Discovered Wordsmiths

In a world where hyper-positivity, Rachael Biggs’ And I Was Like November offers a glimpse of the other side, while navigating themes of isolation and longing.
 
These are stories of what happens to the women that didn’t get their happy ending—the ones who don’t believe the cliches about family being everything and who know that live-laugh-love isn’t the cure all. Taboo topics that embrace a gritty reality include transactional sex, romantic obsession, maternal disdain and teenaged drug dealing are linked by the need to survive in the midst of questionable sanity and deep loneliness. 

Rachael Biggs is an author, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist. She studied creative writing at UBC, UCLA, and with masters of the craft Syd Field and Robert McKee. In 2016 she earned a screenwriting diploma from Vancouver Film School with a focus on television. 
 
Her memoir Yearning for Nothings and Nobodies debuted to critical acclaim and was adapted for the screen as Behind the Eight Ball.
 
She is a frequent contributor to print and on-line publications and her short fiction appears regularly in literary magazines including Door is a Jar, Angel City Review and Charge Magazine. 

https://rachaelbiggs.com

Vancouver’s Legendary Independent Bookstore | New, Used & Out-of-Print Books | Pulpfiction Books (pulpfictionbooksvancouver.com)

Rachel, welcome to the discovered Wordsmith today.

How are you doing? I’m good, thank you. Thank you for having. That’s great to have you. I can’t wait to hear about your book, but before we do that, let’s find out a little bit about you. So tell us some things about you where you live, some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Rachael: Okay. I’ve just actually moved from Los Angeles to Vancouver Canada, whereas the, which is where I’m from originally.

And what do I do besides writing? I have a puppy, a year and a half year old puppy. So I go to a lot of dog parks and dog meetups and walking of the dog. Yeah, I like to be outside. I I ski, I hike, swim, all those usual things. Nice.

Stephen: So what type of puppy did.

Rachael: He’s a long haired dash hound. He’s, oh.

With his friend right now. Cause I needed him to be quiet. or it to be quiet, got it. Just got a text that he’s crying for me oh God.

Stephen: We were chatting just a minute before this started. This is your second book. Tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to write this.

Rachael: It’s a book of short fiction and it started out I read Stephen King’s book on writing.

If anyone hasn’t read that, I really recommend it. It’s so excellent. Yes. And he, I had self-published a book, a memoir in 2013 called Yearning for Nothings and Nobody’s, and it while critically acclaimed didn’t get much traction, it didn’t sell very well. So I was looking for ways to get published traditionally.

And I happened upon that book and he talked about writing short stories and, submitting to literary magazine. So I had never heard of that before. I guess it was in my brain somewhere, but that just, made it a reality. Thank you, Stephen King. So I started writing short stories and I had written a couple previously mostly as like outlines for bigger things.

Cause I do movies and novel type stuff as well. Yeah, I started writing short stories and I, my goal was to publish. Of them within a year and within I think it was about six months, I’d publish 10 of them. So then I had a body of short stories and then it just went from there.

I’m like, oh, I could have this as an anthology and yeah, open that

Stephen: world. Nice. So when you say you had ’em published, where did you get them all published?

Rachael: Different literary magazines. I don’t know if anyone knows about this website. It’s called Duotrope and they, it’s an excellent website. Do you know about it?

Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Yeah, it’s really cool. It’s you can search by genre and word length and everything. For publications that are accepting queries. So that’s how I did that. And what was the question, ?

Stephen: Oh, I was just curious about where they were all published. So it’s different

Rachael: places.

The first one was Dalhousie Review and then there’s 12 other ones from all around the country. And I think there’s one in Australia as well. In Canada.

Stephen: Yeah. So you wrote the short stories all separate, not necessarily intending to be a book? No. And got ’em out. What have people been saying about them?

I’m jumping around in the questions, but this is a little different than most people I talk to cause you’ve gotten stories out and feedback on them. So what have you been hearing about the different stories?

Rachael: It is a theme and I’m not a good pitcher of myself, but the theme is loosely, women in peril and like bad girl themes.

So yeah, so I’ve submitted to I was about to say adult magazines, but that sounds pornographic. It’s not like that , but yeah, I It’s your, yeah, it’s your publication. The quote that I actually have on the cover from Alo Magazine calls it a beautifully written bummer. So I think that’s sort of summarizes.

It’s like themes of loneliness and longing and, transactional sex hit and runs. Fantasies of inflicting violence on your grandmother, stuff like that.

Stephen: Wow. So why did you choose to write a bunch of stories about that? When you say dance and distress, I think of the white knight, coming into the yeah.

Not quite , right? Doesn’t sound like that. Why a bunch of stories centered around that type of a theme or that type of something that’s a little different than what I normally.

Rachael: I wouldn’t say it was intentional, it was just what flowed out of me. They’re very raw, honest.

Some of them are essay essays, so I’ll let people decide which ones they think are true . But yeah, kinda came out.

Stephen: So the overall theme, the style, the story and all that, is there any books out there that are similar that if people go, oh, I like that other book this sounds interesting. I might read that.

Rachael: Yeah. In the vein of the Glass Castle or White Oleander um, catcher and the Rye. Even there’s some mental illness themes. As well. Okay. Interesting. From a perspective. Yeah. .

Stephen: Okay. Yeah. And it’s just coming out, is that correct? It

Rachael: pre-sales are December 15th, 2022, and then it hit sells January 31st, 2023.

Stephen: Okay. Okay. So it is just, by the time the episode’s out, they’ll be able to order it Nice. Just in time.

Rachael: Just in time for our holidays if they need a light holiday. Or if you’re gonna see your family and you need something relatable. .

Stephen: Now this is your second book. How is it similar or different to your first book?

Rachael: The first one was a memoir. And that took me a really long time. It took about two years to write and edit and, get to final. Publication. This one came out a lot. It was a lot more in the flow. I wrote it mostly during Covid, so I had a lot of time and oh, hi Kitty .

Stephen: Yeah, I got a visitor

Rachael: just popped up behind your shoulder there.

Yeah, so it felt easier and also, but I’ve been writing a lot longer now. I think that’s part of it as well.

Stephen: So your first book being a memoir and this being a collection of short stories, do you feel it’s the same type of reader or different reader, different types of readers?

Rachael: Yeah, probably the same kind of reader I would say.

It’s similar style. This is maybe no it’s similar. I was gonna say, this one might be a bit edgier. Not a lot .

Stephen: Okay. All right. Yeah. Now here’s a weird question for this. Are there any maybe not the whole book, but any of the stories that you think would make a good movie or TV show?

Rachael: Probably. I’m always amazed at what they can adapt into TV and movies now. But yeah, there’s definitely. Visual element to them. I’ve been told, I’ve even been told that they can read like horror. So speaking of Stephen King, a lot of his stuff has been made into movies, obviously. So yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me.

Stephen: Okay. That’s funny you say that cuz I do a horror podcast with a friend and Oh, you do? This month I’ve been watching Christmas horror movies to get ready for Christmas movies, transitioning. Oh, I

Rachael: didn’t know that. That was a genre.

Stephen: It’s barely a genre. Most of them are really bad . But

Rachael: yeah, there’s a lot of Hallmark movies that could be considered horror, in my

Stephen: opinion.

Depend on your viewpoint. Definitely

So where do you have a website and where can they find the book?

Rachael: Yeah, it’s my website is rachel bigs.com and Rachel is r a c h a e l. I have to clarify that because I’m sure like your name, , it’s constantly misspelled.

Stephen: I name my daughter Megan, m a e g a n. So that’s little different spelled with the ae, like you, yeah.

Rachael: Sentenced to a lifetime of correcting people. But I do that extra a, so I do correct people. So yeah, it’s rachel bigs.com and then my Instagram is rachel underscore bigs underscore author. Twitter is at Big Z Bigs. I’m not very good about keeping up with my Twitter, but my Instagram, I’m pretty on it.

And then the book will be available. Sorry, did I cut you off?

Stephen: No, go ahead, please.

Rachael: It will be on Amazon, obviously, and in the Ingram Spark catalog. Or I guess it’s just called the Ingram Catalog. And then hopefully in, in bookstores. We’re still working on that, Barnes and Noble and some local stores, but that will be all over my social media.

Nice. Will not

Stephen: be shy about. And you mentioned Amazon. Are you going in Kindle Unlimited with this?

Rachael: I don’t know. I Ingram Spark is who I’m publishing with, and then I guess that falls under the umbrella of them. I’m not super clear on

Stephen: that yet. Okay. No, that’s fine. I was just curious because I know Kindle Unlimited.

More popular with certain types of books and genres. So I was just curious as to if that was looked at that you think your book would be good in Kindle Unlimited or not? Can you tell me about that? What Sure. So Kindle Unlimited, a lot of people don’t like it because it’s you get kinda locked in for three months.

If you get on Kind Unlimited, it’s a subscription service. I don’t know if they, I think it’s in the Canada now. I know definitely the States and a few other. . So for $10 a month, I can read as many books and Kindle Unlimited as I want. I don’t own them. It’s not really checking out the library, it’s a subscription.

If I cancel Kindle Limited, I can’t read the books anymore. And I know a lot of authors put their books in there, but it fits very well with things like Romance, where you’ll get readers that read 20 books in a week, go through and read, everything. And that’s authors make money from it. But when you’re in Kind Unlimited, you can’t publish it else.

So I was just curious cause you mentioned Amazon, but you didn’t mention like Cobo or anything like that. So I was curious.

Rachael: So that might be something that you like put your book on? Maybe not initially, but a year in or something when you want to do a little push maybe.

Stephen: Yeah. I’ve heard all sorts of things.

I know some people that put it in Kindle Unlimited when they start and nowhere else, and then after three or six months they put it, they leave it on Amazon, just not in Kindle Unlimited. Then they put it elsewhere and I know others that offer it here. And then, like you said later, they pull it off elsewhere and put it in Kindle Unlimit.

So yeah, various strategies.

Rachael: There’s so much to know now. As I said I published, self-published 10 years ago versus now. There’s just, it’s a wealth of information out there.

Stephen: We’re gonna talk about that for the second half. So for all the authors listening, that’s gonna be our topic of discussion for the second half.

And do you have plans for a third book? Cause it sounds, we had a long time between it didn’t sound like it

Rachael: wasn’t my intention to wait 10 years, but life just happened. I was working in TV and that sort of took over my life for a but yes I do, I have, I’m actually, I have.

It’s memoir slash educational with regard to cancer and like holistic treatments to cancer. I lost my dad in 2015 and it was really difficult to navigate all of the treatments and, everything’s happening so fast and you’re so emotional. So it’s a memoir slash informational book.

Which I have no idea if it will find , a place in the world, but I’m writing it regardless. Okay,

Stephen: nice. So totally different from the first two books. You seem to keep doing something a little different each time.

Rachael: Yeah, it’s not completely different in that it’s a memoir and my first book was, About my mother.

She was she was schizophrenic and a drug addict, and it’s our lives intertwined. So this one will be about my dad and our life together. So there’s a little bit of similarity, but yeah, that there is the interesting educational component as well.

Stephen: Oh, that’s interesting. I like that. Yeah. Ok so let’s go off your book for a minute.

Do you have any favorite books and authors that you like to read?

Rachael: Yeah, it’s hard to choose, just one, but some of my favorites. I really like Donna Tart. Who, the Gold Finch, obviously. And secret History, which I liked as much as the Gold Finch. I love Tom Robbins. He’s such a freaky. Do you know Tom Robbins?

Stephen: I’ve heard the name. I haven’t read

Rachael: anything. He, his, probably his most famous one was They made it into a movie with Umma Thurman cowgirls. Is it even half asleep in frog Pajamas is my favorite. And then it’s the cowgirls one. She’s got the giant thumb. Do you

Stephen: remember that? Yeah. I Not ready to bell.

Sorry

Rachael: you haven’t read it, but yeah. Tom Robbins I like Kaku. Yeah, I’m always reading like different like spiritual kundalini kind of books as well. I tend to have a novel, some kind of self-help spiritual book and then some kind of educational book on the go.

Stephen: Do you like to read a paper or do you just read Kindle paper?

Yeah.

I

Rachael: do that myself every time I move, but , I do like a good old fashioned paper.

Stephen: Yeah it gets to be a little overwhelming. I’m discovering more and more digital, it’s easier to carry around, like you said. Yeah,

Rachael: I have a Kindle, but I just, I never even remember that I have it, I’m just like, wow.

And I keep buying books. Oh my God. Just get a, use your Kindle. But anyways, .

Stephen: Okay. So when you are buying your books, do you have a favorite local bookstore you like to go to? I do.

Rachael: It’s called Pulp Fiction here in Vancouver. Yeah, it’s a great store. They have new and used books and yeah, I could just spend hours in there, but every city has a favorite bookstore for me.

Portland has some great ones. LA has a really great one. Actually they have a few great ones downtown, but there’s one on the the Venice Boardwalk called Small. It’s a small world books or just small world books. So yeah, I find them wherever

Stephen: I. Yeah, me and my kids, when we went on vacation, we used to look for bookstores everywhere.

Rachael: Where are you anyway? What city are you in?

Stephen: I’m in Ohio Northeast Ohio. Right by Kent State. Everybody, Kent State from the shooting, so unfortunately that’s, yeah.

Rachael: Yeah. Unfortunate. Yeah, I, Ohio makes me think of Dave Chappelle. He lives.

Stephen: Yes. He lives down in Yellow Springs, down southern Ohio. Been through there, haven’t seen him, but it’s a cool little hippie town.

Rachael: Yeah. Yeah. That’s all I think of when with Ohio, .

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not the only one than very much yeah. That’s outdated. I don’t wanna say forgotten, but it’s, different generation at this point, yeah. Alright, so before we talk some author stuff and move. Rachel if someone came up to you and said, Hey, I heard you wrote another book.

Why should I get your book and read it? What would you tell ’em? Ooh, .

Rachael: I would probably run nervously in the other direction. I’m so bad at self-promotion, but , let me give it a shot. It’s it’s very honest and raw and I feel like we live in this world. Everything is presented as being so glossy and unreal.

And this is the opposite of that. So if you want to feel like real connection with characters and people and you’re tired of, fake then I think this is probably a good read.

Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. I wish you best of luck. I hope the presales go well over the Christmas thank holidays.

Thank you. It goes on presale the day before my birthday, so Oh, I’m all for that . That’s a good, yeah. There you go. I’m bestowing good os upon you. Thank you. You’re welcome.

Freddy is back to talk about his writing process. We discuss how author’s need to be proud of their writing and to do everything they can to get it to their readers.

All right, so let’s move on to some author stuff. And we have an interesting topic today owning it which we’ll get to in just a moment. Before we do, let me. You’ve written several books and you’re talking about doing a remix, and we just talked a little bit about things you’ve learned from an editor.

So what are some things you’re doing different with your writing now than when you first started?

Freddy: What I like to do is change up the writing experience for me so that I don’t get bored, because I think the problem with any creative is being able to sit down. When. The creativity doesn’t seem to flow as easily as it does on some days.

So my way of battling that, that inevitable board, inevitable boredom, is to create a different experience. For example, the first book was written, third person Omni. The second book was written, first person present. The third book allow me to Ruin Your Christmas was written. First person present.

From two different characters perspective, so alternating chapters. We got Beck at the college, kid writing, first person telling the story, first person. Then we got Lex telling the story, first person alternating chapters. So it’s just something to keep me engaged and I feel like. If I’m engaged in the story and I’m excited to write even when I’m not feeling my best at four 30 in the morning or wherever, whatever time that I can, I’m still, I’ve got something that can keep me somewhat engaged as opposed to just trying to vomit the words out.

Stephen: Got it. Okay. And what software and services do you like to.

Freddy: I write with a Mac, so it’s pages. I keep the spell check and everything on, but when I’m done drafting well, and let me back up. My second and third book, and from here on out I write Long hand. I wrote the first book.

On my machine. But when I found out that Chuck Pollick writes long hand I just, I’m like my favorite authors are writing longhand. I better start writing longhand. And let me tell you, it does something to you. It really draws you in. And I’m sure there are a lot of authors out there who write on a keyboard and they feel the same way.

I just feel like there’s something about going from brain to. To hand to fingers to moving the pen on the paper. There’s just, there’s something that you just can’t get from typing on a keyboard, and I don’t, I’ve, I don’t, I’ve never written a nonfiction kind of narrative article or anything long hand, so I don’t know if it’s the same, but for fiction.

Long hand it is. So all of that to say from long hand to transcribing to to my Mac with the pages program, and then from pages I. I use this program called Auto cri. So auto like automatic, and then cri, like critic. So auto cri dot com. And it’s a great service. You can, I think there’s a free, there’s a free version, but I have the paid version so that I can get all of the feedback and it breaks everything down for you and pie charts.

And then it shows you little bar graphs. Your sentences. So here, Stephen’s got a whole bunch of short, a whole bunch of short paragraphs, and then a really long paragraph, or too many short paragraphs, too many long paragraphs. Here in chapter seven, Stephen has too many of these kinds of words. And so yeah it breaks everything down by, by word count.

Showing versus telling strong language. It’s. It is. And then, oh, and then you can compare your writing to, so let’s say Steven, let’s say you write women’s fiction. You can compare yourself to someone who writes women’s fiction. You can compare yourself to someone who writes.

You can compare yourself to individual authors Lee Child, Stephen King. Yeah, so it’s a great piece of software. They’re not paying me to say this. I’m a part of their Facebook group. I pay to use the service. So as a client, I can tell you that this is one of those few things that I will just, I will brag all day long about, about this particular service.

They’re very few things that I will brag about and talk incessantly about. This is one.

Stephen: Nice. You’re not just a client, you’re the president. Those

Freddy: size Spurling from the hair club for men.

Stephen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Freddy: So guys our age, remember that. Exactly.

Stephen: Yeah. All the kids just went home . How are you marketing this besides doing podcasts?

Yeah, your book.

Freddy: I. Yeah, absolutely. I’m doing the podcasts, but I’m also advertise, I’m, right now I’m doing kind of a, I’m in the, a part of an AB testing to see if BookBub is gonna do better than Instagram. I have a feeling BookBub is gonna work better, but I don’t want to, I. I’m gonna wait for the results.

I’m also, because the book is set in Houston, I am in the process actually the ad is out now. There is a company called Running Boards, and so it’s Digital Mobile Billboards on a Truck. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I’ve got a two, two month program of advertising where it’s a graphic of the book pointing to the url ruin my christmas.com.

And yeah, so we’ll see if that gets any traction. I figure Instagram and Facebook, I don’t know if it’s and I will seed. I don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of advertising on social media, so maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong or that I have done wrong. But it just hasn’t worked, so I figure why not.

The book is here in Houston. We got this company here in Houston. It’s. It’s worth a, it’s worth a shot. And I’m not dropping thousands of dollars on advertising because I, I’m, as an indie, I don’t have, and I’m also trying to make money and not, blow away a whole bunch of, so it was, it made the most sense from a perspective of trying to go big and bold and different as opposed to simply social.

Stephen: I agree. We’ve got a small local theater and there we don’t have many movie theaters really close. So it was nice when this one opened and all the ads before the com movie are local.

They’re nothing that’s national or, whatever. They’re all small, local companies. And I asked one of the guys, cause I went to his shop and I said, Hey, I saw this, tell me about it. And it’s like $450 for three months and it’s every movie, every showing in that theater for three months.

I’m like, wow, that’s, it’s a small town. I understand that when, but even if there’s 20, 30 people in that theater doing that for three months, that’s a lot of local people to get to. And that’s big when it’s local compared. Everywhere.

