Brad Shreve:
This is Queer We Are. How about some good news for a change? Here on Queer We Are, my guests share stories of overcoming obstacles, doing good works, and hanging on to hope. If you want to hang on to hope yourself and be optimistic during these challenging times, you’re in the right place to find that motivation.
When I started writing, there was no doubt I wanted to be a mystery author. I have fun coming up with interesting ways to murder people in my novels, and it’s just as fun to kill off the nice characters as the bad ones. Fictional mystery novels are the second most popular genre, the first being romance. In both, the reader will always get a happy ending. Granted, the characters may not be happy in spirit in the mystery, but at least you know the crime will be solved and unlike real life, justice will always be served. Or almost always. If you read old newspapers or think of people surrounding a killer’s execution in town, there’s always been a fascination with true crime. Not long ago, those stories would trickle in, But today, we are overwhelmed because mass media has changed all that. We now have numerous 24-hour news networks. We also have TV shows like Dateline NBC. And, man, oh, man, if you want to get a big audience as a podcaster, your odds are best if you go for a true crime show. Last month, Edison Research released the list of the top 50 podcasts. The number 2 show is Crime Junkies. Number 5, Morbid. Number 9, the podcast version of Dateline NBC. That is 3 of the top 10 shows, and the list goes on. Yes, real crime is intriguing, but I worry, are we scaring ourselves to death? But what is the psyche of someone who spends hours creating true crime shows? My guest, Wendy Whitman, worked as an executive and producer of Court TV and the Wendy Williams Show on HLN. During her 20-year career, she covered nearly every major high-profile murder case in America. Can it affect you? She says Yes. So how does she prevent fear from consuming her? Well, I’m your host, Brad Shreve. And as I said, my guest is Wendy Whitman and hang on to find out because queer we are.
Brad Shreve:
Before my chat with Wendy, Did you hate gym class? Contrary to stereotypes, not all LGBTQ people did. Plenty of queer kids love sports, but may fear being themselves to their teammates. Adults too. Founded by pro baseball player Bryan Ruby, Proud to be in Baseball’s mission is to advocate, educate, and create opportunity for the next generation of LGBTQ baseball. It’s pastime for inclusion in America’s pastime. As part of your Pride Month, learn more at proudtobeinbaseball.org. Make a tax-deductible donation while there. Help prevent future generations from experiencing the same fears you may have had or have. Check the show notes for the link to Proud to be in Baseball.
Wendy, we’re going to delve into your career in true crime television, but you have my curiosity about something. Before you attended Boston University School of Law, you worked for 2 greats, George Carlin and Lily Tomlin. I have to ask, do tell, what did you do for them? And how did you go from there to the dark underbelly of crime for 2 decades?
Wendy Whitman:
That’s a good question. So I’ve been asked in a lot of interviews how I went from comedy to crime. And 1 of the things I say, just taking the question semi out of order, is at Court TV, we always use black humor to alleviate the stress of covering all these gruesome cases day in and day out. So I found that my comedy skills worked really well at Court TV, ironically, even though it was really awful, just awful, what we saw all the time. But yeah, so I went to law school before I worked for Lily Tomlin and George Carlin. And Lily was my first job right out of college because we had a mutual friend. And she said, oh, Lily’s going to be in town and could use some help. And that was when I was in Boston. And then Lily sort of needed help in New York for her show. So I ended up going down there with her and worked with her for a while. And then George, when I moved out to LA, worked for George. And they’re both comedic geniuses, and everyone compares them. And when they know I’ve worked for both of them, it’s an interesting dynamic. They had the same sort of approach to the way they wrote their material and all of that. But George was like a family. I was his, my wife was my best friend and very close. And I used to stay with them after I moved out of LA. So that was all that. So I think the transition when I was working for George, I sort of thought I might go to law school, and it sort of seemed like the right thing to do at the time. So it was an agonizing decision, but I ended up coming back east to law school. And then that was in the middle of the first OJ trial. So, I never really thought about journalism. But also, it never clicked with me because I knew I didn’t want to practice. Oh, that makes sense. I’ll apply to Court TV. And 20 years later, here I am.
