Discovered Wordsmiths

South Carolina author Sasscer Hill, an amateur jockey and horse breeder, writes mysteries in series – The Nikki Latrelle Horse Racing Mysteries (five volumes), The Fia McFee Mysteries (two volumes to date), TRAVELS OF QUINN, GRIPPING TALES OF FACT AND FICTION, and now a new series The Janet Simpson Cozy Mysteries, of which MURDER AT THE WILLCOTTS HOTEL is the third volume. This novella is short, but Hill’s ability to create memorable characters involved in a tight cozy mystery heightened with humor makes this book asset sail! The main character Janet’s observations are present in the opening lines: “I remember the afternoon Kate arrived at the Willcotts Hotel. It wasn’t that she blew in like a pink breeze, her hat piled with coral flowers and feathers. It wasn’t her small, prancing poodle, its collar encrusted with coral-colored rhinestones, and it wasn’t the bellboy staggering beneath her three pink suitcases. No, the memory is sharp because it was the day I met Paul Delaveev…’ The theatrical flair established, the cleverly designed mystery unfolds.

https://www.sasscerhill.com/

https://booktavern.com/

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I have Sasser Hill. Sasser, how are you doing today? I’m

Sasscer: doing well. Thank you.

Stephen: Good. Yeah, I’m excited to hear about your book. But before we delve into that, tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, and what you like to do besides writing.

I

Sasscer: am living in Aiken, South Carolina. I moved down from Maryland 12 years ago, which is where I did most of the horse business I was involved in for 32 years. And then I came here because it is a horse area and I knew it’d be a very favorable area for me to stick around with horsey people and see horses.

And it’s also a dog town and I love dogs and it’s every other car that goes by has a dog with its head sticking out the window. So it’s really a nice town.

Stephen: Nice. And when you say horse business, what exactly were you doing? I was

Sasscer: breeding foaling, raising, breaking thoroughbred racehorses.

And I was also an owner who raced them and I did that for 32 years.

Stephen: Okay I would expect there’s some horses in your books. Sometimes.

Sasscer: Oh, yeah. Are our horse racing murder mysteries. The ones that have been out and actually, they’re rather traditional mysteries. They have a little bit of.

Blood and guts in them, nothing too strong, but now I’m writing I’m trying my hand at a few cozy novellas, because they’re quick and easy to write, and cozy mysteries are so popular right now, so I thought why not see if we can get a little bit of that income as well as what I usually write, so it’s

Stephen: been fun.

Okay let’s delve into that. Talk about your books a little bit. So today we’re going to be talking about Murder at the Wilcots Hotel and this is not your first book. Is that correct?

Sasscer: No, it’s like maybe number 9.

Stephen: Okay. So are these in a series or are they just separate individual books?

Sasscer: Most of them have been my first series is a five book series about a gal named Nikki Littrell, female jockey, very young.

The next series I wrote, if you want to call it that, was a two book deal for St. Martin’s featuring a really strong character, female character named Fia McKee. But years ago, when I was in a Sisters in Crime group that I met, and I was taking we were doing critiques, this is when I was still up in Maryland the Sisters in Crime Chessie chapter, that was my chapter wanted to do a bunch of collections of mysteries.

So anthology. So I wrote two anthologies for two different two different stories for two, two different anthologies, and they did quite well. And they were both about a gal named Janet Sim Simpson, and she was a middle aged, if not beyond middle aged female. And they were actually cozy books and everybody said we’d like to see more of this, but then I rushed right back into racehorses and people, fighting with the drugs and fighting, when you have horse racing that has the amount of money that’s in it.

There’s a lot of room for graft and corruption, so my characters were always fighting that. They were always on the side of Thoroughbred Racing. But Janet is, Janet’s great. She’s my older character. She is like somebody out of a Mary Higgins Clark book. She’s smart and attractive and does everything right and never did anything wrong like my other characters.

And she was, had a domineering father, so she was sheltered, and then she married a domineering husband. And although she loved him dearly, he never gave her much freedom, and she always wanted a racehorse, but she was never allowed to buy one. And he finally passed away, and suddenly she’s an extremely wealthy.

Woman with very who’s naive and has very little world experience and that gets her into all kinds of problems that only, she needs her wits to get away from con men who want her money and that sort of thing. So those are the books.

Stephen: Okay. And where does the Wilcox hotel book fall in that set of books.

Sasscer: The 1st, 2 in the set are just the short stories I wrote for the anthology. So this is you could call it story or book number 3. And it takes place at the actual Wilcox with an X on the end hotel. Ah, okay. Which is a 5 star very well known hotel very popular visiting place and people come and it’s also near Augusta, where they had the masters golf tournament every year and they have people from Australia that book 5 years in advance and this town goes wild when they have the masters because we’re just.

Like a 35 minute drive. So that’s fun. And Janet has, she’s amazed when she gets to the hotel to discover that all these different people stayed there, especially Franklin Roosevelt, who had an affair with a woman and would come down by train and the train would mysteriously break down when it arrived at the Wilcox Hotel.

Nice. Amusing.

Stephen: Yeah. Okay. Nice. So are there horses in this one? Yes.

Sasscer: Okay. Because when her husband died, she got herself a racehorse. Finally. Okay.

Stephen: So she’s okay. Cool. And so I’m going to jump a little bit here. A lot of times they say for authors, write what you know. So do you. Is that why you wanted to write these books?

Why’d you choose mysteries for this type of book? And is it, did you put the horses in there? Could you have done something else? Dogs, or just whatever. Because it’s, it sounds a little bit like a Jessica Fletcher, every time she wakes up, there’s somebody having a mystery to solve.

Sasscer: Yeah I since I was involved in the horse racing industry for 32 years, And I loved it, and I know the horses so well, and I spent a lot of time on the backstretch and got to see the underbelly of horse racing. It was a natural, and I’ve always loved mysteries. It’s always been my favorite genre.

So it was just and as a kid, a kid teenager, I read everything Dick Francis ever wrote, because I loved his books, his horse racing murder mysteries. They were great books. And so I was drawn in that direction for sure.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. And what are people saying about the stories that I’ve read so far?

Sasscer: They like them. They like the Janet books. And I, this book has not, it’s not actually supposed to come out. It’s hard to explain until October 1st, but it is available for pre order. And of course, I sent a couple of copies around and people that read them, love them. And I got two excellent reviews.

But it’s a hard business, there’s like a million cozies out and everybody’s clawing their way to try to get to the top. It’s a tough business as

Stephen: Are there any other books out there that you could think of that the stories and the writing is similar to yours?

Sasscer: Dick Francis very much, but also a lot of people say that if Dick Francis. And Janet Ivanovich had a daughter that would be Sasser Hill, because my books have a lot of humor in them. I love humor. Not, slapstick or anything like that, but just the occasional one liner that my heroine will think.

That’s very amusing. And people have laughed out loud sometimes reading my books. I also write a lot like Sue Grafton. I always loved her and I loved her style. So I guess that would be similar, but the other my favorite authors and books that I think I do sound like even though it might be very.

Ignorant of me to say this, but I love Michael Connolly, Robert Craze, Robert Parker was my first. I loved Robert Parker. And I, and of course, Sue Grafton and I do tend to prefer male writers. Most of the female writers, they’re always talking about food and babies, and that just doesn’t interest me.

That doesn’t interest me at all. Most of the female mystery writers, they have to have a mother and a child in there to really, get the tension up, but I don’t think you need to do that. I think there’s plenty of ways to get tension.

Stephen: And sometimes a dog.

Sasscer: Sometimes a dog, although I haven’t written a dog book, but I probably will.

Yeah,

Stephen: Horses, they, they, you always see dogs on the horse farms and roaming around and that. So it does seem to fit. I agree. They

Sasscer: do. They go together, hand in glove.

Stephen: Yeah, my daughter was taking horse riding lessons. So I’ve done my share of leading horses and cleaning stalls and all that.

Not racing them, but. So that’s good. Cesar, your books, let’s the Wilcott Hotel. Would you like to see this or the series turned into movies or a TV show if you had a choice?

Sasscer: TV shows, because I think that things that are streaming now are doing better. I think, I watch a lot of the mysteries on, the British mysteries on Acorn and the other one which escapes me at the moment.

And I really enjoy those. And a lot of them are like an hour and a half, and then they’ll have a second, and here comes the next chapter. Since books, you have chapters and they’re ongoing. And all those mysteries for so many years, starting way back with what was it?

The Hot Book in New York NYPD Blue. They always had ongoing series within the story. Each story stood alone, but, and I think that’s a great thing to do, and I think you can do that when you stream. I don’t see movies being something that’s going to happen to or for me. Most people have said.

Oh, your book should be a movie or why aren’t you on TV? I don’t understand why you’re not on TV. And I always say, you have to know somebody that knows somebody and then I always look at him and go, do you know anybody and they always know. It’s hard. I did have a producer agent for a while.

I sisters and crime did a whole thing. That was hello, Hollywood. And we went out there and we actually met some people that could put our books into TV or movies. But. That’s something you need to work at and work at. And just one trip out to Hollywood and then getting on a plane and going home is not, it’s not going to do it.

I don’t think.

Stephen: Oh, you’re incredibly lucky, . Or if you like, happen to have a real murder in your town and so the news agencies want to talk to you ’cause you’re the local murder writer, now you’re in the spotlight and suddenly someone wants to talk to you. .

Sasscer: No, and I’m I’m right across the river from Georgia and they’re, half the people in Hollywood have moved to Georgia.

Yeah. To film. It’s big. So much cheaper. Hi, I’m right here.

Stephen: Yeah. Back in the day, it seemed like British Columbia and up in Canada. There’s a lot Vancouver, there’s a lot of movies and TVs. Yeah, there’s so hard. Now it’s Georgia. I live close to Cleveland and part of some of the Marvel movies were filmed up there.

Like the first Avengers. There were sections of it. But I don’t know what happened. It seemed like there was a five year time period where we were getting tons of movies and then just died. The latest movie, a man called auto with Tom Hanks, there’s a train scene and that happened right here, the Tiger Valley scenic railroad.

So there’s still some, but yeah, it’s weird. The big bucks that could bring in, but then the government or, the city doesn’t want to give so many breaks or, they don’t want, they lose that George has been just hammering it.

Sasscer: Yeah that’s because they’re favorable.

It’s all about the money, and there’s. Producers and filmmakers, they’re going to go where they make the most money and if they go somewhere and they’re making a lot of money and then suddenly there’s politics get involved and people are shutting them down a little bit, they’re out of there. They don’t need to be there.

They’ll go someplace else.

Stephen: Yep. All right. Cesar, what are your plans for your next book or series?

Sasscer: I’m going to stick with the Janet Simpson books just for a little bit. The book that’s actually all but finished. I’m just writing the epilogue. Now is called murder in the bluegrass and that takes place in Kentucky.

And that, I think it’s. That’s a good book. I’m very pleased with it. It’s another novella and at the very end of the book the trainer for Janet Simpson says I’m taking the horses back to Aiken because, there’s a huge training center here and that’s why the first book takes place at the Wilcox Hotel because Janet comes down here to see, to watch her horse get broken and learn how to Do all the things that horses need to do, because there’s a beautiful training track right here in Aiken.

And so the trainer says, we’re going to take these horses, they’re young, they’re just two year olds, we’re going to take them back to Aiken, let them grow up a little bit. And then this summer, if they’re ready, we’re going to Saratoga. So one of the characters in the book says looks like we’re going to Saratoga next.

And it’s funny, it was a perfect setup. So that’s where the next book will take place. Okay,

Stephen: nice. Yeah, it’s a little foreshadowing without being a cliffhanger. Nice. So I was going to ask this earlier. I forgot. Do you find that a horse other horse people horse racing people farm that they’re attracted your books or is it still mostly just people that like mysteries and just so happens that yours have horses that and they’re enjoying it.

Sasscer: The horse people. Love my books. In fact, I won the Ryan Award. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. There’s, if you’ve ever heard of Ireland’s Ryan Air, it’s a huge concern. It’s an airline and Dr. Tony Ryan decided that there should be an award given to writers of Thoroughbred Racing books, be they fiction or otherwise.

And I was just amazed that I went out there and won this award, and I was up against Felix Francis Dick Francis son, and that was big competition. And my story won, and that was great, and you get a 10, 000 book award. Nice. Now, the Edgars don’t pay you anything except that you get sales. But that was so exciting.

That was one of the most exciting nights of my life. I might’ve had too much to drink.

Stephen: I don’t think there’s a law actually that about getting on a horse. If you’re drunk, you can’t drive when you’re drunk, if the horse can get you home in that, what they used to do, put them on the horse, let them take them home.

Sasscer: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Stephen: So if. If that your books were turned into movies or TV shows, just about every profession hates seeing movies with some of their profession in it. Because it’s never 100 percent right. There’s always things liberties. They take for the fiction in that, computers back in the day, they used to not even have wires hooking anything up and they would show somebody typing 1 line and the keyboard and it would do 2 million things.

That’s just not how it works. And cops complain all the time. Do you think you would want to, you would deal with them just getting things wrong about horse racing, or do you think you might be able to consult and help make sure that’s more accurate?

Sasscer: I would hope that they would let me do that.

I know about what you just said about cops. I went to something called Reuters Police Academy on two different occasions.

Stephen: Oh, I heard about that recently.

Sasscer: Yeah, and then you meet these guys that are just brilliant police, anything from FBI to CIA to DEA. They’re all there and they want you to call them up and ask them questions.

And I do, I’ll be writing a book and I’ll say, is this that I’ve written? Does this sound realistic to you? And they’ll go, yeah, but as far as the horses go a lot of the good reviews I’ve gotten Have been people writing, I am so sick of reading horse books where the author has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

Not so assessor Hill. She really knows her stuff. That’s because I was in the business for 32 years. I guess I know my stuff. I should. So anyway yeah, I think, but as far as everybody I’ve talked to who’s had a movie done or anything like that. It’s gotten better. It’s gotten different. You have Michael Connolly, who’s now producing and completely involved in his movies.

And the more that happens, the better it is, because. A lot of authors have told me in the past, this is in the last over the last 10 years, just take the money and don’t even watch the movie because you will hate it. So I don’t know, it would be interesting to find out. I’d love to find it.

Stephen: And I think, though, that sentiment is changing a bit because I think the studios are finding that if they’re.

Much more if they stay to the heart of the story, I understand, as of 800 page Stephen King novel is not going to fit into a two hour movie and they have to strip it down. But if the heart of it is there and the main parts of it are there, it’s a much better received movie that people enjoy it.

It does well. But when they. When they cut the author out and cut the material down and change it so much, people don’t enjoy it as much. So I think that is changing. That sentiment of take the money and shut up, that Stephen King says that all the time. I don’t care what they do. They paid me, they bought the rights, do whatever they want.

I’ve still got my books. And that’s been the overall, but I think that is changing that they want to be more accurate to what the source material is.

Sasscer: Yeah, it’s definitely changed with Michael Connelly and Lee Child. He’s been involved in his Jack Reacher books. Yep. And I,

Stephen: that’s good.

That’s good. Jack Reacher is a great example because the movies with Tom Cruise We’re not received. Maybe they made money or not. I’m not sure, but they just weren’t talked about received. But the TV show that prime did Amazon prime, I thought was great and was very accurate. He was a big guy.

Yeah. But what I loved about the Lee child books is I just read last year, my first Lee child books. And what I loved about them was. His style of writing is so different than others. They’re short sentences, short words. He doesn’t use long sentences, doesn’t use big words. He doesn’t go into flowery descriptions.

It’s fast paced all the way through. Yeah, that’s what I like. Yeah, and it just keeps you

Sasscer: turning. That’s why I prefer the way men write because it’s the women who usually go off into these long flowery things about, I don’t know what.

Stephen: And Stephen King. Stephen King likes to go on and on. I don’t read

Sasscer: Stephen King.

I just think the guy’s kind of weird and I don’t really like his books that much. I got stuck in a revolving door with him one time and his wife at the Edgars in New York. Really? It was so funny because he had been the master of ceremonies and we got in this revolving door. It was pouring down raining and it wouldn’t move.

It got stuck. And I thought. I’m stuck involving door with Stephen King and his wife said, Stephen, that wasn’t so bad. Was it, because he doesn’t like that kind of stuff. They we got out, they got in a beautiful limo that pulled up and put them on. I got into a taxi cab that had in the backseat was sopping wet and I sat on a wet seat, but we went on down the street.

And we pulled up next to them in traffic, and I’m not making this up. I looked over. He has a flask and he is just downing it. Downing it. I’m thinking Stephen is getting better now.

Stephen: That’s hilarious. I love that. And I see, I believe that he doesn’t like that stuff. He has that. And that’s part of his writing is that down home.

Good old boy type writing. And I think his personality himself, I think that’s hilarious. Of course. Getting stuck in an elevator that, or a revolving door that won’t move, sounds like a Stephen King short story.

Sasscer: I know! That’s just what I thought! I thought that. And I’ll tell you one other interesting Stephen King thing.

I had a horse trainer for years who was from Maine. And when he was a little kid in school, Stephen King taught them music lessons. He was a teacher. And he would bring in these little magazines and what they were was like Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. And he would read out loud from them and he would say, someday I’m going to be in one of these magazines.

How cool is

Stephen: that? That is pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. You mentioned one of your favorite authors a little earlier. What are some of your favorite books and authors? I

Sasscer: love the Lee child books. And I’m trying to think because we’ve talked about that. I’m trying to think there’s well way, way back in the day, there was a book called the far pavilions.

Which I thought was one of the best books I’ve ever read, and it was written by a woman and it was, they made that into a movie. It was a good movie. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that book, but it was took place in India, and it was a fascinating story. But. There’s so many good books.

There’s so many good books, and it’s hard I’m trying to think, who do I like recently? Oh, gosh, what’s his name? There’s a new author out. He wrote, he writes about a guy who has a little bit of post traumatic stress syndrome. And he hears like a noise in his head all the time, and I’m so sorry to bring it up because I can’t remember the name of the author at the moment, but he’s very good, and he’s newer.

So I would say he’s a favorite. And Craze, I mentioned Craze, but his book, Suspect, is just the best book. It’s actually about a, one of the characters, main characters, is a dog. An ex army dog that has post traumatic stress syndrome because his handler and everybody got blown up. So the dog’s always screwed up and the cop in the book is screwed up because his partner was killed and he’s really a mess.

And they find each other and they heal each other and the dog trainer is really worried about this dog. And he says, I think the dog is a little bit suspect. And that’s why he named it suspect. It’s a great book. I think anybody that loves a good mystery with action and excitement and loves dogs. We’d really enjoy that book.

Nice.

Stephen: Okay. So have you discovered any bookstores down there that you love?

The

Sasscer: only one we have because I live in Aiken. We don’t have a bookstore in Aiken. I go to Augusta, Georgia to the book tavern, and it’s a really nice little down home cute Bookstore and the guy that owns it is great. And he’s been very kind to me and sold some of my books.

Nice. So it’s a nice bookstore, but it’s not, there’s a Barnes and Noble, but, I don’t even go in there. I just not really, they’re not personalized at all.

Stephen: Okay. So before we talk a few author things Sasser, if someone on this, Okay. Street your hometown saw you and said, Hey, I just heard that you write a cozy mysteries.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell him? Oh,

Sasscer: I would say it’s because in all my books, I have never wanted to write the great American novel. I want to entertain and give you something that’s, maybe a little bit scary a little bit funny but always is a destination for a place to escape and be informed and also they are informative books because I always write about things about horses that people don’t have any idea and they learn a lot.

So I do enjoy doing that and I would say that’s why you would read them because I want to entertain you and I want to talk to you about. Chasing the dream, fighting the odds, and helping the helpless. Those are some of my, that’s probably the theme, the basic theme in every story I’ve ever written. I think that’s so important.

And my own personal mantra, which is also reflected in the books is, Stay strong and march on. Just keep going. Nice.

Stephen: Okay, great. All right. Let me ask you a few author things. We’ll chat a little bit about so you’ve written a series. Now you said 9 books. What are some things that you’ve learned over that time that you’re doing different now than you used to do?

Sasscer: When I started out, I had. I always got great grades in creative writing, but that doesn’t mean you know how to write a mystery novel, anything but. And I do have a first book that’s in a drawer where it belongs. And I didn’t have any help. And I remember the, one of the big gals in Sisters in Crime when I met her at a meeting.

She’s a one of the first authors that was a member of Sisters in Crime. And I’m so sorry I can’t think of her name right now. It’s but she was shocked when I told her that I didn’t join Sisters in Crime because I just felt like I wasn’t good enough and that I wouldn’t fit in and all these sorts of things.

And she was like, she, it never even occurred to her that anybody would feel that way. And I think a lot of budding authors are terrified. Why wouldn’t you be terrified? All people do is. Criticize and find things wrong with it and and then the ghouls that do reviews. Oh my God, these people are awful.

I think a lot of writers the one thing I learned was to get support, to join groups like Sisters in Crime. I would urge any author to do that. If you write romances, join Romance Writers of America because these people will help you. They’ll listen to you. They’ll listen to what you’ve written and they will support you.

And that’s so important because without support, you’re nowhere.

Stephen: Yes, exactly. And it helps. You feel better because a lot of people, you know that, oh I’m not a good writer and then you get people telling you, oh, we all feel that way. And you say, I love this, yeah, you’re absolutely right.

That support helps a lot. You mentioned the sisters in crime several times and before we started recording you were talking about. You meet with them through Zoom like we are now, and when you and I first jumped on, I usually use Zencast, and we had some trouble with that, so we switched over to Zoom.

So it’s a totally different world as far as authors go, and the meetings, and over the weekend I mentioned I, I went to a author panel in Pittsburgh, there was a festival of books, and JD Barker was there, and he goes, wow, it’s so good to see some people that aren’t Zoom people. But that has changed things.

So do you guys meet over zoom or do you do face to face or what do you do with that?

Sasscer: Since I left the DC area, Maryland my, my group was the Chesapeake chapter and they’re great. Oh my God. Those gals have won more awards than you can shake a stick at. They, Cleaned up in the Edgars, some of them were winning Edgars and gosh, I can’t think of what the other big award is.

I just was having to congratulate them all. One of the gals that used to be in my class has won every award there is to win for her short stories. And Barb Goffman, she’s very good. Writer and it’s hard not to be there with them. I used to go to Bethesda, Maryland, where we would all meet and it was a writing school.

There’s no such thing like that in making there’s just, you have to be in a big city. And I miss that, although I don’t miss being in the DC area. So

Stephen: it’s an interesting thing because I know. I’m a very much an introvert and a lot of times I’m just like, I don’t know if I want to be around people and that’s what zoom makes really well because there’s a lot of conferences now that you can watch via zoom or participate via zoom and meetings.

I was in a mastermind for a while where it was people from all over the country and we’ve met. Every week at the same time, and I can see, made friends and, it could see everybody because of zoom, but there’s something different about when you go live in your face to face with people.

And I’m doing a retreat this weekend with people live face to face. But I guess the new technology gives you that ability to stay with a group, even if you move out of the area, or be in a group I. The closest city for me, big city Cleveland is an hour away. So that’s a one way hour drive to do any meeting, which becomes very difficult to do very often, but it’s much easier to jump on zoom.

So I think it’s changing how we. As authors work with each other or things like these, meetings right here, that wouldn’t have been as easy years ago would have had to just be over the phone recorded on a little tape recorders or, there’s good and bad with it. Definitely. Do you have you done a conferences or anything via zoom or watching video?

Sasscer: I have done a few but I don’t like them as much as the real thing. I really miss going to voucher con, but since my husband and I are getting older, we’re trying to survive on Medicare. What’s the other one?

Stephen: Social security.

Sasscer: Thank you. Yes. You see what happens when you get older. And I don’t have the money that I used to have.

I can’t afford to. I can’t go to any meeting. That’s going to cost me less than 2000 dollars between the plane. Yeah. Hotel. And the food. And it’s just so expensive. I can’t do it anymore. And I miss Patrick Kahn. I have my annual picture of Lee Child and me and I have four or five of them pictures of me and Lee Child and that was so much fun and me and Michael Connolly and me.

And a lot of these gals that are very popular right now. I miss that. And sitting at the bar and having a drink with some of these people. Now that’s just terrific, you really meet people and get to know them if you’re sitting at a bar and just having a light drink and and everybody’s staying in the same hotel and nobody has to drive anywhere and it’s wonderful.

Yeah.

Stephen: That’s so expensive. Yes, and but the flight, the driving, the hotels, it’s all gone up, which, I’m okay. Yeah, I know it always does, but it seems like it’s jumped higher, faster recently. Yeah,

Sasscer: with the inflation, of course, it has.

Stephen: And for me, I write middle grade. So one of my aspects of marketing is visiting schools and talking to kids.

That’s fine for schools, within a certain radius around me, but I’m not going to be going to a school down in Georgia, like on a Wednesday, that’s a long flight or a car drive. It’s not just, it’s not feasible. So schools really only get the authors that are local.

Except for now, we’ve got zoom and there’s a lot of authors that do zoom meetings with the kids and the schools can get many more authors. And, I’m not saying it’s only about the money, but it’s easier for me to jump on a zoom call for half hour and then get right back to what I was doing rather than trying to drive and meet up at a certain time, et cetera.

And so the schools can get more authors in and authors of their choice, so that’s the technology there has definitely benefited something like that. I will say

Sasscer: yes, it has definitely.

Stephen: And I know like you, you mentioned that the con, but I’m not familiar with that one, but a lot of the cons offer both live and video to some people that, I can go to one or two this year and then I can do five of them on zoom or something like that.

You can still do it. Maybe.

Sasscer: Yeah. I still meet with the Chessy chapter gals up in DC on zoom. Because I missed some of those girls. I knew him for years. So it’s fun to see them.

Stephen: And it’s interesting. Like my mother’s a retired nurse and she gets together once a month with some of her friends for lunch and they do that.

But there’s a couple of them that have moved. Away with retirement and they’re like, why I can’t go my kids, their generation. They’re going to be so used to video everything that it’s like, it won’t matter. Oh, okay. You move. So and so we’ll just dial you in or whatever it is at the time. That they’ll hologram sitting in the chair next to him.

They’ll be able to join and be a part of that. So it keeps the communities. That you like and the people you get along with, you don’t have to just always just say goodbye. Yeah.

Sasscer: That doesn’t, that sounds sad. Always have to say goodbye. That sounds like a line in a song. It

Stephen: probably is. I, if we looked it up, I bet it would be there.

I bet it would be. All sasser, I appreciate you getting on and chatting today. Your book sounds very fun with horses, which I love horses. I don’t have any at the moment, but I still love horses. I’d love to go riding again. It’s been a while. I would too. I miss it. I miss it. Do you have any horses of your own now?

Sasscer: No, not now. We sold the farm. We sold everything. We lost everything in 2008 with that market crash that happened. And and move down here because my God, everything’s so much cheaper down here. It’s like a 3rd, it’s 30 percent of what it was in Maryland near D. C. Wow.

Stephen: Wow. Except for food. But and there’s another benefit right there.

You can write remotely. You can get on meetings and stuff remotely. So I’ve been doing a talk for parents with middle school kids saying. We are not preparing them for what the future is bringing. They’re not going to be ready. We’re not showing them how to use the tools that they’ve got now, let alone stuff 10 to 15 years from now for their life.

I make the point in the talk that as a database administrator, something I’ve done, if you wanted a job. With a big company, you had to go to a big city and now you don’t now you can do the same job remote because everything’s through remote computers. Anyway, whether I’m there or here and I showed the differences.

If I’m making, let’s say 100, 000 a year, a little point 7 acre 2 or 1 bedroom, 4 room house in Chicago is like 420, 000, but in my area, the same day it was a four acre six, seven room house with two bedrooms, and it was like 120, 000. And if I was making a hundred thousand dollars, but living remote, my costs are less, so I just think we’re not.

Our kids aren’t getting prepared for it because the adults don’t necessarily understand how that works nowadays. So I think horse raising horses, you can’t do remotely. That’s the problem.

So some jobs, you can not raising horses and training them, but, but those are the types of jobs that are going to need specialized people that know what they’re doing too. So that’s where our world’s changing using this remote and video stuff is changing the world drastically. And now with the AI and 5G phones and all sorts of things, you won’t even know when somebody’s not.

In a New York office, that they’re living in North Carolina yeah. All right. Hey I will let you go and I appreciate you being on. I wish you luck with your books. Do you have any last minute? Do you have any last minute words of advice for any authors out there?

Sasscer: I’ll just say what my mentor told me when I wrote my first book full mortality, which I have to put in this little.

My first book was called Full Mortality. It was nominated for both an Agatha and a McCavity First Best Book Award. And I was going along and I wasn’t sure what to do and she gave me some advice and then finally she just looked at me one day and she said, Keep going. And that’s it. Keep going. Don’t give up.

Keep going. And that’s the best advice I could give anybody. Great.

Stephen: Keep going. Thanks. I appreciate you taking the time and you have a wonderful day. You too.

Sasscer: Thanks so much.

Luna rey hall is a queer trans non-binary writer. they are the author of space neon neon space (Variant Lit, 2022), no matter the diagnosis (Game Over Books, 2023), the patient routine (Brigids Gate Press, 2023), and loudest when startled (YesYes Books, 2020), longlisted for the 2020 Julie Suk Award. they are the winner of the 2013 Patsy Lea Core in Memorial Award for Poetry. their poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Rumpus, & Raleigh Review, among others.

lunareyhall.com

https://moonpalacebooks.com/

So today on Discovered Luna. Discovered Wordsmith. I have with me Luna. Luna, how you doing today? Good, how are you? How are you? Good, good. And I see you’ve got a twins jersey on, so I’m gonna take a guess where you’re from, but uh, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, and some of the things you like to do besides writing?

Yeah,

Luna: definitely. Um, I, yeah, I’m an author. I’ve this, I have three books out, including the patient routine, which I believe we’ll talk about today. Um, I’m from the Twin Cities, been in Minnesota my whole life. Uh, and outside of writing, obviously I love reading. Um, I love doing art projects. Um, I’ve been collaging recently.

Um, I like to do graphic design. I do a lot of graphic design for my. Social media and stuff. So I’ve been getting into that too. Um, I have two dogs. I play with them all the time. Uh, they take up a lot of time. Yes. Um, otherwise that, that’s kind of the main thing. Uh, that’s, that’s kind of what I do in my day to day.

Stephen: Nice. What are you the dog breeds? My

Luna: older dog is a Beagle mix. Um, and his name is, uh, Yoshi. Great,

Stephen: great name. Oh, that’s interesting. I had an author here named Yoshi.

Luna: Oh yeah. You know, great name. So, um, and then my younger dog is, um, a pit terrier mix and Oh, nice. Yeah, she’s, she’s, uh, just a pup, just a little over a year old.

So,

Stephen: yeah. I. We had, uh, two dogs when my kids were younger, both rescues best dogs I’ve ever owned in my life. Uh, one has since passed away and I miss her greatly. But the other one sitting over there being a scaredy cat is a boxer and maybe English bulldog mix. We’re not really sure. Oh, sure. But, uh, yeah, she’s a great dog.

Anxiety though, when I leave, so that’s a problem.

Luna: Yeah, my dogs. Yeah, they’re very anxious too. And I work from home in my day job, so I’m here all the time. So whenever I leave, they are a mess.

Stephen: No. Yeah. Their time. Yeah. Same here. What, what, what do you do for a day job? I

Luna: work in education publishing. Um, right now it’s in like assessment, so like standardized testing as an editor.

Hmm. It’s not, no, it’s not super fun. My writing is significantly more fun. Right, but it pays the bills.

Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve, I am into helping kids with writing and showing parents and teachers how teaching kids to write can lead to things they can do in their future, including storytelling and video games.

Yeah.

As an outsider, I’ll give it that. I’m not in the system. I see some things that could definitely work better and need improvement with our education system and the common core is not one of the good things.

Luna: Yeah, no, I fully agree. Yeah. Um, luckily I work in a lot of like accessibility and accommodation areas, so I get to work a lot of like braille.

Large print type of stuff, um, that kind of stuff. So that’s, that’s great that I can do something that’s very useful because yes, some of it’s, um, quite painful to get through,

Stephen: but yeah. Yeah, I was just, I was just talking to the Pittsburgh Library. They had a, a fair, and they were showing. About getting braille books into braille, which I would love to do because I’d love to have my book available to everyone.

Even if only one kid ever reads that book in braille. You know, there’s one kid that wouldn’t have read, been able to read that book, right? Totally. Same with large print. ’cause my son has issues with his eyes and he likes. Print, but sometimes it gets too small for ’em. So, you know, I, I think, uh, more authors, especially kids, authors, should look into doing some of those alternatives, even though eBooks have helped and audiobooks have helped.

Luna: Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah. And accessibility is so, don’t wanna say it’s like easy, but it’s, it’s so, it’s so important and it’s something that we actually should try to do more of. It’s easy to put resources into it if you care. So that’s, that’s what I’ll

Stephen: say. Agreed. I, I think we’re definitely better off than we were 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Yeah, definitely. But there’s still some room for improvement. Yeah. So, okay. Alright, so let’s, uh, actually talk about some of your stuff. Uh, um, so why did you want to start writing? Yeah.

Luna: Uh, I don’t have a, a super fun like coming to writing moment. Um, I always like to say that I had no clue what I was doing, like wanting to do when I went into college.

So I was at a community college, um, just trying to get generals done and I had to take an English class and it was a fiction writing or screen screenplay writing one of the two. And. I was like, this is kind of fun. Like the first thing in college that I was like, wow, this is kind of fun. And surprisingly, I was not, you know, a big writing kid when I was in high school or younger than that, or reader, like I, English was not one of my strong subjects.

Um, So, uh, once I took that class, I was like, oh, I like this. And then I had to take another English course, so I took poetry, which is my main, my main focus. Oh, good. Um, and I was like, oh, I love this. And I’m, and I feel like I’m okay at this. Like, it was a combination of the, I’m good at, I’m good at this, and it, it, uh, feels good to do it.

So, um, After that, I just kept writing and it, it’s evolved into this, you know, a decade later. Um, and I keep writing primarily just because I have so many, um, especially with like this book, the patient routine that just came out and some of my previous books. Um, I feel like I just have, um, There are a lot of like specific things that I, I want to and need to say.

So I think that’s, um, why I continue to write is that it, you know, maybe one day if I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where I’m like, ah, I don’t have anything else to say, then maybe I’ll stop. But, um, I. For now. I got, I got things to

Stephen: say. Well, I, I love that. It was a discovery process and you found what felt good and comfortable.

Yeah. I, I, I, I know, I agree with you. I’ve heard a lot of people that do the, uh, oh, I’ve always wanted to write, and my focus was, you know, always on writing in high school and, you know, and. Not everybody comes to it that way. And not everyone. I’ve talked to people who, for years, wanted to write a book and then they retired from their day job and suddenly they had the time to do it.

So yeah, totally. I think that’s an important message for lots of people. Yeah,

Luna: and I mean, I, I sucked at English in high school. I mean, it was not great and you know, I did not, uh, I was not a big reader at all, like I said, and I, um, sur surprised, I think I surprised a lot of people when I was like, I’m gonna pursue writing, you know, as a career.

Nice. Um, and they’re like, what? Like, that’s not you. Like, well actually I think it is.

Stephen: So that, that’s awesome. And. I’m gonna preach for a moment, uh, what something you just said there, you weren’t great with English in high school. That is actually like the least of what you need when you write and telling to tell a story because so many people miss that storytelling part.

They’re so focused on the craft, writing the sentence, and in school we teach kids spelling and grammar. Before they’ve written a single thing. Well that’s like, you know, just in the, you know, nebulous. Why am I learning spelling? Why am I learning grammar? It doesn’t mean anything. Yeah. But if we, I feel if we taught kids writing, just writing stories, telling stories, sitting around in a circle and telling stories.

Before we worked on spelling and grammar, that they would do better with the spelling and grammar ’cause they have something to refer to in their heads. Uh, I, I’m fighting a, a, a system, so yeah, I, I

Luna: definitely feel like there’s something to be said about, um, feeling the creativity of kids in writing. Like instead of kinda, uh, extinguishing

Stephen: it and with the software and software that’s still coming.

All that spelling and grammar is the least you have to worry about. ’cause you click a button and a lot of it gets fixed. So all the time we spend on that, yes, it’s good to know, but you know, it’s the same like civil war. I couldn’t tell you all the battles of the Civil War where they were or when they were.

I know they exist and I can look ’em up and that’s kinda how most people are with dates and history and stuff. And I think that’s kinda where our English is going to get to as far as the rules and the grammar and spelling. Uh, again, my opinion not shared by everybody. Uh, I think I’m, I’m on the leading edge in a hundred years, I’ll be revered or something, so yeah.

Yeah. So let, let’s talk about your book. The important part of what we’re discussing. Um, it is called the Patient Routine. Uh, tell us a little bit about it. ’cause I, I, it sounded very interesting when I was reading over the blurb.

Luna: Yeah. Um, the patient routine follows, um, a character named Ashton. They’re a college age non-binary student, um, and they’re suffering from health anxiety, what used to be called hypochondria.

Um, and they’re having an episode, um, that they can’t really shake off. So they decide to check into the emergency room, and in the process of that, the hospital goes under lockdown and everybody in the hospital is trapped in there until the situation which, you know, I won’t try to spoil too much, um, gets resolved.

