Discovered Wordsmiths

J is back, and this time he’s talking about his latest book series which deals with using A.I. for your writing. Our conversation entails the happenings from 20 books to 50k Vegas. J has a lot of thoughts about the future of publishing and the use of A.I.

Stephen: Cool.

Great. Alright. I’m just gonna start us off. New episode, Discovered Wordsmith. I’ve got Jay Thorne which he has been on here.

It’s been about a hundred and twenty episodes ago Wow. Since he was on. Yeah. It’s been a while. He just made the mistake of saying, whatever you wanna ask, go ahead.

That love child that you fostered in Hindus are Hindi Himalayas. Tell us about that, Jay. This is breaking news.

J: I can only talk about things that have really happened, Steven.

So I

Stephen: You’re a writer. What the heck? Oh, come on. So alright. Hopefully, everybody knows Jay because I’m not gonna go into his background.

He’s been on here before. I’ll put links in that. I really wanna get on these new books he’s been writing. Let’s just hit that right from the start. You are writing Or have written a series of books about AI, writers using AI, and more about that.

So There’s probably gonna be a million questions on that. I’ve got several written down I definitely wanna cover. So First of all, let’s just start. Tell us about not only what the books are about, but why you wanted to write these books, Especially right now because, that could get death threats from some people writing a book like this.

J: Yeah.

I say this Sort of tongue in cheek, but it’s certainly true. I don’t get nearly the amount of hate because I’m a middle aged white guy, and I have that privilege, and it’s terrible, but it’s the truth. And I see other folks, Women and other people who get hate for it, and it’s just it’s so unfair. But that’s, that’s how the Internet is in general. But

Stephen: Joanna seems to get a lot of people.

And it’s really, folks, she’s been doing this forever. She’s one of the most best voices for all of us. So yeah. Yeah.

J: I think it’s I think it’s lessened more recently, but certainly early on, she took a lot of heat especially in her comments on her website.

But,

Stephen: because I think most are starting to realize. Hey. It’s everywhere. Everybody’s using it. Maybe it’s not so bad.

But, anyway, we’re already off topic. So tell us about your bugs and why you’re writing these. Okay.

J: So I’m trying to think about how far back I have to go to put to give you context for this.

I would say probably two or three years ago maybe, Pseudowrite was just being rolled out in a beta form. And Joanna was telling me she’s you got you have to check this out. That’s this new AI writing tool. And every couple months or every so often, she would say, hey. Listen.

You gotta try this out. And every time I did, I just wasn’t impressed. I was like, I don’t know. It’s not very good. It’s weird.

It, it doesn’t do what I want it to do. And what comes out of it, I have to spend so much time cleaning it up. It’s just not worth it. And so For years, I was very resistant, and I was like, I don’t like it. It’s not very good.

And I said I enjoy the process of creating the words. So whether I think it’s ethical or moral or makes any sense is kinda beside the point. I don’t wanna farm out the most fun part of the experience. It’d be like being a musician, and you love playing live shows. And someone’s hey. There’s this Technology where you don’t have to go on stage. You would be like I don’t want that. Thanks. Other people can do that. It’s fine. I’m just saying that’s not, that’s not what I want.

And I’m saying this because I’m very transparent about it, and she and I’m proud of the fact that I changed my mind because she teases me all the time. And she was like, You hated this, and we almost had a falling out over it. And I’m like, I did. You’re right. And I changed my mind.

That’s what learning is. You’ve discovered something, you learn something, and you Change your mind.

Stephen: You can be called Ebenezer Scrooge because isn’t that what he did?

J: It’s out whatever. Whatever you wanna call me.

I don’t care. So fast forward to GPT CHI GPT three, which is comes out about a year ago. And, again, she’s you gotta try this. And I try it, and I’m like, again, not really excited about it, but it’s starting to get a little bit better. And I’m like, oh, you know what?

Another three to five years, this thing’s gonna be really cool. The following week? Yeah. Literally, just a few months later, this is probably April chat g p t four rolls out, And there’s a paid version, and Joanna is okay. I’m serious.

You really have to try this. And because I admire her and respect her, and we’re good friends, I was like, okay. I will. And so I signed up for the subscription. I got access to four, and that was the moment.

I was like, holy this is different. It was a it was just it’s very deceiving because In the tech world, if you think about software going from version three point five to four, you think it’s very incremental. It’s just very small tweaks or changes. It’s not a big deal. But from three point five to four with chat GBT was a massive difference.

And I immediately saw What was gonna happen? I immediately saw how writers were gonna be able to use this, and I was coming off Of being in the blockchain and crypto space and dealing with NFTs, and that was that was crashing and burning right at Time that AI was kinda coming up, and the difference between the blockchain and the NFT technology that I was really interested in And the AI was that my mom could use the AI. I could tell my mom go to the site and just type something, And you’ll get a response. Whereas when I was trying to get people in the crypto and NFTs, it was like you need a wallet, and you have to go by this exchange and buy it, then you have Transferred over here, and then you have to put this seed phrase in and it was just too much.

Seeing where it was headed I decided to build on the three story method brand because one of the things that I also realized right away is that if anyone can use AI, then everyone will use AI. So what’s gonna differentiate you?

And I thought for me, it’s gonna be my story methodology. That’s what’s gonna differentiate me. Any money can sit down and make the Creative writing prompt. But if there’s no substance behind it, if you have no experience in storytelling, your prompts can be pretty average.

Know, it’s gonna just be pretty bland or vanilla. So I immediately started incorporating three story method into these different ideas. And so I thought about, what about if you were a discovery writer? What if you wanted to map out a series? What if you wanted to do editing?

And Fast forward to now as we’re recording this in November I think I’ve published, I don’t know, seven seven books, maybe, six, Seven months so far.

Stephen: They should have four or five of them.

J: Yeah. Yeah. And I have another one on board for next week.

And, Really, I’m just striking while the iron’s hot. I’m I have the brand. I’ve built the reputation. Not all the people who following me are crazy about Some of them are giving me one star reviews. That’s fine if it’s not your thing.

Whatever. But I think for the most part, people trust me having been in the space since Two thousand nine. They know I have a reputation with author’s best interest at heart, and and so that’s how the books came to

Stephen: be. Okay. Nice.

What you said there’s a series. What are the focus of the different books, the titles in focus?

J: Yeah. I’ve been bouncing around a little bit. So they’ve all been published within the three story method series.

So it’s up to book twelve now in the series, and the original Methodology book is like book one. And they’ve really they’ve been I’ve been following Trends and following my interest. So they started out with the creative process of plotting or pantsing, and that’s what the earlier books were about. Now I’m getting more into the marketing stuff, like email list management nonfiction writing. So it’s like I What happens is I discover a way to use it, and then I try it out.

And if it works, as I’m doing it on my second monitor, I keep a running list of what I’m doing, and then that becomes the next book. Essentially, I’m testing it out myself to see if it works. And if it does, I turn it into a

Stephen: book. So why aren’t you afraid that it’s going to replace you anymore? It will.

It already has. We’re not talking to the real Jay, this is an avatar. This is j a I,

J: Jai.

Stephen: You got his letters to your name.

J: Okay.

So you ask a good question, and this is a bit of a polarizing controversial position. Yes. And hear me out because it’s gonna it’s a bit of a mindbender. So I am cautiously optimistic about the AI in the creative fields. However, I believe that the end game is the end of the entertainment industry as we know it.

So In the short term, I think AI is gonna be an incredibly powerful tool for creatives to do things they’ve never done before. Here’s the problem. AI is not standing still. AI continues to develop. And you’ve been in you’re in the tech world, Steven.

You know how this works. You when you see a new tool, you in your mind immediately goes to what’s the end game? Like, where is this headed? Not where is it now. Right now, it’s a writer’s tool. Where it’s gonna be is this. You’re gonna come home from work, and you’re gonna be like, you know what? I feel like reading a novel, and you’re gonna be like, hey, AI. I wanna read a book.

And An AI is gonna be like, oh, really? And you’re gonna go, you know what I like. And thirty seconds later, you’re gonna have a book, and you’re gonna be reading it. And the AI is gonna know because it tracks everything. It’s gonna know what genres you like.

It’s gonna know what conventions you enjoy. It’s gonna know what types of stories you like to read. Not gonna have to tell it anything. You’re just gonna have to say, I wanna read a book, and it’s gonna customize a book right to you. Now that might sound a little Farfetched right now, but I don’t think it is.

I don’t think that’s that far off. So I think what’s gonna happen is this. I’m not saying that writing is gonna end. I’m not saying that Authors will become extinct. What I’m saying is the business model as we’ve known it is gone.

Alright? So if you think about what has happened since Two thousand nine. Think about rapid release and KDP page reads and reader magnets. All the Stuff that we’ve all been learning and teaching, myself included, that’s all over. Because I think, eventually, what will happen is the AI will become so good That it will generate on demand entertainment for you customized to what you like.

And if you don’t think I’m you don’t think this is true, Think about what’s happening with music right now. Right now, if I if an AI has access to my Spotify history, It knows what I listen to, how I listen to it, when I listen to it. It could start creating AI generated music All on a tone and kind of slide it into my playlist, and I might not even know. I might think it’s a new band that’s got a nineties grunge feel, And it could be completely AI generated.

And that’s that kind of stuff is already happening. Again, I don’t wanna be a downer, and I’m not necessarily that humans will no longer create art. I think we will create art as long as we’re around. But I think we’re gonna revert back to where we were prior to the twentieth century, Where people make art for their friends, for their family because they enjoy it. But this idea of having an industry around entertainment, I think that’s going away.

Stephen: Wow. That’s super scary because technology has always changed and altered things, through time. When Photoshop first came out, it was the end of any design and anybody could do it. Not Very true. When digital cameras came out, when regular cameras came out, it was the end of, whatever.

Things were so you’re right. And that is a Huge. So oh, okay. So that’s, not the first time I’ve heard that type of thing, and you can see it, already going on, like you said. So are you saying you wrote these books so you could sell them now while you had the chance?

And what’s the plans then later? Because these books will become irrelevant.

J: Yeah. I honestly, my plans later is I don’t plan on being a commercially viable author. That’s just not in my future.

Stephen: That’s assuming you already have an unpicking.

J: That’s good. That’s good. No.

In all seriousness, I think you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have your a one top tier authors who might continue to sell books for a while? You’re gonna have a in a they’re gonna have an audience that they’re gonna serve. But think about think longer term. Think about kids that are being born now. They will never know a world without AI generated art.

They have no attachment to human created art. I hear this argument. People say, humans will always prefer other humans’ art or AI will never be as good as humans. And I’m like, first of all, if you’re still saying always and never in twenty twenty three, you’re you have your head in the sand because you’re not paying attention to what’s going

Stephen: on here. Every time you say tech will never do something, it every time does.

J: Yeah. Every time And the people who are saying that are the people who have the AI companies right now who are trying to sell services to other people. But that’s So so, anyways, there’s gonna be a window. There’s gonna be a sunsetting window where I think a generation or two is gonna die off, And those peep and we’re included in that. And that generation or two who die off will be the ones that have an emotional attachment to one hundred percent human generated art, And everybody born after that isn’t gonna care.

So my long term goal Is that I’m gonna write, and I’m gonna make music for myself because I enjoy doing it. I am giving up on the idea of making money On it, which quite frankly wasn’t even a thing before the nineteen fifties anyway. It’s we act like this has been around forever, and it hasn’t. I’ve had that argument with people. A small blip.

We’re not entitled to this lifestyle, and I’m always astounded when people act as though this is our Our birthright it’s in the constitution that we should get paid to publish books. Like That’s had an

Stephen: argument with people about football in high school. I was like, okay.

J: Yeah.

Yeah. All so what I’m doing right now is I am there’s nothing I can do about this. There’s nothing you can do about this. There’s no regulation. There’s no there’s no laws.

There’s no organization that’s gonna stop this. This AI is if the genie’s out of the bottle, it’s gonna keep getting better and better. So I can’t do anything about it. So my position is I’m gonna make the most of the situation. I’m gonna do the best I can with what I’ve got right now.

And right now, AI is a tool. And if it helps authors for the next two to three years make better stories, then that’s, that’s what I’m gonna do. But I don’t have any sort of vision for this. I don’t think I’m gonna be writing these books even a year from now. I already I can already see that This tailing off.

And my assumption is that probably by early next year, the AI is It’s going to be so good that a lot of the books that I’ve written and published about it are going to be unnecessary.

Stephen: Yeah. You’ll just ask AI to write and improve second edition Yeah. Go to the beach.

J: Yeah.

I don’t know. As we’re recording this the GPTs came out. They’ve been out for about a week, and I’ve been playing around with that. And It is basically the next step. It is if you we’re gonna do a computer coding, but do it by just telling the computer what you wanted.

That’s what these GPTs are. So an example, I was working on one and editing one where I would say, Okay. Here’s my here’s the first draft of my novel. Tell me what’s wrong with the pacing, the character development, the you name it. I just tell it that.

Like and it just it will either fix it or and that’s why I’m saying that is not that far from the next step of Created for me.

Stephen: And the other thing with technology is that a lot of times, it Doesn’t get rid of what’s there. It changes it in different ways.

So people that used to do drawing with art, they do it now digitally. And then they use Canvas to manipulate photos and stuff like that. So there is still an element. We may not even see and realize where we fit into some of this. There still may be some difference in elements.

But, like you said, it’s not the author sitting there For six months, a year, five years for some people putting words on a page, it’s a different way of sculpting and doing it. And that’s an unprecedented in the past. It’s happening at such a fast changing rate. We don’t even know what’s going on sometimes every day, every week let alone in six months. Yeah.

And

J: I’ve had some people tell me wow, that’s a really pessimistic outlook. And I’m like, No. It’s really not. If you listen to what I’m saying, what I’m saying is the gold rush mentality of the past fifteen years is over. And traditionally pub traditional trad pub was never a gold rush mentality.

That was always in a very exclusive club. We’re just simply going back to the way things were, Which is people really writing stuff because they want to, because it’s the process that they enjoy. I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. Again, I don’t think that let me back up. I think another misconception folks have is that if I could just write full time, my life would be complete.

I had just go sit in a cabin in the woods And just work on my stories and get paid for it. That’s heaven. And I can tell you firsthand, that is not true. That’s what I thought I wanted until I had it, and it’s not what you think it is. And I know people poo this.

And they’re like, no. That’s not true. You hear celebrities say this all the time. You think you want fame, but if everyone could experience fame for a day, they might think twice about it.

And I’m not saying authors are famous. What I’m saying is that vision you have, that idealized version of yourself sitting in a cabin in the woods writing is not what you think it is. And every author I know who has had that experience, it fundamentally changes their relationship to the art. Because when you are writing And publishing for money, it changes your approach. It changes how you feel about it, and it becomes more like a job.

Stephen: The grass isn’t always greener No. Because now it’s digitally created. And, it’s funny. I heard the same thing about, Winners of lotteries, the big lotteries that people like, Oh, my life would be so great. This was in Forbes or money or something.

And they were talking to financial advisers, the guy that won that four billion dollars or whatever. They said he’s gonna be broke in ten years. He’s going to be living in an apartment that’s worse than what he had with nothing to show for it and a lot of creditors asking for the money he doesn’t have Because he went crazy and bottled this up. So what you just said, people always think this is so great this other way, and it’s Not always. We mess it up.

And that’s what the author thing is. But, there’s Still some things in there at least right now even with AI because AI doesn’t, at the moment, Give us necessarily always the best. You gotta tweak it. You’ve been doing that with your stories. You’re how did you learn and teach yourself, and what do you do to tweak those prompts to get back what you want instead of Taking what’s there and editing ninety percent of

J: it anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I this is one of those moments where you just you’re in the right place at the right time. Know, that’s what happened to me. It’s I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before in this way, but I you said for joy.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. There’s that. Yeah.

I Think You know this, but a lot of people don’t. And then I spent almost twenty five years as a classroom teacher. And one of the things that I had to do was I had to learn how to ask questions, And I had to learn how to listen because anyone who’s had children or been around children, you know they don’t do what you tell them to do. That’s not how it works. Right?

You have to listen. You have to ask questions. And a lot of times in learning, just asking the right questions Prompts people to think a certain way, and you help create these openings for them. And and that’s a very, succinct way of explaining what I think good teaching is. And when I even right now, I think AI is basically like a seventh grader.

If you tell Chi P T to write something, it’ll be extremely concrete just like a seventh grader. It’ll write exactly what you want, and you’re like, no. That’s What I meant. So I think right now, part of the skill set in using these tools is communication, and that’s what writers are good at.

Alright. So if you’re a good writer, you’re a good listener you’re a good podcast interviewer, you can transfer those skills to AI, and you can ask it questions. You can say to it, tell me what I should be asking you. There are these little things that you can do. Again, these are skills I picked up in the classroom That I think work with AI.

And so I think that’s been the key for me is having more of a conversation. Like, when I see These post on x or these books that are, like, the five hundred thousand dollar chat GPT hack. I’m like, that’s BS. That’s it’s not about a prompt. It’s about a process, and a process is more like a conversation, which is why they’re called chatbots.

Stephen: Exactly. And you mentioned education. There is an area that I totally foresee being Totally unrecognizable in twenty years that there’s so many issues right now with our education system, so many changes going on. And of the things I remember reading a while back was, how do we know our education system works?

Have we ever really looked at it and proved That our education system does work. Spoiler

J: alert. It doesn’t.

Stephen: Exactly. And people are realizing that, and there’s so many changes.

I’ve been working with some schools on the video game thing, and some of these kids, man, when they get this stuff, the tech stuff, they’re just Gone. You don’t even have you sit back. And I’m like, so why are we paying all these teachers when AI just A teaching job is going to be not so sought after, I think, in the future. Just one area.

Yeah. No. But tell parents that. Tell parents that, yeah, our education system really isn’t working. My kid needs to go to college.

Why? Nobody wants it anymore, and they don’t get it. It’s such a different world, and twenty years from now, it’s gonna be so different from what we have

J: now. Yeah.

I mean, I can’t pretend to even look forward a year from now. It’s just it’s mind boggling to even try and contemplate that. If humans are terrible predicting Future, we’re all awful at it. No one does a good job at it. But one thing I can tell you is that our lives will look radically different Maybe in a year or two.

It’s just everything we do is gonna be completely different. That I know. Now what that is, I don’t know. And that’s why I say don’t get depressed if you’re an author and you’re thinking great. I’m just you know, I can’t write books anymore.

I no. You can. You just might not be able to sell them anymore. There’s a big difference there.

Stephen: Which Kinda, we’ve been saying for a while.

Your books are the gateway to other things. I tie I’m working on a series of books For video game creation and stories in video game. So that ties into the classes I’m teaching, the books, the classes. And, it’s More and more added. I’m working with some of the local esports teams and with the high schools.

We’ve got a new local digital paper, and I’m like, hey. You don’t have anybody covering esports. We need that added. So it’s One aspect.

And like you said, author’s looking for this as a full time author. But if you have things other business aspects that tie into it, that’s your best bet.

J: Yeah. Author wasn’t a profession on the tax forms prior to nineteen thirty. Author.

So yeah. Just consider yourself we should all be grateful that we had a small opportunity to have that experience, but, that’s and, just back from twenty books Vegas, the last one, and Becca Syme, a very well respected researcher and coach in our circles, Basically, stood on stage and said what I’ve been saying for two years. She validated what I said, which is the gold rush is over. And all the stuff that we’ve been doing, like I said, the rapid release and the pay per click ads and the reader magnets, all that stuff doesn’t work anymore. It’s over.

Stephen: And I’ve been seeing that looking at various things just with my stuff. Tell us a little bit about twenty books. This was the last one. Everybody listening, don’t get too excited because you can’t go to one.

J: You can get excited because Joe Solari is taking it over, and he’s already doing some great things with it.

He bought the contract from Craig Martell, Michael Anderlecht for the next three years at the Horseshoe Casino. So there is gonna be a conference. There’s gonna be a convention there the next three years, but it will not be twenty books. It’s called Author Nation, and Joe has this vision of making it both an author and a reader event, and he’s really going big on this. He announced the keynote on Thursday night is gonna be the one and only Gen x legend, Kevin Smith.

The OG indie filmmaker, author, comic book guy. He yeah. So it’s gonna be really cool. It this past one, ironically, was my first and last twenty books. Jay broke it.

I that’s all my fault. I’m not really I’m real not that interested in really big conferences, and I’m not a big fan of Vegas as a city. But I wanted to go and see people who I hadn’t seen in a long time. The pandemic kind of, that made it difficult to get together with people for a number of years. And I’m glad I did.

I got to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in a while or never. And it was great, but it was definitely a It was a milestone. It was a marker of an ending. And it’s it wasn’t just me saying this that this version of publishing is ending. Twenty books is ending.

If that’s not a big signal, I don’t know what is. Clearly, this is colored through my perspective, but I talked to so many people who were Either thinking about a transition, in a transition. And to be fair, this started way before AI came on board.

Authors were seeing a decline in royalties, decline in page reads, decline in reader engagement. This was this all started Several years ago, this isn’t just because of AI. So I think this was the trajectory of the industry. As Becca said, it’s a maturation. so Now instead of being this startup techie innovative space, it’s now it’s now a mature industry.

Three. It’s calcified with in into certain rules much the way traditional publishing is. Again, it’s not a judgment. It’s not a good or bad thing. It’s just you have to realize that the rules we’ve been playing under no

Stephen: longer apply.

And that’s a, valid point. Things always change. They always have. People that get so upset about it, I don’t guess, like it’s always changed. And just with books, look at libraries.

You used to go to a library to have a book. Now, there’s meetings. Now, they had records. And now then they had cassettes. Then they actually, some libraries used to have reel to reels.

And then they had CDs. And now you can use your digital tablet to get digital music and movies. And They don’t even have VHS out there anymore. They don’t even have the cassettes now.

It’s play on. So things constantly change, and people are like, oh, I wish Libraries were like they used to be. What do you mean? With DVDs and movies.

Okay. But some people are saying they want it when it was just, books that you weren’t allowed to talk. So Yes. Yeah.

And,

J: you’re we’re the same age. You probably remember in the early in the mid I remember having a conversation with my family. I told them I set up a Citibank online banking account, and they were like, oh, I would never bank online. That there’s I would never purchase anything. You put my credit card on the Internet.

Are you crazy?

Stephen: Yeah. And all my kids were like, you mean I have to go to the bank?

It’s What’s a bank? Great. Isn’t my check just supposed to appear, and ain’t I supposed to just get the money with this card?

J: I don’t think my kids have ever seen a checkbook. I don’t think they’d even know

Stephen: what to do with one. Yeah. We I had one child that kept getting upset because their bank account went under. It’s would you balance your checkbook?

They’re like, what’s that? I looked. There was money in there. Yes. But you wrote a check.

Yeah. It doesn’t come out automatically when you write it, But it’s just how things have changed, and it’s always been that way. Tech is always that way, always changing. So Alright. So what are your future book plans?

How many more of these are you looking at? Are you looking to do any anything else with that?

J: We’ll see. Right now, I’m going on a idea by idea basis. If I get an idea in chat GPT and I think authors would benefit from it, Then I pursue it.

And right now, I still have a number of those ideas. I’m looking ahead to The the fall of next year, I’m looking at possibly some leadership positions in schools or small colleges. I think we talked a little bit about education earlier. I think education is gonna be a place where they’re gonna need a lot of support. I think it’s gonna be An ugly, brutal move forward.

I can say this because I was in the industry for a long time. Education is a very conventional industry. It’s very slow to change. And and the technology is gonna leave it behind, and the kids are gonna be the ones To suffer. And I’m looking I’m looking in that realm but I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

I’ve I have two or three trunk novels that are just gonna sit on my hard drive for now. I really have no interest in publishing those. I’m writing a lot of sort of memoir Why are personal narrative things because I want to, not because I’m trying to sell them? And I have unpublished and discontinued many of my author services Because I can’t with a clear conscience sell support to people to a system that doesn’t exist anymore. And I, I get I have, Not explicitly, but I’ve had some interactions with some folks online who are saying things like, oh AI will never be as good as humans.

And they’re saying that because they’re selling services to others. And I think that I just think that’s wrong. And, and That might not be their intention. They might not being malicious about it, but I’m not gonna be part of that. So I have, I’ve stopped my mastermind group.

I have, I’ve like I said, I’ve unpublished certain things. I’ve ended my community partly because I’m transitioning to something new, but also partly because that’s just stuff that isn’t relevant anymore.

Stephen: Yeah. You mentioned that I got an author mad at me at a round table because they had a book on how to be a writer, that type of thing. And one of the first things I said was, my word of advice is Write a whole lot more and quit buying books and reading about how to be a writer.

They did not appreciate me. But it’s the truth. I’ve told that the kids and stuff. And your thing with education, from my viewpoint also, That’s the area that is going to be changing even more than anything else, and it’s the area that needs The most work and help.

And there’s so many things we fail with our kids and don’t understand and realize it. Absolutely. I had that when my kids were younger. They didn’t have homework, and I asked the teacher about it. They said studies show that homework doesn’t really help.

That the if the kids don’t understand it, They don’t understand it at home. They don’t get the homework done, and then they’re just more confused. They’re like and a lot of kids hate it. Blah blah. It they found that homework doesn’t help, and I’m like, that’s Very interesting.

But there are still people like, where’s your homework? You need to sit down and do homework and but if it’s not the best way to learn, And why do it?

J: Yeah. And, this is this could be a whole another episode.

Yeah. Part of the problem with education is that parents The only perspective parents have of education is their own, which is often twenty to thirty years out of

Stephen: date. Which was already Out of

J: date. Which is it was dated then. Yeah.

Exactly. And so when parents, parents expect to see kids sitting in single desks In rows with the teacher at the front of the room talking and that is not how people learn

Stephen: anymore. No. No. I talk about edX, Which I don’t know if you’ve seen that online courses.

They offer certificates and maybe even a few small degrees, something like that. But when I mention that to parents and stuff at Talks, I’m like the guy who started it had one class Where there were more people that finished it with their certificate than have attended MIT in the whole history of MIT. So if you could reach that many people in one class in three months, then why are we building these buildings and going to these places? It just it doesn’t end. I get oh, man. I have practically get attacked from primary teachers mostly. It’s like they just will defend it to the death. But it’s like that’s just not where it is

J: anymore.

No. No. And it’s really hard for people our age and older to Come to terms with that. There’s this sort of nostalgic glow they put on, their own upbringing as if that was somehow ideal, and yet we forget that There was a lot about living in the growing up in the seventies and eighties that sucked.

Stephen: BuT, I think I’d pick Gen X pretty. Oh, we’re still

J: the best. But Oh, absolutely.

Stephen: I saw a meme the other day. It said Gen X Still the only generation that knows how to set the clock on a VCR.

Yeah. Truth. That was great. Alright, Jay. Is there anywhere you wanna tell people that they can find you or where to get your books and all of that?

J: Yeah. If you’re really interested in seeing where AI is going, especially if you’re, like, a creative professional if you’re doing any kind of creative work and you’re wondering how AI fits into that, I have a week a free weekly newsletter I’ve been publishing since March called Creative AI Digest. Go to creative a I digest dot com. You can subscribe. You’ll get it every Monday, and it’s just my take on where things are going.

It’s real it’s not breaking news. There’s a bunch of newsletters that are doing breaking news. I’m not doing that. I’m being more thoughtful about the tools and the stories and things that are coming out that I think are relevant to people like us.

Stephen: Nice.

Nice. And you’re doing some Gen x thing with Jim. Yeah.

J: That’s a passion project.

Jim Kukul and I are Buddies, we both live here in Cleveland, and we have something called Legacy X, which we’ve been we’ve been working on, and It’s still in development. We’re not we don’t have anything fully formed, but the idea is we wanna help other Gen Xers Leave a legacy. And by legacy, we don’t mean a fancy boat and vacation home. We’re talking about the stuff that matters. That’s at legacy project dot org if you’re interested.

But right now, there’s just not much there but I can certainly follow-up with you as we develop

Stephen: it. By this could be a month or so before this goes out. So by then it might it’ll be closer to something.

J: Yeah.

And we’re not being exclusive. If you are a millennial with a Gen x mindset or a boomer with a Gen x mindset, you’re welcome to. It’s it’s more about the attitude than anything

Stephen: else. There you go.

Alright, man. I appreciate you taking some time and we will talk later. Yeah. Thanks

J: for having me on,

Confessions of a Knight Errant is a comedic, picaresque novel in the tradition of Don Quixote with a flamboyant cast of characters. Dr. Gary Watson is the picaro, a radical environmentalist and wannabe novelist who has been accused of masterminding a computer hack that wiped out the files of a major publishing company. His Sancho Panza is Kharalombos, a fat, gluttonous Greek dancing teacher, who is wanted by the secret police for cavorting with the daughter of the Big Man of Egypt. Self-preservation necessitates a hurried journey to the refuge of a girls’ camp in rural Texas. Then a body turns up nearby that is connected to Middle East antiquities, and they are on the run once more.

Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.

http://www.gretchenmccullough.wix.com/gretchenmccullough

Stephen: So today on Discovered Word Smith I have Gretchen McCullough and you may notice if you’re on YouTube watching the episode that there’s no video because Gretchen is not.

Anywhere in this hemisphere of where I’m at or at least I should say this continent. So we had a bit of a spotty connection and we turned off video to make sure we could hear everything. So Gretchen, welcome. How are you doing today? I’m

Gretchen: doing great. Thanks for having me on your show.

Stephen: Yeah. And I’m excited.

So let’s jump right into that before we start talking about your book. Tell us a little bit about you. And where you are at the moment.

Gretchen: I’m sitting in my bedroom and it’s dark outside. It’s quite noisy. I live in a really busy part of Cairo. And yeah. That’s where I am. It’s across the Nile from Tahrir Square where a lot of Americans probably are familiar with Tahrir Square because of the uprising.

It’s not that far from the square. It’s a huge island called Zamalek. And you can walk everywhere in this area. You don’t really need a car. It’s a neat burrow. There are lots of coffee shops. Yeah.

Stephen: Nice. What, why what brought you to Cairo?

Gretchen: It’s a long odyssey. I taught in Egypt in the 1980s and then I taught in Turkey and then I taught in Japan. And then I went and got an MFA from the university of Alabama. And I had a Fulbright in Syria in 1997 to 99. And. I went back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a year and a friend of mine said, there’s a job in Cairo.

You’re perfect. Why don’t you apply? And I did. And I got the job at the American university in Cairo in 2000. And I’ve been here ever since.

Stephen: Gretchen, where are you originally from?

Gretchen: I’m originally from Harlingen, Texas. It’s called the Rio Grande Valley. It’s near the Mexican border, near Brownsville. It’s the very tip of Texas. That’s where I grew up. I’m from a very small town.

Stephen: Big change.

Gretchen: Yes. I wanted to get out of that town in 1980 and I didn’t realize how far I would go.

So I’m very far from home where I grew up.

Stephen: Okay. So tell us about some of the other things you like to do besides writing.

Gretchen: I’m a tennis player. I like to swim. I play pool. I love to read. So those are some of the things that I do in my spare time. Teaching right now on that, that, that takes up a

Stephen: lot of time.

Talk about your book confessions of a night. Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Gretchen: No, I didn’t say anything.

Stephen: Okay. Maybe it’s a lag stuttering. We’re going to talk about your book Confessions of a Night Errant. So tell us a little bit about this book and why you wanted to write it.

Gretchen: The book is, was based on the last, uh, story of my short story collection, which is published here, was about was inspired by the 2011 uprising, and I started looking at the novella, and I thought, Oh, what happens if those two characters go to Texas?

So that’s how, that’s how the idea for the novel started. But the novella, which was published as a, originally published in a short story collection, was inspired by the 2011 uprising and there were lots of crazy things that happened during that time. We, I was here. I didn’t leave.

Stephen: Wow. So tell us a little bit about the story. What’s it about without giving everything away?

Gretchen: It’s about two guys. One, one is an American professor who’s an environmental activist who’s been accused of being a cyber terrorist. And he’s been accused of hacking into the, one of the largest publishing companies.

And New York, but he’s not he’s really maladroit. And he has a friend who’s a Greek Egyptian, who’s a ballroom dancing teacher. And the two of them are on the run. Gary’s on the run for the American government and Carol Lumbos is in the run from the Egyptian government.

And, but they come back to Cairo. Gary’s trying to find his novel, which he lost, because he only had one copy of it. And Carolumbus is trying to find his long lost son. And it goes, their adventures go from there. And

Stephen: this isn’t the first thing you’ve published, correct?

Gretchen: No it’s the third book.

I published two books with a small press in Cairo. One was called Three Stories from Cairo and it’s a bilingual book of short stories. It I published on one side is three stories in English and my husband translated them into Arabic. So you flip it and the other side is in Arabic. And then the second collection is called Charizard’s Tooth, and it’s stories about expatriates, basically.

Stephen: And we’re going to talk a bit about that because your stories are influenced by your living coming from Texas, moving to Cairo and you’ve got That influence in there. We’re gonna talk about that in a bit coming up. So is this book part of a series that you’ve

Gretchen: got? No, I don’t think so.

I’m I just finished a draft of another book. It, it does, it has really nothing to do with, um, with these guys. These guys were in the novella was in the short story collection, and then I developed it into, a big novel, but. It’s not part of a series, no.