Brad Shreve:
Well, I am so envious that you got to work and get to know George Carlin. I got to tell you that. Yeah, George was amazing. But if anybody’s gonna throw someone into true crime, it’s gonna be the OJ trial. Right?
Wendy Whitman:
Yep.
Brad Shreve:
So I don’t know if this is true today. I know 5 to 10 years ago, I read that, despite what people believe, we are living in 1 of the safest times in history. And the reason people live in greater fear is due to mass communication, newspapers, 24-hour television. You know, back in the past, if a baby was kidnapped in Florida, the people in California would never hear about it. So it’s news, news, news, news. It may not be as true anymore, but there’s still an aspect to that. So I’m gonna ask you, with your work that you’ve done with Court TV and the Nancy Grace Show on HLN, was it difficult to stay positive about life from those jobs?
Wendy Whitman:
Yeah, I think unfortunately, we saw the darkest, most awful, cruel part of humanity and human nature, in addition to people, especially the people who went out into the field covering the trials, became very paranoid. And because we would cover, you know, some defendants were doctors, some were lawyers, some were low lives, you know, ran the gamut. Anyone could be a murderer. You know, Ted Bundy was assistant to the governor, I believe, in Florida at the time. So it was hard to stay positive. And I think that’s why, again, mentioning the black humor, that was like our sort of group defense against everything we saw. The only thing I could say is the victim’s families are what motivated me to keep doing it because they need support from anyone they can get support from and they’re often treated very disrespectfully in court. Some of the stuff we saw. So I feel like I’ve always been a victim’s rights person, and I think the worst thing anyone can do is steal someone’s life away from them. They have no right to do that. So absolutely, the victims’ families were what motivated me to not quite stay positive, but to keep doing this and shining light on some of the really awful cases so people don’t forget about the victims.
Brad Shreve:
So do you see having worked in those forums as doing good work?
Wendy Whitman:
Yes, absolutely. I think it was an honor for me to be able to, like there was 1 particularly bad case, the Carr brothers case in Wichita. And when we did the sentencing, I just made sure we put their pictures up constantly and these people need to be remembered. Otherwise, it’s like everything went wrong. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s bad enough they were murdered. And then if no 1 even knows about it, thinks about it, remembers them, it’s like they never were here.
Brad Shreve:
We’ve kind of already started there, but I’m gonna break the rules on this show, and we’re gonna go straight to dark. Okay. Because we’re gonna pull out of it. Yeah. What were the most common crimes you covered, and what did you find the most disturbing?
Wendy Whitman:
I mean, we mostly covered murder cases, overwhelmingly. And I think what I found disturbing was at times how the judge might reprimand if a victim’s family was reacting to autopsy photos or any of the autopsy testimony, they would often reprimand the victim’s families and tell them if they couldn’t control themselves to get out of the courtroom, which I thought was a little insensitive, to say the least. Oh my God. But in terms of, So I think I had issues with some, some not all the time, obviously, but occasionally when something like that would happen because these people suffer so much. I think the actual just brutality of some of the cases, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom in Knoxville, Tennessee, had the most horrific deaths and their families, there were multiple defendants and their families literally lived in court for years, and they didn’t get the correct outcome from the trials anyway. And it’s really frustrating too, we put so much effort into covering these cases and calling people’s attention and trying to do it correctly and with some dignity. And then if you get a bad verdict, it’s like, what was the point of it all? You know.
Brad Shreve:
Back to what I said about the negative of mass communication. In Los Angeles, people were stealing catalytic converters right and left. In fact, they still are. And I have a family member who, like a lot of people I know who watch TV news hour after hour, she was and is absolutely certain someone is going to steal 1 of ours, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I would imagine focusing on crime and murders all the time, as you did, it can put you in that same mode, if not worse. How were you able to keep in perspective that there wasn’t a killer always around the next corner?
