LynDee Walker – Pulse-pounding Crime Thrillers

Lyndee Walker’s journalist investigator Nichelle Clarke juggles stud muffin boyfriends while she takes on “Mafia hotties, corrupt politicians, old flames and murder.” Hi there. I’m your host jenny Wheeler and LynDee talks her new crime thriller  Hidden Victims as well as a new Texas Ranger law and order series on The Joys of Binge Reading. We’ve got three E book copies of Hidden Victims to give away to three lucky readers. Enter the draw on Joys of Binge Reading.com or on our Binge Reading Facebook Page. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: LynDee’s award winning journalism beginnings ‘Stay at home’ Mum discovers writing fiction How her protagonist Nichelle was created The attraction of the Texas Rangers A sharp new author to watch The ‘secret’ to writing success (it’s not glamorous!) Where to find LynDee Walker:  Website: https://lyndeewalker.com/connect/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lyndeewalkerbooks/https://www.facebook.com/lyndeewalkerbooks/ BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/lyndee-walker What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here’s LynDee.  Hello there LynDee and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, LynDee and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. LynDee Walker thriller author LynDee Walker: Hi Jenny. Thank you so much for inviting me. Jenny Wheeler: I always like to start with this question. It might be a little predictable, but readers always like to know the answer to it. How did you get started on your writing? Was there a Once Upon a Time moment when you had that ‘light bulb’ experience – I have to do this, or was it something a lot more gradual and integrated? LynDee Walker: Actually I did have a light bulb moment. It’s a funny story. My son, my second child was probably a year old and I was loading my dishwasher and all of a sudden there was this reporter in my head. She was locked in a car trunk down in Shockoe Bottom because she’d got herself into trouble chasing a story, and she couldn’t figure out how she was going to get out of it. I looked at the silverware caddy in the dishwasher and said, I don’t know anything about writing fiction, but I didn’t have anything else to do while the baby was taking his naps and she wouldn’t go away, so I got my computer and I started writing the story and that was eleven years ago this summer. I never had any idea at that time where all of this was going to take me or how much fun I was going to have with Nichelle, but that is where she came from.  That scene where she’s locked in the car trunk in Shockoe Bottom made it through all of the edits and is still smack in the middle of the first book. Introducing LynDee Walker Jenny Wheeler: How amazing. For those who don’t know, your heroine being a journalist wasn’t that surprising, because you yourself were a journalist at that time, were you not? LynDee Walker: I had been. I was a newspaper reporter before I was a mom. When I found out I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, I decided that maybe the 80-hour weeks and unpredictable hours of covering police and the courthouse was not a thing I wanted to keep doing because I was never going to get to see my baby. Front Page Fatality LynDee Walker #1 I left the newsroom and I was a stay at home mom for about five years. After we moved to Virginia, I would tell other moms in our playgroup that I used to be a writer, but I didn’t think it was something that I was ever going to do again until that day when Nichelle showed up in my head when I was loading the dishwasher, and now here I am. Jenny Wheeler: Probably it isn’t a surprise that you chose crime thrillers as your genre, but they were first marketed under the tagline of ‘Headlines in High Heels’ and there are a whole set of covers with very high stiletto heels. That was your first iteration, I think. LynDee Walker: Yes, there was a different publisher than the one I have now. Jenny Wheeler: Okay. The first book is called Front Page Fatality and it must’ve been a real thrill because it won an Agatha Award for the best first mystery novel. Agatha finalist thrill LynDee Walker: I actually didn’t win, I was a finalist that year though for the Agathas being on the short list is a big honor. That was a wonderful experience and completely horribly unexpected. The poor woman who had to call me from the Malice Domestic board to tell me that the book was an Agatha finalist – I must have told her she was lying about five times. My family and I were at Disney World when she got me on the phone, and we were in a restaurant and it was very loud and I couldn’t hear her. By the time I got outside where I could hear what she was saying, she was practically screaming “I’m calling to congratulate you on your nomination for an Agatha award”.  I was like, what? You are not, are you kidding? It was a really fun moment and that was a grand, fun experience that I made a lot of friends from – other writers who were nominated with me that year. We did a lot of events and stuff together that Spring and we’re still friends to this day. Jenny Wheeler: A reviewer described the series as murder mystery series taut with gripping authentic plots that only a former crime reporter could write. We’ve talked about your newspaper career, but you obviously were doing crime reporting as well. LynDee Walker – Nichelle Clarke #2 LynDee Walker: I did, yes.  