The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mark M. Bello, Award Winning Author Interview

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Mark M. Bello, Award Winning Author Interview Markmbello.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss my folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com i am your host today i'm always your host really but today i'm also your host so there's that welcome to the show my friends and family of the big chris voss show family the family loves you but doesn't judge you i need to make sure to say that or coffee mode that way people can you know when they're sitting at their

table and looking at their family that doesn't love them and is harshly judging them they can just lift that coffee glass up and it'll say on the front, I belong to the Chris Voss Show family and they love me unconditionally. Within a certain degree. I mean, let's not push the unconditional too far. At least that's what the attorneys say. Then I get emails wanting to borrow money. Listen, here you go. Maybe that should be the byline of that. The Chris Voss Show, the show that loves you, it doesn't judge you, but you still can't borrow money from. And yeah, don't wait for the inheritance either. I'm going to spend it all on Vegas on, I don't know, gambling, I guess, or something. Whatever else you do in Vegas.

So guys, welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Be sure to further show your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats. Get them all listening to the show. Get them all subscribed. All my dogs with iPads are subscribed to the show. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisfoss. I'll have a group of some Facebook, LinkedIn, the big LinkedIn group, of course. The LinkedIn newsletter are pretty cool too as well. Subscribe to those. Today, we have an amazing multi-book author. He's an author of a ton of books and he's done those interesting things in his life. We'll be talking to him today about what he does and how he does it. Mark M. Bellow is on the show with us today. He's an award-winning author, attorney, social justice advocate. He's going to be on the show talking to us about his

stuff. As an attorney and civil justice advocate, he drew upon 40 years of courtroom experience in his Zachary Blake Legal Thriller Series. He's a Michigan native, received his B.A. in English Literature from Oakland University, and his law degree from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. After working extremely high-profile legal cases, Mark wanted to give the public a front-row glimpse of what victims face when standing up for justice. Welcome to the show, Mark. How are you? Chris, I love you. I won't judge you. Thank you. Well, don't judge that intro. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. There's one word in there. I don't know why.

You know, I always say to my guests when they come on, I go, how do you pronounce this or how do you pronounce that to make sure I don't butcher names or colleges or something? And I always get pronunciation wrong. How do I pronunciate that? And it's like, you know, I went to public school. What can you say? So give us your.com so we can find you on the winter. Enter

webs, please. Online? The last name is Bello, B-E-L-L-O. Uh-huh. I didn't hear the last part of your question. Oh, I'm sorry. The internet technology here. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs and learn more about you.

Markmbello.com. I made it easy. There you go. And how many books do you have, Mark? There's a whole lot I read of. You mentioned the legal thrillers. I have eight of those. Okay.

I actually wrote a Jewish cookbook. If you like Jewish food, there's a cookbook on my website. It's actually a funny little story. We have a large, large familyhuh and there's a family club for our 75th anniversary they put out this little pamphlet cookbook and i took the cookbook and made it the cookbook of my fictional character uh with permission of my family of course and republished uh a version of the cookbook so so that's on on my website. There's a novella that you can download for free on my website. That is a Holocaust-era novella that talks about Zachary Blake's grandfather

and what the incentive was for him to become a lawyer. It's sort of a prequel. And then finally, there's the children's book. I started writing social justice and safety books for kids on the theory that children are getting these messages too late in life. If you tell a kid, don't be a bully, and you tell him that in high school, he's already a bully. If you tell him that in kindergarten, maybe you can prevent that from happening.

If you tell a kid, don't let your parents drive while talking on the phone or texting as they're driving down the freeway at 80 miles an hour, maybe the kid in the backseat says, hey, I read a book. Don't use that. These are messages I think that kids are getting too late. Typically, you'll start talking about distracted driving in high school when you're getting your driver's license. I think that's much too late. So I've written children's books about those kinds of topics you should do

one on on pregnancy contraception because every way i know they find out too late how that works you're you're right about that i'll leave that to the parents yeah when i was in high school i would tell my friends i'd be like you didn't know that's that's what happens when you know where you got you got the woman pregnant already. I mean, come on. Yeah. By then, it's too late to my understanding. No, you're right.