Wendy Whitman:
I think what I would do is, like, I always tell people that I get, I put a lot of this in the book, every case I would find some kind of a safety tip. Sometimes people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s literally nothing they can do, even in hindsight, to have saved themselves. But in certain cases, there’s specific things, Like there was 1 case where the killer snuck in under a broken garage door. And if the door had been closed, he might have had more trouble getting into the house. And that was a really awful case. Matthew Hoffman in Ohio, we called it the tree killer case. He was just a horrific, horrific murder case. So I think I did used to try to take safety tips away and I always felt that if I was getting into my car, I would look around and make sure there was no 1 around me and things like that. So I feel like from all the coverage I did, I always had a leg up, whereas a normal person who never thinks about this stuff might just not pay attention. We were always paying attention. We couldn’t help it. So I think in that regard, I felt safer. But on the other hand, I still felt paranoid, if that makes any sense. Because a lot of the crime is just random, and it could happen, especially if someone breaks into your home. What are you supposed to do about that?
Brad Shreve:
True, true. What is your biggest fear, and how do you keep from allowing it to consume you?
Wendy Whitman:
I would say, and I again mention this in a lot of interviews with the first book, my biggest fear used to be that I always thought I was going to be murdered. And I sort of think I ended up at Court TV, not consciously, but because I always like it’s sort of ironic I ended up working in murder as a kid. And I would say up until my late teens, I always had this fear I was going to be murdered. And I do attribute it to some degree to the awful cases I remember hearing about as a kid in the New York area and the newspapers. I think it sort of makes sense that I ended up covering crime from that fear. But today I don’t feel it as much. But then every time I think that, like, if I think, well, I don’t really feel that as much, I think, well, that has absolutely nothing to do with whether I could get murdered or not. You know, just because you are worried about something doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you. And just because you’re not as worried doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen to you.
Brad Shreve:
You know, those times when you and a friend or family member are trying to find something on Netflix and instead of watching you flip, flip, flip, flip looking at 1 movie after another, well sometimes your decision comes down to the reviews. And the same thing happens to podcasting. So for those that are searching madly for a new podcast, help them make the decision and leave a review for Queer We Are on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening to this show.
Wendy, after leaving television, what inspired you to be a writer?
Wendy Whitman:
Well, I think having worked in crime TV for 20 years, I always felt I had a book in me. And initially, I thought I would write a nonfiction book on maybe a specific case or the legal system or something like that. And one night, I woke up and realized how I could do everything and wanted to do it in a fictitious crime thriller. And I wrote till five in the morning, and also I realized I was going to be able to write a book. And I made myself read a certain number of pages a day, every single day for like three or four months, because I knew if I didn’t do that I you know, writing is very individual, everyone has their own method of what works for them. And nothing’s right or wrong. So for me, I immediately stopped reading because I didn’t want to subconsciously bring anyone else’s work into mine. And I haven’t read I’ve read a book since I started writing, which, you know, some people do this that way some people don’t. And I knew I had to write a certain number of pages a day, or I wouldn’t finish it. And that’s how I got the first draft done.
Brad Shreve:
It’s funny for me to hear you say some people do this. I used to be a moderator in a beginning writers group, and we’d have some members say something like, you must do it this way. And now I moderate a podcaster’s group and we get the same thing. And we have to jump in and say, hey, there are best practices, but there are no rules, at least none that are engraved in stone.
Wendy Whitman:
Exactly, no, it’s very personal, very personal.
Brad Shreve:
You write about serial killers, which is always fun. For some reason, I have a fondness for serial killer novels. Maybe I should ask my therapist about it. You touched on it, but based on what you learned covering true crime and your fears, do you find writing these cathartic?
Wendy Whitman
Oh, totally. The first 1 particularly was because I knew exactly what I wanted to put in the book, and I was able to do it through the protagonist’s point of view and her thoughts and things like that. So that technique worked really well for me because I don’t know how many people have put. I put bits of 20 true cases throughout the first book, and I put a bunch of cases in the second book sort of through the killer’s point of view. So it worked in both books. And it came out naturally. So for me, that really worked well, getting in the book what I wanted to get in the book. And again, there were a couple of cases, like Channon Christian and the Carr brothers case that I thought got cheated in the media. So I mentioned that a lot. And Kitty Genovese, who was an infamous 1 in New York years ago, who was supposedly, you know, murdered in front of endless witnesses who did nothing and stuff like that. So, it was total therapy for me.
