Episode 111: On Fire and Under Water (Curtis Ippolito, Puja Guha, Raymond J. Brash, C.E. McKenna)

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, C.E. McKenna, Curtis Ippolito, Raymond J. Brash, Puja Guha

Sarah Harrison  00:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present, we’re discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world’s most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters  00:33

And I’m your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we’re excited you’re joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Carolyn Daughters 00:57

Today’s sponsor is Harrison Heritage, a specialty grower dedicated to preserving and cultivating rare and historic flora and fauna. They have a strong focus on early American and Virginia heirloom cultivated varieties, using regenerative, pasture-focused, and experimental farming practices, Harrison Heritage prioritizes soil health as the foundation for nutrient-rich, resilient ecosystems. Their mission is simple: to safeguard the flavors, genetics, and agricultural traditions of the past while fostering a healthier future. Harrison Heritage preserving the taste of history. And we’re thrilled to have them as our sponsor. And Sarah, Nate, and the whole Harrison Heritage crew are just getting started, and they would love to have you follow them on Facebook @HarrisonHeritage or on Instagram @HarrisonHeritageFarm to keep up with what’s new and what’s next.

Sarah Harrison  01:06

Carolyn, we’re doing something totally new today. We have a bunch of guests. We have an anthology, which is a first for us. Short stories, which is a first for us, and so there’s really fun. There’s so many cool things to talk about. So, I really want to get into it. On Fire and Under Water is the name of the anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press. It explores the intersection of climate change and crime through the lens of 15 short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers, edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at Rock and a Hard Place Press. The stories peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour. Today, we’re excited to welcome four contributors to On Fire and Under Water, a climate change crime fiction anthology. You made it a little bit of a tongue twister.

Carolyn Daughters  02:15

Guest editor Curtis Ippolito is an Anthony Award and Derringer Award winning writer. He is the author of *Burying the Newspaper Man* and the newly published *Waves of Burden* His short stories have appeared in many prominent publications and have been featured in several anthologies. He lives in San Diego and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and serves as vice president of the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime. Pula Guha is a friend of the podcast. Welcome back, Puja!

Sarah Harrison  02:45

It’s official. That’s an official title.

Carolyn Daughters  02:49

Friend of the podcast is something that everybody is going for. Just a heads up. Colorado writer and author of internationally acclaimed espionage thrillers that explore power, politics, and global intrigue, drawing on both a childhood and a consulting career spent traveling the world, she brings authenticity and international perspective to her fiction. She’s a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Science Po and the London School of Economics.

Sarah Harrison  03:17

Raymond J. Brash is a Trinidadian American writer whose work blends speculative fiction, noir, and crime into distinctive genre-bending stories. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in *The Lines We Cross* *Bouchercon* (2026 anthology *Shot Gun Honey* *Rock and a Hard Place* press, and other publications). He has been nominated for a Best of the Net award. He lives in Denver, Colorado. C.E. McKenna is a Colorado writer and historian whose fiction combines historical research and speculative storytelling. The author of award-winning short fiction, Caitlyn was selected for AWP’s writer-to-writer mentorship program and a four-week residency at the Chateau d’Orquevaux. An MFA student, she’s the author of *The Primary Source* a historical thriller. She lives in Boulder, Colorado. Welcome everybody!

Carolyn Daughters  04:19

Welcome all of you to the podcast.

Curtis Ippolito  04:21

Thanks for having us. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Sarah Harrison  04:24

We were super delighted when our friend of the podcast Puja Guha reached out. It was really nice. If you haven’t heard her episode, we interviewed her. Oh, how long ago was that, Puja? It’s been a year or two.

Carolyn Daughters  04:38

Probably two years.

Sarah Harrison  04:45

If you haven’t heard that or read her Ahriman Legacy books, you need to go back, read those, and you’ll find out. Puja is also, I think, of almost all our guests the one most likely to be a spy herself.

Carolyn Daughters  05:01

100%.

Sarah Harrison  05:01

Very fascinating person.

Carolyn Daughters  05:05

There’s maybe David Ignatius could do it, but right now I think she’s the front runner for also a spy. Let’s start with how the On Fire and Under Water anthology came about. What brought to mind climate change and crime fiction? Like, how? How? Maybe Curtis, this is for you, and maybe for the whole group. Starting with Curtis, what brought the idea of climate change, the idea of crime fiction, as something that could be brought together in these stories? And when you open submissions, what were you hoping to receive?

Curtis Ippolito  05:43

Sure. Rock and a Hard Place Press, for those who don’t know, is a press that features I think three or four magazines per year, and their main focus is to shine a light on everyday working class people who are up against it, and as the name “Rock and a Hard Place” would imply, characters who are put between a rock and a hard place, and how do they respond? And so, this press has also done a few special edition anthologies before On Fire and Under Water. They did one on police brutality. They did a one on the uber wealthy, and so they’re taking on these things in our society and in our culture that are really poisoning the waters for everyday people. And so last year, that a couple of the editors came to me and they said we have this idea to do an anthology featuring climate change, because we’re seeing all these stories. It was right after the L.A. fires, and then last summer we had those floods in Central Texas, and we were really starting to see in real time the devastation of climate change and how it was affecting real everyday people. And when I say everyday people, we’re talking about your school teachers, your nurses, your blue collar workers. We’re not talking about the 1% who are building private island escapes and barricade barricading themselves in bunkers. So we wanted to see what writers could bring to this, and I was on board. I had a little bit of a delay saying yes because of my own inferiority complex. But all us writers have those.

