August 13, 2024 • 36 mins
Joe Pulizzi, the Godfather of Content Marketing, takes an audacious leap into crime fiction, delivering a story that is as mesmerizing as it is chilling.
Set within the haunting confines of a funeral home, "The Will To Die" unravels a dark and twisted narrative brimming with suspense, secrets, and a touch of macabre.
Pulizzi's protagonist, a marketing professional, finds himself entangled in a web of deceit and danger. He is compelled to uncover the mysteries buried deep within the family-run funeral home he unexpectedly inherits.
Since I grew up in East Texas, I was drawn to Pulizzi’s crime novel because of the real-life case of Bernie Tiede.
The chubby-cheeked mortician befriended the widow of a wealthy oilman at his funeral.
Bernie became her personal assistant and sole heir to her multi-million dollar estate.
And in 1996, he carried out one of the most bizarre murders in Texas history.
Pulizzi is on to something by incorporating the morticians and embalmers into his story.
They are typically seen as caretakers of the dead, but their presence confronts the unnerving possibility that death has taken on a new, more sinister dimension within their midst.
JOE PULIZZI - LINKS
"The Will To Die"
"The Content Entrepreneur"
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Joe Pulizzi is known as the godfather
of content marketing.
The godfathers that you usually hear about from
me had mafia families in New York City
or the Dixie Mafia in the South.
So this is a departure from my true
crime stories.
I was intrigued when Pulizzi, the best selling
author of books for content entrepreneurs,
(00:26):
surprised many with his bold shift from writing
about marketing to crafting
a compelling crime novel.
His most recent literary venture, The Will to
Die,
plunges readers into a gripping narrative unfolding in
the eerie setting of a funeral home.
Maluzzi's thematic choices
(00:46):
evokes the real life case of Bernhard, Bernie
Tidy, an East Texas Funeral Director,
whose story is as chilling as any crime
fiction.
Tidy's case, which involved the murder of a
wealthy, cantankerous widow,
and his subsequent conviction
shocked the nation and inspired the dark comedy
film, Bernie.
(01:08):
Like Bernie's tale, Pulizzi's novel explores human nature's
duality
and the sinister undercurrents that can lurk beneath
the surface
of everyday life.
Joe Pulizzi joins me from his home in
Cleveland, Ohio
to discuss what it takes to craft a
fictional crime mystery
in the spirit of Agatha Christie or Raymond
(01:30):
Chandler.
Joe, I mean, you already had a great
track record of bestsellers in marketing books.
What possessed you to go off in a
crime novel?
I think the
most important part was I wanted to write
(01:53):
something that my wife would actually read.
And,
she basically said and I said, you know,
I've written all these marketing books. And she
said, well, those are boring, and I I
don't wanna read any of those. She only
by the way, I've always written you know,
it's been, like, to Pam, the acknowledgments and
everything. That's the only thing she ever read.
(02:13):
And I said, wouldn't it be nice if
I could actually write something that my wife
would read? And she loves mysteries and thrillers.
So I started to
try to outline
something that she would, be interested in, and
it was probably
the most challenging thing I'd ever done creatively.
Took me a while to get there, which
(02:33):
we could talk about if you want
to. And, and
and came out with the the will to
die. And and,
I
gave her the
the the first draft, and she said,
this is the best thing you've ever done.
Granted, she never read any of my marketing
stuff.
So and, and then I had an actual
(02:54):
editor, you know, went through the whole process
and and published it. And still, probably to
this day, it's one of the the things
I'm most proud of. Well, as you know,
women are really drive this genre
of their interest, both true and novels in
crime.
Did you get a sense from her of
what appealed to her, what she was looking
for in the book?
(03:17):
So, yes.
You know, they always, you know, at least
if you if you think about I'm creating
content for an audience, what are my audience's
needs, I used,
my wife as sort of the audience that
I was writing to.
And
probably to give you a specific example, the
ending, it's very important to my wife that
things are wrapped up, that there are no
(03:39):
cliffhangers.
Like, she goes to a movie. If there's
something that doesn't get resolved, she's unhappy when
she leaves the movie theater.
So the same with any mystery or thriller.
And so she
she tends to read oh, she'll read a
Patterson
or, you know, short sentences,
short chapters,
(03:59):
lots of lots of dialogue,
which I love. I love to write dialogue.
It's my favorite thing,
And, and then wrapping things up. So I
was very aware of,
not to leave anything hanging
and and also
to to make sure that inciting incident
happens as quickly as pie. And I had
a lot of friends
(04:19):
who,
who read, you know, early drafts and whatnot
that said, hey. You need to need to
move this up a little bit or whatever,
and so that was really important where almost
immediately, I want,
something to happen that that, that gets the,
the audience involved. And in this case, it
would be my wife. Yeah.
(04:40):
Your murder is set in a
in the funeral home, in a funeral home
industry.
And one of the things that appealed to
me about the story is that
I'd recently done an interview with a veteran
Texas prison warden about the worst of the
worst he'd had during his career.
And one was
an owner of a chain of funeral homes
(05:02):
in East Texas.
Very bright, charming guy. So charming that
when my friend was warden, this guy was
the administrative assistant. Inmates run the prisons here
in one sense.
But he had gotten into drug smuggling. He
had a pilot's license. And he got
caught because he was getting divorced, and his
(05:24):
wife to be turned him in. And he
got out on bail, and realized she had
done this, and he killed her. But then
he used the funeral home and this
apparatus and everything in there to dissolve her
body. And as the warden said, down the
drain she went.
So
(05:44):
give us the without giving it away, give
us the plot
of your story.
So, yeah, as you said, it takes place
in a in a funeral home, and the
main character's name is Will Pollitt, and Will
Pollitt's father, Abe, is a funeral director who,
who passes away through somewhat mysterious circumstances.
(06:07):
And as Will comes back to
Will, by the way, is a advertising
manager marketing manager of a of an agency,
comes back home to Sandusky, Ohio where the,
where the murders take place and
basically just starts to
figure out, okay. Well, I gotta take over
dad's business now and and I've, you know,
(06:29):
I I've gotta get things in order, but
as Will's doing that, realizes there's
some things that don't add up correctly.
And Will realizes that there might be things
going on in Sandusky, Ohio that aren't quite
right,
and down the rabbit hole Will goes goes,
and Will has
a very close friend, Rob Robbie, who helps
(06:52):
and, and his ex wife, Sam,
who's also involved in the funeral industry. And,
basically, the 3 Musketeers,
they go out to figure out what's going
on with this mystery
and,
deep
seedy corruption
in the city of in the the peaceful
city of Sandusky, Ohio. So that's basically how
(07:12):
it starts and goes through, and, hopefully, you
know, as you've as you've said, holy, a
fast fast moving mystery reads really quickly
and you get to the bottom where
somewhat regular people who are very, very nice
on the
(07:34):
That's kind of what
I think you found and I found is
is that when you somebody that does something
horribly, it's just, wow, on the outside, that
was such a nice person, such a nice
man, such a wonderful woman.
