Jeffrey B. Burton - The Dead Years
Joining me for this episode is critically acclaimed author Jeffrey B. Burton. We have a fun and lively chat about his latest novel, The Dead Years. A real crime thriller involving siblings and detection dogs tracking down a serial killer connected to a Netflix documentary. We also discuss the differences in writing a mystery series compared to a standalone novel that is so good that it leads to a new series. Have a listen to one of the best novelist around…who of course is a real dog lover. Enjoy!
Listen to Episode #202 Now:
BIO:
Jeff was born in Long Beach, California, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received his BA in Journalism at the University of Minnesota. He lives in St. Paul with his wife, an irate Pomeranian named Lucy, and a happy galoot of a Beagle named Milo. Click here to view a list of his books.
Transcript:
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Announcer: This is Pet Life Radio.
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Announcer: Let's talk pets.
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Tim Link: Welcome to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: This is your host, Tim Link, and I'm so glad you're joining us today.
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Tim Link: Got a super duper exciting show.
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Tim Link: I'm interested to talk to this author about all of his wonderful novels and series that he has.
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Tim Link: We're going to be chatting with Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton.
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Tim Link: Of course, he's got the critically-claimed series Mace Reid Canine series, and we know he's a big dog lover, which we are here too, of course.
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Tim Link: So we're going to talk to him about his latest book, which is The Dead Years, Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie.
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Tim Link: So this will be exciting.
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Tim Link: I'm interested to find out about the whole background of the book and how the puppy dogs obviously come into play and the twists and turns without giving it all away.
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Tim Link: And then we'll obviously talk to Jeffrey a little bit about his writing and his writing styles, see if he is one of those authors that gets up at 5.30 every morning and cracks away, or if he's like me, he waits till the deadline and then gets it all done.
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Tim Link: So we'll come back right over this commercial break and have a chat with Jeffrey B. Burton.
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Tim Link: You're listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: Welcome back to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio. Joining me now is author Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton, chat about his book, The Dead Years.
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Tim Link: Jeffrey, welcome to the show.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Hey Tim, thanks for having me.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: It's great to be chatting with another dog lover on Animal Writes.
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Tim Link: Absolutely, absolutely.
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Tim Link: We always say on this show that if we hear a bark, a cat, a crow, a splash of a fin, then we know we've got a good show coming up.
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Tim Link: So obviously we love to talk about our animals, but I want to talk to you about this latest book, this novel, The Dead Years, Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie.
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Tim Link: I love that and I love the cover of the book.
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Tim Link: Tell us a little bit about the book and how it came about and some of the twists and turns.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Sure.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: During COVID, during COVID, my wife and I streamed a lot of true crime documentaries and I wound up, you know, writing a little note that I tossed in my idea drawer.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And my idea drawer is nothing spectacular.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: It's where I keep my wallet and car keys when I come in the house.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And what I put on the note was what happens if a serial killer is not happy with his portrayal in a, you know, in a true crime Netflix documentary.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I was under contract with St.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Martin's Press for another book or two.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I spent about a year and a half opening the book drawer and that thing would be peeking up at me.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And, you know, when I come in, I say, yes, I'll get to you, I'll get to you.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so finally, oh, I think late 2021 and 2022, I wrote The Dead Years.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And it has that plot, but it's also got a couple of interesting human remains detection dogs, cadaver dogs that help kind of move the plot along.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: The protagonist runs a dog obedience school, but he specializes in training human remains detection dogs.
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Tim Link: That's fascinating.
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Tim Link: So I love that I'm imagining this in my mind.
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Tim Link: So here we are in COVID years and the darkest times of our lives.
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Tim Link: And you decide, hey, you know, what would it be like to write a serial killer book?
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Tim Link: The idea thrown in a drawer that constantly sneaks his head out like a serial killer would, you know, an occasion.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And it was a lot of fun because I think a lot of the true crime things that we had streamed, I was talking with my wife and I'm like, just imagine if some guy is, it's a code case and they never caught the guy and eventually gets around to streaming it and he's not happy with the actor portraying him or some of the facts of the case.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then some bad things start happening to people that were involved with the production of the documentary.
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Tim Link: I love that fact that a documentary comes up about me as the serial killer and I'm just not happy with it.
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Tim Link: You know, Tom Hanks playing another one.
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Tim Link: What's going on here?
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Tim Link: I can't understand that.
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Tim Link: So the flow of the book, how did you go from the concept to actually writing the book and putting it together?
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Tim Link: How did that flow come about?
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Tim Link: And how did you find ways to work the angles in?