Sarah Harrison  07:34

Wait, what? That’s right. He didn’t want to say yes to editing because …

Curtis Ippolito  07:40

Well, when I was first asked, the only other editor of a special edition had been S. A. Cosby, and I thought, well, how do I follow that? How do I follow the king of crime fiction? And so I thought about it for a couple days, and I came to the decision of, I am the right person for this. I’m passionate about climate change. I love the genre of crime fiction, and so I was all in as soon as I said yes to On Fire and Under Water. And as far as what we were looking for, we were looking for stories, and these three guests and these three writers are perfect examples of this. We didn’t want all our stories set in the United States because climate change is a global issue, and so each of these writers, as you’ll find out, I’m sure, set their stories outside of the United States, and really helped us create a cohesive, all-encompassing look at how this, how climate change is affecting the globe, not just your neighbors or people you may know.

Sarah Harrison  08:50

That’s really interesting, and maybe I think I want to go even more basic because I I’m not sure. I know I wasn’t aware how anthologies are put together. Did all of you folks create something for this? Maybe let’s ask. Let’s do a little round robin. Did you create something specifically for this? Has you already done this type of work and you had something ready? How did you become involved in the project? Let’s start with Raymond, and we’ll just go in order.

Raymond J. Brash  09:24

The story was based on the submission call on the On Fire and Under Water website, and I saw it, and the idea just popped in my head, and I knew I was going to write that story. That was eventually selected.

Puja Guha  09:37

I heard about the call directly from Curtis. We were at a conference here in Denver, and I initially was like, “I’m not going to be able to get anything done in time, and I did it anyway. I was super excited to hear about it and wrote something for it.

C.E. McKenna  09:58

I also was at that. Same conference. It was Left Coast Crime in Denver. I guess it was a year and a half ago, and met Curtis and heard about the call. But I had actually already started a climate change short story that was based in Svalbard, and it had been top of mind for me. But then when I heard that this On Fire and Under Water anthology would be a crime fiction anthology. I went back and rewrote it to ensure that there was more crime

Carolyn Daughters  10:27

You did an excellent job. There was more crime. There’s far more crime. Curtis, then you got a number of submissions, and I think you had yourself and maybe a few other readers making decisions, and that decision making process has to have been challenging. How did you determine the 15 that would fit together the best thematically, but also outside of the theme, just stood in my mind with the three authors we have here. These stories stand alone as really excellent stories in the genre. What was that like?

Curtis Ippolito  11:14

You’re exactly right. So the process was pretty much what you described. So we put out a call, and it was a quick call. I think maybe only a month or six weeks for the deadline, and I think we got about 60 or 70 submissions for On Fire and Under Water. And from there, myself and a team of probably six other editors put them all in a spreadsheet, and we read them, and we scored them, and we whittled it down to our top 25, and so we were looking for things like you said, do these stories fit the theme? Are they a diverse range of not only authors but stories that are set in diverse locations? And so from those 25, it was really difficult to pare them down. We had very a bunch of really good high quality stories, and so then, getting down to the 15, it felt like once we started chipping away at the 25, then those diamonds started emerging, and I’m a little biased, but I tell everyone like every single one of these 15 stories can stand on their own. Each one of them could run in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock if they were into climate change crime fiction. They’re all such good stories, so well told, show a mastery of the craft, and each have their own identifiable voice, so that there was variety there in voice, and then it was just a matter for me of stacking the stories, and I looked at it like arranging an album, a music album, and I didn’t want two stories that were both wildfire stories back to back, right? And you don’t want a sad story and a sad story and a sad story. You got to break that up with something with some either hope or light heartedness. That was the fun part, though. Honestly, was just fearing how to stack the stories and help each story for the reader being able to differentiate it and appreciate it for what it is based on who, which story preceded and followed it, if that makes sense.

Sarah Harrison  13:34

It does. I want to ask the team a little bit about how this connects to your broader work. I know, having talked to Puja before and coming from the REMN legacy. When I first was looking, just on the surface, oh, okay, well now it’s a climate change book. That doesn’t seem like her normal thing that she does. But then when I read Puja Guha’s story The Devil Doesn’t Live Hand to Mouth. That’s the one she contributed to Rock and a Hard Place Press in On Fire and Under Water. It’s about someone in this scenario where they’re facing this decision, and in this case, he’s facing a decision to almost move Into the intel world, or become part of a spy network. I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, there actually is a lot of similarities between what she writes. How is it for Puja? You can comment on that, and then Raymond and Caitlyn. Is this really similar to your other work? Is it really divergent? Tell me a little bit about how this fits in the work you typically do.

Puja Guha  14:48

It definitely fits. I think I’ll probably end up writing an Antonio book at some point, or connecting it to the Ahriman Legacy and the other books that I’ve been working. At some point, I don’t know when, but I expect that I will because I really enjoyed writing his character. But also, I think it’s worth saying that even though climate change, crime fiction is its own thing in a way, that climate change is affecting everybody, and so in that sense, I expect that. I mean, in the book that I just finished, which I don’t have a publication date set for yet, but there’s a big storm in the North Pacific island Palau, where there’s the big rescue scene and there’s a whole bunch of stuff happening. I had to take into account climate change, both in terms of how the storm would actually happen and how it would change, and how they would figure out how to whether they could even do the rescue. All that stuff, just because climate change is everywhere now. I expect to be dealing with that behind.

