The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Wrong Side of the Flame: A Brighid LaFlamme Mystery by Renaii West

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

The Wrong Side of the Flame: A Brighid LaFlamme Mystery by Renaii West Renaiiwest.com https://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Side-Flame-Brighid-LaFlamme-ebook/dp/B0CP8W6N99 Brighid LaFlamme, Belly dancer and fire performer, is the undisputed leader of a tight knit group of friends she has dubbed her Fire Buddies. When they are not performing at Renaissance faires or other events, they can be found enjoying alternative forms of adult entertainment and activities at the local kink-oriented venue. When one of her Fire Buddies, who had recently distanced himself from the group, dies, she has trouble accepting the official story of a tragic accident and becomes determined to learn the truth, despite the challenges and discouragement she faces. Dragging her buddies into this journey, and picking up a few new friends along the way, Brighid discovers the darker side of ambition, talents she never knew she had, and the value of friendship. About the author Renaii West has been writing and performing from an early age. After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she became the dramatic arts instructor in a performing arts program, where she wrote and directed many of her own productions. Desiring to spread her creative wings, she is now creating fun-loving and sometimes quirky characters who inadvertently find themselves in the middle of a mystery and must use their wits and cunning to solve the case. Her passions and hobbies include mythology, classic films, travel, belly dancing, yoga, jigsaw puzzles, and, of course, mysteries.

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That's the coffee's for. Well, you're almost legal. Yeah, I'm almost legal. That too. Or it depends on what the FBI decides this week. I get one of my five ankle bracelets off, but mainly because I always, change the, I always remove the labels from mattresses. That's my thing. Anyway,

don't do that, folks. That's what the judge says. Anya guys, for the show, friends and relatives, go to goodrease.com, for chest, crissfoss, LinkedIn.com, for chestchischrist, Foss, YouTube.com, for chestacchusfus, and remember, leave those labels on your mattress or else. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may by advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, we have a returning guest. She was on yesterday with one of her books that we got the chance to talk about.

We're going to talk about another book that she has. She has several books. It is entitled, The Wrong Side of the Flame, a Brigid Bridgett. Bridget Bardot. Let me recut that. The wrong side of the flame, a Bridget La Flame mystery. Out December 4th, 2023 by Renee West. We're going to get into with her and all of her details and find out more about her and her books that she keeps writing that you need to read in order from Amazon today. Damn it, just go now today. Renee West has been writing and performing from an early age after earning her

Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She became the dramatic arts instructor in a performing arts program where she wrote and directed many of her own productions. Desider spread her creative wings. She's now creating fun-loving and sometimes quirky characters who inadvertently find themselves in the middle

of a mystery and must use their wits and cunning to solve the case. Her passions and hobbies include mythology, classic films, travel, belly dancing yoga, jigsaw puzzles, and of course, mysteries. And yesterday we let off with her book that should pop up here in one second and got into, what was the book that we covered yesterday, Renee? Death by chaos. The internet was moving slow. Welcome to show. Renee, how are you?

I'm doing well, thank you. I had a blast yesterday. It's all downhill from here. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interim? Okay. I'm at my website is www. Reneywest.com.

And Renee is spelled a little differently. It's R-E-N-A-I-I-W-E-S-T, like the Wicked Witch of the West or Westside story. And then I also have a Gmail, Renee West, spelled the same way, at gmail.com. Ah, there we go. So give us a 30,000 or you. What's in this new book?

This new book is called The Wrong Side of the Flame. I'm going to bring it up here. It's won a few booths. I can't really see that stickers. It won a few Book Fest Awards. And I like to say I designed that cover. I did not. But many people seem to like this cover.

But anyway, it's another, it's a different group of kids. I call them kids. They're much younger than my goddesses from the first book. They are basically, they're a little outside the edge. Some people might call them odd ducks or maybe even weird or whatever. The three ladies are belly dancers. One is a fire performer.

And their friends are also fire performers as jugglers and whatnot. They perform quite a bit at street fairs, Renaissance fairs, quite a bit. And also, they hang out at maybe interesting venues, maybe more adult-oriented venues. Ah, I think I'll get your drift there. Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you. And what happens, there's a person that joins them. She has many friends, but this is her core group. Bridget is the leader of the band there. She's the ringleader. She has just nicknamed that group her fire buddies. It's term she got in college. And I actually got that term in college as well.