You're right. Other than that, though, there's 10 books on my website right now. Yeah. Eight of them are these legal thrillers that we're talking about. Nice. You know what you could also do is people that have teenagers. I see all my friends that are in their 50s now, like me, they have teenagers and they're always complaining about them. I'm like, the reason I didn't have kids was because I knew they would become teenagers. No question.

And evidently they needed a book for that as well. And I had children from age 36 to 43, and they were teenagers. And I'm telling you, I don't know how I survived. That's why I have little hair and gray hair. Teenage years are hard to survive. That's probably why you wrote all these books is to pay for all that. So let's talk about your series of books here, your big series, the Zachary Blake Legal Thriller Novels First. Let's talk about that and tell us about what that's about.

Your main character, as you're running through there, I imagine, is named Zachary Blake. Zachary Blake is a combination of my son, whose name is Zachary, and my nephew, whose name is Blake. So I named the character after my son and my nephew. Nice. The way the series came about is kind of an interesting story. Back in my 30s, as I indicated, I'm 70 now. Back in my 30s, I handled a case against the Catholic Church, one of the many scandal-related child abuse cases by clergy in the Catholic Church.

And the fact that there's a pedophile priest or a demented individual, that happens everywhere. That's not an unusual thing. you can be a predator and be a rabbi you can be a predator and be a priest you could be a predator and be an ordinary citizen a lawyer a broadcaster a podcaster well it's not that's not that's not that's not that unique what's unique is the way the church handled it. And what happened in this case and in many, many others, as is shown in the movie Spotlight, if you recall that, it was an Academy Award winning film about the Boston scandal. They covered it up.

Not only did they cover it up, but they would hide the priest's pred what's the word predilection pred pred well their history they were moving to other the priest's propensity let's say for pedophilia and worse than that once he committed a crime in detroit they would transfer him to cleveland he committed a crime in cleveland and they transfer him to Cleveland he'd commit a crime in Cleveland and they'd transfer him to Baltimore so I decided when I handled that case found out the extent of the cover-up found out the extent of the problem that the church is having and is still having I'd one day write a book about it I didn't know it would take me 40 years, and I started it a long time ago. But having children, as we just discussed, having a practice, having a full-time occupation got in the way.

And here I am at 64, 65, about to retire, and I picked up the book and decided to fulfill my bucket list and write it full time and the result was my first novel which is called Betrayal of Faith and it's a fictionalized account of what I actually went through embellished quite a bit but what I went through in dealing with the church

and exposing the cover-up and getting my client justice. Oh, wow. Does it deal with the same topic of what we just described? Is it? What about? Say it again. Does it deal with the same topic of a priest? Okay.

It's about a pedophile priest who molests two boys his mother wants justice she hires a down-and-out lawyer named zachary blake who becomes her crusader for justice and that's essentially what the premise of the book that's awesome awesome that's that's really awesome man that's that's awesome So the whole series is that, or does he go on other adventures throughout the book? No, that would be quite an eight-book series on pedophilia. I don't know. I couldn't do that. But anyway, from a history standpoint, I thought I was a one-and-done author. I had a bucket list item that I wanted to write. I wrote the book. It won a few awards. It did well.

And I started looking for the so-called second book. And then the 2016 election came along. And I don't know what your politics are or what the politics of your audience is, but my politics are moderate, left-leaning. Democrat? I have voted Republican. I vote mainly Democrat. Yeah, I'm a moderate Democrat as well.

So I'm watching the election unfold. I'm not like that. And I'm listening to a certain candidate talk about shooting people on Broadway or Fifth Avenue about deporting all Muslims, about closing borders along the Mexican or the southern border. And I'm saying, what would happen if a self-professed bigot became president of the United States? Excuse me. It had that effect on me so i decided i'll write a book about this i this is before the election happened i finished the book around november 1st 8 late october i posted on amazon i publish it and lo and behold i didn't

think he'd win but lo and behold he wins the election did you have a character a big orange guy in the the character is a guy by the name of ronald john who basically adopts for lack of a better way to say it much of the rhetoric of donald trump um and and i thought okay he'll lose i've written this book it's kind of interesting in in the comparison would he have been would he have been the kind of president i wrote about yes or no that's what i expected the questions to be lo Lo and behold, he wins, and he becomes the kind of president I wrote about. Wow. Well, it wasn't hard to predict. So now I'm online.