C.E. McKenna  16:04

With my work, I keep coming back to climate change. I actually have an essay that’s being published tomorrow by the Masters Review that goes into a postcard that I received in the year 2000 from my grandfather that actually connects to why I wrote this story to begin with, and I realize that I keep coming back to the same environments again and again. Curtis just mentioned that they didn’t want to put two wildland fire stories together in the On Fire and Under Water anthology, and I think that any of us who live in the Western United States, we are constantly thinking about wildland fire and climate change. Last night we had a huge plume of smoke that came out of the Utah-Colorado border that turned the moon red, and there are just these parts of climate change that are just part of our everyday lives now. So it’s really hard not to write about those sorts of things, especially if you’re a writer of any type of modern fiction, any type of nonfiction. You can’t escape it, and in some ways, I mean, this is weird, but there’s a beauty to that–that we’re all in this together.

Raymond J. Brash  17:31

I only started writing short fiction at the end of 2023, and got my first online publication in 2024, and then my first print publication was a Trinidadian-based short story from Rock and a Hard Place Press in one of their issues, and that was 2025.

Carolyn Daughters  17:54

God, you’re so talented.

Raymond J. Brash  17:56

Literally that year was this story in September 2025 is my second Trinidadian story. I think I wanted to start writing Trinidadian stories because I’m half Trinidadian. I grew up there. My mom’s from there, and I noticed in the short fiction realm, there’s not many Caribbean authors. Ashley Ruth, who’s one of the editors at Rock and a Hear Place. She’s from St. Thomas, great author, really good. She just had a book out. She’s one of the few that I’ve been able to find. Most Trinidadian writers are like literary fiction and stuff. So, I love writing crime. I feel the most comfortable doing it, and I started writing Trinidadian stories, and that’s what I want to keep doing because there’s a lot of stories to tell.

Carolyn Daughters  18:44

That’s amazing. It’s one of the things that I, one of the many things I loved about these stories. I really enjoyed all three of your stories, and what I want to do is hear from each of you a little bit about your story in On Fire and Under Water. How did you choose the setting? Mozambique, Trinidad, and Tobago, Svalbard. We talked a little bit about that, but what did that setting do for you in this story that allowed you to explore this theme of climate change in a way that possibly another setting might not have? What inspired you with regard to this setting that you chose, and let’s start with Caitlin.

C.E. McKenna  19:25

I chose Svalbard for my story in On Fire and Under Watr. Svalbard is an archipelago that’s high above Norway, and it is this strange place that I’ve felt has been connected for me to climate change since, as I said before, the year 2000, my grandfather was a paleontologist, and he was leading a group of people from the American Museum of Natural History, where they were going to go up to the North Pole, and on a on an icebreaker, and so they actually left from Svalbard. So they were helicoptered from Svalbard onto an icebreaker, a Russian icebreaker, and then taken to the North Pole. And this was in August of 2000. And normally, when you would get to the North Pole, it would be covered with ice, and they would allow everybody to disembark, and they would have a barbecue there. And in the year 2000, they got there, and it was open ocean, and so he was actually the first scientist to have ever seen the North Pole not covered with ice. So he came back and he sent me a postcard from Svalbard, which I have since lost. And so I know well that’s what that master’s review essay is about. So it’s always been this place that was really connected to climate change for me because growing up I was 14 in 2000, and even though you had heard about climate change then, we called it global warming of course at that point we hadn’t really transitioned to calling it climate change, but it was really the first time that I had really seen true evidence, and it was from someone who I loved and was who I seriously respected, and so that’s Svalbard has always been tied to that for me, and then I went there in 2018, and I was just blown away by this place. We got there on October 31st. The sun never even crested the horizon. There was twilight for about an hour and 15 minutes, and then it was just pure dark. And there are signs everywhere talking about polar bears, and we saw a 20-foot fence around the elementary school, and we’re told that that’s so kids can go to recess, so that the polar bears can’t get into the recess yard. So it just made this huge impression on me, and that’s why I chose to go back there and had written a short story that my main character Atle was in, but I wasn’t. It was definitely more literary when I first wrote it, and then I went back and gave him different motivations and a different plot.

Carolyn Daughters  22:15

Your story in On Fire and Under Water is Long Night of the Polar Bear, and the polar bear is woven in to the story. I just I loved it. I thought it was really just exceptionally well done.

C.E. McKenna  22:32

Thank you so much.

Carolyn Daughters  22:34

The atmosphere felt unforgettable to me.

C.E. McKenna  22:37

It’s an unforgettable place. It’s a really strange place.

Carolyn Daughters  22:44

And Raymond, how about you?

Raymond J. Brash  22:47

When my story context for whoever’s watching this, it’s about a guy who pilfers dead bodies after floods in Trinidad for money. When I was 12 or 13, I saw a dead body that drowned in the water when I was in Trinidad. So that was this thing I had, this core memory I had growing up there. Twenty something years later, and I see this call and I’m like, I could write about that. That’s how it worked. So that’s the spark of it. But obviously, you need to tell more than just things that are happening. You got to tell a story. So I wanted to show in Trinidad, there’s a line in On Fire and Under Water, too, in the story that’s where he says they say God is a Trinny. There’s an actual saying in Trinidad that God is a Trinny, because every hurricane season, the hurricanes miss Trinidad. It goes, it comes, looks like it’s gonna hit, and then it sweeps north. And I think Trinidadians are they’re the kind of people that they’re really good at adapting to things. They’re very adaptable people, but at the same time, things are just getting worse. The floods get worse. The fires get worse. It’s rainy and dry season in Trinidad, so I want to tell a story about somebody who has been adapting as the floods get worse and worse and worse, and he’s having to go to these extreme measures, but he’s just like, I’m just gonna go do this thing to get money for this thing I need.

