Episode 47. Behind the Crime Story: Author Kate Flora

00:00
She had a fascination with people's criminal tendencies and how they tick. But when she got the opportunity to write the book Finding Amy and saw how it works from behind the scenes, it changed her life forever. Join me as I talk with author Kate Flora on this episode of True Crime in Authors.

00:28
Welcome to True Crime and Authors Podcast, where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. Here's your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody? Welcome to the episode of True Crime and Authors. Of course, I am your man, David McClam. Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social medias.

00:55
One link to a link tree gets you all the links you need to follow the show in the show notes. All right, so if you have been following the show or looking at your calendars, you know that it is time once again for another author interview. I have a good one for you. So sit back while I tell you who our guest is. She is a Maine native. She's fascinated with people's criminal tendencies began in the Maine Attorney General's office.

01:24
Deadbeat dads, people who hurt their kids, and employers' discrimination aroused her curiosity about human behavior. The author of 24 books and many short stories. She's been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association Award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. Her most recent Thea Kozak mystery is Death Sends a Message. Her most recent Joe Burgess is a World of Deceit.

01:54
Her crime story collection is careful what you wish for. Stories of revenge, retribution, and the world made right. She is a founding member of the New England Crime Bank and the Main Crime Wave and runs the blog Main Crime Writers. She's non-fiction focuses on aspects of the public safety officer's experience. Her true crime works include Finding Amy and Death Dealer along with the Game Wardens memoir, A Good Man with a Dog.

02:22
and a nonfiction book about police shootings, Shots Fired. Shots Fired and Finding Amy were co-written with Joseph K. Loughlin. She divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine, where she gardens and cooks and watches the calls when she's not imagining her character's dark deeds. She occasionally swims in the shark-filled sea, and she's been married for decades to an excellent man. Her sons edit films and hang out in research labs.

02:49
And she is the co-author of Finding Amy, a true story of murder in Maine. Please welcome Kate Flora. Kate, how are you today? I am doing just great today. How about you? I am doing wonderful. It is great to see you. I have been a fan of yours for a long time. I think I told you off air, I've read your book, Finding Amy years ago. It was a gift. So when I saw your name pop up in my inbox to come on the show, I was ecstatic. So thank you for being here today. Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

03:18
All right, so to begin, won't you tell us a little bit about Kate Floor, what we don't know from that fabulous bio? Oh my gosh. Well, you know, there really isn't anything interesting about me. That's my bottom line. You know, I sometimes when I'm teaching writing, I occasionally give my students an exercise where they take Personals ads from the Harvard magazine and they're supposed to write the first meeting between the two characters in those ads. Well, my Personals ad is, you know, sort of like

03:45
dull middle-aged woman seeks and then there's a question mark because actually of course I'm not seeking anything I'm too busy writing. There really isn't you know I mean I garden I cook it's it's so terribly old-fashioned and then I drive down the street and I wonder about all the things that I'm seeing and that's really the most exciting part of my life. Why is that car parked there? What is that police car doing? What is that you know sort of strange

04:14
you know, nervous looking fellow shuffling down the street really up to, doesn't that woman understand that if she walks along with her purse hanging open like that, we all want to steal her wallet. You know, I have a nice crime writer's mind. I could definitely tell. So is that what led you into writing because of your curiosities and how you think? It says in the, you know, that the bio

04:39
plastic bio. Basically, you know, when I was doing child support enforcement and employment discrimination and battered kids, it really made me think a whole lot about, you know, what is the nature of evil and what is it that causes people to decide that they're entitled to escape from or ignore the social contract we all, you know, subscribe to, which is that you don't hurt others and you don't take things that don't belong to you.

05:08
And it was just sort of wondering about that. You know, who can allow themselves to beat their child to death? You know, who can allow themselves to be the kind of people we write about with great glee in crime novels? You know, where does that come from? You know, what's their background? What's their history? What lets them be the way they are? Yeah, I hear that one. I read that in your bio. You know, there is a number of cases here in good old Southern California that deals with that.