Freddy: Exactly. And I think you have to find, you have to be willing to diversify what you’re doing because sometimes at the end of the day, you don’t wanna be beholden to the social media overlords and the algorithms and right.

There are authors who are bigger than the two of us who have the backing who. The tens of thousands of dollars to spend on social media. And then we get buried. We get buried not just on, on the big ones, but we also get buried on Amazon and on book Bob and on whatever. So it’s, it, I think it for indies, I think it behooves us.

I love that word. It behooves us to explore other more viable options if you’ve got absolutely a movie theater. And that’s a captive audience too. That’s a great idea, man.

Stephen: Yeah, I was like, man, four 50 bucks. Funny thing is also our local fair, you can set up a booth, a table yeah. In the merchant building.

And I was with somebody else that works for a mattress place and we went to check it out and they were like, oh yeah, for a small 10 foot it would be like 7 85. And I’m like, oh, is that per day? They’re like, no, that’s for. For a week with our county fair that gets 45,000, 50,000 people through there in a week.

That’s, I like, that’s pennies per person, yeah. So I was like, oh, that’s pretty cheap even for me to think about, to

Freddy: do. Yeah. You got, you Really, I think and this goes back to being an Indian and owning the entire process, because you can write the book and that’s just the. That is just the beginning.

There is no, you will build it and they will come. You’ve gotta let people know that you are out there, that your book is ready, and this is the best book that they’re gonna ever read in their entire life. And so you put your blood, sweat, and tears. Some people take five years to write their first manuscript and finally get it out to market whether it’s indie or traditionally published and.

It is incumbent upon the creator of the story to let people know that it is there. And there’s nothing wrong with advertising. I think, and I come from the terrestrial radio world where I worked for more than 25 years, and so commercials, it was like yeah, we run 30, 30 ads per hour, but how else are we supposed to get paid?

And how else are these brands supposed to get? Their products and services noticed, you have to advertise. So as a creator, there’s nothing wrong with putting yourself out there, whether it’s going to fair or putting an ad on a movie theater. There are ways to go about it without doing it.

The slimy kind of snake oil salesman way.

Stephen: And if you really wrote a good book, you put your time and effort into it and improved the product, you have something good. Like for me, it’s middle grade kids. I’m doing them a disservice if I don’t get my book to them. I think it’s a great book. I think they’d enjoy it.

I hope it sparks their imagination, but if they don’t know about it to read it, then I have failed. And it’s a different mindset. And you mentioned owning it, which is owning the outcome, good or bad. That’s our topic for today. What made you wanna discuss that topic and choose that as a topic for our discussion?

Freddy: I’m doing this for selfish reasons because I am. This is my first year going out on my own. As I said, I worked in terrestrial radio for more than 25 years. And as a non it’s all about owning the outcome, good, bad, or indifferent. And as a storyteller, as a media company owner, as a podcaster, as a blogger, as a dad, as a husband we have to own what we do.

And we’re not gonna get it right all the time. And we have, we just have to own it. Don’t dwell on, don’t dwell on it. Don’t dwell on what somebody else could have done to help. At the end of the day, it all comes down to you. Or in my case, it all comes down to me. And so by doing that, I have empowered myself to try.

Do the best that I can given the circumstances, and let the dice fall where they may. This particular book might not sell 50 copies. And guess what? There was probably something I could have done. To make it better. Yes, I’m advertising, yes, I’m making the podcast rounds. Yes, I’ve I’ve done what I can in trying to communicate with my social media following, but at the end of the day, if I only sell 27 books, that’s on me.

That’s not on the reader, that’s on me for not taking the extra step or 10 steps or 100 steps. And so I think there, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of power in that, in knowing that it’s not it’s not some outside force some greedy billionaire holding his thumb down on my success.

It’s me, right? It begins and end.

Stephen: With me. Agreed. And like I agree with what you said, that when you think about it, owning the outcome could be several different things. Yeah. In this case it’s, Hey, I wrote this book. I spent the time and effort, it’s up to me to make it work. Not just put it out and say, oh writing books doesn’t work, or, oh, I’m a terrible author, because there’s a lot of bad books out there that have sold a lot just because they marketed it.

They got out there and there’s people that sell things all the time that aren’t worth buying just because they’re, they can talk and they have charisma. Yeah. And the other part of it is this is something you did. There’s a lot of authors that get afraid to talk to people about it.

Yeah it’s not that good, but no, you wrote this book. It’s the best you could do at this moment. Giving every circumstance, around. So yeah, own it. I be proud of it. I wrote this book there, there’s several aspects of the whole topic.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that.

I will say that.

Now I forgot what I was gonna say again. So what happens when you Transformational year? Yeah, transformational. It’s a transformational year and so what I, where I think I went wrong in my previous career was not treating my gifts, was not persuading people to see my gifts that I have. In such a way that I am the gift.

So you have to have a certain degree of hubris. And I hate saying that because it has a very bad connotation. But you do have to exert that alpha male or alpha female or alpha, whatever, energy. If you’re going to, if you’re going to succeed, you have. You have to put that energy out into the world because just like you said, you can have somebody that you’re talking to on a podcast, and if they don’t believe in the product, what makes me think that?

Suzanne Smith, who wrote this cozy mystery, who doesn’t believe in her book, and I’m listening to her talking to Steve, what makes me wanna go and buy that, right? I’m not gonna wanna buy that. Oh it’s just a little book. No, I wrote a cozy mystery and guess. It rivals anything that’s on the New York Times bestseller list and here’s why.

Absolutely. And absolutely, it’s a fine line to walk because hubris leads to very bad things. But you’ve gotta have just a little, just like when you’re cooking with salt and pepper and garlic, it’s a little dash of it. and it makes the meal just as that certain kind of, so you have a little bit of hubris, you sell your gifts, but with the mentality that you are the gift.

And so that’s where I went wrong in my previous career, was not convincing people in a way that, Hey, look, yo, I am. I am the gift. There are people, just like you said, who are far more inferior to what you do, what I do, and what you have done and what I’ve done. And yet they know cuz they’ve got the silver tongue that, and they schmooze the right people and they’ve got the agents and they’ve got the backing that they’re far more successful than.

But bull crap, we flip the narrative and we take control. And it all goes back to owning it because no one’s gonna care about what you do more than you. And I think the, absolutely. Yeah. And I think that the I think that the sooner a creator of any sort, it could be an author, it could be a blogger, it could be a vlogger, it could be a poet, it could be a musician or whatever.

It could be an a white collar office worker for God’s sakes. The sooner they realize that nobody cares about their work as much as they do things get.

Stephen: And it’s not pride and ego. That’s the difference. You can be proud of something without being prideful. With that thing. Yeah, you can be proud of the product and like I said, if I wrote this book cuz I want middle graders to spark their imagination and think about my, I a lot of what I.

Is the general theme is there’s magic in the world all around us. You just have to find it and discover it and that , and I didn’t intend that to happen. It just seems to be, that’s how I think in my life and I think kids, Need to use their imaginations more and just do things because it’s fun and that’s what my books and stories tend to be.

So I have to own that. And if I want parents and teachers and the kids to read my books, I’ve got to get it to them. I’ve gotta show it to ’em. I’ve gotta do something. And if not, then you know, I’m doing them a disservice. It’s a mindset shift to owning it. And again, it’s not an ego thing. You can tell.

That’s like you said, smarmy, salesman. Yeah. That’s the ego and coming out.

Freddy: Yeah. And kids, man, kids are so much more smarter than we give them credit for. Yeah. They will pick up if Steven’s not completely sure that his new book is gonna hit, they will pick up on that energy and they’ll be like, yeah, forget this.

I’ll just read Harry Potter again. .

Stephen: Yeah. And that’s actually what spurred my book. There’s a Harry Potter Fest over at Kent, and I didn’t have a wizard magic type book. So I wrote a short story to set on my author table, and then I realized, oh, this could be better. And that idea of a short story has turned into what’s going to be possibly seven books now.

, oh. That’s yeah, how that all started. So that’s great, man. Yeah. I’m working on, I’m, I’ve got book two written. I’m finishing things up. I got idea for three and four with vague plans for beyond that. But that, that’s the goal. I want kids to understand that they can be imaginative throughout their life.

They can write by starting now, and by the time they’re 1820, they’ll be much further ahead. I see so many authors. That are, 40 getting started and they have, they, I can’t write, I can never do this. Whereas if they started when they were 15, by the time they’re 40, they’d have masterpieces. Yeah.

That’s

Freddy: my philosophy. No, absolutely. And with you targeting the middle school demographic, this, it seems like maybe that’s about the age where. The luster of imagination starts to, to wear off. And so by you telling these kids and sharing these stories with ’em, it’s helping them realize that, hey, you know what, there is wonder out in the world and you know what?

School might be boring or life might be boring, or, things might not go wrong, but the world is huge. It’s a, it’s an incredible place to be and Yeah.

Stephen: And you said, okay, something you said about your book that you like to challenge yourself and do something a little different. And this one’s second person perspective, so owning it, another, this is another thing.

You chose to do it this way. You could have written it in third person, first person. You could have done a happy romantic Christmas instead of a going bad type of, you chose these things. These, this is the story that you wanted to get. Like you said, it could flop totally. You could do everything, all the podcasts, all the marketing, pay for all the ads, and it could still flop Totally.

That’s part of owning it too. That doesn’t mean you are a bad writer. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, doesn’t mean your book sucks. It might be the wrong audience, the wrong time. Maybe you just need to tweak and improve one thing. That’s what the next book’s for improve. Next time get better. Learn from the things you made mistakes on.

I see a lot of authors that, they still have that thought, Hey, I wrote this book over the last weekend. I put it out and nobody bought it by day one. So I’m a failure. No, you. Again, going back to the owning it, there’s more to it than just putting words down and throwing it out there.

Freddy: Absolutely. And just to give you an idea, Edgar and Poe, in his entire lifetime didn’t make but around $200 off of his writing. And if he only knew his legacy, he’s got, he’s required reading in schools. He has got entire literary societies named after him awards named after him. So just because you don’t sell a hundred thousand copies of your ebook over the course of a month does not mean that it’s not gonna make an impact in some way, shape, or form.

Because somewhere over the past hundred and something years, there was somebody. Who read one of his books that might not have been The Raven who read one of his books or poems or whatever. Or maybe it was the Raven who the Hell knows. But there was somebody somewhere down the road back then who saw something and was like, ha, this is incredible.

I gotta show, I gotta show Steven and then Steven’s whoa, this is incredible. You know what? I have a friend who’s the dean of a college, I’m gonna show her, and the dean of the college is wait a minute, I’ve got friends. I’ve gotta show this to my book club. And the book club, it’s just a, you never know.

Humans are, Complicated and fun and interesting, and you just never know what can happen if your book gets into just one reader’s hands.

Stephen: Exactly, and you gotta get, you gotta find those readers, so you gotta keep trying. I, what you just said made me think some of the initial reviews, when Star Wars came out in 77, the critics, they didn’t like it.

They panned it, they thought it was stupid and Oh yeah, I guess they were wrong on that one. Yeah, a little bit. And think of it this way, there’s 7 billion people on this planet. Yeah. If you had a hundred thousand fans. And they all bought your book every year. Now you’re making enough money to live on by writing one book a year to just those and a hundred thousand people is nothing compared to the whole planet.

So it’s getting out there and finding those people and that’s, you know what you gotta do after you write the book. And again, another part of owning it is taking the time to write and learn your craft and write a good book and it improve each time you write a book. That’s part of owning it too, not just throwing something together and thinking.

Three year olds, five year olds, that tell you a story. Wow. That was great. I love that story that you just made up. That made no sense whatsoever. Every parent does it. They’re like Uhhuh, I loved it. Great. I have no idea what they just said, but we’re gonna tell ’em that. But when you’re an adult, you gotta suck it up a little bit and actually make a good story. You can’t just throw anything out and expect everyone to praise you.

Freddy: Exactly. Exactly. And that doesn’t mean you have to go to school or take a college class or whatever. Just read a couple of craft books, Stephen King and Chuck Pollick and oh, now I’m spacing on the Kurt v.

Kurt Vts. Kurt V. Either reader is incredible. And it’s a dense book. It’s huge. It’s huge. And it’s chock full of so much wisdom from. That it’s almost like if you were to just spend a week reading that book, you would get so much more knowledge and be a, you’d be so much, you would be an improved writer in more ways than one.

Stephen: The other one I’ve come across is by Jeff Strand. He independent, he writes comedy horror. He’s written 50 books, and his 50th one was basically a memoir writer book, encouragement, inspiration thing. But a sarcastic viewpoint. And I interviewed him and talked to him. I love his books and I didn’t realize that it was just the last, like five books that he had quit his job and was writing full time.

So he kept going until he got to that point. So he is got a lot of good things to say. So yeah. Those other three books you mentioned? I’ve read ’em all. I’ve read his so good books for authors, keep going.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. And read craft books from outside of your genre too.

Like I’ve got one Jennifer Probst is a fantastic romance writer. I’ve only read a little handful of her work, but I have read her, her writing craft book. Oh, and I forget right naked. Is the book I know catchy title, but Right. For, because listen, humans we are the relationships that we have many are romantic.

And so you have to be able to, whether you’re writing horror or mystery or even middle grade, there, there are, there, there is love, there are components of love. In every story that we write or in most stories I assume. But yeah, there, there are things that you can take away from.

From any kind of craft book in what she recommends. It’s interesting. What she recommends is that if you are a writer of what do they call it? The erotica, like the raunchy stuff, if you’re, yeah, if you write the raunchy stuff, Read Sweet read Sweet Romance, and if you write Sweet Romance, read erotica.

So basically it’s learn that ying yang aspect where you’re learning from something completely outta your wheelhouse. Yeah it’s great. It’s great advice.

Stephen: I, I did something similar. I read a reacher book by Lee Child and I’m not a big thriller action reader and, but Id heard him on an interview, actually, his brother, cuz he is taken over.

And so I picked up a book, you can find them at every yard sale for 50 cents. They’re all over the place. And I read it and I was just blown away. The writing is so precise and the sentences are short and say what they need to say without flowery anything. And the story moves without putting in tokens, 50 pages of descriptions and, so it is a totally different style.

So it was like, No matter what style I wrote, somebody out there will enjoy it for the genre and style I have. That’s, what everybody needs to remember.

Freddy: And that’s how you find your voice too, because no one author is going to take away the same the same advice from anyone or two or three or four authors who write craft books.

Stephen: Absolutely. A hundred percent. All right. Freddy, I know you need to get going. And I’ve got stuff to do today. It’s been a wonderful talk. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely. Thank you. So before we sign off, do you have any last minute advice you would give to new authors?

Freddy: To new authors? Just write the damn book.

Right? There you go. Even when you don’t feel like a, get in the chair and write the damn. Write it right. Make time. Make time.

Stephen: I would add to that the craft books don’t make nearly as much sense unless you’ve written some stuff beforehand. If you’ve never written and you’re trying to pull it all in, just by reading a craft book, you won’t absorb anything.

It won’t make sense. But if you’ve written some stuff, no matter how poorly. Reading those books makes a lot more sense and you improve a lot more that way. So that’s my new advice I’ve been telling people and

Freddy: that’s why you should just write the book . Yeah, absolutely. Agree to the craft books .

Stephen: Yep. All right man.

Thank you. I’ll talk to you later.

Freddy: Yeah, really appreciate it. Hey Steven.

Yeah.

He just discovered why his dad died. Now ‘tis the season for a rampage of revenge…
“If you like your festive stories dark and twisted, Freddy Cruz has a gem for you. Allow Me to Ruin Your Christmas is packed full of secrets, lies and diabolical characters you’ll love to hate.” _ Adam Hamdy, bestselling author of The Other Side of Night.
Beckett needs his eyes bleached. Catching his mom and his favorite pod-caster doing things that will get them on Santa’s naked and naughty list is enough to turn his stomach. And after he agrees to officially meet the new boyfriend, his slightly nauseous Yuletide cheer devolves into rage when he learns the guy was involved in his father’s death.
Driven by the need for vengeance, the incensed son sets out to stuff the home-wrecking grinch’s stocking with burning coal—by going after the los-er’s wife and daughter. But as Beckett’s gore-trimmed plan descends into chaos, another ghastly secret could send him into murderous overdrive.
Is he about to unwrap a no-holds-barred retribution spree?
Allow Me to Ruin Your Christmas is a perfectly gruesome revenge thriller. If you like characters pushed over the edge, dark acts, and family drama, then you’ll love Freddy Cruz’s bloodstained holiday treat.

https://www.freddycruzcreativeworks.com/

https://ruinmychristmas.com

Murder By The Book | These Stories Are Killer (murderbooks.com)

So Freddy, welcome. Good morning. Welcome to Discovered Wordsmith. How are you today?

Freddy: Wonderful. Thank you

Stephen: so much for the invite. Yeah, it’s good to have you here. I can’t wait to find out about this book. It’s perfect timing for the time of year, . Yeah, it’s, no, please go ahead. Oh no. You go ahead. I was just gonna say, tell us a little bit about yourself where you live, some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. I am in the greater Houston area, technically Richmond, which is about a half an hour outside of downtown Houston. I am an entrepreneur who owns a media company that centers around storytelling and helping brands and individuals share their stories with the world. So it, writing books and doing podcasts and helping with podcast production is, it’s really all intertwined.

Stephen: I agree. I like that cuz I’ve heard a lot more about nonfiction, writing it in a story style and companies telling their story through their brand and all that. And it kinda sparked me, my idea of working with kids, not just on writing books and stories, but stories and video games and how they can, get into the video game industry by writing instead of having to code.

Everyone thinks you got a code and there’s so much more to it.

Freddy: Yeah, absolutely. In video games, The best video games, at least in my humble opinion, is are the games that are story based. We got, I don’t know how old you are. I’m 47, so I grew up with Atari 2,600 Snooze. Yeah.

And, but Nintendo 64, man, we got Metro, we got Legend of Zel. Frogger was fun, but I where’s the story in that You get splat hit by a truck. But

Stephen: those, but it still fun several seasons of a cartoon, so if they created something

Freddy: there. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, no, it’s like that journey that you go on and it gets you it gets you sucked in, then next thing you know, it summer’s over and it’s time to go back to school.

Stephen: So yeah, I, I’m, I, same age and I agree with you some of those. A lot of people now complain about, oh, that game sucks because the graphics weren’t that great. I grew up on a Commodore in a Atari. If the game was fun, that was all it mattered, the graphics? Yeah. But it’s so funny now you got so many independents doing eight bit graphic video games after everyone was saying, oh, we need better graphics.

And not always true. Not in the video game world.

Freddy: So yeah, everything old is new again, .

Stephen: Exactly. Except us, right? ? Yeah. Oh

Freddy: God. Don’t remind.

Stephen: All right you live in Houston, so you haven’t been getting the cold weather like we have up here, .

Freddy: Yeah. No, absolutely. And we live three years in Minneapolis, so we know all about cold and so yes.

Okay. Yeah, so the cold weather up there, it’s much like the heat down here where you could be native and you just don’t get used to. But I will say when we lived up north there was a threshold and it wasn’t free. The technically freezing mark, it was 20 degrees at some point when it, when the weather was, when it got up to 20.

All right. I can go outside with a dog and we can go play and that was it. But if it wasn’t the teens or lower, forget it.