Carolyn Daughters  24:28

And your story is Ban Yuh Belly. I think that’s Caribbean patois. Can you talk about what that means?

Raymond J. Brash  24:36

In Trinidad, Ban Yuh Belly is a saying that it has two meanings, which is also important to the story. So Ban Yuh Belly means get ready for hard times. So just to spend so much money in Ban Yuh Belly, that’s like get eat less because you’re not gonna be able to afford food. And then also it means to hold on to something to keep. Something close like money or jewelry or whatever, and not spend that, which obviously comes into play in the story as well. But that’s where that comes from.

Carolyn Daughters  25:13

Also, just a wonderful story from On Fire and Under Water. I was feeling for the protagonist Geoffrey, even though at times I thought, well, he’s difficult to feel for at times, but then he’s trying to help his sister and his niece, and I just thought that was really compelling the way you did that, and then Puja, can you talk about the Mozambique setting.

Puja Guha  25:41

Absolutely. So I was lucky enough to work in Mozambique a little over 10 years ago. I worked there for about two years, coming in and out, being there. But a good friend of mine, who is loosely the character that Antonio is based on, this was a scuba diving instructor. I mean, he now lives in Germany, married to German. But I feel like in another version of reality, he could have been setting up for the type of future that Antonio saves up, teaching swimming lessons, teaching scuba diving, and then opens his own resort. My good friend helped me get my scuba diving license and all that stuff, and it was just somewhere in the back of my mind. And I hadn’t written a Mozambique story yet in any of my books or any of my short other short stories. And so it was there. And then a couple years ago, I worked on an emergency relief program for Typhoon IDE, which hit Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe super-duper hard. Probably some other places too, but really, really hard in all three of those places. It was one of the few projects, sadly, that I’ve had where you can clearly see the impact of the work in a very immediate sense. There’s a lot of other stuff where you’re trying to do good things, really hope that you’re doing good things, but you’re not sure. It takes a long time to see those results. But in this case, because it was emergency relief, because we were rebuilding roads, rebuilding schools, it was just very, very clear. But when I was onboarding to that project, I remember doing some reading on I flu and seeing some of the pictures, the needs, and there was this one guy standing alone on this pier, everything behind him is gone: down trees, beach, and brown water. And then there’s just this leftover pier that is barely standing, but he’s standing by himself, and this has to be my story. And so that those two things, like that image and my friend, and learning to scuba dive in in Mozambique tied together into what became this story.

Carolyn Daughters  28:07

The story in On Fire and Under Water is The Devil Doesn’t Live Hand to Mouth. Antonio, the protagonist, is not a hardened criminal, but he has a very hard decision to make. And what I thought when I finished the story is okay, I want more? I want more. So I can very much see this as the nugget of a much larger story. One of a future novel by Puja Guha is how I felt when I read it.

Sarah Harrison  28:35

It felt like the first chapter for a show. I was like, well, where’s the rest? There’s a lot in each story in On Fire and Under Water. I feel a lot on themes we could talk about. I want to zoom out again for a second, though, and Curtis and anyone else from the team that wants to answer. We recently had a conversation with Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookshop. He was talking about some of the things he was told early on in his career, and some of those things included. Nobody wants short story anthologies for mystery. Mystery short stories don’t sell. Anthologies aren’t the thing. He’s found that that hasn’t exactly held true. What has been your experience for the appetite, or maybe even change over time for a mystery anthology or a crime fiction anthology in this case?

Curtis Ippolito  29:37

Oh, that’s a good question. I can say for this On Fire and Under Water anthology, it’s been very well received. Not to pat ourselves too hard on the back, but I think it’s the number two most selling edition of anything Rock and Hard Place has put out.

Sarah Harrison  29:54

Awesome,

Curtis Ippolito  29:54

And it has garnered the Daringer Award. We won that. We’re nominated for the Anthony Award at this coming Bouchercon, so it’s being recognized on the award front as well. Received all really good reviews, both from readers but also from professional reviewers, and I think it just speaks to not only that readers have an appetite for mystery stories, but readers might have more of an appetite for mystery stories that have a strong social presence or a what we’re calling. I’m not blanking on my words here. Just stories that involve a bigger theme than just a crime, and that’s it. Talking about some of the struggles in society, and recognizing that life isn’t just all make believe. That we need to bring in some realism, and just like we were talking about earlier, that climate change is a factor in our lives, so we need to be talking about it because our number one job as writers is to be honest. And if we’re not being honest about the world we’re seeing right in front of us, then what are we doing? So it’s been very validating that readers have connected with this On Fire and Under Water anthology because I think when we set out, we were hoping that readers would connect with it, but were nervous and a little unsure if they would, and so it’s been great that they have.

Carolyn Daughters  31:30

Crime fiction has always reflected contemporary anxieties from prohibition to the Cold War, for example. Do you see climate change as a defining backdrop for this next generation of crime fiction.

