Susan Leon on Crime Fiction, Forgiveness, and the Ripple Effects of Loss – The Writing Coach Ep. 227

Today on The Writing Coach podcast, I’m joined by author Susan Leon to discuss her debut novel, If They’d Only Known.

Susan’s book is a dark, emotionally layered crime novel set in Northern Ontario, exploring the ripple effects of a child abduction and murder across a family, a community, and the decades that follow. But while the book uses the shape of a crime story, our conversation goes much deeper than plot.

We talk about:

• Grief, trauma, forgiveness, acceptance, and what it means to write dark material from a place of wisdom rather than despair.
• Susan shares how her own life experiences shaped the emotional heart of the book.
• How real conversations with detectives, veterans, and families touched by loss informed her research.
• And why she believes forgiveness is not about excusing harm, but about freeing yourself from the weight of carrying it.

We also get into the writing journey itself:

• Learning how to structure a novel after years of collecting scenes.
• Discovering which character’s story she was really telling.
• Navigating historical research.
• Working with beta readers.
• And finding community through writing programs and fellow authors.

This is a conversation about crime fiction, but it’s also about the power of stories to help us process pain, make meaning, and maybe even move forward.

Check it out now:

Audio:

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Video:

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The Writing Coach Episode #227 Show Notes

Visit Susan Leon’s website and join her mailing list: https://www.susanleon.com/

Pick up Kevin’s latest novel: The Page Turners: Fantastic Realms.

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Grab your FREE copy of The Busy Author Method here.

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The Writing Coach Episode #227 Transcript

Today on the podcast, I have author Susan Leon. Susan, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

You’ve lived in Ottawa, Ontario, most of your life?

A little bit southwest of Ottawa, in a little place called Carleton Place, for many, many years. Then we traveled quite a bit in an RV, so living in a sardine can is pretty interesting.

Recently, we’ve been in Mexico for a year and a half, and now we’re back in Ottawa. So it’s kind of good to be home, but traveling was great too.

Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. I’ve spent most of my life in Ottawa, whereas you have lived here a big chunk of your life, but you’re also originally from Northern Ontario. As you said, you traveled in an RV, and you’ve lived in Mexico.

Ottawa is kind of known as being a bit of a sleepy, boring town. I’m curious, do your travels confirm that? Or what’s your take on Ottawa, having seen a larger world out there?

Well, Ottawa is kind of laid back. I mean, they kind of roll up the streets here in the early hours. In Mexico, music is going on till the wee hours of the morning, and you just get used to it.

But we have family here, and so that’s kind of the draw. Once you get to my age, you appreciate having family close by, especially after we’ve been gone for so long.

Oh, for sure. And I think on the literary front, you’re not the first Ottawa writer or writing coach to be on this show. There are lots of different conventions and festivals and things.

So while we might not have a big party culture here in sleepy old Ottawa, I think it’s a nice place for writers to develop careers and convene and connect with one another.

Yeah. Since I’ve been back, I’ve connected with Mike Martin and Peggy Blair. In fact, we’re working on something called Killer Words Festival Book Fest in Carleton Place in 2027. That is going to be a fun time.

We’re going to take over the town of Carleton Place and have it as a murder mystery weekend.

You know what you should do? Some guerrilla marketing. Draw out those white chalk outlines of bodies in various parts.

Yeah, exactly. That’s what we plan to do. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Well, let’s go back to the beginning of your novel journey, at least. Tell me about the moment when you decided you were going to write this book, and what that looked like at the very beginning.

Well, you know, I’ve always wanted to. I kept saying, from the time I was in my early twenties, “I’m going to write a book.” I would tell all my relatives, “I’m going to write a book.”

But life gets in the way, right? I had four children and a busy life, and it just got put on the back burner. I thought it did anyway.

Then I realized, when I was sorting things out as we were downsizing to get into the RV and leave, that I’ve written a lot of stuff. I’d just put it in little books, and it had all been collecting in a little box somewhere.

Then I started writing more scenes. I write a lot of poetry. I do that under a different name. The poetry circle of girls in Ottawa here actually brought me onto some writing summits.

Yeah.

And that’s where I met you.

Okay.

