Business Innovators Radio - Killer Run: A Thrilling Blend of Romance, Detective Work, and a Spine-Chilling Serial Killer Plot

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

In this episode of the Inside Track, host Markus Loving interviews Sherri Gallagher, a successful author known for her non-fiction bestseller “Profit is Not a Four Letter Word.” However, in this episode, they dive into Sherri’s world of fiction, specifically her newest novel, “Killer Run.”Sherri draws inspiration from her real-life experiences, particularly her love for German Shepherds and German Shepherd Search and Rescue. She shares how her passion for these dogs shines through in all of her books, including “Killer Run,” which features a thrilling blend of romance, detective work, and a spine-chilling serial killer plot.Despite facing setbacks, such as accidentally deleting a portion of her original manuscript, Sherri overcame adversity and rewrote the story. Now, she eagerly awaits the release of her gripping novel.Listeners who enjoy heart-pounding mysteries, stories of overcoming obstacles, and a love for dogs won’t want to miss this episode. Sherri’s journey as an author, her experiences with self-publishing, and the inspiration behind “Killer Run” are all discussed in this entertaining conversation.Sherri’s books are a must-read if you’re a fan of strong and relatable characters, fast-paced storytelling, and a touch of humor. In “Killer Run,” she masterfully balances pacing and suspense, ensuring readers stay hooked while providing moments of respite.This episode is perfect for anyone interested in the world of writing, self-publishing, or simply looking for an exciting novel to add to their reading list. Sherri’s expertise and passion for storytelling shine through in every word.To learn more about Sherri Gallagher and her books, visit her website at sherrigallagher.com or find her on Facebook. Her books can be found on Amazon or through her website. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to dive into the thrilling world of “Killer Run” and experience Sherri’s captivating storytelling firsthand.Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/killer-run-a-thrilling-blend-of-romance-detective-work-and-a-spine-chilling-serial-killer-plot

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Welcome back to The Inside Track, your go-to radio show for all things business relevant and good. Today we have a very special guest joining us, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and an incredible talented author, Sherry Gallagher. Now, Sherry's no stranger to the writing world. She's had tremendous success with her nonfiction book. Profit is not a four-letter word. which became a number one bestseller. It made at the top of five or six Amazon bestseller list.

But today we're going to dive into her world of fiction, specifically on our newest novel, Killer Run. Now, Killer Run is not your average run-of-the-mill novel. It's a thrilling blend of romance, detective work, and a spine-chilling serial killer plot. Trust me, folks, you won't be able to put this down once you start reading it. What's even more fascinating is how Sherry draws her inspiration from her real-life experiences.

Her love for German Shepherds, and German Shepherds' Search and Rescue shines through all of her books, and she'll be telling more about that later today. But realize it's not all rainbows and sunshine in the world of writing. Sherry faced a major setback when she accidentally deleted a third of her original manuscript of Killer Run. Talk about a writer's nightmare. But she didn't let that get her down. She overcame adversity, rewrote the story, and here we are today, eagerly awaiting the release of her gripping novel.

So if you're a fan of heart pounding mysteries, overcoming obstacles, and of course, amazing dogs, you won't want to miss out on today's episode. Get ready to hear all about Sherry's journey as an author, her experiences with self-publishing, and the inspiration behind Killer Run. Sherry, welcome to the Inside Track. Well, thank you very much for having me. That was a really cool introduction. You know, well-deserved, well-deserved. You know, you've done amazing work with all of the books you've written. You've done an amazing work with your search and rescue with the dogs and in your career as well.

It's exciting. You deserve it. You deserve a great introduction. Tell us, let's jump into this right now. Tell us a little bit about the newest novel Killer Run and what inspired you to write this romance detective serial killer novel. Well, I draw from everyday ideas and things that I've seen or experienced. And I was out running with one of my German Shepherds outside in the Chicagoland area. And it's really hard to find some places where it's where you feel like you're away from civilization. And we were running up this hall road for a golf course. And I looked around and went, this is a really good place for a body dump. And I'm running with my human remains dog going, don't alert, don't alert, don't alert.

