Gifted Underachievers

Today, we’re profiling a wonderful project by Chris Bujold. Robot Dreams and Suburban Nightmares is “a cinematic coming-of age memoir told through the films that defined a generation, a life, and a childhood.”

Released just this week from Library Tales Publishing, the book is already zooming up the charts! And we are absolutely delighted to discuss Chris’s work and the meaning of movies in our own lives.

Here’s where to buy Robot Dreams and Suburban Nightmares:

* Online on Amazon or Barnes and Noble

* Through the publisher’s website, librarytalespublishing.com.

* Order it through your local independent bookstore.

Check out Chris’s Substack, House of Buj

Follow him on Instagram: Chris Bujold

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August can be crazy. Crazy busy. Crazy fun. Crazy social. Crazy vacation time.

And all that crazy can throw us out of our creative flow.

Pat and James are absolutely struggling to recapture the motivation and flow state they’d had with their creative work back in June, when summer was merely a babe in the woods.

To get back into creative work with momentum, Pat suggests focusing on space, time, and tools.

Question for Listeners:

How do you re-find your creative thread after an interruption?

For Further Exploration:

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Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

If you’ve been around writers, agents, and publishers for a while, you will be aware that ass-kissing, pandering, and sycophancy (call it what you will) are a feature of this harsh industry, where only a couple of hundred top agents can actually get good publishing deals, where a safe bet for publishers is a book that follows current trends, and where the exponential increase in people aspiring to publication creates a Hunger Games scenario in many writers’ minds.

Why not kiss ass? What do you have to lose?

Your credibility, for one. And the time you could have spent better building relationships in a more sustainable and fruitful way.

Your Gifted Underachievers discuss these other ways to create relationships with industry professionals. Although few of them require large amounts of money, they all take time and effort.

Questions for Listeners:

* Have you ever kissed ass hoping it would get your material read / seen / viewed?

* How did that work out for you?

* What else have you done to build industry relationships that’s yielded tangible results?

For Further Exploration:

Learn how to Sell Your Book Without Begging or Bragging: https://getaliteraryagent.com/sell-yourself-book-literary-agents/

Get the lowdown on Ben Shattuck, James’s new BFF (not): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Shattuck

The creative who LIKES pitching—Amber Petty:

Meet the writer who connected Pat with her agent: https://www.sharonharrigan.net/

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

If you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse. No cost, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

It’s easy to get mired down in the BS that comes with working in a creative field, whether it’s publishing, the TV and film industry, visual arts, crafts, comedy, or whatever realm you operate in.

Despite all that, we’re lucky to have an abiding interest that can see us through to the end of our lives. Creative work feeds our curiosities and provides meaning to both us creator and our audience. What could be better than that?

Questions for Listeners:

* How do you honour your creative work?

* Or if you don’t yet, how can you start?

For Further Exploration:

John O’Donohue: https://www.johnodonohue.com/

Anam Cara (source of the Work Blessing): https://www.johnodonohue.com/store

Pam Bustin: https://pambustin.com/

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

If you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse. No cost, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

As creatives we often rely on others for a great many things. As people with creative adjacent careers, we also rely on others for a great many things.

Ergo and therefore, it is all too easy to fall into and be trapped by the dysfunction of others.

And while we get good at preventing or short-circuiting dysfunctional processes, there is always a new one. Furthermore, if we depend on that other person (or organization) it can be VERY difficult to simply walk away. We also experience the business concept of the sunk cost fallacy because we don’t want to lose an opportunity or walk away from many hours of work.

What to do?

Well, the Gifted Underachievers have thoughts. Good ones.

Questions for Listeners:

* How can you avoid dysfunction in others?

* How can do you get out of a dysfunction trap?

* Do you miss red flags?

For Further Exploration:

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

If you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse. No cost, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

It could be worse.

Or so thinks James after receiving a relatively thoughtful letter from narrative to let him know he was not a finalist in their short fiction contest.

He is an optimist from a family of optimists.

However, he and Pat dive in with some solid insights as to whether or not the contest pathway is perhaps a better approach to getting our work out than the dark hole/deep wishing well of blind submissions.

Listener Questions:

* What is your contest update? Any wins, close calls.

* Let us know and we’ll feature you for a listener profile.

For Further Exploration:

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Guide to World Domination!

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

If you aren’t already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse! No spam, unsubscribe any time.

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

Joe Ponepinto’s current project is a fascinating Substack publication called Beyond Craft. Learn how and why Joe created this world, the challenges, the audience, and the point.

Bonus: a special offer to GU Listeners!

Check Joe out at: Beyond Craft

If you aren’t already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse! No spam, unsubscribe any time.