They gave back to the community. They went
to church.
And, of course, you you know, you peel
back the layers and you find that that
(07:56):
it's not all quite what they've lived up
to be. So
So, it sounds like Will is inspired by
Joe in marketing.
What what about the funeral home? Why the
funeral home industry setting? Did you already know
something about it?
So I grew up in in the funeral
home industry. My
grandfather was a funeral director. It was his
(08:18):
business when he, started working in the twenties.
He started working for a gentleman named Fry
in in Sandusky. So this is not basically
based on anything real, but I do use
the city and the things that I learned
about the funeral industry
as part of the story. And so and
my my grandfather, Leo Groff, was,
(08:39):
one of the one of the most amazing
individuals ever, and I was
blessed with when I started working,
15, 16, 17 year old, and I and
I was
figuring out my way around a funeral home.
I had
my
father who was basically retired at the time.
He was my teacher, so he started to
(08:59):
teach me about the funeral business
before I actually started to go out on
calls
or, you know, be involved in the embalming
setting when I was 18 to 21.
And, I was infatuated by it,
because unlike a lot of people when they
go into the funeral setting and they're very
hesitant and they don't know what to make
(09:21):
of it, I feel very at home because
I was 5, 6, 7 years old running
around a funeral home,
and,
it's where I
realized that funeral directors are are perhaps the
funniest people on the planet because they have
to be.
Because they you you can't if you I
think if you really,
(09:41):
look at what you're doing every day and
you take it too seriously, it can take
a toll on you spiritually and emotionally. So
you can't you almost have to, one example,
and I think I use this in the
book, is it's you you it's never he
or she.
They never use pronouns. It's always, you know,
mister
Smith or it's the body.
(10:01):
And that
that once that person has passed away, you
sort of, detach the humanity, if you will,
so you can get through the whole process.
So and so I I just I knew
that environment, and, of course, they always say,
you know, you you're right about what you
know.
I know a lot about marketing, and I
know a lot about funeral homes, so I
sort of mash those 2 together.
(10:22):
And the other thing is, and you and
I have talked about this before,
if you're gonna create
content, you should you should have some differentiation
as part of it. And I had not
read
a lot of mysteries or thrillers or known
about a lot of mysteries or thrillers that
had the protagonist as a marketing professional.
And not a lot no. Not a lot
(10:44):
in funeral homes. I mean, there's some, and
it's it's maybe a little bit more,
than it used to be. But I said,
I don't think there's ever been, like, a
marketing funeral home mashup in a mystery. So
I said, let let's go to town on
that one and see if we can separate
ourselves a bit. So what was your reaction
to the family since they are in the
business? Were they any concerns that, well, they
might think this happened here with us?
(11:05):
Well, I'll, I'll be completely honest with you,
Robert. I wrote this,
and I was so excited for my uncle,
which was my grandfather's son, to to read
this. And and it initially came out as
an audiobook. I think you remember this. I
launched it as an audiobook first and then
printed did the ebook and the print version
(11:26):
about 3 months after that. And so I
had my family
listen to the initial audio version,
and I was very excited because I've sort
of, like, a love letter to my
to my family, and they did not like
it at all.
That's putting it lightly.
(11:46):
They thought that I was making fun
of the which I'm which I've not and
I never have been, and I sort of,
I'm proud of
the people, the funeral directors. I I love
the service that they provide, and I it
sort of was, in my view, was a
love letter, but some people didn't take it
that way, and there's nothing I could do
about that.
I don't know if I would change or
(12:07):
do anything differently,
but I was a little disappointed that the
family didn't
appreciate it as much as as I do.
So that that was the one that was
the one downside in the one area that
I didn't expect. Do you think you'll stay
with a funeral home setting? Because I really
find it interesting. You know, we've got the
case here in Texas, Bernie,
the funeral home director who
(12:29):
everyone loved,
and he was stealing from the wealthy widow
and then murders her and
stashes her away in a deep freeze. You
know, I I'm sure you know the story.
I've heard of it. Yes. Oh, my God.
It's it's a terrific,
interesting, interesting story.
And because it's so different, we, you know,
we don't have that much contact with the
(12:50):
funeral home.
Do you think you'll stay with that setting?
So I'm working on the outline
as as I have you know, you switched
careers a lot, done a lot of different
things. I do a lot of different things
as well or I'm trying to. So once,
I wrote the novel, I went back and
started dabbling back into marketing, and I'm sort
of going back on the novel side now.
(13:11):
And I've just begun to write out some
mini chapters and outlines for the next book,
and the
it is probably not as
much of the plot or as it used
as it was in the original, but it
is still part of I mean, I'm using
the same characters.
They're still in the same positions.
But I I heard the same type of
(13:32):
feedback that you're giving me right now is
it's so interesting to people. They love the
inner workings of what happens inside a funeral
home, the embalming process, the cleanup, the pickup,
going to get the you know, everything about
that,
that happens.
(13:55):
The
bodies are coming to the funeral home, and
the funeral home director and the embalmers are
realizing,
hey, this wasn't a natural death, this was
murder.
You know, and
starting their own investigations.
There's so many places that you can go.
And it's interesting,
although
Will Robbie and Sam are not private investigators,
(14:18):
they sort of act like private investigators in
the first,
in in the first novel, Will to Die.
And they're just curious people, and they know
enough to be dangerous. And they have a
lot of friends to help them along the
way. And so I like that,
you know, not that that's Harry Potter esque,
but, you know, if you wanted to make
(14:38):
a comparison, you take the 3 of those
from Harry Potter. And they're always curious and
inquisitive, something's going wrong.
And you take those 3 and you put
them into the funeral home atmosphere, and crazy,
crazy things can happen.
(15:04):
Well, for our listeners,
given an understanding of what
goes into that crime novel they'll be reading
on the beach of what it takes to
do it.
So
when I start a business book,
it's fair I don't wanna say it's easy,
but it's much easier for me to do
that because
(15:26):
I have a very specific idea of what
the informational needs are of my audience. In
this case, I've been living in the marketing
industry forever, so I'm target targeting marketers.
Here's what they need to know. Here's
how I'm coming at it from my point
of view, and then I start to write
out what do chapters
(15:49):
because I
because I didn't know where the story was
going to go.
And I wanted it. I really wanted an
outline and I thought and I and I
actually am going back to that process because
I've been reading and watching a lot of
what James Patterson does, and James Patterson is
a big believer in outlines.
And I think that's a easier place to
start than just
sitting at my computer just waiting for the
(16:12):
spirit to un develop, and then I can
start start to type this thing up.
So, but what I did with this one
is I realized that I I had an
idea
for how this thing was going to start,
the inciting incident,
and where it would go from there. I
didn't have the ending worked out, but I
had a good, like, starting point and middle,
(16:33):
and I had to just sit down at
my computer and start writing.
And it wasn't until I got to about
the 4 week process, Robert, where I felt
I had anything usable.