And that was really where Killer Run got started from was just looking around, going, man, if I was a serial killer, this would be a good place to dump a body because nobody would ever find it. Nobody's around here. There you go. It's amazing. Everyday things can draw, give you that inspiration and obviously create an amazing story about that. So what sets killer run apart from other books in the same genre? Well, one of the things that I find is hard about the thriller and the serial killers is they tend to be very dark. Okay. They take you, they can take you to some really bad places.

And I have to admit, in writing this, I had to fight going to the dark places. And, you know, I try and keep in mind who my readership is. Right. I write for people who are like me, business women who are traveling and you're in an intense situation all day long. You go back to the hotel. you just want to relax. And you don't want happy, happy things that are boring,

but you also want to feel good about it. So writing killer run, if you read it, you're not going to sit there and want to double lock your doors and, you know, put bars in the windows and all of those kinds of things. But it is going to make you on a question like, what's going to happen? It does drive you. And I do think that that's an important piece. of what a writer needs to do for their readers is make them want to keep reading,

but also make them want to feel good. Absolutely, without a doubt. It's all about how making the, it's all about the experience. And part of the experience is how their readers feeling when they're reading your novel. That's amazing. You took that, take that in consideration. So obviously, not allowing people to go down that dark rabbit hole is what makes you very unique in one of the aspects.

Now, how did you incorporate search and rescue German Shoeuvres? shepherds into your novel to enhance the overall story? What made you pick that particular element? Well, every one of my books has something to do with a German shepherd. That's the thing. Okay. So the first one, Sophie's Search and the second one out of the storm, in both those cases. And then the fourth one, Labrador T, they were from the perspective of a handler, a search and rescue handler who was very, very experienced. And I did want to write a book about a handler who was like, I have no idea what's going on and just gets drawn into it. So that was one of the considerations about killer run is I didn't want this handler to have any idea what her dog was doing.

So that was how I drew on it. And then I went through, and I've trained, you know, let me see, I'm on my seventh or eighth search dog. Wow. And I've trained probably 30 handlers on how to train. dogs. And so I wanted to do some of the basic background to let people know that it's your average everyday person who's out there doing volunteer search and rescue. Yeah, there's a lot of extra work and a lot of extra training, but it's the guy next door. Right. You know, it's a school teacher. It's a business executive. We've had hairdressers. You know. So everyday people that

become passionate about German Shepherds and search and rescue, and you train them how to handle the dogs and go out there and actually search for people that are missing, correct? That's one of the things you do. That's one of the things I do. It's the best volunteer job you'll never get paid for. There you go. I love it. I love it.

So with those experiences, obviously that gives you a lot to draw upon. And obviously, you've done that in a lot of your fictional novels that you've written, including Killer Run. Many authors choose to kind of go down a traditional publisher's path, but you made the switch to self-publishing not too long ago. Can you share with our listeners the reason behind your decision and how that impacted your writing career? There was two reasons for it. One was autonomy and two was money. Okay. Meaning?

Meaning. All right. So autonomy. One of my teen novels was picked up by a traditional publisher. Okay. And the cover art was horrible. I had no say in it. Wow.

They owned the characters, so I'd actually written the sequel to that book before I'd written that book. So then I couldn't publish the sequel without their permission, or I had to change all the character's names. Wow. It was about bullying, and it was about a big kid being bullied by a smaller kid. Okay. And they wanted me to change that and make it know the big kid's bullying the smaller kid. and it took a lot of work to get them to finally to agree to that. So those were some of the challenges, and then it took a very long time to come to market.

So when you're doing self-publishing, once your book is done and edited and finished, really finished, and there's a lot of steps in that we can talk about in a little while, you can get the book out almost immediately. Whereas, you know, Sophie's search was actually written for a traditional publisher, and a traditional publisher had that book for eight months. Wow. And then decided that they weren't going to publish it. Wow. So at that point in time, that's when I said, that's it, I'm done. And I went to self-publishing.

One of the other things was with the traditional publishing, it's not like you see on murder she wrote or, castle where they're doing all of this promotion for you and you do nothing but sit back and collect royalty checks. You have to have a platform or they won't talk to you. You have to have a website. You have to be doing marketing. You have to be doing speaking engagements. You have to be outselling your book. And you can buy your books through a thing that gives you counts towards your, you can either buy them directly from the publisher and then it doesn't count towards your sales or you can buy them through another organization and it counts towards sales. Right.