So I always liked that term. So I kept it. Somebody has joined them and was with them for a while. But she noticed at some point, she's noticing the relationship is weird. He's become aloof. He's become distance. It's a little bit awkward. And she's also a little worried about some of the new company he's keeping.

And what's going to happen? is somebody in the story does not make it out alive. This is what mysteries are all about. And it is ruled a tragic accident and Bridges, I know. And all other friends, her

fire buddies are going, what can we do? Deal with it. And she's no. And so she goes on a journey and of course she has to drag them along and as always they find other people they drag along and she does discover the truth. Uh-huh. Yes.

Can you tell us what the truth is or do we need to buy the book to find out? I think you should find the book. Yeah. Most people are happy with the truth. Okay. Yeah, it's one of the things where you've got to read it. Now, you've written two other books, I believe. Was it two other books from going from memory here?

Okay. I've written Death by Chaos. Wrong side of the flames. My second one. And there's a third one that should be out in February, April. Okay. To be ready for April. Now, is this part of a series, this book, The Wrong Side of the Flame?

It's going to be, this is the debut. So I don't have a second one yet. It seems I had the goddesses and this is the fire buddies. And then I did the goddesses again and then I'm going to do the fire buddies. Ah, lots of things. It's like two different. Yeah. It allows me to explore different worlds.

Yeah. Yeah. It gives you lots of different things you can take and do. Is there any connection to the characters and who you chose to? Is there a little bit of you in here or some of you in here? Oh, definitely, definitely. I've been asked because I have presented maybe people who are a little bit outside on the edge and maybe a little edgy for a lot of people's taste.

And what happened is just for fun, at one point, I'm wanting to do something different, wanting to do a new form of exercise. I took a belly dancing. And I met a great group of ladies. And I just thought it, as a lot of us did, we thought we'd just be taking this class as it was through an adult education. And we end up spending a fortune buying the costumes, performing at Renfair Street, fairs, everything. Although we do not become as advanced as the characters in my book. We're always just like amateurs.

But we did dance in restaurants and get tips and all that good stuff. And that led us to explore the Renaissance fairs. And I don't know, that's a whole culture, subculture in and of itself. The Rennings, they're called Renny's. There are people who spend almost every weekend at a Renaissance fair. Oh, yeah. I met people in L.A. And people had flown out from back east in Texas for this one.

And they were going to fly out to another place for that one. And I just definitely became, and that was an interesting. group of people. And then they also, there was a crossover at some of these venues we got invited to, first to perform and then hang out. And I just thought, there's a lot of interesting, creative, resourceful people. And I found that a lot of times they were not presented in books or TV shows. They were either the creepy villain or they were that weird neighbor or something. and I wanted to present them in a much more positive light. And, no, as far as like fire performing, I love to tell the story.

I take ballroom dancing. Oh, do you? Yes. And that's my thing now. And as we were Christmas show, there's always these showcases. One of the guys who was much younger and edgy, and in the dance, they're dancing. And then all of a sudden he breaks away and is supposed to be Christmas ornaments. And he does that thing.

You might have seen the people that can juggle with that with the balls. And I went up to him later. I said, you do that with fire, don't you? And he said, how do you know? I said, I can just tell. And I said, this is your lucky day. We're going to schedule it. I'm going to take you out to dinner.

And you're going to tell me everything about fire performing. Ah. And you know, I knew a lot about fire performing, but I really got a lot out of him. It was. Yeah. I tend to dance a lot when I'm on fire, too. Yeah. No, it definitely is, yeah.

In fact, I had a, I think I had one friend who was a fire performer, he lost one of his eyes doing it. Oh, no. Yeah, I think some, I think a piece of flame or whatever he's doing with this twirly thing, and there's always shit coming off it because it's all wrapped up with stuff and took out his eye. But he kept doing it. So I was like, you only have one eye left. You might want to cut your loss.

here, buddy. He made a lot of money doing it at clubs until that, who's that band, Great White? Oh, my God. Had that horrific fire. And that kind of ended it because the fire insurance went through the roof on clubs and stuff. Yeah. Note to sell. I knew in my book promote the safety issues. Oh, yeah. And now this guy that I took to dinner, he admitted, now granted, he's only in his 20s. and he admitted that a lot of his friends don't follow the protocols. But I made sure in my book, my characters do. You always have a fire extinguisher and a first aid with you. You have to have so much room.

I made sure my characters, it's not lectured, but is mentioned. You give the suggestion there. Yeah, never do a fire twirling when you're in the hay barn. That's what I know. Yeah. It's not appropriate to do that or usually in the house. No. Definitely want to be outside.

