Beyond the Draft

What if every spoonful of vanilla, every drop of honey, or every piece of chocolate carried a human story you've never heard?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Imma sits down with culinary explorer, author, and Flavors Unknown podcast host Emmanuel Laroche to uncover the remarkable people behind Madagascar's world-famous ingredients.

What began as a business trip became a mission to tell the stories of vanilla farmers, cocoa growers, beekeepers, pink pepper harvesters, and even caviar producers who are quietly shaping one of the world's richest culinary landscapes.

Together, they explore:

• The journey that transformed curiosity into purpose

• Why every ingredient has a human story behind it

• The biggest misconceptions about Madagascar

• The surprising rise of world-class Madagascan caviar

• Food as a bridge between cultures and people

• Sustainability, resilience, and preserving traditions

• Why curiosity is the beginning of every great story

This isn't just a conversation about food.

It's about culture, identity, resilience, and the invisible hands behind the flavors we enjoy every day.

Because every flavor has a story, and every story has the power to bring people together.

What if one lost dream became the beginning of your life's greatest story?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Imma welcomes aerospace engineer, Air Force veteran, and author Jeff Kildow, whose passion for aviation and history became the foundation for gripping alternate-history thrillers.

After poor eyesight ended his dream of becoming an Air Force pilot, Jeff found another runway, serving in the Air Force, building a career in aerospace engineering, and eventually writing novels that ask one haunting question:

What if World War II had ended differently?

Together, they explore:

• Turning disappointment into unexpected purpose

• Why alternate history reveals truths about the real past

• Blending engineering, military experience, and imagination

• What makes storytelling deeply human in the age of AI

• The enduring power of asking "What if?"

• Why history is more fragile than we often believe

This conversation is about more than war.

It's about resilience, purpose, imagination, and discovering that the dream you lose may lead you to the story you were always meant to tell.

Because sometimes life rewrites the draft before we ever write the ending.

Some writers begin with a blank page and a dream.

Robert O. Bowers began around a campfire.

For decades, he collected stories the old-fashioned way, by living them. Forty-three years working for ODOT. Countless days hunting. Countless nights fishing. Miles of wilderness, quiet woods, dark lakes, and remote places where most people never go. And where, according to Robert, not everything can be explained.

Strange sounds in the darkness. Unusual sights in the trees. Encounters that still defy easy explanation years later.

For a long time those stories lived only in memory, shared around campfires and on fishing boats, passed along to the nieces and nephews who kept saying the same thing.

You need to write these down.

So he did.

What started as a collection of true stories became four volumes of Campfire Tales From Uncle Rob. Then came novels. Then came cryptids. Then came Red Eyes at Black Mesa and Have Dog Will Travel, fiction inspired by a lifetime of real encounters that still have no easy answers.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Robert opens up about the moment he realized campfire stories could become books. About forty-three years of quietly paying attention to the world. About the unexplained encounters that challenged everything he thought he knew. About why human beings are so drawn to mysteries science has not fully solved. And about what he most wants to say to the retiree, the outdoorsman, the dreamer who has been sitting on a lifetime of stories and still has not written the first page.

This conversation is for every person who has been told it is too late to begin.

Robert O. Bowers just proved otherwise.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Robert O. Bowers /Author · Outdoorsman / Storyteller

📖 Campfire Tales From Uncle Rob · Red Eyes at Black Mesa · Have Dog Will Travel: Amazon

Beyond the Draft/Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

He had a career most people would spend a lifetime building.

Professional ice hockey coach. Director of Hockey Operations for Team Canada West. Scout for the Los Angeles Kings. A life lived in arenas, traveling the world doing work he loved.

And then he walked away from all of it.

Into a jungle. Into a war zone. Into one of the longest-running and least-reported conflicts on earth.

David Small has spent twelve years serving in Burma, a country that has been in civil war for over seventy-five years and that the world has largely chosen not to notice. He has walked through landmine fields. Survived bombing by MiG fighter jets. Endured mortar attacks. And through all of it, he held onto one conviction that changed everything about how he made decisions.

He could not be led by comfort or fear.

He had to be led by love.

His bestselling memoir, Nameless Faceless People: Ten Years With The Free Burma Rangers, documents everything he witnessed, the courage of the people fighting to survive inside a forgotten war, the heartbreak of a conflict the headlines ignore, and what it costs to keep showing up for people the world has decided do not matter.

