Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #120: Scott Urbach / CIA / Corporate Security/ Thriller Writer

Transcript

#120: Scott Urbach / CIA / Corporate Security/ Thriller Writer · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together
• 0:15
  and we're live. We're back.
• 0:16
  Scott Erbach, welcome. I'm so excited to have you here.
• 0:19
  Thank you so much for joining tonight.
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  Thank you very much. I'm I'm really excited about
• 0:23
  being here. Yeah, you know, I was thinking
• 0:26
  actually on my on my way home. I just started school last week
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  and I was happy that, you know, I caught you in one of your
• 0:32
  first few podcasts after the book came out, because I feel
• 0:35
  like doing a podcast is like dating, you know, where you
• 0:38
  know, you get you, you talk about yourself a lot, you tell
• 0:40
  some great stories. And then after the 10th time or
• 0:43
  20th time or 30th time of repeating it, you know, you get
• 0:46
  a little tired, a little burnt out.
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  So I hope that hope that all this stuff that you talk about
• 0:50
  is going to be fresh and exciting and, and I'm really
• 0:53
  excited to talk with you today. Yeah, thanks.
• 0:55
  Me too. So you want to tell me just a
• 0:58
  little bit about your background and then we're probably going to
• 1:01
  look at everything through the lens of your new found writing
• 1:04
  career. But do you want to give me a
• 1:07
  little bit of background about yourself and we can we can kind
• 1:09
  of work away from there? Yeah, sure.
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  So you've already kind of alluded to some of it.
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  My I've, I've recently embarked on a what I'm hoping to be a
• 1:21
  career as a as a thriller author.
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  I've I've had my debut novel released in March of this past
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  year. It's ACIA thriller and which is
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  what I know my background is. I was a former CIA officer many
• 1:43
  years ago and over the last my career spanned 40 some years.
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  I left the agency after a little while and then it's been in a
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  global security executive for a number of international
• 1:57
  companies ever since. And so it's been a, it's been a
• 2:00
  long road, an interesting one, and which has led me to to the
• 2:05
  writing career now. Yeah, yeah, It's really
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  exciting. My, my famous.
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  I had a professor that got me into writing with the first
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  class that I went to. And the thing that he said was
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  every great writer has at least 50 to 100 things they love more
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  than writing because otherwise you have nothing good to write
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  about, you know, and, and at life, you're going to, in order
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  to, if you want to really be a great writer, in order to really
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  get there, you have to be accumulating experiences to be
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  able to have something to write about.
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  Let your imagination work, let history work, let your
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  experiences happen. And then try, and then you find
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  a way to capture it and put it all into words.
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  So I, I think that you're, that it sounds like the time is ripe
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  for, you know, for a writing career based on that kind of
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  background. Well, yeah.
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  And I think he, I think he was spot on with all of those
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  comments. Obviously, they also say, you
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  know, write what you know and write what you love and write
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  what you like to read. I'm a voracious reader, so I
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  read across multiple genres, But I, I, I know I'd be a lousy
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  romance writer. I, I think I'm much, I'm much
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  better at writing, you know, mystery, thriller, action,
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  adventure type books. Have you always have you always
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  loved reading and you ever have you ever have you always had a
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  desire to write? I've, I've always loved reading
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  and I'm going to date myself here, but you know, I, I go all
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  the way back to the Louis Lamour western novels, you know, back
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  in the 60s and 70s and you know, James Harriet and then the All
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  things bright and beautiful books that he wrote.
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  He was an, an English author and you know, then all all the way
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  up. You know, of course, I, as you
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  would expect with my background, I was drawn to Ian Fleming then
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  and the James Bond series. Now those predated me.
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  Those are from the 50s, but I've read, I've read all of those all
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  the way up to the current day. You know, there's a number of
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  modern authors that I, I follow, you know, religiously every time
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  a book comes out, I'm, I'm, I'm the type of reader that every
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  author dreams about. You get me hooked on a series.
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  I'll read through the entire thing.
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  So it's, I think in 2023 I gave myself a goal of reading 100
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  books on my Kindle and I think I topped out at 120 or so.
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  That was, that was everything from the classics, you know, Old
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  Man in the Sea or Dracula, you know, Gone with the Wind and
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  then all the way up to, you know, modern genre specific
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  action adventure type type novel.
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  So, so I've always been, you know, very keen on reading and
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  writing. You know, I like all of us.
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  You mentioned being in school. I took creative writing classes
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  and things like that, you know, in school, but really never had
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  the time to sit down and actually, you know, put pen to
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  paper and, and really write a book.
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  And then recently in in 2024, I decided it was time to finally
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  do that. And that's what's led me to to
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  it today. OK, awesome.
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  That's a, that's a spectacular segue.
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  And it's really, and it's, it's funny because I have a really, I
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  personally have a very difficult time finding new books.
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  I, I, I have adept, I, I judge books based on their cover.
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  You know, I'm one of those people.
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  And I try and I, and it drives me crazy to say because I like
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  to be open minded, but I really, really need to be prompted to
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  really push my way into, into a new book.
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  But one thing that I did notice that I think is really
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  interesting. Maybe you've noticed just from
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  what you've read that there are authors that can really just
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  like hump out writing whole books.
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  Like like it's, I mean it's a method, you know, and like they
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  can, they can write 10/15/20 books.
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  And, you know, you, whether you have the famous or the famous
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  Alex Ryder series or Colleen Hoover, which my wife and my
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  sister-in-law are, you know, love reading like they have a
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  formula and a process and they just keep on turning out books.
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  Do you, did you pick up on any kind of pattern or any kind of,
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  you know, while you're reading any kind of formal structure or
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  pattern that these kind of writers had?
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  Well, yeah, I mean, in my genre and others, you really want to
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  if you're going to have any type of commercial success and, and
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  understand there are two paths to publishing nowadays.
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  Back in the day there was one pass.
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  It's called trad publishing or traditional publishing where you
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  would write your manuscript, you would shop it to an agent or,
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  you know, hundreds of agents and receive hundreds of rejections
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  before somebody finally picked you up.
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  Who would then take it and sell it to what are now, I think the,
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  they're called the big 5 publishing houses who would
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  then, you know, mess with it and edit it and do all kinds of
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  things for a year or more before it finally gets published.
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  Then, you know, in the, you know, early 2000s, you know,
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  2015, maybe 10/15/20 years ago with the advent of Amazon, the
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  indie publishing world really went from what was once looked
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  down upon. It was called vanity press.
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  And you would pay a lot of money and you know, a book would be
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  printed for you and have thousands of copies stuck in
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  your garage somewhere. Now, now it's not like that
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  anymore. The, the indie author indie
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  author world is a vibrant community of really talented
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  writers who are writing their books, publishing their books
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  themselves, marketing the books themselves and, and having great
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  success. Honestly, I would say 90 at this
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  point, 95% of the books I read are from indie authors that I
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  can as, as you said, that I can search online to find a book
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  that I'm interested in. And that, and that process
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  actually is what led me to, to actually writing the book.
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  Because as I mentioned when I went on that, you know, goal of
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  reading 100 books, I'd also about that same time gotten into
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  scuba diving. It was something I've always
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  wanted to do. So, you know, so I started
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  querying Amazon, you know, about, you know, scuba diving
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  related fiction novels and scuba diving adventure stories, which
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  led me into this entire sub genre that I didn't even know
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  existed. There's actually a group, and
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  I've become friendly with some of the authors in it called the
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  Tropical Authors group that have, there's about 50 of these
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  guys that have men and women that have their books that are
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  all kind of themed around, you know, action and adventure and
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  sea stories and scuba diving. And so I think the first one I
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  came across was Sharon Ward and her Finn Fleming stories, which
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  led me to a tremendous guy, Nicholas Harvey and his AJ
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  Bailey dive mystery stories. And then there's some cross
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  pollination between these various authors where 1
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  character from one book will show up in another book.
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  That led me down to other authors in reading their books,
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  ultimately to A to a guy by name of Wayne Stennett, who's kind of
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  the godfather, the grandfather of this tropical authors group.
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  And he's got to your point, I think he has he just published
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  his 30 30th book in in one specific.
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  It's called the Jesse McDermott series.
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  He, you know, he has thirty of those now.
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  He's been doing it for many years.
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  He probably puts out several a year.
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  But then he also has some non fiction books, one of which was
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  called, it was called Blue collar to no caller.
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  And you know, his journey to becoming a writer.
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  He's a former Marine boat captain, a truck driver.
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  And he explained how, you know, one day he decided to sit down
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  and start writing stories and now it's his full time job.
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  And that's something that resonated with me and said, you
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  know, that's something that I think I can do.
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  And it goes back to my my family had and my kids have been after
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  me for literally decades to to write a book now.
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  They they were envisioning me writing a memoir of some sort of
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  my my times, my time in the agency, which I was never going
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  to do, but but this gave me because.
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  It was it was it was impractical or because it.
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  Was, well, because, you know, I wasn't going to talk.
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  You know what? What I did in the agency was
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  exciting and important and fun work, but it's not something
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  that, you know, that I would write a memoir about.
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  That's just not who I am. But I could write a novel about
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  what I did, loosely based on me and my career, very loosely
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  based on me and my career. And so that's what I decided to
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  do. And I didn't tell anyone I was
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  doing it. And and again, to your point
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  about the old saying you can't judge a book by its cover, well,
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  you really have to nowadays. And one of the first things they
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  drill into you if you listen to other podcasts about writing or
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  if you, you know, read articles about it is, you know, two
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  things you immediately need to have.
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  You have to have a a good title that fits your genre and a good
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  professionally made cover that also fits your genre.
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  That because, you know, as people are are going through
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  Amazon or wherever they're looking for a book, even if
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  they're at a bookstore, you know, you got about a second and
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  a half to grab their attention for for it to really, really
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  scream. This is their genre.
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  So, you know, my buckets title is admit nothing.
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  The cover is the typical, you know, thriller genre cover, a
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  man, you know, running towards trouble, gun in his hand, bright
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  colors, etcetera, etcetera. So you know, right away it's a
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  thriller novel. No one's going to, you know, no
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  one's going to look at it and assume it's a romance or a
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  fantasy or something like that. Now, if you, if you're writing a
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  romance and a fantasy, you want your, you want everything to
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  look different, you know, to have the, the Dragons or the the
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  flames or the flowers or whatever the case may be on your
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  book. So, so that's essentially.
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  Marketing, right? Well, that's the, it's the very
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  first step of marketing, right? It's it's.
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  Psychological marketing because you're trying to capture
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  someone's eyes and all their attention and and stand out at
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  the same time, you know? 100%.
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  Hundreds of other or dozens of others in the same in the.
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  Same, right? So.
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  So back to your question of is there a formula?
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  I believe, and again, I'm very early on this journey, but the
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  formula should be right. You know, do everything right
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  first. And, and obviously the very
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  first thing you have to do is write a good book, right?
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  You can't, you know, no matter how good your cover is and your
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  title is, if you know, after the first couple pages, people think
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  it's garbage and it clearly is. And then you're not going to
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  generate any, any following. But you know, you write a good
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  book. You.