Human behavior. So now I'm online. I've got this book published, and I'm getting attacked by the right-wing media for doing a, quote, hit job on President Trump. So they were triggered and my response has has been has been today has been then and is today if you see a similarity between the president i wrote about and he became it's on him not on me my guy came first yeah i. I wrote the book. He decided to be that president. Well, you know,

the thing about that whole thing is, is if you understand human nature and I've done business with people like Donald Trump and I, the extreme narcissism, it's not that hard to predict where that was going to go. Like now I'm running around screaming, punching people who said I was insane in 2015. And I'm like,

see, we, we told you what he's going to try and do. And hopefully that gets us all to the Justice Department. I won't say that I was a genius for predicting what happened. Because as you say, it was quite predictable. But my point is that he had a chance to be a guy who just spouted political rhetoric to get elected. He had a chance to do. He had kind of a mandate, if you think about it.

Yeah. You know, a change candidate, if you will. He had a chance to be somebody different, and he chose to be who he was. And that's on him, not on me. Exactly. When people tell you who they are, believe them. Yep. So that was interesting. You do have a book you mentioned on Jewish cooking and stuff like that?

I did. By the way, that book, the presidential book, is called Betrayal of Justice. There you go. That was my second book. And that's part of the Zachary Blake series as well, huh? Blake is hired. A young Muslim woman gets accused of killing a white supremacist, and Blake is hired to represent her. The president, the new president,

finds out that this woman is accused of murder in Michigan, and he wants to use her situation as his poster child for a Muslim band. Oh, wow. And that's the premise of the novel. Murder, you say. That's pretty wild. And so the whole series is different scenarios

that Zachary Blake goes through? Yes, different criminal or civil cases, interesting stuff that is like justice and to a smaller degree like faith, because faith, obviously, clergy abuse and pedophilia in the church is a newsworthy topic and a real topic uh and a real headache for the church so both of those books were pulled from from so-called headlines issues i took that and the series is basically picking and choosing various issues that have come up in our society over the last, I would say, five, six years, like white supremacy, like cops shooting innocent black people, like school shootings, like a Supreme Court justice candidate committing a sexual assault, like the immigration crisis. And there's a book of your choice on those topics and more

so that's kind of what I write about so most every one of the books is going to have like some different featurettes of pulled from the topical things that are out there today fictional accounts which allows me to embellish

there you go the Jewish cookbook that you have. Yes. I love my Jewish friends. It's one of my favorite religions because it's the one they never try and sign people up at. They don't knock on your door on Saturday morning and interrupt your hangover to try and get you to, you know, believe in Joseph Smith. Hung over on Manischewitz, right? Exactly.

I'm going to pretend i knew what you said but i you know i i use the words oyen veil a lot when i'm around my niece and nephew who i'm not allowed to swear around but you know there's one problem i have with the jewish people and i don't think i ever say this right i think i'm gonna correct you jefelta fish is it is that pronounced right? The. Gefilte fish? I still didn't catch that. Gefilte fish? Gefilte fish. Okay.

Gefilte. That's the problem. You pronounced it wrong. Yeah, I am. It's gefilte. Gefilte fish. There's no such thing as a gefilte fish, by the way. I've seen that in the jar.

It's a. It's a. Is this. Is this a video or an audio just an audio it's video it is a uh packed if you know what a matzo ball looks like yeah yeah that's what a gefilte fish looks like it's it's a bunch of different cuts of fish and they pack it together and make up gefilte fish and then they put it in a jar and it's it's an acquired taste especially for a non-jew that's what a lot of my friends who are jewish tell me they're always like yeah it's the older folks

that like that it's not the younger folks well there's also you know different recipes so so you know if if if aunt sadie makes gefilte fish her gefilte fish is different than your mother's. Or great aunt Sophie is different than both of those. So there's no consistency to gefilte fish, and that's part of the problem. I just like to never see that again. Like, I just...

That's the only problem I have with the Jewish people, is I see that in the jar at the store, and I go, please don't eat that. The secret ingredient, my friend, is horse radish. Well, I mean, and I go, please don't eat that. The secret ingredient, my friend, is horseradish. Well, I mean, if I put horseradish on a dog turd, I'll get in some soup for a while. Probably good, too. I don't know.

