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A weekly podcast and three books are far from a media empire, but I thought you would enjoy hearing about how I do my podcast and author thing and why. After all, I’m nearly four years into my full-time creative adventure of talking and writing about FBI true crime and crime fiction. During episode 122, I was interviewed by Deana Marie, podcast host of Twisted Philly, about my FBI career.
In this episode of FBI Retired Case File Review, I’m interviewed by my friend and fellow podcaster Javier Leiva, host of Pretend Radio, a show featuring stories about people pretending to be someone else. Javier and I regularly have conversations about producing our shows. This episode is practically a recording of one of our “mastermind” sessions, except this one is all about me. I reveal some immediate changes I’m making to the podcast schedule.
Podcasting is not as easy as it looks. Often, other life commitments and technical issues can throw off the production flow. I believe I’ve finally gotten control of my issues with audio quality, with the exception now and then of a distorted voice, usually mine. Podcasting makes me happy. However, writing and reading books also make me happy and recently I can’t seem to find the time to do either. The premise and plot twists for the third book in my crime fiction series have been collecting in my head for more than a year.
I started FBI Retired Case File Review on January 22, 2016, to build a potential audience for my writing. After posting my third episode, the podcast received a huge boost from iTunes when it was featured in New and Noteworthy. I shared details about that experience in my September 2017 blog post One Million Downloads: 5 Lessons Learned Producing a Podcast.
It’s been two years since I wrote that post and I thought it was a good time to update you on the podcast stats and my author journey. The podcast continues to grow organically. I haven’t spent any money on advertising, but I have occasionally been a guest on other shows to promote both FBI Retired Case File Review and my books. As of the end of August, episodes have been downloaded 2.7 million times. Currently, the show is on track to surpass 3 million downloads by the end of the year. However, since I have decided to change the frequency of the release of episodes from weekly to every other week and take most of the September off, this will probably decrease my average monthly downloads from approximately 90,000. The result will, most likely, be that I won’t hit that 3 million downloads milestone until sometime in early 2020 (Update – Nearly 10 million downloads as of July 2023).
Here are a couple of images providing a snapshot of my podcast statistics as of 8/31/2019. FBI Retired Case File Review is hosted on Libsyn.
In writing FBI Myths and Misconceptions: A Manual for Armchair Detectives, I use quotes and short excerpts for the agents I’ve interviewed to debunk common cliches. I want it to become “the book” for learning about the FBI. The book currently has 45 fabulous reviews on Amazon, the big dog of book retailers. If you’ve had a chance to buy the book, I would appreciate a sentence or two about what you liked and learned from reading it. Here’s a link to the review page. I’m thrilled with the response FBI Myths and Misconceptions is receiving from listeners so far. However, I would love to share it with more readers.
The more than 180 podcast interviews and case reviews I’ve conducted provide endless plots and story ideas to use in my writing (and yours). Here’s a short list of some of the top downloaded episodes and a montage of images from many of the shows.
A Few Listener Favorites:
Episode 035: Keith Kelly – Bernie Madoff, Ponzi Scheme
Episode 055: Max Noel – Unabomber Terrorist Ted Kaczynski (Part 1)
Episode 057: Eddie Freyer – Polly Klaas, Child Abduction and Murder (Part 1)
Episode 065: Bob Hamer – NAMBLA, Undercover Pedophile, and Sex Tourism
Episode 107: Greg Coleman – Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort
Episode 118: Ed Mireles – Fatal FBI Miami Shootout (Part 1)
Episode 132: Dan Craft – Jeffrey Dahmer, Interrogating Serial Killers
Don’t forget, in October instead of weekly, I’ll start posting episodes every other week. Thank you for your continued support!
[…] as fascinating but not as well-known FBI cases. As part of the celebration for my 300th episode, you can learn about my podcast origin story […]
This episode and the last was just down right fun to listen to. I hope you do more like it. It’s refreshing to hear that the FBI accepted women as equals right from the beginning. That is amazing. Thanks for sharing great interviews, including the one with an interview of you.