Wendy Whitman:
In your own words, what does the phrase, I’m happy, mean to you?
Wendy Whitman:
I think I’m happy to me would just translate into feeling peace, feeling peaceful. I equate happiness with inner peace, not inner peace in the way that might’ve just sounded. That you can go to bed at night and not be tossing and turning, that you’re doing everything wrong in life, and you should have done this, and you should have done that. I think at some point, it’s hard. People tend to compare themselves to other people, and they compare by their ages where they should be in life and what they should have accomplished. And then there’s a definition of what is accomplishing. Is it just money, money, money? We live in a society worldwide, not just America, where many people measure someone’s success or quote, happiness by how much money they’ve made and things like that. And I think as you get older, you look at life differently and you realize you have to be happy. Everything you do at the end of the day has to make you feel good about yourself and you can’t worry about what other people think. And that includes your writing or anything. And it takes a long time to get to that point because I think people tend to always worry about what people think of them. But once you pass a certain age, you don’t care anymore. And I think that’s what people end up learning. When they say youth is wasted on the young, young people tend to worry, especially with social media in their face all the time, oh, I didn’t get invited to this, and this is going on, and that’s going on. None of it matters. I think happiness to me is just being content with yourself. And there was a meme on Facebook a while ago, don’t let comparison be the theft of your joy. And I thought that was so well said. There is endless people. There are what, we have 8 billion people in the world. So if you try to compare yourself to people, you’re never gonna be happy. You have to look at your own life and your own skills and your own talents and what you wanna contribute to the world and just be at peace with that.
Brad Shreve:
And you know what, something else I heard is, you always hear, Well, I don’t have a right to feel bad because there’s people starving and such and such. And 1 of the things that I thought was beautiful is, because we need to grieve at times, many times in our lives, was don’t allow someone else’s grief to rob you of your own.
Wendy Whitman:
That’s a very good point also. Yes, because of course, someone could have it quote, worse than you, but that doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to feel what you’re feeling and not deal with what’s affecting you, what’s upsetting you. So that always did bother me when people would say, oh, what are you complaining about this? No, you have a right to feel it’s your life and things that happen to you and things that matter to you and you have a right to, you know, feel what you feel.
Brad Shreve:
Well, I couldn’t agree with you more as far as the inner peace is the way to go. And I do think it gets better as you get older, but I know lots of older people that have no inner peace. How do you get there? What works for Wendy?
Wendy Whitman:
For inner peace? And I think the book has been a good roadmap to get me there. Because when I first started looking at my Amazon reviews, everyone gets a 1 star review here and there. And I think a lot of times online commenting brings out the worst in people. And sometimes people that just on a power trip like to go on and trash a restaurant or trash a book or trash something. I think the book’s sort of been a good gauge for me to realize that at a certain point, I’m happy with it, and that’s all that matters, and I’m not going to worry about everybody else. And I think what’s gotten me to inner peace, well, first of all, I’m a huge dog lover. So having a dog definitely enhances your inner peace. That’s for sure. And I honestly don’t know how people live without dogs, so I would say that’s better than Valium or Ambien or Xanax or anything else you could pop in your mouth.
Brad Shreve:
It seems like a regular thing on this show that people talk about how much joy their dogs bring them. And you do some special things with dogs and we’re going to get into that, but let’s go ahead and talk about your, your novels. Your first book was Premonition and your upcoming novel is currently available on pre-orderis Retribution. And that is the second in the series. So tell us about either novel or the series in general, whichever you think works for you. But first, are these based on your experiences from working on television?
