Latest / The Whitfield Report / TWR Monday | Transitioning from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing: A Conversation with Author Eric P. Bishop

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TWR Monday | Transitioning from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing: A Conversation with Author Eric P. Bishop · The Whitfield Report

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  Now broadcasting from the Next Gen. conservative studio in
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  sunny South Florida, bringing you the latest in politics,
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  current events and pop culture. This is the Whitfield report
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  with Sam Whitfield. Hey there folks, Welcome to the
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  Monday edition of The Whitfield Report.
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  I'm host Sam Whitfield, and joining us for the Monday
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  edition of the show is a return guest friend of the show.
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  Also one of my favorite authors, Eric P Bishop, author of The
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  Body Man and also author of the new political thriller novella.
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  Ransom Daughter, which is available now in paper.
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  Is it available? Actually, it's It's everywhere
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  now. The paperback is available
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  everywhere else, like Barnes and Noble and Target and all that
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  stuff. But mainly Amazon is where I
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  normally push people. It's.
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  Yeah, I and you know, I don't, I don't have a copy of the body
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  man in front of me, but I do have it on.
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  You know my Kindle here as well. So there you go.
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  Mine's over there. Mine's over that shoulder.
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  I think it it's got pushed back behind Ransom daughter.
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  Now it's got been relegated to the back seat.
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  You know, it's it's the older, you know, child, but this is,
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  you know, this is the the redheaded stepchild, the
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  redheaded stepchild now. So now I'm proud of it, it it's
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  the one that I worked really hard for and seven years after
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  writing my first novel, I finally got something published.
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  So I'm I'm very proud of that moment.
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  Yeah. So the the last time that you
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  know you were on, you were working with a small, you know,
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  publisher and you know you you told me that things have
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  changed. So you know just I don't want to
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  give away too much, but what you know what's been going on since
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  the last one we talked on here two years ago, so about a year,
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  a little more than a year ago now.
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  I guess it was a year over the summer I submitted breach of
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  trust, which was the follow up to the body Man.
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  Didn't hear anything for months. I mean I can't remember if it
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  was three or four months. It was sometime November ish.
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  I heard back from the publisher and to my surprise they did not
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  really like it or wanted to make a lot of changes, put it that
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  way. It wasn't really clear if I if
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  they wanted a full rewrite or whatever, which I know happens
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  in the publishing world, and I believed in the book.
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  I had a bunch of bunch of beta readers.
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  Some of those beta readers were really established authors, and
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  I was kind of at a loss that the publisher wasn't.
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  It needed editorial work, absolutely.
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  That's what I I need that help and I fully own that.
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  But the story I believed in, so I didn't really agree with the
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  publisher's viewpoint. And you know, I went back and
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  talked to some of the writers, you know, one one of my friends
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  writes with, you know, the biggest name in publishing and
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  basically agreed with me and said no, I don't agree.
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  I don't agree with that, with that finding.
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  And I said, well, so I kind of had two choices, either go back
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  and rewrite a book or make pretty dramatic changes to
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  please the publisher or just kindly tell them not going to
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  happen. So I went with, I went with The
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  Ladder. I was saying, hey, I appreciate
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  all you did with The Body Man, but I won't deliver.
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  I won't deliver a new book now. I won't redo this book.
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  So I had a parting ways. I got the rights back for the
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  breach of trust, which was good and but I didn't want to be one
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  of those. I didn't one of those people
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  that just said, well, it's my way or the highway and I I got
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  to be right if I wrote it. So I did put it aside for a
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  while just to say let me look at it again with fresh eyes, which
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  I looked at again really over the spring this year.
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  And you know, I think that was the right decision to to not go
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  back and rewrite it basically so.
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  How does that work necessarily with like, you know, pub
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  publishing contracts? Because I know, like in the
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  movie business, you know, just talking with some friends who
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  you know. Do some act, do some acting it.
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  It's really hard to, you know, get out of some of those
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  contracts. Yeah, I've heard the the legal
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  verbiage basically. And in the verbiage I had the
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  right the, the publisher had the right to reject the manuscript.
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  I had the right to say, tough, I'm not going to rewrite.
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  They can't make you write a new. Now what the publisher could
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  have done is said, I'm not going to release you and we're just
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  going to have a stalemate for indefinite period of time.
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  And they technically then would own the publishing rights to The
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  Body Man and two sequels. And I could just say forget you,
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  I'm not going to write 2 sequels, you've already got The
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  Body Man and we could have just parted that way.
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  I think we probably just both put our heels in the dirt,
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  pretty firm, and we were both adamant on our stance and
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  fortunately the publisher realized I wasn't going to spend
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  on that and they decided to just do the right thing and let me
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  out. Yeah.
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  Well, I I know from like listening to Jack Carr's
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  interview on Joe Rogan. I, you know, I think he said
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  this a few times. But Joe Rogan's like, you know,
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  how do you always, you know, write so many of of these books
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  every year? And I think Jack Carr something
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  like, well, because I have to, because Simon and Schuster makes
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  me write one book per year or something or something like
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  that. And I'm always like, man, that
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  that's. That's crazy that some of these
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  guys, you know, get mandated to, you know, write one book a year.
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  You know something well, and also too I would not compare
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  myself so I I don't know Jack's contract by any stretch, but I
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  guarantee you Jack's probably got a pretty good money stream.
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  And I guarantee Atria wants to keep Jack happy because they
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  probably make quite a lot of money off Jack's books.
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  Publishers always make more money than anybody else.
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  The author gets the least amount.
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  That's a trade secret, you know, it's not trade secrets.
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  So it's well known the authors get the least.
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  So that's a mutual relationship where they want to keep each
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  other happy. He wants to make money.
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  Atria wants him to deliver a book.
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  And I I've, you know, know Jack and I've seen a lot of his
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  interviews as well, and I don't believe he's had much editorial
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  feedback, negative feedback. When he submits his manuscripts,
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  they pretty much go with what he says.
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  And at someone at his level and skill set, I probably would let
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  him say whatever he wanted to say as well, so.
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  Yeah, well, given his given his experience, you know, just kind
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  of his story, you know, outside of being being an author too, I
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  mean he he's one of the few authors I I would say that I
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  could actually. Described as like an actual real
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  life resident badass, considering that he was, you
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  know actually in the SEAL teams. And it's funny because you know,
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  I I've actually always pictured him in the James Reese role, you
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  know, for his character. I know he always says that, you
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  know Chris Pratt. And I'm like, I mean I like
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  Chris Pratt. I still always see Jack's face
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  as James Reese whenever I read. The book.
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  I mean, that's not to say Chris Pratt did an amazing job in the
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  Terminal. I don't know if you had a chance
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  to watch that, but it's pretty good.
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  I actually. I've only seen it once and I
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  binged it the week it came out. I was invited to.
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  I was uninvited on a podcast. I think it was the, I think it
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  was the No Thrills Mitch Rat podcast.
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  And they were doing a breakdown of it and they asked me to do
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  the last two episodes, like give a commentary on my thoughts and
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  go through it. Yeah, So I had to watch, like, I
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  don't know how many episodes there were, 10-8.
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  I don't remember now. They were.
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  They were right, OK. I had to watch them all in like
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  3 or 4 nights. So I like had to double up every
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  night to watch them So. And I thought they were, you
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  know, they were departure from the book of course in some form,
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  but not dramatic departure. And I mean, I thought
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  considering it was Hollywood, I thought they did a really good
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  job, which I also think was due to the fact as well that Jack
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  was executive producer. He was involved with the
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  scripts. He was on set there was there
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  was one of the times I'd probably contacted him a little
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  bit more at that point. There was a time I texted him
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  and he was on set when I texted him.
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  And so I and I didn't skip the message for a little bit.
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  And so he messaged me back that he was on set.
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  And so I sent him back a text to say, hey, tell Chris Pratt
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  whatever it was, blah, blah, blah.
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  And so he immediately texts me back.
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  He's like, you just missed him. He's back, he's, he's back.
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  Shooting scene. I'm like.
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  That's that. That's cool.
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  Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, you
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  know, for for guys like him, obviously.
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  I think publishers do want to, you know, be pretty.
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  Differential towards, you know, him, especially with his, you
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  know, veteran status and the fact that he knows what he's
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  talking. But on the other hand, you know,
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  you have, you know, more average shows like you and I and the
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  publishers, you know, tend to kind of scoff and I think it's
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  interesting. And the other thing that I've
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  kind of noticed not just from talking to you, but a few other
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  people have actually said, well, I'm not getting really paid or
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  anything, so going. You know, independence seems to
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  be better. So you know, with with that,
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  what was your kind of experience doing that?
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  What did I get paid? No, no, I mean what was the
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  experience of self-publishing versus I will say this first of
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  all. So I, I, I we'll never talk
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  details and most people don't talk details.
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  A lot of people put out books and don't make you know, there's
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  people that pay money to put a book out.
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  I even with even though I went with a small publisher, I didn't
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  have to pay for anything any if I chose to market it, that was
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  on me. But I didn't have to pay for.
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  Like I I know someone that had to pay for their editorial.
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  I know people that have had to pay for cover lots of different
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  things. I my even though it was a small
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  publisher, I actually did get a book advance, which is unusual
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  for some small publishers, especially really small ones.
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  And I didn't have to pay a dime and I earned out my advance.
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  I don't know what took me about 8 weeks, 7 weeks, so so I sold
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  well, I no complaints, didn't make any tremendous amount of
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  money. I'd probably make more in two
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  weeks of my day of my nine to five job than I did.
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  You know, making a year year worth of book sales.
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  But but I still earned out and and and made the publisher good
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  money. I made a lot less because the
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  percentages are horrific. But I was just grateful that
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  with the first book you can fall flat on your face.
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  And I didn't fall fat on my face.
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  Now Fast forward to leaving the publisher and I'm going to take
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  a step back for a second. So like with Ransom Daughter,
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  because we talked a little bit about separating from the
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  publisher, I didn't want to self publish and I didn't want to
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  self publish because I don't believe there's a stigma to
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  self-publishing. I don't think that well a
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  traditional publisher means you're a really good author and
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  if you self publish you're a real crappy author.
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  Nothing could be further from the truth.
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  I know self published authors that I think write just as good
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  as the Jack cars or the Brad Thor's of the Stephen King's or
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  name your big name author. I've read some self published
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  people that write just as well. They just don't happen to get
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  that contract. They don't get that deal and
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  they decide that they don't want to forever be pitching to an
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  agent and trying to get a publisher and they self publish.
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  So I have a lot of respect for folks that do that.
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  Why I didn't want to self publish was I learned enough
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  about the industry and I knew how much work it was to self
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  publish. I wanted to write, not to become
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  a publisher. Because essentially if you self
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  publish, you're a publisher, you're some people do everything
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  themselves. They do the writing, the
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  editing, the cover design, the marketing, the layout, all of
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  it. That's where I think it's a
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  little bit more dangerous for folks.
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  Not to say there's anything wrong with doing it, but I think
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  when you put a product out, you have to put the best product
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  imaginable out and it's really difficult for one person to do
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  all those pieces well, my me being knowing I can't do that.
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  So when I decided to go down that path with Ransom Daughter,
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  I thought the only way I would do that is, first of all, I had
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  learned a lot since I written my first book in 2014.
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  So I had a lot of years under my belt of learning a lot of stuff.
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  And also I built up some good contacts so I could hire someone
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  to do a cover. I could hire someone to do
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  professional editing. I do do a lot of marketing
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  myself. I do pay for advertising for
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  Facebook and different things like that.
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  But I do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff on my own and I have
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  a business degree, so finance side of it, the setting up the
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  company because I went all out and just I set up a legal
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  entity. I I set up an imprint name for
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  the book. I hired a graphic designer to
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  create logos and all that kind of stuff.
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  So I I really tried to treat it as I'm creating a small
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  business. I'm creating a booking.
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  So but it's a lot of flipping work and for myself I will say
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  when you get to do all that what don't you do?
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  You don't write hardly at all. That's the hard part.
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  But with all the work I've put into Ransom Daughter and
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  everything I've got now in place, after about six months of
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  work, I'll be in a much better position for what comes out next
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  because I've kind of grade the, I've laid the groundwork.
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  So now I can step back on some of that and I can just pay
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  people to do their part and I canmore oversee it and then
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  focus more on writing. Well, you know, it's it's
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  interesting that you say that in regards to you know all the
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  marketing and all the stuff that you have to do.
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  You know, in regards to the book and I certainly kind of, you
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  know, in my experience, I noticed the same thing.
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  It does take a lot of work to, you know, do all the marketing
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  for the book. But kind of just speaking from
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  my perspective, you know, doing doing this podcast for the
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  report for as long as I've had to do, like you know, I've, I've
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  done like all the graphics and a lot of this stuff myself.
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  You know, from day one, especially since back when I
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  started podcasting, people still really didn't know what
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  podcasting was. It wasn't part of the, it wasn't
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  part of of the lexicon like it is now in doing self-publishing.
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  It was actually my grandfather, you know, who said, well, why
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  don't you, why don't you just self publish it?
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  You're already doing like all this marketing and whatnot for.
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  You know, your show, it'll just kind of be the same thing for
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  the, you know, for a book. And actually, it's kind of, it's
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  actually kind of nice now because one of the things that a
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  lot of podcasters do that I kind of find to be just a little bit
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  cringy in some parts is you have a lot of podcasters who will,
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  you know, whether or not they're doing a podcast or a live
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  stream. They'll have like a donation
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  link in like 5 or 6 times. And they said they'll go like
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  please, you know, please donate, kind of like the E begging
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  thing. And that's never really sat well
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  with me. So instead of, you know, a
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  couple times during the show, I'm like, hey, I have this book
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  here, you know, American Instinct, you can buy off Amazon
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  and, you know, so I'm selling a product.
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  You know, instead of just, you're promoting your products,
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  instead of promoting give me money just to listen to like me
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  talk or whatever. Yeah, and and people actually,
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  you know, like that more. So it's actually kind of, for me
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  at least, because I had the podcast before, it's a nice,
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  it's kind of been a nice vehicle to be like, hey, you guys know
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  me for this one thing, But you know, did you guys also know I
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  can write fiction? So, yeah, the other thing I'd
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  say real quick too on the marketing is, you know, the
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  market's changed. It used to be, you know,
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  probably now it's over 20 years or 20 plus years ago, you wrote
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  a book, you gave it to your publisher.
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  You know, you had an agent, you go, you gave it to your
• 17:21
  publisher or the agent gave it to the publisher and then your
• 17:23
  your job's kind of done. You might have to do some media
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  stuff, but you know, kind of low key, just go, go, go back to
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  your cabin, you know, with Theodore Kaczynski and write
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  your next book. Basically not the case anymore.
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  I don't care. And of course you you, you
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  brought car up and car is probably the pinnacle of the
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  examples. But even people that don't have
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  his clout or his brand, as a writer you're still out there.
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  The the publisher expects you to market expects you to go do
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  podcasts, expects you to do print media if you can get on TV
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  shows or I was on a radio show a couple days ago for Western
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  North Carolina. The publisher expects that and
• 18:05
  even even for you to go. I I have like very successful
• 18:09
  author friends that they pay out of their own pocket Facebook ads
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  for their books. You know so these are people
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  that make an income off writing that are still pouring money
• 18:20
  into the marketing themselves and they have a big name
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  publisher. So it it's it's just a different
• 18:27
  world now you have to be able to do all this and and some people
• 18:30
  do it better than others of course but it's expected and and
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  that's just if you have a a traditional publishing deal or
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  maybe maybe a small publisher. You know of course small
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  publisher as well. If you're self published you
• 18:42
  have zero options. If if unless you want to sell 10
• 18:46
  books you better get out there and you better learn one word
• 18:50
  hustle and if you don't like to hustle you better learn another
• 18:54
  word poverty. You're not going to sell any if
• 18:57
  you're trying to live off your book sales because you're going
• 18:59
  to not have a dime. Yeah I know.
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  And I mean anyway that that's kind of the other thing is like
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  you know I have AI have a freelance you know business
• 19:08
  which is kind of what I do you know day-to-day and you know and
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  and then the podcast and whatnot those are kind of like you know
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  in the book those are secondary you know and comes I'm hope I'm
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  hoping to get to the point where I can rely home you know it to
• 19:24
  the point where you know I can make it full time.
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  That would be awesome. But you know, in the meantime,
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  it. You know, suddenly you know it.
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  It does. And I have AI, have a
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  communications degree. So actually like marketing and
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  whatnot is what I do for a living, for a living item.
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  So you know it's so you know it's it's, you know, what I
• 19:47
  always tell people is if you're planning on, you know, writing
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  or making you know or doing, you know, film writing too, that's
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  even more of a case of you know you're not, you're not going to.
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  Be making $1,000,000. You know, your first book.
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  You know, unless you've got like a really good debut novel, and
• 20:08
  even then it's it's really who you know, you know in the
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  publishing world. And if you and if you don't know
• 20:15
  anyone, well, then you're kind of, you know, Sol.
• 20:19
  So that that term, starving artists, doesn't reflect on a
• 20:23
  few starving artists. That's telling you that if you
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  have an artistic type of a job or or or role you're trying to
• 20:30
  do, Yeah, most of them are starving, whether you're a
• 20:33
  writer, whether you're an actor, whether you're a painter, a
• 20:36
  musician. I'm friends with a very
• 20:38
  successful music band and my son likes to play music and I keep
• 20:42
  telling him that's great. I hope you're phenomenal at
• 20:46
  this, but you better learn a trade or you better go to
• 20:49
  college and get a degree. Because if you think that's
• 20:52
  going to, if you're just going to become the next big thing,
• 20:55
  musician wise, I believe you can.