Or first saw you. I don’t know. Maybe it was your Canadian accent that hooked me in because it was quite an international group of people.

But I just kind of liked that thing.

I had all these scenes, but I had no format to them. I guess people call it being a pantser. I just had everything there, and I didn’t know how to put it all together.

So from beginning to end, because I’m coming up to publishing, it’s been about a three-year journey. I did take one of your courses in story planning, and then I kind of disappeared for a few months while I worked on it.

Then I went to Italy to a women’s writing retreat.

A women’s writing retreat, yeah.

Yeah. That gave me a lot more confidence to really pursue this and get it together. It’s been a very interesting journey.

Of course, I made all the mistakes that a newbie makes, you know, head-hopping all over the place, kind of jumping in time. But I think I’ve got a good product now.

The book is called If They’d Only Known, and it’s an exploration of grief and trauma in a family setting, but it’s filtered through a crime case.

So tell me a little bit about approaching these ideas of trauma and family problems through the crime fiction lens.

Yeah, that is kind of dramatic, I guess, because throughout our lives we all have these little moments of loss. To frame it in a large loss kind of brings to the fore things that could probably help us on our journey toward forgiveness and finding serenity when horrific things happen.

I’ve always been really, really fascinated with not the crime itself, but what happens to the people around it. There are so many victims. Even the parents of murderers are victims, you know? Everybody suffers, and the ripples just go all the way through society.

That’s always fascinated me, and that’s kind of what my story is more about. It’s what happened. The crime is almost the subplot. Not quite, but almost.

Well, it’s interesting. The last guest on the show was another client of mine, Sandy Day, who characterized her novel, Where the Night Winds Wail, as Ontario noir. I think If They’d Only Known could very much fall into that same genre.

What made you decide to set it in Northern Ontario? And do you think there’s some sort of noir vibe to this province?

No, this is a great province. After traveling all around, Canada is a great country. I’ve got to tell you, we have so many things that we don’t even appreciate. We look to other places for these things that we have in our own backyard.

But I grew up in Thunder Bay, when it was Port Arthur and Fort William. It still takes me a bit to remember that it’s now Thunder Bay.

Having grown up there, everything was so idyllic and perfect, and I decided, you know, I’m going to set it there, where there are all these things to do when you’re a kid, and just make it a little darker.

Because I left there when I was about 15 or 16 years old, and I’m sure there was a lot of darkness going on. In any town, there is. But I just knew the area. I knew that time frame very well. That’s when I still lived there.

I just felt comfortable.

Well, speaking of the time frame, it is a historical piece. The crime takes place in 1966, right?

Yeah.

What were the challenges of writing historical fiction in that manner?

Oh, just getting the things correct.

For example, in one part, in the 1966 part of it, I had cadaver dogs in there. Then I did some research, and cadaver dogs were not used in Ontario until 1976, so I had to change that.

What was interesting is I ended up doing an Excel spreadsheet starting in 1900, believe it or not, and going in 10-year increments. I had categories of slang, what people were saying, what was popular in slang, music, cars or transportation, world events, Canadian events, and forensic events.

I started filling all that in. You know, today’s environment is a little crazy, right? People are a little worried, and the phrase “It’s going to hell in a handbasket” is bandied around.

I’m going to tell you that, having done that exercise every 10 years, we’ve been going to hell in a handbasket. We’ve had terrible health problems, like the Spanish flu. You just go through all the 10-year increments.

It gave me a lot of hope for the future.

Getting the vernacular right, even getting the buildings right, because when they amalgamated and became Thunder Bay, they moved the police station to a different part of the city. Getting those things correct, and where things were, was challenging for me. I had to try to make sure that was all correct.

Do you think there’s anything particularly Canadian about the book?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

What are some of those aspects?

Well, even the setting and phrases, like using “fly dope.” I had a beta reader from Australia who had no clue what that meant.

I refer to Block Parents and the Block Parent sign that we used to have in the windows, and some of the other beta readers from other countries had no idea what that meant.

So there’s a lot of that. I should have had somebody baking butter tarts, though. That’s a real one.

One of the moments that felt truly Canadian to me is very early on, right after the crime happens, the community comes together to put together a search party and help.