Well, I had sold over 200 books and then the traditional publisher came back and said that I'd only sold 12. What? So they did, and then twice they forgot to cut me my royalty check. Wow. And when you look at it on traditional publishing, you're getting, the author is getting 15% of the sale price. and no traditional publisher will talk to you unless you have an agent, and your agent gets 15% of that 15%.

Got it. Everyone's got their hands in your pocket, for sure. Yeah. So when you go to self-publishing, then no, you've got 35% is coming to you. And you don't have to have an agent. So you're still doing the same marketing work. Yeah, you're doing the same work. Might as well get paid more money for it and have control.

Well, and that's it. When you're writing a book for traditional publishing, if you're writing it for Christmas, you better be finished in July. Right. You know, so just being able to go from, you mean, when you're writing, your head's in your book, you know, and going through those different things and then going to real life, it can get to be like, oh, wait a minute, let me, let me get my head straight here. That makes a lot of sense.

It makes a lot of sense. It seems like there's a lot of upsets. like there's a lot of upside to going self-publishing and very little downside because you're doing it. Again, like you said, you're doing all the work yourself and you're making happen. What challenges did you face when you did jump into the self-publishing realm? And how did you overcome those? Well, and that's a good point. When you're doing the self-publishing, when you work with a publisher, they'll come back to you and they will say to you, hey, you know, you've got We've gone through and we've done these edits for you.

We've looked at the grammar. We've looked at the dialogue. We've got some questions. Things don't make sense. When you're self-publishing, you have to be able to do that yourself. So, yeah, I'd use a grammar program. And then I have a couple of people who are just grammar gurus and they read my books. And they go through and one puts comments in and one takes commas in and one takes commas out.

So I have to laugh at that. Some of it is stylistic. So, you know, those things are there. And then you have to make sure that the book is going to draw the reader through. Right. And self-publishing got a really bad rap in the beginning because people who didn't want to do that extra work put out some really wretched stuff. Got it. And it took a long time for self-publishing to get past that for probably the first.

five, six years I was writing and self-publishing. Okay. If you went to conferences and said, I'm a published author, they'd say, okay, who's your publisher? Right. And if you said, well, I self-published, they'd say, you're not a published author. Gotcha. They kind of lifted their nose at you, thinking that you're below beneath them kind of thing. Yeah.

And they've gotten past that. I've got a number of friends who were, I mean, they were Rita Award finalists. Okay. which is romance, I don't know, it's like the biggest thing in romance novels. Got it. And she's gone totally to self-publishing because she wanted control of her characters. Yeah. It sounds like they try to control a lot of aspects.

It's not about you being the author and you being creative and creating this wonderful masterpiece. They want to have their fingers into all aspects of it, which is, you know, I'm sorry. That's not right. I mean, they're taking all this money and then they want to control it too. It's like, come on. Exactly. Well, that's good. That's good.

You've been able to work through that. Obviously, every industry needs time for it to kind of get its legs underneath it and mature a little bit. So which obviously, I think the self-publishing world has done that now. I'm also a self-published author. So I totally understand that aspect of things a little bit. Okay. So Killer Run is your furry first self-published book when it comes to. a serial killer, the genre.

How did you feel about the freedom and the control you had over your work compared to when you were with a traditional publisher? I mean, obviously, you've said it's much freeing. Was it an amazing experience for you? Yeah. I mean, if you look at Sophie Search, which was written for a traditional publisher, that has the strongest Christian theme in it. And that was required by the publisher.

Okay. Whereas I do believe that, how do I put this? Yes, I am a Christian. I don't evangelize. Right. I try and demonstrate by being the best person I can be. Sure. Whereas my husband said, you know, with the traditional publishing, I had to drop God racks on people.

Right. So it has been a lot more freeing. And I can put things forward in a format and a manner that keeps things moving. I can be specific about dogs, which a traditional publisher would be like, yeah, no, what do I care? You know, a lot of them didn't want me to ever mention German shepherds. That's not going to worry. That's not going to fly with you. I know you.

One of them wanted to put a lab on the cover of my book. I went, uh-uh, uh-uh, it's not, you know. Not happening. The floppy ears, cone ears, cone ears, you know. But, yeah, so that has been, that has been some of the things that have, it's, it's, you can write the book in a story and make the story flow. The story has got to flow and it's got to move. I think one of the best compliments I got was when I was doing Sophie's search, I actually

went to the businesses I mentioned in the book. They were existing businesses. and I sent them the book and said, here, you know, make sure, here's where I talked about your business. Right. Are you okay with this? Right. And one of them is a restaurant owner and he came back.