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  I'm sorry real quickly just to just to ask to elaborate because
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  I want you to elaborate on this direction where you're heading
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  down, if you don't mind. But you know, people have a real
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  great concept a lot of times. What makes a good movie?
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  Do you have a concept in yourself?
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  What makes a good book or what are you looking for when you're
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  when you're picking up a book? And so again, yeah, in my genre,
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  yeah, you need to have a compelling, A compelling story.
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  But more importantly, in my, in my belief, A compelling
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  characters, you know, your, your protagonist has to be, you know,
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  believable. I strongly believe the
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  protagonist has to be flawed. You know, not if, if your
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  protagonist was Superman and did everything absolutely right
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  every time, never had conflict, never had stress in his or her
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  life. That's just not believable.
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  So you, you want a compelling story with good, solid
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  characters that are relatable, that have flaws of some sort in
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  my genre, you need to have some action, some adventure, some
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  plot twist that, that you know at the end or midway through.
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  So, so there's, there's those type of steps that you want to
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  have and, and you know it. If you if you know what you like
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  to read you you understand what what good writing is in that
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  genre and so. You recognize the patterns
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  there? Yeah, the patterns.
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  That are familiar. There are certain patterns and
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  you don't want it. It's not like you know it's
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  completely wrote and you and there's no creativity in it
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  because there absolutely is within certain constructs.
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  You can do certain things with your story and you know, as
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  you're writing through, I like to leave a little mini
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  cliffhanger or drama at the end of every chapter because you
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  want them to turn the page. It could be two in the morning
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  and you you end a chapter with a little zinger.
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  It's like, oh man, I I really need to read the next page to
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  see what happens next. And then then you do all of that
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  in your first book. And then ideally, if you're
• 15:49
  writing, you know, you could, you could make a living at this.
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  I I understand with, with a series of standalone books, but
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  I think it's it for me, it's going to be a more interesting
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  journey to have a continuing series of the same characters,
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  you know, put in different situations that are somewhat
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  related. Often that could lead to a
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  spinoff series with if one character really takes off and
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  gets a lot of appreciation by your fan base.
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  So in the old saying is nothing sells your first book better
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  than writing your second book. So you have a good, a good,
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  solid first book in the series, followed by a, you know, a good
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  second book, then to the third and then to a fourth.
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  And so my goal right now and, and I'm just, I'm hoping to
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  release book 2 in the next couple of months.
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  So my goal is to, you know, ideally write 2 books a year.
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  It might be nice to squeeze a third one in there.
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  But if I could write 2 books a year, market them properly,
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  start, you know, slowly building up a readership, I'd be very,
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  I'd be very happy with that. And you know, where I was going
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  with earlier about how I decided to, to write this and to the
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  point I was getting to on the cover and the title, I told no
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  one in my family I was doing it. It was a little secret project
• 17:20
  of mine that I was doing, you know, upstairs in, in my study
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  and, and writing the book. And then the way I kind of
• 17:30
  willed it, manifested it into existence is rather than just
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  print out on computer paper the manuscript and hand it to my
• 17:38
  family. I actually, you know, had it
• 17:41
  properly formatted, sent it off to I think Barnes and Noble
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  Press had them with. And I'd hired a cover artist and
• 17:49
  all that. Had it professionally printed up
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  like a book with the cover looked like, looked like you'd
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  picked it up off the shelves and Barnes and Noble.
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  And, and that's what I, you know, surprised the family with
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  as my first draft. And then they became my beta
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  readers and my, you know, my first set of reviews to give me
• 18:10
  feedback as I then. And that manuscript at that time
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  had was about 60,000 word, yeah, 60,000 words.
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  And by the time I incorporated all my changes and and feature
• 18:22
  edits, it landed about 80,000 words when I finally published
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  it. Wow, you added.
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  I know a lot of for a lot of writers their their problem is
• 18:30
  actually cutting away words, not having to add more.
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  Yeah, and exactly. And and, you know, there's
• 18:37
  probably a lot of puts and takes there because I probably, you
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  know, I started with, like I said, if I was, you know,
• 18:42
  editing at 60,000 words, I probably delete, deleted 20,000
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  words and then wrote 40,000 back, you know, so it was a lot,
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  it was a lot of back and forth as I was, you know, editing and
• 18:54
  taking out things that just didn't make sense, putting in
• 18:57
  new things. It eventually got to the point
• 19:00
  where I just had to stop because I would find myself waking up in
• 19:03
  the middle of the night thinking, oh, you know what?
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  I could have, I could have said that differently on that one
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  sentence, then gone and changed that sentence, which then led me
• 19:12
  into rewriting that entire chapter.
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  You know, So eventually I had to say, OK, it's good, it's ready
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  to go and let's put it out there in the world and see what, you
• 19:23
  know, what everyone else thinks. Yeah, I don't think as an author
• 19:28
  or as an artist anyone ever really feels 100% ready.
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  But I think at a certain point everyone understands that it's
• 19:36
  got to go out there, you know, whether you like it or not.
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  But what I think is also very interesting about what you're
• 19:43
  describing is, you know, it's actually funny because I'm very
• 19:47
  into the entertainment industry as a whole.
• 19:50
  You can hear me. OK, so I'm sorry about that.
• 19:54
  What I was saying was I'm a huge fan of the entertainment
• 19:57
  industry as a whole and and one of the thing and the business
• 20:02
  behind it as well. You know, and for studios, it's
• 20:05
  always easier to create a sequel than it is an original because
• 20:11
  and and sequels almost inevitably make more money than
• 20:14
  the originals do. But the sequels are almost also
• 20:17
  inevitably get a worse reception with the audience.
• 20:22
  Right. And because, and by the way, I
• 20:25
  really think, you know, just going back to what you're
• 20:27
  talking about, about your method of writing and your characters
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  and everything like that, you know, spin offs are not bad, are
• 20:36
  actually I think awesome. I think they're phenomenal.
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  I I think that a good series is phenomenal.
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  And I think that one of the hardest things to do is convince
• 20:44
  other people of an original story that they never heard of
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  before. And so I would imagine that the
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  hardest book to write is probably the first because you
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  have to convince the audience of the book's good enough.
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  And then the challenge is keeping up the quality with that
• 20:58
  first one so that it doesn't let your audience down and that you
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  don't kind of cheapen the brand of the character.
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  I mean, you have that kind of story.
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  You know, you have that kind of story that happens with Marvel
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  where Disney talks about all the time how how their mistake
• 21:12
  recently was making Marvel feel like homework.
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  Like you had to like keep up with all this stuff and it was
• 21:18
  exhausting, you know, fatigue and new materials coming out all
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  the time. And how do you keep track of the
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  TV shows or the movies or the straight to streaming?
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  You know, at a certain point, people don't want to do
• 21:29
  homework. They just want, you know, they
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  just want to be able to enjoy. And I think that what's fun
• 21:36
  about this little world that you're playing with is that you
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  can kind of gauge the audience response if you can.
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  I don't know if there's a way you can as a writer and you can
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  tell me whether that's your you know, what, what your experience
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  is with that. But you know, and then kind of
• 21:51
  jump on a character or do you feel yourself like, hey, I'm in
• 21:55
  a real flow with particular characters And I think that
• 21:57
  these characters are rich for more stories and more potential.
• 22:00
  Well, again, you know, being early at it.
• 22:02
  But first of all, let me step back.
• 22:04
  Your your Marvel analogy is outstanding because I have this
• 22:08
  ongoing thing with my wife. She'll want to watch a Marvel
• 22:11
  movie. And I said, look, I'll watch a
• 22:13
  single superhero movie where there's one superhero and that's
• 22:17
  it preferably the origin story that superhero.
• 22:20
  But when there's 37 different Marvel characters and, or, or DC
• 22:24
  characters, whatever, whichever 1 is which.
• 22:26
  And you know, there's there's this talking raccoon guy over
• 22:29
  here and there's, you know, Thor over here doing something else
• 22:33
  and Superman and Batman and everyone mixed together.
• 22:37
  That's, you know, that is homework for me and I can't go
• 22:40
  down that route. So, but to your point on, you
• 22:44
  know, your, your character journey, I think you know that
• 22:49
  there's, there's the ability and as evident by a lot of these
• 22:54
  authors I read that have, you know, 1520 thirty books in their
• 22:59
  series. There's plenty of room for for
• 23:01
  the characters to continue with various types of, of adventures
• 23:07
  or, or incidents that they get into and have to get their way
• 23:12
  out of. And there's a lot of times
• 23:14
  there's a common thread. I really enjoy the the little
• 23:17
  back story, common threads that weave through a series where,
• 23:21
  you know, somebody might be talking about a character, you
• 23:23
  know, a a minor character of a family member of something in
• 23:27
  book 1 and then is referred back to in book 3.
• 23:30
  And then you see in book 5, you know, the the daughter's now
• 23:34
  getting married or something like that.
• 23:35
  And I'm so I really like those type of of continuity plays
• 23:41
  through. And I like it when when there's
• 23:44
  crossover with with another, let's say.
• 23:49
  And Nick Harvey's a great example.
• 23:51
  His AJ Bailey series start, you know, started with it's all
• 23:56
  focused around this woman who's a dive instructor in the Cayman
• 24:00
  Islands. And then that round book 3 or 4
• 24:02
  or something like that, a plot line circled around a teenage
• 24:08
  runaway from Norway who was in the Cayman Islands who ended up
• 24:12
  in in a sex trafficking situation.
• 24:16
  You know, she ends up, you know, surviving it.
• 24:19
  And then in the next story, she she's a bigger character.
• 24:25
  And then he spun her off. It's called the Norris Summer
• 24:28
  series. He spun her off into her own
• 24:30
  series and then but then refers back as AJ shows up in her in
• 24:35
  her books. And so I, I like that type of
• 24:38
  interplay as in, and I think for, for as an author that
• 24:45
  excites me about being able to, to expand that world, much like,
• 24:50
  I guess a fantasy author, you know, gets likes and enjoys, you
• 24:56
  know, world building some new world.
• 24:59
  I'm not world building, but I'm world building around, you know,
• 25:02
  the characters in, in my book who, you know, quite frankly, I
• 25:07
  mentioned, you know, the family pushing me to do this.
• 25:10
  Almost everyone in my family is a character in the book, some of
• 25:15
  some of them in some of them in true name and, and using their
• 25:20
  background as, as plot points. And so it's been, you know, it's
• 25:27
  a kick for them to, to do it. It's just littered with Easter
• 25:31
  eggs. That was for them to, to find.
• 25:35
  You know, the, there's a whole storyline.
• 25:37
  The protagonist talks about his, his wife and their first date
• 25:41
  and where they got married and how they first met and the, you
• 25:46
  know, the 1st and all of that is absolutely true between, you
• 25:49
  know, because my wife was CIA also.
• 25:51
  So she and I met on the 7th floor of CIA headquarters out in
• 25:55
  front of the director suite. And so I tell that story in the
• 25:59
  book from the viewpoint of the protagonist.
