Episode 026 - Weaving Your Day Job into Your Books with Todd Harra
May 12, 2020
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Common wisdom is to write what you know, and incorporating your day job into your books is an obvious method. But how do you do that and maintain confidentiality and professionalism when your job is as sensitive as a funeral director and undertaker? Todd Harra describes how he has walked that fine line in this episode.
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Todd is a fourth-generation undertaker who works in the family’s funeral home and crematory in Wilmington, Delaware. His family has been in the undertaking business since the Civil War. In 2008, the same year he appeared in the Men of Mortuaries calendar as "Mr. January," Todd’s first book, Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt appeared. It was followed by Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid. He is also the author of Grave Matters and Patient Zero, mysteries featuring an army vet turned undertaker.
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Todd Harra. Hey Todd, how are you doing?
[00:00:08] Todd: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:10] Matty: I am pleased for you to be here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you: Todd is a fourth-generation undertaker who works in his family's funeral home and crematory in Wilmington, Delaware. M family has been in the undertaking business since the Civil War. In 2008, the same year he appeared in the Men of Mortuaries calendar as Mr. January--this is definitely one of the more interesting bios I've gotten to read--Todd's first book, Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt, appeared.
[00:00:41] It was followed by Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid, and he's also the author of Grave Matters and Patient Zero, mysteries featuring an army vet turned undertaker.
[00:00:52] The topic we're going to be talking about today is weaving your day job into your books, and I thought Todd would be a great person to talk about this because I think there's sensitivity for any writer in baking their real life day jobs into their books, but you're obviously in a situation where the considerations of discretion and confidentiality are especially important.
[00:01:16] Matty: Before we delve into the details of weaving our day job into your books, just give our listeners a little bit of background on what your books are about so they understand how your day job has fed into them.
[00:00:08] Todd: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.
[00:00:10] Matty: I am pleased for you to be here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you: Todd is a fourth-generation undertaker who works in his family's funeral home and crematory in Wilmington, Delaware. M family has been in the undertaking business since the Civil War. In 2008, the same year he appeared in the Men of Mortuaries calendar as Mr. January--this is definitely one of the more interesting bios I've gotten to read--Todd's first book, Mortuary Confidential: Undertakers Spill the Dirt, appeared.
[00:00:41] It was followed by Over Our Dead Bodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid, and he's also the author of Grave Matters and Patient Zero, mysteries featuring an army vet turned undertaker.
[00:00:52] The topic we're going to be talking about today is weaving your day job into your books, and I thought Todd would be a great person to talk about this because I think there's sensitivity for any writer in baking their real life day jobs into their books, but you're obviously in a situation where the considerations of discretion and confidentiality are especially important.
[00:01:16] Matty: Before we delve into the details of weaving our day job into your books, just give our listeners a little bit of background on what your books are about so they understand how your day job has fed into them.
read more ...
[00:01:30] Todd: Sure. Absolutely. Before we go into that, just want to let your listeners know that I'm a hybrid author. The two nonfiction books I did with a coauthor I did with a traditional publisher, Kensington. And then, later I did my two fiction books as indy projects. And I work my day job into those, books, our stories of the profession, whereas the fictional books, I based a character around the role of an undertaker.
[00:02:03] Matty: And when you were deciding to pursue both of those, both the fiction and the nonfiction books, did you have some kind of criteria you were considering for what you did and did not feel comfortable sharing in those books?
[00:02:20] Todd: In the nonfiction books, I worked with a coauthor, Ken McKenzie. He's an undertaker out in Long Beach, California, and he's actually the one that did the calendar, how I got into writing or authoring a book in the first place. And he came to me, and he said, Todd, I'm thinking about writing a book to support the foundation and his breast cancer foundation is why he created the calendars. The calendar supported his breast cancer foundation.
[00:02:52] And that's how I got involved with Ken. And after we did the calendar, he came to me and said, "I've been working with a ghost writer on this idea. I've had about stories, in our profession that are unusual that the public would want to know about, just because they're so kind of off the wall or cute or whatever they might be. And that fell through, and would you be interested in writing this book for me as a ghost writer?"