He goes, I picked up the book. He goes, and I was up all night reading it. He goes, I couldn't put it down. That's awesome. That's great. And I think self-publishing lets you do that where you can move a story and go and go without putting in this extra artificial stuff for the art. for the traditional publisher.

All the fluff they want to fill it in so they can make it a thicker book or whatever it is they do. So, yeah, I get that. Now, I know you're no stranger to setbacks. I know in this working on Killer Run, you accidentally deleted a significant portion of your original manuscript, and that must have been devastating. How did you deal with that disappointment? And what strategies did you use to overcome that setback? Back up.

Okay. Now, I had a typical novel is about 85,000 words. And Killer Run was set in Chicago in the Chicago area. And I was at 35,000 words. And I had the whole relationship going and I had all sorts of stuff going and I had all the forest preserves and all these runners groups. And then I needed a thumb drive in a hurry for a business thing. And I grabbed it. And I just hit delete it.

all. And that was the only place where I had killer run. And I put the book in the drawer for several years. And then when I went looking for it and went, oh, no, now I know what happened. And I had to start over. But by this point in time, my readership, all my books are set in the Adirondacks, the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Nice. So I said, okay, I got to redo this. I moved it to the Adirondacks. Of course, that then made it interesting because there's not a lot of runner groups in the Adirondack mountains.

Okay. Most people are hikers. Okay. Yeah. The closest group is in Utica, New York. So I had to make up this whole thing, and I had to figure out where would people run if they were running. Okay.

And actually, that's where I had to go in and do some research about running trails, because when I'm in the Adirondacks, I don't run. I do in Chicago to, you know, for health reasons. Sure, stay in shape. Yeah. It's easier on flatland versus mountains. Oh, yeah.

My sister is in Syracuse, New York, and she runs hills all the time, or she did. And so I'd go running with her and it'd be like, flatlander, flatlander. But, yeah, so we do hiking. Okay. You know, but that's fast walking. That's not running. So, yeah, there was a lot of work with that and trying to figure out setting. and to make things work.

And my husband's gotten used to me going, wait, stop, I got to look at this. Okay, let me get a picture because this is a good scene for a book, okay? And he's like, okay, fine. You know? Well, it's good to have a partner that understands where you're going and is willing to play ball. So that's good.

That's good. That's awesome. He's been really good. That's it. That's all. Jim's a great guy. Absolutely. So romance,

a detective serial killer genre, as you talked about, you can go down a dark path with that. and can be quite intense and emotionally charged. How do you ensure that the story remains engaging without becoming too overwhelming to the readers? What are some of the things that you did to make sure that, you know, you kept them by the light, so to speak? Some of it was like watching the language. And that sounds silly.

But if you start watching the words you're using, they influence what it is that the feeling that you're giving. Okay. And so I'd set a goal for myself of writing a thousand words a day. So you write the thousand, then you write the next thousand, then you go back and read that first thousand. Right. And you see where it leaves you feeling. And if I was writing it and when I got all through writing that thousand words, I was feeling really dark, then that was, okay, no, go back and redo these. So I had to take, because you're in the story. Right. You're a character in the story.

Sure. And so, yeah. And when you're writing it, you know, you're feeling every ounce of it. So that's really where I went to prevent being too dark. And again, as I said, the language. And then trying to put some humor in. Sure. Every few pages, you just had to be just a little bit, get outside yourself and be a little bit,

silly. Yeah, a little snarky maybe. Yeah, it makes the characters laugh at themselves, you know, have a dialogue between two characters where they're, where they're teasing each other. And you can bring it, you can lighten it up at that point in time. Yeah, and then words are powerful. I mean, you know, we do we know, I mean, thoughts are powerful, words are powerful. So, you know, the fact that you said that, that makes a lot of sense. And that the process is not just about writing. It's writing. It's reading. It's, it's interspection. It's seeing how you feel because obviously if that's the way you're feeling, a lot of there's a good chance that the readers that you're writing for are going to feel

the same way. So that's fantastic. So you mentioned, you know, you do a lot of research and you include a lot of businesses and you moved it from Chicago out to New York. Can you discuss some of your research process that you undertook to accurately portray this kind of detective serial killer aspects of killer run? Okay. So I read some books about serial killers and that was really hard. Okay. Yeah, I bet. and what their motifs were. But where I really was worried about was portraying the hero in the book correctly. And the hero is a New York State Police investigator.