• 26:01
  But everything he talks about there really happened in real
• 26:04
  life. And, you know, so it's something
• 26:06
  for the, the kids to see and, you know, quite frankly laugh
• 26:10
  about now. But then I put them, I put them
• 26:12
  in, you know, their characters in the book now.
• 26:15
  Now what they have to do is stay on my good side.
• 26:17
  Otherwise I'll kill them off in the book.
• 26:18
  But but so so far they. You sound like David Chase, the
• 26:23
  author of The Sopranos. The.
• 26:25
  Right creator. Of The Sopranos, apparently he
• 26:27
  was. Apparently he was infamous for
• 26:29
  if you pissed him off, he would just have your character whacked
• 26:32
  you'd. Come back and you come back and.
• 26:36
  You read the script to the next. Episode and you're gone and.
• 26:39
  You were killed. Off.
• 26:40
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, I did.
• 26:42
  Well, I've actually, I've had friends now that are that read
• 26:45
  the first book and now writing me and say, hey, will you put me
• 26:48
  in the second book? And I said, yeah, but I can't
• 26:50
  guarantee you can make it through it.
• 26:51
  Oh, that's cool. You know, use my name and, you
• 26:53
  know, see what happens. And so two of them are not going
• 26:57
  to make it out of the second book.
• 26:58
  I know that much. So.
• 27:02
  I see when they fall on your list.
• 27:04
  Of buddies, yeah, they're good guys.
• 27:05
  But so you know, 11 challenge that we haven't touched on when
• 27:10
  we talk about the cadence of writing the book and how I'm
• 27:14
  trying to get out a couple of year is I have a unique
• 27:18
  situation and commitment that I have to meet when I write a
• 27:22
  book. Now, if I'm writing a cookbook,
• 27:25
  this isn't a problem. But if I'm writing anything
• 27:28
  that's CIA related, I'm still bound by my secrecy agreement
• 27:33
  that I signed, let me see, 41 years ago day.
• 27:38
  After tomorrow it'll be 41 years since I since I signed this
• 27:42
  piece of paper. So I'm bound to it for life.
• 27:45
  The secrecy agreement, which states that anything I write,
• 27:48
  again, cookbooks aside, that has anything related at all to the
• 27:53
  Ciai have to submit the manuscript for review and
• 27:57
  approval by what's called the CIA Pre Publication
• 28:02
  Classification Review Board. So, and I did that with book 1.
• 28:06
  I sent them the manuscript. Now understanding that I was not
• 28:12
  never and I never would intentionally divulge any true
• 28:15
  classified information. And but their role is to make
• 28:19
  sure that I didn't that I didn't even unintentionally do it.
• 28:23
  And so they back to you. It was less so than I actually
• 28:28
  thought it was about, it was about a month I think it took
• 28:32
  for them to get back to me with their redactions.
• 28:35
  And they had some, and you know, some is some of the redactions
• 28:40
  were simply because again, I've been out of the agency I was in
• 28:46
  for a little over 10 years. So I've been out for 30.
• 28:50
  And I thought, you know, it was something that I've written and
• 28:52
  I wrote the name of a building and I thought that they didn't
• 28:56
  use that building anymore. And apparently I was wrong
• 29:00
  because they made me redact that name.
• 29:01
  So I changed it. I changed the name of the
• 29:03
  building. And then they, they asked me to
• 29:06
  redact. They must have pulled my file
• 29:09
  and they asked me to redact some information.
• 29:11
  The, the, the protagonist mentions he worked in XYZ field
• 29:16
  office and it was the field office I worked in.
• 29:19
  And they, they asked me to redact that.
• 29:23
  So I changed the name of the field office and then do they?
• 29:27
  Tell you Do they tell you specific reasons why redactions
• 29:29
  have to? Happen No, they, they didn't
• 29:31
  tell me. They just said it was redacted.
• 29:33
  It had it had to be be removed. They they actually asked me to
• 29:38
  redact something that I completely made-up.
• 29:41
  I, I, I referenced, I referenced a situation where someone was
• 29:46
  standing up at a certain point and I, I said there was a, a, a
• 29:50
  certain type of weapon, you know, I in the knee well of that
• 29:54
  desk, which was completely made-up.
• 29:57
  And they made me redact that, which made me think, OK, I've
• 30:00
  been out 30 years. Maybe that weapon is, is now in
• 30:03
  the meanwhile of that desk. So maybe I just stumbled upon
• 30:06
  something that, that they asked me to.
• 30:08
  So I, I changed that. So obviously I'm going to do
• 30:11
  anything that they ask me now, you know, I'm very clear and
• 30:15
  they are very clear that the fact that they have now give me
• 30:19
  the redactions, I make the changes and I published the
• 30:24
  book. In no way are they endorsing the
• 30:27
  book, you know, recommending the book or anything like that.
• 30:31
  They're just saying that it went through the process and I was
• 30:34
  cleared to and I was cleared to publish it.
• 30:37
  And so I have to do that now for every, you know, every volume
• 30:43
  that comes out next. And matter of fact, at the end
• 30:47
  of our discussion today, I'm going to go hit send and send
• 30:50
  the the manuscript for Book 2 off to them for their review.
• 30:55
  No way. It's ready.
• 30:57
  It's ready for them to review. It is not ready to publish, but
• 31:01
  it's ready for them to review. So, you know, I'll send it to
• 31:04
  them and it doesn't have to go back and forth multiple times
• 31:08
  unless I were to make really substantive changes.
• 31:11
  So as long as I do the redactions that they say I need
• 31:15
  to redact and I'm. I'm, I'm relatively certain
• 31:18
  they'll be even fewer in this book than in the first one,
• 31:20
  because the first one I was taking great pains to, to talk
• 31:24
  about, you know, inner workings of the agency and, and paint a
• 31:28
  picture, you know, talking about the exterior of the building and
• 31:32
  the Nathan Hale statue outside of the main headquarters in the
• 31:36
  lobby. And then the, the, the seal, the
• 31:38
  great seal, you know, on the, on the granite floor of the lobby,
• 31:42
  the memorial, the stars carved in the memorial wall.
• 31:45
  The, you know, what's in the CIA museum, you know, the greatest
• 31:49
  collection of espionage related artifacts in the world that the
• 31:53
  vast majority of people will never see.
• 31:56
  I talked about certain things in there and you know, how the, how
• 32:00
  the, you know, the floors are laid out and things like that.
• 32:03
  So I, I was putting a lot of detail in the first book.
• 32:08
  Again, a lot of it, you know, take a lot.
• 32:09
  Of that detail. Out No, no, they didn't make me
• 32:12
  take. They didn't make me take hardly
• 32:15
  any of that detail out. It was more they're really
• 32:18
  worried about what we call sources and methods, right?
• 32:21
  They're worried about, you know, either inadvertently talking
• 32:26
  about something that still remains classified or talking
• 32:31
  about, you know, well, you know, the sources and methods, you
• 32:36
  know, techniques that that they don't want, you know, put out
• 32:40
  there. So.
• 32:42
  So yeah, the, the, you know, what color the walls were and
• 32:45
  all that. They weren't.
• 32:46
  They weren't too worried about that.
• 32:48
  Right, right, right. But something that could be a
• 32:50
  little bit more used to understand the workings of or
• 32:54
  day-to-day. Right if.
• 32:56
  Things could be more concerned about.
• 32:57
  And, and the plot line also goes back to to you can almost call
• 33:03
  it historical fiction because I used real incidences that
• 33:09
  happened when I was there involving a famous KGB defector
• 33:15
  who defected to the agency and then re defected months later.
• 33:21
  And that's a major plot line in the book.
• 33:23
  So I was used, I used his real name and real facts about that
• 33:27
  case, you know. No, it's not it That story
• 33:31
  itself is. Yeah.
• 33:34
  The guy's name was Vitaly Yurchenko.
• 33:36
  He was a K GB Colonel that defected in 1984.
• 33:42
  Five, I think. So the middle of the Cold War.
• 33:45
  Yeah, the middle of the Cold War.
• 33:47
  And he, he defected in, I think he was stationed in Berlin.
• 33:54
  I have to go back and read my book now.
• 33:56
  He's stationed in Berlin and defected to the agency.
• 34:03
  We scooped him up, got him back to the US, debriefed him at, you
• 34:09
  know, a facility and then moved him around.
• 34:12
  There's a whole bunch of moving parts around him.
• 34:15
  And what eventually happened is he the members of the office
• 34:22
  security, which is which I worked in, had him out in
• 34:26
  Georgetown at a, at a specific restaurant.
• 34:30
  And I named the restaurant doesn't exist anymore, but I
• 34:32
  named the restaurant and it's you know, it's common knowledge
• 34:35
  where it happened and the location.
• 34:37
  There's actually a plaque on the wall of the building on on
• 34:41
  Wisconsin Ave. I think where it happened.
• 34:45
  And and what happened is he, you know, he has to go to the
• 34:50
  bathroom. Something came back, told the
• 34:52
  rookie CIA security officer that was with him.
• 34:56
  Are you going to shoot me if I walk away?
• 34:58
  He said no. And he said, I'm sorry, I'm
• 35:01
  doing this to you. And he turned around and walked
• 35:02
  away and walked out. And then, you know, chaos
• 35:06
  ensued. They couldn't find him until a
• 35:09
  day or two later, he showed up at a press conference at the
• 35:12
  Soviet embassy. So then the big the big story
• 35:15
  was, was he a double agent? Was he sent there on purpose?
• 35:19
  Was he sending all of that I work into the book.
• 35:24
  So I used a lot of true, you know, you know, events and weave
• 35:30
  that into the storyline of the book.
• 35:33
  How much, how much does or how much are you guys are you
• 35:38
  trained in? And I guess this applies for
• 35:42
  both CIA and your security job. How much are you trained in
• 35:45
  psychology and understanding people and dealing with people
• 35:49
  when it comes to your type, when it comes to security, type of
• 35:51
  positions? So, well, it, it depends on your
• 35:55
  role in the agency. You know, obviously there, there
• 35:57
  are certain roles where a case officer, for example, which I
• 36:02
  was not in the director of operations, a case officer is
• 36:06
  what the, you know, in the vernacular, people call them a
• 36:10
  spy, the ones that work overseas and their job is to convince
• 36:14
  other people to spy for them against their country, right.
• 36:18
  So they, they are trained very heavily on how to manipulate
• 36:22
  people and read people and do certain things along those
• 36:27
  lines. In my world in security as an
• 36:32
  investigator, we are trained in certain investigator techniques,
• 36:36
  investigation techniques, and in certain elicitation techniques
• 36:40
  and how to interview somebody and elicit the information we
• 36:44
  want, how to gain their trust and how to, you know, work, work
• 36:50
  a case in a specific way towards a logical conclusion while
• 36:55
  gaining, you know, all the facts that you need to gain.
• 36:58
  And, you know, the interview process is a big part of that.
• 37:03
  So there's a lot of psychology built around that and techniques
• 37:07
  that that we use. And that was both in the agency.
• 37:11
  And then, you know, as my, my global security career
• 37:14
  progressed, you use the same type of things when you're
• 37:17
  investigating a theft or any type of threat or investigation
• 37:22
  that that you have to do for corporate entities.