Stephen: Okay, so what are your plans for your next story?

Gretchen: I have a draft. I worked on I’ve worked on a draft. The university gave me a leave. And the new book is set in West Texas in the 1930s and it’s based on the idea of the CCC camps under the New Deal. They were building parks and they were and they, there’s a huge, there’s a huge swimming pool in West Texas that is completely fed by natural springs.

It’s probably the size of a football field. It’s huge. It’s called Balmorae. Anyway my, my novel is about the guys who were work, working at this camp. There’s one woman, there’s a nurse. So it’s a completely different kind of it’s not completely different because the confession sets, set in a girl’s camp and, a girl’s summer camp, but this is totally different.

This is Men and it all men together So it surprises me that I would write a man book, but I think I have

Stephen: Okay And I like that my grandfather worked in the tri seas camps.

Gretchen: Oh, really? Oh, okay Yeah, I mean I thought

Stephen: in fact Please go ahead. No. No, go ahead. I was gonna say in fact after he died and we dived into some articles and some papers of his, we found out that he during the Korean war, he was assigned to the tri seas camps and he never left the States.

My grandmother thought he was over in Korea fighting at the war, but he was here in the States the whole time and she never knew that their whole life.

Gretchen: He never mentioned anything about his experiences.

Stephen: He talked about his experiences, but he made it seem like it was just part of it. And he was over in Korea.

So I don’t know where the miscommunication or confusion came from, but it was like, everybody’s what he wasn’t in Korea during the war. That’s what he went, it was. I don’t know. It was all before my time. So

Gretchen: that’s funny. One of the characters in my book is a there were many guys who were World War One veterans who were running these camps and he was he the captain of the CEO of the campus is a veteran from France.

So I had to also do a lot of research about World War One besides doing a lot of research about the 1930s.

Stephen: Oh, okay. Nice. So we’re going to talk about some of the. Influence with living in Cairo. But before we do what, tell me, tell everybody what some of the feedback you’ve been getting for your stories so far.

Gretchen: Some, it’s a fun book. It’s there’s some serious elements in it, but it’s a. Rambunctious kind of entertaining tale and lots of crazy things happen. Some people really love it. It’s pretty fast paced. It moves very fast. Other people feel it’s too wild and it’s too far fetched.

But I’d say that’s the world I live in. Yeah. That’s been the feedback.

Okay. There’s a lot of humor in the book.

Stephen: Okay, good. If you had a choice Would you to see these turned into a movie or a TV show?

Gretchen: Oh, I wish, but it, I don’t see that, I don’t think it would be very viable Since part of it takes place in Egypt, I think there would be a lot of challenges for film right now.

So I don’t know how that would happen, but anyway, it’s every writer’s dreams.

Stephen: Let me ask this since you’re living in Cairo, but the stories are a lot taking place in the States. How are you releasing these? Are they, why do you have an audience in Cairo? What, how to. What’s that like for you with living in, in Egypt, but having books based on something in the United States.

Gretchen: I Wouldn’t say, I do have some sort of, I probably had more of an audience when I was publishing in Cairo when I was publishing the books and the small press locally, because we had lots of signings and got a lot of publicity for it. But right now, the situation in Cairo is, the economic situation is not really very good. So it’s hard for people to buy books. My book, I got the university to order my book, but it’s really unaffordable. Yeah, so I don’t know about, and really I wrote the book for an American audience. I had that in mind and the publisher, the publisher is a boutique press out of Seattle that’s publishing, writers who were writing about the Middle East.

Stephen: Okay, perfect. So you found a nice fit with a publisher.

Gretchen: Oh yeah. He’s he was a great fit. Unfortunately he passed away, but his widow is still kept the press open. It’s called Kuhn Press.

Stephen: And. Do you have a website that people could go to, to find out more about your stories?

Gretchen: Yes. It’s Gretchen McCullough fiction, writer. com.

Stephen: Okay. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes for

Gretchen: everybody. Yeah. There’s another Gretchen McCullough, believe it or not in the world. She’s an internet linguist. That’s not me.

Stephen: Oh, okay. So do you have you said books are hard to get. So are there any good bookstores?

Gretchen: Some, quite a few of them have closed. thEre is one not too far away. It’s called Dewan and it used to be owned by two sisters who loved books, but things became just really difficult in terms of, books have to go through customs and there are taxes. And I think they, they got tired.

And they sold it to someone else and it has not it’s become a bit more commercial bookstore. It used to be a real independent, a real independent bookstore. It’s become more

Stephen: commercial. Okay. So Gretchen, do you have any favorite books or authors that you like to read?

Gretchen: Oh, I have lots of favorite writers.

One of my all time favorites is Mark Twain. I love Mark Twain.

Stephen: What’s your favorite Mark Twain story?

Gretchen: I love Huckleberry Finn. I love, I just reread Innocence Abroad. That’s hilarious.

There are so many writers, so many good writers. I love, I really started to appreciate Gabriel Garcia Marquez and also the Portuguese writer, Sara Mago, because they write with, about the fantastical and the bizarre and that sort of seemed to be Resonate with me. As I said, living in, in a world where things are so unpredictable,

Stephen: right? Okay. So if you either in Cairo or if you came back, visited the States and you’re around hometown, somebody came up to you and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book? What would you tell him?

Gretchen: It’s fun. It’s entertaining. It’ll make you laugh.

Stephen: That’s all great.

All right. So we talked about this a little bit, mentioned it. So how often do you come back to the States for visits?

Gretchen: I come back about twice a year in the summer and at Christmas. Okay. To see my parents and to see my, my, my sister and brother and family.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So you’re, you still have, you still touch base in the States.

You still, come back a bit, but you’ve mostly lived in Cairo for most of your life now. And your stories. Have a lot to do with the U S being based in here. How do you write a story living in one country, but writing about a different country?

Gretchen: Do you mean like, how do I write about the U S living here or the other way around?

How do I, yeah, how

Stephen: does, how does living in Cairo affect your writing when you’re writing about the U S

Gretchen: oh, that’s a great question. I think I probably have more distance on the culture because things are so different here. I can sometimes see things that uh, that I think I don’t know that I don’t agree with or everything’s becoming so technological that people don’t spend much time talking to each other.

Yeah. And I think that still even in Egypt, people spend a lot of time, face to face interaction is really important.

Stephen: Also you said your husband, please finish.

Gretchen: No, I was just going to say people, priorities are different. People are not as work centered and define themselves as much by the work that they do in Egypt. Family is extremely important and people spend a lot of time with their families.

Stephen: Okay. And so you said your husband translated, uh, your one book into Arabic. When you look at like the reader feedback in the sales, considering it’s a book set in the US, how does all that compare? With Cairo readers compared to U. S. readers.

Gretchen: Oh, I don’t know. Cause I don’t, we do, we did that. The reason we did that was because Mohammed felt that my stories would resonate with that because they were about the neighborhood. He felt they would resonate with, Arabic speakers. So that was one of the reasons he translated the story.

But it hasn’t gone the other way around. Confessions of a Night Errant hasn’t been translated from English to Arabic. It’s a huge project to translate a novel. But we have translated. I bet. Yeah, it’s just huge. We have translated his work and from Arabic into English. He’s a very good poet and he wrote a book about Izmir Turkey.

It’s called a song on the Aegean sea. And we translated that.

Stephen: Okay. So have you thought about writing stories based more in Cairo or even between Cairo and the U S?

Gretchen: I have most of my books have been set in Cairo, but the last one that I want to describe to you in West Texas is completely American and I have a Syrian character in West Texas in the thirties, but I don’t have any Kyrene connection in that book.

Stephen: Okay. Okay. So you’ve gotten a little bit of both.

I imagine. It have you, with the book you wrote for Texas, did you come back to visit and say, Oh, you know what? I put this in my book and that’s wrong. It’s not like that in the States. Did you find anything like that you had to

Gretchen: change? That’s an interesting question because I went initially about five years ago to Sol Ross University in Alpine, which is a really remote town in West Texas.

And I went to the archive and that’s how I initially got the idea to write about the, this huge swimming pool. And then I came back anyway, I wrote I’ve written a draft of it and I thought, I never saw the swimming pool. So this past summer I went with kind of some trepidation, oh, gosh, what if I got it all wrong, but it was a surprise to me because I just added a few things and, but it was good to see the pool and to swim in it.

It was an interesting experience. It’s a gigantic pool in the middle of, a very arid landscape. And it’s, and they’re fishing it and they’re turtles and it’s an incredible natural spring swimming pool, but no, I’m surprised like you, I’m surprised. I thought I, I would have gotten it all wrong, but I, it’s mostly from my imagination, but of course I did lots of research.

Stephen: Okay.

Oh, you faded out.

Gretchen: I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You fade it out there. So Gretchen, since you’ve written several things and since you’re publishing very wide you’ve got books published based in Cairo and U S. So I’m assuming they’re available like on Amazon and those places. What are some things that you’ve learned about writing and publishing yeah.

Things that you’re doing different now or things that you would advise other people to do?

Gretchen: Yeah, I wrote a first novel in my thirties and uh, it was never published and I really took it to heart and. I think it was a mistake to take it too much to heart that it wasn’t published. There might be different reasons why people get rejected. And sometimes you need to work on your writing more.

Sometimes you haven’t found the right reader or editor for your work. And sometimes your writing might not be the latest trend or trendy enough for whatever big houses are looking for, but it might be very good. So I think that’s something that I’ve learned is that. Sometimes if you get rejected, it’s it doesn’t mean you’re not a good writer,

Stephen: right? Good. Okay. All right so Gretchen, I apologize a little bit of the delay in the Back and forth, but I think your books great. And I think it’s wonderful that you’re writing these books based in Egypt and the US I think more people need to expand globally and let’s embrace that a little bit more.

Gretchen: Yeah. The book is really about being between cultures. So I think if anyone’s interested in, and the humor also about how sometimes people don’t connect, um, even Americans who, returned to the U S after living outside might enjoy it. There’s a lot about, my, my Egyptian character.

There are things that he can accept and he doesn’t like, and there are lots of funny things that happen in the book. So I think it’s about being in between,

Stephen: nice. Okay. Great. Gretchen I’ve enjoyed talking to you today. It’s nice nice to hear that the car horns sound the same in Cairo because I heard some of the traffic in the background because I’ve never been out.

I’ve only been up. Yeah. I’ve only been up to Canada. So sometimes, especially for. People in the States, it gets hard to imagine other countries and what they’re really like. So I think it’s fascinating that you moved from Texas over to Cairo and you’ve basically been there for so long. So I think that was very fascinating for me very much though.

Thank you.

Gretchen: Thank you for having me on your show.

Stephen: Yes. All right.

With inspiration from her own life, Kalee Boisvert has developed an easy-to-use system for women, young and old, to take control of their finances. Make Money Your Thing is an approachable guide to take women on a journey from avoidance and overwhelm to feeling comfortable and in control of their finances. This book provides simple action steps to learn the basics of money management, understand the importance of balancing the books, and embrace the uniqueness of your own personal situation. The end result is women feeling good about where their finances are right now, and building a solid foundation for where you want to go in the future. When money is your “thing” you can feel completely at ease about making it work for you–

Stephen: So today on Discover Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Kaylee. Kaylee, how are you doing

Kalee: today? I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

Stephen: Yeah, this is great. And we, right before we started, I mentioned I don’t get a lot of nonfiction, so I’m excited about this.

Yay. All right. So before we get started talking about your book tell us a little bit about you, where you’re from, and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Kalee: I am from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And a little bit about me. What else? Sorry.

Stephen: jUst some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Okay.

Kalee: Other than writing, I love reading. I am a big bookworm. So I think. By nature, it was destined to write a book, but I love reading and I’ve discovered how easy it is to read off my phone. Now I have a one year old and so I can’t really have books out because he has a tendency of ripping pages.

So he’s at that. That very destructive stage. So I read on my phone, but I find it so easy that I can read on the go all the time. So I’m reading way more books and book talk has actually gotten me a lot more interested in some of the books that are on there and are popular. So for a book talk and all that, but I do love reading.

I love like my guilty pleasures, like real housewives watching the real housewives of everywhere, those shows. And then I’m also always really busy with my kids. I’m a single mom. I have a nine year old and a one year old. Like hobbies include going to the park and things like that.

Stephen: Nice.

Okay. And so with all that going on young kids and busy why did you want to write a book?

Kalee: Silly me. Yeah. I think it’s because of how much I love books in general. So I’d always wanted to write a book. I’ve read books like, and just like love, like I see authors and people who write books is just, to me, they’re like celebrities.

I think it’s so amazing because it’s a long, challenging endeavor to write a book.

Stephen: You probably realized that way more when you actually wrote one.

Kalee: Exactly. Exactly. And I. kept receiving the message like I started writing stories when I was young when your teacher would ask you to write a, couple page story and mine would go on for 20, 30 pages and that was like grade four.

And because I was like, how do you develop A story in two pages. So for me, it was like this very elaborate the character development and everything But the teachers you could tell didn’t even read it and i’m assuming it’s because they had a lot of grading to do and I It went beyond the assigned work.

So in their defense, I’m sure that was what was behind it. But in my mind, I was seeing it as, Oh, maybe I’m not a good writer. That’s the messaging I took to believe. So then I decided maybe I wasn’t meant to write. But it was like a few years back. I was just sitting in my office and I said out loud.

I really want to write something because it just had all come back and it just, I don’t know. It was just like, I was pondering this has always been a goal of mine. And a colleague happened to be walking by and he’s Oh, I just met a book coach at a networking event. I was at, do you want her card?

And I was like, absolutely. So I met with her and she turned out to be my book coach and really get me on the path to writing. My book and the rest is history, but that was my journey. So it’s something I’d always wanted to do and then thought that it wasn’t something that I was good at or meant to do.

And then, coming back full circle, finding someone to just help get me on that path again. It’s really intimidating and scary writing a book, especially the beginning, early stages, right? You’re like, it’s like, where do I start? What do I

Stephen: do? You get a blank page and you look at it and then you start writing and you’re like, Oh, this is going great.

It’s wow, how close am I to being done? It’s like you wrote 500 words.

Kalee: Not close at all. Yeah. It’s a long game for sure, but it, so it’s been an amazing journey. I really enjoyed

Stephen: it. Nice. Okay. So let’s talk about your book. It’s called make money. Your thing. Tell us a little bit about it.

Kalee: Okay. So it’s I really wrote this book to help inspire and empower women with their finances.

So as I mentioned, I am a single mom and a financially independent woman. I was raised by a single mom. And so growing up. Money really showed up as a source of like stress and struggle and early on, it was like, I wanted to learn it and figure it out because in my mind, if I could figure it out, it was like math.

I had a very like much a math mind too. I loved math. And so it felt like a math problem. If I could figure it out, then, maybe I could fix it and solve the problem. And I felt really like helpless back then as a child, like there wasn’t much I felt I could do, but it was, how about if I learn as much as I can?

And then as I figure it out for myself, then I can teach other women and I can help women like my mom one day so that women don’t have to go through that. And so that was always the goal, like my passion and why I got into the finance industry where I work. So it just felt like very natural. Then to write a book about money.

And it’s essentially like I put in one book, everything I’d want women to know about money, what I’ve learned in my experience in this industry for 15 plus years. So I share stories of women and their journeys and their stories of themes I come across quite often in my business. So it doesn’t mean I don’t think any two people are exactly the same when it comes to like their financial lives and their, their goals and their journeys.

But I see similar themes, so I would use those. As stories to share with the reader so they can really relate and see themselves in these stories of these women and then insert like the teaching or the, the lesson or the insight I want to share with the reader and then at the end of each chapter, I have action steps because.

As a finance person, the big thing for us is we can tell you everything you need to do, outline it, one thing after another, just say do this, and then this, and you got it. That’s what you need to do, but I was finding so many people just weren’t.

Taking the steps like they weren’t doing it and I can only do so much. So with this book, it felt I’m giving them these steps of action to take, and I’m giving them in like very like small, tiny homework assignments. So it doesn’t feel overwhelming where the reader actually. Wants to do the things and they, they understand why they’re doing it and what the impact is by, for getting to know their numbers.

And so it’s we think of a budget is like, Oh, like most people just don’t get excited over it, but I try to make it more exciting in the chapter. And explain why it’s so powerful to know those numbers and where it can lead you to by having that awareness about where your money is going.

So trying to break down these somewhat boring financial topics and make it fun, interesting, and really make it comfortable for women. So again, I wrote the book for women. Wanting women to feel comfortable because this industry has been very male dominated for quite some time now, the finance industry.

And as a result, how it is presented often forgets the interests and the needs of women. So that’s what I really wanted to do is get women really excited and engaged and put something out there that really felt like it was for them.

Stephen: And I was going to ask you this, you, I think you answered several of the questions that popped up in my head.

I was going to ask it, to be, to say it’s focused on women doesn’t mean a man couldn’t read it and get something out of it, but the way the material is presented is it mostly focused to a single mother woman or is it any woman?

Kalee: I would say any woman, but you’re right. Men have read it and they’ve enjoyed it and they’ve given me great feedback.

But I write it from the perspective of women and as a woman because I think, we get it or it’s just that whole again, I share stories about I love for the real housewives or my dating experiences. Somehow I relate it to money. And I think as women, it’s just, it’s stories that we can see ourselves in or relate to or get.

So I did want to write it from, as a woman. For perspective of women. So women can feel like, Oh, okay. Yeah, I’ve felt that way too. So it’s just different. It’s just giving the female perspective. And so of course men can read it. But again, it’s just, this industry has been very from the perspective of men, because that’s just.

It’s like by nature happens when you have more men in the industry as well, that, the material is presented more in, in their perspective. So you’re right, men and women and then women of all sort of stages of life, whether you’re a single mom or a young person just getting started or nearing retirement or already in retirement, I think there’s something for everyone in this.

That’s what most people or the feedback I’ve been getting is that there’s, So people who have said I already, have read a lot of finance books. I feel like I’ve got it all, have still given me the feedback that they got something new out of reading the book, which is really

Stephen: exciting.

Nice. Good. And I was going to ask you what the feedback’s you keep answering my questions before I get there. But mind reader too. That’s your next book, right? That’s your follow up. How to be a mind reader. So it made me think, and I’m glad you said that the way you did and what the focus is, because it made me think another very popular finance book for the common people, you might say, is Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Everybody knows that one, but the point is for authors, jump around a little bit, that just because there’s another book out there that already covers finances, doesn’t mean your voice. Couldn’t do it in a way that fits people better, rich dad poor dad doesn’t fit a woman.

You know the title so I’m glad you brought that up and mentioned that It’s not like the financial information is going to change and be different

Kalee: So it’s still exactly it’s still the same concepts. It’s about investing. It’s about, the power of science And I think with women there, it just goes into some of the topics that as women, I see pop up more than men.

Like men seem to be willing to sometimes dive in before they know in the finance industry, which is great. Because it takes a little bit of that. It’s a bit, it can be a bit scary, but women seem to just be sitting on the sidelines still. And the fear is almost like paralyzing and they don’t do anything.

And so if anything comes of it, I want women to feel like they can take the action. So it’s just giving them that little bit of a confidence boost that maybe they need as the first step in, in making progress. So yes, I think women and men, I don’t see them as different or, one knowing more than the other.

I think it’s just, they have different needs and they’re at, and certain things appeal to them more or there’s, women needing a little bit more of that confidence. And and the whole first part of the book is about the money mindset piece where I do come across a lot of women just writing themselves off saying, I don’t understand, or I’m not good with math.

I’m not good with numbers. Money just isn’t my thing. And that’s why I wrote this book. Make money your thing. Anyone can do it. Helping, what I see as women almost just deciding they’re no good at it right from the get go before they even give themselves a chance. And I think they do that far more than men, unfortunately.

So having a whole piece devoted to that, and

Stephen: you can definitely say, I wrote this book for myself and I’m sharing it with everybody else because you’re. The ideal demographic in many ways.

Kalee: And I made money, my thing. That’s what I say in the book. I’m like, I made it my thing. Again, I grew up, we had no money.

We had nothing. Like we lived in subsidized housing. We didn’t have enough money to buy groceries sometimes. And now fast forward. And I’m, I’ve done all the things I’ve I share that in my book about all the goals that I’ve accomplished and, buying my dream house on my own and things like that.

It’s just, it’s really empowering. It feels so good. There’s an element of. I can do anything when it, when you can achieve like a money goal you have. And I think confidence like that for people, it’s good for any element of your life. Cause then you can take on big things like write a book when feel like this is, wheelhouse, I don’t know how to write a book, but you just dive in and do it.

Cause I’m like, I could do anything.

Stephen: And so you mentioned there’s action items to do with each chapter. Do you have a workbook or are you thinking about a workbook for people?

Kalee: I don’t. That’s a great idea. Yeah. I try to keep it simple. I know with a lot of the books I read that have action steps, I read a lot of nonfiction and sometimes the action steps can lose me when it feels like homework or You’re taking a whole master’s degree in a new program.

So I tried to keep it light, but you’re right. Like getting, some sort of course or something, getting people going on those just to give them that extra push is beneficial. I’m sure. Absolutely.

Stephen: Just a thought. Cause if someone’s reading your book and they’re comfortable and they enjoy it, it would motivate them to get going.

And having that workbook right there, just, here’s the action plan. Let me take the notes and write down what I’m doing.

Kalee: I know, I, that’s a great idea. I know we want to do I’m working with a group of women to do is like a book study. And I’m like, that’s such a fun idea. Cause we can go through that too with people reading the book.

So you’re right. Making it widespread. So all women can take those steps.

Stephen: That’d be cool. So let me ask you, Miranda, you said you read a lot. What’s your favorite books and authors?

Kalee: I’m all about the thriller type fiction books now. It’s really popular. I was reading a post of someone on a Facebook group and they said they were researching what are the most popular genres and it’s one of the biggest selling, right?

It’s they said it was like romance and thrillers, not necessarily together, but.

Stephen: And the funny thing is the biggest reader of thrillers are women, like middle aged women are the biggest demographic of thriller reader.

Kalee: That’s me. They know, I don’t know why we like it. It’s so fun though. It’s that like twist and turn and what’s going to happen.

I don’t know.

Stephen: Do you

Kalee: have any favorites? I Frida McFadden. I’ve gone through almost all of hers. Okay. And I found out about her on BookTok too. So I wasn’t familiar. So I do get a lot of my thriller suggestions from BookTok.

Stephen: Oh, nice. Yeah. I hadn’t heard of her. I’ll have to look her up, put some links on the show notes.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s really good. Are your kids readers?

Kalee: Unfortunately, no. Oh, no. So Jax destroys books. He’s my one year old, which is terrible. And my daughter, no, I wrote a kid’s book too. It’s it’s about a little girl learning about money. And I was like, Ivy, like when it came in the mail, I was like, can you read my book?

And it’s not very long or any, it’s a kid’s picture book. She got two pages and she’s I’m going to finish it later. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Family’s not the best to tell you how good the book is or not.

Kalee: No, she just doesn’t like it. And I don’t know why. I think she hasn’t found the right genre for her.

I’m hoping. I tell her about when I was a kid, I was like, I loved like goosebumps and Nancy Drew and all that stuff. And I would explain, and she was like, no, I’d rather just watch the show mom. I’m like, wow.

Stephen: One of the things I work with kids is storytelling in video games and there’s a lot of good stories being told in video games.

That might be something that if you Find a good story based video game that you and her sit down and do together. Some of them, there’s one I saw, oh, and I forget the name of it. I apologize. But it’s an adventure game, but it has cut scenes that are pop ups and it’s all text. It doesn’t talk to you.

So the other gateway drug, a lot of times that we. Mention is comic books kids sometimes get into certain comic books because of the pictures and the reading and then they move on to other readings. So just a couple thoughts.

Kalee: Yeah, those are good ideas. You’re right because the video game idea is very appealing.

Or so what do you think my next book? I really want to aim it at. young adults. And my book coach was like, think of presenting it in a different way. And I’m like, Oh no. What do you think then? Like late teens, young adults, because she’s right. You get to that stage of life and it’s almost like you don’t have time to read books.

I remember it was like head down you’re in university or whatnot. So that was like the years where I didn’t read, but I want to create a money book for people like that. Cause it’s such an important

Stephen: time. It would probably be very, we talk, I see all the time people like I never learned this in school and how come nobody taught me that I had a stepdaughter that had no clue that you were supposed to balance a checkbook and keep track of that and she kept going under because she’s I took money out, but it said I had money.

I’m like, how many checks did you have to? I wrote three or four. That’s why you’re going what do you mean? And she just didn’t understand how that worked. And that’s a, to me, a simple thing so that, and she was at the time, like 1920 that would probably be a perfect time, but like you said, maybe they’re not, maybe this is where you need that videos or something to go with the book, maybe a book with videos or something.

Kalee: Cause it’s a tough stage. Like it’s almost like they’re really busy, but you’re right. They need it. It’s it’s such an important point in life because it could set you on your whole trajectory for what’s to come with money. And in the finance industry, we always give those, great charts and say if you started at the age of 19, putting away a hundred dollars a month, and you’d be a millionaire.

And everyone looks at that and goes. Why didn’t I do that? I’m like, that’s what your book is going to get people doing

Stephen: it, right? That’s when they’re older though. But I had several kids all graduating within a couple of years of each other. And I showed them like, look, you have this money right now.

You got from graduation. If you put it into this with an average return, blah, blah, blah, blah. When you’re 55, it’ll be this much. They went. Huh. I’m gonna get a new monitor for my video games, and it’s just like I don’t think they get and I know I certainly didn’t, I had a great couple jobs that if I had just taken even half of that money I made, which I didn’t need it all for living, most of it went to stuff or doing things I didn’t need to worry about and do, but if I had done, I’d be so My life would be very different right now.

And it’s hard to get the kids to grasp that. I

certainly

Kalee: didn’t. Yeah. It’s like our brain isn’t connecting it, that investing now and putting it away. It almost seems then I don’t get to enjoy it, but it’s you do. It’s like future you. So it’s still for you, but it’s like this disconnection of Oh no.

Like it, I’ll think about that later. I’ll do it later. I have plenty of time, just like with debt and the credit cards. It’s people are it’s so easy to spend and use it because it’s almost like you don’t think that you’re the one who’s going to have to pay it at the end of it.

You just think, Oh no, like that’ll just push it off to another day. And then it almost feels like you’re like, Oh, someone else will take care of it. I got to take care of it.

Stephen: Yeah, I just read a story about a guy telling a story about his friend who. Got a credit card, ran it up till, almost total max.

And then the next month he was trying to use it and it was bouncing. He’s what’s going on? They’re like you used it all up. He’s doesn’t it reset at the beginning of every month? No, little things like that, that you don’t really, but I think even now today’s kids are. More distanced from that because we don’t use cash.

We don’t use checks. We use a card and boop. And it’s just they net when they’re younger. They don’t see the money. They don’t see the transaction. It’s just you put this card in and everything’s magic. And I don’t think that gets explained or goes away.

Kalee: No, it’s yeah. It’s we’ve changed money in, for the more convenience.

Yes. but for not necessarily the better because there is no visual. And yeah, my daughter says when do I get a credit card? I’m like you’re nine years old. So not for a very long time. And it’s not actually just like a gift card or you just go tap. I’m like, you actually have to pay the money back.

It’s not your money. So they don’t, they have no idea. It doesn’t make sense.

Stephen: There were a couple of times when my kids were younger. They wanted something, but they didn’t have the money for it. And I got it and loaned it to them. And then they paid me back and they paid me with some interest. And I know some parents were like, that’s mean and blah, blah, blah.

No, that’s not, that’s what parenting is for. That’s what it is. I’m not just. Buying them stuff. So they’re, catered to, and I think it helped a little bit that they, neither of them have credit cards and they just live off what they make and, put money aside. I don’t think I failed completely there, but probably a little better.

Kalee: No, that sounds amazing. Anything like I tell people because when it’s, when people don’t think when people are not feeling confident about money adults, oftentimes they don’t feel like they can, teach their kids. It’s almost this idea of I don’t know enough to teach them or whatnot.

But I think as parents, we have to remember really, it does fall on us because they’re not learning in the education system, which, okay, that’s fine. And then knowing it falls on us, it’s just. Be like aware of that and have those conversations and give them those examples of real life. Like you were doing where they can actually like experiment and see.

Oh, it’s taking me even longer to pay it back or it’s taking me a really long time. I do with my daughter now. I do give her like. An allowance for doing work that she does like cleaning up cause her brother destroys the house. So she’ll clean up, which is so helpful. And I do pay her and she starts to see like how much she earns for that.

And then when she goes and has her own money and wants to buy things, she’ll look at things and say, Oh, it’s, Oh, that’s 20. No, that’s too expensive. Like she gets to start now making decisions, knowing I worked this hard to make this money and this costs as much. And then weigh the.

Cost benefit or like how much does that mean? Starting to get an idea of what money means. And so I think there’s so powerful for parents. So what you did amazing, like just giving these options, like our actual real life experiences that they’re going to have later on in a nice, like safe environment where you’re not like going to come after them and, take their car and their house if they don’t make a payment, nice, safe environment for them to experiment,

Stephen: right?

If you don’t hear about these. 23 year olds going bankrupt because they have so much debt, so hard. That you did some writing when you were younger stories but now you’ve written a nonfiction. So how did you approach starting to write a nonfiction book? How did you organize your thoughts or what got, how’d you get started writing?

What are some things you can maybe help others who want to write nonfiction? Absolutely.

Kalee: So I think the big part is like getting down your thoughts of what you want to get across to the reader. Like usually with a nonfiction, there’s almost like something you’re trying to teach or share. And you probably have a very specific set of ideas of what you’re hoping.

The reader will learn, like how do you want your reader to end up? Again, like there’s usually in nonfiction, it’s an element of a journey, something you want them to grow or, develop or do. So I think it’s just like writing down all those. Those lessons or things you want them to learn.

That’s what I did with the money book. So it was like, I wanted them to learn some of the money mindset piece. And understanding your numbers and what is budgeting and knowing your net worth how it’s so important to stay in control of your finances. There’s these ideas that I wanted to get across and then, just writing them with the very like finance oriented, thought process I was going through.

Obviously, what came out of it was like a textbook, which was so boring and no one would want to read it because no one likes reading textbooks. That’s very much an obligation in school. So working with the book coach was so helpful because I would have these, ideas and it’s. basic form, which was again, boring and needed a lot of work, but then it would be like, okay, what is a story about someone you’ve worked with or come across that, experienced this, the good or the bad, and can you share that?

And so I was working with a book coach who is experienced in fiction writing, and it was so beneficial for a nonfiction book because nonfiction is still. Sharing stories. That’s what engages a reader like a reader is always going to be engaged with storytelling. And so you can’t lose that, whether it’s, fiction or nonfiction, you’re still going to have that nonfiction I learned, which was like, Eye opening for me.

So she would give me like writing exercises where it would be like completely different scenarios And I would just have to like a rewrite about a zombie apocalypse or something like to get those creative juices flowing So I could take that into my non fiction work And it was so beneficial having someone pull that out of me because I would have never thought to do that.

Like the version of the book that I probably, started with, it’s not at all what it became. But it became these stories and sharing stories of myself. So I think, start with that outline and it’s going to be probably. pretty technical and, point form and sort of these are the bullets you want to cover.

But then think of like fun and exciting ways that you can share them. That’s going to pull the reader in. That’s going to have the reader like wanting to know what happened. And do what was a big lesson for me was going through the edit, editorial, like with my editor, the process where she was doing like the structural edit and her telling me about how you really want to make sure you’re taking your reader on a journey.

This is where they’re starting and you might know where you want them to end and then that’s how you want to rearrange the book as well. So again, you might have that outline and the points. But how can you see them, how can you see a reader going on that journey, like where they’re starting to where they end up and preferably breaking that into parts, maybe like three part, most nonfiction books have four part structure or three part.

They have some sort of like separation like that. Not saying you have to, but again, that’s how it unfolds and think of it as taking the reader on the journey. So that’s. the order of things. So that might rearrange your points when you start going through, and Oh, this one’s about, just getting started and making sure your mindset’s in place.

That should start first because, they’re not going to do the budget and all that if they haven’t worked on their mindset. So it’s going to help your whole writing process, seeing that unfold, seeing you. Bring that the reader on your journey with that journey with you or and I think that’s really key for nonfiction.

Stephen: And I’m glad you said that today’s nonfiction book isn’t like yesterday’s that they are very much. Feel of a story or more casual in how it’s presenting the information getting even further from that textbook feel and I’m glad you said that because I was going to bring that up, that’s what people are more used to that casual story type of.

Telling information.

Kalee: Yeah. Because no one just think if you’re saying, if I say to you, okay, so what you need to do is put away this amount of money every month, and then in five months time with interest, it should be that, or what if I say, can I share a story with you about a client who ended up being a millionaire?

By some really great habits that she put into place early on. And, at first she was really nervous and scared because of blah, blah, blah. Like those are going to draw you in more and resonate more, I think, than that very yeah, let’s do that. Do that.

Stephen: Absolutely. Absolutely. KAylee I think your book sounds great.

I’m, I love hearing that it’s a focus. for women. That’s a great way of doing it. And I think it’s like you said, a demographic that means approached in a different way rather than a just general book. I think that’s wonderful. So before we get going do you have Any advice for authors or better yet, if somebody stopped you on the street was I heard you wrote a book on money, why should I get your book and not Rich Dad Poor Dad or something like that?