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  And I tell him that because I do believe he can.
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  But you also have to pay the bills and well.
• 21:05
  Well, you know, it's funny you mention that because one of my
• 21:08
  favorite, you know, bands, The Police Sting was you know, Sting
• 21:14
  was a teacher before it became. You know, before he became a
• 21:19
  yeah. You know a a pop star and before
• 21:21
  he came. Pop star.
• 21:22
  Yeah, yeah. Friends with the band Shinedown.
• 21:24
  Eric Bass was, I think he did roofing.
• 21:26
  He did something construction, but I think it was roofing or
• 21:28
  framing. The bassist Barry Kurtz, who's
• 21:33
  the drummer, he had a biology degree, if I recall, and he was
• 21:37
  at work taking like water samples and ponds in
• 21:40
  Jacksonville before he got, you know, the drummer gig at
• 21:43
  Shinedown. So yeah, it's Gene Simmons from
• 21:47
  KISS. Taught English, you know what I
• 21:51
  mean? And the amazing thing is if
• 21:53
  you're around musicians, there's some really, really, really good
• 21:57
  musicians. And I go to them frequently at,
• 21:59
  like, local breweries and places like that.
• 22:02
  They're really good. They do a great job.
• 22:04
  They make 50 bucks a night, you know, on a gig.
• 22:07
  You can't provide on that. So it's so hard.
• 22:10
  And that's the same thing with writing.
• 22:12
  So I will say real quick, I've been doing a lot of research
• 22:14
  with it, especially with coming out with my own brand, just to
• 22:17
  look at numbers as much as because the publishing industry
• 22:20
  tries to keep them hidden so as much as you can.
• 22:22
  And some of the stuff came out when Penguin tried to merge.
• 22:26
  Was it Penguin and Simon and Schuster?
• 22:27
  I think it was Penguin and Simon Schuster tried to merge.
• 22:31
  I might have that wrong, but it was two of the big we were going
• 22:33
  to go from Big 5 to BIG4. So a lot of numbers came out
• 22:37
  with that. It was public knowledge at that
• 22:39
  point because of the antitrust case the government brought out
• 22:42
  against them. And so Publishers Weekly had a
• 22:45
  big article about it, which I just I sent to someone a couple
• 22:47
  days ago, Couple years old stats, But the stats are that 10
• 22:52
  books or fewer a year sell a million copies.
• 22:56
  Yeah, 500 books or fewer a year. Sell 100,000 copies.
• 23:01
  The average published author traditionally published not
• 23:05
  small, not not self published. The average traditionally
• 23:09
  published author sells 500 copies of a book in its
• 23:12
  lifetime. Yeah, and self published is 50
• 23:16
  or less. The average self published
• 23:17
  person will sell 50 or less. Now do some self published
• 23:20
  people sell 10/20/30 thousand? Yes, but there's a lot of self
• 23:25
  published people that sell two or three or four, you know, they
• 23:28
  just, they don't have any sales. So in in Amazon you anyone can
• 23:32
  upload a book. So those numbers get skewed
• 23:34
  pretty good because if you get hundreds of thousands of books
• 23:37
  uploaded a year, the numbers for sales aren't going to look very
• 23:41
  good. I could write about.
• 23:43
  So we're this is we're filming on a Monday night.
• 23:45
  I could 100% do my day job and for the evenings between now and
• 23:51
  if I didn't have my kids, I'm going to have my kids Wednesday
• 23:53
  through Friday. But say I didn't have my kids
• 23:54
  for a week, I could write a novella or short story between
• 23:58
  now and Friday. Wouldn't be good, wouldn't be
• 24:02
  something I should publish. But I could get it in a format
• 24:05
  and I have all the software and all the stuff to do everything.
• 24:08
  I could have it uploaded to Amazon by Saturday and print
• 24:11
  copies out on Monday of next week 100% I could do that.
• 24:16
  Should I do that 100%? No, but that's how easy the
• 24:21
  entry is to publishing now, which is a downside.
• 24:27
  But the upside, of course, is that publishers are so hard to
• 24:31
  get your foot in the door with them now that really good
• 24:33
  authors and people that are pretty good authors can still
• 24:37
  become published authors because of the Amazon and Ingram Spark
• 24:41
  and the this the systems that are out there.
• 24:45
  Yeah, no, it's it's funny that you it's funny that you
• 24:47
  mentioned that because I actually, I'm off my soapbox now
• 24:50
  too by the way, that's. I well, it it's actually kind
• 24:54
  of, you know, it's funny you mentioned this and I hope
• 24:58
  there's one person I'm not going to name who it is.
• 25:01
  There's one person who I hope is watching this because I I sold
• 25:06
  like around 40 copies of, you know, my book.
• 25:11
  Shadows of Deception in the first month which which was July
• 25:17
  and my friend was like, you only sold like 40 copies and and I'm
• 25:21
  like that's actually really good considering that you know there
• 25:25
  are some, there are some published authors with, you know
• 25:28
  way who actually have contracts and whatnot with way higher
• 25:32
  exposure than I do. They only have sold like 12, you
• 25:37
  know, copies or so maybe. So I have a friend who publishes
• 25:43
  overseas and they were telling me a couple years ago when we
• 25:46
  when we were really getting the the numbers, they were saying
• 25:48
  there are people that in Britain they have hard copies available
• 25:52
  at the British bookstores and they've sold like 50 hard copies
• 25:56
  of their book and they're they're well known author in
• 25:59
  Britain they're not some self published.
• 26:01
  This is a traditionally published person.
• 26:03
  They sell like, you know, copies.
• 26:05
  And that's not like, that's not a one in a million story either,
• 26:09
  unfortunately. So yeah, it's I've sold really
• 26:12
  well and I can't. I've sold.
• 26:14
  I haven't looked at my sales numbers for ransom.
• 26:16
  Daughter, it's been out not quite a week.
• 26:17
  It'll be a week tomorrow. One of my friends reached out a
• 26:20
  couple nights ago and he's like, what are the sales looking like?
• 26:22
  And I said, I don't know because what do you mean you don't know?
• 26:25
  I said, I'm not going to look. What do you mean you're not
• 26:28
  going to look? I said, well, I have a job to do
• 26:31
  right now. My job is to do stuff like this,
• 26:33
  promote the book ads, do all the stuff I do with social media,
• 26:37
  bringing people to help with that as well.
• 26:40
  And if I look at numbers, high probability I'll be disappointed
• 26:45
  because I expect my numbers to grow, especially after what Body
• 26:50
  Man did. I expect better numbers for the
• 26:52
  next one. And I expect, you know, and I
• 26:54
  don't want that in my head to then say, oh, do I need to
• 26:57
  change my marketing plan? Do I need to implement something
• 27:00
  else for at least for now, It's just like you know what the
• 27:03
  numbers are going to be the numbers.
• 27:05
  I'm not going to get lost in the I I know what my pre-orders were
• 27:10
  and my pre-orders exceeded what the average small or self self
• 27:17
  published person does in their lifetime for that book.
• 27:19
  So my pre-orders already had that knocked out.
• 27:22
  So I know I'm going to do OK and I'm grateful.
• 27:24
  I was. I was one of those pre.
• 27:28
  By the way it's it's funny because you sent me oh you're
• 27:32
  you're you're more than welcome. No it's funny because I remember
• 27:36
  you messed me and you know asked me would you like a a gallery, a
• 27:41
  gallery copy and it's funny because literally the day before
• 27:46
  you messed me at that I think was when I had pre-ordered your
• 27:51
  your book grand's and daughter so.
• 27:55
  And then I and then just a week ago it just popped up, you know
• 27:59
  on Amazon your pre-order you know, has arrived.
• 28:02
  So I'm like oh you know, that's cool right As I'm, you know I'm
• 28:06
  in the middle of writing like my second, you know, Nobel 2.
• 28:10
  That's one of the thing I wanted to ask you is why do one, Why do
• 28:15
  a novella this, you know, this time as opposed to a full blown,
• 28:20
  you know, novel. Part of it is what we talked
• 28:24
  about earlier. I expected Breach of Trust to
• 28:26
  come out. I actually thought it would come
• 28:27
  out probably early this year, you know a year ago when I was
• 28:32
  writing and editing and doing all that stuff.
• 28:35
  And so once it didn't and once I look, it wasn't going to in some
• 28:39
  ways I had egg on my face and I kind of learned a good lesson
• 28:42
  because I had been, I had been promoting breach of trust.
• 28:44
  I had been putting on social media when I finished the drafts
• 28:47
  and and I had a lot of people messaging me and saying I can't
• 28:50
  wait to read this book. I what you're what you're
• 28:52
  talking about sounds really cool.
• 28:54
  And then there I am left with, well, it might still come out,
• 28:59
  but it won't come out from that publisher.
• 29:02
  And so I kind of had to pivot at that point.
• 29:04
  So this was probably the end of 2022, early 2023.
• 29:09
  I just, like I said before, I wanted to take a step back
• 29:12
  because I didn't want my ego to say put breach of trust out.
• 29:16
  I wanted to put out a good book for my fans and also for myself.
• 29:20
  I don't want to put out something that I go back and
• 29:22
  look at later and go, man, you dialed that in.
• 29:24
  That was a crappy book. Not this.
• 29:26
  This is a book that mainly I write for myself and my kids.
• 29:29
  I want my kids to be able to read this book when they're
• 29:31
  older and be proud of me and to see the little Nuggets of stuff
• 29:34
  I put in there that nobody will ever understand.
• 29:37
  But that means something to my family or to my mom or me or my
• 29:40
  dad or my brother or sister or whoever.
• 29:43
  Family, friends, I I had a friend real quick.
• 29:46
  I did a signing this weekend and one of several of my friends
• 29:50
  came, which was really cool. I get great support from family
• 29:53
  and friends, but one of the guys that came is a guy I killed in
• 29:58
  the body man. And we can talk about that in a
• 29:59
  few minutes. And I had him sign the book,
• 30:02
  too. And I'm like, was you OK with
• 30:04
  my. So my buddy was like, are you OK
• 30:06
  with that? I'm like, dude, I could Mickey
• 30:08
  Mouse could sign this book. It would be fine with me.
• 30:10
  I don't have any ego issues with that.
• 30:12
  Please, it would be an honor. I actually filmed in with my
• 30:15
  phone signing the book and took a picture and all that.
• 30:18
  We had a blast. But but yeah, no.
• 30:21
  So getting to that point where all that's happened, what I had
• 30:25
  to do this year was decide, OK, what am I going to do with
• 30:29
  breach of trust? And I think I'm going to put it
• 30:32
  out is what my thought process was then.
• 30:35
  But that's a big undertaking and I don't know that I'm ready for
• 30:38
  it. So why don't I try to put out
• 30:40
  something else that's a little bit, not to say less to chew on.
• 30:45
  It's a great story and I'm proud of it.
• 30:47
  But it was a little bit less effort from an editorial
• 30:49
  standpoint. So if you publish a a novella or
• 30:54
  a full size novel, it's kind of the same work when it comes to
• 30:58
  marketing, cover design, all that kind of stuff that that
• 31:02
  doesn't change. Whether it's 100 pages or 400
• 31:05
  pages, you're going to have the same effort.
• 31:07
  But from an editorial standpoint, you're talking a big
• 31:10
  difference because I've probably read this book, I don't know, 20
• 31:15
  times since February, thereabouts.
• 31:19
  So reading 150 page book 20 times versus A4 to 450 page book
• 31:25
  20 times, that's a huge time difference.
• 31:28
  Oh yeah, So that was, that was one of the drivers of I said
• 31:32
  well, I've got this story and it was a story I'd actually wrote
• 31:36
  years ago. So the the quick version of this
• 31:39
  is that I wrote three books in the Troy Evans world, 2014
• 31:45
  through about 2017. I wrote 3 Troy Evans novels and
• 31:49
  I wasn't able to get a publisher or an agent.
• 31:52
  And I I pitched him, went to New York City.
• 31:54
  I had some good feedback, but I kept getting the doors closed in
• 31:57
  my face. Well, while I'm waiting for all
• 31:59
  those doors to slam in my face, I started writing novellas for
• 32:03
  Troy and the Omega Group. So I don't remember what year
• 32:06
  the first draft on this was done but it was it was a while back.
• 32:10
  So earlier this year before I wanted to pull the trigger on
• 32:14
  breach of trust, I said why don't I take something that I'm
• 32:17
  really proud of that I know is a good story and why don't I try
• 32:20
  to focus on putting that out first.
• 32:23
  So that's kind of how rants. So I went through all the stuff
• 32:26
  I had for Troy Evans and Ransom daughter was the one that kind
• 32:29
  of popped up me and said this story needs to come out.
• 32:32
  So I sent it to some friends and it was still and I said, and
• 32:35
  they're they're a lot of times friends will just tell you, hey
• 32:39
  you did a great job boy this is the best thing you've written
• 32:41
  and they're totally full of crap because you wrote a piece of
• 32:44
  crap. It's horrible.
• 32:46
  But they're friends and they don't want to be.
• 32:47
  They don't want to be the jerk that says you suck.
• 32:50
  I have friends that will tell me I suck.
• 32:52
  So they did. It as do I, which is great.
• 32:56
  That's what you need. You need thick skin, which no
• 32:58
  one really has totally thick skin, but you need to have
• 33:01
  someone put you in your place with writing or you're going to
• 33:04
  put out lousy things. So I gave it to several friends
• 33:07
  and I said, straight up truth. I need it.
• 33:09
  And they're all like, dude, publish this thing.
• 33:12
  And I'm like, that's what I need to hear.
• 33:14
  So then I sent it to some author friends who I know they're going
• 33:19
  to be nice in the author world with me because of our
• 33:21
  relationship, but one in particular.
• 33:24
  I made a deal with them years ago and he said I'll read
• 33:26
  anything you ever write, with one caveat.
• 33:29
  I will flat out tell you exactly what I think and if it's good
• 33:32
  enough to publish and everything, I won't miss any
• 33:34
  words with you. And I said I love you.
• 33:36
  That's what I need you to do for me.
• 33:38
  I don't need you to say great job, Eric.
• 33:40
  And then I put out a turd. So that person said the same
• 33:44
  thing and actually, well, that person's on the cover, so that's
• 33:49
  how good they liked it. They gave me my blurb, so, so
• 33:53
  that kind of let me know I was going down the right path.
• 33:55
  So then it was just rewrite, edit, get it fixed until I
• 33:59
  finally brought the professional editor in, which was in I think
• 34:02
  July, end of July, early August and I got it back within pretty
• 34:06
  quick period of time because it's a novella, so they could
• 34:08
  edit it fast. So yeah, so that was the path.
• 34:12
  Sorry, long answer, that was the path that coming out with that.
• 34:15
  And I also got my feet wet for starting my own thing.
• 34:18
  Now when I pivot for next year and come out with breach of
• 34:20
  trust, I've kind of done that leg work, you know?
• 34:24
  I know how to do the formatting. I bought formatting software and
• 34:26
  it's piece of cake. An intoxicated monkey could
• 34:30
  format a book with this with this software I have.
• 34:34
  What do you paid it when I did it.
• 34:36
  No, I'm kidding. What do you, what do you what do
• 34:38
  you use? Just out of curiosity, so
• 34:40
  there's two great ones to use. Vellum is 1, which I don't use.
• 34:44
  That's what. If you have a Mac, you want to
• 34:46
  use vellum. Vellum's really good.
• 34:48
  I use Atticus, which might have a monkey on its little software
• 34:53
  thing. This might have been where my
• 34:54
  brain said a drunk monkey or something monkey.
• 34:57
  But it took me about four hours the first night I worked on it.
• 35:00
  About two hours into it, I was starting to like, pull out what
• 35:03
  little hair I had left. Because I'm a man and I'm a
• 35:06
  fool, and I don't watch any of the tutorials.
• 35:08
  I just go whatever, hit buttons. I can figure this shit out in
• 35:12
  the world. This crap out.
• 35:14
  Yeah. No, no, I really.
• 35:16
  So I sit down and watch a couple of the videos.
• 35:18
  I'm like, oh, that's where that is.
• 35:20
  Oh, that makes that's how I can change the formatting.
• 35:23
  It is. Yeah.
• 35:23
  I'm an idiot. So.
• 35:26
  I I I'm going I'm going to get I think I'm going to get Atticus
• 35:31
  for for this second book that I'm 100 and at least it's
• 35:37
  changed in the last couple months $147.
• 35:40
  You have the it's not a one time, it is a one time payment.
• 35:45
  You can use it for any of your books so just and they do
• 35:49
  updates and everything. So it's I, I, I I've probably
• 35:53
  formatted that book now 10 different times and a bunch of
• 35:56
  different ways and I like it even more every time I've used
• 36:00
  it. So 100% I'll sing their praises.
• 36:02
  I'll advertise for them. I looked at, I looked at, I
• 36:05
  looked at vellum. And because, you know, I I, I
• 36:10
  actually, I have a Mac, OK? But you know, I, well, I have, I
• 36:15
  have Apple, everything. People you know and people in
• 36:18
  this podcast fan base give me a shit because I'm such a Big
• 36:22
  Apple nerd. But even Even so.