So it’s a. Mystery thriller. Um, it’s, it’s all done in verse. Um, like I said, I study poetry for my, you know, my, my M f A, my b, f, a, all of that. So I’m, um, that’s kind of the mode that I write in. So it is a very playful with the page and formatting and language. Um, But it’s definitely a, uh, spooky story as well.

So I mean, it’s got, it’s got a little of everything, um, in there and it’s definitely a journey of, uh, you know, the self finding oneself in, um, the larger mental health sphere, the hospital system, um, gender. And a, a ton of other things, but that’s kind of the basics of it.

Stephen: Nice. So it’s it’s your jabber walkie.

Luna: Yeah. Nice. Something

Stephen: like that. So is it a medical thriller or, uh, straight up horror more, uh, what would you say?

Luna: Yeah, I’d say it, um, it’s definitely more like body horror. Um, it leans more towards that. I mean, there are definitely some medical aspects, obviously. Hospital. Um, but it definitely leans more towards just, um, the horrors of being trapped in your own mind.

The horrors of the medical system, but not in the terms, not in the way that I think most people think of, of like medical thrillers where, um, you know, the, the disease or the, what’s happening is like a really focal point. Like Ashton is the, the main focus in what’s happening with their.

Stephen: Okay. And, and can you think of any books or have you read any books that are similar to this to give people an idea if they’re interested?

Yeah. Um,

Luna: I think when I, I think when I pitched it originally, um, it was a mix of the Troop by Nick Cutter, um, which is a masterful, uh, body horror, um, piece of work. And then Eric Rocha’s, um, gosh, what’s the name of that book? It’s their first, um, book. There’s, uh, things have gotten worse since we last spoke.

It’s a queer horror book. Um, those were kind of my main inspirations. And then there was a bunch of, uh, like novels and verse that I read, um, to kind of just see structurally so that those also took influence. Um, I’m thinking like, Um, was it long? Way down by, um, oh gosh. Jason Reynolds, I believe

Stephen: his name is.

Luna: Long way down. Um, I’m just Googling things. Got it. Yeah, so those are, those are kind of the three books that I, when I was pitching people. Those are the ones that came to mind.

Stephen: Okay, nice. So if someone’s read and liked those or a combination of those, uh, they’d probably enjoy your book? I

Luna: would definitely

Stephen: say so, yes.

Okay. And what type of feedback are you getting from readers?

Luna: Uh, yeah, so far it has been extremely positive. Um, We’ve gotten, I think right now, uh, I think there’s like over 50 reviews on a bunch of, you know, platforms. Nice. Um, and it’s been very positive. You know, a lot of people who are, I, I think my favorite piece of feedback so far has been, and it’s happened two or three times, I’ve noticed, um, people have been like, I hated this book.

The first like few pages or the first like, Few sections and by the end of it I loved it because I think it is one of those things where it is harder to get into. ’cause it isn’t straight prose, it isn’t, you know, something that’s super, um, easy to get into if you aren’t used to reading poetry, if you aren’t used to the structure and kind of the.

The norms of poetry. ’cause it definitely leans into those. Um, but I think once you get past the fact that it’s poetry and the past, the fact that it’s not just paragraphs, then you can kind of get into the story and actually enjoy it.

Stephen: So definitely if somebody’s, uh, you know, uh, all my, all the books I’m reading sound alike, and they’re all the same, blah, blah, blah, I need something a little different and to mix it up.

I mean, that would be, uh, a good reason to pick up your book right there. Uh, I would think so. Something, yeah. You know, uh, and I know I, I think that way quite often. You know, I love certain things like Star Trek or what, you know, but if I watch too much Star Trek at one time, I get burn out and I’m like, ugh, I need something different.

Right. And then I’ll pick up. Foundation by Asimov Way different, but still a little si, you know, so, right. Yeah, uh, definitely. Uh, for someone looking for that type of thing, uh,

Luna: okay. Yeah, no, definitely. I think, you know, if you’re, yeah, definitely. If you’re looking for something different or if you’ve ever, you know, Wanted to see, uh, you know, I, I think it also works in the other way where people, if you’re scared of poetry, maybe this could be an easy way to get into it because it has a lot of the elements that regular fiction

Stephen: books have.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Poetry with a plot.

Luna: Yes. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty much an epic poem. Um, you know, like the old classics.

Stephen: The, the, the really, really

Luna: old class, the really, really old, you know, the, the Dante Infernos and the, the Homers and the Iliads and all that. The Beowulf. Yes. So, uh, it’s definitely along those lines too.

I guess maybe I should have pitched that too.

Stephen: Yeah, well, you know, I guess it all depends on who you’re talking to. Yes. Yeah, that’s true. I, I, because I could, if I throw out to certain people, Hey, it’s a little bit like Beowulf. Oh heck no, I’m not reading that. You know, but there’s other people. If I say, Hey, it’s a little bit like Be Wolf, really, I think I’ll check that out.

So, yeah, all depends I guess. Yeah, totally. So Luna, if you had a choice, uh, would you like to turn this into a movie or a TV show?

Luna: Oh, geez. That’s, um, I think it’s definitely more of a, a movie. Um, it’s a, it’s, uh, and it’s a novella, so it’s, it’s a short little piece. Um, So it, it goes by quick. I’ve, another piece of feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s very, you know, one, one sitting type of read where you just kind of go through it, um, just in one shot.

Um, so I think it would probably fit a movie more. It, it doesn’t, I don’t know how you could expand it into a nice, like, nice Netflix style where they really milk it for all it’s worth. Um, but I. Hour and 25 minute movie. Oh yeah.

Stephen: Nice. And, and horror quite often loses something if you extend it too much. Uh, there’s very few examples of Yeah.

Really good horror TV shows.

Luna: Yes, that’s true. Yeah. See, uh, there, I mean, that’s few that have done it well, but, um,

Stephen: that’s not an anthology series. Yes,

Luna: true, true. I do love like the, the Hing on Hill House. That’s great.

Stephen: Yeah, that was exactly what I thought of one of the few ones. But the Bly manner wasn’t quite as good, right?

Luna: Yes. So, you know it all, yeah. Con yeah. Contact of the series and uh, source material that also helps.

Stephen: But, um, very much so. Do you have a, a website that people could go to and check out all your books? Yes.

Luna: Yeah. Luna rey hall.com. That’s l u n a r e y h a l l.com. And I’m at Luna Rey Hall on every social media platform

Stephen: there is.

Nice. And we’ll put, uh, links in the show notes to all that. Awesome. So do you have any plans for your next book?

Luna: I, well, uh, I do have another book coming out, um, in. January, it’s my second full length poetry collection. Um, I like to think of it as like a sister project ’cause it is also about health anxiety, but more personal.

Um, when I was talk, I was just talking to a friend about it actually. Um, and I was saying like, The poetry book is more about the hopeful aspects of mental health and my personal journey and the horror book. The patient routine is more about the, how can I make this experience as scary as possible to reflect some of the horrors that I’ve had in my life, but not.

To push it to the extreme. Interesting. So, um, so yeah, so that comes out in January. It’s called no Matter the Diagnosis. Um, and, but I do, I’m, I’m constantly writing. So I have another book that I’m pitching right now that is also a horror book that’s about, um, analog horror. I don’t know if you know what that is.

It’s like a. It’s like a YouTubey type thing where um, it focuses a lot of like on mystery and old. I like to think of it as like old broadcasts that, uh, have like secret messages. Okay. That’s kind of the easy way to explain it. Um, okay. But I’m, yeah, I’m also working on my next, I’m doing everything apparently.

Yeah. So, um, I’m also working on a full novel length project too. That will be my first novel. Um, so we’re seeing how that goes. Um, I have no experience on that, so, um, that’s taking it slow and, um, that’s, those are my, that’s what I’m working

Stephen: on. Oh, nice. And, uh, now you’re, are you doing all of these in pros or was this just for the one and you’re doing, uh, regular type non-pro writing?

Luna: Um, yeah, so I have the one that I’m pitching, the analog horror one is kind of like a mix of both. Um, it uses prose, some poetry, and then it also has like letter writing in it too. It, it’s, it’s all over the place. Um,

Stephen: well, is it called, uh, a pistol area, right? Is that, that’s what that’s called. Okay. Yes. I keep my terms straight.

Luna: Um, But yeah. So then, um, but the novel is a novel in verse. Um, that’s just, that’s my go-to. I, I, I feel like, I think in poetry now, I’ve just been so used to it. So when I’m writing, it comes out like that. Okay. Um, I’m not sure. I, I’m always, you know, someone asks me if I’ll write like a, just a standard fiction book one day in Prose, and I was like, I don’t know, you know?

I don’t know if I could, like, I feel like I’m, so I’d have to go back to school maybe and learn from fiction writers. Um, Yeah. So, um, a mix of prose and verse

Stephen: uh, writing. But, but also they always tell you, you know, write what you know. And you, you discovered writing. Yeah. So if you think and write well in prose, the, the people you start picking up, kinda like Katamari there, you know, with the rolling ball picking you up.

Uh, That, that that’s what they’re going to like and want. It’s, it’s what makes you stand out too. Right. You know? Totally. It’s, it’s that thing, uh, that’s different about you, but also something that’s not so far different that nobody wants it, you know, you know what I’m saying? Totally. You don’t have that

Luna: balance.

Yeah. I get that.

Stephen: Okay. So, um, What are some of your favorite books and authors that you’ve read? Oh, geez. You mentioned a couple earlier what your book was like, but your personal favorites.

Luna: Yeah, so, um, actually the Troop by Nick Cutter is one of my favorite books ever. It really got me back into horror. Um, I was super lucky to have Nick Cutter blurb, my book.

That was an amazing experience. I, I go back to that book like once, once a year at least. Um, one of my favorite, I have two favorite poetry books that I always recommend, which are Black Aperture by Matt Rasson, um, and Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith. Both are great. Um, those are, those are my go-tos. I’m also a big fan of, uh, I, I read a lot of comics, so I, I read a lot of, um, Saga is my favorite, like graphic novel.

My

Stephen: son loves Saga.

Luna: Yeah. Fantastic. Um, I have the collector’s editions behind me. I love that.

Stephen: Oh, I see right there on the end. Yeah. Yes. I recognize the cover

Luna: with a big stack of books in front of it too. Um, so those are kind of those Yeah, those are my, um, those poetry books. I go back to all the time and saga.

I read a bunch too. Um, But the troop, um, I’m, I’ve been a big fan of, um, queen of Teeth by, um, Haley Piper. She’s great. Um, yeah, so those are, those are my, I guess off the top of my head, those are my

Stephen: favorites. Okay, great. And where you live, is there a favorite bookstore that you like to go to? Yeah, I

Luna: love, um, moon Palace books in St.

Paul. They’re great. Um, I’ve read for them a couple times and they’re a very, Uh, queer friendly, uh, very accessible stores. So they, um, they, they have my heart right

Stephen: now. Nice. Okay. I’ll put a link to them in the show notes and a map so people can get to ’em. Awesome. All right, so before we talk some author type things, um, tell everybody if someone pa saw you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book.

Uh, why should I get it and read it? What would you tell them?

Luna: Um, I like to think because it is, um, pride month while we’re recording that you, yes. It’s should support, you should support trans, non-binary authors and, um, especially ones that are writing in verse. ’cause that is a, a very niche field,

Stephen: um, population of one at the moment that I know of.

Luna: Yeah. So, um, you know, support, uh, experimentation.

I’d say that’s the biggest thing that I. Would, uh, preach is that, um, if you like this type of work and or you even have ever thought about it, um, make sure that you, you shout it’s, uh, um, shout it out ’cause um, nobody will continue to publish it if it just. Dwindles correct. And yeah, there, there are, there, there are other authors who write, you know, horror in verse who write, you know, novels in verse, um, currently.

Um, and they’re awesome, but they are few and far between.

Stephen: Yeah, I don’t think I can actually name another horror verse book or writer, uh, other than what you’ve talked about off top of my head. Yeah, there

Luna: was, um, oh my gosh. And now I’m gonna of course blank. It, there’s this great werewolf one, um, that was inverse and I’m totally blinking on it, so

Stephen: we’ll, we’ll, we’ll get up and maybe put it, put it in the show tonight.

Yeah, yeah. I’ll send it. So, yeah, that’d be perfect. Uh, let me ask you, since uh, you’ve been writing a couple things now, you’re working on a couple things, what are some things you’ve learned that you’re doing different now than you did from the start?

Luna: Yeah. Um, I think the biggest thing with like my first book, it was, um, and my first book is called Loudest When Startled, it’s a poetry book about gun violence and masculinity, family, et cetera.

Um, I think the biggest thing that I learned from that is that now I know more in my audience, like what my. People who have continually read my books, um, what they want out of me. I think that’s a big thing that I’ve learned. Um, another thing is kind of just like trusting myself. I think that’s a big, just like, especially with the patient routine, that was a big leap of faith to just be like, I can do this totally different, weird thing and make it a success.

Um, Otherwise, I mean, if I didn’t trust myself, I think I’d just be writing the same book over and over again with different, uh, you know, variations. Um, right. I would never have jumped into a different genre, a totally different, uh, community really with the horror as opposed to poetry. Um, so I think those are the two big things that I’ve learned.

Stephen: And I love what you said about, um, your, your audience and what they want, because that sometimes can be a hot topic, you hear write to market, uh, quite often. Yeah. In the publishing and writing in, you know, groups and stuff. And a lot of people are like, ah, you know, write to market’s bad and blah, blah, blah.

But the, there’s, I’ve discovered people take that. Saying in two different ways. You can have right to market, which means, oh, I wanna write a, a successful horror book, or a successful romance, you know? And I went and studied all the tropes and I threw ’em all into this book, and now I wrote it and it should be successful.

You, you weren’t. Writing what you wanted. You were writing what you thought would sell, but if you have an audience like you mentioned, and there’s certain things they want from your books, there’s certain things they want from horror books. You write what they want, you’re writing that is also writing to market, but you’re not doing it in that sleazy way.

That’s what we should all be doing, is writing what our audience wants to read. If not, if we’re just writing for ourselves and what we want. We don’t really have a right to complain if nobody else likes it or buys it. Sure. But if we understand our audience and we’re writing what we want, but what they wanna read, also that’s a VE debt or Venn diagram in there.

Uh, I think that’s super important to understand that distinction in a couple different ways of saying right to

Luna: market. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I think it. Yeah, I mean that’s, that’s a said. Yeah, I agree with what you’re saying. Yeah.

Stephen: Alright. Good, good, good for me. You agree? Yes. So, okay. So our discussion, let’s talk about this.

And I was excited because you’re an l uh, forgive me if I get all the letters wrong. It’s changed on me. L G B T Q I. Is that it? That is,

Luna: yes. I mean, yeah, definitely. Um, LGBTQ plus is also acceptable. There’s, you know, many acceptable

Stephen: directions. So there’s variations, I think. Yes. So, uh, which is not even something 10 years ago that was really on anyone’s radar or part of the discussion of genres and things.

So the first thing I wanna ask you is, are you finding it. Easy or harder to get into. It’s hard to tell ’cause you haven’t written before, but do you, do you find that saying, I’m L G B T Q writer, do you find, uh, the difficulties or what’s easy about it? Uh, you know, what, what’s different, I guess, than someone that’s not an L G B T writer?

That you can tell, that you can see. Yeah. I know that’s a weird question because you haven’t been writing for 50 years in multiple genres.

Luna: Yeah. Um, I think for me, well first of all, being queer permeates, like all of my writing, like everything I write is very queer. It’s all very, um, part of, you know, I don’t think I’ll write a book that doesn’t have.

A main character that’s,

Stephen: and, and we, we mentioned this earlier, they always say, write what you know. Well, there you go. Right? Yeah.

Luna: Yeah. So, like I said, patient routine, they’re very non-binary and that is essential to the story. Um, the books I’m writing now, they’re all trans characters and that experience is very integral to the story.

Um, So, yeah, I mean I think that’s from my limited experience over the last, you know, 10 years. ’cause I definitely, I started writing when I was not out. Um, so my first book came out right where I was starting to be out. Um, so a lot of those were written very, um, I would say, Shy or frightened of letting on that I was a queer person, um, letting on that I wasn’t, you know, this man that my family and everybody had thought I was.

Um, so I mean, those things are just like constants for me in my writing always now, like the, just being queer is part of my, my work now. Um, and I guess that as, as opposed to, and I. In both poetry and horror. It’s very, they’re very accepting, uh, communities, the author, communities, the writing, the readers.

Um, so I mean, I haven’t had any like, pushback. I definitely had some feedback where people didn’t understand the crux of, um, particularly the patient routine. ’cause it is a very, you know, queer. Climax, I would say, where, you know, um, if you hadn’t experienced that, and maybe if you weren’t paying attention through the whole thing as closely, you might not catch on to everything.

Um, but I mean, yeah, I definitely feel, or I mean, right now, I, I could not pull the two, I couldn’t pull writing and queerness apart for me. Like they’re just inter, they’re integrated now. Okay.

Stephen: If that makes any sense. No, absolutely. And I. Uh, you, you know, you said about 10 years ago is when you first started.

In the last 10 years, the, the avenues have changed a a lot. Mm-hmm. That there’s more avenues. You mentioned the bookstore near you that’s accepting and allows you to come and read. Whereas pre covid 10 years ago and all that may not have been a possibility. People, you know, oh, that’s going to hurt our store, or, oh, we don’t have a section for that.

You know, and, and I think there’s more. Of that out there, uh, you know, to, to give you those avenues.

Luna: Yeah, I definitely think visibility and, um, celebration of queer work has definitely increased in the last 10 years. Um, luckily I live in a state and, uh, the Twin Cities metro that is very accepting and very, um, progressive, uh, for the most part.

Um, so. I hope, my hope is that 10 years ago it would’ve been okay too. But um, yeah, no, I definitely understand what you’re saying. And yeah, I think the, especially for bookstores, the, um, I guess there’s something to be said about the, like the genre nature of. LGBTQ

Stephen: plus. And, and I’m so glad you mentioned genre ’cause I was going to bring that up.

Uh, but for, for people who do listen to the podcast regularly and get it, uh, I’m, I’m going to just bet there’s somebody, oh, I can’t believe that he’s talking to an l LGBTQ writer and that’s, I don’t wanna listen anymore, blah. I’m sure there’s somebody like that, but Sure. But you know what, I have never. I like to read horror and I like to read fantasy.

I have never taken a horror book and crammed it down somebody’s throat and say, you must read horror because I think it’s the best. I can’t imagine you’re going to take your book and shove it down anybody’s throat and say, you must read this because I said you should. I don’t understand the people that think it’s their duty to the world to denounce any genre because they don’t like it, and that doesn’t even make sense to me.

Luna: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a difficult, um, subject for some people, I guess

Stephen: you could say. I, I, that’s a very delicate way of putting,

Luna: you know, Saying anymore? Yeah, I think, you know, some people are just, uh, not open to Right. Um, The, the, the width of the human

Stephen: experience? Well, I’ll say for anybody listening personally, I’m probably not going to go into the store and pick up an L G B T book.

That’s fine. I’m not your target audience. You know, I, I go and read aza, but if one was on my desk, somebody said, Hey, you’d probably enjoy this. I’d at least give it a try, but I don’t, I wouldn’t stop listening to a podcast or something like that because of. This one interview or something. I, I just think people need to move on.

You know, why, why do you care if other people are enjoying Luna’s books? Let them go enjoy it. That’s great. They’ve got something for them to read that they wanna read and enjoy. Yeah,

Luna: definitely. No, I. I

Stephen: agree with you. Well, I’ll let you know once this airs, if my subscriber rate goes down. Yeah. We’ll know who we don’t wanna, who we don’t wanna talk to.

Luna: Yeah. Hopefully I don’t kill too many of your

Stephen: subscribers. That’s fine. You know what? If people are close-minded and they wanna drop the podcast because I talked to you and you’re on here. Let ’em do it. That’s fine with me. There you go. Keep the rest of them. Uh, now there is one thing, uh, that I, I know you probably deal with that I deal with.

So I, I write middle grade books, fantasy books. Yeah. That you write L G B t L G B T Horror At the moment we’ll say, but here’s what bugs me. Middle grade L G B T Q, those are demographics. Those are not genres. You can’t just say, I write middle grade because a kid that likes, uh, dork Diaries is not necessarily going to like where the red fern grows.

There are two different genres and what people need to understand is you can have a demographic, but within those demographics you still have all the same. Genres. So you write horror, it’s in the L G B T L G B T Q demographic. I write fantasy in the middle grade demographic, uh, which is way different than an adult fantasy book.

Uh, you know, so does, does it. I don’t know, do you run into that or think about it where people just say, oh, he writes L G B T Q? Well, I don’t write romance necessarily. I don’t write, uh, you know, literary fiction. I write horror. Totally different than just, uh, you know, lumping. I, have you ever, you know, thought about that or is that an issue for you?

For me, that’s an issue. Yeah.

Luna: Um, I think my most straightforward answer is that I don’t care. I, I totally understand and appreciate, um, what you’re saying, and I think there has been a lot of push for. You know, generalizing, I guess, you know, I love that word. Word. Everything. Everything and anything right.

To sell it. I mean, I think that’s the biggest thing is that it’s all to sell these things. So you can sell the category, you can sell the author, the, the, the book. Um, but definitely when I’m writing, I’m not, I’m not thinking about it. You know? It’s just, it is what it is. And. After the fact. Um, you know, I wasn’t like going into this and I was like, I wanna make a horror piece specifically.

Um, it just ended up being that genre because of the content. Um, so I mean, yeah, I definitely don’t, I. For me personally, you know, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a big deal or a big thought. That’s something for my publisher to deal with.

Stephen: Got it. That’s probably a personal pet peeve of mine. Sure, sure. But, but the other thing is with the L G B T Q is sometimes, what does it matter?

It doesn’t always come into or affect the story. Much, if at all. For example, uh, the Lord of the Rings. I know there’s been a huge argument and debate and whether Gandalf is gay or not and they should tell us, or um, I think rallying had some of the same issues with some Harry Potter characters who’s gay and who’s not.

It’s like, hold on a second. Harry Potter is basically middle grade. These kids are in school. There’s a little bit of flirting and you know, standard kid, uh, dating type stuff. It’s not really affecting the story if someone is gay or isn’t gay. And I think, I think a, as a society, we need to get past that point where we have to focus on that part of it.

That it either is or isn’t. And it’s just part of things. Let’s worry about the story. What do you think about that?

Luna: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think representation is important. Yes. In, in the, um, especially in, you know, Early grade, middle grade. Ya, it’s definitely important to show that these characters exist and that they are fully fledged characters and, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of nuance to that conversation, but, um, true.

Yeah. I definitely think that, um, you know, uh, again, I, I do kind of think it just goes back to that they’re trying to sell. You know, X, Y, Z and they’re labeling things that really don’t, like books, really don’t need like labels and that kind of terminology. I think

Stephen: I, I, I agree. We, so, um, let’s focus on story.

Luna: Yeah. So, um, yeah. But, um, I mean, if people wanna debate on if a character is gay or not, like, Go for it. That’s my opinion. Like go for it. Um, especially if it helps a kid or, you know, helps someone, uh, well that’s a good point. Accept

Stephen: themselves. That’s a good point. Yes, you’re right. I mean, come on. For almost a hundred years now, we’ve, uh, heard the story of, uh, the Seven Dwarves that all lived together in one house.

Let’s think about that for a moment, folks. Yeah. They’re pretty gay. Yeah. I mean, that’s been, that’s been in kids’ stories for a long time. Totally. Yeah. Alright, so, uh, Luna is, is there anything that you would say to an audience, uh, about being an L G B T writer or L G T B books in, in general, uh, that something that you, you’d like to just get out?

Luna: Yeah. Um, I definitely think if you’re, you know, an LGBTQ plus person, a queer person and you wanna write a story, definitely go for it. ’cause there’s an audience and there are people who wanna listen to it and read it. And it doesn’t matter that you aren’t fitting the standard, um, paperback, bestseller, um, ideals.

Um, you could say. Um, so yeah, that I can just say we need. We need more of that. We need more people to just be themselves and to really do weird, cool, creative projects. And, um, that’s that. Yeah. I’ll

Stephen: just leave it there. Okay. Agree. Agreed. And if that isn’t for you, great. Go back to the 3 million other genres that are available on Amazon.

Yeah, definitely. I, I, I, I look forward to. Not having that distinction that you know, that if, if you pick that, it doesn’t have to be the, the, um, sexuality or the L G B T Q ness of a book doesn’t have to be the focus of it. It, it, we need to get to the point it’s past that to the story and how well the story’s told and uh, everything else is just, Part of that, that that’s what I look forward to.

Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I have no problem reading books with straight characters, gay characters, bi characters, trans characters. But I’m not, I even, even the, the hero characters. I, I, I don’t care to read a book where the focus is on that. Sure. I, I wanna read a spy thriller or something, you know what I’m saying?

Uh, it, it just, that’s what it is. Great. It can be a part of the story, but not a spotlight.

Luna: Yeah. Nope. I, I hear you.

Stephen: All right, man. I appreciate you taking some time chatting with me today. Uh, it’s been great talking to you. Thank you.

Luna: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for having me.

Robert Wolf, M.D., grew up as the only child of Ervin and Judit Wolf. Their stories of their escape from communist Hungary, and his father’s tragic history of escaping the Nazis twice but having his own parents taken to Auschwitz, inspired Robert to document his parents’ tales and share those stories with Jewish groups and others throughout the United States. In “Not a Real Enemy” Robert shares his family saga-and the forgotten history of the nearly half million Hungarian Jews who were deported and killed during the Holocaust-through an epic and inspiring tale of daring escapes, terrifying oppression, tragedy, and triumph. 

Robert Wolf is a national speaker and is featured in national media and TV including ABC TV, NBC TV, CW TV, FOX TV, CBS TV and more.  

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmith, I want to welcome Rob Wolf. Rob, how are you doing

Robert: today? I’m doing well. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Thanks for inviting me.

Stephen: Yeah. It’s great to have you on. We’re gonna talk about your book not a Real Enemy, but before we do let’s find out a little bit about you. What are, where do you live and what are some of the things you like to do besides writing? I.

Robert: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, and I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan the Detroit area.

I was raised kindergarten through 12th grade in a small town called Mount Clemens. Suburban Detroit. Famous for Thomas Alva Edison and Sulfur Baths back in the day. They those don’t, I don’t know even know if those exist anymore, but back in the day it was very popular resort for that.

Stephen: Yeah, I don’t think Edison still exists. No.

Robert: He was the Elon Musk of his day, I would say. Yeah. So yeah. And then I went to Tufts University for undergraduate. I was fortunate enough to get into Tufts University near Boston for undergraduate. And then I went to University of Michigan Medical School and I graduated in 1988. Loved Ann Arbor.

What a great place to go to school. Again, very privileged, very competitive. Always a, it was a great school to go attend and it was a great school to to be an alumnus as well. And then then I did residency. I, my residency, I’m a radiologist, so I did a year internship at Framing Framingham Union Hospital near Boston Boston University affiliate.

I did my radiology residency at Brown Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. And then I did a neuroradiology neuroradiology fellowship at Yale. University in New Haven, Connecticut. Now, by now I’m 30 years old. I’ve done half my life. I’m 60 now, so now I’m about 30, finally ready to make a living after all those years of indentured Ry.

And so I’ve lived half my life in New England and half my life in Michigan. So I’ve bounced back to forth. There were no jobs when I finished my fellowship back in the nineties. So I took what I could a place in Massachusetts that I was moonlighting as a senior resident and as a fellow.

I needed a radiologist, so I took a job there and I was there four years, and then back to Michigan for seven years, and then back to Massachusetts with my wife at the time. And worked a few jobs inpatient, outpatient hospital work tele radio, tele radiography work. I still do some teleradiology now.

I’m, I do two days a week, part-time, Wednesdays and Thursdays just to stay, stay in the loop. I can tell, we’ll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about the history of my book, but Besides medicine, which I’ve been doing. So now I’ve been doing that, let’s say 33 years in radiology, 34 years.

And it’s been a great it’s been a great run. I’ve been part-time since I was 43, so about half of my career I’ve been part-time and the other half pretty much full-time. And, night call and weekends and all that other stuff. Besides radiology, I love sports.

I love all sports. From Olympics to curling to everything. Pickle ball’s popular down here in Florida where I live now. I’ve been down here in Florida since 2019. I love baseball, football. So exciting that we have the Miami the Miami heat down here and the Florida Marlins both in the finals and both eight seeds, which I don’t ever remember that happening.

So that’s pretty exciting. That starts the night. And they beat the Celtics, who’s another favorite. I root for all the Boston teams, of course, that’s right after the Detroit team. And I root for Michigan State across the board, unless they’re playing University of Michigan. So that’s a, it’s a pretty simple algorithm for me.

But I do all the teams and I’m so excited for Florida Sports because it’s really been on a roll even before I got down there. Tampa Bay is a great sports city too down here as well. So I love music. I’ve been to maybe 350 professional concerts, not including local stuff. I name a band.

I a lot of rock, jazz, fusion blues, seen them all. The Rolling Stones, Clapton, Jeff Beck, rest in Peace. Ping Floyd on and on. I love music. I like a little bit of classical, not like my parents used to, but mostly jazz, rock and fusion and blues. I love nutrition. I’m a foodie, so I like preparing my own food.

I like fine dining when I can. Of course, food’s getting expensive more and more now as we all know, even at the grocery store. And I’m a gym rat. I’ve been going to the gym for 40 years. I like fitness. I like golf. Exercise, swimming. I was in multiple sports in high school, swimming, golf, tennis, soccer.

I love ’em all. I love to watch ’em. Still love to play when I can at 60. It’s a little tough. I wanna keep my knees for another 20, 30 years, hopefully. So I’ve really slowed down on participating in the sports, but still love it, still love trying to participate when I can. I like history. I like history.

I like travel. I try to be I try to be pretty well-rounded as much as I can and as much as the time gives you during the day it’s difficult sometimes to squeeze it all on a day. But I try to, and I like my hikes and walks and like I said, travel. I’m going to I’ve, I went to Israel last year, which was a real game changer.

I would recommend. I think they always say every Jewish person should go to Israel, but I think everyone should go to Israel. That’s what I say. And that’s not the only country. I Iceland a few years ago was a great trip. I wish I had more money and time to do more of those trips. Maybe someday as I slow down and not work so hard on this book.

But so I keep my mind open. I’m pretty game to just about anything. I’m not gonna do sky jumping now at this point, or bungee jumping or anything silly like that. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna get in a speed a race car and drive around the Indy 500 the racetrack, things like that. But within reason, right?

I’m pretty adventurous. I like to try new things and I, and I, I’m not an old man yet. I’m getting there, but I try to still keep an open mind. Try not to get too set in my ways. Try to be open-minded. I like

Stephen: that. Okay, great. So with all of that going on multiple states, your radiology and all the activities that, sports and all that, why did you wanna start writing?

That’s a great question.

Robert: I don’t even know the answer to that, to myself. I always joke ’cause it’s so much more difficult when I first started this in 2018. So I guess it’s a good time to start with the history of the book. So my mom and dad wrote his autobiography in the 1970s. They went from penant pen and paper and pencil to a typewriter, to a computer, to a disc.

And I read the manuscript. It was written out as a manuscript, as autobiography. And I read it many years ago, but of course I was. Busy with my practice, busy with family. I didn’t really think much about it. Maybe I didn’t even finish the whole book ’cause I, most of the stories I didn’t remember going back, probably talking 25, 30 years ago.

And I was a little bit indifferent to what went on in my parents’ history and what went on in their lives. Flash forward to 1997, my dad passes away, unfortunately. Then flash forward to 2016, my mom passes away. I took a year to take care of her affairs. She had she wasn’t the Queen of England or anything, but she certainly had enough affairs to deal with that such as Hungarian and German restitution accounts to close out.

That took a long time. That was difficult. I needed translators. It was all just snail mail back and forth. Of course selling her house and her car and estate sales and closing out things like that. And then I took a year off. I actually retired for a year 2017 into 2018, and that’s when I traveled a bit more.

Much of it was domestic travel, but like I said, that Iceland trip was great. And then a friend a radiology friend who we are longstanding friends from the Flint, Michigan area, and we still are he’s also down here in Florida. He said can you help me with some part-time work reading x-rays and ultrasounds?

Out of a clinic in Michigan. And so since they were short and I figured I’d help him out. He is, helped me out many times over the years. So I picked up the work and between cases I actually, or, so when my mom died, my. The disc of my parents’ story now that my dad’s story was on a disc and a historian friend of the family in Michigan handed me the disc when my mom died in 2016.

I didn’t think much of it, but she said, you really need to read this and I wanna see what you think. So it was another two years before I actually got to it. So the point about me going back to work, it’s, it got me back into the office instead of the golf course and loaded up the disc in, in between cases when I was reading x-rays and ultrasounds, and I started reading my dad’s stories.

And I thought, wow, these are amazing. I can’t believe that I never really appreciated what my parents had been through all those years and all this time that I had the opportunity to review all his stories. And so I read the whole thing it’s tooth and nail, and I thought these, the miraculous stories, fantastic stories, Mira and I just, I had to share it with the world.

I couldn’t just keep it in my computer. And that’s where my my writing career started. So that was 2018. It was about five years ago. Became a labor of love. I converted my dad’s autobiography into a biography. That took a good year. And then I moved down to Florida, packed everything up. I was finished with the first round and then had the book copy edited and polished and edited again.

And then I sent the book to a few to some beta readers and other authors to see what their opinions were. And it was well received. But one of the authors of I don’t remember how I connected with her. Maybe it was on social media. But she hooked me up with my co-author Janice Harper.

And Janice is out in, she’s actually a Michigan person too. She got her PhD at Michigan State and anthropologist too. She’s a brilliant woman, very good writer, and that’s all she does. So she’s a book coach too. And she said, I can help you write this book and turn it from point A to point B, where dad was born on this and dad did this.

And that is to a real novel, a real story. About a year and a half. I accepted her offer and she became a, my co-author. And she did her history, she did her homework. She read about Hungarian culture and cuisine, the language and the wars. And she went above and beyond the Call of Duty in helping me make this book something special.

And she did just that and parallel stories, converging stories, conversations, letters to and from home. So she’s, she zipped it up. She kicked it up a few notches and. And then after that, another 20 edits later. And she, we vetted out some agents and publishers. She helped me with that as well.

The proposal package. Fantastic job. Just a plus primo work. And literally shoestring catch bottom of the ninth, we got Amsterdam publishers to take us on. So that was last January. They they made an offer to, to publish the book. ’cause we were that close to to self-publishing. That’s one piece of advice.

Don’t give up. That’s the first thing I’d say to, to new authors. We talk about that later. Don’t give up. And we were pretty selective. That’s another piece of advice. Be selective of who you query of. Make sure you pick the right agents. Make sure you pick the right publishers. Make sure you don’t waste time.

’cause there is a lot of wasted time in it. It gets better. Your time gets funneled into something more productive. But it’s all, it’s hit and miss in pick and choose as you get more experience. That said, so we got Amsterdam publishers. They did a great job. We published in October very pleased.

We had the, we hired a book cover, a guy that did a great job with a book cover, a Croatian man who sympathized with a story of being from Eastern European, being of Eastern European descent himself. Of course the book was about my dad and mom who were from Hungary.

Stephen: That’s where my family’s from.

Robert: Oh, really? So Hungarian you’re from the Midwest, you said. So there’s, so that’s funny because a lot of the Hungarians, Polish, Eastern European, the Czechs, that when they left, either after the Hungarian Revolution, my parents’ case, or even before that they like to go to the similar climate.

And so Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Michigan. It was the hot area too back then in the forties, fifties, sixties, with the auto industry and everything. Yeah, so same idea. A lot of Hungarians in the area. Of course a lot of Eastern Europeans, my, believe me, my parents made every effort to know all of ’em.

’cause they were very sociable people and they loved to entertain, they loved to teach. And so we ended up in the, yeah, the Detroit area and the book. And the book finally is out now in two. So last year the book was out in October. And rave reviews, great testimonials. Slowly digging and clawing to get people to know about the book.

It’s a process. It’s, we could talk about that for two. I could talk about that all day. I, I bore people to death with it because it’s a big part of a, you might have the world’s biggest book, the world’s greatest book, but if nobody knows about it nobody’s gonna get a chance to read the story.

So it’s a, it’s another great lesson too for upstart authors or even experienced authors. Amsterdam publishers, all they do is the genre. It’s it’s Holocaust related. The book is, but it’s not just Holocaust and. I can tell you more details about the book in a little bit if you want as well.

But here we are, 20, edit later, a great co-author, great publisher. We also hired a historian who was a retired gentleman from the Holocaust Memorial Museum who who read the book and corrected any history that we may have missed or have mistakes in. And so we, we made the appropriate corrections.

Lot of work, lot of effort, lot of time, lot of help. Great team across the board, marketing and pr, et cetera, et cetera. We can talk more about that too. But I’m very pleased with the book. I think the book should do well give as, as long as enough people start to learn about it and know about it and realize how fantastic these stories are.

Stephen: So you mentioned these are stories, it’s a biography. What are some of the things in the book and why the title, not a real enemy.

Robert: So while the book is of course it’s a biography by my dad it, and it’s also a Hungary light. It’s a history light book about Hungary.

Little known hung that covers from World War I. Where my dad’s father was a captain on a ship on a Red Cross ship in the Black Sea during World War Iden. He was a dentist, but medical school and dental school were combined back then. It’s obviously now the subspecialties are, have really expanded over the years.