But, yeah, so lots of fire and burning going on here in the book. So what do you hope people come away with when they read the book? In this book, fire, I consider fire one of the main characters. Okay. And I'm always fascinated with that whole pleasure, pain issue or the duality of anything. something can be a lot of fun until it's not. I always use the example, one margarita. That's good.

A whole picture, margarita, ah, not so good. It's finding the balance. There's a whole picture bad if you end up dancing on the tables and entertain everyone. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen. I ended up on the floor. You end up on the floor? And this got to be cleaned up, and that's all I'm going to tell you. Oh, wow.

Okay. Maybe it's two margaritas that I dance. Everybody's got to find their balance. If you're having margaritas, you're going to have trouble with balance here in the short time. So fire, the duality of it. And for fire, definitely. And so there's the idea of what you're going to sacrifice for fame, what you're going to sacrifice for your ambition.

We tell people to get out of their comfort zone. but sometimes the comfort zone is telling you this is where you belong. So I want people to the idea of and they understand that these characters are constantly figuring out the balance. There's the flame to stay on the right side of the flame. Obviously, you can get on the wrong side of the flame

and that's where you get burnt. And then like my first book, the idea of friendship, the idea of loyalty, What they, the efforts they put in to find the truth because they felt they needed, this would be justice for this person. And then so I hope they appreciate the characters. I hope they appreciate the love and affection they have for each other, the friendship. And again, the loyalty they have.

Well, he's a big deal. And you've intertwined a little bit of your life into this. When you start writing, I think we talked about this a little bit yesterday, but in case people miss that show will duplicate it a little. When did you begin writing? I think I've been writing my whole life, and I will tell the story again from yesterday. I remember starting to write a lot of poetry while in elementary school. And I didn't realize until years later, my mom was keeping a copy of everything.

And I think I must have been lost. I think I even appeared in some children's literature magazine or something. I think my mom submitted something. And I know I, for a talent show, because I can't really sing and I wasn't really a great dancer, I wrote for a talent show, I wanted to be in it because I was doing a lot of acting at that time. So I wrote a little murder mystery that me and a few friends performed. And so that was fun. Then I did when I was teaching drama, I was lucky enough to get into, it's called the School of Creative and Performing Arts. It was a magnet program within a regular program.

And we did two big productions a year, usually at the end of the semester. But most of the rehearsals were done during school hours during that class time. And I bet you know this, because I can guess what kind of junior high kid you were. If you don't give a kid something to do, they'll find something to do. And usually it's not what you want them to do. And I was a popular teacher. I had 30 kids signing up for each class. And I had to find a way to incorporate 30 kids in a play.

And because they just didn't exist. Wow. And so I just began writing. I begin. And to this day, I don't think they know this, although I'm friends with some former students, they might see this and they go, hey, I thought, this kid's really talented this way. I'm going to write the part this way.

Oh, and she's my leading lady. I'm going to write it this way. And then I would have auditions, like every, Like, everybody's for the chance. No, I already knew who was going to do it. Oh. Pustard. Yeah.

Or for the most part, but no. So I, and that was, I found that very satisfying. Yeah. More so than I thought, I did it out of desperation, but I found it very satisfying. And I found when I took up belly dancing and also I, with ballroom dancing, if I have a story, I just don't want to do steps. I have a story that I'm trying to tell. You may or may not get it.

It doesn't matter. It affects my mood. It affects my facial expression. And I just realized at some point I am a storyteller. I need to tell stories. I like telling stories. Yeah. We're the sum.

Our whole lives are the sum of stories. Yeah. If you erased your stories, who would you be? You'd be like, I don't know who would be. But you used to be sitting around and people like, hey, how'd you get here? And you're like, I don't know. I don't know if you know this song. Harry Chapin, he's famous for the taxi song and the Cats in the Cradle song.

He has a song called Short Stories that will, in the line of short stories that what we live, just take what I can give. And I think it's in a relationship with somebody and they're just going to have short stories. And I thought there's something to that. Yeah. It's stories are, sadly I didn't figure this out, even though I own a podcast, I finally didn't figure this out until 50, where it occurred to me that everything is stories, TV, television, theater, radio, my podcast, everything is sharing stories. And stories are the fabric of our lives.