Stephen: Yeah. And the wind and all that. Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Your book we’re gonna talk about is Allow me to Ruin Your Christmas, and it’s a great time of year for that which title is very intriguing.

Tell us a little bit about this book and why you wanted to.

Freddy: Yeah, first first and foremost, I gotta tell you because I love the story. I was talking to Tweet t Sutherland during season one of my episode of my podcast rather. And And she was asking because every now and then I’ll pull my last question because it’s Freddy’s huge Ask podcast.

It’s an interview form. So the last question, every now and then I’ll say, Hey, so this is Freddy. See Ask podcast. What would you like to ask me? And so I asked tw that question and she asked me what I was working on. And so I told her about the book. It’s it’s a thriller. It’s set in Houston around the holiday season.

Oh, what’s it called? And I told her that I wasn. Sure about the title yet, and I had a couple of working titles, like he Ruined My Christmas and then I forget what the other working title was, and then I just, for some reason it just came out and then I’m thinking, maybe allow me to Ruin Your Christmas.

And she started laughing. She thought that was funny. And so I’m like, okay, here’s a best selling author who likes the title. And so she just basically affirmed what it.

Stephen: Absolutely. That’s great. Yeah. It’s a fiction book. What is it? Is it you’re ruining all the kids by telling them about Santa Claus?

Tell us a little bit about the story without giving it all away. Yeah, sure.

Freddy: Coincidentally, it but not really has to do with Santa, but rather two unsavory individuals. One is college aged the other is middle aged. And so the college. Discovers the older guy in a very compromising position at home with his mom.

And so it’s, it just all goes downhill from chapter one. He discovers that they’re having an affair. He’s married, and then he discovers that this guy had something to do with the death of his. And so from that plot point which is just a few chapters in, so this isn’t really giving anything away from that plot point, it just all goes downhill for both of ’em.

So

Stephen: it’s not a like Christmas horror slasher movie is my first thought reading that title. ? Yeah.

Freddy: Yeah. It, I don’t wanna say it’s not slasher because. There is some death. Okay. And I’ll leave it at that. Okay. But yeah, thing, things go south really bad for both individuals.

Stephen: I, I love that because I like to watch a lot of horror movies leading up to Halloween.

And I like to watch a lot of good Christmas movies in December, but November was this. So I compromised and I watched Christmas horror movies in December, so it’s like that transition in. Yeah. So this sounds like it’d be like a great movie. So let me ask you that. If someone asked you, would you like to see this turned into a movie or a TV show?

Freddy: I certainly wouldn’t turn down either offer, but I feel like a series would prolong the success of the franchise. Yeah. I. For some reason, I don’t know that this particular book would work in a series format. My first novel is probably out of my three, is probably the only one that will work, that would work in a series format.

The other two including this one would be more apropo for a movie. But, what do I know? I don’t produce film or tv. So I could be totally off base here, .

Stephen: So what does, like genre, do you classify this in? Is it an action, is it thriller? What do you think it.

Freddy: It’s labeled.

When you look under Amazon, it’s labeled as a mystery and a thriller. Okay. Yeah. Right with a holiday theme. Yeah. A twist of, I don’t wanna say just because people die, that it’s horror, but people die and there’s some ruthless, there’s some ruthlessness in the book.

Okay. And so that’s why I’m not really sure that it I’m, I tend to think that it does delve into horror. I’m just not so sure that just because people die, yeah. Because people can die in a comedy.

Stephen: We, we, yeah. We, it seems like books nowadays are really getting away from that strict classification and you get lots of little bits here and there.

think Netflix system of just using tags is much better to, oh, I like gritty and horror and I, so I like this, yeah. I think that would be good. So can you think are there any books out there that are of similar for people that have said, oh, I’ve read that sounds like I’d like Freddy’s book.

Freddy: I don’t know that there’s a, a particular comp. I will say though, that if you, so my favorite authors are Chuck Pollick, the Mastermind behind Fight Club. I love Carolyn Kipp the author of the U series. So those are my two favorite writers. And so if anyone likes that kind of style, the gritty, dark humor very strange kind of fiction, transgressive creepy fiction, then you will like this.

Stephen: Okay. All right. Now, I’ve heard of Chuck I haven’t heard of Carolyn. What’s that series like? I’ll put some links, Freddy’s favorites in the show notes. Yeah.

Freddy: The u yeah, the U Series follows someone who is a who’s a serial killer. He ends up being a serial killer, but the u the U in the U series, he is talking, it’s written in the second person, so he’s talking to his victim.

Soon to be victim. And the second person, so you’re reading it and it’s like he’s reading the book to you, like he’s narrating to you. Wow. So it’s Hey, you came into the bookshop and look at you wearing this. Oh yeah. You are doing this. Oh, you’re gonna be doing that. Yeah. And the the narrative that the style is just on point.

On point. Yeah. And a Netflix series, so anybody listen. May have seen the Netflix series and not realized that it’s based on a book. I do prefer the audio book over both Netflix and the actual, pages. Just because Santino Fontana is one hell of an audio audio book narrator. He is just flawless.

Stephen: Nice. Yeah I’ve had a couple audio books I prefer over the written book and partly because of the narrator they just nailed it

Freddy: what’s your favorite audio book?

Stephen: I’ve got two of them and they’re one’s good, what I normally read, but the other one’s a little off. My favorite two are the odd Thomas books which I can’t remember the narrator at the moment, but he just nailed the tone of the book and the.

The voice of the main character, so well that I just, I’ve listened to it multiple times. And then the other is way off what I normally listen to, but it’s the silky Stackhouse books that the True Blood TV show was based on. For some reason her voice talking is just, Way fits the, again, the tone of the whole book.

And I listen to that whole series and I normally would not pick up like a Paranormal Romance book, but it really works

Freddy: for me. . Okay. It’s called the Soki What? Soki

Stephen: Stackhouse Mystery Novels. It’s the, how do you spell that? How do you spell that? Soki, S O K I E. And Stackhouse S T a C K House.

Freddy: Huh? I’m writing it down for people that are not watching, I’m writing it down. All right, cool. Yeah. . All right.

Stephen: Yeah. If you’ve ever watched True Blood, it’s the books that, those, that TV show was on. It’s Southern Romance Vampires.

Freddy: Interesting. Yeah. You ever been to oh gosh, now I’m spacing on the name.

It’s outside. It’s about an hour outside of Atlanta where they did the other Vampire series. The Vampire Diaries.

Stephen: Oh no, but I’ve heard you can go and visit. Yeah.

Freddy: Yeah. And they film one of the one of the Halloween movies there. And there another classic movie. It’s a really cool, quaint kind of country town.

It’s a long drive, like well over an hour. It’s not quite two hours. But yeah, it’s it’s interesting. It’s a nice little town. You go and you. Fresh, homemade hand turned ice cream, and the food’s really good. And see where the slashes were. Yeah, just going. Yeah. And then there’s a map.

There’s a map of of all the houses where the where the vampire, where the quote unquote vampires lived in the, from the Vampire Diaries. And this was right, right before Covid started to get real serious. It was March 2020. And my family and I we had gone. And and here we’re just, it’s me, my wife, and two teenage girls who are hooked on Vampire Diaries.

And and we’re walking through this neighborhood and standing in front of homes, taking pictures of people’s houses. And I’m like, y’all. This is embarrassing . And normally teenagers are embarrassed by their parents. But hear me being the dad, I’m like just cross my arms, my hand over my face.

Nobody noticed me. Nobody noticed me. But yeah. Yeah, that’s something you can do.

Stephen: I was in New Orleans last year and I went around cuz there’s been multiple movies shot there. I went to the square where the one James Bond was. I looked up N C I S, new Orleans, the different spots. And it’s hilarious because they have this.

Place they go in to go to their headquarters and it’s marked, and you can go to it and it’s a somebody’s garage. There’s nothing in there that they really walk into. They just film the outside parts, then go somewhere else to film the rest of it. It’s hilarious.

Freddy: Yeah, it’s incredible what they make it look like.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It fools you. But I got a picture there, so I’m like, Ooh, . For this book people that have read it, what have, what’s the feedback?

Freddy: The book is, I don’t know, at the, I don’t, we’re recording on November 10th, so I’m not sure when the episode will be out, but it’s only been out for a few days.

I’ve got a couple of reviewers who says it’s a haunting and chilling revenge thriller. There’s a gentleman who was recently on my podcast who. Was gracious enough to blurb it and he was like, the, these characters are diabolical and you’ll love to hate them. And yeah, it’s so far so good.

My beta readers seem to like it, and it was just, it was interesting. It was a different, it was a different writing experience for me because I have never written from the first person. I’ve never written first person present with two characters in alternating chapters. And so it was a neat format for me to to explore.

And like I said, it, things go very badly for both individuals and in the book’s, darkest moments. It was strange. What kind of took over as I was writing it and then like the feeling. It like I’m writing these scenes and it felt like I actually did something. Oh, wow.

Like I wrote the, I only wrote them, but it felt like I was actually engaged in the physical moment and

Stephen: in your mind kinda took over your body and made it feel like it had done what it

Freddy: had. Yeah. Yeah. And I hate. I hate to sound like that kind of author. Oh, my characters made me do it. But no, that’s a real, it’s a real thing.

And there was one particular day where it was during the, one of the most conflict written passages of the book. And I had written two chapters, so obviously it’s alternating first person present, so it was one character did this one thing in one chapter to the guy, and then the guy who had it done to him is writing it as, so he’s narrating as it’s happening to him and it, I had to step outside and I couldn’t write for a couple of days because it really messed with my head.

Does that

Stephen: make sense? That’s intense. Yeah, that’s intense. Cuz you’re the one writing it. You get that people reading books that like, wow, that, if you, it’s almost it I liked quantum physics and I always say, maybe there’s something coming in from another world. You’re just channeling what’s there.

Maybe you have an ultra ego that did experience it and you connected .

Freddy: Yeah. And it makes you, it really makes you wonder.

Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Let me ask you this, Freddy, is your house haunted?

Freddy: No, not that I know of. The do will. Oh, , that’s my dog, .

Stephen: I was in here, I’m like, why didn’t see somebody come in?

Just check .

Freddy: Yeah. My kid my younger daughter will tell you that when she was a little girl, she would have dreams about a little girl in her room.

Stephen: And I’ve talked to some other kids and people with the same type of thing.

Freddy: Yeah. And as a teenager I’ll tell her, yeah what better you than me kid?

Yeah. Yeah. I never tell her. I never tell the eight year old version of her that . But as a teenager,

Stephen: Now you can pick on, I just said that to a friend. We’ve, all our kids are above 20 and we were saying, playing a game and said something. It’s man, isn’t it great when the kids grow up big enough that you can like, be mean to ’em, and not get in trouble?

Cause they’re adults. Yeah.

Freddy: Scar them for

Stephen: life. Yeah. Yeah. So is your book self-published or do you have a publisher?

Freddy: It is indie published through Tuscany Bay Books.

Stephen: Okay. Is that your own or is Somebo some other publishing? Yeah,

Freddy: it’s somebody else’s press it’s Richard Pellis Press out of California.

Stephen: Oh nice. Okay, great. And we talked about the TV show. Do you have a website?

Freddy: I do. You can go to, for anybody interested in allow me to Ruin Your Christmas. The website is ruin my Christmas dot.

Stephen: Nice. So do you get a different website for each of your books?

Freddy: No, this is just a what do they call it?

A, a, it’s just a rebranded link that redirects to my website.

Stephen: Okay. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Okay. That’s an idea for, yeah, there’s

Freddy: a technical term. Yeah, there’s a technical term for it and I forget,

Stephen: Redirect.

Freddy: Yeah, redirect. Something like that. Yeah. Redirected website.

Stephen: So what are your plans for your next book now that this one’s out?

Freddy: Yeah. I’ve had a couple of ideas of what I’d like to write for my next fiction book, but I’m at a point where I think with 2024 coming up, I know next year’s 2023, but the five year anniversary of my first book is gonna be in 2024. And I feel like it behooves me to do a sort of remix of my first novel and with a new cover with expanded beginnings, middles and endings, and I was wrestling around with maybe an idea of, Maybe journal entries from one or two of the characters.

Maybe a short story or novella, like a prequel or a sequel or both. I don’t know what that, I don’t know what the five year anniversary remix would be. Other than it’s going to have new artwork and it’s going to be kick ass because I feel like since since 2018 writing my my.

Manuscript. I feel like I’ve learned a lot as far as storytelling and plotting and character development. So much so that with my third novel I didn’t work with the, with a developmental editor. I plotted it out and allowed myself a little bit of grace to let the characters tell me what to do.

But I I did work with a copy editor and proof reader. For reference. But I did not do, I did not use a developmental editor for the first two books I did. And I feel like I learned a lot through each, through working with each of these women. And it was like, it was almost like going to to a writing school.

When When you get a really good developmental editor, that’s what it’s like because they don’t cherry pick. For instance, the. With the second book she literally told me, you lost me as a reader. Wow. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m self-loathing, but I welcome one of my friends who does public speaking training.

He calls it hot and cold feedback. So hot being positive, cold, being negative. I love cold feedback. I just do, I think that’s where a lot of growth happens. Because if someone is just gonna be, Hey, Steven, great job. And then the one time you actually do something that is not right, your whole world comes crumbling down,

Stephen: So I, I totally agree. Same thing. I learned a lot from my editor and grew a lot from that. And I, I’ve had people. Let read my stuff. Oh yeah, that was great. I’m like, that doesn’t help me. I can’t get better. I would rather people tell me, this is what’s not good, what I don’t like before I release it, and then it flops and I don’t make any money and nobody else reads it.

And you know you want all of those things. That’s why you’re writing it, know? yeah. And they don’t understand. I’m. You’re not attacking me personally. You’re helping me improve because I can’t see my own flaws. I want that and ask that. Now, if somebody’s being a troll and just starts attacking you personally, it’s ignore them.

They’re not helping you either. .

Freddy: Yeah. I feel like that’s why I feel like that’s why in order to write fiction, I think you should be at least 30 or at least 30. That way you’re, you’ve got the emotional maturity. That’s what they claim. Yeah. That’s what they claim. But no, I think it it, it takes a certain set of, I think you have to have a level of thick skin because if you’re younger, you’re still discovering yourself.

And it could be to get that kind of brutally honest. Can really stifle your growth and make you not want to ever write again.

Stephen: Yeah. Agreed. Let me ask, do you have any favorite bookstores you like to go to?

Freddy: You know what I do? There’s one in Southwest Houston called Murder by the Book, and the website is murder books.com.

That. Don’t let the name fool you. They sell all kinds of books, but I just love this place. It’s a nice little shop. And they host authors from all walks of life, from all genres. They go in during covid, they were doing a lot of the virtual signing virtual event. But they hosted me for, from my first book, but they’ve had Brad Thor, they’ve had Ruth.

We in February, January or February, I forget. I’m gonna, I’m gonna host a live q and a tentatively speaking with Brad Taylor. So Nice. Yeah. It’s just a, it’s a fun place. It’s a fun place. They got a they’ve. A space for for q and a events. So you can squeeze about maybe 30 people into the little space.

And you got the table with the chairs and the mics and yeah it’s a fun, it’s a fun spot for uh, for anyone who wants to learn about their favorite writer.

Stephen: Good. I’ll put a link to their website. I like to, help bookstores out some too, if we can do that’s great. All right.

Before we move on to the second half and talk some author stuff for everybody listening if they said, Hey, Freddy, what’s this horror Christmas book about this murder Christmases, why should I get this and read this? What would you tell ’em?

Freddy: I would tell them that if they are tired of the feel good Christmas movie specials on tv, and they just need something different, this is a book for.

If you are tired of characters that just always do the right thing no matter what. This is the book for you. We’ve got perfectly flawed individuals doing terrible things, and they have no idea that they’re doing terrible things because they think that they’re doing them for all the right reasons.

They don’t see their flaws. And I think that’s what makes for a great story, is perfectly imperfect. People doing crazy, insane things, and they have, they’re totally self.

Stephen: Great. All right. Freddy I appreciate you talking to us and sharing your book with us. I wish you luck and we should have this episode out before Christmas so everyone can get the book and read it to get in that Christmas spirit.

Thank you.

With horror, theme can be even more important than other genres and you can get a theme that you didn’t expect. Shannon has developed her own way of finding her theme, and we discuss that in this episode.

Okay, so let’s move on and talk author stuff, and I think this is a great, uh, discussion, uh, on theme because we’re recording this in October and October’s a big team month with all the Halloween and horror stuff.

So, uh, before we get onto that, let me ask you a couple hard questions. You’re working on your second book, you wrote this first one. What are some things you’ve learned writing that first one that you’re doing different with the second one?

Shannon: Definitely don’t worry about the first draft. That’s a really hard one to get, um, okay with.

But don’t worry about the first draft. Just write it all out. When that muse comes calling, listen, sit down just right. Don’t worry about anything else. Um, The what readers liked. It was good to see what readers liked from my first book, and then knowing, okay, I can do this more in my second book and add it in there.

She. I don’t have a good answer for this one.

Stephen: No, that’s, that’s fine. And uh, I mean, you’ve only written one book, so there’s probably still a lot of things you’re learning.

Shannon: Uh, yeah, I just don’t, I’m still kind of feeling lost in the weeds a little bit . And

Stephen: that’s perfect too because, you know, the focus of the podcast is new authors.

Not someone who has, you know, New York Times bestsellers, I’m not gonna talk to Patterson. You know? Yeah. Talking to new authors and a lot of times new authors feel like, oh man, everybody else has it all together and know what they’re doing. And that’s not true. Just about every author I talk with, you know, is, is the same way.

It’s like, man, Like you said, the second book’s hard. Oh my gosh. You know, it’s not the easiest thing in the world just cause I, no. Yeah, and you

Shannon: think it’s, you think you’ll get that first one published and it’ll just be easy and you’ll be confident and you’re like, oh, I’m really a writer now. And no, that’s, that doesn’t make everything go away.

It’s still work and it’s still difficult. Yes.

Stephen: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so what, uh, when you’re writing, what software and services do you use? Do you have anything special that you really.

Shannon: I just use Google Docs. Okay. Um, sometimes I might pop it into Grammarly and just make sure I’m doing okay there. There’s a fun little, um, website Hemingway edits.

Oh gosh, I don’t remember that. But it’s based on Hemingway’s writing. You just pop something in there, it’ll tell you too many ad verbs or shorten your sentences. It’s just fun to. Um,

Stephen: to use and I use pro writing aid help, like you said, learning more, uh, you know, tells me what I did wrong and why, and it helps me improve.

I use it, you know, as alerting tool, not just editing. So, yeah, grammar is similar in that. Yeah. Um, So what are you doing? Uh, you said this came out two years ago, and I think that’s a great thing too, because a lot of people think, oh, I gotta get my book out and it’s gotta rise in top and I’ve got 30 days and Oh, I’m not a best seller and I’m done.

And but you, here you are two years later, you’re still working on it. So what are some of the things you’re doing to market it and what results are you seeing?

Shannon: I’m using Facebook. Getting the word out there and that’s going well. I really like the environment of Facebook. It’s very friendly and support.

I’m on Twitter, I’ll post things on there occasionally. Um, just talking with other writers, helping them promote their stuff, um, and share things going on with them. And then of course, people see you sharing that, and then they, they’re curious about you and they look on your page. Um, I’m a little bit of a recluse.

I’d love to be like a salinger type and just be a hermit writing, but you can’t do that anymore in this day and age. You have to put yourself out there, um, and be known and, and talk to people and get your book out there,

Stephen: right? Yep. So are you see seeing results anything better than something else?

