This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Jason Kapcala.

Check our discussion about his novel, Hungry Town, along with his other writing.Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.We also have a shop now. Check it out!Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafeDownload a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. Today I have with me the author of two novels and numerous short stories that have been published in many magazines and literary journals. His latest book is Hungry Town. It's my pleasure to have with me, Jason Kapcala. Did I say that right?Jason: KapcalaDebbi: Kapcala. Jason Kapcala. Well, hello Jason. Thanks for being here. Thanks for spending time with me.Jason: Thanks for having me, Debbi.Debbi: It's my pleasure. Now, you have two novels, but you have many short stories. Did you start off writing short stories?Jason: Yeah, I did. I kind of went the academic track. Went through an MFA program, and when I was there, started out learning to write stories, short stories, and actually my first book was a short story collection, but it was a linked collection so they all kind of tie in with one another, and it was all based around the town where I grew up, that area in Northern Pennsylvania where I was from. And then after that, I started moving into writing longer things, working on novels, and wrote my first novel, Hungry Town, and kind of got into that mode of writing about crime and police.Debbi: Does your work tend to focus on small towns?Jason: It does, yeah. I always write about a fictional place, but there's always elements of real life places that influence those towns. I just do that because I think I like the freedom of being able to put things where I need them, as the story demands it. So if I need to have a river here, I can put a river here, nobody's going to say, Hey, I'm from that town. There's no river there, but I'll go ahead and really base these towns on places where.... The first one was the place where I was from, but in other cases, places I know. So the town of Lodi in the novel Hungry Town, it's kind of an amalgamation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was very close to where I grew up, and it was a steel town, of course, and had a large steel mill there.Jason: It was really non-functional by the time that I was old enough to pay attention to it, but I still passed the ruins of it a lot. So it's sort of part that, and then part Athens, Ohio, where I did my Masters which was also formerly an industrial town turned college town. It had a brick factory and brick streets and everything. I don't know that there's really a town in existence that's quite like the one in my novel that would have a mill the size of the mill in the novel, but also a town as small as Athens. But I kind of went with that and ended up naming it Lodi, but it doesn't have any connection to the actual Lodi, Ohio. If anybody's from there, it's not your Lodi. It's a fictional one.Debbi: That's interesting, because I kept thinking of Lodi, California.Jason: Well, that's why I picked that name. Someone had said to me once they think there must be a Lodi in every state of the country. And so I was like, yeah, that does seem like a kind of an every town name, and so that's why I ended up going with it. Plus I like the Creedence Clearwater Revival song.Debbi: Gotta love the Creedence. Do you have a preference for writing short versus long?Jason: Oh, definitely long. I enjoyed writing short stories when I first started it,