05:36
One Gabriel was the kid that was beat to death by his parents or his mom and his stepfather. That touches home when he lives right around the corner from me. So there's a memorial there for him that grows every day. I mean his birthday, Christmas, they put a big mural, Netflix did a big thing on him. So I wanted the same thing. I'm a father of six kids. Yes, my kids can be annoying sometimes and get on my nerves, but just to wake up in the morning and decide I want to just beat them to oblivion, it never crosses my mind.

06:04
So I wonder the same things too, which is probably why I'm in the true crime and the true crime podcast. So how long after you started writing, did it take you to release your first book? Oh, well, you know, sad story. Although of course it's very comforting to aspiring writers that I spent 10 years in the unpublished writers corner. And basically I think that what happened over that 10 years is A, I got to be a much better writer, B, my personal New England Yankee stubbornness got honed to a fine point.

06:33
And I came to the conclusion that I was never going to let anybody decide that I was a writer except me because I was collecting rejection letters and I used to joke that I was going to paper the bathroom with them, but the bathroom was small and I was just beginning to look at the dining room when I got my first book sold. So I never had to paper the dining room with those rejection letters. And years later, I finally threw them all out because I decided that keeping them was a little toxic.

07:03
But it is a struggle and I think that any writer will tell you. Some people get lucky. A lot of it is persistence, a lot of it is luck. And of course, obviously some of it is talent. But talent without persistence and luck isn't going to get you very far. Because nobody, as we say in the writing world, is ever going to knock on your door and beg for the opportunity to publish your book. Did you ever think about going independent or did you ever try that route? I have sort of a patchwork.

07:32
quasi-independent for some of my books. But I mean, a little bit of a literary snob, so I kind of like the idea of someone else choosing me and an anointing book. The fact is, of course, that you do the same work except for sort of layout and printing and distribution that you do whether you're indie or whether you're traditionally published, I believe. It's hard to keep the terms straight because they've changed over the years.

08:02
But you know, so I you know, and I and I do love a hardcover book I do love you know a growing bookshelf with a body of work you know, whatever works for any individual author and Now you can't be a snob about indie publishing these days because there there are fewer Opportunities than there were when I started and you know it that the world of publishing has changed a lot Now these days what they really want you to do is write something exactly like Gone Girl, but different

08:32
You know, so it's always going to be like that. It's a, it's a real challenge. Well, you're getting along great with my wife when you said you'd like to have a ever growing, you know, library of books. I switched to digital books about two years ago because my bookshelves are overflowing and with the amount of reading that I do, it's easy to take a Kindle with me and read in the car. And she keeps buying me books and well, I found this book that you gotta have. She'll never grow out of that. You know, she's the person that still wants the home button on the iPhone and.

09:01
I understand. I like that too. I mean, our house is overwhelmed with books and I don't really mind that. But our son says, please don't give me a physical book, give me a digital book. So, you know, some of it's generational and some of it is the fact that eventually the floors will crack and the second floor will fall to the first. Then I don't know where we'll live. Well, I mean, it then becomes convenient and I can carry a hundred books at one time.

09:27
Versus if I had to take, you know, I do love my hardcovers and my paperbacks too. I have a special place for those, those of you, especially the ones that you guys as authors signed for me, which I'm very grateful for. So I do still keep those, but yes, it's easier to read these days digitally, unfortunately. Oh yeah. It's very convenient. I agree. So the book that I came to know you four years ago was Finding Amy, the story of Amy St. Laurent, young girl that vanished one day, didn't show up at work and end up eventually being murdered.

09:56
How did you come about getting yourself in that story and then being able to write a book about it? The way that it came about actually is that I'd been writing a series, my Thea Kozak series, which is, you know, short elevator pitch, strong amateur female PI. We all were writing strong women who rescued themselves then. And the publisher dropped the series and I said, what am I going to do? Do I go back to practicing law? Do I? And then I said, well, you know, I've been spending the last X years going in and out of

10:24
cop's offices asking them questions so that I would get my books, you know, get the cop lore right. And I was fascinated by their world. So I said, I will make my next character cop. And so I decided I'll set the books in Portland, Maine, because it sort of means one biggest city. And, you know, it's got all kinds of, you know, ethnic diversity and it's got crime and it's a really cool place. And so then I had to find someone in the Portland Police Department to be my, you know, sort of informant.