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Tim Link: Because one of the characters obviously is a police detective on the police department in Chicago.
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Tim Link: And the other is a brother.
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Tim Link: Yeah, it is a dog handler.
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Tim Link: You know, two totally opposite things, but their lives do intermingle or professional lives do intermingle as well.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Right, yeah, Tim, it's kind of funny because writers always have the debate on whether you're an outliner, where even before you start writing, you've got, you know, whatever, 50, 60 chapters just outlined, and some people even have the research done.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then there's the other side where authors are by the seat of their pants, where they're just kind of, you know, they've got a kernel of an idea and they just start, they sit down, they start, start writing away.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I had started out an outliner, but my outlines were really loose because when you're writing a book, something's going to occur to you when you're writing it that's better than anything that you had on your outline.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I'd wind up finishing writing for the day, then I'd have to tweak the outline per how I changed it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so for the last couple books, I've been more kind of seat of the pants to see how that goes, where I kind of know where I'm going, maybe a chapter or two ahead.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, it hasn't really saved me a huge amount of time because my outlines were so pretty, pretty sparse.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And in terms of your second question, one of the narrators of the documentary has disappeared.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And the Chicago police detective, her younger brother is the dog handler.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so she calls him in because the guy was a jogger, and he would jog kind of in the morning and at night in kind of a park near his house.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: It takes place in Chicago.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so that's how, you know, the dog handler shows up.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: He doesn't really think they're going to find anything, but as they get into kind of the wooded area of the park, he does in fact find something.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so that kind of sucks him into it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: There's a few other parts where they need some dogs that come into play.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I have a lot of fun with that.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And it's so amazing, Tim.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, when it comes to cadaver dogs, I mean, certain bReids have 300 million scent receptors in their nasal cavity, whereas, you know, you and I, we just have five million, and we've kind of evolved with our eyesight.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so, you know, I mean, I go to a movie theater and I got to get popcorn.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, I just, I got to get popcorn.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I smell the popcorn.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I got to get popcorn.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And, you know, you can smell burning leaves and the milk's curdled.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, you can smell stuff like that.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But I tried making a list once.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And when I got to the real lower double digits, that was about it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Whereas dogs are, you know, they're supernatural.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, they're deciphering thousands of different smells.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And that's how, you know, we're able to train them for, you know, explosives or IEDs or all the different kind of narcotics to sniff out heroin or meth or cocaine.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: They're even able to sniff out certain kinds of cancer.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I read something back during COVID where they were actually trying to train the dogs to maybe sniff out COVID.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so it's just insane.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And when I was last at the airport, they had the dog kind of, you had to go through this area and walk by a dog.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And the guy that was the handler was explaining to me, I'm like, well, I'm, you know, I'm not sneaking drugs onto the plane.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: He said, you know, this is actually money.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: They're trying to smell.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, I don't know if some guy's going to get a half million dollars in cash or something.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So they're absolutely incredible.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Sniffer dogs are absolutely incredible.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: They're supernatural.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And in The Dead Years, there's Alice, who's the blood hound.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: She's six years old and she's real bright.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, she's when it comes to human remains detection dog, she's about an A plus.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then there's Rex, who's a springer spaniel.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And he's three and he's not as good as Alice, but he does have his good moments.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so they have a lot of fun and they wound up helping to save the main characters now and again.
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Tim Link: Yeah, I love how the plot intermingle with things.
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Tim Link: And you brought it up right from the get-go.
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Tim Link: It's like, okay, as an author coming up with an idea, perhaps I'd come up with the idea of, okay, a murder mystery, you know, a little whodunit, add some dogs in there, a little twist, maybe a brother-sister combination.
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Tim Link: It makes sense.
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Tim Link: And then all of a sudden you add in what happens if I'm the serial killer and I happen to pop on Netflix and there they are talking about me.
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Tim Link: It's like, wait a minute, they got it wrong.
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Tim Link: What's going on?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh, yeah, yeah, he steams.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then a few weeks later, terrible things started happening.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, the documentary actually serves to, he'd kind of gone dormant.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I won't give away the twist.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: There's a certain reason he went dormant.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But the documentary kind of serves to suck him back out and back in, you know.
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Tim Link: Absolutely.
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Tim Link: So you mentioned right from the get-go was you were under contract.
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Tim Link: Now, correct me if I'm wrong in this.
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Tim Link: You were under contract for your other series, but this was an epiphany you had.