[00:03:21] I said, no. I thought his idea was great. I said, but I will write it as a coauthor because I saw the potential in the idea initially. I thought, this is a fantastic idea.
[00:03:33] So the way we worked it is Ken had already gathered the lion's share of the story. The initial draft of the book had 60 stories in it, and he had probably gathered close to 90% of those when he approached me with the idea. He sent me those ideas and I told him initially, because I had reservations about confidentialities and things like that, essentially, I didn't want to profit off somebody else's grief.
[00:04:05] I mean, that's just not who I am. And I don't think it reflects good on anyone in the profession. I said, leave telling details out of this: who had happened to, maybe the setting, anything like that. And when I got the data, I massaged it into these stories where if I knew the setting, I would change it or I would, add details so it read like a story. The basis for the story is a hundred percent true. It's just the characters have names that it's not the people that happen to them. And if it was a man, it might be a woman. I would change things around if I thought it was something very sensitive. So nobody would ever pick up the book and be able to say, "Hey, that's me."
[00:04:53] So in a sense, I did have to use a little creativity to create these stories so we could be sensitive to any confidentialities and make sure we didn't breach any of those.
[00:05:08] Matty: Did any of the people who were the true subjects of those stories either recognize themselves or know that they were in the book because of maybe speaking to your coauthor.
[00:05:19] Todd: The true subjects of that book are the funeral directors. It's written from a funeral director's perspective, their experiences, so of course the people who submitted these stories to Ken obviously know it's them. It's, maybe I'll call them the ancillary characters in it, the grieving families, or the setting where it might be, those people would have no idea because something that may have originally taken place in Florida, I might have reset it in a snowy setting up in Maine, for instance.
[00:05:57] So like I said, no one would say, "Hey, that's my funeral. That's my story," and feel like we were capitalizing off their grief because it's really not about the funeral that was being served. The whole story is about the funeral director and their perspective and their take on the situation. The funeral director's the main character in each story.
[00:06:22] Matty: Since you're writing stories that are very specifically weaving all sorts of different people's day jobs into your book, were you involved in whatever signoffs were needed, legal sign-offs or releases, to enable that to happen for your nonfiction books?
[00:06:38] Todd: If it was a story that I had essentially culled or pulled into the collection, then yes. But Ken and I had a pretty nice division of labor. He was in charge of collecting the stories for the most part and doing a lot of the marketing of the book after the fact. So he was in charge of gathering a lot of those sign-offs because he got the lion's share of the stories together.
[00:07:05] Matty: Was the process you used for the second book in that series the same as for the first book, because I'm assuming on the second one you were involved right from the beginning.
[00:07:14] Todd: Absolutely. We got a lot of feedback from Mortuary Confidential. And the feedback for the most part was, "We love the little stories, you can sit down, you can read one or two and they're interesting and kind of give you different views about the profession." And the other was, "We want to know more about your and Ken's experience. We want it to be a little bit more personal." So we took that and tried to make a little bit different book. I would hate for somebody to buy something and feel like we just reheated it, so another book of just short stories, so Over Our Dead Bodies is more of, our journey through the profession, but we sprinkle in little stories of other people to illustrate certain points.
[00:08:10] So we tried to take the feedback from the first book and listen to our readers and what they wanted and make something that would appeal to them in a different way for the second book.
[00:08:23] Matty: It does bring up another interesting aspect of weaving your day job into your books-- not only the collection of the content, but then the marketing of it. So you had these two books that were about the mortuary undertaker world. Who were you marketing them to?
[00:08:37] Todd: From the get-go, they were initially meant for a general audience. You know, there's a veil around this profession. It's a profession that historically has been kind of shrouded in mystery. The whole thrust behind the book is "Hey, let's show what this profession is like from an insider's perspective, that it's not all doom and gloom all day, every day." There are, believe it or not, some humorous aspects to the job. and some very touching aspects to the job, so we wanted to give people an honest look inside of the profession. And we wanted to write a book that anyone could pick up and read, that wouldn't just appeal to a very niche audience for people that are looking for something that's a Halloween book, if you will.
[00:09:31] Matty: Did you have beta readers for your nonfiction books?