10:54
and ended up getting introduced to a guy named Joe Loughlin, who was the lieutenant in charge of their CID. And Joe and I became friends. He wanted to write, I wanted couplor, so it was the perfect friendship. And then Amy was killed, and Joe started saying this case is not like anything else that I've ever worked on. It was a joint investigation between the Maine State Police and the Portland Police.

11:20
because at the time that she disappeared, and it was a disappearance rather than a homicide at that point because they didn't have a body, they assumed that a crime had happened because she had vanished, or it wasn't one of those situations where they thought she'd just gone off somewhere. But it was main state police and Portland police, and all of that stuff that you read.

11:41
You know, the traditional sort of rivalry between two police agencies that don't work together and don't get along and don't share information is very true. But in this case, what happened was that there was something about Amy's personality and something about the way that Amy's mother worked with the police sort of built an affection for her, you know, a dedication to their victim between both the state police and the Portland police.

12:09
And the two primary detectives did what is called mirroring up. That is, they became an investigative team. They, you know, it wasn't about my agency, your agency. It was about our case to find what happened to Amy. So Joe was the supervisor for the Portland police. And he kept saying to me, this is not like other cases. Look at the way that we've connected with Amy.

12:35
You know, we would have, they would have meetings where they would speculate, well, did this happen or did that happen? And the police officers sitting in the room would say, well, no, our Amy wouldn't do that. And it was that our Amy, that attachment that made him say, I want to write about this, I want to write about this case. It's so different. So he kept saying to me, cause I'm his writing teacher and his friend, I want to write about this, but he didn't know how to write a book. So I kept saying.

13:05
You know, here's what you do. I said, while you're investigating this, you won't have the time to write, to work on a book, obviously, you may not have the time when you're done because you have a big job, but take notes of the significant things that happened in the case. Write them down as soon after they happen as you can find the time to do it and put those all in a folder. And then when you've put the case to bed, then you can go back and revisit that folder and you can say,

13:35
These are really the basics of the story, and you can work from there to expand that and create a narrative, and that will be the book. And so that's what he did. And I kept saying, yes, this, yes, that. When the bad guy had been arrested, he's still saying to me, time goes on, I really wanna write a book about this. And I realized that he was gonna go on saying, I really wanna write a book about this for the rest of his life,

14:05
big job, demands on his time, and no sort of ability to translate those notes into a narrative, into a story. So I finally drove up to Portland and I sat down with him over coffee and I said to him, look Joe, I know that I've never worked with anybody and I'm an independent character and I like being solitary and you haven't worked with anybody on a book. We don't either of us know how to do this, but what if we do it together? This was a big offer for me because I...

14:35
First of all, because I am solitary and B because I didn't know what I was doing. So he said, no, I should have, I could have stopped right there. He said, no. So then I said, well, how would we, how would it work? And I said, well, here's how it would work. You, we would take those, you know, those notes that you've written and I would go through the case files and I would talk to the parties and I would create the narrative and it would be like the setting for these little gems that you've written.

15:05
and we would use your voice for those, and I would write the rest of it. And finally, he said, maybe. And then finally he said, yes. And then my entire writing career, which was write a book for nine months, promote for three months, write a book was completely sidelined because it takes forever to write, because I had to go talk to all these people. I used to joke that I spent a year sitting in the breathalyzer room at the Portland Police Department.

15:33
surrounded by boxes and boxes and boxes of files. And I would read them and I would take notes and then I would say to him, I need to go talk to so and so. I need to talk to so and so. And so he would set it up so that I could go and talk to these people. And gradually a book emerged from that. But I always say that writing fiction for years was my rehearsal for having the opportunity to tell Amy's story because I understood about

16:02
organizing material and storytelling and drama and how you make a book compelling rather than just a narrative or just a description and how not to get lost in the weeds. And so, I'd been rehearsing for years and then this opportunity came along and getting to tell Amy's story I still consider to be an amazing honor that I was trusted with that story. Well, it's written very well. I'm starting to find out from doing this that this is becoming a common theme.