And where does that happen? At the local arena.

It just seems, of course, like as a Canadian, where else would a community gather?

With hockey sticks.

Hockey sticks through the foliage. So that felt truly, wonderfully Canadian to me.

Yeah, it was for sure.

When I was writing my book M School, I had become interested in sociopaths because I am the complete opposite. I’m overflowing with emotion.

So I was really fascinated by these people who don’t feel emotion and empathy for others. I wrote a book in first-person perspective from a sociopath’s perspective, and it was an interesting exercise.

But by the end of it, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I do not want to be in this person’s head anymore.”

I mention that because your book is about a child abduction and murder. I mean, even more challenging a place to put your head as a writer than just thinking about sociopaths.

So how did you handle sitting down every day and writing about such a horrific topic?

Well, I had to put it aside for a while at times. My sequel is even a little darker, and I’m finding I have to put it aside.

When I was researching for If They’d Only Known, there’s a segment in there about Vietnam. Oh my goodness, some of the research I did. I couldn’t even finish the book. I had to come back a week later to read it. It was just, yeah.

So you have to find the outlets.

Part of Jack Kelly, my protagonist in the book, is based on a fellow my husband and I met in our travels who was a cold case detective. He was willing to share a lot of time and stories with us. His outlet was music, and he would play gigs wherever he could.

His outlet was music, and soon he became my outlet because we would go listen to him. He was very good, and his family would sing with him too.

But yeah, just staying in the moment and staying in today, and learning how to put it down and walk away from it. That was a little tricky at first, but I think I’m pretty good at that now.

You just mentioned your protagonist was based on a detective you met, and you interviewed or spoke with a Vietnam vet.

Oh yeah.

Does this process of speaking to real people who have experienced these sorts of things in real life become a key part of your research?

Oh, for sure.

Not that I base everything exactly on these people. I’m not stealing their stories. But I feel so grateful that they are willing to share some of these stories with me because some of them are kind of heart-wrenching.

And that they trust me with the story they’ve told me, that I’m not going to make it any more or less than what it was.

We also met a couple in our travels who have a missing child. That was quite interesting because, similar to my book, the father believes that the child is gone, and the mother, until she sees the body, isn’t going to believe it.

So one is already going through the grieving process, and one is not. It’s an interesting thing to observe.

Then you kind of apply it to your own life, some of the losses that I’ve had. Because I’m an old lady, so there have been losses along the way. Sometimes you get stuck, right? Sometimes you get stuck in that grief.

In my book, I tried to show that some people make it through it and some people don’t. It’s not a happy ever after.

Yeah, we both write dark, but I feel like I’m generally pessimistic. I don’t message in these books like it’s all going to turn out okay.

What do you think your personal take on all of this is? Because, as you said, there’s some justice or resolution in some senses of the book, but in other ways there are losses, and there are things that are never overcome.

So where do you land in terms of how we respond to the dark aspects of being alive, but also in art?

Well, I’m a very big believer in forgiveness and acceptance. You can’t change the past. You can’t change what’s happened. You have to learn to live with it.

Some people learn to live with it very well and move on, or use the negative experience to help other people. Some people get stuck in it. They wallow in it and die. If not physically die, then they’re living a life that isn’t full.

The loss of a child is horrific. Don’t get me wrong. It’s horrific. And we have lost a child, so I can come from that place. But you have to move on. You have to live for the other children.

In my story, the girl who is kidnapped has other siblings, and it’s about how this affected them and the parents.

It fascinates me. There was a show on TV, and in this particular show, it’s always cold cases. It’s always many years later, and they use forensic genealogy to find out what happened.

In one particular case, the brother, who was just a young boy when his sister was murdered, is now a grown man. At the end of the trial, the brother goes over to the daughter of the murderer. Everybody was kind of like, “Oh, what’s going to happen?”

But he went over and said he forgave her father.

That was a big moment because he actually realized that there were more victims than just his sister. There was how he grew up with parents who had lost a child.

It’s just fascinating to me, how it ripples through everything.

Well, you bring up the topic of forgiveness, which is a theme explored in the book. And I know it’s also a topic that you’ve explored in your own life and perhaps other writings.