[00:09:37] Todd: So our nonfiction books, we had a lot of trouble getting that book published. We would try to get an agent and they would give us feedback and we try to incorporate it into the manuscript. And then someone would read it and say, "Oh, you need this." And so we try to take a lot of what we felt was the constructive criticism, because of course, everyone has an opinion and you've got to weigh, is this a valid opinion? Does this opinion fit in our vision for the project? And at one point, we had hired a book doctor in New York, a guy who's very respected, had a lot of industry credentials, and he told us, "I don't think this book will ever be published as it is. If you want to sell this, it's going to be more of a coffee table, curiosity books." He says, "You need to illustrate it." So Ken and I spent a lot of money to have the book illustrated. And several months later when we finally sold it to Kensington, the first thing our editor said is, "These illustrations have got to go," which I agree with.
[00:10:46] But you know, that was just something we tried, dare I say, almost out of desperation to get it published. And this was really before indy publishing was really even a viable option. So that didn't even cross our minds at the time, that, okay, maybe we could publish this ourselves.
[00:11:05] From the get-go, we were very focused on the traditional route of publishing. But just as a side note, if anyone wants to see those illustrations, I still have some of them up on my website. I'll use them occasionally in social media posts because we spent a lot of money on them and they're pretty good.
[00:11:24] Matty: This is not on the topic of weaving your day job into your books, but I'm sure our listeners would be interested in knowing if with 20/20 hindsight, is there anything that, if you were in the same situation, you would see as a warning sign that would prevent you from having sunk money into something that then you weren't able to use the way you had originally planned to?
[00:11:42] Todd: Yeah. There's a lot of these traps out there where people that aren't very experienced, I can see they get pulled into, "Okay, we'll promote your book. We're going to send out your book to a hundred thousand of our social media followers," and these blanket mass social media posts, and all the traps, I'm sure you've seen them all or most of them at this point. So I would advise caution, or at least maybe if something doesn't smell right to you, go to a writing group or a friend, a writer friend that maybe has some more experience, and say, "Hey what's your experience with this?"
[00:12:24] Maybe do a little research if something doesn't smell right. You know, Ken and I chalked that cost up to the cost of doing business. That suggestion came from somebody who had all the right credentials, was in the know. We had hired him to make our product better. And in his mind, that's what he thought was going to give our book the best shot. In the end, it didn't hurt. But yeah, it cost us money. But we reached our goals, so I don't think it was bad money spent.
[00:13:01] Matty: We've been talking so far, mainly about your nonfiction books. I want to switch the topic to your fiction books, which also involve the undertaking profession.
[00:13:10] Todd: Yes.
[00:13:11] Matty: Did you know right from the get-go that that's what you wanted your character's background to be when you started those books?
[00:13:18] Todd: I did. And you've probably read or heard this advice, people say write what you know, and then other people say don't write what you know. And then I actually heard the advice one time, write what you want to know, which I think is kind of write what you don't know. But I think, and this is coming from just my own opinion, but if you write what you know, it makes your work feel more authentic to the reader.
[00:13:49] And I think a lot of times the reader can sense if something's contrived or it's natural. And as a writer, you're doing so much research on so many different aspects of your book--whether it be looking up how to handle a firearm, or where a certain bus stop is in a certain town, all these kinds of little things you've got to look up to pull together a piece of fiction-- my advice is make your life easier and write something that you know, whether it be your profession or some other skill set you have, so it just lessens the research burden and you can write a final product that also feels more authentic.
[00:14:42] Matty: How much in your fiction books does the undertaker side of the equation factor into the plot? Is it key that he's an undertaker that he gets involved in the stories he gets involved in, or is it more a background factor?
[00:14:59] Todd: It certainly plays a large enough role that it justifies the reader knowing what he does. Actually, both the books, he gets involved in the mystery from the beginning based on what he's doing.
[00:15:13] So, Grave Matters, that's Book One in the series, he gets a young woman that supposedly died of natural causes. And when he gets her back to the funeral home and starts the embalming he notices, "Hey, this doesn't look right." This is actually something most states have, that if a funeral director or an embalmer suspects foul play, they have to report it to the state medical examiner. Like, "Hey, I don't think this person died from natural causes," and then they'll either accept the case or say, "No, we don't want this case."