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

In this special episode of Gifted Underachievers, we are absolutely delighted to welcome Gifted Achiever Amber Petty to the GU Clubhouse. Amber is a writer/Weird Marketing Maven living in Los Angeles. She’s helped hundreds of students get bylines in places like Huffington Post, Business Insider, the Guardian, New York Times, and more. Plus, she’s grown a 6-figure business and 11,000-person newsletter by helping misfits make more money.

In her current programs Marketing for Misfits (eminently affordable!) and the Creative Control Club (free!), Amber is helping hundreds of creatives figure out how to grow their audience and market their work. We’re especially delighted by the Compliments Challenge, a truly painless (in fact, rewarding) way to expand your network and create opportunities.

Join us as we discover:

* How creative people can overcomplicate marketing by coming from a place of “I’m not good at this, and I hate it.”

* Why we “bland ourselves out” in our marketing and on social media, and how to stop

* What marketing really is at its core, and why creatives have all the skills we need to do it well

* The importance of allowing our identities and ourselves to evolve

* How to raise our own excitement about marketing, and why that matters

* The value of lighting up your creative brain first, THEN turning on your marketing brain

* How when we get even OK at marketing, we can build a solid audience that will appreciate ALL our creative work

* How having more control over our own marketing (rather than waiting for opportunities to be showcased by someone else) can result in life-changing income

Questions for Listeners:

* How do you feel about marketing?

* Are you finding a previous identity hampers your ability to share your work?

* What would actually feel good to you when sharing your creative work?

For Further Exploration:

Marketing for Misfits: https://www.skool.com/marketing-for-misfits-8832/about

Compliments Challenge: https://amber-petty.newzenler.com/courses/compliments0926/

Creative Control Club: https://amber-petty.newzenler.com/f/creativecontrol/

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! If you know a creative who needs solid, clear advice on marketing their work, Share This Post!

If you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse. No cost, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

An Underachieving Note: We’ve underachieved again. Summer is waning and\or peaking depending on whether you are going back to school or not. And we are, well, crazy busy with the details of life while fulfilling important family duties. And so, we bring you an incredible interview with the guy whose notebook is described as “off putting with serial killer vibes.” We love him. You love him. Here he is…

In this episode, Pat and James have a wide-ranging discussion with Gifted Achiever and author Richard Kelly Kemick. His most recent book—Hello, Horse—is a wonderfully unique collection of short stories that features a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above average number of dogs while exploring the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better or worse.

In a word, Richard is brilliant and funny (yes, I know, that was two words). As but a taste of the topics Pat and James explored with him:

* Pen or pencil?

* His writing and publishing process, which includes his fair share of rejections (something we all have experienced).

* The pleasure of working with a fabulous old-school editor.

* Moving up the rejection ladder.

* Can an arts community become too dependent on grants? And can funding abundance disconnect the artist from their audience?

* Our favorite authors and books.

* Why the writer/creator must work harder than the reader/viewer/audience.

* When applying for a grant, have an idea not an emotion.

* Rejection is just another step forward.

* Richard’s top five grant pitch tips.

* How being creative forces you out of yourself.

* There is no better life than the creative life.

Segment Questions:

* What do you believe the difference is between an idea and an emotion?

* What is your favorite book/movie/song/artwork?

* What are your five pitch tips?

Segment Links:

Richard’s Website:

https://richardkemick.com

Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kelly_Kemick

Hello, Horse on Amazon: https://a.co/d/7yy9yPm [Gifted Underachiever tip: Download a sample on Kindle, then after you discover Richard’s brilliance, purchase a copy at your local independent bookstore]

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com

There are lots of accusations of AI use in the arts—especially writing—based on both human detection and AI detection apps.

So many creatives are worried that they could get accused of using AI when they are not.

And those that publish or promote creative work are afraid that the creators they work with might be using AI.

The problem is, that neither or human senses nor the AI detection software being used is accurate. False positives and false negatives happen…a lot.

This is something we should all keep in mind when we hear the next high-profile accusation of AI use. There’s just too much room for errors that could permanently taint a creative person’s reputation.

Questions for Listeners

* Have you been falsely accused of AI use? If so, let us know. We’d love to hear from you!

* Is AI a feral baby?

Buy us a Coffee and Win a Book

Here in the GU Clubhouse, we’ve gleaned and gathered incredible wisdom from our creative guests, whom we fondly call the Gifted Achievers. We’re putting this wisdom into a series of handy guides so listeners can study how to make a good living doing what you love. Click the coffee cup below and you’re on the list! The first 20 coffee angels will get a free guide!

For Further Exploration

The most recent case: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/31/crime-novel-deal-collapses-questions-ai-jerry-falade-call-me-ill-hide-the-body

Thanks for listening to Gifted Underachievers! This post is public so feel free to share it.

If you’re not already a subscriber, we’d love to have you in the GU Clubhouse. No cost, no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit giftedunderachievers.substack.com