What would you tell them?

Kalee: Yeah, because mine is for women. No. Oh, and because in mine, I’m wearing some pink boots on the cover. No, it’s, I think it’s just, One I wrote where you can feel really comfortable sitting down and just reading some chapters and feel really at ease non intimidated. So that was really my focus and not feeling like you’re doing some sort of course and being put on the spot where you should grab a text or a notebook and start taking notes.

So I did make it really, again, the story is very relatable. You see yourself in them, I would hope. Very like. Easy action steps at the end that I think anyone can do while reading the book and an easy read that you can do in one sitting that doesn’t feel overwhelming. Like I wanted to cater to more of the majority of people concepts, oftentimes like the rich dad, poor dad, and some of the other finance books really like hone in on a specific thing, buy a bunch of real estate and build up this whole real estate portfolio and things like that. And that’s not realistic for everyone. I wanted it to be something that people feel like wherever they’re at right now, that they can actually do things and see change and really make a big impact. That they didn’t have to Be, I think a lot of these books feel really overwhelming and put really high expectations on us.

And sometimes it’s just we want to just have more joy in our lives and feel like we’re doing the right things with our money. Like as simple as that. And that’s what I hope this book gets across to the reader.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. Hey, you mentioned real estate. Yeah, I actually recently got into buying some real estate.

I was able to buy both park place and boardwalk and put hotels on them. So I understand the concept.

Kalee: I love Monopoly. Like Monopoly is a great game, but you’re right. It’s hard being a landlord. It’s a lot of work.

Stephen: Yes, especially in Monopoly. All right. Kaylee, I appreciate you taking some time getting on today.

aNd I wish you luck with the book and let me know if you get a workbook or that teen book. I’d love to talk to you again about that.

Kalee: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone for listening too.

G. S. Gerry doesn’t just write books, he creates humorous experiences with the written word.  When life kicks you in the nether regions find a way to see the humor in it all.  

I am all about Mastering life Experiences Through Humor.  My purpose is to share my own experiences to help you laugh at my pain, and laugh through yours. 

G. S. Gerry engineers uniquely hilarious concepts that are quirky and utterly unique, geared towards entertaining those on the lookout for that one truly unique experience.  Using a visionary approach towards life, laughter & entertainment.

Derald Grake destroys his life the moment he decides to sell the family home. After capturing the American dream, this father of 4 hopes to solve the complex formula of buying low and selling high. Witness one ‘normal’ family embark on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey involving, among other surprises, assassins, meth, murder, and the end of Amazon.

Wrapped inside this intriguing mystery are eye witness accounts and compelling evidence to separate truth from fantasy. Follow the clues, sort through the lies, and put the pieces together of this twisted reality.

From award winning author and visionary creator G. S. Gerry comes the critically acclaimed debut Meth Murder & Amazon.

Stephen: Today on Discover Wordsmiths, I have Jerry. Jerry, how are you doing today?

GS: I’m great. How are you? Thanks for having me. It’s a

Stephen: pleasure. It’s a good to have you on and you mentioned it was raining where you’re at. I live in Ohio. It’s raining here. Also. Where are you located?

GS: Started in Land O’Lakes, Florida.

So 30 minutes from Tampa and I feel like it’s been raining every day nonstop since the summer started every day at some point it rains like it was torrential

Stephen: downpour today. Wow. Okay. We had a like monsoon. The other day I lost electricity for three hours. It was coming down so hard.

I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house. It was crazy. Yeah.

GS: It did knock out the internet here earlier, but not too

Stephen: crazy. Yeah, I felt like we were in Florida. Yeah. All right. We are what, before we talk about your book I love your background, by the way, that’s a great background. Tell us a little bit about you and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

GS: Yeah I’ve actually been only writing for about a year and a half. I never thought I was going to be a writer. I had a crazy situation at work that kind of led me to hey, I want to be a writer. And so I can tell you about that real quick. I was working on a project. I do a lot of technical report writing at work on my new cyber security and credit card compliance. So you select your card at Walmart, Target any kind of store, right? Those customer, those companies have to have a compliance report. And so that’s where a company like the one that I work for come into play. So we write a lot of long reports look at a lot of controls. And so I had a situation at work.

I gave a customer a report and the next day she calls me and she’s Jerry, this report. It’s completely the same as last year. I’m like, Oh, gosh, please don’t tell me that’s the case. This is like a 500 page report, start reviewing the report saying we went on site. We didn’t, there was no on site.

We were in like the pandemic, like early pandemic at this time. So I was like, Oh, she’s right. We have to rewrite this report. So the guy who was on my team, he was the guy who was leading the assessment. And he’s the one who wrote the report. He copied my work. Yeah. Word for word and turn it into the customer, like it was his work.

So we had to rewrite the report. It went from 500 pages to 750 pages. And it takes me like two months to fix the report. And afterwards, I’m like, man, I just wrote a novel. That’s it. I got the story. I’m just going to write a book. That’s just what I did. And so that’s how it even led me to this crazy journey here.

Stephen: Wow. And you still have your job doing the big reports?

GS: yeAh, I still do that. It definitely keeps me busy. It’s always interesting. You get to see a lot of interesting and complex environments and then customers that you get to use all the time. Like you, you remember when Target had that big breach and all the credit card numbers got leaked out, Home Depot, et cetera.

So there’s a company, a third party company that’ll actually come in and say, Hey, this company is secure. They’re okay to take, continue taking credit cards. Or in the cases of like target, right? Because the company that actually does the assessment misses something and there’s a huge breach that leads to fines and all these other things.

So it’s a pretty big deal. We come in and do these assessments. They can take, anywhere from a couple of months to 6 plus months, depending on how big the customers.

Stephen: Wow. Wow. That’s a, that’s an investment. That’s time. That’s do you enjoy doing that? Does writing help you with the stress, that type of

GS: thing?

The writing does help with the stress. I’ll say that. That’s why I started writing in the first place. It’s a lot of learning. I’ll say that. So I feel like I learned a lot. throughout the job. No two environments are the same. Even if they use similar technologies, it’s always different.

I like it. It’s different. Definitely pays the bills.

Stephen: So you needed to relieve some stress and you wrote a book that is very interesting title, meth, murder, and mayhem. How’d you come about the title and tell us a little bit about the book. Yeah.

GS: So it’s a, it’s meth murder and Amazon.

Stephen: Amazon. Yes. I’m sorry. You’re right. And I just started a minute ago. Didn’t I?

GS: You did. That’s okay. So yeah, meth, meth murder and Amazon, you can actually buy it on the Amazon. And so this is a true based on true event story about the worst home selling experience of your life. And so as I was going to sell my house in Colorado, that’s my first house, by the way, so my first time selling a house.

And along the way I actually get accused by my own real estate agents of murder and making mess while I’m not even in the state. And how many real estate agents does it take to sell houses? It sounds like a running joke, right? And so most people would be like, take one. And I was, I usually say, you would think but in my personal experience, I actually took three real estate agents.

One of them the guy who actually sold me the house, he wasn’t even living in Colorado. He moved out of state and was in Arizona. So he wasn’t marketing my house, really doing anything to sell the house. So I fired him. I’ll go to the next real estate agent. She’s, I think she’s okay.

She’s a good person. We go on vacation to go visit my mom. My mom is sick. She has, early stage cancer. So I was like, Hey, let’s take a vacation. We’re going to have an open house. And so I’m on vacation where it’s me and my wife and my four kids at the time, we’re sitting in like Panera bread parking lot.

And I got a call and my real estate agent is Jerry. There’s someone inside the house. I was like, excuse me. What do you mean? There’s someone inside the house. She’s yes, there’s someone inside the house and they’re hiding under the bed. No one’s supposed to be there. I’m like, absolutely not.

No one’s supposed to be there. She’s great. I called the cops. Cops are on their way. Cops show up all of a sudden body’s gone. A few days later, they have a meeting at the real estate agency and they’re like, Oh, by the way, when we were at the house at the open house, we went around and we checked everything and we were in your garage and it smelled like burning plastic in there.

I was like, Oh, no, it was something burning right it’s like they’re an electrical fire and something catch on fire real estate agent goes no burning plastic means math. And so we think that someone could be smoking meth or making meth on the premises so we’re going to need you to get a meth test done.

Or we’re going to flag your house on the MLS for suspicious behavior. I’m like you’re absolutely not going to do that. I will sue you. So you can just consider this to be another relationship. So that’s two real estate agents that I finally find another one. And the book essentially was just this crazy rollercoaster of, from the time I actually decided I’m going to sell my house until I finally sell it.

And so it takes six months, three real estate agents and just a whole slew of just. Nonsense that kind of occurs throughout the process. And so I take you on an interesting little journey along

Stephen: the way. Wow. So it’s based on real events. But it’s not nonfiction. It’s a fiction story. No,

GS: it’s nonfiction.

I really tried to keep it true to how the story unfolded. Now I will say I changed all the places, all the names, right? Everybody has funny names. Everyone has like a funny location they live in. But the actual events that happened did really happen. And so one part I go to talk to the news and so I’m I’m on Denver seven news.

This is really happened. They come, they do an interview. I tell them the whole story. And they screw that up. So this whole thing is in the book, but I go on news, right? It airs at 9 PM. Not even 12 hours later, my realist, my new real estate agent. So real estate number three calls me and she’s Jerry, what did you do?

I’m getting people calling me the nastiest names, asking me, how can I do this to your family? Like you’ve got to take this down. And so what happened was the the news agency. When they started the on air broadcast, they, pan out to the curb appeal, they show the house wall and the front yard is the new real estate agent sign.

And so this is, she’s with Keller Williams, the ones that accused me of the murder and the meth that was remaxed. And so people weren’t even listening to the whole broadcast. They’re not even reading the article. They see the number and they just start calling her up. Calling her out. And so it got taken down.

I talked to the news agency and they’re like, yeah, we can’t edit anything that’s already aired. It’s just coming down. So there’s a lot of events that transpire along the way.

Stephen: So what do you what genre did you put this in to put it out there?

GS: So I decided to make it like a humor slash comedy, but it also has some suspense.

There’s some mystery in there. It has a little bit of everything, even like almost like horror, right? This was like, someone’s like real life nightmare. Could you imagine selling your house and then boom, you get accused of murdering somebody and then you get accused of making that right.

Like you can’t make this stuff up. So I write with a funny twist on it with a funny spin on it. And so that’s why I thought, humor would be the best way. Plus I, I choose really funny character names for my books. And someone was like crappy to me along the way, like the real estate agent accused me of meth and murder.

She got the name Dobby Snobby. And so I’ll make fun of her throughout the book. I’ll make fun of her name. And just all these different things. But if someone was like really good to me, like it was like a positive element as part of the whole story, that’ll get an actual really good name. And I’ll be like, Oh yeah, they helped me out.

Just different things like that.

Stephen: Wow. So what type of feedback are you getting from people reading it? What are some of the comments?

GS: A lot of people would say Hey, this is a crazy rollercoaster ride. If it wasn’t backed up by cold, hard facts, I really wouldn’t believe it. I tell, I would tell my friends this story, like before I even wrote the book, what happened, they’re like, stop it.

You’re making this up. I’m like, no way. I couldn’t make this up if I tried, right? This is so unbelievable. It has to be true. And I get really good feedback. Just Hey, this is really different. This is really unique. There’s really nothing out here. That’s like this. And so that’s what the goal was when I originally decided I was going to write a book, cause I wanted to do something really different and to set myself apart.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. So it, this is crazy. It sounds perfect for either a movie or a TV show. What would you choose for it to be?

GS: Either or, right? I think it could make a great TV series. I think you could make a great movie, right? I was thinking who could be the main character, which would be me. It’d be like, hey, Ryan Reynolds is a hilarious guy.

He would be, like, a great actor to portray this. And you could definitely make it a whole season but there’s even a lot of stuff that happened before I tried to sell my house. So I could actually write other books about this as well. But I hired, Yeah, a prequel, I could even do a sequel.

And so the prequel I had I was going to finish my basement in this house. And so you think like contractors, everybody know contractors are sometimes shady. I did what I was supposed to do. I’m like, Hey, I want to get my basement finished. So I’m going to subcontract out all this work.

You have to frame it. You have to get drywalling done. Water, electricity, right? All these things. So I would, bid it out. I wouldn’t hire the most expensive guy or the least expensive. I try to go in the middle. Man, I had the worst experience. It was only supposed to take three months. It takes almost a year to actually finish my basement.

And just like anything you can think of that can go wrong from like a contractor’s perspective did. So I was like, I could totally write a book about this. I call it framed, maimed, and plain to blame.

Stephen: There you go. I got some good, interesting with houses. I think this would make a great movie. I, and a lot of times, I go either way, but this particular one, put the right budget in it, get the right actors, and I think it’d make a really great, big

GS: absolutely movie.

And it’s really, most of it happens inside the house or at, at a parking lot or something. So it would be a pretty small budget, right? Like you wouldn’t need a lot to make it happen.

Stephen: It’s one setting, the house,

GS: just the house, things that happen inside the house. But it was fun.

It was fun to write about. And so I do tell people like it’s nonfiction, but it almost reads like it’s fiction because of the way I use the characters and the names, but also teach like the readers about what the different elements are when you try to sell your house, some people might be going through Hey, I want to buy a house or, Hey, I want to sell my house.

So I teach you about staging different things you need to look out for. What all the different showings means open house. So I try to add, a teachable element to it as well.

Stephen: Oh that’s cool. So it’s a fun book that you learn something from. That’s right. Yeah. What not to do sometimes.

So you also mentioned, you’ve got a book coming out soon, a second book. What’s that one about?

GS: So I do have a new book coming out September 22nd. It’s called hysterical hangouts with behind legs. And it is a true life reality show, but in a book. And so it follows the time honored tradition of, you meet the girl of your dreams, you fall in love.

And the only thing left to do is meet the family. What happens when you meet the family and they’re a little wild and what you might call crazy? And so along the way, the main character who is the boyfriend that’s dating the girlfriend, he decides, Hey, I’m going to do an undercover reality TV show.

And so he has a undercover camera and he goes through all these different events with her family, whether it’s her mom and dad she has three brothers. And so each episode or each chapter of the book is set up as an episode. They’ll be like episode one, here’s the title. And I’ll actually give it a rating and add in like the TV elements, like rated TV, 14 for language alcohol, suspense, whatever’s in there.

And so I try to really make it like a you’re really watching the reality show, but you’re reading in a book.

Stephen: Cool. And that comes out next month. You said in about a month. Yep. Yep. Next month. Cool. And do you have any plans beyond that for another book?

GS: I feel like I could probably write some books just on crazy things that have happened throughout my life.

So the, this new book coming out hysterical hangouts with the hind legs, I left it open ended for a reason. It’s, it is fiction. This new one is fiction. I’ve been married to my wife for 18 years now and she has seven brothers and sisters. And so this. This first book was only about the brothers.

So I thought I could make a sequel to it of just her sisters. And so I can do then even do a followup trilogy with not only the brothers and the sisters, but what happens when they all have children. And so the different like dynamics that come into play when you have brothers and sisters

Stephen: and then kids of all those people.

Wow. Okay. So do you have a website that people can go to and find out more about you?

GS: I do. So my website is gsjerry. com. On there, there’s obviously information about the book. There’s also some blogs. I also have some free recipes I like to cook. Don’t worry, they’re meth free. But I do have them labeled as meth lab creations.

So someone might see that and be like, oh, heck is this? It’s just free recipes that I’ve

Stephen: come up with. That’s pretty good. I like that. Putting it right in there.

Sorry. I’m sorry.

GS: What? Oh, no. I was just going to say, you just got to take ownership sometimes, right? If someone says you do something, it’s better to just, oh yeah, you got five

Stephen: minutes, right? You need a teacher. Yeah. Something,

GS: so I actually, so there is a shop on there as well. And so you can actually, there’s some merchandise on there.

One of them is a coffee cup and it says, don’t mess with me until I’ve had my coffee. There’s another one. It’s like an apron. It’s I can’t remember what it says off the top of my head, but it’s basically don’t mess with me or you might end up in the recipe or something like that. So they’re finding a little place on meth.

Stephen: Don’t mess with me or I’ll put you in my next book. Yeah, exactly. I see. I would get you one that says follow me to my meth lab.

GS: Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah, I can totally do that. It’s so tough though, right? Because some people are so sensitive, they’ll be like, Oh, this guy’s joking around about meth and all this stuff, right?

And meth’s like a huge epidemic. Yeah. Around the world and I get it. That’s why I got accused of the meth, because Colorado is like the meth capital of the world, apparently. That’s what they told me. And wow. Yeah. So after this all happened, whenever they accused me of this and I fired them, I actually, this isn’t in the book, but I actually went to talk to a lawyer about this and I explained what happened.

And there’s no way they can do that, blah, blah, blah. So I like shared with them the story. Lawyers contacted the real estate agents. They’re like, yep, this did happen. But that’s all we’re going to tell you then they finally go on through the discovery process and they find out that because Colorado has such a problem with methamphetamine, if a real estate agent even suspects Colorado.

That there’s a possibility of meth on the premises. They can do whatever they want, essentially. And there’s nothing you can do about it. So when this happened and they’re like, Hey, you you’re making meth in your garage or someone’s smoking meth. I was like, that’s gotta be defamation, slander, right?

Like something, right? Like you can’t just say someone’s making meth with no evidence. That’s just nonsense. But in Colorado, they can do that.

Stephen: Wow. Crazy. And so somebody basically waited till you were selling the house and you went out of town and they. Moved in and took over for probably just long enough to make a batch.

GS: It’s actually even worse than that. So I don’t want to, I don’t want to leave any spoilers, but what’s under the bed and who’s under the bed. It’s hilarious.

Stephen: Let me ask you, Jerry your book sounds hilarious. I think that’s a great situation to turn into a book. Do you have any favorite books and authors that you’ve liked through the years to read?

GS: I do. So I like C. S. Lewis. He has some great books. So it’s funny, right? I’m sitting here talking to you on a podcast, being an author. And I was the kid growing up that. Played a lot of sports. And so we had book reports to do in school. I’m like, all right, what’s the movie I can watch? I don’t have time to read these books.

And so I’d always get good grades. I always get A’s in my book reports. But the older you get, the more you realize reading is just part of life. You have to read for your job. You have to read for pretty much everything. And so when I was growing up, I hated reading. I didn’t want to do it. I just wanted to go play sports.

Now that I’m older, I do C. S. Lewis. My mom passed away a little over a year ago. And someone was like, Hey, you should read this book by C. S. Lewis called A Grief Observed. And it was when he lost his wife. And so I read that, right? I lost my mom. It’s different. But a lot of the elements and the things that he talks about on there, I was like, that’s super relatable.

So it definitely helps. And then he just has great visual descriptions, great elements in his book. So he’s just a fantastic author. As I read more and as I write more, I noticed that there’s some things that he does that I do as well. Like he’ll actually use run on sentences. He’ll actually like, and things abruptly.

And I definitely do that. So I thought it was cool to just see that kind of similarity there.

Stephen: Yeah I work with kids and one of the activities I’ve tried to pass on is. If you read the book to the first lion, which in the wardrobe the end of the book, the battle is all of four paragraphs.

That’s the whole battle, but the movie it’s like 10, 12 minutes long or something, but there are all sorts of creatures and all sorts. I, tell kids that’s, the difference between a plot and a story, here’s the plot. We had a battle, we won and the story in the movie, they expanded and made it much more exciting.

Trying to do an activity using that to, write your own battle scene, that’s better than, that’s how

GS: you get, that’s how you hook them, though, trying to get them to do something that they actually want to do. No one wants to write book reports, and then you have to use the right grammar and the right punctuation and spelling, right?

It’s just no fun. But if you give them a fun thing to create, kids love that, right? It lets their imagination kind of run

Stephen: wild. Yeah I totally agree with that and I have thoughts on that and I’ve talked to several teachers, I’ve talked to other parents, other adults, and everybody I talked to all agrees about the reading and that, but then the people in charge are making all this common core stuff and shoving it down their throats and these books are the ones you should read, I’m like, let them read something they’re enjoy, they enjoy, hit them with the books when they’re older, once they’re hooked on reading, don’t Throw the bad stuff at him early.

GS: Absolutely. You take a lot of the elements males are usually hands on, and of course, boys are going to be hyperactive in their classes. They don’t want to be in class. They want to be bouncing around, playing with stuff, building stuff. Harness that energy and get them outside, right?

Teach them how to use their hands. Learn skills. And that way, but they don’t do that in

Stephen: school. Encourage kids like you tell me a story about a made up baseball player or a fake baseball game, or, use sports and learn how to tell a story, but yeah, that’s a whole nother discussion.

GS: We could talk on five podcasts.

Stephen: I could probably do a whole podcast on education and storytelling. I’m sure. Now that you’re reading a little bit, do you have a favorite bookstore in the area? You said you had four kids. Do you take them to any bookstores? So

GS: I actually have five kids now. So we had four kids when the mess and the murder happened.

I just had a baby last year in November. It’s almost nine months now. And you have to have three boys, two girls. We have a lot of books that our grandparents have given us over the years of, they need a book first. I think we’ll probably go to Barnes and Noble just because that’s probably the closest one.

There are some like mom and pop bookstore I could say, but they’re like not on like the way where I’d be going, so I usually just go to Barnes and

Stephen: Noble. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Alright, so we’re gonna talk a little author stuff before we do though. If you’re out on the street and somebody said, Hey Jerry, I heard you wrote a book.

Why should I get your book? And I think we’ve already covered that, but what would be the quick pitch you would tell them?

GS: I would say, I would just tell them like, Hey, you want to read something that’s unbelievable and true. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to laugh your ass off. I guarantee it.

And so I think that pretty much sums it up, right? Like my books are always going to be funny. There’s always going to be some humor element to it, but it’s not even just that, right? Like it has so many other elements that just. Make for a great story. And part of it is just being unique, I think, is my trademark, right?

Like I don’t think I don’t do things the same way that a lot of authors do. I don’t write a lot of the same ways that a lot of authors do, but that’s on purpose. And so I figured it gives me a leg up when I get to tell people about the

Stephen: book. Yeah. I haven’t read your book, but it sounds to me like it’s a combination of Breaking Bad meets Dork Diaries.

That’s what it sounds like. You

GS: know what’s funny is, so when this happened and the real estate agent actually called the cops on me and accused me of murder, I told one of my friends about it. He’s dude, that sounds just like Breaking Bad. I was like, I haven’t watched it yet. I was like, that’s it.

I’m just going to watch it. And it’s like the third episode they’re doing the open house and they’re making meth in the basement. I was like, yep, this is it. They had to watch breaking bad before they did the open house. And so it must be, I’m like the reincarnation

Stephen: of buddy. So you’ve written a couple of books now.

Your second one’s on its way. You got an idea for a third one. What are some things that you have learned that you’re doing different now than you did when you first started?

GS: Yeah. So when I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. Let’s be honest. I was like, Hey, I want to do something different.

I want to create a really unique experience for the readers. And part of that is I’m going to just, I’m going to write a way that no one’s ever even comprehended. And so I’m going to, I’m going to misspell words on purpose. I’m going to make up my own words. I’m going to have run on sentences on there.

I’m going to break up the the way that the characters actually have their narration. So it actually forces you to take these pauses. But not only that, I’ll even go a step further and I’ll actually bring an audio element. So there’s like fun little remixes in the book. So like London Bridge is falling down.

I’ll make a remix of that to my own little like rhyme along. And so I just do random things to like, really keep the readers engaged and focused. Not only that I would say marketing so when the book first came out last year I didn’t know what this thing marketing was. I’m like, hey, this is a great title, right?

But they’re just, people are just going to see it and they’re just going to buy it Metford or Amazon. What could be better, right? And but that’s not how it works. There’s a lot of competition out there. I think there’s something like 30 million books on Amazon. And there’s a million books that come out every single year.

So you guys like anybody that’s an author, they’re going to have a lot of competition. So what sets you apart? How do you stand apart? And a lot of that comes from marketing. And so I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even start marketing until after the book came out. Even just to piggyback on that, as I was going through Amazon to release my book, Kindle has the ability to do a pre order, so I’m like, all right, great, I’m gonna put this pre order for 90 days out, and so then I go to start doing the same thing on the paperback and the hardcover editions.

There’s no pre order there, but I didn’t know that and so i’m like filling out this section So i’m like, all right Maybe it’s the next page is going to ask me when does it want to release? And so like I get to the last page and I hit and it’s like, all Do you want to submit a hit submit and be like your book is going to be live in 72 hours?

I’m, like, all right now going back now like i’m not taking it down And so I just let it go so it actually released a month earlier But obviously I didn’t know because I’d never written a book before or never gone into this idea of writing a book Now that I have read it, I actually put this new book on pre order about six months out.

I’ve been doing a lot of marketing and social media posts and everything just to bring attention. I’ve gotten reviews ahead of time as well as I submitted for awards, so I did win an award from Literary Titan a couple weeks ago. So I’m trying to build some positive momentum, right up until the launch date and then I’ll do some different tactics as I go along.

But definitely didn’t have any clue what I was doing the first time. And so part of this, right? Like I would have never done that the first time because I didn’t know what I was doing the second time. Now I have a good idea. I know how to market it, where to go what social media platforms to use, things like that.

Stephen: So I love that you said that and to point out to others, I know. A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about publishing and it will, they’ll go to conferences, they’ll go to author events, round tables, and the quizzing. And I always see people that okay, I’ve got one chapter done in my book, but tell me how do I publish?

Where do I publish? Who do I send it to? What? And I’ve been, as I’ve been talking to people, I’m like, Calm down. That’s like the last thing you got to worry about and figure it out. And most mistakes can be corrected which is what you sounded like you said, Oh, I messed that up. Keep going.

And you lived.

GS: That’s right. Yeah. That was a fight another day. I feel like it didn’t really hurt me overall in the long run. I probably could have sold more bucks originally, but there’s a lot of people I knew that I already told the story to. And so I was like, I wrote a book, they’re like, no, you did it.

Stop it. And I was like, I absolutely did. And I’d tell them about it and they’re like, okay, I’ll get that. And so personally, I feel like word of mouth is going to be always be the best marketing tool that you can have. Yeah. You can post on social media, but. It’s so tough to get people’s attention on social media, especially with so many different things.

We go viral. What’s going on? So I feel like word of mouth, talk to somebody, go to the coffee shop. Oh, what are you reading? Hey, I wrote a book. You want to hear about it? And so there’s all these different ways to get your book out there besides just the normal, like a post on social media, 900 times a month and all these different other tactics that are out there.

Stephen: And you mentioned unique style. So you talked about breaking things up and how you’re writing the characters and putting things in the book. Do you think that’s actually helped you now that you’ve done that?

GS: I think so. And so whenever I was first starting out with this, I’m like, all right, I’m going to use this really unique style if it flops.

Hey, that’s fine. Like I tried something new and it failed. But if it doesn’t I’ve got something to talk about that nobody else is doing. And so I think that’s really played to my advantage because you can go read the reviews and almost everyone has pointed out like writing style, but in a positive way.

And so you don’t have to follow the normal traditional writing style. You have to develop your characters this way. You have to. Write the sentences this way. It has to flow this way. That’s absolutely not true. Like you can write however you want. If it flows, and the readers enjoy it, then you’re going to provide a positive experience.

And it’s just going to set you apart.

Stephen: And usually authors don’t think that way or don’t try and experiment like that until they’re more well established. Have you heard of, or seen the road by Cormac McCarthy? I haven’t. I recommend looking that up sometime, even library or whatever. It is a great, interesting book.

It’s. Post apocalypse the world is basically destroyed and the whole book is written like Without periods and commas and everything’s in lowercase and it’s almost like a big run on sentence. It’s very interesting, but he uses it to help convey the stark feeling, the depressive feeling of the book.

Yeah. I’ll

GS: definitely check that out. Yeah, it’s definitely interesting and that’s just one of the reasons I did it the way that I did it. It was like, hey. This will who can say they read a, wrote a book, right? And then I was like, hey, tons of people write books all the time.

What can I do differently that’s going to really stand apart, maybe stand on its own? And so that’s why I chose the writing style. But I definitely will use wrong sentences. It’s fun. But if you think about how we text, really, this is where the idea came from. Whenever you’re talking with people, like you’re not caring about what your grammar looks like.

You’re not caring about the period here or a comma there. Now, I will use the right punctuation all the time, but I won’t I’ll just run sentences on together. And so it almost read like how you and me are talking right now. We don’t talk in complete sentences. We talk and run on sentences all the times.

And so as you read it, it’ll almost feel like you could hear yourself like reading it out loud and it really flows well.

Stephen: And I think one of the things people have talked a lot about is writing to make sure it sounds good in an audio book, because a lot of people are doing audio books and some of the more structured ways we write, putting, she said, he said, or something gets very monotonous in audio.

So something, if somebody’s talking fast and telling a lot of information, a run on sentence. Makes sense in audio. You don’t see all the punctuation in audio and it can convey that feeling of being, or, Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe I just went into the house and then I went upstairs and there was somebody in the bed and they were just like, that doesn’t have commas and stuff in there when you’re saying

GS: it.

Absolutely. And so I do have an audio book for the meth murder on Amazon. And I use this platform called ACX and so they have a tie into iTunes, Audible and Amazon. And so part of that, you can actually submit your script to anybody out there. That’s a narrator through this platform. And so you can actually take auditions and that’s absolutely what I did.

And as I said, my book has some crazy elements to it and there’s like funny little word plays and even like songs in there. So I literally spent the most difficult parts. Of the books as a narrator and I was like, Hey, I want a male. I want him to have really good community timing. I really want him to take ownership for it.

And I got like the first five and they were like, so boring. They are like drawn out. I was like, all right, not you. And then this one guy like totally took ownership of it. And every part that I gave them one part was like. From the interview that I had with the the guy from the news agency.

And so he’d be like, Hey, go up the stairs. Oh, no, wait, that’s too fast. Come back down the stairs. And so I literally would write it like that Oh, no, wait, stop, pause. And so there’s all this different back and forth between me and the news journalist. And so I sent it to him and I was like, if this guy can do like these parts good, like he’s going to be great.

And sure enough he nailed it. And so he’s going to be the narrator for the second book.

Stephen: Oh, nice. And when does that is the audio book out for the murder mayhem or

GS: murder? It’s funny. You’re not the first one that’s done that. I think it just goes together. Cause you know, M and M. So yeah. Yeah.

Meth murder name is on. It does have an audio book. We did win an award for that as well. And then we’re in the rank for another book award at the end of the year. The new one, I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but I’m trying to get it to line up like almost identical to when the Kindle releases.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. Jerry it’s been really great chatting with you about your book. It sounds fun. It sounds like you had a great time writing it too.

GS: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was definitely a fun time. Like I said, I never thought I was going to be an author, but as I started doing it, I wouldn’t give it to people.

I was like, Hey, read this. If it sucks, tell me, don’t make, let me make myself look like a fool. And no one really gave me any negative feedback. I was like, all right, I might be onto something. Then I like had submitted to my first editorial review. I was like, all right, if it’s going to suck, they’ll tell me.

And I got my first review. And I think they said, I was like Robin Williams on speed. I was like, Oh, that’s a good name shop. And when compared to Robin Williams, I thought it was a good thing. But it was really good review. So I’ve gotten a couple of negative reviews, but they don’t leave any comments are like two stars and they don’t say anything. And I’m like, maybe they thought that was like similar to

Stephen: another book, but You know with the way that whole system works could have just been somebody scrolling through Amazon saw meth I don’t agree with drugs and they clicked on two and you know that they moved on

GS: I do read the reviews.

I actually like reading them. I’ll actually take them. And if I’m like working on the description for the book of someone from something super whittier, it was like, Oh, that really captured like what I was after for the description. I’ll add that in there. So I definitely read the reviews. I think part of it is right.

Like you can’t be too serious, but with yourself, but you also got to have thick skin, right? Not everybody’s going to like what you write. Everybody’s going to like how you write and don’t like the story, right? Tons of reasons why people aren’t going to like your book. So if someone doesn’t like it, Hey, that’s okay.

If you get a ton of good reviews, you’ll be like, hey, there’s always going to be somebody that’s going to be on the other side of the

Stephen: coin. Yep. All right. So before we go do you have any advice you would give to other new authors out there?

GS: Yeah, I would definitely tell them write what you know.

I think Mark Twain said that, write what you know. And I think that’s important. I feel like I’m a funny guy, so I’m going to write funny stuff. But. The reverse of that, right? If you’re not funny, don’t write funny things, right? Because readers, it’s going to come across to the readers. It’s going to sound weird, right?

But if you’re serious serious things, great stories. But just stay true to yourself because that’s, what’s going to make, come across as a reader is just really genuine. If you try to do something that you’re not going to, they’re definitely

Stephen: going to know. Agreed. All right. Jerry, I appreciate you taking some time chatting with me today. It’s been really fun. I wish you luck on your

GS: book. Yeah, thank you very much and thanks again for having me. It was a great time.

Stephen: Yeah, good.