[00:15:52] Well, in this case obviously the plot thickens. The coroner says, "No, no, no, we don't want this case," and he's convinced that this person that was supposedly a natural death was killed, based on this mounting pile of evidence." I wanted to satisfy the reader expectation of, "Hey, this main character, this protagonist, is an undertaker." I make a point to tie his job heavily into the different arcs, the plot arcs, that I'm setting up within the narrative.
[00:16:29] Matty: Are your fiction books based around Wilmington, Delaware, where you live?
[00:16:34] Todd: No, I actually set it in Charleston, South Carolina. Without giving too much away--I mean, granted, it's a very charming city-- but it has to do with the confluence of the rivers surrounding that city. Right--you're pointing to your maps back there.
[00:16:50] Matty: It's Charleston!
[00:16:52] Todd: Right.
[00:16:53] Matty: Tune in on YouTube, if you want to see what I'm pointing at.
[00:16:58] Todd: I needed a city that had rivers surrounding it. And if I go too much into it, it's going to give away the reveal at the end of the book, but water plays a big part into why the antagonists, how they're doing what they're doing.
[00:17:16] Matty: I was just curious because I thought if it was in Wilmington and you had the coroner in your book saying, "No, no, we don't want to take another look at this case," whether the coroner that serves Wilmington, if there is such a position in that area, would ever call you up and say, "Hey, I just recognized myself in your book and I don't appreciate the implications."
[00:17:38] With your fiction, have you ever run into that situation where somebody thinks it's them or knows it's them?
[00:17:45] Todd: People ask me this all the time: "Are you basing characters in your book off people?" And I think the answer is yes and no. I'll take little personality traits, interesting personality traits that different people have and combine them.
[00:18:01] So I certainly want characters to feel real. But some of them have over the top traits. But no, I won't base a single character in a book off of a single person. It's always these amalgamations of interesting, quirky, unique traits that all different people have been one thing about my job is sure, there's the, kind of the backend, behind the scenes stuff we do. But most of my job is out in public greeting people. We get a lot of people coming through the doors on viewings and funerals and a lot of these are people that I see several times a year. I'm interacting with the public on a daily basis and as a benefit, I meet a lot of very, very, very, very interesting people.
[00:18:57] Matty: I guess that's the other aspect of weaving your day job into your work as an author, that that kind of experience must make it easier for you to then deal with author events or readings or book signings, having that comfort with the public.
[00:19:13] Todd: That's right. Things like that, I almost revert into my funeral director role. A couple of times a day I stand up before an audience of people and give them directions for the pallbearers or how to line up for the funeral procession or any number of instructions. So standing up to read before a crowd of people, is just kind of like slipping into my undertaker role.
[00:19:40] Matty: Plus, you're always the best dressed guy at author readings. I can vouch for that. You're always in a nice suit and tie.
[00:19:48] Todd: Well, I want to meet reader expectations. How's it going to look if some guy that's an undertaker, writing a book with the main character being an undertaker, shows up in a tee shirt. I mean, it's all about meeting the expectations.
[00:20:03] Matty: Well, now I know people are going to be interested in finding out more about you. So, Todd, let people know where they can find out about you and your books online.
[00:20:12] Todd: You can visit my website at toddharra.com or connect with me on Facebook at ToddHarraAuthor.
[00:20:21] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Todd, for spending the time. That was really interesting.
[00:20:25] Todd: It's been great, and thank you for having me on.
[00:20:28] Matty: My pleasure.
[00:02:03] Matty: And when you were deciding to pursue both of those, both the fiction and the nonfiction books, did you have some kind of criteria you were considering for what you did and did not feel comfortable sharing in those books?
[00:02:20] Todd: In the nonfiction books, I worked with a coauthor, Ken McKenzie. He's an undertaker out in Long Beach, California, and he's actually the one that did the calendar, how I got into writing or authoring a book in the first place. And he came to me, and he said, Todd, I'm thinking about writing a book to support the foundation and his breast cancer foundation is why he created the calendars. The calendar supported his breast cancer foundation.