• 36:27
  You know, one of the things that, yeah, very nice I've I've
• 36:33
  still got a 14 pro, but I think that's what this is this is a 14
• 36:37
  pro. It's yeah this is this is not
• 36:39
  this is not the one that just I got this in like April.
• 36:42
  Yeah, no, I I got, I got this, I got this back in like August.
• 36:48
  So but. Yeah, I I looked at Vellum and I
• 36:54
  was like, yeah, for the price tag, I can get Roy nice
• 36:58
  headphones for the price of, yeah, I think Vellum's like 300
• 37:03
  plus maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:06
  It's like it's like 300. It's like, man, I can, I can get
• 37:09
  the Airpods Max for, you know, for the price of this well.
• 37:14
  And then I'd use the for my SO for my first book, for my first
• 37:20
  novella. I used the Kindle Cray software,
• 37:25
  which is just a free one. That, and I mean it, it worked
• 37:29
  fine. But there were a couple of
• 37:30
  different like formatting things like you can't split the book
• 37:34
  into parts like you can with, you know, with, you know, like
• 37:43
  like do a a part one, Part 2. Like, like, yeah, OK.
• 37:47
  Yeah, you you can't you can't do that in the, in the in the
• 37:52
  Kindle Cray. Not a big problem because of
• 37:54
  this was just the first you know because this was just the first
• 37:59
  novel. I wanted to see if if this would
• 38:01
  sell, you know before I invested any in any software.
• 38:05
  But you know, now, now I do know that I'll I think, I definitely
• 38:09
  think I'll get Atticus. Yeah, we can talk offline about
• 38:14
  it too. Reach out to me and we'll talk
• 38:15
  offline. I'll kind of give you some some
• 38:16
  pointers on. I'd be glad to spend some time
• 38:18
  with you. But yeah, I I plan on using it
• 38:22
  for the two books coming out next year.
• 38:24
  I'll be working on that early next year to format the first
• 38:27
  one I'm sure. But yeah, and it's something
• 38:30
  that you can, you can definitely pay someone to format.
• 38:33
  It's not super expensive, but it's not like cheap cheap
• 38:37
  either. And literally to, at least for
• 38:39
  me, my thought process. If you spend 150 bucks on a
• 38:43
  software and you have it for life, I can edit.
• 38:46
  I can fully get the book in the format I want in in less than a
• 38:50
  day. You know, like a Saturday or a
• 38:52
  couple evenings. Piece of cake.
• 38:55
  Why pay one couple 100 bucks or whatever to do that?
• 38:59
  Plus, I like the. I like the control side of it
• 39:03
  that I get to go in there and decide, hey, this is what my
• 39:06
  headers are going to look like. This is where I'm going to, you
• 39:09
  know you got to get to just choose your layout, and it has
• 39:11
  multiple options for layout as well.
• 39:14
  It's not just a. Right layout A, Layout B.
• 39:17
  You have like 20 or 30 layout options that I've even found and
• 39:21
  there might be more of them on there.
• 39:23
  One of one of the things though, you know, getting back to the
• 39:26
  just the general novel format, I remember one of one of my
• 39:31
  friends, so I. I kind of ran a like a store arc
• 39:36
  for my show, for my for my novella series about like 10
• 39:41
  years ago. I've kind of had this thing
• 39:43
  clicking in my brain for the past 10 years.
• 39:46
  And then I I went off to college.
• 39:48
  So it took a bit of a back burner because, you know, with
• 39:52
  all, with all the writing I had to do in college, especially as
• 39:56
  an English major, not a lot of time to free write.
• 40:00
  Actually, you know, you're right.
• 40:02
  You write a lot of essays and then your brain is just fried
• 40:05
  from doing all that, so you know.
• 40:09
  But when I when I finally, you know, when I was finally free of
• 40:15
  college, so to speak, and could find time to go back, I I
• 40:23
  actually pitched the outline to a friend, to a friend of mine,
• 40:27
  and they were like, well, why doesn't this need to be a novel?
• 40:30
  Why not just do like a novella or a series of like short
• 40:34
  stories? Nobody.
• 40:39
  Nobody really. Now this is going for like a 25
• 40:42
  year old, but he said, you know, nobody really write, nobody
• 40:45
  really reads like these, you know, 5-6 hundred page, you
• 40:51
  know, novels. And I said well, and I said well
• 40:54
  I do. And he said well yeah, but
• 40:56
  you're a, you're a book nerd. But he said most, most people
• 41:00
  just generally don't have, you know, time.
• 41:03
  So I was like, well, that's so I kind of, I kind of pitched it,
• 41:07
  you know, would you rather I write like a full blown novel or
• 41:11
  kind of do a, a novella kind of doing like market research.
• 41:14
  And a lot of people were like, yeah, no, I I would, I would
• 41:18
  read like a shorter, you know, novel, which is kind of a a
• 41:21
  novel is. So that was kind of what I ended
• 41:25
  up doing. And I think it's funny because
• 41:31
  my book is only like I think like 136 pages if I'm not.
• 41:39
  And it's funny because there are people who are like, oh, I'll
• 41:42
  blow through this in, you know, one weekend and then and I'm
• 41:47
  like, I'm like, so did you finish it?
• 41:49
  And they're like and this is like 2 weeks later and they're
• 41:52
  like, no, I'm, I just got really busy.
• 41:54
  I I'm, I'm halfway through it. But I still haven't, you know,
• 41:58
  finished it. And I'm like, and you were and
• 42:00
  you were the people that gave me shit for it, you know, the
• 42:03
  length being too short. So.
• 42:05
  Right, right. I just can't find them to be
• 42:08
  funny. I like the format for it.
• 42:10
  I had that question. I've done obviously a bunch of
• 42:11
  podcasts the last couple months gearing up for the book coming
• 42:14
  out. And I'm busy and I'm busy by
• 42:19
  choice. So it's not a complaint.
• 42:21
  I yeah, I'm on the go a lot. I'm, I mean, I was home
• 42:25
  yesterday. I was home Sunday.
• 42:28
  And I I actually didn't end up leaving.
• 42:30
  I was thinking I wouldn't even going to leave the house.
• 42:31
  And I'm like I need to go hiking or something and I'm like, you
• 42:34
  know, it's cool out. I haven't golfed in three months
• 42:36
  because I live in the South. So I threw my golf clubs in the
• 42:38
  car, went out by myself. I literally played.
• 42:42
  There's a small 9 hole course here in my town.
• 42:45
  It's not executive, it's got par fives and everything, but it's
• 42:48
  not super long. I played it.
• 42:50
  I walked it. Now you have a push cart.
• 42:52
  I'm like an old man. I've got a push cart.
• 42:53
  I don't carry it. My bag behind my back.
• 42:56
  But I don't drive a car either. I got a pull cart or push cart,
• 42:58
  whatever you want to call it, Man.
• 43:00
  I played that hour and 20 minutes.
• 43:02
  I shot like 6 over par. I haven't played in three
• 43:04
  months. And I was just kind of like,
• 43:07
  yes, man, I'm living the dream here.
• 43:08
  It was, It was, it was cool. I had a sweater with me.
• 43:12
  I didn't need it, but I almost needed it.
• 43:15
  But yeah, I've been at the the weekend before.
• 43:16
  I had my kids weekend before that.
• 43:18
  I was down in Florida. I went and saw Shinedown.
• 43:21
  Next weekend I have a book event following weekend.
• 43:23
  After that, my son and I are going to Vegas to see you too.
• 43:27
  Oh, nice. Then I have another thing and
• 43:30
  then we go to Connecticut. Yeah, it's just yeah, those are
• 43:33
  nice. Until I went and bought the
• 43:34
  flight finally like a couple weeks ago.
• 43:36
  And then I looked at hotels and I'm just like kid, this is your
• 43:41
  Christmas present for the next 5 years.
• 43:43
  I was like, holy credit. The concert tickets were the
• 43:46
  cheap thing, unfortunately. But really, I I I was.
• 43:51
  Shocked, my brain was telling me Vegas, it'll be super cheap
• 43:54
  flight. I can go stay at a cheapy cheapy
• 43:56
  hotel. I don't know what's going on
• 43:59
  that weekend besides the concert, but they are apparently
• 44:03
  charging premium. Or I'm an idiot because I look.
• 44:06
  I mean, I looked everywhere. Expedia.
• 44:07
  I looked everything, but yeah. I I I won't be able to cover
• 44:14
  that with book sales, probably. I'll just say that I'll need to
• 44:16
  dip into some nine to five paycheck money.
• 44:20
  Yeah, yeah. No, that's, you know, that's the
• 44:24
  reason. But now I'm taking to see that
• 44:26
  You 2 with The Sphere. He his first concert when he was
• 44:30
  10, I took him to see The Joshua Tree in Louisville, KY And so
• 44:34
  that was his first music experience.
• 44:35
  And I was. I'm a die Hard you 2.
• 44:39
  Favorite band of my life. So I've seen him a bunch.
• 44:42
  And that was just an amazing concert.
• 44:43
  And so this summer when we were looking at concerts and I've
• 44:47
  taken, you know, since I know Shinedown, I've taken to seen
• 44:49
  Shinedown shows. I took him to see Guns N' Roses
• 44:52
  a couple months ago. He's my parents.
• 44:55
  Didn't take me to concerts, so I won't go the full list.
• 44:58
  But I took him to YouTube, took him to The Rolling Stones shoot.
• 45:04
  We did Garth Brooks. We've done the Eagles.
• 45:08
  I mean, it's like Bon Jovi. We did Bon Jovi.
• 45:12
  Floor seats. It was a.
• 45:14
  Little pricey too. Their fucking floor was like but
• 45:19
  but I want those memories with him that we can go out there and
• 45:22
  do that and he'll, you know, years from now he'll be able to
• 45:25
  instead of saying, yeah, my dad sucked, We never did anything,
• 45:27
  but at least I expected to say my dad took me to see Bon Jovi.
• 45:31
  You too. Guns and Roses, I'm definitely
• 45:34
  proud of you. For you know, for making sure
• 45:37
  that your boy knows all the classics too.
• 45:40
  So my ex-wife would be happy I'm taking him to Vegas.
• 45:42
  I don't know if she knows yet. I think she knows.
• 45:44
  I guess she's going to find out. But yeah, well, I'm not letting
• 45:48
  him roam off on me. I told him I have to actually
• 45:50
  work one of the days. So I'm like, we're just chilling
• 45:52
  in the hotel. He's like, I can't go out.
• 45:54
  I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going out exploring.
• 45:57
  You're 16 years old. I I don't want the court talking
• 46:00
  to me when I get back. I was like, Nope, you're with
• 46:02
  me. Yeah, well, you know.
• 46:06
  Well, you know, at least at least he knows who you know, you
• 46:08
  two and some of these other, you know, bands are.
• 46:12
  So he does. Not he's not the traditional 16
• 46:16
  year old. He doesn't.
• 46:17
  He's not on his phone, he's not on social media, he doesn't like
• 46:21
  modern music and he basically on a frequent basis says Dad.
• 46:26
  You grew up in the 80s, the 80s rocked this.
• 46:30
  Decade sucks. I wish.
• 46:32
  I grew up in the 80s. So he loves classic rock.
• 46:36
  He's, he just bought himself a leather jacket.
• 46:39
  I finally saw it today for the first time.
• 46:40
  He got it a couple days ago when he was with his mom and got a
• 46:43
  leather jacket and he's got, he's got his, he's got, I bought
• 46:46
  him some aviators for Christmas. So he's got Tom Cruise aviator,
• 46:49
  so he's, you know, looks like a little stud basically.
• 46:52
  Yeah, my my, my ex, my ex-girlfriend towards the end of
• 46:58
  our towards in our relationship she she's like she's like you
• 47:02
  listen to all this like old man music and I'm like and I'm like,
• 47:06
  OK, I'm, I'm like, OK, we're we're finished.
• 47:10
  No, I mean that that that wasn't the death blow, but it was kind
• 47:14
  of like one of the. It's a good, it's a good reason
• 47:17
  to put a nail in the coffin. Put it that way, if you start,
• 47:19
  if you start dogging real good music, it was, it was kind of
• 47:23
  like, I don't know if I want to have kids with you, so.
• 47:27
  Exactly. But my my son up really simple.
• 47:32
  Just stay single for a long time if you like.
• 47:34
  If you think you like to travel, go do a lot of traveling,
• 47:37
  especially before your mid 30s or so.
• 47:40
  Go out and see as much as you can.
• 47:42
  I I did travel a lot actually, before kids, and I traveled some
• 47:45
  during kids. I'm traveling now more after
• 47:50
  divorce and all that, only because I have every other
• 47:53
  weekend free. So like.
• 47:56
  Last last Thanksgiving, actually, I didn't have my kids.
• 47:59
  It was, it was the first time since the divorce and
• 48:01
  everything. I didn't have them for like 10
• 48:03
  days straight at Thanksgiving. And I knew it ahead of time.
• 48:06
  It wasn't like a shock. So I was like, man, what the
• 48:09
  heck am I going to do? And I said, well, maybe I'll go,
• 48:11
  I don't want to stay home. I'll be depressed.
• 48:14
  Maybe I'll go up to a Connecticut visit.
• 48:15
  Family and I've got amazing friends.
• 48:18
  So my friends around here were like, hey, come spend the
• 48:21
  holiday with us. And they've done that for
• 48:22
  Christmas before. I always have my kids on
• 48:24
  Christmas, but. It alternates years, whether I
• 48:27
  have them in the morning and the week before Christmas or do I
• 48:30
  have them the afternoon and the week after Christmas.
• 48:33
  So that kind of switches every year.
• 48:34
  And so I've had friends that have had me come stay at their
• 48:36
  house for breakfast in the morning since I don't know, my
• 48:38
  kids the afternoon, but but. So for last year with
• 48:43
  Thanksgiving, my buddy that's the security director for
• 48:46
  Shinedown was like, well, why don't you come over and why
• 48:48
  don't you go to a show in the UK?
• 48:49
  And I'm like, I can't come to a show in the UK He's like, yeah,
• 48:53
  maybe you can. So.
• 48:54
  I start looking around and wouldn't you know it's actually
• 48:58
  less expensive to fly to Europe on Thanksgiving Day because you
• 49:02
  know most Americans want to see their family not fly to Europe
• 49:05
  for Thanksgiving. So I guess I it was the night
• 49:09
  before I boarded a flight the night before out of Atlanta.
• 49:12
  I landed in London Thanksgiving morning.
• 49:14
  I took a 2 hour train at the Cardiff Wales and by.
• 49:17
  That evening I was out with John and Barry and we're having an
• 49:21
  Italian dinner on Thanksgiving Day in Cardiff and then going
• 49:24
  out drinking after that. That's Thanksgiving ever.
• 49:28
  It was so much better than a family Thanksgiving.
• 49:30
  I love my family, but I know what I'll.
• 49:32
  Be doing next year when I don't have.
• 49:34
  I have them this year. So we'll have a family
• 49:36
  Thanksgiving next year. I've already told one of my
• 49:38
  friends I'll be international for Thanksgiving.
• 49:41
  I don't know which country. I don't know where we're going.
• 49:43
  I don't know if you'll be around.
• 49:44
  If not, I'll find someone else. But.
• 49:46
  I'm out of there next year for Thanksgiving so that's that's
• 49:50
  that's that's pretty nice I. Find a woman between now and
• 49:54
  Thanksgiving next year. But she'll just have to
• 49:56
  understand that no, I'm not going to be up for Thanksgiving.
• 49:59
  You can come if you want, but yeah, you know you're well,
• 50:03
  you're single again, so just enjoy that for for a while, so.
• 50:08
  So for any of your listeners that have been through the
• 50:10
  horrific thing that is separation and divorce, and I'm
• 50:13
  not, I'm joking about it, but it's not anything jokable.
• 50:16
  It's it's very much the hard one of the hardest things you'll go
• 50:20
  through in life. But I had some great advice when
• 50:22
  I went through it through a writing friend actually.
• 50:25
  And he said, hey, do me a favor once your divorce finalizes.
• 50:30
  And and this is a pretty true statement, guys are normally
• 50:33
  fairly desperate losers when it comes to not doing, Especially
• 50:38
  if you've been married for a while, it's hard to be alone.
• 50:41
  It's I'll I'll tell you, it's really difficult to, you know,
• 50:44
  not have a wife or not have kids anymore.
• 50:46
  Half the time it's just it's it's messes with you.
• 50:49
  But some of my buddies said once everything finalizes, spend 2
• 50:53
  years, go find who Eric Bishop is, Write some novels, travel.
• 50:59
  Don't run into the arms of another woman.
• 51:02
  And so I was like, I don't know about that, but I'll try it.
• 51:07
  Yeah, I didn't go on a date for 2 1/2 years until after my
• 51:11
  divorce finalized is this summer is when I actually delved into
• 51:14
  the world of dating and dating apps.
• 51:16
  Which I must say, shit shit show is the I can just wait to
• 51:23
  describe that world. But.
• 51:26
  I'm I was married for 18 years. So, like, when I got married
• 51:30
  there wasn't the cell phones were like clunky.
• 51:34
  You know you didn't flights and do online banking and find a a a
• 51:38
  woman that might not be a woman. You know, 'cause who knows
• 51:41
  what's really on the app? You didn't have any of that.
• 51:44
  So now flip side of technology and having all that.
• 51:47
  I'm like, isn't there like a traditional way to meet someone?
• 51:50
  And apparently not. But so yeah, I'm.