For a large part of my journalism career, I covered mostly the police departments and the courthouse. There are of course a lot of stories that come out of those two places. I think knowing the behind the scenes part of how the case has progressed and what happens from the initial police report and the arrest – here in the United States and in Texas particularly, because that’s where I worked when I was a journalist, the District Attorney’s office will have an investigator. Being a journalist an advantage It completes an investigation after the police investigation has been completed and the reports have been filed. There are all kinds of steps that happen between that initial arrest and the trial, which can be anywhere from 12 to 24 months later. Knowing the background of all that and how the deadlines in the newsroom work, hopefully, gives the stories a behind the scenes peek for people who aren’t familiar with that world.  And I hope that’s fun for readers as well. Jenny Wheeler: There are now eight full length Nichelle books and two novellas. The most recent one is called Hidden Victims. LynDee Walker: Yes. Jenny Wheeler: They can be read in any order? LynDee Walker: They can. There are some overarching storylines that go between the books. Nichelle has her personal life, her love life. There are things that stretch between the books but there are no spoilers for any of the mysteries in any of the other books. If you happen to pick up the series on the third one, it’s not going to ruin the first two mysteries for you because it doesn’t say who did it. You can still go back and read the others. Jenny Wheeler: Nichelle is a heroine. I love this description that I read – she juggles stud muffin boyfriends and takes on mafia hotties, corrupt politicians, old flames and murder. That’s in Buried Leads, Book 2.  How has she evolved over the series? You mentioned her romantic life. Has she evolved in other ways? Nichelle – An evolving character LynDee Walker: She has. I always wanted Nichelle to grow as a character over the course of the series. That was one of the goals I had once I figured out there was going to be more than one book. While I read and love and appreciate a lot of mystery series where the characters don’t ever change, like Nancy Drew, for instance, I wanted her to learn things and grow as a person. Deadly Politics – LynDee Walker thriller She had all these personal issues and challenges with commitments and her family history, and a lot of that stuff gets resolved over the course of these eight books. She grows into herself and becomes more confident in herself and her abilities and figures out more of who she is. I think that helps her in her personal relationships with other people. Jenny Wheeler: It’s interesting because in Hidden Victims she’s in a new job and she comes under that pressure many reporters would be familiar with today, where the bosses are looking to her to get the clickbait stories, the stories that are going to make people pull out their money at the supermarket checkout. That’s a very relevant reflection of what journalism is like today, isn’t it? It might not have been quite so much like that when you began. The fast changing face of media LynDee Walker: It was not. Those are things I have had to watch and study trends in the marketplace. When I wrote the rough draft of Front Page Fatality, I wrote it as the newsroom was when I left five years earlier. There was no social media, there was no Twitter. The receptionists were still leaving messages on desks on little pink slips of paper, because that’s what we had and it was the newsroom I knew. After the book sold, I had to go back and update everything to include cell phones and searching through social media profiles for people that she was investigating and doing stories on all kinds of stuff that I didn’t ever have to do as a reporter. Of course everybody always wants the big headline grabbing story but the newspaper didn’t used to be under so much financial pressure for reporters to bring things like that in where today they need the story because they need the ad revenue that having the story and being the talk of the town is going to bring in. Jenny Wheeler: Yes, and some of those stories are probably not justified in the position they get. They’re almost gossip. Starting out as a feisty reporter LynDee Walker: There are probably some publications out there that will use things that may not be strictly of the highest journalistic integrity to draw clicks. That’s something I’ve always loved about Nichelle. She has my old school ethical code. When I was in college, my professors were all old school journalists who worked at the Dallas Times Herald back in the 60’s and covered the Kennedy assassination and did all these great, wonderful things when they were reporters. Cover Shot – LynDee Walker Nichelle Walker series One of the things they managed to drum into our heads when I was in school was that you don’t have anything if you don’t have a reputation. It doesn’t matter what kind of story you got if it was at the expense of – now these people won’t talk to you anymore. That’s something Nichelle takes very seriously in the books. She’s not going to run something until she knows that what she has is the truth. Jenny Wheeler: You’ve also launched a second series around a Texas Ranger called Faith McClellan. Book 2 of that series was also published this year. So far this year you’ve had one book in each of your series out. What made you decide that you wanted to do this second series? LynDee Walker: It was a combination of things. I wanted to write about something different. I had a contract that was discontinued on the Nichelle series from one publisher and it can be very difficult in the publishing world to find a different publisher that wants to pick up a series when it’s already established. From high life condo to Texas Hills My agent said the best road was for me to write something totally different. I got an idea for a book about a sort of overachiever, superstar, teenage girl who is from a very affluent family and winds up dead. This one police officer didn’t see the case as a privileged young woman who had committed suicide and wanted to investigate it further. I started writing that and while I was working on the first book in the Faith McClellan series, there did come to be another publisher who was interested in picking up the Nichelle series and continuing it. All of a sudden, instead of writing one series, I had two, because I was almost finished with the rough draft of Fear No Truth at the time. It’s been an interesting challenge with a household to run and three children to raise and take care of and a busy husband who travels often, to make sure I stick with these deadlines and get two books out a year instead of one. So far, it’s going okay. Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. You’ve moved your settings, because a lot of Nichelle is high life condo sort of territory, to Texas Hill country. That must be quite a change for a start. LynDee Walker: It is, but Faith stories are fun for me to write. I live in Richmond now, so the Nichelle series has been a fun way for me to explore and learn about our adopted hometown because I didn’t grow up here. A lot of the history stuff that turns up in the books is there because I found it interesting because it was something I learned while I was doing research. Faith McLellan – Texas Ranger But I did grow up in North Central Texas and the Hill Country is not a long drive from there. It’s one of the most beautiful parts of the State and has always been one of my favorite places to visit. I started off the rough draft of that book with Faith being a police detective and she was determined that she was a Texas Ranger. That became a very interesting dynamic for me to explore with her character all on its own, and then being able to set that book in the Hill Country was a bonus because it feels like writing about home. Fear No Truth – Faith McLellan #1 Jenny Wheeler: For those who may be in New Zealand and Australia who aren’t so familiar with what a Texas Ranger is, could you give an explanation of the distinction between a detective and a Texas Ranger? LynDee Walker: Absolutely. The Texas Rangers are a unique criminal investigation organization. They serve as the Criminal Investigations arm of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Their jurisdiction is the entire State and there’s about 256,000 square miles in Texas, it is very big. They also cover a very wide range of types of cases, everything from bank fraud to running the State’s Cold Case Homicide unit, so there’s a lot of story material there. The Rangers also have a mystique and a legendary history in Texas. They were the original border patrol cowboys way back 150-200 years ago. There are all kinds of stories of legendary investigators and gunfights. The last ‘good ole boys’ club Their uniform included boots and cowboy hats for a long time and still mostly does to this day. The badge is still a silver star. There are a lot of things that haven’t changed, but it was very interesting to write about a woman who was a Texas Ranger in the 21st century, because the Rangers were the very last American good old boys club in law enforcement. Where our Federal Bureau of Investigation began to admit women agents in the mid-1930s, the Texas Rangers did not have a female field officer until 1993 when the Governor made it a law that they had to admit qualified women as field officers. Even to this day, there have been fewer than 20, so it became a motivating thing for her character. Leave No Stone – LynDee Walker Texas Ranger #2 That was something I had to go back and figure out. Why would someone do this? What would motivate her to push through all of this to get to this specific job when she’s such a good cop and she could have been an FBI agent or an ATF agent or worked anywhere at any police department in the homicide division. Jenny Wheeler: That’s really interesting. The book that’s out this year was called Leave No Stone and it was a serial killer story. How is Faith different from Nichelle in terms of personality and character? LynDee Walker: Faith is a lot quieter. She’s a lot tougher and more no nonsense than Nichelle. We meet her in the first book having had a much rougher life than Nichelle did in a lot of ways. She knows a different kind of loss than Nichelle ever has and it has had a big role in shaping who she is and why she’s dedicated her life to this work when it wasn’t at all what her family wanted her to do. Twisty plots and surprise endings She has different ways to grow and develop over the course of her series and I have very much enjoyed getting to know her better writing these books. She is a neat character. I’m fortunate to get to write about fictional people that I would really like to go have a glass of wine with if they were real. Jenny Wheeler: That’s your prerogative as an author, isn’t it? You’ve had a lot of compliments in your reviews for your twisty plots and your surprise endings. I wonder how you tackle all these books in terms of structure? Do you have a lot of sleepless nights working out the surprise endings, or do you start with the surprise ending and work backwards? LynDee Walker: It depends on the book. There have been a couple where I started with the end and worked backwards to figure out how Nichelle was going to get to that particular answer. But most of the time these days I start with a vague idea. I’m terrible about not being able to outline. I wish I could but every time I’ve ever tried, I veer so far off it while I’m writing the story, that it ends up being useless to me. Dateline Memphis – a LynDee Walker novella So I start with a vague idea of what I want the story to be about and a body that’s going to be discovered somewhere and then see where it goes. It’s funny because sometimes when I do events and I meet