Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

EP 208 - Writing & Living a True Crime with Deborah Vadas Levison

Aug 27, 2021

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Mark interviews Deborah Levison, a multi award-winning author, freelance writer, publicist and the author of THE CRATE: A Story of War, a Murder, and Justice - a true crime story with echoes of the Holocaust.

Prior to the interview, Mark reads comments from recent episodes, shares a personal update, and talks about this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by Findaway Voices.

You can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

During their conversation, Mark and Debbie talk about:

How much of a bookworm Debbie was from an early age, and that she'd always dreamed of being an author
One of the earliest essays she had to write for school about her, her mother, and her grandmother going to visit the bears at dusk at the local garbage dump
Debbie's lonely childhood growing up spending summers in the Muskoka region of Ontario, and how that helped fuel her imagination and love of fictional characters from books
Her work as a professional writer (a journalist, publicist, etc)
Debbie's true crime book, The Crate, which was about a very grizzly and gruesome crime that personally impacted her family
Family history that includes paralleling evil from the past (Debbie's parents being Holocaust survivors) with evil in the present
The surreal 2010 life-changing phone call Debbie received from her brother informing her about this crate he discovered hidden under the crawl space of their family cottage
The challenge and experience of reaching out to the victim's mother and sister and learning about who she was -- which was the focus of the second half of the book
How the media painted the situation in a very "blame the victim" manner
The "memoir" elements in the structure of this book
The process of pitching the book, and the first agent she'd reached out to who graciously spent time and energy helping Debbie make the book better for her pitch, and then recommended her to another agent
How Canadian publishers are heavily subsidized by the Canadian government, which led to them passing on Debbie's book because she was no longer a Canadian resident (those publishers only get grant money when they publish books from Canadian authors)
The third agent Debbie worked with who found a publisher in Colorado that worked quickly to get the book out
The cover promotional blurbs Debbie got from Lee Child and James Rollins after connecting at ThrillerFest in New York
Some of the logistics about the research and writing of this book
The numerous live events she has done talking about The Crate, and what Debbie is working on now

Links of Interest:

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0