• 51:54
  Happily single at this point. I'm gladly meet someone at some
• 51:57
  point, but I kind of like doing my own thing, you know?
• 52:00
  I like now last like, Thanksgiving last year.
• 52:04
  If I want to go to Europe for Thanksgiving, I don't have to
• 52:06
  ask anybody. I don't have to get permission.
• 52:08
  I don't have to be like, where'd you go?
• 52:10
  I just do whatever it is I feel is the right thing to do and I
• 52:15
  have to deal with the consequences of it, not anything
• 52:18
  else. Yeah, I mean it's and it's
• 52:22
  totally not book. Related but life related, no.
• 52:26
  Well I mean it it's it's also it's it's funny that you mention
• 52:31
  that because kind of you know getting kind of getting back to
• 52:34
  the book one one of the one of the kind of the one of the
• 52:39
  negative reviews I actually got on my on one iBooks is there
• 52:43
  aren't enough. There aren't enough you know
• 52:46
  female character characters in in this thing and I'm like well
• 52:50
  I'm writing out I'm writing out special OPS and I know there are
• 52:55
  there. I know there are there are a few
• 52:57
  women but you know, not that many.
• 53:00
  And besides what am I? What am I going to do just make
• 53:04
  one up out of out of thin air And you know, I, I don't know.
• 53:10
  It's character creation is always, you know, weird.
• 53:15
  I I find, yeah. Oh, I absolutely.
• 53:17
  So I so that that segue is good to what will hopefully come out
• 53:21
  a year from now, so sometime next spring or summer, the
• 53:25
  sequel to The Body Man, which we can't see over there in the
• 53:28
  corner very well, a breach of trust will come out, which
• 53:31
  really does start off pretty much right after The Body Man
• 53:34
  ends story wise and then next fall or winter of 2024.
• 53:42
  Not the sequel, but the next story for Troy and the Omega
• 53:46
  Group will come out which happens to have a female special
• 53:51
  forces character actually. So I I dive into that world with
• 53:55
  that story that's that's that's going to be a fun that's that'll
• 54:00
  be a fun 1 to get out that one. That one has some work still to
• 54:03
  do to it. So I'll probably be working on
• 54:04
  that in the spring to get that to the editor by summer to, you
• 54:08
  know, play this whole game again of you know.
• 54:12
  Putting something out but not game.
• 54:13
  But you know the whole rhythm roll.
• 54:15
  Yeah, I might have asked you this question on on Facebook but
• 54:19
  I'm not sure if I did. Are the are the Is the body man
• 54:25
  tied to the Troy Evans universe or or or vice versa?
• 54:30
  Or have you not figured? Is it?
• 54:35
  I will say that you know if you read the final, if you read the
• 54:40
  final chapter. You know chapter 30 at the Is
• 54:45
  it? I'm 30.
• 54:46
  Hold on. I've got it right here.
• 54:50
  Yeah. Read the epilogue.
• 54:52
  Read the epilogue in Ransom Daughter.
• 54:53
  Probably what I gave you a while ago.
• 54:55
  Didn't have what I'm what I'm referring to now, but OK, yeah,
• 54:58
  I I haven't. I will say this.
• 55:01
  They exist in the same universe. These characters are are they
• 55:05
  are separate stories. So the Body Man story is
• 55:08
  separate from Troy Evans and the Omega Group.
• 55:11
  But to to to not be coy and shy, Absolutely.
• 55:17
  I'm going to set it up so that at some point down the line,
• 55:21
  we're going to have a reason for all these fun people to go do
• 55:24
  some crazy stuff together. Yeah, that that's kind of,
• 55:28
  that's kind of what I I kind of gleam that that was the case.
• 55:32
  But I also know some other authors who just do completely
• 55:36
  different, you know. Right.
• 55:39
  And I I'm kind of doing the same thing but you are I'm kind of
• 55:44
  building like I'm kind of building a universe through kind
• 55:47
  of multiple novella series to to manage two is kind of like you
• 55:53
  know that that's a lot of extra work so.
• 55:59
  It's not for the thing at heart, for sure.
• 56:01
  And Speaking of female characters too, one of those
• 56:03
  stories that I need to get back to, it's probably going to take
• 56:06
  me another year before I even. Entertain diving back into it is
• 56:11
  Merci, one of the characters from The Body Man, the assassin
• 56:15
  I was, I was actually going to ask where you got the
• 56:19
  inspiration for her from. You know, the inspiration was I
• 56:24
  wanted obviously a strong female character.
• 56:28
  I wanted an assassin and I when I wrote that, I wrote that.
• 56:33
  I wrote the first draft of The Body Man and she was in it, you
• 56:36
  know, that was probably like 2018.
• 56:38
  It was a long time ago. I didn't know her back story.
• 56:42
  I didn't really know I she was fully developed with what you
• 56:46
  read for her in The Body Man, but it was only what was in The
• 56:48
  Body Man. There wasn't like this huge.
• 56:52
  This is how she got to that point.
• 56:53
  I didn't even know what it was in my head.
• 56:56
  It wasn't until I was separated actually.
• 57:01
  And. Right before I got divorced is
• 57:03
  when I started writing her novel, which I've got several
• 57:10
  different working titles on. And I don't even remember what I
• 57:12
  last put on the manuscript, but I wrote about a third of her
• 57:16
  own, Stand Alone, and it's tied into the Supreme Court, and it's
• 57:20
  like, there's a lot of cool stuff in that story.
• 57:23
  And then I was about a third done with that book.
• 57:27
  And then I got the contract offer for The Body Man and two
• 57:30
  sequels. So as soon as I got that, which
• 57:33
  was in 2021, early 2021, I put everything else into the, you
• 57:40
  know, onto the hard drive and just saved.
• 57:42
  So I've not revisited Back to Mercy's World, but at some
• 57:47
  point, At some point I will. And I will divulge here for the
• 57:55
  first time on a podcast that. You know, high probability she
• 57:59
  might have a little something to do and breach of trust.
• 58:02
  So she's definitely gave her a little, gave her a little job to
• 58:05
  do you know keep keep her active.
• 58:09
  Interesting. Yeah.
• 58:10
  Yeah. Because when it.
• 58:12
  Well, I don't know why, but like, so the first time I've
• 58:15
  read the The Body Man and her character came up, I I kept
• 58:20
  picturing Heidi Klum in my head for some.
• 58:23
  Oh, interesting reason. And then I read and then I
• 58:26
  reread the book and I'm like, oh, her description isn't like
• 58:30
  that at all. I don't know what, I don't know
• 58:32
  what I was thinking. But but it's it's interesting
• 58:35
  how you typecast different characters in your head.
• 58:39
  Absolutely. What if?
• 58:42
  If. Because you've read The Body Man
• 58:43
  more recently than I have, but if you recall, or if I recall
• 58:47
  correctly. She's allowed to leave in the
• 58:50
  body, man. Where you think with after what
• 58:52
  she did, what what it was you think he was, you know, killed
• 58:56
  or arrested. She's not.
• 58:57
  She's let to go, but with one thing.
• 58:59
  Leave and don't ever come back, ever see you again.
• 59:02
  Then it's game on. So how does she factor under
• 59:06
  breach of trust? Well, she's needed.
• 59:11
  Her specialty is needed for something is all I'll say.
• 59:14
  So she kind of has a, you know, I and I I know most authors hate
• 59:19
  when you know, when you compare their work, but she seems very
• 59:23
  much like almost a female John Wick type character of sorts
• 59:29
  that. Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad
• 59:33
  analogy for her. So yeah, she's.
• 59:36
  She's really good at which and what was really cool which makes
• 59:39
  me now say I'll do these things and I talk about this and I
• 59:42
  haven't talked about this in a long time.
• 59:43
  Her. Now I want to go back to her
• 59:44
  story because what I tried to build with her is why would you
• 59:49
  have this very attractive, very intelligent woman who kills
• 59:53
  people for a living. What what would be And you know
• 59:56
  there's a lot of ways you can then go well this might lead to
• 59:58
  that that might. So I came up with a back story
• 1:00:00
  for her. Now it's a couple years ago.
• 1:00:03
  And I think I gave her the perfect reason of why she would
• 1:00:06
  go on this murderous rampage at times.
• 1:00:11
  And so, yeah, now I want to get out there and get that I can't
• 1:00:14
  move her up on the list because I've already committed to other
• 1:00:17
  things. But.
• 1:00:18
  And that's the cool thing about doing this so real quick for you
• 1:00:22
  and your listeners too, of like, where do I move forward or what
• 1:00:24
  do I do? Because we talked offline about
• 1:00:27
  it a little bit. You know, I'm always careful
• 1:00:29
  what I'll say online into some of the details, but I haven't
• 1:00:33
  abandoned the publishing industry or traditional
• 1:00:35
  publishing in any any, any way shape or form.
• 1:00:38
  I have a couple projects that are in various forms that I will
• 1:00:42
  pitch to agents and hopefully the agent will be able to get a
• 1:00:44
  publisher for. So I kind of like to do a hybrid
• 1:00:46
  approach going forward. So I have, I have a bunch of
• 1:00:49
  completed stories and a bunch that can be completed with you
• 1:00:53
  know, a couple months of work. So what I think I'll do is a
• 1:00:56
  couple of the projects, I'll go traditional.
• 1:00:59
  And then now that I've created this brand, I've got this
• 1:01:02
  imprint, I've got the groundwork for it.
• 1:01:04
  I can take some of these stories that have been, you know, just
• 1:01:08
  languishing on my hard drive, get a professional editor, get
• 1:01:12
  them cleaned up, and I can put them out into my own brand.
• 1:01:15
  Even if they don't get as many sales as I might have dreamed
• 1:01:19
  they would have when I wrote them a couple years ago, I can
• 1:01:22
  still give those characters an outlet that they're not just
• 1:01:25
  sitting in a hard drive forever. And that's with the caveat that
• 1:01:28
  I'm not going to put anything out unless I think it deserves
• 1:01:30
  to go out. And I think it could go out by a
• 1:01:33
  big publisher. But the way publishing works
• 1:01:36
  right now, it's really difficult to get your foot in the door.
• 1:01:40
  And the time I, I, I, I, I know some folks that have got
• 1:01:43
  publishing deals in the last couple months, their books don't
• 1:01:46
  come out till 2025. So they have a completed book.
• 1:01:51
  Totally done. Manuscript's done.
• 1:01:53
  Publishers approved it. They're going to do edits, but
• 1:01:55
  you know, two years from now is when they'll be talking about
• 1:01:59
  that story, which is now what I'm doing, talking about the
• 1:02:01
  body man. Two years later, I'm talking
• 1:02:03
  about the body Man, but I've also got something else out now
• 1:02:06
  as well. So, yeah, that it's just there's
• 1:02:09
  such a delay with the publishing industry that it makes it
• 1:02:11
  really, really challenging. I mean that's kind of the other
• 1:02:15
  thing too is like one of the things that I've kind of you
• 1:02:20
  know, run into as well we kind of talked about this.
• 1:02:25
  Off air and I have talked about this a little bit on, you know,
• 1:02:29
  social media. But one of the things in my
• 1:02:33
  book, and this is kind of one thing I'm curious not too, is
• 1:02:38
  how much do your plots rely on, not really rely, but how much do
• 1:02:45
  they integrate real world events being in the political thriller?
• 1:02:50
  Genre because like for me, I'll I'll give you an example.
• 1:02:55
  One of the things is it's not a major plot point at least not
• 1:03:00
  yet in my series. But there is a there is a, you
• 1:03:06
  know, a female protagonist I've written that works for the
• 1:03:11
  Mossad, and she's, she's Israeli and at one point my main.
• 1:03:19
  She and my main, you know, protagonist, they have a, you
• 1:03:22
  know, a history together and at one point my character is going
• 1:03:30
  to go over to Israel and maybe do some stuff.
• 1:03:34
  Now what's interesting about that is I planned that out way
• 1:03:42
  before the Israeli Palestine conflict.
• 1:03:47
  That was this most recent 1 1/2. And now I'm kind of in the
• 1:03:54
  position where we're getting all this new information.
• 1:03:58
  And I'm kind of like, well, you know, how do I integrate this?
• 1:04:03
  Or you know, or do I even address what's going on
• 1:04:08
  currently in the new? So you know, I'm still writing,
• 1:04:12
  but I might need to make a few changes just so it's more
• 1:04:15
  reflective. Yeah, it's it's a hard one, Sam,
• 1:04:19
  only because unless your book is coming out right when the
• 1:04:23
  conflict is taking place, like you know right now, unless
• 1:04:26
  you've got a book coming out right now, things are going to
• 1:04:29
  change in the next couple months.
• 1:04:30
  So I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:04:33
  I don't think I'd give my my advice wouldn't be to make too
• 1:04:36
  many changes based on real because you know a lot of the
• 1:04:40
  authors do like you know the Brad doors Vince Flynn did it.
• 1:04:45
  Kyle Mills took over for him where they, you know, they kind
• 1:04:48
  of seem like their stories are coming out you know six months
• 1:04:52
  before news breaks that has a similar thing going on.
• 1:04:56
  Yeah I. And I think that's a good thing
• 1:05:00
  and it's cool. And how you do that is you're
• 1:05:03
  very well tuned into the global news not watching necessarily
• 1:05:08
  the US run mainstream media because weather and it's not a
• 1:05:13
  knock at CNN or Fox or any of them, they're all very selective
• 1:05:21
  in what? Gets put You don't have an idea
• 1:05:23
  what's going on in this world. If you watch CNN, Fox News,
• 1:05:27
  MSNBCCBS Evening News, you have a little bit of a slice of
• 1:05:31
  what's happening, sure, but you have a you have an idea of
• 1:05:34
  what's going on globally. No way in God's green earth.
• 1:05:37
  You have an idea what's going on globally.
• 1:05:38
  You know, you you, you get a filtered version of what they.
• 1:05:41
  And if you watch most of the newscasts, whether they're
• 1:05:43
  skewed, conservative or liberal, they all got the same general
• 1:05:47
  terms that are being used because their news is all being
• 1:05:51
  filtered through a few sources, basically.
• 1:05:54
  Yeah, that that's and and believe me, I don't, you know
• 1:05:57
  that's one of the things that you know as a podcaster you know
• 1:06:02
  this is, you know this does a lot of.
• 1:06:05
  You know, pop culture stuff in society.
• 1:06:07
  But I also do for politics. And one of the things I've tried
• 1:06:10
  to do is kind of stay away from, you know, the mainstream US
• 1:06:15
  narrative just because everyone, you know, does that.
• 1:06:18
  They are kind of, you know, dime a dozen podcasts out there.
• 1:06:23
  And then also, you know, as an avid reader of of thrillers and
• 1:06:28
  whatnot, you know, so much of you.
• 1:06:30
  I mean, I I hate to say it. I'm not really that shocked that
• 1:06:34
  like. I'm not surprised that Hamas
• 1:06:37
  would attack, you know, a concert or anything like like
• 1:06:42
  that. There.
• 1:06:43
  There are lots of people who are like, I can't believe they would
• 1:06:45
  do this. And I'm like, well, you know, as
• 1:06:47
  much as I hate to say it, I'm not at all this.
• 1:06:52
  The daycare. Look at the daycare.
• 1:06:54
  They try to keep that, You know, it's not God as publicized as it
• 1:06:57
  should be. But look what they do to the
• 1:06:58
  daycare of the kids. I mean it's headed and butchered
• 1:07:02
  babies and toddlers and yeah, they and that's one of the
• 1:07:06
  things that I don't. I mean, man, there's a lot of
• 1:07:07
  stuff coming. You know, you got people
• 1:07:09
  protesting in our country, anti Israel, anti Palestine or Hamas
• 1:07:14
  or or or or Palestinians. But I'll tell you what it's It's
• 1:07:20
  hard not to at least speak the truth when it comes to what's
• 1:07:23
  happening over there and any group that attacks daycares,
• 1:07:31
  concert goers that I believe, if I recall it is a concert for
• 1:07:35
  peace. You know, it wasn't a concert
• 1:07:37
  for Ghosts, Slay, the Palestinians or any other ethnic
• 1:07:41
  groups. It was a peaceful concert.
• 1:07:45
  So you attack them, You know, that says a lot about your
• 1:07:49
  organization. Now people, of course, then will
• 1:07:51
  say, well, there's a moral equivalency.
• 1:07:54
  Israel can't attack Palestine or can't invade Palestine because
• 1:08:01
  innocent Palestinians will die. And and that's a really
• 1:08:05
  difficult conversation and I'm sure it's difficult for people
• 1:08:08
  that are, you know, in the IDF that are in the military because
• 1:08:13
  Hamas will use human Shields. Yeah.
• 1:08:16
  Does that mean you let all the Hamas people live and you just
• 1:08:20
  don't do anything? Because if you let all those
• 1:08:22
  characters continue on and just back off, what are they going to
• 1:08:27
  do in a couple months? They're going to come hit the
• 1:08:29
  next concert or they're going to do that.
• 1:08:31
  So yeah, it's, I'm glad I'm not in the leadership and have to
• 1:08:34
  make those decisions. But I don't see that there's a
• 1:08:37
  moral equivalency when it comes to what the Israelites or what
• 1:08:43
  Israel's doing versus what Hamas did to start this particular.
• 1:08:47
  And the conflict is nothing new. This is, you know, anyone that's
• 1:08:50
  like, Oh my goodness, there's a conflict in Israel and stuff.