That's my joke I do. So what sort of recipes are in the book? Oh, there's all kinds of recipes. Is there any gift? Brisket, apple pie, trifle, chicken soup, matzo ball soup, gefilte fish, to your point, Passover dishes, high holiday dishes. You name it, kugel. Some people pronounce it kugel. Some people pronounce it kiggle.

It depends on whether you're Ashkenazi or what have you. You name it, it's there. It's an interesting little book, and it's kind of funny. There's a bunch of anecdotes in it from my actual family. I invented some anecdotes from Zachary's family. I tell a few jokes in the book. It gave me some license to have a little fun instead of being so ripped from the headline serious all the time.

Well, that's got to be good. That's got to be good. You had the children's book. You had the series. What haven't we touched on about what you're doing? The children's book is Happy Jack, Sad Jack, a bullying story. It's about a

biracial kid who was bullied in kindergarten and to the point we were discussing earlier about catching kids at younger ages i felt that topics like that topics like distracted driving which is going to be the next book in the series, are important to get a kid at an early age rather than waiting until they're teenagers. I thought the book about the priest catching kids at an early age was that age, the typical age that kids are involved in these situations are 11 and 12. So to your point, you're right. I mean, this stuff should get to a kid much earlier than their teen years. Yeah, definitely stranger danger. So there's that.

Yep. That's actually pretty insightful. What does your fan base think of the series that you have, the Zachary series? My family has been moderately supportive. It takes a lot of my time. It takes a lot of effort. It pulls me away from retirement and family time, and I get a lot of pushback about that. You know, hey, Poppy, come swimming with me. Hey, Poppy, I thought you were going to take me for ice cream.

And I try to balance both of those things. And sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. They like my books. My adult children have read all my books and enjoy them. I'd force them on my children. I'd like read to them at bedtime whatever books I wrote, which would probably be boring because my book is business, and they'd just be like, where's the thrill in it? It's hard to read a business book at bedtime. How to be a better leader, Johnny.

I know you're five, but you really need to take more control of your preschool class. No question. I want to see preschool president out of you for the student body. I don't even know if they have that. You know, he's sitting there. Time management for preschoolers. Time management for preschoolers. The next book coming for us from Chris Wuss.

You know, you got to target that market early. Absolutely. When they grow up and they're like, when they become ceo of at&t someday they'll be like what what made you you know achieve this high position they'll be like when i was in preschool podcasting for for kids how about that he also had another book how to poop in your diaper no i'll share i'll share i think that's my first book my my seven-year-old grandson dylan comes comes to me with a a book it's got a bunch of pictures in it and he calls it the poop book and he wants me and he wants me to publish it so i he and i are working now together to publish the poop book by by dylan as told to poppy so we'll

see we'll see what happens that sounds like a load of anywhere there's like an endless amount of jokes i can do on that maybe that's what you should call it a load of whatever is it to help people a lot of poop is it help is it to help children understand what the what the whole you know we're getting things going on there and why why we do what we do i like it some people are full of it so there you go you could do a whole series of that i have a friend who writes these these books these really popular on tiktok and they're really irreverent sometimes disgusting but i mean they're they're cartoon books that are targeted towards you you know, the younger crowd. People like Mad, you know, they liked Mad Magazine and stuff like that. I'm working on that.

As an old guy, TikTok is, like, new to me, and I'm still struggling with how to use TikTok as an author. It's very interesting. We're still trying to figure out how to use it right. Because, I mean, I don't, my face and my whole image doesn't appeal to people who, I don't know. No, you don't think? No, they really don't. Like, even on YouTube, they just go, yeah, this is too highbrow for us. We might have to use a brain cell or two. I think that might be true.

Well, that's not my problem. But yeah, it is. Anything more you want to touch on or talk about before we go out? I can talk about individual books if you'd like. I can talk about, you know, you name a legal topic or a social justice topic, and I'll give you my thoughts about it. But whatever you'd like. All right. I'm easy, man.

Does the Justice Department have the authority to indict a sitting president or a previous president? And I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Well, the answer is yes. Well, it looks like the- The answer is yes, they have the authority. And it's whether they have the gut to do it.

That's a different question. Does Merrick Garland, the, so, I mean, basically you took your 40 years experience as a, as a attorney and wove it into a lot of your book series, which probably gives you, I mean, basically, you took your 40 years experience as an attorney and wove it into a lot of your book series, which probably gives you, I mean, you probably have a ton of material. Are you going to continue to do that series? The Zachary series? Right now, I'm working on a kind of a hybrid between romance and law. Because romance is a hot topic. Is it a divorce card book?