16:31
There's another author that I have coming up relatively shortly. He's written the book, his name is Chris McMullen, but the same thing. He's ex law enforcement writing about his life, didn't know how to do a book and then got a hold of Maria Jefferson who actually becomes his writer, did a very good job. I know a lot of trust goes into that too, because, you know, Joe has to tell you things to write in the book that maybe he doesn't disclose to other people. How did that work out for you when it came to, especially with the Amy case?

17:01
Yeah, I think that that's probably the most important discovery that I made, you know, moving from writing fiction where you have to be well informed because our crime readers are well informed. But to go into the world of true crime, where you're actually dealing with real people and their stories and their lives, you have to get past, particularly with public safety, you have to get past a trust barrier. You have to get past the us versus them. I mean, I'm a civilian.

17:30
Not only am I civilian, I'm kind of a dumb blonde suburban housewife type, you know, and here I am coming in and asking them to trust me with important stuff in their lives. And it worked. Partly it worked. You know, people always say, how do I make a contact with the police? And I say, you know, use somebody that you find somebody in your circle of acquaintances or family or friends. Because if you come in, you know, with a recommendation, people are more likely to trust you.

18:00
And if you then can build on that trust. And it's, I mean, it was absolutely, it's still absolutely amazing to me that, you know, that people trust me with so much of their stories. And there was one day when I went to talk to the state police and, you know, if the Portland police have sort of become my people because I'd spent time with them, the state police were very, very formal and very distant, you know, and I wasn't even allowed to talk to the primary detective.

18:29
without his supervising sergeant there, in case he said something or was tempted to say something that I shouldn't hear or that I couldn't be trusted with. And so, you know, we did that interview and that was great. And then the sergeant and I talked for a while. And then we went out to lunch and talked some more. And by the time we'd gotten back from lunch and we're back sitting in his office, I'm saying to him, tell me about the night that you were out there in the woods in December.

18:59
digging up the body. What did it feel like to have finally found her? And he just starts to talk. He gives me smells and he gives me sound and he gives me color and he gives me detail after detail. That's just so intimate. What it was actually like to have been looking for her and looking for her and have found her. And this moment for all of them was so powerful. And he's sharing it with me. He's trusting me with that kind of information.

19:29
And that, you know, I still look back and that was years ago. I'm just in awe that I was trusted that much that he was willing to tell me that. And it's because he knows, you know, I'm not against him. I'm not going to write bad things about people. I'm not trying to trick them. He and I both want to tell the same story. It's pretty fascinating, but it's all about trust. So when it came to Amy, Amy's in Portland, Maine, you're a Maine native. You know, Portland, Maine is a very small town.

19:59
Everybody was shocked because these kinds of things just don't happen in Portland. Her family went on the chair. There was posters everywhere. They say that this just was not what Amy would do because she vanished from a nightclub scene with two men leaving. They feel like she was in distress from your research, everything you did. Can you tell us a little bit about Amy? Do you feel like that she was taken against her will that night? No, I think that, I think she was fooled.

20:27
I think she was deceived. I think women, you know, girls can be deceived. She was deceived by being in a situation where she was already stressed by being with a guy who had come up from Florida to see her, who expected more from the visit than she, you know, wanted to give. And they were there was a misunderstanding there. So she was already stressed.

20:53
She was trying to be a good host as she was taking him out to see Nightlife in Portland. They got separated and the guy that she eventually, the guy who offered her a ride home was somebody that people she knew in the Portland scene seemed to know and trust. And you know, I mean, to some extent, I think the problem is that young males support each other in their predation.