• 37:24
  It's the exact same tools and skill sets I would have used
• 37:28
  during my agency days. I see.
• 37:31
  So your skill set was able to carry over pretty easily from
• 37:34
  the public sector to the, I guess, the corporate, I guess.
• 37:37
  From the to. The to the corporate sector.
• 37:40
  Yeah, 100%. I, I did.
• 37:42
  And because I, I always worked in large global international
• 37:46
  companies, it, it directly translated, you know, I, I
• 37:51
  think, I'm not exactly sure where I am right now.
• 37:55
  I've lost count, but I've probably visited, worked in 70
• 38:00
  countries or more, you know, across every continent pretty
• 38:06
  much. So.
• 38:07
  So I've done a lot of international work just like I
• 38:11
  did in the agency for these global companies.
• 38:16
  Again, you know, with all the same type of issues, whether
• 38:18
  it's physical security or investigations or threat
• 38:25
  analysis. You know, I always would have a
• 38:28
  intelligence function of some sort with my background.
• 38:31
  You know, I would always build an intelligence function in
• 38:34
  every one of the corporate jobs. I had to have a team of analysts
• 38:38
  that are looking at threats globally and how they might
• 38:42
  affect either the company itself, our personnel, our
• 38:45
  assets, our Tier 1 suppliers, etcetera, etcetera.
• 38:50
  Right. And that actually that's going
• 38:52
  to get me I think to kind of the next, I guess transition
• 38:57
  transitional phase. I want I'm going to come back to
• 38:59
  the book and the writing for sure.
• 39:02
  But first of all, if there are very similar skill sets that
• 39:09
  carry over from that CIA sector to the corporate sector, is
• 39:14
  there is there a relationship between the two?
• 39:16
  Did you continue to have some kind of relationship, You know,
• 39:20
  once you're kind of working corporate, big company, private
• 39:23
  security abroad, I imagine you'd have to work with kind of
• 39:26
  American authorities if it's going to be an American based
• 39:29
  company, right? Yes, certainly, you know, we
• 39:31
  would have relationships with all manner of federal agencies,
• 39:35
  whether it's the the FBI or immigration or, you know,
• 39:40
  Marshall Service or you, you name it.
• 39:42
  You always wanted to maintain, you know, relationships
• 39:46
  throughout, you know, various government entities.
• 39:50
  I had a unique relationship with the agency, obviously because of
• 39:53
  my background. And occasionally they'd be
• 39:56
  interested. And this is not classified.
• 39:58
  There's a entire function of the agency whose job it is to, you
• 40:04
  know, interface with corporations and, you know, ask
• 40:09
  questions. And, you know, if, if there are,
• 40:12
  you know, employees that are travelling to certain areas,
• 40:15
  maybe going to a conference or something like that, the the
• 40:18
  agency might want to interview those people when they come
• 40:20
  back. It's all you know, you know.
• 40:24
  Understood declared above board. There's nothing clandestine
• 40:29
  about it. So I would have those type of
• 40:32
  relationships and then 11 situation popped up where I had
• 40:38
  I was I was in the private industry.
• 40:39
  I was getting ready to make a trip to Moscow.
• 40:43
  First time I I was going to Moscow I what that was a denied
• 40:47
  area when I was in the agency. I couldn't go there then, but I
• 40:51
  was going as part No, no, just, you know, it's a deny.
• 40:56
  It was a denied area. So there had to been of a
• 40:59
  mission critical reason for me to have been going to Moscow.
• 41:03
  I wouldn't I wouldn't have gone there on vacation or something
• 41:05
  like that. So, but I was out of the agency
• 41:10
  and I was in private industry and I had, you know, a corporate
• 41:15
  reason to go. I had mentioned it to one of my
• 41:18
  buddies that was still in. And then I don't know, it was
• 41:22
  probably a week or two before I was leaving.
• 41:27
  I got a call from the chief of station in New York asking to
• 41:32
  meet with me. And I said sure.
• 41:34
  And I went and met with him and he, he told me, he said, I
• 41:37
  understand you're going to, to Moscow.
• 41:39
  And I, I, I had to put the pieces together.
• 41:42
  How did he know? And I, I said, oh, my buddy must
• 41:44
  have told him somehow it gotten through the system.
• 41:47
  And he said, we highly recommend you don't go.
• 41:50
  And I said, OK, give me a reason.
• 41:53
  He said, well, it is a little bit convoluted story, but
• 41:56
  apparently what happened is the FBI had wrapped up a retired,
• 42:02
  this is back of the days of KGB, a retired KGB officer and the
• 42:09
  rush the Soviets, I think it's still at the time were not happy
• 42:13
  about it because this guy was out of the game and he got
• 42:16
  arrested. And the threat was that they
• 42:19
  were going to arrest the next former CIA guy that came in the
• 42:24
  country. And apparently that apparently
• 42:26
  that was going to be me. So, you know, as soon as they
• 42:30
  told me that, I said no problem. I have no interest in seeing the
• 42:34
  inside of Lubianca prison. I'm good.
• 42:36
  I and I said I'm not going and it's like I postponed the trip.
• 42:41
  And then 6-8 months later, something like that, I got a
• 42:43
  call saying, OK, we're good to go.
• 42:45
  It's been resolved, you can go. And so eventually I ended up
• 42:50
  going like I think I visited twice, something like that.
• 42:53
  Moscow, But yeah, yeah. So but that was a it, it was, it
• 42:59
  was amazing. It was, it was AI went twice.
• 43:03
  I went once in the dead of winter, which I wouldn't
• 43:05
  recommend. It was cold.
• 43:08
  Everything you hear about, about the, you know, the, the freezing
• 43:12
  cold and what the, what happened in World War 2 and all that kind
• 43:15
  of stuff, you know, I can see it.
• 43:17
  Then I went one time in the spring and it was beautiful And,
• 43:20
  and it, you know, the, the Soviet Union had fallen at that
• 43:25
  point. And there was, you know, this
• 43:27
  weird mix of, of capitalism trying to start and a lot of
• 43:32
  weird things going on. But yeah, it was a great
• 43:34
  experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:37
  I, I, I've been to, I've been to Ukraine, I've been to Poland and
• 43:45
  I've, I kind of, when I went, when I was in, in school, I was,
• 43:48
  I spent a year studying in Israel.
• 43:50
  And part of what they do is they offer you an opportunity to go
• 43:54
  to Poland and Ukraine and kind of get and, and get a history of
• 44:00
  World War 2 and what happened and actually, you know, kind of
• 44:03
  go through it. Yeah.
• 44:04
  And my grandfather, who'd been a survivor, although he kind of
• 44:08
  survived him and his family struggled through actually the
• 44:11
  Russian side of things. I just, I'm just discovering all
• 44:15
  this because he passed away two or three years ago.
• 44:19
  And I wasn't really aware of geography or politics or history
• 44:22
  at that point. So whenever he was talking to
• 44:25
  me, it was very hard for me to process and place what was going
• 44:28
  on in my mind, you know. But he was born in Poland right
• 44:31
  before Germany took it, I guess in World War 2, on the border of
• 44:37
  Poland and Ukraine, and his family crossed over to Ukraine
• 44:41
  figuring the Russians would be better to deal with than the
• 44:43
  Nazis. But they got 10.
• 44:45
  That's a tough choice, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, America has to
• 44:49
  make that tough choice to deal with too, right?
• 44:50
  You know. Everyone has to.
• 44:52
  Deal at that point with that tough choice, but they chose to
• 44:54
  go to the to Russia and they got sent to a slave labour camp in
• 44:58
  Siberia or sorry, not a slave labour, A labour camp in
• 45:03
  Siberia, which is essentially a slave labour camp.
• 45:05
  And until they until they made their way to, you know, I guess
• 45:11
  Northern Asia, you know, towards the end of the war, are they
• 45:15
  able to get out of the out of that part of the out of the
• 45:17
  world? But, you know, I'm just, I'm so
• 45:20
  fascinated now. I've been so fascinated.
• 45:22
  Now, now, right there, there's a novel for you to write.
• 45:25
  There's there's that's a really compelling story My.
• 45:28
  Father was begging, was actually begging me to write this because
• 45:31
  I'm a, he's a, he was a historian.
• 45:35
  And he actually published. Did he leave any?
• 45:38
  Did he leave anything behind? Any notes behind?
• 45:40
  Oh yeah, he published. A memoir, and I could actually
• 45:43
  send it to you, I think. I mean, it's really, really
• 45:45
  interesting. And it's really.
• 45:46
  I'd love to read it. Yeah.
• 45:48
  Well, pick it, Pick. It's really funny you should say
• 45:51
  that because just yesterday I dug up a, a memoir of sorts of
• 45:57
  family history that was written by one of my relatives way back
• 46:02
  when, who kind of along the same lines.
• 46:08
  My family tree goes from Germany to Russia to the Volga region of
• 46:13
  Russia. And then from so this is German
• 46:16
  immigrant population that went to Russia and then in the 1800s
• 46:19
  or so, mid to late 1800s immigrated to to the US.
• 46:26
  We saw there's a German Russian connection.
• 46:29
  And I, I just dug up this book yesterday looking at to say
• 46:32
  maybe, you know, a project down the line could be a family
• 46:37
  history memoir type thing using that book that was written in
• 46:41
  19. It was written about the time I
• 46:44
  was born because I'm actually in the book that they list me as a
• 46:48
  family member. So it had to be in 1962 or so
• 46:52
  that it was that it was made. So, So yeah, if you have
• 46:57
  something from your grandfather, which I think is amazing, you
• 47:00
  know, that would be, that would be a great jumping off point
• 47:03
  for, for either a, you know, a true memoir written well or a
• 47:10
  historical fiction or something along those lines.
• 47:13
  Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
• 47:15
  I would love to, especially because now again, it speaks to
• 47:18
  me and I think that, you know, he was.
• 47:19
  Yeah, again, he was an historian and none of my family is.
• 47:22
  And I was the oldest to my family, so, you know, he was.
• 47:26
  So I, you know, if I wasn't really interested and none of my
• 47:29
  younger siblings are mature enough or, you know, I guess
• 47:32
  even educated enough to really be aware of what was going on.
• 47:35
  But but it was really, I mean, it, it, it and now I have it and
• 47:40
  it feels so cool and so special to have that bit of family
• 47:43
  history to be able to like, you know, be able to relate and
• 47:46
  understand and kind of look into that.
• 47:47
  But yeah, actually, and, and maybe that I could bring us back
• 47:51
  a little bit to the writing conversation because my biggest
• 47:54
  problem as a writer is I have a hard time keeping track of the
• 47:58
  whole story and then getting lost and actually making the
• 48:02
  story happen. What's your, what was your
• 48:04
  process when it comes to, when it comes to the big picture
• 48:08
  story and then, you know, writing the filling in the
• 48:11
  details and the characters along the way.
• 48:13
  So you in in the writing community, they call it a you're
• 48:17
  either a plotter where you plot out everything.