And if I go back to the initial
writings and chapters, I would probably say there
was hardly anything in that first 4 weeks
that I ended up using,
But it's almost like whether you're gonna run
(16:54):
a marathon or you're going to the gym,
you would need to work those muscles, you
need to get yourself in shape, and that's
what I needed to do.
And for whatever reason, a month
it took about a month for me to
get in shape until I started to feel
I had something going, and then I got
into a rhythm
where every morning, I would spend 2 to
3 hours in front of the computer and
(17:15):
write generally between 502,000
Finnish words a day.
And after about 2 to 3 months, I
had the initial draft done.
So it was
6 months of I have no idea how
to write this novel. Where am I gonna
go? And this is not as as easy
as writing a,
a business to business book
(17:37):
to, I'm starting to write this process. I'm
terrible. I'm never going to do this. Nobody's
ever going to read this thing to,
oh my god. I can't believe what this
character just did. I had no idea. I
remember there was one moment when I really
thought I was on to something and I
was feeling good about it. I came downstairs
and I went to talk to my wife
about it, and I said, you have no
(17:57):
idea what Will did today. And she's like,
what are you talking about? What Will don't
you I mean, you're the right don't you
know? I said, no. I had no idea
it was gonna go that direction, and that's
what
was new and different about this process
versus writing a nonfiction book is because I
know exactly where I'm going
in a nonfiction book.
In a fiction novel,
(18:19):
sometimes the characters do whatever they do, and
I don't you know, it just it just
comes out of the page, but you have
to get to that point. And that's what
I didn't know before, Robert, is is putting
in the time and effort
and get into rhythm. And that's where somebody
like, James Patterson,
it works wonderfully because they never get out
of shape.
They get up every morning,
3 hours, 4 hours, and they write, and
(18:41):
they're never out of shape. And that
when I and I and I run half
marathons and I ran a marathon last year,
and that makes perfect sense to me saying,
I can't go out tomorrow
and run a marathon if I don't train
for it. You can't go out tomorrow and
write a novel unless you train yourself for
it. So 30 days,
2 months of training
(19:01):
gets you into the point where 3 or
4 months later, you have a first draft
of a novel. Now that you're into this,
what is your sense about why we are
so intrigued
by murder,
men and women.
I'll give you an example that
happened with one of my friends that's happening
now.
There is one woman in our friend group
(19:22):
that
is very straight laced. She's very she's she
never does anything questionable.
You'd never see her say a a naughty
word, if you will.
Prim and proper, I guess, would be a
good way to to, describe it.
She loves reading the smuttiest,
most horrific
(19:43):
pornographic
romance you would ever imagine.
I use that as an example because I
think it's an escape for a lot of
people. I think it's like I
you know, you what you want you don't
wanna go and be at the beach, as
you said, at Beach Read and read about
you working in an office
Yeah. If they came from an office.
(20:05):
You wanna read something outlandish, something exciting, something
that they would never
possibly get involved with.
Take them away from whatever the worries of
the current were. So that that's kinda what
my thinking is,
because when I my my wife, huge reader,
she usually has 2 or 3 novels go
on at a at a time,
(20:25):
and has probably read every one of Patterson's
books that have been out there. It is
a real escape for her,
and I see that she has less stress
during her day if she's had a chance
to spend 30 or 45 minutes at least
reading a little bit of a novel.
So from that standpoint, I think that,
some people actually need that. They need that
(20:46):
escape,
and I think that that's what it is.
And I it's it's funny that
the whole romance novel with my my other
friend that I would have never expected that,
but that's something that that's her that's her
escape. And so I think the same thing
goes for for murder novels.
Well, one of the things I've seen based
on research is that in periods of anxiety
(21:10):
and stress, a lot of that these days,
the
appetite
for crime novels and true crime increases significantly.
Why do you think that is? Is that
just because it is a de stressor? It
does relieve that anxiety? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you
feel like that if you're reading police procedurals
and and, you know, where there is an
(21:30):
ending and stuff,
maybe it restores
faith that things will get better, things will
work their way out.
Now my interest in
what I do, I'm really interested in
what makes these criminals tick
the mind of the murderer.
And I think deep down that many people
(21:51):
are like,
do I know somebody like that? Or
could that
person
in bed with me, my spouse or significant
other? Could they,
have murder on their heart? You know, that
sort of thing.
But hey, I did want to tell you,
I want to share with you,
because I'm always doing research and stuff. But
I was reading PD James, the great British
(22:13):
true crime writer from,
gosh,
19th century, something like that. What he what
I really found interesting, she says, the most
dangerous
emotion is love.
And she says the l word covers all
motives for murder (22:27):
love, lust, loathing,
and looser, which is the love of money.
And I thought, that really kind of sums
it up. I mean, those
those are
part of every kind of true crime story
and and also in crime novels that you
encounter.
I love that. That's that sounds perfect. Absolutely.
(22:47):
And it's what's funny is is that that's
probably the same for the will to die.
It involved
money issues,
love,
unrequited
love,
loss of some kind. Yes. Absolutely.
To a t.
I interviewed an author here recently that does
crime novels.
They're really
(23:09):
very closely
based on real
criminal cases,
But he'll change things. But what really is
god, it astonished me. He just sits down
at the typewriter and starts.
No outline. Nothing.
Just starts going.
And wherever it may.
And I thought, wow. That's
(23:30):
that's some discipline right there. You know, it's
interesting. I love that there's no one right
way to write a novel in my experience
and in reading, you know, even on writing
by Stephen King or wherever you whatever you
you look up to to the novelist.
The only thing
that is the same thing that runs throughout
all these novelists is they do it every
(23:51):
day.
They do it consistently over a long period
of time. Some of them use novels, some
of them just sit down, some of them
have 5 going at a time, some of
them just work on 1 and then work
on the next one. But that so they're
all different except for that
sometime during the day, they sit down in
front of a typewriter or a computer and
they write.
(24:11):
And so and that's where I was like,
any if you wanna do it, anybody can
do it, but you just have to put
in the work and the time.
I try to block out the calendar with
quiet time in the mornings.
The phone is off. Everything.
And
well, because I, you know, do a lot
of research as well and stuff.
But for the writing,
(24:32):
you gotta tune everything else out.
I think first thing in the morning, it's
it works the same for me. I'm very
it's very difficult for me in the afternoon
at all
to write something that
will end up,
being a thing. It's like for and and
I think a lot of it is is
that in in my writing career,
if I set myself to do this every
(24:54):
morning, whatever happens while I'm sleeping in the
middle of the night, I generally if I
if I'm programming myself this way,
it works in my favor so that when
I get up and I'll get my cup
of coffee and I'll sit down and I'm
and I'm ready to go and whatever was
working the night before just starts to unleash
itself on the page,
which I don't know why that works. You
(25:15):
probably do more than I do, but you
get into that rhythm
and then you need it. And you feel
like if you skip a day, you've done
something bad, just like I didn't go work
out today. So you need to do that
every day.
I am the benefactor of honing the craft
over so many years in newsrooms
where it's chaos.
Absolute
(25:36):
chaos.
And in television news, people might not realize
this, you write for the ear.