But yeah, he was a captain on the ship in World War I and they ended up in Hungary during During the, after the war, peaceful Hungary in the early twenties, although there were issues that Jews had to worry about too back then. But, so it’s a hist, it’s a history light book about Hungary. It’s my dad’s biography.

It covers the trials, the tribulations, the tragedies of my dad’s family, how they survived during, before and before the war, especially World War ii when antisemitism was on the rise. And it’s an adventure. There’s so many amazing stories there. 40 chapters, 40 stories. And we’ll start with, my dad was a multiple escape artist.

He escaped twice from forced labor camp. Wow. Twice with his friend Frank who’s Frank’s daughter. Reached out to me a few months ago, found me somehow on social media, and sent me some information that she had, including a very interesting map that I posted on social media and elsewhere of the trek that my, my dad and his friend Frank went through from their home, his hometown of Jira, all the way across Hungary.

The northern part is a, is like one large triangle over months and months. A lot of walking, a lot of hiking. And so we, that, we picked up that. And I don’t wanna lose my chain of thought here, so multiple escapes. So also, so finally the war’s done. My dad’s on the run. Even after a second escape he found a little safe sanctuary.

He found multiple sanctuaries, but he kept having to run and move and leave. He didn’t wanna put anybody at risk or danger for trying to hide him. Unfortunately that was part of it. But fortunately nobody got caught at his on his dime, while he was trying to hide or run.

So he, he found some sola, he found solace in some good places. And after the war, he had to wait a few months until everything was cleared in his hometown before he could go back to his hometown to find out. What had happened to his parents, and that took a few months. Even after the war, there was no cell phones or internet or local news, and Jewish people over all this time weren’t allowed to even own a radio or let alone read a newspaper or get any information about the outside world.

So there was that as well. Fast forward a little bit. My dad meets my mom. They get married. He finally gets to go to medical school, which is all he ever wanted to do in his lifetime. That was on a quota because you could only 10% of the medical students could be Jewish. With the help of the J D C in the us my dad was fortunate enough to get a spot in the medical, in a medical school.

He was very intelligent and and lucky to have that and appreciated it and worked hard at it. My mom was also a med student. She was quite a bit younger than my dad, but my dad was a resident or actually practicing by the time he had met my mom and they got married.

He was an ob, g y n, so mom was in medical school and we’ll get back to that in a minute too, because she had to leave, she had to quit early 13 months before her graduation during their final escape. Come the Russians, the great communist menace. So they, so the Russians saved Hungary, Russians, and Romanian renegades rather than United States.

Now, if the United States had occupied Hungary, I wouldn’t be an American citizen. I probably would’ve lived my whole life in Hungary. So that’s serendipity, but that’s something that, that’s something in the back of my head that I never would’ve really realized. As we know, communists the communists took over part of the Eastern European block in central Europe, and the United States helped out with.

Of course France and Italy and England, and we all know those stories a lot better Normandy than we do know what happened and where my parents came from. So the Czech Republic Poland Poland got hit really hard. The Polish Jews especially, really hard during world War ii, so I.

So a little known hungry. So now they’re under communist rule. My dad’s kind of plugging along. They still don’t like that communist menace hanging over their shoulders. And before he even met my mom, he escaped as a med student and made it all the way to the Austrian border. He got in an argument with a Russian soul, armed Russian soldier.

That’s a great story. And he made it. But he changed his mind. He got nervous about the fear of reprisal, the fear of getting arrested and getting sent back to Hungary. And and having to be in prison for many years and hurting his medical career. So he was conflicted between living under communism and and wanting to practice medicine in the free world.

Ultimately, he was able to do that, but it was a lot of sacrifice and a lot of time I. Then their last escape was at the end of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. So this was my dad’s fourth escape. And this was a real, it’s a harrowing escape too, but they made it they had to try several times to cross the border, a rapidly closing border.

That was a short war, that Hungarian revolution. And not a lot of people know about it. We all know about the Ukraine War now, and it’s been going on, and I think a lot of people assumed it was gonna be. As short as the Hungarian Revolution, and a lot of professionals have compared that war at first to the Hungarian Revolution.

But now I call it really it’s the Hungarian Revolution on steroids. It seems like it’s never ending. And I feel badly for the Ukrainian people because they got hit during the other wars as well and even now. And it just seems so nonsensical, needless to say, they finally escape. In between, there were cloak and dagger stories with the Russians and forged papers during World War II and afterwards, and.

The thing, the places my dad had to hide, you wouldn’t believe. And the clothes he had to wear and the places his friend Frank had to hide. So there’s all these little stories in and out. Not just the escapes. My dad even missed an escape. And I don’t wanna be spoil after spoiler, but my dad missed an escape, went to the wrong train station, and thank God he did, because everybody on that train, including his medical school roommate, got arrested.

Wow. And that messed up his roommate’s his career for, at least for the short term. I think he ultimately escaped with my parents as well in the dead of winter in harrowing. So world. So the Hungarian Revolution is covered in from my dad’s eyes, and my dad was a front liner in the Hungarian Revolution.

He had to double down, not only his ob, G y n, but also as a trauma surgeon for two weeks. So he was getting no sleep for. We’ve all seen MASH and all these crazy, so it’s a, it’s the same kind of thing except 24 7 for, he had to do his ob, G Y n deliver babies, his, see his female patients and also double down as a trauma surgeon and mean, so he was a front liner.

My mom was a front liner too because she ran the blood bank and Budapest 3000 people died in that war. And that was just two weeks. A lot of disabled tanks, a lot of destruct, property destruction, a lot of refugees, as you probably know. And and they were a part of it. And then after that war, they said two wars, pestilence, persecution, antisemitism.

My mom and dad said, enough is enough. She was 13 months away from graduating medical school and she never went back, unfortunately. But she could have, but it would’ve been quite a few years later. And so they finally left and got out of the country in 56, right after the Hungarian revolution.

So all those stories are, they’re all meshed into this great biography that people turn, it’s a page turner, and people say, wow, how did, and then people that knew my dad, he was so jovial and jolly and loved to loved his work, love delivering babies. He would walk into the hospital and I would go with him sometimes when he’d round and he would be like he’d say hi to everybody, the janitor, the secretary, the other doctors smiling whenever he answered the phone, when the phone rang.

He was never grumpy, never had P t s d, never had physician burnout would’ve worked till till the day he died. Literally if he could have. And redemption deeded. He delivered probably about 10,000 babies in the Detroit area. That doesn’t include what, who he delivered in Boston where he had to redo his residency at the prestigious Beth Israel.

Lucky him. And how many babies he delivered in Budapest, in Hungary, I don’t know. But about 10,000 babies in actually a shortened career. So redemption indeed that after everything he went through the herring life and being able to bring all those lives into the world and. It’s so pleasing when I share on social media about him and about the book, and especially those that remember him and especially people that say, yeah, he delivered my kids, and that kind of thing.

It’s so nice. It’s so heartwarming. And that’s part of my motivation. Going back to your question is why did I become a writer? Why did this it was it was like the dis called out to me, the dis summoned me and just said, you’ve gotta see this, like Superman’s kryptonite called out to me.

And and it just bit me, the bug bit me. And so here we are nice. And when people read this book, they’ll say they will not, most people will not have known my dad when they read this book, but after they read the book, they will know my dad, if that makes sense. They’ll actually know him.

People will sympathize with him, put them, put themselves in his place like I did, saying this could happen to me, it could happen to you, could happen to any one of us. So we’re not, none of us is exempt from this kind of brutal behavior, brutal activity. And I hope we’re not adding that way in this country.

I, my, my job here is to try to fight that. I’m trying to fight antisemitism. I’m trying to fight the perils of power and the perils of persecution and. The book states that quite clearly from the beginning. And

Stephen: you mentioned it’s got some good reviews. What have some people been saying about it those that may have known your dad or not known your dad?

I.

Robert: Most people that do the reviews don’t know. My dad I have three great testimonials that was a process, getting test, the back cover testimonials. One was from Michael Berenbaum, who’s a big name. He was a consultant. He did the show, a movie, the famous show, a movie, Steven Spielberg. So he was one of ’em.

And that was a connection through a, a guy here, Avi Hoffman, a local comedian, also a big guy. He’s he’s a c e O of A. Why I love Jewish. He’s a big antisemitism anti antisemitism advocate. He does shows to raise money to educate about antisemitism. So he got me, Michael Berenbaum, the guy that got me Avi Hoffman was, is a good friend of mine, ed Schultz.

He’s my, I call him Sergeant Schultz, but that’s a misnomer because I call him schutze, but great guy. But he he’s my bicycle repairman, which brings me to. Monty Python’s, bicycle repairman. I dunno if you know this sketch, but yeah, my bicycle repairman gets me. This guy, Michael Berenbaum, who’s a famous he’s a professor and he gets me this great.

And so I can’t thank him enough. And then we had Monty Auer in Jerusalem, another professor who wrote the test, a testimonial. And and then the brave, the reviews just came in one by one. Most people not knowing my dad, not most people not knowing his stories they’ve called the book Riveting, compelling, intriguing people said, you can’t put it down.

I can’t even remember. There’s so many kind words, and I’ve posted as many as I could, but I’ve still have backlogged other great reviews that I haven’t even posted yet. When they say they can’t put it down or. And they say we, they, we don’t want history to repeat itself. And people say that they can relate to my dad, that they can put themselves in his shoes right away.

That’s exactly what we were trying to do with the, with this book.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. And so this is a biography about your dad. Do you have plans for another book after this? Great question.

Robert: Before I answer that question, I wanna I didn’t finish the, not a real enemy the title. Oh, yeah.

Original title was Hungarian, Papillon was my original title. The Hungarian Butterfly after the Great Escape Artist Papillon, if you Steve McQueen played the movie, but it was a prisoner falsely accused a murder and escaped from the Devil’s Island area many times. So maybe that my dad’s escapes weren’t quite as exciting, but they were exciting and yeah, he didn’t fall from a cliff for that was hundreds of feet above the water.

But there they were still harrowing. But my co-author, Janice, who was very pragmatic, widely wisely, said, too many people aren’t gonna know that reference the Hungary pepper, especially the younger crowd, the younger people so the not a real enemy, the true story of a Hungarian Jewish man’s fight for freedom.

Part two is self-explanatory. Part one is not a real enemy. Before my dad’s last escape in, in, in 56 af after the Hungarian Revolution. And by now my dad’s risk tolerance was through the roof. And so he snuck into the medical center the night before their escape and he snuck into the medical school office of the medical staff office in between security guards and looked up his dossier to make sure there was no sort of damocles over his head that there was no bounty on his head in case they got caught.

He didn’t wanna end up in jail. And the Soviets in their own arrogance, in their own arrogance described him as not a real enemy thinking was he was communist neutral. All he did was practice medicine. He didn’t participate in their Morgan, the coken dagger stories many of his colleagues did.

They bought into the communist system. Some of ’em tried to betray them or double cross them. My mom and dad never bought into it. They never bought into being part of that political party. They loved Hungary. They were loyal to Hungary. They loved Jewish Hungary. They loved the Jewish people, they loved Israel, the United States, but they wouldn’t buy into Nazi Hungary.

They wouldn’t buy into Communist Hungary. So they described ’em as not a real enemy, even though leaving the country lost two good people. And who knows maybe more if they’d had more kids. Only because they despised them so much. They just didn’t wanna, it wasn’t worth speaking out or being so vocal after seeing what had happened both in World War II and in Hung Revolution where, It just got, squelched.

So in the end they were, my dad was a real enemy, but they just didn’t realize it. And that’s the twist and turn. But that saved his life too, the way he was very smart to, to not save more than he had to, to not buy into whatever people were trying to sell. And about the communist world, and I call it the dark world because for my mom and dad, it was 20 years of a dark world, maybe even more if you think about it.

So

Stephen: Plans for your next

Robert: book plans. Okay. I have three in the back of my head, whether they get on pencil and paper. I don’t know. By far this book will have been my most important book, and I’m still working so hard at it just to try to get the word out. So it would probably be at least a year or two before I would do that, and I would probably get help from my co-author and, that’s a lot more time and a lot more expense and but we’ll see.

That would be part two of my dad’s story. So look, his, this book only gets my, get my parents to Vienna, Austria, and they end up gonna the United States. And that story itself is harrowing and how they tried to survive in Providence, Rhode Island and Boston. And there’s funny story, New York Detroit.

So there’s enough material in there for, it’d be a much smaller book and certainly less harrowing, but still interesting. If you were into it, makes you, it would make you appreciate, like I do, how hard it is for foreign medical grads to succeed in a foreign country. Not only to do a medical school and do a residency, but to do it in a second language.

It makes you realize that. And they got through it. They spoke English as well as anybody. They had accents, but they were well as well, read and spoke English as well as anybody. So that would be one this is a spoiler, but the things they don’t teach in med school would be an autobiography, but it would be comedy, it would be some ama, my mo, my most amazing stories and experiences.

Every doctor probably has a book in them. And I’ve heard this from more than one person. And many doctors have written a lot of ’em about medicine, but they could write autobiographies or the things they’ve seen or but for me it would be more than just my stories. It would be pre-med, gross anatomy, the classes that the Wards, internship, residency partnership tracks, insurances, burnout.

Insurances would be actually probably more than one chapter. Legal issues. The things they don’t teach in med school and the classes that I probably blew off when I was in med school if it wasn’t gonna be on the boards, I was over at the basketball court playing with the U of M guys playing, whatever, get exercise I could in the middle of a busy day otherwise and get the notes from somebody.

I didn’t do with that a lot, but once in a while if you just would break out of a class Those things. A lot of it was about HMOs back then and PPOs and nobody cared because we had a normal system or what we thought was normal, the Medicare, Medicaid and Michigan Blue or whatever.

Florida blue it was pretty basic. And now it’s so complicated. Yeah. Not that I’m an expert at it, but it’s it would be part of it how that’s changed medicine burnout. So there’s a lot of material that I could do in a book the things they don’t teach you in med school.

And the thing about it is that every, everybody could write that same book. And it would, they’d all be so unique that but mine would be so it’d be dictatorial, autobiography teaching, make sure this is what you wanna do, make sure this is, you’re going into something you expect.

And also the gratification of it. So I. And then the fourth book would be, and I’m no expert, but I’m, I’m sort, I’m a, I know more about it than most people, I would say is how to invest in a bear market, because I’ve been in and out of a lot of bearer markets. I’ve saved and invested. I’m debt free. I read up about, I’m, I’ve been, I watch C N B C every day.

I I used to read Barons every day Investors Business Daily value line. So I’d say short of being a del running a mutual fund for Fidelity or Vanguard, which is a secondary career over the years that I thought would’ve been pretty cool. I know enough that I could write a book for beginners on how to invest in the bear market.

Start with Johnson and Campbell Soup. Worked with, dividends reinvested in taxes, and we can talk about day trading. I day traded for a year. I did pretty well, but it wasn’t this last year, which was horrible. But the year before, when the, we hit the covid bottom, I day traded for a year.

But I wouldn’t recommend that for most people. But again, health insurances disability insurances life insurance, that kind of thing. But just how to invest and stay with it and stay the course. Trust your country. Trust the system. Try not to get off the page. That’s a, so that would be a, that would be a short book.

And, the only way I could do that would be get credibility as an author and what kind of credibility you have. Probably a self-published book, that kind of thing. ’cause I’m not an M B A I always thought about getting in the M B A, but that would be, By far, like I said, the chances are I won’t do three books.

Maybe another one, if I did another one, it would probably be let’s see if this book’s re well received, if it is, probably do a part two of my dad’s story. But the things they don’t teach in med school, I think could be a funny, a Woody Allen with a humor in it and the comedy, but also a se serious component to it where, it’s actually useful to people, especially college kids that are interested in going to, to medical

Stephen: school, right?

Correct. Yeah. Okay. Let me ask you, Rob you yourself, do you like to read and what are some of your favorite books and authors? I,

Robert: I do like to read. I wish I had more time to read. I’ve been so crazy busy with this book. Like I said, the first 30 years of my life, I have very little extra time.

I used to like Shakespeare. I read a lot of Shakespeare books over the years. I liked Isaac Asimov as a kid. You’re gonna laugh. No surprise, whoever wrote Exodus the second book. In the five books of Moses in the Old Testament obviously a lot of people wrote Exodus, and it’s been probably redefined and rewritten over many years.

But why wouldn’t it be Exodus? It’s a story of the Hebrews escaping Egypt. Or getting, leaving Egypt. Why wouldn’t that be my favorite? So that’s a favorite story of mine. I read a lot of newspapers. I love the Boston Globe. I love the New York Times. Currently, I would have to say Mitch Alba, a fellow Michigander I loved.

He used to do a radio show when I was in medical school in Ann Arbor. Loved his radio show. Loved his sports column in the Detroit Free Press. I still think he writes for them. And of course he’s a guest often on espn, but he’s also a book writer and an author, and he’s written four or five novels by now, if I’m not mistaken.

And like Tuesdays with more it comes to mind and Right, the five people you meet in heaven. I would have to say that that he’s a probably my favorite as far as contemporary. I know a lot of people love Stephen King. My, my wife included my ex-wife. She loved Stephen King. I liked his movies, but I never really had the patience to read.

But she, she loved him. So I’d say Mitch album right now, I would be one of the guys that I can relate to.

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. Good. Oh, go ahead. No, please

Robert: finish. Yeah, and and now I’m so I’m, I read like page 10 to page 20 to page 30 of fellow authors Holocaust books. Not that I’m a big Holocaust genre reader, but I do like to hear about other people’s stories.

It’s just hard to find time and, people do reviews from my book and you’re supposed to reciprocate a little bit. It’s hard ’cause, there’s certain rules. Amazon doesn’t really want you to reciprocate back and. I will get to that. And there are so many good books. I’ve got a pile in my house here that to read and it’s still on the list.

And the next time somebody asks me that, hopefully I’ll read one or more of those and say, this is a great one. And this one, I do have one here that a long walk, which I haven’t finished, but I’ve read part of it. It’s a really it’s another escape, an escape story and different set of circumstances.

Then reflections is Agie Rubin. She’s also written this with a co-author. She’s since passed away unfortunately. But she was a friend of the family back in Michigan over the years so she did, she used to do talks on the Holocaust and they’re both very good books in their own right.

And I haven’t quite finished ’em, but getting through ’em, there’s just so many. I, yeah, it’s just amazing.

Stephen: Yeah. We were gonna talk a little bit of author stuff some advice for authors. So writing this book, it wasn’t like a long-term plan, you just fell into it. What are some things that you’ve learned that if you do your other books that you’re going to do different and things you would tell new authors to watch out for?

Robert: Everybody wants a piece of, that’s for sure. Every day we’ll start backwards. Instagram, Facebook, so I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook. I’ve got a Facebook author page. I’m on Twitter, I’m on LinkedIn. I get trolls everywhere every day. We’ll help you pump the book, but we’ll help you do this and that.

Do you need graphic design? Do you need and no. So look out for, I see how many people are following you. How many people are you following? I look at the demographics. If they even have a typo, one typo in their proposal to me or in their pitch, you’re out. You’re, you lose your credibility.

Editing that kind of thing. And I make typos too, but I, my book’s already out so I don’t have to, if I make a typo, but I edit my own posts and because that you’re reflected as an author about how you post so the trolls, so that eliminates a lot of the people too. Working backwards, don’t pay anybody by the hour.

Pay them by the job. Don’t pay them. Don’t pay everybody all upfront. Pay them maybe half an hour or a third now, and then the rest on delivery. That’s another piece of advice. My graphic designer was amazing, but we did it all. There was a lot of trust there overseas. It was all done on the. On by email and Venmo or whatever.

And no phone calls, no, no snail mail addresses. All done electronically. A little strange guy did a great job. But I’ve, I worked with people that were a little more seedy and not, and I, there’s no way to avoid it. I can’t say that enough, especially if you don’t wanna spend a lot of money if you’re not gonna.

Spend money, then it’s gonna be harder. You’re gonna have to just accept doing things yourself. But advice, if you do have the money, if you do have the time, hire people to help you. Hire a good copy editor. Book polishing. If you have a good author. If you want a co-author, they should be able to help you polish the book.

If you’re lucky enough to, if you go to Amazon and you self-publish, they should edit the book at least one time around for you as well. And when we had a publisher the publishing company also had their own editor, it’s plenty of editing, but I was lucky enough to find a good copy editor in Massachusetts and she was meticulous, but even then, A lot of changes were made in the book so there’s that other advice,

Stephen: oh, go ahead. I was gonna interrupt. Amazon doesn’t do any editing,

Robert: At all. I don’t know. I, so I was told nothing. Yeah.

Stephen: If you self-publish with Amazon or any of the others, whatever you put up, that’s what gets put out. Amazon will run. Some checking through to see if they can find spelling errors or grammar errors, things like that.

Not extensively. Okay. It’s just an automated robot thing. And you could even say, no, these are all correct and skip it. And they’ll just say, okay, there you go. Yeah, Amazon’s just, you’re all on your own. You gotta find your own publisher or editor. Okay.

Robert: I would recommend doing that.

I wouldn’t just most writers, I. I was raised with science and math as my love biology and chemistry and anatomy. Those were my, this whole English and history, this is all new to me. I wasn’t that great a history or English student back in there were my, my, my worst grades high school.

That was okay, but, came to college. It’s a whole other level, let alone trying to get your PhD in any of that. But you don’t have to do that. You can still be a good writer, but don’t just say it’s good enough. Or the book, I would say. Beta reads are good too. I recommend beta reads once the final product’s done.

If you know somebody who’s an avid reader or somebody who’s in the business, it’s always good to hand on that. That way you can get connections. ’cause beta readers tend to know other beta readers. They might know other editors, and even a publisher or too. So that’s that would be some advice to give.

And then, like I said earlier, vet, vet out your agents that would re, that would really show. Don’t have high expectations is another thing. Have, have reasonable expectations. But and I like when I applied to medical school, not so much medical school, but residency, I applied to tons and tons of residencies.

So it’s okay to apply to to tons and tons of people, but do it one at a time, kind of space it out. I think that if people find out you’re, I. Your bulk or your spam a querying a lot of agents and publishers at one time. I think that’s they lose interest that way because and not only

Stephen: that, they, a lot of times when you do that, you send it to people, agents or publishers that very clearly say, we’re only accepting science fiction at the moment.

And you’re sending them a romance or,

Robert: exactly. And I’m good that’s a little homework. That’s, and that’s my coauthor really helped. The original version of the book I did with the help of somebody else. We did query the original version of the book and it was about, 15, 20 agents and most of ’em actually got back to me, said, we’re not interested in, thank you for the thing.

It’s, thank you for the, the submission. We’re just not interested in it right now. At least they got back to me. But when I queried with the final product with Janice. Somebody said, we’ll get back to you next week. Never heard back from ’em. Most ghosted. And then the one, we got Amsterdam publishers, she said we’re full now in January but query again in May.

I. I remembered it and then my co-author didn’t even remember. And that literally we had exhausted our possibilities, at least the short-term possibilities ’cause we hadn’t heard from, and we were lit, literally ready to to self-publish. And that’s okay too. Most people are self-publishing. I’m not, I would’ve been happy to do that.

Maybe have a little more of a, handle, more of a control of what you do. Your marketing. You plan on doing most of the marketing yourself, even if a publisher says they’re gonna help you market. They they’re busy too. My own publisher, she’s, they’re putting out three books a month and she’s a small publisher and in the city of Amsterdam.

And it’s a, it’s the biggest publisher in the Netherlands, but that’s busy for for very small staff. That’s it. Plan on doing some of the marketing yourself and what else? And be weary of boutique publishers is another thing. You might wanna pick up a boutique publisher. I’m not sure there’s much of an advantage to that, except you’re gonna spend a little bit of money and you’ll still end up having to market your book yourself.

Either self-publish or if you’re lucky you get a traditional publisher. If you’re real lucky, you would get a random house or a, a hot and Mifflin or something, but I’m sure they’re getting thousands of queries a day I’m trying to think what else. There’s, ask me a specific question I can probably answer.

And everybody’s gonna have their own, everybody’s gonna have their own unique story, mine’s different. I didn’t even when I wrote the book, so being a radiologist on the left of two screens on the left is The patient work list, the queue, and on the right are the images. So when I did my dad’s autobiography, on the left screen was his autobiography, and on the right screen I was dictating the biography through word.

So instead of, writing or typing, so it’s not really, but I’ve been dictating for 30 years. That’s what I do for a living is I dictate cases. So that made it a little more natural for me.

Stephen: Oh, that’s in. Oh so lemme ask you about that real quick. ’cause I know dictation is something a lot of authors have said, help them get more words in and that, and I never thought about that, that in the medical field there’s a lot of dictation.

So you dictated the book. So it did text or did speech to text, and then did you go back and read it to edit and add to it? Yeah,

Robert: I had to, yeah. Then and then copy edited and then polished and then redone and then, yeah. But that was how I started doing it. When I actually, when I was, when Janice mailed me back her version of it, and I edited, yeah, I edited on the computer screen.

It was just so much. You’ve got word pro, you’ve got the Word document. It’s easy to scroll. The letters are bigger. You’re comfortable, you’re in a good position. You’re not cuddled in your bed or huddled in the sofa. You’re you’re working, you’re in a working, I walk away from the office, I walk away from the desk.

I’m not doing it. But when I’m here, I’m doing it, and Patience is another thing. And also if you write a emotional book about mine, some people procrastinate and I’m a procrastinator too, but I gave myself a sort of time limit. I gave myself a year to do this book and stuck with it.

I it wasn’t, once I got rolling the momentum the momentum continued, but it was hard just getting rolling, getting that. But what, but be patient with the work and don’t fight yourself about procrastination. If you need a day off or two. So for me it was the emotional part of the book.

So what happened to my dad’s parents and some of these other sad stories, I had to just take some time off and don’t fight that. I think go to the, take a walk. Clear your. Be patient about querying. Don’t be discouraged if if you don’t get accepted by a publisher or an agent. It still could be a good book.

And the same with sales. Sales are tough to come by. It’s very competitive business. It’s a very fickle business. Escape artists right now, or Holocaust related stories. Some I’ve heard about Holocaust fatigue. I’ve heard about physicians trying to do side hustles just to make extra bucks.

I’m not into any of that. I’m just trying to spread the message about antisemitism and how perilous and how to let’s avoid it here. And the stories are entertaining. They’re amazing. And but yeah you gotta be patient and you can’t be too hard on yourself. And it’s a bonus.

People that write a book they’re thinking outside of the box. They’re doing something different than just going to work every day or going to the grocery store or raising children or that kind of thing there. There’s more to life. There’s more to life than food and water And everybody has a book in them.

And Stephen ca I’m so impressed, like John Grisham and Stephen and Shakespeare even maybe the greatest of all time. How did they write and write and just have and do it, just do it so well. It’s admirable, but, so for me to do this, if I can do it anyway, can do it. I’ll just say that too.

It’s just, it’s it’s just, it was fun at times. It’s fun now. It’s still work because talking to people and try, but I love doing this. I love sharing with people, meeting people getting people to say, when somebody says, I bought the book, or somebody says, I read the book and they send it in a personal message or something that makes my day that’s all I wanna one day, one person.

Sometimes it’s five people and sometimes I’ll go a week with the bad thing, a week of trolls or people that don’t agree with what I’m saying. I’ll get the haters. I get the haters and I, they slip through and I, hey, Bring it on. I’ll let’s talk about this. Let’s get you in a classroom.

Let’s talk. By the way, that’s my ultimate goal is to get this book obviously libraries, museums on people’s shelves and on bookshelves. It is actually on Barnes and Noble’s bookshelves, some of ’em so far. But you can, anybody can go into any Barnes and Noble store and we can talk about where else you can get the book.

But you can go to any Barnes and Noble store and order the book, and they’ll have it shipped to your home. So even if they don’t have it on the shelves at your Barnes and Noble it’s possible to buy. But yeah, it, it takes patience and it takes it, it’s a different, it’s a different ballgame.

It’s a completely different animal than practicing medicine. When I walked in, when I walk, look at my work queue, the work’s ready for me. If I go to the hospital, whoever was in the emergency room last night, whatever’s admitted their CT scans, their x-rays, it’s all there. The work’s waiting for you.

And it’s relatively finite. God forbid a plane crashes. There’s a lot of casualties. But your work is still finfin. I you still, you can still get your work done on a day. Marketing a book, writing a book. It’s seemingly infinite. It’s if I haven’t told everybody about the book, then I haven’t done my job.

And gotta be reasonable. I’m not gonna pitch my book in North Korea or Iran or China necessarily, although I’m sure a lot of Chinese people would be, if the book could get to China. I’m sure a lot of Chinese people be interested in this book, right? Yeah. Sub-Saharan Africa, they’re so farfetched.

Antarctica. It’s a farfetched. In those are India would be a long shot. A great place. South Africa, difficult to get the book in. It’s an English speaking country. But so right now I’m focused on the United States, England, Canada, Australia. It would be wonderful to have the book translated in Hungarian, sold in Hungary.

It’d be wonderful to have the book translated into Hebrew sold in Israel. I’m realistic. Those are long shots. We’re working on an audio book too. That’s another thing. It’s another set of it’s another set of chores. It’s not It’s it, and I’m still learning as I go. I’m learning something every day.

And that’s the other thing about doing a book. It’s stimulating if you’re, if you haven’t done it or if you’ve done it a lot, write a book, it’s cool. Or write a, an article to start, write an article to a newspaper or I was writing articles to Harrow, h a r o, help a reporter out. I didn’t get a lot of traction with that, but I met some people and I haven’t given up on that.

But my, my energies have been diverted elsewhere, obviously.

Stephen: Nice. Great. Rob it’s, it is been really fascinating listening to you about this story and your father’s journey and all that. I think it’s great. I appreciate you taking some time to chat with us and the advice today. So I do wish you luck on the book.

I hope it does well and I’d love to see something else the follow up to this. Oh,

Robert: I appreciate you saying that. So not a real enemy. The true story of Hungarian Jewish mans Fight for Freedom is available on Amazon. Of course. English speaking Amazon so far Barnes and Noble, online or at the stores?

Walmart I’m proud to say at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. C It’s on the shelves there, so that’s nice too. So nice. That’s pretty awesome. I’ve donated quite a few books too to other Holocaust museums, the one in South Africa, and to a couple here in Florida and more to come.

But and I do donate some books from time to these big organizations, and I’m working now to do Holocaust Museum talks. Maybe a few in Texas and Chicago so far. There’s so many places to query. There’s so many places to reach out to. I can’t say that enough to authors too with, without being obnoxious or, you, you have to swallow your humility pill, but there’s good narcissism and bad narcissism.

I learned this early on. You gotta go with the good narcissism. You have to have confidence, but you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna overdo it. And that, that’s part of it too. Somebody will say, stop sending me this, or stop telling me about it. It’s it’s like those commercials you hear again and again on, you have the same commercials.

Can’t you guys come up with something fresh?

Stephen: Rob, do you have a website that people could go to? And I

Robert: do. I’m at Robert J. Wolf md.com. Robert, J as in Joseph Wolf, no, e Robert J. Wolf md.com. There’s a link on every page to purchase the book. And there’s a little bit of the history of the book.

I’ve got, I’ve done 15 TV interviews, I’ve done multiple podcasts. A lot of the content is in there. Photographs of both wars. Reviews are on there. You get a lot more detail and there’s a good there’s a 20 minute video about the Hung revolution, if you wanna see that, if you’re into the history and that kind of thing you can reach out, you can send me an email, Robert at Robert J.

Wolfe md.com. If you wanna ask more about the book, I’m happy to do that. And like I said, I’m on social media. Just if you Google not a real enemy or if you Google Robert J. Wolf md you’ll find me somewhere at the top of the list. So easy to find. And And let’s fight antisemitism.

Let’s make our country, let’s make our country tolerant. Let’s love our neighbor. I don’t wanna sound corny. I don’t wanna sound like just some I’m just preaching to the choir. But it’s heartfelt. I mean it, and when people read the book, they say, damn this this could happen to me.

This, it could be a bad neighbor, it could be a bad government, local government, my own government, a foreign government. But I could global warming a natural disaster. We could end, any one of us could end up. On the run or homeless or starving or, and just in a completely different safe situation daily that most of us fortunately haven’t had to experience.

Stephen: Great. Alright Rob thank you for taking so much time talking to us today. I appreciate you. A pleasure. I appreciate Thank you.

Robert: Pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much. Hope you enjoy the book if you get

Stephen: to read it. Yes, that sounds great.

Ben joins us from New Jersey where he goes to college. Ben may be young and isn’t known, but he is an experienced author with several books under his belt already with many planned in the future.

Ben has also talked with an author, Sue Bentley, that he admires and got her permission to use some of the animals names from her book in his book. Listen to what Ben shares about his books and his advice for writing.

http://benlevinauthor.com/

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I want to welcome Ben Levine. Ben, good morning. How are you doing Levin? Let me rewind and back that up. I’m messing this all up today.

Alright, so today on Discover Wordsmith, let me welcome Ben Levin. Ben, how are you doing today? Good morning. I’m doing all right.

Ben: Thank you, Stefan. And you,

Stephen: You’re doing all right. As long as I keep getting things correct instead of messing things up on what we’re talking about. Sorry.

That’s okay. All right. So Ben tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, what you like to do, some things you outside of writing. I’m currently going

Ben: to college at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and I am, I live in Mottville, New Jersey. In addition to writing, I like to read, relax, sometimes go on walks and do active stuff, even though I don’t do it as often as I’d like.

Stephen: Gotcha. And being in school that keeps you pretty busy. Anyway. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, it’s a fun time. Good time. You like to read, we’re gonna talk a little bit about some of your favorite books and stuff later, but what are you studying in college? Creative writing. Okay. It fits right in.

How’s that going? You enjoying it? Yes. Yeah. We’ll assume you’re doing well ’cause I don’t want you to embarrass yourself if you’re not. So we’ll just say, Ben, I’m glad you’re doing so well in college. That’s good. But let, we’re gonna talk about that too, also a little bit about what it’s like to write while still in school.

And you started writing before college, so we’ll talk a little bit about that too. Let’s talk about your latest books. You’ve got several books out in a series. Tell us a little bit about that. You mean about Nellie’s friends? Nellie’s friends? Yes.

Ben: What exactly do you want to know

Stephen: about it? Sorry.

Tell us what the series is about. What it is it’s about healthy. Is it mystery? Little bit of it’s a.

Ben: Okay. It’s a kid series, a little girl series about a girl named Nelly who moves to Illinois from New York. And after she leaves all her friends behind her favorite hobby becomes making new ones.

Each book is about a new friend she makes and the adventure they have together.

Stephen: Okay, nice. So why did you wanna write a series of books about a girl who’s trying to make friends?

Ben: The idea initially came to me in fourth grade, a time when I was obsessed with things stereotypically meant for girls, like dolls and girl books, and part of me wanted to explore this interest more.

Okay. And Nelly’s friend seemed like the right way to do it.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. You know what are you using any of these books for part of your schoolwork, creative writing, or is this all on the side? All on the side. Okay. So are you picking up some things in college that are helping with the writing?

Or are you Yes. Okay. Like what have you learned in school that’s helped with your latest writing? I have to think. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Throwing ’em at you, you’re not ready for, got it.

Ben: I’ve never really thought of it that way but I’m almost certain I’ve learned

Stephen: something.

Yeah. I hope, yeah. You’re spending a lot of time and money there, so I hope they’re giving you something right. That’s true. How many books do you have in the series right now?

Ben: Published or in general

Stephen: published at the moment? Five. You got five books. Do you have more planned? How many?

Ben: Yeah. The series has 44 books and all.

Stephen: You actually have 44 books planned? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So we can’t say you’re a pants discovery writer, you’re more of a planner. Does that sound accurate? Yeah. Okay. Definitely. So we’re definitely here at the beginning of your whole career. You’ve got five but 44 plans. So what is your character going to be doing over 40 more books in the series.

Just

Ben: going on more and more adventures with her friends.

Stephen: Okay. And how are you keeping it interesting and different so that each book doesn’t sound like the last book? That is a good

Ben: question. No. Nelly. That’s actually a concern I do sometimes have. Most of my books aren’t fully fledged. Only about eight of them are three of the non-published ones.

I think one thing that helps is that Nelly’s friends explores a variety of different categories such as. Tennis dogs, school camping, swimming, dance, horses, trouble with annoying cousins.

Stephen: Okay. So you’re taking parts out of lives that’s real and putting ’em into your stories. So are the kids aging throughout these stories or are they basically staying about the same age?

Nelly’s

Ben: in fourth grade for the majority of the series, but I. Spends the last 14 books in fifth grade.

Stephen: Okay. All right. Are there, what other books out there would you say are similar to what you’re writing?

Ben: The Sue Bentley books. Fun fact with her permission. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Sue

Stephen: Bentley books.

Actually, I’m not, no.

Ben: Magic. The Magic puppy, magic kitten, magic Bunny and Magic Pony series where magical animals meet girls. And that’s where I got a lot of ideas from. And with Sue Bentley’s permission and I named each of Nelly’s friends after the girls who met the magical Animals.

Stephen: Oh, nice. So it’s a little bit of an Easter egg for fans of that series.

You could say that. Nice. Okay. And I love that you reached out to her. ’cause I found I had to,

Ben: if I was gonna get published, otherwise it wouldn’t. I probably would’ve been sued

Stephen: or and I love that though, that I often say that authors are such great people in, even someone who’s just starting out could reach out to somebody who has multiple published books and except for a few of the highest end authors, you get responses, you get feedback, and they’ll talk to you.