Growing up in New York in the late 1960’s, Audrey Birnbaum assumed that watching Holocaust documentaries was a perfectly normal family activity. On her first day of elementary school, Audrey sat in the cafeteria, unwrapped her liverwurst sandwich, and excitedly told her new classmates about her public television proclivities. Her Brady Bunch-watching peers had never heard of PBS, but they had heard of PB&J (and they weren’t too keen on liverwurst either). They made it abundantly clear: Audrey’s childhood was, in fact, not normal at all.

We will never know whether it was schoolyard bullying or watching tragic Shoah documentaries that was responsible for Audrey’s acute sensitivity to others; but that empathy may have helped pave the way for her choice of medicine as a career. Audrey chose to specialize in Pediatric Gastroenterology – for who needed more help than children; and where could anyone feel more suffering than in one’s gut? Day in and day out, she watched intricate family dynamics play out in the context of fragile health. Audrey listened to each patient’s story until she could retell it with clarity and give it meaning. Through witnessing and recording these tender dramas, the seeds of writing had been planted.

In the summer of 1941, eleven-year-old Wolf is coming of age amidst the rubble and antisemitism of war-torn Nazi Berlin. Destitute and facing imminent deportation, he must leave behind his ill sister and travel with his family across a continent entrenched in war. With nothing in hand but expired visas to the US, Wolf and his family must figure out how to sneak aboard the Spanish freighter the Navemar, a ship that will gain its reputation as the “Hell Ship of Death.” But this is only the beginning of Wolf’s saga.

“American Wolf: From Nazi Refugee to American Spy is a heart stopping true story full of last-minute rescues, near-death encounters, and survival against untold odds. It is also a story about coming of age, family dysfunction and national identity, and is a resounding testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

Using the extensive, detailed notes compiled by her father, author Audrey Birnbaum retells in memoir style a poignant and vivid account of Wolf’s childhood in Berlin, his riveting escape from Nazi Germany, and the continued challenges he faced even as he reached freedom.

https://thevillagebookstore.net/

[00:00:00] Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Audrey. Audrey, how are you doing this morning? I’m great,

[00:00:06] Audrey: Steven. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:00:08] Stephen: It is great to have you on and I’m excited to hear about this book but before we talk about your writing and your book, let’s find out a little bit about you.

[00:00:15] So tell us some of the things you like to do and where you live outside of writing.

[00:00:20] Audrey: Stephen, I live in Westchester, New York, and I have not always been a writer. This is pretty new to me. I actually. I want to say I was a doctor, but I think I’m allowed to say I still am a doctor, but I don’t

[00:00:34] Stephen: think you ever stopped being a doctor.

[00:00:37] It’s one of those

[00:00:37] Audrey: professionals that I want to hold on to that title a little bit, though. I don’t walk around like I didn’t put MD on my book because I thought that was, I don’t know. Ex I do. I’m a pediatric gastroenterologist.

[00:00:52] Stephen: Wow. That’s a mouthful. That’s a lot.

[00:00:53] Audrey: It’s a mouthful. It’s people will have trouble saying it.

[00:00:57] I usually say kids from here to here . But [00:01:00] people are, they’re good with that. Yeah. I

[00:01:02] Stephen: study kid farts,

[00:01:04] Audrey: yeah,

[00:01:05] Stephen: probably what the answer the kids would like, . . I’m sorry. Go on. Tell us more about you.

[00:01:10] Audrey: Yeah so that’s that’s so I stopped working in 2020 and right before the pandemic.

[00:01:16] Not that I knew it was coming. I’m, not psychic, but that happened and

[00:01:20] Stephen: just so happens your next book is a conspiracy theory book about,

[00:01:26] Audrey: bUt that gave me, a lot of time to do. This, I think I had planned to do some other things and, other hobbies. Actually, I do sing. I’m in a couple of courses because I can’t decide which one I like better.

[00:01:38] I have a pop acapella group and a more classical choral group and I like them both. And then I was planning to do, I don’t know, ballroom dancing at a long list. And then, pandemic. Said no to those things. And so that allowed me an opportunity to really focus [00:02:00] on the writing of this book, which I did obsessively and compulsively.

[00:02:07] Stephen: So doctors don’t usually leave much time for much outside of work life. It’s very hectic, busy, stressful life. But it’s also, I hear rewarding usually good pay and all that. So why would you want to stop doing that and just look into writing and make writing more a part of your life?

[00:02:30] Audrey: Oh, writing is so profitable. Don’t you think? I’m not, we’re not,

[00:02:36] Stephen: yes, it can be.

[00:02:37] Audrey: Yes. No, I’m not doing this for that reason. I would say that, it really started in 2018. So going back a couple years, I had 2018 was a bad year. For me it was it started I think with I had a case of identity theft that was like the beginning of a bad year.

[00:02:57] Oh geez, geez. I did not, you know that it happens. [00:03:00] It’s, but then I had a ski injury in Colorado. I

[00:03:05] Stephen: wasn’t really you or the other person

[00:03:08] Audrey: that’s really me. I was doing an aerial acrobatic move. Not, I’m not on purpose though. And and I broke a leg very. Very badly and I came back to New York and had to be carried up to my house by the fire department so that’s how bad it was and I And then a week later my father died and so it was like, you know like a bad series of events and then I had to write a eulogy while I was on narcotics, which was probably a good thing.

[00:03:46] And I knew my father had this experience of being, in the Holocaust and that was going to be a big part of his the story I had to tell, but I, it had been so long since he told us these stories that I really didn’t [00:04:00] remember the details. And I had to. tRy to figure out what to write and what to tell about him.

[00:04:06] And I remembered that he had written down his life story years ago, maybe 13, 15 years before. When he retired, he typed out his life memories. And it was somewhere in my attic, somewhere. I got on my ass, and I… Hall myself backwards up my attic stairs and found the dusty copy of this thing that he had typed and started to go through it and found what he needed for the eulogy and we put that away and then I was off my feet for two months and not at work.

[00:04:44] And it’s the first time in my life I had ever not worked. I’ve literally been working since I was 11. Not in the home life. I’ll go into about why I was working since I was 11. That’s another book for another time. But so then I was,[00:05:00] at home, on drugs with my leg going like this and some kind of rehab machine and not doing anything, not wanting to be idle.

[00:05:08] I’m talking to my mother who was widowed a lot and she said, Audrey, your dad really wanted his book published and the book was I don’t know if you could see, but it’s it’s a pretty big tome. Yeah. It’s like a one pound tome. And, and so I started really reading it cover to cover, and I thought, wow, this is amazing, so much detail.

[00:05:28] He remembered so much from his childhood, growing up in Germany, under a Nazi regime and I thought. Yes, this absolutely should be published, except it is absolutely unpublishable because it’s really not good. So that really, got me thinking that if I ever was to do this, I would have to really rewrite it completely from cover to cover.

[00:05:51] buT I was still working. So after a couple of months, I went back to work on crutches, which is very hard, by the way, to do a colonoscopy on crutches. I don’t recommend it [00:06:00] to anyone. But I, I think also, coming back to work again, 2018 being a bad year, my mother, a couple of months later broke her hip and so I was going to work and doing the widow mother broken hip thing and but I started to think this is maybe a time I should start thinking about, uh, maybe at some point not working, um, in medicine for the rest of my life.

[00:06:29] Starting a new chapter,

[00:06:31] Stephen: literally, right? And that’s interesting. I’ve talked to a lot of authors that they do that, but they usually stick with their main career, retire and then write. You’re obviously not completely ready to retire. I think that’s, a lot of people would probably find it difficult to leave a profession like.

[00:06:50] Medical profession to go into writing a book. Cause as we joke, it’s just so lucrative to do. Do you find, and I know working with kids, [00:07:00] that probably was mostly good days helping kids. Do you find fulfillment or are you glad to get rid of that? Stress or whatever was with the medical.

[00:07:10] I’m just curious as to your feelings on doing this and moving away from medical a bit. Yeah.

[00:07:16] Audrey: I think that I think two things, I think I, I started my career really early. I was 22 when I graduated medical school. But just a very accelerated life of rushing through everything.

[00:07:27] And so again, like never having taken a break, I felt like maybe a little bit done. And I really loved patient care. I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoyed my patients and my interactions with families and the caring part was all positive, I think you’ll. Speaking to a lot of doctors today, they’ll tell you the more and more administrative stuff became, part of the end of day to late hours of night.

[00:07:57] And it became a little bit more than I [00:08:00] wanted, but I think more than that, I just really wanted to do other things. I always felt like I had this creative side that was untapped and that I had put away and couldn’t get to because. The work was just too consuming. That just wasn’t enough time to do, to balance it all and to do both.

[00:08:16] And so I did the opposite of what all my friends did. Their kids left the house and they went back to work. My kids left the house and I left work at the same time, which I’m a little guilty about. I was like, I’m supposed to be home with my kids and then go back to work and I did the opposite and I feel forever guilty and I hope they forgive me.

[00:08:34] Stephen: But I love that. Because I think too many people put off what they really want to do and what would be fulfilling in their life because they have this notion, this is my job. This is what I got to do. I got, you, you took that step an inspiration for many, I hope

[00:08:50] Audrey: yes.

[00:08:50] And I did it with therapy because it was such a hard decision, but no, it’s really hard. It was the idea of leaving work was. It was a painful [00:09:00] decision. There was pain in my leg and the pain in my brain. And I, it was not easy. And then I had to make sure I could afford to, which was, that was also really hard.

[00:09:10] The idea of not having a steady income was. Yeah,

[00:09:17] Stephen: I Bet I, I know a lot of people have that issue, which keeps them from doing what they want. And I understand about the a little bit about the administration stuff with in the medical world. My mother was an orthopedic nurse for 45 years and what drove her out was they Changed and upgraded the computer system and it was like broke.

[00:09:38] It was horrible. And she was like in tears and it’s just retire. You’re many

[00:09:43] Audrey: tears, many. Yes, I’m a good, I’m a good crier. So I understand.

[00:09:48] Stephen: That would, that could be your next thing. You’ll get an acting gig on some soap or something where you have to cry a lot. And

[00:09:54] Audrey: Here, I have a button somewhere that when you push it, they just come.

[00:09:58] I thought I might try it [00:10:00] today, depending what you say. Oh, it happened at

[00:10:04] Stephen: any moment. Who’s that? Who’s that? There’s that one, one interviewer that like always tries to. That gets people to cry and you always hear the actress of that. I wasn’t going to cry, but you got me to cry. No, I

[00:10:16] Audrey: don’t want to pull it off.

[00:10:19] Always. Yeah.

[00:10:20] Stephen: All so you talked a little bit about finding this book, wanting to redo this book for your dad. I want to find out a little more about what’s in the book. You said it wasn’t really publishable and you had to redo it. So walk us through reading it and what’s in there and what pushed you to keep going and then what you had to do to actually get it out into the world.

[00:10:41] Audrey: Yeah. So basically it is my father’s story about living through the Holocaust. He was born in Berlin in 1930 and he left. Germany in 1941. So he really lived through the [00:11:00] Nazi years and his escape was really is by the skin of your teeth escape. And I don’t want to give away too much about how he left, but cause that’s the exciting part, but.

[00:11:14] He is he was profoundly detailed about his life to a point that was astonishing. If I could tell you that I could draw you an architectural blueprint of his apartment in in Berlin the color of the walls, where the bathroom was. Every piece of furniture and, which was great because it was material for me that I could do something that was thoroughly believable.

[00:11:43] But if, as a reader, you would not want to say when you first walk in the apartment, there’s a foyer and then to the right is Anita’s room. And after that is the bathroom. It was written a little bit like that, which again, fabulous for me to make something completely [00:12:00] honest and true, but had to be.

[00:12:01] Written in a readable way, but the story itself of escape and survival was. Dramatic and then when he came to this country, there’s a whole other story about immigration and identity and trying to become an American and all of this in the backdrop of a very dysfunctional family, which makes it very relatable because don’t we all want to read about dysfunctional families and, some of it’s funny because I thought it sounded funny, um, because, his mother was a little crazy and erotic and his father was a bit of a pumpkin and a buffoon, I guess would be a better way to put it.

[00:12:44] And and that created a lot of errors in judgment that led to them getting stuck in Germany longer than they should have. Why did they stay? And, I, he didn’t really. Explain it. He documented it, but I don’t think [00:13:00] he really analyzed it. There wasn’t a lot of assessment, so I did the assessing for him.

[00:13:04] So what I had to try and do is which was a challenge, was keep it in his voice even though they were my words, and assess it in an an adult way that he was a little stuck, I think in the frozen, in his childhood experience. And I had to analyze the motives of the characters that was, yeah, and give it life.

[00:13:27] Does that make sense? Yeah.

[00:13:28] Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. To have the narrative there, were there parts where you wished you were able to talk to him to get more information that there was things you wanted to know to put into the book or did you? Yes. Okay. Okay.

[00:13:45] Audrey: Yeah. In some parts, I think also, I had. I think the biggest difficulty I had actually were not with him, but I think there were things that he didn’t know.

[00:13:54] I had to research a fair amount. Like he, he wrote this before the [00:14:00] internet. So he didn’t know certain things. He, there were family members that disappeared. He didn’t know what happened to them. Friends who he just. Who got left behind in Germany, he didn’t know. So I, names of family members he didn’t remember.

[00:14:15] So I did a lot of research to try to figure out who were these people, what happened to them. And of course I had access to the Holocaust Museum’s database where I was able to find out what happened to his closest friends. A lot of sad stuff that maybe it’s better that he didn’t know. Then there was a very big story about his sister and what happened to her because the family got separated and she got I guess left behind due to some visa issues and her story of what happened was really fascinating.

[00:14:47] And again, I don’t want to give it away, but I would have liked more detail, but it’s possible because he was so young that he wasn’t always told the entire story. And [00:15:00] she. Wasn’t around and I asked my cousins or her children who obviously adults now if they could shed more light on it And I don’t think she had shared more intimate details So I would have really liked to have known more so I could only share just what he wrote so yes, I Would have liked a little more but I think he did give me enough To write a detailed moving story.

[00:15:30] And and I, I just want to say that, there’s a lot of Holocaust stories out there, and I’m not saying that this one is more dramatic. My father didn’t, he wasn’t in a concentration camp and he, there’s a lot of suffering to go around and a lot of very moving stories.

[00:15:48] But I finds that, everybody, has a story. Everyone who survived it has a story that’s moving in its own way. And the story still needs to be told. [00:16:00] I think again, this story is unique in its own way. Again, because of family situation, because of how late they were in Germany.

[00:16:09] And so I hope people just, can enjoy it and enjoy the way I’ve told it.

[00:16:15] Stephen: So would you say it’s closer to a nonfiction documentary or a fiction, not action story, but drama story? Where’s the,

[00:16:27] Audrey: no, I don’t think it reads like a documentary. I always felt like it read like. More like a novel.

[00:16:33] Okay. Even though it was, I, it’s, I can’t say it’s a memoir cause I, it’s not his words exactly though. Sometimes I used his, I did, sometimes he had a really nice line and I used it directly as is, but I felt like it read more like. As if it was a novel written in the first person, I saw it in my head as a movie, like that was, okay, as I was writing it, and I was, yeah, that was [00:17:00] to me, it was a movie and it was like, I would say it was like 50%.

[00:17:05] Like some combination of Europa, Europa mixed with Portnoy’s complaint, because the later part is all the awkwardness of, coming of age and, being a young man, being in the service, there’s a lot of and a little bit of the namesake to, I’ll throw that in too, because there’s this whole first generation American identity.

[00:17:28] So a combination of those

[00:17:31] Stephen: three. Got it. So if you came across a spot that maybe needed more depth to it, more, how did you go about putting in dialogue or describing something or writing it so that it fit what was real and what was there, but made it an interesting story to read, how did you like handle that?

[00:17:52] Cause that seems like I’d be frozen. It’s I don’t want to. Miss misrepresent what he’s putting, but I also want it to be [00:18:00] interesting for people to read. And I know a lot of the movies and stuff based on true events, that the dialogue, they just. This is probably close to what they said, type of thing, how did you handle that?

[00:18:10] Audrey: So part of it was that, I knew some of the characters. I knew my father, I knew my grandmother she was alive until I was, 16 years old. And so I’m going to use the Schitt’s Creek example. You may not get the reference. I like

[00:18:26] Stephen: that show, yes.

[00:18:27] Audrey: Yeah, everybody loves Schitt’s Creek, but I think when there was an interview with, I can’t remember the actor’s name. The father who plays the father.

[00:18:35] Stephen: Yeah. I can’t remember his name off hand.

[00:18:37] Audrey: And they were talking about just creating the show. He said, the humor is not in the one liners. It’s in the characters themselves. If you have good characters, they speak for themselves.

[00:18:49] And so I think that we had the characters of my grandfather and my grandmother and my father and my aunts, they were already well [00:19:00] developed. And I think I had developed them well early on, even from going back to like, when they got married back to the old country. And so once you had that. I could embody them and I knew what they would say.

[00:19:12] I knew who they were. And so when I wrote for them, I was writing as them and I could speak for them because I already knew who they were. I knew what they would say. So I didn’t find it difficult because it’s, to me, it didn’t seem artificial.

[00:19:28] Stephen: Nice. Okay. Yeah. And I love that because that’s, fiction writers often say when they really understand their characters and get into it, that they just go and you’re just trying to keep up and write down what was said.

[00:19:42] Audrey: Exactly. They wrote themselves. I felt like they were writing when I was writing, I never, I sometimes didn’t know where I was sitting because I was, I felt like I was there in, if I was in Germany or if I was in Washington Heights, wherever I was, like I was so immersed [00:20:00] in writing that I literally, I could not tell you where I was sitting in the house.

[00:20:05] It

[00:20:05] Stephen: just, you hit that flow. Yeah,

[00:20:09] Audrey: exactly. It was total flow.

[00:20:11] Stephen: Yeah. Nice. So what type of feedback have you been getting from people who just discovered it, from maybe other people who lived through similar or had family members that lived through similar? Have you heard any feedback on that?

[00:20:24] Audrey: I have. So most of my readers so far have found it really emotional and very immersive. I think the feeling was like, they also said they feel like they’re there and they root for, I think, because I present my father as this sort of, awkward, just trying to try so hard to become once he comes here, first it’s like an eventual they get out and then it’s can he become the man he wants to be?

[00:20:53] And fit into an American society after all the tragedies that he experiences once he’s here, they’re [00:21:00] rooting for him. So that’s the feedback that I’ve gotten. And then the people I I’m publishing with Amsterdam Publishers, who’s like a large international publisher, mostly like Holocaust and World War II memoirs.

[00:21:13] And so I’m now part of a authors group. And there’s other people publishing their memoirs and again, it’s been very enlightening because Of course, now I realize there’s other people and they have their stories too, and it’s wonderful to read. And sometimes there’s similarities, uncanny similarities, and you’re like, really?

[00:21:31] Your parents were crazy too? But that’s because everybody, not really, because everybody who lived through this, everybody has a story, whether they were hiding. Plain sight, pretending to be Christian, hiding under the floor, or it’s whatever. There’s our they all have good stories.

[00:21:48] They’re worth reading. They’re interesting and dramatic. And all of us next generation, we’re all crazy as a result.

[00:21:56] Stephen: That must be, my, my [00:22:00] family didn’t go through that, but to hear that and know that growing up must be a totally different perspective on, uh, just being who you are and being in America and not having to, live through that totally different than somebody who’s. Family has been here for 200 years or something, yeah, I said

[00:22:20] Audrey: It’s an immigration story, but it’s a little unique, I think, because when my father got here, um, first of all, we were in the middle of a war and everyone was anti German and he was German.

[00:22:32] And then everybody pretty much was like, anti Jewish too. They were I don’t really want the Jewish refugees to come. So that was like a second thing. And then a lot of Eastern European Jews didn’t like German Jews because they were like, Oh, the German Jews, they’re so snobby. They think they’re so superior.

[00:22:50] So there was like, there was this, and plus he had already been through like the trauma of. The continuous loss of everything, lose your school, lose your clothes, [00:23:00] lose your friends, lose your furniture, lose your money, lose your sister, lose your family, so there’s it was very, in that respect, I think it was a little bit of a decision.

[00:23:09] Distinct immigration experience. So I think, there was a lot of trauma for him that it created a lot of things, anxiety and, behaviors that whether he passed that down in DNA or just behavior, I couldn’t tell you, but it was. It was a bit of a unique experience.

[00:23:34] Stephen: And you mentioned something about your father when he was young and coming over and all that did, was it difficult for you to write your father as a character and things that Of how he was before you were even born and what you knew of him. And, cause still you gotta have some sort of a little bit of a character arc in there, without making him like the big superhero or [00:24:00] something, you know what I’m saying?

[00:24:00] That you want to idolize your father. Was that a difficult thing for you to do?

[00:24:06] Audrey: So I think to be like as honest as I can be, like, I think my father was a difficult father because of his traumas that he experienced. And by the time I was an adult and a parent, myself, I had already You know, forgiven his, whatever difficulties that he had come to terms with that.

[00:24:30] But I don’t think that I fully sympathized with his experience until I read and understood what he had written and all the losses he experienced. I could not believe. I knew, again, the escape story. I got that. But I didn’t know how much else was in it and how deep the losses went, even after he came here, how difficult it was.

[00:24:56] So I think I developed a real sympathy for the child that [00:25:00] he was that I never really had before. And so I think I was able to imbue sympathy for the young person that I was writing about and not the adult father figure that I knew.

[00:25:15] Stephen: That would be very difficult, I feel I’d have a hard time doing that myself, so I applaud you for that, definitely.

[00:25:22] Audrey: Yeah, that’s a lot of tears. A lot of sobbing occurred.

[00:25:27] Stephen: Did your mother like the book?

[00:25:30] Audrey: Oh, yeah, my mother and my sister loved it. They… Cried buckets when they read it and then, and I was thinking, I kept thinking like, Oh, I wish my dad was around to see this get published. And then I thought, Oh my God, I could never have written this if my dad was around because he would have prevented me from writing it the way I wanted to, I, I wrote my version of events and that was not his, this is what he wanted, but that’s.

[00:25:59] That’s not [00:26:00] what, that’s not what I wanted to say.

[00:26:03] Stephen: It’s he wrote for himself. He wrote for his own reasons and you wrote to get the story out into the world and to share it with

[00:26:12] Audrey: others. I think he wrote really more as a legacy to his family. Like he really dedicated to his children and grandchildren.

[00:26:19] This is my life story. This is, chronicle of my life. And yeah, and exactly. My motive is to. It tell a story to the world that should be heard. Exactly.

[00:26:32] Stephen: So do you have any plans now for another book? That’s a big auspicious beginning what do you, what’s next? ?

[00:26:40] Audrey: Yes, I do. Actually I’m in the middle of writing another book and it’s fiction and it’s much more fun and totally different.

[00:26:47] And now I realize like how in, in a way it’s easier because I can manipulate. the characters as I want to, I don’t have to follow as, I’m like, I think nonfiction is hard. [00:27:00] Because it, again, that narrative arc, you have to, you have to have a conflict and conflict resolution and where’s your ending.

[00:27:06] And sometimes with a biography, you can’t, sometimes There is no, I, in this book, in my dad’s book, I definitely tried to create that kind of narrative arc with where I ended it and having a resolution. But I think it’s, with fiction, you can manipulate it just right. Time it just right.

[00:27:27] And so anyway, yeah, so I’m writing a book. It’s a, it’s called The Climb. It’s a, it’s an ensemble cast of people on vacation. People with bringing all their problems with them on vacation, getting together and running into some trouble and having to work together. And it’s fun, humorous, um, totally different

[00:27:53] Stephen: genre.

[00:27:55] Great. And do you have a website that people could go to if they have, want to see more about the [00:28:00] book?

[00:28:00] Audrey: Yes, it’s, audreyBurnbaumAuthor. com

[00:28:03] Stephen: Okay, we’ll put links in the show notes for that. Okay. Yeah. Let me ask, do you have any favorite books of, that you’ve read throughout your life or authors that you really like?

[00:28:15] Audrey: yEs, I do. I have it’s funny. I was thinking about this and I was thinking I have more male authors that I like than female authors. And I thought, is that bad? I do really like Jonathan Franzen. I really did like his last book, Crossroads very much. I love Philip Roth. And I love Jonathan not Jonathan. John Irving. And then I Zadie Smith is a favorite woman author of mine. And Chimamanga Adichie. I hope I didn’t mangle her name too much. And Elena Ferrante. I think those would be my… Top contemporary authors. Okay.

[00:28:58] Stephen: Nice. There in [00:29:00] Westchester, is there any bookstores that you like to go visit?

[00:29:05] Audrey: Yeah. The Village Bookstore in Pleasantville is a, which is a town away from me, is a lovely, sweet bookstore where you can get lost in and, just You know, it’s real brick and mortar, find a book, get help, buy a gift, lovely

[00:29:26] Stephen: place. Okay. All right. So we want to talk a little writing stuff about opportunities, which I have some questions on.

[00:29:33] But before we do if someone said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell them?

[00:29:40] I would

[00:29:40] Audrey: say that it’s a, this is a, it’s a character driven story and it’s a family drama and It’s a it’s a good read whether or not you want to read a story about the holocaust or not. So if you’re the kind of person who does want to read like a holocaust story or you’re a World War II buff, you’re going to like it.[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] But if you also just want to read a heartwarming story about a boy who’s living through some difficult times with his family and It’s trying to find his identity even for I would say even a YA audience might find that to be something they could relate to. So I think, a lot of people could find something in this book that they would connect

[00:30:22] Stephen: to.

[00:30:22] Nice. Okay. AUdrey, let me ask you this. You did not choose a first writing project as an easy project. You chose one that is probably very… So everything else should be easy. So what are some things you’ve learned through this process that are helping with this next book?

[00:30:43] Audrey: Yeah. I, I didn’t accomplish this entirely on my own.

[00:30:47] I had help in the sense that I. Had, friends who read for me, which was really helpful. I had a friend who’s an author, Katie Size, who [00:31:00] read my book and gave me some hints and clues, which was really helpful. I. Realized pretty early on how difficult it would be to get an agent. And so I decided instead to go to a niche publisher, which was helpful.

[00:31:14] But on the bright side of that, the rejection, not getting an agent was really helpful because I actually put the book down for a long time. And then when I came back to it, I think improved it a lot. So that was, I think, a lesson to, put it down. For a little while and then come back and look at it again, freshly with fresh eyes.

[00:31:40] And you’ll see things, you’ll see where the writing is weak and where you can prove it. And so I think that’s one important lesson, and then also that, finding landing like a niche publisher, I think to me, that was. Very helpful. It’s getting [00:32:00] it moving to make sure that it actually made it somewhere.

[00:32:03] Stephen: oKay. So you mentioned in email about talking about not missing opportunities and taking advantage of opportunities. With this one book, has there been some opportunities that you regret that you’ve missed? And the reason for possibly talking about that? Or have you, do you have some great opportunities that you’re glad you did?

[00:32:27] Audrey: Do you mean opportunities with the, with writing itself, you’re saying? Yes.

[00:32:32] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:32:32] Audrey: I’m

[00:32:35] apologizing, I really, I’m

[00:32:37] Stephen: not An Agent, which would have been an opportunity, possibly, to get in a big publisher, a big possibly, who knows what, foreign rights movies and stuff, and you didn’t do that. Do you regret not choosing An Agent? Do you wish you had?

[00:32:54] Audrey: Oh, I think I see what you’re saying. Okay I think that…

[00:32:58] I would have [00:33:00] liked to, I think I, I think an agent didn’t choose me. Let’s be clear. I did put it out. I maybe didn’t, do it as aggressively as I might have. But I’m not sure that this genre lends itself to being picked up by an agent, to be fair. It is a niche genre that may not, at this particular moment in time, have the appeal that an agent would.

[00:33:34] Really be interested in. Just to be completely fair, this is, not necessarily, Holocaust literature, not necessarily what people are really interested right now,

[00:33:46] Stephen: flying off the shelf for every day.

[00:33:49] Audrey: Exactly. So I think like I recognize that after, a couple of go arounds with seeking out agents.

[00:33:56] And I. So I, but I didn’t give up, [00:34:00] I wasn’t gonna give up and I did not want to self publish I, I could have, I certainly would be a way to go, but I, that wasn’t the route that I wanted to take. I Didn’t think that it would be easy to get noticed and, and I didn’t want it to be a vanity project either, so I I was looking still for real representation.

[00:34:22] So I think I found, I found a good publisher, a legitimate publisher, and, I feel, represented.

[00:34:29] Stephen: Are there any other things that may be coming up that you’re going to do to help promote the book that you wanted to make sure and take advantage of either setting up somewhere or some conference or something going on?

[00:34:42] Is there anything besides podcasts? I

[00:34:46] Audrey: am, I’m, right now I’m. I’m working with so social media, the marketing part of this is all, brand new for me. I’m not, I was never really on social media before. So I now do have an Instagram and I do have Facebook. And so I’m working on [00:35:00] that.

[00:35:00] I do have something coming up in January that I’m very excited about, even though January is always away, but the book isn’t. Officially launching till October. It’s available for pre order September 15th, and then it’s it’s going to be available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in on October 23rd and January there’s a, the Reagan library Reagan presidential library in California has been doing a program, really beautiful program on outfits. And, but it’s not just outfits. It is a Holocaust related program. And I’ve been invited to speak there in early January and speak about the book, which is, an amazing opportunity because ultimately.

[00:35:44] Besides the book. And again, I’m not doing this because I think I’m going to become rich from this book, but the idea is really to get the story out and to tell my dad’s story. And and so that to me is a marvelous opportunity. And as you can see, I like [00:36:00] to speak, so I will. Do it more. And that’s, so that’s my, to me a big opportunity.

[00:36:07] Otherwise, I’m going to probably be doing be setting up, uh, talks and temples, continuing education programs, and, neighborhood things. I have not set that up yet because I don’t physically have the book.

[00:36:20] Stephen: And I love about doing that talk because that’s a perfect venue to be, everyone listening to the talk is interested in the topic.

[00:36:31] And I think that’s something a lot of authors don’t think far enough and wide enough that I, if there’s a writer’s conference in the area, I see a lot of authors setting up at a table to sell their crime fiction or their fantasy. And I’m like, That doesn’t make sense to me because everybody at this conference is a writer with their own book.

[00:36:52] They’re not looking to buy a book to read, and I, I think there’s opportunities out there for [00:37:00] people to do things outside of just. Book and library related things. So I love that you’re going out to do this talk and you’re doing things with the local community. Have you looked at other Jewish events or other synagogues or anything out there that you could go work with and talk with or anything like that?

[00:37:20] Audrey: I’m planning to approach, it’s a little early yet still, but I’m planning to approach the the New York version of the Holocaust Museum. It’s called the Jewish, it has a different name, but it’s so I think I’m going to do museums and then all of the, there’s plenty in Westchester, plenty of local synagogues.

[00:37:40] And there’s also a lot of groups that are children of Holocaust survivors, like smaller groups that I’m. Planning to approach. So all the in person stuff I’m planning to do for the fall and set up. So I haven’t done it yet, but it is. Next on my list of things to do.

[00:37:58] Stephen: Nice. I like [00:38:00] that thinking outside the box.

[00:38:03] Are you using the same writer name for this book as your next book, or are you separating those?

[00:38:10] Audrey: No, it’s gonna

[00:38:11] Stephen: be the same name. Okay. Have you Do you have any thoughts or concerns about someone who picks up a book about the Holocaust and then they look at your next book and it’s like completely different fiction any concerns about people going, Hey, this is not what I wanted.

[00:38:27] Now I do.

[00:38:28] Audrey: Oh I I had. No, I’m just, I, again, I’m not in this as, for me, I’m in this not to there, I know there are some writers and they’re very targeted in terms of, this is my audience and this is who I’m marketing for. And this is exactly the type of literature I’m doing.

[00:38:49] I’m right, from the heart and. I’m going to write what I want to write that could be another memoir in the future. It [00:39:00] could be, so I, it’s maybe that’s not a good business approach, but it’s for me, the goal was not, um, yeah, I’m, I’m a later in life.

[00:39:15] Right in, in, and I maybe don’t have the, this is one project, I’m putting this away, I’m starting the next project, and. We’ll market it accordingly.

[00:39:27] Stephen: The other thing I’ve seen and think about too is you’re not so much worried about selling two different products. It’s more about you that you’re the brand, you’re the product almost, you know, if someone.

[00:39:41] I am the brand. Exactly. If somebody does like the first book. And they like the writing. Even if your next book’s fiction, it has nothing to do with the Holocaust or anything like that. They may say, you know what, she got this story out. I love what she did and I’m going to stick with her. I [00:40:00] like that.

[00:40:00] And it’s a different approach than like you said, a lot of authors get really focused. Oh yeah. I write in three genres of three different pen names. I got three different websites and that’s a lot to do. So I’m just I actually love that, you’re, this is me, this is what I write.

[00:40:17] Audrey: Thank you for being so supportive, Steven.

[00:40:19] Stephen: Yeah, and

[00:40:20] I’d love to definitely check it out after the next book and see what the feedback read that first book, this is different, but I love it. That type of thing, because I think that’s a, a. A way of marketing and getting out there that a lot of authors avoid cause we’ve been told to, but I don’t think that’s completely right.

[00:40:43] I think you’ve got a good angle actually.

[00:40:46] Audrey: No, I think, listen I, the truth is, I think that really good authors can spend quite a few years on a. On a novel and write very different books. And that’s, I think, to their [00:41:00] credit. And I think you know who those authors are. But also this book was a commitment I made to do something, in homage to my father, which I did.