Curtis Ippolito  31:46

It could be, especially the way that some of our actors are participating in it. The billionaire class, our politicians. They’re exacerbating the problems. The U.S. is turning its back on the Paris Accord. We’re abandoning our climate responsibilities. We could get really political here, but I won’t. But I think it is one of those things, as you said, like crime fiction has always been that genre that holds up a mirror to society and shows readers what someone that’s not like themselves are going through, and I think yes, I think climate change is going to have to be more prominently featured in in crime fiction like On Fire and Under Water.

C.E. McKenna  32:39

It seems like genre in general is a great way to talk about some of these overarching, pretty scary issues that we’re all going through, because it doesn’t have necessarily the focus on that. It gives you a different way in a fun way in, and it allows you to explore parts of climate change or the difference between rich and poor without having to focus on it exactly because it can be really tiring. It can be exhausting to just think about something as huge as climate change, I think that’s a great point. I think in anthologies to be able to have these bite-sized stories, and I think actually one of my favorite short stories, and I can’t remember the author’s name right now, but it’s called Palisade, and it’s about the Palisade fire, and it was in best short stories, I think, of 2023. I think the Palisade Fire was a little bit before that, but it’s beautiful. It’s about a woman who’s evacuating her dead husband’s father. So it’s her father-in-law. She’s evacuating him from Palisade, and I won’t go too far into it, but it’s a climate change. It’s a literary climate change story, and it has stayed with me since the moment I read it. I had to email the author the moment after I finished it and tell her how much it affected me. There are just these beautiful pieces that you can get from short story collections, I think, and short story collections that are anthologies allow you to see all these different voices, whereas a lot of just full short story collections you might be getting the same themes that the author is really poking at from different directions.

Puja Guha  34:38

I’ll just add really quick that when you’re in genre in general, you want to explore serious themes without being preachy. Just tell a story about someone who’s dealing with it without being like, “This is how you should do this.

Carolyn Daughters  34:57

That makes sense.

Puja Guha  35:00

As an aside, I think that the reception to this, like Curtis was saying, has been absolutely amazing. I was at a book fair in Greeley back at the end of April, and I had copies of my books and copies of this On Fire and Under Water anthology. And the anthology sold out. I mean, I sold quite well on my own stuff too, but it was really I was like, “I should have brought more of you. I had five copies, and in two hours they were gone. I’ll definitely I’m going back to that venue in August, so I will have more.

Raymond J. Brash  35:40

Two things to jump off of what Curtis was saying about how much praise On Fire and Under Water has gotten. Megan Lucas’s story is going to be in Best American Mystery and Suspense this year. It’s the last story at the end. It’s the longest and it’s awesome.

C.E. McKenna  35:55

It’s so good.

Raymond J. Brash  35:56

I think Richie Narvaez. His story in On Fire and Under Water is up for Best Short Story at Bouchercon. We have none of ours, but none of ours. But I mean, you have all these. Everybody’s praising it. Really recognize. I mean, ones in the best American. It’s awesome. Like this is. People want to see this. People want to read this. And I think on top of that, I was gonna say I read across the board of all the like, I read sci-fi, read fantasy, I read whatever. If you ever read Clark’s World. Clark’s World is like the biggest sci-fi short story magazine out there. Every it’s almost like every issue or every other issue, they have some climate change-based sort story where the setting is informing the character, I don’t see why crime just can’t do that more. We obviously we here’s the proof of concept, right? I’m sure there’s other crime stories out there you brought up that, or that’s just a literary fiction. But I’m sure there’s other crime stories.

Raymond J. Brash  37:05

I don’t see why more authors aren’t writing, because you read a mystery story, and sometimes it’s really interesting. It’s fun. You’re like, oh, who did this? Like the whodunit, right? You read these stories, you’re like, oh dang, this makes my tummy hurt. Like this is heavy. This is amazing writing.

Carolyn Daughters  37:24

It’s also very entertaining, and everybody should buy On Fire and Under Water.

Sarah Harrison  37:26

Yes, it’s not just a stomach ache, everyone.

Curtis Ippolito  37:35

I wanted to jump off something that Caitlin and Puja both said about how I think it was really important to us as editors to make sure that these stories weren’t preachy, and none of them are. If they were preachy, they would have been essays, right? That’s the place to be preachy, if you are going to be. But I think all these 15 writers and these three here today, what they did an excellent job of was what exactly what Raymond said was letting the setting and the situation inform the character and inform their motivations, and it wasn’t them getting on a pulpit and saying climate change is bad. We need to fix this. It was here’s the hand I was dealt. How do I work through this? Just like any other struggle that people go through in life, right?

Sarah Harrison  38:26

I think having the environment has put people in a situation like all mystery stories that now their motivation is part of giving them choices on what they’re going to do, and Puja, your story in On Fire and Under Water actually touched, and everyone. I think maybe we want to take a minute to talk about the literary themes of the story. But one thing that came up for me in the devil doesn’t live hand to mouth is something we’ve been going through in several of our books lately. We just finished Agatha Christie’s Death Comes as the End, and we’re about to do Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool. And in both of those stories and in yours, there’s this environment of compelled gratitude, right? I’m in a situation where I should feel grateful about something or to someone, and because it feels compelled and required, I am very mad about it, and I don’t feel it. And I wondered, was that part of your experience? And then the classism, of course, typically plays in there, right? Because it’s a gratitude you should feel. Maybe you feel that you should feel it to a benefactor, but then you struggle with that relationship with the benefactor and how you’re perceiving them, and so that just it’s totally on theme with a lot of the books we’re reading right now, and I wondered working with this dive instructor as you did, how much. How much of that’s fictionalized? How much of that’s just daily reality? Can you talk a little bit about incorporating that theme?