And it’s such a great thing in the author community that most authors are that way. And I’m glad she did that for. And it makes you feel good and it helps you out to encourage you to write, somebody that has an established series like that. So you said you were traditionally published.

Who are you published through? Jump Master Press. Jump. Master Press. And we’ve been talking to some of their authors. A good group. What feedback are you getting? Do you have some kids that have been reading the books and getting feedback from? A

Ben: little, not as, not that much. I did show some of the books to kids when I first wrote them in fifth grade, but I haven’t read, but I haven’t really gotten a lot of recent feedback.

I’ve gotten a lot more recent feedback on in the whole though. What’s that? My other. Recent book? Not as recent. It was published in June, 2021, but,

Stephen: okay. Tell us a little bit about that book too. It’s

Ben: very different from Nellie’s friends. It’s a YA novel about a boy named David who goes through several years of his childhood

Stephen: homeless.

Okay. So is it based on any true events you know of or just a story you wanted to get out there?

Ben: I did some research and I had read a little about homelessness before I started writing it, but Okay. I, it’s, it was just based off. What I knew, I guess you could say.

Stephen: Alright, nice. And is this targeted to like the fourth grade age also?

Ben: No, that one’s more for high schoolers.

Stephen: Okay. Which did you write it when you were in high school still? Yeah, I

Ben: wrote it. I started it during the second half of eighth grade and finished it shortly after I started 10th.

Stephen: Okay. Nice. All right, so talking about Nelly’s friends again. If you had the choice, would you like to see those turned into movies or a TV show?

A

Ben: TV show? Definitely. There are too many of them for a movie, and besides they’re too short.

Stephen: Okay, so it would work as like a episodic series or something?

Ben: Yeah. And the Hole could work as a movie though.

Stephen: Why is that one a movie, do you think?

Ben: It’s very long. 200 pages. 15 chapters.

Stephen: Okay. So it just fits that movie vibe?

Yeah. Alright. Do you have a website that people could go and check out all your books?

Ben: Ben Levin author.com.

Stephen: Levin, not Levine. I’ll make sure and have that correct for the website in the show notes. Alright Ben, so let me ask you a few questions about your background. What books and authors do you like to read?

Ben: I read a mix. Oh, I read a mixture between ya, middle grade, some kids.

Stephen: So you’re in college. I love geographies. Okay. So you’re in college. You’re 20 years old yet you still like middle grade stories. Why is that? Obviously because you write them, but is there I never really,

Ben: I always had a hard time outgrowing books.

When I was in fourth grade and fifth grade, I was still reading a lot of. Kids chapter books like Magic Tree House, my Weird School Puppy Place. My parents, it drove my parents crazy that my, that I was barely reading more mature stuff until I didn’t really start reading more mature stuff until sixth grade when I started to get into history and biographies.

Stephen: Okay. And I think that’s great ’cause I write middle grade too and I still will read them partly to keep up with what’s out there, but sometimes it’s nice to have a, an easy book to read that’s not some big complicated world ending, something going on. It’s just a nice, almost like a plain candy crush or Angry Birds or something, it’s relaxing. Yeah. Do you have a local bookstore that you like to go to?

Ben: I do love Barnes and Noble.

Stephen: Okay. You got one in town? Yeah. Okay. All right. So Ben, I wanna ask you a couple things about writing before even being outta college or high school. But first, if someone came up to you and said, Hey Ben, I heard you wrote some books.

They’re for kids. Why should I get your books for my kid? What would you tell them

Ben: For Nellie’s friends or all one my two other self-published books I’ll in the Race and Go Wars. I’d insist they were good in entertaining reads and for, in the whole, I’d say it’s an important tool to start learning about homelessness.

Stephen: Okay, great. Nice. And we’ll put links in the show notes, to your books and website so people could check those out.

Alright, so how many years have you been writing now? About almost 10 years. So what have you learned in that time that you’re doing different now than you used to do? I’m getting

Ben: better at including details, and my stories are a lot longer than they were in fourth grade. My first books were like one to three pages per chapter.

Stephen: Okay. And I love that you said that because I like to work with kids helping to write stories in that. And I think it’s important that younger kids and their parents understand that your kid’s not going in fourth grade isn’t going to write the next Stephen King or JK Rowling masterpiece that they have to just write and learn and get better over time.

And starting in fourth grade, I think. I think that’s what I have been encouraging kids and parents is let your kids start writing now in fourth grade, because then when they’re up in college, they’ll already have some published books and they have that as a career traject trajectory that they have a choice to be able to do.

But if you start writing, when you’re in college, you’re already behind and you’re going to be in your thirties before. You would get to the point where you are already in your twenties. So I love that you said that and you’ve been writing for that long and learned some things. So have you had any editors or anything that’s read early books and now and made comments that Yeah.

You’ve improved or what they like better? That’s a good

Ben: question. I’ve always been switching between editors. I had one editor. For a while, but we had to split paths. And then I’m currently working with a woman who was actually my writing teacher, and from fifth grade through eighth, she’s this, she’s editing Nellie’s friends.

I didn’t initially show her Nelly’s friends and I. I don’t, we haven’t really talked about the series I worked on at writing class, but I’m, while I never got comments that I’ve improved, I’d like to think I have, especially when I’ve been writing for almost a decade.

Stephen: I, I would definitely say not only from just the experience of writing, but you’ve aged and matured.

There’s definitely, kids are different from fourth grade to when they’re in college at 20. You know what I mean? That’s just an obvious thing. So your writing will improve just by, aging and getting older, but with the practice you can see things that you’ve changed or gotten better at.

You even made that comment that you have. Being in college are you learning anything about the publishing part of it, the marketing part of it, or anything like that? We’re still

Ben: the, I’ve only taken a couple writing classes and intro to creative writing and poetry.

Stephen: Okay, so I know you work with Jump Master Press.

Are you doing any marketing or anything on your own other than being on a podcast? I’m

Ben: currently taking a break from the marketing because college can be a lot,

Stephen: but it can be yes.

Ben: But I’m hoping I’ll get back into it sometime in the foreseeable future.

Stephen: Okay. Do you find that. Just getting a little older, getting out of school into college that you have less time to write or are you finding time to write in between everything?

Ben: It’s definitely harder to find time to write, but I always try.

Stephen: Okay. So what are your plans? Obviously if you’re taking creative writing, you probably intend to stay with some writing type of. Thing in the future. What are your plans with your books, with your career after college? My

Ben: plans are to keep writing, keep seeing what stories feel the most ready to be edited and published.

And I’m also aiming to write a lot of sequels.

Stephen: Okay. And I think that’s great because you’re hitting so many of the points that one you’ve already been writing for 10 years and a lot of. People in the quote unquote industry say, it takes about 10 years to get off your feet, so you’ve already covered that and you’re still in school.

You’ve got books already. And people say the more books, the more in a series, then you start getting more people buying. Have you seen your sales every time you come out with a new book? Have you seen sales on the past? Books jump a little bit, a tiny

Ben: bit. One thing I’ve noticed is. The momentum gets a little higher or lasts a little longer.

When I got my first self-published book published in eighth grade, ghost Wars, the momentum kind of went and left. It was published in April, and then I got a lot, I got a decent amount of sales immediately, but then after a month they stopped. Okay. Same with Nelly’s friends. When I first self-published the series, within the whole, it lasted significantly longer.

It was published in June of just after I just after 11th grade. And then the sales continued for To go really to go fairly well for three or four more months. And there’s, and a lot, and I’ve still sometimes gotten occasional sales, not, so it feels like the momentum has died down, but it’s not completely dead.

Stephen: Okay. So when did you start working with Jump Master Press? In

Ben: the Hole was my first book published under them. Alright. And it was accepted by them just before 11th

Stephen: grade. Okay. So Nelly’s Friends, you’ve mostly self-published. Now you’ve got in the Hole with Jump Master. What are differences that you’ve seen working with a publisher for a book or doing it all on your own?

Between the writing, the editing, the marketing, what are some differences that you’ve found?

Ben: It hasn’t felt that different but working with a professional editor definitely changes a lot. I push myself a lot more. It’s more intense, but also more fun. Okay.

And the work really shows in the books when you, when it’s someone who’s actually trained to edit, does it?

Ghost Wars is my only book that was ever published, which has not been traditionally edited and there are still, and there’s still a lot I’d honestly like to fix in it like way too much spelling and in ghost Wars is about several animals who are working to save the world. After several animals are kidnapped, the note, the kidnappers leave literally says where they are and yet they’re still struggling to find them or figure it out.

Or figure out where they’re go, where they were. And then later when another animal is kidnapped. And the four were initially art. Asked where they were initially taken like that Hadn’t already been said several times. That’s one thing that definitely needs to be added if I ever re-edit Ghost Wars

Stephen: And that’s right there.

So you’ve noticed some improvements in your writing right there, like you said, but it’s also you have that option. Here’s a book you wrote five, six years ago when you were younger. That you have the ability and option if you want to edit it and re-release it out into the world. That’s one of the great things about today’s publishing world is being able, I know,

Ben: I know.

I’m just, and I did that with Nelly’s friends technically. It was, I didn’t re-edit it before getting it traditionally published because they had been professionally edited before they were self-published, but, I do think I’m not, I don’t currently have any plans to forget to republish ghost wars, even though I am, I did already write a sequel for Brain Wars and I’m currently writing a third book in the series, werewolf Wars, but maybe someday.

Stephen: Yeah, it, it may not hurt if you’re go release those two to redo book one. Republish it and get all three out there. Like you said, one, you saw sales of past books improve when you release new books, so that could spur all three of them have a whole trilogy release says, I know Jump Master Press does some cool box sets, so that could be an option too, maybe.

Yeah. Alright, so Ben before we go, and it’s been really great talking to you. I love the fact that you’re a young writer and I hope you do so well in college with your books and everything. But. There are some kids out there younger than you that are maybe writing and maybe some parents that have kids that wanna write and parents aren’t sure if they should let them, or if it’s a good idea or anything like that.

So what advice would you have for kids that are younger than you that want to get into writing?

Go for it. All right, there you

Ben: go. Also, if you want inspiration, read a lot of books, watch a lot of movies, and live a lot of life.

Stephen: I love that. That’s so good. I love that you put all three of those together like that. What would be a good middle grade book you’d recommend for them to read to get going?

Ben: That’s a good question. Maybe bridge to Tara Bia.

Stephen: Okay. That’s a good one. I like the fantasy aspects of that book a lot. All right, Ben, I’ve had a really fun time talking to you. I’m glad you’re, you contacted me, your mother got ahold of me to do that. You with a busy schedule finding some time. It’s appreciated.

So I wanna wish you luck on your books and I’ll hopefully we’ll see some more coming from you soon from Jump Master Press. Yeah. Great.

I want to welcome Jennifer Lawrence and apologize to her once again. We did a whole episode and talked about a lot of great things – that I forgot to record. So she graciously agreed to get back on and redo it, even though she was super busy with school and family. Thank you.

Jen lives in Nashville, TN with her family. She is also a teacher and has written a series of books for kids – The Mystic series. We discuss her book and having her daughters read and help with the series. We also discuss the difficulty in marketing middle grade books and some things you can do.

Stephen: big surprise today, I’m welcoming JL Lawrence to the podcast for the second time, but most of you don’t even know what the first time was. So she was gracious enough to get back on because we switched recording mediums last time and I forgot to hit record. So we had a great conversation and then didn’t even record it.

So hopefully we can recreate all that great conversation that we had. Jen, tell us a little bit about you and what you like to do besides writing.

Jennifer: I do, I guess in my off time or my real job, whichever way you wanna look at it, is I’m a high school teacher so I teach marketing and I spend a lot of time with the students.

’cause we do a lot of competitions like the one we just went to in Orlando to compete internationally. Had some good results there. So really enjoyed that. And keeps me a little bit young when you’re constantly surrounded by teenagers. Yeah. So sometimes I feel really old. Sometimes it helps you feel young.

It’s a double edged, but but I do enjoy it. I’ve been teaching for 20 years, so it’s, it’s been a good run and I’ve enjoyed it. And then when I’m not teaching and not writing I mostly spend a lot of time doing stuff with my kids, like with soccer or whatever it may be.

Stephen: Yep. The life of a busy working parent.

Yes. It. Your kids are a little older. My kids are just a few years older than yours, and it starts settling down a little bit, but then you start going I don’t know if I wanna do that other stuff. ’cause boy, the stuff with the kids was a load of fun,

Jennifer: yep. Yeah. I’ve got three, my oldest one graduates in two weeks.

Stephen: Oh, wow. So it’s really busy time right now.

Jennifer: Yep. She just had prom yesterday, so got to enjoy that and now ready for getting ready for

Stephen: graduation. Nice. I remember those just a few years ago. All right. So tell us about your books. You write middle grade. Tell us about your latest books and why did you choose to write middle grade your high school teacher?

Jennifer: It’s my journey. It was actually a little crazy. I started with an adult fantasy series that I had in my mind for years and just finally came into fruition. And then when I finished it, My daughter, who was 14 at the time, was like why didn’t you write something that I could read? So I was like okay.

So I thought about it, and so I took the same character and brought her back to high school to create my first young adult series. I. And so that she, and that was a four book series so that she could have something to talk with me and work with me and read. And then in the last couple of years, I just really got to thinking about, other, my youngest one now is just 14, but was 12 when I started thinking about it.

And so I started thinking about what else I could do to reach her. And, a lot of fun ideas that I had over the years. I love dragons and a lot of mythical creatures that’s always interested me and so I just figured out how to put a spin on it and came up with the Dragon Master

Stephen: Chronicles.

Nice. And have your kids read the books now? I.

Jennifer: Yes, my my youngest one has actually worked with me through it. Like I’d write a couple of chapters and then I’d read ’em to her and she’d give me feedback. And and right now I’m working on the second one, so I’ve read some of it. I haven’t read all of it to her, but I have read several chapters and so she’s working with me on that one as

Stephen: well.

Nice. Great. And you, your other books that you wrote tell us just a little bit about those real quick.

Jennifer: My original series is called the Mystic Series, and so it was, it focused on a heroine who was trying to figure out why she didn’t fit in the human world, and she had all these strange abilities she couldn’t quite place and was, just.

Trying to force herself to be in a normal world, but yet knowing deep inside she wasn’t. And then she’s runs across, she’s an F B I agent. She runs across a case that kind of blows her normal to pieces and starts meeting other people, opening other worlds, and then eventually realizes that she is destined.

To become the next mystic, which means she has to face off against an ultimate evil. So it’s got a lot of your good versus evil battles, ups and downs, those epic epic journeys. And then of course, with your big

Stephen: final battle, So you’ve got books really, that you hit ’em in middle grade and they read a good series and then you hit ’em in high school and then that series they can follow you through the years.

Yes. Which is one of the nice things about middle grade, with adult, either you catch ’em or you’re not With middle grade you, if you catch ’em, you got ’em for a few more years, a few more series, but you got another chance if they didn’t like your middle grade stuff too. Yeah. It’s interesting.

What’s the feedback been on your books from kids and people other than your own? My

Jennifer: middle grade series I haven’t released yet. Widespread. I haven’t decided exactly what I wanna do with it yet. I. I’m back and forth between do I just do it myself? Do I try to find a publisher? And so most of it, so far, most of my feedback from it so far is from beta reading and some testing in different age groups and different.

Different types of people interests, things like that to make sure I’ve got a good widespread, like I’ve made sure, I’ve got some male and female readers to make sure that my characters appeal to both. ’cause I want it to be a good balance series that I could appeal to anyone. And so I’ve enjoyed. Doing that. My young adult series it has done well with both I’ve done several conferences or markets or different things where I’ve had people come back and buy other series because they liked it. Either direction, some that started with the young adult and then one of the adult or vice versa.

So I’ve had a lot of good response to the two different series and

Stephen: how they connect. Nice. And what are your plans for upcoming books?

Jennifer: Right now I’m working on the second in the Maggie series because or the Dragon Master Chronicles. And so I’m trying to finish up that because I really wanted at least two solidly done before I, I really start pushing in one direction or another or deciding what to do and making the final decisions there.

But once I finish up that one, I am trying to, hoping to make that final decision and deciding which direction I’m going this summer. And then my next project will be the Shadow War Shadow Warrior Series. And that is pretty much a continuation or conclusion to the Mystic Series. So it kinda leaves an opening at the end of that series.

This kind of ties it up and then not only does it tie up that series, but some of the characters you meet in the young adult that don’t really follow through. This is where you find out their ending nice. And so it all comes back full circle. In the next three book series that will be called the Shadow Warrior Series.

Stephen: So you really do tie it in through grades five through 12 and keep ’em rolling. All those. Yes, of

Jennifer: course. And actually on purpose, I’ve done two short stories for my publisher and I have tied in Maggie from the Dragon Master Chronicles. With Alyssa from the Young Adult series and Kate from the Mystic Series.

So they’ve all kind of made like little guest appearances here and there. So that ’cause Maggie will actually tie back in from the middle grade series. When I write the adult series, you’ll get to see where she is as an adult. Oh, that’s

Stephen: nice. That’s a great idea. And we’re gonna talk a little bit more about marketing ideas for middle grade and young adult and all that.

But the other problem though, with. A lot of the middle grade is, they read so voraciously sometimes that if you have a three book series, they may get it and be done with it two weeks later and then they’ve got a couple years before maybe they can read the ya stuff. Yeah. So you gotta keep, do something, keep ’em going.

More books. More books, yeah. If you had a choice if would you rather turn these into movies or TV shows?

Jennifer: I’m mixed on that. In the past I would’ve said movies pretty easily, but now with all the different Netflix and Amazon Prime and, even like a M C and h b, all these that are coming out now.

And creating these more detailed TV series that are getting just as much notice as movies have in the past. I’m leaning toward TV series ’cause I feel that there’s so much more you can do. I saw in the news where JK Rallying and WB are looking at doing, something like that.

For the Harry Potter series and that’s what she stated was that she could do so much more detail and stay so much closer with the book and that, I’m in that same line of thought. Why Sure. I’d, I’d love to have movies. But I just I feel like you can do so much more sometimes with a TV series, especially now where it could be like at eight or a 10 instead of a 22.

Stephen: And good budgets. Yeah. Nowadays. And the JK Rowling thing that is I always thought the books were much better than the movies. A lot of readers will say but the movies so brought so many people into her world and they’re so love, they love it as much as I love Star Wars growing up Yeah.

And they’re so enmeshed in it, and. I just, oh, I think it’s going to be interesting to see the feedback, because you’ve got people that were 10 that are now thirties and have kids, and those kids have probably watched the movies that their parents have. But you really have a whole new generation that may have never even seen the movies.

Maybe read the books, maybe not. But it’s so hard to imagine anybody else as Harry Ron, and yes. Hermione, I, so there’s just so many mixed feelings on that one, and it’s

Jennifer: not even Yeah, that would be my biggest hangup. There is, yes. Those characters, they’ve gotta nail that because if they don’t it’ll be a long road.

Stephen: Yes, and I feel for all the true diehard Harry Potter fans because I know these last Star Wars movies I’ve got issues with. But I would rather have issues with new movies than have ’em say we’re going to redo the originals. No. You can’t do that. You know that

Jennifer: is true. And because I’m a huge Star Wars fan myself, and yeah, there’s those original three I think will always be my favorite.

I’ve seen all the others. But I don’t think anything will ever compare to those original three.

Stephen: Yeah. Especially when we were younger watching ’em. Yeah. So I agree with you. TV shows seem to be a good route nowadays and I think I. They’re hungrier for stuff. So indie authors have a better chance.

I know what’s his name? Sean Johnny. And Dave Tru, Johnny Truant or whatever wrote Fat Vampire, and he got it picked up on, on sci-fi. And then Hugh Howie had the wool series picked up on a m c independent. Publish or publish books. It, it’s a different market than it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, yeah. Totally different. So I like that. Jen, do you have a website that people could go and check out your books? Yes,

Jennifer: my website is author jl lawrence.com. It’s actually going through an upgrade right now. You can still get to everything on it, but I’m doing a little bit of a rebranding.

’cause most of my graphics, when I created the website, were MO based off the Mystic Series. And specific graphics related to that. And I’m doing some upgrades to make it more of a Celtic feel overall because all my series tie into usually some type of Celtic symbolism and culture. ’cause that’s just always been a favorite of mine.

And I am doing some upgrades and a little bit of updates there But it’s author jl lawrence.com to get all that information.

Stephen: We’ll make sure and put some links in the show notes for that. And so we talked a little bit about your plans for your next book, but let’s talk about some of your other favorite books and authors.

What books do you like to read or that you’ve read several times in your life?

Jennifer: I am, I’m a big fan of she Kenyon. I’ve read, most of her books in that Dark Hunter series and some of her others I’ve read a lot of Christine Feehan and. I like the Nora Roberts, her Paranormal Supernatural Books.

Okay. I like the Blood and Bone series or some of those type I really like how she writes those. And so those tend to be my go-tos and the ones that I reread when I re, when I do that sometimes.

Stephen: So you kinda like the Supernatural Fantasy where, and you write more pure fantasy almost for kids.

I, yeah, I like how a lot of authors read something different than they write. And it’s interesting to see that, ’cause a lot of people are like, oh and then, someone tries to write mystery and keeps failing after every time. So sometimes you have to change it up and write what feels correct for you.

Jennifer: Those tend to be my go-to books and I do read a lot of different stuff. I do a few mysteries every now and then. I do varying it up just so that I do get a feel from other types of genres, but I just always find that I come back to fantasy when I’m really wanting that, just fun, leisurely read where I really get carried away in the worlds.

That’s just where I always end up as one of those.

Stephen: Nice. I like that. And I think a lot of authors feel the same way, which is probably why a lot of authors write multiple genres sometimes, because I like all of this. Did I tell you last time we talked? I got to meet Sherly Kenon recently. Yes, you mentioned that.

Yes. Yeah. And she was really nice and it’s great thing about authors, even the really top brand names that people know usually are extremely nice and we’ll talk to you and all sorts of things. So yeah. Shout out to she Kenyon, definitely for that. Yes,

Jennifer: she is. When I met her, she was definitely very nice, very talkative, very willing to share her struggles and her successes.

And so it was very nice to talk

Stephen: with her. Yeah, absolutely. And have you had anyone, any kids or whatever, give you that kind of treatment? Read your book, said, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you wrote this. This is wonderful. I love it.

Jennifer: Not really with kids as much yet since my middle grade hasn’t become widespread.

But I have had some reach out with the young adults. I’ve had some that will show up to places that I am, and they’re like, do you have anything new? We’re ready to read it. And we’re, or I’ll have I released a Christmas series, but I hadn’t released the third one yet at a show I did back in October.

And sure enough they must’ve been watching my website ’cause, or my Instagram. ’cause as soon as it popped up I got an email and they were like, could you mail this to me? We saw your third book is up. Nice.

Stephen: That’s great.

Jennifer: So I know, you know that I have some that are watching and enjoying it and, will come see me at the shows where I am.

So it’s so far, yeah, it’s been a lot of good feedback.

Stephen: Nice. That’s good. Do you have any shows planned coming up? It’s not like you have anything else to do in your life.

Jennifer: I will be at a Comic-Con in Chattanooga this coming weekend. And then I’m traveling a lot for the summer, but I’ll be at a Comic-Con in Knoxville, Tennessee in July.

And then I have a lot of little local shows like the Mistletoe Merchants in Memphis and in Lebanon throughout the year. Nice. So a lot of little places where I’ll be here and

Stephen: there. I just interviewed another author recently from Chattanooga. But I don’t know if they’re going the show.

I do have an author friend if you happen to see him there, Zach Bohannon. Just tell him I said hi. He writes zombie stuff. I don’t know if he’s gonna go to the Comic-Con or not. Alright do you have a bookstore that you like to go to in Chattanooga or close by?

Jennifer: In the Nashville area. We don’t really have a whole lot of like your small bookstores like I did in a small town when I was growing up.

We do have a Books-a-Million and a Barnes and Noble the Barnes and Noble isn’t too far from our house. So since my girls also love to read, we’ll, take a stroll through there sometimes and browse the books and enjoy it. Used to spend a lot more time there when they were younger and we could go into the little children’s center, and. But that’s probably where I primarily go if it is

Stephen: store-wise. Okay. Alright. And so before we talk a little bit of author things in marketing middle grade, if someone came up to you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book, I’m looking for something for my kids. Why should I get your book and read it?

What would you tell ’em? My book is

Jennifer: all about having fun and adventure and getting outside of the normal stresses of the world. That’s one of the main reasons I write fantasy to begin with. It was a coping mechanism that I did as a kid and then eventually turned into something more. And now I would, say that same thing to other parents.

It’s a chance for them to get to be a part of the world where the rules are different and the adventures are anything they want them to be. And I tend to not be an overly descriptive writer because part of it is I want them to see some of that as they interpret it. And I do give a lot of details, but I try not to go over the mark.

’cause I want their minds to get there too, and to add some of those gaps and to fill some of those things in because that’s what I do as a reader. And part of why I love fantasy is I would. Almost see it play like a movie. In my head, even though I was reading it, I would visualize it. And that’s what I try to do with this series is make it just fun and adventurous and an escape and just a fun time to be in a world that yes, they face hardships.

Yes, it’s battles. Yes, it’s this, but it’s also just a world of fun.

Stephen: And you know what, let’s kinda roll into the middle grade marketing. I’ll ask you about what you’ve learned, but what you just said, I think’s important because to have a good story, and this is one of the first things everybody learns, is you gotta have some conflict.

You gotta have a reason for the story. You have some change in growth in the story. Without that, you’ve just gotta meandering bunch of scenes that you know aren’t as good as you may think. And I think for middle grade sometimes. It’s a balancing act in, in everything with middle grade, but you get some parents occasionally that will be like I’m not gonna let my kid read anything where there’s fighting or that somebody gets hurt or that there’s monsters or this.

I’m like what are they reading? Even I. If you go back and read like Little House on the Prairie, there was conflict. Now they’re not fighting monsters. Yeah. But it was survival. It was getting along with people, there was conflict in there. So I feel sometimes parents don’t understand that and that kids don’t wanna read the stuff like that.

Have you run into anything like that?

Jennifer: Sometimes and I see a lot of that with teaching high school and knowing, what they read in the past or they’ll talk about different things. I am noticing that shifting some. And honestly, I think it’s like series like Harry Potter, where that opened that door where parents didn’t fear it as much anymore.

Because as long as. As parents are providing the teaching and the, what they want their kids to know and believe, that’s real. I don’t think fantasy necessarily has a negative impact for me and for my kids and for what I’ve seen it do for other students I’ve had over the years.

It provides them that, that chance to just to dream, to jump on a dragon and fly. Yeah. And yes. They may have to, Fight for their right to stay in the kingdom or whatever it may be. But it’s also just about the adventure and in my mind it’s also about opening their imaginations.

Stephen: I love that. ’cause I think that’s key. Yeah that’s fantastic. And the parents that say, oh, I don’t want my kid reading this, but it’s okay if they go play Call of Duty online. Do you really? I question your parenting if you’re not aware of what Call of Duty is online and you’re worried about Harry Potter or the parents that are like, I can’t have my kid read Harry Potter.

’cause she teaches real spells in that book. What? What do you mean? She teaches real spells?

Jennifer: I can tell you mine, I invented like new types of magic, different, there’s probably not an ounce of reel in it, but because I wanted it to be very unique to the realm, it’s, It, there’s just a difference.

There’s real and there’s fantasy, and if you’ve taught your kids the difference between the two, then one doesn’t harm the other.

Stephen: And I mentioned Little House and nothing against the little house books. I read the whole set, the whole series when I was younger and enjoyed them, I. That was a couple decades ago and a lot now, kids don’t wanna read the same things.

Stories have changed, books have changed, entertainment has changed. You can’t give them a hardy boy and Little House and just expect them to necessarily say, oh, this is wonderful and great when they’ve got Call of Duty and Marvel. Movies to watch, so you’re fighting against that. So what are some things you do to try and combat against the other things that take, that kids get interested in for entertainment?

Jennifer: Honestly, I try to look at I try to actually study the trends and see what they are looking for and try to incorporate it as much as I can while still adding in some of the values that I want to have there. But that’s the reason why in my middle grade series one, I. I have her, it’s almost like a coming of age, like the main character ages a year in each book and has a new quest to face in each book.

The whole time that even though she’s doing these quests and she’s attaining something in each book, that it’s all leading her to face kind of the villain that’s introduced in the beginning, in a final battle, in that final book. And so it helps you build with the character, get to know the character.

In the first book, I kept it simple so I didn’t overwhelm the reader with too many characters and too much stuff going on ’cause it’s a lot of new world. But now in the second book, I’m getting to add in a character here and a character there and build that. Yeah. And and build those relationships and make them relatable characters that’s one of the things that, that I do to combat that is to keep the adventure there, to keep the interest there to keep adding new things that kind of spark the imagination component. But then also have I. The real that drives it with the friendships and the bond between, Maggie and her Dragon Fire Spark or Maggie and Egan the two main characters and all that.

And to show how they grow and in their relationships and just, in their overall knowledge. And that’s

Stephen: real nice. And one of the things that. A lot of people don’t realize the great thing which we hinted at with middle grade is these kids read a lot. So if you have a lot of books and you write a lot, then if they like you, they’re gonna probably pick it all up and read it and just drive through it and want more and more.

That’s a good thing. But the thing that a lot of people don’t think about with middle grade is, How to market it because you can’t put ads on Amazon targeted to 13 year olds. You can’t put ads in the newspaper or billboards ’cause they don’t recognize, look at that stuff. You can’t put ads online targeted to 13 year olds.

All the what? So no but you don’t necessarily want to all the time because it’s the parents that are buying it and paying for it. But parents will ignore it. So you’ve got a double-edged sword. Where you’re trying to get the kids to see the books, recognize the books, want the books and parents to re see the ads and click to buy it for them, or enough to get kids to point them to the right place.

That’s where you were mentioning one of your things of do you go publish, get a publisher, or do you do independent? And that’s a big choice. Yeah. So what are your thoughts right now on which way you wanna go or thoughts on how you’re marketing. That

Jennifer: is, honestly that is my biggest hangup is the marketing aspect because I do know what it takes to market or the limitations of.

Of middle grade and it does concern me, would I really be able to reach widespread where I’m trying to get if I try to do this, on my own? And so that’s kinda why I was looking for a publisher that specializes in middle grade because they already have a lot of those connections and so I feel a little bit more comfortable with, Kind of them taking a lead on that, where they have the connections that I don’t have.

I also am looking at, the reality of not finding a publisher and or at least not in a timely manner. And I don’t wanna just sit on the series forever. I’m starting to look at, what can I do if I decide to do this on my own? And so I’ve been making a list of things that I can do and focus on.

I’ve been looking at the types of social media that they like where I could put like Instagram ads, TikTok. I’ve also been looking at adding a YouTube channel ’cause I know my kids, they like to watch a lot of the little videos and things on YouTube. And I thought about maybe doing a YouTube channel where I do like readings or, like a meet fire spark and listen to a few pages and I’ve made a more concentrated effort in this series to, like, when I talk about the Compass or the scepter of Time or things like that in the book, then I’m actually trying to find replicas and get them, so like the dagger that Maggie has to find in the first book.

I, I have, a replica of it that looks like it’s described in the book. So I’ve been trying to do things like that because they, I’ve noticed that they tend to like, you know what they can see, that’s one of the successes of Harry Potter. They can get the one, they can have the robe, they can look just like them.

And that has been one of the biggest successes because they were able to build that world. And you feel a part of the world. Yes. And that’s a huge attraction, especially to that age group. So I’m trying to really be thoughtful about what I choose in the books, what I find to represent.

Hopefully all of those things combined, if I decide to do it myself, we’ll reach out there.

Stephen: And it, it’s a lot of indirect marketing as opposed to direct marketing. You’re not putting up an ad and counting number of clicks and then how many people bought the book, which that’s typical marketing, that’s how they judge it. Yeah. Here it’s I went to Five Comic Cons. I spoke to 200 and some people and they enjoyed the thing. Did they go buy? Did they buy that day? Did they buy later? It’s right. It’s more difficult to do that because you don’t necessarily know, but, and you can’t even get them to sign up for a newsletter because that’s frowned upon to get kids, mailing the kids.

Yep. So you gotta figure something out to reach the parents for that same type of thing. So some of the things you’re doing are all ideas. And I know I, there’s probably. A lot of marketers like, oh man, I don’t want to touch any of that. ’cause they can’t quantify it. They can’t say I’m gonna charge you this much money for all these things you’re doing, but we can’t tell you that you grew because of it.

Yep.

Jennifer: And that’s what I also thought about maybe some library sponsorships. I know some of our local libraries around here you can sponsor like a Saturday reading, where I could read like a chapter and then be there to answer questions to anyone who is interested. And some of the libraries will even let you be there, and let you sell copies of the book and do like signings.

If I decide to go the independent route, that’s another thing I’m gonna try to employ as well, is trying to get into some of those communities. We have a couple of middle school librarians that I’ve worked with in, in some of different, the different schools and, they’ve hosted some events and some things for the middle schoolers.

And so those are, that’s another option, that I’m looking at to try to get

Stephen: going. And I love all that. I’ve got a school visit coming up in about two weeks, and it’s a lot of hands on it. The middle grade world is different than adult. It’s even different than ya. Yeah. In today’s world, it’s a lot of hands on and trying to reach them that way.

Because these kids also studies show, and I’ve seen it, they wanna grab a physical book and read it. They don’t want to do digital and No, and that’s different than everything else. You gotta fight that too. So instead of saying hey, my book’s only three or $4, parents might be like, okay. It’s my book’s 15 or whatever you have for a print book.

And it, and that’s a, yeah, that’s a difference for parents. So have you found you haven’t really started marketing your middle grade, but have you found the ya are they reading physical or are they reading digital?

Jennifer: I’d say that’s still mostly physical. Now I will say every once in a while when I’ve run like a special and all the ebook up for free or some type of discount, like in the first of the series, I’ll have a lot of response and I’ll have a lot of downloads and I’ll see some follow up.

But still with that age range, I’m still just probably predominantly paper copy. Huh, okay. They just still aren’t, and I just know from teaching high school, very rarely do I see ’em pull up a book on their phone or bring in an iPad. Most of the time if they’re reading in class, it’s an actual

Stephen: book.

And I do love that you did the the, you’re doing the knife and you’ve got your dragon, props in a way. In my one story, I had them eating this treat and I, my sister’s a chef and she’s actually working on, I. Making the recipe. So I can offer the recipe in my study guide, and she’s doing videos for me to show how to make it.

What it really is just homemade hostess fruit pies. It’s got a whole nother name and we’re gonna make it look a little more magical. But those are the types of things sometimes that you gotta do to attract the kids. It’s it, I know there’s probably some authors going, oh, I don’t wanna deal with any of that crap.

You probably shouldn’t write middle grade.

Jennifer: That. Yeah, I would agree. It’s been very different, from going from adult to middle grade and just a totally different mentality. I didn’t really have to worry about did I have the right prop for adults. They they vision it the way they want to.

Although I have found recently in a lot of my in-person events that even adults like to see replicas of things in the. I wonder if that’s not from a carryover from the Harry Potter original generations and that kinda world building where they’ve been able to experience the worlds and now that’s what they want

Stephen: is to keep that.

I will say that what we mentioned earlier about Harry Potter, I think. If they’re in their thirties or younger, that Harry Potter had a lot to do with that. And then the Big Bang Theory, because the Big Bang theory showed you can be an adult and you can enjoy superheroes and comic books and statues. It’s not dolls, it’s not, for kids necessarily.

And I think those two things have a whole new generation of people in their thirties or below that’s acceptable. And so they like, The stories, even the fantasy with the statues, maybe they’re not getting figures and going pew, pew it like I used to do. Maybe they want the statue that looks cool on their shelf, or, yeah, even them some, there’s a lot of cosplay.

They want a robe, they want a hat. I have a detective with a cool hat. Here’s a replica, and that type of thing. So I will give, personally, I, I would anthropologically say Harry Potter and Big Bang pushed that a lot for adults. Yeah,

Jennifer: I would agree. And it did, I did end up going back and getting a second dagger done and that is a replica now for the Mystic Series.

So I have one one for each of those series. Nice. And continuing to look for things for that. So it has, it’s opened my eyes working with both. But definitely with middle grade, they want to feel a part of the action. Yeah. So whether it’s a cape, whether it’s a wand, whether it’s whatever it may be having little things helps them feel a part of the action.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. And I just use it as an excuse to three d print or get little toys that, as for me so lemme ask you this We’ve got right into the talk about marketing and that you wrote some books and now you’re writing your middle grade. So what are some things you’ve learned from writing those other books that you’re applying to writing your middle grade?

Jennifer: Honestly, it’s been very different. I think I had to do more of separating the two than applying one to the other than. Just knowing that I’ve got to be more visible. I’ve got to have more, do more social media. I’ve got to do a little bit more work. It’s, it unfortunately it’s not the build it and they will come type mentality.

It is a, you’re gonna have to push it out there and let them know it’s there in order to come. And so it’s, it. So it’s been a lot of learning on that and in that first series of things that worked that didn’t work, having to take on social media even though I didn’t have much time for it, it’s actually one of the reasons that I decided to go from independent to working with Jump Master with that series, just because I finally was able to admit to myself that until my kids are a little bit older and until my schedule changes a little bit, I.

I don’t have the time, I physically, there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do the marketing that would need to be done if I were to really move those books

Stephen: myself. Yep. Understood. And I agree. Alright, Jen once again, I appreciate you jumping on again. It was great talking to you for a second, first time.

