Interview with Candice Miller Speare, Content Editor for Barbour Publishing

Candice Miller Speare is Content Reviewer for Barbour Publishing, as well as a published author for Barbour's cozy mystery line. Her first book Murder in the Milkcase releases this month.



What is a Content Reviewer?

I’m the first person in a pretty lengthy process that Heartsong cozy mysteries go through to reach their final form. When Susan Downs receives manuscripts from contracted authors, she forwards copies to me, and I review them in order—according to the production schedule.

My job as content reviewer is exactly what it says. I review content. I’m not a grammar expert like our wonderful line editors, although I will point out major grammatical problems if I see them. Sometimes I’ll point out bad writing habits that an author has. (Watch it. No stuffing your face with chocolate or ice cream while you write. I’ll know! Ha-ha!)

I will also make observations about word flow and sentence structure. But my main job is to look at the content.

First and most important, I determine if the story meets Heartsong’s cozy requirements.

Then I look at the characters. Do they grow, have motivation, conflict, depth? I love to read a book in which the characters leap to life. I want to care about what happens to them.

I also check for plot consistency—will the story grab the reader from the beginning? Does the plot make sense? Does it drag? I also check for the growth of the mystery. Clues. Police procedure. Does the mystery make sense?

As an aside, I enjoy the reviewing process and editing from the other side of the fence. I’ve learned more from the people who have critiqued and edited my work than I could ever learn from books and conferences. All of us are blind in some way or another to our own writing flaws. We miss things in our own manuscripts. As a writer, I want to keep growing in my craft. Having my work edited helps me do that. And I hope it does the same for our authors.

You are uniquely qualified to review Barbour's mystyer line for content. Please share with us your experience as a volunteer at the sheriff's office and the benefits you reaped working in that environment.

I think the reason my volunteer work at the sheriff’s office benefited me so much was because I volunteered at the training academy. I had the opportunity to sit in on law enforcement classes. See what the recruits were taught.

The highlight of my time there was participating in training scenarios. Over two years, I was held hostage, stopped in my car for drugs, searched and arrested for hidden weapons, arrested for beating up my boyfriend, and had my “son” threaten my life. I was even a hooker once—ha-ha. I’ve been handcuffed so many times I know what it’s like to have handcuff bruises. My whole experience was awesome. I got to observe everything from traffic stops to criminal investigation in the training sessions, and then I got to listen to the trainers critique the recruits.

I also helped keep training records, so I saw first hand the training a law enforcement officer goes through. Which is a lot, by the way.

Because of the exposure I had to so many of the deputies, I got a feeling for how law enforcement officers tick. The longer they’re in law enforcement, the less they think like civilians. Go to lunch sometime with a cop and watch his eyes. They have a different perspective on what’s going on around them, as well as life and people in general. I have a great deal of respect for the job they do. They pay a steep price for their chosen careers, and sometimes I wonder if the young recruits understand just how their job will impact and change their lives.

Many police officers will tell you they have trouble trusting people because they’re lied to so often. Which is one reason why they’re so cynical.

I must clarify that my volunteer experience did not give me all the police procedure and knowledge I need to review cozies or write my own books. I am not an expert in any way, shape, or form. I still rely heavily on law enforcement friends for my own research, as well as for my content reviews. When I’m not certain about something I read in the cozies, I always go to a knowledgeable source.

As Content Reviewer for Barbour Publishing, you must run into many issues regarding incorrect police procedure. What are some examples of common mistakes crime writers make and how can they avoid these in the future?

The biggest thing I see is police officers not acting like police officers. I don’t care whether a cop works for a big or small agency; all of them have a cop mentality if they’ve been in law enforcement for more than a couple of years.

Here’s another big one. Lack of research.

Shows like Columbo, Murder She Wrote, and newer shows like CSI are great entertainment, but very inaccurate in terms of law enforcement and procedure. Unfortunately, those shows get in our heads and come out in our writing. I’m guilty of that just like everyone else, which is why I am so picky.

In real life, cases are thrown out of court all the time due to sloppy investigative work. Suspects get away. We live in a litigious society. Justice is no longer black and white. If a police officer doesn’t dot every “i” and cross every “t” in his or her investigation, the guilty party will get away with the crime.

And this is just as important for the small town law enforcement officer as it is for one who works for a major department in a large city or county because lawyers are lawyers and judges are judges. One of my good friends works for a small city police department. He handles things exactly the same way the deputies did at the large sheriff’s office where I volunteered. He can’t afford not to.

I also run into lack of research about murder weapons and murder. We write cozies, so our murders take place off-scene. However, we still have to understand how a weapon kills, how it works, and what the scene will look like. And then how it fits into our stories.

Let’s take, for instance, a car bomb. Great way to off someone, right? Materials wouldn’t be that hard to obtain. But wait. The problem with a car bomb in a cozy is not all the suspects would have access to the materials or the know-how to make one. Therefore, it’s not a good choice as a weapon in a cozy. Unless the suspects all work for some sort of company doing the kinds of jobs that would make this probable.

And in terms of research, there are many people available to answer questions, and most people love to talk about their jobs. The internet is full of information. We can research in books. There is no excuse for lack of research.

Okay. One more big problem I’ve seen in the cozies is that an author doesn’t present enough red herring clues and/or suspects.

What books do you recommend to help an author make the crime scene realistic and the details correct?

Oh, wow. I have a whole shelf full. Top of the list? All of the writer’s digest crime books. They are always a good beginning to research. Police Procedure & Investigation by Lee Lofland. The Idiot's Guide to Criminal Investigation. Forensics for Dummies. When You're the Only cop in Town by Jack Berry and Debra Dixon. True Blue by Lynda Sue Cooper.

Often experiential books or those with true accounts or blurbs from the life of a cop are good just to catch the mind set. Like What Cops Know and Pure Cop by Connie Fletcher.

I read lots of true crime books. Those help me get a sense of criminals and crime. All the John Douglas books. (He was an FBI profiler.)

I collect obscure books about a lot of other research related things, as well. For instance, I have several books about poisons, including one out of print book from the seventies. (I’ve often thought that if anyone near me was ever poisoned and I was a suspect, I’d be in BIG trouble.)

I have one interesting little spiral bound book called Practical Homicide Investigation Checklist and Field Guide by Vernon J. Geberth. There’s a large book to go along with that, but it’s like $90, so I haven’t bought it.

Just go to Amazon and put in crime or cops or law enforcement. You could easily spend hundreds of dollars.





Stay tuned for Part 2