Today he directs the Jungle Discipleship School, a nine-month program equipping young Burmese people with spiritual, leadership, and small business skills to transform their own communities.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, David opens up about the moment he left the ice rink for the jungle. About what it does to a person to face danger repeatedly for over a decade. About the philosophy that kept him alive. About the people who gave his book its title. And about what he most wants the comfortable person quietly questioning their life to finally hear.

This is not a boring episode.

David Small promised us that. He kept his word.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: David Small / Author /Missionary/ Director of the Jungle Discipleship School/ Former LA Kings Scout

📖 Nameless Faceless People: Ten Years With The Free Burma Rangers: Amazon and all bookstore

Beyond the Draft / Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

Most of us know we need to let go.

We just don't know how.

We carry conversations that happened years ago. Criticism that never left. Regret, resentment, embarrassment, loss. And over time, these experiences do not simply live in our minds. They settle into our bodies. Into our posture. Into the way we move through the world.

Melanie Smithson believes freedom begins the moment we learn to release what we have been unconsciously holding.

She is a therapist, movement practitioner, and the author of Shake Yourself Free , a book that did not arrive through sitting at a desk forcing words onto a page. It arrived through dance. For months, during her weekly movement practice, new ways of letting go revealed themselves. She would move, feel something shift, receive an insight, run to her notebook, write it down, and step back into the dance. Again and again, until a book had found its way through her.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Melanie opens up about the child who naturally knows how to let go and the adult who forgets. About the language of the body and how to finally learn it. About becoming what she calls a hoarder of upset, and why human beings cling so fiercely to the pain that is making them miserable. About the difference between letting go and denying what happened. And about the surprising truth that healing is not always found through analysis.

Sometimes it is found through movement.

Through breath.

Through learning to trust the wisdom already living inside you.

This conversation is for every person who is exhausted, not from doing too much, but from carrying too much. The ones who want to let go but do not yet know how.

Melanie Smithson just showed them the way.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Melanie Smithson /Therapist · Movement Practitioner · Author of Shake Yourself Free

📖 Shake Yourself Free: Smithsonclinic.com

Beyond the Draft/ Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

What does it look like to spend more than half your adult life living in someone else's country, and still not feel lost?

Jodi Cowles has called seven countries home. She spent eight years in Istanbul, navigating culture, collecting stories, and discovering that human connection speaks a language deeper than words. She became an entrepreneur, a publisher, a champion for independent authors, and the co-founder of Blue Hat Publishing and Well Told Studio.

But the story that changed everything was not about publishing.

It was not about business.

And it was not about living abroad.

It was about becoming a mother.

Her memoir, Then Came Joy, tells the deeply personal story of adopting her daughter from Turkey, a journey marked by uncertainty, grief, faith, loss, and the kind of love that transforms everything it touches. It is a story about resilience. About identity. About raising a Third Culture Kid across cultures and borders. About leaving the simple, Sunday-school faith of childhood behind and finding something deeper, harder, and more honest on the other side of doubt.

Jodi calls it leaving Flannelgraph Jesus behind.

And what she found instead is extraordinary.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Jodi opens up about what seven countries taught her about belonging and identity. About the grief that arrived before the joy, and why that matters. About what it means to raise a child who exists between worlds. About building a publishing company that gives independent authors a real chance. And about what joy actually means when you have earned it the hard way.

This conversation is for every person who feels like life has taken them somewhere they never expected to be. Who is grieving, questioning, searching, or wondering if joy is still possible for them.

Jodi Cowles just proved it is.

🎙️ Host: Imma

📚 Guest: Jodi Cowles — Memoirist/ Entrepreneur/ Co-Founder of Blue Hat Publishing & Well Told Studio

📖 Then Came Joy — Available Now

🌐 jodicowles.com

Beyond the Draft/Where the real story begins after the writing is done.

Your words have power. Your story matters. Keep writing.

What happens when Hollywood tells you your stories aren't marketable?

For Kay A. Oliver, it became the beginning of a whole new career.

After more than three decades producing, writing, and directing in Hollywood, Kay was repeatedly told that female-driven stories wouldn't sell. Instead of giving up, she turned to novels, and built an award-winning writing career that now spans fifteen books.