Maybe sometime we’ll catch up for an actual second time, which would be the third time or something like that. We sound a little Harry Potter Time travel going on there now. Yep. Before we go do you have any last minute advice for any new authors out there?

Jennifer: Yeah. Some key ingredients I think you need, and this was years of hard lessons learned for me to get there.

One, you need to find a good group of friends, critique partners, peer group writers, however it is that can help you move forward. They don’t necessarily need to be the same genre. I think I’ve one of some of my closest friends in my writer’s group, one does crime thrillers, another one does historical fiction, and.

We actually have been able to benefit each other with outside points of views and all of our stuff. And I think it’s made us each stronger together in each of our different genres. So definitely finding, that group of friends that’s gonna lift you up, but also help expand. And then my second thing would be, Learn to take critiques, find people that will critique you honestly, and be okay with that.

Yes. Don’t get offended. Learn from it. Grow from it. My first renditions of the Mystic Series are nowhere near prob what they are right now in their current. Publication, right? So I had to learn, I had to take the advice and maybe you don’t take all of it ’cause you do have a writer’s voice and that you wanna keep that unique.

But you can also learn a lot just from having honest critique par partners and not taking it offensively, but learning from it. And then that kinda leads to my last piece of find a good editor. I think, one of my biggest pet peeves is people that just say, okay, I wrote a book. I typed it up here.

I’m gonna throw it out there. And. And just go with it

Stephen: because, and then say, I don’t know why people are giving me bad reviews or not buying it. Exactly.

Jennifer: But it ends up giving a bad review to independent publishing overall. Yeah. And, but that’s not to say that every book is gonna be perfect.

’cause I’ve seen traditionally published where there’s a typo here or there and and one of mine, I found one and it went through two editors and probably 10 beta readers. So that’s not necessarily what I’m talking about. But it’s just the ones that you can tell they haven’t really studied the craft.

Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. And I totally agree. I. I feel for any of the authors, that someone gives them a one star review because they said on page 375, I found a missing, comma, this book sucks and should have had. I’m like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? What about the story itself? And that’s, that’s a whole nother discussion on people and psychologically why people do stuff like that.

Yeah. But, one little miss. Mistype or something like that. Shouldn’t give people a one star. No problem. Alright, so Jen I appreciate you taking some time. Don’t choke on me here. We gotta make sure it’s still around for getting the episode live. We say, the first time we forgot to record it, we got the second time, but then she took to death, so that would not be good.

Nope. All right. Thanks Jen. I appreciate it. Have a great day. Thank you. You too.

Catherine lives in Tucson Arizona and is a bass player. Good combo – author and bass player.

She has written a sci-fi novel called Aztec Eagle that is the first of a series. She is also with Jumpmaster Press.

https://www.bookstoptucson.com/

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I wanna welcome Catherine. Catherine. Hello. How are you doing today?

Catherine: Doing fine, thank you Steven.

Stephen: Alright, so we’re gonna talk about your book Aztec Eagle, but before we do that, let’s find out a little bit about you.

So tell us a little bit about where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing. I

Catherine: live in Tucson, Arizona, and of course with the fabulous weather we have here for most of the year, I enjoy outdoor things like bicycling and hiking and indoor things like making music.

Stephen: Oh, nice.

What do you play? I

Catherine: play bass guitar. So do

Stephen: I. Good, good choice.

Catherine: Yeah, my my husband and my daughter and a friend of ours had decided they were gonna put a little trio together. They had a keyboard and drum kit and a singer, and when I heard them perform the first time, I said, you really need a bass player? Yeah. Yes. I’ll have to learn to play bass.

Stephen: And so I did.

Yeah, that, that was the same with me. I had some friends that had a band, they needed a bass player. So my buddy showed up and said, hi, this is a base, this is the e a d and G strings. Each fret is a half step go. Literally, that was my introduction. Let’s go. Yeah. Alright, so Katherine why did you wanna start writing?

Catherine: I have to think back and I was in elementary school and I think what happened was my older brother had an assignment in his class to write a short story. And I read the short story that he wrote. I thought that was just the coolest thing and I’d like to do that too. So I started writing when I was about 10 years old.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. That, that was about the time I was reading Stephen King. All right. We’re gonna talk about your book, Aztec Eagle and it, you said it’s your seventh book, correct? That’s correct. Yes. Okay. So tell us about Aztec Eagle and is it part of a series or is it a standalone?

Catherine: Aztec Eagle is book one in a series called the Aztec Eagle Series.

Book two, we hope we’ll be out later this year. And I’m editing book three we’re on our way. A little bit about it. It’s set maybe 200 years in the future where earth has one colonial planet called Alpha. But the story starts in a small town in Mexico on the shore where a young urchin named Enrique is selling trinkets to the tourists, and he meets a captain in the peacekeeper Pilot Corps.

And the interesting thing about this pilot core is that many of the pilots have a neural implant. That allows them to connect with their aircraft so that they’re getting data instantaneously from their aircraft. And the way they select for pilots who get this implant is if they have a high cyonic ability.

And as it turns out, young Enrique, who was maybe five years old at that time has a pretty good cyonic talent. And El Capitan takes him under his wing to develop and train the cyonic talent. And Enrique then just becomes fascinated with becoming a pilot. He’s obsessed with it. And of course, as with all obsessions, he runs into some major difficulties.

He’s poor, he can’t afford secondary education. He can’t, he can hardly afford the books for his schoolwork. So there are obstacles to conquer. And then his world turns upside down when he finds out that El cap. His hero, who, he was planning to become a pilot and be just like El Capitan and fight side by side with El Capitan.

His hero defects to the other side goes over to the rebel cause, and now Enrique has a dilemma. What does he do? So that’s, that gives you an introduction without giving away too

Stephen: much of the plot. Nice. Good. What made you choose and all, what genre would you say it’s in? I call it science fiction.

Catherine: Okay. Or speculative fiction would be, it’s a little more inclusive. It is in some opinions it is what they call cross genre. That is, it’s a combination of science fiction and fantasy. And the fantasy element that comes in is Enrique has a little spirit companion a creature that lives in the spaces between matters, shall we say.

But it’s skirts into that magical realm as does cynics. You’ll find people on both sides of that question. Whether cynics is just, a science of the brain that we don’t understand yet, or if it’s just mythical and it’s more in the realm of fantasy. But this little spirit companion of his.

Is very elemental and sees the world and the people in it as colors. So he sees Enrique as a nice warm amber most of the time, except when he gets mad, then there’s some red in there, or he sees a pretty girl and then this purple stuff floats up. So it, it’s an interesting perspective on the doings of and fleshed creatures from the viewpoint of this little

Stephen: spirit.

Nice. Cool. And what gave you that idea? I. Well,

Catherine: when I first had the idea for the book my husband said, Enrique needs a companion a familiar of some kind. And I thought let’s see, Mexico, maybe an iguana. But I thought, nah, you can’t take an iguana in an aircraft very well. And then I find out it gets too cold for them up there anyway.

He just, sees up and fall over. I thought A spirit can go anywhere. So that’s where that

Stephen: came from. Nice. Cool. And why’d you decide to write a book science fiction and this particular book with these fantasy elements?

Catherine: I have written several science fiction books ahead of that and the fantasy element, I don’t know it just seemed natural.

It seemed like a part of Enrique and. As I got into the writing of the book with this little thing flitting around it, it just tickled me. I get such a kick out of that character.

Stephen: Okay. And can you think of any books out there that are similar for people that like certain types of books?

Catherine: From a science fiction standpoint my earlier works have been compared to okay, now the name’s gonna escape me. This always happens. Connie Willis. Okay. I like to think it’s more Ann, not Ann Mcca a little like Ann McCaffrey Cher cherry, CJ Cherry, in that mode.

It’s more about the people than about the science. The science is there. The advanced technology mostly. But it’s really about people and people are pretty much the same no matter which century they live in.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And since you have written several books what are, what’s been the feedback from readers on your books?

A, any feedback on this one?

Catherine: The, I haven’t got a lot of feedback yet on this one from readers. My, my beta readers were very enchanted with it and particularly with the character of, I call ’em Chop the little spirit creature that hovers around previous books. I’ve actually, one of the Mother Grim was nominated for the Philip t Dick Award the year it came out.

So that, that’s encouraging. And I also write short stories in novellas, and two of my novellas now have been selected as best of the year for the Ann Lab Awards given out by analog, and I believe as OVS is in on that too, with their reader awards. So that’s

Stephen: reader feedback. Nice. Wow. That’s a pretty big deal actually.

Yeah. I’ve read And Asimov’s quite a bit, even though I’m more of a fantasy guy. I still get there. There’s a lot of crossover quite often. Yes. If you had a choice, would you rather see these turned into movies or TV shows?

Catherine: Oh gosh. That’s a good question. Movies can get into a little more depth in the short term, but, television, there’s, you ha if you have a series of shows, then you have more opportunity to really explore the stories and the character.

I would say probably television because of the serial aspect of it. When you have a series of books coming up and my writing does tend to be episodic. So it would lend itself more, I think, to the television

Stephen: serial. Okay. And television is completely different than it used to be. So that, it’s a completely different question now, instead of a season with 24 episodes, it shows a eight at night.

It’s some streaming service with 10 episodes and that’s all, totally different, but they. Apple TV pulled off foundation, which nobody thought they’d ever be able to do foundation, so it’s totally different world. But I agree when you have a good story like science fiction stories with the characters, throwing it into a short movie a lot of times just doesn’t it’s not satisfying enough.

Catherine: You can’t really cover all of the events that go on. It particularly if you read the book already and then you go to watch the movie, then it’s oh, but they didn’t put in this part or that part, and they didn’t develop this character and they left out that character. They combined these two characters.

Stephen: Yeah I think the Hollywood people are finally figuring out that. Having a really great successful book does not mean you can make a really great successful two hour movie because that movie and timeframe is very specific as to what you can do with it. And a lot of good books need more than that.

Thrillers a lot of times work because you can fit a thriller more often, it seems into that timeframe. And I think they’re also finding out that. Working with the authors is actually beneficial. It used to be like we just paid for that. So author goes Shut up. But now they’re working like Hugh Howie silo is coming out.

Or maybe it’s already out really close, so he was an independent author and now they’ve got a, I think it’s on Apple TV show coming out on his books, and he was involved to a small degree, not large, but that’s, Gayman was involved with his shows. The oh, it’s alluding me now, but yeah.

More authors are getting involved with the show. Yeah. And they’re the streaming shows, not the. TV shows of old

Catherine: right, the streaming you’re not limited to a certain number of minutes. You don’t have to, structure it around ads. So yeah. It’s a whole new ball

Stephen: game. And I think Johnny, I don’t know if you ever listened to Sean, Dave and Johnny podcast I forget the name of that podcast that they used to do, but he had his Fat Vampire story and that just got turned into a TV show on a m c.

So a lot of independence now are starting to get their books out there because. Good. Content is good content. That’s right. So Catherine, do you have any plans? You said you’ve got a book two and then a book three that you’re working on for this series. Is there plans for a different series after this?

Catherine: Not for another series. I still, dabble in the short story medium. So I have a couple of those things on the back burner. But series nine, I’m not sure I wanna get that involved to develop another whole series. Enrique’s got plenty of adventures ahead of him. I think this will keep me busy for a while.

Stephen: Okay, good. And do you write anything besides science fiction or have you thought of writing anything else?

Catherine: I do actually. I have a historical fiction book out called Macbeth which is based on the historical High King Macbeth. And if you peel away the legends that have arisen around it and try to get back to and it’s really difficult because there’s so little material that’s extant from that time period.

And what there is, of course, as they say, history is written by the winners. So they don’t have a very kindly view of Macbeth. But in fact the historical record that does exist, Shows us that he was probably a very good king. He ruled for 17 years at a time when most High Kings lasted about six.

Stephen: Wow. Nice. Okay ha, have you ever thought of doing like a remake of Macbeth in science fiction? I don’t. There’s mashups like that, yeah.

Catherine: Yeah I’m not sure how I would pull that off. And I like the story so much the way I have it. I’m not sure I’d wanna Fair,

Stephen: fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough.

Catherine, do you have a website?

Catherine: I do not have a website at the moment. I am on Facebook. You can find my Facebook page. Also if you go to Amazon Author Central, you’ll find some information about me and my

Stephen: books there. Okay. We’ll put some links in the show notes for everybody. Okay. The science fiction readers.

All so let me ask you a couple other questions about you. What are some of your favorite books and authors?

Catherine: Oh boy. I love Connie Wilson’s stuff. I really do. And I enjoyed the Orson Scott card books Hein Line. Of course, master Just a Master,

Stephen: always. And there’s a book that didn’t get made into a very good movie, battlefield Earth.

That, that was a huge book and they throw it into a movie that didn’t work so well. Yeah,

Catherine: Yeah. That’s tough to deal with that. I also read very widely in historical fiction. No big surprise. And part Godwin I think is probably my all time favorite in that genre.

Okay, great. He was also, he was writing science fiction before he went into historical fiction, but his series on Robinhood and the one on Arthur, they’re just wonderful.

Stephen: Oh maybe I’ll put some notes links to show notes. I haven’t read those. Yeah they’re ex Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have a favorite bookstore around where you live?

Catherine: The book stop here in Tucson is is very friendly to local authors. And yeah, I like the book stop.

Stephen: Okay. And I’ll put a link to that too. I like pointing out some of the bookstores authors like to go to all so before we talk a little author stuff if someone stopped you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Catherine: I’d say if you want an interesting tale with a little touch of humor to it and some color draws on the southwestern roots and yet has all the excitement of a, like a space opera then that’s what this book is for you.

Stephen: Nice. Great. Okay. You’ve got seven books out you said. Yeah. What are some things that you’ve learned that you’ve changed or done different from the beginning to now?

Catherine: Wow. It took me five years to write the first book that I got published. The Earth is All That Lasts by the second book.

I had that down to 15 months to get the sequel out. And it really was a process. I had a wonderful in-house editor and feedback person, and my daughter April and she was at that time, I think 12 years old, but she would read my manuscript and say, mom, this doesn’t, and this my advice to beginning writers is, Find someone who reads other writers have a tendency to tell you how they would write this story, but if you find people who read and if you can get them to give you honest feedback.

That’s the biggest help to an author, to say, oh gosh, your book was wonderful. I really loved it. We love to hear that, but that doesn’t help us make it a better book. Yes. When you say, oh, that this character just seemed a little phony to me, or I didn’t believe this action sequence right here, that’s helpful to us and that’s how we learn and are able to.

To grow and, keep reading yourself. Read other people’s stuff, see what they’re doing.

Stephen: AB absolutely. And I try and explain to people, I’m like, look, if you read my book and tell me, Hey, that was great. I loved it. And that’s the only thing you tell me, then that’s actually worse for me.

You’re actually being much more mean to me because you’re making me think that, oh, this is great and perfect and I can put it out and everyone will love it. Then I put it out and people are like, wow, this sucks, and that was boring and I didn’t like this, and sometimes I’m getting all these people hating me and I feel much, much worse.

I’d rather have a friend tell me what they didn’t like because I trust them and it’s hard to get people to understand that they’re actually being mean to you by not telling you what’s bad about it.

Catherine: Yeah, when as I was doing drafts of my first book and I would give them to various people to read and get feedback, and when I finally had a draft that the reader said, oh, that Castle Rock character was really a, a mean character.

And I thought, She’s criticizing the character’s personality. She’s not criticizing the

Stephen: book, I think, and that’s what you want to go, I think I’m ready to go. Yeah. Yeah. When people get that invested in the character that they can hate them, that, yeah. Okay. Then I nailed it. That’s what I wanted, exactly. I know my mother, oh man, my mother. Even though she reads thrillers, she reads Patterson, she reads occi, she reads cussler and what’s his name that did hunt for red October? She reads all these stuff with all this thrillers going on. But then she reads my stuff. She’s oh, why’d they have to get so mad at each other?

And why was there this fight? And I’m like, It’s a boring story if there’s no conflict of any sort. No. Everybody should get along. Should be roses because it’s my book. I’m like, mom, you’re not reading my stuff anymore.

Catherine: I have, I’ll tell you a funny story about when I got my first book published and I grew up in North Dakota and my parents still lived there at that time.

And I went back to and combined a book tour, went around and hit the local bookshops to do readings and so forth. But as I arrived for the first time since the book came out and my mother came running out of the house to greet me and. With a copy of my book in her hand and said, I found 14 typos that you should have them correct before the next edition comes out.

Stephen: That’s pretty cool. Thanks, Bob. That would’ve been nicer before published it, but, okay, thank you. Yeah, but with eBooks, it’s so much easier to just make that change and even print. Now you can make the change pretty easy. You can’t correct the people that already have, the problem, but, it’s still not that hard.

So you mentioned talking about rules of writing and what did you mean by that and what are some examples of rules that you’ve had?

Catherine: Somerset mom famously said there are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. And I love that I’m very much of that mindset.

But you’ll find people who say you can’t ever do this, or that. And you can only have two points of view from, from two characters when you write or you can never use and to start a sentence because that’s improper. Or it is good to know the rules. It’s good to know what they are, but you also have to know when it’s okay to break them.

Yes. You have to know what they are. When you get to know that you are breaking

Stephen: them. Exactly. Why you’re breaking them.

Catherine: Exactly. Exactly. And it’s very very frustrating. There are a lot of writers workshops out there where basically what they’re doing is teaching you rules. Which is, fine, as long as they understand these are general rules and they’re not absolute rules.

And I’m not sure that message is coming across right now. There is a trend in in genre fiction toward a particular style, and there are a lot of rules that just try to push you toward this style. Which may or may not be suitable for your work if you’re writing action suspense then if you wanna look at Dan Brown’s stuff and say, yeah, hey, follow the rules for that.

There’s another writer whom I won’t mention, but he’s, bestseller and his rule is never use anything but said to carry dialogue. For that particular style, the style that he writes, that’s absolutely correct for some of us that I write with my tongue so far and my cheek that I would choke if I had to do nothing but said to carry dialogue.

I imbue my stuff with a little more humor and a little more folksy style than what he, he uses.

Stephen: And again my, my advice that I’ve started giving authors, and again, I understand I’m not a worldly experienced, multi-decade multi bestseller author, so take that with a grain of all. But the advice I give is any advice you get.

Take it with a grain of salt and evaluate it for your situation, because not every bit of advice works for you or is good for you. And the said thing, I, early on I had the, it was maybe the trend the hot thing people were saying, don’t even do. He said, she said, or anything like that, take it out because for audiobook it sounds better.

And so I tried it and the thing is, it worked for me and I do it like, without even thinking about it now. So I hardly have any said or, offered congratulatory, you put something like that and he, he yelled, exclamatory, whatever. And there’s always someone saying, oh no, take that out. That sounds horrible, and stuff.

And. And you gotta just see how it works for you, your writing, and never overdo anything good or bad. I do have a friend that wrote a book and I stopped reading it because it, it was a scene of a bunch of people sitting around talking and it was literally, No, I don’t think we should do that. She said disgustedly.

I think we should. He’s, he declared authoritatively and I’m like, oh my God. It sounds like Scooby-Doo, like a fifth grader wrote it, and I wasn’t even a writer at the time and it just stuck out to me. It sounded so badly. ’cause 20 people talking and everyone was some, something other than sex.

Some arb. Yeah. Yeah.

Catherine: Some adverb

Stephen: attached to it. Yeah. It was just way too much. Go ahead. Go ahead. There,

Catherine: There was a time when that was actually promoted to, don’t just say something, but add some qualifier to it. And that was a style for a while, but it’s it wears out in a hurry.

Yes. Yeah. Now we’ve, the pendulum has swung the other way, and now it’s don’t put any of that in. And fine if that works for your material. But if it doesn’t, cut yourself a little

Stephen: slack. And the thing, the other thing is that I started thinking of, ’cause I write middle grade, you know it’s for kids and when a kid writes something, you get.

He declared, he yelled excitedly. And they use a lot of, they break a lot of the rules ’cause that’s how they’re still learning and that’s kinda how their thinking goes. So I don’t always think it’s bad for me as a middle grade writer to write, Like what? They’re a little bit used to sometimes, I’ve had editor cut things out and rearrange sentences and stuff, and I’m like, wow, that sounds much more dry.

Oh, but it’s much more proper. Then I’m going to leave it like it was because I have that. I’ve read a lot of books in my life. I’m assuming you’ve read a lot of books in your life and I look at books that I love, books I may have even read more than once because I loved it and I could give you the basic story.

I can’t tell you. Chapter for Chapter Beat. For Beat. I got, I can tell you what happens in it, but I don’t remember the details. I don’t remember the grammar. I don’t remember the structure, the sentences and all that. Those are just what lead me through the story. I remember the story. So if what people focus on so much is the grammar and the writing of the sentences, they lose track of the story.

And if the story isn’t a good, I don’t care how good your sentences are you can get away with less than. Grammarly perfect. A hundred percent sentences. If your story’s good, you draw the people in and they get it. You can break rules to engage your reader. Yes, that’s

Catherine: true. And there is a flow to writing.

There’s a flow to sentences, and sometimes you want smooth and sometimes you want choppy. Sometimes you can wander a little a bit. But you have to find the style that fits you and fits your writing and follow that flow and not get it herky jerky and broken up unless you are trying specifically to do that for a particular scene to get a particular emotional

Stephen: reaction from the reader.

But it all comes back to you have to have read widely and you have to have written a lot of things. I know I, I know a lot of authors that go to lots of workshops and lots of critique groups and classes, and they read every book and they do online courses and they’re studying all this stuff. It’s how many books have you written?

I’m still working on my first one. I have learned, and this is me from experience in hindsight, that 90% of what I learned early on, I didn’t retain, I didn’t even understand. It wasn’t until I wrote multiple pieces and multiple things that the stuff I was learning made sense and I, I could apply it in my head, I could apply it to my writing, then it made sense, and I could figure out what worked, what didn’t, and move on.

I, there’s, that’s been my advice for newer writers than me, is stop reading the books and the courses and the classes. Just sit down and write multiple things. Don’t focus on that one story. Write a couple short stories. Write a book, put it aside. Write another book and just write it.

And then you can figure out all the rules and all the grammar and whatever else. I,

Catherine: I was part of a writer’s group for a while that I was the only published author in it, but, these were good people and they were, trying to, but as we would share material around and you look at each other’s stuff to critique it, and you could spot the ones where it had just been overwork shopped, they’d been to so many people who gave them so many different kinds of advice.

That yeah it just had become stilted as they tried to incorporate all the rules.

Stephen: And if it’s the first thing you’ve been working on and you’ve been working on it for so long, you don’t understand. You can’t take everybody’s advice. Not everybody’s advice is correct. I had a.

A group I sat in on, and it was a couple thriller writers that were critiquing this guy, reading his first couple chapters or whatever, and they told him he should cut out the first three parts and just start here and I was like, no he shouldn’t, because he’s writing horror, not thriller horror. You need more of a buildup, you need that long tail of suspense.

With thriller, you wanna see the dead body so you can move on with the story. Horror isn’t like that. And they didn’t agree with me. But I’m like, have you guys read horror? Because I’ve read a lot of horror. That’s how horror works. But I, without having the experience of writing something else, that guy wouldn’t know so much about what would’ve worked and what didn’t.

So it’s, again, you’ve gotta write a lot.

Catherine: I remember After I’d been published and so I thought I had a little better grasp on novel writing. I read a mystery for the first time since I had this new body of knowledge, and my reaction was why did they make me care about this person in the beginning that just then was murdered?

That was the victim. It’s.

Stephen: That’s the point, right?

Catherine: Oh, okay. That’s how you do mystery. You start, you build up sympathy for the victim, and then you have the death. So you’re invested in it. Then different genres have different approaches and different needs for that, that opening attack.

They, it’s, it is most important to get a hook. And depending on the genre, sometimes you’ve got a page to do that hook. Sometimes you’ve got a paragraph to do that hook. With thrillers and action things, you need to get in there right away and get that hook and get that writer hooked in.

With historical you have a little more leeway you can build

Stephen: into it. But even then, you can break that rule if you are a, have a long established series with a character and stuff that people know, of course know. If you’ve read Jack Reacher, you’ve read multiple of that series. You don’t need to have that body on the first page because you like Jack Reacher and you wanna read a little bit about him.

You’re into him and that’s why you’re on book 28. So exactly. That rule can change in certain circumstances again, but without writing that much you wouldn’t realize that or know that or get the feedback for that or whatever.

Catherine: You have to get a sense of the flexibility. It’s a craft.

It’s not a science.

Stephen: Exactly. And there, there’s a writing book. It’s called This Writing Life by Jeff Strand. And not a lot of writers have heard about it. It’s more of an inspirational book. It’s not. Devoted to craft or anything like that. It’s just basically, here’s some of the crap I’ve put up with over 20 some years of writing is essentially what it’s, and there’s so many things easily in there.

People tell you leave out the adverbs and do this and do that. He’s That’s crap. Do what sounds good for you. And essentially what it is. So I love that book because of that. It’s a it’s a great book to check out. If you’ve read Stephen King’s on Writing a hundred times, this is a good one.

That’s a counterpoint to some of that. Alright. Yeah. So Catherine Before we go is there any last things you’d like to say to authors about your, or readers about your book or authors about writing,

Catherine: To authors, my advice is just keep writing even if it doesn’t sound good. Even if you get a bad reaction to it.

Keep writing. Find someone to give you good, honest feedback. Don’t be afraid to make the changes and just keep writing it. It’ll come eventually. Yes. If you’ve got a gift, it’ll come eventually. Okay. Readers I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for being readers and thank you for delving into these works and letting us share our imagination

Stephen: with you.

Nice. Great. Wonderful. All right. Katherine, I appreciate you being on today. It has been a fun talk with you. And I’ll make sure and put links to your book and everything in on the show notes.

Catherine: Okay. Excellent. Thank you Steven. Yes.

Jim is one half of the Flinch publishing duo and joins us today to talk about their newest anthology – a western title Six Gun Legends. We also discuss his Sgt Janus books and connection to Carnacki, Kolchak and X-files.

With the upcoming Pulpfest, JIm tells us more about that show and what he and partner, John Bruening, have planned.

Stephen: so today on Discover Wordsmith, I wanna welcome the great Jim Beard, who is the better duo, better half of the duo of Flinch Publishing. That’s what I hear at least Jim? Oh,

Jim: wow. Okay. This is starting off on the wrong foot already.

Now. I can never talk to John again. My partner, my publishing partner. Wow. Okay.

Stephen: We’ll just not tell John you’re on here, and then we’ll, okay. Yeah. This

Jim: is just between you and me. Nobody else is gonna hear

Stephen: this. Nobody at all.

Jim: Wow. Wow. Yeah, he’s, he’s already, supremely jealous of me, so now it’s just gonna be worse. Nice.

Stephen: Jim tell everybody a little bit about yourself to give an intro here. Okay. I

Jim: am a a writer, editor, and publisher of adventure Fiction. And pop culture nonfiction. And then I also whenever I can, I will write licensed fiction too. I don’t do as much of that as I would I would like to.

But so I wear several hats and do a lot of different things. And I actually have two small press self-publishing firms, and we already mentioned the one. So that’s flinch books with John Bruning of Cleveland, Ohio who will never speak to me again. Thank you. Oh,

Stephen: I’m sorry. I just broke the band up.

Jim: And and then Becky books which is just me.

Stephen: And actually you mentioned the license stuff. That was the first time I met you. It was actually years ago at pioneer Village down mid Ohio. Yeah you had a little table like set up behind the mill. Yeah. In the middle of nowhere.

It was like nobody was around you. Yeah. It

Jim: was a card

Stephen: table. Yes. And I had found out that you wrote a story for one of the Star Wars comic books I had, and I had that brought it down to have you sign. Yeah.

Jim: You’re reminding me that we only see each other at bigfoot shows. Yes.

Stephen: Yeah. Which is funny because about it, it’s this for sure.

And that’s kind funny because that’s not your main thing up until now you.

Jim: That’s, that’s interesting because I have been utterly fascinated and in love with Cryptids, all my life from when I was, a little kid and and just want to be around that kind stuff.

But I chose to do that because I do have a lot of like monster or supernatural related things and I’ve that kicked it off for me. I’ve actually started doing some crypted shows now and finding out that I do very well at them. That the people really seem to spark. When, when I bring Cold Check the Night Stalker or Love it, I don’t have, I can’t get it anymore.

I used to have an in the X-Files book, but unfortunately I can’t get copies of that. I,

Stephen: I’ve got that. Yeah I got a

Jim: copy from you. And I was just, before we started recording here, I was just telling you that this lasted show that I was at, which I. Surprise, surprise that I got the idea that I’m finally going to do an actual Bigfoot book.

Yeah, that’d be great. I actually can, hold that up when I’m at these shows and say, look, I have a Bigfoot book. It’s not just it’s Bigfoot.

Stephen: Yeah, I saw you asking for stories in that and I got excited ’cause I love reading that stuff. I actually thought of replying one, but I’m like, nah, I don’t wanna mix it with asking you to be on the podcast and applying to the book.

I don’t wanna feel, I’m mad. That’s okay. Yeah. But I don’t think I was ready for it, listen, I

Jim: mean, honestly, if this first one does well, I will certainly, want to do other another in fact, I had to, I got more pitches than I had slots, right? The book. And I had to actually turn down, four people.

Everybody turned in great pitches. Which is an editor’s dream. It’s also a nightmare too, ’cause you, ’cause then you have to weigh two really good ones and you gotta go so who knows maybe a second volume, but it’s, I gotta get this first one out first.

Stephen: Good.

I’ll look forward to it because I also mentioned, I’m reading the Mummy anthology from several years ago, and it’s been sitting on my shelf for a couple years now, so it’ll always

Jim: be there for you.

Stephen: The problem is when things are on my pile, other things get added to it. It’s kinda like a trash dump that the good stuff on the bottom disappears because it’s covered up.

Jim: My, my two read pile is not that. But I, John, my, my publishing partner, his, he always talks about it just grows and grows. And every once in a while, he’ll take one off of it and go, oh, this has been on here for years.

Stephen: And what really sucks is we are we’re jumping around a little bit.

We’ll get back to some books here in a moment, but we were talking Oh, is that what we’re talking about? I’m, yeah, exactly. Yeah. We’re just chatting for the night. Okay. But we were talking about Pulp Fest coming up and I’ve mentioned that in the past. I know I’m gonna walk away with books and my son’s got a list that he’s looking for and I’m like, oh man,

Jim: hey, listen, I spend almost like everything I make, I just turn right around and it goes right back to the other tables.

We just spread this money around.

Stephen: There’s really no money to be made at those places because everything you make, you just give to someone else who then gives it, and you get back what you put in at times.

Jim: That’s a really good point. And this goes into Behind the scenes of publishing.

John and I say this a lot, that while we may not be making a ton at Pul Fest or maybe sometimes even breaking even, because we have our hotel fee and we have our table fee and all of that, it’s to us, it’s the show of the year for what we do. And we look at it as rich a wealth of networking.

Seeing what other people are doing, almo and then touching those roots of what we do. Again, the classic stuff that we see all through there it’s so valuable in many ways. It’s not just right, to make money, we’re hopefully absolutely. That we’re gonna make some new fans, there, and that will help down the road too.

Stephen: And then the problem comes in after you’ve seen the same people at a couple of these, it’s I’ve got all your books now,

Jim: yeah. And then, you know what, and that’s an ongoing concern, challenge, whatever you wanna call it. That that the audience is not, growing.

And yes, we do see, but the key to that is to always have something new. Always have something new. So Flinch will have two new books. This year that we didn’t have last year. Nice. And then now for the very first time, Becky books is going to be there. I decide, ’cause I actually took a few with me last year and I told John, I’ll keep these under the table.

You, it’s I’m not gonna take over the flinch table. But people were coming up and asking for them. So I put a few up there and they did so well that I actually broke down and bought another table. So we’re gonna be both be Becky books and flinch books there. And with the Becky books, I’ve got, I have several new books that I didn’t have last year.

But that is the key. If you’re getting the same people, then you gotta have something new. Got to have something new.

Stephen: Right. So let’s talk about a couple of those books. Okay. You’ve mentioned the Western and that’s your newest one from Flinch. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that. And I know you do a lot of like short story anthologies in that, so Yeah.

If you got any others to bring up for people that are listening that, that would be interested in that, tell us a little bit about them. Cool.

Jim: So at the time of this recording one week ago John and I published Six Gun Legends. And it’s 10 Rounds of Wild West Action is the subtitle.

This is our very first foray into Western Fiction. This is, was spearheaded by John. He’s a big Western fan somewhat more recently that he’s gotten into it. But he’s, and he said to me, I really want to do a Western anthology. Now, what we do at Flinch is that we, we do usually once a year, we do one anthology and we do one.

Like of our own novels. So we been alternating. He puts out Midnight Guardian and I have Sergeant Janice, but we always do a a fiction anthology. So this year it’s the Western anthology. And I gotta tell you, I’m proud of every book that we put out, but this one is just in incredible, the lineup of writers that we got in it.

We got a couple of the If you’ll, pardon the pun, big guns of modern Western fiction Terrence McCauley and Jeffrey Jay Marriott. Who, look, if you don’t know their names, yeah, I don’t know. Look them up. And they’re at the forefront of the, modern writers who are doing western fiction right now.

We can’t believe they said yes, but they seemed very excited to be part of it. And it’s all brand new stories in this book. And there’s a couple of us who had, are, we’re all professional writers in this book, but a couple of us have never written westerns before. And that’s cool. I’m one of them. Now, this is funny, John is almost one of them, but about what?

About a month? Previous, about a month ago another publisher, a friend of ours, Charles Millhouse. Oh, at Storm Gate Press, he put out a Western anthology and John is in that, and it’s so funny. It’s just that he got that one published first, or ours would’ve had John’s very first Western, so it’s technically his second Western.

But Chris, Ryan and me, we have our very first Western. That’s cool. Neither one of us that’s had ever written westerns before, but had always wanted to, and this was our chance. So the theme of it is, it’s not just Western stories. The theme of it is that every, all the characters in it in the, in their universes their legend precedes them.

They all have something about them that, that are, that’s larger than life. So think the lone Ranger.

Stephen: Okay. The

Jim: Lone, when I was a kid, the Lone Ranger was my entry point into westerns because I love superheroes. I wasn’t so sure about Westerns, but my dad was a big lone Ranger fan when he was a kid.

Mine too. And he good see and how that happens. Yeah. He infused me with that same love of the character. So that’s how Flinch Works is one of us usually comes up with the basic idea and then the other one offers a way to tweak it, and then we go back and forth. So John said, gotta do a Western anthology.

And I said, cool. How about if it’s more instead of the common man in it, I said, all the characters, have something about them that people know before they even walk into a town. They have a name for themselves, they have a gimmick, anything like this, they have a legend.

And he said, yes, let’s do that. So

Stephen: that, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a gunfighter, right? It could be a, yeah. So this

Jim: book has, gunfighters or assassins. It’s not just heroes. There’s some real shady characters in this. But again, they have some, they have a shtick, they have a name they, this, that, and the other thing some of them are almost superheroes.

John has his character called the Six Gun Specter, and he’s Oh yeah. Like a, almost like a shadow char. The shadow. But in the Old West,

Stephen: Western superheroes are cool. Yeah,

Jim: Totally. So here’s me thinking oh, I’m gonna do like a Lone Ranger thing. And then I don’t know how it happened, but I did a husband and wife duo called Mr.

And Mrs. Smith and Wesson. And just had a ball with it. I imagine my story as a half a black and white half hour episode of a classic western, like the rifle man or something like that. I set it up and imagined it in my head, and there are a couple that. They have a very odd relationship that the husband’s a little handpicked.

The, the woman’s ki very strong-willed, but they also have this great love story kind of going on too as they walk, go into town and get themselves into crazy, misadventures.

Stephen: See, my first thought, and I’ve watched a lot of those westerns with my father.

He, that’s all we ever watched. We had the Western Channel just so he could watch westerns all the time. I love it. And my first thought actually was like a Maverick character. That the card ace guy and some heist or he gets himself in trouble and it’s a comedy thing. That was my first thought, which is weird.

’cause normally I’m an action guy, but, we

Jim: got, we got them, we got that type of character, in this book. So all those wonderful types of Western characters, they’re all represented here. And like I said, some are more sterling than others and some have way more shades of gray than others, but they all have a name for themselves.

The one somewhat exception to that, and I love this, is that Jeff Marriott no. It’s Terrence. Oh I, Terrence will be mad at me if you listen to this. Terrence McCauley has an ongoing set of characters in his novels that he is known for. He offered us a story of those characters when they were younger and he, I guess he had never done that before.

Almost like an origin story. So this is those characters before they became legends the way they are in his series of, that’s cool. I’m hoping that once the, his fans hear that, that there’s that character that we love so much, except this is when he was younger, that I hope that, they’re gonna say, I need to have that because to keep that, completeness going in it.

Stephen: Absolutely. And so my question for you particularly is you mentioned your Sergeant Janus character, who I’ve read and loved very carnagie like character. Thank you. You very easily could have put him into a western in that time-ish frame and done something with him.

Supernatural. I know. He, he,

Jim: thank you for that. He exists in what I call the late Edwardian period. He’s actually in the late 1920s. Is there, yeah, the funny thing is that there are TV shows on right now that are westerns, but they take place in modern times. You still have that’s a very fun idea.