Shannon: I, no, I don’t think so. Good Reads has been good. I’ve gotten a lot of more reviews on good Reads than I have on Amazon, so that’s been a great website, um, to share on there. Nice.

Stephen: Okay, well that’s something to pass on. And, uh, is this your first podcast or have you done others? Yeah,

Shannon: this is my first podcast, Keeping Mind.

Stephen: How’s it going? It’s going great. I’m having a good, good time talking to you. This is great. Okay, perfect. So let’s talk about our main topic of theme and. So I think this is great cuz horror writers really have to get that down. You really gotta have that theme and the, the, the overall, what you’re trying to say in the book along with the, the atmosphere theme and at mm-hmm.

So why did you choose this topic and why is it important to you? It’s one

Shannon: of the most fun things about writing for me is injecting theme into parts of the story. And I feel like it can really keep you on track as an author when you’re getting lost and you feel like, oh, I’m just, he did this and he did that, and the writing’s getting boring and, and it’s not creative.

You think, where can I put the theme into this where, and infuse it with some atmosphere so it’s not just plain and boring. Prisoners of Stewartville. The theme in that is prisons. So there was tons of opportunities to make that feeling of imprisonment, um, come through in the book. When he is in his bedroom, it’s very cramped in his bedroom, sort of like a cell.

Um, and I just think that’s a great way to make the reader feel what you, you want your atmosphere to be. And what the story’s about is just dropping. The theme every once in a while, and maybe your theme is about abandonment. So you’re inner diner and a teddy bear has been left on a booth. Um, you know, and you’re not outright saying it, but you’re just creating these images and visuals for the reader that stick to your theme and atmosphere.

Okay.

Stephen: And, and when you’re writing horror, how are you creating and adding to that atmosphere? What do you like to.

Shannon: Oh, I love riding. Horror is so fun. Just trying to get people’s heartbeat going a little bit or freaked out. Um, so I, you know, concentrate on feeling. Um, it’s, they say horror is a lot like romance.

It’s all about the emotion. You know, they’re two sides to the same coin. So just trying to get the reader to feel something. Through what’s going on, the shadows and the tension within each line or a noise over here. And that’s, it’s so fun. I don’t know if I do it well, but it’s fun to try . Well, it,

Stephen: it’s very different than a horror movie cuz that’s almost all visual with some sound.

And the me and my buddy talk about this a lot. The best horror movie. Use sound very effectively. Mm-hmm. , the ones that really only rely on visual, kinda, you know, mostly what they start getting is jump, scare after jump, scare after jump. Yeah. Well, that’s all they got. But the, the ones that really get that atmosphere and the feeling and how to build that in visual along with good sound and things, you know, little things or whatever.

Create the most atmosphere. Books are different. You don’t have sound at all. And, and just putting drip, drip, drip doesn’t, you know, help a whole

Shannon: lot. It really doesn’t. Um, speaking of sound though, we just watched the New Hell Razor. Yeah. And uh, I noticed that in the beginning of the movie we’ve got this heartbeat sound while she’s like, doing research.

And I was like, oh, the sound in this is great. Right.

That

Stephen: was, Yeah, I, I, I liked it. Uh, I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary reboot or anything. Uh, I didn’t think a whole lot of difference between that and the original stuff. Uh, but you know, me and my son enjoyed it. I watched Halloween ends last night, which I liked actually a lot better than I thought I would in that trilogy.

I didn’t like the middle one, but the n the last one put the middle one in a slightly different perspective for me, so,

Shannon: oh, we’re watching that tonight. So no spoilers.

Stephen: Send me an email, let me know what you think. All right, I’ll

Shannon: do that.

Stephen: So, um, What have you had any readers tell you, uh, when they’re reading it that, oh, I couldn’t put it down.

I had to keep going cuz it, it just had ’em so on edge reading

Shannon: it? Yeah. Uh, a lot of people said it was very fast paced. They read it like right through page Turner. Um, they loved it. Just, they loved the setting. They love the title of the book. They said it’s one of the best titles for a novel that they’ve seen in a really long time.

Wow. It just because I think when you’re reading it, you’ll see that the prisoners of stewartville are not just the people in prison. Um, there’s a lot of different types of prisoners and prisons in life. Um, and that comes through in the book.

Stephen: And, and that part of your theme there too, did you have the theme when you started, or did you kinda discover it as you wrote and adjusted your writing?

I, I

Shannon: discovered it. Probably about four chapters in. I was like, okay, I think I see where this is going. I had my title ready and then it just went from there. And once you have that theme, it really carries the book forward for you as a writer, um, knowing, okay, I need to make these certain things happen because it’s the theme of the book.

This is what’s going on with my charact.

Stephen: I agree. I I’m the same way. I know a lot of people say, oh, you know, I outline everything and I come up with my theme so I can, and I’m like, man, I, I have now do that. Maybe I’m not good enough, but maybe it’s just my thinking and style. I gotta kinda get the story before sometimes I even discover what the theme is.

Yeah. And yeah, and a lot of times I’ll go back and adjust and change things. Um,

Shannon: Exactly. Yeah. You can just write the first draft and then figure out what your theme is and then go in and start dropping that theme in the rewrites and the final drafts. Absolutely. And it’s, it’s really fun to do .

Stephen: Yeah. I’ve, I, for me, I’ve discovered that the editing process is much more aware.

My writing and creative writing comes out, uh mm-hmm. , whereas I have the story, I have the idea, I have the actions. But it’s that editing where I can figure out what my theme is and interject that, and then do the atmosphere, the, the thoughts, the uh, the sounds, the feelings, the visual, add that in afterwards.

Definitely. Uh, I think that’s the better place to add it in, but that’s what works for me.

Shannon: Yeah. And I know they say, what’s that like sometimes blue curtains are just blue curtains, but I think if you have your theme in mind, it does come. Subconsciously, I had a reviewer say about a scene Oh, and the atmosphere they built right here, and the theme was perfect.

And I was like, oh, that was totally not on purpose. And I wish it had been, but I think when you’ve got that in the back of your mind, it does come out, um, in the writing.

Stephen: Absolutely. And, and I, I agree with you horror, especially romance, but it, you know, it fits in a lot. Thrillers. Like, I don’t know if you’ve read Lee Child, uh, Reacher books.

I’ve seen the movies. Okay. Um, well the Amazon show is much better than the Tom movies, so

Shannon: I was gonna say that I loved Tim Reacher. That was perfect. He was

Stephen: absolutely perfect. And it’s much closer to the books. Uh, but the books have a totally different feel than when, like when I read a King book. One of king’s better qualities, and I’m sure we could discuss all of his bad qualities.

And, uh, there’s a lot of people that think he’s not as good a writer as he, he gets the money for, but one of his good qualities is, is really drawing you in and, and fleshing out the world and the characters you really feel for those characters. That’s where he sets his mood and then his themes come out through those, uh, bits by bits, sometimes a little too.

and that, but action and suspense. Thrillers, like reacher, I don’t get that as much. Themes, you know, really don’t get a whole lot of, cuz they’re all similar and atmosphere. It’s not as much, it’s more just the action itself. So, you know, you really got to look at your, um, atmosphere for horror. And like you said, love and horror.

They’re kind of the same thing, just. You gotta have a good theme cuz that’s what pulls people in. Just trying to do a flasher movie as a book is gonna fall flat unless you’re getting something in more in there.

Shannon: Yeah. And I think it’s hard, like king can sometimes there’s his criticisms, but the thing with horror is it’s the unknown that’s scary and it’s the mystery that it, that’s exciting.

And then once you kind of get to the end of the book and you find out you. What the monster is or whatever it may be. And the mystery is kind of being solved. That horror feeling kind of goes away, can kind of feel a bit like a letdown. It’s very hard to, once you know what something is, oh, it was a book fell, it wasn’t a ghost or whatever.

In real life, you know, it’s kind of gone. That magic. Yeah. So that it’s difficult in horror.

Stephen: Very, very. And like you said, once you’ve, I think that’s why the best horror movies. Focus and show the monster. Mm-hmm. , even with si or the, the special effects and stuff that we got now when they focus on the monster and you see it in full light, it loses a lot of that.

The best ones, I mean, a good example is Cloverfield. You don’t really see, you see bits and pieces of the monster, you know? Um, yeah, and, and like werewolf movies where they like close up and you watch ’em transform. It never comes across as scary. No, it could. Uh, I think other tricks that the movies use make it better.

Like the, uh, Disney Plus were Wolf by night that just came out. They didn’t show him transform. It was a shadow.

Shannon: Yeah. And I think that was

Stephen: a great show. It was, it was very good. Uh, I love that one. Um, and I think in books, I think King has discovered very much what gets people, you know, wanting to keep reading and like on the edge, like, oh.

He does fall flat a lot of times with the ending of, I don’t know if it’s just how he describes it or whatever, but it seems like everything up to that point is super. There lot times, like you said, the endings kinda like, oh, that’s all it was.

Shannon: Yeah, I was a spider .

Stephen: I was just thinking that too. Um, but I was also thinking, uh, um, uh, the, under the dome, I was like, what?

It’s okay. I give the big universe other world thing, but it’s aliens with a cup on the ants and where the ants. I’m like, ah. It just, oh yeah. I, I.

Shannon: The premise of his books is always so great. Like, oh, okay. I, I read Dome and it, the premise just seems so interesting. But yeah, the ending, yeah. We don’t have to go there,

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: But it sounds like people like what you did with yours, theme and atmosphere and that, do you have, um, Any suggestions? I mean, where did you learn to get a good theme and atmosphere? Are there any craft books, any learning videos or any courses by particular other authors that helped you?

Shannon: One of my favorites, um, I’m still not gonna say his name right.

Chuck Pich. Yeah. He wrote the 36 craft essays, um, for writing. And it was so helpful. I loved, he talks about theme a little bit, um, bearing the eye, just it’s rules that you wouldn’t think of. It’s not the standard rules. It’s more out there and it was really helpful. Um, I read Stephen King on writing. I just look up articles.

I’m always trying to learn more, you know, I get stuck and I’m like, I need help. And I’m googling writing advice all the time. Okay.

Stephen: All right. Good. Great. All right, well, uh, I, I appreciate the chat and the talk, Shannon. It’s been great. Uh, writer on here. I don’t get a whole lot of those, uh, so that’s fun for me.

Uh, before we go and close up the, the podcast, do you have any last minute advice for new.

Shannon: Just. Because I was so,

Stephen: you should copyright that. You could use it the way I think somebody did . I think that’s a 19. Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry.

Shannon: Um, but yeah, I didn’t, for the longest time, it just seems so hard. I wanted to be a writer and, and it seems like an impossible dream.

And so I tried to do other stuff and I didn’t do great at that stuff either. So I was like, well, if I’m not gonna do great, I might as well not do great at writing. And you know, I love doing it. And I actually. Fail at that. I’ve got stuff out there now, so just do it. If you love writing, just go for it.

It’ll work out better than you think. I

Stephen: agree. Uh, I had another author, uh, tell me that I’m one of those people that jumps off the cliff and builds my wings on the way down. Me, me too. I’ve embraced that and I love it. So yeah, that’s, Right. Well, Shannon, uh, thank you again for chatting with me today about your book.

Uh, and I will let you know when this goes live. I hope you, uh, had a great time.

Shannon: Oh, I did. It was, I was terrified, but it was great. I really enjoyed this. Have me on again when I get better and have had more practice answering questions.

Stephen: I like to have people on a second time after they’ve got another book or two out and see how things are going and how it’s changed.

So, perfect. I, I do love the fact that the horror writer was, So .

Shannon: Yeah, well that’s, you know, part of the, part of the job. Great. All

Stephen: right. Great. Thanks Shannon. Thank you.

Stewartville. A town living in the shadow of the prisons that drive its economy. Haunted by the ghosts of its past. Cursed by the dark secrets hidden beneath. A town so entwined with the prisons waiting outside the city limits that it’s impossible to imagine one without the other, or to ever imagine escaping either. When a teenage boy digs into the history of the town, he discovers a tunnel system beneath Stewartville, passageways filled with dark secrets. Secrets leading not to freedom, but to unrelenting terror. Stewartville. Where the convicts aren’t the only prisoners.

Well, today I’m discover wordsmith. I want to, uh, welcome Shannon Felt. And Shannon, how are you today? Hi,

Shannon: I’m good. Hi everyone. Thank you for having me here.

Stephen: All right. Well, Shannon, uh, before we get started talking about your book, let’s find out a little bit about you. So tell us, uh, where you live and some of the things you like to do besides right.

Shannon: I live in Phoenix, Arizona, kind of right outside Phoenix. So you’re not

Stephen: getting the cold weather I’m getting today. ?

Shannon: No. Where are you at?

Stephen: Uh, I am in northeast Ohio and it’s actually snowing in parts of the area.

Shannon: Oh, you’re so lucky. I love snow. I do too. Yes, I agree. Oh, it’s beautiful. You wake up and it’s a winter wonderland and the world is

Stephen: transformed.

Absolutely. But I’ve been to Phoenix and besides, you know, killing you when it’s hot, it’s, it’s beautiful in its own way there too. So yeah,

Shannon: it can be. We’re moving soon to Georgia, so end of the year. Well, you won’t get excited about that there either,

Stephen: and maybe so. I’m sorry, what else do you like to do?

What are some things.

Shannon: Um, I do all kinds of stuff. I’m always finding something new to do. Right now I’m learning to play chess. I went through a bread making phase. We had fresh bread like every day. My family loved it. Um, just kind of anything, you know, I get bored kind of easily. I like to change things up.

Okay.

Stephen: Yeah. So why did you wanna start?

Shannon: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve always loved to read, and creating a world and losing yourself in the book is just the best feeling, and I wanna do that for myself and for other people. Um, And as a kid, we’d get these assignments, like write a short story, a short paragraph, and I’d fill out the whole page, flip it over, fill out the whole back of the page, just go way beyond the assignment.

Right. Um, so yeah, I guess that’s why . Okay. Nice.

Stephen: And, um, so the, the book we’re gonna be talking about is called The Prisoner of Stewartville. Yes. Um, so why did you wanna write this book and tell us a little bit about.

Shannon: Well, when I was 12, my mom started working with the federal prison system here in Phoenix, and they had this company Picnic Day, and I’ll never forget this, it was at the facility and we’re like roasting hot dogs and playing tag and 20 yards away.

There’s prisoners walking around the gate and I’m 12 and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, what did they do and why are we here with them? And just kind of that weirdness, the two worlds colliding, really stuck with. And then when I was 14, we moved to a small town where prisons were more a way of life. There. You could hear the sirens at night and there was nothing else around.

So there was tons of ghost stories, . And when I went back, um, a couple of years ago, a year before I wrote prisoners, I was like, oh wow, I’ve gotta write about this place. Like I’ve gotta take people on a visit to this town, even though it’s totally exaggerated in the book, it’s not nearly as evil and horrific as it is in the horror story, but I just thought this place has so much character it deserves to be

Stephen: told.

Oh, nice. Nice. So before we talk about your book, what’s your cat. Oh, can you hear

Shannon: her? No, I saw

Stephen: her

Shannon: a little bit. She is four weeks old. This is Twiggy. Aww. And she’s been crawling all around my lap. So adorable. Yeah. All right.

Stephen: So give us a little bit of what the book’s about without giving it all away.

Shannon: Uh, it’s about, uh, boy and his friend.

They’re playing moral combat down in the basement that in the nineties. Uh, and the mom comes down, she’s a prison guard. And in this town, Everybody’s involved in the prison some way. You’re either a prison guard, you’re a prisoner. It starts off three reasons people move to Stewartville is they have family in prison.

They are in prison, or they work for the prisons. So Denny’s mom is a prison guard and she comes downstairs to the basement where they’re playing and she’s mad and she takes her steel toe boots and she throws it against the wall. And these bricks fall out of the. And then she leaves and they look behind there and there’s the tunnel, um, in Denny’s basement and Denny wants to explore it.

Um, our main character, he’s lived there all his life and he’s like, no, there is nothing good behind this wall. We are not looking back here. Um, and Denny keeps pushing it and then a lot of awful, horrible things. Begin to happen once this tunnel opens. Um, and our main character is trying to figure out what’s going on while also trying to figure out who he is.

Is he gonna wind up a prisoner or is he gonna wind up working for the prisons? And he doesn’t know he and he doesn’t feel like it’s in his hands. Stewartville is gonna make that decision for him. Um, and so you have to read the book and find out what happens.

Stephen: Nice, nice. So what would you say this is like a suspense thriller, or what type of book would you say?

Shannon: I would like to say it’s a literary horror, but that might be a little pretentious, but I guess it’s thriller suspense, um, horror. There’s some supernatural, there’s some, a cult. There’s the idea of a monster. So it’s really got a whole bunch of different, um, sort of genres within horror in it. Okay. Well that’s interesting.

Pleasure .

Stephen: Okay. And can you think of any books that are out there that are similar to this one for people that are listening?

Shannon: I maybe salem’s lot a little bit because it’s also about a town with all these creepy things happening. Um, one of my big influences, and I’m not, I don’t know if I’m gonna say his name right, Chuck Pich.

He wrote Fight Club. Yep. Um, it’s kind of got that grungy feel to it. Okay.

Stephen: So, so, uh, did you intend to write a horror grungy book or is this just kinda what came.

Shannon: It’s kinda what came out. It’s where I found my voice. I’m a catastrophic thinker. Like worst case scenario could happen. I’m thinking of it. So that’s how my writing goes.

It could be I’m trying to write a romantic picnic and next thing there’s an ax murderer because , I’m terrified of that happening in real life. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen: So I like that because, uh, I kind of did the same thing. I writing it once I realized what I was writing, uh, that just came out naturally instead of trying to force.

Yeah. Much, much better. Yeah. Uh, so is this independently or do you have a, an agent, a, a publisher or anything like

Shannon: that? Independently? Right now, a small press, uh, Bridget Skate Press. It’s the second release for this book. Um, before that it was through Silver Shamrock. And Bridgets Gate has just been awesome.

They’ve got us, um, social media managers, publicists, so it’s really worked out well and the horror community is so great and it’s so close knit, especially like on Twitter and social media, um, that it’s just feels like there’s a tight community. Supporting authors and artists. Nice,

Stephen: nice. So you say it’s a second release.

So they printed it up, put books out there, it sold well, and they said, let’s do another run. Yeah.

Shannon: And the first publishing company shut down. Um, and Bridget Skate Press was contacted me and said, we’d love to carry your books. So I was like, oh yeah. Great. Thank you, .

Stephen: Cool. And is this your, your very first book or do you have others?

Shannon: This was my first one. That’s what I, um, I wrote some, a short story afterwards after Prisoner got picked up. Um, the short story was published first in an anthology, and I have a few more short stories out there. Um, but it was my first long fiction.

Stephen: Okay. And and how did it feel when you had a publisher and then they’re like, yeah, we’re shutting down.

Shannon: That was, I didn’t even know what was happening, honestly. Somebody wrote me on Twitter and they said, did you hear the news? And I was like, quick news. And I went on there, there was some drama involved with this publishing company. I don’t really wanna get into it, but I got into Twitter and I saw, and I was like, oh, okay, well, um, I guess I’m done here.

But it was also kind of exciting, like, okay, let’s see where the next journey is for this book and, and where we can go from. Well,

Stephen: that’s a good attitude. I mean, if you were having any regrets or double thoughts, then you know, it actually maybe worked in your favor, so good. Right. You know, good attitude on that.