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Kay shares her journey from Hollywood creative to bestselling novelist, the success of Disturbed Tombs, overcoming breast cancer, writing resilient female characters, and why rejection is often redirection in disguise.

This is a conversation about courage, perseverance, reinvention, and refusing to let others decide the value of your story.

In this episode:

• Life inside Hollywood's creative machine

• Turning rejection into opportunity

• The story behind Disturbed Tombs

• Writing strong women

• Surviving breast cancer

• Building a fifteen-book career

• Why resilience matters more than talent

🌐 Website: Kayaoliver.com

#BeyondTheDraft #KayAOliver #AuthorInterview #WritingPodcast #WritersLife #Hollywood #BookWriting #CreativeJourney #WomenWriters #Resilience

Can a cybersecurity executive become one of the world's most prolific ghostwriters?

Richard Lowe did exactly that.

After spending thirty-three years in enterprise technology, cybersecurity, logistics, and leadership, including two decades helping run operations behind the scenes at Trader Joe's, Richard walked away from corporate life and reinvented himself as a full-time writer.

Today, he has written or ghostwritten more than 160 books and is known by many as "The Writing King."

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, Richard reveals what he's learned from helping executives, entrepreneurs, and experts turn ideas into books, how ghostwriters capture another person's voice, what AI means for authors, and why it's never too late to begin a second career.

This is a fascinating conversation about storytelling, technology, authorship, creativity, and the courage to start over.

In this episode, we went deep into:

• Leaving a successful corporate career

• Writing and ghostwriting 160+ books

• The art of capturing someone else's voice

• Why most people never write their book

• AI and the future of authorship

• Technology lessons that improve writing

• Reinvention after decades in one career.

🌐 Website: Masterofworlds.com

#BeyondTheDraft #RichardLowe #Ghostwriting #WritingKing #AuthorInterview #WritingPodcast #BookWriting #AIWriting #Storytelling #Creativity #Authors #WritingLife

Some books are planned.

Others are written because survival demands it.

In this deeply moving episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma welcomes award-winning author and speaker Richard Ballo, whose memoir Life Without Lisa began as a private journal after the devastating loss of his wife to cancer.

A published writer for more than five decades, Richard never intended to write a book about grief.

But when tragedy changed everything, writing became his lifeline.

In this conversation, Richard shares:

❤️ The healing power of writing through loss

❤️ Life as a widowed father raising two young sons

❤️ Why grief isn't something we "get over"

❤️ Turning heartbreak into hope

❤️ The difference between surviving and healing

❤️ Finding purpose in life's darkest moments

❤️ How writing can become a path toward resilience

This episode is for anyone who has experienced loss, loved someone through grief, or wondered how people find the strength to keep moving forward after unimaginable heartbreak.

Because sometimes the story that changes lives is the one we never intended to write.

🎙 Guest: Richard Ballo

📖 Book: Life Without Lisa

🎧 Listen now and discover how grief, hope, and healing can coexist.

#BeyondTheDraft #RichardBallo #LifeWithoutLisa #GriefHealing #Resilience #Memoir #WritingThroughGrief #AuthorInterview #Hope #Podcast

What if the life you're searching for begins the moment you stop chasing who you think you're supposed to be?

In this episode of Beyond the Draft, host Imma sits down with actress, coach, Reiki practitioner, retreat leader, and co-author of Landing on Your North Star, Brigitta Dau.

After leaving Canada at 21 to pursue acting in Hollywood, Brigitta discovered that true transformation isn't about changing your circumstances, it's about changing your relationship with yourself.

Together, they explore:

✨ The courage to reinvent yourself

✨ Why self-worth should never be tied to achievement

✨ Healing from old identities and limiting beliefs

✨ Creativity as a tool for transformation

✨ Intuition, mindfulness, and personal growth

✨ Finding purpose in life's unexpected chapters

✨ What it really means to follow your North Star

This is a powerful conversation for anyone feeling stuck, searching for direction, or standing on the edge of a new chapter.

Because sometimes finding yourself isn't about becoming someone new, it's about remembering who you've been all along.

🎙 Guest: Brigitta Dau

📖 Book: Landing on Your North Star

🎧 Listen now and discover why reinvention is truly an inside job.

#BeyondTheDraft #BrigittaDau #PersonalGrowth #Purpose #SelfDiscovery #Mindfulness #Creativity #Reinvention #AuthorInterview #Podcast