• 1:08:52
  It's like, have you not paid attention to all the bombings
• 1:08:55
  the last 10 years? Yeah, this, this is just bigger
• 1:08:59
  now because it was such a large incursion And there was, it was
• 1:09:03
  so mascot, I mean, I don't even know that they've updated it,
• 1:09:06
  but last I heard was like at least 1500 to 2000 people.
• 1:09:10
  And that's not including all the people that are still missing.
• 1:09:13
  Yeah, well, you know, it's. Yeah, I mean it's as as a human
• 1:09:21
  being it's, you know, it's it's horrible to watch all all of
• 1:09:25
  that, you know, and as someone who does commentary, it's
• 1:09:29
  horrible to watch all that. I mean on the flip side though,
• 1:09:33
  as as an author I am looking at this stuff and being like hmm
• 1:09:40
  well this. As horrible as it is, this would
• 1:09:43
  be an instinct Ave. to explore maybe in a future.
• 1:09:48
  Story or work it in in in some well, plus your fiction is
• 1:09:55
  probably in some most fiction obviously is is grounded in some
• 1:09:59
  form of reality so that those real world stories that are
• 1:10:02
  happening in you know impact what you write in the future.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah, definitely. Well, and I'm also I describe my
• 1:10:13
  writing style as kind of like. This might not be the perfect
• 1:10:19
  description, but I don't know if you ever played DND the the
• 1:10:24
  tabletop. I know about it, but I've not
• 1:10:26
  played it. But I mean the way, so the way
• 1:10:30
  you play Dungeon, Dungeons and Dragons.
• 1:10:33
  I've only done it once, but there's a lot of writing
• 1:10:36
  involved in it because you you basically you you play through a
• 1:10:40
  narrative there. There's a, you have a.
• 1:10:44
  You have a guy who kind of you know sets the stage for your
• 1:10:48
  narrative and then you kind of role play that scenario out
• 1:10:53
  through you know Dyson, you know through lying Dyson what not.
• 1:10:58
  I bring that up because I kind of do the same.
• 1:11:02
  Not exactly, but I kind of do the same thing, at least in my
• 1:11:05
  writing, where I'm like where I'm like how would.
• 1:11:11
  How would my president in my fictional universe respond to
• 1:11:17
  this based on, you know, what we're seeing?
• 1:11:22
  I mean, it's it's really interesting how you can kind of
• 1:11:24
  game, you know, how you can kind of come up with different plots
• 1:11:30
  in your, you know, universe. Oh yeah, no, that's to me,
• 1:11:34
  that's the fun part. I've gotten that question
• 1:11:36
  before. How do you come up with
• 1:11:38
  characters? How do you come up with the
• 1:11:39
  plot? For me, I come up with a central
• 1:11:42
  idea. So for Ransom daughter, my kids
• 1:11:46
  were a lot younger when I wrote that first draft.
• 1:11:48
  But my thought was as a dad and I don't distinguish that son
• 1:11:53
  versus a daughter. But there's more of a protection
• 1:11:58
  dads do for their daughters than I think, even their sons.
• 1:12:01
  I think mothers are very protective of their sons.
• 1:12:03
  I think that's just innate in our DNA.
• 1:12:06
  And I know gender stuff has gotten a little strange here in
• 1:12:10
  the last couple years, but innately how history has worked
• 1:12:13
  for thousands of years, this is how that worked too.
• 1:12:18
  And so, you know, once you have a daughter, lots of things go
• 1:12:22
  through your head. But one of the things when I was
• 1:12:24
  thinking of story ideas is what would I do if someone kidnapped
• 1:12:28
  my daughter? I'd move heaven and earth to get
• 1:12:32
  her back, irregardless of laws or anything else, to be honest
• 1:12:36
  with you at least that would be my thought process.
• 1:12:38
  Maybe common sense and morality or whatever else might kick in
• 1:12:42
  and draw me back. But you know, so for this story
• 1:12:45
  idea, I thought, well, what if you had a very wealthy father?
• 1:12:49
  Money is not the issue, but his child is kidnapped and offered
• 1:12:53
  for ransom. What would he do?
• 1:12:55
  Well, you're my first thought is, will he pay it?
• 1:12:58
  Absolutely. He doesn't care about the money.
• 1:13:00
  He's got upwards to close to a billion dollars, €20 million
• 1:13:06
  drop in the bucket. Give me my daughter back.
• 1:13:09
  What if they don't give her back though?
• 1:13:11
  What if you pay that money and they they kill her, or they send
• 1:13:14
  her back in pieces, or whatever? These are butchers maybe that
• 1:13:17
  have your daughter. So as a dad, what do you do?
• 1:13:20
  You do whatever you have to do. He just happens to have access
• 1:13:24
  to this group that's referred to as the Omega Group through a
• 1:13:27
  friend of his that he met through West Point that he was a
• 1:13:30
  roommate with. And he makes that call to say I
• 1:13:33
  need my daughter back, do whatever it takes.
• 1:13:36
  And then it of course has to go a little because it's not
• 1:13:40
  exactly what you think's going. It's not exactly what the title
• 1:13:44
  says. There is a ransom, daughter, but
• 1:13:46
  that's not the only thing going on here.
• 1:13:48
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:13:49
  I mean, I, you know, I've. I've read it.
• 1:13:51
  I I did think that was a very interesting premise.
• 1:13:54
  You know though too for for the book, one one of the things that
• 1:13:59
  I I thought was just about the the body.
• 1:14:02
  The body man is. And I don't know if you had any
• 1:14:05
  intention of doing this whatsoever, but it kind of
• 1:14:11
  seemed like you were talking about the shadow government or
• 1:14:16
  kind of the deep state in our quotes.
• 1:14:20
  As we're in the body, man. Almost.
• 1:14:24
  If I'm not mistaken, before a kind became a popular term.
• 1:14:33
  Yeah, it's the body man kind of fed off of an earlier thing I
• 1:14:38
  had written that was so the first it fed from Troy Evans
• 1:14:44
  universe. So real quick, taking a step
• 1:14:46
  back was the first book I wrote in 2014 was called Vengeance and
• 1:14:51
  it was Troy Evans story and he was on a path of vengeance.
• 1:14:55
  Well, to write that story instead of writing the next
• 1:14:58
  story of what happened after Vengeance, why he was on a path
• 1:15:01
  of Vengeance, which started actually at 911, why he joined
• 1:15:05
  the military, what happened that kind of got him in this
• 1:15:08
  headspace. And then for the third book I
• 1:15:12
  wrote in that series, went back to real time.
• 1:15:14
  What did he do after? That's where it kind of went
• 1:15:16
  back. So I kind of like did Star Wars
• 1:15:18
  out of order, 'cause I didn't know what I was doing.
• 1:15:22
  But I planned out seven books, and one of them basically is
• 1:15:26
  about a shadow government. I didn't write that one, but I
• 1:15:30
  plotted it out. And so it was interesting.
• 1:15:32
  And I've told this story on a few other podcasts.
• 1:15:35
  When I was pitching vengeance in New York City at at Thriller
• 1:15:38
  Fest, one of the agents, you know, I was telling him about
• 1:15:42
  the story and in the course of, you know, the 5 minutes you
• 1:15:46
  have, you don't have very long to talk to this person.
• 1:15:48
  In the course of that, I said, well I've got three that I'm
• 1:15:51
  working on. I think at the time I had
• 1:15:53
  already written the 1st and 2nd. I know Vengeance was done.
• 1:15:56
  I think I was writing the 3rd at the time.
• 1:15:58
  But whatever it was, I said, well I'm going to write 7 and
• 1:16:01
  this agent was just like what you've planned out seven books.
• 1:16:06
  It's like, yeah. And the I still remember the
• 1:16:09
  comment because it it just like blew my mind.
• 1:16:13
  And this agent was like, well, how did you have the audacity to
• 1:16:16
  think you could write 7 books in this series?
• 1:16:19
  And I'm like, how would you not? I had to figure out, and they're
• 1:16:23
  not like figure out like full outlines or whatever.
• 1:16:26
  But I had to figure out plot ideas of where these characters
• 1:16:29
  would go so I could build the world in my head before I wrote.
• 1:16:33
  Even some of that was figured out before I wrote the first
• 1:16:36
  chapter of Vengeance. Not a lot of it was, but I
• 1:16:39
  figured it out as I was writing how I could tie things together.
• 1:16:43
  But yeah, that's where I kind of started thinking the idea of a
• 1:16:46
  shadow government. And I'm trying to remember now
• 1:16:50
  what the title is for that. Now, now, now you're making me
• 1:16:52
  feel like I'm old. It wasn't the shadow government,
• 1:16:56
  but it was the shadow of something.
• 1:16:57
  What did I call it? I think it was book four or
• 1:16:59
  five. It's one that I did not write,
• 1:17:01
  but I kind of sketched out. But yeah, so I've always had
• 1:17:05
  that idea in my head of and I do in real life.
• 1:17:09
  I will say this, I don't believe.
• 1:17:12
  Well this is kind of a comical thing to say.
• 1:17:14
  I don't believe Joe Biden's calling the shots and that's not
• 1:17:17
  a knock at Democrats, Republicans.
• 1:17:19
  But I don't think Donald Trump was calling the shots.
• 1:17:22
  I. Think interests and powers
• 1:17:25
  there, and I think some whisper a little bit louder than others.
• 1:17:28
  And I think some presidents maybe have a little more
• 1:17:31
  fortitude that they can kick back.
• 1:17:34
  But I mean, if you go back and study Kennedy, that's where I
• 1:17:37
  started The Body Man in my narrative.
• 1:17:39
  I started the Body Man under Kennedy, which actually will
• 1:17:42
  come out in the third Body Man book.
• 1:17:46
  But you know Kennedy, if you know the history behind him, he
• 1:17:50
  was fighting up against, you know what really probably is the
• 1:17:54
  deep state. Yeah, yeah, He had problems with
• 1:17:57
  the CIA. He had problems with this
• 1:17:59
  government entity in the overreach and and Lee Harvey
• 1:18:04
  Oswald killed him for it. I'm I'm very well you know I I
• 1:18:09
  think I I don't know if I've made it overtly clear but you
• 1:18:13
  know like I'm pretty conservative like liberty I'm
• 1:18:19
  I'm like more libertarian with a with a conservative strayed what
• 1:18:23
  are the things I what are the things that I like about fiction
• 1:18:26
  is that I fiction is I can kind of go off on some of my more.
• 1:18:32
  I don't think they're wacky, but some people might think they're
• 1:18:35
  wacky. And so it's kind of.
• 1:18:39
  It's given me more of an opportunity to write some my,
• 1:18:44
  you know, to write some of my theories that like how the
• 1:18:47
  government actually works, you know, whereas like if I just
• 1:18:52
  were to say like I I do believe that there is a shadow, you
• 1:18:57
  know, government or you know, kind of an entity that controls.
• 1:19:03
  The government, which is kind of what, you know, my book Shadows
• 1:19:06
  of Deception is, you know, that's kind of where I'm
• 1:19:10
  starting this whole thing off, is the fact there is, you know,
• 1:19:16
  a shadowy entity. And my, you know, my main
• 1:19:21
  character is is an Afghanistan war veteran and he's struggling
• 1:19:26
  now with, you know, I came back from Afghanistan.
• 1:19:31
  Is was what I was fighting for. Is that the same thing as what I
• 1:19:36
  was told? I was fired.
• 1:19:38
  So, you know, so that's it. You know, that's a narrative
• 1:19:42
  that I think, you know is really interesting to explore,
• 1:19:45
  especially since I've I've talked to veterans and they kind
• 1:19:48
  of have, you know, the same kind of feeling now that, hey, maybe
• 1:19:52
  I wasn't, you know, fighting for what I thought for freedom over
• 1:19:56
  there, maybe. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:58
  Well, you know, I'm not. And again, I get out of politics
• 1:20:01
  only because my job is to write books and sell books.
• 1:20:05
  Not to piss off half my listeners or yeah, or whatever.
• 1:20:09
  But even like Kennedy, I've been, I'll follow all of them.
• 1:20:12
  I'll follow what Biden says. I'll follow what Trump says,
• 1:20:15
  I'll follow what Kennedy, whatever.
• 1:20:16
  Because I want to be informed. And that helps me for my
• 1:20:19
  narratives, helps me. I can take some of the worst
• 1:20:22
  qualities of these jokers and I think kind of all of them are
• 1:20:25
  jokers sometimes and I can build my perfect evil president based
• 1:20:29
  on just following the news almost.
• 1:20:31
  But Kennedy's even mentioned that you know, he he thinks the
• 1:20:34
  people that really pulled the strings on a lot of politics and
• 1:20:37
  on the government are Black Rock, State Street and Vanguard.
• 1:20:41
  You've got the three companies that like have like trillions of
• 1:20:45
  dollars of assets under them and they I think the stat is they
• 1:20:49
  own 85% of the S&P 500 companies.
• 1:20:54
  You know, that's massive influence.
• 1:20:57
  And so I'm amazed when people go, wow, politicians, they're in
• 1:21:01
  it for the for the good of the people.
• 1:21:04
  There might be so little bit corruption and I'm sure there's
• 1:21:07
  some that aren't corrupted. I'm not not throwing out the
• 1:21:09
  baby with the bathwater. But when you're talking about
• 1:21:12
  people that need what what what was the stat?
• 1:21:15
  I can't. I'll get it wrong if I say it,
• 1:21:16
  but I want to say how many billions of dollars were poured
• 1:21:21
  into the election for 2020 for both parties.
• 1:21:24
  I mean, it was like a massive amount of money.
• 1:21:27
  Well, when you have to generate that massive amount of money,
• 1:21:30
  who do you get it from? You don't get it from Eric
• 1:21:33
  Bishop or Sam Whitfield. You might get a couple of
• 1:21:36
  dollars from us, but that money's coming through special
• 1:21:40
  interests. That money is being funneled
• 1:21:41
  through stuff. And when someone's, you know, if
• 1:21:44
  someone were to come in right now and someone were to by
• 1:21:49
  20,000 of my books. But they said, hey, Eric, you
• 1:21:55
  need to make a little change to breach of trust and I want you
• 1:21:57
  to put this in there. I might tell them screw you the
• 1:22:02
  story is the story or I might go that's like a that's like
• 1:22:09
  $100,000 maybe I should listen to them a little bit.
• 1:22:13
  That might at least enters your thought process.
• 1:22:15
  Now that's from a stupid analogy because I'm just a writer.
• 1:22:19
  You take someone's a politician that has to have that money so
• 1:22:23
  they can get re elected and has to have that money so they can
• 1:22:26
  carry on their lifestyle. When someone owns you or
• 1:22:29
  someone's paying for your re election and that someone might
• 1:22:32
  be 1000 little someone's that I'll add up to it.
• 1:22:35
  But that influence speaks and that influence has to affect
• 1:22:40
  what they do. There's just no way, no way
• 1:22:43
  around it. Sorry.
• 1:22:44
  Anyone who thinks that that they're innocent and pure.
• 1:22:48
  I've got some beachfront proper property for you in Kansas I'd
• 1:22:51
  love to sell you. Yeah, I know.
• 1:22:53
  And I mean, I I, you know, I didn't need to get you too far
• 1:22:56
  off, you know, into political weeds.
• 1:22:59
  But you know, I I do. I love Democrats and Republicans
• 1:23:03
  and libertarians by the book. Yeah, I mean, I I I just like,
• 1:23:08
  like I said, going back, you know, to kind of the reason why
• 1:23:12
  I'm out. The one of the reasons why I
• 1:23:15
  write is it does kind of want me to war game some of this in in
• 1:23:20
  ways that I can't really you know, do that you know in, you
• 1:23:27
  know in real life. Like I think I think the whole
• 1:23:29
  concept of the body man in in and of itself is actually, you
• 1:23:35
  know pretty interesting. Thank you.
• 1:23:39
  I I I hope so. And it's going to get more
• 1:23:41
  complicated because in in breach of trust, what you'll find is
• 1:23:47
  that in the in the body man it's pretty much referred to as the
• 1:23:50
  fact of it's kind of a secretive position.
• 1:23:53
  Not many people know about it, and that's what keeps it going
• 1:23:56
  well, in breach of trust because of what happened to the
• 1:23:59
  president and because of what happened in Washington.
• 1:24:03
  Washington talks, gossip flows around Washington extremely
• 1:24:08
  quickly. So people start to learn that
• 1:24:10
  there is a role within the White House referred to as the body
• 1:24:13
  man, and that person has a lot of power.
• 1:24:16
  That doesn't sit well. And by book three, it really is
• 1:24:20
  not going to sit well because you have an unelected person in
• 1:24:23
  the White House that has power over the presidency.
• 1:24:28
  That is a scary thing. And that's.
• 1:24:29
  I wrote it to. I wrote it because I thought it
• 1:24:33
  was entertaining. But I also end up writing stuff
• 1:24:37
  because I want to start conversations with people, not
• 1:24:40
  to them, point them the direction I will.
• 1:24:42
  I believe because what I believe is probably far different from
• 1:24:45
  what someone else believes. And God bless them, I think they
• 1:24:48
  have the right to think that way.
• 1:24:50
  I do also have the right to think the way I do.