So tell me a little bit about forgiveness and the role it plays in this book and in your writing in general.

There is a scene where Shannon is really upset that her mother has forgiven the guy who kidnapped her sister. She has confronted her and is saying, “Are you saying this is okay? What he did was okay? How can you do that?”

And the mother explains that forgiveness isn’t for him. Forgiveness is for me.

That’s a whole thing that I think people get wrong, or don’t realize. They’ll say, “How could I ever forgive somebody for doing something horrific like that?”

You’re not doing it for them. You’re not saying it’s okay what they did, or that you condone it, or anything like that. It’s that you’ve decided you want to stop carrying that burden around. You want to be free of that lead weight that pulls you down.

It’s interesting how, in my other writing life, I’m working on a book about forgiveness. I spent half my life not forgiving people and being miserable. It affected my work, my family, my whole serenity, really.

Acceptance and forgiveness are a theme through this book. And probably, if you really thought about it, through my life. Finding that point in my life was a real serene moment. That also helps me to be able to write about this without it affecting me so much, you know what I mean?

Yeah, because you’ve learned not to hold on to everything.

And it’s kind of like I can look at the dark side from a safe distance.

Yeah. I often argue that literature is really an art form for older people. Being a pop star is probably for the young. But novels—I really do feel like books should have some wisdom to share, and I feel like a lot of valuable wisdom comes from life experiences.

So you’ve discussed struggling with not being able to let go or not being able to forgive. You’ve discussed the loss of a child. Do you feel like you could have written this book at any other point in your life?

No, no, no, no. I didn’t have the life experience. I didn’t have the self-awareness or self-knowledge. I didn’t take the time to examine.

You really have to sit back and examine your life and draw out the lessons.

Right.

In every experience, there are no mistakes. In every experience, there’s a lesson to be learned, and I truly believe that.

So I don’t think I would have been able to write this with the lessons learned and the experience in my twenties or thirties. No, no, no. I wasn’t there yet.

Something I often see with first-time novelists, and this includes myself, is the self-insert character, where the protagonist is basically just the author in some form.

With your book, you’ve got this diverse cast of multiple POV characters, and many different people playing different roles in the story and across the community that it takes place in.

Were you ever tempted to create a character based on you? Or was there one of them that felt like you? Or did you just look at them all as individual characters representing different aspects of the people touched by this crime?

Yeah, I don’t think I’m in here at all, and I was never tempted.

I just kind of looked at each one in their role, where they were. And you know, I know people used to say this to me, and I thought, “Oh, you’re a little crazy,” but your characters tell you what they’re going to do and who they are.

The first time that really actually happened to me, it was kind of like, “Oh, wow.” But it’s true.

These characters, I would write something, and they would come to me: “No, no, I wouldn’t do that. You’ve got to change that.”

I even had one where I had to change the whole book. I think you may recall I told this story. I was getting a little frustrated and didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I had heard from Tracy Scouse, who said, “Do a meditation.” She actually had music and everything, and she said to ask your story what it needs.

I did that, and my protagonist had been Shannon. I wanted to write strong female characters. But that didn’t come out. I ended up with Jack coming into my psyche, or whatever it was, and saying, “Hey, this is my story, not hers. Smarten up.”

And so when I started writing it from that point of view, it worked out better. It told the story I wanted to tell.

One of the unique experiences that I get as a coach is that it’s difficult, I think, sometimes to communicate to first-time authors the organic nature of developing a novel.

A client can come in one week and then come in the next week and go, “Oh, guess what? The main character isn’t the main character.”

This is all natural, right? I’ve seen it a million times. Stories grow. Stories evolve. We discover things. We amplify some things. We cut other things.

For me, it’s so exciting to see something start as an idea and then get to have you on an interview and see the book coming out into the world in a short period of time. I get to experience that journey alongside you and see things grow and become the thing they ultimately are.

You must really enjoy that, because I know when we come in, we have all these newbie things in our heads.

I’ve even had a point where a character said to me, “I’m sorry, honey, you’re going to have to change my name because a Mary wouldn’t do that.”

I think that was one of the hardest things I had to do about writing this whole thing: naming people.

Yes.

Yeah, I had trouble with that. You may recall, at one point, almost all my male characters’ names started with J.