But what I wanted to do was, I personally didn’t want to have, a recurring, my recurring character in it. I really wanted to do something, brand new. And I’m hoping that people like. My new characters enough that they may want more stories of them. And I hope that for all the characters in this book, ’cause they’re all brand new except for terrence’s characters the story’s brand new, but the characters, are previously existing.

But I’m hoping that people love that so much that they go to these writers and say, man, I really wanna see more stories, with that character.

Stephen: A Absolutely. And I’ve been involved with a couple anthologies with a whole bunch of writers where it was like a theme and everyone did their own thing.

So I always, even if I have those at a table, it’s, I’m a middle grade writer and I’m like, these are anthologies with many writers. I cannot guarantee all the stories are kid friendly, just warning you. Yep. So at some point I’ll probably, for, people on my list or something, release my stories to them.

Yeah. So they don’t have to buy this book and rip out the stories that don’t fit their kids or something. It’s just, it’s that weird thing. I just don’t want someone reading it and saying, oh my God, I didn’t know that this one. ’cause they’re swearing. There’s adult themes, there’s yeah. One, one author who’s wonderful, but everything is L G B T.

Yeah. And not that I have a problem with that, with middle grade, but if you’re not expecting it from a middle grade book, absolutely.

Jim: And you know what a lot of people do that where they write they have a character and they are in many different anthologies with that character. And then they eventually take, when they get enough of the stories, they take ’em all and then they republish ’em in one set.

My buddy Charles Rutledge has his his barbarian character carne. And he’s been saying lately a lot on Facebook that he’s I now have, I think it’s 17 or 18 stories of this character. I think maybe I have to do a collection now, and we’re all going, yeah. This is what you do.

Come on. Take ’em all and you put ’em in, so it’s like the complete car.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah. Tell everybody a little bit about Sergeant Janis. We’ve mentioned him and he’s one of your big characters. You’ve got a couple books by him. Yeah. And right behind you, we were talking about your posters and you’re talking about the crypto stuff.

So you’re in that supernatural paranormal monster world. You’ve done X-files and check and Sergeant Janus is. Your own character that fits that give everybody a little bit about that. Sure. And

Jim: you said it earlier when you mentioned Carnagie. Carnagie was created by William Hobe Hodgson in the teens the nineteens.

And I, when I first read those nine adventures, there’s only nine stories of them. Hodgson was killed during World War I before he could write anymore. I absolutely fell in love with it. Now, I’ve always loved the idea of the occult detective. It’s a subcategory of detectives. It’s it’s like Sherlock Holmes, but with ghosts, and supernatural things. And I’ve always loved that idea. And I was really inspired by not only that, but then Carnagie also appears in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, comics. Yes, at one point. So I think I actually dis, like Alan Moore told me about Carnagie, and then I said I have to go and find the original stories.

And then I read all that and I said I, it’s, I just want this, I want this for myself. So Sergeant Janis grew out of that. He is a spirit breaker, but basically a ghost hunter who operates in the 1920s. And the twist is that all of his stories are epistolary. Yeah, meaning if, and it’s okay if you don’t know out there, if you don’t know what that means that there, every, the stories are told through letters, journals other type of writings all first person.

And that’s the twist here, is that in the first book, Sergeant Janis Spirit Breaker we learned that the sergeant, he does not write up his own cases. Once they’re done, like for his own files, he asks his clients to do that. And what we get is it’s eight cases. In this, in the first book and book, we get eight different points of view on the same guy.

So some are men, some are women, some are people who are totally into what he does. And then there’s some people, there’s one guy in particular who is no, this guy’s a fake. And I can’t believe I fell for this. By the end of the book, like I said, you learn how the Sergeant operates, but you get it filtered through eight different people right.

As they themselves go through this, these crazy little adventures with

Stephen: him. And it’s a direct line from like Sergeant Janus to cold check to X-files. If you like those and you’re a reader, Sergeant Janus fits right in with that. Yeah.

Jim: What I love about the occult detective trope is that it can be adapted to many different things.

So you said it yourself. So there’s the classic stuff like Carnagie which is just pure unadulterated occult detective of the classic era. And then there are things like Cultch. People don’t realize it, but Carl Cultch is an occult detective. He investigates supernatural things. He’s doing it for a different reason that like, he’s not out in the world to, to first and foremost get rid of the supernatural.

He’s actually writing stories for a newspaper, right? But in that, in the process of that, he gets rid of the supernatural menace usually. X-Files, great example. Scalor and Mulley s Mulder and Scully. I,

Stephen: I like Scalor and Mulley, that, that would be the good parody.

Jim: There’s a parody of it out there somewhere.

There. They are totally occult detectives. Here’s another one that people don’t realize. The Ghostbusters are occult detectives, right? So it’s really cool that what it’s become over the

Stephen: years. I think the X-files the one thing I look at it now, and I wouldn’t say they have to change it, but I really wonder what it would’ve been like if Scully would’ve been much more scientific and opposed to Mulder’s belief and all his paranormal, he just would go the paranormal route and figure it out.

Yeah. But she was supposed to be the science one, but we didn’t really get science on that show which wasn’t bad. I just wonder what it might’ve been like. Yeah. With a little more in

Jim: the beginning maybe but I think it, it’s inevitable what happened and I love it. They had almost switched places.

Stephen: Yes, absolutely. She,

Jim: she got to the point where she was presented with more and more things that she could not deny or she could not question, and then he became very disillusioned. With everything and colder to all those different things. So that’s really interesting the way those two characters yeah.

Ended up. Yeah. In the beginning, and for a little while she, she really did, resist all those and tried to offer explanations for things, but I guess when you’re kidnapped by aliens and impregnated and whatever the hell else, everything else, yeah. I don’t think you can go, eh, it was swamp gas.

Stephen: I, I did start to miss the monster of the week type thing, which they brought up some more later.

Jim: I totally agree. My wife and I watched it. We didn’t watch till the very end. I think we watched up until the point where decoy left the show and the other guy came in and I can’t think of.

Robert Patrick. Yeah. Played Dan from Cleveland, by the way. There you go. Wow. It produced both John Bruning and that guy. But we said that after a while too, that we looked more forward to Monster the week than what they, the mythology episode. Yeah, because you know what, it was getting so thick that you had to, you couldn’t miss a mythology episode or you’d have no idea what the hell was going you.

Yeah. Now, you know what, with Sergeant Janis, every time there’s a new book or a story I do it in a way that you don’t have to have read the previous ones, although it would be nice if you did. No but I do it in a way hopefully that you don’t have to. But boy, oh boy. If you did, you, you’re gonna get this bigger, huge story that’s

Stephen: going on.

The TV show Supernatural took over as Monsters of the Week for me for a while. It got convoluted, overarching, five, six seasons worth of one storyline type thing too. It happens. Yeah. What are some of your favorite books to read and you know what, when I was,

Jim: when I was a kid and into to college, I was really, regimented with what I read.

It was pretty much science fiction and fantasy, epic high fantasy and science fiction. And it took a long while before I got to the point where I started to reading some mysteries, maybe a little bit historical, maybe even a romance or two, here and there. And over the years I realized how much time I had lost and there was, so I have favorite authors now that I, that I wish I had known sooner.

One of my most favorite non-science fiction and fantasy writers is Rex Stout. Oh, okay. The creator of Nero Wolf. Yeah. I’m an immense fan of the Nero Wolf books. They are some of the greatest mystery books. Ever written. I highly recommend them. And there’s a lot of them, so it can take you a little, a little while to go through them.

Classically I’m a big Robert Heinlein fan. I’m a big Ray Bradbury fan. I, there’s a guy who I absolutely love, and unfortunately he hardly does anything anymore. His name is James p Blaylock. Oh yeah. He wrote, or writes, or whatever you wanna call it what we would normally call urban fantasy.

But it’s some of the quirkiest most interesting stuff. My favorite is one called The Last Coin, if somebody wants to seek that out. Other than that there’s a book that I absolutely love called The High House, and it’s actually part of a, it’s three books, and that’s James Stoddard, who writes those.

It’s, again, it’s a fantasy world, but unlike anything really that’s out there, it’s basically set in a house that is so big that it contains many lands inside of the house. Wow. And it’s actually said that the house controls the workings of the universe. So there’s clock towers, and there’s a guy that goes and winds the clocks regularly, but if he doesn’t, he says that time itself will run down and stop if he doesn’t keep the clocks wound.

There’s so many different, I love these books to death. It’s called the Evan Mere series, e n m e r e. They’re by James Stadard. There’s three of them. There’s, he’s got a couple of short stories floating around out there of the same universe, but highly recommend those books as well as Rex Stout.

And and then James p Blaylock his more his earlier stuff. What he does now is he has like an sort of an occult detective character, and I’m not so fond of those as I am of his individual novels.

Stephen: Oh. Put some links in the show notes for the episode. That’d be cool.

You’re actually the second person to mention the Nero Wolf stuff, like in the last two months. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And nobody had mentioned him before that, so that’s weird. You, it’s,

Jim: it’s one of those series that you don’t, and people, I’m not the only one who’ve said this, lots of people say this.

You don’t read them for the plots, you read them for the interaction between the two characters. It’s Nero Wolf, the detective, and his assistant is Archie Goodwin. And you really read it for Archie Narrates, the adventures. And he’s almost like this sort of stereotypical gumshoe type of character, but in some ways, but in some ways he’s not he gets very frustrated with his boss because the whole thing with Nero Wolf is that he won’t leave his home. So Archie is his eyes and ears and feet and hands going out. But ni Niro’s a very corpulent individual who likes to just sit home and he likes his food.

He raises orchids up in the attic room of his home and he only works when he absolutely has to. And Archie just gets so frustrated with the guy. They’re wonderful novels. Just I, again, I can’t recommend them enough.

Stephen: Oh, I’m going to pick up a copy ’cause I’ve not read that. So I always love finding out things that I should be reading.

Not that there’s enough of that already.

Jim: He wrote them from the, geez, I think the first one is actually in the late thirties and he wrote them all the way up to the beginning of the 1970s. Wow. Okay. But an he does an interesting thing is that they get to the point where they’re almost timeless.

Like he’s he, there’s topical references every once in a while, but he begins to detach from actual time where you don’t have to worry about oh my God, these two guys would be how old? These stories have been going on for decades. You don’t worry about that. ’cause they don’t age at, at all like the peanuts.

Yeah. Yeah. Ex exactly. I mean they’re those classic type of characters that are, have been ar around for a while and they can’t age,

Stephen: okay. Alright. So up in Toledo, do you have a bookstore you like to go visit?

Jim: I hate to say that, but I don’t, yeah, I don’t go to bookstores anymore.

It’s a real shame. We do have a, we have One or two, Barnes and Noble, and every once in a Blue Moon, I’ll go to them. We have a books a Million, but it’s way out on the other side of town, so I don’t ever get out there. There is one independent bookstore in our area. It’s in Perrysburg, which is to the south of Toledo, called Gathering Volumes.

And I don’t get over there like I should, but it’s actually been around for a while now and it’s an independent and God bless them, that they can make an independent bookstore. Work, these days when I’m sure Barnes and Noble are, have not, are, have seen better days. But I tend to buy my books off of Amazon.

I’m sorry. I’m

Stephen: sorry. Yeah. I know that’s what a lot of people are saying. Yeah. But I like to try and me and my kids, whenever we used to go on vacation, we’d always find a bookstore and go to a bookstore. Yeah. And one of our favorite stories was actually in Toledo. We were looking around like what’s close?

And we found one that wasn’t just. Books. It was a eclectic mix. It had DVDs and anime and collectibles and stuff. I’m like, let’s go check it out. And it was the weirdest experience. I don’t know remember the name and I doubt it’s still there. Okay. It was this old couple, they were like 80 years old in this rundown strip mall.

It’s this narrow little store and you walked in and it was like the store that, that the dad bought the mug wife from with just stuff cluttered everywhere and things hanging over you. Like he’s moving things out of our way so we can get down the aisles and there’s dust on stuff and there’s no organization.

And my kids just loved it. We were in there for two hours talking to the people. How long ago would that have been? Like 2012 ish, give or take. 2014. I,

Jim: I hate to say this, but I have no idea. Yeah, I don’t think it was around for very long or, I don’t know. Wow. I’m stu on that one. It was Toledo.

Stephen: Yeah, it was Toledo. My, for my guess is it really didn’t exist. It was like one of those Stephen King stories where after we left, it just faded away and disappeared. You

Jim: know, Stephen, I hate to tell you this, but honestly I think that’s what it was. Because, yeah. Here’s me thinking, no, you’re nuts.

There’s nothing like that around here.

Stephen: Exactly. And my kids will still talk about it. We’ve been to so many bookstores and that’s the one they remember the most. Wow.

Jim: You know what? I’m also getting very jealous too, because, I would’ve liked to I A, I have no idea what that, yeah. A long time ago, and I’m talking 30, 35, 40 years ago, there used to be places like that in Toledo, but I can’t think of anything more recently.

Yeah. Like within 10, 10, 12 years was, okay.

Stephen: All right. Jim I wanna talk a little bit more about Flinch and Publishing but before we’ve delve into that aspect of it, for everybody listening you talked about your Western, you talked about Janus. If they said why should I get your books and read them, I’ve got a stack over here, why should I get yours and read ’em?

What would you tell ’em?

Jim: I guess I would have to say, because I think that maybe I’m doing things that other people aren’t doing. I’m gonna be the first one to admit that my books are not mainstream stuff. They’re the kind of things that, that I think are cool. I am having a good time putting them out and maybe 10 to 12 people on the, on earth, we’ll get a kick out of them but that’s okay.

I’d rather do something like that than necessarily writing a New York Times bestseller. I’d like the money if you want something off the beaten path eclectic or just kinda odd or maybe one of those ideas that you go, oh, why didn’t I think of that? Then, look into to my my books and then with my, and that’s all my original, my own stuff with my license stuff.

Have read license works before, and you got mad because the writer went off the rails and it didn’t feel

Stephen: like

Jim: the movie, the TV show, the whatever that it was supposedly based on. Then I would say give one of mine a try because what I do is I go outta my way to make sure that the characters sound like they’re supposed to sound and that I stay within that concept because I know that’s why people are there.

They pick up a cold check book because they love cold check. They don’t wanna read something, I, I have my Green Hornet novel. They don’t want some weird, silly, crazy thing, and believe me, some of the comic books more recently have done stuff like that. I’m, here’s me going now, this isn’t anything like the TV show, right?

Then give my Green Hornet, novel a try. And that’s not to say that they’re boring, because I do actually try to say something, interesting in them. But you’re going to see that the core concept is true. And that may, that means a very big deal to me.

Stephen: And that’s very important.

I’ve got, The One Soul book based on the TV show, MacGyver. And it was so hard to track down in today’s world. I didn’t even know it existed until more recently. Yeah. And I was excited. I’m like, cool, here’s something from like 1985 MacGyver. I’m waiting for it. And I read it and I’m like, okay, I know what happened here.

So my guess is that some agent had a book and knew MacGyver was big, and told the author, if you change this to MacGyver, we could sell it. And they did. And it’s nothing. There is no MacGyverisms, there’s no science. It’s, and the character is so flat and boring. Yeah. And there’s nothing exciting.

And why,

Jim: why disappoint people like that? They’re picking it up because they like MacGyver. Here’s a good example. Can you see this?

Stephen: Yes. Yes. Land of the

Jim: Giants. Yeah. This is the second of three land of the Giants novels that Murray Leinster wrote. And while I’m enjoying it, it bears very little resemblance to my Beloved TV show that I loved as a kid so much.

Because that was back in a day when there wasn’t the, there wasn’t the guidelines like today where they basically just said, Hey, will you write a Land of the Giants novel? And they don’t. It’s like they just did it. They, and they didn’t pick it. The editor or the light, the property owners didn’t pick them apart.

And that’s what this is. He just did whatever the hell he wanted to do in this novel. And it’s not bad, but I’m going like, wow. That’s a big stretch from the, like in the TV series, the spin drift is broken down like the entire two seasons or whatever. Here it’s flying all around and then they land and they recharge the batteries and they’re flying again.

And there’s a, there’s an entire character in the crew, the passengers that’s not even in the series, the TV series at all. Her name’s Marjorie. And here’s me going who the hell’s Marjorie? My stuff’s better than that.

Stephen: That’s good. Yeah, and I like that Star Wars story. It was one of them, I, when I found out which one you, it was yours.

I’m like, that was Jim’s. I’m like, that was one of my favorites outta that whole series. And I’ve read some of the X-Files stories, not all of them. Okay. And I thought they hid it right on and nailed it. And, Sergeant Janus is your own character. But I, I think, and I don’t understand why short stories aren’t more popular than they really are sometimes, because I hear you, people are like, oh, I don’t read.

But here’s a great short story, a great character. It’s an a beloved property. You,

Jim: I, yeah I hear you. It’s weird when I started writing, oh a, as a reader, I did not l I did not prefer short stories. I preferred novels as a writer. I have found that I prefer writing short stories to novels.

You have to use, it’s a, you use a different muscle when you’re writing a short story as opposed to a novel. And I can see why some people don’t feel that short stories like matter. And I feel that’s that same way in comic books, when you get one of the, like the bigger special like annuals or one of the other things, you get a bunch of stories in it and you can tell that they’re all just pretty much filler.

They don’t seem to matter with the character. And I think that’s the perception with a, with some readers, but there’s a lot of readers who really appreciate the art of the short story. I have learned as a reader to appreciate the art of the short story. And I gotta tell you who did that for me is pretty much as Ray Bradbury.

Because the, he has, that makes sense. He has a few novels, but honestly, the guy was a master of the short story. Yes. He was the king of short stories. But I get it, when you have fantasy novels these days that are like phone books, people look at a short story and go, I don’t, I need to have a, a novel this big,

Stephen: yeah. And I’ll say about Bradbury his novels aren’t necessarily the easiest read. They’re definitely their own little style. Yeah. Quite

Jim: often. Yeah. That, that, that’s, that is true for the most part. I prefer, like I, the Martian Chronicles is not a novel, but it, but the stories are all linked.

And you can almost call it one big novel, right? The Sergeant Janis books are like that, where the, it looks like it’s individual stories, but the trick is when you start reading them, you realize that they’re linked and that they form this overarching story. I learned that from the Master Ray Bradberry.

Stephen: One of my earlier projects that’s backburnered right now that I wanna revive is kinda what you were saying with Janus. It’s short stories, but trying to bring out these characters in a lot of action sequences. It’s for kids. Yeah. The goal was something boys would wanna read. This is only six pages and it’s pure action that, but then I’m, I’m trying to get a whole story out.

It’s a back burner project ’cause it was more than I could handle at the time. Ah, bring it,

Jim: bring it to the front and turn up the heat.

Stephen: ’cause no, my other stuff I’m working on is I’m very excited about, so that’s what I’m, okay so there’s a good f segue into for flinch. You guys are publishing and now you don’t publish like a million other authors.

It’s your ideas, your stuff. You may do anthologies, but you’re not like getting novels from 10 different auth authors every year, right? That’s

Jim: not how do you where we’re at?

Stephen: Yeah. How do you guys decide what you wanna do with your limited time? It’s,

Jim: it’s, it, so far it hasn’t been so bad. Sometimes it’s, we actually have more ideas, than we can do.

We’re a two-man operation. We both have full-time jobs. We publish literally one to two books a year. And that is so that we can focus on making this one book the very best thing it can possibly be. We have set out to have some of the best. Writers the best stories, the best editing, and this is hugely important to us.

Some of the best covers. All those things are so important to us. And if we did, 10 books a year, we would not be, something we get sacrificed somewhere. We are very happy. We just published our 13th book. I think we’ve been going for eight years now, if I’m not mistaken. And we only just published the six Gun Legends is our 13th book.

And. So right now it’s anthologies and then basically our two vanity, our vanity characters, it’s the home of Sergeant Janis and John’s the midnight guardian. I don’t foresee that changing in the future. We have been approached by some writers to say would you be interested in my novel?

Stephen: And what we

Jim: we’re at the, at a point where we just want to do our own things, and that’s, I don’t see anything wrong with that. If we do a full novel of somebody else, it’s still probably going to be our, our character. In one way or another.

We have a book an anthology called Quest for the Space Gods, which is the the Chronicles of Conrad von Haig. We would very much like to have a full novel done of the Conrad Von Haig character. So I can, I can foresee something like that. But, writers can still approach us because, we’ll want to expand our stable, if you will.

And I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you sound like horses out there but I don’t know what else to call it. But we have people have come up to us at Pulp Fest or where else and said, boy, I’d really like to write for you guys. And number one, that’s the hugest compliment.

Anybody could pay us. We must be doing something right. If somebody comes up and says, wow, I wanna be published by you guys. So like I said that’s where we’re at right now. I don’t really foresee that changing. We really love coming up with anthology ideas. We just, and so many of them we’ve come up with at Pulp Fest, and in fact, this year, in just a couple weeks at Pulp Fest on our mission, on our agenda ’cause we consider that a three or four day flinch meeting is what that show really is because we just talk about what we’re gonna do, we will most likely talk about and figure out what our next anthology is gonna be for

Stephen: next year.

Yeah. Shows and stuff like that, when you have someone sitting next to you is a good brainstorming session. Yeah. We have a

Jim: car ride, ’cause I drive to Cleveland and then he, then we take his car from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. We have a car ride and we have to sit next to each other for three or four days.

So we get some flinch business done.

Stephen: Nice. Definitely. Yeah. And you also had a book Airship 27 the Airship Hunters, if I remember right. Wasn’t

Jim: that you? Oh yeah. That was published by Meteor House. Okay. I know. Yeah. It’s a funny little thing because Airship 27 is who I was first published through and when air, when Airship Hunters was announced at Pul Fest one year.

Through Meteor House, Ron, the head of Airship 27, I knew this was gonna happen. He comes to me and he is like, what? Like he goes, you’re publishing a novel with Airship in the title and you didn’t bring it to us. Yeah. That’s written with Dwayne Spurlock, who is in Six Gun Legends,

Stephen: and he’s also in the zombie book The Mummy Book.

Mummy book. Mummy book, yes. Yeah. Which is called

Jim: Restless. Yes. Yeah. Dwayne’s one of my most favorite writers to work with nice. And he and I wrote the novel called Airship Hunters, which is actually inspired by the real world great airship mystery of 1897.

Stephen: I love that story that I think that was probably the first thing I got from you guys.

That

Jim: is one of my proudest achievements. That book it was it became exactly what I wanted it to be and more and I just it’s one of my most favorite things I’ve ever done.

Stephen: Thinking from the publisher aspect, what are some things that have been difficult or things you’ve learned that you’ve had to figure out and do differently as opposed to just an author writing one book?

Jim: One thing I’ve learned is that you can have so many levels of proofing and editing, and you still get typos. It’s maddening how many levels we put it through, both of us. And we put it through, like the wor the in word, Microsoft Word? We put it through editor, we put it through Google Docs, and it’s finding all these things and we’re like, we, and then we go back and, oh, and then wait.

We put it back through. Every writer gets their last chance to go over it, and they still find more. That’s maddening. But what I have to say is John, and I believe that we still come out to have. Some of the best edited books out there. It’s never going to be perfect. I’m laughing.

You wouldn’t believe how many typos is in this thing Three different times it says Dan said, and it’s supposed to be Steve said three different times. So it’s so that’s definitely one thing I learned is not to, beat ourselves over the head about that, to do the very best we can do, but, and it’s going to happen.

Stuff is just going to get through and it happens to the big guys and it happens to the little guys.

Stephen: I, I’ve always been of the mind though. I don’t understand the people that say, oh, this book sucked. I found one missing apostrophe and a common in the wrong place. One star. And I’m like, hold on. Did you buy this book so you can find grammar error errors to complain about?

Or did you buy it to enjoy the story? Yeah. The comma missing and the apostrophe in the wrong spot or something. If that drew you out of the story so much, then the author really wasn’t making a good story. Yeah. But if you’re writing a great story, I could care less about the occasional duplicated word or something.

I wanna get the story. I don’t understand people that get so ni nitpicky about, it’s

Jim: literally on every page. It’s gonna take you out of, yeah. And believe me, there are books like that. I just had one not too long ago that I could not believe it. Again, a major publisher and I got to parts where you can tell it was, I.

The it was supposed to be taken out. It was like a note. Oh, it was either the writer’s note or the editor’s note and it’s still in there and it’s oh, sentence. So it’s oh my God, John and I have never had that before. The other thing is that, I have learned that it’s a team effort.

You are, when you cannot do everything yourself, you are dependent upon other team members. And sometimes you, as excited or antsy as you are to get this book out into the world, sometimes you do have to wait because somebody is working on their part of it. I’ve also learned how to work with the people who do the more technical stuff.

Because I can’t do that. I cannot format. I’m not tech savvy. I’m lucky I know how to work in Word, I cannot create a P D f file for the interiors of the print edition. I cannot format, I cannot do logos. Now I can art direct because I have an art background and I can say, I want this here, and I want that there.

All of that, but I cannot do those technical things. The key is to find good people who can Yes, absolutely. And bring them into the, onto the team and then learn about what they do so that you’re making their job easier, and then you get a smoother process to maybe yes. Get to the end result quicker.

Because you’ve eliminated these problems along the way.

Stephen: And this is controversial, and I know a lot of people are like, oh, you can’t do that. But in today’s world, you’ve got the electronic books, and then you’ve got books that are print on demand. So it’s not like they’re buying 10,000 and storing in a warehouse until they sell.

Yeah. So you, it’s not hard to go fix a few things and re-upload new manuscripts. Yeah. And the people that buy it from that point on have no idea that there used to be a mistake there. Yeah. But for some reason people are like, oh, you can’t do that. You can’t alter it. It’s not chiseled in stone. It, and it’s my file.

If I wanna upload the corrected file to Amazon or Yeah. Cobo or something, I

Jim: can I’ve never felt that at all. And we’ve done that. Here I’ll admit it we put out six gun legends and Jeffrey Marriott comes to me and he’s oh, I’m so excited.

Everything. But

Stephen: You spelled my name

Jim: wrong in the, not in the book itself, but in the Amazon listing. Oh. And he said, so I cannot put it on my Amazon author page ’cause it’s j e f e r y instead of r e y. And I’m, I was just like, mortified. This is a big time writer. And he was really cool about it.

So I had to go back to K D P. And I had to change it in there, and we had to wait, however, long for it to three days a week outdated. You know what stuff happens. Yeah. We’re all human, we can try to do the best we can possibly do, but sometimes stuff happens. It happens. And the cool thing is that you can correct those things.

Yeah, exactly. Today’s

Stephen: world is different.

Jim: And you brought up print on demand. And I wanna say to anybody who’s thinking this, there is no shame for on print, on demand, I, I’ve encountered shows that will not accept. To have a table there be, if they have print on demand books, and it’s I’m sorry, my print on demand books are probably better looking and better edited than some of the non-print on demand.

So like where that stigma came from. It’s old

Stephen: school

Jim: thinking. It, it really is. It’s like I, because here’s me going, like everybody I know does print on demand. Yeah. Who the hell’s gonna pay for $10,000 print, run 10,000 book print, run and have it sitting somewhere like nobody does that stuff any

Stephen: right.

It used, 10, 12 years ago, every show, every whatever was, oh, you’re not traditionally published. We don’t want you. And now it’s changing because there’s way more authors going to these shows that have print on demand and they’re independent. And even Dean Kuntz skipped out and went to Amazon.

Yeah. As opposed to, and I know I talked to JD Barker, who is hybrid. He’s traditionally published and he writes with James Patterson, but he has some independent publish on demand stuff. So that’s the, that’s

Jim: the way to go. Weird. That’s the way to go. It really is.

Yeah. Yeah. The tech technology is all out there and if a guy like me can self-published, anybody can self-publish. It’s so freaking, it’s so freaking easy right now with the way, with all the way all this technology is. Yeah,

Stephen: it is.

Jim: And you, me, over and over on Facebook.

’cause all in all these groups, people are like, how do I find a publisher? And I just, I literally, I should have it in custom cut and paste, self-publish. I just say self-publish, and I go on to the next thread, like somebody saying the same thing, self-publish. Like, why wouldn’t you wanna self publish?

Stephen: So real two things there. Okay. You mentioned the name wrong linking in Amazon. I got on my Goodreads profile page and there was a picture book that popped up saying it was mine that I’m like, that’s not mine. There’s a new author lady that has the same publishing name that I do, and I’m like, are you kidding me?

Couldn’t she have looked before she did this? Yeah there’s

Jim: a couple that happens on Good Reads when I. Put in my name, there’ll be, there’s a couple books by other people with my name, but it’s interesting ’cause they’re absolutely nothing even remotely like the stuff that I do. So no one’s ever going to think that, that, that’s me.

But thank God there’s o there’s a very well-known musician with my name. He’s like a keyboard player and he is been around for a million and he actually has jim beard.com, or but again, it’s no one’s ever gonna mistake me. For

Stephen: me. And you mentioned about the self-publishing thing.

We’re talking some author stuff and again you’re more published than I am. There’s tons of authors more published than I’m, I totally get that. I’ve got a little bit of experience under me, so I feel I can offer some thoughts and advice on a few things, but I have noticed that so many authors come to the things up at the Cuyahoga Library, which is a wonderful library system for authors, and they come to these round tables, they come to the conference and that, and they’re like last month I decided I wanna be a writer.

And I’ve been working on an outline, so my question is, how do I publish to Amazon and should I use, and it’s finish your damn book first. This is not something to worry about right now. And people get so worried about the publishing part and it’s oh my God, if you’re that focused on it, What, how good is your book going to be?

Yeah. Get that book finished. That’s the publishing stuff really becomes easy once you have a book.

Jim: Yeah. Pre preach it, brother. Yeah. You couldn’t be more. And yeah. I have seen it over and over again. John has seen it over and over again. It’s absolutely true. And it’s almost like a, a pandemic if I can use that word.

People are so they’re jumping to the end Yeah. And worrying about all that stuff when they don’t even have the work yet. It’s one of two things, if I’m ever asked do you have any advice for, new writers or young writers or whatever. And after many years I’ve come up with two things and that’s one of them, which is finish something.

Believe me, I’m the worst procrastinator. But I cannot believe how many, writers that I see and they go, yeah, I have four unfinished short stories and I have that unfinished novel. And it’s finish one of them. Just get to the part where you write the end. Have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Finish it. It does not have to be pretty, you go back and you polish it, but don’t keep leaving. All of these unfinished works littered behind you. Yes. And maybe it is because you’re focused on. I need to find an agent. I need to find a publisher. I have to get an an author photo taken. I need to have my author Facebook page, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Stephen: It’s no this other genre’s really big. I’m gonna do a book in there. Wait, this other thing’s really popular. I want to do a book there. And I get

Jim: it. Yeah I have not been diagnosed. I’m probably a d I am a horrible procrastinator. But. You know what? I have finished things.

It can be done. The struggle is real, but it can be done right. Believe me, you’ve got to do that. You are absolutely correct in everything you just said, Steven. When you’re worried about all of that other stuff, something’s really wrong, it’s, yeah. There will be that time when you wanna start thinking about the cover or the map that goes in your fantasy novel or whatever, but finish the damn thing first.

That’s so important. Have that be everything. That’s the Alpha and the

Stephen: Omega. And it definitely is different. I’ve got a couple things done and under my belt and publishing out, I’m working on other things, the new things. Click so much better that, I was so trying to, oh my God, I gotta learn Hero’s Journey and the save the Cat beat sheet and fit everything in and cramm this story.

So it hits all those points. Yeah. And what was the problem? And I’m listening to this podcast and I’ve got 300 books, craft books that I’m reading and I realized what the problem was. I had no reference for any of it. That until I start writing and I had a couple books and a couple short stories and all of that done and ready to go, that the learning, the craft made sense.

Yeah. I needed that reference for it to make sense to actually get better. That was the important part.

Jim: I’m not a big proponent. For how to write books and how to write seminars and things like that. I greatly respect the people who write those books and do those seminars and the people who read those books and go to those seminars.

It’s not for me. I learned by doing. Absolutely. Yeah. I fell down. And, I broke my nose a couple of times or whatever, but I just, I’m not, that big on taking all that time to, to listen to someone else telling me how to write when writing is such an individual thing. Yes, there are nuggets of wisdom out there.

I get that. Especially the people who say just right. Those, I like those people just right. That’s what you gotta do. But when you’re spending, that much time on, on the preamble or whatever I gotta tell you just right. Again, it doesn’t have to be pretty, write something, get it done, then go back and then make it better.

But just focus on getting to writing those words, the end and make that

Stephen: Your mission. Yeah. Total. Totally agree with you. And that’s, something I’ve had to learn myself over the last couple years, writing is my writing isn’t getting better except by writing and writing the next thing and more.

And the more I’ve written, the more everything makes sense. And it’s, people are like, oh, I haven’t had the muse and the, and I’m like every big name writer says it’s my job. I have to sit down and write. And when you do that, you actually can get things done. And people that are like, oh, it’s just I had this other idea, or it, or I was reading this book, or I had this conference.

And it’s but did you learn anything that you’re applying? Yeah. It, you got, I just totally realized I. I’ve learned way more by writing and writing more than I have anywhere else, and it makes a lot more sense. Now, I’ll tell you,

Jim: If you know someone out there, if you want to read something that might help you, is read, read novels or short stories or whatever, I think you’re gonna learn more from that than reading a book about how to write a novel and a short story.

I think, read your favorite writers, figure out, and then dissect it. Figure out what, okay, get to the end of whatever and go, now why did I like that so much? And take it apart. Now, that doesn’t mean you wanna ape those people, but you might actually learn more from that rather than, read a Stephen King book, not necessarily Stephen’s King’s book on how, all right.

Yeah. Although I have a lot of friends who love that book, and so I’ve gotta be careful what I’m

Stephen: saying. And to add onto that, what I’ve said also is don’t just read and then go back and try and write something, have stuff you’ve written, because then your brain can refer to that as you’re learning and the structure.

And I read all the time and I’m like, oh. I see what he’s doing there and how he wrote this emotion or the way he’s describing this, and that makes sense for something I was struggling with and I went, can go back and now mimic that. Yeah. And learn. And that’s the way to do it effectively. There’s a,

Jim: there’s a second part to this and I, if you don’t mind, I want to say what my second

Stephen: piece of advice is.

Oh yeah. I’m sorry. Yes, I’m sorry. No.

Jim: Because it is a continuation of what we’re just saying here. So you have, you got to the end, you have this thing, but you’re not sure what you have. So you want somebody to read it. You want another human being to read it. Here is my advice, especially for those first time writers, those younger writers the.

The newbies A among us. Do not have your mother read it and you can take your mother and fill in also, your father, your sister, your brother, your aunt, your very best, your B F, F. Don’t do that because those people are going to F you up. A hundred percent agree. We have to, this is called tough love, please.

They are not going to tell you what you need to know. They are. God love them. They’re not gonna lie to you. Hopefully they’re not gonna lie to you. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re gonna purposefully lie to you, which is not a good thing either, but they’re not going to be, they’re not gonna give you the honesty that you need.

Yes. You need to almost find a stranger who will read something because your mother, what is what’s gonna happen is your mother’s gonna tell you that you’re the greatest writer since. Hemmingway Tolstoy, I don’t know whoever the hell else near Rex Stout. Yes. And I got it. And then what’s gonna happen is you’re going to go out and you’re gonna publish something that is utter crap and you’re going to embarrass yourself.

This sounds harsh, but somebody has to say it. You can’t do that. You have to publish when you’re ready to be published. You have to learn and you have to get better. And those people who are very close to you, who love you dearly are not really going to be the ones to help you do that unless your dad’s like a, an English professor and he’s an, a very hard cold guy.

And it doesn’t matter if you’re his daughter or son and he is gonna lay it on the line then, okay, but that’s really what you need. You need somebody who’s going to give you the tough love and they’re gonna say yes. That wasn’t bad, but

Stephen: It’s

Jim: kind of clunky, or I didn’t really care for that.

And you know what? It’s not gonna be easy to hear what you wanna hear. Is your mom saying, oh my God, sweetie, that is the greatest. Oh, I love that. I can’t wait to tell my, my I, I don’t, I was gonna say Bridge Club, but I don’t think any place anybody plays bridge anymore. See how old I’m but seriously, folks you gotta find somebody who will give you honesty when agreed, when you have them read your stuff.

And I have yet to see anybody who gives it to their sister, who they’re so close to, ’cause all they’re going to do is they’re gonna lavish you with praise. Yeah. And then, you know what? And then we’re gonna have that many more horrible, crappy things being self-published on Amazon, because this happens in the music industry, and I see it all the time, all these shows on TV with these singers, you can tell that more than half of them are up there because somebody in their family told them how good they are, instead of telling them, you really need to work on your singing.

Should you take a few lessons or whatever. And it’s the same thing with writing. It’s the exact same thing with writing. Agreed. Yeah. And I, it’s gonna be, it might even be a challenge to find somebody who can offer you, like I can’t do it because I’m at a point where I shouldn’t really be writing or reading unpublished stuff.

Because I don’t ever want someone to come back around and say, you stole my idea. It’s not a good idea. So it could be a challenge, but mom might not be the best person right. To go to

Stephen: I, I’ve told a few people that have read my stuff. I said, look, if you wanna gimme some feedback, that’s great, but if you truly love me, you’ll give me constructive criticism and tell me what you don’t like.