I must say . Okay. When did the book come out?

Shannon: Uh, February, 2020. Okay. So it’s been a two year release now. and I’m just finally getting started on a companion novel for Stewartsville. The sophomore novel is really hard. Once you get that first one, you’re like, well, I don’t wanna write the exact same thing. I don’t know what else to write.

What if it’s not as good? It’s really hard, and I’ve read online the sophomore book is just a killer to get through. So

Stephen: is this new one going to be a sequel or something? It’s

Shannon: going to be, um, well, like a companion novel. It’s gonna run alongside the events that’s occurring in the first book. So it’s not a prequel or a sequel?

Um, it’s in the same universe, same timeline, different character.

Stephen: Oh. But, so it’s a series, but, uh, different. I, I like that. That’s interesting.

Shannon: Yeah, it was one of the minor characters in the, uh, original book, and I thought it’d be great to see her perspective. She kind of played a big role in what happened with our main character, so I thought, let’s see it through her eyes and, and what’s going on here.

Okay.

Stephen: I like that idea. I like that. What are people saying, readers saying about the book now?

Shannon: Uh, they seem to like it. It’s got good reviews. 4.3 on Good Reads, doing well for something on Amazon they really like. Um, that Stewartville winds up being the main character of the novel and I’m really happy readers got that because that was my, that’s what I tried to do when writing it.

We have. Casey the main character, and, but he’s more of an observer. He tells us about stewartville and even though the town of course doesn’t have a voice, you really get the sense that this is who we’re following. This is the main character in the book, is this town.

Stephen: That’s nice. Yeah. I, I just watched some horror movies over the weekend with a friend and we were pointing out how some of them make the, the building or whatever, uh, character and how to do that in a horror and why it works.

So I think that’s, uh, interesting. Uh, right after that discussion, I’m talking to you, which is same type of thing. That’s really good. So Great. Uh, now if you had a choice, would you choose to turn this into a movie or a TV

Shannon: show? Oh, I think a movie would work better. Okay. Well maybe now that I’m doing a companion novel, it would be good as this series is a TV show, but I think a movie would be great.

Just something. Like lighthouse or witch, sort of that art house. Horror. Yeah. Okay. Kinda feel,

Stephen: go, go for the, the big ones that aren’t the blockbusters, but, uh,

Shannon: yeah. Hereditary. Oh, hereditary. That was a gut runger. But I’d love to do a movie like that. .

Stephen: Did you watch, uh, Midsummer The One After Hereditary?

Shannon: Yes.

Yeah, I like that one a little bit better. Really? Uh, hereditary just really got me in the gut. That was a, an emotional horrific, like the emotions were worse than the horror that was occurring in the movie. Right. The real life, which I love. And that’s kind of how Stewart the prisoners of Stewartville is, but Nice.

That’s,

Stephen: If you got any horror fans listening right now, uh, you probably just had ’em going, oh, I’m gonna check this book out. Cause those are good choice horror movies, I must say. Uh, not your typical run. Nice. I like that. . Uh, and do you have a website and where can people find your book?

Shannon: I don’t have a website right now.

People can find my book on Amazon or at Bridgets Gate Press. They have a universal link for all d. Um, sellers, I’m on Twitter, not very often. I’m not great with social media or online things at all. Okay. Um, but I do post occasionally and then maybe delete it later. I don’t know , but Okay. All

Stephen: right. So, uh, do you have, is your booking Kindle Unlimited?

Is that why It’s mainly on.

Shannon: Yes, it’s on unlimited. You could also get the paper back. Okay.

Stephen: Do you have plans later to go wide with it or are you doing well enough on ku you’re gonna leave it?

Shannon: Um, I would like to go wider with it. Um, get it into more stores. Um, we’ll see. Uh, Bridget’s Gate has been great.

They said if we get offers that will help us, they’re more than happy to, uh, help us have those offers come through. So I’m not stuck with one. Publisher one Access point. I don’t even know. .

Stephen: Right. Okay. All right. Well that’s good. It sounds like you’ve got a good, uh, group that you’re working with.

Shannon: Yeah, they’ve been fantastic.

Stephen: Great. And you already told us about your next book. So let me ask you, uh, what are some of the books and authors that you’ve enjoyed reading throughout your life that are

Shannon: your favorites? Oh gosh, that’s so hard. I have, I read anything and everything. I don’t know, beloved, by Tony Morrison is one of my favorite books.

And it’s also sort of a ghost story. Um, I don’t know if you’ve read it, but it’s No, my mother

Stephen: did at one point. Remember her telling me about it.

Shannon: Oh, it’s fantastic. It’s just a beautiful novel. Um, my husband and I were going through Netflix or something the other day, and we came across communion with Christopher Walkin.

And we both went, oh my gosh. I remember reading this book as like a teen, and it terrifying me. These aliens creeping into this guy’s room, and there’s been so many influences just, I mean, even as a kid reading Sweet Valley High Halloween specials, RL Stein, fear Street, you know Stephen King, all kinds.

I’ll read anything. ?

Stephen: Well, yeah, for better or for worse. Uh, when I was 10, my mother bought me a box set of books for Christmas and it was a Stephen King box set. So that kinda melded me right there. Here. Everything will, should read Stephen King . Yeah. So, um, and where you live, uh, in Phoenix, and I know, uh, it’s, it’s an interesting place, uh, to get around, but do you have any, uh, favorite bookstores?

Shannon: Just the Barnes and Noble. I know that’s awful, but it’s just right up the road. Um, we’re kind of in a, more of a farming community out here, outside of Phoenix. Um, so yeah, Barnes and Noble is kind of our closest. We’ve got the kids. It’s just quick to go over there.

Stephen: And that’s, I remember Phoenix being like that, um, walking around in, uh, the areas.

I’m like, wow, this is, you know, you think it’s just a big open, sprawling desert. And there are definite places like that. But, uh, there are areas too where it’s, you know, like a small town, you know, kind of mm-hmm. Laer. So, yeah. Uh, It, it’d be nice to have more bookstores, but . Yeah, I get it.

Shannon: I would love to open one

Stephen: I just had a friend do that, like a popup bookstore. How’d it go? Uh, it’s going good for her. She’s got like five or six, uh, places scheduled for this fall. Oh, nice. Always wanted to have a bookstore and this was a way to do it without investing in a big building and all the books and you know, she keeps up with the latest hot books and stuff.

She put my book out on her table, so I’m always good for you. Let’s do it.

Shannon: Do you get a chance to promote your book? Why don’t we do it here, ?

Stephen: Yeah. Well, um, I can, uh, I’ll look it up and send you some info how she does it, uh, and things, uh, so yeah. Uh, that would be interesting. Uh, I’ll, I’ll let you know.

Sounds good. All right. So, um, Shannon, before we talk a little more author stuff, uh, if someone came up to you and said, Hey, I heard you wrote a a book. Uh, why should I get it and read it? What would you.

Shannon: Oh wow, that’s a tough one. I knew you were gonna do this. Um, . Um, I think if they wanna lose themselves in a world for a couple of days, it’s a quick reading book.

It’ll take you on a tour of a place that you’re probably gonna love. Um, and that might terrify you a little and make you feel something. So that’s why you should pick up the. I don’t you edit this, right? Like , all the bad stuff outta here.

Stephen: All the, all the mistakes I leave in. Oh great. That’s the most fun part.

Shannon: You won’t have to edit anything then. No. Yeah, we’re

Stephen: doing perfect. Yeah, no, I love that. That’s great. Uh, I’ve had a lot of authors have something prepared for that and it’s what they tell people all the time, but I’ve had a few other authors go, wow, that’s a good question. I’m gonna have to write that down cuz somebody else might ask that.

Yeah, I’m gonna have to,

Shannon: I got it. I’m gonna have to remember that one. And it’s hard, you know, it’s hard talking yourself up. I think a lot of authors have trouble with that too, saying, oh, it’s the best book you’ll ever read. You know, it’s uncomfortable saying that ,

Stephen: which isn’t necessarily true. Uh, I have a buddy who reads, uh, nonfiction war books, so he would not agree with that statement that, you know, that’s why I never make a statement like that.

Yeah. You know? So, Well, Shannon, I appreciate you sharing the book with us. We’ll have links in the show notes and, uh, it sounds really cool. I’m a big horror fan, so thank you for sharing.

Matt has been a professional writer for over 40 years. One of the hardest aspects of writing is the beginning – both the beginning of the book but also starting a book.

Let’s move on and talk some author stuff. And we have a really good topic today. A lot of authors want to talk about finishing your book and that we’re going to talk about beginnings.

Before we do that, though, you have been writing for a long time, so what are some things and, and even your fiction, you’ve been writing for quite a while. What are some things that you’ve learned through that time that you’re doing different with your writing than you used to?

Matt: I was always pretty good right from the beginning.

I, I sold my first short story that I ever wrote in 1982. And I’ve sold virtually everything I’ve written since. I had a knack for it. That’s, and it certainly didn’t hurt that I spent decades writing speeches that is writing for the voice and bringing across charact. To audiences who sit there saying, why am I listening to this guy?

It’s cause I can make you listen. But I know some things, and I think I knew them pretty early on. One thing, as I said before it’s always about conflict ERs have to contend against each other and their circumstances. One thing that I find most obvious when I give advice or teach or do critiquing or editing for people who are trying to learn how to do this business is that you have to do a really good opening.

And recently I looked at a few pages of someone I know. Who asked me to have a look at what he was doing. And it started with a guy getting up in the morning and going in the kitchen and having coffee and talking to his mother. And then his friend showed up and they talked a little and absolutely nothing happened.

They all got along very well with each other and it was here’s the thing. The real problem, and it’s got nothing really to do with literary considerations. It has to do with how the market works, the industry agents and editors are the gatekeepers now. Used to be, you could write a thing and send it in to a publisher and there would be somebody there who would read it or read some of it and decide whether or not it was worth looking at.

They were called slush readers, and Slush was the stuff that came in, as they would say over the transom. All of that ended decades ago. The corporations took over the independent publishers and turned them into profit centers. And one of the things that makes profit is to cut costs. So they got rid of all those slush readers, assistant editors, and they pushed the job of winnowing, triaging.

They pushed that down onto the agents. The agents responded. They said, We’re no longer gonna take 10%, we’ll take 15%. Cuz now we have to do all this extra stuff. And that happened. So there’s a story that a famous, very powerful New York agent tells at writers conferences. He says that they they get 800 queries a month.

Seven to hundred to 810% of which they send a note saying, send us the synopsis and the first chapter. And then once a month, usually on a Friday afternoon, they gather only agents gather around a big table in the conference room and they have this stack of 70 or 81st chapters and they start to pass them around.

And what they’re doing is deciding. Am I gonna read this on my own time on the weekend? Cuz nobody ever has time to read. They’re always so busy marketing, reviewing contracts, looking at manuscripts for people. They already represent the idea of reading something new and seeing maybe we’ll represent this person that’s done on their own time largely.

So say there’s six agents sitting around a table and down comes the first chapter and a guy looks. and reads maybe the first page, if it doesn’t catch his interest, he gives it to her. She reads it. Maybe it catches, maybe it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it goes around the table, goes into a stack and. That person will get a form letter on Monday morning from one of the secretaries saying, sorry.

It didn’t catch us. It didn’t click with us. Good luck. So here’s the thing. I always recommend to people that in order to get past this gate, the gate, You don’t start your story with establishing character or background. Certainly don’t write a prologue about the history of the world, the fantasy world you’re talking about.

Start with your character in motion, in conflict, in something is happening, and we know the story has started. It’s not gonna start on page five. It started on page one, the Louis Lamore approach. You know you have your character in trouble on page. And if you do that and you weave in the backstory bit by bit, little penny packets of backstory, you should go along.

You’re much more likely to get past that first triage as you go around the circle or whatever it is. Somebody picks up your story and gives it maybe a page and a half, and they decide then, oh they don’t read 20 page to 30 page. If it doesn’t catch them in the first couple, and the trick is to know that character does not have to be described.

You don’t have to introduce your characters and who they are and what they’re all like. Never mind that characters are what they do. You show the characters in action in conflict. Doesn’t have to be big. Conflict, doesn’t have to be a brawl or a sword fight. It can be just two guys. Arguing with each other, maybe with humor even doesn’t matter.

As long as you’ve got something going on like that you can fill in all the rest of it later. It’s what I do. And I’ve now I’ve sold 24 novels and almost a hundred short stories in novels and whatnot, and that’s my standard approach. I start with a character in.

Stephn: And I, and that one of the things, I’m obviously nowhere near as experienced as you are, but one of the things I’ve found for myself is that I need to just write.

And if I could go back to when I first started writing, I would tell myself, quit reading the craft books. Quit going to the conventions. Quit listing to every podcast. Sit down and write a book. Write a couple short stories, then write another book. Try out the other stuff, see what education you need, and you have to have that writing experience.

Cuz I heard a lot of feedback from people saying this first chapter needs to be improved. And I know a lot of authors spend 10 times more time on the first chapter than the whole rest of the book. And that’s not good either. Sometimes, nope. But it is a trick to. Put a first chapter, that’s part of the whole story, not just an action sequence necessarily, unless it’s Indiana Jones.

Like if you’re writing about middle schoolers, it might be the kid going in the school, but you could have a conflict with the bullies and he is late to class and he forgot something. But it introdu it tells you, like you said, tells you who the character is through all the actions. But you feel for this kid.

And that sets it up rather than, like you said, he get. To his mom argues with her about going to school, eats his toast. That’s boring. So actually

Matt: I sold a series of stories to fantasy and science fiction about a wizards henchman called Baltimore. And it started off with him as a 10 year old actually arguing with his mother, cuz his mother said, you’ve gotta go to school.

And he said, no school. But she gets sent and the moment he arrives, At the alley that leads the school. There are three bullies there to pay school tax. Give me your lunch money.

Stephn: I just nailed your story, .

Matt: But that one really worked because the place where he crosses the market square to get to the alley that leads to the school is where some money.

Changers work and one of them has a debt collector, big guy called V, and the kid decides he’s gonna hire vent to sort out the bullies. You pay him a half a penny a day, okay. Cause that’s all he can afford. And then becomes a relationship. And then all kinds of things develop after.

Stephn: So what would you tell new authors listening?

How do they figure out the beginning of their book, the first couple pages, how do they figure out if what they wrote is something that should be jettisoned or what to write? How do they do that? If you’re a new writer and you’re like this is my character, I need how you, the brain.

What advice do you have for them to tell ’em, here’s how to figure out what you should have in that first chapter?

Matt: The classic thing in genre fiction they always say is show don’t tell. By which I take it to mean don’t explain your character to me. Don’t tell me what that character is show me what that character is like by what the character is doing, and pick the key details.

Of what’s going on in that scene. Details that really go to character. If you do that, you stand a very good chance of actually getting an interesting character. But if you’re gonna explain to me how Prince Harry, who was raised to be this and no no, I wanna see Prince Harry being who he is and always characters are what they do.

Characters are not real people. They’re story element. And they are what they do, and I very often don’t describe a character at all. Yeah, I don’t , for example, that, that character, I take him from 10 years old to retirement, most of which he spends as a wizards, henchman not a very nice wizard either.

Tries to get him killed a lot. I don’t describe Baltimore at. And I’ve not had thousands of people read the stories in the magazine and more of them have bought the collection of stories that I put together, which is now an ebook a paperback and a very good audiobook. I’ve got a guy does wonderful voices to do that, but I have not had anybody ever send me an email or make a comment.

On a Facebook page or something. I don’t know what Baltimore looks like. You don’t describe him. They don’t care what he looks like. It doesn’t matter what he looks like, what matters is what he does in a story. So

Stephn: agreed. And I’ve noticed with some series where you have the same characters, you’ve grow to love the characters.

I’m thinking of the Spencer Books, but there’s other. Where the first chapter doesn’t even necessarily have to involve that main character after you’ve gotten that first book or so done it. The mystery that’s getting started, it’s focused on the bad guy. It’s focused on the person they’re against the car chase right at the beginning, but it’s not even Spencer or whatever series and characters it is.

That’s a very common thing too. You see it a lot in TV shows too. We’re

Matt: talking Spencer, the detective, right? Robert B. Parker. Yeah. Here’s the thing. Robert B. Parker never described Spencer and. Tales are told in the first person, usually from Spencer, saying, I did this and I did that, and nowhere does he look in a mirror and say, I noticed that I was still six two.

None of what you do get, hang on. Very interesting technique. And he does it well. He’s dead now, but he did it wonderfully well. Other people react to Spencer in a way that tells you that he’s big, he’s handsome. He’s very well coordinated. All of that from how other characters react to him, which I think is brilliant.

T. Yes.

Stephn: And I guess Spencer wasn’t the best example. You just mentioned him earlier, and I know he has a big series, but some things like Mac Bolin or like what I was thinking, the uh, supernatural TV show and stuff, the first segment up to the music. Is not even the main characters.

It’s usually somebody else in whatever demonn of the week and the setting up that oh my gosh, they’re being possessed and then you get to the characters. But we know the characters so we don’t have to have ’em introduced every time. It’s that what’s going to happen with this situation?

Matt: I had a trilogy from Angry Robot books called to Helen back comic, but also serious about. Highly high functioning autistic actuary who accidentally calls up a demonn, refuses to make a deal, causes hell to go on strike cause a big keuffel. And then out of that he, he ends up as what he’d always wanted to be.

He’s a big comics fan and he wants to be a costumed crime fighter. Which he has helped from a weasel headed sabertooth demonn who goes around with them and does things. Now I did three of those books, and the second one, I think it was the second one might have been the third one of them opened with an entirely different character, a nasty psychopathic con.

Who fleeced old ladies out of their their life savings and mortgages and so on. And I did a whole chapter on him, and then my hero came in and sorted him out. But it was, it worked perfectly well. People liked the book. Yeah you don’t have to do what so many people try to do, which is just start an ordinary.

You can make a situation. It doesn’t have to have the hero in it. Although, as a general rule, I like to have my hero on the first page. Although most of my heroes are actually anti heroes, they’re not particularly nice people. At their best. They’re, they can be highly egotistical. Yeah. .

Stephn: So let me ask this then.

The beginning of the book and what you should do for the beginning of the book, what would you tell people? Cause I know a lot of people get that first book done or they just have a blank page and they’re like, I don’t even know how to start. I don’t know what the beginning of writing a book is like.

What would you help say to help them with getting that second book started or even the first book?

Matt: There’s all different ways into the forest. And this is important for people to understand when they start to do this seriously. They’re really trying to write some people, they have to do a big detailed outline, everything to work the whole story out right from the beginning to the middle, to the end, and then they start writing the scenes.

Other people cannot do that. I cannot. One of the blind alleys I went down into when I was first interested in doing this stuff I was reading how to books and I read one that was written by Ken Follett’s agent and he said, the only thing you’ve gotta do is do a completely detailed outline, cuz that’s what Ken does.

And then once you got that outline all worked out, then you just type I tried that. Can’t do. I’m what they call a fencer seat of the pence. I start with a character, a situation, something happens. Of course there’s a problem. The character reacts to it, other characters come involved, react and organically out of the guy in the back of my head, I create the situations and they move forward and.

I’m lucky in that the guy in the back of my head seems to know exactly what he’s doing, cuz my first drafts are like 90% of the final. The story just seems to unwind naturally, organically as I do a thousand words a day. So there are people who are complete outliners and there are people like me who are complete panthers.