It could be. I have a concept in mind, but I'm not ready to share it yet. And I'm also working. The two hot topics in Amazon land, from a fictional standpoint, are cozy mysteries and romance so i'm trying to take advantage of those genres and see what i can do with those women love those romance novels so zach zachary might appear in those novels but he's not going to be the focus of those yeah but i think once you go over there you have a hard time getting out i've got one

gal who's been on the show a couple times she's wrote like a whole mess of romance novels she's like god in romance novels and then she started writing some other sort of just normal novels okay normal loves and so she had a it's a r tory t-o-r-e-a-r is her initials and i can't remember if those are for her new books or her old books, but she had to set up a different pen name to deal with the separation of her brand. That's the other question, whether or not the book is going to be something that I'm going to release in my own name. So we'll see. It depends if it's that salacious sort of stuff.

I mean, men read Playboy. Women read romance novels. They have all their stuff in their head. Anything is possible. I haven't decided yet. Yeah. Those are the things I'm working at. It depends on if you've got one of those covers that when you look at it,

you feel a little like you should go take a shower sort of thing. You've got to wash your hands. You've got to wash your hands. You're like, oh, I can't wash my eyes out. you feel a little like you should go take a shower sort of thing. Those are the ones that come to mind. You got to wash your hands. You got to wash your hands. You're like, oh, I wash my eyes out. What's going on there, man? Some of these things, my kids are around. Jesus.

You know, it's like, what was that other one that all the ladies loved? Gray, something gray. The gray whatever. Dorian Gray? No, it was the one that all the chicks bought, the gray whatever dorian gray no it was the one that the all the chicks bought the gray series the the guy was the rich oh shades of gray okay shades of gray i got you i never read that 50 50 shades 50 shades of gray that was it yeah so there you go so it's interesting and so people people who like legal stuff will probably really enjoy your novels then.

I believe they will. If they like certain legal thriller authors, obviously John Grissom comes to mind. If they like stuff like that, they'll like my novels, no question. That's a good angle. You know, you should write a book, you know. You can call it Jackson Brown. You know Jackson Brown, remember that song, Lawyers in Love? Mmyers in Love You could call it Lawyers in Love Sure a lot of lawyers

We could If I do the romance thing Yeah Lawyers in Love They're like You've got two lawyers I think that's been used by the way A testimony table and the judge is like

Hey knock it off or something. I don't know. If you need scenarios, just call me. I can come up with a few. Clearly. Anything more you want to touch on, Mark, before we go out? I'm good, man. Whatever you want to talk about, I'm here to talk about it.

If you want to say goodbye, I'm here to say goodbye. Whatever you want to do. It's your show, man. Is there anything more we want to promote while you're here? Promote, promote, promote. Yeah, it's all about promotion, my friend. No, I'm good on that end. There you go.

All right, well, give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. They can find my books on Amazon or any other online bookseller. They're not typically found in bookstores, although there are a couple of outlets that have purchased and carry my books. Nice. Bookshop.org is a nonprofit booked to local bookstores bookseller and there's a value it seems to me in

in maintaining the integrity of your local bookstore that makes a that makes bookshop.org a great place to purchase books and all of my books are available on Bookshop. But they're generally available at all online booksellers like Kobo, like Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, and so on. I have audiobooks on Audible and Chirp and Findaway. The first five of my novels are available as audio. The children's book is also is also available only on amazon so there you go as is the novella the novella or at my website which is markmbello.com there you go that's my story and i'm sticking to it that's the story sticking to it you were since you're returning i should have had you swear on a stack of Bibles and take an oath.

But we'll believe you for now. It sounds like a good story. And I've checked it out. I've seen your stuff. So really interesting. Thanks for coming on, Mark. We really appreciate it. My pleasure.

There you go. Guys, order up his books. Be sure to go wherever fine books are sold. But stay away out of those alleyway bookstores because you might need a tetanus shot or you might get shanked. You know, I've been there. I've seen it happen. Don't do it. Go to wherever fine books are sold and order up his books.

Go to see everything we're up to on goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. All our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places. Just put Chris Voss, The Chris Voss Show, and you'll find it. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.