Perfect. Because if you think you’re being nice and don’t wanna hurt my feelings, it’s gonna be 10 times worse if I publish it and it’s a load of crap. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim: And then you get, you start getting those one star reviews and they say, Reads like a book that somebody gave their mom to read instead of, listening to somebody who actually had

Stephen: talent.

The first thing I did write, which is hidden somewhere, I don’t know if I’m gonna bring it back out at some point, but my mother got mad at me for it because it was basically a kind of X-men superhero origin story. And she was a foster child. So you know, the parent, the foster parents had to die to push her into that world.

Oh. And they did. They got killed and she got mad at me. And Why did you have to kill the parents? And on? And I’m, because it would’ve sucked if I didn’t. Hey, at least she didn’t say,

Jim: oh sweetie, it’s so good. At least she was being honest with you. Yeah.

Stephen: She was trying to

Jim: point out that there would be other people out there in the world who might not be that happy when those parents died.

Right.

Stephen: Once it got back from the editor and there was 20 pages of redline notes and I. Literally pulled out 35,000 words. It was time to put that away for a while and take what I learned and move on. Smart guy. Smart guy. Yeah. Alright, Jim it’s been a wonderful chat and thanks. I can’t wait to see you in a couple weeks.

Yeah, cool. I’m looking

Jim: forward to it. Yeah. Alright.

Stephen: Have your money ready. Yeah, it will do. And my son’s definitely coming down there. I don’t know what all he’s getting, but he’s, he can’t stop talking about it. I’m like, really? How are you suddenly this excited about Pulp Fest? You’ve never read Pulp Fiction in your life.

It just suddenly he’s got that bug and he took all my Conan stuff and he is been reading it. And, but

Jim: here’s the thing, Steven is the, the the goal is that he sees things that he might not have seen before and get interested in them. That’s the problem with that show is that the audience is aging.

Kind of aging out. Yeah. And what we need is we need some younger people who go, wow, this is, I’ve never seen any of this stuff before. It’s all new to me. And look at that. Oh wow. That’s cool. Look at that. If they can get past the unfortunate, in the classic pulps, they can get past the unfortunate racism, sexism.

Yeah. And some of that stuff. And understand that was the times and exactly who the popes were being written for, the common man. Then I think there’s a lot of valuable stuff in there. And then what they’ll see is that the guys that are doing it today, like John and me and several other of our compatriots are changing, that we’re retaining the excitement of pulp, but we’re bringing it into the 21st century.

Yes. In those ways that we’re unfortunate. Oh

Stephen: yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to go to the show with him because it haven’t been things like this we’ve done together for a couple years, so it’s nice to have this again. It just I look at him, I shake my head. I’m like, dude, I’ve had pulp Fiction on my shelves.

I’ve had Conan and you’ve never touched any of it your whole life. And I’ve shown it to you, oh dad. But now it’s suddenly, Hey,

Jim: Hey dad, get off his back. Let him go, man, it sounds good to me.

Stephen: Yeah, of course he did that with other stuff when he got into Alpha Flight, he took all my Alpha Flight comics.

So I would

Jim: draw the line at that.

Stephen: Alright. Especially

Jim: my John by Alpha Flight original issues. He ain’t touching those.

Stephen: Yeah. He’s got his own set now. He’s been. Alright. It’s been great talking to you man. Same. Appreciate you getting on we’ll have to get you on the Gee podcast so John can’t show you up on that, right.

Jim: Good, because I can’t have that.

Stephen: No, we wouldn’t want that. All right we’ll see you in a couple weeks. Thank

Jim: you. All right. Take care. Thanks so much.

Don lives in Ohio with his wife and recently retired. As a retirement goal, he wanted to write a book and he’s written a series of humor books. Along with writing, he has been practicing standup comedy.

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Don Ake.

Don, good morning. How are you doing? Good morning. It’s a

Don: great morning here.

Stephen: Yes. It’s finally getting warmer around here though. We’ve got some cold temperatures at night still.

Don: Been a weird spring but yeah. We’ll take

Stephen: the sunshine. Yeah, definitely. So Dawn before we talk about your book let’s find out a little bit about you where you live and some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Don: I live in Jackson Township and right now, this is a transition period for me ’cause I retired from my day job in

Stephen: September. Okay.

Don: And so I writing. I’m spending most of my time right now, even in retirement writing my fifth book which will be a business related book. Oh, nice. But besides that I like to play tennis.

Since I retired I’ve been doing some standup comedy. Really? Yes. So I’m a humor doesn’t translate. 100% over to standup, but I’ve never had time to do standup and my friends have always wanted me to get back on stage. I used to do standup years ago, and so since yeah, since September.

I’ve been on stage several times and that’s a fun thing to

Stephen: do. Yeah. Cool. You, you write humor books and we were gonna talk about writing humor later, so that’d be great to talk about how it’s different than standup comedy and compare and contrast that a bit. We’ll get into that a little bit.

That’d be great. Why did you wanna start writing these humor books?

Don: It was an interesting thing in that I wrote a humor column in college at the University of Akron a long time ago. And I, at some point a few years ago, several years ago now I started, I wanted to start a humor blog.

So I call the column that I wrote for the University of Akron book, delight was called Aches Pains. Alright, play on my name. And so when I started the humor blog, I called it Aches, pains, humor Blog, and I, at the beginning of the blog, I said, yeah, I’m just back after a brief 32 year respite. But the thing with humor writing with me is even though I had taken all that time off and I had written stuff, I’d written some sketch humor I’d done standup comedy in between.

So it, it wasn’t like I hadn’t written anything but humor writing comes naturally to me. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t too long after I started blogging that. I was back doing what I do very well and do naturally. So then I started this humor blog in 2011, and by 2015 I had enough of enough following and enough material that I put it into a book that’s called Just Make Me a Sandwich, which is my first humor book.

So I never set out to write a book. I was just having fun. I was just writing blog posts and all of a sudden I have a book. My my goal, one of my life goals was to write a book after I retired. And so I figured after I retired, I’d have time, I’d write a book, and so I, I forget the math. Now it’s I fulfilled one of my major life goals like seven years early.

Okay. Which, is very rare. Followed up, just make me a sandwich a few years later with will there be free appetizers, and then kept writing. And then a couple years later introduced in 2020, right? In the middle of this pandemic. The current one, Turkey terror at my door. So that’s the history from college to now.

Stephen: And that’s cool. I remember the book Delight ’cause I went to Akron also. I, I don’t know if I remember your column, but that was 30 years ago tell us a little bit about Turkey terror and the other books. It’s humor writing. So tell everybody a little bit about what that means and what they can expect to see in the books.

’cause it’s not a story necessarily. It’s

Don: short essay humor and it’s about everyday subjects. That I encounter. A lot of it’s about me and my interactions with people, my interactions with things, but it’s about general topics that I can make. Funny, I. People have compared my writing and my books with the show Seinfeld.

They’re going, your book is really about nothing, but it’s very funny. So I consider that a great compliment. So Turkey terror, for example, where where the title comes from, Turkey terror. At my door is chapter three and chapter three. Is essays and the story of me battling the wild turkeys in my backyard that are raiding my bird feeders and the interaction.

And you’re going, how do you get, how do you get a chapter out of turkeys? It’s a story and you have this one instance and you have this other instance. And you have the interaction with the turkeys and me and the turkeys and my wife, and the problems that, that we’re encountering.

But it is a very funny story about the Turkeys other other chapters in the book deal with, stories about me being at the beach and encountering people and incidents like that. I. And we, I can make just about anything funny. For example, there, there’s an essay in the book about losing your socks in the dryer.

I’m writing like 800 words about losing your socks in the dryer and you’re going, how do you do that? That’s what I do. Okay. Now Turkey Care is different than my other two books. About a quarter of the book has to do with more serious reflective subjects. And they’re not funny per se, but they are interesting, more serious books.

There’s a story or chapter about me trying to find my real grandfather and doing it. Through genetic forensics and that part of thing, which is just an interesting story. There’s a chapter about how my parents met and you’re going yeah. Everyone has a story about how their parents met.

No, this is unique that it’s a bar pickup when they’re both 35 years old and desperate. Okay. And that’s, but that story tells a lot about how I came to be and how I am. So again, stuff like that, it’s very interesting, but it’s not it’s not humor per se. And trying to go back from humor to more serious stuff in the book.

That was a challenge when we put the chapters together. But I think it works. I haven’t had anyone complain yet that it was too disjointed.

Stephen: Okay, got it. And what would you say, is there other books out there that are similar to yours? Humor writing.

Don: My humor is short essay. That seems to be one of the trends.

Currently in humor writing my style you will see my style. If you’re familiar with Dave Berry.

Stephen: That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Don: I grew up reading Dave Berry and loving Dave Berry’s work and you can just see the influence just because I’ve read so much. One of the comparisons that I make is I read a lot and I’m a fan of the work of David Sedaris.

He is the top right now, short essay humor. He would be considered the most successful in that genre. I tell people who are familiar with his work. I’m like the Midwestern version. Of David Sedaris. Okay. It’s the same type of observational humor. Same, same style of writing.

He’s 10 times better than I am. I can’t make that that apples to apples comparison, but it’s offbeat. But it’s offbeat in the Midwest versus offbeat in some of the stories that he tells from Europe. If I ever went to Europe, I would probably write a book about being in Europe, but I haven’t been to Europe.

Stephen: And that sounds like it would probably be a good book with lots of adventures.

Don: Take somebody goofy from the Midwest who writes observational humor and stick them in Europe. Yeah I, maybe now you said that maybe now that maybe that’s two books, maybe that’s what I should do on retirement.

I should just travel the world and write,

Stephen: Or better yet the first one you write about traveling to Europe, just call it book two and never have a book one, and, what’s, what type of feedback are you getting from readers because I know. I had run into you at some event years ago, and I remembered you, and then recently I ran into you at another event.

We talked about being on the podcast. So you’ve been going out, talking to people and getting involved. So what have people been saying about your

Don: books? Humor is subjective. And my writing is it’s not common. I don’t like to write about the stuff that everybody’s writing about, and for sure, I don’t like to write the same perspective as everybody’s writing about.

But that being said, my books are very well received. It’s, I tell people no matter what, I can make you laugh out loud two or three times during the book, no matter what, and if you really get it, you’re going to be laughing the entire time sometimes. So the feedback is good.

And the feedback on the more serious stuff in the book is it has been good. Has been good too. That was one of the things that, that I was. Concerned about when we released it, just about how the other chapters fit in. And I’ve had several people just read it cover to cover and enjoy it with, but with short essay humor, you don’t have to read it, cover to cover, read it an essay, a chapter to time.

That being said, I’ve had people, they’ve read the book like over a year, and that is, is fine. My, my artist who did the covers for book one and two has described my book as the best bathroom book that he’s ever read. So it, it, it works it works however, but the feedback on Turkey Terror and the other books.

It has been great.

Stephen: So you got Uncle John’s bathroom reader and Don’s Turkey terror sitting there.

Don: Yeah, because some people like, this appeals, a lot of this is, more guy humor, more the early books and the later books but sometimes trying to get guys to buy a book who haven’t read a book.

In a long time. They’re hesitant to get the book. And I’m like no. You just read it for five minutes. You put it down and you pick it up whenever you know you can, because if you’re busy, I’m busy. And if somebody says, here’s a book and you need to read this, straight through. To keep the plot line going.

And so you gotta dedicate so many so much time a day to, to read. That’d be tough for me. Okay. This book is not like that again. You read it when you want to read it. And the one chapter, the one chapter doesn’t lead into the second chapter. And with my humor because of how it is. You are not going to find every essay humorous.

Alright, because I take risks. Some of the stuff is not politically correct, more in the early books than the late books, but, so you’re gonna read something and that one you may not find funny just for what, for whatever reason. The next one, you turn the page. And the next one, you may be laughing out loud and can’t stop laughing, right?

That’s that’s my style. I don’t want, when you’re reading my stuff, I don’t want the reader to get ahead and know what’s coming up. So sometimes I’m setting up a joke. And I’ll take a left turn and I’ll take you somewhere where you didn’t see it coming. And that’s part of the joke. It’s kinda like jumping out from behind something and scaring somebody and having a laugh.

Got

Stephen: it. And have you ever thought of writing like a fiction story with all the humor in it? Alright,

Don: now you’re getting to book six. Oh,

Stephen: okay. We’ve got plans,

Don: I’m, right now things are book four is written at the publisher, but suffering a few publisher delays at this point. Okay. So book four is not out.

It will be out. Sometime, unfortunately I don’t have a date right now ’cause we’re working through some issues. Book five is about 80, it’s about 90% done. Okay. But that’s a business book, so that’s gonna take some time to, to edit and whatever. But book six is going to be a a novel. It’s gonna be set in a business setting.

And there will be humor interjected into that. So you have correctly, I congratulate you, you have correctly anticipated book six and you, chances are, Maybe I start writing that one before the end of the year, but we’ll have to see how

Stephen: things Oh, great. We’d love to follow up, next year or so.

Find out what’s going on how that’s going, or has gonna have me,

Don: you’re not gonna have me on the podcast for the business book. That’s not gonna work. So that would be the next book that would qualify for the podcast.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. Don, do you have a website?

Don: I do not right now. Have a website. I took a break from that when the pandemic hit.

Or a little bit before the pandemic hit. However, I will be having one. I will have a new website before book four, but I don’t, I. Have that right now.

Stephen: Okay. Alright. But we can get your books on all the usual sub suspects like Amazon.

Don: You can get it on Amazon. You can actually get a signed copy on eBay if you go in and search my name for author, signed copy.

And of course, if you want to email me at don a d o n [email protected]. I get you a signed copy.

Stephen: Okay. That’s great. When you’re. Oh I’ll make sure and put all that in the show notes so people have it there too. So when you’re sitting at the author tables and people come up, I’ve seen those authors you get some nonfiction, people with history and memoirs and whatever else, and then you get some fiction, a lot of sci-fi, a lot of fantasy some romance, and then they come over to Dawn and Dawn’s got.

Essay. Humor. Humor and they’re like why should I get your book instead of those other ones? What do you tell ’em?

Don: Oh, I tell them that it’s guaranteed to make you laugh. Do you need to laugh? Do you cannot read my books without laughing at something? So it’s very relatable. Very Simple, plain humor.

I’m making fun of things you can relate to. It’s not something that you can’t relate to. Frustrations with life, talking about trying to adapt to a digital world. Just things, there’s nothing in there that you’re going. Wow. That’s really different. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

And I don’t get, I don’t get the jokes. So you are gonna laugh and you’re gonna the book and it’s something different. So the, that, those are good selling points. But we all need to laugh. That’s what this book, that’s what this book does.

Stephen: Nice. Great. Alright, so you’ve we’ve talked about you, you’ve got plans up to book five.

You’ve worked on a couple books before this. So what are some things you’ve learned about writing that you’re doing different now than you did at the beginning?

Don: It was kinda weird when I started the Aches Pains blog. My philosophy was, I’m gonna write whatever I want, however I want, and I don’t really care who reads it.

All right? So it was, oli, politically incorrect, but not offensive. And all of a sudden I’ve got this readership that, for a politically incorrect book is tremendously diverse. And I didn’t really know how to deal with that. So I start smoothing my material out to make it funny, but less offensive to this diverse audience.

And what that means is that sometimes I will rewrite a sentence or two sentences. I rewrite those seven times. So that the people still get the joke, but the people who aren’t going to find that funny, which, that’s just the nature of the diverse audience, okay? It’s humor. The people that don’t find that funny won’t be offended, which means the next time that I write something they love, so that.

That is a big change. All right. The other thing is, as I started writing, I’m writing from the perspective of a middle aged guy, and it’s not, I’m not I keep saying politically incorrect and I. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just, some, in our sensitive world it’s hard not to write humor and have that to be the case but in, in writing, alright, my female audience, which I never expected to really have a strong following writing from my perspective like that has grown.

Okay? And as it’s grown, I’ve adapted to the audience. Okay. So my first book, which is The Roughest and the Most Guy Humor and probably still the most popular among guys, the second book is smoother than the first book, and Turkey Terror is smooth. Okay. It’s still funny. But it, the writing and just how I go about stuff is smoother than the first two.

That being said, I’ve had, some of my friends, the guy friends go, oh dude, that first one was just the best and this is good, but, and I’m like, yeah, I know, but we’re, we’re making it. More attractive to the wider audience and I think it, it works and the as the more you write, the better you get.

I, it’s incredible. The first book you put out is an author. You’re thinking, I cannot possibly write any better than this. This is just like the ultimate book. It’s the best that I could ever do. Now I read that book versus the third book and I kinda laugh. Yeah, that’s the best you thought you could do.

This is much, much better. Which is encouraging because once again, you look at Turkey tear and go gee, can you write better than that? I don’t think so. Now you can. You just, yeah. You just gotta keep writing.

Stephen: You don’t know what you don’t know. And I’ve talked to so many authors lately about that the biggest thing you can do to get better and make your stories better and improve, it’s not going to classes, it’s not going to conferences, it’s not reading a ton of writing books.

It’s just writing that next story, writing that next book, and not. Editing the same thing over and over. It’s writing that next thing. Writing something new. Writing and writing. Yeah, I totally agree. I will tell you that I for like humor. I like my, like my movies, humor movies.

The ones I find the most funny are the ones that are the mixed in with action, like Lethal Weapon or fast And the Furious sometimes has some of that just that action comedy. Combination. The Jackie Chan ones with Chris Rock I thought were hilarious. I think those are much funnier than like airplane.

Just my personal preference, so I, that’s why I was asking about the fiction earlier. I think getting something with your humor would work well and be interesting to see. So you mentioned doing standup. So how do you. Prepare for standup to do comedy as opposed to writing a book. How are those similar and different?

Don: I’m a much better humorist than I am a comedian. So when I’m writing something, like I said before, I could rewrite something seven times and and typically I’m rewriting I’m polishing. I’m getting that just the way that I want on paper and I can read it back on the comedy stage.

Everything’s happening in real time, and delivery is so important in standup comedy. The pauses, the facial expressions. Just the tone of voice can, can create laughs. So stand of comedy. The whole thing is can you make people laugh and make them laugh repeatedly? In a short period of time?

That’s a lot harder. Okay. The skills. To do that, and when you read like Jerry Seinfeld just rehearses it over and over and over and over to get it just right. Then on stage he can deliver it perfectly.

Stephen: It’s playing in a concert band where they practice the same piece maybe for weeks and months before they perform it one time in front of

Don: people.

Yeah. So you have, yeah, you have natural ability there, but that doesn’t get you, that doesn’t get you. To that status. So to, in, in messing around with the standup, I’m still, I’m still messing around with stuff. But it’s fun and I’ve been I’ve done I haven’t done great.

But that’s not what I’m doing full time. Even though I’ve retired, I’m writing most of the time and then doing some other retirement type things in addition to that. So yes, if I wanted to, if I wanted to pursue that, which would be strange at my age, but not unprecedented it would take a ton of time.

And so now I’ve just, I’m trying to. Balance my time, which is all retirees go through this state. Some days it doesn’t feel like I’m retired. Just like I gotta get up and do a podcast today. Sorry, I’m not sleeping in, I’m not watching reruns on tv. I’m talking to you. So yes, it’s a balance.

Yeah.

Stephen: And, but that’s I’ve talked to quite a few people who retired and wrote a book. It’s, they just couldn’t do the, let me sit here and watch Wheel of Fortune in jeopardy. And price is right all day and do nothing. They wanted to the next part of what they wanna do in their life and.

Writing a book seems to be quite popular, and I’ve had several it. The funny thing is I get a lot or I used to get a lot of computer people that have turned to writing books, and then I got a lot of retired lawyers turning to writing books which I thought was very interesting to notice. I agree.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that you can write a book your whole life as a. On the side. But when you’re retired and you can devote to it, it doesn’t mean, oh, I’m too old. It, it’s not that type of thing at all.

Don: And in essence, I waited to retire before writing my business book.

’cause my business book is going to be about the stuff that I learned in business and in a specific in business forecasting in what I did. So I’m taking my knowledge and putting it in the book to help other people. In that in that business function.

Stephen: Got it. Cool. Alright Dawn this has really been great.

I’m glad we, we had a snafu the first time We got things resolved. We got back on, so I’m glad we didn’t just let it go. Oh, there we go. Turkey terror at my door. Are you going to be appearing anywhere this summer if anyone’s in Ohio and wants to come visit

Don: right now? Good question. Right now I do not have anything set up because I am awaiting the release of Book four, which I don’t know when it’s coming out yet.

So as soon as book four, which is called Deep Heavy Stuff, which is not a humor book. Alright we’re shifting the more serious short essays on the serious stuff of life. Soon as that comes out. I’m gonna be all over the place, but I can’t set that up until we, we get that. Which, and once, once I get that, it’s gonna make an interesting author’s table with three humor books and one serious book and trying to explain to people that the differences, ’cause they’re not anything except for being short essay.

They’re not anything like each other.

Stephen: Got it. Yeah, that, that’ll be interesting. I’d like to hear about, maybe we’ll run into each other once you do

Don: that. We can do a podcast on deep, heavy stuff. Yeah. And that’ll be a much different podcast too.

Stephen: Okay, great. We’ll have to check that out.

Follow up and hopefully we run into each other. Before we go, Do you have any last minute advice? For any authors out there that are looking to write humor, what would you tell ’em? That

Don: is a hard question. Humor writing comes naturally to me. I could turn out, I could turn out a humor piece every day if I wanted to and a decent quality.

I’m gonna say, know your audience, know your target audience, and target to that audience. And it would be better to specialize on a topic than what I’ve done. I’m all over the place and that from a book standpoint is not, that has issues. It has issues with marketing and target market and all that.

So I would say observe, take a lot of notes. A lot of rewrites and try to specialize on a topic. That would be my biggest thing. And so I sound like a hypocrite and I’m going, do not do what I just did three times.

Stephen: Got it. Alright, great, Don, it’s been a pleasure talking to you again. So I wish you luck and I’ll let you know when this goes live.

Don: Thank you very much and you have a great day.

Stephen: Thanks, you too.

Avyan is a young writer, 10 years old in fact. Yet, he’s an experienced author that has written a non-fiction book for that his fellow classmates enjoy. As a bonus, Avyan donates his profit to his school.

Stephen: today on Discover Wordsmith, I have a very special guest. This is Avian and he is 10 years old right now, but wrote his first book when he was six. Avian. How are you doing today?

I think I was like

Avyan: eight

Stephen: or something. Yeah. Oh, you were eight. Okay. So you were eight still. There’s a lot of people my age that are trying to get one book published and with them, this is Mom Monica. So welcome you guys to Discover Wordsmith. How’s everything going today?

Monica: Going good. And thanks for inviting us for

Stephen: podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is great. I, one of the things I like to do is, Highlight young people and kids doing these types of things, because I know there are parents out there who don’t understand that kids can do this stuff in today’s world. And I think we limit our kids sometimes because the parents don’t understand what all can be done.

So I think this is great. So Ian you’re 10 years old now, correct. So I assume writing books is not your full-time job. What are some things you like to do besides write? I.

Avyan: The first thing that I don’t have a full-time

Stephen: job. You don’t, not next year. You’re getting one next year I think.

I don’t know. Okay. Alright. So what do you,

Avyan: What do you I like reading and I like space and like mysteries. Space mysteries, that kind of thing.

Stephen: Nice. And

Avyan: I do also, I play piano and ty, I do TaeKwonDo since five years.

Stephen: Both. Wow. So you’re busy. Yeah. I, TaeKwonDo, I have a cousin who did TaeKwonDo.

I did a style of martial arts called Kwan. It’s Korean. So I, I love martial arts. I think that’s great. My kids both did it for many years. Oh, okay. When they were your age. So we’ll talk about some of the things you like to read but you play music and martial arts and you so I think that’s great.

Active kid. That’s wonderful. Yeah.

Avyan: I also like basketball.

Stephen: Oh nice. Are you tall enough to play basketball? Cuz I wasn’t. Yes.

Monica: Nice. He’s quite tall for his age.

Stephen: Good. Yeah. Hopefully you’ll stay that way cuz I played a little basketball in sixth grade and by the time I was in eighth grade, everybody else had grown and I hadn’t, so I stopped playing basketball.

Abian, you wrote a book called True or False a couple years ago, and you wanted to donate the money to charity. First of all, tell us why did, what’s, what is the book about and why did you wanna write it? So the book was

Avyan: actually a school project. My teacher, like my gifted teacher she had this project like for me and my friend who was also in gifted to write this book.

And she gave a couple of genres to just get us started let’s say like nonfiction or fiction or realistic fiction, like the true or false type nonfiction, which I selected. And then there’s app called Book Creator. She gave me a this account for it and book creator like help me like.

Make the book itself. And then for the publishing part, my parents like just got this idea for the publishing and then they

Stephen: published it

Avyan: and then we just decided that we would donate the money to charity.

Stephen: And what charity are you donating the money to? So

Avyan: Most of it went to my school. Nice.

And the other part of it went to the American Heart Association.

Stephen: Nice. Good choices. It’s always good to help out the schools. I love, doing what I can to help schools and education myself. So

Monica: that’s what like the Stephen, we thought because this whole book thing started with the book project.

And so it came from the school. The whole thing started because of him being in the gifted class and doing the school project. So we thought, okay, what’s the better idea? Like the school to start with, the school something, what teaches us he’s being in the school whole time and to start learning to give the community back.

It’s something, school is the first priority to start with.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah, I love that. And I love that your gifted program is pushing a little bit to do projects like that. My son, when he was first in the gifted program, the most they did was play the Blockers game, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with, but that was like what they pushed him at and it was like not a whole lot.

So I think it’s great they’re doing that. And it’s great that your parents were involved because. Being a kid, it’s hard to get published by yourself. You can’t open the accounts that are needed to any other kids. And I like pushing this out and talking to other kids about kids that are writing.

That is one thing you need parents for. Yeah. And the parents get an education learning how to publish because their kid did it. So tell us, what is the book about Avian? So the

Avyan: book is about So my genre is like true or false. And I picked the human body, like why I picked that. Like I’m interested in like space and life and that kind of thing.

I was already doing a space project that time, so I just selected the human body and it’s about the facts that you didn’t like. I didn’t know, like that kind of thing. Ok. Like interesting facts about the human body and it’s like a true or false type thing. So first it’s like true or false, let’s say the skin is on organ of the human body and then they have to readers have to guess like true or false.

Then on the next page, it’s like they give the answer like, true it is, and then some. Stuff about it. Nice.

Stephen: And then same thing, I had 11 facts or something. Oh, ok. Facts. Nice. I love that cuz when I was a kid that’s the type of book I would’ve read, cover to cover several times. So I think it’s great that you’re opening that up for lots of other kids.

So what was it like coming up with all the true false questions and how did you do that?

Avyan: So first I just typed like human body and the internet and it was hard to come. Going to those websites where there’s this interesting facts in it, like most of them like had facts like I already knew, and most people would know about that.

So I, I would get about one or two facts from each website that actually has the interesting facts.

Stephen: Nice. Okay, good. Hey, in September at the rg, I’ll introduce you to my son. We gotta remember, you need to ask him his elephant story. He’s got a really good elephant reading book story that I think you’ll love.

When I see you in September, we’ll make sure and ask Colin that, okay? Yeah. All right. So you wrote this book. Do you have any plans for another book? Another book? Yeah. I’ve started. Nice.

Avyan: I. I don’t want to reveal what’s it

Stephen: about. Okay, that’s fair.

Avyan: A surprise. So I’ve gotten like one fact or something down, like the Google slides where I made

Stephen: it.

Okay. So is this gonna be another true false or a different type of, that’s another true false. So it’s like the sequel book two. Oh, it’s same true and false. Avian has a second book false until he writes it. Yeah. Okay. What other books out there that are, that you can think of that are similar that you’ve read that maybe gave you inspiration to write this one?

Is there anything else you’ve read similar?

Avyan: The main thing I want, I selected just genre, is to try something new. Nice. I’ve seen other true false things, like true or false. A banana is purple. Like that kinda thing. So I decided to make one for like my age

Stephen: kids. Nice. Yeah and I love that the example you gave the about the skin because Yeah, that’s one I have in my book.

Yeah. I guarantee there’s a lot of people that don’t know that. Facts. Yeah. So it, I think there’s, and it’s great kids your age, love, knowledge and love to absorb it. Not necessarily school, but that’s two different things. Gaining knowledge is different than schooling. So giving them something that they can read like this and pass on, who knows?

Maybe somebody someday will go onto Jeopardy and say, yeah, I read that in Ian’s book back when I was in fifth grade. Oh, that would be cool. So what are your friends saying about your book?

Avyan: I shared it with my class in second grade. I think I did. And then my teachers bought it to support me and then they read it nice.

My relatives, I think, bought it too. So they were all like most of the facts my class didn’t know, like the most people who knew in fact were that skin one,

Stephen: sorry,

Avyan: that skin was an organ one. That was the one that, that was the fact that had the most kids know it.

Stephen: Okay. That’s cool. Did you made this one about the human body.

You don’t wanna give up what the other one’s about what, but can you give us a clue as the topic of true false questions? What I said earlier. Okay. All right. Okay. And do you have any intentions you wanna write some fiction some like space science fiction stories?

Avyan: That kinda of I would rather write non-fiction sort of things.

Ok. Than like the fiction science fiction. I like reading science fiction and like that kind of thing.

Stephen: There will be a gentleman at the author panel with us. His name is Bill Keith. He writes under the name Ian Douglas and everybody there knows him. We all know Bill but he writes science fiction.

And in fact, if you go to. Amazon and just look up Ian Douglas. You’ll see all his books. And then he also wrote some like Battle Tech books. If you know what Battle Tech is, the Fighting Robot game. So he will be there and he would probably love to talk with you about writing science fiction space stuff.

Yeah.

Avyan: So we published them on Amazon and then like recently, I just searched up my name on Google and it just came like Walmart. And then I just clicked on it, and then I saw that my book was also in Walmart for

Stephen: some reason. How’d that feel? Good? Yeah, it felt good. You felt like a superstar, didn’t you?

Sort

Avyan: of, yeah, like Walmart, like without us publishing it

Stephen: on Walmart. Because Amazon has an expanded distribution that they do for other stores. And just a little author secret. There’s a lot of authors that look themselves up just so they can see. How many stores their book is in. And they like to hit refresh.

They’ll sit there hitting refresh to see if they’ve made any sales. That’s a little author’s secret that many authors like to do. So

Avyan: shop popping up like it was another person with the same name as me.

Stephen: Wow.

Avyan: I don’t know what he did that made him appear in Google, but

Stephen: Hopefully he does not like stealing things and that he doesn’t, you don’t get mixed up with him. That’s like a, he’s the same age as

Avyan: me. Really? I think 10 years old, 11 years old,

Stephen: something like that. That is crazy. That’s pretty cool.

Maybe someday you can meet him. I’ve always wanted to meet one of the other people that was named the same as me. Just see that, say I did it so

Monica: he could sell he could sell so far almost one 50 books.

Stephen: Really? That’s pretty good. Congratulations. Because most books only sell about 200 copies is what the yeah.

Quote unquote.

Monica: That was right. Like on the, that’s been two years now. But I think in that first six, first three, four months itself he could sell one 50 books. And afterwards, as you said, like most seller cannot sell afterwards, so now it’s like kind of it had stopped. Yeah. But that was the initial,

Avyan: just like one or two books in the Sierra or something.

Yeah.

One time, like two years ago, there was this huge buying thing.

Stephen: That’s pretty cool. They might have done it for a school classroom or something. Yeah. Or some event. Finish your second book and put that one out. And I guarantee sales of the first book will pick up again. That you’ll make a few more based on someone buy looking and finding. The second one, it, it always happens.

You get a few sales of the first book.

Avyan: Yeah.

Monica: It was for the charity, like the first book itself just was for charity. And so far we have told him like in future also for this particular book always will go towards the school charity and some portion in the Heart Association. So we are making him, making sure as he grows, he know that one particular book is always for the cherry.

That one particular book will be always for charity, not just the initial years.

Stephen: Nice. I like that. And one of the things I like to point out to parents is typically an author, they say it takes five to 10 years to get the skills of writing and the publishing and start getting books out there to start earning money off of your books.

And what I keep telling parents is, Kids can do that while they’re in school. They can get those 10 years of learning and practice out of the way. And by the time they’re 18 to 20, they’ve got several books they’re publishing. They know what to do and they hit the ground running. And I’m not saying every kid becomes a full-time author making a million dollars a year, but just by the time they’re 18 to 20, how many kids have a side business where they can earn money to, on their own before they’re even outta college?

Monica: Yeah. And in the principal and the school and everyone, they were so kind enough, like Principal actually helped to promote the book, like calling the local news company. Nice. And they interviewed him and they

Avyan: yeah, I think yeah, I did the interview in the school library in the morning when there’s no library class

Stephen: there.

Perfect. Perfect. So did they like show on the news? Did you get to watch yourself on the news?

Avyan: Yeah, my mom took a video of it because it was like at 5:00

Stephen: AM Of course, what parent wouldn’t do that? I’ve gotta get up tomorrow morning and see the news. That’s awesome. So you’ve all, you’ve got it for forever now.

So you have a website for your author’s stuff? No. If you get a website, you can put the video on there.

Avyan: Oh, okay. True fact.

Monica: Okay. That’s a good idea. Yeah. Thank you. And also because one of the thing to publish on the Amazon, that time was Covid actually. Yeah. The whole idea was just to somehow to do the charity work and they were learning in the school also about community and yeah, giving

Avyan: back.

The community. Yeah.

Monica: So then, so that’s the one thing we thought, okay, this will be a really good idea because in the social study they were learning about the community workers and those things. So practically to teach the kid it’s, it was just a project, but just, and the project was, I like, we felt it was quite impressive work he had done.

So let’s just convert into the book. If the covid was not there, how much time did it

Avyan: take? Couple days.

Monica: Yeah, a couple of weeks maybe I had to run through it. Yes. Yeah. But so if Covid was not there, maybe, I don’t know, we could have just printed some copies and then hand it over to people. But because of the covid, we wanted to avoid meeting in person.

And then even we thought, okay, if somebody is not in town and they want to buy the copies we got this idea about this. Self-publishing. So anybody who wants to like even the kids for kids, even if they’re making any stories they can even publish it. And then there are options, like you don’t have to even put just maybe minimum amount to sell the books or even the Kindle has, you can ask whoever has the Kindle, they can read it for free.

Those kind of options are there in Amazon. We just thought, okay we can at least have these things going on with the self-publishing because that was the best idea that

Stephen: time. Yeah. And I think it’s a great idea regardless because like I said, he’s 10 in eight. Or so years, he is gonna be outta school and he’ll already have an idea of how to publish a book, how to write a book.

And it, he could continue doing that. It and it, with today’s market, when Covid hit, so many people lost their jobs were outta work and they didn’t know what to do. Yeah. I still have

Avyan: my format. Of my first book. Yeah. But I can use that for my

Monica: second book. Yeah. So that, that is his plan as he is telling.

So he has that kind of a plan already. Like he wants to make the series of the same thing and then he Nice save the format. So he wants to continue having the same format.

Avyan: It’s a comic style. So I have all that kind of background in the. There’s no real images of my thing cause they’re all like scary.

I just clip. Cause one time when I was searching for an image of an eye, I forgot to put the word clip in there and

Stephen: staring at me. Yeah, I can understand that. But hey, that gives you a lot of choices of eyes.

Monica: Yeah. Yeah, so this is all about he figured it out. Okay. I want to go with the, all the clip parts. So he will search all the clip parts, make comic style, and I thought it’s a great idea because that’s what the kids like to See it not like a real things, but as a form of clip art.

And then he got the idea, like last two pages of the book, correct? He had, yeah, last two pages. That’s, he had put it as a kind of a game, like if you read the, to have the, that’s what he likes to do, word search and all those things. So he came up with the idea that once. All the kind of, the book is read all the 11 facts out of the book.

Then he has two activities for the kids. What he likes to do it. I think I

Avyan: have a word search

Stephen: and nice,

Avyan: Crossword, I think.

Monica: Nice. So based on the book itself, it’ll ask the questions and those

Stephen: things. So it’s a activity book all around very interactive. Yeah.

Monica: And also what, when you say what’s another plan actually he participated almost every year, like in the local W Q L N, like pbs, W Q L N they, there’s

Avyan: writer’s contest.

Yeah. Nice. So you just upload a book and there’s some criteria for words or something. So I always go over that criteria for the word count, right? I dunno, I’m just asking like, why don’t, why do they keep a maximum word count for some

Stephen: reason? Keep everybody on the same even keel. So every, it’s the playing field’s even for everybody.

So someone’s not writing this gargantuan novel and then everybody has to read it so they keep it, a certain word count and everybody has to write within those restrictions. And different genres. They try and keep within a certain word count too for those. So how’d you do for the contest?

Avyan: Yeah. So

Monica: last year like every, this year he did not win, but he I encourage him to irrespective of the winning or losing, like I just encourage him to participate. Yes. Because I feel like kids has so much imagination than adults. What we have, and this is

Avyan: a, yeah, I made a comic for this year.

I made this comic about traffic rules.

Stephen: Oh, nice. Okay.

Monica: And that’s where Stefan, like when you were asking him about the book, like we asked the wq, l n like whatever the story he has submitted so far, because he’s been participating since four five years. Actually every year he has participated so with respect to the age at least a small story he has created.

And I asked them like whether is there any restriction from their side if you wanna publish that story as a book in his own handwriting. So whatever he has written in the handwritings and pictures that will just go as. As a Kindle book or something like that to read it for free.