Wendy Whitman:
Yes, well, again, I don’t know how many writers do this, but for me, for the first book, I sort of automatically based loosely, not specifically, like, ethnicity and looks and all that, but loosely, the protagonist was based on myself, so, yes, she also worked in television and all of that and was dealing with a murder case. So I think that just sort of, you just write the way you write. As you write, it just sort of unfolds, and you sort of lose control over it. The characters take over. Everything sort of starts to snowball if you’re making good characters and a good plot. So the first book, I had to spend a little time coming up with the general. I didn’t do an outline. I just wrote it. But I knew where I was going. I decided what the ending would be and what I had to put in between. So each day, again, I’d write a certain number of pages. And I think I knew what I wanted to include in terms of things about the legal system, about certain cases, about thoughts that the protagonist had, which were my thoughts. So that book was very specific, and it was like therapy for me. And then the second book picks up exactly where the first book left off. And that became much more… It was interesting from book 1 to book 2, it became much more of just a thriller. And I didn’t really have an agenda in terms of putting things in. I just wanted to really write from the killer’s point of view and get in the killer’s head, which I think I did a really good job of, almost scary job of.
Brad Shreve:
I love those.
Wendy Whitman:
So I’m very, very, very happy with the way Retribution came out. I already started writing the third book and I think people will enjoy it and I hope people who want to get Retribution do also pick up Premonition because you could read it as a standalone, but obviously it would lose a lot. You know, you really need to read the first book.
Brad Shreve:
I applaud you. Whenever there’s a series, it drives me crazy if the book cannot be a standalone. Obviously always best to start at the beginning for the most fun, but I should be able to go pick anyone in the series off the shelf and it’ll make sense. So good on you for that. And it’s funny that you were talking about, you are able to use so much that you know from law enforcement in your books. 1 of the reasons I write a PI is because they can break the rules. I don’t have to worry about the technicalities sometimes. You can crawl through windows and all that other stuff. So you consider yourself a thrill seeker. In what ways?
Wendy Whitman:
Um, I just like adventure. Like, you know, I went… You remember George Plimpton used to do 1 thing, he did 1 thing, and then another thing, and then another thing. I did, I went skydiving once, I’ve done hot air ballooning twice, I went to Antarctica. Um, I just, you know, was out west at some of the 2 of the beautiful parks we have, Bryce and Zion. I just always feel like life’s just an adventure, and I want to do as much of it as possible.
Brad Shreve:
Why do you think it is that you’re a thrill seeker? You said that life is an adventure and I agree 100%. Everything in my past I look at as an adventure in 1 way or another. What keeps you in that mode to think life is an adventure and I want to taste it all? What do you have that others don’t?
Wendy Whitman:
I don’t know. I guess, you know, when I was at Court TV, I never even wanted to take a vacation because I was always afraid I’d miss a good case. And my work was like my vacation and I loved it so much. And then when we stopped working there, I sort of switched gears and decided I’m just going to do everything. So I went skydiving right away and then I did ballooning and I started traveling a lot. I did travel a lot earlier in my life as well, but just those years at Court TV, I did less of it. And It’s hard to answer that to pinpoint it exactly. It just, I just keep wanting to do more and more interesting things. And like, I guess Court TV was such a fundamental part of our lives and such a wonderful place to work. And we were all so traumatized when they shut it down. And then I realized that you can make your life better and you can do things. And this goes to bring the light out of darkness that I realized I have control over my life. So since Court TV, I’ve done a ton of traveling, done adventures like skydiving and hot air ballooning, written 2 books, And I could have sat around and not done any of that stuff, but I controlled it and did it. So it is a good feeling to realize you can add a lot of great stuff to your life. If you sort of cancel out all the bullshit, you really can add a lot of good stuff to your life and not get caught up in all the bad stuff. So I think that’s what I’ve tried to do, and it’s been working. It’s so far so good.
Brad Shreve:
People are probably tired of hearing me say this, but I call it looking at the blank slate. When I hit the lowest points in my life, I said, I have a blank slate. I can do whatever I want. And you said the same thing when you lost your job at Court TV. And I think what people need to learn is they can stop and start that clean slate anytime.