Okay. And so I went to the, I knew a retired captain of the New York State Police. And I sent him some questions. And then he put me in contact with the actual people in. Raybrook. And I got to say, those, the public relations person and those investigators were absolutely awesome. That's fantastic. I would write, what I went through and did was I wrote the things and I pulled all the scenes wherever the investigator was actually doing police work. And so then I came back with a list of questions because these guys are busy.

Sure. You know, this isn't their job. Right. And I sent them the list. It's not like episode of castle where all the police officers are going to drop for everything to cater to his story or whatever. Yeah. I mean, and I got to be honest, I sent the questions, and I waited a while. I was traveling for work, and I was gone for a couple of weeks, and so I contacted back the public relations person saying, hey, I'm back in town. How are things going? And she was very, very sweet, and she came back. She goes, the guys are going to be working on it in a couple days. We're wrapping up, right after your questions came in, we had a murder to investigate. Okay. Yeah. Uh-huh. That takes a little priority over answering some author's questions.

Just a little bit. But they were really, really good about correcting me. There is one place in there where I asked them if they would be able to get a warrant to do something. And they said, no. But the story wouldn't work if I didn't get a warrant to go look at this guy's apartment, the serial killer's apartment. So that was literary license. And I did mention that in the author's. notes at the back of the book that, you know, that was the one place that I kind of tried to, I kind of strayed from what they said I could do. Well, you know, that's okay. I mean, you have to balance realism with the need for suspense and entertainment. And obviously it sounds like you try to make the story as realistic as possible, but you do have, you're an author. You know, it is fiction.

So you do have that license to kind of do that. You know, did you find any other places where you had to balance that out a little bit? It wasn't too bad other than that because, I mean, the search and rescue is everything that I've done. Okay. So that just, that flows on the page. The serial killer part of it, yeah, I did watch some movies about serial killers and those kinds of things. I really had to limit it because I have a good imagination and then I'd have nightmares. Sure. Oh, my gosh, I can imagine it.

I don't watch many of those. If it creeps me out or if it's way too intense, then that passed. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of one of those things where it's, I figured if it creeped me out and I couldn't sleep, then it probably isn't something I wanted to pass on to my readers. Right, exactly. Exactly. It makes a lot of sense.

So how do you approach creating strong and relatable characters in your novels, particularly in Killer Run? Like, what techniques did you use to develop their depth and complexity? Well, one of the things that I found was that my, books are read by teenage girls. Okay. And I'm a little bit older and I kind of grew up in the generation of you married doctors and lawyers and engineers.

And I said, no, I'm going to be an engineer. So that's what I did. And I want to make sure that when teenage girls kind of question, what's my role in life? Right. And sometimes they're pushed away from science and math. and those kinds of industries. So I try and make sure that my characters are always strong women capable of being independent. Like yourself.

That's great. And then I don't like wimpy heroes. Okay. Okay. So I want the heroin to be able to get herself out of trouble, but I don't want the hero to always give in and always be. somebody who just rolls over and knows how to do things. A lot of guys' characters is based on my husband. Yes, we've been married 46 years and I still love him and he's still my hero.

Congratulations. That's wonderful. You don't hear that much these days. So that's fantastic. So, yeah, I mean, I guess he's considered a man's man, but... Nothing wrong with that. He's the basis of my heroes and my heroes are strong and my heroines are strong and my heroines. are strong. And then I try and make my support characters, people that you'd love to sit down and have a drink with.

Okay. You know, they kind of keep the hero and heroine on track. Sure. There's kind of a romance element to all of my books. But I get really annoyed with romances where they could be solved if the hero and the heroine, if the main characters just sat down and talk to each other, you'd have no plot line. Okay, right. So it's got to be more of a plotline than that. It's a little more complex than that, yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, they're working on something. They're working together to get somewhere. Yeah. Versus, oh, does he love me?