And then there’s a spectrum in between and different writers fall into. Parts of that spectrum. And the way you find out which one you are, where you fit on that spectrum is you write and you see what works for you and you see what doesn’t work for you. Like for me, outlining does not work, so I never do it.

I just make the character and get ’em rolling and then see what happens.

Stephn: And I think that’s what I’ve discovered and that’s what I think’s the best advice. I don’t understand the people who will debate endlessly as to which one’s better or which one you should do. And it’s like, just start writing.

I know people who have been planning to write their first book for six months, or people that. Are working on their book for four and a half years because they’re not sure if they should outline it or if they’re, if they should do this. It’s just write. I’ve been working with kids on storytelling.

Yes. And I the teachers teach grammar. They teach sentence structure and spelling good. I’m working with them more. Using your imagination and getting that out, getting a story out. And that’s what I work and tell ’em. Story is the king. If you have a few little grammar mistakes, but the story is really strong, people will like it.

But if you have everything spelled right, but it’s a crap story, nobody cares. And some kids need that outline so they can write and do good, but other kids just start going off. And I think it’s just how your brain works. Sometimes

Matt: it is it’s a matter of discovery. You find out what kind of writer you are by.

That’s it. Absolutely. And I’m thinking I, I’ve got a new book coming out before Christmas. I got a lot of books coming out. I was gonna say that

Stephn: you seem to have a couple on the way I’ve got one that’s a reprint coming out before the end of the month, but before Christmas, I have one coming out from PS publishing a very good small press in the uk.

Matt: And I’m mentioning it not just to plug it it’s called Ghost Dreams and it’s about a commercial burglar, not a house burglar. A guy does warehouses and wholesalers and so on. Who gets haunted, you could say, by a woman who was railroaded into an insane asylum in the 1940s cuz she married the son of.

Wealthy family and they didn’t want her, and then he died and they just shoved her into the you gotta judge to say she’s crazy and put her away. And then they took the baby that she was carrying and they gave it away. And so she haunted the asylum and then she haunted the house that was built on the asylum, and that’s how she ended up meeting the burglar.

Here’s the thing when I was 15, 16, my favorite author was Thorn Smith. Now almost completely forgotten, but he wrote these extremely funny books about ghosts and statues coming to life. And everybody was drunk all the time. He’s writing during prohibition and his most famous character is Topper The banker Who meets these his neighbors end up as ghosts, and they take him on wild rides.

Get him drunk. Funny as hell. Forres is what it is. And I started out to write that I was gonna write about a burglar and a ghost and it was all very funny, but as the characters came out of my head and began to develop and extrapolate, it didn’t turn out to be a force. It turned out to be a kinda offbeat romance.

In which two people, one dead, one alive, who had been wounded by life found healing in each other. It’s actually quite a sweet story when you get to the end of it. I had no idea that’s what I was going to write. In fact, I thought I was writing something different, but that’s where it went. So I follow where it goes.

I I did the same thing. I started off trying to. Adult thriller, adult horror, and, just all that. And finally another author, a friend of mine helping me reading my stuff. He says, why are you right trying to write this? Because you’re writing sounds like middle grade. And I was, and it was a, a light bulb revelation because I work with kids a lot.

Stephn: I do a lot with kids, and it made the most. And when you really sit down and look at it objectively, yeah, the writing is very middle grade, so I’m like, okay, now I’m a middle grade writer. There you go. And, but again, I had to write multiple things before I really figured that out and discovered it. So again,

Matt: beginnings.

Yeah. That’s the key word, is discover. You discover what kind of writer you are as you do writing. Because after a while, in your case, somebody had to point it out to you, but after a while, it becomes obvious what you doing.

Stephn: Yeah. Yep. All right. So Matt, it’s been really great chatting with you. I’ve enjoyed it.

I’m glad to go look your stuff up. Before we go, do you have any last minute advice for new authors besides just right.

Matt: There’s a guy I used to see at writer’s conferences. His name is Don McQuin, former US Marine Officer who wrote energetic Fantasy swords and Stones, so on. And he always used to give the same advice.

He would say, there are many things that are useful to you as a writer, talent experience of the world, understanding of charact. But if you have to get rid of all of, but one, the one thing you keep is perseverance. You never give up. You no surrender. You keep going no matter what, because it’s gonna be a struggle for most people.

And there are going to be setbacks and disappointments and small victories to encourage you along. But the main thing is if you believe in yourself and you believe you can do. Don’t give up.

Stephn: Nice. Agreed. Like that. All right, Matt, thank you much for being on today, and I, again, I appreciate we had to reschedule.

So I appreciate you being flexible in that. That’s

Matt: quite all right.

Stephn: Thank you. Enjoy the house. Maybe next time if we talk you, we’ll have a new house to look at. Almost certainly. We’re just here till the end of November. We’re right now in a beautiful place. I don’t know. Can you see

the view?

It’s a little sunshine. I Is that your wife? Hi.

Matt: Yep. She’s sitting there. Yep. We’re in a place called Salt Spring Island on the the south coast of BC and it’s beautiful. It’s right on the water and there’s birds and trees.

Stephn: Nice. Great. We’ll see where you are if we talk again.

That’d be nice. Okay. Appreciate it.

The Emir’s Falcon, an exciting new young adult tale of outdoor adventure by award-winning Canadian author Matt (Matthew) Hughes, is now available in print, ebook, and audiobook editions from Saskatchewan publisher Shadowpaw Press Premiere.
“The novella evolved out of a real event that happened when I was an aide to Canada’s Minister of the Environment,” Matt Hughes explains. “The government decided to give a peregrine falcon to a Persian Gulf emir. I wondered how the teenage volunteers who worked with the birds at the breeding facility would react. Almost forty years later, I stopped wondering and made a story out of it.”

Matt (Matthew) Hughes writes fantasy, space opera, and crime fiction. He has sold twenty-four novels to publishers large and small in the UK, US, and Canada, as well as nearly 100 works of short fiction to professional markets. His latest novels are A God in Chains (Dying Earth fantasy) from Edge Publishing and What the Wind Brings (magical realism/historical novel) from Pulp Literature Press. He has won the Endeavour and Arthur Ellis Awards and has been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, Neffy, and Derringer Awards. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s Hall of Fame.

https://matthewhughes.org

I’m recording, so we’re all good.

Matt: Okay. All right. What would you like to know? Matt, what would I like to know? Welcome to Discovered Wordsmith. First thing I’d really like to know is a little bit about you and where you live. Some of the things you like to do besides writing.

Okay. I have been a professional writer all my life.

I think I got my first paycheck in 1971. Okay. As a reporter covering municipal councils for a daily in, in Vancouver, and I went into weekly papers, was an editor of a couple of small weeklies, and then a guy who just won election as a member of parliament in Canada. Said, would you like to come to Ottawa and Ghost write my column for the local press in the writing?

And I eventually said, yes. I tossed the coin after a week of not being able to make up my mind and off I went to Ottawa and I became the MP assistant. And I was writing his column and helping people with their pension problems and immigration problems, all of that stuff that MP’s assistants do.

Been there about six weeks and he came into the office and said I’m seconding the speech from the throne debate, which is a big deal. It’s where at the beginning of a new par. The government sets out its whole agenda and then there’s a debate and they always have a couple of maiden mps do the the seconding and the moving and seconding.

And they picked him. So I had to write a speech. He said, write me a speech. So I wrote a speech, one draft. He loved it. He went out and gave it, it killed. And next thing I know cause of that speech, he’s getting all these request. For come and speak to this group and that group cuz he’s a great speaker cuz he is got a great speech writer.

And next thing I know I’m being headhunted by minister’s offices and I end up a speech writer to the Minister of Justice. Nice. And later on I went to the Minister of Environment and I did four years in Ottawa as a speech writer. And then I came back to Vancouver and I freelanced for corporate speech writing for almost 30 years.

And then what I’d always wanted to do was to write fiction. Originally science fiction, then I thought crime fiction was more my thing. And I started doing that towards the end of the freelancing. And then finally I said, this is what I want to do. I was getting $200 an hour as a speech writer in those days and I was getting next to nothing.

Cuz that’s what you get as a new author and a mid list author. So I made a brave decision just about, oh, just coming up to 15 years ago now. End of October, 2007, I gave up having a house. I gave up having possessions, and I’ve started wandering the world as a house sitter, which is what I’ve done since then.

I’ve lived in 12 different countries and visited 8, 9, 10 others passing. . And it’s eventually my pension came and kicked in and I got patrons on Patreon who helped me out every month with some money, and I sell books and I take my old books and I sell them again on Amazon. And all of that amounts to a pretty decent living.

As long as I don’t have to pay a mortgage or anything.

Stephn: That’s pretty interesting. So how many fiction books have you written since you switched to writing fiction?

Matt: I think I’d written 1, 2, 3. I’d written I think four by the time I went out in a road, or no, maybe six. So I’ve written 18 more since.

But most of my output has been short stories, novels for professional markets. The magazine of fantasy and science fiction. I’ve had I think 42 in there. Oh, wow. Most people would kill to have one. But they’ve liked my stuff. It’s very old fashioned fantasy in science fiction based on.

I’m

Stephn: going have to go look cuz I subscribe to that magazine, so I’ve got some. So I probably

have

Matt: some of your stuff. Well, You’ve probably seen, you’ve probably seen my name on the cover a few

Stephn: times. Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll have to go check. I’ve got a whole bunch of ’em stacked up there. So your latest book is The Amirs Falcon.

Why did you want, tell us a little bit about this book and why you wanted to write this particular book.

Matt: Okay. We’ll go back to my previous incarnation as speech writer to the minister of environment. In Canada, that department included the Canadian Wildlife Service and the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Had established a breeding facility in Alberta at a military base for Perrin Falcons and Falcons had almost been wiped out by the effects of D T on their eggs and so on. If you remember that Rachel Carson, the Silent Spring big book about it. So they were raising the, these falcons to let them out into the wild.

In fact, a lot of them, they let out into cities so they could keep down the pigeons and the rats. And then 78, 77 thereabouts, Canada was trying to sell a desalinization plant to an Amir in the Persian Gulf and they wanted to sell what we used to call a can do nuclear reactor to. This was well before solar energy.

And to sweeten the deal, they decided they would give one of the birds, the Perrin falcons, cuz the the Arab Amirs, they love Falcon so they decided they would give one. And I thought at the time I knew that I knew the program cuz I was working for the Min. And I knew that teenage volunteers actually did a lot of the work with the birds and I wondered what a kid might think if his bird that he thought was gonna fly free somewhere is now gonna have a hood and Jess is on its legs and be in a cage to be taken out when some Arab prints felt like going out and doing some falconry.

And I just filed that away in the back of my head. And it, you, I made a note on my hard drive kind of thing years later. And then I thought, what the heck? That’s a good story. The breeding facility closed years ago. It was a huge success. They repopulated the world with Perrin falcons, or at least Western Canada.

But I thought, okay, suppose it was still there. And suppose along came the government said, we want to give away your bird. And some Ukrainian Canadian, Alberta farm boy who was already having trouble with he wants to. Become a wildlife biologist now that he’s worked with the birds and his dad says, no, you’re gonna run the feed lot just like I did.

And my dad did. He just, he’s not gonna take it. It’s one straw too many on the camel’s back. And he steals the bird and runs off into the wilderness with it. And I placed it in a region called the Swan Hills of Alberta. Where as an 18 year old, I was conscripted to fight a forest fire. So I remember that area.

And then I’ve made characters and put them together and they clashed. And then in the end there was a resolution.

Stephn: Okay. And we don’t give it all away. So how, what genre would. Say that this is it action thriller or you mentioned misery?

Matt: It’s young adult contemporary fiction. That’s what it happens today.

It’s really for teenagers and it’s just a, not a crime story, not a science fiction or anything. Just regular story.

Stephn: Okay. All right. And do you know or can think of any other books that are out there that are similar to people who like that? The

Matt: yourself ? No, I don’t, I know absolutely nothing about young adult fiction except I wanted to write this one.

And it turned out that a guy I know in Saskatchewan, ed Willett a quite well known Canadian, I know him. Yep. He had a small press. and some years ago I edited six young adult books of his that were being published by an outfit called Coto Press. So I went to him and said who do I talk to at Coto?

Cuz I’ve got this ya. And he said they’re outta business, but I’m publishing things. Let me see it. And I gave it to him and he’s now brought it out. Nice. Okay.

Stephn: This is independently published through Ed, or what, how’s that? Ed has his own press. It’s called Shadow, pour Press, named after his cat, and I think mine was the second book he put out.

Matt: And he’s putting out another one of his own now. So he is becoming a small press publisher as well as everything else he does, which is podcasting and anthology producing and writing for, I think he’s published by Do mostly.

Stephn: Yeah, I believe that’s what he and I talked about. Yeah. When I talked to him.

Matt: And right now he’s just formatting a new book for me, which is another thing he does, which is actually a friend of one of mine from 10 years ago, science Fiction Space Opera. And I’m gonna have that out in the next few days. Nice.

Stephn: So do you consider yourself a hybrid author? You’ve done some independent, some in

Matt: My nutshell description of me is that I am a crime writer, trapp in a science fiction and fantasy author’s career.

I started out to write crime stories. I won an award, was selling stories to Alfred Hitchcock magazine. And a very good online magazine called Blue Murder, which unfortunately died. And I had a crime novel from Double Day Canada, but I’d written a fantasy I couldn’t sell way back in the old days when I was just noodling it.

And then I saw Warner Aspect was looking for just that kind of book. So I sent it to them and they said, yeah, okay. And do as a sequel. So I did a sequel and then I became recognized as a kind of heir to Jack Vance, the great science fiction fantasy author. At which point an editor from tour said if you’d like to do one for us, we’ll buy it.

So I did. And then I started writing short stories in order to raise my profile cuz you need to do that. And I was selling them to fantasy and science fiction and as aov and suddenly I was a speculative fiction author. So I kept doing that. But really what I do crime stories set in space opera and dying earth fantasy setting.

Stephn: Oh, nice. Okay I come from a family of minor criminals, so it comes naturally . I. I’ve often said I’m the white sheep of my family, ,

but I don’t involve myself in the crimes. I’ll just write all about ’em. When’s the next family reunion? You need some more ideas. Right?

Matt: Now most of them are dead now.

Oh,

Stephn: that’s even better. But you mentioned a a book that Ed’s working on. Is that the next book coming out? Got a little bit about,

Matt: that’ll be out, that’ll be out in the next two or three days I think. It’s called the other. It’s a space opera and it features a fellow I’ve written, ooh, maybe 10 stories and four novellas about are called lure.

Who is based upon the characters that Sydney Green Street played. The big fat guy in the Mals Falcon. Yeah. Fat man. They called him . And this is my guy. I love Emre. He’s a forger, a confidence trickster, a thief a middle man sometimes for other people’s crimes and. He’s extremely coate to use the polite term and a gourmet.

And the reason he makes his living as a criminal is so he can afford to live at a very fancy private club in a city on old Earth, which is a fussy, not very much remembered place. There were 10,000 worlds in this civilization very far future. Totally. Unlikely to ever happen. But he likes to live in his club and eat gourmet meals.

And when he needs more money, he goes out and steals or forges or whatever he does. And in this novel he is tricked and Shanghai off to a very remote little planet, a desert planet where they have a certain. They require people to look a certain way and he doesn’t look that way. And so he becomes a member of a despised minority, an irregular as they called and put to work in a circus of freaks.

And he has to figure out how to get the hell off this planet which is not easy. And then he asked to figure out who did this to him, who sent him here, and why? The book is called The Other and I intended it to be the first half of a two volume thing. I sold it to a a small press in Canada called Underland, and they were going to have me do the second half.

I even wrote the first chapter of it. But then Underland decided she didn’t wanna be in that business. She was a lawyer who was dabbled, which is fair enough. So she sold her list to another outfit and they weren’t interested in the sequel cuz they figured the other hadn’t done well enough.

This was before ebook, so it was basically a paperback and that was all it was of it. It was shortlisted for the Phillip k Dick Award. It’s a good book. Wow. Nice. But without eBooks you just don’t do it without eBooks. And this was before they came.

Stephn: The character, just from what you said about him, sounds a little bit like KO’s Ozzie Boone from the odd Thomas series.

Okay.

Matt: I don’t know that.

Stephn: A little bit like that. Reminded me of that. Yeah. You’re your books, the Amirs Falcon isn’t out yet, but your books, what type of feedback are you, have you been getting obviously if you’re writing for the the magazines Hitchcock, and that your short stories are doing pretty good?

I’m, anybody read the Amirs Falcon to give you any feedback?

Matt: George r Martin is a fan of my. Okay.

Stephn: So no, no big names or anything.

Matt: He gives me blurbs. David Gerald, the guy who invented triples. Yes. He says I’m a treasurer. Nice. And Rob Sawyer, Canadian science fiction author is a, both a friend and a supporter and other people you mentioned.

Comics is the Flic called Kurt Busk. I know that name. He’s very much in my corner. Nice. Yeah. I get I get good reviews and I get help from people like that, that they’ll give me a blurb I can put on the cover. Beautiful. Yeah. Like George Martin. George Martin is a great fan of Jack Vance, a late Jack Vance, and he’s given me a quote from a book I did two years, no, a year ago.

He said, Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack, him. Wow. Which I was really touched by.

Stephn: I can tell you, I bet some of the other authors that are listening to this of hate you right now because of all the great contact you have. But maybe the, and I know some people, I’m not a huge Martin fan and I’m not Game of Thrones, but I bet there’s some people that would say, Hey, George, stop reading other people’s stuff and finish the next

Matt: book.

I defend him. If it pops up on a Facebook page or something, he has the right to do what he wants to do. Absolutely. Career working his way up to learning how to do this really well.

Stephn: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what our country says it’s based on, and that’s what we say the dream is that people can do.

Yeah. So more power to. So this particular book, it’s a little different for you cuz it’s the teen, but if you had a choice, would you like to see it turned into a movie or a TV show?

Matt: Which one are we talking about? The

Stephn: Amirs Falcon?

Matt: It would be a pretty short movie. It’s only about 38,000 words long.

Okay. A lot of ya stuff is not very lengthy. Yeah I wouldn’t mind, I can say without saying too much that right now some of my stuff is being looked at by very well placed people in LA particularly a historical novel I had out three years ago, which I consider to be my magnum opus, my, my great work.

And it’s it’s when I wait. 40 years and more to write because, mostly because it was very hard to research it. It’s, I’ll tell you what it is in a nutshell. It’s in the middle of the 15 hundreds, a Spanish gallion commercial Gallion coming down the west coast of South America was shipwrecked on the jungle coast of Ecuador, and the only survivors were 27 African slaves.

And they moved in on the local population of Indians who had been decimated by disease and bad abuse by the Spaniards as they were going up to conquer the Inca Empire. And they formed a new mixed society and then they out fought and outthought the Conta doors for 30 years. Until finally the Spanish made a deal with them because these people controlled a river and the Spanish really wanted a port at the mouth of that river.

And so they became and stayed independent for generations. It was a successful mixed what they call a maroon society. Okay, nice. And I think it’s a natural. A TV show, like for a streaming of 10 episodes or whatever, especially since it has a happy ending, which most slave stories don’t have.

Yeah.

Stephn: But if you end somewhere before you know the whole story. You got that cliffhanger for season two. Yeah, you could. So Matt where will we be able to find your book? And do you have a.

Matt: I have a website. It’s www matthew hughes.org. I was a little late to the party. Somebody had already got hughes.com and you can find me all over Amazon.