Puja Guha  40:07

Absolutely. First, thank you for that comparison. Very, very.

Sarah Harrison  40:15

Right, the two queens of crime there.

Puja Guha  40:18

For sure. But I think that’s all over, sadly, the donor project work, especially in Africa. I mean, you see it in other. It’s really most vivid in Africa, I would say, where on the one hand you have governments and government officials and stuff like that that are really, really dependent on World Bank and other donor money, and you’re trying to do really good things, but it also has this weird sense of classism. It has this weird dependency, and it creates this sense of oh, everything that we have maybe is because of these projects, and I think that’s absolutely not true. I think when I think of some of the best African business people that I have seen that have worked and grown their businesses from nothing in incredibly difficult environments. That’s all of them. They figured it out. They figured out a difficult regulatory environment, how to navigate. Depending on the type of business, who their client base is, and whether that is foreigners or richer locals, or some mix thereof, or more like regular people, and they did it mostly on their own. I mean, when they found programs that were available and took advantage of those, I don’t think that that takes any of that success away from those people. But I do think, sadly, that a lot of the donor community really believes that they are responsible. It increases this weird continued colonialism situation, and so that definitely is a vibe that I wanted to put in. In my story in On Fire and Under Water, Antonio is a business owner in Mozambique, who has come from really not a wealthy background in any way, not a rich Mozambican, and he just works hard and saves and has this amazing skill. The great swimmer and a really good instructor and a great scuba diving instructor, and so he put in that time and effort to build his dream, and then supposed to be grateful when it’s all taken away, and he has to depend on other people, and it’s really odd power dynamic I’ve seen a lot in Africa.

Carolyn Daughters  43:01

One thing that would be interesting to find out from each of the three of you authors is if there’s some one message that you want people to take away from your story in On Fire and Under Water. What do you want people to feel? What do you want people to think? What do you want them to hope or to fear? What is the thing that is a take away from your perspective? Let’s start with Raymond.

Raymond J. Brash  43:26

Mine obviously doesn’t end on the happiest note. Spoiler alert. I think my biggest one is the idea of, like I said, trainees are adaptable, but a frog sitting in a boiling pot is just gonna sit on a boiling pot until it gets too hot, and it’s not gonna do anything about it. It could swim, it can do, it could try and hop out, but that pot’s gonna get hotter and hotter and hotter, and then the frog’s gonna die. That’s the idea I wanted behind my story of this. Our character is adapting to the situation he’s in, the hand he’s being dealt. He’s making some questionable choices, but he’s pushing through, and then he has a bigger choice to make. I don’t want to spoil the story. That’s what I was wanting my story to get across. That this is just going to keep getting worse, and you can make the decisions you make, and people can understand that. But sometimes you may not be able to get out of a bad decision. I think that’s the crux of it.

Carolyn Daughters  44:42

There’s this one scene very early, so we’re not spoiling anything here, where we know that he is basically robbing dead bodies of money or other items of some value, but he always calls in. To the Coast Guard or the police to let them know, and I kept thinking the easiest thing is to take the money and run, but there’s this thing about him where he’s always calling it in, and I thought that really made his character rich.

Raymond J. Brash  45:16

I definitely didn’t want him to be just the worst person possible, right? I think that’s also two things at once, right? Maybe he does want these people to be found and their body to be brought back to their family, but at the same time, like if he gets caught pilfering is one thing, but if he’s pilfered and then doesn’t look like there’s anything there, and he calls it in. He’s like, “Hey, I’m just doing the right thing. Here you go. Don’t look at me. So I think it’s a two-parter, having both the good and the bad into one character.

Carolyn Daughters  46:01

Puja, talk briefly about your takeaway with your story in On Fire and Under Water.

Puja Guha  46:06

I think, I mean, similar in a sense to what Raymond was talking about is that sense of desperation. So, what would you do if you lost everything? Would you just do the hard work and do it all over again, or would you take the easier way out, even if it’s not necessarily the righteous thing to do? That’s what people would do.

Carolyn Daughters  46:31

There’s a line in your story in On Fire and Under Water where Antonio is thinking about this very wealthy couple, Fred and Gina, and he says they work very hard at whatever they do, and I thought that was so funny because he’s trying to grapple with a very hard decision that brings the story into the spy thriller realm. And I could see that he’s got this 10-year-old car and he’s really grappling with even driving onto this estate, which is beautiful and beautiful Lexus’s and all of the wealth that he can never possibly attain and so I thought that it made the story really complex and interesting.

Puja Guha  47:18

Thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  47:20

Caitlin, how about you?

C.E. McKenna  47:22

My story features multiple polar bears, and one of the reasons for that is because when polar bears die on Svalbard, they are taxidermied, and so there are these stuffed polar bears everywhere that are posed in these very lifelike ways, and my favorite one that I saw when I was there has its arms up, and it’s almost as if it was dancing. So I put that into my story, and I think my biggest takeaway, the thing that I was trying to get at the end of my story, without spoiling it, is there’s this, and I said this earlier. The thing about climate change that I find terribly beautiful is that we are all connected. So my main character has an epiphany at the end where he realizes that he’s essentially the same as a taxidermied polar bear, and that is something that I come back to a lot when I’m thinking about climate change, because I think that there’s no way to have tragedy without there also being love. You can’t have tragedy unless there’s something to lose, and so what I like to focus on a lot of times is the thing that we’re gonna lose, I guess, and how beautiful that is, and how wonderful it is that we even got to experience it at all.