Wendy Whitman:
And sometimes it is a blessing in disguise because, you know, they just so people understand, they laid all of us off and they changed the network to True TV. And we, like I went to Nancy Grace’s show after that for about 4 years, that maybe if we had never been all laid off, I would never have written the books. Maybe I would have just continued working there, which I would have loved. But I took life in a different direction. And I did a lot more traveling, a lot more sort of adventurous kinds of things, and started this whole writing thing, which I probably would never have done.
Brad Shreve:
And you made me think of something that I was, I’ve been alluding to kind of all along, but you kind of put it into words that I think are a little more clear. We have so many true crime television shows and true crime. As I said, we have the TV network, the 24 hour news networks. We have Dateline NBC. The list goes on and on and on. The number 1 type of podcast. They tell you if you want to be successful in podcasting, you should do a true crime podcast. They’re everywhere. Do you think we’re getting too much?
Wendy Whitman:
You would think we’d be at a saturation point, but quite honestly, there seems to be no saturation point. People are really fascinated with true crime. And they, particularly the millennials, like all my nieces and nephews’ friends, when they hear I work to Court TV, they sit me down and grill me on every case. And I think it’s, you know, I’ve been asked this in interviews too for the first book, why is there such a fascination with true crime? And I always say, because it’s the 1 part of human nature and behavior that a normal person can’t relate to, because some of the stuff we’ve covered and seen has just been so sadistic and cruel and evil. And you just can’t understand how someone can do it, especially to someone they don’t even know who’s never done anything to them and never been in their life. And I think it’s just an endless mystery. And there aren’t that many real mystery mysteries, but the mystery is how certain people can function like that. And a lot of them need double lives. They have families. They have a job. And they’re doing all this crazy stuff on the side. And it is hard for people to wrap their brain around.
Brad Shreve:
I find it curious because when it comes to novels, romance novels are number 1, people like happily ever afters. Mystery novels is the number 2 genre. And the assumption is, or the theory is, that the reason why people like mysteries is, justice is served in the end. But we don’t get that in true crime all the time.
Wendy Whitman:
No, rarely, I would say. I’m not saying every verdict we got was bad, but I always say there’s no punishment available that can offset murdering someone because the person’s dead and they’re never going to live again. So even if Every verdict came down with the absolute maximum of everything. The person still died. The person still had their life stolen away from them. We have seen an awful lot of bad verdicts and an awful lot of verdicts we don’t agree with, which is disheartening. But it’s the way the legal system works.
Brad Shreve:
Well, I want to get into something else that’s very disturbing. And the reason I want to get into it is there are people like you that are doing wonderful things about it. And that’s what this show is all about. We can’t escape the problems, but we can do something about it. And that is you work with rescue dogs that have been active in the dog meat trade or part of the dog meat trade? Can you talk about that?
Wendy Whitman:
Yeah. It’s OK for me to mention specific organizations?
Brad Shreve:
Oh, absolutely.
Brad Shreve:
OK. So yes, I was just out in LA, actually, and Jill Stewart, who founded China Rescue Dogs, an amazing woman, has opened a facility in LA, and they’re going to be bringing the dogs in through there. And they just brought 22 dogs, 17 golden retrievers, and a poodle, and a few other breeds, a Malamute. And she drove 10 of them around the country, brought them to their adopters’ homes, and the other ones were flown to where they were, their destinations. And spending the day with those dogs was the most amazing experience. And people, again, I think this is something I’m not sure how many people are really aware of it. A lot of people think, oh, it’s not true, or they haven’t heard of it, or it’s just not on their radar. But there is a very active dog meat trade in Asia and probably other places as well. And these organizations, Slaughterhouse Survivors, is also founded by 3 women who are just amazing. They have facilities over in China, and they are saving as many dogs as they can. And I think it sort of goes along with my whole murder thing, And I always feel like dogs are the most innocent, loving creatures. And that’s the cause I’m devoting the rest of my life to. It’s a wonderful cause.
Brad Shreve:
It is. Thank you for doing that.
Wendy Whitman:
What allows you to be the best version of yourself?