And
if you go into a went into a
large television newsroom and on deadlines,
everybody's talking out loud to themselves.
Because they're writing as, how does this sound?
You know, turning phrases. You'd walk in there
(25:57):
and think, I've walked into an asylum or
something.
But that has been helpful for me. Just
covering the White House, other places. And then,
you know, as you sit there, having to
write a story
on a notepad or something in chaos is
very helpful. But now I really
I value
the quiet time and no distractions. You just
(26:17):
can't have distractions and do this.
A lot of people,
they get up in the morning and they'll
look at email or social. Oh, that's a
big no no. You cannot you cannot let
your brain go there. Yeah. You have to
stay in the go right go spend your
quiet time. Go do whatever you have to
do,
and then you can push that off to
(26:39):
later. It's very tough on the inspirational process
if you if you let that come between
you and your your writing.
Do you pay much attention to real crime
news and sort of your always sort of
open to inspiration
or
you're just gonna let it happen in your
head?
If it gets to me, if news gets
to me through other people,
then fine. I'll listen to it. Somebody will
(26:59):
tell me a story. Did you hear about
this? Whatever.
And may maybe some of that's inspirational.
I have
divorced myself from a lot of the social
media that's out there.
Most of the news that I get comes
from
the newspaper or
newsletters
that I trust.
I do not watch ever watch the news.
(27:22):
I'll listen to podcasts, but most of the
pod it's funny. What if I'm listening to
something, it's probably nonfiction.
I don't listen to a lot of and
I like to refer to other Riz. I
like to read
the the fiction stuff. But most of the
stuff the my inspiration comes from reading, while
I'm reading other books.
Absolutely.
So and and I never did that. I
(27:43):
when I was probably all the way up
to 30, I was not a reader
of a tremendous amount of books, and my
wife got me hooked on it. I think
it was some vacation we went on, and
I got I really liked that mystery. I
think it was a a Grisham book or
something like that.
And I'm like, wow, I really I like
myself better when I'm reading these books. I
like how my mind works a little bit
(28:05):
better. So I always have a book going
now,
and always try to spend at least 20
minutes a day or more into some kind
of a book. I just think I'm a
better person, but I think that from there,
I don't know why it's it's not a
direct tie either. If I'm reading something and
I get an idea, it's just for whatever
reason, I got into that state
of reading a book and my brain goes
(28:27):
in a different direction, and then I'll go
ahead and I'll write the note down so
that I can come back to it later
or I've got the I've got the note
as I I do a lot of thinking
in the shower as well and we've got
we put a little notepad up in the
shower because I make notes on that as
well.
Who knows? You know, you I wanna make
sure that, I I take it down whenever
(28:47):
I can.
The idea,
comes into my head.
Do you ever find yourself thinking,
wow. You know, I might could get away
with this. I might could get away with
a real crime like this.
No. But I do say I think this
is going to happen or I think it
could happen.
Like, I,
(29:08):
with the will to die,
I really believe that that
stuff could happen. Like, everything that happened in
that book, I believe that it could happen,
or I've,
heard somebody talk about it, or I've seen
something
around it
happen, I don't wanna ever say, oh my
god, there's no way. And a lot of
the book involved technology. So even in, you
(29:30):
know, so it's been 5 years since I've
really worked on that book, I'd have to,
I'd have to really think differently about how,
I would employ technology. And I and, actually,
I'm really in the next book,
it's gonna be interesting, especially with all the
AI stuff that come in because I'm if
I'm talking about marketing and what's going on
with AI, I've you've gotta
(29:50):
I've gotta really be careful. I don't wanna
date the book because, oh, technology only happened
during
this this point in time. There's a book
that I read recently. I don't know if
it was a a
oh, I can't remember which one it was.
I have to get back to you on
it. But there it took place in
1990
4, 1995
before, like, heavy usage of cell phones or
(30:13):
social media. And I was like, wow. That's
a great place. That's just a perfect place.
Because you you didn't have like, you didn't
know where people were.
You didn't have that tracking technology and other
things, so it's a fun place. I would
I would be interested in going back to
a time. That's why when we were in
the book, when I would write in the
seventies or in the eighties,
(30:33):
It's enjoyable. There's no cell phones going on.
There's no social media. There's no technology. It's
like, we're going out. People don't know where
we're at.
There's a lot of freedom when you can
write without those constraints.
Well, there was one thing in
the will to die that struck a responsive
chord with him. I'm not going to give
the story away. But it is the
the buying of life insurance policies.
(30:55):
That's happened to real life,
those abuses.
So that that actually comes from
I sat we sat down
with,
with our insurance agent
years ago and they brought up this
reverse
life insurance thing, you know, again, against your
real
(31:16):
reverse insurance against real estate property and the
whole thing, which a lot of people do,
unfortunately. And I didn't know about it at
the time, and I started researching it. Like,
oh my god. This is a thing. And,
oh my god. There's people that are really
getting taken advantage of. I'm like, oh, I
could see this
this happening and, of course, inserted that in.
So again, to your point,
a lot of these things could happen, are
(31:36):
happening.
I just don't want to be the one
doing it. Yeah. I've got a recent episode
up about
a series of murders in Malibu.
And the perpetrator
it was all about insurance.
And he had even his family
had a long, long history of insurance fraud.
He had learned from the best, except he
(31:56):
elevated his to life insurance
murders.
And he when it really gets him caught,
he's got an
$800,000 life insurance policy that he just has
paid off
a few
weeks before
his
wife and stepson, pretty new wife,
mysteriously drowned while they're out with him.
(32:18):
Jeez.
Yeah.
That's terrible.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's crazy.
Well, I appreciate you talking, with us. And,
before we close out here, I want you
to give a a pitch for your orange
foundation. Tell my listeners
what you do and and how they can
help out. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah.
The Orange Effect Foundation, the orange effect dot
(32:39):
org,
effECT.
We've been working on this, little cause, my
wife and I,
since
2007.
Our son at the time we did this
was 6 years old, now is almost 23,
but was diagnosed on the autism spectrum,
when we got into that process,
(33:00):
realized that how difficult it was. We had
the means, which was great. We had intensive
speech
and play therapy
and came through that whole process,
went went through a tutor in a school
until 8 years old,
then didn't need 1, started saying more and
more words,
and really is is doing wonderfully well because
(33:21):
of that speech and play therapy. And then
that during that process, we found out a
lot of families couldn't afford that. A lot
of families
who their kids are diagnosed,
they really need this speech therapy, and they
can't get it because insurance doesn't cover it,
and they need to put food on the
table. And that's tragic
if you can't get that therapy that you
need. So we created Orange Effect Foundation to
(33:43):
be a sort of a last resort for
people who who can't, people,
families, kids who can't get this type of
therapy or technology.
So we've been doing this officially as a
5 zero one c three since 2000 14,
and we have grants out to over 400
kids in 39 states.