21:19
is one way of putting it. She was just such a good person, such a trusting person. Normally she would have been more careful, I think, because of the stress of the situation and that everybody seemed to know the sky and think he was a great guy. And she'd even ask, you know, is he okay? And they said, yes. And he wasn't okay at all. And I totally get it. I'm probably one of the males who do. I was a DJ for a nightclub years ago, back in early 2000. I was the number one DJ. My booth set really high.

21:48
And when I read this book, I thought about that because the number of girls that I tried to protect mainly from themselves, well, they were written to these guys in the nightclub. They were all good to them, bottom drinks and you know, Hey, we're going to go out here. Now the girls drinking and I've seen things, everything from them taking clothes out, putting on booths to me getting other bounces to say, we can't let this girl go with these guys because I could see what they were up to. And the way that our society is built, unfortunately is

22:17
Well, it's the girl's fault. She should have known, you know, she, she did all of this. No, the man is grooming her at this point to do this and figure it out. Hey, maybe we get away with this. And especially if you know the person, you feel a lot more at ease with being yourself or being laid back. So I totally get it. How did her family feel about you writing the book? I know her mother has been very, very vocal when this all happened. How do they feel about it? Families, people who, who, you know, who care about a victim are always going to worry.

22:46
how is our beloved person going to be portrayed? I think one of the things that helps me in these situations is that a lot of true crime books really are a bit voyeuristic. They're a little sensational. They really like to dwell on the ugly details. But because I was writing it, and I say I write my true crimes, the two that I've done, looking over the shoulder of the investigating officers.

23:15
which is a very unusual stance, I think, in general. It's sort of, I want to know sort of what's going on behind the scenes. So we're looking over the cop's shoulders as this is happening. But her family was wary, but they had a very good relationship with the police and with Joe and, you know, and so they, there was some level of trust there that if Joe was going to be working on the book, that it wasn't going to be sensational.

23:45
And all I can say is that we had a book launch, which, you know, for a fiction writer was sort of the most eerie experience imaginable, in which all of the people in the room, all the characters from the book were in the room, except the victim and the perpetrator. So that I was standing in a room with the Portland police.

24:12
the state police, the game wardens who organized the search to find the body, her family, you know, all these people who, you know, who were the characters in her life are standing there. And her mother got up to speak and she said, of course, I can't say that I liked this book because of the subject matter, but that it's an important book. And if this book could save even one life, it would be worth it.

24:41
Well, I'm obviously sure that it definitely did that because I used this book as a cautionary tale for young women everywhere. It's totally a heartbreaking book. Her mother or her family, but I'm sure most of her mom has created the Amy St. Laurent foundation. The one thing that she urges when you go to that page is for women to learn how to protect themselves. And she offers classes. Is there anything you know about the foundation you can tell us a little bit more about? I can't tell you much except that I know that it supports those red, you know,

25:09
Police Department supported women's self-defense courses. And I've actually taken one at my local police department. They're extremely good for situational awareness, which is something we don't think about enough. I mean, you're busy, you've got your packages, you've got your purse, you're thinking about where you're going next and you get in your car. You don't think about looking around you. Once you've taken this class, you're much more aware of.

25:38
where you park. I mean, I still, if I'm in a strange place, I still have my keys in between. I have pepper spray. My kids gave me a taser for Christmas. It teaches you all those things, and it teaches you some basic self-defense moves, which I think are really helpful. But you need to be refreshed. You need to be keeping... But I think that it makes a huge difference for the police departments to sponsor these classes.

26:06
and for women to take these classes because, you know, the first time that you're, you know, just in a gym and the guy in the red man suit comes up behind you, it's absolutely terrifying. It's hard stopping, even though it's only a mock-up. It's, you know, it's a perfectly safe situation, but it just teaches you a whole lot about, you know, how to think about the world. You do, I mean, I think people have to do things to memorialize.

26:34
people that they've loved. I think that's one of the ways that we carry on people's memories is to do something. You have read the book. You've seen Amy's diary. She was such a good person and such a lovely person. You can't help but think, what did the world lose? In some ways, that's one of the things the book is about. The book is about telling young women that they need to be more aware.

