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Podcast host and thriller author David Temple gives you a front-row seat to the best thriller writers in the world. If you like thriller fiction in Books, Movies, and TV Shows, you’ll love The Thriller Zone Podcast.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (00:00.11)
Hello and welcome to the Thriller Zone. I'm your host David Temple and I am so happy to introduce you to our season seven, Cue the Fireworks. Yep, we've made it another season as we approach 200 episodes, which we will hit this month. On today's 196th episode, I'm honored to welcome the legendary number one New York Times bestselling author, Kathy Reichs. You'll likely know her from the hit television series,
bones. So without further ado, please welcome Kathy Reichs to the Thriller Zone.
We are kicking off season seven. So you're my very first guest on season seven. We've been at this for three years now. We're going into our fourth year. So I'm excited because as we prepared, I thought, okay, who could we get that is at the top of the game? And we've been trying to get you for a while. So thank you, Kathy Reichs, for being with us today.
Thank you for inviting me. The book of course is fire and bones and I've got so much to say about it. We're going to get to it. I do want to kick off by saying I love the fact and we have this similarity. I lived in Charlotte for nearly three decades and I just recently a couple of years ago left. So the fact that you are living there is just cool because I don't get to meet a lot of people who are living there these days. And I just wanted to say a big old shout out to my family and friends in Charlotte. What took you to Charlotte and how long have you been living there?
I've been living here since 1978. So I've lived here longer than I've ever lived anywhere. What took me here? My husband and I had joint offers from him from a law firm and me from the university here. we, it was one snowstorm too many living in Chicago. said, yep, let's do it. Let's head south.
And here again is another similarity. So I spent a few years in Chicago on a radio show and I would just like you one day I woke up after five years and I went, you know what? This is madness and ended up moving west, but then ended up going back to Charlotte. But yeah, there are days that Chicago has a, an appreciation. I'm going to use that in air quotes for the cold weather that I no longer share. It's beautiful. Yeah. I love Chicago. It's beautiful in the summer, the winters can be brutal.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (02:16.046)
And I also understand you spend a little time in Charleston, South Carolina. I do. have a home on one of the barrier islands off of Charleston. It doesn't get any pretty. We're right on the water. So there's always a breeze. So I love it. I want to start with how much I loved fire and bones. And, I've got a couple of notes that you'll see that I put stickies in here because I, and I scribble, but you have my favorite thing.
can't decide if it's the phrase breaking down the fourth wall or it's that inner dialogue of Tempe. But that, that smart ass, sarcastic conversation, I cannot get enough of it. He can be sharp. She can be sarcastic for sure. And especially about herself. She has a sense of humor and I think she has a good sense of humor about herself and she'll often talk about what a dumb thing she just did.
And I think it's that approachable miss of her. The fact that she is, she gets into a situation and she is observing the situation and she's having this inner dialogue. I'm like, God, that's exactly what I would say. And I think that's part of the thing that just makes me love her so much. So fun. And I will admit that I am a relatively new to the Kathy Reich's fan club, that, you know, besides the murder and mayhem and of course the science, and you're such a specialist on the science angle of things.
Besides all that, is that humor and the compassion and the realism of her so that I don't give away too many hints. Tell me about fire and bones for my listeners. Not surprisingly, given the title, it starts out with a fire. Tempe is asked to go to a fire in a neighborhood in Washington, DC called Foggy Bottom. And I just, really liked the name Foggy Bottom. I wanted to call something like Foggy Bottom Bones, but my publisher said, we're not going to do that.
Anyway, she goes to this old house, which is burned down in Pluggy Bottom. She knows that they know that there are four victims in there. So she's asked to help recover those fire victims, but she discovers, because a fireman falls through the floor, she discovers there's a sub cellar that's on none of the diagrams of this old house, 100 years old. So she goes down, of course, into this sub cellar and she finds another set of remains, a tiny little woman, and she becomes almost obsessed.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (04:38.53)
We're trying to figure out who this little woman is and what she's doing in the subseller of this home. And then a lot of the history of Foggy Bottom comes into the story because there was a group called the Foggy Bottom Gang, who a group of brothers, the Waring Brothers, who ran the Al Capone did in Chicago, only they ran it during Prohibition in the 30s, into the 50s actually, ran the illegal booze and later gambling operations in Foggy Bottom.