• 1:24:53
  I can respect their opinion whether I disagree with her or
• 1:24:56
  not. And I think we can probably find
• 1:24:57
  common ground. But yeah, I want people to read
• 1:25:00
  the body, man, or read Breach of trust and be like man, do I like
• 1:25:03
  that you have someone in the White House that has power over
• 1:25:07
  the president. It's a good it's thought
• 1:25:09
  provoking at the very least. And and see here, here's me, I'm
• 1:25:14
  like, well, that's that's a really entertaining, that's a
• 1:25:18
  really entertaining narrative. Unfortunately or maybe
• 1:25:21
  fortunately for Eric, I also believe that it might be that,
• 1:25:26
  you know, it's probably true too that there is, you know a a
• 1:25:31
  body. It's funny, I wrote it.
• 1:25:33
  So I wrote the first draft. It was completely done in
• 1:25:37
  Trump's administration. So now it was published under
• 1:25:43
  Biden. Let me think, when did we
• 1:25:45
  publish? Yes, so it published under
• 1:25:47
  Biden, but it was totally written under Trump
• 1:25:49
  administration. It was not written in the.
• 1:25:51
  It wasn't even written with the current politicians in mind, but
• 1:25:57
  it was written as a general rule of how does Washington work?
• 1:26:03
  What does absolute power do You know what corruption is out
• 1:26:08
  there because you know it. It might not be the case
• 1:26:11
  forever, but up until modern times the presidency for the
• 1:26:16
  United States is the biggest world bully pulpit you have.
• 1:26:20
  We're the superpower. We have the way.
• 1:26:23
  We have the authority, in a way to change other governments, to
• 1:26:26
  change the way history is going. Now, that might not occur in a
• 1:26:31
  few years, who knows? But at least currently, it's
• 1:26:34
  still that. So that always has made.
• 1:26:36
  And I I've always been a student of politics, although
• 1:26:39
  unfortunately as I've gotten older, I'm in my mid 40s now,
• 1:26:43
  I've become a lot more jaded to politics too, because for years,
• 1:26:48
  for years, I've just heard empty promises.
• 1:26:50
  I'm going to solve this. I'm going to solve that.
• 1:26:53
  So I researched what authority does the president actually
• 1:26:57
  have? What can the president actually
• 1:26:59
  do? And some people probably don't
• 1:27:04
  realize how little authority they have, and some people think
• 1:27:07
  it's a lot of authority, depends on how you look at it.
• 1:27:10
  But but it just helps. It's like you say for me, then
• 1:27:13
  it's cathartic, 'cause I can take ideas I had in my head and
• 1:27:16
  I can put them in a story. And as long as I'm not totally
• 1:27:19
  dogging one party or one, 'cause I don't ever talk any of my
• 1:27:23
  characters. When it comes to the the the
• 1:27:24
  office holders. I don't even if I have someone,
• 1:27:27
  the speaker of the House, I don't say that the Republican
• 1:27:29
  speaker of the House and I try to make it vague.
• 1:27:31
  I don't want people go, oh, that's a Nancy Pelosi, Speaker
• 1:27:36
  of the House or oh, that's a well, Jim Jordan might be the
• 1:27:39
  speaker in the next couple days or he might not be.
• 1:27:42
  So I mean, right. Goodness knows what any of
• 1:27:45
  these. No, I mean, the Republicans are
• 1:27:48
  doing right now, that's for sure.
• 1:27:49
  I mean, I, I it's it's always interesting because I I have
• 1:27:53
  people who automatically assume that, you know, I.
• 1:27:57
  Oh you you based this character because you know you like Trump
• 1:28:02
  so therefore this guy is totally your your and I'm like and I'm
• 1:28:06
  like I'm like OK you're free to interpret it but it's it's not a
• 1:28:10
  completely you know Donald Donald Trump.
• 1:28:14
  I will say I do. I do a character who's kind of
• 1:28:17
  like Elon Musk, if Elon Musk were more of like an American,
• 1:28:25
  so. You know, for anyone who reads
• 1:28:29
  my books that that is something I will put out there.
• 1:28:33
  And I do think that's an interesting narrative too.
• 1:28:35
  You know potentially is the effect that Silicon Valley and
• 1:28:39
  all these you know tech companies also you know play and
• 1:28:43
  you know American Society and potentially with you know the
• 1:28:48
  whole misinformation and you know the the propaganda So the
• 1:28:56
  and I cannot his name just left my brain but one it's not
• 1:29:01
  Zuckerberg but one of the guys that founded Facebook.
• 1:29:04
  One of the original guys. Man, I can't remember which one
• 1:29:08
  or what his name was. Peter Thiel.
• 1:29:11
  What's that? Peter Thiel, It might be Peter,
• 1:29:15
  but I think if if he's the one that said he would not let his
• 1:29:18
  kids near Facebook, they're not getting on this thing.
• 1:29:22
  They're not. I'm not lying to do social media
• 1:29:24
  and it's it's amazing and and I am a huge purveyor of social
• 1:29:27
  media so I'm a hypocrite you could say but the power of it to
• 1:29:33
  do and and the way that people can use that to manipulate
• 1:29:37
  people's feelings and I mean I'll know it for myself if I go
• 1:29:41
  to my Facebook you know thing that you know post which I don't
• 1:29:45
  look Facebook hardly at all anymore but when I did use it a
• 1:29:47
  lot more especially around the elections man I you you'd see a
• 1:29:53
  certain spin on it depending on based on whether you were
• 1:29:56
  conservative or you were liberal you would get those stories push
• 1:30:00
  you whether you were Christian or non denominational or
• 1:30:04
  Catholic or Muslim whatever you're you know Baptist whatever
• 1:30:07
  you might be yeah it's it's I mean AIAI is another thing and
• 1:30:12
  I'm not versed in it very well. I have a friend actually took my
• 1:30:15
  bio recently from the book and he ran it through AI and said
• 1:30:19
  hey, update your bio, check this out.
• 1:30:22
  And I got like one line into it and I was just texting him back
• 1:30:24
  and I said dude, AI, right. He was yeah, I go, it sounds
• 1:30:27
  like AI. But I tell you what, it
• 1:30:30
  definitely puts some bells and whistles on boring Eric Bishop's
• 1:30:34
  life of what? He actually what he really does
• 1:30:36
  in real life. Well, so here's something that
• 1:30:40
  I'm not revealing anything new because I actually talked about
• 1:30:44
  this in the in the. You know, in the intro of my
• 1:30:49
  book, but I mean, one of the things is I've taken all of my
• 1:30:54
  rough drafts like actual chapters I've written and put
• 1:31:00
  them through ChatGPT, it's not plagiarism because it's still
• 1:31:05
  your original, but like, but I I have to say that a lot of the a
• 1:31:10
  lot of the drafts that I've, you know, that I initially wrote,
• 1:31:15
  they can't like a lot. More polished in Chat DBT.
• 1:31:21
  So I mean I still did a lot of editing, but I will say that
• 1:31:25
  like using Chat DBT did cut down like my my actual writing time.
• 1:31:34
  At least 25% I would say. So it is, it is helpful.
• 1:31:42
  I will say that you can't really rely on it because.
• 1:31:46
  It's still like it still is a computer.
• 1:31:49
  It will still make errors. And I think I think a lot of
• 1:31:52
  writers like I know that George RR Martin is really concerned
• 1:31:56
  about like AI taking over for writers.
• 1:31:59
  And you know a, he's a lot older.
• 1:32:01
  So I don't know if he fully understands the the technology,
• 1:32:04
  but it's it's definitely, it's a helpful tool.
• 1:32:08
  But I don't think it's going to be anything that takes over for
• 1:32:12
  actual writers anytime soon because, well, I'm a little
• 1:32:17
  older than you. Sam and I saw Terminator Two in
• 1:32:20
  the theater when it came out, so I think we're screwed.
• 1:32:25
  Yeah, if I can sell a bunch of books, I'm buying an island in
• 1:32:30
  in near Bali, out in Indonesia. There's about 30.
• 1:32:33
  I think it's either 18 or 32,000 islands out in Indonesia.
• 1:32:37
  I'm going to buy my own and then I'm just going to watch the
• 1:32:39
  world burn in hell. I don't know, I'm.
• 1:32:43
  I'm a little bit more on the skeptical side of we're starting
• 1:32:46
  to go some some interesting directions with some of this
• 1:32:48
  technology. I'm not, I'm not necessarily
• 1:32:51
  worried about ChatGPT, which is, which is just like a, you know,
• 1:32:55
  that's that's just like a chat bot, right?
• 1:32:57
  No, no, no. I know.
• 1:32:58
  I know. I.
• 1:32:59
  Know, but I will say I am. I am more worried of like this
• 1:33:02
  thing of this whole thing of like the Metaverse and everyone
• 1:33:05
  having like a a digital you know AI and it it does seem a bit
• 1:33:12
  Blade Runner asks to you know and and again I I, I walk a fine
• 1:33:17
  line with what I talk about on these sometimes because I don't
• 1:33:19
  want to piss people off. But we started to see a little
• 1:33:22
  bit of that during COVID stuff here in the United States where
• 1:33:26
  you started to have a digital pass needed.
• 1:33:29
  OK you have to prove your and I saw it first hand.
• 1:33:33
  Just a quick story was I was in New Orleans I was supposed to go
• 1:33:36
  down there for a Bashir Khan a writers conference and that was
• 1:33:40
  2021. It got cancelled about a month
• 1:33:44
  before. I had prepaid everything.
• 1:33:48
  I had prepaid hotel airfare and I could have kind of pushed the
• 1:33:53
  button and got that at least you know credits back or whatever.
• 1:33:56
  But I had planned to write part of and I have AI have chapters
• 1:33:59
  for breach of trust that are set in New Orleans and I was like
• 1:34:03
  man I still want to go. I I changed custody time around.
• 1:34:05
  I didn't have my kids. I ended up meeting down there
• 1:34:09
  Jack Stewart who at the time was reservist Navy pilot.
• 1:34:15
  He's since got out his for his his book comes out next month
• 1:34:19
  actually his debut book. He actually met me down there
• 1:34:22
  and Long story short on that was he said do you want to fly,
• 1:34:26
  could I try to get a backseat ride.
• 1:34:28
  He flew F18 Hornets and I'm like, hey, backseat.
• 1:34:31
  And he just, you know, laughed at me and said never going to
• 1:34:33
  happen. Oh, well, he goes, but I can get
• 1:34:36
  you an F18 Hornet simulator. Same thing we train on at base
• 1:34:40
  if you want to go down to the base.
• 1:34:41
  And I'm like, absolutely. So he picked me up at the
• 1:34:43
  airport. We went down to Joint Base New
• 1:34:46
  Orleans. He got me the simulator for like
• 1:34:47
  an hour and a half. And I had amazing time.
• 1:34:52
  But like a week before I went to New Orleans, they were requiring
• 1:34:56
  proof of vaccination to go in any restaurants.
• 1:35:00
  They would not let you in a restaurant or bar.
• 1:35:02
  What was interesting is you could go in stores and shop.
• 1:35:09
  So you'd come to this. You'd come to the storefront and
• 1:35:12
  you'd have, you know, gumbo. You'd have some New Orleans food
• 1:35:17
  here. You can't walk in there unless
• 1:35:19
  you show proof of vaccination. But you can walk in next door to
• 1:35:22
  the souvenir shop. You'd have to put a mask on.
• 1:35:25
  So they were requiring masks. But you could walk in the
• 1:35:28
  souvenir shop and you didn't have to have proof of
• 1:35:29
  vaccination. And you could be in there for an
• 1:35:31
  hour. You could.
• 1:35:32
  It wasn't like staying here for three minutes.
• 1:35:34
  Yeah. So it was just really, it was
• 1:35:36
  like, it was just weird. But then, you know, it was it
• 1:35:41
  was just one of those, like, like, really, this is the United
• 1:35:43
  States where you have to have like proof of something to walk
• 1:35:45
  in to eat food because, you know, where do you, if you're
• 1:35:49
  not vaccinated, how are you going to eat?
• 1:35:50
  Well, certain places will still get your take out.
• 1:35:53
  Or you can get window service or Cafe du Monde.
• 1:35:55
  You could still go into Cafe Du Monde and get food or get, you
• 1:35:58
  know, get menets and stuff. But yeah, it was just, it's
• 1:36:03
  been, it was an inch. That was an interesting time in
• 1:36:05
  human history. I don't know that's the last
• 1:36:08
  time we're going to have that go on either.
• 1:36:09
  But it was very interesting to live through some of the fiction
• 1:36:13
  right out of the window. Because it's like if I had
• 1:36:16
  thrown some of these story ideas at an agent or at a publisher
• 1:36:19
  5-6 years ago, they would have been like, this is the stupidest
• 1:36:22
  made-up crap you could ever. It'll never happen.
• 1:36:25
  That's now I don't know how to make some stuff up because it's
• 1:36:28
  like, jeez, where do we go next? Well, that that's where do we
• 1:36:32
  go. Well, that that's exactly why I
• 1:36:35
  don't one of my one of my friends is like, well, Sam,
• 1:36:40
  you're big into science fiction, so why didn't you write a
• 1:36:43
  science fiction book? And I've literally said at at
• 1:36:47
  this point, things are so weird that if I would write a science
• 1:36:53
  fiction book, how long would it be before it actually became a
• 1:36:58
  reality? 3 weeks?
• 1:37:00
  4 weeks? Yeah, 35.
• 1:37:03
  Yeah, yeah. At this point, you know, maybe
• 1:37:07
  like, yeah, if, yeah. If someone had, if someone had
• 1:37:10
  said that a global pandemic would affect, you know, us in
• 1:37:13
  2020, you know, I don't think anyone I I went, I believe that
• 1:37:20
  five years ago. I would have thought oh you're
• 1:37:23
  high. You know, there's no, like like
• 1:37:25
  that. So.
• 1:37:28
  So quick story on that was we were I was my son was in Scouts
• 1:37:32
  during early well before 2020 but early 2020 we were at a
• 1:37:35
  Scouts meeting and one of the dads came in and he said, hey,
• 1:37:39
  there's some weird stuff coming out of China and we're like,
• 1:37:43
  what do you mean? And he kind of foreshadowed what
• 1:37:47
  ended up happening like a month and a half, six weeks later.
• 1:37:50
  So and we're all just like, dude, you're full of crap.
• 1:37:54
  That's not whatever that that's that's too many conspiratorial
• 1:37:57
  websites. Stop watching all the stuff.
• 1:38:00
  Stop watching Infowars and all this other stuff.
• 1:38:02
  You're you're going down a path that's not true.
• 1:38:04
  Yeah. Six weeks later, we were eating
• 1:38:06
  crow and I was one of the people at Walmart, at least around
• 1:38:10
  here. And I lived in the South, so the
• 1:38:11
  South in. Carolina.
• 1:38:14
  Yeah, I'm in Florida. Florida, so yeah, so South
• 1:38:18
  Carolina. Florida probably was similar to
• 1:38:19
  South of North Carolina, but our experience was far different
• 1:38:22
  from like my family in Connecticut.
• 1:38:25
  I have a lot of Co workers in California.
• 1:38:27
  I go out there for work a lot. Their experience was much
• 1:38:29
  different but they did a stay at home order here on a Friday
• 1:38:34
  night. I would just was I separated.
• 1:38:37
  I was definitely separated at the time.
• 1:38:38
  I don't think I was divorced yet, but I was living, you know,
• 1:38:40
  I was alone half the time. And I was with a friend then
• 1:38:45
  that Saturday up at his house and 'cause I went out, right?
• 1:38:50
  Like the night before the stay at home order came out, I had a
• 1:38:53
  friend who was overseas that called me and I was like, hey,
• 1:38:57
  what's up? And he's like, you know, And by
• 1:38:58
  that point, COVID was being talked about and there was talk
• 1:39:02
  about some lockdowns, but it was all kind of like, hey, this
• 1:39:05
  might happen, but we don't know what's going to happen in the in
• 1:39:07
  around here. And so this friend from overseas
• 1:39:10
  calls and says, hey, I know you got kids and I know what kind of
• 1:39:13
  dad you are. What kind of food supply do you
• 1:39:15
  have? And I'm like, I don't know, I
• 1:39:18
  got pantry with some food. He goes, how much food do you
• 1:39:21
  have? And I'm like, I'm sure several
• 1:39:24
  days or more than that, but I don't have like a massive thing.
• 1:39:26
  He goes, why don't you go out and do some shopping tonight?
• 1:39:29
  And I was like, what's going to happen?
• 1:39:31
  He goes go shop. I don't know.
• 1:39:34
  It might be nothing or it might be, you know, what's going to
• 1:39:38
  hit the fan within 48 hours. I went out that night and I
• 1:39:43
  think I dropped $500. Boom, canned goods, rice, fuel
• 1:39:48
  for my camping stove, rations, water.
• 1:39:52
  Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Loaded up, loaded up the car and
• 1:39:54
  people are looking at me like weird.
• 1:39:56
  Well then the next night or two nights later, I can't remember
• 1:39:59
  what the time frame was. Now is when North Carolina.
• 1:40:03
  Because I had a my house where at my rental house was in South
• 1:40:06
  Carolina. My office was in North Carolina.
• 1:40:08
  So I went across the border every day, back and forth.
• 1:40:11
  Well, North Carolina issued a stay at home order.
• 1:40:14
  And so I'm like, what's that mean?
• 1:40:15
  Well, you can travel for essential travel, you can travel
• 1:40:18
  for work. But besides that, for two weeks
• 1:40:20
  you weren't so should go anywhere.