Sarah Harrison  48:49

I love that. I don’t have a message, but I do want to ask a little bit more about a couple of the themes of your story in On Fire and Under Water, so we were touching on one aspect, Raymond, of your character that I love, and it’s and I think it plays into probably everyone’s stories, which is how they’re living with their choices and the way they do a little good thing to compensate for a little bad thing, and I don’t the concept of spoilers for stories so short. I’m really struggling with this. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I feel like I’ll just say maybe philosophically, at the end you wonder if he was. I can’t say anything. I cannot get this question out.

Raymond J. Brash  49:47

Regretful.

Sarah Harrison  49:49

Sort of, but not regretful in a way of empathy. I would say he’s made all choices and he’s tried to live with himself and in the end, maybe he still cannot. Can you elaborate on how he’s getting through his days?

Raymond J. Brash  50:16

I think this is going back to the whole the frog in the boiling pot. We are introduced to this character in my story in On Fire and Under Water where he’s been doing this. This isn’t his first one, right? This isn’t his first body. He’s pilfered. This isn’t the first time he’s getting money. He has his strategies of like, oh, let me go down in coast and see what’s down there and stuff. And like that, I wanted to show, I wanted there to be a very not limited amount of introspection of him struggling with what he’s going through and having to make these like he’s already here, he’s making these decisions. This is this is decided even while we’re reading this and I think it’s the end where he gets this big decision where he’s like, “Do I? Well, I’ll basic I’ll spoil it a little bit. Is like he finds a watch on one of the bodies, and he doesn’t realize until later that it’s worth a bunch of money to him, and so he’s got to make a decision: is he going to sell this watch, or is he going to keep it because it’s the nicest thing he’s ever owned, right? He’s been dealt this hand where he’s lost his house in a flood, lives with his sister, he’s trying to help her, and he has this big decision to make, and ultimately it’s the nicest thing he’s ever owned, right? And it proves to be a little bit of his downfall. So I wanted that to be that ending where he’s like, I’ll fix this. This doesn’t matter is like anymore. I’ll go sell this right now. That’s the introspection I wanted, and that’s why I wanted it to hit really hard, and give that immediacy of like this isn’t what I should have done, you know what I mean? And that empathy of now that I’m here, I’m not going to be able to help my sister and my niece, you know what I mean? Like this is where, and that’s what I wanted to do. So like less introspection throughout, and then at the end, that immediacy of like, I fucked up.

Sarah Harrison  52:25

Right. You make a series of compromises that you can still live with yourself about, and you don’t necessarily realize when you’ve crossed over that line, and then you can’t come back. At the beginning, I think I’m in a different place. I’m thinking, well, maybe that guy. Thanks for spoiling it that much. Maybe that guy wanted to give the watch to his own family, and at the end, I’m like, maybe that was never that guy’s watch, and he just pilfered it himself. So, for you, Caitlyn, one thing about the polar bears in your story in On Fire and Under Water that really struck out to me-it reminded me a little bit of a guest we had earlier, Christine Carbo, who wrote The Wild Inside and that’s about a grizzly bear. Different bear, different place. The grizzly bear is the killer. The grizzly bears kill the person, and the relationship with the people, though they also love the bear, and I felt like I got a strong sense of that. As the bears killed someone’s dog, or as the character’s trying to dig out a bear, and everyone’s like, “Oh, he’s trying to save the bear, and it’s a very positive feeling about a bear, and yet their everyday existence is like let’s try to not get killed by bears. Can you talk a little bit about that love, maybe love fear relationship that they’re all dealing with?

C.E. McKenna  53:54

I’m really happy that you picked up on that because I feel like that has been a theme of my entire life growing up in the Rocky Mountains, moose are actually my animal of most fear, as I’m sure Carolyn knows. I mean, what I find so interesting about polar bears, and I think grizzlies are similar, is especially in Svalbard. So there are these signs everywhere in Svalbard about grizzly bears, and they are in Norwegian, which I do not know. But essentially, the translation is bears. I think it’s just bears are everywhere, and every single person who lives there has to carry a rifle with them, and there are actual umbrella stands in the post office and in the grocery store where you just put your rifle when you go in because they also ask that you don’t bring them all the way in. So there are those signs everywhere, but bears are such a big part of that community, and. Everybody has stories about seeing them. There’s actually a viral video that I’ve been seeing in the last six months. There’s a polar bear that chases after someone and it’s in the middle of Long Irvine, and they get on their snowmobile and ride away and it chases them, and that’s just an incredibly common thing, but in Norway you can’t shoot a polar bear because they’re endangered. So the point of those rifles is to shoot above their head. So you’re trying to scare them off, but again, they are hunting you. You are their food. So I just find the wildness of that is something that I have always really been drawn to because I grew up in the Rocky Mountains and I was a kid that hiked a lot on my own, and the most beautiful moments of my life have happened in nature, and the scariest moments of my life have happened in nature, and sometimes they happen on the same day, but there’s something just truly brilliant about being stuck in a thunderstorm above tree line, and there’s something gorgeous to having a moose so close to you that you are worried about your dog barking at it. There’s this incredible energy of seeing a cougar in the middle of the night as you drive by yourself up to your house, and all you can think about is how quickly can I get into my house. That’s just something. I’m just so glad that you picked up on that because I feel that’s something that has driven a lot of my writing, but I’ve never written directly at it.