Being a forensic anthropologist, I was reading about you and I'm like, you cannot say that there are many people that do what you do. And I'm trying to figure out the difference and help me understand the difference between a forensic anthropologist and just a specialist in cadavers. think of Patricia Cornwell. I'd call her a writer because she's not a scientist. She has worked closely with forensic pathologists.
And she writes about a pathologist, but she's, she has no scientific training. okay. Okay. That's where I was mistaken. I thought she had the training because you spent your entire life training for this. Yes. I, for decades, I did all the forensic anthropology cases in North Carolina and also in Quebec out of the main lab there in Montreal. I was watching a video of you over the remains of a body and I thought to myself,
I'm probably on the weaker side, stomach wise, I've seen things and I asked myself, what made Cathy wake up one day and go, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to study. And that's what I want to specialize on. Take me through that. I wrote a story. There's a book called The Bone Collection and it's for short stories. Although they're not very short. They're more like novellas. I'm not very good at short. And the first one is called First Bones, I think. And it's Temperance Brennan's origin story.
And it's also my origin story. So she's sitting, she had trained, I had trained to do bioarchaeology to analyze ancient skeletons recovered by archeologists. But because I was the bones lady out of the university, when cops found skeletal remains, what do we do with these? Let's take them out to that bones lady out at the university. So that's how I, so I never pictured myself going into forensics, but once I started doing the forensic work, I love archeology.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (07:01.43)
It's fascinating, but you're not going to impact anyone's life depending on what your report says. But you are when you identify someone and tell a family, have identified their missing member or when you testify in court, you are going to impact lives. And I really liked the relevance of that. So I retrained and I sat for my board certification exams and I've been doing the forensic end of it ever since. It's an amazing field.
That also made me wonder because for those folks who don't know who you are, which I can't imagine that being, and perhaps not know the show that came from your work, which is Bones on television. I wondered when did Temperance Brennan first come to you? Do you remember when she first came to you and you first said, this is it? Yeah, I decided I was going to write a novel in 1994 and I started writing it.
Over spring break, I was teaching full -time at the university and commuting between Charlotte and Montreal doing forensic work. the easiest thing, forensic science was in the air. It wasn't what it became where everyone became fascinated with forensic science and CSI and all that. But it was, I sensed it was going to become popular. So it just made sense to base my protagonist, my main character on myself. It's just easier that way. So.
I drew a lot on, not personally, personally, she's her own person. She has her own flaws and yeah, we can go into that if you want, but professionally she does exactly what I can. She commutes between Charlotte and Montreal and she does the forensic. I remember when the book first came out, same critic saying that's ridiculous. Nobody would ever commute between North Carolina and yeah, I've been doing it for 20 years anyway. Don't you love it when people tell you that.
Yeah. No one would ever do that. Yeah. Yeah. And then you're doing it or someone who's doing it. Think about her and I love the character on television and I did a count on it. I think it's 245 episodes, 12 years when you started writing. And I want to make sure that we tell that story of where you thought this was never going to work. But did you have any idea that it would ever
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (09:25.474)
be that successful. Now I was a completely unknown writer writing my first novel. I had never tried fiction before. I'd written scientific books, but never fiction before. So every now and then you think, this is going to be a series and it's going to be picked up for feature film or, and then you tell yourself, you know, just get real, finish the book. Maybe some publisher will agree to publish it. Maybe people will buy it and like it.
Do me a favor and share this story. don't remember where I heard it, but you were right about this time you're thinking about writing and you said to yourself, okay. It had to do with rejection slips. And I want to hear that story because there are so many listeners who are up and coming writers and they go, they play that. I can't do it. What if I, what, what if I can do it? Maybe I can do it. What if they'll never read it and tell me that story. I told myself I would 50 if I got 50 rejection slips, would.
take that as a commentary on my writing skills and go back to just looking at bones. Yeah. So I, when I finished the book, my daughter had a friend who had a friend who had a friend who worked at a publishing house. So she said, why don't we just mail it to him? In those days, he mailed the whole hard copy manuscript. Sure. I'll kind of find out where this person works. And it turned out it was a Scrivener and it was a junior editor. Yeah. Okay. So I composed a cover letter.
I just sent it off, sent it off. I'm sure she's on the, Sue Rucci, who's now a publisher in her own right. I'm sure she's on the other end hearing that her friend's friend's mother's first novel is coming her way. She told me later, she took two or three chapters home from Manhattan to wherever, Brooklyn or wherever, thinking already composing the reject letter. Read them, went back into Manhattan, got the rest of the manuscript, read the whole thing over the weekend.