Wendy Whitman:
I think sort of taking all the pressure off and not, A, not comparing myself to other people, and appreciating the things I do have in life. I realize sometimes I wake up in the morning, I actually start, you know, it’s easy to make lists of what you haven’t done and haven’t accomplished, but people don’t always make a list of the things they have done and what they do are positive in their life. So more recently, I do wake up in the morning, and I take a minute, and I think how lucky I actually am. And nobody has everything in life, but I have a wonderful family and wonderful friends. And I’m devoting my life to writing and traveling and helping these poor dogs from the meat trade. And it makes me feel good and it’s given me a purpose. I think that trying to save these dogs has given me an enormous sense of purpose.
Brad Shreve:
And would you say having that sense of purpose is important for pretty much anyone’s general mental health?
Wendy Whitman:
Yeah, I think since I’ve been focusing on that, I think it’s helped me enormously. I think if you have something you really truly believe in that is basically selfless,he only satisfaction of what you’re getting out of is that you’re helping another creature or someone else. So I think if you don’t have any sense of purpose, I don’t see how you can be at peace or be happy. So it’s also made me want to live forever, because I feel like I want to keep doing this and at some point I won’t be able to because I won’t be here, you know? So I feel like I think of everything in my life, it’s given me the biggest sense of purpose of anything I’ve ever gotten involved in. I think it’s very healthy, and I feel like it pays that I’m here because I’m helping.
Brad Shreve:
Yeah, I’ve said to many friends, Mother Teresa, she had a difficult life, no doubt, and she worked really hard, but no 1 can tell me she wasn’t getting a tremendous amount of joy, internal joy,
Wendy Whitman:
Oh, absolutely. From what she was doing. Oh, Absolutely, absolutely.
Brad Shreve:
And in a way that’s selfish, but in a good way.
Wendy Whitman:
In a good way. It’s a good selfish. Yes, exactly.
Brad Shreve:
So, Wendy, what gives you hope moving forward?
Wendy Whitman:
I think that at the end of the day, people are talking, everyone’s talking about how crazy the world is right now, but the world, I guess, has always been crazy 1 way or the other. And I think that somehow the human race has survived and been through tough times, and there’s a lot of awful things going on in the world right now. But I think that the good people, just like the people I dealt with last week in LA with the dogs, you realize there are people out there that are really sacrificing themselves, that are devoting themselves to helping others, including animals, which I think dogs rank at the top of everything. And so I think for me, I found it in fighting the dog meat trade. That’s what’s given me hope and given me a purpose. And I know it’s not on a lot of people’s radar, although there are a ton of dog lovers out there, and I don’t want to keep repeating the same thing. But quite honestly, that is what’s getting me up in the morning now, in addition to my writing and other things. But it’s been a huge, huge factor in my life. And I feel good that I’m not spending my time purposely. What would be the word? With no purpose. I found something that really matters to me. And I think at the end of the day, that’s what gives people hope. You have to find something that matters to you and then you can make an impact on and effect or else you’re just sort of bumbling around.
Brad Shreve:
Well, back to Wendy’s novels. Her name is Wendy Whitman and her first novel is Premonition and you can buy that now. She’s got a lot of wisdom from the work she’s done. It’s a great novel. And then her upcoming novel that is available for pre-order right now is the second in the series. I’ll have the links in the show notes there for you or you can go to the website queerweare.com and I’ll have even more information about Wendy and her background. Wendy, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it and I appreciate the work that you do. I think you’re, well, I write mystery novels because I love mystery novels for many different reasons, but I feel like you are able to give people something different that other mystery writers can’t provide based on your experience. So I think that you have a gift there. And the work that you do with the dogs is just wonderful. So thank you for all you do.
Wendy Whitman:
Thank you so much, Brad, for having me on. It’s been a pleasure.
Brad Shreve:
Yeah. I’m on most social media. Got to keep up with friends and family, you know, but where you’ll find me hanging out most is Instagram. Sure I post about this podcast sometimes but who wants to follow an account that’s all commercials right? I have more fun sharing posts or reels with good thoughts opinions humor or on a good day all of the above. To find me on Instagram, search for at the Brad Shreve, or you can just make your life easy and click the link there in the show notes. See you on Instagram.
