Interview with Crime Writer Sascha Rothchild: S. 7, Ep. 23

The Crime Cafe

This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer, screenwriter, and producer Sascha Rothchild. Check out our discussion of her debut novel Blood Sugar! And a bit of chat about screenwriting. This is the Crime Cafe, your podcasting source of great crime, suspense and thriller writing. I’m your host Debbi Mack. 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. Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe Debbi (00:54): But first, let me put in a good word for Blubrry podcasting. I’m a Blubrry affiliate, but that’s not the only reason I’m telling you this. I’ve been using Blubrry Podcasting as my hosting service for my podcast for years and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made. They give great customer service, you’re in complete control of your own podcast, you can run it from your own website, and it just takes a lot of the work out of podcasting for me. I find for that reason that it’s a company that I can get behind 100% and say, “You should try this.” Try Blubrry. It doesn’t require a long-term contract, and it’s just a great company, period. It also has free technical support by email, video, and phone, so you can get a human being there. Isn’t that nice? If you want to podcast, try out Blubrry. No long-term contract, excellent distribution, and great technical support, too, by email, video, and on the phone. I’ve included an affiliate link on this blog. Here’s a PDF transcript of the interview! Debbi: Hi everyone. Our guest on the final episode of Season 7 of the Crime Cafe is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter who just released her debut novel, Blood Sugar and I have a copy right here and check out that cover! If you're watching on YouTube, I tell you that is a beautiful cover. Her credentials include working on the public radio show This American Life, writing a memoir-turned-screenplay called How to Get Divorced by 30, writing and producing various television shows—GLOW, The Bold Type, The Baby-Sitters Club and The Carrie Diaries, to name a few. And she's now a showrunner for a Netflix series. Her feature film screenplay Who Invited Her? has been optioned by DreamWorks with Reese Witherspoon to executive produce it. Not too shabby, as they say. It's with great pleasure that I introduce my guest Sascha Rothchild. I hope I said that right. Sascha: Yes. It's a mouthful. Sascha Rothchild. I know my parents had fun with that one. Debbi: Well, very cool. I just want to thank you for being here, spending time with us first of all. I could ask you 10,000 questions based on your background, but we'll start with the book anyway. What prompted you to write a novel? Sascha: I had an idea late at night that started with a personal event. My husband is a Type 1 Diabetic, and he had a low blood sugar at night, which is quite dangerous. He has a continuous glucose monitor and it beeps very loudly to wake him up so he can eat sugar and he had a low blood sugar. There was the beeping. I woke up, I woke him up, he ate sugar, he's safe and healthy, and he fell right back to sleep. But I was wide awake and my writer brain started turning and asking, well, what if and what if? And I thought, well, what if he had died? Well, that would be horrible. But then I moved on to story and plot and I thought, what if the police thought I killed him because the spouse is always the first suspect? And then I thought, wait! What if I actually had murdered people in my past and gotten away with it. Now I'm being investigated for the one murder I didn't commit.