And then handed it up the chain to the person that actually became my publisher. So the first house to whom I submitted it bought it. a minute. So you set, set for yourself 50 and you didn't even have to get one. No. And that's not the way to go about getting published today. I understand you need to have an agent. You really, I've talked to.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (11:47.342)
Publishers that they don't even look at on agented manuscripts. Do you really need to be represented by an agent and the age and As soon as I got the offer from Scrivener someone showed up and said, I'm let me be your agent and I was a little resistant to that but she ended up being my agent for the next 25 years and on that first book she pulled back she Quadrupled their offer and pulled back all kinds of rights that I would have signed away. So you definitely need
Wow. Yeah. It's so funny. I have this conversation with writers all the time and we volley this conversation. I don't need an agent. Agent takes too much money and I can do it myself or I'll do self publishing and there are pros and cons to everything. So I don't want to get into that because I know there are a lot of folks who went the self pub route and have done extremely well. But to your point, the specialization of an agent and knowing the,
landmines and the ins and the outs and the loopholes is worth the price of admission. you agree? And they know what's the best fit for your manuscript, whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, historical fiction, romance, thriller, whatever. They know to whom to submit it and know people at all the different publishing houses. So I don't have an agent anymore, but I did for my first, I don't know, 20 books. so you're free agent.
Yeah, I just have an attorney now because it's automatic. Yeah. The old are automatic and my renewal of contracts or have been automatic. Yeah. Kathy, not for nothing, but when you're as big as you are, I think you can do whatever you want. Can't you? You can. Yeah. Nice place to be. Let's say hi to our brand new sponsor for September. And we'll be back with more Kathy Reichs right here on the Thriller Zone. with us.
So speaking of first Deja dead book, number one, first book you thought, hopefully maybe this will work. And correct me if I'm wrong. It went on to become a New York times bestseller. Yeah. It right. Went right onto the list. And I think it went right onto the London times at number one. I don't know how that happened. I, cause I, yeah. You don't let any chance play the lottery. you?
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (14:11.598)
I haven't that shmuckity shit. I've never, don't think, let's see, we've done near just at 200 episodes, three years on this podcast. I've yeah, I've never met anyone with the, don't want to say luck because I believe there's good fortune. think good fortune supersedes luck, but boy. Yeah. I got a bask in that thought for a second. Cause I know you must feel that right? Part of it's timing.
I'd say good timing and also good product. Lyman script landed on Susan Moldow at that time was the publisher at Scribner on her desk right at the time they were looking for something like that. So the timing was good. The manuscript was good. So I guess that's luck part of it's luck. it safe to assume that very first book was the original impetus for bones? They actually purchased, I think the CIF.
book, which is called Grave Secrets. And the Bone series starts out with her and that book was set largely in Guatemala and touched on the aspect of forensic anthropology involving human rights research work. So the first episode, the pilot actually starts with Tempe, arriving, Temperance Brennan arriving back from Guatemala and Angela meets her at the airport. She's got a skull in a bag or something, which is crazy, but. Everyone should travel with a skull in a bag.
I'm curious since you have had your hands in two pretty sizable pots, what has it been? What have you learned from working in television? And, and that's a really broad question, but I guess it makes me wonder, do you find television and being accepted into and having success in television as magical as you may have perceived it to be years ago? Let me just say this. I had a wonderful experience.
In television, a lot of our writers will say they took my art and they ruined it, blah, blah. I loved the series. I loved what our executive producers, Hart Hansen and Barry Josephson did with the work. I agreed to option the character to them because when Matt, we all seem to be on the same page about it. We wanted not just another police procedural. We wanted it to be a character based show. We wanted it to be a show that has humor in it.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (16:37.816)
humor into my books and that's hard. That takes a delicate touch because every episode, every book deals with violent death. So how do you be funny? How do you put in humor? And I think our writers did a fabulous job with that. And of course, David and Emily did a fantastic job on camera with the material. So I had a good experience. I would do it with those people at least all over again.