That’s okay. At least it can reach out to more people or more kids. Read and they said, yeah, they don’t have any restrictions. So probably that’s another plan, whatever those stories to come as a book.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. Mentioned. For the author table, author panel in September, you can go into your dashboard on Amazon and order author copies.

And if you’re selling it for $10, the author copy is gonna be like $4. Yes. So you can order 10 of those, sell ’em at the table. And that’s something the other authors are gonna be doing too, okay. Thank you. Encourage you. Yeah. Ian what are some of your favorite books that you like to read?

Avyan: There’s this book I forgot the title, but it was this book you have to read the first couple of pages and then this gives you a choice like I don’t remember the title, but 59 Clue. No, it wasn’t 59 clues. So they give you an option, like if you wanna do this or if you wanna do this if you wanna do like option one, then you go to this

Stephen: page, like a chew drone adventure book.

Yeah.

Avyan: And I’ve read it a couple times doing it the different ways, like there’s all different ways figured out. Most of the ways to get to the. It’s always like this mystery and this, oh yeah, I remember it was case closed. That was the title of

Stephen: the book. Okay, nice. I used to love those when I was a kid.

All that. Choose your own adventure books.

Avyan: Yeah, so it was like mom, and then the kids wanted to help with the detective, and then the kids only solve it.

Stephen: Of course, like if you

Avyan: choose the wrong path, then it would just give you like a page, and then it would say case closed. That means you failed. Then you have

Stephen: bank, and then you go back and you just try a different path.

Yeah,

Avyan: because I always keep my finger in the page where I read shit so I don’t have to find that

Stephen: page can. And after you do it a couple times the first couple pages, cuz it’s all the, background stuff and it’s okay, I don’t need to read that again. I’ve read it five times, just jump to the first choice.

All what would you say to any parents or teachers or other kids out there? If they said why would I wanna get a book that was written by an eight year old? What would you tell ’em?

Avyan: I would say that’s a book quite written by an eight year old, and it’s I would say that it’s has like interesting facts and like that kind of thing.

And it has some activities at the end if the kids only want to, if the kids want to do the activities like I don’t think like younger kids could do the activities without reading the book first, because it’s like that kinda thing. It’s that kinda tricky thing that goes along with every question in the book, like true or false question in the book.

Stephen: Nice. Nice. That’s good. And that’s good to have a good answer with why people would wanna read your book because if you do any other you might have got asked something very similar for the news interview. It’s a very common thing, so it’s something to practice as you do more books and get out there.

So I do wanna ask you a couple author writing questions. You mentioned that you used an app called Book Creator. I haven’t heard of that one. Can you tell me about it? So

Avyan: Book Creator, it’s logo is this Rainbow Square with the book inside and there’s this pencil inside the book. It’s the book, and the pencil is white.

So it’s like when you go into book Creator, there’s this, someone has to give you an account. It’s a, that like, not an account, but like a code. It’s

Monica: mainly with the people. Yeah. It’s mainly from the, I think from the school or educators.

Avyan: I, yeah, like that, like my teacher my class teacher has given me our class A code for book creator to nice.

Just make some books in there that, like most of the books in there, like they can’t be published or Jerry gets a home. Like that kind of type thing? Yeah,

Monica: It’s mainly to mainly for kids to encourage the kids to I think the educators use that platform to show kids how to make the books and learning process for the kids in a fun way.

And where they can create their own any, they can, I think, scribble and draw their own thing and even the find the find the pictures, which is like a copyright free pictures. So kids, they don’t have to worry about whether

Avyan: can take it from me. If you go in the book creator and then take some pictures from, it’s.

Nice. So it’s creators like if multiple people have access to that code and join that class, they can go in one book at the same time and edit in the same time.

Stephen: Nice. Okay.

Avyan: Slides. You can add how many slides. If you print it, it’ll be pages. So you can just add and do whatever you want on the slides.

Nice. Take a picture of your own like self. If you are doing something with your book, then you can take a picture of your book

Stephen: A and then it allows you to export it in a format that you can upload to Amazon or elsewhere.

Avyan: I think like you can download

Monica: it, I think. Yeah, you can download it. And then what I felt like, I thought it’ll be easy and just upload it.

But then I think I learned it. It had, Amazon had several other formats and other things, so I went through the YouTube videos about how to learn and like how to publish it. Ended up being Separating the pages and then going with the, because Amazon is very particular about the margin and those kind of things, right?

So they had to make sure that those things does not cut off from that. So just resizing those things in that and I think Amazon has the. The formatted slides also available, so we can just insert his work into that. And then it was easier

Avyan: yeah.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And you decided to write a book, but mom got the education in publishing.

But that’s good too. That, that might be something too at the author panel you could help answer some questions about that. Cause I, that idea, the author panel that in September is everybody that comes to our talk. Is gonna be able to ask questions. I’m gonna have some prepared questions to get things rolling, and then we’re gonna open it to the audience and see what we go get.

So who knows what an, what questions we’ll get. Yeah,

Monica: and I think this is, because right now the whole idea is not like a doing as a professional writer. And those things I think with the, what I, I. Felt during that like learning about the self-publishing was if it’s for any professional writers, I thought they are mainly writing and maybe the illustration and those things somebody else will be doing to help them look more professional.

But here it’s just to promote his creativity. Again, when I said like the W Ql N story probably will be just putting it out there in his own handwriting. So Ill be just publishing in the comic.

Avyan: Yeah. I made in my Chromebook. Then it would That same thing,

Stephen: and Amazon does have a comic creator publisher too, you’d probably have to search for it, but it allows you to publish comics through Amazon also.

Nice. Good to know.

Avyan: Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah. Something to look for.

Monica: Yeah that one thing, right? This year he has created this comic. What he’s what Avi was talking that is something he did it in on his Chromebook. So that’s something he came up with the idea that, okay, I want to create a comic this year.

I’m like, go ahead.

Stephen: Nice. Awesome. It I went through the same thing, having gifted kids and you’re constantly trying to do things that challenge them, that they’re interested in and their interests. Change sometimes and bop all over the place that you get to the point it’s yeah, just go do it.

Don’t you know, you don’t have to debate about it. Just go figure something out and do it and encourage them to just. Try things. My daughter must have tried 20 different things growing up got interested in it, went for a while and changed to something else, so yeah, I think that’s great that you’re doing that and especially because it’s writing, cuz I think that’s something that can benefit people throughout their whole lives, so yeah.

Wonderful.

Avyan: And the

Monica: same thing, like what we feel like me and my husband, we always feel and we tell that because if. Then you learn something. Even like participating somewhere in the writing or even like when he created book there is nothing wrong or right. When you don’t do anything you don’t have that thing.

But at the end of you start something, you get something new, you learn the process and there is some new creation is there. So always just try something new. And that actually even keeps him busy and active and they like it.

Stephen: Yes. Yes. I love that. And you play basketball and TaeKwonDo and take piano.

I think that’s wonderful. I played piano when I was younger and I still played music. It, it lasts through throughout your life. Yeah,

Monica: that’s so true. And it helps them, I feel the music, it’s a calm therapy also. And TaeKwonDo, he’s a second degree black belt, so he’s going towards his third degree right

Stephen: now.

Much better than me. I only made first degree black belting Kwan. So you’re higher than me. Yeah. So I won’t mess with you when I see ya. I wouldn’t want the 10 year old to, to put me on my butt. Alright. Monica and Ian, it’s really been great talking to you guys. I’m so glad we got in touch with each other and I so look forward to us meeting in a couple months.

Yeah.

Monica: Yeah. Mansa thing is in September. That’s what

Stephen: he’s been talking. Yes. And this episode, it’ll be a couple weeks. I’ve got a couple in the queue ahead of you, but as soon as it goes live, I’ll send you links and everything and let you know all about where to listen to it. Thank

Monica: you so much, Stephan, because we never knew about it.

It was a pleasant surprise, like seeing your email because it’s been two years and suddenly the email popped out and we were like, okay, is this really true? I went back to the chain of the emails how you figured it out and reached out to us for the podcast. So it was a good experience for him.

Stephen: Yeah I think this is great. I’m really excited about the whole thing and I really excited to get you guys involved with Mensa, cuz I think you’ll really love it and it’ll be a good time. And that RG is a great one to go to. It’s one of my favorites, great. Folks, I appreciate you taking some time in the evening and thanks Ian.

You keep writing. I wanna hear an update in September.

Avyan: Yeah.

Monica: We’ll in September then? Yes.

Gustav is from South America where he lives with his large family. He writes for a very thriving science fiction fan base there. We discuss his sci-fi military book, Colony, but also about being a South American writer and trying to sell in the United States.

Gustav is a Jumpmaster Press author and loves what they have done to help his career.

https://gustavobondoni.com/

https://www.kelediciones.com/

Stephen: today on Discovered Wordsmiths, I have Gustavo Bond. Bond. Is that correct? See, I didn’t ask the last name. Alright, so Gustavo, welcome to the podcast.

How are you doing today?

Gustavo: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. Yeah.

Stephen: Yeah, this is great. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you like to do, where you live, that type of stuff outside of writing, things you don’t besides writing. Cool.

Gustavo: I’m from Buenos Aires.

I’m currently in Buenos Aires. I live in Enos Aires. Nice. I have two young daughters. I live with my wife and two daughters, plus two children from my wife’s previous marriage. So there’s a lot of us in the house. Nice. Outside of writing, I I have a day job. I work for an internet company and I also enjoy I enjoy reading.

Of course. That’s I think you probably

Stephen: get that lot books behind you there.

Gustavo: Yeah. And if you look to the, like to that side, there’s also a little display case with a bunch of models in it, airplanes and cars, which I actually built. I also like to do some art. So the, if you look above the models, lemme see if I can make like right above the models, there’s one draw.

One of my drawings is up there, which actually they were, there was two of them hanging on that wall before I put up the display case. So

Stephen: yeah. Nice. So I think you’re the first South American author I’ve interviewed. Cool.

Gustavo: Great. Great to be the first. Yeah, it’s, a lot of South Americans write science fiction and fantasy.

But not a lot of them speak English or work in the US and the European markets. So it’s not unusual that you might not have run into too many of us.

Stephen: Oh, that’s interesting. I think it’s great cuz I’ve been getting authors, all continents. I think it’s great talking to such a big variety.

Gustavo: Yeah. It’s cool.

Stephen: So you’ve got multiple kids. I know what that’s I’ve had the same how do you find time to write?

Gustavo: So generally I try to find a little bit of time to write when they’re at school. And after that, when they’re watching cartoons in the afternoon, the rest of the time becomes a little bit harder.

But if I have to write during during A fight in the middle of my house, I can actually do that. I’ve done it. So

Stephen: arriving under fire?

Gustavo: Yeah, during the pandemic. The pandemic was actually very good training for that because like they were here all the time and they were small. They were like, one of them was two and the other one was four.

During the pandemic. Oh, wow. They were really needy, really small. And so that was good training, like writing when Yeah, when the world is like coming down around your

Stephen: ears. So I wanna talk about your book Colony but I find it interesting I wanna ask you, there it is. Ask you, you mentioned that a lot of South American authors like to write sci-fi and fantasy which is interesting to me.

Why do you think that is? There’s a tradition

Gustavo: not only of straight science fiction and fantasy in the Asimov vein, but actually science fiction and fantasy in Latin America has been spilling out into every genre. So if you look at the last few greats from Latin America, if you look at Mario Osa, who is Peruvian, or if you look at Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who is.

Who is Colombian or even our own Argentinian superstar who is Borges. That’s basically, you’ll find most of that writing on the shelves titled literature, literary fiction even. But as a subgenre of literary fiction, it’s basically something called magic realism, which is not straight realism. It’s not, it’s very much I.

In touch with the fantastic, with the impossible, with the kind of fantasy that is just just around the corner. So the literary fiction tradition from Latin America, and that’s just touching the, that’s just scratching the surface. If you look at the really big writers from Latin America, they’ve all had some kind of setting in fantasy or magic realism, so that.

Informs everything else. Plus there’s a very healthy straight science fiction community and people who like fantasy and nowadays with all the TV shows we get the same TV shows you do. We have Netflix, we have Amazon Prime, so all of that is, is very much present as well.

Stephen: I love that.

And that’s something I know I’ve heard a little bit about that in certain areas of the world, there are certain genres that are more popular than others. I know a lot of American authors trying get into Europe and England and moving down the coastline there and stuff. If you do fantasy science fiction, maybe South America’s a much better target to go for first.

Gustavo: Not if you intend to make a living because,

Stephen: ok.

Gustavo: Being a smaller, the thing about it’s being a smaller market means that only the very, very top best sellers are actually paid. So it’s it’s much better to actually sell your work into the US and European markets. A lot of Latin American publishing houses view the author by necessity.

Not so much because they’re scammers, but by necessity they view the author as a co-investor. So maybe the author, once the book is approved, needs to, I don’t know, pay for the print run or things like that. So it’s not a great market to work in, but it is a great market for readers. Like even if it’s a, the problem is it’s smaller okay,

Stephen: so they, so we’re.

We’re going backwards here talking some author stuff first, just because it got me interested. So you are with Jump Master Press, that’s from Alabama here in the States. Is that why you chose to go with them?

Gustavo: I chose to go with them because I actually was on a comm panel with them once and they had a they started talking about their business model and I thought, whoa, I would, I have a book that works for them.

They’re, They have a military background colony is a colony, is a military sf. It’s right on the verge. It’s not military SF in the traditional sense, but it has some military action in it. And I thought these guys would probably like this. I think they would be able to sell a bunch of copies. I have, I’ve been writing for a lot of years, I have worked with other publishers and.

To a certain degree. Some people are actually gonna say, oh, you have a book at Gustavo. My name’s very easy to remember. So they’ll actually get some sales from that as well. I’m probably the only Gustavo writing in English right now, so

Stephen: it’s Right. Yeah. So you mentioned several other presses you’ve worked with.

So that’s a model that is, something people can do today, not something you could do so easily before that. You could have a book that Penguin Random House picks up, but you could also publish it your, something different yourself and have a publisher here or publisher there. What is it like to work with multiple publishers like that?

Gustavo: It depends which publisher. Some of, most of my experiences have been really positive. I try to make sure that. A publisher that likes a certain kind of book gets first write of refusal for that kind of book. If I happen to write another military science fiction novel, I will ask Guard Bridge if they like it before trying to shop it to anyone else in general the publisher I’ve worked with have been really good.

I work with a couple, which I’m gonna mention, which are, I work with guard rich books in Scotland. And Guard Bridge always goes to every world con and to every English con. So I might arrive and people who will have already seen my book be familiar with the book, some of them will have already read the book, which is always interesting.

I also work with an Australian press, which does really good job online, which is called Severed Press, and they work, I have a series of monster books. They do really well. They do a really good job selling them, which is basically what you wanna press for. If not, as you said, you did self-publish, I would not do a good job selling my books.

So I prefer to have someone who’s an expert at that doing it for me. Plus they do really good. Another thing I always look at is cover design. For example, if you look at Colony, I act, before I sent them anything, I actually, the first thing I do when I’m looking at a press, I might send them something to evaluate, is to check their cover design.

If it looks professional, at least I know that at the end of the day I’m gonna end up with a professional product. How well they sell, how well they don’t sell is hard sometimes to see. Cause sometimes it’s a press, sometimes it’s an author, it’s even King will sell a book if I publish it. So it’s not necessarily the press, but it’s definitely something that I look at.

So when I saw Jump Master’s books, I thought they were really good looking and they did a really good job with Colony. So I’m really happy, and it seems that they’ve been selling quite a few. They go to Cons and after each con they like say, Hey, we sold a bunch of your book, or We sold a few of your book.

Or, Hey, we didn’t sell that many of your books this time. And they have a big table. So yes, it’s always good to know that they’re selling a bunch of mine.

Stephen: Yeah, when I saw them at Scares That Care, they had a huge area with a whole big wall and yeah, it was very impressive looking and really nice guys and everything.

I’ve got several authors coming on here from Jumpmasters. I’ve been telling other authors, Hey, check them out, because I’ve dealt with them directly. I’ve dealt with their authors. Their authors love them. They do a great job at the cons. What there, what more could you really look for?

Cause you know, the, it’s the, those are the things that make the difference. It’s easy to fake it by getting a good cover and getting a printed book. You know that is actually the easier part nowadays.

Gustavo: It is. And books are printed on demands, so I don’t know. I don’t know what Jump Master does with their books, but normally smaller houses will print them on demand.

They’ll have a few, I don’t know, they’ll take 20 or 30 of each book two or whatever number they think is best to a con, but they don’t have a huge investment in a print run. So it’s more important to see them at the cons, to see them like they recommended that I should talk to you. So that’s something that for me is important.

Cause they’re actually doing things for their authors. And they had a bunch of authors at the con you, you weren’t scared to care. They, I dunno if they had authors there, but they def I definitely saw a pick with a bunch of eight authors at a con. So they’re doing the work and that’s hugely important to me.

Yeah

Stephen: it is. They did have a couple authors there. They had Armen Shimmer Man from Deep Space Nine that did the Elyria series. He was there and I believe the one other guy was there, but he was like on offshoot, connected. And then I thought I saw another author too, wandering around at times.

Yeah I was pretty impressed in talking to ’em. They were, Like, they have the cards for the eBooks they were giving out. You buy so much and Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, wow, these guys are really, let’s try this. Let’s do this. And really getting on it. I have talked to was it Jim?

I believe gene. Or I did talk to Gene, but I think I, I interviewed one of the other guys. I forget his name off the top of my head. I’m, I apologize. He’s probably listening to this. I dunno,

Gustavo: I don’t know all the writers from Jump Master. I know I, I know a few of them. I know a couple of them by name too, but I don’t know them physically yet because I haven’t been able to get to a con myself.

This year. I did Easter Con a few weeks ago, which I had promised to do before the before Colony even came out. Cause I had a book from Guard Bridge coming out at for Easter Con. But I definitely wanna get to one of the jump master cons. I’ve been talking back and forth to Kyle about when we can both be there at the same time.

So I’ll see. So I’m never in the Southeast really. I generally, when I do go to the us I’m generally either in New York, Chicago, Washington. I don’t necessarily go further south. Maybe Miami if I’m way south. So that might, if there’s a con in Miami, it might work

Stephen: out. Got it. I’m sure there are.

Okay, we, we’ve done some author talk, which is usually what I do at the end and we’ve gotten some good info on presses, so I appreciate that. We’re just totally mixing it up today. Let’s talk about your book Colony. That’s the one from Jump Master Press. You said it’s a sci-fi, so tell us a little bit about the book.

Gustavo: So the setup is the following. There’s a colony ship escaping from A war which is basically humans versus uploaded humans fighting for resources and basically control of a system. And they basically said, okay, this is not for us. They jumped on a holy ship and left right in the middle of the war.

They launched as a actually, as an escape pod cuz humanity was thinking, we’re gonna lose this war. So these guys are in, they head to a completely empty planet, far from everything away from the war where nobody will find them probably. And they set up their colony. The colony is on a very cold planet, it’s not terraformed.

And they set up their colony and within a few months they start realizing they’re not alone. And what the way they realize they’re not alone. Is that an, a slight, an offshoot colony of dissidents actually gets. Completely wiped from the map, and they have no idea who this was. There’s no one on the planet.

It’s a completely empty planet. There’s no life, there’s no signs of anything, no civilization. And yet something has just deleted a colony and they just attacked them and they left no survivors. So why that happened? They have to go find out. And when they, once they do, they have to fight what they find.

So it has, as I said earlier, it has some military elements. But it’s straight science fiction of the kind that you might have seen in the fifties and you might watch on TV today, so Oh, I love that. So it’s action packed. It’s pretty, it’s fun and it has some, in my opinion at least, has some great characters.

So I, I had a lot of fun writing this book too.

Stephen: Oh good. That’s always a good thing. People don’t understand that. Others enjoy writing the books sometimes. Most of the time they should actually. Yeah. Sometimes. Let’s leave it at sometimes let’s leave it at sometimes. There you go. So are all your books sci-fi?

I do

Gustavo: sci-fi, I do fantasy. I have a couple of literary fiction collections from press on the West Coast called creators. Publishing. They’re actually part of the creator syndicate, the comic guys comic and newspaper column syndicate. There’s a couple of collections of linked short stories.

Very literary, very high end, very high brow. Then I also do fantasy. I have a military fantasy set in just before the Romans. So these are the Etruscan fighting off the Romans. And we have, I have a little bit, I also have a comic fantasy novel set in nation, ancient Greece. Then the Monster Books.

I have some monster books from Severed Press and I have some short story collections which have both, mainly reprint collections from magazines and anthologies, which are both nice. Science fiction and fantasy generally mixed together. So I have a little bit of everything I’m on. I’m not as, but I do a lot of fiction.

Stephen: So why did you wanna write this particular science fiction book? I.

Gustavo: Because I’d written the book about the war that actually sent these guys off, and these guys just left and disappeared from the universe completely. And I wanted to know what happened to them. Like, where’d they end up? Why don’t we hear from them again?

So the, so that’s the story I wrote in this one. It’s, I actually do have the book before this one, which is actually, you don’t need to read that one. To enjoy this one. It’s called Siege. It’s from Severed Press, which who are the guys who do my monster books, but they’re no longer doing the science fiction.

So that’s the reason I didn’t offer this one to them.

Stephen: So it’s like a loosely a loose sequel to the other one. It takes place on

Gustavo: the same universe. It’s it’s there was this happened, so I was interested in knowing what happened next. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other book, other than the fact that this is where they came

Stephen: from.

And you said it’s got some really great characters. I think that’s something else that people who don’t write don’t quite get sometimes that they’ll say how do you think of this and stuff. It’s my characters told me what the story was. They start writing the story on their own.

Gustavo: Exactly. You know how certain characters are gonna react to certain in certain moments, and that’s it. That’s what they do. So there’s one character who is very cautious and one character who is I have a there’s one character who just writes herself. She’s a doctor, a surgeon, and she is the only character in the novel, which actually swears, and she swears that everyone, because she’s she’s had it with everyone.

Like she’s one of those doctors that says, don’t bring me your crisis. I have to operate on someone’s brain now. All your things are not your stress isn’t really stress. So that’s where, so she writes herself and she’s very memorable. And there are a couple of others who are in that vein.

So it’s a character driven novel, even though it has a lot of plot in it, but the characters do push it forward.

Stephen: Okay. And do you have any plans for a third book in this set?

Gustavo: I would love to, I have to get down. I really want to talk to Kyle and Jean about what they, how they see it.

They’re, and I want to get down to a con and see how people are receiving it as well. Because if there’s interest, I can definitely write another book in this series because there’s definitely material to

Stephen: play with here. Okay. And what about your other stuff, your fantasy and that, do you have any plans for any books there?

Gustavo: Yeah, I’m finishing off a book about a private, it’s a Norish private detective on a space station, but not a little space station like the IS ss. This is a space station in orbit around a colony, around ta. It’s basically, I have, I need to get another 20,000 words in it. So about a quarter of the, I’m about three quarters to four fifths of the way through the book.

That one is earmarked for an attempt at a major publisher okay. So yeah, that one that I’ve had some success going through the slush at one of the major publishers, and they still, they have a couple of my books in their slush. One of them has Advanced. So I send them everything that I’m doing that might fit their needs first.

I can’t talk about the one that’s advanced, so I can’t talk about any of them really. Cause they told me not to say anything yet. So this one seems to fit their list. So that’s going there. It’s good. And if it doesn’t work there, it’s a book that I believe in. I think it’s gonna, I think it’s fun.

It’s distinctive enough that it can fit pretty much. Anywhere science fiction books are sold so we’ll

see

Stephen: where, yeah. Yeah. Your colony books specifically, but all your other books, what type of feedback are you getting from readers?

Gustavo: I get generally positive feedback.

It’s people enjoy them. People enjoy them. They’re, they try to the feedback I get that seems to be the one that, that people seem to agree on is, This is like golden era science fiction, but with good characterization and high quality modern writing. So the theme, nice. I love that. And ideas and the kind of feel of the book is golden age science fiction.

It’s actually technology positive generally, although the risks of technology are there too. At the same time it’s problem solution a lot of the times. But my influences have all been modern writers, so I don’t necessarily write in the same way that Hein line would’ve been writing in 45 or whatever so it’s it’s golden hsf with modern writing and sensibilities.

Stephen: Okay. I love that. And I love science fiction from the fifties and, forties, sixties, that era, the thin books, at least here in the States, they were like thin books and, those are some of my favorites. I’ve got a nice collection of that type of sci-fi yeah.

All right. Oh, I’m sorry. We got a bit of a lag. I apologize.

Gustavo: No, it’s fine. Me too. I was just gonna say Me too. I love science fiction from the Golden era. I have not only just I actually have some decent editions, some Eastern press stuff, some Library of America stuff from that era. Nice from, it’s modern, but it’s worked from that era.

So it’s, yeah, I think you can probably see some of it behind me. There’s a big, there’s a big dune right there underneath a car that’s over my. My right shoulder. Your, you guys are on the left

Stephen: yeah. Which the sec second movie’s coming out soon. Yep. I

Gustavo: saw a trailer the other day, so

Stephen: Yeah, I know it’s out.

I haven’t seen it. So speaking of movies or tv which would you like to have colony turned into if you had a choice?

Gustavo: I personally, I like watching movies as a viewer. I prefer movies, the series. But I think Colony would probably make a really good series more than it would make a really good movie. Because it has, especially once they understand what they’re, once they find out that they have to deal with something, it has an episodic nature to it.

Like something happens, they respond, something happens. They respond until they can actually get ahead of stuff. Because at the beginning they’re just reacting cause they have no clue what’s going on. And that would work really well for a TV show. More than it would for a movie. Okay. It could be made a movie but I think a TV show would actually work for this

Stephen: one.

You, you wouldn’t turn down either one. Of course not.

Gustavo: If they wanna make it a play I’ll sign on the dotted line as well.

Stephen: Yeah. I.

Gustavo: They pay, they get it.

Stephen: Yes, exactly. I mean, apple TV just turned foundation into a show. Yeah, I know. Anything can go if they can do a good job with Foundation.

Cause that’s a rough one. That, that I was like, man, I don’t know how they would are gonna do that.

Gustavo: I haven’t seen that one. Is it out yet?

Stephen: It’s on Apple tv.

Gustavo: I haven’t seen it yet. It’s, it doesn’t sound like something that would necessarily be. Straight up. Highly interesting viewing, unless they made some serious modifications.

It’s very talky. Yeah, but I mean up for it. I’m up for it. It’s, I love foundation. It’s one of the, it’s one of the books, the first science fiction books I ever did read back when I was a kid. So yeah, as a mom’s always been one of my favorites. So I

Stephen: have to he wrote a couple things for you to choose from to read.

Just one or two? Yeah. Yeah. One or two things. Alright. Do you have a website, Gustavo? Yes. It’s

Gustavo: gustavo boni.com.

Stephen: No, I’ll make sure and put links so people don’t to necessarily hopefully, get the right one. There’s probably five of you somewhere, I’m sure, right? No,

Gustavo: actually there isn’t because my name is weird because, He, it is one of those immigrant things, so if you ever see someone with an Italian first name or last name, and a first name or last name from somewhere else in Europe combined with that, so Gustavos and Spanish first name and Bondon is an Italian last name.

When you combine them, he’s from Argentina, so my best friend has the same thing, but his is even more funny because he’s called Federico Schleman. Okay. He’s actually related to the schleman who found fro the father of modern archeology oh, wow. So he was he went to school with me, high school with me here in Argentina.

And then he went to, he went to college in Arizona at the U of A, and one of his professors said, okay. Italian first name, German last name. You’re from Argentina. That’s basically how I’ve defined it since, and there aren’t very many bands in Argentina, so I’m actually the only one. It’s, I’m easy to find.

Stephen: So nice. Nice. Yeah. My, both my kids have Irish names, first and middle. Okay. And neither my me nor their mother are Irish at all. Whatever the last name is German. So you got Irish and German for them. All right. Gustavo, tell, I haven’t heard anybody from this, so do you have any favorite bookstores down in around you in the area?

I

Gustavo: do actually, a couple of blocks from my house there, there’s a, there’s one chain of English language bookstores in Argentina, which is called Kel, K e l. These guys have a store a couple of blocks from my house. Actually, one of the guys who works there actually went to high school with me, so it’s, and they already all know me.

I walk in there, I go with my daughters. They tear the place up, but it’s all good. Nice. It’s a chain. They have, they probably have 10, 12 stores scattered mostly within the Bueno IRAs area, but other places in the country as well. And their main business, they have a lot of fiction. They have some good stuff, but their main business is the, is to.

Is to take care of the bilingual schools. So most of the really good schools here in Argentina are bilingual. Not all of them, but most of them are bilingual. So you have English and Spanish. And it can be mixed. So like the school I went to can be, you could have maths in English and geography and Spanish or vice versa, depending on who the teacher was and what they were feeling like that year.

And they had, so they, so you have about half of the stuff is in English half could be in Spanish. So they, they have a bunch of books and in it for the, basically for lesson plans. Nice. Where I live, there’s a bunch of English schools, like right around this bookstore. There’s just, there’s a bunch of schools.

So these guys have a ready-made audience and they sell a bunch.

Stephen: That’s awesome. I, that’s one thing I wish they did a little bit more here in the States was other languages a bit more. They wait till high school and then all, everyone’s just taking it to pass. You don’t really learn it so much.

And I think that’s a downfall. Yeah,

Gustavo: that’s true. It’s never bad to learn another language, but the reason everyone here learns English is that English is the language we need to actually work at any, like we have the same companies you guys do, like we have the European companies, the American compensation, you wanna get a job at an American company.

It’s very good. It’s a good idea to know English if you wanna get a job at a European company as well, because those guys use English as their lingua franca. So I actually learned English, cause I lived in the US for a while but most of my friends went to a bilingual school, went to, and ended up working at major multinationals.

Stephen: I, we’re bordered, we’ve got can Canada above us and they speak a lot of French and we’ve got South America the lowest that speak Spanish, but we hardly, I was terrible at Spanish in high school. But I think if we start earlier, It’d be a lot easier for the kids to understand and pick up some of their languages.

Gustavo: Well, a lot of states in the southern US actually have a majority of Hispanics now. So I know New Mexico is more Hispanic than and anything else really? The 51, they went over 51%. I think Arizona as well. California was on the way and I don’t know Florida’s in Miami. It’s.

There’s, unless you’re like really obviously blonde-haired, blue-eyed, like Ameri, very American in, in Miami, they will just talk to you in Spanish straight up. So you go to a restaurant in Miami and the waiter will ask you what you want to eat in Spanish. Yep. Which is fine. I lived in Miami.

Yeah. It was really small. It was still an American city back then and never spoke English. But now it’s like part of Latin America basically.

Stephen: Yeah, and we’ve got a lot more of that. Again, I wish, they pushed the languages a little more. But like you said, on the flip side, English seems to be the business world, right?

More than any other language, just about every country uses English as their common language, right? Yeah, exactly.

Do you have, we talked about books. You’ve got a ton behind you besides Asimov and a few, do you have any other favorite books and authors?

Gustavo: My absolute favorite author is Douglas Adams hitch, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of the few books I read in reread all the time. I haven’t reread in five years, so I’m have to sit down and get a new one.

I wore out the original paperbacks from the eighties. Then I. I got the Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide and wore that one out. And then there was mostly harmless, so I had to get the more than Complete Hitchhiker’s Guide and I wore that one out. And now I have one of those Barnes and Noble leather bound edition, which looks really nice on the shelf and it seems to be a little sturdier.

So that one seems to be holding up better.

Stephen: Nice. Have you heard the original BBC radio production?

Gustavo: I’ve heard the radio production, I’ve seen the original BBC show, and I actually have the script, the radio scripts up there somewhere. I actually have a signed copy of the radio scripts up there, which everyone says, Ooh, you have a third copy.

And as I as Douglas Adams says, in an introduction to a different book, there are much, much more copies of the radio script that are actually signed. Unsigned. So

Stephen: that’s funny. Not actually, it’s not something that’s worth anything. I actually was introduced to Hitchhikers through the radio program before the books.

Wow. But I devoured the books just absolutely love them.

Gustavo: Yeah, I do. I love them. I came to them as a kid in the eighties. I was living in Cincinnati back then. Like everywhere. Oh my

Stephen: gosh, that’s right. South of me. It’s where I’m just a little ways north. I’m up by Kent State. Oh wow.

Gustavo: Okay. So I lived in Cincinnati from 8 85 to about 88 when I came back to Argentina.

I’ve been living in Argentina since 88. I actually lived in Mexico for a while in the middle there too. But I’m mostly in Argentina. And I was living in Cincinnati and like this, I’m talking mid eighties, mid to late eighties. Every kid. Between the ages of 11 and 13 was reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide and I had no clue what it was, but everyone was reading it.

So I picked it up, read the first page and said, oh my God, this is for me. So I really love fan funny science fiction and fantasy like I, have you heard of Robert Asprin? Yes. Yeah. He was the first guy I was reading, which was funny. And then I’ve read everything Pratchett ever wrote. And I even as far as Glen Cook’s Garrett series.

I don’t know if oh, that one. I don’t know. Oh, sorry. That was cool. It’s like a detective in a fantasy city. It’s very much with the no sensibilities, but going through the humor side, not so much for the series and this guy, it’s really fun. It’s really fun. So if it’s humor, I like it.

Stephen: And then there’s the Zant series based down in Florida.

I remember reading those. Good. Nice. Alright.

Gustavo: Top shelf. I haven’t touched those in years. I’m waiting for my daughters to get old enough to read them. My daughter’s working. She’s six. She’s working her way through the Wizard of Oz, the first five Wizard of Oz books. Beautiful. Yep. So she’s there. She’s gonna be seven now in June, and she’s a voracious reader.

My other daughter is probably gonna be more of a. A sports slash jock style. I don’t see her as a voracious reader, but this one is, and she’s making her way through the Wizard of Oz books and when she gets those first five, which are all in one volume, I’m gonna see if I start off on Harry Potter and once she’s on Harry Potter, that’s it.

She’s Asimov and the rest can

Stephen: come. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. The gateway drugs. And I love that she’s reading The Wizard of Oz because it’s vastly different than the movie, and I think not enough kids have read Wizard of Oz in today’s world.

Gustavo: The problem I have with her is that, Getting books for her age.

It’s not, I can’t just walk down to the Barnes and Noble cause they don’t have the Kell guys have books, but they don’t have the selection. So she’s reading Owl Diaries and Isadora Moon and the Princess and Black, which are age appropriate. Yep. And I basically, the only kids stuff that I had in my library as well, I have the Lloyd Alexander books, which are a little, he’s still a little young.

And the let’s try this. And she’s working her way through. It’s not like other books, like she inhales the Princess in Black, give it to her. 40 minutes later it’s done. And you have to wait for now book depositories closed, so you have to wait for someone else to deliver the next one.

So in the meantime, I try to give her like slightly tougher stuff to read so she’s not just rereading the same stuff all the time. And the OZ books, she’s enjoying them. She is finding them a little harder going. They were written like in the early 19 hundreds, so that’s not surprising. And after she gets through with the Oz books, I think she’s ready for Harry Potter.

Stephen: That’s her. Yeah. I remember reading Harry Potter and my kids and I was halfway through book four, reading it to ’em at night and they said, daddy, just stop. Said, we both finished it on our own. We’re both on book five now. They were just listening to me to be nice. And I’m like, okay. Then I had to go finish ’em.

I’m like give them to me when you’re done.

Gustavo: Yeah. That’s cool. And so once she gets, like a couple of years from now, the books are still there. They’re gathering dust right now. Because they’re, I liked them when I was a kid. I don’t know how well they’d hold up as an adult. I haven’t been brave enough to try them in the last, I have the first 30 or so.

Stephen: Yeah, they’re up. Yeah. And I haven’t, I did go back 15 years or so. I did go back and read them and as an adult, I didn’t think they held up quite as well, but my seven-year-old self would probably still enjoy ’em.

Gustavo: Exactly. I read them as a pre-teen and as a teen. So I’m giving her a couple more years, but she’s, I think she’s a little ahead of where I was at her age to start with, she reads in two languages.

When I was a kid, I was in, I was Argentina, I was in. I was in the US and in Europe, so I was only reading in English. I really had a tough time learning to read and write in Spanish when I got back to the point where I still write in English. So like I can write an email in Spanish and it’s grammatically fine, but I can’t write literature in Spanish.

It sounds terrible. Like the rhythm, the flow, the just, they’re there, they make sense. They tell a story. But it’s not literature, it’s just someone telling a story. It’s very different. I have a very different feel for the language, which the language I used when I was a kid was English. So here I that’s what I write in, which actually helps me out a bit.

Cause as I said, the market’s much bigger, but it’s, but my, my, my eldest daughter reads in both languages, so she’s gonna have a head start.

Stephen: That’s great. I love that. All right. Gustavo, this has been really enjoyable talking to you. I love it. So before we go though, if somebody came up to you on the street and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a science fiction book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Gustavo: Because it’s fun, because you’re gonna enjoy it. Cause you’re gonna forget about everything that’s going on around you. And be, and if it’s colony, if you pick up colony, you’re gonna be on a different planet with completely different problems and you’re gonna forget about the mortgage and the boss and the clients for a few hours and that’s always cool.

Stephen: Nice. Okay. And there you go. And it’s from an author who likes Douglas Adams. So he is got a good foundation. That’s cool. All right. Thank you for being on today. I really love talking

Gustavo: to you. Thank you so much for having me. Great to here.