And we just raise as much money as
we can to make sure that these kids
get the speech therapy they need to be,
(34:04):
whatever kinda normal they wanna be
just so they can communicate more effectively. And
it's, it's a passion we all have, and,
if anybody's interested, just look us up at
the orange effect dot org, and and we
fundraise all year long and have been for
the last 18 years.
I'll add my insights from my reporter's notebook.
(34:24):
For years in the prison systems, I've seen
so many cases of inmates that have learning
differences,
speech difficulties, and all of that.
It contributed to the reason they're in prison.
And if we can get these people help
as children,
you know, we're gonna it'll be one less
prison bed that taxpayers have to take care
of. So,
(34:45):
Joe, thank you again for joining us. Thank
you, Robert. I really appreciate it.
Joe Pulizzi is known as the godfather
of content marketing.
The godfathers that you usually hear about from
me had mafia families in New York City
or the Dixie Mafia in the South.
So this is a departure from my true
crime stories.
I was intrigued when Pulizzi, the best selling
author of books for content entrepreneurs,
(00:26):
surprised many with his bold shift from writing
about marketing to crafting
a compelling crime novel.
His most recent literary venture, The Will to
Die,
plunges readers into a gripping narrative unfolding in
the eerie setting of a funeral home.
Maluzzi's thematic choices
(00:46):
evokes the real life case of Bernhard, Bernie
Tidy, an East Texas Funeral Director,
whose story is as chilling as any crime
fiction.
Tidy's case, which involved the murder of a
wealthy, cantankerous widow,
and his subsequent conviction
shocked the nation and inspired the dark comedy
film, Bernie.
(01:08):
Like Bernie's tale, Pulizzi's novel explores human nature's
duality
and the sinister undercurrents that can lurk beneath
the surface
of everyday life.
Joe Pulizzi joins me from his home in
Cleveland, Ohio
to discuss what it takes to craft a
fictional crime mystery
in the spirit of Agatha Christie or Raymond
(01:30):
Chandler.
Joe, I mean, you already had a great
track record of bestsellers in marketing books.
What possessed you to go off in a
crime novel?
I think the
most important part was I wanted to write
(01:53):
something that my wife would actually read.
And,
she basically said and I said, you know,
I've written all these marketing books. And she
said, well, those are boring, and I I
don't wanna read any of those. She only
by the way, I've always written you know,
it's been, like, to Pam, the acknowledgments and
everything. That's the only thing she ever read.
(02:13):
And I said, wouldn't it be nice if
I could actually write something that my wife
would read? And she loves mysteries and thrillers.
So I started to
try to outline
something that she would, be interested in, and
it was probably
the most challenging thing I'd ever done creatively.
Took me a while to get there, which
(02:33):
we could talk about if you want
to. And, and
and came out with the the will to
die. And and,
I
gave her the
the the first draft, and she said,
this is the best thing you've ever done.
Granted, she never read any of my marketing
stuff.
So and, and then I had an actual
(02:54):
editor, you know, went through the whole process
and and published it. And still, probably to
this day, it's one of the the things
I'm most proud of. Well, as you know,
women are really drive this genre
of their interest, both true and novels in
crime.
Did you get a sense from her of
what appealed to her, what she was looking
for in the book?
(03:17):
So, yes.
You know, they always, you know, at least
if you if you think about I'm creating
content for an audience, what are my audience's
needs, I used,
my wife as sort of the audience that
I was writing to.
And
probably to give you a specific example, the
ending, it's very important to my wife that
things are wrapped up, that there are no
(03:39):
cliffhangers.
Like, she goes to a movie. If there's
something that doesn't get resolved, she's unhappy when
she leaves the movie theater.
So the same with any mystery or thriller.
And so she
she tends to read oh, she'll read a
Patterson
or, you know, short sentences,
short chapters,
(03:59):
lots of lots of dialogue,
which I love. I love to write dialogue.
It's my favorite thing,
And, and then wrapping things up. So I
was very aware of,
not to leave anything hanging
and and also
to to make sure that inciting incident
happens as quickly as pie. And I had
a lot of friends
(04:19):
who,
who read, you know, early drafts and whatnot
that said, hey. You need to need to
move this up a little bit or whatever,
and so that was really important where almost
immediately, I want,
something to happen that that, that gets the,
the audience involved. And in this case, it
would be my wife. Yeah.
(04:40):
Your murder is set in a
in the funeral home, in a funeral home
industry.
And one of the things that appealed to
me about the story is that
I'd recently done an interview with a veteran
Texas prison warden about the worst of the
worst he'd had during his career.
And one was
an owner of a chain of funeral homes
(05:02):
in East Texas.
Very bright, charming guy. So charming that
when my friend was warden, this guy was
the administrative assistant. Inmates run the prisons here
in one sense.
But he had gotten into drug smuggling. He
had a pilot's license. And he got
caught because he was getting divorced, and his
(05:24):
wife to be turned him in. And he
got out on bail, and realized she had
done this, and he killed her. But then
he used the funeral home and this
apparatus and everything in there to dissolve her
body. And as the warden said, down the
drain she went.
So
(05:44):
give us the without giving it away, give
us the plot
of your story.
So, yeah, as you said, it takes place
in a in a funeral home, and the
main character's name is Will Pollitt, and Will
Pollitt's father, Abe, is a funeral director who,
who passes away through somewhat mysterious circumstances.
(06:07):
And as Will comes back to
Will, by the way, is a advertising
manager marketing manager of a of an agency,
comes back home to Sandusky, Ohio where the,
where the murders take place and
basically just starts to
figure out, okay. Well, I gotta take over
dad's business now and and I've, you know,
(06:29):
I I've gotta get things in order, but
as Will's doing that, realizes there's
some things that don't add up correctly.
And Will realizes that there might be things
going on in Sandusky, Ohio that aren't quite
right,
and down the rabbit hole Will goes goes,
and Will has
a very close friend, Rob Robbie, who helps
(06:52):
and, and his ex wife, Sam,
who's also involved in the funeral industry. And,
basically, the 3 Musketeers,
they go out to figure out what's going
on with this mystery
and,
deep
seedy corruption
in the city of in the the peaceful
city of Sandusky, Ohio. So that's basically how
(07:12):
it starts and goes through, and, hopefully, you
know, as you've as you've said, holy, a
fast fast moving mystery reads really quickly
and you get to the bottom where
somewhat regular people who are very, very nice
on the
(07:34):
That's kind of what
I think you found and I found is
is that when you somebody that does something
horribly, it's just, wow, on the outside, that
was such a nice person, such a nice
man, such a wonderful woman.
They gave back to the community. They went
to church.
And, of course, you you know, you peel
back the layers and you find that that
(07:56):
it's not all quite what they've lived up
to be. So
So, it sounds like Will is inspired by
Joe in marketing.
What what about the funeral home? Why the
funeral home industry setting? Did you already know
something about it?
So I grew up in in the funeral
home industry. My
grandfather was a funeral director. It was his
(08:18):
business when he, started working in the twenties.
