Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. And I have a personal friend I can call Carl that he lives here in San Diego. I live in Encinitas. He's actually down in PB. And I've known him for years, we've made contact over previous books, his Memorabilia book. And he has a new book, it's Murderabilia, I'm sorry. And he has a new book out called Saving miles, a novel. And it's an intriguing novel. And many of my listeners that come to this show, are definitely going to want to read this. He's won many awards for it. And I'm going to tell our listeners a bit about you Carl. Carl von Drew is an award winning author of crime fiction. As a child growing up in Cleveland, he loved to write his ghost stories scared the bejesus out of other kids. We got that coming up because it's gonna be Halloween. But it took a long time to become a full time author. He left Cleveland to study at Stanford and then spent more than 30 years as a banker in the US, Latin American North America. Those international settings were sources of inspiration for his books. His first novel, Murderabelia was published in 2019. In one, a Left Coast crime Award, and the best debut and a San Diego Book Award for Best mystery. His second novel savings, miles, was just published in August of this year, we're only a few months from there. He worked with nonprofits also important to Carl, he's president of partners in crime, the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports authors and fans of crime writing. He's also volunteers with San Diego Social Venture Partners, to mentor other nonprofits. And he lives in San Diego is two grown sons live close by and he says he wonders how he knows so much about serial killers and banking crimes. Well, this book is going to be it's because maybe he experienced someone

Carl Vonderau
Who says families don't have a secret.

Greg Voisen
Well, thanks for being on inside personal growth. And actually, this while this story is got intrigue in the novel, I'd like for you to tell the listeners about saving miles. It's a tackle some gripping and emotional topics. Can you give our listeners a brief overview of the story and what inspired you, because you have prior books about, you know, crime and murder and whatever. But this one's interesting about a kidnapping in Tijuana. And some crazy things that the parents or the father gets involved in. Can you speak about it a little bit?

Carl Vonderau
Sure. But first of all, I want to thank you for inviting me and it's a pleasure to be part of inside personal growth. Thanks very much. And thanks to listeners as well. I, you know, many things inspire me to write a particular book. And in this one, you know, I'd read the firm by John Grisham, many years ago, and I thought, hmm, I wonder what it would be like if a bank was owned by criminals. So that was kind of banging around inside my head for a long time. But the other side is that my books are character driven, probably more than their plot driven. And so my motto is that behind every crime is a family. So both for the perpetrators as well as the victims, the family really influences how the book what happens in the book because of the crime. So you know, you put those two things together. I was thinking to that, you know, there not many books done about money laundering. So I thought that would be it. And then finally, I've you know, I've done banking in a number of countries. And my books are multinational, in a sense. So I've got characters from Montreal, from San Diego, as well as Tijuana. So those international aspects are important, important part of the book. And you want me to tell you a little bit about what the book

Greg Voisen
we can we can go into these questions. And I think what will happen is it'll build on it because that's what this is about. It's novel, and it builds and you're what that kind of intrigue. Now, as you say, this, this book has family, and it also has parent child relationships. Yes, I'd like you to share the insights into dynamics between way the father Fiona the mother, and their son miles. And how this relationship impacts this narrative in this book, because there is there's no I don't even know if I want to call it dynamism. But there is this interesting relationship that's going on between this these family characters.

Carl Vonderau
Right? Well, they're very much and there's nothing so interesting is a dysfunctional family. So we've got three points of view in this book, The Fionna, that was the mother and wife weighed the father in miles, the teenage son. And Wade has been a workaholic father, influenced by his own father who worked himself to death. This is his idea of success. As a result, he's been absent, raising his son. And he feels remorse for that and wants to create a better relationship with his son. And with his wife, his wife, she got pregnant very early, and feels as if she had to give up her, her adventures in her 20s to raise her son. And her son has had lots of problems, and she's really rescued him. But when his problems really come to the fore, and the beginning of this book, she feels responsible for it. She's also she runs a nonprofit organization that helps save street children in Mexico. It's an orphanage, that, in a sense, is kind of a redemption for her for the way she feels about how she's failed at it, raising her son. Miles. On the other hand, he has always wanted to be closer to his father. But his father was never there. And miles additionally, has he repeated first grade. So he has this feeling of inadequacy as a result of that. Now he's a teenager, he both wants to be close to his father, and he really resents him for not being trying to be closer to him. And he, of course, is a teenager is totally influenced by romance and love. So girls are hugely important. He's very idealistic. Sex, Drugs, rock and roll. That's drugs and rock and roll.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. And I think the drug part is the part where you kind of see this story. Take a you know, he goes into this treatment center, after what you call a streak of harmful behavior, right. After a year of treatments, yeah, comes home, as you say, in the front of this book, with some seemingly rehabilitated seemingly is probably the right part. And then he heads to Tijuana to buy drugs. And he's kid kidnapped when he's in Tijuana, getting these drugs that he was supposedly rehabilitated from. Can you speak with us about this part of the story? I think, yeah. Really cool. How did you wove this all together?