I like that. And that's how we learn. There's no owner's manual that you get mailed. Mine got lost clearly in the mail. Everyone I talk to seems to still be using the United States Postal Service. And, yeah, I'm throwing shade. Iron. I put up with a shit from that division.

And yeah, where are the sum of our stories? And that's how we learn. We teach each other. So a lot of these stories have blueprints of survival, overcoming adversity, overcoming cathartic moments, stories of triumph, the phoenix rising from the ashes. We love these because it gives us inspiration and hope. And hope is one of the most endearing things that, frankly, is the last thing I can, is the one thing I can put up with human beings.

This is, these blankets, these are the phoenix rising from the ashes. Oh, okay. there we go. One of my favorite myths as well. See, I didn't even know I was doing a subconscious show tie in there to your background. Yeah. That worked that well. It was almost like a good planet.

Anyway, so yeah, the people love these stories. And we go through so many things. We go through tough times. And it's sometimes we think we're alone and the universe is just beating up on me and abusing me and the universe hates me. I should just quit and give up. And no, you can talk to a lot of other people and you can, Thank God, there's so many independent bookwriters and so much democratized data that you can take and go find if you want to research something, then you can find how other people survived.

And they'll give you their blueprints and they'll go, hey, here's what I did to get through whatever it was. And the grace is there that we can find hope again through each other, through our stories and we can learn. And hopefully we can be smart enough not to make the same mistakes, or at least not make those same mistakes twice. We just make new mistakes. Or five or six times maybe. Eight times, ten, whatever. I know people, they got a whole lifetime of, you're like, and how many times you didn't learn nothing?

Some people, that's the venture for them. They like that. All right. Now, you've got some upcoming, I think, speaking engagements or something like that we want to talk about? Yeah, I'm going to be participating in the, I think it's called the LA Book Fair, is on the USC campus. For those of you don't know, University of Southern California.

Okay. Go Trojans. Campus, I think it's the third weekend in April. Okay. And it's a big event. It's a huge event. My books were featured there last year. I did not attend.

I spent the last year getting two new knee replacements. Oh, wow. So I was in the midst of recovering from one. And you trust me, you know, I'm a dangerous driver to begin with. You did not want me driving with one. me. Yeah. And so anyway, but I will be there physically this time and I will be with my three books

and I will be signing. And please come up and say hi. And then last year I also participated in the Chicago Book Fair. It's on Printers Row. I'm not familiar with Chicago with the areas, but I know this area is called Printers Row. I think it's a historical area where I think there must have been a lot of printing. There must have been some printers, yeah. Yeah, really a huge book fair.

It'd be funny if there wasn't any printers there. I know. Anyway, it was definitely a lot of fun. Again, we'll be there as well. And again, I should have the third book up and they're ready to be signed and presented it as well. Forward to that, yeah. That should be a lot of fun. That should be a lot of fun that people can see out and about.

So as we go out, give people a final pitch out to pick up the book, tell them where they can find it online and all that good stuff okay it's the wrong side of the flame and and you can find it on amazon dot com it is available in this pretty paperback version also kendall and now audio the audio book as well so there it's been fun to have you on twice for nina thank you very much for coming on and then we'll look forward do you have any suspended date for that future book in the series The one, the third one murder at the Afterdusia. Again, it's in the process of being approved. I had to approve the layout, and I saw one correction that needed to be made.

And again, I'm not at all a manual labor person, unfortunately. So I don't know what's involved in getting these books printed. A lot of work. The physical aspect, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I've done everything at my end. You write the books and then somebody else does the rest. And then I can write them and stuff.

stuff, yeah. So did we get your dot coms? Any websites we want to promote before we go out? Okay, Ben, www. www. renaywest.com, R-E-N-A-I-I-W-E-S-T, and then Gmail at Reneewest.com. And then Renee W-W on, I guess it's called X. It used to be Twitter. Yeah. Yep. Or what we like to call it is Twitter. Fuck E-Long. I'm going to call it Twitter. I grew up on Twitter. I made my bones and my money off Twitter to start. And it's always going to be Twitter to me.

I miss it. Oh, yeah. I miss the old days of Twitter when it was still a kumbaya sort of thing. You know, who were a little bit more nicer to each other, maybe. All right. So we'll get into it there. And thanks for coming by the show. We really appreciate it.

All right. And thank you. Thank you. Folks order up for book wherever fine books are sold, the wrong side of the flame. A Bridget LaFlam. LaFleam mystery. Thanks for tuning in. Be good at each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you guys next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead. Ray, we got her done.