He started working for a gentleman named Fry
in in Sandusky. So this is not basically
based on anything real, but I do use
the city and the things that I learned
about the funeral industry
as part of the story. And so and
my my grandfather, Leo Groff, was,
(08:39):
one of the one of the most amazing
individuals ever, and I was
blessed with when I started working,
15, 16, 17 year old, and I and
I was
figuring out my way around a funeral home.
I had
my
father who was basically retired at the time.
He was my teacher, so he started to
(08:59):
teach me about the funeral business
before I actually started to go out on
calls
or, you know, be involved in the embalming
setting when I was 18 to 21.
And, I was infatuated by it,
because unlike a lot of people when they
go into the funeral setting and they're very
hesitant and they don't know what to make
(09:21):
of it, I feel very at home because
I was 5, 6, 7 years old running
around a funeral home,
and,
it's where I
realized that funeral directors are are perhaps the
funniest people on the planet because they have
to be.
Because they you you can't if you I
think if you really,
(09:41):
look at what you're doing every day and
you take it too seriously, it can take
a toll on you spiritually and emotionally. So
you can't you almost have to, one example,
and I think I use this in the
book, is it's you you it's never he
or she.
They never use pronouns. It's always, you know,
mister
Smith or it's the body.
(10:01):
And that
that once that person has passed away, you
sort of, detach the humanity, if you will,
so you can get through the whole process.
So and so I I just I knew
that environment, and, of course, they always say,
you know, you you're right about what you
know.
I know a lot about marketing, and I
know a lot about funeral homes, so I
sort of mash those 2 together.
(10:22):
And the other thing is, and you and
I have talked about this before,
if you're gonna create
content, you should you should have some differentiation
as part of it. And I had not
read
a lot of mysteries or thrillers or known
about a lot of mysteries or thrillers that
had the protagonist as a marketing professional.
And not a lot no. Not a lot
(10:44):
in funeral homes. I mean, there's some, and
it's it's maybe a little bit more,
than it used to be. But I said,
I don't think there's ever been, like, a
marketing funeral home mashup in a mystery. So
I said, let let's go to town on
that one and see if we can separate
ourselves a bit. So what was your reaction
to the family since they are in the
business? Were they any concerns that, well, they
might think this happened here with us?
(11:05):
Well, I'll, I'll be completely honest with you,
Robert. I wrote this,
and I was so excited for my uncle,
which was my grandfather's son, to to read
this. And and it initially came out as
an audiobook. I think you remember this. I
launched it as an audiobook first and then
printed did the ebook and the print version
(11:26):
about 3 months after that. And so I
had my family
listen to the initial audio version,
and I was very excited because I've sort
of, like, a love letter to my
to my family, and they did not like
it at all.
That's putting it lightly.
(11:46):
They thought that I was making fun
of the which I'm which I've not and
I never have been, and I sort of,
I'm proud of
the people, the funeral directors. I I love
the service that they provide, and I it
sort of was, in my view, was a
love letter, but some people didn't take it
that way, and there's nothing I could do
about that.
I don't know if I would change or
(12:07):
do anything differently,
but I was a little disappointed that the
family didn't
appreciate it as much as as I do.
So that that was the one that was
the one downside in the one area that
I didn't expect. Do you think you'll stay
with a funeral home setting? Because I really
find it interesting. You know, we've got the
case here in Texas, Bernie,
the funeral home director who
(12:29):
everyone loved,
and he was stealing from the wealthy widow
and then murders her and
stashes her away in a deep freeze. You
know, I I'm sure you know the story.
I've heard of it. Yes. Oh, my God.
It's it's a terrific,
interesting, interesting story.
And because it's so different, we, you know,
we don't have that much contact with the
(12:50):
funeral home.
Do you think you'll stay with that setting?
So I'm working on the outline
as as I have you know, you switched
careers a lot, done a lot of different
things. I do a lot of different things
as well or I'm trying to. So once,
I wrote the novel, I went back and
started dabbling back into marketing, and I'm sort
of going back on the novel side now.
(13:11):
And I've just begun to write out some
mini chapters and outlines for the next book,
and the
it is probably not as
much of the plot or as it used
as it was in the original, but it
is still part of I mean, I'm using
the same characters.
They're still in the same positions.
But I I heard the same type of
(13:32):
feedback that you're giving me right now is
it's so interesting to people. They love the
inner workings of what happens inside a funeral
home, the embalming process, the cleanup, the pickup,
going to get the you know, everything about
that,
that happens.
(13:55):
The
bodies are coming to the funeral home, and
the funeral home director and the embalmers are
realizing,
hey, this wasn't a natural death, this was
murder.
You know, and
starting their own investigations.
There's so many places that you can go.
And it's interesting,
although
Will Robbie and Sam are not private investigators,
(14:18):
they sort of act like private investigators in
the first,
in in the first novel, Will to Die.
And they're just curious people, and they know
enough to be dangerous. And they have a
lot of friends to help them along the
way. And so I like that,
you know, not that that's Harry Potter esque,
but, you know, if you wanted to make
(14:38):
a comparison, you take the 3 of those
from Harry Potter. And they're always curious and
inquisitive, something's going wrong.
And you take those 3 and you put
them into the funeral home atmosphere, and crazy,
crazy things can happen.
(15:04):
Well, for our listeners,
given an understanding of what
goes into that crime novel they'll be reading
on the beach of what it takes to
do it.
So
when I start a business book,
it's fair I don't wanna say it's easy,
but it's much easier for me to do
that because
(15:26):
I have a very specific idea of what
the informational needs are of my audience. In
this case, I've been living in the marketing
industry forever, so I'm target targeting marketers.
Here's what they need to know. Here's
how I'm coming at it from my point
of view, and then I start to write
out what do chapters
(15:49):
because I
because I didn't know where the story was
going to go.
And I wanted it. I really wanted an
outline and I thought and I and I
actually am going back to that process because
I've been reading and watching a lot of
what James Patterson does, and James Patterson is
a big believer in outlines.
And I think that's a easier place to
start than just
sitting at my computer just waiting for the
(16:12):
spirit to un develop, and then I can
start start to type this thing up.
So, but what I did with this one
is I realized that I I had an
idea
for how this thing was going to start,
the inciting incident,
and where it would go from there. I
didn't have the ending worked out, but I
had a good, like, starting point and middle,
(16:33):
and I had to just sit down at
my computer and start writing.
And it wasn't until I got to about
the 4 week process, Robert, where I felt
I had anything usable.
And if I go back to the initial
writings and chapters, I would probably say there
was hardly anything in that first 4 weeks
that I ended up using,
But it's almost like whether you're gonna run
(16:54):
a marathon or you're going to the gym,
you would need to work those muscles, you
need to get yourself in shape, and that's
what I needed to do.
And for whatever reason, a month
it took about a month for me to
get in shape until I started to feel
I had something going, and then I got
into a rhythm
where every morning, I would spend 2 to
3 hours in front of the computer and
(17:15):
write generally between 502,000
Finnish words a day.
And after about 2 to 3 months, I
had the initial draft done.