Carl Vonderau
Sure. Well, first of all, when his mother found these drugs, Oxycontin in his closet, yeah, when he was 16. And they're the parents have a choice of you have to save your kid's life. Your kid is now behind you. So they sent him to against his will, to a residential treatment center in Utah. And these are really can be really tough places. Yeah, they are tough love, tough love. Very much like the military. His son hated it. But he came back with a much more sophisticated method for manipulating his parents. Because, you know, there's all kinds of psychological investigation that gets done at these and they come back with supposedly new attitudes and new ways to be more successful in life. But he of course, resents his parents for having sent him there. But so and if he's very attracted to girls, so when a girl wants to score drugs in Tijuana, it's like the perfect revenge and the perfect opportunity to read to really get back at his parents, even if he doesn't tell them. So that's what he does. And when he's in Tijuana, he has to pay for these drugs in a garage. But there's always a bit of goodness about him and heroism. He says, No, the girl cannot come with him to the garage, because it's he thinks it's too dangerous for him for her. He does it and he gets kidnapped.

Greg Voisen
So he's kidnapped his kidnapped and at this point, there's a ransom. Anyway, interesting you we have another character in here, which is Andre the banker. Yeah. And the Father Wade decides to get involved and sign an agreement with this banker to work for this bank to get the in to get the money he needs for this ransom. And then he becomes indebted to this cartel. Explain that. The story between Andre this crooked Hal banker. And what's going on?

Carl Vonderau
Well, Andre, I think in many ways is one of the more complicated characters in the book, because he is also has a New Age philosophy, he very much wants redemption for what he's done in the past. He follows a lot of sort of union principles. And he looks at the spiritual elements of alchemy. So he's got this, these two sides to him, he's also laundering money, and he's married to a woman whose family's involved with a drug cartel. But Wade doesn't know this. And neither does Fiona. Fiona has always admired him, and she works for Andre in his own foundation. She's admired him for being, you know, a spiritual man and in successful banker at the same time, that sort of anti Wade. So she pushes that Andre, they get involved with Andre. And Andre says, Look, I'll lend you the money. I'll help you negotiate. But in return, I won't wait to help build my commercial real estate at my bank weights a star banker, but what else do you do? They don't have the money. So when Wade goes there, he finds out that there's some really sketchy things going on at the bank.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it's a, it's a really good part of the book. Now, you know, you mentioned this, and I know you maybe don't want to get into this so deep. But in the writing process, I'm gonna ask this question. Did you draw inspiration from real life stories or individuals who had been involved in similar situations to those depicted in the novel? And I know you did, because you said you did. Do you want to comment about any of this? Because a lot of times when a novelist writes a novel like this, I was just on with another gentleman. And he called this a life fable. Well, this this whole life fable that I'm holding in my hands here, he then admitted it was about him. James, the character's knee? So I'm sure you're not as crazy as many of these people in this story, but tell us if there is a connection? And if so, where might it be? Well, I mean, we had we had a situation like this that happened in our family almost 20 years ago. Excuse me. And I'm getting you all choked up, you got to talk about Yeah. That's okay.

Carl Vonderau
Yeah. And, but I don't comment on the particulars of that situation. But kids that have these problems are quite common now. And the way it's portrayed in the first chapters of the book is quite often the way the parents deal with a situation they find a wilderness program, residential treatment center, somewhere. Yeah, somewhere. It's these two strangers they've hired they've never met before show up to accompany them there because the kid will go willingly. And you know, and it probably breaks their marriage apart. You know, so these things happen. Didn't happen to us. I mean, I've been married for more than 30 years. So the way that that happened with us was different than this. Yeah, I mean, there was no oxygen involved. There it can.