Sarah Harrison  56:43

Fascinating. Well, I cannot actually believe that we’ve come up on time. I feel like there’s so many great stories in On Fire and Under Water, and we’re only interviewing three of the authors and the editor Curtis, which has been fascinating. Carolyn, did you have any final questions before we wrap up? I definitely want to hear about what they’re working on right now.

Carolyn Daughters  57:05

That’s what I was about to ask: what’s coming up next for each of you, and then how can our listeners learn more about you? Let’s start with Curtis.

Curtis Ippolito  57:14

Oh, thanks. So I have a new novel out called Waves of Burden, and it’s available anywhere you can find books, and I’m really excited about it. And I am working on promoting that because that is a full time job as an indie author.

Carolyn Daughters  57:31

Yes, and congratulations on that. Four days ago, I think. Raymond, how about you?

Raymond J. Brash  57:42

I have ADHD. Too many projects happening. Jumping between them. But I, I just wrote one that I really am gonna start submitting more. It’s a short story about an old bank robber whose crew that he double-crossed the guy? One of the guys finds him, but this is like 15 years later. He has Parkinson’s, so he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the situation because he’s old. He’s not as fast as he used to be, so he has to be a little bit smart about it. And I wrote that because my dad has Parkinson’s. I wanted to start writing something about chronic illnesses and crime together. Interesting to do. So it’s new for me, new realm I’m getting into, but it feels good writing it.

Carolyn Daughters  58:34

Cool. Puja?

Puja Guha  58:37

I’ve got a few things in the works.

Carolyn Daughters  58:41

That, Puja, is shocking. We can’t believe you have a yes.

Puja Guha  58:45

Just a few.

Carolyn Daughters  58:46

Yes.

Puja Guha  58:49

After my short story in On Fire and Under Water, I wrote the first book of two different series. So one is both of those are finished, and publishing is the slowest industry on the planet, but hopefully I will have publication dates at some point soon. One of them is about a Bengali girl working for the World Bank in West Africa.

Carolyn Daughters  59:17

That must be so hard for you to write about.

Puja Guha  59:24

It starts to deviate from my life. She gets engaged to a Nigerian businessman, and then gets picked up by these people who are claiming to be from an independent intel agency, and that he is running drugs through his resorts, and so she has to decide who to trust, whether it’s her fiancé or supposed agency, and then the other button that is finished is an alternate history about Iran set in 19. 1991, where the 1953 CIA coup failed, and the whole thing’s classified and covered up. So 1991 Middle East looks a little bit different, but the actual story is about a murder of a CIA whistleblower, and then about the journalist who breaks that story, so that has been a little bit challenging to navigate with the political landscape right now. Putting that out with traditional publishing space, so I may end up indie publishing that like I did with the Afrivo, see how that all shakes out.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:46

Cool.

Puja Guha  1:00:46

I’m working on a relative book that is set in the mountains here. It’s my first book set in Colorado.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:54

That’s amazing.

Puja Guha  1:00:57

I’m very excited. It’s a few different firsts. First set in Colorado. It’s a first where really like diving into some contradictions, wonderful, beautiful things, but also crazy things about you. But it’s basically the woman who’s the head of an HOA in the mountains disappears. Funds of the HOA disappear at the same time. Everybody in the complex has a motive, and her extended family niece Nadia, who’s also a Bengali girl, is like trying to figure out who she should trust and what actually happened.

Carolyn Daughters  1:01:36

Cool. I love it. Caitlyn?

C.E. McKenna  1:01:44

As I mentioned earlier, after my short story in On Fire and Under Water, I have an essay coming out tomorrow in the Master’s Review, which is only like 1,000 words, so it’s tiny.

Curtis Ippolito  1:01:52

But it was a competition.

C.E. McKenna  1:01:53

It was a competition, and I did not come in first. You got to see me. Was they publishing? There’s first and not first. I am querying a novel called The Haunting of Lydia Struin, which is about the actual murder of Jane Stanford, who was the co-founder of Stanford University, and she was poisoned in 1905, and it’s never been solved. So it’s like a ninth house meets why fish don’t exist. I like to do nonfiction plus fiction plus gothic stuff. That is out now. If any agents are watching this podcast, and then I they all are writing. Of course they are. I’m writing my second novel, which is like Buffy meets Killing Eve. So it’s a vampire, a modern day vampire who’s living in Amsterdam and eating men’s heads in the red light district. Awesome. That’s been very fun. Sort of travel loggy. A lot of people deal with modern day problems. There’s some climate change in there, so it’s been really fun.

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:09

Awesome. Well, very exciting. You guys have all have amazing projects in the works.

Sarah Harrison  1:03:15

Tons of wild stuff going on. Well, it’s been fantastic talking to all of you. Thank you so much. And the book, if you haven’t caught it, On Fire and Under Water. So run out and buy it. It’s right here. Caitlin’s modeling it for us. We’ll also be putting it on our two different stores. We’ll also look up all the author’s other work and put that on there as well, so you’ll be able to find some other things they did easily. But thank you again, guys. It’s been great talking to you.

Speaker 1  1:03:48

Thank you.

Curtis Ippolito  1:03:49

Thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  1:03:52

Thanks so much for listening to this episode on On Fire and Under Water: A Crime Fiction Anthology. Please help other mystery lovers find our show by subscribing or with a like, a share, or a rating. It’s totally free, and it means the world to us.

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Carolyn Daughters

Thanks for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. Until next time, Stay Mysterious.