So it was
6 months of I have no idea how
to write this novel. Where am I gonna
go? And this is not as as easy
as writing a,
a business to business book
(17:37):
to, I'm starting to write this process. I'm
terrible. I'm never going to do this. Nobody's
ever going to read this thing to,
oh my god. I can't believe what this
character just did. I had no idea. I
remember there was one moment when I really
thought I was on to something and I
was feeling good about it. I came downstairs
and I went to talk to my wife
about it, and I said, you have no
(17:57):
idea what Will did today. And she's like,
what are you talking about? What Will don't
you I mean, you're the right don't you
know? I said, no. I had no idea
it was gonna go that direction, and that's
what
was new and different about this process
versus writing a nonfiction book is because I
know exactly where I'm going
in a nonfiction book.
In a fiction novel,
(18:19):
sometimes the characters do whatever they do, and
I don't you know, it just it just
comes out of the page, but you have
to get to that point. And that's what
I didn't know before, Robert, is is putting
in the time and effort
and get into rhythm. And that's where somebody
like, James Patterson,
it works wonderfully because they never get out
of shape.
They get up every morning,
3 hours, 4 hours, and they write, and
(18:41):
they're never out of shape. And that
when I and I and I run half
marathons and I ran a marathon last year,
and that makes perfect sense to me saying,
I can't go out tomorrow
and run a marathon if I don't train
for it. You can't go out tomorrow and
write a novel unless you train yourself for
it. So 30 days,
2 months of training
(19:01):
gets you into the point where 3 or
4 months later, you have a first draft
of a novel. Now that you're into this,
what is your sense about why we are
so intrigued
by murder,
men and women.
I'll give you an example that
happened with one of my friends that's happening
now.
There is one woman in our friend group
(19:22):
that
is very straight laced. She's very she's she
never does anything questionable.
You'd never see her say a a naughty
word, if you will.
Prim and proper, I guess, would be a
good way to to, describe it.
She loves reading the smuttiest,
most horrific
(19:43):
pornographic
romance you would ever imagine.
I use that as an example because I
think it's an escape for a lot of
people. I think it's like I
you know, you what you want you don't
wanna go and be at the beach, as
you said, at Beach Read and read about
you working in an office
Yeah. If they came from an office.
(20:05):
You wanna read something outlandish, something exciting, something
that they would never
possibly get involved with.
Take them away from whatever the worries of
the current were. So that that's kinda what
my thinking is,
because when I my my wife, huge reader,
she usually has 2 or 3 novels go
on at a at a time,
(20:25):
and has probably read every one of Patterson's
books that have been out there. It is
a real escape for her,
and I see that she has less stress
during her day if she's had a chance
to spend 30 or 45 minutes at least
reading a little bit of a novel.
So from that standpoint, I think that,
some people actually need that. They need that
(20:46):
escape,
and I think that that's what it is.
And I it's it's funny that
the whole romance novel with my my other
friend that I would have never expected that,
but that's something that that's her that's her
escape. And so I think the same thing
goes for for murder novels.
Well, one of the things I've seen based
on research is that in periods of anxiety
(21:10):
and stress, a lot of that these days,
the
appetite
for crime novels and true crime increases significantly.
Why do you think that is? Is that
just because it is a de stressor? It
does relieve that anxiety? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you
feel like that if you're reading police procedurals
and and, you know, where there is an
(21:30):
ending and stuff,
maybe it restores
faith that things will get better, things will
work their way out.
Now my interest in
what I do, I'm really interested in
what makes these criminals tick
the mind of the murderer.
And I think deep down that many people
(21:51):
are like,
do I know somebody like that? Or
could that
person
in bed with me, my spouse or significant
other? Could they,
have murder on their heart? You know, that
sort of thing.
But hey, I did want to tell you,
I want to share with you,
because I'm always doing research and stuff. But
I was reading PD James, the great British
(22:13):
true crime writer from,
gosh,
19th century, something like that. What he what
I really found interesting, she says, the most
dangerous
emotion is love.
And she says the l word covers all
motives for murder (22:27):
love, lust, loathing,
and looser, which is the love of money.
And I thought, that really kind of sums
it up. I mean, those
those are
part of every kind of true crime story
and and also in crime novels that you
encounter.
I love that. That's that sounds perfect. Absolutely.
(22:47):
And it's what's funny is is that that's
probably the same for the will to die.
It involved
money issues,
love,
unrequited
love,
loss of some kind. Yes. Absolutely.
To a t.
I interviewed an author here recently that does
crime novels.
They're really
(23:09):
very closely
based on real
criminal cases,
But he'll change things. But what really is
god, it astonished me. He just sits down
at the typewriter and starts.
No outline. Nothing.
Just starts going.
And wherever it may.
And I thought, wow. That's
(23:30):
that's some discipline right there. You know, it's
interesting. I love that there's no one right
way to write a novel in my experience
and in reading, you know, even on writing
by Stephen King or wherever you whatever you
you look up to to the novelist.
The only thing
that is the same thing that runs throughout
all these novelists is they do it every
(23:51):
day.
They do it consistently over a long period
of time. Some of them use novels, some
of them just sit down, some of them
have 5 going at a time, some of
them just work on 1 and then work
on the next one. But that so they're
all different except for that
sometime during the day, they sit down in
front of a typewriter or a computer and
they write.
(24:11):
And so and that's where I was like,
any if you wanna do it, anybody can
do it, but you just have to put
in the work and the time.
I try to block out the calendar with
quiet time in the mornings.
The phone is off. Everything.
And
well, because I, you know, do a lot
of research as well and stuff.
But for the writing,
(24:32):
you gotta tune everything else out.
I think first thing in the morning, it's
it works the same for me. I'm very
it's very difficult for me in the afternoon
at all
to write something that
will end up,
being a thing. It's like for and and
I think a lot of it is is
that in in my writing career,
if I set myself to do this every
(24:54):
morning, whatever happens while I'm sleeping in the
middle of the night, I generally if I
if I'm programming myself this way,
it works in my favor so that when
I get up and I'll get my cup
of coffee and I'll sit down and I'm
and I'm ready to go and whatever was
working the night before just starts to unleash
itself on the page,
which I don't know why that works. You
(25:15):
probably do more than I do, but you
get into that rhythm
and then you need it. And you feel
like if you skip a day, you've done
something bad, just like I didn't go work
out today. So you need to do that
every day.
I am the benefactor of honing the craft
over so many years in newsrooms
where it's chaos.
Absolute
(25:36):
chaos.
And in television news, people might not realize
this, you write for the ear.
And
if you go into a went into a
large television newsroom and on deadlines,
everybody's talking out loud to themselves.
Because they're writing as, how does this sound?
You know, turning phrases. You'd walk in there
(25:57):
and think, I've walked into an asylum or
something.
But that has been helpful for me. Just
covering the White House, other places. And then,
you know, as you sit there, having to
write a story
on a notepad or something in chaos is
very helpful. But now I really
I value
the quiet time and no distractions. You just
(26:17):
can't have distractions and do this.