• 48:20
  And there's many ways to do some people just do it, you know, in
• 48:23
  a notebook. Some people do it post it notes
• 48:25
  on the wall. Or you're a pantser.
• 48:28
  You know, you, you're flying by the seat of your pants.
• 48:30
  You just start writing and see where the story goes.
• 48:33
  I thought I was a plotter. Yeah, well, yeah.
• 48:36
  So I thought I was a plotter. I plotted out my book where
• 48:42
  where I thought the story was going to go, what the story was
• 48:45
  going to be. I did, I had it from A-Z written
• 48:49
  out. And then after probably 2
• 48:52
  chapters in, it took a hard left turn and went a completely
• 48:57
  different direction. And I just, I just went with it.
• 49:00
  I just said, OK, I'm just going to go with this story the way
• 49:04
  it's the way it's written. I, I would come up with new, no,
• 49:06
  I saved everything I, I plotted out for that book.
• 49:09
  I saved it because maybe it'll end up in book 3 or 4.
• 49:14
  It's not in book 2, but, but yeah, so I, I just, they also,
• 49:20
  people also call it a discovery writer.
• 49:22
  And it, it really kind of spoke to me as I started writing
• 49:25
  something and then an idea hit me and I kept going with it and
• 49:28
  going with it. And, and the, the, everything I
• 49:31
  talked about the your Chenko redefection, all that was none
• 49:36
  of that was in book one. It was in the, what I plotted
• 49:38
  for book one. It just ended up there as I, you
• 49:42
  know, made my way through the story.
• 49:44
  And, and then, but to your point also on how do you keep track of
• 49:47
  everything? There are, you know, you know,
• 49:50
  some people just write in Word or in Google Docs or there's a,
• 49:54
  there's a software called Scrivener, which is very robust.
• 49:57
  And you can have in that software you're writing in one
• 50:01
  pane and then you have tiles, you know, in other panes with
• 50:06
  plot points and you can move chapters around.
• 50:09
  You can do all kinds of fancy stuff with it.
• 50:11
  And I wrote book one in that I'm actually using a different
• 50:14
  software for book 2. Yes, it, it, it does.
• 50:18
  You could, and there's a, there's a number of different
• 50:21
  software's that that do things like that.
• 50:23
  So you can, you can be as sophisticated as you want as you
• 50:27
  do it. I just try and keep it all in my
• 50:29
  head as I'm going. And then I go back as I'm
• 50:33
  making, you know, edits, I'll think of something and say, OK,
• 50:36
  I got to go back to this chapter because I know that's where this
• 50:39
  incident happens. And you know, then I'll, I'll
• 50:42
  work on it there. So, but I, I enjoy the process
• 50:47
  of weaving myself through the story.
• 50:51
  And then you end up, you know, sometimes you write yourself
• 50:53
  into a corner, you end up with a plot hole you can't get out of.
• 50:57
  And then I'll sit there and struggle with it.
• 50:59
  And then, you know, one day in the shower, I'll be driving in
• 51:03
  my car. Well, eventually he comes to you
• 51:06
  say, OK, either either you give up and you backtrack and you go
• 51:10
  a different direction, which I which I'm just too stubborn to
• 51:13
  do that, or you you figure it out.
• 51:17
  And eventually I figured out a way to get out of a certain plot
• 51:21
  that I was stuck in for weeks. And and and and.
• 51:26
  Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
• 51:27
  Finish your thought. I'm sorry about that.
• 51:29
  So in in book 1, I wrote it in a linear fashion.
• 51:32
  I started at, you know, the opening sentence, which I
• 51:37
  rewrote 57 times, but the opening sentence and then all
• 51:40
  the way through the end in a in straight order.
• 51:44
  In book 2, I got myself in a little bit of a jam.
• 51:47
  And so I said, you know what, I'm going to leave this.
• 51:49
  And then I went, I jumped ahead 10 chapters to a scene that I
• 51:54
  had in my head that that I knew I was going to write.
• 51:57
  So I jumped ahead to that scene and then went back and bridged
• 52:03
  the gap. And so that was a way to Get Me
• 52:05
  Out of, you know, get my head out of this plot hole I was in,
• 52:08
  go write a scene that I knew I was going to be in there and
• 52:11
  then figure out how I was going to bridge them.
• 52:14
  So that that was a fun way to do to do it this.
• 52:16
  Way it's a great it's a great method.
• 52:19
  I had a teacher that used to say you got to plan your life
• 52:22
  somewhere between 5 minutes and five years from now.
• 52:24
  And if you don't know what it's going to like look like in 5
• 52:27
  minutes, then think about it in a year or in a week or in a
• 52:29
  month. And then and then where you want
• 52:32
  to be and how are you going to bridge those two, Right.
• 52:35
  And I think that's a very similar experience that what
• 52:38
  you're just what you're just describing, you know, where
• 52:40
  sometimes you know the right path to take, look where you
• 52:44
  want to end up and then and then and then see what options lie,
• 52:48
  you know, lie before you. I think it's a really, I think
• 52:51
  it's really cool. Another thing that you, that you
• 52:52
  mentioned that I wanted to kind of jump on also that I want you
• 52:55
  to bring some more light to and focus to is that you don't throw
• 52:58
  out or get rid of any of these like plot points that you start
• 53:01
  wandering down and meandering down.
• 53:03
  And just even today, you know, I had some students, I'm trying
• 53:07
  to, I'm teaching 9th grade, the difference between capitalism
• 53:09
  and communism and, and you know, and my students are, you know,
• 53:15
  trying to write these answers and they get frustrated.
• 53:17
  They RIP up their paper and throw it out.
• 53:18
  I'm like, no, what are you doing?
• 53:21
  They're like, they're like, it's not good.
• 53:23
  I'm like, it's fine. It's important that you keep
• 53:26
  track of the way that you're thinking and important for you
• 53:28
  to be able to keep this and look back and be able to say, oh,
• 53:31
  right, that didn't make sense. This makes sense, you know, or
• 53:34
  that. Yeah, a couple.
• 53:35
  Of sentences worked out this couple of sentences, didn't you
• 53:38
  know, but at least you can save a little bit for later.
• 53:41
  One of the another great writing writing exercise that we did
• 53:47
  when I was learning how to write creatively was everyone would
• 53:50
  write a poem, you know, for 5-10 minutes, whatever it was.
• 53:54
  And then everyone would read their poem out loud and you
• 53:58
  would write whatever details. It could be a word or a line or
• 54:03
  a description or a sentence. You'd write what captured you,
• 54:07
  you know, and you'd be forced to integrate that into your next
• 54:10
  poem because there's something about that that stuck out to you
• 54:14
  enough to make itself stick in your head.
• 54:16
  And that's there's a reason for that.
• 54:19
  So don't throw that out. That's not garbage.
• 54:22
  Use that again, you know, recycle it.
• 54:24
  And I think that any writer will tell you recycling is a huge
• 54:27
  part of the. Industry, yeah, I mean, because
• 54:31
  you never know when that nugget that you had before will fit
• 54:35
  someplace else or, or just serve as inspiration to get you say,
• 54:40
  yeah, this was OK, but I could now use it in a different way
• 54:45
  or, you know, give you the inspiration to to take off on
• 54:49
  another project. Yeah.
• 54:51
  So tell me about your early how you got into the agency.
• 54:54
  Was this a family thing? Was this like a?
• 54:57
  Patriotic thing? No something.
• 54:59
  You just weren't sure what you wanted to do, so you decided to
• 55:01
  end up there. How'd this happen?
• 55:02
  No, it was more of the patriotic thing.
• 55:04
  So I went to school in San Diego, UC San Diego, and was
• 55:10
  graduating as a political science major.
• 55:13
  This was after I'd spent, you know, three years as a pre Med
• 55:17
  major, but after I failed, after I failed organic chemistry for
• 55:22
  the second time, I figured, you know, the doctor things just not
• 55:24
  going to work out for me. So I've heard that, by the way,
• 55:28
  about organic. Chemistry from a lot of a lot of
• 55:31
  we've all said. That yeah well, it it organic O
• 55:37
  Cam and I did not get along so so I you know, I thought to
• 55:41
  myself, you know what else do I like I like politics back then
• 55:45
  and I still do so I you know, I dropped you know the and how old
• 55:49
  are you? I think I I guess college you
• 55:52
  were so this is this is my junior year, halfway through my
• 55:54
  junior year of college. And so what's going on?
• 55:57
  You know, I dropped that you're. Involved politically right now.
• 56:02
  Oh, now or back then? No, no, no.
• 56:03
  Back then what? What made?
• 56:06
  You. Interested back then so well
• 56:07
  back then. So this was 19.
• 56:10
  I graduated in 84. This is like 83.
• 56:12
  So, you know, it was Ronald Reagan and, you know, the
• 56:17
  shining city on the hill type thing and, and the, you know,
• 56:21
  the Soviets were the red menace. And so all of that was kind of,
• 56:27
  you know, building the, you know, the the world around me.
• 56:32
  And so I went to I became a poli sci major.
• 56:35
  I graduated on time. I was able to, you know, drop
• 56:38
  all the science classes, pick up all the poli sci classes, work
• 56:41
  my butt off to get out in time and again.
• 56:45
  So now I'm dating myself. This was the Internet didn't
• 56:48
  exist. And you know, what I did is I
• 56:51
  walked into the Career Center one day and there's a bunch of
• 56:55
  binders on the wall that, you know, for various companies and,
• 56:59
  you know, agencies and, you know, not, not for profits and
• 57:04
  you name it. You know what any college Career
• 57:07
  Center would have for every major.
• 57:09
  And I'm looking and I there was one, there's a Central
• 57:12
  Intelligence Agency. And I knew I want to do
• 57:15
  something in the government with my poli sci background.
• 57:17
  And so I was applying to, you know, congressional offices.
• 57:21
  I applied with what back then was called the Naval
• 57:24
  Investigative Service and I pulled the agency one down and I
• 57:28
  read through what they were looking for and you know, of
• 57:32
  course it, it, it seemed really interesting to me.
• 57:36
  So I, I'm sure I went back to my dorm room and pulled out the
• 57:41
  typewriter and typed out a letter and send it off in snail
• 57:46
  mail. And, you know, weeks later, I
• 57:49
  got a phone call from a Mr. Jones.
• 57:51
  And of course, I thought that was immediately thought that was
• 57:53
  a pseudonym. Turns out his name really was
• 57:55
  Mr. Jones. Yeah, through the interview
• 58:00
  process. And they, they were looking for,
• 58:03
  you know, it was again, you know, for your listeners, this
• 58:06
  was 40 years ago, so a much different time in the world.
• 58:12
  And they were looking for the all American men and women who
• 58:15
  could, you know, for God and country, you know, join the
• 58:18
  agency, pass the polygraph and go out and do their work and
• 58:25
  pass the polygraph. You know, I think that.
• 58:27
  Mean you're not lying about something or pass the polygraph
• 58:29
  that shows. You but yeah, well, no to assume
• 58:32
  you're not lying. So part of the background, you
• 58:35
  know, the background investigation was very intense.