[00:41:12] And now that I know that I can write and I can finish a book. And now I’ve got the bug and I really enjoy writing, it’s a great pleasure that now I move forward and now I’m going to do the kinds of stories that I want to tell and they will be different.

[00:41:27] Stephen: And that’s beautiful.

[00:41:28] I love that. All right. Audrey, I appreciate everything today. I think that book sounds wonderful. I agree. I think the world needs some more of those, even though there are plenty of things happening that take people’s attention and something that was a hundred years ago may seem like eh, it’s old news.

[00:41:48] It’s still something that we shouldn’t forget that affected people and people’s lives. To this day. So I love that you did that. Do you have any advice for anyone else that is [00:42:00] in a similar situation where they have a parent or a grandparent that has a story to tell and they might want to write a book and get that story out?

[00:42:08] Do you have any advice for them?

[00:42:11] Audrey: Yeah, I think it’s don’t hesitate to start putting it on paper, just start writing, don’t critique yourself till you have it down, excuse me, from start to finish, and then edit it and edit it but find, even if it’s somebody else’s story, I think you still have to find your own voice as a writer, um, you’re still telling it, and I think that’s the, probably the biggest challenge is in finding your own writer’s voice and knowing if you have one.

[00:42:45] Because yeah, because people still have to be able to, feel, they have to still feel it for it to be. To feel the emotion of the story. You can’t just, again, it’s a show not [00:43:00] tell.

[00:43:01] Stephen: They have to connect to it. Yeah. Very much. Great. Audrey, thank you for being on today. It’s been great talking to you.

[00:43:08] I wish you lots of luck not only with the book, but with your talk in January. I hope that goes very well for you.

[00:43:15] Audrey: Thank you. Thank you. I’m very excited. Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. Thank you.

Ashley Earley grew up in Georgia, where she spent most of her time running wild in the woods of her backyard, building forts to create her own fantasy worlds, obsessing over books, and experimenting with her writing.

Today, she lives in Colorado with her dog and still spends her time devouring any book she can get her hands on, writing, and editing for her clients at Earley Editing, LLC. In May of 2021, she graduated with distinction from University of Colorado Boulder, receiving a B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She also enjoys snowboarding, exploring, annoying her dog, constantly eating chocolate, and sharing her writing adventures on Instagram.

Her Thriller/Suspense short story, Chasing Hair of Gold, won first place in the 2016 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards.

As a writer, she leans into fantasy or horror due to her love of all things creepy. As an editor, she loves a little bit of everything when it comes to fiction. Give her that steamy, forbidden romance, give her vampires, or even that young lovey-dovey stuff with all the twists and turns!

https://www.ashleyearley.com/

https://www.tatteredcover.com/

Stephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Ashley to welcome. Ashley, how are you doing? I’m good, how are you? I’m doing good. Before we get started, we’re going to talk about your book, Heart of Skulls. Before we do that tell us a little bit about yourself, where you live, what you like to do and some things, hobbies and stuff outside of writing.

Ashley: Okay. So I originally grew up in Georgia, but I live in Colorado now. I ended up moving out here for college and never went back or leave the mountains. So

Stephen: do you ski now?

Ashley: I snowboard, so I’m like,

Stephen: the cooler person. Okay, cool. Got it.

Ashley: Yeah, so I do snowboard when I’m not writing. I love reading. I have little coffee reading dates with my friends.

I have a dog that I go hiking with quite often. Yeah, and then I run my own business, so I do that a lot of the time as well. So

Stephen: pretty busy. Your own business related to writing or something separate? Kind

Ashley: of related to writing. I write, I book edit. So I run my own book editing business with a couple other editors on

Stephen: my team.

You ever argue and yell at yourself about what should or shouldn’t be in a book?

Ashley: I do when it comes to my own books where I’m like, yeah, this works. This doesn’t work. Oh my gosh, I’m a terrible writer. Like the typical stuff.

Stephen: All right. What’d you go to school for when you went to Colorado, if I may ask?

Oh,

Ashley: I majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing.

Stephen: So do you feel that has helped you with your writing career now? Or is it like it was nice, but not so much.

Ashley: It was nice, but not so much. It did help with my editing career because I got to critique people in person and kind of fall in love with critiquing content.

So that’s. That’s what I do now. So I’m a developmental editor who focuses on the content of someone’s book and how it flows and all that good stuff. So it helped me with that and got me passionate about critiquing people. But otherwise for writing definitely not. I would say that they don’t really teach you like the writing techniques people should be aware of.

Stephen: Interesting. See, okay. And I ask that my own personal passions I feel we focus with younger kids in school way too much on spelling and grammar when they have no reference to what that is used for and where I feel we should work on just having kids tell stories and learn about how to tell a story and what makes a good story because once you write a bunch more, the spelling and grammar makes sense and falls into place.

And I’m sorry, but The kids that are going to struggle and not get the writing and not get the grammar and just have a hard time with it are not going to be any better by starting earlier and pushing it all through school. But they might become interested in telling stories and want to work at it a little harder, or it might make more sense and be easier.

I just think we should do that more for younger kids.

Ashley: I think that’s very true. So with being a developmental editor, one of the things that I emphasize. Two things that I emphasize a lot is the show don’t tell technique and then story structure. A lot of people don’t know like the story beats and how a story is supposed to evolve.

So that’s one thing that I’m always like teaching people. And I’m like, I know that this editorial letter is like 20 pages, but let’s listen for a second. I promise this

Stephen: will help you. You know what? I have a really good idea. We should talk about that later. How’s that for a good idea? I like it. Yeah.

No, spoiler alert. That is what we are going to talk about later. And I totally agree with you that we’re all, we’re jumping off topic. We’ll get back to your book. I promise.

Ashley: I’m passionate about this. I can talk about this all day.

Stephen: My first story. Like many, I had no clue, and I just started writing and I meandered.

It had a plot, had some good stuff. I didn’t understand what wasn’t good. I didn’t know why, that is. So then when I finally sent it to an editor and came back and it was like, it literally was 19 pages of red ink of notes and extra stuff she put in and I looked at them and at first I was like.

Oh, man, I’m horrible and put it away. Then I said look, if I want to do this I didn’t go to school. So this is how I’m going to learn. I need to learn what they said. And I ended up understanding in a green and I ripped out literally 35, 000 out of 70, 000 words from the book, because I was like, The I totally get it because these are the chapters that I like, let me just do this cause I don’t know what else to write and I’ll just throw this in there, but they made no sense.

They didn’t, progress the plot. They didn’t help the characters. It was just I only have 40, 000 words. Let me write something. So I get another 5, 000 and it, and I understood that. Yeah the, and the whole beat thing and all that. This goes back to what I said a minute ago. It took me so long to understand that because I was trying to learn it.

It was much, much better when I wrote. And then I replied it to what I wrote and I’m like, Oh, I get it now. I see that. So now it comes up. So again, it goes back to my whole thinking. Why are we so focused on spelling and grammar for kids? They are never sorry. Hate to tell teachers this hate to inform parents of this.

The kids that are in third and fourth grade now are never going to spell their whole life because it’s always going to be done for them. They’re not going to have to worry about spelling on anything. Ever. That’s just going to be a reality. I’m sorry. I would

Ashley: say okay we can teach spelling, but grammar is one of those things that even I have to reference.

Like grammar books to make sure I’m using a comma correctly. Yes. I’ve never been able to like grasp how many rules there are when it comes to

Stephen: commas, like that. You can’t memorize them all. And when you’re being creative, you’re thinking of the story, not the comma, and that brings you out of the flow.

And also, need to addendum there. When I say they’re never going to have to spell, I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach it to them. I’m just saying it shouldn’t be such a major focus. It should be a little more cause they need to learn to spell because if they can’t even get close, they do, but you still got to get close and there are definite reasons to learn spelling.

But I think. The focus is so much on spelling and because we can quantify what they’ve learned. Whereas when you learn to write a story and it’s creative, you can’t put numbers on that and quantify it because my horror story, everybody may say it sucks except the horror people. They may love it. And so am I go get an F or an A on it?

Depends on my teacher that year, so I understand why spelling is focused on. It’s just not actually as helpful. to the kids later. And again, if you write stories and you learn to write the spelling will come without even trying, that’s my

Ashley: thought. Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that.

Cause that’s how I started writing stories when I was 14. As a 14 year old, I don’t know how to spell restaurant. That’s one of those things where I got close and then autocorrect helped me. And then I was like, okay, like eventually I’ll remember how to spell.

Stephen: And I being a tech guy, loving most of the tech and working with it.

I would totally encourage parents, homeschool parents, teachers to make the kids learn using a dictionary and I know they do, but, I come across as everything they’re learning should go away because tech will do it all, but it’s not, I really think kids should learn to use a dictionary.

I think they should still go back and learn to use a card catalog. So they understand the Dewey decimal system a little bit. And then they also understand alphabetizing a little bit,

Ashley: yes. Oh my gosh. So no, I was actually homeschooled up until college, my whole life. And my mom literally was like, no, you’re not allowed to use the internet.

Here’s a thesaurus. And here, like we had a literal like collection of thesaurus. And so my mom gave us dictionaries as well. And she was like, go off. That’s it. We would play. If we played Scrabble, we had to use the dictionary. We weren’t allowed to Google anything. So those things were like, you had we had to do that

Stephen: kind of stuff.

That’s pretty cool. Let me ask you this. You, I don’t know how much you learned about what public schools were like or what the curriculum was. Do you have any insights onto what your curriculum was like and what was good and bad about it compared to what public school is? And that’s a pretty deep, intense question.

I understand

Ashley: that is. I would like the one thing that I know that was like really weird that I found out way later growing up that I was a little upset about was that with being homeschooled, my mom had us go through the entire textbook of any for any subject we had. And then I find out later, I’m like.

Wait, these kids are literally like their teachers pick and choose what they get to learn from the subject every year. I was like, yeah, here’s a textbook. That’s 2, 000 pages or something. You can

Stephen: go through that entire thing within the year. You better get working. Yeah. So I was like, ugh.

The reason I asked because I’ve. I’ve gotten, I’ve been trying to learn more and more about homeschooling because when the COVID hit and I was starting to write my books I said, you know what, there’s a lot of parents out there that need help with this and I can’t help with math or science. I could, but that’s not my brand, my focus.

If I can help with story, which leads to spelling and grammar and help them in writing aspects. So I’ve done that a little bit. And what made me think of it was because my kids. The school they went to was a STEM alternative type school and they did a project where they were learning about the Suez Canal and they had to do a project that they would make a model that would lift a toy boat.

So they were also applying the physics about, distribution of the water in the thing and how to, how it lifts the boat up and what volume of water do you need to lift this size of boat and that, and so they did this. project that encompassed that, but then they also included art with it because they couldn’t just, a shoe box or something.

They had to make this nice model and how to make the model. So it was encompassing multiple aspects of learning. And I thought, wow, that they probably learned more about the Suez Canal than reading two or three pages in a history book. Yeah, doing that. And the same with the table of elements. They had a group that they only had to learn two elements, but they had to learn who discovered it.

When was it discovered? How did they discover it? What were the science experiments that helped them, say this is an element and all that. So they really had a deep dive on it. And then they, All had to report. And I’m like, you know what? They may not remember the whole table of elements, but they know they can look it up.

They may have heard of the other elements, but those two, they know forever. They will know that down cold. And it’s probably better than me. I learned all the table elements and I sure couldn’t tell you much beyond hydrogen and oxygen and,

Ashley: Ask chemistry. I’m not a science person.

Stephen: Okay. We just really, drove off the deep end there, but I think that’s cool.

I love the conversations like that. Yeah. It’s just

Ashley: a conversation, no pressure,

Stephen: you get me going. I get passionate about the education stuff with kids because I think teachers. My solution to all of our problems is, and it’s going to take 20 years to fix it. That’s the thing. I have a solution that’ll fix everything in the next 20 years.

We take what the politicians are getting paid from all the donations or whatever. We give that to the teachers and what the teachers get paid. We pay our politicians because you’re only going to get politicians that really want to do it. So there’ll be passionate about it. And you’ll get teachers that have been like, I am making so much money.

I am going to be the best teacher ever. And those kids getting taught. We’ll figure out how to solve everything when they’re 20 years old. All right, we’re going to get back to show. Don’t tell and actually talk about your book a little bit. I enjoyed the conversation. I hope it, you don’t feel like, Oh my God, shut up.

All so Ashley, your book is called heart of skulls. Which I assume is a nice comedy romance, right?

Ashley: Oh, absolutely. Totally not gory. There’s no blood, like not even a spill. Like

Stephen: that’s it. None whatsoever. Great. Can’t wait to hear about it. So tell us about your book. So

Ashley: Heart of Skulls is a suspense horror novel about the evolution of a serial killer.

So definitely gory, definitely bloody. There’s a romance in there, but nothing crazy. He’s definitely propelled by his love for his girlfriend. But the reason for that is because I wanted to answer this question that I’ve always had, like watching documentaries about like Ted Bundy or other, murderers that are like maintaining this normal life.

And then they go home, have this, have a girlfriend, have a wife, have children. They have this normal seeming life, but they’re getting away with murder on the side. So I wanted to answer that question of like, how are they doing this? And. Have this normal life. Like how can you juggle both of them?

So that’s how heart of skulls was born I just played around with a bunch of true crime documentaries tried to answer that question nature versus nurture kind of deal

Stephen: Nice. Okay So what’d you discover? What were the? things you may have found out or felt by the end of the project,

Ashley: it was an interesting project.

I’d never written horror. The end of the book was something that I had turned in for one of my college classes and it developed into a bigger thing. But with like nature versus nurture, definitely both is what I discovered with at least my main character, Scott, I think that’s a theme for some like actual.

Serial killers and true crime and all of that. I think it’s a little bit of both, but with how does a killer maintain a normal life? I just manipulation. It’s a whole lot of, all right, I’m juggling this and this at the same time. And I’m, I’m having my cake and eating it too. Like

Stephen: so did you do, they always say even the villains.

Make somebody feel some sympathy towards them to understand and, really get into the character. Did you do that? And how did you do that? I

Ashley: think you feel that in the beginning, but the further you go into Heart of Skulls, the deeper you get into his mind and how he’s thinking and rationalizes and is this is what I’m doing and this is why the crazier he sounds.

So I don’t think that the sympathy is so much there anymore. At least I tried to kill it off because I didn’t want anyone to… Sympathize too much with him. Cause I’m like, okay, yeah, he had this rough upbringing. It’s, it’s explains it, but it doesn’t excuse it,

Stephen: okay. And I ask so just FYI, I live within about a half hour or so of where Jeffrey Dahmer grew up, his hometown.

So just, we’ve never wanted to go visit. There’s not a big tourist attraction. Yeah, I would imagine

Ashley: not. At least I hope it’s

Stephen: not. I’m sure it might be for some, but so there are two movies you made me think of. One is called Behind the Mask, The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It is like a college documentary of a serial killer.

And it’s, you should watch it. I think you might enjoy it. Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s… Not quite poking fun at the whole slasher genre, but it’s not like a serious documentary, obviously it’s got an interesting a mix in there. I think you’d enjoy it. The other one, and I warn you, you may want to skip this one, but it totally made me think of some, it’s called martyrs.

And there is an American remake that kind of sucked. So if you look it up, do not watch the later American remake. I think it was like 2008 or whatever. Go for the early original. Okay. It is, but I’m warning you and anybody else listening, I’m not recommending you watch this. Okay. Because. It is the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen in my life, but I bring it up because there’s a lot of bad disturbing stuff going on.

But at one point I, me and my buddy do a podcast and we were talking about the movie on the podcast. Okay. And I said, Is it bad and wrong of me that I like empathize with these people that are doing all of this? And he said, Oh my God, I’m glad you said that. Cause I felt the same way. And I’m like that’s some good storytelling to make you feel bad for the bad guys, yeah, you should look those up. I think you’d enjoy them. But again, Martyrs is disturbing. Just so you know, I’ll go in hesitantly. Yes. Yeah. The original it’s just, it’s I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Ashley: That’s interesting that you bring up like empathizing with the bad guy because with the Netflix show for Dahmer, I, that’s how I felt and I’m like, no, like he does all of this stuff way late, like later yeah, okay.

I could feel bad for his younger self and understand how he got to this point, but I don’t want to feel bad for him.

Stephen: You almost feel bad for feeling good or, empathizing with them. That’s a, that’s hard to get across when you’re doing something like that. Yeah, but I

Ashley: think everyone will take like heart of skulls a little differently.

I’ve had some reviews come back and they’re like, Oh, I sent by myself sympathizing with. The main character over and over again. And I was like, okay, so like this person’s a little more like sensitive. Got it. I think everyone will take something away, like in a different way, but

Stephen: That’s great with horror because everybody likes different.

Horror is one of the probably broadest genres out there really, because there’s so many things you can do with horror and when you get something good like that, that you get different people responding to different parts of it, I think you’ve done a pretty darn good job then. Ooh. Okay.

Then. Yay. So people are enjoying the book overall.

Ashley: Yes. That was surprise. As an author, you put something out there and you’re like, this is going to get terrible reviews. Like you’re like preparing yourself for the worst. And then. With reviews coming in, I’m like, Oh, okay. I didn’t do too bad.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, good. And I’m assuming with horror that this is just a standalone, not part of a series?

Ashley: I’m thinking that it’s going to be a standalone. If I write something that kind of hints to Heart of Skulls, it’s going to be able to stand on its own as well, because I do have another idea, but we’ll see.

Stephen: Okay. Are you working on another book now? I’m

Ashley: not, because I’ve been so busy with my editing clients and then promoting Heart of Skulls, and I’m like, okay, I need to take a break, but I do have a writing retreat planned in March, so at that point I’ll have no choice but to write.

Stephen: Okay, alright, and while you’re that far ahead planned, I can barely plan what I’m doing tomorrow.

Ashley: My critique partner and I just had an idea because I’m gonna go to Georgia. I’m gonna go back home to visit for a little bit. And she was like, okay we’ve been talking about doing a writing retreat for like years. Let’s just go camping and. Block out the world, sit down and actually do what we’re supposed to be doing.

Okay.

Stephen: Nice. I like that. Do you have a website that people could go to, to check out your everything about you?

Ashley: Yeah. So it’s actually early. com, but it’s. My last name is spelled a little weird, so we have an extra E in there, but it’s A S H L E Y and then E A R L E Y dot com. I don’t know how we got the extra E, but it’s there.

Stephen: My daughter can empathize with you because her name’s Megan, but it’s M A E G A N. And, nobody knows how to spell it,

Ashley: at least she doesn’t accidentally spell early the wrong way. Cause I’ll be writing and then I’m like, I add the extra E and I’m like, oops, hope my editor doesn’t think I’m stupid.

Sometimes it just I’m on autopilot,

Stephen: yeah. No, that’s what autocorrect’s for. So Ashley, let me ask you some of your favorite books and authors.

Ashley: Ooh, okay. I love Sarah Dreamos, so my favorite series of her is the A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m actually, funny enough, I’m reading A Court of Silver Flames right now and I have it on my desk.

Stephen: That is a big

Ashley: book. Yes, it is. I’m reading that right now, just started. And then, I love Frankenstein. I was actually just talking to someone about how many times I’ve read that book. And Dracula is also one of my favorites, so I would say those. I do love Jane Eyre as well. Like one of my favorite classics.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. Back and forth. So for you, is Frankenstein horror or science fiction? It’s both for sure. I would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. And so here’s a little I guess brag and I’m not gonna say it’s a humble brag. It’s just, so Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, his great grandnephew, Dacre, has been in charge of the estate, and he does talks and stuff about Bram’s book, Dracula, and some of the cutting edge forensics and stuff that’s in the book from the time and all that, but they’ve written two co A prequel and a sequel to the book that Dacre has been involved with the release, but then he also did like this Kickstarter and this is probably the, but you’re too late for it.

And I apologize for telling you about it now, but he found a guy that creates. Authentic originals and they did an authentic original of Dracula with the same looking cover. But this guy goes so far as to get the same paper, he sources the same paper and uses it in there. And they got the same cover that looks worn.

It looks like it’s been for, and I missed the Kickstarter, but I had been talking to Dacre and somebody was like, really, this is taking too long. I want my money back. Which if that’s not how Kickstarter works. And he said, would you be interested in the book if you give him the money and he shuts up?

So I am getting a copy of the UK original edition and it even has. I’m sorry. I can’t wait to it

because it’s in the same like mustard yellow cover, but the guy used and he even has a dust that he puts in it. So it smells like it’s been sitting on a bookshelf for a hundred years. That old dusty smell. Oh gosh. I know. I’m so excited. You

Ashley: should be. I would be fortunate. Freaking out.

Stephen: All right.

I’ll put your name down as a note to remind myself when I get it I’ll send you some pictures. Please do. It’s going to be a while yet still, but I was very excited that I could be a part of it.

Ashley: Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s I

Stephen: keep going off on tangents. You’re great to talk to. We,

Ashley: yeah, I know I’m such a, I’m such a nerd. Like I, I just can’t help it. Like I literally took a. Horror and gothic novel class in, when I was in college. So I had to read Mary Shelley for that and Dracula. So I’ve had to read Frankenstein about five times in my life and then Dracula only once, but it was so impactful that I finished the book before anyone else in the class.

I was

Stephen: in it. Yeah. Now I remember reading it and thinking, wow, this is almost a romance with vampires. And

Ashley: it’s crazy. And it’s so ahead of its time with how provocative it is and how just like inappropriate is for the times with all of the vampires and everything and how You know, we’ve got the Mary Sue in there, but then we also have all of these other characters that are just acting crazy for their time.

Yeah. Very inappropriate and not

Stephen: ladylike. So I don’t know how much history of it you’ve delved into, but the sequel to it. Dacre helped write with JD Barker and I so happened to know somebody who was friends with JD Barker. So I’ve been in a couple of conferences talking to him and stuff, not just me.

It was a group. And he said when they were researching to write the sequel, they actually went to the same monastery and library and found the same books that Brom had been researching and he had written notes in the margins. And so they. And there was like 100 page first couple chapters that the editor had them completely cut out that got added into the prequel in a way.

So yeah, you should look up Dacre Stoker and see if he’s doing a talk sometime that you could attend, you’d probably. Love it. But all these

Ashley: things, books. Now I need those. I didn’t know

Stephen: about that

reading

Ashley: list because of you.

Stephen: That happens to me all the time. I’m talking to the author that I’m like, hold on, wait a minute. Let me write that down. And I’m like, I don’t need any more books on my list. I’ve got a stack. I’m never

Ashley: going to finish my collection. it before I die and I just keep adding more I’m like, okay, I guess I’ll just leave it for my children.

Stephen: I’m trying to learn to read faster, but that’s not working so well. All that was books. Do you have any favorite bookstores that you like to go visit in the area?

Ashley: Bookstores. So in Colorado, we have Tattered Cover, which is like a, it’s a, an indie bookstore, so there’s no, it’s not a brand or whatever.

They have three that I know of where, around the area that I live in, and all the bookshelves are different, all of the chairs in there are different, and the atmosphere is just so homey. And it’s literally smells like books. So they have old ones in there too. So I’ll go there and I’ll just toodle around and do whatever and sit down in one of their chairs and read for, I don’t even know how long.

So that’s one of my favorite places to go to.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And FYI, Kevin J. Anderson, sci fi writer he lives in Colorado. Oh,

Ashley: okay. So funny enough, I know my parents had a neighbor who was writing like thriller books, but I never got the chance to meet him before he moved.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. So we want to talk a little bit about Show Don’t Tell, do some author stuff.

But one last thing for anyone listening that likes horror, which I love getting horror authors on, I don’t get it very often and I end up talking about all sorts of stuff because it’s my favorite genre of movies and books. But if somebody is listening and they’re like that doesn’t sound too bad.

If they were walking down the street and ran into you and they said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell them? That’s a

Ashley: good question. I would say that if you were someone that was, even if you didn’t read or watch True Crime, I should say, it’s more than just about the serial killer.

It’s about the relationship that the main character has with Natalie as well. So that’s why I say that there’s a romance, and that’s what propels him to do what he does, because Scott does end up killing women that look similar to his girlfriend because he doesn’t want to kill her, but he does.

So there are a lot of layers, I would say, when it comes to Heart of Skull. So you’re not just reading a horror, gory novel. You’re definitely also getting the other side of things where it’s a real life type of situation as

Stephen: well. And I love that. The best horror isn’t all horror and horrific.

And that’s what also makes Dracula so great. It’s not every scene with fighting a vampire. There is so much humanity and development of the characters into there. Oh, and they really expand on that in the sequel and prequel. Just so you know. I have to

Ashley: check it out. But I think that’s one of the great things about horror is that we really tap into Humanity.

And we bring that to the forefront and we’re, we try to make it so convincing that yes, this could definitely happen in real life, even if we have a terrible monster, you can take that monster and think about it in a different way. Like maybe it represents an internal struggle or something like that.

Like we really. Poor writers really tap into that kind of thing to really freak out readers.

Stephen: Got it. That’s a good thing. That’s what they want. Yes. So let me ask you, Ashley, you went to school creative writing and you’ve written your book, you’re working as an editor and working on more books, hopefully.

So what are some things you’ve learned in that whole process that you’re doing different now than you did at the beginning, maybe things that. You thought were the right way to do it, but discovered that’s not the best way. So

Ashley: talking about, whether the schooling was worth it for writing, they never taught show.

The show don’t tell technique was never grasped by anyone in our class. We had no idea what we were doing and I didn’t fully grasp what show don’t tell meant until I started my editing company and started getting certifications and I learned more in my certification than I did in my classes. Full honesty, it was actually really upsetting.

So I’m like, Oh my gosh, I paid like this much money for this certification. And then I paid this much money for a college degree and it was useless in no way. So I would say if you want, if you’re okay with me delving into my little show, don’t

Stephen: tell please go.

Ashley: So show don’t tell I’m sure as is something that’s like.

Overshared, like it’s something that’s overemphasized with people where they’re like, Oh, you should be showing and not telling da,

Stephen: da, nobody tells you what that means. No one tells you what it means.

Ashley: So as an editor, I have to walk clients through what exactly that technique involves and what you should be doing.

There’s a great emotion, the source book that’s out there. Good book. 10 bucks on Amazon, highly recommend it to every client I have because I even keep it on my desk when I’m writing or editing if I’m like trying to make suggestions to my clients. But for an example of telling, and I have a whole written thing here this is telling and it’s once upon a time there was a castle and a dragon and even a tasty looking hawk, very choppy, very to the point not the greatest opening, right?

Or, even if it’s in the middle of a book. But this is an example of showing. Smoke blew from the dragon’s nostrils, talons digging into the stone as it scaled down the side of the castle. With the beast’s mouth agape, it extended its neck to engulf the tasty hawk. We’re usually showing without even realizing it most of the time.

When we’re going into… more descriptive detail about what’s happening on the page. It’s more immersive for readers in that way than if you were saying, once upon a time dah, and listed out a bunch of things. You really want to grasp reader’s attention and make them. Stay hooked to the page, but there are instances where telling is okay.

And that’s where people come in and say, Oh, it’s overdone. Da. No, while you shouldn’t say, he was angry. You should show it in a different way. He balled his hands into fists or he clenched his teeth, something like that, build off of that to continue showing there are. Like, this is an instance where telling is okay, and it’s like an outside perspective where the guards cast wary glances her way.

That’s like the main character seeing the guards and being like, okay, like they’re looking at me in this particular way, like she’s analyzing what’s happening and it’s a bit telling, but there is an instance where it’s okay to directly include that emotion without being like he was angry. So that’s where that technique being like, Oh, it’s overused.

Like it’s overdone. Da. It’s not, we accidentally do it. All the time when we’re trying to make readers stay hooked to keep turning those

Stephen: pages. Yeah, and it is such a tough thing until it clicks and you really get it. And what helped me was I go to a lot of author fairs and when I was just starting writing, I wasn’t trying to be a part of them.

I was just visiting and I buy books from lots of different people and I bought these. Books from this guy, one of the first guys I ever ran into that was indie. So I’m like, okay, I’m gonna buy some of your books. And he had a book of short stories and I like short stories. So I said, okay. But it was more like a little kid telling a synopsis of a story.

It was in your instance, like the dragon got angry and blew fire and killed the knight. That’s not an interesting, great story, but it is a story. It’s just, what can you do to make it better? And that’s what actually helped me click. With Show, Don’t Tell is, Oh, I see it now. Let me describe the dragon tensing up and the heat of the air.

And

Ashley: why was that dragon angry to begin with?

Stephen: No. Yeah. So reading something bad. Really helped me understand better. So I actually, and this is something I don’t know, maybe good or bad. I made that into an exercise for myself. I would take some of my favorite books and find a nice passage that analyzing it, looking at them like, wow, this really is a great writing.

And I would take it and transform it into the most boring writing. I could taking out all the show, taking out all the description and making it. As boring as I could. And that actually reverse engineer process helped me understand what they’re doing better. And then I would try things like how would this have been written a hundred years ago?

How would it be written if it was science fiction instead of a romance or whatever? And that little exercise. Yeah, it helped me a lot because like you said, show don’t tell is so hard to grasp when people just tell you, Oh, show don’t tell, what, what elaborates. Yes. Yeah.

Ashley: One of those, or it’s okay, if you’re telling me what it is, like telling me to do it, tell me how to do

Stephen: it.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. You work with your clients on this. When you get something, do you have, what are some of the things you do have them do to get better at the show showing instead of telling or understanding it, is there any techniques or anything you use with your clients? Kind

Ashley: of do in my editorial letters, I usually like outline what show don’t tell is and the different ways it can be used.

But if I’m directly like in the document and I see he was angry, what I’ll do is I’ll take that sentence and I’ll be like, okay, like this is telling, and I’m going to show several examples of how you can show it. So then they can directly see in their book. Okay. This is what I wrote. And this is what. I’m being suggested to do, and they don’t have to take that suggestion of he balled his hands into fists or anything like that.

There’s so many ways to show different emotions. It’s just to help them grasp how they can do it and how they can implement it to their main character or a side character that they’re trying to, put focus on and stuff like that. So that’s where I am like, okay, directly in there showing them how they can do it.

Stephen: Nice. So they get a real life example of their own writing, which goes back to what I said would help be better for kids. See, it all tied together. Yeah, exactly. One of the other things I discovered along with show don’t tell that fits very well. So Stephen King says, rip out all the adverbs, adverbs paved the way to hell or something like that.

That

Ashley: type of quote. I also tell all my clients

Stephen: that one. Yeah. So what I realized thinking of that and reading King was. A lot of his show don’t tell is because he’s trying to get that same adverb without saying the adverb. So a lot of his description, a lot of his emotion and what’s going on in a scene is because he doesn’t want to say tiredly or shallowly or, something like that.

Ashley: Their shoulders were drooping and they just looked a little sad. Their eye, they could barely keep their eyes open. There’s so many ways. I love it.

Stephen: And he definitely for whatever you may love or hate about Stephen King. He definitely reading his stuff can, especially some of the early to mid stuff is a real master class in drawing people into the book, and that’s, in support of what we’ve talked about, if you don’t know how to spell and you don’t know grammar, we can fix that.

We can help you. You can get better, but if you can’t draw people in your story, the rest of it’s irrelevant. They got a. Really feel a part of your story to enjoy it in some way, cause Lee Child with Jack Reacher does not draw me into it the same way Stephen King does. I don’t feel a part of the world so much as I’m like, interested and just engaged with, Oh my gosh, what’s happening next?

Totally different styles.

Ashley: Yeah that’s. That’s what I try to emphasize. I’m like, okay what are you looking to get out of readers? What is your goal? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to take away from your story? That’s such a big thing that you need to think about that.

Not a lot of us really sit down and think about when we’re writing a story, it’s usually like what comes later, and we got to actually sit with it and think about it. That’s where I come in and I’m like, okay, you should start thinking about this, how to market and get your book out there, get it.

scene, get people interested. And then, what’s the first thing that people judge when they go to into a bookstore, the book cover, second thing, the synopsis, but they’re going to open up to that first page, read the first line, the first paragraph, maybe even the first chapter before they decide whether or not they’re going to buy

Stephen: it.

Yeah. And if they’re not engaged, which that’s a whole nother discussion, because I personally have not enjoyed critique groups, especially as I’ve written a few things myself, because. Critique groups don’t seem to help me get better. And most people get so focused on that first chapter that, yeah, you may draw somebody in, but then you get a bad review because the rest of it sucked.

There wasn’t enough and critique groups. Oh, you’ll appreciate this. So the one critique group I go to, there are two gentlemen who are very. Alpha predominant in the group. And they are thriller writers, both of them. Some new guy got up there and he’s writing a horror story. And it was several pages before you understood that this main character that we had been following around was actually a ghost.

And you didn’t get that at first. And they said, Oh, that should be like in the first paragraph, first page, you need that. And I said, You guys do not understand horror whatsoever. I says that will totally destroy the mood of the horror book. That will make no horror readers want to read. And they argued with me and I’m like,

Ashley: it’s a great twist to reveal later on.

And then that’s like that moment where it goes. Okay. I want to find out why this person is a ghost. How did they get here? What are they doing here? There’s so many questions to answer.