A lot of people,
they get up in the morning and they'll
look at email or social. Oh, that's a
big no no. You cannot you cannot let
your brain go there. Yeah. You have to
stay in the go right go spend your
quiet time. Go do whatever you have to
do,
and then you can push that off to
(26:39):
later. It's very tough on the inspirational process
if you if you let that come between
you and your your writing.
Do you pay much attention to real crime
news and sort of your always sort of
open to inspiration
or
you're just gonna let it happen in your
head?
If it gets to me, if news gets
to me through other people,
then fine. I'll listen to it. Somebody will
(26:59):
tell me a story. Did you hear about
this? Whatever.
And may maybe some of that's inspirational.
I have
divorced myself from a lot of the social
media that's out there.
Most of the news that I get comes
from
the newspaper or
newsletters
that I trust.
I do not watch ever watch the news.
(27:22):
I'll listen to podcasts, but most of the
pod it's funny. What if I'm listening to
something, it's probably nonfiction.
I don't listen to a lot of and
I like to refer to other Riz. I
like to read
the the fiction stuff. But most of the
stuff the my inspiration comes from reading, while
I'm reading other books.
Absolutely.
So and and I never did that. I
(27:43):
when I was probably all the way up
to 30, I was not a reader
of a tremendous amount of books, and my
wife got me hooked on it. I think
it was some vacation we went on, and
I got I really liked that mystery. I
think it was a a Grisham book or
something like that.
And I'm like, wow, I really I like
myself better when I'm reading these books. I
like how my mind works a little bit
(28:05):
better. So I always have a book going
now,
and always try to spend at least 20
minutes a day or more into some kind
of a book. I just think I'm a
better person, but I think that from there,
I don't know why it's it's not a
direct tie either. If I'm reading something and
I get an idea, it's just for whatever
reason, I got into that state
of reading a book and my brain goes
(28:27):
in a different direction, and then I'll go
ahead and I'll write the note down so
that I can come back to it later
or I've got the I've got the note
as I I do a lot of thinking
in the shower as well and we've got
we put a little notepad up in the
shower because I make notes on that as
well.
Who knows? You know, you I wanna make
sure that, I I take it down whenever
(28:47):
I can.
The idea,
comes into my head.
Do you ever find yourself thinking,
wow. You know, I might could get away
with this. I might could get away with
a real crime like this.
No. But I do say I think this
is going to happen or I think it
could happen.
Like, I,
(29:08):
with the will to die,
I really believe that that
stuff could happen. Like, everything that happened in
that book, I believe that it could happen,
or I've,
heard somebody talk about it, or I've seen
something
around it
happen, I don't wanna ever say, oh my
god, there's no way. And a lot of
the book involved technology. So even in, you
(29:30):
know, so it's been 5 years since I've
really worked on that book, I'd have to,
I'd have to really think differently about how,
I would employ technology. And I and, actually,
I'm really in the next book,
it's gonna be interesting, especially with all the
AI stuff that come in because I'm if
I'm talking about marketing and what's going on
with AI, I've you've gotta
(29:50):
I've gotta really be careful. I don't wanna
date the book because, oh, technology only happened
during
this this point in time. There's a book
that I read recently. I don't know if
it was a a
oh, I can't remember which one it was.
I have to get back to you on
it. But there it took place in
1990
4, 1995
before, like, heavy usage of cell phones or
(30:13):
social media. And I was like, wow. That's
a great place. That's just a perfect place.
Because you you didn't have like, you didn't
know where people were.
You didn't have that tracking technology and other
things, so it's a fun place. I would
I would be interested in going back to
a time. That's why when we were in
the book, when I would write in the
seventies or in the eighties,
(30:33):
It's enjoyable. There's no cell phones going on.
There's no social media. There's no technology. It's
like, we're going out. People don't know where
we're at.
There's a lot of freedom when you can
write without those constraints.
Well, there was one thing in
the will to die that struck a responsive
chord with him. I'm not going to give
the story away. But it is the
the buying of life insurance policies.
(30:55):
That's happened to real life,
those abuses.
So that that actually comes from
I sat we sat down
with,
with our insurance agent
years ago and they brought up this
reverse
life insurance thing, you know, again, against your
real
(31:16):
reverse insurance against real estate property and the
whole thing, which a lot of people do,
unfortunately. And I didn't know about it at
the time, and I started researching it. Like,
oh my god. This is a thing. And,
oh my god. There's people that are really
getting taken advantage of. I'm like, oh, I
could see this
this happening and, of course, inserted that in.
So again, to your point,
a lot of these things could happen, are
(31:36):
happening.
I just don't want to be the one
doing it. Yeah. I've got a recent episode
up about
a series of murders in Malibu.
And the perpetrator
it was all about insurance.
And he had even his family
had a long, long history of insurance fraud.
He had learned from the best, except he
(31:56):
elevated his to life insurance
murders.
And he when it really gets him caught,
he's got an
$800,000 life insurance policy that he just has
paid off
a few
weeks before
his
wife and stepson, pretty new wife,
mysteriously drowned while they're out with him.
(32:18):
Jeez.
Yeah.
That's terrible.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's crazy.
Well, I appreciate you talking, with us. And,
before we close out here, I want you
to give a a pitch for your orange
foundation. Tell my listeners
what you do and and how they can
help out. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah.
The Orange Effect Foundation, the orange effect dot
(32:39):
org,
effECT.
We've been working on this, little cause, my
wife and I,
since
2007.
Our son at the time we did this
was 6 years old, now is almost 23,
but was diagnosed on the autism spectrum,
when we got into that process,
(33:00):
realized that how difficult it was. We had
the means, which was great. We had intensive
speech
and play therapy
and came through that whole process,
went went through a tutor in a school
until 8 years old,
then didn't need 1, started saying more and
more words,
and really is is doing wonderfully well because
(33:21):
of that speech and play therapy. And then
that during that process, we found out a
lot of families couldn't afford that. A lot
of families
who their kids are diagnosed,
they really need this speech therapy, and they
can't get it because insurance doesn't cover it,
and they need to put food on the
table. And that's tragic
if you can't get that therapy that you
need. So we created Orange Effect Foundation to
(33:43):
be a sort of a last resort for
people who who can't, people,
families, kids who can't get this type of
therapy or technology.
So we've been doing this officially as a
5 zero one c three since 2000 14,
and we have grants out to over 400
kids in 39 states.
And we just raise as much money as
we can to make sure that these kids
get the speech therapy they need to be,
(34:04):
whatever kinda normal they wanna be
just so they can communicate more effectively. And
it's, it's a passion we all have, and,
if anybody's interested, just look us up at
the orange effect dot org, and and we
fundraise all year long and have been for
the last 18 years.
I'll add my insights from my reporter's notebook.
(34:24):
For years in the prison systems, I've seen
so many cases of inmates that have learning
differences,
speech difficulties, and all of that.
It contributed to the reason they're in prison.
And if we can get these people help
as children,
you know, we're gonna it'll be one less
prison bed that taxpayers have to take care
of. So,
(34:45):
Joe, thank you again for joining us. Thank
you, Robert. I really appreciate it.
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