Right. Exactly. It kind of just feels right in your head, and you don’t notice it until someone points it out.

Yeah. But that whole thing, like, “A Norma wouldn’t do that. You’ll have to change it to Vera or something like that.” It was just so weird, but it happens.

People who are against planning, or who are staunch pantsers, often make the argument that if they plan, all the magic and surprise of the creative process will come out of it.

And I’m like, just because you have a piece of paper that says, “In Act Two, Scene Two, someone’s going to go into a bowling alley,” doesn’t mean those characters aren’t going to start talking to you, or the story might not go in a completely different direction.

I just feel like giving yourself a bit of a path forward better facilitates the magic of the story coming alive, and the creative surprises, and the characters talking to you, and all these things that happen along the way.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I was just a pantser because I was just writing things. I have all these booklets here filled with stuff. I’m sure I have another story and a half in here that hit the floor because, well, that didn’t work in here.

But I wasn’t a pantser by choice. It was because I just didn’t know how to make a plan.

I say this all the time, Susan. People try to write a book and they can’t do it, or it’s not good, and then they beat themselves up.

And I’m like, no one ever teaches us how to write a book.

We just think we’re magically supposed to know. People understand that you need to learn how to become a dentist, but people just sit down and try to write a book and then feel horrible about themselves without ever understanding, well, like anything else, you’ve got to learn how to do it.

It can be really tough when you’re going it alone and don’t even know that planning is an option.

That’s right. That’s right.

I was really grateful for getting on these summits and learning about that. Then meeting up with you and having some organizational skills to put it all together.

I did your First Draft and Final Draft programs, and I’m sure you would have liked me to do a little more editing. But you know what? At my age, I’ve got to get it out there.

You know, my goal as a writing coach is to help you achieve what you want to achieve. I would never be like, “Oh, you should do another draft,” when you’re ready to get it out there into the world.

And I think our beta reader experience proved that readers were ready for it. I felt, with your beta readers, that there was a real emotional response.

A lot of the time, when we have beta readers, they give us more technical feedback. Whereas with yours, a lot of people were like, “I cried. It moved me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” Those sorts of things.

Yeah, yeah.

In Mexico, I met another Vietnam vet, and my husband’s my greatest champion, right? So no matter who it is, he says, “She’s written a book.”

Thanks, babe.

But I was talking to him about the research I had done on Vietnam. He was quite surprised. He was American, and he was quite surprised that that many Canadians—20,000 Canadians—had actually volunteered for that war.

I said, “I’ll send it to you if you’d like to read it.”

He was very moved, in a lot of different ways that I didn’t expect.

Because once you’ve written it, you know what you’re trying to say, but you have no control over how other people receive it, right?

It’s out there now. It’s how they receive it.

I was quite moved by what he said it meant to him. It helped him in a struggle that he’s been having. I don’t know how because he wouldn’t talk about it, but he thanked me.

I thought, “Wow, the power of words.” It really hit me when we had the c

onversation.

Yeah. So many authors, or at least authors while they’re prepping their first book, define success by bestseller lists and millions of dollars in the bank or something like that.

But what I find from my own experiences and from what I’ve seen with clients is that ultimately, moments like that really feel like success. They feel like you’ve done something worthwhile.

Who cares if you hit some Amazon list? If you actually impacted someone’s life in a real way, I mean, yeah, money’s great too, but I think all of us, as writers and artists, want to have an impact on the world.

How do you have an impact? One person at a time.

I remember at one point I would always say that I wanted to write a book. Then one day, I was really stuck. I’d be doing these prompts and things, and I said to my husband, “Maybe this isn’t for me.”

He said, “Well, maybe you just don’t have anything to say.”

That kind of did it because I’ve got lots to say. Do you know me? I’ve got lots to say.

So, yeah, I just had to learn how to say it. So thank you.

They always say, you know, people say they get writer’s block, and yet no one gets talker’s block.

So there’s a little mindset switch there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

You mentioned being in several of my group programs. I’m curious, what was it like being in the trenches with other writers going through the same process as you?

Oh, you know what? That was invaluable. Invaluable.

I’ve made some lifelong contacts that will stay with me forever.