Stephen: And I, I argued with them. I’m like, it is not a thriller story. Horrors have a different arc and and I, that’s important.

I think for people to understand that you need to understand your genre and what makes it great. You wouldn’t have a romance where they don’t kiss. But I can name a lot of thriller books where nobody kisses, so if the romance writers are, reading a thriller, they’re like where’s the kissing, yeah.

Ashley: One of my favorite things that I found while I was writing Heart of Skulls was I found a beat sheet, like the save the cat beat sheet dedicated to horror. And I, that helped me out so much, even though it was like more dedicated for. Like a horror story with a monster. You can still take that and switch the monster with an internal struggle.

And it still has the same beats. It still follows the same flow. It’s it’s just, it was so great. And it was so useful. I actually, I think I posted that to my blog somewhere. So if anyone’s listening, I want to go check that out. It’s somewhere on my website.

Stephen: Got it. We’ll put a link up to your website.

And I would argue with that. The Save the Cat is another thing I didn’t quite understand. The Hero’s Journey I didn’t quite understand. Cam Weiland does a lot of podcast and writing. And her is just a little different. Similar to both of those. I said, okay everyone says I got to use hero’s journey or save the cat.

And it’ll be a good book. I’m trying to like cram all these scenes into this structure, but I’m not understanding the structure. So again, once I’d written a little more. I started to see it and without even realizing it, I wrote something. I’m like, ah, that doesn’t fit there. I need to move it. And this is better here.

And I’m like, now I get it. There’s save the cat right there. And I didn’t even realize it. Yeah. You gotta get some writing under you. Yeah. And

Ashley: not just even using save the cat, using similar resources where it’s okay. You, some people just need like that different explanation of even if they read save the cat, maybe it doesn’t click, but they read the same thing from someone else that explains it a little differently.

And that’s what makes it click. Like you need multiple resources for those types of things before it’s like you have your

Stephen: aha moment. You absolutely agree. And Doing it hands on, Cam Weiland has that whole database of the movies and books and it says, here’s the pinch point in the first conflict and all that.

I went and read tons of those and I’m like, okay. Now I still don’t get it, when I actually took a movie I had watched and tried to apply the beats to it, then I had to do it myself, I had to have enough knowledge to know what the end result was supposed to be, but I had to sit down and do it myself and going back to the show.

Don’t tell that you got to do it yourself. You can read All the books you want, I’ve read Stephen King’s book a hundred times and all these other articles and podcasts and everything else on show don’t tell, but until I was able to look at my writing and say, yeah, I can expand that and get the reader more drawn into it is when I understood it.

Yeah, that’s,

Ashley: that’s, it’s like a hands on kind of deal you can read as many craft books as you want, you have to have that sit down moment with your own writing and be like, okay, how can I make this better? You have to be able to admit that to yourself before you

Stephen: keep going. Yeah, and too many writers…

that have been doing it maybe a couple of weeks, a couple of months, they want to know what craft book should I read? What more book? I’ve got these 50 of them and what more should I get? And how do we publish and how we do this? And I know I’m not super experienced, but I’m like, what are you writing? I’ve been working on the same thing for five years.

Oh no. You need to go write like 10 other things before you even worry about reading a craft book before you worry about the publishing. And unfortunately I don’t have enough. Chutzpah to say, I really know what I’m talking about, but that’s what I’ve discovered for myself that I try and pass on.

No,

Ashley: I agree. Like I’m very selective with the books that I recommend my clients where I’m like, okay, here’s a list of three. When you read these and you feel a little confused, I’ll have more for you. Come back.

Stephen: Yeah. Take it slow. You’re way better off to just sit down and write another short story to write another book and put it aside.

And then worrying about. Editing it once again and revising it once again and reading another craft book, you know i’ve seen people at these critique groups that read a craft book and then they bring their stuff back and it’s You didn’t apply anything you read Yeah, it’s great that you read it, but that means you have to like to apply it.

And I’m guilty just like a lot of people. It’s, Oh, Hey, I got 300 books on my shelf, but I have story genius right here on my desk. And I haven’t got that one. This is

Ashley: one I usually recommend to people story genius by Lisa Krohn. Cause it’s one of those where you worry about it when you’re done with that draft and then you go in and try to apply.

The things that are in this book, but it’s not like something you worry about while you’re writing.

Stephen: I would recommend to anybody listening to find, like you said, a couple, three or less craft books, ones that speak to you that someone recommended. And read in detail and apply it. Don’t read to get done with it.

Read a little bit, highlight it, read it in depth, and then go and apply it to your writing right then and there. Whatever it is that you’re learning, apply it and then go read more. You’ll get way more out of reading one book in depth like that than you will buying the 300th book on your shelf.

Ashley: For sure.

I totally agree.

Stephen: All right, so we’ve been chatting quite a while and I’ve been batting. Babbling quite a bit. I hope everybody got something out of the your show. Don’t tell, because I think our tangents, my brain works sometimes, especially like you said, when you start getting passionate about it, it’s like, ah, oh, Hey, I see your heart of skulls right there in the background.

Oh yes.

Ashley: And I also have the save the cat outline for heart of skulls.

Stephen: Beautiful. Did you print that out yourself? Cause that’s looks like 11 by 17 or something. Yes, I did.

Ashley: Yeah, it’s just a printout for the cover because I got it and I wanted to be able to see it every day once I had it. And I haven’t taken it down.

Stephen: I will say a lot of people use Word and I think more authors I talked to use Word, but I found Word hard to use when I really wanted to. Have the flexibility to move things and I can much more easy, easily visualize save the cat, the hero’s journey, the beats in the cork board on Scrivener than I ever could on Word.

Ashley: Yes, I love Scrivener. I will, I refuse, I edit in Word because I have no choice. I need like track changes, the comments and all that, but Scrivener is what I use to write. I will not use anything else. It’s.

Stephen: It’s my go to and people say, Oh, it’s just so confusing and so hard. And I’m like, really, do you use all the functions of word or did you just open it and start typing?

Ashley: Word is complicated. I still can’t even grasp everything that it can do. I’m just like, these are the specific things that I know how to do. And then that’s it. But that’s another tangent. I’m

Stephen: sorry. Yeah, exactly. So we’ll have to have you back on and we’ll just call it the tangent show. And we’ll talk about all the things we didn’t talk about today.

That sounds like there’s probably a lot.

Ashley: I’m there for it. Let’s do it.

Stephen: So March, you’re going to be on your own writer’s retreat. We’ll make a note, get back in touch with me and we’ll find out how that writer’s retreat went and see what new things you’ve learned that we can talk.

Ashley: Yes. I’m totally down.

We’ll do it. Great.

Stephen: All right. Ashley, it’s been great talking to you. I’ve had a lot of fun. I wish you a lot of luck on Heart of Skulls. I love horror.

Ashley: Thank you so much. And thank you for having me on. It was truly a

Stephen: pleasure. Yeah, great.

Colin is Irish and used tales of his homeland to create his horror novel, Country Roads.

When Luke Sheridan moves out of Dublin city to rural Kilcross with his wife and baby, he imagines the worst part will be his extended commute to work. They can look forward to enjoying the countryside and being part of a small community. After all, his old friend Declan Maguire lives in the house next door and is a Garda in the nearest town.

But Declan’s devilish attitude towards drink, drugs and women means trouble is never far from his door. And worse, gruesome murders and the appearance of sinister figures at night mean the countryside is becoming a very dangerous place to live.

Country Roads —don’t go outside alone.

https://colinleonard.com

Stephen: today on discover wordsmiths, I have Colin Leonard, how are you doing today, sir?

Colin: I’m great. Thanks very much.

Stephen: Oh,

Colin: please. No. I’m my book was just released yesterday and we had a launch party the day before. So I’m this is a timely interview as well. I’m all about the book at the

Stephen: moment. Nice. Awesome. All right. So launch party, congrats. Was it fun?

Colin: Yeah, no, it was great.

It was Bridgescape Press, my publisher organized this and we had a good few people online and yeah, just had a great time and nice chat about folk horror.

Stephen: Nice. And that’s the book Country Roads, which we’re going to talk about in a few minutes. But before we get to the book, tell us a little bit about yourself where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Colin: So I live in County Mead in Ireland in a little rural, it’s not even a village, it’s a little tiny cottage with a scrap of land that keeps me busy when I’m not writing, repairing the house and trying to keep the field from growing too wild apart from that, I have a young family. So the rest of my time is taken up with.

Their activities, which they are big into sports and music. So we get to bring them here and there, watch their matches and watch their performances. So that’s Yeah, it’s a lovely age that they are at the moment. What do they play? Two of them play piano, one plays violin and they play soccer and cricket as

Stephen: well.

Wow, nice. Yeah I had piano lessons when I was young and still play music. So it’s a great thing for kids. Yeah, definitely approve.

Colin: Yeah, no, it is. It is fantastic to do it.

Stephen: So let me ask with a family and everything, why did you want to start writing and why’d you want to write horror?

Colin: I’ve always been writing on and off.

From when I was a kid, I was always encouraged by my parents and my school teachers my, we were made aware. All the time that my grandfather was a poet, he had stuff published in the national newspapers. So he was a farmer in the truck driver as well, but he took the time to write poetry. Then leading into secondary school, I continued writing genre type stuff and entering it into competitions, some of which I won and got into the school magazine and that kind of thing. But life takes you in different places. Even though i did english literature in college i didn’t end up working in that i did different things travel different places but once my life became more settled and i got a bit older i became more focused on trying to get published and concentrating on.

Learning my craft a bit more and given a bit more time to writing.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. Okay. So your book is called country roads. And it’s full core. Tell us a little bit about the book. So

Colin: it’s as you say, it’s called country roads and it’s set in Rural ireland in somewhere similar to where I live and where I grew up.

It’s about a guy called luke sheridan who moves to Displaced from the city with his wife and his baby, and he does that kind of at the behest of his old college buddy Declan McGuire, who’s a local Garda but it just so happens around this time, there’s a series of brutal murders in the area, and, but it’s coming from a supernatural element.

There are some horrible Creatures from Irish folklore that are creeping back into our domain. I

Stephen: love that. And I love my, my son has a book with Irish ghost stories. He picked up when he was over there. And I’m imagining that you don’t read this book to your kids. Oh, it’s set right here by us.

And it’s got monsters. Let’s read it for bed. No,

Colin: I did get a congratulations from one of my daughters. And she said, I can’t wait till I’m old enough to read it.

Stephen: And then it’ll be on you, kid, not me. So yeah, you remember that field you were in? Let me tell you about the monster I wrote about in that video.

Your wife will love you. You’ll be on the couch forever. And

Colin: all this was true

Stephen: based on true events. So why did you choose a horror genre to write specifically?

Colin: Ireland. Is very kind of spooky. I think there is does the weight of religion and that kind of gothic Catholicism around and then there’s that mixed in with the the sense of folklore and myth, things like the banshee and all that.

So that was always around me. And then I grew up watching. Things like critters and gremlins and the omen and all that. So as well, I think so much more writing than that than gets labeled horror is horror. I see horror as nearly anything that’s a bit off that’s in a minor key. The kind of music that appeals to me.

TV shows and all that, that mightn’t just be labeled horror, but I think they have a horror element. If you think of things like musically radio heads, the pixies, all that, just a little bit off.

Stephen: And I agree, especially for movies, music is huge, but horror is just so broad that you can have multiple.

Types of stories within horror and it’s easy to get horror elements in lots of other types of stories. If you’re not straight horror too that’s a benefit.

Colin: Yeah, exactly. And even there’s so many different types, whether it’s slasher or ghost stories or, but yeah, no, apart from that, I just like.

Giving myself a good fright.

Stephen: And I like that you used elements from Ireland because Ireland’s got a great history of supernatural folk stories and things. You’ve got a lot to draw on from the country.

Colin: Yeah, absolutely. I try and base most of my work in Ireland, just apart from right.

What, I just I feel there’s so much here to explore. In that

Stephen: spooky sense. Agreed. Agreed. What type of feedback are you getting from readers other than your kids?

Colin: No, everyone seems to like it so far. Of the ones that I’m reading, I’m not going to read the bad ones. But They’re focusing a lot on the fact that it’s a small town horror, with unlikable characters and A creep, creepy imagery and it’s funny, I wouldn’t have described it as small town horror so much because our small towns over here are much smaller than American small towns but it does have that sense of a community and how they.

Clash against each other and how, so I’ve based a lot of things on warring characters against each other as much as against the evil elements in the story.

Stephen: Nice. If you were given a choice between movie or TV show, what would you rather turn this into? I

Colin: would see this more as a TV show to tell you the truth.

And it’s because it’s multi P O V and I first envisioned it as episodic. Okay. I see it like those little miniseries from Nordic countries or the uk things like Kala or Requiem. That kind of low budget, grainy, acted, but spooky vibe to it.

So I’d say as a TV series more

Stephen: I love that you described it as grainy. That, that feel of that. That’s. That’s a great description. I know Netflix uses tags and that’s a great tag that they should put on some horror. Yeah, it fits very well so you mentioned multi point of view that’s a lot of times harder to pull off Why did you choose the right multi point of view instead of focusing on one character through the whole book?

Colin: Yeah, I that was just the way I envisioned it and as well I would have been reading a lot of stuff that was, that’s the kind of thing that was appealing to me at the same time. So all the different characters popped into my head and I just didn’t want to stick with one. I wanted to to pop in and out of the others.

And also some of the characters whose POV you’re in. Die. So I wanted to have the reader a little bit on edge that he’s not quite, they’re not quite sure whether the head that they’re in is going to be attached to the body by the end of the chapter.

Stephen: And it does help bring people in closer to the characters.

Like you said, that slasher feel almost where you. You empathize with each character and then they start getting knocked off. Who’s next? Oh man, don’t let so and so be next. As long as it’s not, Hey, he killed my favorite character. I can throw the book aside. I’m done with that. So Colin, do you have a website that people could go to and check out your book?

Colin: I do indeed. I’m at Colleen Leonard dot com and that’s C O L Y. L e o n a r d dot com. Why,

Stephen: Collie

Colin: Colin Leonard. com was taken up a long time ago by other people. I was wondering, do you remember when we had to get invited to get a Gmail address? I’m of that vintage. So Colin Leonard was gone, but Collie Leonard was still there.

And since then, everyone started calling me Collie as well.

Stephen: Okay. I love that. So do you have any plans for the next book?

Colin: I’ve written a few I’ve written a couple of novellas that I’m polishing up and I have completed another novel and I’m hoping to start sending that out soon once I complete edits on it.

It’s this one’s really tight single point of view. Just to go completely the other way. And it’s it’s set in a city as opposed to the countryside. Okay.

Stephen: But it’s still horror. It’s

Colin: still, Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s still horror.

Stephen: I love horror. It’s my favorite genre myself. I sometimes don’t read enough of it anymore, but it is my favorite.

So let me ask you a couple of questions about. Where you live in that. So growing up or as an adult, what are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read?

Colin: So at the moment, my, who I’m really into is Nathan Ballingrude. I think he’s just amazing. He did became deceived TV series, monster land, North American lake monsters.

Is his collection of short stories and it’s mind blowing. I think he’s the best writer working in the genre at the moment. Apart from that, there’s another, an English writer called Tom Fletcher, who has a story called which bottle or a novel called which bottle, and it’s very much in that folk horror vein as well.

And I’ve read some of his other stuff and he just writes exactly the sort of thing i’m into I would read outside of horror as well. People like emily sanjohn mandel, Who did station 11? I don’t know. I know that. Yeah. Yeah, and jg ballard was always a Someone I’ve been really into.

Yeah, there’s tons and tons,

Stephen: but most of the writers are readers and have good lists of books to read. Yeah. Do you have a favorite bookstore? Close to you that you like to go to,

Colin: I don’t have any bookstores close to me. Then depending on how you define close, there’s there’s one about an hour away called academy books in draw that I like to browse in and they support local

Stephen: Okay, nice. I like to put links and maps. So if people are going to the website and go into any of these locations where we’re mentioning books, they’ve got a bookstore to look up and go to and support which I totally push people support bookstores, go to bookstores on vacation. So we’re going to talk a little bit of author stuff, but before we do if somebody stopped you on the street and said, Hey, Colin Hey, Colin, I hear you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell them?

Colin: I would say, if you want to read something that’s set in a creepy Irish setting, with a feel of wrongness creeping into the contemporary society from ancient evil, then give this one a go.

Stephen: Ancient evil, I love that. That’s one thing. We talked a little bit about folk horror and the rich history of some of the creatures from Ireland.

We don’t quite have as much of that because, the conquerors came and took over America 200 some years ago, wiped everybody else out. So we don’t have that long history behind us with the monsters so much. We’ve got newer ones and we’ve usurped things like Bigfoot, There’s a long history with Native Americans, with Sasquatch and Bigfoot.

You have to really dig. It’s not part of our culture anymore, which I think is a shame. Other countries like Ireland, you do get that as part of your mythology and culture. We don’t have it quite so much, unfortunately.

Colin: Exactly. And we a lot of that stuff is passed down. True generations my grandparents would have told us spooky stories and pass them down.

And there’s really good work. I think being done here as well by the folklore commission where over the years, they’ve collected handwritten accounts and oral accounts from older generations about little myths and local legends and all that kind of stuff. Some of which can be quite

gory.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. And I think that’s great. I love that. I actually do a horror movie review podcast with a friend and we’ve watched movies from all over the world. And there, there’s some really great ones from, Ireland, Scotland, other parts of England Turkey and, various other places.

And I love seeing some of the. The difference in how different countries perceive the horror and supernatural.

Colin: Yeah, no, exactly. There’s there’s a bunch of good Irish horror out at the moment. There’s a movie called you are not my mother, which is based on the changeling myth as well, which is very scary.

If you haven’t seen

Stephen: that. No, I know the myth. I haven’t seen the movie.

Colin: Yeah, no, it’s very grim. That movie really captures a certain essence of urban Ireland

Stephen: as well. So nice. I’ll have to look that one up. We did watch Grabbers, which was set in Ireland. You know that one?

Colin: I do. Yeah. And that’s, it’s funny. Some of Irish horror as well.

Does have that comic element or that absurd element to it as well. I think we go two ways. We either go nasty and absurd or sad and grim.

Stephen: Yeah that one cracked me up. Obviously I’m not Irish at all. I’ve not been to Ireland. But you got that stereotype. Americans have stereotypes different countries.

Everybody has a stereotype of people from our countries. So what are you going to do if you have aliens invading Ireland? You find out that they are basically allergic to alcohol. And they can’t suck your blood, so let’s all get drunk at the pub. And it was just, that premise was hilarious to me.

Colin: Yeah, exactly.

Stephen: No, it’s very good. Okay. So there’s the book. Let’s talk a little author stuff. You mentioned What, before we get to that, what are some things that you’ve learned in your writing from when you first started to now that you’re doing different or that have changed?

Colin: One thing is I know a lot of people say, write every day.

You don’t have to write every day, but Write as many days as you can. No one’s going to discover you if you don’t put in the work. And there was a podcast I used to listen to called the bestseller experiment, and they were very inspirational where they would talk about just doing a 200 words a day challenge.

So even if it’s just 20 minutes, you can grab here or there just to Keep you writing fish as it were because sometimes I would have gone months and months without putting pen to paper and on that same topic I I discovered ways to be able to write all the time So whereas before I might have needed to be in a particular setting sitting down with a laptop or whatever I’ve learned to write on the run whether it be in Car parks or snatched moments of any day.

Stephen: Okay. And do, what do you use to write? Do you use like word or Scrivener? Do you have any other tools that you really like?

Colin: I use, I will do a lot of stuff in the Google verse. So I use Google docs on a tablet is how I wrote most of my first drafts. And Use a note taking app if I’m doing stuff really on the fly.

Stephen: Okay. All right. So you mentioned for our discussion for authors about opportunities. So what type of opportunities are you talking about?

Colin: I’m talking about, as I said, no one’s going to Discover you or come along and find you the way a soccer player might get spotted by a talent scout. So you have to go out and look for opportunities.

And what I mean by that is, and what I did later in life is studying. The kind of writers that you’d like to be like the kind of stuff that interests you, the presses that publish the books you’re interested in. And then if you look for the open calls, they have the anthologies they put together.

And if you try and, learn how to format things properly to submit all that sort of stuff the things to the, around the sides of writing that you have to learn if you want to give yourself the best opportunity of being published.

Stephen: And I think a lot of authors still get into this not, they’re new, they’ve never written and they get into it thinking, oh.

I’ll write a book and everyone will love it and I publish it and I’ll make a ton of money and put my day job and I think in the back of the mind, a lot of authors still think and feel that way, though I don’t think it’s ever really been that way. And but then there. almost ashamed to, stand on the soapbox and say, Hey, take a look at my book.

And the opposite or the connected part of that is the opposite. The same type of wrongness is the people that stand on their soapbox everywhere and say, Hey, look at me, read my book. It’s Hey, this is a NASCAR convention. Nobody cares about your horror book. You know what I’m saying?

There’s a lot of opportunities, but just Shouting to the wind everywhere. Doesn’t necessarily provide you opportunity.

Colin: Exactly. Yeah. You have to focus. And like I over the last few years, I really tried to find out as much as possible about the kind of people who are putting out the stuff I like to write.

And cause if you don’t like to write it, what’s the point? And. Just going for things there’s often low, I had a mentorship as well that I applied for about getting your book published and that was quite local. But if you, if I wasn’t looking for that and applying for that, then, that taught me how to improve my cover letter and my pitch and all that sort of stuff.

So there’s more to it than just sitting down and writing you to give yourself the best chance possible. You have to do that bit of research and that’s interesting as well. It’s really interesting to listen to podcasts like the one you’re doing here and. One’s on craft and one’s by other publishers just to find out what’s going on.

Stephen: And talking with other authors and sometimes, authors, it’s funny, the same author that will get on Facebook and blast every single group they’re in with, Hey, read my book. are afraid to go and set up a table at the library for an author event. They don’t want to do it in person, but they want to do it anonymously behind.

But with the way things are really, if people see you and shake your hand and talk to you, that’s how they get to know you, especially in a local community. I know a couple authors that they will. They do one of those like on a Friday night different bands come in and set up and, they call it rock the lock cause it’s an old locking lock system for moving barges.

And so they, they do rock concerts on Friday night throughout the summer. And I know an author who sets up a table cause you can rent tables and set up for your business and people get to see your face and get to know you. You may not sell a lot but it’s the community getting to know you. And that’s.

A big thing for authors, just getting people to know you and see your face.

Colin: Exactly. And you learn so much from that and even things like beta reading for other authors and helping out that way. Yes. It’s invaluable to improving your own craft.

Stephen: Have you done gotten involved with maybe an open call or some other opportunity that maybe you were hesitant, but turned out really well and you were surprised.

Anything like that you’ve done?

Colin: Oh yeah. Though I submit to lots of anthologies and I’ve been lucky enough to get into a few, the horror library series by dark moon books. i’m in seven and eight which was just released now and if you don’t Give it a go. You’re never going to you’re never going to succeed.

I used to back when covid was on and we were all sitting around I used to There was a flash fiction competition for a publisher in the uk And I was determined They had a competition every two weeks and I was determined I was going to get selected by it. So I wrote on the team every couple of weeks, never got in.

But each of those stories became the kernel of something else. And three or four of them got published in other venues since then.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. So sometimes you just gotta… Keep trying, take the plunge. I know people get discouraged. They had this writing contest and I entered and I didn’t get chosen.

Okay. But you understand like 2, 500 people entered that and you entered it one time that there could be a ton of reasons. It may not have been your writing. It may just have been somebody else had something that just caught the fancy of the judges and nailed it. Or maybe you, what you wrote was good, but.

It was very similar to something that won the week before. So they’re doing, so you gotta just keep doing it and over and try multiple,

Colin: yeah. Like the numbers for until open calls and competitions are phenomenal, but. The more of them as I say, that’s why you have to keep looking at and whether it’s true social media or listening to podcasts you’ll find out more places to submit The more you do that, the more you learn and the more, the better you’ll get as

Stephen: well.

Agreed. All right. Colin, I appreciate you coming on today, chatting with me. Before we go, do you have any last minute advice for new authors?

Colin: No, just that keep writing keep reading as well. And Read widely

Stephen: agreed If you’re in a horror author read some romance and learn some things from it, right?

Exactly. Yeah All right. Thank you for being on call. It was great meeting you. I wish you luck.

Colin: Thanks so much you too. Thank you Stephen

Saph Dodd has been writing for as long as she’s known how. Since she first picked up a pencil and learned to string sentences together, she’s been creating fantastic and intriguing stories.

This twenty-six-year-old writer adores reading, especially action-adventure, fantasy, and horror stories, as well as lore and mythology. 

Her first novel, published when she was sixteen, spurred her to continue to do what she loves. Writing is her passion.

She lives in a small Tennessee town with her family: a younger sister, Jennifer, a constant source of inspiration, and supportive parents.

https://www.jumpmasterpress.com/product-page/sovereign-fourth

Stephen: Today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Saf Dodd. Saf, how are you doing today? I’m doing really well. How about you? I’m, I’m doing good. I’m not as pink as you are today.

Saph: Yeah. Pink is, it’s a takeover in here.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. So we know you like pink. Before we talk about your book, tell us about some other things about you, what you like to do outside of writing.

Saph: Well, shocker. I like to read. Okay. Mostly action, adventure, fantasy or horror, but I also I also do makeup. I’m a full time beauty specialist.

So like I, I do makeup looks a lot and I

Stephen: cause, Oh, nice. What’s your cosplay characters,

Saph: Ladybug from miraculous ladybug, Marinette from miraculous ladybug sailor moon, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, both versions and Cinderella. And a couple of characters from Bluey. That’s what I’ve got in my roster right now.

Stephen: Oh, nice! My daughter loves Miraculous Ladybug. Oh, yes, I love it. I actually know that one a little bit.

Saph: I actually got to meet the voice actress of Ladybug at Huntsville Pop Culture Expo when I was there to sign books.

Stephen: Oh, nice! Yeah, that’s always fun to do. There’s been a lot more of those in recent years.

I think it’s a good change in the culture that there’s so much of this available. So tell us where do you live? And if there’s anything really cool about where you live. Well,

Saph: I live in Nashville, so it’s Nashville, Tennessee. To music city, I guess, like, I’ve lived here all my life and it doesn’t seem like it’s that cool.

But, like, I guess, like, everybody moves here to get big and country

Stephen: music. I can relate. I live near Cleveland, the rock and roll capital. I’ve only been to the 1 time. So, yeah. Nice. All right. So why did you wanna start writing, and then what made you wanna write this book? Okay, so

Saph: I have literally been writing for as long as I know how, I knew how I started at a very early age, just writing stories down in notebooks and stuff because I, I, and I, I would excuse me.

I would try to, I would tell stories to my mom before I knew how to write. And then, like, when I learned to write, I was like, this is so cool. Now I can put my ideas down. And, you know, there wasn’t much structure to it because I was a really young, but it’s built, it’s built into something more of a, more of like a craft that I do.

And I, I started writing because, like, I felt it in me. I knew that I needed to, like, I was always destined to write. And this particular novel was really hard for me because I wrote it to eat, like, because I wrote it to get through my grief over losing someone very close to me. That’s why the main core themes in Sovereign Fourth are lost in grief.

So I wrote that to help me kind of move on and cope. It’s dedicated to my uncle.

Stephen: That’s a that’s a coping mechanism. That’s a way recommended is writing your feelings, writing things down and channeling that into a story is, I guess you could look at it as taking the bad thing and putting it into something good.

Yeah.

Saph: And then it became my debut album. I

Stephen: know a lot of people do. Nice, nice. I do like that you have been telling stories since you were young. That’s one of the things I’ve been working on talking to parents about is, you know, our kids should tell stories. Our kids should learn to tell stories more so at the beginning than spelling or grammar because that will come and that’s exactly what you’ve done.

You’ve told stories and now you’re writing stories and now you’ve written a book.

Saph: I’ve always had an insane imagination.

Stephen: Describe insane imagination. I love that description. What do you mean by insane imagination? I

Saph: am so full of ideas, like to the brim. I’m always like, I work on, I’m working on 2 projects right now, mainly, but I also have 3 other side projects, you know, like. I’ve always got something if I get bored with one thing, I can move to the other and then I’m still being

Stephen: productive.

Nice. Great. All right, so we’re going to talk about your book Sovereign Fourth. Tell us a little bit about it as much as you want to give away. Okay. Well,

Saph: It is about dragons and dragon riders. And it’s set in a kingdom, or an empire rather and reminiscent of ancient China and ancient Japan.

So a lot of the culture is far eastern. They, they were kimonos and, you know, Juntos, stuff like that, like the traditional rare Han Fus. And so I did a lot of research, a lot of research so that I could build this world properly. And I didn’t want the regular, like, the usual medieval kingdom setting for dragons.

I wanted something different and I figured that this hadn’t been done before. So, as far as I knew, it hadn’t been done before. So it was like, well, you know, I could do it this way. And it’s, it’s like. A lot of the themes are grief and floss, of course, but then there’s also a lot of action, a lot of adventure.

And there’s found family. You know, some people really like that genre. But, yeah, it’s, it was like, that’s I don’t I don’t know how else to say about it. I’m sorry.

Stephen: I’ve never been interviewed before. So did you do any, that’s fine. Did you do any research into what types of dragons there are in Chinese mythology as opposed to.

Saph: I did, I did, and I decided to stick with your typical picture picture of dragons because I wanted them to have wings. And dragons, like, in ancient China did not have wings. They were serpent, like, and there are dragons in the universe that I write that are like that. There are different species of dragons.

It’s just the most common 1 is the 1 that has 4 legs and 2 weeks.

Stephen: I got it. So you kind of made it your own. Yeah. Okay. And so the. You said it’s got dragons. It’s medieval. What’s the basic story? Is it someone trying to take over a kingdom or what’s going on in the story? Okay.

Saph: So it starts with 10 month, the main character, and she’s a little girl and she witnesses the death of her mother.

And then. Like for her entire life her dragon has been watching her from afar. She does not know she’s a dragon rider But her dragon Artemis has watched her grow up because dragons and dragon riders cannot be super separate or they will feel it and it’ll be very upsetting and very distressful for them.

So, you know, Tenma’s father agreed to let Artemis stay in the woods outside of their house so that he could watch Tenma. And one night, there’s a fire, and Tenma’s sister Mira and her father Miros appear to have not made it. Tenma run, like, she sees somebody in the house while she’s trying to get to her father’s room, so she runs back upstairs and it ends up, she gets thrown out of a window, and that’s how Her dragon was able to save her.

Now she is the sovereign, which is the conduit to the God of lightnings, the conduit to the God of lightning. And she was chosen at birth and her father wanted to keep her from that. So he would, he didn’t allow any of that to be part of her life. And then, but when he passed away, she was brought to the Capitol where the court wizard Lasan.

Is going to train her to like, harness the power of hero, learn magic, and some sword fighting. So she becomes the court wizard’s apprentice. There are really, like, I love my cast of characters, but I’m a little biased. There’s a Lynx demon who is my favorite. They’re called Sabellans, and Sabellans used to be animals that are demons that turned into humans.

And so he has cat ears and a cat tail and he’s 1 of my favorites to write about. He’s very snarky, very smart alecky, very, you know, aloof into and then they’re my 2nd favorite character is Katania. She is a seer and she, like, there’s, she’s part of the elite guard and so she’s like a rank above 10 month, but she’s always been like, a mother figure to 10 months since she came there.

And this book is about her learning how to harness this power and also losing a lot of people that she loves. You know, there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say I’m James R or George RR Martin levels, but I do, I don’t shy away from character death because I feel, but I always want to make it mean something.

I don’t just kill characters because I want to, I want to make it mean something, their death that can progress

Stephen: the story further. Okay, and. So this seems a very deep book. It’s not, is it, is it like YA or what genre level would you put it at? Like, I,

Saph: I don’t want to say YA because I know that there are like 13 year olds that are included in YA.

Like, a lot, like, it does touch on some troubling subjects, like human trafficking and stuff like that. So, there’s nothing explicit in it, but I think it’s more for an audience of 16 to 27 year olds, you know. Is more of my target audience. And I’m not sure what that’s called, but that’s,

Stephen: well, I think there’s a, there’s the new adult genre, but that a lot of time is drama, not fantasy.

I, I have a problem with some of our designations. Cause like YA is more of a demographic, not a genre, you know, there’s horror in YA, there’s romance in YA, you know? So it’s, so this is like why YA or new adult fantasy is what it sounds like. That sounds

Saph: cool. Yeah,

Stephen: it’s that’s something to check

Saph: out.

Yeah, for sure. But like,

Stephen: I’m sorry. We got a bit of a lag. I apologize. Go ahead and finish what you were saying.

Saph: I just, I’ve put like, and every, almost every character mentioned in the book, even side characters have like a full fleshed out backstory that I only have. So I started a Patreon to start posting that stuff, but you know, like I nice.

Stephen: Yeah, what were you gonna say? I was going to ask if you’ve ever read the Dragon Riders of Pern series.

Saph: I have I read them when I was very young. Okay. And that’s what got my interest in dragons started. I loved all of Anne McCaffrey’s books. So she,

Stephen: Actually, it’s funny, I got a… Sorry, I got a buddy that loves those books.