27:04
It's about giving Amy something back that was taken from the world. We live in an era now where the police are vilified constantly. And this is the good side of policing. This is the police who deeply care and won't give up. And it can be incredibly discouraging when you have a case where you go weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and you don't even have a body, even though you're sure you have a victim. The book does a lot of different things that way.

27:34
It was, like I said, it was an honor to write it. It was a really interesting challenge to learn how to tell a story like that and to live with Amy in my head for, you know, a year or two. Well, it's definitely a good book. And I do agree with you, you know, with the way that the police is going right now.

27:53
As an African American, we don't have a very good relationship with law enforcement either. The recent beating of Tyree Nichols kind of proves that. Doesn't matter what color the cop is, it happens. When it comes to good cops like, you know, like Joseph Laughlin and LaDonna Humphrey's an investigator, you know, I've talked to several other cops. These are the good cops that I speak of when I say not all police officers are bad. There are actually some out there that wants to do the work and that are good to the community and that will take a case to its end.

28:22
And when it came to Amy, I think she was very fortunate to have someone like Joseph LaVlin working the case, never gave up. You came along with the book, which is excellent, which just further tells her story. And being a man that has three daughters, I'm like, hey, you need to read this book. These are the things you need to be careful of. And not that Amy was a bad person because she wasn't, she was an excellent girl. This is anything that any girl, USA or abroad, can find themselves in if you're not careful. And a lot of it has this goal.

28:51
to deal with, you know, trusting somebody. And so it's kind of to the point to where now I'm like, you know, who do I even trust? And I'm a big guy. You know, if you start acting funny, maybe something's wrong with you. Maybe you actually get out of your car. I don't know where the way the world's going. So I appreciate the book. Tell us, what do you want people to get from finding Amy when they go out to read it? Well, I think what I just said, I think that, you know, part of it is, I think it's fascinating to have an opportunity.

29:20
to go behind the headlines and say, you know, you read that such and such is happening and the police are investigating. And, you know, what I like is the idea that you can actually see what they're doing day to day, hour by hour, minute to minute, who they're talking to, how much work they do behind the scenes that you never see. You know, in this case, I mean, the thing that I say about this book is that it had a natural drama to it. I didn't have to really work at that.

29:50
You know, it was so dramatic. They go down to the South to, you know, to look up the guy who is their prime suspect, who ends up being the guy that's arrested and ultimately convicted. What's fascinating in some ways, and I think that one of the things that made it really fascinating is that this is one of the things the cops said to me very early on is that families are what shape the kind of person that these two people, the victim and the perpetrator ultimately become.

30:19
And at the very end of the book, you have the statements before sentencing where the mother of the victim, Amy's mom is talking, Diane is talking, and you have the mother of the perpetrator talking. And the mother of the victim is saying, you know, here's what the world has lost and here's who Amy was and so forth. To sort of say, you know, she deserves justice.

30:46
And the mother of the perpetrator is saying, this has been so hard on me. I have to take all these medications. I mean, and she had been such a piece of work. So, you know, partly it's, you know, let's go behind it. What do you take from the book? You get to go behind the scenes and see the day to day and the night to night.

31:04
You know, the moments when they think they've got something and then they don't. And the moment when there's a breakthrough and the moment when they're so frustrated, they go and talk to a psychic. You know, I mean, all of these different things that you don't see because they're not in the news that tell you the story. And then, as I said, you know, the the fact is you learn who the victim was. And most of the time we don't. We you know, she went to a nightclubs and went home with a guy so we can make some assumptions about her, which turned out not to be true.

31:32
And so those things are important. And then we worked with a woman police chief at a university who wrote a set of guidelines for young women to help to keep them safe, things to follow. And that was incredibly helpful. So there were lessons from the book, what you were saying about what do you want your daughters to know. You've got three daughters. You really want them to think.

32:00
not once, twice, three times about who to trust and what kind of situations they don't want to be in. Because she wasn't careless normally. So it can happen to anybody. So there's a lot going on in that book. The thing about what is it like for the good cops, the dedicated cops, to try and get justice for somebody. So it's a lot of things, a lot of takeaways from.

