My guest interview this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is with crime writer and publisher of The Real Book Spy on Substack, Ryan Steck.
Also, feel free to download a copy of the transcript here.
Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. Welcome to 2026. Our first show of the new year features the author of the Matthew Redd Thriller Series. He’s also a freelance developmental editor, which is an important thing to have if you’re self-publishing, and an author/publisher of The Real Book Spy on Substack. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest Ryan Steck. Hi, Ryan. How are you doing today?
Ryan (01:20): Hi, Debbi. Thank you so much for having me.
Debbi (01:23): I am very happy to have you on, even though you are wearing a Yankees cap.
Ryan (01:27): I know.
Debbi (01:27): I can live with that. It’s cool. I have Yankee fan friends, even though I’m a Met fan and a Nationals fan. I’m a National League fan. I don’t know.
Ryan (01:38): Well, I was telling you before we started to record, I’m actually a Tigers fan too, but I’m from Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is where Derek Jeter grew up. So I always loved the captain and rooted for the Yankees since I was a little kid.
Debbi (01:51): Very cool. That’s a very cool reason to root for him, too.
Ryan (01:55): Yeah.
Debbi (01:55): There you go. So anyway, happy new year. Glad to have you on. Thanks for being with us. What inspired you to write a thriller series?
Ryan (02:06): Oh, I think I’ve always loved to tell stories and I love thrillers. I love mysteries. Way before I was actually writing books, a fan of the genre, it was through talking with other authors. So I came from sports journalism and covering NFL teams, primarily the Detroit Lions, and then sort of made my transition into publishing. And at the time, I tried writing for other media outlets, writing book reviews and author interviews, but I didn’t love that I was told what books I had to review or which authors I had to talk to. I wanted to be in control of myself and my own boss. And so I was friends with a lot of the authors that I was covering. And the one thing I kept hearing from everybody is that there’s no one-stop shop for all things thriller. And it was a good friend of mine who was a mentor.
(02:58): His name was Ted Bell, New York Time bestselling author, Ted Bell, of the Alex Hawk series. Ted’s a guy I worked with for a while and he really mentored me in writing. But he said, “Buddy, if you build a website, we’ll come. We’ll support you. We’ll be there.”