• 58:37
  You know, they do a full scope. We call a full scope background
• 58:40
  investigation everywhere I had lived for the past 15 years,
• 58:45
  every place I had worked, which admittedly wasn't much.
• 58:48
  I had a couple of part time jobs.
• 58:49
  I was coming right out of school.
• 58:51
  Every, you know, you know, the family members were interviewed
• 58:56
  and friends and you know, other, you know, people were, were
• 59:01
  developed as, as to be interviewed as to, you know,
• 59:05
  everything about me. Then, you know, I had to go back
• 59:07
  and pass, you know, a medical exam and pass a polygraph to,
• 59:11
  you know, prove that I wasn't a Soviet agent and all of that
• 59:15
  type of thing. And when I got to the polygraph
• 59:19
  part, I, I said, OK, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get this job
• 59:21
  because I, I knew I wasn't a Soviet agent.
• 59:23
  I knew I'd pass the Poly. Still.
• 59:26
  They still, they still, yeah, they still really put you
• 59:30
  through the wringer on that thing.
• 59:32
  And and then you know, when you're in, you get repollied.
• 59:36
  They called periodic reinvestigations re polygraphs
• 59:40
  every couple of years. And you know, it's never a
• 59:44
  pleasant experience, but if you've got nothing to hide,
• 59:46
  you've got nothing to hide as you go through it.
• 59:48
  My wife on the other hand failed it every time she would get I
• 59:51
  don't know how she I don't know how they ever hired her because
• 59:53
  she every time she took the Poly she just got so nervous she she
• 59:57
  would end up failing and have to go back and take it again until
• 1:00:01
  the shoes finally. You know, got through it, but
• 1:00:04
  you know, they can tell if you're being deceptive or if
• 1:00:07
  you're just being nervous and making the box flutter, you
• 1:00:10
  know, so there's, there's a, they're really good at what they
• 1:00:14
  do. You know, there's an art to it,
• 1:00:16
  there's a science to it and there's an art to being a
• 1:00:19
  polygrapher. I, I toyed with the idea of
• 1:00:21
  joining the, the, you know, becoming a polygrapher and
• 1:00:24
  joining that team when I was in and, you know, never, never
• 1:00:28
  actually went down that road. But so, yeah, so cool.
• 1:00:32
  World to dive into as from an author's perspective.
• 1:00:35
  Yeah, I mean, oh, 100% and that, that that's.
• 1:00:39
  Cool. Yeah, that'll definitely, you
• 1:00:41
  know, they'll they'll that'll play somewhere in my in my
• 1:00:44
  stories. I mean, I mentioned, I think I
• 1:00:47
  mentioned it in book one. It is, you know, just as a, a
• 1:00:54
  side comment about, you know, having to take a, a polygraph
• 1:00:57
  exam, you know, when you're, when you're inside the agency.
• 1:01:00
  But so that process, you know, it takes quite a while.
• 1:01:05
  I think I graduated in, I graduated in May or June.
• 1:01:11
  And well, I'd started the process before I graduated.
• 1:01:15
  And I, like I said, I entered on duty in September of, of 84.
• 1:01:20
  So it took, it took a few months to get through.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah. And it's probably it's longer
• 1:01:26
  now. Please sorry finish your
• 1:01:30
  thought. I'm sorry.
• 1:01:31
  Not to say it's longer. I'm sure it takes longer now and
• 1:01:35
  they're looking for different skill sets now, you know, you
• 1:01:39
  know, now I'm sure they want people with extensive overseas
• 1:01:42
  experience who've lived overseas, worked overseas.
• 1:01:45
  Again, depending on the type of roles, you know, for case
• 1:01:48
  officers, they're going to want somebody that speaks foreign
• 1:01:50
  languages and has other type of experiences that I didn't have
• 1:01:55
  back then. But I also wasn't looking, you
• 1:01:58
  know, at that point, I wasn't looking to become a case
• 1:02:00
  officer. I was drawn to the, the, the
• 1:02:04
  security side. So I spent my career doing
• 1:02:07
  investigations. I spent a long part of my
• 1:02:09
  career, which is what the books are based on, on the director's
• 1:02:14
  protective staff. Back then it was called the DCI
• 1:02:17
  security staff. Now it's called the director's
• 1:02:18
  protective staff. They're the, they're the
• 1:02:21
  internal team that protects the, the director and the deputy
• 1:02:25
  director in their families. And so I, I spent a long time
• 1:02:30
  doing that, travelling around the world doing that for a long
• 1:02:33
  time. That's that's the basis for the
• 1:02:36
  primary character in my His Name is Grant Hunter in my Grant
• 1:02:40
  Hunter thriller series. Well, OK, I got a lot of I got a
• 1:02:45
  lot of follow up questions over here, but this is great.
• 1:02:48
  First of all, I guess that this could be just quick.
• 1:02:50
  This is a quick follow up. Is the case officer something
• 1:02:53
  just glorified by Hollywood or does it have a lot of status in
• 1:02:55
  the agency that oh, he's a case officer, she's a case officer
• 1:03:00
  and it's really hard to do. It's really impressive.
• 1:03:01
  And so you have more respect for them?
• 1:03:03
  Or is that just kind? Of well, they, they definitely,
• 1:03:07
  I mean the every role in the agency is important.
• 1:03:11
  So there you have your your case officers are the ones that are
• 1:03:15
  out primarily overseas, you know, working their assets to
• 1:03:21
  gather the information that's important to the country.
• 1:03:25
  Then you have, you know, so that's, that's a very important
• 1:03:28
  role. And that's the one that tends to
• 1:03:30
  get glorified most by Hollywood. But then you have your is.
• 1:03:36
  It one of the more difficult roles or careers to get within
• 1:03:39
  the agency or it's you. Know it's that's.
• 1:03:41
  Just. It's again, it depends on your
• 1:03:44
  it depends on your skill set. You know, if you you know there
• 1:03:48
  arguably some would say, you know, the ground branch
• 1:03:51
  paramilitary team is a very difficult role to get because
• 1:03:54
  you have to come into that with military experience and
• 1:03:58
  background tier one work. So case officers is, is it
• 1:04:03
  difficult? Because you have to, it's a very
• 1:04:05
  difficult life. You have to have a specific
• 1:04:09
  mindset to do it. You're undercover primarily your
• 1:04:13
  entire career. And I was undercover my entire
• 1:04:15
  career. So that that's a undercover
• 1:04:19
  security, you know, it's AII was I was undercover.
• 1:04:22
  So I was not a declared agency person until I left.
• 1:04:27
  They opened me up when I left. But during my entire time.
• 1:04:34
  Yeah. So I I didn't, you know, if you
• 1:04:36
  asked me who I worked for, I would have given you my cover.
• 1:04:39
  My wife and I had to come up with a cover story of how we met
• 1:04:42
  because she was open. She was a known open CIA
• 1:04:46
  employee and I was undercover. So we had to have a cover story
• 1:04:49
  of how we met. We had to have a cover story of
• 1:04:51
  why was it, why was the the director of the CIA at our
• 1:04:54
  wedding? Because.
• 1:04:57
  So we had to have a cover story for that.
• 1:04:59
  We had, you know, there was, it's a, it's a difficult
• 1:05:01
  lifestyle when you're under now only a small fraction of agency
• 1:05:04
  personnel are undercover and have to go through that type of,
• 1:05:09
  of process and, and, you know, understanding of how you're
• 1:05:15
  going to live your life. So yes, you know, case officer
• 1:05:17
  is a difficult role, but it's, you know, it could be argued
• 1:05:22
  that an analyst has an equally difficult and arguably as
• 1:05:27
  important a role because they have to take the raw data that's
• 1:05:31
  coming in from the field and synthesize that into actionable
• 1:05:35
  intelligence that the policy makers can then use.
• 1:05:38
  So you have you have your collection side of the house,
• 1:05:43
  you have your analysis side of your house, you have directorate
• 1:05:47
  called the director of science and technology.
• 1:05:50
  You know, those are all the big brain guys that are, you know,
• 1:05:53
  coming up with the covert communications and you know, you
• 1:05:58
  know, the the latest and greatest technology for
• 1:06:01
  eavesdropping and, and dead drops and all of those kind of
• 1:06:06
  things. So that's a that's a very
• 1:06:08
  important role. Then you have what in my day is
• 1:06:10
  called the director of administration.
• 1:06:12
  I think it's called the director of support now, and that's
• 1:06:14
  everyone else that makes the agency run.
• 1:06:17
  So without, you know, the security team and, or the
• 1:06:22
  psychologist and the medical professionals and, you know,
• 1:06:26
  the, the lawyers and the congressional liaison and all of
• 1:06:31
  the other things that make, you know, the, you know, people, you
• 1:06:35
  hear people refer to the agency as a company, you know, make the
• 1:06:39
  company run equally important. So it just depends on where your
• 1:06:45
  skill sets fit and you got linguists and everything else in
• 1:06:48
  between. It's a It's a fascinating place
• 1:06:53
  to work. I can imagine, I can totally
• 1:06:56
  imagine The other thing I wanted to ask you just based on your
• 1:07:00
  answers before and maybe you can give me a little bit of a
• 1:07:03
  contact understanding context. One thing I've been thinking a
• 1:07:08
  lot about recently is the fact that history didn't start today,
• 1:07:13
  you know, or last year or five years ago or when I was born,
• 1:07:16
  you know, and I'm really, really curious, especially when you
• 1:07:21
  were politically, you know, active or interested and engaged
• 1:07:26
  in the 80s. What, what do you think?
• 1:07:31
  What, what, what was like the core difference between, you
• 1:07:34
  know, what was considered a liberal back then and a
• 1:07:37
  conservative back then relative to today, you know, and what you
• 1:07:43
  know, like, you know, obviously Russia was the big was the big,
• 1:07:47
  you know, blip on America's radar in the 80s.
• 1:07:51
  What was what was the we? Did everyone agree left and
• 1:07:55
  right that Russia was a problem? Did it was just a difference in
• 1:07:58
  how to resolve it or how to deal with it?
• 1:08:00
  Or was there a question as to whether or not Russia was even a
• 1:08:03
  problem? Whether you know what you know
• 1:08:05
  what, what, what, what was the political world like while you
• 1:08:09
  were engaged in it? You know and you know and you,
• 1:08:12
  you feel free to elaborate on your personal opinions or to
• 1:08:14
  leave them out, whatever you're more comfortable.
• 1:08:16
  With yeah, so this is definitely, this is definitely
• 1:08:19
  the world according to Scott and not, you know, not agency
• 1:08:22
  doctrine or anything else. I mean, obviously you've already
• 1:08:26
  hit on it. It was a completely different
• 1:08:28
  world in a number of different ways.
• 1:08:31
  Yes, there was, you know, the, IT was still when I was there,
• 1:08:34
  it was still the Soviet Union which was the big primary, a not
• 1:08:41
  the, but a big primary focus. But so is China, right.
• 1:08:45
  So and and then there was how? Sure.
• 1:08:51
  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, China was not as
• 1:08:56
  sophisticated as the Russians were in far as far as
• 1:09:00
  geopolitical and again, my opinion, geopolitical influence
• 1:09:06
  peddling and all of that as as a Soviet work.