• 1:40:22
  So I drove up to a friend's house that night and I was
• 1:40:25
  telling him how I just loaded up and he goes, and him and his
• 1:40:29
  wife were like, you know, I don't know that we have enough
• 1:40:31
  stuff. So we drove up to
• 1:40:32
  Hendersonville, NC, to a Walmart, had a gun on me and I
• 1:40:36
  had a concealed permit, so I was allowed to have a gun on me and
• 1:40:40
  stuff. That's the only time I Walmart's
• 1:40:43
  can be scary. Not.
• 1:40:46
  Just Walmart. But Walmart can be a scary place
• 1:40:49
  at time. But that's the only time I was
• 1:40:50
  in Walmart that literally there was people pushing buggies down
• 1:40:54
  the aisle, putting their arms out and just pouring canned
• 1:40:57
  goods, not even looking at what they're pouring in.
• 1:40:59
  Into kings and toilet paper was everything was getting cleared
• 1:41:02
  out and we were there for about 30 minutes and I bought another
• 1:41:05
  $150.00 of crap that I probably ended up donating to a food bank
• 1:41:09
  six months later. But it was just you were it was
• 1:41:12
  the first time in my life that I've ever felt like panic set
• 1:41:15
  in. Like is it all going to come
• 1:41:17
  crashing down? You know it was such a weird
• 1:41:20
  dystopian, you know, otherworld feeling going on and I think
• 1:41:27
  people have kind of forgot it somewhat.
• 1:41:28
  But man, I still remember what those nights were like.
• 1:41:32
  I keep, I I keep like, you know, I have, you know, multiple packs
• 1:41:36
  of water in the crawl space now and I keep the canned goods just
• 1:41:40
  because like, OK, I've been through that.
• 1:41:41
  Now I can, I'll be good for a month, easy, maybe more at at
• 1:41:45
  all times. Because it's like, I don't want
• 1:41:47
  to be having to run out to the grocery store and load up and
• 1:41:50
  have that fun experience at Walmart getting, you know, get
• 1:41:54
  my cart stolen. Yeah, I know that that was
• 1:41:57
  weird. And then like the other thing
• 1:41:58
  that was really weird for me too was once the vaccine came out.
• 1:42:05
  You know, I I don't. I don't know what your.
• 1:42:07
  I don't know what your take on the vaccine.
• 1:42:09
  My my take on it is. I mean if you want, if you want
• 1:42:12
  vaccine, you know great more power to you.
• 1:42:16
  If you don't, you know you shouldn't be mandated today.
• 1:42:20
  If the government tells you you should take something, you
• 1:42:22
  should absolutely take it without question, Sam.
• 1:42:25
  Yeah, no, not even personal. I believe in personal choice for
• 1:42:31
  any of that stuff. Your body.
• 1:42:33
  Your choice. Yeah, that applies to vaccines.
• 1:42:35
  In my opinion, that and that was that was my whole.
• 1:42:38
  That was my whole take on it. The thing that was really weird
• 1:42:42
  to me too, though, was like there were all these companies,
• 1:42:46
  like like Dunkin' Donuts was like or I think it was Krispy
• 1:42:50
  Kreme. Or maybe both of them were like
• 1:42:52
  offering, you know, free Donuts or free donut if you got a
• 1:42:56
  vaccine shot. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:57
  Or or. Or free or free McDonald's.
• 1:43:00
  And I was. And so I'm looking at all these
• 1:43:03
  coins basically doing giveaways and I'm like and I'm like well,
• 1:43:07
  they've said that like if you eat fast food or something like
• 1:43:10
  you're higher risk to get COVID. So why?
• 1:43:14
  Like diabetes is like the biggest.
• 1:43:18
  Obesity is like the biggest trigger that Happy Meal will
• 1:43:22
  that'll help you so. What?
• 1:43:24
  So why are all these companies like giving away, you know,
• 1:43:27
  basically giving away stuff when like when their products are
• 1:43:31
  basically like elevating your risk for COVID?
• 1:43:33
  It just seems so backwards like you know yeah it was it was just
• 1:43:38
  very weird time and it. I know people on both sides of
• 1:43:42
  the spectrum that were vaccinated.
• 1:43:44
  I know people that were not vaccinated and yeah, it was just
• 1:43:50
  it was bizarre. And I I hate to think that's not
• 1:43:54
  like the one time in my life, because that was the first time
• 1:43:57
  in my life I had gone through anything like that.
• 1:43:59
  I I my, my gut feeling is that's not the only time I'll have to
• 1:44:03
  go through something like that though.
• 1:44:04
  Maybe. Maybe that's it.
• 1:44:05
  Maybe we got it out of our system.
• 1:44:07
  But. I knew people who were like at
• 1:44:09
  who were at each other's throats, like if you were.
• 1:44:14
  If you were unvaccinated, you were an idiot for, you know, and
• 1:44:18
  then if you and then if you were vaccinated, well, you were just,
• 1:44:23
  you know, again, and I was like, I'm, I'm staying out, I'm
• 1:44:27
  staying out of this. So I know people that couldn't
• 1:44:30
  go to family member's house because they weren't vaccinated.
• 1:44:34
  Yeah, 100%. I know people, they're extremely
• 1:44:37
  close to me, that they could not go to a family member's house
• 1:44:40
  because they were not vaccinated and they did not see those
• 1:44:44
  family members for a long time. Yeah, I know.
• 1:44:47
  I know people who, I know people who sadly were disowned by
• 1:44:51
  certain family members because they were, they weren't
• 1:44:54
  vaccinated. I'm like, and I'm like this is
• 1:44:58
  in here. Here I am being like, this is
• 1:45:01
  what the powers that be want. They want us to be divided.
• 1:45:06
  So you know, yeah. And, you know, put it back to
• 1:45:09
  the politics. I hate to go that direction with
• 1:45:12
  it, but yeah, I don't think. I think the two major parties in
• 1:45:16
  our country aren't showing any form of unity.
• 1:45:20
  And I tend to side with the voices that say, you know what,
• 1:45:25
  folks? There's a lot of difference and
• 1:45:28
  people are allowed to believe whatever it is they believe,
• 1:45:31
  whether it's religion or sexuality or whatever.
• 1:45:35
  Yeah, not not anyone else's opinion or voice to put you down
• 1:45:38
  for that. But I think we have more in
• 1:45:41
  common than we're led to believe.
• 1:45:46
  Yeah. And I think if we can find that
• 1:45:48
  common ground, yeah, maybe some issues, we just will say, hey,
• 1:45:52
  we're going to choose to agree to disagree, but, you know, be
• 1:45:54
  nice to each other, be kind to each other, love each other.
• 1:46:00
  Don't be, don't be an asshole. That's the I had that, actually,
• 1:46:06
  that's what years ago someone asked me, like, what would you
• 1:46:08
  want your gravestone to be? And I thought about it for a
• 1:46:10
  minute, and that was what I said.
• 1:46:12
  I'd like it to say he wasn't an asshole.
• 1:46:14
  I think if I get through life and I'm not that, then I
• 1:46:17
  probably did a halfway decent job.
• 1:46:20
  But there might be some people out there that say I am one, but
• 1:46:23
  I think there's quite a lot of people that would say I'm not.
• 1:46:25
  Because I sure try not to be. Don't ask my ex.
• 1:46:29
  But I don't. Yeah, no, I I don't.
• 1:46:32
  I don't think, you know, and I think that's a good thing to
• 1:46:34
  strive. I also, I also don't think you
• 1:46:37
  can go through life trying to play Kate and be nice to
• 1:46:40
  everyone. I don't think that's a good way
• 1:46:43
  to live either. I think you have to be yourself.
• 1:46:46
  You just have to be respectful. But not me.
• 1:46:51
  Not be steamrolled over either. Not not be a doormat.
• 1:46:53
  So you have to stand up for what you believe.
• 1:46:56
  Just do it in a respectful manner.
• 1:46:58
  And that's you know it kind of go back to the whole you know
• 1:47:01
  writing thing like I I I know someone who who read my book and
• 1:47:06
  they and they actually said, well the subject matter the
• 1:47:11
  subject matter made me feel uncomfortable and I'm like well,
• 1:47:15
  you know, I don't know what to say either you shouldn't read my
• 1:47:18
  book or maybe my book is. You know, bringing up a subject
• 1:47:22
  that maybe you might want to, you know, dive into further.
• 1:47:24
  Why is it, you know, why is it making you feel?
• 1:47:28
  I don't. I mean, I don't think, I don't
• 1:47:30
  think it. You know, my my book's not that
• 1:47:33
  deep. But Even so, it's still ask
• 1:47:37
  questions, you know, even in a fictional narrative.
• 1:47:40
  And, you know, I think I think good writing can do that too.
• 1:47:45
  There have been several times you know, even in the yearbook
• 1:47:47
  where. You know, again, I thought back
• 1:47:50
  to, hmm, is there really, you know is there really a a body
• 1:47:56
  man? It it it certainly would make,
• 1:47:58
  it certainly would explain a whole lot.
• 1:48:02
  Is there a body, man? That's the that's the most
• 1:48:05
  common question I've got in the last two years.
• 1:48:07
  And I always stick to the same answer.
• 1:48:09
  That and and also I should be that and also I should be
• 1:48:13
  dubiously aware. And maybe I should be a little
• 1:48:16
  more cautious about extremely good looking European women too.
• 1:48:21
  So they they they might get you in the end.
• 1:48:26
  You never know. Yeah.
• 1:48:29
  So oh shoot, it's not a yeah. So I was about to say it's in
• 1:48:36
  the In the Body Man, but no, it's in Mercy's story that has
• 1:48:40
  not been completed yet. There's a scene that takes
• 1:48:44
  place, It'll probably stay in the final version, but I can't
• 1:48:48
  give away too much with it. But let's just say she ends up
• 1:48:51
  having to use a wine bottle in a very creative, creative way to
• 1:48:55
  take someone out. And that was a fun chapter to
• 1:48:58
  write, so. She actually, if I'm not
• 1:49:02
  mistaken, you you made a you made a reference to that?
• 1:49:08
  In The Bottom Man at One. OK, so I might have made a
• 1:49:10
  reference to it, and then I might have expanded upon it.
• 1:49:12
  Then in her story where they actually tell the full story of
• 1:49:15
  what? Happened with that whole thing.
• 1:49:16
  Maybe that's what I was. It's I haven't read The Body
• 1:49:18
  made in a couple of years, so too many other stories have
• 1:49:22
  happened since then. I'm showing my age.
• 1:49:24
  It's it's it's Her of of the John Wick of the John Wick
• 1:49:28
  pencil story. Then Then I Very much so.
• 1:49:32
  Very much so. Yes.
• 1:49:34
  So she's fine again. It's fun to write.
• 1:49:37
  And that's the one thing you know, bring it back to the
• 1:49:40
  writing, is I try to encourage people, man.
• 1:49:42
  If you got stories in your head and you think you have the
• 1:49:45
  desire to write something, do it.
• 1:49:48
  You might be the only one that ever reads it or maybe a couple
• 1:49:50
  of friends will read it and it might not be very good.
• 1:49:53
  But guess what? You can still get something out
• 1:49:56
  of your head. And you know, for me, I had
• 1:49:58
  someone message me the other day they were at talk about we have
• 1:50:01
  one. I started writing something and
• 1:50:03
  and how did you do it? And I said, well, it wasn't easy
• 1:50:06
  to say, oh, it's real easy. You're full of it.
• 1:50:09
  So for me, at the time when I first started writing the first
• 1:50:12
  novel, especially my kids were a lot, lot younger, I didn't let
• 1:50:16
  it interfere with family time. So I wrote at night when
• 1:50:19
  everyone went to sleep. And to do that, what did I have
• 1:50:25
  to give up? Two things, sleep to some degree
• 1:50:29
  and television. So I had to give up two things.
• 1:50:33
  Sleep wasn't a good thing to give up, and I got myself
• 1:50:35
  physically sick after about three months of not sleeping
• 1:50:37
  enough. So don't do that.
• 1:50:39
  But television was a good thing to give up so that I could get
• 1:50:42
  that first story out, even though it never got published,
• 1:50:45
  even though it never saw the light of day.
• 1:50:47
  That sense of accomplishment was invaluable.
• 1:50:50
  And that built the foundation that four books are on the 4th
• 1:50:56
  book. So three more books later.
• 1:50:58
  The 4th book is when The Body Man was created.
• 1:51:00
  Yeah, that would have happened without that first story coming
• 1:51:03
  out and me putting my butt on the chair and writing it pretty
• 1:51:07
  much six nights a week for months until I had a first draft
• 1:51:10
  done. Well you're you know you you
• 1:51:13
  could you can put this on you know the blurb for your next
• 1:51:17
  book but I can tell you that the you know that the the weekend
• 1:51:21
  that that I got random daughter. That pronounce replaced my
• 1:51:28
  television. You know, for good.
• 1:51:32
  For the for the weekend. So yeah some visual.
• 1:51:35
  Visual some. Your your television was in your
• 1:51:37
  eyes. You got to read, you get to put
• 1:51:40
  you and hopefully it puts you in there.
• 1:51:41
  I I yeah, I went through it about 3 weekends ago.
• 1:51:45
  It's probably the last. It's probably the last time I'll
• 1:51:46
  ever read it again. Honestly.
• 1:51:48
  I read it one last time. After all the edits after.
• 1:51:52
  I think I had fixed everything. I read it one last time just for
• 1:51:54
  enjoyment, and I I was going to publish it.
• 1:51:57
  So if I read it through again, I'd read it enough that I liked
• 1:52:00
  it. But I just, I wanted to read it
• 1:52:01
  from a fan perspective of do I like this story?
• 1:52:04
  And I tell you what I read through, I put it down and I
• 1:52:06
  just told myself you did it, You did it.
• 1:52:08
  You did what you put out what you what you set out to
• 1:52:11
  accomplish. This is a good story.
• 1:52:13
  People are going to like the story.
• 1:52:14
  Some people won't like it. I'll get negative reviews or
• 1:52:17
  I'll go. People that'll say this isn't
• 1:52:18
  believable. Your your interrogation scene is
• 1:52:21
  crap. Pro tip.
• 1:52:23
  I'm not former military intelligence.
• 1:52:26
  I've never interrogated anyone. I've seen a lot of movies.
• 1:52:29
  I take some liberties. Was it fun?
• 1:52:32
  Did you like Harvey the White Rabbits there?
• 1:52:34
  Did you Do you like the dialogue?
• 1:52:36
  Because I did my best. If you don't like it, that's
• 1:52:39
  cool. Thanks for buying the book.
• 1:52:41
  Don't buy another one. That's OK.
• 1:52:42
  That was one of my things too, is I got someone who was like
• 1:52:46
  this. Isn't male Merrill till early
• 1:52:50
  accurate this guy? You know played way too much
• 1:52:54
  Call Call of Duty that that was one of the.
• 1:52:58
  And it's like, well, I mean you're not wrong.
• 1:53:01
  I, I do love some Call of Duty on occasion.
• 1:53:04
  But also I mean I do have, you know, I actually do have, you
• 1:53:08
  know, friends who you know you and I both probably do have
• 1:53:12
  friends who you know served in the military.
• 1:53:14
  And I and I've asked some of them, you know, is this
• 1:53:17
  realistic? You know, some of them will say
• 1:53:20
  yes, some of them will. Then was I know, but I I did
• 1:53:23
  have one who would be like, I wouldn't want to read what we
• 1:53:27
  actually did in in the field because it's too boring.
• 1:53:30
  It doesn't make for a right, it doesn't make for a good
• 1:53:34
  narrative. So you know when you're a door
• 1:53:37
  kicker you're not kicking down doors 24 hours a day normally so
• 1:53:41
  and and and I if you really and I have some friends that have
• 1:53:46
  actually I'm going to a wedding in two weekends from now for
• 1:53:49
  someone that's active duty and one of my friends that will be
• 1:53:53
  there as well as retired he was fifth group.
• 1:53:56
  So I've heard tons of stories from these guys over the years
• 1:54:00
  and for every guy that's in there kicking down a door, you
• 1:54:04
  got three or four logistics people that are getting them the
• 1:54:07
  supplies and the food and sanitate doing everything it
• 1:54:11
  takes to put a soldier out there on the front line.
• 1:54:14
  So for a lot of those people that have served and served for
• 1:54:17
  20 years, they never pick up a rifle, they never fire a gun,
• 1:54:21
  they don't ever do any of that. But that role is important.
• 1:54:24
  If you didn't have that role, you wouldn't have the person
• 1:54:26
  that's kicking in the door going to kill Osama bin Laden or
• 1:54:30
  whatever, whatever whatever guys on the on the list this time to
• 1:54:34
  get. So yeah.
• 1:54:36
  Any, any, and even. And even the guys who do see
• 1:54:39
  combat, I mean it. It's very, you know, at least
• 1:54:43
  from what they've told me, it's all, it's all very, you know,
• 1:54:46
  quick, instantaneous. It's not like, it's not like the
• 1:54:50
  movies are Hollywood where there are, you know, where there are
• 1:54:52
  drawn out firefights. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:54:54
  Why? Probably rarely, yes.
• 1:54:56
  Well, this is, and this is really the first I I know Cars
• 1:54:59
  talked about in some of his interviews.
• 1:55:01
  This is the first time after the War on Terror after 9-11
• 1:55:04
  happened. It's kind of the first time in
• 1:55:06
  modern history that you could join the military and literally
• 1:55:09
  be an active duty and be deployed for a 20 year career
• 1:55:15
  and have multiple engagements. Because prior to 911, you could
• 1:55:20
  serve 20 years in the military and never never pick up a a
• 1:55:26
  rifle and be an infantryman, you know, but never have a reason
• 1:55:30
  to. You know if you didn't get
• 1:55:31
  deployed for Gulf War Korea and all that was long before you.