It's so funny having worked in and around television and Hollywood for awhile. I realized that what is that old saying? Mileage may vary experiences may vary. And once again, you have had a stroke of genius and luck in your favor, but I was talking to, I've talked to several, think Don Winslow has said this. Mark Grady has said this. Andrews Wilson has said this. Tess Garrett's impressed. They've all had a share, share a similar thought in that this people will go,
I like the book better. I like the TV show better. when they took your book, I think of Mark Graney, especially Mark Graney, they took your book and they ruined it. Mark had the best comeback. goes, you know what? I'm perfectly happy because I wrote the book I wanted to write and it had its life and success. And then Hollywood comes knocking and says, we want to take that and adapt it ourselves. And he goes, and they did what they wanted. And it was perfectly fine because that is their particular take on the story and their flavor of entertainment.
Exactly. And then it doesn't impact you when you sit down to write another Temperance Brennan book or whatever, writing about book TV and that's TV Tempe and complimentary for a long time. People said, let's like Tempe the early years. It's a prequel to the Tempe in your books. Okay. That's one way to think of it. Sure. I'd like to switch channels just a quick second. And as it pertains to having a life as a writer, and I know you didn't particularly set out that way, but very
Obviously you have resulted that way. What is your opinion? And we've just started talking about this lately in the landscape of social media has changed. Every sentence you can imagine both Twitter, X, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera. What are your opinions of social media for book promotion? Are you, and are you a fan of it? And do you think it helps? absolutely. I think it helps sales. mean sales, the marketing? Yes.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (19:01.218)
How could it not? You can write the most brilliant book in the world, but if nobody knows it's out there, they can't, they won't buy it or their chances of stumbling upon it are meager. So I think, social media is a great way to promote a book. think probably what I'm drilling down on is we are, I was having this conversation, I think it was Chris Hottie the other day, and we're just drilling down on how, and let's use X for this particular case of the argument is it was different before.
Elon Musk took it over and we're concerned and we're asking ourselves, is it robots that are pulling and pushing influence or is it true engagement and how do you have so many followers one day and then the next you don't. And I think it just begs the question, the best way to publicize a book. And if you were starting over again today, do you think you would go?
Would you lean into social media or against it? I'm certainly not opposed to it. wouldn't want, don't personally want to publish that way. I've always published with the traditional publishing house with Scrivener, which is part of Simon & Schuster. And I've been with Random House briefly, no, books or something like that. And also in the UK. So I've always been with the traditional publisher. I don't know if it's harder to get published if you're a new, brand new debut unknown author. Is it harder today? Because.
Publishing houses are so much more risk averse and they like to go with the tried and true known authors. Or is it easier because there are so many other outlets that you can go to such as online publishing. it's hard for me to say I've never done it any other way. since we're in the writing world, I'd love to ask you, you've heard this phrase, write what you know, and you're a perfect example. Like you're the quintessential example of write what you know.
There are other people who would say, I'm an artist, I'm a creator, I'm a writer, I just make stuff up. And my mind always vacillates on this because there's a part of you, like, let's say for instance, you wanted to write about, let's go, let's really bend it over backwards and go, you wanted to write a military thriller. Let's just say you want to do a military thriller. I don't think you've been in the military, so you may not. Do you think that is a requirement of being a great writer to only write what you know?
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (21:29.376)
No, I think it either way can work very well. And I did work for the military for many years. great. Okay. Identification of war dead that are being repatriated at the central identification laboratory, which was out in Hawaii. But I think if you write about something you don't know anything about, and I do that when I each of my books is it's a thriller, but it's a forensic. The solution is driven by science, by forensic science.
So I try to use a different aspect of forensic science in each book, blood spatter pattern analysis or mitochondrial DNA extraction from, I don't know, cat hair. I don't know anything about that. I know very little about those areas. So those are the areas that I research very thoroughly. And I'm lucky because I work in forensic science that I have colleagues. know colleagues. can pick up the phone and say, tell me all about how you extract DNA from cat hair or whatever it is.
reading wandering afar from your question, think, but I think I love that. I think it's interesting that sometimes I find the first of all, it's very clear that you're research driven. The minutiae of detail is so precise and I love that about you. And it also begs the question whenever you pick up a book, Kathy, and you're reading it, maybe in your, in your spare time or on vacation, do you, how
What does it do to you when you read a book and, they're speaking about specificity and yet they get it wrong. Yeah. My kids won't watch like CSI type shows with me because they're just, you can either sit there and be quiet or go away. Cause I do, I talk that you can't do that kind of thing or what she's wearing pumps and pantyhose to a crime scene. Seriously. Yeah. I do. I do critique as I read or as I view. Yeah.