• 1:09:09
  Remember the, you know, the Soviets were again decades
• 1:09:13
  before, you know, causing mayhem with the, you know, the Cuban
• 1:09:18
  missile crisis and things like that, where they were pushing
• 1:09:20
  their influence out and, and threatening the the US in a
• 1:09:24
  number of different ways. And when I was in the Soviets
• 1:09:31
  who had made their move into Afghanistan.
• 1:09:34
  And so, you know, we were supporting the Muhaja Deen and
• 1:09:39
  it it was a proxy war of sorts supporting them and as well.
• 1:09:46
  That's exactly where I was going.
• 1:09:48
  You know, you know, it's, it's a little bit dramatic, but I think
• 1:09:52
  it was Charlie Wilson's War is a excellent movie for any of your
• 1:09:56
  listeners that are interested in that time period to go watch
• 1:09:59
  because it it's you know, from my limited.
• 1:10:05
  Yeah, it's I, I think it's, I think it's outstanding.
• 1:10:08
  It tells the story in a fairly accurate way of how, you know,
• 1:10:13
  the agency started building up its its support of anti Soviet
• 1:10:20
  forces. Now I think the agency will be
• 1:10:23
  the first to admit and, and I will too.
• 1:10:25
  After the Soviets left, we dropped the ball there and which
• 1:10:31
  allowed the, you know, the, the fermentation of the radical
• 1:10:36
  Islamic, you know, extremism, which ended up coming back to
• 1:10:40
  get us on 9/11, right. So there's, you know, there's
• 1:10:44
  lessons to be, there's definitely lessons to be learned
• 1:10:47
  there. But but, and then the other
• 1:10:49
  thing, you know, you know, you asked about what was
• 1:10:52
  conservative and what was liberal.
• 1:10:54
  You know, back then it was, you know, Democrat and Republican.
• 1:11:00
  But, but if you think, and I, I know that I, you know, I'm much
• 1:11:05
  older than you are. But back then, you know, the
• 1:11:08
  Democrats and the Republicans actually worked together.
• 1:11:12
  You know, you'd have tip O'Neill, who is the speaker of
• 1:11:15
  the House for, you know, decades would work with Republicans to
• 1:11:24
  and, and vice versa to actually get some things done.
• 1:11:28
  It wasn't this, this bomb throwing animosity that we have
• 1:11:32
  now. And, and, but you know, a lot of
• 1:11:36
  what we, you know, a lot of the social ills that we have now,
• 1:11:40
  I'm convinced are part and parcel to, you know, the advent
• 1:11:44
  of social media and the fact that anybody, you know, can say
• 1:11:49
  anything at any time and push it out to millions of people.
• 1:11:54
  And so there's the the the extremists on both sides are to
• 1:12:00
  me, you know, very it's very disappointing.
• 1:12:05
  And I was asked in another podcast, yeah, well, I think so
• 1:12:10
  as well. But I was asked in another
• 1:12:12
  podcast is do I do I let any of that into my writing?
• 1:12:15
  And I'm, I'm being very deliberate not to, you know, AI,
• 1:12:21
  just like I said, it's disappointing and I think it's
• 1:12:23
  dangerous to a certain extent. But B, just as a, you know, as
• 1:12:28
  an author and you know, you want it, you're also a businessman
• 1:12:32
  because you, you've got this business around your books.
• 1:12:35
  You know, I don't want to automatically, you know?
• 1:12:38
  Turn off half your audience. Piss off half of the half of my
• 1:12:41
  reading audience because I land on one side of the political
• 1:12:44
  spectrum or the other. So that's that's just not good
• 1:12:47
  business. But also, I don't think it's
• 1:12:50
  it's compelling storytelling either, unless there's, you
• 1:12:54
  know, a specific plot point you're trying to make.
• 1:12:58
  So at the time, left and right agreed that there is the same
• 1:13:02
  issue and they just had varying degrees or I guess line or, you
• 1:13:07
  know, responses and what would be appropriate to deal with the
• 1:13:10
  issue. Because it feels like today.
• 1:13:13
  And one of the actually one of the reasons why I even started
• 1:13:15
  this podcast to begin with is because, you know, today we
• 1:13:19
  can't even agree on what the same freaking problem is.
• 1:13:21
  I mean, you could tell someone, hey, you know, this, you know,
• 1:13:26
  this, this group is a problem. And they'll be like, what group?
• 1:13:28
  And then like, you know, and then you wait four years and
• 1:13:30
  then the next group will be like, that was a big problem.
• 1:13:32
  You're like, what? You, you didn't respond.
• 1:13:33
  You've been talking about that for four years because you were
• 1:13:35
  talking about it, you know. And yeah, you're absolutely
• 1:13:43
  right, both sides are guilty of it.
• 1:13:44
  And, and it's, you know, it's the extremist viewpoints on both
• 1:13:49
  sides. I mean, you couldn't get them to
• 1:13:51
  agree that the sky is blue right on on any given day.
• 1:13:55
  So when, when there's absolutely 0 common ground at all, you
• 1:14:02
  know, I don't know how anything can get done.
• 1:14:04
  So, you know, it's a, we're certainly not going to solve it
• 1:14:09
  on this podcast, but it's a, it's a, it's a significant, it's
• 1:14:14
  a significant problem, but. Yeah, it is.
• 1:14:19
  One thing you just mentioned also was was the online presence
• 1:14:25
  which has become extremely I guess controversial.
• 1:14:31
  And, you know, one of the points that people make is that
• 1:14:35
  potentially that and almost certainly not even potentially
• 1:14:38
  that different, that different intelligences around the world
• 1:14:41
  will will kind of try to push or highlight stories on online to
• 1:14:50
  kind of create or force a narrative.
• 1:14:55
  You know, and on one hand, you kind of feel torn because you
• 1:14:59
  want to protect freedom of speech.
• 1:15:01
  On the other hand, you know, these are potentially foreign
• 1:15:03
  adversaries acting. Do you do you have any?
• 1:15:07
  First of all, I think that's a, that's a great thing to
• 1:15:09
  influence into a book, right into the question of what to do
• 1:15:12
  with such a thing. But do you, do you have any
• 1:15:16
  thoughts on any of that? Well, I mean, it's, it's
• 1:15:20
  certainly, I mean, we've, we've seen it, it's the case.
• 1:15:23
  And again, on both sides, you have, you know, various
• 1:15:28
  adversaries that are, you know, pushing a, as you say, a
• 1:15:33
  narrative or, you know, I hate the term fake news just to try
• 1:15:38
  and muddy the waters or maybe, you know, influence those that
• 1:15:44
  are susceptible to it. I mean, I, I truly believe, you
• 1:15:48
  know, people have a, a duty to, to be, you know, aware of what,
• 1:15:53
  you know, who and what they're voting for.
• 1:15:56
  But those that are, are more susceptible to a certain type of
• 1:16:01
  rhetoric or whatever. Certainly that happens.
• 1:16:04
  And, and now, you know, we're, we're getting into even more, I
• 1:16:09
  believe, dangerous territory with the advent of AI and the
• 1:16:15
  things that can happen in AI that, you know, back in the day,
• 1:16:19
  you know, a politician would get caught in a sex scandal or
• 1:16:22
  something. There'd be a photo of them.
• 1:16:24
  And they'd always say that photo was, you know, was doctored or
• 1:16:27
  photoshopped and it never was. It was always them.
• 1:16:30
  Well, nowadays with AI and what they can do, you know, they can
• 1:16:35
  make a whole videotape that and you cannot tell.
• 1:16:38
  So, so there's it, it's just a strange new world that we're all
• 1:16:44
  going to have to, you know, get ourselves through.
• 1:16:49
  And, and again, I, I'd be the last one to say I have any, you
• 1:16:53
  know, any true answers for, for any of these problems.
• 1:16:56
  But as you keep alluding to, there's, there's plenty of
• 1:17:00
  plenty of fodder for, for future storylines and plot lines and,
• 1:17:05
  and you know, ways to weave some of this, these challenges in
• 1:17:11
  into the book. And, and, and you know, right
• 1:17:14
  now I'm because of how I wrote the, the book one with
• 1:17:19
  references to what was happening in 1984 with the Yorchenko
• 1:17:22
  defection and all that. It, the, the book Book 1 was
• 1:17:26
  kind of set in like 2012. Book 2 is like in 2014, 2015.
• 1:17:31
  Eventually I'll be moving forward and, and I always have
• 1:17:34
  to catch myself and go back and as I'm doing research on a, on a
• 1:17:38
  certain technology or a weapon system or an aircraft or
• 1:17:41
  whatever, I have to go back and Google it or at ChatGPT.
• 1:17:46
  Did this exist in, you know, 2014?
• 1:17:49
  Because last thing I want to do is get called out for a second,
• 1:17:52
  you know, No, Scott, that didn't come out until 2022.
• 1:17:55
  So, yeah, so yeah, there's, you know, as I move, as I move the
• 1:17:59
  storyline, as I move the storyline forward, I will
• 1:18:02
  eventually be, you know, incorporating some of these
• 1:18:07
  newer, you know, challenges and topics into future stories.
• 1:18:14
  Yeah, what's, what's your homework like?
• 1:18:16
  What's your homework like when it comes to a topic?
• 1:18:18
  Because you know. There are people I, I, I have a
• 1:18:20
  friend of mine and you know, I met him a couple of months ago
• 1:18:24
  and he's, he's a great dude. And one thing that he does so
• 1:18:27
  well is that every time he's interested in the topic, he
• 1:18:30
  loves doing deep dives and homework into, you know, and
• 1:18:33
  like, you know, crawling into these rabbit holes and just, you
• 1:18:37
  know, seeing where he ends up. Do you what's, what's your
• 1:18:41
  homework like when it when it comes to writing this?
• 1:18:44
  Do you do homework hoping to find new material or do you have
• 1:18:47
  the material in advance and look to do homework after that?
• 1:18:50
  What's the? What's the process?
• 1:18:52
  It's a, it's a little bit of both.
• 1:18:54
  I mean, obviously I knew as I walked down this, this one
• 1:18:57
  storyline with, with the Yorchenko defection, I knew I
• 1:19:02
  was going with that and I, I'd lived some of it and I'd
• 1:19:06
  researched that particular case quite a bit.
• 1:19:09
  And I was polling from multiple sources, not just Googling it.
• 1:19:12
  I was going to the agency and you can go online in the agency
• 1:19:17
  and look at, at certain things that they're published about
• 1:19:20
  certain issues where it's declassified, it's out there.
• 1:19:23
  So I was researching that and then I would, you know, I, I, I
• 1:19:27
  had to go through, there's a part of the plot line involves
• 1:19:33
  the use of one time, you know, cipher, one time pads.
• 1:19:36
  So I had to get smart because I had never actually used one
• 1:19:39
  myself on how A1 time pad worked.
• 1:19:43
  So I, I went down that rabbit hole and then, you know, it,
• 1:19:47
  the, the book was initially set. The initial scenes are in
• 1:19:51
  Thailand. Now I'd visited Thailand and
• 1:19:54
  worked in Thailand on several occasions.