The support that I’ve gotten from you, Laura, and everybody in the different programs—sometimes they don’t even know they’re giving you support. It’s just when they’re saying, “Oh, I can’t get this,” or, “I can’t get that.” Even just hearing that is supportive because it’s like, “Ah, me too.”

You know you’re not the only one.

I think in your groups especially, the positive feedback is amazing. Even when it’s something constructive, it’s done in a pleasant way, an encouraging way.

For many people who are just starting out, especially if you’re younger—you get a little old and salty, and it all rolls off your back anyway. Or you take it in the way it’s meant, as constructive, and don’t get personal about it.

But yeah, it’s been invaluable, and I’m going to miss it when I’m not there.

Well, let’s talk about the future. We’ve got the book, If They’d Only Known, coming out shortly.

What does the next, say, six months look like for you in terms of promoting the book? What have you got planned?

Well, I’ve got my website going. You can see it at susanleon.com. Very simple, just my name all together, and .com.

I have a newsletter going out. I am starting to put together the building blocks for the next Kelly and Crew mystery.

Also, I am working on, in my other persona, the forgiveness book. I’m hoping to have that out in the next few months. Quite a bit of the book is about what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is really a simple decision. Forgiveness is a decision.

Sometimes that’s hard for people to do, to decide that you want to live a better life.

And I always say, when you sit on that picket fence, all you get is a picket up yours.

Yeah, making a decision.

Oh, Susan, if folks want to pick up the book, If They’d Only Known, it’s available on Amazon?

It’ll be available on Amazon through FriesenPress, which is a Canadian publishing services company that I have used.

What I like about them is they’re 100% Canadian and 100% employee-owned, which kind of appeals to my socialistic nature.

But you’re just Canadian, right?

Yeah, yeah. And there’ll be a few others, I think. Barnes & Noble. Ingram distributes it, so it’ll be out there.

I will be doing some book fairs and things in the local area. I will be adding an events calendar to my website. There’s something coming up in October and another one again in December.

If people want to keep track of everything you’ve got going on, heading to susanleon.com and getting on that mailing list is probably the best way to do so.

Yep, yep. It would be the newsletter. I’ve got a newsletter coming out next week, so if you want to get on that right away, there’ll be some freebie things for people who subscribe.

I have one little short blurb called “Before They Knew,” so it talks about five years prior to the book happening. Then I have some other little blurbs about Jack Kelly when he was young and how Dell gets to be part of his family.

Those are things that kind of hit the cutting room floor when we went to actually put the book together. But I think they’d be—

You know, when I was into movies in the early DVD days, I loved those behind-the-scenes documentaries or author extras.

So I love it when I see writers doing the same thing. “Hey, want a glimpse into a scene that got cut, or a different aspect of the world that this story is set in, or a different angle on these characters?”

I think folks should get on that newsletter mailing list and get those cool extra bonuses.

Yep, yep. It’s kind of fun.

It has been such a pleasure working with you.

I’ll tell you a really quick story. I’ve probably told you this before, but pretend I haven’t, because then the little bit works.

When I was first starting my coaching business, I was in this small group coaching program for small businesses, and there were all sorts of different courses in their training library. They were all taught by different people. They brought in different experts to teach these different courses.

I watched this one course that was Book Yourself Solid. I don’t know why, but I was like, of all these courses, of all these teachers, for some reason, I really resonate with this coach.

So I looked him up. His name was Jason Billows, and he lived like a kilometre and a half from me.

I don’t know if it is the accent, I don’t know if it’s the energy, but this experience that you were somehow drawn to me—I have literally been through the exact same experience, where somehow Jason Billows spoke to me, and it turned out he was in Ottawa as well.

The point being, there’s something magical about getting to work with someone who you can actually get together with for coffee.

You were hanging out with me and my wife the other day by my pool. So with you, obviously the internet is wonderful. Zoom calls are good. It’s great to be able to work with people from all around the world.

But boy, is it also nice to breathe the same air, sit next to someone, and drink a coffee together.

So it’s been a delight both being your coach, but also your friend and fellow writer.

Well, I thank you so much for this podcast too. That’ll be helpful.

My pleasure. It was great having you.

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