Oh, do I love him? Does she love me? Does she love me not? Yeah, exactly. That's awesome. That's awesome. So what kind of impact are you hoping that killer run is going to have for your readers? Are there any specific messages?

or themes besides the one you just shared about strong women that you want to convey through this novel? With Killer Run, I wanted people to know that it's not as hard as they think to get involved in search and rescue. Okay. That was really one of the things I wanted to bring out in this is that if you like dogs and you like being outside, you really might want to try and talk to your volunteer group, see what you can find out. because it's a whole new world and it's a lot of fun and you can make a difference. Absolutely. And one other thing is, and I didn't answer this before, I don't know much about 3D printing. And in Killer Ron, my heroin is a mechanical engineer and her business is 3D printing.

Okay. That's interesting. That's a newer industry, for sure. And my son has a 3D printer. So he was my go-to reference for, okay, could a 3D printer do this? Or how would I do that? Or can I set these alarms so that it will work on a phone? Or he goes, no, Mom, they don't do that.

Right. So, yeah, I did try and bring that in. Okay. And the idea that there are other technologies out there that you can get involved in, and you can start your own business. Sure. You know, the heroin in this started her business when she was in high school, developed it through college and ended up paying for all of her college and everything else because she had this business going. Look out there and see what you're interested in. You never know when it can turn into a nice career.

Absolutely. Do what you love. And, you know, they say, I forgot who said the phrase, you know, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. It's finding those passions. You know, I know Gary Vee, I listen to a lot of his podcasts, and he's a very inspirational thought leader and entrepreneur out there. And, you know, he says, you know, what do you love to do? Talk about that. You know, get started with that. And, you know, let's see how that can develop because if you love what you do or if you have passions for something, you're going to be more geared to want to, you know, go the

extra mile and go the distance and make things work and make things happen, make a business successful in this example. And that's great. You know, in your case, make books. exciting and funder rate, which is great. So it's interesting, you know, you mentioned, again, German and Shepherds, Search and Rescues. Obviously, that plays a big, significant role in your books. What drew you to do that to incorporate those elements in the beginning? What drew you to German Shepherd rescue in the first place? And how do you ensure, and obviously you ensure their authenticity

in your story telling them because you've been doing it for so long. But what drew you to that in the first place? Well, whenever I do demonstrations for schools, it's always going to come up. How did you get into search and rescue. Sure. And I tell the class, look, I did something very dangerous and you got to think about this before you do it. And I said, what? I got a dog and I read a book.

Oh, okay. I actually read a book so that others may live by Caroline Hebarred. And she talked about how she got into search and rescue and what she looked for in a search and rescue dog. And I had this really obnoxious German shepherd. And that dog was everything that she looked for in a search and rescue dog. Interesting. So I contacted the people who she put in the back of the book, and that was how my career started into search and rescue.

And it's an element that generally isn't in books. Or if it is, I mean, I read some of these things and I go, you would never do that. You know, one book where at the end of the training, we turn, somebody leaves with all the toys and we turn all the dogs loose. and the first dog to get to them is the one that gets rewarded. And it's like, you would never do that, ever, ever. So I wanted to make sure that anything I had in there, if you read about what's being happening as a search and rescue in a search, in those books, right?

That's real. Real. That's, yeah, that's inspirational because you never know. It's like you got your start because you had a dog and you read a book. So that's awesome. You're leaving a legacy through not only your words but your actions. So that's great. That's great.

So can you talk about the importance of, I'm going to shift gears here a little bit into the way the novel flows. Can you talk about the importance of pacing and suspense in a thriller like Killer Run? How do you maintain that balance between keeping the reader hooked and providing them with the moments of respite? There is an editing technique where you go through and you look at description. Okay. And you highlight that in green and dialogue in blue and emotion in red. Okay.

So you go through after you've, so you print your section. Okay. You do this highlighting and you set it on the table and look at it. And if you've got more green than all the others put together, you've got a cut. Okay. Your pacing is wrong. You're not, you're, it may sound good to you, but no, you're, you're, you're leaving your reader into boredom. Okay.

Interesting. If you, um, oh, his name slips my mind. There's, there's one author, um, Clive Custler. And I love his books. I read him, but they're very formulaic. And when he gets talking about antique cars, it's like, okay, skip the next 12 pages. Right.