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Tim Link: And so were you writing the books, what you were contracted to do, and this particular book, The Dead Years, at the same time, or did you have to literally put this, The Dead Years, in a drawer?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, I had to, yeah, literally put it in the drawer for about a year.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, I wouldn't be too good at juggling two projects at once.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, I'm like, mowing the yard and doing laundry.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: That can't be done.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: That's impossible.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So yeah, this kind of sat.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then when I was able to come up for air, I was able to kind of dig in and have some fun with this.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And the Mace Read, there's certain parts of the books where I needed completely different characters.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But the previous series, the Mace Read Canine Mystery Series, is also about cadaver dogs.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And it's kind of funny, Tim, where just writing about human remains detection dogs came to me as I actually got jury duty.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And not only did I get jury duty, I wound up being assigned to the jury.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I know, I'm in Minneapolis, St.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Paul, but I'm in a county where I've got to drive about 40 minutes to a little town.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, I don't get to go into Minneapolis.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so my wife's an attorney, my dad was an attorney where I met my wife, was a place where we dealt with attorneys.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So I kept saying when they question you on the jury stand, and I kept saying attorney and counselor.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I thought based on reading John Grisham novels, I'd nuked myself.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I was a little surprised when they said Jeff Burton.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I'm like, oh, no, I said attorney.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So about the first full day that I drove in, I was listening to the news, and there was some poor elderly gentleman who had wandered away from a nursing home or an assisted living facility.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And they said, well, you know, the sheriff's going to call out the cadaver dogs.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I was kind of thinking, you know, I mean, juries, there's so many things, a five-minute break turns into a 40-minute break.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And, you know, a lot of times the attorneys are trying to figure something out, and you're kind of sitting there.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I started thinking, you know, there have been all sorts of police dogs, and there have been bomb-sniffing dogs and military dogs.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But how about if you could have stories of the trouble that a dog handler and his human remains detection dogs get into and hopefully out of.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so during the trial, you know, they give you a yellow notepad.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And this was the most complicated real estate case ever.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, I'm filling it out, but on the last page, I'm writing down now what would get this guy involved, and what would be the plots, and what are the dogs, and what are some of the names.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so by the time the trial took an entire week, was done, I had the last page kind of filled out.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And you know, the judge came in, he goes, I just want to thank you guys for coming, and the bailiff's going to be in in a minute to take your notepads.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So I'm like, you know, suddenly I'm about 13 years old again, I'm trying to really sneaky rip out that last page.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I didn't want to tell him, I figured, you're in contempt of court.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So I had to sneak that into my pocket somehow without anyone noticing.
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Tim Link: I love that.
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Tim Link: But something unexpected, you know, oh, no, jury, dude, I got to go in for that.
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Tim Link: But all of a sudden, now you got a book, or at least outlive for a book, you have an idea.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, it was, you know, kind of interesting to, you know, I mean, I kind of, you know, I kind of enjoyed it was kind of you do your civic duty, but also, oh, this is how it works.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh, okay.
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Tim Link: Yeah.
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Tim Link: Well, I have been blessed, knock on wood multiple times here.
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Tim Link: But yeah, I think I've gotten called in one time.
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Tim Link: And by lunchtime, they said, they've settled or they said, oh, my God, somebody gave me a coupon for a burger or something.
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Tim Link: So it worked out all right.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, burger.
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Tim Link: Oh, goodness.
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Tim Link: All right, we're going to take a quick commercial break.
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Tim Link: Then we'll continue our conversation with author Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton and his book, The Dead Years, Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie.
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Tim Link: So everybody hang tight.
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Tim Link: We'll come back right after this commercial break.
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Tim Link: Welcome back to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: Continuing our conversation with author Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton and his book The Dead Years Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Bye.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So Jeffrey, putting together this book compared to some of the series that you put together, well, let me ask you first of all, do you see this book as being a standalone or a series, or will that depend on the publishing house and what they're willing to do?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Tim, it's the funniest thing is that I've never really gone into something thinking I'm going to do a series.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so for the Mace Read Canine Mystery Series, St.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Martin's Press, I had the first book was called The Finders.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so they read it and they loved it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And they said, hey, would you be interested in getting a, you know, maybe two, three book contract and do it.
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Tim Link: You said, you don't want that.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, no way.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I don't care who you are.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I only, you know, so there's only one answer and that's yes.
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Tim Link: That's it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then so The Dead Years I wrote is kind of a stand alone.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I'm with a different publisher now and they brought the same thing up where, hey, we really like this.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Can we sign you to a book, two book deal?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And of course, you just, you know, you just got to say, yes, that's right, you know, twist my arm.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: So yeah, The Dead Years comes out now.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then I'm frantically working on the book that will come out a year from now, which is called The Second Grave, which which the dogs find.
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Tim Link: Love it.
