm.

Steve Cuden: That’s because you’re certain about what you’re writing, which is good.

L.A. Starks: Well, I try to start with action. I think if I wrote historical fiction and if I read historical fiction, I don’t. But if I wrote it, it would be easy to put in too much backstory. I mean, that’s kind of the backstory, I think really goes to the characters and the character development and that’s, that’s where you do all that.

Steve Cuden: Well, sure, you’ve probably received your fair share of notes and ultimately it’s your copyright, it’s your piece. I assume you have the right to override an editor’s note unless there’s some big egregious thing. What do you do when you receive notes? Do you sit back and absorb them and let them seep in? Do you object to things that you don’t think work? How do you handle notes that you’re not sure of what to do with?

L.A. Starks: I don’t run into that too much. Usually from my editor. It’s pretty useful stuff.

Steve Cuden: Spot on.

L.A. Starks: Yeah. If I don’t understand what he said, will, I’ll ask him, you know, if it’s something like I feel strongly about, I’ll sort of discuss it with him. But usually it’s, uh, not. He’s pretty on target.

Steve Cuden: So how often do those notes help you to get to a much better place?

L.A. Starks: Oh, all the time.

Steve Cuden: All the time. So the work of an editor is certainly not only helpful, but extremely useful.

L.A. Starks: Absolutely. Yeah.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s good to know. Well, I’ve been having just a fantastic conversation for almost an hour now with L.A. Starks. And we’re going to wind the show down just a little bit. And I’m, I’m wondering, in all of your experiences, can you share with us a, um, story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or just plain funny?

L.A. Starks: Um, sort of a combination of quirky and funny and cute. Very early on, this was with the first book and I actually had a different title for it, um, which was probably part of the problem. But I was at a conference in coastal Georgia and this woman had signed me, an agent had signed me. So I was very excited. And I was meeting her for the first time at this conference and she was, uh, we’having conversations. She was also introducing me to a filmmaker. And as we were talking, I realized she hadn’t read the book and that she thought I should pitch it as a romance. And I’m like, uh, o, uh. So we kind of went back and forth a little bit and then she left. And I hope this doesn’t bother too many people, but she left for a Wiccan meeting. So this guy was, this filmmaker, was, was still there. And he said, you know, he said, I don’t think she’s helping you. And he was exactly right. And you know, it was such a big deal. I had an agent. It was such a big deal. Eventually, sure enough, the agent and I parted ways and the very nice filmmaker, um, man from Georgia, wound up giving me this wonderful blurb or endorsement for my first book.

Steve Cuden: O, that’s nice.

L.A. Starks: So that was interesting. It was an interesting experience.

Steve Cuden: That’s interesting all the way around. I mean, the fact that she leaves for a certain kind of a meeting, uh, and it wasn’t just to go have a sandwich, it something fascinating. That’s very good.

L.A. Starks: Right.

Steve Cuden: Uh, so last question for you today, la. You’ve shared with us a huge amount of advice throughout this entire show, but I’m wondering if you have a single solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give to those who are starting out in the business or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to that next level.

L.A. Starks: What I would say something that really, in retrospect, helped me, of course, joined critique groups, you know, joined professional writers organizations. Those were good. Something that really, in retrospect, gave me a breakthrough was writing for an anthology. And, um, these professional groups will have anthologies. They to raise some money for the professional group. Although, ah, there was one that was commercial and I submitted a short story to it. Short stories. They’re a lot of work.

Steve Cuden: Yes, they are.

L.A. Starks: Ton of work. But it’s not a book, so they’re much harder to sell all that. But anyway, and this publisher said, o, uh, they published the short story. And they said, well, do you have a book? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, I have a book. Uh, because that was my second book. And at that point I was working on it and finishing it up, and they said, we’d like to see it. So my advice is the anthologies can really sort of introduce you to people, to publishers, not only to other writers. They’re a very nice community, and it can be very much worth doing.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s very great advice because it’s not only writing, which is always helpful just to keep writing. It gives you sort of, um, an expanded audience. You might meet people you would otherwise never have met or bring in readers you might never have ever found. So I think that’s very wise advice. Any outlet, I think, is a good outlet.

L.A. Starks: Yes.

Steve Cuden: L.A. Starks, this has been a great, fascinating hour on Story Beat, and I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy and your wisdom. And I’m grateful for you being on the show with me today.

L.A. Starks: Steve. Thank you so much.

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 help 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.