Or when you get in. Unless you really like antique cars, right? Right. Or if you, when you get into the really graphic romance novels, again, they kind of call them pant and grapples. Sure. And they get into these sex scenes and you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, okay. just flipping pages. So those are kinds of places where you've got to look at and say, yeah, it's interesting to me, but it's going to be interesting to the reader. And that's where I actually

use a thing called a beta reader. I have people, when my book is all done, and I think it's absolutely the best thing ever, and it's all perfect, I give it to them. And they come back to me and they say, yeah, I like this. This made no sense. Okay, pages 12 through 15, cut it to one paragraph. Wow. They're giving you some good advice and some critique. Yeah. I mean, it hurts.

Yeah. It hurts because that's your baby. And then it's like, how do I make three pages into one paragraph? But it helps you to keep the pacing flowing. And then I read, like I said, the easiest way to do it is to look at the amount of description. If you've got too much description in there, it's too slow. The pacing is wrong.

Got it. When you have a scene, the scene has got to move the plot forward. If the scene doesn't move the plot forward, cut the scene. You don't need it. Makes sense. So is there a balance of color you want to see on that page? Because that's very interesting. I'm a very visual person.

So I can see myself drawing something out. And it's obviously very apparent what you're looking at because it's very visual with the colors. Do you find that that technique helps you to, besides finding, you know, pacing things up a little bit, Are there other things you see when you're doing that? Yeah, a lot of dialogue you've got to watch and then see if you're throwing too much backstory in. Backstory is history that, yeah, you know as an author, but does the reader need to know it? Right. Also, sometimes dialogue can be information dumps where you're giving the reader too much information.

I'll give you an example. In Killer Ron, I talked about an illness that can come. cause a dog to die. It's called torsioning. Okay. I've never heard of that. Okay. So what happens is if the dog has a really full stomach and it gets too much exercise, the stomach will flip and close off on both ends and the dog will die. Oh my. Very painful death. So what you do is no exercise an hour before you feed them and no exercise six hours after you feed them. Okay. And that was one of the little things I wanted to get into a book so that people know this. Sure. But I did it in dialogue, and one of my beta readers came back and said, this was an information dump.

You got to shorten this up. Right. Okay. So were you able to have twin chaining it around, so you still get that idea across to people without having it be too much of an information dump? Yeah, I mean, because I went into here's where the research studies were and those kinds of things. So cut the research studies and just have the guy go, oh, no, don't do that. You know, here's why. Makes sense. Now, is that all dogs or is, I'm curious, is that all dogs or is that just German Shepherds?

It's any kind of a dog that has a high tuckup. So it's where the stomach is slung, if you have a big chested dog and then it comes up to a very high hip. Okay. So Afghan hounds, greyhounds, German shepherds, Malinwas, all of them have this potential. Okay. Depending on your goldens and their breed lines, you may or may not have that potential with it. But I mean, it's just a nice rule of thumb. Sure. You know, no heavy running and playing for six hours after you feed them. That makes sense, yeah. I mean, you know, you don't want to be doing that after you eat also. Yeah. Think about it. You know? Do you want to go swimming? You want to go for a nice long jaunt, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's good. Good. Well, it's good that you're dropping. in, you know, helpful information and things for the reader, you know, that, heck, you know, they may not be in such a rescue, but they may have a dog and, you know, that's a good life-saving

thing for an animal. So that's great. That is great. So what's next for you after Killer Run? You know, do you have any upcoming projects or ideas that you're excited to explore in your future works? Yeah, I've got one. Now, it's tentatively titled Coming Home.

Okay. And I've got an industrial engineer who is working in Dublin and then has to come home, her husband dies, and then she has to get into a fight for a custody of her own child. Wow. Okay. So that's the next one. That's the big plot line. And there'll be, she's going to have a search dog that nobody can train. And so she's, it's somebody, another handler is like, here, I can't take this anymore. You work with this dog. Okay. And have her train the impossible dog. That's wonderful.

That'll be a good story. So it's like taming the stallion. Well, you know, there's a lot of different ways of training dogs. And a lot of professional dog trainers look for certain things in a dog. I know of some organizations that take dogs that are in rescue situations, and they'll test them, and then they'll try and train them for search and rescue, and they have a success rate of about 25%. Okay.