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Tim Link: Love it.
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Tim Link: So we'll look forward to having you back on for that one for sure.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh, that'd be fun.
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Tim Link: Well, I know there's authors that, you know, I love talking to authors just about their writing and writing styles and how they go about doing things.
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Tim Link: And I interviewed quite a few authors that have dual projects and long series.
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Tim Link: They'll have like their sort of their spring series.
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Tim Link: And then, you know, towards wintertime, there's the totally opposite series.
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Tim Link: And then there's some they'll put out a spring book and a winter book type thing, Christmas theme type thing.
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Tim Link: And I always found that fascinating, especially the authors that could juggle the two, you know, where, yes, okay, we got cadaver dogs in both series, but they're standalones and trying to keep the characters straight.
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Tim Link: And how do you keep that flow going?
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Tim Link: Do you find it, I know you mentioned earlier, you like to work on a project and go from there.
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Tim Link: Do you find it challenging to try to keep everything separated or bounce from one sort of series to the other?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, it's kind of, it's always a little bit terrifying because they, you know, they set up a date where, even if it's nine months away, we need to have the second book by April.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And you're like, you do?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh, okay, all righty.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I think the, I don't really have writer's block out of just sheer terror of not having something to give them, you know?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I'm basically, I am a morning person.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so I'll be here with coffee and I'll try to kind of rattle things off.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then by maybe 11 or 12, I'll have to go and see if there's gotta be something out on the TV or something else for me to do or eat some junk food.
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Tim Link: Turn on Netflix and find another crime spook to write.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But I think the thing that really helps me, Tim, is that, I guess I would say that I'm a binge writer where for some reason if I'm really in the mood and I just go crazy for like four days where it's just like, okay, I know where I'm going for the next six or seven chapters and I just, you know, everything, the stars align and I'm just right in the zone.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then all of a sudden I leapfrog like, you know, 12, 13,000 words.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And so whenever that happens, I'm like, you know, I'll just tell everyone, I'll just, just I'm gonna be antisocial.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Just leave me alone.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I need to leapfrog.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I need to leapfrog over.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then there's the issue when, you know, I finish and then I go, oh, I don't even know.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I'll just send this off.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I don't need to even edit it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then I read through it and I go, oh my God, what was I thinking?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I need to, I need to edit this pretty intensely, you know.
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Tim Link: They say, you know, the pros say when you get it at zone, don't worry about typos, don't worry about, you know, editing or anything, just type it, type it, type it, get it out.
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Tim Link: And then you can go back and do all that stuff.
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Tim Link: But I always find that challenging.
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Tim Link: Cause I, you know, I've been sort of, I don't know if I call myself a perfectionist or not, but as you're going along and you see, you know, something that's out of place or you lose your spot or, you know, there's a massive typos on your screen.
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Tim Link: I feel compelled to want to make those changes right then and there, where I know according to the experts that I shouldn't do that.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Well, you know, I was talking to another author who was telling me that he does speech to text for his rough draft.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I go, I don't think I could do that.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, I understand that if you could just spit something down and then just start making editing the primary thing.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But I don't think, you know, dictate a book.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I think there's almost a thing with the typewriter and typing and everything that it would be impossible for me to just, you know, stone walked into the bar, you know, and just kind of dictate 80,000 words.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But yeah, I guess more power to them.
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Tim Link: Yeah, I think it's your own flow on how you do things.
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Tim Link: I'm like you, I mean, I would love to be able to do that.
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Tim Link: Just put my headset on or have my recorder walk around and I have a whole book, you know, because I can talk, as you can tell.
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Tim Link: I can definitely talk.
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Tim Link: But the problem is it would jump all over the place, you know, and even when you're doing narration, even if you're doing like audio books and doing narration on that, you know, you have to have the script.
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Tim Link: And for me, I will add Lib, I'll skip around a little bit, but not like I am doing this radio show or doing, you know, talking to someone where I'm all over the place.
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Tim Link: And all of a sudden, a funny joke pops in my mind, or at least something I think is funny, you know, and I want to blend that in the conversation.
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Tim Link: It's like, nah, that doesn't quite work.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: You know, and I think also is that when you're typing the first draft, you're probably, you know, you get halfway through a sentence and then you go shake your head and you redo it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Whereas if you're dictating, by the time I'm actually done writing a book, it's really probably second or third draft.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Whereas I don't imagine speech to text, that would be pretty hard.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Scratch that.
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Tim Link: Absolutely, yeah.
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Tim Link: I used to do, many moons ago in a previous life, I did corporate training and I would prep these training classes and I'd have the binders, I'd create the binders, all this good stuff.