• 1:55:35
  So you know I guess you had Grenada, Grenada, you had a few
• 1:55:39
  other things. But yeah, it's this has kind of
• 1:55:41
  been. And because of that, I've gotten
• 1:55:45
  to know some of these people that served for those time.
• 1:55:49
  And it's been really interesting and scary in a way to see these
• 1:55:54
  soldiers that have come out after all these deployments and
• 1:55:57
  just the changes that have taken place and the things they've
• 1:56:00
  seen. And it also points back to where
• 1:56:03
  we've failed in a way of not for especially the first several
• 1:56:08
  years after the war had begun. We weren't giving those soldiers
• 1:56:12
  the treatment they needed for when they returned back to
• 1:56:14
  regular life. And then VA let a lot of
• 1:56:17
  soldiers down and the burn pits and just the just like cascades
• 1:56:23
  of all that problems that that started.
• 1:56:26
  Yeah, I mean that that's kind of, that's another narrative
• 1:56:29
  that I've covered a little bit, kind of in a side plot, you
• 1:56:33
  know, of veterans coming back from Warren, you know, dealing
• 1:56:38
  with PTSD. And I mean, I thank God I
• 1:56:41
  haven't, you know, experienced any of that myself.
• 1:56:44
  But I have, you know, I know people who have, and I've tried
• 1:56:47
  to, you know, write some of those characters.
• 1:56:52
  In a way that would reflect that.
• 1:56:53
  And you know one of one of the compliments that I I got was you
• 1:56:59
  know one of my buddies who was a veteran actor said wow you know
• 1:57:05
  you're you actually did did a really good job of accurately
• 1:57:11
  portraying someone who goes through PTSD and and that you
• 1:57:15
  know in a respectful way and that meant the whole world to
• 1:57:19
  me. You know I I I.
• 1:57:21
  I could care a lot about the one guy who's like this isn't
• 1:57:23
  militarily accurate. So if I can capture, you know,
• 1:57:28
  the heart of, you know, someone in the character, I feel like
• 1:57:32
  I've done my job as an as an author, No, that that is.
• 1:57:37
  Yeah, it's a general rule. And I tried to tell some advice
• 1:57:39
  I got years ago from a very well respected authors because I
• 1:57:44
  asked him, I said what should I be prepared for?
• 1:57:45
  And they said two things, don't look at your reviews and don't
• 1:57:49
  look at your numbers. Those two things as an author
• 1:57:52
  are just going to mess with your head for the most part.
• 1:57:55
  I didn't especially originally. I've looked with Ransom daughter
• 1:57:59
  to see if I'm getting reviews. I think I'm might have 12 on
• 1:58:04
  Amazon as of the first six days or so.
• 1:58:07
  But I've not like dug in to see what the reviews say or any of
• 1:58:10
  that and I'll sales numbers and. Neither.
• 1:58:14
  Neither have I. I mean the the only the only
• 1:58:17
  reason I know about the guy who complained about, you know.
• 1:58:20
  The COD thing is just because it it was so it was so laughable
• 1:58:25
  that I actually kind of got it that I actually kind of got a
• 1:58:28
  chuckle out of it that you know someone what someone was that
• 1:58:33
  mad that you know oh he's not a super you know spec op you know
• 1:58:39
  guy. No, I I was AI was AI was a 20
• 1:58:43
  something year old college kid when I started you know riding
• 1:58:46
  this. Well, this story.
• 1:58:48
  So they have the right to leave their opinion out there.
• 1:58:50
  The good news is they bought it as long as they did.
• 1:58:53
  If they bought your book, hey, they bought the copy, they
• 1:58:55
  didn't like it, then you still got to stay a lot of it.
• 1:58:57
  So, and I don't, I do leave reviews, even if on the rare
• 1:59:04
  occasion I read a book and it's just horrible.
• 1:59:06
  I'm never going to put that in review.
• 1:59:08
  What a horrible book. You know, I find something
• 1:59:11
  positive. What?
• 1:59:12
  Honestly, I've gotten so busy and everything now where if I
• 1:59:15
  don't get through the 1st chapter, maybe sometimes 2
• 1:59:18
  chapters and I'm not engaged, I'll just skim and I'll maybe
• 1:59:22
  like catch the middle and catch the last chapter or two and just
• 1:59:27
  hey, good job. Well that that's you finished a
• 1:59:29
  book congratulations and keep it very above the board.
• 1:59:32
  Give them their rating and just but do.
• 1:59:35
  I used to read everything years 1015 years ago.
• 1:59:39
  If I didn't like a book first page, I would still read it
• 1:59:42
  because I either bought it or I got it from the library and I
• 1:59:44
  felt like I had to read it. Now I have no problem spending
• 1:59:49
  10 minutes going, well I'm done. Well, just being done because I
• 1:59:53
  have 50 more books probably on a shelf that one day I might get
• 1:59:57
  to read and that grows every day or every week or month.
• 2:00:01
  Yeah, well, that that's. Well, that's one of the reasons
• 2:00:03
  too, why I wrote, why I wrote in the novella format too, is I was
• 2:00:08
  like, well, I don't have a lot of time to, I don't want to read
• 2:00:12
  these big, long, lengthy, lengthy novels as a reader.
• 2:00:17
  Right. So.
• 2:00:18
  So why would I want my audience to suffer through a big, long
• 2:00:23
  novel if I'm not willing to to do the same now, now, I mean,
• 2:00:30
  there are no, I mean there are a few authors where that is the
• 2:00:33
  exception. Jack Carr is, you know, one of
• 2:00:36
  them. But like, one author who I like
• 2:00:40
  is Robert Ludlum, who wrote the Bourne books.
• 2:00:44
  But my yeah. I got them.
• 2:00:46
  I got them down here for the originals, but one eye big, one
• 2:00:49
  eye. Big criticisms of Robert Ludlum.
• 2:00:52
  Not so much with the not too much with the Bourne series, but
• 2:00:55
  with some of the other ones is some of them just drag on for a
• 2:01:00
  long and one of them I actually did read write like a negative
• 2:01:05
  review being like I like the story, but it just took so long
• 2:01:10
  to get there that I that I lost interest and by by the end the
• 2:01:15
  payoff wasn't really that great so.
• 2:01:19
  Yeah, and I've I've definitely my taste have changed with just
• 2:01:23
  with having with putting the novella out even like breach of
• 2:01:25
  trust. I've just a social started back
• 2:01:28
  this weekend and I did not. So maybe the next couple nights
• 2:01:31
  I might dive in. Probably won't get to it
• 2:01:32
  tonight. But I forget what my word count
• 2:01:36
  is. Last I looked.
• 2:01:37
  I know it's hovering in the 100,000 range, maybe right at or
• 2:01:41
  right around there, but I'm going to dice it down because my
• 2:01:45
  own attention span is less. And I think I I know there's
• 2:01:49
  plenty of readers that will go out and read a, you know, a 5-6
• 2:01:51
  hundred page book. But I'd rather give, you know,
• 2:01:54
  less is more philosophy of of of of cut them down a little bit.
• 2:01:58
  Yeah, but. And that's one thing I did like
• 2:02:00
  with Ransom Daughter was and it's the feedback I've gotten
• 2:02:03
  from readers, even just last couple days, people that have
• 2:02:05
  already read through it, that bought it on Amazon, is that it
• 2:02:09
  was a fully thought out plot, but just really quick read.
• 2:02:14
  It just bounced. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 2:02:16
  You know where it hit Every chap, every chap that just hit
• 2:02:19
  it didn't have a lot of and it didn't have a lot of the
• 2:02:21
  background that I'd want to give the characters.
• 2:02:24
  And that's what the next one will do.
• 2:02:25
  The next one will dive a little bit more into, you know.
• 2:02:29
  Like has Jesus's background in East LA.
• 2:02:32
  We'll dive into that a little bit more with the next story.
• 2:02:35
  Why the Jackal is such a Jackass.
• 2:02:38
  We'll dive a little bit more into the Jackals background and
• 2:02:40
  stuff and but not not go crazy with it because again, I don't
• 2:02:44
  want to have a big, you know, massive book.
• 2:02:47
  It'll be a full length novel that comes out end of next year,
• 2:02:50
  but it won't be as big as The Body Man was.
• 2:02:53
  I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll slim it down a little bit for sure.
• 2:02:56
  Yeah. You know, and I I also think
• 2:02:59
  like it, you know, if I explain at least for me like it, if I
• 2:03:04
  explain my character's entire back story, you know in the
• 2:03:09
  first book, what is there going to be for future?
• 2:03:15
  Right. You've taken the mystery out of
• 2:03:16
  their their, their character to some degree.
• 2:03:18
  Yeah, you know. Absolutely cool.
• 2:03:23
  Anyway, though, we've been at this for a little bit.
• 2:03:26
  I don't know if anyone's going to want to watch two hours of
• 2:03:28
  this, but I had a good conversation with you Sam.
• 2:03:31
  I do. I do know people who you know.
• 2:03:34
  I know people who who will watch like 4 hour Joe Rogan podcast.
• 2:03:39
  I'm. I I don't.
• 2:03:41
  A lot of times I'll skip out if they're if they're the Super
• 2:03:44
  long ones, but if it's someone. If it's someone I want to see,
• 2:03:47
  then I'll sometimes go through the Super long ones.
• 2:03:50
  Yes, I will say that as far as long books go, I I'm almost at
• 2:03:55
  the end of Elon Musk's biography that Walter Isaacson.
• 2:04:00
  OK, interesting. I actually finished your book
• 2:04:02
  right before I dove into the Elon Musk bio.
• 2:04:06
  And I mean it definitely. I mean, I some of the criticism
• 2:04:13
  against Musk is definitely warranted.
• 2:04:15
  But I will definitely say that, you know, if you if you thought
• 2:04:20
  you knew about, you know all about him, chances are you
• 2:04:26
  probably didn't because his story is a lot more, you know,
• 2:04:29
  complex than a lot of people think.
• 2:04:33
  And I mean, Walter Isaacson did a pretty good job of, you know,
• 2:04:38
  basically, you know, compiling this guy's life into, you know,
• 2:04:46
  an 800 page book or so. So gotcha.
• 2:04:51
  Breach of trust will not be 800 pages.
• 2:04:54
  We're gonna, we're gonna try to get it.
• 2:04:55
  We're trying to keep it under 400 will be my plan.
• 2:04:57
  So I'm gonna try I I I appreciate that.
• 2:05:01
  So yes. I I but.
• 2:05:04
  Now that now that I'm putting on my own too, you know?
• 2:05:08
  The the print cost is, you know, I've kind of learned the print
• 2:05:10
  costs well. The print cost is much more
• 2:05:13
  expensive on a 450 page book than a 360 page book, which
• 2:05:17
  probably means your profit margin is going to be a lot
• 2:05:20
  smaller on a 450 page book unless you Jack your price up.
• 2:05:23
  So yeah, well I you know, I don't I don't, you know with
• 2:05:27
  Amazon I don't know how you do it.
• 2:05:29
  But I mean I published through KDP, so you know from my you
• 2:05:36
  know I don't have to pay anything into print but it just
• 2:05:39
  it just oh. No, Yes, correct.
• 2:05:40
  It just comes out. But yeah, it's it's like yeah,
• 2:05:43
  the the bigger the book is, the less profit you you get.
• 2:05:47
  B, just because they have, they have to they have to spend more
• 2:05:51
  money to print and so Yep, and that.
• 2:05:53
  Print cost is your cut. So if you you know Amazon, and
• 2:05:58
  that's all common knowledge, you know if you've put a book out
• 2:06:01
  there. Amazon will give you 60%.
• 2:06:03
  They'll keep 40%. You go, oh cool.
• 2:06:06
  However, your 60% is going to be lessened by the print cost of
• 2:06:10
  that book. So your oh cool goes down
• 2:06:13
  quickly if you have you know and again your price point changes.
• 2:06:17
  So my the Novella is priced significantly cheaper than what
• 2:06:21
  the the publisher put the body. It's also my smaller book.
• 2:06:25
  So the print fee for the novella was a lot cheaper than you know,
• 2:06:28
  because it's not quite a third, but less than half for sure.
• 2:06:34
  Yeah, my my uncle, before my uncle was one of the ones who
• 2:06:42
  bought the book and I sold mine on on Amazon for like for not
• 2:06:49
  for 10 bucks. And it was like you need to, you
• 2:06:53
  need to raise the price on that one.
• 2:06:54
  I'm like well it's it's you know it's it's just a novella that
• 2:06:57
  and you know it's not, it's not you know that much and besides
• 2:07:03
  I'll, you know, I'll make, I'll make 7 bucks off of that on
• 2:07:07
  print. So you know it's it's still
• 2:07:12
  pretty good. You know, the pricing margin is
• 2:07:14
  definitely interesting. Yeah.
• 2:07:16
  So it's lots. It's again, it's one of those
• 2:07:17
  things you have to learn that I, you know, I didn't intend to
• 2:07:21
  have to learn that, but. And also your profit margin and
• 2:07:24
  all everything's different. Amazon versus Ingram Spark,
• 2:07:27
  which will get your book to you know, everything else like
• 2:07:30
  Barnes and Noble and libraries and small bookstores and all
• 2:07:33
  that, but the payout is different and the print costs
• 2:07:36
  are different and costs for printing.
• 2:07:39
  My quality's really good. I was surprised I I I ended up
• 2:07:42
  doing a hardcover, which I wasn't.
• 2:07:44
  I did one just as kind of a kind of see what it would look like
• 2:07:47
  because I knew it wouldn't have a dust jacket since it was
• 2:07:49
  Amazon. But because it's novella and
• 2:07:51
  it's, you know, thinner, it actually does.
• 2:07:54
  A dust jacket would have been a bad idea with it.
• 2:07:57
  And the the hardback I love. I love how it turned out.
• 2:08:01
  My see mine isn't wasn't big enough to do what?
• 2:08:06
  Like I kind of justify A hardcover, but one of the things
• 2:08:09
  that. One might It has to be a certain
• 2:08:10
  thing. Yes.
• 2:08:11
  One of the things that my friend that my friend did suggest is
• 2:08:15
  he's like well, well, once you get the first like, so I'm kind
• 2:08:20
  of doing my book of series and like seasons so to speak.
• 2:08:26
  So the first three books will be like season one, so to speak or
• 2:08:31
  you know, or the 2nd book will be like you know.
• 2:08:34
  And so once I get the seasons and I can compile them together,
• 2:08:38
  then I'll do the horror. So I'm curious to see how.
• 2:08:43
  I'm curious to see how you know those will go too.
• 2:08:47
  So but this is but this is interesting, you know,
• 2:08:52
  interviewing you and then also talking shop.
• 2:08:55
  So yeah, it's always good. Always, always enjoy talking
• 2:08:57
  shop. So I've learned a lot and I'm
• 2:08:59
  glad to share what I've learned with fellow authors and the
• 2:09:01
  general public, for sure the readers out there.
• 2:09:04
  So I appreciate it. Where?
• 2:09:06
  So you know once again where where can people find you?
• 2:09:09
  Do you have a website? I.
• 2:09:11
  Do my website is my name. It's got my middle initial in
• 2:09:15
  there. Eric P which stands for Paul but
• 2:09:17
  Eric P bishop.com. That will send you everywhere
• 2:09:20
  book wise. Simplest way to go is go to
• 2:09:23
  Amazon and type in Ransom's daughter and it'll be the first
• 2:09:27
  thing that pops up and it's an e-book paperback and hardcover.
• 2:09:31
  The cover is, you know, whoever did your cover is they did a
• 2:09:35
  really good job on it. Todd Wilkins, Todd I I give Todd
• 2:09:40
  his prophecies and the acknowledgments and everything
• 2:09:42
  as well. Todd Wilkins did the cover
• 2:09:43
  design and yeah, he he, he knocked that image out of the
• 2:09:47
  park. So I was very.
• 2:09:49
  Very pleased with how the cover turned out.
• 2:09:51
  Looks. I think it looks just as good as
• 2:09:52
  any cover out there that Atria or any of the big boys are
• 2:09:55
  putting out. So I think Todd's got a good
• 2:09:57
  out. So.
• 2:09:58
  So, yeah, thank you. All right.
• 2:10:01
  Well, you know Eric P Bishop, Ransom, daughter and the and the
• 2:10:05
  Body Man too. If you read The Body Man, go and
• 2:10:09
  go and read that one too. Because with everything going on
• 2:10:14
  in the world, well, that might not be fiction, so I'm not
• 2:10:22
  saying. I'm not sure.
• 2:10:24
  So I'm not talking about who my contacts are in the Biden Harris
• 2:10:30
  administration. So, yeah, thank.
• 2:10:34
  You, Sam. I appreciate your time.
• 2:10:36
  I I appreciate it as well and take.
• 2:10:39
  Have a good night. All right, you too.
• 2:10:42
  Thanks for listening to the Whitfield report on the NGC
• 2:10:46
  network. Please visit Sam's website at
• 2:10:49
  www.thesamwhitfield.com and support Sam on
• 2:10:55
  patreon@patreon.com/whitfield Report Until next time.
• 2:11:01
  God bless God, save this great nation and God, freedom, legacy
• 2:11:06
  in that order.