32:28
one book, you know. Definitely is. One of them, like you said about the perpetrator's mom, as a parent, I always sit back and like, I don't know how parents, especially when they have all the evidence that's sitting there, you know, say, well, look what's happening to me and my family. I think the only family member that I really ever saw that really embraced what his son had did was Laul Dahmer, who was Jeffrey Dahmer's dad. You know, he never went on and said, my son didn't do it. You know, when he found out about it, he was like as heartbroken as everybody else, but knew that the people who his son took from them.

32:57
Right. Would never come back. So even though he had pain, it would never be the pain that they would feel. And I wish more people who has kids, unfortunately does these kind of things would embrace that because the family members like Amy's family will never recover from that. You know, her son, I believe is still sitting in jail. She can go see him. They can't go see Amy. So I, I totally feel how you feel there. Uh, so in closing, is there anything you would like to say to all of your fans and readers out there?

33:26
Well, I'll say what I've been saying for the last couple of years, which is, you know, I, it was so fascinating to do Finding Amy. And when I was done with it, I said, I'm never doing another true crime because it takes too long and it's too hard to live with a dead person in your head that you come to care about for years on end. And then, you know, the warden called up and said, I've got another one for you. So I did another true crime that took place up in New Brunswick, Canada. And

33:53
When I was done with that one, took five years, two full trials, you know, the whole thing, the bad guy finally went away. And I said, now I mean never again. And now I'm saying, well, you know, I'd like to do just one more before I'm done. So I keep saying to people, you know, if you've got a story and, you know, you need a co-writer or you've got a story that you'd like me to work on, let me know. But I am not defendant side, even though, you know, I went to a very liberal law school and I believe in.

34:22
you know, the right to a good defense. I like those books where I look over the cop's shoulder, because it's just a fascinating view into a world that interests me and it's about getting justice for victims. So I'm looking for another story. That's, you know, that's what I'd say. Well, there certainly is tons of them out there. Welcome to the world of true crime. It's one of those holes that open up and you just keep falling through it. Well, this will definitely not be the last time I have you in the show. I have a lot of books of yours to get through.

34:52
So I would love to have you come back as I read those books at any time. If you would like to do that, that'd be great. It was really fun. So sure thing, David. I've got, you know, more, more, more true crime in my stack here. So, you know, and, and they're always going to be different. So it'd be fun to talk about what it's like to work with the small Canadian police department or what it's like to work with a, a game warden on his memoir, which turns out to be 25 years of.

35:21
incredible drama in the great Northwoods. So, you know, I got books and stories to tell. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, thank you for coming on the show. I hope you have a good day and we will definitely be talking again real soon. Okay, great. Thank you. Good luck with the podcast. Thank you very much.

35:43
Alright guys, well you heard it there. That was the incredible Kate Flora. You can go and find her book, Finding Amy, a true crime story in Maine, anywhere, especially Amazon. Make sure you pick that up. Especially for young women, this is a cautionary tale. You need to read these pages so that you can avoid some of these pitfalls in life.

36:07
All right, guys, once again, thanks for joining us. I hope you guys are all having a good day. Hope you enjoyed this author interview. If you have any authors that you would like me to interview, feel free to drop me a line at truecrimeandauthorsatgmail.com. I'll be more than happy to reach out to him and her and see if we can get them on the show so that I can interview them as well. I hope you guys are all being safe out there. Be good to yourself and each other and always remember, always stay humble.

36:35
A little love and compassion goes a long way. And this is the podcast where two passions becomes one. I'll get you guys in the next one. Thank you for listening to True Crime and Authors. Don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe. Join us on social media, on Facebook at True Crime and Authors, on Twitter at Authors True, on YouTube and TikTok.

36:59
at True Crime and Authors and email at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com. Cover art and logo designed by Dazzling underscore Ray from Fiverr. Sound mixing and editing by David McClam. Intro script by Sophie Wilde from Fiverr. And I'm the voice guy, your imaging guy from Fiverr. See you next time on True Crime and Authors.