Greg Voisen
But you did have a real life kind of situation. And I I've had one myself, so I could relate to that as well. You know, the book explores this kind of dark side of humanity. You were just talking about Andre. It also highlights resilience and the strength of the human spirit. Can you share some of the moments of kind of hope or triumph in this story? So far, all we've talked about is the problems and challenges and the, the cartel and the kidnapping, and the kid on drugs. And where does it take a turn Carl?

Carl Vonderau
And then they die.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, I think Joseph Campbell always said you know it and the hero's journey, at some point most of all of these stories, or I wouldn't say all of them, but many of them are about the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey

Carl Vonderau
very much very much. And this is very much a hero's journey novel. And the three of them have a hero's journey, the father, the mother, and miles as well. I think there are some, lots of turning points here. For instance, when Miles is kidnapped, his father goes to Mexico and, and thinks about all the way he's failed to be a good father. And he thinks also that Miles has he, they've tried everything, and they just can't help him and his, his son is incorrigible, but he should have been a good father. And then he thinks, a good father would never give up on his son. And he doesn't the rest of the book, miles comes back determined feeling that he's responsible for his father having to had give up a career, a really good career to work at this other bank. And he, he wants to be a better person, he's trying to be a better person. He's trying to do the right things. Fiona realizes that what's most important in her life, she's having an affair with a much younger man, she really realizes that her family and the way that Wade needs her now is more important than any of that and it causes her to fall in love with him again. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Myles has fallen in love with his teenage girl. And he asked his mother, how she fell in love with Wade. And you can see you can feel the attraction that she had when she first fell in love with Wade. And it's also a very special moment for her because she gets to experience her son really falling in love for the first time. little does she know is with the wrong girl. But those,

Greg Voisen
there's always got to be a twist in there. Yeah, yeah. It's okay to fall in love. Just make sure it's with the right girl. No, but no, not in this book. Not in

Carl Vonderau
this book. No. I mean, there's a part where the father is trying to in trying to persuade miles that you know, I know it's tough. But one of the saddest things in life is that sometimes there are more important things than love. And the teenager doesn't even hear it.

Greg Voisen
Right? All right course. The hormones are running very intently.

Carl Vonderau
He's gonna save this girl. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Well, tell us now the book, you know, you've received all kinds of acclaim. It's got a gripping plot, and character development. And I heard you on another podcast talking with the guy about all the advice you got from your writing coach, the people that you helped you put this together? Can you tell us about your approach to crafting? I think many people out there who are listening might be interested in writing a novel, they maybe haven't written it yet. A suspenseful yet emotionally resonant story. And you know, it's quite a craft to be able to do this. And not everybody's cut out to doing this. I mean, these books take you a long time to write. And they go through many, many edit things. And you have to It's a team effort, isn't it?

Carl Vonderau
It is, it is. I tell people that my two most important qualities in writing have nothing to do with writing. And that is that patience, and tenacity. Those are the two most important things you can get better as a writer. But it involves rewriting and rewriting and getting outside advice on where your writing is good and where it fails. And so I've gone through a lot of that in in critique groups, et cetera. I mean, the problem that most beginning writers have is they send out material before it's ready, because they haven't gotten enough feedback. Because, you know, you've worked so hard on a book, it's, it's really everything inside you. You get anxious, you get it, you get anxious. You think you've gone through so many times you think it's wonderful. But it's not. And that's where you need out, you know, you need a critique group. I mean, many times I have one and I've been with them for 10 years now. Many times I'll think that I've done something brilliant. And they'll say no I missed the bar and on that this and this and this problem. And other times I think it's not particularly good. And they'll say, Well, you know, this is really quite fine. So my secret has been rewriting.

Greg Voisen
I said the two secrets were tenacity. Yes, just stuck with patience, and patience. Because how long did it actually take you to evolve from the concept in the plot of mile saving miles to writing it, to getting it published? What was the timeframe now it was like four or five years, you know, so for my listeners, don't be in a hurry. Carl's a guy who hasn't been in a hurry. And for that reason, his patients kind of won out and look at the acclaim and awards he got. Now, you know, look, there's lots of stories that hit the big screen, right? Whether it's Netflix, or it's Amazon, or whatever. Are you being chased? And or are you chasing anybody about turning this into a movie?