I'm one thing I picked up somewhere. You were talking about the character in bones as, two things she would do that you would not do. I remember one scene, I don't know what season it was. She reached across the table and punched, one of the guys. And then you, and then later she cares, she carries a gun. you said in this conversation, I believe that neither one of those things you would ever do. Now I'm curious, would you ever even think about would there had to be a situation.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (23:49.4)
somewhere along the way where you'd like to reach over thing punch. Well, yeah, I don't own a gun. have no guns in my home. I don't think she carries a gun though, because that's an issue with her. She wants a gun and she works with Sealy Booth in the TV show and he's no, you're no, you're not carrying a gun. have a gun. don't need a gun. There may have been one episode where for some reason she has a gun. as I begin to wrap up, if you.
I always love to ask this question because it just gets me curious. if you could go back to your 10 year old self and give career advice, what would you tell young Kathy that may or may be different than the life you have led? think I'd tell her that just don't sweat making the decision. Think them through and make good choices, but you're not locked into anything. I moved from being a bioarchaeologist to a forensic anthropologist.
to commercial fiction writer, to TV producer. So you're not locked in. It's not, I've had students contact me and they have to declare a major and it's like they're locking their life in forever. You're not, you can always change it. So I guess that's the piece of advice I'd give myself. And I love the fact that you have had such a wonderful arc of a career. I'm a, I agree with you, Kathy. I'm such a big fan of.
Don't put yourself in a box because we got a nice long stretch for most of us here to enjoy. And if you want to do something for a decade or so, and you change your mind perfectly fine. So. Yeah. if you, I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, I'm writing a book. then two years later, they've never, they haven't finished it. Are you writing it or not commit to it? Whether you can find whatever that block of time is.
one hour a day or one day a week or two hours every other day or just on weekend. Commit to that. Sit your butt down and write because you can't, you can always hit the delete key, but you can't edit or delete a blank page. That would be my other piece of advice to people that would like to write. You have just anticipated my very last question that I ask every author that comes on the show. Very last thing, my signature.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (26:09.632)
What's your best writing advice since you've already said it, if you'd like to embellish it just a little bit, please feel free to do. You don't know if you can succeed unless you try it, give it a try. I didn't, when I started writing, I did it in secret because if you're a, if you write a novel in a English department, you're a hero. If you write one in a science department, you're a little suspect. So I didn't tell anyone I was writing it. So I didn't have any input.
from anyone really until I submitted the book. That's probably not a good way to go about it. Maybe join a writer's group and use each other to critique your work. That's probably a good idea. Yeah. I say the book was a heck of a read. There was so much, think one of the, as I close, one of the best things I love about your books is lots of conversation. There are a lot of people go, yeah, but I want to know more about background and backstory and
environment. like, you know what? I'm a big fan of just cut to the chase and have people talk because that's what entertains me. After all, aren't we storytellers? So one of my highlights that I enjoyed. Once again, the book is Fire and Bones. Kathy, thank you so much. If folks want to learn more about you, we got the place for them. kathyreichs .com. Such a delight to chat with you. Nice talking with you. How cool was that? Hanging out with the legend Kathy Reichs.
Now, folks, it's a new season and a new episode landing next week where you're going to meet rising star DJ Williams, creator of the Chase Hardiman series. Now, DJ has promised to join me in a face -to -face interview right here in sunny San Diego to talk about his latest and soon to be hit King of the Night. DJ is one of those good guys. Super nice, super talented, and I think is going to be another Don't Miss episode. So that's next Monday on The Thriller Zone.
In the meantime, I hope you'll do me a favor and swing by our website, thethrillerzone .com, where we have put a fresh coat of paint to celebrate the new season and are providing a way for you to record a short voicemail directly on our website to let me know just how much you enjoy this podcast. How cool. Here's what you do. Go to thethrillerzone .com slash voicemail, click record and let it fly. Hey, I'll even feature your greeting on an upcoming episode.
The Thriller Zone with David Temple (28:28.726)
Also, take five seconds and leave us your email as we promise, finally, to get you involved in our fresh newsletter beginning this month. I know, it took me forever. Okay, until next time, I'm your host, David Temple, celebrating season seven, and I'm looking forward to your joining us next week for another episode of The Thriller Zone.