[00:02:52] And that's how I got involved with Ken. And after we did the calendar, he came to me and said, "I've been working with a ghost writer on this idea. I've had about stories, in our profession that are unusual that the public would want to know about, just because they're so kind of off the wall or cute or whatever they might be. And that fell through, and would you be interested in writing this book for me as a ghost writer?"
[00:03:21] I said, no. I thought his idea was great. I said, but I will write it as a coauthor because I saw the potential in the idea initially. I thought, this is a fantastic idea.
[00:03:33] So the way we worked it is Ken had already gathered the lion's share of the story. The initial draft of the book had 60 stories in it, and he had probably gathered close to 90% of those when he approached me with the idea. He sent me those ideas and I told him initially, because I had reservations about confidentialities and things like that, essentially, I didn't want to profit off somebody else's grief.
[00:04:05] I mean, that's just not who I am. And I don't think it reflects good on anyone in the profession. I said, leave telling details out of this: who had happened to, maybe the setting, anything like that. And when I got the data, I massaged it into these stories where if I knew the setting, I would change it or I would, add details so it read like a story. The basis for the story is a hundred percent true. It's just the characters have names that it's not the people that happen to them. And if it was a man, it might be a woman. I would change things around if I thought it was something very sensitive. So nobody would ever pick up the book and be able to say, "Hey, that's me."
[00:04:53] So in a sense, I did have to use a little creativity to create these stories so we could be sensitive to any confidentialities and make sure we didn't breach any of those.
[00:05:08] Matty: Did any of the people who were the true subjects of those stories either recognize themselves or know that they were in the book because of maybe speaking to your coauthor.
[00:05:19] Todd: The true subjects of that book are the funeral directors. It's written from a funeral director's perspective, their experiences, so of course the people who submitted these stories to Ken obviously know it's them. It's, maybe I'll call them the ancillary characters in it, the grieving families, or the setting where it might be, those people would have no idea because something that may have originally taken place in Florida, I might have reset it in a snowy setting up in Maine, for instance.
[00:05:57] So like I said, no one would say, "Hey, that's my funeral. That's my story," and feel like we were capitalizing off their grief because it's really not about the funeral that was being served. The whole story is about the funeral director and their perspective and their take on the situation. The funeral director's the main character in each story.
[00:06:22] Matty: Since you're writing stories that are very specifically weaving all sorts of different people's day jobs into your book, were you involved in whatever signoffs were needed, legal sign-offs or releases, to enable that to happen for your nonfiction books?
[00:06:38] Todd: If it was a story that I had essentially culled or pulled into the collection, then yes. But Ken and I had a pretty nice division of labor. He was in charge of collecting the stories for the most part and doing a lot of the marketing of the book after the fact. So he was in charge of gathering a lot of those sign-offs because he got the lion's share of the stories together.
[00:07:05] Matty: Was the process you used for the second book in that series the same as for the first book, because I'm assuming on the second one you were involved right from the beginning.
[00:07:14] Todd: Absolutely. We got a lot of feedback from Mortuary Confidential. And the feedback for the most part was, "We love the little stories, you can sit down, you can read one or two and they're interesting and kind of give you different views about the profession." And the other was, "We want to know more about your and Ken's experience. We want it to be a little bit more personal." So we took that and tried to make a little bit different book. I would hate for somebody to buy something and feel like we just reheated it, so another book of just short stories, so Over Our Dead Bodies is more of, our journey through the profession, but we sprinkle in little stories of other people to illustrate certain points.
[00:08:10] So we tried to take the feedback from the first book and listen to our readers and what they wanted and make something that would appeal to them in a different way for the second book.
[00:08:23] Matty: It does bring up another interesting aspect of weaving your day job into your books-- not only the collection of the content, but then the marketing of it. So you had these two books that were about the mortuary undertaker world. Who were you marketing them to?
[00:08:37] Todd: From the get-go, they were initially meant for a general audience. You know, there's a veil around this profession. It's a profession that historically has been kind of shrouded in mystery. The whole thrust behind the book is "Hey, let's show what this profession is like from an insider's perspective, that it's not all doom and gloom all day, every day." There are, believe it or not, some humorous aspects to the job. and some very touching aspects to the job, so we wanted to give people an honest look inside of the profession. And we wanted to write a book that anyone could pick up and read, that wouldn't just appeal to a very niche audience for people that are looking for something that's a Halloween book, if you will.