readers, I almost feel like it comes across the wrong way if someone compliments a twist in a particular book. I’ve had people come up and say, I loved it when this happened and instead of saying, thank you like a normal person, I say, I know, I didn’t see it coming either. Edge of your seat moments All of a sudden, it was there. I was sitting at my computer and typing, and I went, oh that’s who that guy is. They come to me while I’m working for the most part, but my children have stories to tell about us being in the middle of doing something as a family and me just stopping and running for my computer because I got an idea or I figured out something about how something was going to work out. Jenny Wheeler: And you want to make sure you get it down before you forget it again. LynDee Walker: Yes, ma’am. Absolutely right. Jenny Wheeler: It’s a real edge of your seat moment when those things happen, isn’t it? LynDee Walker: It really is. It always comes as a relief to me. I start every book afraid of what’s going to happen with it and where it’s going to go. What if this is the one I can’t figure out? Thankfully I’ve not come across that one yet, but those moments that I have when I do figure it out and I go, that’s why this is all happening this way, because it’s this thing, then it’s a huge relief because now the story is going to work out. I know what’s happening here. Jenny Wheeler: I wondered if you’ve ever yourself been caught in some of the extreme circumstances that your heroines face – threats from either the villains or from readers who don’t like, in Nichelle’s case, what she’s publishing in the paper. How did you handle it if you did face that kind of circumstance? Learning the reporter ropes LynDee Walker: Not nearly as dangerous as anything that Nichelle has ever gotten herself into. I did have one story that I wrote as a very young reporter where the Police Chief in the city where I worked threatened to arrest me because he was upset. He didn’t particularly care for the way I was covering some things that were going on in the Police Department.  I had a running joke with his Public Information Officer at the time. The PIO was great and we got along really well, but I would call and ask for a comment on whatever I was writing about and he would always laugh and say the Chief isn’t going to talk to you. He has no comment. He doesn’t like you. Lethal Lifestyles – LynDee Walker thriller I would say, that’s okay because they pay me to call and ask. But he did something he shouldn’t have at a hearing one day because he thought all the members of the media had left the building. It sounds ridiculous the age that I am now, but at the time I was very young and it was my very first professional reporting job. I was still a college student and I had a test that day that the professor would not let me out of because I was supposed to be covering a hearing. So I had to go to campus and take a test. Learning to handle politicos When I left, I left my tape recorder with one of the attorney’s assistants and asked her to turn the tape over when it ran out so that I would have my own recording of the rest of the proceedings from the hearing that afternoon. The reporter from the local television station also left because she had something else she had to do back at her office. They resumed the hearing and he didn’t think there were any journalists in the room, and he said some things he probably would not have said if we had still been there. He got very upset when I called the next day asking for a comment on his behavior because I had a recording of the things he had said. He called me to his office and told me he would sit for an interview and then proceeded to threaten to arrest me for violating a section of the penal code that pertains to illegally wiretapping a telephone conversation. He said, I can arrest you for violating this particular section of the Texas Penal Code and that tape can disappear out of my evidence room. Getting into hot water I said I don’t know what that section of the Penal Code says but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say I can’t have a tape recorder in a public meeting, and if that’s all you wanted, I think we’re done here. All of 19 years old and probably still relatively naive, I got up and walked out of the office. I think I probably must have been pale as a ghost because the Public Information Officer did sit up in his chair and look at me and say, are you okay? It was an interesting learning experience for me, behaving when they think no one’s watching. I did go back to my office and write a story and include all the things that happened during that interview. I got some great comments from some of the attorneys that had been involved in the hearing the day before. I also got a lot of phone calls from rank and file police officers when that story ran, who called me and said, I’ve never met you and don’t know anything about you, but I wanted to apologize because he shouldn’t have behaved that way. Award-winning crime reporter Jenny Wheeler: That’s remarkably courageous for a 19-year-old who’s just starting out. I can see why you managed to become an award-winning crime reporter. LynDee Walker: I don’t know that I would handle myself that same way if that same situation happened today. I think I was young and naive enough to not really understand how much trouble I might be in. Jenny Wheeler: Was it at the Dallas Morning News where you were working and how long did you have in journalism? LynDee Walker: I worked at different papers in North Central Texas for eight years, I guess, and I worked all over the Dallas Fort Worth area. I worked at the alternative weekly paper in Fort Worth for a while. I wrote some stories freelance, personal local magazines and even for an environmental