Another way of looking at it is you go to a breeder, you get a puppy from a reputable breeder who has been breeding for what it is you're looking for. If you're looking for a hunting dog, are they breeding hunting dogs? Are you looking for a search dog, a working dog? Are they breeding working dogs? and get a puppy and work up with that. But just because it's a puppy doesn't mean that they're all going to act the same. Sure.

But you get about an 85% success rate with going through the puppy and through a reputable breeder. And it does give you, I do promote reputable breeders, and that's, you know, I'm probably going to get a lot of slamming from people who only have rescue ducks. If you want a nice pet, have it in your home, rescue a dog. Absolutely, yeah. But if you want a dog that works, if you want a dog that you're training and that you have a purpose in its life, then you need to go to a reputable breeder because that breeder is going to give you advice. Right. I mean, I've had German Shepherds, when I came home from the hospital as a newborn, there were German Shepherds in the house. Okay.

You've been around them all your life then. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when you look at it, I know a lot about German shepherds, but I can't tell you the number of times I've called up the breeder and said, I'm having problems with this. The dog that was in out of the storm, oryx. Okay. He stopped tracking. And I didn't know what to do.

I mean, he wouldn't track. I called up his breeder. And his breeder goes, I've got to go to nationals. He was Hungarian. Okay. Meet me in Buffalo, New York. So I took him to Buffalo, New York. He spent all his time working with a dog and me on how to track.

He'd be like, oh, wait, I'm doing the stadium. I'd be back. And he'd go and he'd compete with his dog. And then he'd come back and he spent four days helping me with my dog to get him to track again. That's amazing. Another breeder, a good breeder takes back their dogs if they don't work. Okay. So the dog on the cover of this book was taken back by the breeder.

He went and visited the dog. He just dropped in on the family. He did that when he was anywhere near where his puppies were. Hi, how you doing? Wanted to see my puppy. He realized she was being intimidated. Okay. And said, here's your money back and took the dog.

Wow. Nobody messed with his dogs. Sure. That's reputable breeders. Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Versus these puppy mills that you hear about that I think that probably gives the industry a bad rap.

Yeah. And I mean, I know some people who worked in the rescues and the rescues were buying the puppies. They didn't have any dogs. So they were going to other rescues and paying the other rescue and bringing the dogs up to the Chicago area from other states. Really? So, I mean, think about it carefully. I mean, the other thing is talk, if you want a dog that's already partially trained, you don't want to go through the puppy stage, talk with breeders because a lot of times when they've got a breeding stock, when that dog's ready to retire, it's seven, eight years old. You've got another five, six years, and you've got a completely trained, housebroken, love to hang out in your family dog.

That's awesome. That's wonderful. Well, Sherry, you've shared a lot of great insights, and I appreciate you taking the time here. It's a lot of golden nuggets you've shared, and I'm sure our readers love the conversation as well as looking forward to diving into Killer Run. I know it's going to be out very shortly here, and exciting things are happening. And if you want to learn more about Sherry and her books, Sherry, what's the best way for them to reach you? Probably by email. Okay.

I do have my author website. Which is Sherry Gallagher.com. It has my books on it. Okay. I do work with a search and rescue team. So on Facebook, it's German Shepherd Search and Rescue Dog Association of Illinois. Okay. So anytime I'm doing anything with training with dogs, it's out there, we do not post anything about active searches.

Okay. For privacy reasons of the people involved. and sometimes there are actually ongoing criminal investigations so we can't do anything. Sure. And then I am on Facebook. If you want to reach me there, you can hit me there. Wonderful. But yeah, that's where I'm at.

Wonderful. Well, there you go, folks. So if you want to reach Sherry Gallagher, go to sherry Gallagher. Go to sherry Gallagher. You can see all about her author page and books. You can find her on Facebook, as well as go on Amazon. Just Google Sherry Gallagher or search for Killer Run. and you'll find not only that book, but you'll find all over other books as well, which I'm sure you'll all enjoy.

So I appreciate everything you've shared her today. Well, thank you very much for having me. You know, I always love talking to you, Marcus. Likewise, likewise. And I'm sure we'll be talking again. So there you have it, folks. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time on the Inside Track. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio. To hear all episodes featuring leading industry influencers and trendsetters, visit us online. at business innovators radio.com today.