Introduction to Mystery Books Podcast

by | Sep 21, 2020

 

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Mystery Books Podcast. I’m mystery author Sara Rosett, and this is a short introduction to Mystery Books podcast. This podcast will cover mysteries in all of their forms from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies. In each podcast, I’ll focus on one mystery. I’ll give you a quick overview of the book, but there will be no spoilers, I promise. No spoilers! My hope for the podcast is that it will either help you find a new author to try or let you revisit an old favorite.

If you’ve been around for a while, you probably realize that what I’m doing here is actually rebooting Mystery Books Podcast. There was an earlier version of this podcast several years ago and I loved doing it. But I pod-faded. If you don’t know what that means, that means you do a couple of episodes and then you just fade away and you’re never heard from again. Normally it’s three, four, or five episodes and then the person just disappears.

I think I got up to about 18. So that shows you that I’m a little more persistent and dogged, I guess, than some people that pod-fade earlier than I do.

But I just couldn’t keep up with podcasting and writing. I’m a mystery author first and I had to give time to the fiction in. Podcasting is very time consuming, but I think I found a way to do the podcast, share books I love, and also continue to write books. This podcast will be very similar to the original version. It will be the same, only different. I will have the same great mystery books, but I wanted to do an update for several reasons.

Refresh to the Podcast

First, I just know more about tech. The first version of this podcast had sound issues with microphones and static and popping sounds. And I feel like I know more about how to make the podcast sound good from the get-go. I’m sure there will be sound issues with this version as well, but I think that it will probably be a better listening experience from the beginning.

The other thing I wanted to change about this is that I used to do ebook-centric news and updates, but those become dated very quickly. I didn’t even think about how after a couple of months, a couple of years, the things that were in the news then don’t apply at all now. So a lot of the companies that I mentioned, a lot of the software programs, some of those are completely out of business and don’t exist anymore. So that becomes dated very quickly. I want this podcast to be timeless. That’s what I want for my books, too.

I want people to be able to read my books today and then hopefully in 10, 20 years they can pick up my book and still read it and enjoy it without feeling like they’re reading ancient history. So I hope people are still reading my book 10 years from now! I have the same hope for this podcast. And that’s one reason I’m focus a lot on classic golden age novels. I’l also talk quite a bit about books that are written by contemporary authors, but that are set in the past.

Another reason I wanted to update the podcast is because some things about the books have changed. Murder on the Orient Express has a new feature film about Poirot, and there’s going to be more films made about Poirot coming up. I want to add that to our discussion. I won’t totally forget about some of the books that we talked about before. For some of those books I’ll give them a little refresh and do a new episode about them, adding some of these new details. And Murder on the Orient Express will be one of those books.

What’s staying the same?

The things that won’t change will be that I’ll always bring you a mystery. Each episode we’ll talk about mostly books, but I may throw in a mystery TV show or a mystery film, but each episode will focus on one single book, film, or TV mystery show. I’ll still talk about the interesting stories behind the books, the author inspiration, the quirky or funny tidbits related to how the author wrote the book. Those things are very interesting to me. There will always be quotes because I love quotes, so I’ll always make sure there’s a quote from the book in the episode.

What will be different?

I talked about how there will be no more bookish news segments. But I am adding a new section on tropes. Now, I promise there will be no spoilers, so that does limit what we can talk about as far as clues, red herrings, and about the mysteries themselves.But we can usually talk about tropes without spoiling anything. If there is a trope that would spoil some critical part of the story, I won’t mention it, and I’ll just let you discover that on your own. But I think that this is going to be really fun to look at the different tropes and consider how they match up with theme and how they contribute to the story and why readers like them so much.

Then, additionally I’ll add in some discussions of film and TV adaptations, and I may include some audiobook samples. I haven’t tried that before, but I’d like to maybe add a couple at the end. Not every episode, but occasionally I’ll add a sample so that you can get a taste of the audiobook. I figure you are podcast listeners, so you must enjoy audio and you might like to get a taste of the audiobook.

The other big thing is that I’m going to do is seasons instead of weekly episodes. And I think this that’s what will allow me to continue to do this along with my fiction writing. I’m the type of writer who needs time to think. Right now I’m between books. I just finished a book, sent it off to my editor, and while I’m waiting for that to come back, I’m working on this this. I’m also thinking about the next book and what the plot will be, who the characters are, how the mystery is going to fit together.

But I’m a thinker, and I need time to ponder. So while my brain is chugging away doing that, like kind of like a computer processing in the background, I’ll be doing a couple of episodes of Mystery Books Podcast. So that way I’ll be able to do the fiction writing. Then I’ll take a break, and I’ll record several episodes, and then I’ll upload a season. Then I’ll go back, write another book, hopefully if all things work well, and then I’ll come back and record another season.

When there’s a season that’s being released, you’ll have an episode every week. And then when I’m writing books, there will be a break and I’ll come back with another season. I think that that’s a workable plan and I hope you’ll come back next week. We will begin with a new look at Murder on the Orient Express.

Thanks for listening and I hope you give the new and improved version a try. See you next time!