journal for a little while. Writing as a professional Then I went to work for Star Group in Southwest Fort Worth as a Managing Editor, running a paper in a small town outside of Fort Worth in Southwest Tarrant County. Jenny Wheeler: What lessons did you learn in that career that have transferred over to your current fiction writing? Small Town Spin – LynDee Walker LynDee Walker: You have to stick with your deadlines and just because your muse isn’t talking to you today is no excuse to not get your work done. I didn’t always feel like going back to the newsroom at the end of the day and writing a story but I had a deadline and so I had to anyway. I think that has served me well with writing fiction professionally with deadlines and publication schedules to worry about, because even if I don’t feel like doing it, I have to sit down and write something because I have a deadline and it has to be done. Jenny Wheeler: I guess that’s the same advice you’d give to young writers starting out today who ask you what the secret is? Just do it, don’t wait for inspiration LynDee Walker: Absolutely. You can always fix it. It doesn’t matter how crummy your first draft is. If you have something on the page, then you have something that you can revise. I think of a rough draft of a book as like dumping clay on a potter’s wheel. It’s not pretty but there’s something there, and you can shape it into something that’s beautiful when you go back to revise it. My first advice is always, even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t know what’s going to happen next, you are allowed to write something that is terrible because eventually the story will get moving again and you will figure things out and as long as you have something, you can always fix it later. A winning process for ten books Jenny Wheeler: How many revisions would you normally do? LynDee Walker: I usually go through four rounds on a book because my writing process is so messy. I make margin notes as I’m writing the rough draft because things will change as I figure out things. When I get later into the story, then that changes something that had to happen in the beginning, and so I’ll make myself a note in the margin to go back and change this, or I need to add a scene that does A and B so that C that I have here makes sense. The first round of revisions is always that sort of stuff, the big cleaning up and making all the story threads come together. Then I go through and read for continuity to make sure the characters are all behaving in the way I think they should be behaving according to the way they’ve behaved in other books. Then I usually read for more language type things, sentence length, making sure I’m not being monotone. That one normally I walk around the house with a file on my iPad or sometimes even in printed pages and read it out loud because I hear it better that way. Devil in the Deadline – a Nichelle Walker Thriller The last one is always looking for the words I have a tendency to repeat. I have a list in my computer of things I know I have a tendency to say too much in every manuscript, so I go back in, look for those and delete them when I find they’ve been overused. Jenny Wheeler: That’s a remarkable, structured, disciplined approach. LynDee Walker: It’s worked for me so far ten times, so hopefully it’s going to continue to. What LynDee likes to read Jenny Wheeler: This is The Joys of Binge Reading and we’re coming to the end of our time together, so turning to LynDee as a reader – do you like to binge read and if so, what do you like to read for your entertainment and not so much for the research you might have to do? Would you have some current favorites that you could recommend to people? We like to say that on this podcast you can find something great for your next read. LynDee Walker: Absolutely. I have so many favorite books we probably don’t have time for me to list them all. In terms of binge reading, if people are looking for a good series, I like to laugh when I read. Reading is an escape for me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like the dark books too, but if I’m going to read a whole lot of books about one character I would usually like them to be a little more lighthearted. My friend Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow mystery series is phenomenal. It is hilarious, the mysteries are always so well drawn, the characters are lovely, her setting is wonderful. She hops around and does different things with travel. I think she’s up to 25 books in that series so if you want to binge read something and you’ve never read Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow books you should definitely check them out because they are worth it. Some hot favorite books LynDee Walker: Current, favorite, individual reads this year, I have read some fantastic books. Jennifer Hillier’s new psychological thriller Little Secrets was phenomenal. She has outdone herself and I don’t think I thought that was possible after her last book. Coming up this summer, but not yet out – I think it releases next month – Shawn Cosby, I think he writes under S.A. Cosby, he has a new thriller coming out called Blacktop Wasteland. I got an early copy of it this winter and it is an exceptional books. https://www.amazon.com/Blacktop-Wasteland-Novel-Shawn-Cosby/dp/1250252687 Exciting new author – and a LynDee Walker top pick It is very dark. It is not funny, except in a very dark way. There’s some dark humor in there, but it’s this adventure in rural noir that it is just incredible. The characters really stuck with me for a long time after I turned the last page and closed that one and I’m excited to see how the book does when it comes out next month, because I think this is going to be his big breakout novel. Jenny Wheeler: Is that