Carl Vonderau
Well, that's an interesting question. I had some interest from Hollywood for a TV series, three weeks ago. But we were waiting till after the writer strike, and it was a good director. And Santa's day before we were supposed to have a big zoom meeting, he cancelled it, because with the end of the writer strike, some projects that he thought were buried had now come to the fore. So we hope that at some point, you know, we'll have some interest in this.

Greg Voisen
But I hope you do, too. You know, Carl, I get asked this, and it's not redundant. But the story about this family caught up in this crime, a son is drug addicted, and the plot to obtain the funds and the ransom. You know, this allows the readers mind to go in a lot of different directions. But at the end, the end, do you believe it allows a reader to understand the own their own challenges they face in life? A lot better for having read a novel like this? Because it gives almost like a, you know, it's so suspenseful, it draws them in? It's kind of like a real life story. What would what would you tell the listeners out there?

Carl Vonderau
Well, I would say like in the hero's journey, the characters have to learn something internally, that helps them survive. And I think any family, particularly one with teenagers, sometimes it's a point of the family doesn't look like it's going to survive. But I think the the, the theme of this book is that no matter how broken your family is, and no matter how troubled your son or daughter is, there are still ways to come together, and forgive each other and learn to cherish each other again. And that's what happens in this book. I think also, it comes with a lesson that love means great sacrifice. And, and all of them have to learn how to sacrifice something.

Greg Voisen
Well, certainly Fiona, certainly weighed and certainly miles had to sacrifice quite a bit. And it's truly clear and evident, that you've allowed these characters in what may not be in somebody's real life was reading this, the allowing it allows them the intrigue of what maybe whatever their challenges are, to look at him in a different way. Maybe with not so much challenges you exemplified in the book? What would you like the readers to take away from saving miles and what lessons might they draw? From your really suspenseful and thrilling story that you've graded here in the book and by for my listeners, it's Carl Vonderau, v-o-n-d-e-r-a-u.com. Go to that website. There. You're gonna learn more about the book. You also can see him up on YouTube. There's some videos of him having done interviews. This podcast is going to be everywhere, Carl, it's going to be on iTunes and Spotify, and YouTube and all of those places. So please, once you guys get this, go out and check out Carl's website, don't go to Amazon and get a copy of the book. And Carl even has a spot at his own website. If you want to contact him. There's a contact there. There's a newsletter there. There's news there, there are events, there's book clubs, and the other books that he's written. So what I encourage you to go look at the at the events, he just told me a minute ago, he's going to be back in his hometown speaking. Pretty soon. It looks like he's been around like he's going to the book shop, which is October 21, from one to four. And then November 4, he's going to be a man of mystery Conference in Long Beach. And then on the 11th, he's going to be in partner in crime, virtual discussion. And all these things, you can find more, and he'll be at Diamond Bar library, which is a city just a little bit north of us in November. So you've got a pretty packed schedule here for the next month or so, Carl?

Carl Vonderau
So it is it'll be fun. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
This is gonna be fun for you. What is it that, you know, in that last question, I asked you, what are the lessons you want the readers out there, the listeners out there to kind of take away

Carl Vonderau
I think, never give up on each other in your family and being open to change. To make things better? I think those are the lessons. There, they're pretty basic, but they're so true and so hard at the same time.

Greg Voisen
Very insightful, I think, you know, change and not being so hard on yourself. Right? Right. These are less business forgiveness, right. forgiveness and compassion for not only yourself, but for others, I think is true. The fact that you were talking about Fiona, and Myles, and her kind of seeing him in a different light. That's very, very important. Even though all these choices weren't perfect, we all make choices at times that aren't perfect. And this is about a family that made some choices that probably could have been evaluated a lot better. But if that was the case, there would never be a novel.

Carl Vonderau
We better, better people because we screw up.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. So again, for my listeners, go to Karl's website, he says behind every crime as a family. And I think this most recent one that we all know about, because he used oxy cotton is the Sadler family. And I've heard some pretty eerie stories about that family. And that's definitely a family that was really screwed up.

Carl Vonderau
I've also always said that money just amplifies problems.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Well, there was a lot of money there and a lot of problems. You got that. Right. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth to talk about your book saving miles. Thank you for doing that. Thanks for taking the time. Thank you. I appreciate you. And I look forward to seeing you over coffee pretty soon, one day after you finish this crazy tour that you're on.

Carl Vonderau
Thank you.

Greg Voisen
Thanks so much for being on. Appreciate it.

Carl Vonderau
All right.