[00:09:31] Matty: Did you have beta readers for your nonfiction books?
[00:09:37] Todd: So our nonfiction books, we had a lot of trouble getting that book published. We would try to get an agent and they would give us feedback and we try to incorporate it into the manuscript. And then someone would read it and say, "Oh, you need this." And so we try to take a lot of what we felt was the constructive criticism, because of course, everyone has an opinion and you've got to weigh, is this a valid opinion? Does this opinion fit in our vision for the project? And at one point, we had hired a book doctor in New York, a guy who's very respected, had a lot of industry credentials, and he told us, "I don't think this book will ever be published as it is. If you want to sell this, it's going to be more of a coffee table, curiosity books." He says, "You need to illustrate it." So Ken and I spent a lot of money to have the book illustrated. And several months later when we finally sold it to Kensington, the first thing our editor said is, "These illustrations have got to go," which I agree with.
[00:10:46] But you know, that was just something we tried, dare I say, almost out of desperation to get it published. And this was really before indy publishing was really even a viable option. So that didn't even cross our minds at the time, that, okay, maybe we could publish this ourselves.
[00:11:05] From the get-go, we were very focused on the traditional route of publishing. But just as a side note, if anyone wants to see those illustrations, I still have some of them up on my website. I'll use them occasionally in social media posts because we spent a lot of money on them and they're pretty good.
[00:11:24] Matty: This is not on the topic of weaving your day job into your books, but I'm sure our listeners would be interested in knowing if with 20/20 hindsight, is there anything that, if you were in the same situation, you would see as a warning sign that would prevent you from having sunk money into something that then you weren't able to use the way you had originally planned to?
[00:11:42] Todd: Yeah. There's a lot of these traps out there where people that aren't very experienced, I can see they get pulled into, "Okay, we'll promote your book. We're going to send out your book to a hundred thousand of our social media followers," and these blanket mass social media posts, and all the traps, I'm sure you've seen them all or most of them at this point. So I would advise caution, or at least maybe if something doesn't smell right to you, go to a writing group or a friend, a writer friend that maybe has some more experience, and say, "Hey what's your experience with this?"
[00:12:24] Maybe do a little research if something doesn't smell right. You know, Ken and I chalked that cost up to the cost of doing business. That suggestion came from somebody who had all the right credentials, was in the know. We had hired him to make our product better. And in his mind, that's what he thought was going to give our book the best shot. In the end, it didn't hurt. But yeah, it cost us money. But we reached our goals, so I don't think it was bad money spent.
[00:13:01] Matty: We've been talking so far, mainly about your nonfiction books. I want to switch the topic to your fiction books, which also involve the undertaking profession.
[00:13:10] Todd: Yes.
[00:13:11] Matty: Did you know right from the get-go that that's what you wanted your character's background to be when you started those books?
[00:13:18] Todd: I did. And you've probably read or heard this advice, people say write what you know, and then other people say don't write what you know. And then I actually heard the advice one time, write what you want to know, which I think is kind of write what you don't know. But I think, and this is coming from just my own opinion, but if you write what you know, it makes your work feel more authentic to the reader.
[00:13:49] And I think a lot of times the reader can sense if something's contrived or it's natural. And as a writer, you're doing so much research on so many different aspects of your book--whether it be looking up how to handle a firearm, or where a certain bus stop is in a certain town, all these kinds of little things you've got to look up to pull together a piece of fiction-- my advice is make your life easier and write something that you know, whether it be your profession or some other skill set you have, so it just lessens the research burden and you can write a final product that also feels more authentic.
[00:14:42] Matty: How much in your fiction books does the undertaker side of the equation factor into the plot? Is it key that he's an undertaker that he gets involved in the stories he gets involved in, or is it more a background factor?
[00:14:59] Todd: It certainly plays a large enough role that it justifies the reader knowing what he does. Actually, both the books, he gets involved in the mystery from the beginning based on what he's doing.