a western noir? LynDee Walker: Yes, it is. It is a very dark book about a man who was a getaway driver, largely known as the best one on the East Coast for a long time and then trying to get out of the criminal life and settle down and have a family. He has some extenuating, extraordinary personal circumstances pop up that force him into the one last big score. You can imagine that things go wrong, and mayhem ensues. The character studies in this book are incredible. He did a phenomenal job. Jenny Wheeler: Sounds like something Netflix would love too. Is there anything she would change? LynDee Walker: I really hope so. I think I saw a couple of weeks ago in Variety that maybe they had sold the film rights. I might be wrong about that, but I think they have an eye because as I was reading, I kept thinking this would make an incredible movie, the imagery here would be so fantastic on film. Jenny Wheeler: Circling round, looking back down the time tunnel because we are coming to the end of our time together now, is there anything you would change about the way you’ve done it? If so, what would that be? LynDee Walker: I wouldn’t. I’ve had several people ask me that question in the last few years and I feel I’ve ended up where I’m supposed to be. I’m in a good place and every single decision I ever made about publishing brought me here in one way or another. I’ve made some wonderful friends and met some fantastic people and wonderful readers along the way and I don’t think a quicker short road to the publishing big time would have been nearly as much fun or as educational or brought so many wonderful people into my life. I’m very happy with the way things have gone. Jenny Wheeler: These days there’s a general observation that no writer can live on one big book. You have to have a solid back list, don’t you? LynDee Walker: It definitely helps. What’s next for LynDee the writer? Jenny Wheeler: What is next for LynDee the writer? What have you got on your desk for the rest of 2020 and the first half of 2021, now we’re halfway through the year? LynDee Walker: I just signed a contract extension for five more books, four more books, I don’t even remember how many were on there. This third Faith McClellan book I’m working on finishing now will be out either in Winter or early Spring of 2021. It’s currently slated to release in March 2021, but there’s been talk at the publisher of trying to push the date up if we can make that work. Once I finish this one and turn it in, I’m going to write the fourth book in the Faith McClelland series. They haven’t given me a release date for that one yet, but I would imagine late 2021 or early 2022. When I finish that one, I have an idea for a new series I’m going to start, which I’m very excited about. Hopefully that’s going to be great fun to write and get started and get to know some new characters. Where to find LynDee online Jenny Wheeler: So Nichelle’s taking a bit of a rest. LynDee Walker: She is. I didn’t start writing Hidden Victims with the intention of having that happen but by the time I got to the end of the book, I was like, well, this is all okay. There are a lot of lingering questions from earlier books that answered themselves in that one while I was writing it. I’m not done with Nichelle. I think she has more stories to tell, but right now my agent and my editor agreed that she’s in a good place and we can let her rest there and be happy for a little while before she goes getting herself in trouble again. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. Do you enjoy interacting with your readers? You’ve mentioned your readers several times, so I’m sure you do. Where can they find you online? LynDee Walker: I do. I love hearing from readers. I try very hard to respond to everything I get. Sometimes I’m not great about it, so I beg your pardon if anyone has messaged me and not got a personal reply back. It probably means that either my personal life was crazy at the moment or I was on a deadline and trying to spend all the time in front of the computer writing and getting the next story to you all faster. The sweetness of reader feedback But I read and very much appreciate every message that I get from folks. I’ve had some incredible stories over the years. I wonder sometimes if readers understand how much it means to writers when they take the time to send a note and talk about what a particular book or a particular series has meant to them. I’ve sat in front of my computer and bawled my eyes out reading messages from people who say, you know, these Nichelle books got me through chemo because that’s what I read when I went to my cancer treatments. It’s incredible to me that stories can have an impact that helps people to see past and get through really dark times, and I feel very fortunate to be able to be part of that in some way. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful, and just to mention that we’ll have links on the website to all your books and all the other things we’ve discussed in the show notes for this episode, so they’ll always be there in perpetuity. LynDee Walker: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Jenny Wheeler: LynDee, thank you for your time today. You’re going to be able to now go and get your dinner or relax with an evening drink while my day is just starting, but wonderful to have had a chance to talk. LynDee Walker: Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me. I had a great time and I hope you have a wonderful day there. Jenny Wheeler: Thank you. If you enjoyed LynDee you might also enjoy Anna Willett’s Nightmare Thrillers or Timothy Hallinan’s Master Thrillers Both on the Joys of Binge Reading. Anna Willett Nightmare Thrillers Timothy Hallinan – Thriller Master Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]