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Tim Link: But to put it down into paper, I dictated it and then had my assistant.
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Tim Link: And it was funny because we got to one point where the assistant I had, she left and it hadn't replaced her yet.
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Tim Link: So the only one was available was the president of the company's assistant.
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Tim Link: And he wasn't a dictator.
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Tim Link: He basically didn't do a lot of dictation.
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Tim Link: So I don't know.
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Tim Link: I think I probably become her least favorite person because I can imagine her putting these headsets on.
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Tim Link: It's like, what is he talking about now?
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Tim Link: It has nothing to do with this workshop and training.
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Tim Link: But with authors, I find that it is all over the place.
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Tim Link: Some are very morning people, some are night people, some are 5,000 words on paper, do or die, others are deadline driven.
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Tim Link: Some, like you mentioned, all of a sudden, you'll get in the zone and you work for three or four days almost straight, don't bother me, I'm going.
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Tim Link: And other times you have to sit around.
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Tim Link: So I don't think there's any right or wrong answer, but I love picking the brains of authors to figure out how their flow is and what has worked well.
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Tim Link: Because I think you mentioned a little bit earlier about writing in an outline form and then sort of getting away with that, moving away from that, see if a different method would work better for you.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Yeah, and it was kind of interesting when I started writing the dog books is that the editor at St.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Martin's Press that I wound up working with, she said, Jeff, I don't care what happens to the human beings.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: No dogs die.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And because I'm not too bright, I'm like, well, what about where the red fern grows go?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: What about Sounder and Kujo?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And then I realized who I was talking to and I said, no dogs will die.
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Tim Link: That's it.
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Tim Link: That's it.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: They may get banged up a little, but they will live.
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Tim Link: They always bounce back.
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Tim Link: They're usually the hero or one of the heroes in the book.
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Tim Link: And if you put a dog or any animal in a book, you have a great chance of success.
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Tim Link: And I think that's the key.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Right, right.
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Tim Link: So, Jeffrey, when everybody picks up the book, The Dead Years, Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie, what do you hope they get from that?
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Tim Link: Is there a goal or accomplishment when they pick up the book and read through it that you hope they get from the reading through it?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I hope they enjoy it just as a real fun thriller, you know, if you're taking a plane somewhere and you need something to read or you're going to go lie on a beach somewhere.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: But then also, I think maybe the love of dogs comes through.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: I mean, they're a big part of the book and the dog handlers and just the interactions and how they train the dogs and everything.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: In fact, I got Milo here making sure I'm honest.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Or right behind me.
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Tim Link: Excellent.
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Tim Link: We must be doing it right because I don't hear any barking.
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Tim Link: So it thumbs up to or paws up to us, we're okay.
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Tim Link: Well everybody pick up a copy of the book.
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Tim Link: It's The Dead Years, Let Sleeping Serial Killers Lie.
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Tim Link: It's a thriller, it's a novel, it's got dogs in it.
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Tim Link: So it's a win, win, win all the way around.
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Tim Link: It's by author Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton.
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Tim Link: Jeffrey, where can people find out more about you and all the wonderful stuff you got going on?
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh yeah, my website, which ironically is jeffreybburton.com.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: jeffreybburton.com and I've got a, you can kind of surf it, but there's, I've written a lot of different articles and some of them are on different kind of dogs.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: And I've got all sorts of fun things that you can read there.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: If you want to get lost in the world of human remains, detection dogs.
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Tim Link: Lost in the world, and who knows you may be the next novel.
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Tim Link: You never know about these things.
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Tim Link: So we'll definitely post that online so everybody does that and take a look at your website and all the great stuff going on.
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Tim Link: It's by author Jeffrey B.
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Tim Link: Burton, the book's called The Dead Years.
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Tim Link: Congratulations on a job well done.
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Tim Link: I appreciate the book and the effort and everything, and I definitely appreciate coming on the show today.
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Jeffrey B. Burton: Oh, absolutely, Tim, it's an honor.
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Tim Link: My pleasure.
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Tim Link: Well, we're coming to end the show today.
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Tim Link: I want to thank everyone for listening to Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: I want to thank the producers and sponsors for making this show possible.
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Tim Link: If you have any ideas, comments or suggestions for the show or any show, drop us a line.
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Tim Link: You can go to petliferadio.com and we will entertain your comments, answer your questions and bring on the people you want to hear from most.
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Tim Link: And so until next time, write a great story about the animals in your life, and who knows, you may be the next guest on Animal Writes on Pet Life Radio.
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Tim Link: Have a great day.
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