[00:15:13] So, Grave Matters, that's Book One in the series, he gets a young woman that supposedly died of natural causes. And when he gets her back to the funeral home and starts the embalming he notices, "Hey, this doesn't look right." This is actually something most states have, that if a funeral director or an embalmer suspects foul play, they have to report it to the state medical examiner. Like, "Hey, I don't think this person died from natural causes," and then they'll either accept the case or say, "No, we don't want this case."
[00:15:52] Well, in this case obviously the plot thickens. The coroner says, "No, no, no, we don't want this case," and he's convinced that this person that was supposedly a natural death was killed, based on this mounting pile of evidence." I wanted to satisfy the reader expectation of, "Hey, this main character, this protagonist, is an undertaker." I make a point to tie his job heavily into the different arcs, the plot arcs, that I'm setting up within the narrative.
[00:16:29] Matty: Are your fiction books based around Wilmington, Delaware, where you live?
[00:16:34] Todd: No, I actually set it in Charleston, South Carolina. Without giving too much away--I mean, granted, it's a very charming city-- but it has to do with the confluence of the rivers surrounding that city. Right--you're pointing to your maps back there.
[00:16:50] Matty: It's Charleston!
[00:16:52] Todd: Right.
[00:16:53] Matty: Tune in on YouTube, if you want to see what I'm pointing at.
[00:16:58] Todd: I needed a city that had rivers surrounding it. And if I go too much into it, it's going to give away the reveal at the end of the book, but water plays a big part into why the antagonists, how they're doing what they're doing.
[00:17:16] Matty: I was just curious because I thought if it was in Wilmington and you had the coroner in your book saying, "No, no, we don't want to take another look at this case," whether the coroner that serves Wilmington, if there is such a position in that area, would ever call you up and say, "Hey, I just recognized myself in your book and I don't appreciate the implications."
[00:17:38] With your fiction, have you ever run into that situation where somebody thinks it's them or knows it's them?
[00:17:45] Todd: People ask me this all the time: "Are you basing characters in your book off people?" And I think the answer is yes and no. I'll take little personality traits, interesting personality traits that different people have and combine them.
[00:18:01] So I certainly want characters to feel real. But some of them have over the top traits. But no, I won't base a single character in a book off of a single person. It's always these amalgamations of interesting, quirky, unique traits that all different people have been one thing about my job is sure, there's the, kind of the backend, behind the scenes stuff we do. But most of my job is out in public greeting people. We get a lot of people coming through the doors on viewings and funerals and a lot of these are people that I see several times a year. I'm interacting with the public on a daily basis and as a benefit, I meet a lot of very, very, very, very interesting people.
[00:18:57] Matty: I guess that's the other aspect of weaving your day job into your work as an author, that that kind of experience must make it easier for you to then deal with author events or readings or book signings, having that comfort with the public.
[00:19:13] Todd: That's right. Things like that, I almost revert into my funeral director role. A couple of times a day I stand up before an audience of people and give them directions for the pallbearers or how to line up for the funeral procession or any number of instructions. So standing up to read before a crowd of people, is just kind of like slipping into my undertaker role.
[00:19:40] Matty: Plus, you're always the best dressed guy at author readings. I can vouch for that. You're always in a nice suit and tie.
[00:19:48] Todd: Well, I want to meet reader expectations. How's it going to look if some guy that's an undertaker, writing a book with the main character being an undertaker, shows up in a tee shirt. I mean, it's all about meeting the expectations.
[00:20:03] Matty: Well, now I know people are going to be interested in finding out more about you. So, Todd, let people know where they can find out about you and your books online.
[00:20:12] Todd: You can visit my website at toddharra.com or connect with me on Facebook at ToddHarraAuthor.
[00:20:21] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Todd, for spending the time. That was really interesting.
[00:20:25] Todd: It's been great, and thank you for having me on.
[00:20:28] Matty: My pleasure.
Links
To see the illustrations that Todd and his co-author commissioned for Mortuary Confidential, go to http://toddharra.com/mortuaryconfidential/web_extras.html and then click the link at the top of the page.
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