I couldn’t get into them as much. There’s other fantasy I do read, but for some reason I just couldn’t get into Dragonriders.

Saph: It’s a unique genre. And, like, I, I love, I took a little bit of inspiration from them because the different types of dragons are different colors. So, like, Artemis, Temma’s dragon is a bronze dragon, which is one of the, he’s the last bronze dragon.

So, and they’re very large, so they’ve different size, shape and

Stephen: color. Okay. Have you run across the Dragon Lance series? I have not that you might want to check that 1 out. It is a wizards of the coast. So it’s associated with Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, it started as Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. But it’s a world the world when the books start don’t have dragons, but the whole First trilogy is all about the dragons coming back and there’s a war.

So that’s one of my favorite fantasy So check Dragonlance out. Yeah for sure. What’d you say? It was called again Dragonlance Series, the first one is dragons of autumn twilight

Used to be some of my favorite fantasy when I was younger

So I’m sorry. Yeah, go ahead. What type of feedback are you getting? What type of feedback are you getting for your books?

I’m

Saph: mostly positive and I’m really happy about that. I don’t think I’ve gotten a bad review yet, but, you know, someone might have not liked it and just not reviewed it. I know, like, I know that there’s always room for improvement, you know.

You never stopped honing your craft. Always.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah.

Saph: So but it’s been getting pretty positive feedback. I went to, I was invited to sign books at Pop Culture Expo in Huntsville last April. And I sold out of my

Stephen: novel there. That’s amazing. That’s awesome.

Great. So if you had a choice, would you like to see this book turned into a movie or a TV show? TV

Saph: show, because I think that if the people who did Game of Thrones and stuff like that got a hold of it, it could be something really great because I don’t know, I feel like movies, you have to cut out, you have to cut out stuff in movies and like, I don’t know, I need like, lose the creative license when you do that.

It’s like, If I, if it was going to be turned into some kind of media, I’d like it to be an either an anime or a TV show because there I can, I have say so and stuff like that.

Stephen: Right? I’d, I’d love to have more really good anime fantasy. Yes. So do you have a website that people can go to. I

Saph: don’t have a website.

I have a Facebook page. It’s just SAF do. Okay. And I have a Patreon as well. Just if anybody was interested in that. It’s, I post backstories chapters, pictures of characters that I’ve done. I put like in the, also the journey of publishing. I try to show a little bit on there. I, it’s, it’s still brand new, but.

I do have lots of plans for it. I’ve got this this month’s bonus chapter is already finished. I just have to edit it.

Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll make sure and put a link in the show notes for that. Thank you. So, do you have plans for a book? You mentioned you have a couple of projects. Do you have plans for a book to in this series?

Or what are some of your other books coming up?

Saph: Okay, so this series, has 3 books, 3 installments. The 2nd, 1 is being edited right now. So hopefully be released by sometime. Beginning of next year. And I am working on another project that I’m going to take to a publisher that is, is Rumpelstiltskin meets Prince and the Popper.

And if you don’t know, like do you know Rumpelstiltskin? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, do you know the Prince at the Popper? Like the two that look to the same and soft places? Of course. Okay. So the idea, yeah. Is that rumple still skin? Was promised a firstborn child if he spun gold is drawn to gold for this woman and this woman Was desperate because she was going to be killed if she didn’t spin the straw into gold.

So she took the deal and Whenever she made she marries the king and gets pregnant, you know, it will still skin shows up again and tells her he that’s what he wants And she has the baby, it turns out there’s twins, one has golden hair, one has brown hair like their mother, and Rumpelstiltskin shows up at the christening to take the baby, and he’s like, I know that this one is the firstborn, because I cursed you to have, for your firstborn to have hair like the gold that you so desperately needed.

And so he takes the girl and names her Lena. And he deals in names and names, or if you take someone’s name, it makes them go insane. And so he deals in names and he says, he tells Lena that he got his her name from the sun goddess because of her hair. And, you know, skip forward, Lena is now on a pirate ship.

And I’m working as an herbalist for the pirates. And she ends up back in the kingdom where she was born. Her sister finds her and then they talk and they explain each other’s lives and what happened. And then they swap places for a year. And that story is the story of Laina trying to get through learning how to be royalty and not blowing her cover.

And she ends up like her cover gets blown in the first five minutes by one person who is it’s Ellenway, her sisters. Private tutor and he’s blind. So he’s like, I’ve heard Ellen. We’s voice every day for 10 years. I know that’s not you. So who are you? And so he said, she tells him his, and then he helps her learn how to be a princess.

And then the rest of it’s like, there is action and stuff like, you know, rumble. So it’s getting wants to get her back. But you know, that’s

Stephen: the gist. Nice. Okay. And when do you have a plans for that to come out? What’s the hope?

Saph: It is in the editing process right now, and I’m not sure I’m going to go to the same publisher.

I’m thinking about going to another literary agent and you know, like, querying the manuscript. Because I’d like to have representation. And hopefully get it to a nice publisher, you know, my publisher is great. It really is. It’s just, they don’t have they don’t have a lot of the resources that. A bigger publishing company would so, like, I’m paying for all my own ads and stuff like that.

So. If

Stephen: I got just a warning, just a warning that may not change with different publishers, my understanding they only do so much and only for the biggest. 1, so you may not see any change. Yeah,

Saph: but it would be nice to, like, be able to go to books a million and see a copy of my book there.

Stephen: That’s true.

Very true. Okay. So let me ask you do you, who are some of your favorite authors? Some of your favorite books? We’ve mentioned a couple already, but what are some of your favorites?

Saph: This this series, it’s the, it’s the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, who is my favorite author of all time. And this is my favorite book from that series.

It’s basically just like fairy tales retold in a sci fi setting. So I enjoy, I enjoy stuff like that. I enjoy, obviously I enjoy fairy tale retellings, but I’m also really like I’m trying, I’m drawing a blank. I’m sorry. They wrote the the Kelly Armstrong. That’s who I’m thinking of. Yeah. Kelly Armstrong.

She wrote a series, like a couple of series about supernatural stuff. So. I really like her, too, but Marissa Meyer, she’s

Stephen: got it. Okay. And do you where you live in Nashville? Do you have a favorite bookstore in the area that you like to go to

Saph: the books? A million out here is really great. I like going there.

And I also like, there’s this little, I live in a little town outside of Nashville. So, like, there’s this little bookstore that’s like, locally owned and I love going there.

Stephen: Okay, what did you know what it’s called? Oh, great reading rock books. Okay. I’ve got a couple of friends that actually live in the area. So, I wonder how many. Yeah. All right. So, and before we talk about some other stuff. If you’re walking down the street and somebody wasn’t into music, but they were into books and they said you wrote a book, why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell them?

Saph: Because it has heart. And it does deal with some heavy subjects that I feel like, aren’t talked about enough. So, you know, I don’t shy away from the difficult subjects as a matter of fact, I seem to

Stephen: towards them and that’s actually a noticeable and a good thing with your generation.

There’s been a lot more understanding a lot more awareness of mental health and and the. Pitfalls and the problems and not just ignoring it and not the stigma that lots of people have an issue. And it may be a temporary thing. It may be for just a little while because of certain things you know, but it’s definitely better from, like, before me, the boomer generation.

Down to you. You know, my kids generation. There’s definitely a difference in how the mental health issues are handled. So I think your generation could definitely be applauded for your much more understanding of that and awareness of it.

Saph: Yeah, it is a lot better than it was 50 years ago.

Stephen: Yeah. Well, 50 to 80 years ago. Yeah. 50 years ago was not too long ago for me. So let me ask you, Sav you’ve written some books, you’ve got some you’re working on. What are some things that you’ve learned that you’re doing different now than when you first started?

Saph: I learned that I’m a teller instead of a shower.

So I’ve been really working on Like bettering my not, not having passive voice, not having too much telling more showing, you know it’s really hard because I’m a very descriptive writer. So it like I want to describe the person as tall, muscular, well, you know, well built, something like that. I, it’s very hard for me not to use descriptive words and to just like, if he’s tall, he has to duck to get in the room, you know what I mean?

So like, I, I’m, I’m struggling with that a little bit, but I am getting better. And so I feel like that’s my main skill that I’m working on right now and I’m doing that differently. Also the publishing process, like, I, before I went into this, had no idea what it was like. So I’m doing more like to advocate for myself, you know, and my writing.

Stephen: Okay. So you mentioned a publisher and you know, hoping to get a different bigger and that type of thing. And what, what our topic is that we decided we were going to talk about was earnings for an author. And what, what that currently is, what it could be, why maybe it should change and that type of thing.

So why did you want to talk about that topic? Let’s start there.

Saph: Well I just feel like I see people like self publishing on Amazon all the time, and that’s great. I’m glad I used to self publish on Amazon. You know, I would have an editor look over my work and I’d do that. But it’s like if you publish on Amazon, then your ebook is free.

So like. You’re not getting paid anything for people to consume. Well, I, that is, that’s how it was when I was on Amazon, when I would self publish on Amazon,

Stephen: put it in Kindle

Saph: unlimited. I don’t think so. I, I just, I just I would like, it’s been a while. I would just upload it to the Kindle direct publishing site and then it would be reviewed for 12 hours and then it would be posted.

But because it was published on Amazon, they all every time I published a book on Amazon, they always put it on the Kindle for free. So,

Stephen: okay, well, maybe that’s part of the problem because. That has never been true that it’s forced to free. In fact, it’s difficult to get your things taken for free.

Did you have it listed somewhere else for free first? I did not. That’s interesting because I mean, I’ve got my book up there right now and my ebook is 3 and my print book is 10 and you can set your price for your ebook through Amazon. Now, if you’re in Kindle Unlimited, it’s free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, but you get paid per page read.

Oh, okay.

Saph: See, I didn’t know any of that. Like, I didn’t have anybody to explain it to me about Amazon. So I was just desperately searching for a publisher that would take Sovereign Fourth and. You know, the publisher that I was jump master and they’re great. They’ve taken really good care of me, but, you know, like, once my contract goes up with them, I’m probably going to take time from 4th to another publisher just to, you know, like, and they’ve already talked to me about it.

They said that that was fine because the rights are only being borrowed right now. And, you know, I just feel like. It could get more recognition and maybe like, and I feel like people don’t value people’s writing. Like, it’s not like, it’s not like I agree with important skill. I agree with that. Yeah, but like, I don’t if we didn’t have creative voices in the world, imagine how it would be.

You know, and I like you put your work, you put your, you pour your heart and soul into your work. And then it’s like, you only get like a couple of dollars less for every copy sold. So like, and I know that they have to do it that way because they’re a small publisher and they only make, you know, they can’t, they have to make their ends meet too.

But one day I would like to be a full time author. Be able to live off of it.

Stephen: Well, just to understand that if you have an agent and you go to like random house or something that you’ll get a small advance like a thousand dollars or 5, 000 and then when you’re all done with the book, you might get another thousand to 5, 000 and then they will sell the book until they’ve earned that money back and you won’t get any more money.

For sales until after that fact. And most from my understanding, most authors don’t even make back their, their royalties from that. So I’m just not trying to burst your bubble. I’m just setting expectations that even if you get signed with Penguin or random house or something, it’s not just going to be some big check that you’re suddenly going to get.

And they only do so much. They, they, they take an even bigger percentage of royalties. So for like a 10 book, you might only get 40 cents for everyone that’s sold after you pay out on your advance. So just making you aware and anyone else listening that that’s really how it works and you’re still expected to do your own marketing and like to get on podcasts and to do things like that.

So. And you did touch upon a pet peeve of mine, though, that for music, cause I’m a musician and for writing is that you practice as a musician for years, you go through lessons, you practice, you play, you just spend all this time perfecting your skill. And then you come out with music and people say, well, I’m not going to pay for that because they, like you said, don’t value the skill that it took, or they come out, you come out with this album.

That’s an amazing album. People are like, eh, you could have done better. And that’s not really, and they don’t have any understanding of the skill, what it takes and the same with writing, you know, most books now are 15 to 20. Hardbacks are 25, 30. And people are like, Oh, I’m not paying that for a book. It’s like, but really this book, it costs as much as a movie ticket.

And a movie ticket is for two hours. And this book will last you for like six to eight hours of entertainment. So I don’t people’s thinking on that. It is annoying. But like you said Jumpmaster and many of the other publishers do help out and help get some of that out there. I know I, I thought Jumpmaster had a wonderful booth at the scares that care that I was a part.

So you do get that benefit. Have you ever looked into not just self publishing, but selling your book through your website?

Saph: I don’t have a website. I just have a Facebook page and a Patreon.

Stephen: That’s, you know, Patreon too. That’s just some, an option you have as an independent author is being able to take your book and having the website, put it on the website. So if I put my print book on the website for 10, I’m plus shipping. Don’t count shipping for a minute, but it’s 10. I would make more by printing the book myself and selling it, then putting it on Amazon and letting them print and sell it.

And have you ever heard of book funnel book? What book funnel? No, I haven’t. Well, there’s another thing for you to mark down with book funnel. You can actually offer your ebook. For sale and it’s directly from you. So you can send people to your, your book funnel page and they can buy the book at the ebook and get it onto their Kindle to read without going through Amazon or Cobo or anything.

So something to check out. Yeah,

Saph: I just typed it in the browser so I can go there When Frankie went off the call.

Stephen: Right. There we go. So when you were doing your first book did you find an editor or did your publisher get an editor and edit?

Saph: Well, I did both. I have an editor that edits all of my work and he like, he’s great.

And then I had, I had him edit the manuscript first. And then when I was satisfied with how it was, I sent it to the publisher and then the publisher went through a few times with me and we agreed or disagreed on changes. That’s so I’ve, I’ve done both.

Stephen: Okay, and that’s 1 of the things personally that I like about being independent is I can find and choose an editor myself, but it is 1 of the costs that publishers quite often take on.

So, that’s, you know, they, they compensate that through slightly lower royalties to.

Saph: Yeah, no, I understand and I’m not like, I’m not like, salty about it or anything. But like I said, I am trying to make

Stephen: exploring your options as an independent author.

Saph: And I’m trying to, I’m trying to get it to where I can one day make a living off my writing because that would be a

Stephen: dream come true.

And, and that’s actually, I mean, I totally agree and applaud and think you should. You’re young and you’re still starting out writing. So, okay, I’ve written a book. I have a publisher. I’m going to try another publisher. I might try and publish something myself. Or I have done that. I might try and put something on my own website.

You know, you’ve got all these options to explore. It’s figuring out what works best for you with, you know, what you’re offering. I know there’s one author that I met at a conference. She did a talk and she doesn’t write just books. What she does is. She writes serial fiction that’s only released on her website and you have to pay to get access to it and every day from January 1st to July 1st, every day.

She posts a new chapter, a new section of the story and it continues for those 6 months and people pay to read it every single day. And then she compiles it into a book and sells it at the end of the year. So that’s a total different way of selling a book and promoting a book. But then, you know, those are the options you get in today’s publishing world, which I think is great.

I love that. That’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to it. Yeah. You know, you’re not selling your book. I, I’ve, I’ve been, I worked for myself for many years and I hear people all the time saying, oh, my book’s not selling. And my response is always, well then figure out how to sell it. I mean, that’s your option.

That’s your, you own that. So, you know, if it’s, if you don’t want to spend the time marketing, you don’t want to spend the time figuring out that stuff, then your best bet is to find a publisher and sign on with them and let them handle that you get less money, but you also have less work. Well,

Saph: you’re right.

And I, I knew all that because I did like, self published before I went to jump master and I’m even promoting stuff now and like it, you know, it’s always good. So, like, always be your own hype man. And my mom, my mom is a great handler. She got me on the radio and everything. Whenever we went to school, like.

Stephen: So, wait, so how did you get on the radio? What, what would you do? What was that like? Well, it was

Saph: a local radio station that had a video camera and a guy coming up with a microphone, just kind of checking off the call. And my mom grabbed them and pulled them over to the Jumpmaster booth and she grabbed my arm and she’s like, This is a published author and she’s selling her book here today.

It’s like, mom.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. So did they talk to you and did you have a good time with that?

Saph: Yes, I did. It was very fun. I was so nervous cause I was put on the spot, but I think I did

Stephen: okay. Good. But that’s, you know that’s part of the reason I do this podcast is to give new authors a chance to get on a podcast to talk about their book and kind of figure out what they want to say.

That’s part of the, You know, because there’s not a lot of podcasts, not a lot of avenues out there for a brand new author to get an interview or something, unless you’re paying for it. So I just, that’s why I did this. I wanted to have that avenue.

Saph: Thank you. Okay. My battery is running low. I need to go get my charger.

It might,

Stephen: it might just, no, I think we’re coming. We’re coming to a close here pretty quick. So, I I’ve loved talking to you. I think your book sounds great. I love the fantasy before we go and you get disconnected. Do you have any other advice for new authors?

Saph: You can’t just, it’s finished the book.

That’s what I have to say is like, you can edit a bad book, but you can’t wait. If you have nothing, then there’s nothing that you can do. So like, don’t be a disgrace, even if it’s, even if you write it and you feel like it’s awful. Finish it because you can,

Stephen: yeah, I agree. And I think people need to write a lot more to figure out what really is good for their writing.

Yeah. Sometimes write one book and yeah. Yes. Yeah. Right. And that’s why you wrote, right? Exactly. All right, Saf. I appreciate you jumping on and talking today. Your book sounds great and I wish you luck on it. Thank you. Thank you.

Saph: I appreciate you having me. It was great to meet you.

Soulworm, the debut novel of Edward Willett, now the award-winning author of more than twenty novels and twice that many nonfiction books, has just been made available once more in a new edition from Shadowpaw Press Reprise.
A young adult fantasy novel, Soulworm was originally published by Royal Fireworks Press in 1997, and was shortlisted for the Best First Book award at that year’s Saskatchewan Book Awards. It was written in the 1980s while Willett was news editor of the Weyburn Review newspaper, and is set in Weyburn in 1984—which nowadays gives it a Stranger Things vibe, although at the time it was a present-day tale.

Edward Willett is the award-winning author of more than sixty books of science fiction, fantasy, and non-fiction for readers of all ages, including the Worldshapers series and the Masks of Agyrima trilogy (as E.C. Blake) for DAW Books and the YA fantasy series The Shards of Excalibur, originally published by Coteau Books. His most recent novel is the humorous space opera The Tangled Stars (DAW Books).
Willett won Canada’s top science fiction/fantasy award, the Aurora Award, for Best Long-Form Work in English in 2009 for Marseguro (DAW) and for Best Fan Related Work in 2019 for The Worldshapers podcast, and a Saskatchewan Book Award for Spirit Singer in 2002. He has been short-listed for Aurora and Saskatchewan Book Awards multiple times (most recently for his YA science fiction novel Star Song), and long-listed multiple times for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

edwardwillett.com

Stephen: Today I want to welcome Edward back to the podcast. How are you doing, Edward?

Edward: It’s good to see you again.

Stephen: Now that we’re in winter, last time I talked to you, it was like negative 20 or something, and you were talking about walking around outside in the snow. Do you have a nice weather now?

Edward: Is it actually over the weekend? It was more like 30, 31 Celsius. Put up around 90 Fahrenheit. So we’ve had some really helpful.

Unfortunately, our air conditioning is broken. And so getting back fixed, but today it’s quite cool. It’s 18, I think for a high today. So

Stephen: yeah. It’s been awful humid here. We’ve had rain off and on for a couple of days, so it gets really humid and that’s worse. I’d

Edward: rather have heat. I went to university in Arkansas, so I know heat and humidity.

And I was in marching band.

Stephen: Oh, nice wool uniforms and stuff. Black ones at that. Oh, man, we had dark maroon and gold. You put that on and I played drums when you carry that big heavy equipment.

Edward: Our drummers were lucky. They got to wear a kind of a peasant shirt with an open collar and something lighter.

But all the rest of us were stuck in these winter weight woolen uniforms.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. It’s good to have you back again. We’ve talked with you before about some of the books you’ve had, the anthologies, short stories, some of your other books. So today we’re going to talk about a new book for you

Edward: called soul.

Yes. Although it’s not really a new book. It’s a, it’s an old book and a new edition. It’s my debut novel now out in a new edition.

Stephen: Oh, that’s awesome. In that, and that’s probably why you suggested we talk a little bit later for the author stuff about revisiting and revising. Perfect. All right.

So give us a little bit of the background history here of Soul Worm, how it fits into your overall list of books

Edward: And when I came out of university, I had decided in high school that I wanted to be a writer, but I also knew you couldn’t make a living as one. So I was actually working as a newspaper.

I went into journalism. I was working as a newspaper reporter and then editor of my hometown newspaper. I was editor at the age of 24 of my newspaper back at Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and it was sometime during there that I wrote Soul Worm. I can’t remember exactly, but I was living in Weyburn. And so the book is actually set in Weyburn.

And at the time it was a contemporary fantasy novel, now it’s a historical fantasy, because I kept it in 1984, I think, is the year that I set it in. So yeah, it wasn’t the first novel I wrote or the first one I tried to get published. It was, however, the first one that got published in 1997.

So even by that point, I, it had been about, At least 10 years that I’ve been sending it around and but that was back in the good old days when everything was typed up and you sent it out in a box and you waited forever. And then you got a either you got it back. If you’d sent enough postage or you if you were lucky, you got at least a letter back.

Sometimes they just lost the manuscript. So I don’t really miss that way of doing things. I bet. So that’s yeah. Though I was frozen there for a moment on my screen so that was the background. And because it was written while I was in Waburn, that’s why it’s set in Waburn. And it was inspired by Waburn.

Waburn is a prairie town of about 10, 000 people, but it has a hill, which is a little unusual in southern Saskatchewan. The river kind of curves around the bottom of this hill and there’s A water tower, an old water tower on top of the hill. It looks a bit like a lighthouse. It’s a distinguishing feature of Weyburn.

But I was driving through town and I looked at that hill and I thought, what would be more interesting on that hill would be a castle of some sort. And that was the inspiration. So I started thinking about parallel worlds and how there could be a world just like ours, only there’s a castle on that hill instead of a water tower.

And then I decided they could also have a forest because, there weren’t a lot of trees and and that was it. And then I thought what would be happening there? That might. Connect the two worlds and I came up with this idea of the the soul worm, which is a creature that feeds on negative emotions and hate and violence and stuff like that.

And somehow one of these gets into our world and these race of priestesses who fight it in that world have to send somebody after it and they accidentally, literally accidentally, the wrong person gets sent. And it’s a teenage acolyte of these priestesses who actually doesn’t. No, what she’s doing or have the power to fight soul worms as far as she knows.

And and she’s also stuck in the body of a teenager in Weyburn. Who’s been in a coma. She only came in her spirit and she had to have a body and that’s where she ends up and she’s can’t even influence what this girl is doing to begin with. And the soul worm itself possessed this girl’s best friend.

So that’s the setup.

Stephen: Nice, nice. And I love this because you said it was your first book but you didn’t Get it for a while and then you’ve done so much since then, and now you’ve gone back to it. So let’s jump around just a little bit. Why did you decide to go back to this book and re release it?

And what was that like going back to something you wrote

Edward: 30 years ago? I can show you one reason. I, this is the original, this is the original soul worm. And I absolutely hate that cover. It looks like a graphic novel. I’ve actually met the artist. And it is a moment in the book, although, as I always say, when I’m doing school readings, and I did quite a few because this is my first book.

So I did quite a few school readings. I always said in my defense, first of all, that girl’s supposed to be 16 or even younger. And she looks. In her twenties minimum, and she was not wearing a mini skirt in my story that was put on there by the artist. Anyway, she yeah, so that was, that is a scene.

That’s the very moment at which this, she falls inside this magical circle and her spirit gets sent into our world, but I didn’t like the cover. That was one reason. And so I did a new cover. So now this is the new cover. It’s also very shiny.

There you are. It reflected in the cover of the book. So that was one reason. And the other was just that it’s been a long time. And the other book is long out of print. And I had to write. I also have my own publishing company now, so one of the things I have done through that company, I’m publishing a lot of different people and a lot of different books, but among other things, I’ve been publishing new editions of the books that have come back to me because they’re no longer available.

So this was an opportunity to put my first book back out there into the marketplace a little bit. I’m not expecting it to sell millions, but if it sells a few copies, that’s good. And it’s also interesting to me because it is my debut novel and. So it was, it’s interesting if anybody cares to compare what I write now to what I wrote back then, it’s interesting for me to compare what I wrote back then to what I write now.

Stephen: So what was that like looking at it, reading it? What did you go, Oh man, I can’t believe I wrote that. And did you change a lot of it? I

Edward: didn’t change a lot. I tweaked it here and there, the language here and there, my, and my, my the way I feel about The uses of commas and things like that has changed over the years, so there’s just that kind of copy editing stuff going on, but I was actually, it sounds a bit egotistical, but I was actually quite pleased with reading what I wrote back then, and I was writing at, at a professional level all those years ago, and it just took a while to, and even then, the publisher that I had was A terrible publisher, so I was happy to have an opportunity to bring it out myself for that reason as well.

And it was sometime after that before I really had my first novel picked up by Daw Books in New York, and then that’s been my main publisher. I have 12 novels with them now. But even going back at this one, it is a simpler story than I would probably make it now. But I certainly Recognized my writing what I was reading.

It wasn’t like reading something from a stranger, even though I didn’t really remember some of the details until I read it again this time around. Yeah, it actually stood up pretty well. And I was pleased.

Stephen: Nice. And that’s a good thing. Nowadays is You know, to get your rights back and you have that option to publish.

Whereas,

Edward: it was a completely different era. I don’t know what, if I were coming along now, I don’t know what approach I would have taken. I might have immediately started self publishing and maybe that would have been good in some ways, but I think the process of, but I went through all those years ago of writing, sending stuff out and then writing something else without even thinking about it until it came back from the publisher.

I probably had, by the time this one sold in 1997, there wasn’t any money involved, but anyway. I had probably, oh, I must’ve had at least 10 unpublished novels either in circulation or just sitting around and I had decided not to sit in the mouth, but I’d written at least 10, maybe a dozen novels by the time this one came published.

And as I said, this wasn’t the first one I wrote. The first one I wrote, I brought out from shadow pop press completely rewritten. That one took a, I really rewrote called star song. I just brought that out last year. So that was the first. book I wrote seriously and although I modified it quite a bit, large chunks of the original book are in there and it was nominated for a Saskatchewan Book Award and for an Aurora Award.

So I clearly was doing something right all those years ago, even though it took me forever to find a publisher.

Stephen: So you have written multiple books since that a bit, but it’s still the same. Type of style. It’s a sci fi, a little fantasy element in there. Did you always want to know for sure that’s the genre, that’s the style

Edward: you wanted to write in?

The very first complete short story I wrote, which if I ever find it, I’m going to put it online, but it’s in a box somewhere and I haven’t come across it for years. It was called Castor Glass Hypership Test Pilot, and I was 11 years old, so I would say I was pretty, pretty firmly set on on what kind of stuff I wanted to write very early.

I had two older brothers who read science fiction fantasies, especially the next oldest brother, and so those books were around my around the house. It’s somewhere here. Is it still here? I don’t know. I have a book that belonged to my brother, still has his name in it written by Robert Silverberg called Revolt on Alpha C which was actually Robert Silverberg’s first novel.

It’s still here. Published when he was 19, I think, because he was an overachiever, but that was the kind of thing that was around. And of course, that’s what I latched onto. And I started reading that very early. And I was a voracious reader. I read all sorts of stuff. I remember loving little women, which is very different and things like that.

But I was reading a lot of science fiction, so I latched onto it very early. And once I started writing, everything was in that genre. I wrote it. I wrote three novels in high school. One was called the golden sword, which was a fantasy novel. Although I later changed it to the silver sword. When I realized that you couldn’t even lift a golden sword.

Probably couldn’t fight with it.

Stephen: No, you just have to change the

Edward: magic sword. It could have been a gold colored sword, but anyway, at some point I changed it to the silver sword. And then the next one was called Ship from the unknown, which was, what? I never paid any attention to that.

This was about a mysterious ship that shows up in a coastal town. Of course, I lived in the prairies as far from the ocean as you can get, and these kids end up on it. And the next thing they’re battling a technological miracle! Hidden society. It’s like Wakanda. This was tucked away in the jungles of Amazon and was planning to take over the world.

And somehow they managed to stop it. I don’t even remember that book. I have it here somewhere, but I haven’t read that one in a long time. And then my third one was also fantasy. It was called Slavers of Falk. And it was serious fantasy because it had a map and all the best fantasies have maps,

Stephen: right?

I was thinking, huh? That book you wrote when you were 11, that should be your next anthology. You compile is established writers and like their early school day stories, compile them all.

Edward: That might be fun, but I suspect most writers would be very unwilling to do that. I did years ago in a world science fiction convention was in Denver.

So it must be at least 14 years ago. I think my daughter was eight at the time. I actually suggested a panel and we held it of writers reading from their juvenilia, and I read from Slavers of Falk. Connie Willis was on that one but she didn’t really read juvenilia, but she wrote, she started as a true confessions type romance writer, so she read some of that.

Joshua Palmatier was on there, he’s doing all kinds of anthologies, and he’s also an author now One of my fellow authors was then too, and he read something, I don’t remember what he read, and then we had Sarah Hoyt on there, and she read, she started writing in Portuguese, and English is her second language, so we all had different stories, but it was fun, and and people enjoyed that panel, they like to see how people have progressed, especially people that they now know as established writers.

Stephen: So what, how many other books do you have that you theoretically could revise and get back out that aren’t out there?

Edward: The next one would be the dark unicorn, which was my second novel, also published by the people who published soul worm. And it was shortlisted actually. So I’m a shortlisted for a Saskatchewan book award for best first novel when it came out and the dark unicorn, which was my second novel was shortlisted for best.

Children’s book at the time. They didn’t have a way category. So I’m going to do it next, I think. And then let me see. Is there anything left? I put out Andy Nebula Interstellar Rockstar as from the streets to the stars. Yeah, no, I think that’ll be it. I think after that I will have put out everything that I have that was in a previous edition that is now Come back to me.

So I think that’s the last one left.

Stephen: Cool. And what would you tell other authors that may want to go back and revise and re put out old books or stories they may have never

Edward: published? I did that too, because with my first thing I published through shadow pop press was a collection of short fiction.

So it was a mixture of stuff that had been previously published, but also some short stories that never found a home. And now at last they had a home. Yeah. You can do it. That’s all I can say. You I would not expect unless I suppose if you were, Brandon Sanderson or somebody and you decided to do that, you probably make a lot of money.

I suspect it has to be a labor of love and you just want to make sure that those stories if you still believe in them, that they’re out there and that readers can find them. And that’s the reason I’m doing it. It’s not like I’ve sold a huge number of copies of any of these, but they’re there and they do sell occasional copies.

And so there’s still people discovering these stories that I wrote. A long time ago. It’s not a financial thing at all. It’s very much. I just want to have those stories out there. And I think there’s a lot of authors that are doing that, that are putting out new versions of or not new versions necessarily, but at least bringing out books that rights have reverted to them and that are out of print.

And it’s one of the things that the What you can do in publishing now has made available to authors and I think a lot of authors would like To see some of the stories that might otherwise have vanished to be back out there. And in fact Shadowpaw press is also publishing books like that I have an imprint called shadowpaw press reprise and I’m getting a lot of books Where the publisher died.

In fact, one of them was my publishers, the Cotto books here in Saskatchewan. And I’ve republished two or three from there. There’s another one I just did. Again, the publisher closed down and the rights reverted. And they’re authors who don’t want to climb the rather steep Learning curve of publishing your own stuff.

They come to me and I put it out and I’ve done several of those so far.

Stephen: Oh, that’s nice. Do what’s the feedback been on, somebody getting this book or any of those other revised books that, this was written 30 years ago, but the author. Or your book. I wrote this 30 years ago.

It was my first one. I have people said, yeah, you should have left it away. Or are people glad to get these? I

Edward: haven’t had any feedback on soul worm. I’m glad it’s out there. That’s all that really matters. And I don’t know. I think I know some of the authors One, for example that I republished, Anne Lazurko has a book out now that’s getting all sorts of critical acclaim, and her first book, Dolly Bird, was one of these books that I’ve reprinted, and so she’s very happy to have it, because now she promotes her current Book she can also now know that her first book is available for readers who like her new book.

They can go back and find that one. But I don’t know exactly what readers are saying when they read these old books. Nobody has told me, no, you should have left that one in the drawer. Nobody has said that to me anyway, but they may just be being nice. I don’t know.

Stephen: If people don’t like something, they’re more apt to give you that negative feedback and tell you that, it’s when they do like it, that you don’t always hear that as much.

So take it as a

Edward: good thing. That or just nobody’s reading it.

Stephen: There could be that too. That’s true. So is this available as ebook and print

Edward: or just ebook? It’s available in both ebook and print. I held up the print copy, but yeah, and everywhere. It’s wide. It’s not just stuck on Amazon or anything.

It’s available. Everywhere books are sold and any bookstore can even order it. And if you ask them to, which would be, I really wish you would tell them to bring in a hundred copies or two, just to be sure they have enough. Oh, and no return, but don’t send them back again after they don’t sell. I

Stephen: need a hundred of these for gifts for the year.

Every author would love that. Just need one person to do that at every store and we’re good. That’s all we need. So do you write under any other pen names or anything like that, that you have things out because you have your publishing company and use other people publishing through you? Do you do multiple genres

Edward: and keep things separate?