I write as Matthew when I’m doing science fiction and fantasy. And as Matt, when I’m writing crime, I also have done a couple of media tie-ins where I was Hugh Matthews not too hard to figure.

Stephn: Yeah. Okay. And we talked a little bit about your next book, but for you personally, what are some of your favorite authors and books that you’ve read throughout your life?

Matt: Anything by Jack, Vince, I,

Stephn: that id, that was be first

Matt: answer. I’m sad that he is, I think, becoming forgotten by younger members of fandom because he was unique at a. Voice and style and wrote about anti-heroes instead of guys with big swords and stuff. Him for sure. My actual reading for recreation is more whoops, is more crime writing suspense.

Elmore Leonard Robert B. Parker. Who else, particularly that we used to be. He’s dead now. A British author called Reginald Hill, who was just excellent at doing police procedurals set in Yorkshire, England which is where my dad came from and where I house set. So basically I’m reading a lot of crime and suspense occasionally a historical novel, not.

I haven’t kept up with science fiction and fantasy. This is awful to say. I haven’t really, since the mid eighties, that’s when I started to read crime. As I say I am a crime writer, but it’s some sort of fluky thing that I’m able to sell. Science fiction and fantasy.

Stephn: I’ve read all the, all except Reginald Hill.

I’ve read all of those. I, I know that, how good all of that

Matt: is. Oh I would also throw in Lawrence Splunk. Okay. I really like Lawrence Splunk, especially his scutter. About the ex alcoholic cop who becomes a detective, and those are wonderful. Nice.

Stephn: Okay. And you’ve traveled all around. Have you run into any bookstores that are like your absolute favorites?

Somewhere.

Matt: Because I’m a house sitter. I tend to buy my books in secondhand stores and then give them back when I leave cuz I can’t take a big suitcase of books around . I used to have about 3000 books when I was settled and I gave them to one of my sons. So he’s got them. Favorite bookstore?

There’s Monroe books in Victoria. Which was run by Jim Monroe. He’s gone now, and his ex-wife is Alice Monroe, the very, very famous short story writer. And I think by now she might have won the Nobel Prize for literature. She’s very good.

Stephn: Okay, I’ll make sure and put besides links to your website links to the bookstore and some of your favorite.

Along with your book. Of course. Yeah. Alright, so Matt, before we move on to some author talk which we’re gonna talk about beginning, oh,

Matt: one other thing I should plug this we’re talking about Jack Vance and so on. His son John has his own press. It’s called Spatter Light Press, named after a Jack Van’s story.

And. He authorizes a few people to write stories set in the universe of his father can’t use the same characters, but you can use the setting. And he authorized me to write one called Barbarians of the Beyond. I did use that title because Vance had an early book called Vandals of the Void, so I thought I’d wanna do the same thing.

But one, its is a kind of sequel, or you could call it a companion novel to one of Jack’s most famous series, which was the Demonn Princess. Demonn Princes are about a man who tracks down five master criminals in a space opera setting who together staged a raid on the community where he was a boy and took everybody off into slavery.

And my take on it was to say, okay, we know what Jack’s hero did to kill each one of those, or settle each one of those bad guys. What happened to the people who were taken away. And so I had made a story about the daughter. I’ve got a female protagonist, which Vance usually didn’t do. I wanted that to be different.

The daughter of two of the people who were carried off or who were now cooks and chef to a pirate lord on a very far off planet, but she makes her way back to where the raid. Because her parents had hidden something there, which was very valuable, which they’d stolen. And she believes and they believe that if she can convert this into cash, she could buy them out of servitude.

And she’s been trained her whole life since. A little girl for the job of going to this planet, getting there some. And finding that thing, cashing it in and then going to the place where you buy and sell slaves. A place called Interchange and getting your parents back. And then of course it doesn’t quite work that way cause it never does, but it gets a good story if it did.

Yeah. Anyway, it’s barbarians of the Beyond and it’s the one that caused George Martin to say I do Jack Vans better than anyone except Jack. So do recommend it. It’s a hell of a hell of a rattling. Good read is what it’s, yeah. Okay. Good.

Stephn: All right. So Matt, you’ve got years of experience writing.

If an author came up to you and said hey, why should I get your book this new one? What would you tell them?

Matt: The aim is Fal.

Stephn: Yeah. Yeah. Someone said, why should I get it and

Matt: read it? Cause it’s a good book. It’s a good story. It’s about three different characters, very different one’s a farm boy, one is the son of an Amir, an Arab, and the third one is the daughter of a matey trapper.

And the story ends up in her trapping territory. So she’s involved, they’re all entirely different people. They have. Lifestyles, agendas, wishes. And yet this situation of the stolen bird or liberated bird brings them into contact with each other and each one of them, and this is a trick to doing good Ya fiction or any good fiction.

Each one of them develops and changes because of the conflict and association with each other and each one of them. I think comes out the better for it. So if you wanna see how to do young adult fiction take a look at this. Take a particular look at how the characters develop out of con conflicting with each other.

Cause that’s the trick to doing fiction, is you have conflict characters struggle and contend. Against each other, against their environment, against their inner selves. And when you capture that kind of thing properly people want to turn the next page and see what happens.

Stephn: Agreed. All right.

Great. Matt, thanks for sharing your book with us. I’ll make sure and have some links for everybody that’s listening to go check it.

Ken reads a selection from his book, Hero Haters.

Ken recently attended a great convention and we discuss why authors should attend conventions and conferences. There are things that an author should do before going to one and there are things you should be aware of while attending. We discuss all of this and Ken gives us some information about the police writer’s academy.

Okay, so let’s talk some author stuff and we’re gonna talk about conferences and going to conferences, which you just went to one recently, which. I find interesting because it’s in a different country which I haven’t been to.

I’ve been to Canada, but not a conference up there, is what I mean. All right. But before we do that let me ask you a couple other questions. So you have been writing for a very long time. And you’ve done journalism and now you’re doing fiction. So what are some things that you’ve learned through the years that you’re doing differently now than you would’ve.

Ken: Certainly the technology would be key. When I started, I didn’t even have a cell phone. They weren’t available. I had a pager, which was a bit of a pain in the butt at times. But and then there was a whole business of filing a story. It used to be I remember the first semi computer that I could take on the road was about the size of a big briefcase.

It had a capital gray tube. And you pretty much had to coat it in Vaseline to get it under the seat on an airplane. And it was a very delicate operation. Then you had to use acoustic couplers to stick it on a phone behind

Stephen: modem. Oh my gosh.

Ken: It was a real, it was a real challenge so that the technology became ridiculously easy.

Now, I remember I went to the museum in Washington DC. The news museum there, and they had one of these satellite trucks with the antenna that went out and so forth, and the TV reporters would be reporting from there. And I realize now my little phone has all that technology in this

That satellite truck, I’m sure cost a half a million dollars back in the day. Yeah, that, that part was definitely different. The actual hunting and gathering of quotes and the reporting, of course, it was made much easier with with the cell phones and so forth. But when I look back at some of the things I covered before, before I had that technology, I know earthquake in San Francisco or a murder on the Mexican border or the Exxon Valdese Oil spill.

Those were all things that I covered with pretty primitive technology and no cell

Stephen: phones. Wow. So do you feel if you would’ve done fiction writing back then that you would’ve enjoyed it or been as successful? Or do you feel that now that you’ve gone through your years of journalism, you can relax more with the fiction and it comes across?

Just how do you feel about that

Ken: after? Oh I agree that I think I can relax now, for one thing I’ve this may surprise you that fiction writing doesn’t come with a dental plan or a pension .

Stephen: So yes, if nobody understood that fact, ,

Ken: imagine my surprise. But no, I, so that’s why I wanted to make sure I was financially secure for before I turned to fiction, because as you.

It’s not always the ticket to I, I feel I’ve written an 80,000 word lottery ticket, but who knows what the odds are of ever cashing in on that. But yeah. Anyway I felt that I needed the security of not having to wrestle with, Where the next paycheck would come from. So that until the kids were grown, that my two sons and they left home, and my wife and I retired, then we figured, okay, now we can relax and breathe and use a different part of our brains.

Nice.

Stephen: Okay. And you mentioned the technology has changed. So what software and services are you using now for your fiction writing?

Ken: Actually I just use Microsoft Word. I had I had used Scrivener, which is an excellent program, but I lost patience, figuring out all the bells and whistles, and I realized that I could probably just get by as I did as a reporter, basically with a more basic word processing, Okay.

Software. So that’s just what I use. I I. Occasionally stuck up things on a bulletin board as to my various plot points. But I don’t even do that too much. I just I just push along one scene at a time. I usually write a scene a day and not necessarily a chapter, but a little movie in my head.

And when the movie starts to flicker and fade, I figure it’s time to to stop that one and then we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Stephen: Yeah I agree. I do that a lot too. Really envision the scene, it helps get the words down easier and they sound better. I know it sounds so clunky that way.

I,

Ken: that was one of the gifts of journalism, I had to say. I spent as I said, a recorded most of my interviews. And then you’d have to transcribe them and go through that. Now, these days, I guess you don’t need to this transcription software, but I never had. But it required me to listen more closely and to pick quotes that are legitimate.

But the quotes that encapsulate the whatever issue I happened to be exploring and that I realized works very well in fiction writing as well, because dialogue is a, an elusive beast. People stumble when they talk, as I am evidence of that right now, but you have to fake realism.

When you do dialogue. You have to make your your people smarter and more concise and still realistic. That’s quite a challenge sometimes.

Stephen: Definitely. Agreed. Your book you just got it out. What are you doing to market it besides podcasts? Are you doing anything else to get the word out?

Ken: Yes. I have a digital. Marketer who Amy who works in from Texas. And so she’s doing a lot of the stuff that I either can’t do or I’ve lost patience trying to do. So my website is ken mcqueen.com and she’s on there updating it from time to time. I’m on Twitter and Facebook and a few things like that.

But I’m, I. Basically not very good at this marketing thing. So I figured I would hire help for things like that. So I’ve been very fortunate in hiring two good people to, to look after it. Mickey Mickelson, as you know and and Amy as well, and in Texas. So between the two of them, they keep me focused more on.

Being a writer as opposed to being a marketer. Not very good at that part

Stephen: of it. So know your strengths. Yeah. Good. All right. So we wanted to talk a little bit about conferences and things like that. You just went to a conference in Toronto, I think you said? No,

Ken: actually this one was your side of the border.

It was in the, it was the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference, and it was in Seattle, or actually this. Just across the way in, in Renton. And it was a wonderful conference. Lots of writers and I went for a couple of reasons. One just to, because they had some great workshops and and agents and editors talking about the craft.

But also I got my publishing contract through them because last fall I entered an un publish. Writer’s competition that they staged. And I was a finalist in the mystery and thriller category there. And I didn’t win, but as a result of that, I did get a publishing contract out of it. So to me, that was a bigger win than a little surprise.

So yeah, so that’s how Wild Rose Press picked me up. I was very grateful for that. And so that was a good conference. I’ve also Been at

Thriller Fast. So there is myself and John Sanford at Nice in New York. I was hanging out with the A-List folk and they that’s a very nice conference. I’m hoping to go to it again this year in New York. It’s been a virtual one for the last couple of years, obviously. That is that has incredible wealth of great authors and it’s very craft oriented.

Stephen: I will say I feel authors, even the big names are much more approachable and down to earth. Then say going to someplace where there’s actors there’s a there’s a lot of actors that are that way too, but. You talked to John Sanford, you got a picture with him, right? Like right there.

Whereas you wouldn’t be able to do that with a lot of big name actors. Oh. Oh. Are you still there? You’re

Ken: you? You’re breaking up there, Stephen. I think we’re reconnected again. Are we?

Hello there. You’re sorry. I didn’t catch all of that. Last one. That.

Stephen: I was saying how you got to go to a conference and talk to and get a picture with John Sanford. big name author. And I feel authors are very much more down to earth and they’re more approachable and they’re willing to talk to they’re not like, Oh, you’re not a best selling author.

I’m not talking to you. I’ve never encountered that with they

Ken: are, I I totally agree. There were any number of Harlan Cobin was there, and Wow. A lot of them and they are very approachable, very helpful. Linwood Barkley was there Rick Fin, who’s a fellow Canadian, another both Linwood Barkley and Rick Fin are former journalists who turned to fiction.

And so I was interested to talk to them about some of their experiences in making that. So I really enjoy those conferences for that reason. The energy that, that they project and the help helpfulness that they they give a newbie like me,

Stephen: yeah. So what was your main motivation for going to the conference

Ken: tho those were in this time it was a bit of a thank you to the conference Pacific Northwest Writers Conference for giving me my start.

And I also ended up as a judge for the unpublished thriller category. This. So I was one of many judges for that. So I wanted to give back a little bit to that and also to see what else is out there, who’s breathing down my neck with the next great book. And there’s some great talent out there, I gotta say.

Stephen: Yeah. And you mentioned workshops. Do you attend many of the workshops that they have at these conferences?

Ken: Yes, absolutely. It’s a continuous learning curve for me. This whole fiction thing. As the publishing environment is so dynamic. You turn your back for a minute and and one of the publishing houses is amalgamated with another publishing house and another publisher’s gone down the drain and you just never know what’s going on.

So it’s good to, it’s good intelligence to keep okra on these things.

Stephen: Nice. Are there any conferences, you don’t have to name names, or any particular workshops or something that you’re like, Wow, that was not as good as I expected. Did you have anything like that happen?

Ken: No, I haven’t really been disappointed with the ones, but I’m very careful where I spend my money

No I’m going to another one in in late in October and it’s in a nearby. Suburban area called Surry, British Columbia, but it’s called the Surrey International Writers Festival. And it brings a lot of top talent from from Canada and the us. So I will go to that one. And there will be a lot of great, helpful writers like Robert Dagone, who’s a brilliant Saskatchewan or Saskatchewan, Washington state.

Author, who’s done very well with his Tracy Cross White series. And is written three great spy novels based in Russia. So he’s he’s another of my heroes. He did a little bit of journalism back in his day as well, but so he’s a great teacher. Hank Phillip Ryan is a wonderful.

Teacher as well. I’ve sat in on some of her her workshops. Hank is a her, but

Stephen: she’s very good. Yeah. I know, I agree with you and understand the, You gotta pick and choose sometimes. There’s just so many popping up out there and a lot of people are getting in on and starting some, but then they’re not always what you would expect.

I know I went to one last. It was a smaller one. A bunch of authors I knew, but it was just so fantastic. Everybody, the energy and everybody got ideas and thoughts and information, and everybody left with some new stuff. They were gonna do another one this year, but there just wasn’t as much interest. I was, I astounded cause everybody was oh, this is the greatest thing ever.

And they were purposefully trying to keep the conference small because they wanted it to be more intimate, which is what made it so wonderful. But then people still weren’t interested. So what would you say to people how to decide and pick and choose whether they want to go to a conference and how to find the ones that are worthwhile and good for.

Gotta I, I think you there are a lot of conferences that specialize, like the one I was just at and the one I’m going to in Surrey. The one in Seattle and the one one in Surrey, bc they’re more general publishing authors, all sorts of genres and also nonfiction. So those are good if you value some of the teachers and some of the workshops, which is why I.

Ken: I went there and the Thriller Fest, which is in New York, is all purely if pure and thriller can be put in the same sentence, purely thriller oriented. So that one is a definite go for thriller writers. It’s an expensive one. But I it’s all part of my training. I also went earlier this year to Wisconsin to something called the.

The police what was it called? Police writer’s academy. And it was amazing. So I got to drive a cop car. I got to shoot virtual guns. I got to learn how you do a traffic stop, all that sort of stuff. And so that was it was a great con course. And it was all writers, all fiction writers in the most part.

And that was a great deal of. , but again, you have to pick your spot. So I call W Wisconsin a deductible USA because I can write some of this stuff off .

Stephen: I like that. I’ve not heard of that one, but I love that idea because a lot of authors, thriller authors do things with the police as far as writing about ’em in the, ’em, in their books and we always try and make it a.

So whoever thought of doing a conference where it was a bunch of police teaching writers what they do and giving ’em that information, that’s brilliant. We need more of those.

Ken: I for anyone who writes a police procedural, I highly recommend taking a look at this. It’s not always held in Wisconsin.

It’s occasionally somewhere else, but the the person in charge of it is Lee Loughlin, l e l o f t l a n d. And. And it will be going on again next year. I, and it’s well worth it if you get the chance and if you like, like me not having to grow. And so you get to drive a police car and do all sorts of cool ,

Stephen: right?

See. Now I’m thinking I wanna start writing about race car drivers. We need to have a conference where we can have race car, and I need to do more science fiction so I can go up in a SpaceX spaceship or something. But if anyone knows how to do a conference on dragon writing, hey I’ll write about writing dragons.

Let’s get this going. .

Ken: Yeah. Good luck on that one. I think it’s a little easier use Procedurals. .

Stephen: But I love that concept because it’s for writers, but it’s different than just hearing some of the same things about publishing or the craft of writing or this, that and the other thing, which there’s nothing wrong with that.

But after you’ve been. Four or five conferences, and it’s a lot of the same type of material. It’s good to know there’s choices out there that are more niche and specialized.

Ken: Absolutely. I’m just trying to find here we go.

Oh, I’m trying to find Lee Laughlin’s. Anyway, his last name, If anyone is interested. It’s Lee, l e, and f l o f l a n d. If you google his name, you’ll find out about this police academy. He’s a former cop himself and he loves writers, and writers love him and all sorts of really a-list authors have been at that conference.

And Nice. And it’s a picnic for

Stephen: people. I I’m think. Joking about the dragons and stuff, but seriously, there’s so many script writing and streaming of abilities now, yo. And people wanna learn more about that cuz there’s choices all over the place. I wonder if someone already does or why someone doesn’t do a movie.

Screenwriting type of writer’s conference focusing. Doing that, how to publish your book and that type of stuff. Someone’s gotta be doing something like that. Cause that one

Ken: I would expect that’s the case there. One, one of my writing books is called Save the Cat. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of that.

Stephen: Who doesn’t? It’s a good one. You don’t Save the cat. Get Save the Cat. There you go. It it’s a great book and it’s, it was aimed at a screenwriter. But it also works for novelists as well. And if you start watching a movie, my wife will nudge me and go save the cat. It may not be literally a cat, but some way to humanize even the worst people.

Ken: Cause they’ll do something a little outta character and kind of nice. And then they may not be the nicest person, but it gives an element of of humanity to anyone that you’re writing. .

Stephen: Yeah. You mentioned Thriller Fest. And one of the authors, I know JD Barker, he’s at Thriller Fest almost all the time.

He’s the one that, at that conference I told you about last year, turned me on to Save the Cat. Okay. And using that and it’s kinda scary. It’s once you have that power, it’s like Spider-Man, you gotta use it responsibly. I’ll watch something and I’m like that sucked. But now I know why it sucked, and now I know what they screwed up on.

Yeah, exactly. So it’s powerful. Save

Ken: the dragon. You gotta work on your .

Stephen: Yes. And then I’ll do my own conference. Who doesn’t wanna come to Lake Erie in the middle of winter and to learn about dragons Yeah. And go ice fishing.

Yeah, we could go ice fish for dragons, yeah.

All right. So again any other thoughts or advice about conferences or, I know you mentioned virtual conferences. I think a lot of ’em are getting back to in person, which I love, but I still like the virtual, because you mentioned the one in Wisconsin. And I’m like it’d be a little harder for me to get to Wisconsin money wise, timewise.

Yeah. But I’d be interested if they did a virtual, whereas the Thriller Fest, which is in New York, that’s closer and I’d like to go to that one personally. So I think a good mix of the virtual and live is a good thing nowadays. What do you think about that? And do you have any other thoughts or advice on.

Ken: Definitely there are virtual ones that I’ve gone to and you can actually do quite a bit with them. Even even Thriller Fest, the Thriller Writers, International Thriller Writers organization, which I’m now a member of a great honor in my view. But they have writing courses online where you can submit and they have about, I dunno, 10 really.

Authors like when I took the course that had me child among them and he was critiquing work and looking at your work online and you can really advance your craft by taking some of these virtual courses and they’re pretty good value for money without having to even travel to New York.

So that’s something I highly recommend.

Stephen: There we’re back. We’re back. Talk about that conference anyway.

Ken: Yeah. So I was saying that international Thriller Writers has this great online training program that they

Stephen: Technical issues, we’ll get this edited as best as possible. So we sound like we’re jumping all over place.

I don’t, You were saying something about conferences and I, Sorry, I don’t remember. It threw me off when we.

Ken: Gosh, it was probably really profound and it’s lost to humanity now

Stephen: all the time. But we all gotta put writing and change our profession. Now, here

Ken: I am, recording from my Canadian igloo and there are probably some technical difficulties.

I’ll put, I’ll put my my Recording on a dog sled and get it to you at some point, but there you go. Yeah. No, I I think probably what I was talking about was we were trying to find value for money in these conferences, and I was saying you, and you were talking about there are some that are virtual and you feel that there’s value in those.

And I have to agree, I’ve been to several of those as well. You can’t beat the in person stuff. I was saying one of my favorite organizations, the International Thriller Writers has put a lot of energy into nurturing newbie writers. And they have a great online writing course where you get top level authors usually about 10 of them.

And the leach explore one aspect of the writing journey, and they’ll write about it. They’ll do. They’ll have a prepared program, but you can you can also ask them questions and they’re very generous with their their insights and costs you a bit of money, but not nearly as much as flying to New York for a conference.

And you have this for all time on your hard drive so you can refer back to it. So I’ve done that and I got a lot of really useful insights.

Stephen: And like you said, you, there’s lots of things different conferences do, and you met your publisher. That’s one thing. The workshops are definitely another, but the in person, just going to the bar and hanging out sometimes gets you insights, gets you knowledge, gets you friendships that can lead places.

It I highly recommend if you’re going to a. Take full advantage of it. Do a pitch war if they offer it. Yeah. Talk to publishers. Check out other authors, sign up for newsletters, attend the workshops, go to the after hours goofy stuff because basically maximize your money in time.

Ken: ab Absolutely. Which can be a stretch for some some writers, and I put myself among them are introverts in the main right. You have to. To do marketing, you have to break out of that and to meet people at a bar and all of that stuff. You find once you do it and once you start talking to people about writing it’s great.

One of the con courses I was at at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association dealt with marketing and it was all about, everyone went into that thing going, Oh geez, I gonna hate this because it’s durable. What the speaker said was, You’re not, You don’t look at marketing that way.

You look at it, what makes you excited about your book, and when you talk about what gets you excited about your book, it’s infectious and people will will respond to that. And you realize at that point you’re not marketing you’re just. Sharing your excitement and it makes a big difference.

And it was, that was kinda like one of those times when the penny dropped and say, Okay, that I can understand.

Stephen: Yeah. I always had the thought if I’m writing a book, it’s because I want other people to read it. I want people to enjoy it. Yes, I will get pleasure out of them enjoying it. And that’s why it’s motivated me to do it.

But if I don’t get people to read it and they don’t hear about. So what’s the point of writing then? It’s like being in a band and making music. You make music cause you want people to listen to it. But you gotta get it out there somehow. So I think marketing just has a bad connotation for us when it doesn’t need to be.

Ken: Yeah. I totally agree. The problem though, is it’s like hurting introverts it’s a very difficult thing to do. . Yes. Once. Once you get over that fact and as you say, the whole purpose of writing is to share it, so you gotta figure out, all right, put your big boy pants on and learn how to share your enthusiasm for your product.

Stephen: Yep. So Ken, we’ve had some difficulties. Sorry, I don’t know what was going on with all that, but before we go and I’ll try and edit this so we sound like we know what we’re talking about, so that’ll be good . But do you have any last minute advice for new authors?

Ken: Seat in pants, stare at screen.

Repeat daily. I’m not one of these writers that says you have to write every day. I’m more of a five day. Because that was my work pattern when I, unless I was covering a big story. But be professional, treat it as a job and really just put your seat in the pants, do your research and and let your imagination run free.

I think it great. It’s the thought I once thought when I was about 15 or no, 15. When I was about 23 or 24 that I should write a novel, I realized I didn’t know enough about life to even attempt such a thing. I think you can start writing at any point in your life. It’s never too late or too early, but you may not have as much success early as you might think you do.

But we all have life experiences and. Color those into creating wonderful characters. So that’s where journalism is a great gift. And, but there are any number of life experiences that would work well in

Stephen: fiction writing. Great. Appreciate that. So Ken, it’s been great talking to you. Good afternoon discussion for writers and about your book, and I wanna wish you luck on that.

I’ll let you know when this goes live and we’ll. Links in the show note to your website and to the book for everybody.

Ken: Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. Ken mcqueen.com. M a c q u E n. That’s someone told me that’s a great writer’s name, Ken McQueen. I said yeah it’s mine. And John D.

McDonald was already taken and Allister McClain was already taken. So I

Stephen: keep. I joke that I should have made my pseudonym Stephen Ace because it’s just one better than Stephen King , but I thought that was a way, little presumptuous. All right. You have a great day, Ken. I’ve

Ken: really enjoyed this.

Steven, you’re a great interviewer and thank you and very relaxing.

Stephen: Great. Had a good time.

Before turning to fiction, Ken MacQueen spent 15 years as Vancouver bureau chief for Maclean’s, Canada’s newsmagazine, winning multiple National Magazine Awards and nominations. He travelled the world writing features and breaking news for the magazine, and previously for two national news agencies. He has written extensively on crime, politics, disasters, both natural and man-made—and, being Canadian, on the shifting fortunes of Queen Elizabeth II and her clan. All of this is potential fodder for future fiction, though the Queen as action hero seems unlikely. MacQueen covered nine Olympic Games and drew the athletic prowess of Jake Ockham, his protagonist, from tracking elite rowers in training and on podiums in Athens, Beijing and London. Hero Haters, set in the Pacific Northwest and rural Pennsylvania, is his debut thriller. He and his wife divide their time between North Vancouver and British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast.

Ken also wanted to pass along the link for the writer’s police academy.

https://kenmcqueen.com

Alright, so Hero Haters is the book and we’ll talk about conferences for the second half, the author half.

Stephen: All right. And I like to keep things casual, so if we go off on a tangent a little bit, that’s. Great with that. All right, so finally, after a few mishaps with technology I wanna welcome Ken McQueen to discovered wordsmiths today. Ken, how are you

Ken: doing? I’m doing great. Just had my book launched last night I might be a little fuzzy, but uh, I’m doing well.

Stephen: Good. Great. We’ll get into the book, we’ll talk about that. Before we do tell us a little bit about yourself. Some things you like, where you live, and some things you like to do outside of writing.

Ken: Ah, live in North Vancouver, British Columbia. I’m looking out over Barard Inlet right now, watching some freighters go by.

And what we like to do here is here and on the coastal part of. British Columbia as walk along the Pacific do some kayaking when we’re not, when I’m not writing, and just enjoying the moderate temperatures of British Columbia after years of living in Ottawa where it was extreme

Stephen: Got it. Yeah. I’m in Ohio, which has very frequently changing weather right below Lake Erie. Yes. And today it’s very mild and nice, but we’re supposed to get rain tonight. We’ll see.

Ken: So do you get the lake effect snow come winter, spring?

Stephen: Not so much. I’m just a little south of that. Lucky you.

Yeah. If I go north a little bit. But it’s really cool in the winter sometimes when it gets, like the last couple years really cold, you go up to Lake Erie and you see all the frozen waves and the piers are all frozen over and it’s really cool looking. It is. It looks pretty

Ken: freaky actually.

Yes. Otherworldly,

Stephen: yes. Inspiration for some story . Yeah, exactly. All right. Ken, why, tell us why you wanted to start writing.

Ken: Actually writing is what paid for part of this house. . I’ve been a journalist, I was a journalist for many decades before before turning to fiction. And I covered.

Any number of things. I worked for two National Wire services in Canada, and then for the last 15 years when I was a working journalist, I worked for McLean’s, which is our equivalent of Timer Newsweek. So that that sort of gave me the keys to the kingdom. I could travel all over the world, cover major events and nine Olympic games and whatnot.

Nice. So yeah, so it was fun. And then I retired. I took early retirement because I thought let’s try something a little fresh and different and not very fresh because I still ended up writing. It’s just that now now I make

Stephen: stuff up . So that’s admitting you didn’t make stuff up before. That’s good.

Ken: That is exactly do, and you know what I gotta say? That whole fake news thing really gets up my nose really. I had potentially millions of readers I was a writer for a national organizations. And plus, trust me, you’d get called out if you were making stuff up. I checked double check, verified, and anyone who attempted to accuse me of fake news usually got a bit of a reprimand for me because everything I did was recorded and confirmed.

Stephen: Which people I mean off on a tangent here, but I think people don’t want to listen and understand that purposefully they want to make their claims and their beliefs, even though it’s completely refuted and not true. I think that’s a definite problem we have with News . It is definitely, it’s just a, it’s a very inconvenient when they.

Ken: Facts and reality that they don’t like. So it’s a very easy way to dismiss something, but it’s a cheap way of doing it. Not very effective in my

Stephen: view. So I’ve talked to some other people that started in journalism and news articles and things and moved into writing fiction even though they’re way different.

Do you feel you had a good basis of learning to write and how to write, et cetera from that to move into your fiction, even though they’re vastly different ways of writing?

Ken: That’s actually, Steven, that’s quite a profound insight on your part because I thought I knew a lot about writing and I did.

Obviously, it paid me very well and got me a access to a old manner of people. But then now on my bookshelf, I have a whole book, a series of books on learning to write novels and fiction. And I did realize it’s quite an education actually to Go from writing. My longest magazine piece was probably about 19,000 words or so, quite long.

But my book is 81,000 words and there’s a whole arc series of arcs. But I would say I had to do a lot of research to learn how to make stuff up, which is weird, but it’s very,

Stephen: Nice. Yeah, I could see that. I can, I could see how being a journalist helps you more than to move into fiction than to start as a fiction writer and moving into journalism.

I, I think it’s easier going one way. Yes.

Ken: I I still root my stories in a lot of a lot of fact it gives me confidence, and when you have confidence, it gives you the voice that you need when you’re writing. Concept of voice is a very difficult thing to define, but it’s essential.

You have to have this confidence. So let’s talk a bit about that book, it’s called Hero Haters. Tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to write this particular book. I’ve been fascinated by heroes for a long time. We create them in the news business.

Often, but the ones that I was interested in for this were everyday heroes. People who were thrown into a circumstance. It might be a burning building, it might be somebody flailing in the ocean. It could be a car crash. Any case where a regular person puts themselves at risk to rescue a stranger. And I thought what makes those heroes?

What do they do? And I’ve actually researched that quite a bit and talked to people about it when I was a reporter, but also just doing academic studies and so forth. And people have been asked to explain why they did what they did. Like why would you risk your butt to Rescue someone. And most honestly, they say, I don’t know.

I just did it. And so that’s just a glorious act of selflessness. And those were the sorts of heroes I wanted to explore in this book. But as admirable as that is, as a thriller writer, I wanted to turn the concept on his head, on its head and say, So what would happen if people didn’t love a hero? In fact, what would happen if they were trying to kill off a.

So that’s where my book, the germ of my book was as a ex reporter myself, I made my protagonist a reporter, just because we’re all heroes in our own imagination. So his job was to vet heroes for something called the Sedwick Medallion. It was a creation of mine and he was a.

Robert Barron back in the turn of the last century, and he funded this legacy that still lives on today and awards these very respected medallions and financial aid for heroes. So I thought alright, so my guy will vet these as a reporter, former reporter, because he has the ability to do those research.

But then what would happen his heroes started disappear. And all of a sudden the heroes that he confirmed and respected are vanishing and he becomes a suspect. So he has to not only try to save these good people, but he also has to clear his name. And that’s basically the genesis of the

Stephen: book.

Nice. Now, is this a standalone or part of a series?

Ken: In my optimistic Frame of mind. It is I’m six chapters into the next book with my same protagonist. So we’ll see. His name is Jake Aum and he’s based in at a small weekly newspaper now in Aberdeen, Washington. And yes, I would like to see him as a hero.

I think he has the the legs to carry on for a little while, but we’ll see. Nice.

Stephen: It sounds like when you started, you just planned on the one book, but had thoughts for more stories, more series. Is that accurate? Yes. I always, I’d always constructed it with a few unanswered questions and backstory that I would fill in later should Lord willing, there’d be another publishing contract, but you never know.

Ken: But I. I thought it had legs, but I’m not much of a planner, so I started this book Hero Haters without really knowing how it was gonna end. And then it evolved slowly as I went

Stephen: along. Okay. I just ask cuz that’s kinda what start with me, my. My fantasy series, I had an idea for a story that turned into, now I’ve got an idea for seven stories

Ok. It seems like that’s how it goes. Your brain works a little better than mine. I’m, I’ve got an idea for the next one, but I never looked beyond that. I don’t

know about better, maybe differently, but, Okay. , But please tell me, you said his name was Jason or Jake Aum. Please tell me, you have a scene in there where he shaves with Jake AUMs.

Razor , Sorry.

Ken: Yes. Actually there is a scene where he does explain that name of his, which is his family name spelled a little differently than the O C A M, but yes. So actually the AUMs Razor does play a part in this story, .

Stephen: Okay. Sorry, I like corny dad joke type puns and stuff. Now you also said you made him a journalist because you know that, and that’s interesting cuz how many Stephen King stories is the protagonist a writer?

He’s got writers in every other story he does just about. Yeah. So I think, and it’s a good, that type of protagonist I think could lead to a series and adventures, things can happen and he’s pursuing a different story or

Ken: whatever. E Exactly. And he’s still working part-time for this Sedwick fund.

So I’ll always move from from Pittsburgh to the West Coast to work for his family newspaper. He still vets some heroes for for the sedwick metal. So he’s got that going on the side too. So that gives him not only the reporting side, but the heroic side that I can play. Which gives me a lot of

Stephen: freedom.

Yeah. And you mentioned a publishing contract, but I take it, this is self-published right now, right?

Ken: No. My publisher is Wild Roads Press of New York State. Yeah. But it’s a one book contract and I hope if I sweet talk them along, they’ll they’ll renew it with a second book.

So we’ll just

have

Stephen: Nice. So has the first book been doing well, what it’s feedback from.

Ken: I’ve got some great reviews already on Good Reads, but it only actually hit the a release date yesterday oh. Okay. So it’s that’s why, as I said, I was a bit fuzzy this morning. Refreshments were surge last night at my launch

Stephen: party. Nice. Okay. Okay. Taking your book, if you had a choice, would you rather see this turned into a movie or a tv? Whoa.

Ken: You know what? I would have to go with a TV series because one of, one of the my favorite authors I have a couple of them that are former reporters like Michael Conley and his Harry Bosch series.

And John Sanford, of course, has written some wonderful books. He’s got some great characters, Virgil Flowers and so forth. They’ve both talked about how wonderful an apprenticeship journalism is, and I have to agree with him on that. You just, you run into so many characters as a reporter, you see the best of people’s lives and the worst of people’s lives.

And you can draw on a lot of that as you move forward

Stephen: in fiction. Nice. And would. When you think of TV series, do you think of old school back in the day, as starts a season in September and goes till spring or the new TV type series where it’s a limited run at just about any time of the

Ken: year?

I kinda like that streaming idea very much. It’s it works for me because I’ve enjoyed I’ve certainly enjoyed Harry Bosch. If you’ve seen the Bosch series. On prime, I guess that is. And yeah it’s a fabulous way of doing it. And you can get an arc, a very complex arc that you can’t get in a movie when it’s so terribly compressed.

But I think I’m probably getting a little ahead of myself when it comes to talking about

Stephen: that . But it is good to think that way too. Like you said, a TV series has different requirements for the story than a movie. if you write your stories, so they fit well with a TV series like Indiana Jones, the Raiders.

It was written kinda like the old serials where it goes highlight and stop that type of feel. So it’s it if your stories are already like, Could make it easier to make it a TV show. And there’s a lot of more choices

Ken: out there. I remember when I saw Indiana Jones, the first one in the movie theater, and it was just love at first sight and that it really did bring me back to my childhood and all those serials and series and the the wonderful I guess I’d call ’em the chapter endings that kept going on and on.

Oh my God, what’s gonna happen next Then? So I try to drag my reader through that sort of thing too. A lot of cliff hangers in the book.

Stephen: Nice. So do you consider your book more action oriented, thriller? What type?

Ken: I would call it a thriller as opposed to a mystery, because we know who who the bad person is.

Although my protagonist doesn’t know he’s in the dark. So I, I enjoy abusing. Poor protagonist, poor Jake. I put him through the mill, but the reader knows that there’s more going on than he realizes.

Stephen: Nice. And you mentioned Bosch and Virgil Flowers. So if people like those books and those characters, would you say that they’d like yours?

It’s very similar

Ken: in my dream, Steven. Yes, I would exactly say that. I love those those two writers. John Sanford is consistently brilliant. So is the Harry Bosch series and the Lincoln Lawyer Series. They’re both the excellent ones that I’ve enjoyed very much, and so those if I can emulate those I can’t hope to match their success probably.

But I certainly love, One of the things I really love is the mix that they’re both able to get. Very blood thirsty concepts from time to time. But there’s humor in them, especially in John Sanford. He’s got a great gift for humor and especially with the Virgil Flowers part of the series it’s just fun and it, and I like lightening the tension and the drama it makes.

I think if you have these little asides it. , it gives people a breather and then you can then mess with their head in the next chapter. .

Stephen: Absolutely. Okay, so where you live, which is like the other side of the continent from me. Do you have any favorite bookstores that you like to go to?

Ken: There’s one in North Vancouver. There, there’s a bunch. But there very few in North Vancouver that that I. That I see they’re just two are opening up and I don’t even know the names of them yet. So it’s an act of courage that they’re even opening bookstores in this day and age, but

Stephen: yes.

Nice. That’s good though. I like that. Yeah. There

Ken: are, of course, the chain stores. There is Chapters Indigo, which we have one in West Vancouver just down the road for me, and it’s a good one. But the little independence are it’s always a bit of. Struggle for them? I think so, yes.

Stephen: All right. Before we go and talk about some author stuff, which we’re going to talk about conferences, you just went to one.

If somebody came up to you and said, Hey Ken, I heard you wrote a book. Why should I get it and read it? What would you tell ’em?

Ken: Ah, that’s a very good question. I would say if you’re fascinated with heroes, if you’re fascinated with the question, Who am I when no one is looking and explore some of that.

I think that you might like this book. You, now you may have to put up with a little mayhem and murder, but there, there are some deeper aspects of heroism that I think you might find quite interesting. And so yes, I would say give it a shot for that reason to love.

Stephen: Great. Thank you.

Appreciate that. We’ll make sure there’s links in the show notes for people interested in the book. Thank you. Thanks for sharing.