Not particularly, although I do have pen names, but they were both. given to, or not given to me, but I was asked to use them at DAW. So I’m E. C. Blake, who wrote a trilogy called The Masks of Agrima. And I have used that pen name outside of DAW. A company called Rebelite published a book of mine, which they titled Flames of Neviana.

And They went under pretty quickly. They weren’t in operation very long, so I brought that out through Shadowpaw Press under its original title of Blue Fire, which I like that title better. Although when I do look around, I see there’s actually quite a number of novel books called Blue Fire, but I still like it also is really nice because it’s makes a nice little square block of blue and fire about the same length of word.

So I’ve done that one. And then my other pen name was Lee Arthur Chain, and he’s only written one book called Magebane for DAW. I think what happened with DAW was I started off Edward Willett wrote science fiction. My first three novels for them were science fiction. And they said, you should switch to fantasy.

It’s selling better. We’ll give you a fresh start. So I became E. C. Blake. No, I became Lee Arthur Chain first. And this was like a fantasy standalone called Magebane. And then I became E. C. Blake because the Masks of Agreement trilogy Functionally, it was YA. The main character is a 15 year old girl and she only ages up to, I don’t know, she gets to 16 over the course of the book.

Although it’s, but they said we don’t do YA. But because it was a young female character, they thought maybe initials in case somebody cares and they might think that you’re a woman that way if you do that. Okay. So I became E. C. Blake for those three books and then used it again. But I went back to being Edward Willett with that and everything I have written since then has been.

Stephen: Back in the Star Trek original series, DC Fontana was a woman and they made her use the initials because they were afraid people wouldn’t read or watch sci fi.

Edward: It’s almost the other way around. I’ve got sorry, my phone just went off. Oh, and it’s spam too. It wasn’t even real. Now it’s buzzing over there out of the way.

Yeah, and it was interesting because it was actually the other way around because I was writing a young female character. They thought. Maybe it’d be better to be initial so that people might think that I was a woman, right?

Stephen: So you mentioned a couple of times about YA and young children’s, not all of your stuff is in that realm.

So that’s something that I’ve said is newer that the YA category, I’ve had a few people argue saying, Oh yeah, we had YA back in the eighties. No, not. Really? So how do you decide if something’s YA or children’s or adults? That’s a good

Edward: question. If I’m trying to sell to a publisher who specializes in YA is really a marketing term.

Back when Heinlein was writing what you would now think of as YA, they were just called juveniles, which, I’m glad we got away from that terminology. The explosion in YA probably goes back to Harry Potter specifically. But Yeah, I, for me it’s basically is, goes down to the age of the character and what they’re, I think that’s really it.

And then there are certain ways that, like the Masks of Agreement was published in the adult science fiction market, fantasy market. Although it was functionally a ya because the characters were so young, the main characters were so young. But all that meant was that I didn’t even think about, the level of violence or anything I, that I felt was appropriate.

I just wrote it as I would Now, given the way ya books are now, I don’t think there’s anything in there that’s, that wouldn’t fly as a ya book because they are far more wide open than they were once upon a time. So that’s the only definition I can give is that you have a young character and it’s a young character whose concerns are those of young characters.

I guess it can be a young character who’s operating in the adult world and everything is seen through an adult. Lens and I think that pushes it into the adult but even my stuff that’s been published as adult I don’t know what it is about how I write but this last three books I get did for none last three But a three book series I did for dog called world shapers The main character is established early on as 27 years old and yet when it got short Longlisted for the Sunburst Award up here for Best Canadian Science Fiction Fantasy.

They put it in the YA category and I don’t know why. There’s not a single teen character. There is in the third book, but there’s no main character that’s a teen and they’re grown ups. So I don’t know. I don’t know why it got tagged as YA. So I guess I don’t really know the answer to that question.

Stephen: That’s good. I think sometimes I don’t like. Like I write middle grade and I hate when people say, Oh, you write middle grade because middle grade is a demographic. Whereas you can have fantasy middle grade, which is totally different than the dork diaries or totally different than even Harry Potter, it’s fantasy like an element, but it focuses on magic and wizard, so I hate saying, Oh, it’s middle grade. I like fantasy for middle grade, I think it’s more like you said they go for certain the tropes, the feel as opposed to something like Jack Reacher or some other Patterson book or something.

Edward: I’ve never managed to sell a YA book to a.

Why a publisher? So I’m not sure I actually match that demographic or at least that marketing slot very well at all.

Stephen: So for anyone listening before we go if they like your books, if they like fantasy, science fiction type stories what would you tell them why they should get soul worm

Edward: and soul worm is fun because first of all, it’s got a stranger saying stranger things vibe now, because it said in 1984, which actually, if you go back, you’ll notice.

I picked a font that might remind you of another, yeah, so there’s that, but it’s, I’ve always enjoyed the fantasy mixing into the real world and I think that’s the appeal of Soul Worm and a lot of those. Kinds of stories contemporary fantasy. I don’t think the term urban fantasy even existed when I wrote that book either.

But that mixture of fantasy with the real world. And in this case it has the, it’s a little different setting because it’s set in a small Saskatchewan town. Which to me is not exotic, but it might be to somebody reading it somewhere. My wife likes to say that we think Tuscany is exotic, but the people in Tuscany, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is exotic.

It’s all a matter of perspective. So I guess it’s got that going for it. And if you’re interested in and seeing something that. Somebody who’s now getting old wrote when he was young. You can compare it. You can get that and then you can get all my other books and you can read through them and you take notes and figure out my progression of writing as you go along.

Stephen: Published order. That’s a big thing, especially like in comic books, what’s the published order as opposed to the timeline order and yours are all separate. So timeline doesn’t pertain to this. All right. Edward, it was cool catching up with you. I love talking to you again. I’m glad we got to meet up on it.

I hope you get your AC fixed for the weather. So it turned

Edward: out there’s also asbestos. We have to have taken out of the basement before they can put in the new furnace. So that’s what I’m juggling this week. Oh man, it’s a very old house, almost a hundred years old.

Stephen: So yeah. Wow. All right. Hey, I wish you a great day and I appreciate you getting back on and catching us up to.

Today is a different episode. I’m not talking to an author, this has to do with video games. Though it’s not focused on video game storytelling as I’ve had in the past. It is related.

I am talking with the coaches for the BioMed Science Academy eSports team. BioMed is a local alternative STEM school and they are one of over 200 schools in Ohio with eSports teams.

This is important, because it shows the rise of videogames and how our culture is changing with that. Video games are still growing and there will be more future for today’s kids to be in the video game industry – as storytellers or other.

If you are a teacher or school administrator – this is a good episode to help introduce you to eSports. If you are a parent, there’s a lot in here that you may not realize. I hope to do more episodes that deal with video games and video game storytelling.

Stephen: Great. Okay. So today on Discover Wordsmiths, a very exciting conversation for me. If anyone’s been following along on this podcast, I’ve had several interviews with some people in the video game industry where we talked about storytelling in video games. And today I’m continuing that with a couple of teachers at a local school, Biomed STEM Academy, which I’m very excited to talk to because they have an e sports team, one of the few in the area.

So welcome Eric and Alexis. How are you guys doing?

Eric: I’m doing wonderful. How

Stephen: are you doing today? I’m I’m really doing great. I’ve been excited. I went to Blossom last night. So I went to bed late, but then all I could think about was talking to you guys. So if I yawn, I apologize. You’re not boring. It’s you know, body picking up.

Before we start delving into this to inform parents and students or whatever tell us a little bit about biomed and what biomed is.

Eric: So we’re at biomed science Academy and biomed is a STEM plus M school. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But we also have a medical pathway as well at our school. And what we do is instead of just teaching math, I will teach math in terms of different science and technology and engineering and even some of the health pathway.

So the math that you see not only goes with the state’s standards, but I’ll also give those applications in the STEM field. And that’s not just me, but the entire school that that’s part of our mission and vision.

Stephen: And my kids, after they went there, what I described that people is instead of just sitting down for a history class, where they tell you the Panama Canal was built at this time, they say, Go do a research on it and build us a working canal that you can move levers and adjust it and then tell us how it affected the economy in the area.

And I’m like, Oh, my God, that tells you so much more than just it was built in this time. You know, about biomed. I remember the table of elements. You know, when I was in school, it’s like, okay, memorize the table of elements. As much as you could. Who cares? Nobody, you can look it up. So who cares if you memorized it?

But you guys put them in groups. Because that’s important working in groups in the world and companies. And you said, okay, this is your one or two research. These tell us everything you, you can find out about it and give a report. And I guarantee those kids remembered those two better than everything else.

And I always thought that was such a great approach to learning and more, much more exciting. I don’t know if the students get it so much, but I would. So, all right. So what we’re going to talk about a little bit more in depth today is your e sports team. And I was really excited about this because I’ve been trying to find out more about video game storytelling and it connected to e sports because Ohio just approved e sports teams in high schools to get varsity letters this year.

And I was super excited about that. So I convinced you guys to get on here and listen to me and talk to me a little bit. So tell us exactly what. eSports is for the world in general.

Alexis: To make it as easy as possible to understand kids play video games competitively against each other.

Eric: Go ahead. Oh yeah.

I was going to say we, we use e sports just like, just like any other sports where we are going to build the community with one another. We have we have problem solving. We have team bonding. It is competitive like those other sports while it might not be physical, but all of those same skills that you do in those traditional sports.

We also hone in on those in our e sports community as well. And we also have a good time. Yeah.

Stephen: So there’s a whole lot there to unpack and point out to people the benefits here, but I don’t want to just spout it all. Let’s, we’ll do it in a conversation. So when you say, first of all, That so who can join the e sports team?

Eric: So for us, anyone can actually join e sports. We are broken into two kinds of divisions. We have a club aspect and an actual competitive aspect. We do have to break it up. We are in a particular league and in that league, the middle schoolers are no longer allowed to join the actual. competitive side.

So we do split it up into two. But anyone can join the, anyone can join our esports team. If they are in middle school, we’re actually going to get them prepped for when they do come to high school, that they are ready for those actual competitions.

Stephen: Okay, so what you said skills and then you said prep, what exactly does that mean?

Cause I’ve, I’ve talked to parents and they’ve said, well, how do they do that? If they’re sitting in their living room playing Donkey Kong, what’s that mean? Do they just don’t get it? So tell, tell me what you mean when you say to get them prepped and the skills they use,

Eric: I’m going to, to make this easiest, I’m going to pick on super smash brothers to make, to make it a lot easier for me cause I don’t know all of the games out there.

But what we do is for our, for specifically that we’re in, there are certain rules for when they compete and we make sure that one, the students understand what those rules are. So they can also use that to their advantage, you know, so they can learn the, the, the how do I want to say it? The mechanics.

So they can learn the actual mechanics of, of the game before they actually get to the high school level. The next thing is that way they can also communicate to each other as a team, like, hey, we have to verse these people one on ones. We have to put our best person first, so they’ll have, they’ll have to decide.

amongst ourselves, who’s the actual best competitive player and then strategically determine who’s going to go next and then after that. But we’ll also have practices where they’ll determine like, hey, if you’re going to use a grab, you have to watch out for X, Y, and Z, because you’ll be vulnerable to specific attacks, counters, and so on.

Stephen: And first of all, so I know a lot of parents probably like, what the heck is Smash Brothers? So tell us, again, there’s just so many things. I don’t know what I’m bouncing around. So let’s, let’s, let’s say football, baseball. So parents understand that my kid picks up a baseball. We practice throwing it. They practice catching it.

They get there and you throw the ball and they bat and they run around the bases and they learn the rules of the game. With Smash Brothers, it’s a video game. It’s a fighting game and characters and the players choose their own characters, which have strengths and weaknesses for each. So how, how would you say to, to, for a parent to wrap their mind around?

How is what you’re doing comparable, but also different than regular football, baseball? Practice and skills

Eric: actually see it. No, no, no. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s, that’s a lot to process. I wouldn’t see it that different. Cause even in football, they have to, they have to hone physical skills, right?

Yeah. They

Alexis: have to figure out what their strengths and

Eric: weaknesses are. And. With, with Smash Brothers, it’s, it’s going to be the same thing. They have to, they have to understand all of the different characters, strengths and weaknesses kind of like what you were saying. But they’re also going to have to be able to play to their opponents.

So if they know what their So you’re going to get around their

defense. Same kind of concept in Smash Brothers, you know each character, each person will pick a character, and then they’re going to have to know that character’s strengths and weaknesses to be able to overcome and actually defeat that player. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Stephen: I was just saying, in my thinking you’ve got…

The guy who is maybe not as heavily built has a good arm. So he’s the quarterback, the guy that’s, you know, the refrigerator and he’s in front of the quarterback, the little wiry guy that has quick feet and he runs and catches you know, but you might have two guys, one guy can. You can pass it to him and he’ll hang on to it and run like the Dickens, whereas another guy can run fast and catch it better.

So that’s the same thing here. It’s just that they’re using the, the avatar of the video. Yes. The one pushback I get from a lot of parents, and I’ve heard this from multiple is, well, this is going to just change our culture. And I point out that football has not always been a high school. Equivalent class or thing.

It’s only been within several generations and we’ve changed that. Golf is a sport now. In high school that kids can play and golf is not the same. It’s, it’s a single player thing as opposed to a team thing. So this is just another extension in my mind. No.

Eric: And I, I, I would completely agree. And to piggyback off of that football nowadays.

Is not really the same as football was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago as those rules and like even the equipment that they wear is constantly evolving. Yes. So, I mean, and that’s going to be, that’s going to be the same thing. So. Things that were in the past. Yes, we will still kind of do them today, but it just looks a little bit different.

Stephen: And so two other big things I always like to point out is that number one. You can have a bigger variety of kids that can be on a team and join a sports team. Whereas I was not necessarily big enough to really play football. I might’ve been able to run, which I probably would have done very scared to keep.

So I wouldn’t, I could have played baseball, but the point is It’s very connected to physical ability. And even today, most high schools, the sports teams are male dominated. There’s not as many female teams, basketball, baseball. Yeah, we do have the teams, but you don’t get the mixture of male and female playing on the same team.

E sports allows all of that. Plus, I’m guessing you can have a bigger team than most football, baseball teams. More kids that can join it. So, how many kids do you have on the team?

Eric: In general, we, for the competitive or in all of e sports

Stephen: together? Competitive on all of it together.

Eric: So all together, generally around 50 or so, which for us, that’s, that’s massive for those who don’t know much about biomed, we are a smaller school with graduating classes in the around 70s or so.

So you have 50 students in it. That is. A very massive number. This year currently, we are still in the process of registering teams and getting teams ready, and the only one that’s ready so far is we have one Smash team that has about eight or nine players. Yeah, about. But we know that there’s some other people that are trying to put other teams together, so we’re kinda in a weird limbo waiting for them to make sure that We have all of the players to make sure that we have a team.

So,

Stephen: so what are some of the other games that you could play or are played in competition?

Alexis: There’s Valorant, there’s Apex Legends, Overwatch 2 Mario Kart 8

Eric: Rocket League, Rocket League, oh,

Alexis: Fort, Fortnite, can’t forget that. Yeah, Fortnite. Male schoolers love Fortnite. Yeah. We can

Eric: do chess too.

That’s, that’s another one that I was also about to say is chess which is, you know which is also really cool. Is there any others? Am I forgetting any? I’m sure there’s more. We’re in a specific division. And in our division, there’s only certain games that you can play competitive. And there’s a whole bunch of different divisions that you can, that you can join just in our specific one.

Those are pretty much most of the games. Oh and in case we forgot to actually mention smash brothers, that, that, that went to obviously,

Stephen: you know, to help people wrap their minds around it. Sports have changed and evolved and are different. You know, we think of high school sports football baseball, but like I said, now there’s golf and golf is definitely not a I have to be super strong and super fast.

It’s a skill race car driving, which I brought up Gran Turismo in the movie. That’s out. That’s a different skill, but it’s considered a sport and some of the other sports out there, you know, the, the triathlon where you have rifle shooting and skiing and tobogganing this, the toboggan sled, that’s a sport ice skating, the figure skating, all of these are different with different skills.

This is just the modern skill.

Eric: to, to add on to that, cause I do completely agree with that too. There is still a level of. Physical skill that is needed. ’cause as, as you were playing a lot of these things, when you’re playing in these competitions, a lot of these things happen at a blink of an eye super fast.

So you have to be able to quickly take in all of that information and then, Physically react. It’s, it’s just that that physical reaction isn’t necessarily a, a tackle or a sack or maybe a kick of a ball. You’re, you’re, you are moving your hands and you actually have to be quick with that in itself. So there is still a physical level to it.

It’s just not as not full body. Yeah, it’s not full body. You’re not breaking your bones. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully while doing it.

Stephen: But reiterate again. You can have boys and girls on the same. Yes. Yes. You could have somebody who’s in a wheelchair that could never have even done necessarily golf and getting around on the course they can play e sports.

And I know some of the new adapter controllers words

Eric: right out of my mouth because that’s actually about what that was. I was going to say is I is more acceptable. Accessible. That’s the word I’m trying to say. It is more accessible than a lot of your traditional sports. And for those parents who who are listening and you are concerned with, Hey, like, Hey, maybe your child has some accessibility things that they need like assistance on.

There are a whole bunch of special controllers that help that are designed for multitude of different how do I want to say it? What’s the word? Physical abilities. Yes, yes. No, for sure. Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you. And also somebody, and I know when my son and daughter were in school they had a lot of friends that were identified as being on the spectrum what we used to call autism.

I, I know that still comes up, but they try and use that on the spectrum more. And. With the input of football or baseball, they would never be able to compete and, you know, not do something like that. It gets overwhelming, but the video game interest is usually a lot stronger and that gives them something they can go do.

So again, the diversity and the inclusion, that’s buzzwords in, you know, this decade and video games are it. That’s what gives it to everybody. So why did Biomed decide to do an e sports team?

Eric: I’ll be honest with you. We weren’t here yet. Yeah. We we weren’t here when they started. If I

Alexis: had to take a guess.

A lot of kids really

Eric: wanted it. Yeah, no, for sure. It was, it was started by Mr. Alex Wolf. He’s still teaching. I, I forget where he’s at now. But he, he started it and then it was passed down to Aaron Ettinger. And then it was passed down to us. I do know this for our community since biomed, it is a, it is a a choice school.

So we actually pull from a whole bunch of different districts. So we don’t have any actual physical sports ourselves. Most of those students go back to their, like. Hometown home district for it. But eSports is our actual only competitive sport that we have that’s specifically biomeds. Mm-hmm. . And it’s also really nice because everything is done at the actual school.

Mm-hmm. that it, we can actually we can host, we can host the entire eSports mm-hmm. right here on campus.

Stephen: So, so do some of these kids have some big rigs, some pretty impressive setups for their home stuff?

Alexis: Some of them have told me about their home setups, yeah. No, for sure, for sure. And they, I’ve had kids tell, ask me too, like, can I bring in my PS5?

And I’m like, is that a good idea?

Eric: Heh, heh, heh. But yeah.

Stephen: So when they come in for a practice, we’ve touched on this just a little when they come in for a practice, what’s a practice look like? It’s I assume it’s not just chaotic. Turn on TVs and play video games up. Time to go home. What? What are you doing at a practice for the kids?

So

Eric: each week Each week or every other week, we will have a little, like a little mini lesson before we actually start our competitions, not our competition, our, our practice. And in those mini lessons, there are things on like community and respect and being a team player. So we’ll have tiny little conversations about that.

It’s, it’s. easy to forget that we’re dealing with young ones, you know, and so some of these things, like they’re still, they’re still trying to build these skills. So we’ll have, we’ll have a conversation about that. And from there though, it does kind of depend on each team and their strengths and weaknesses.

Last year we, we went through and our Smash Bro or Smash Bros. Captain. He went through and he watched all of the others play, all of his other team members play, and he identified like, hey, you’re constantly getting thrown because you are doing X, Y, and Z, so in order to combat that, you can, and they will kind of work through, they’ll work through some of those strategies together as a, as a team.

Stephen: And then who do you compete against? Because I know the new generation, young generation, the studies are showing that they’re less interested in traditional sports. They’re not watching football, baseball, basketball as much, but Markiplier and PewDiePie, Not them thinking otherwise, you know, and I know these kids watch the twitch streaming like constantly Do you compete against and who watches these and you know, tell us a little bit about the competition

Alexis: Just the different schools that are also in our league.

They, they kind of come up with a schedule for us to be like, oh, this week you’re going to compete against this school for a school that came to mind Akron STEM. Yeah. That

Eric: they’re one one, one also thing. So we are in the division and what’s kind of unique again with e sports compared to your physical.

sports is we play all of our competitions actually at the school. So we’ll play people that are two, three, four hours away still in Ohio. But we’ll be able to get on at the same time. We don’t have those long bus rides to get to, to get to one another. So really Like Alexis was saying, anyone in our division we’re just putting a roster, they come up with it for us, and it’s not always the same.

I do know that they’re working on some of the fine details for that. I will say, I actually don’t know who we’re competing against this year because they haven’t completed those rosters yet.

Stephen: The season starts in January or something, right? Is that it?

Eric: Yes and no. So, if you think of your traditional sports, you know, football is just in the fall.

Generally, like, track is in the spring. We actually have both a fall and a spring season. All of the same games are played in the fall and in the spring. So, for the fall, chances are only our Smash Bros. team is going to be ready to start competing, and we have scrimmages this week, and the actual season starts next week.

But in January… We have an opportunity to reorganize ourself. So the Smash team will probably want to play again. But as I was saying earlier, there’s people who are interested in like Overwatch and League. If they, if they miss the deadline for this season, they’re always able to get their team together and play in the spring season.

So we are starting now and we will also start again.

Stephen: Got it. Nice. And can anybody watch these? Do they stream the competitions? Some people do. We didn’t

Eric: do it last year. Yeah last year was… Alexis and I first year, so there was a lot of information that we had to, to gather. There is, there is streaming.

Most of it does happen through the official Discord, but we can, we can stream through Twitch if we want to. And we can have parents or whoever wants to watch, watch. That’s something that is on our… To do list as it is quickly approaching

Stephen: for us. Yeah. And so if you like compete for seven weeks or whatever, and you win, is there then a bigger Ohio state competition is a national competition?

How does that work?

Alexis: Yep. There’s like the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. So that’s in November. I believe

Eric: I do know for it for sure That there is like once we once we are let’s say we we win in our actual division We’ll play against other divisions again within our league But our league is only for Ohio I don’t think that we have a national at least for the one that we’re specifically in But that doesn’t say that there isn’t other leagues that Schools can join that do a national

Stephen: competition.

Akron have the like Ohio state finals or something like that. They, they host.

Eric: They did last year. Yeah, they did. Akron, Akron did some and Mount Union also, Mount Union also did some as well. It might have also been like the different seasons as well. Yeah, cause Mountain Union I think was at the end of the year.

Yeah,

Stephen: yeah. Nice, they’re both up around us. Yeah, yeah. But again, you can, you should be able to stream it. You know, not necessarily. But I, I think it’d be exciting to go like to Akron and see all these teams actually competing with the video games. I’ve had many, many kids come through the house and video games have always been a thing.

And I’ll tell you, so, so if you guys played the kids, do you get your butts kicked?

Alexis: And he’s played more than I have. Last year I coached Valorant and I still am not clear on the rules.

Eric: No, fair, fair. So I played against Smash and I was able. So, I was able to beat most except for our top three players.

I was not able, I was not able to beat them. But also, I grew up playing Smash Brothers, so I played, I played a lot, but now as… I get older, I don’t have as much time to, to play, to play the games. So yeah, they whooped me. You

Stephen: guys are much closer to that age group, but I’ll tell you, if they add space invaders in there, I’ll take any of those kids on.

Eric: If we go. Killer instinct, the Super Nintendo version. I actually had them pull it up on one of our big TVs up here and I was able to defeat two or three of them in a row without even getting hit. So yeah, you want to take it back to like old school killer instinct? I got you. . Oh, .

Stephen: That played street Fighter two on Super Nintendo and they would get so they were so good.

Played so much. That just for show at parties, they would actually sit with their backs to the TV and fight and fight each other. Wow. And it wasn’t just on the opposite sides. They were like right there. And with the moves cool. Because they, because that’s the other thing people don’t understand is when you get those top baseball players, the top football players, they, they practice throwing, they practice throwing, they, they practice hitting.

They practice hitting. They practice until they get it. So minutely tuned. One of my favorite stories is Dr. Er Larry Bird. He was doing a Pepsi commercial back in the 80s. And what they wanted to show was, you know, he shoots and he misses. He drinks a Pepsi, he shoots and he misses. So they were filming this and they said, okay, shoot and miss.

It took them like 34 times to miss the basket. Because they were tuned and trained. And that’s what these kids are really doing. You know, I can sit down and I can play video games. Ooh, I won. You know. But these kids are like immediately pro level. In the game against other people who have been playing it for thousands of hours.

And the skill level is unheard of at the normal person level. And I think parents still regard the video games as, oh, that’s a kid’s thing, but it’s growing beyond that. And these kids are definitely highly skilled at what they do.

Eric: And again, I feel like for, for those who, parents who are still. Again, like there are skills with those hand eye coordination and to be able to just quickly interpret what is happening in that specific scenario and to react appropriately like that’s, that is, that is very difficult to do.

Stephen: Yes. And I’ve been pointing out the Gran Turismo movie kind of shows that video games lead into real life as much as anything else, you know, that’s only one kid that actually joined the actual racing circuit after training on video games. And how many times have we heard the stories that combat pilots using drones now have been trained on video games?

Eric: Mm hmm. I will say with our, with our military, they have also started using. They’ve started using things like Xbox controllers on their like bomb defusal robots and stuff like that. So even being able to navigate a video game controller, such as the Xbox controller. If they go into the military, they literally might be using it if they go into something like bomb defusal, which is really cool.

Stephen: And I’ve also been telling parents. That the reason the OS OHSAA approved it for varsity letters is because so many schools are recruiting college for eSports teams, but they were having to go outside of Ohio because we didn’t have a lot at the time. And now there’s like 200 and some schools that have eSports teams and parents are like, what?

And the kids, oh my God, it’s so hilarious because the kids go, wait. I can get a college degree by playing video games. I’m like, yeah, I keep playing overwatch And the parents are like, oh my gosh, and it freaks them out a little bit. The the younger parents like you guys not quite as much they get it a little more But if you start getting parents with kids that are teenagers and they’re in their Forties or so they don’t always get it and you tell them.

Yeah, these kids are getting scholarships to college Maybe not all full scholarships and maybe not you know full rides and stuff like that But it’s starting to happen and it’s going to come it’s growing bigger every year, I think All right, so anything else you guys want to add or say about the eSports these sports teams that I missed asking you about

Eric: It’s always I mean, it’s always it’s always a good time. I don’t know. I don’t think I got

Stephen: anything I always connect it to that The video game industry is bigger than movies and pro football put together and and that’s a number I throw at parents how big the industry is and that there are plenty of companies looking for Not just programmers.

Video games have grown beyond having to program to be in video games. There’s so many jobs in the industry that it’s a good one for kids to actually think of as a career. It is not just something that the nerds do, it’s something a lot of people do. That wasn’t quite the case even a decade ago. No, for sure.

So the one I love throwing out, I’ve got, I printed it off from indeed. com, is Blizzard was looking for narrative design storytellers starting at 98, 000, no college degree in the requirements. Wow. And that’s just the one I use to shock parents. So. Go ahead.

Eric: So I’m also I’m also thinking with that. So definitely the, the creative storytelling is a critical part in video games.

And it’s really cool to see those who want to be writers and authors and stuff like that. Being being a creative storyteller for a video game industry is. absolutely phenomenal. And even if you didn’t want to do that part and if you’re thinking like, oh, it’s just video games working for a company like NVIDIA, they make graphics cards, but not only do they make graphics cards, but those same pieces of hardware that give you the stunning visuals, they’re also used in a whole bunch of data centers to quickly process a whole bunch of different information.

They’ll use that. To model things like infectious diseases and that spread of infectious diseases, they’ll work on heavy heavy computations as well. So even if you’re not necessarily interested in the video game aspect of it, like those are those pieces of technology that do fuel it are also applicable in a whole bunch of other fields as well, which is really

Stephen: cool.

Yes. And I, I’ve been talking to the. Primary school, middle grade because they do teach a narrative storytelling class and talking to them about that. So that’s the other thing is these skills and video games are permeating the kids lives so much that kids in third and fourth grade are learning about making video games in one way or another.

You know, that also, I think people need to understand that kids that. Don’t know anything about video games or anything to do with the coding or, you know, how are they work? There go be a little bit behind in the coming world because it’s permeating the life more and there’s more of that Available.

So I love that bio meds that progressive with you know, third graders doing it on

Eric: not Not necessarily eSports as a whole but like kind of like games kind of like games and education Have you heard a blue kit? So Bluekit is, it, it, it’s, it’s where you can… You play a whole bunch of different games, but in order for you to complete an objective, you have to answer a whole bunch of different questions.

And what we as teachers can do is we can input our content into these questions that students have to answer. And depending on how many that the students actually get right, they’ll be able to like move so many spaces or collect so many things. So we can actually still use video games as a way to get students to study and to work hard.

But we’re also keeping their interest at the same time. So they want to do well in this game, so the only way to do well in this game is to actually study and learn the things that you have to learn. So, even as educators, we can leverage the idea of games to get students to… Learn the things we need ’em to learn or want, or want them to want them to,

Stephen: to learn.

Get ’em where they’re at, not where you think they should be or where it used to be. Yeah. Because if you’re,

Eric: oh, yeah, so, no, sorry. Yeah, yeah. No, all

Stephen: you. No, no, it’s, it’s all you.

Eric: Oh, yeah. I was gonna say, compared to just skill and drill, like, Hey, do 20 of these, you know, then students are bored, dozing off, and they’re not gonna do anything, so, right.

But yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have dysentery and you’ve died.

So that was something I thought of going back a second. Some of these games are on multiple platforms. PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo usually has their own games. And then some are on like PCs with Steam and all that. Is there like guidelines on this game played in the league is going to be on this platform?

Or, or how does that work? Because some of them are cross platform and some are not.

Eric: The, the cross platform ones, you are allowed to play cross platform. I do know that. Yeah but then there’s like Smash and Mario Kart. Yeah, there’s, there’s some games that are specific to a system or a what’s the word?

Launchers, like, for example, Fortnite has to go through the Epic Games launcher. So there are some… Yeah, it does. It does just depend, but I can tell you this, though. If there is a game and the students are able to play it on PC, they’re playing it on PC over a console. Most of them are really good. At the mouse and keyboard compared to the actual controller.

Stephen: Okay. That’s interesting. But that’s expected. I mean, they start off with bio med with computers and they have computers for everything, for their whole careers. It lives with them. I know my kids my son still uses his laptop five years out of school. So it’s getting a little old. But like, what about.

I know I’ve heard a lot of gamers, they will use wired controllers because they’re more responsive than the wireless. What do you do for Nintendo? Do they get wired pro controllers or do they use Joy Cons? We

Alexis: got a Switch, so like, we have the Joy Cons ready to go already. And did anybody use a wired one last

Eric: year?

I don’t remember it. We had a couple people use a wired, not, not many, but some of that for us at least does come down to funding. Anything that we get for our esports team, we have to either find grants for or we have to fundraise. So, last year we did a fundraiser and we were able to buy a Switch. And we were also able to buy a copy of Super Smash Brothers, but this year we’re going to also do some more fundraising because our computers are a little bit older and we want to keep things as up to date as, as possible.

Stephen: Right. Yeah, I bet the computers get more, way more expensive than the consoles. Oh, for sure. For sure. All right. Well, guys, I love talking to you. It’s been great. I know you’ve got class coming up. I have another meeting soon. I appreciate you taking the time and I’d really like to stay in touch. Find out how the season’s going with the kids, what they’re doing.

And then if you have fundraisers or if you have something going on, keep me in mind on your list and shoot me an email. I’d love to. Stay involved in knowing what’s going on. Cause I mean, you guys are a mile away from or five miles away. You know, I think it’s awesome that you’ve got this and you’re doing it.

So thank you guys.

Eric: No, thank you. That would actually be really appreciated too. Yeah.

Stephen: Let me know. I don’t have a huge audience in the area, but I do have some people if there’s a fundraiser, if there’s, oh, that was something else. Do you guys have a team name and jerseys and stuff?

Eric: No. Yeah, we actually talked about, we talked a little bit about getting like shirts made for them.

Last year, because they had shirts made I think the year before, but we, we weren’t able to get any last year, but I know this year that we’re actually really trying to get I know shirts more than jerseys per se, but still kind of, I guess the, in the, in the, in the same vein, with our actual, because we have an actual e sports logo as well to, you know, get that on it.

So that is, that is something that we’re definitely also looking into.

Stephen: Cool. Well, if you open it up to parents and stuff, buying some of the swag shoot me that too. Cause I’ll definitely get a shirt and wear it around. No dude, that’s awesome. All right, guys. I appreciate it very much. It was a great talk.

And again, I’ll let I’ll let you know when this goes live. I’ll probably put it up pretty soon because I want to get this out and I want parents and people to be able to see it and see how the world has changed and wake some people up to it. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Have a good night.