• 1:19:56
  So I had broadly knew what I was talking about.
• 1:20:00
  But then to, you know, make specific, you know, if I was
• 1:20:04
  describing A surveillance detection route, I wanted to be
• 1:20:08
  accurate. So then I was researching the
• 1:20:11
  road maps and you know, if I was running an SDR in Thailand
• 1:20:15
  today, these are the roads I would take and then weaving that
• 1:20:18
  into the book. So there's, you know, I, I think
• 1:20:21
  that the, that the research is just as enjoyable as the writing
• 1:20:27
  part. You know, there's a lot to a lot
• 1:20:29
  to get into. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:32
  Do you do you watch White Lotus? When?
• 1:20:36
  This newest season? Are you a fan of the show?
• 1:20:39
  No, my my wife. My wife is a fan but I don't
• 1:20:42
  think I've ever seen it. You should check it out.
• 1:20:44
  It's, it's what, what I think you would like about it,
• 1:20:49
  especially from a writer's point of view, is that it's a very
• 1:20:53
  deliberate and intentional and, and, and it feels like there was
• 1:21:02
  a lot of love and attention put into every single shot and every
• 1:21:07
  single scene. And, you know, and so from a
• 1:21:11
  commercial sense, it's not too, you know, typical in terms of
• 1:21:15
  like popping and cutting or whatever it is.
• 1:21:17
  But you know, from a, from a storyteller's perspective, it's,
• 1:21:21
  it's, it's really a work of art. And the and the and the and the
• 1:21:24
  latest season was was in was in Thailand, which is what I was
• 1:21:29
  asking. About yeah, that's what she told
• 1:21:31
  me it was. I just.
• 1:21:33
  Yeah. I find it, I find it fascinating
• 1:21:37
  that, you know, and I guess this is done and I guess this is for
• 1:21:42
  good reason. But how little we know about how
• 1:21:47
  little at least Americans seem to know that the rest of the
• 1:21:50
  world, you know, like the Far East, Thailand and Japan and you
• 1:21:54
  know, China. And I mean, those are, these are
• 1:21:57
  all rich cultures that have been on for thousands of years that,
• 1:22:00
  that I don't remember hearing. I, I didn't, I couldn't point
• 1:22:03
  out a map where they were, you know, and I didn't even notice
• 1:22:06
  how much ground they covered on the map.
• 1:22:08
  You know, and it's just, it's something that's not really
• 1:22:10
  discussed, but it's, it's, it's a remarkable culture, isn't it?
• 1:22:16
  Yeah, it, it definitely is. And the, you know, the more you
• 1:22:19
  travel the world, the more glaring that becomes because,
• 1:22:24
  you know, you'll, it's amazing. You you go to number places how
• 1:22:29
  many people speak English as their, you know, as a second
• 1:22:32
  language just because of how business is run.
• 1:22:36
  And yet, you know, we have people here that have no clue,
• 1:22:40
  you know, again, you know, where to locate certain places on a
• 1:22:43
  map or, or how to act when they travel.
• 1:22:46
  And so, yeah, it, it, like I said, it's, it's interesting
• 1:22:51
  when you see people stumbling through certain places and, you
• 1:22:57
  know, I've, I've always enjoyed learning each of the cultures,
• 1:23:01
  you know, in places where I've worked to try and, and, you
• 1:23:05
  know, respect, you know, respect their, their customs and norms
• 1:23:09
  and everything else to make sure that I'm not the quintessential
• 1:23:12
  ugly American travelling someplace.
• 1:23:14
  But there's no place like home at the same time.
• 1:23:19
  That's very true, there's no doubt about it.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah, I went to, I was in, I went on a honeymoon a couple of
• 1:23:24
  years ago. We went to Greece, Italy and
• 1:23:26
  Ireland for that, for our honeymoon.
• 1:23:30
  It was a ton of fun. And I've never been, I've been
• 1:23:32
  to Dublin once before that. And, you know, we're in Gree.
• 1:23:36
  I think we're in, we're in Italy and we're talking to, we're
• 1:23:41
  talking to a couple of stranger, a couple on the street that we'd
• 1:23:43
  met. We were, you know, we just,
• 1:23:44
  we're just hanging out with. And it was at a bar and they
• 1:23:48
  said, what do you call someone that speaks 3 languages?
• 1:23:53
  I'm like trilingual. They're like, yeah, we call
• 1:23:56
  someone that speaks 2 languages like bilingual, like in someone
• 1:23:59
  that speaks one language. I'm like American.
• 1:24:03
  And I was like, oh man, you guys, you guys really didn't
• 1:24:09
  have to do much like that. That cut deep, but it's funny.
• 1:24:13
  It's true. It's funny, you know.
• 1:24:14
  We're talking about, we're talking, you know, we're talking
• 1:24:16
  and you know, and we were in Italy and another couple came up
• 1:24:20
  and asked a question. Tell me, I wanted to actually
• 1:24:22
  ask you about work life balance because I, I presume based on
• 1:24:27
  everything you're telling me, you've got a family, including
• 1:24:29
  the fact that, you know, your kid went to college and, you
• 1:24:31
  know, in, in New Orleans and another kid in California.
• 1:24:37
  What was work life balance like? I know that there's a good
• 1:24:40
  newfound, you know, almost like it's almost like part of
• 1:24:45
  everyday life no matter what. But I'm sure that wasn't the
• 1:24:47
  case while you're working security or at the agency.
• 1:24:51
  So what'd you do? Yeah, no.
• 1:24:53
  So you're right. You know, way back in the day,
• 1:24:58
  work life balance wasn't a term that anybody used.
• 1:25:02
  So and you know, initially, as I said, my wife is in the agency
• 1:25:08
  too. So she knew what she was getting
• 1:25:11
  into with me, that I'd be disappearing for weeks at a
• 1:25:14
  time. And you mentioned you recently
• 1:25:18
  got married. I disappeared like for three
• 1:25:22
  weeks right before the wedding, you know, in the crunch time
• 1:25:25
  wedding planning and I was gone on a three-week Middle East
• 1:25:29
  trip. So I wasn't too popular at home
• 1:25:31
  for that one. But so but she knew what she was
• 1:25:34
  getting into the lifestyle I was in her her father was a police
• 1:25:38
  officer, her brother was a police officer.
• 1:25:40
  So she she knew about that. And then when, you know, Fast
• 1:25:45
  forward a few years and we started having kids, same thing.
• 1:25:48
  She, you know, she ended up, she worked initially and then we did
• 1:25:53
  the math. And it wasn't the math wasn't
• 1:25:55
  mapping and it wasn't making sense for her to continue
• 1:25:57
  working. She'd left the agency by that
• 1:26:00
  point. She'd been at one point, she'd
• 1:26:03
  just been lured away by private industry for, you know, they
• 1:26:07
  were looking to hire people that had security clearances, you
• 1:26:10
  know, some of these Beltway, you know, companies that were doing
• 1:26:13
  work with the government. So she'd left the agency and
• 1:26:17
  then eventually when we had kids, it didn't make sense for
• 1:26:20
  her to work anymore. So she was home with the kids.
• 1:26:22
  We were fortunate enough to to have that, you know, be the
• 1:26:25
  case. But I would be for.
• 1:26:26
  America, you could do that. Yeah, right.
• 1:26:28
  It was a back, it was a while ago, but then I was, you know,
• 1:26:33
  transitioning to corporate America where as I mentioned
• 1:26:36
  before, I was still travelling extensively overseas quite
• 1:26:41
  often. So, you know, she, she took on
• 1:26:45
  the burden of, of the family at at that point and I'd be present
• 1:26:50
  when I could be. Then as you know, you know, the
• 1:26:53
  corporate life continued and I got more senior in my position.
• 1:26:58
  I didn't have to travel necessarily as much because I
• 1:27:00
  had teams that were doing it. And then, you know, all the way
• 1:27:05
  up to more recently when work life balance became an actual
• 1:27:10
  issue. But of course, you know, over
• 1:27:12
  the last, you know, 5-6 years, we had the COVID, you know,
• 1:27:16
  issue hit and then working remotely became a thing that
• 1:27:20
  didn't exist before. So that was a big pivot to be
• 1:27:25
  able to say, OK, now our kids were older at this point.
• 1:27:28
  But again, you know, being able to work, literally work from
• 1:27:32
  anywhere has been beneficial. And, you know, it's, it's
• 1:27:38
  completely different world now for for my kids, the three of
• 1:27:42
  them in their careers, two of them work fully remote.
• 1:27:47
  And yeah, and they and they have thriving careers and they're
• 1:27:51
  able to do that. And quite frankly, I worked, I
• 1:27:54
  was, you know, mostly remote for, for the vast majority of
• 1:27:58
  the pandemic, you know, before we started going back.
• 1:28:04
  And even then, you know, now, now I'm in the office four days
• 1:28:07
  a week because I screwed up. I retired, I, I served 12 years
• 1:28:14
  as a chief security officer for one of the big three automotive
• 1:28:18
  companies here in Detroit. I retired in last year thinking,
• 1:28:25
  knowing that I would probably get back in the game at some
• 1:28:27
  point. And that's when I wrote the book
• 1:28:30
  and did all that. And then I screwed up one day
• 1:28:33
  and answered the phone call from a headhunter and I got, I got
• 1:28:37
  dragged back into the corporate world and I'm really enjoying a
• 1:28:41
  totally new field right now. But, but so now I'm balancing.
• 1:28:49
  I am, I'm the vice president of security, safety and loss
• 1:28:53
  prevention for a very large global in our space, the largest
• 1:29:00
  restaurant chain in our, in our space.
• 1:29:02
  So, so it's a it's a new world for me being in the, you know,
• 1:29:07
  the restaurant type world. But so I'm now balancing, you
• 1:29:11
  talk about work life balance, I'm balancing, you know, you
• 1:29:15
  know, running a global operation with my family obligations here,
• 1:29:21
  you know, a brand new grandchild and then, you know, then now
• 1:29:25
  this, my burgeoning author career as well.
• 1:29:29
  Well, congratulations on the grandchild.
• 1:29:31
  Thank you. Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  Very exciting. Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah, yeah. Do you?
• 1:29:36
  Did you ever talk to you? But it was, I guess my question
• 1:29:42
  is, it was just from an emotional level.
• 1:29:44
  It was just a reality that dad's busy, Dad's working, dad's out
• 1:29:47
  of the house. Or how did you feel as dad, you
• 1:29:51
  know, for particular events being away for weeks?
• 1:29:53
  Yeah, I, I mean, I tried, I tried my best, as I'm sure you
• 1:29:57
  do, and and others that, you know, to be present when I could
• 1:30:01
  for major events and all that. I don't think I missed, you
• 1:30:05
  know, I, I know I missed some Christmases, you know, when I
• 1:30:08
  was out on assignment and, and things like that.
• 1:30:11
  And I'm sure I've missed birthdays, but but I tried to be
• 1:30:15
  as present as possible when I could be.
• 1:30:19
  It was interesting when my grandchild, my granddaughter was
• 1:30:21
  born, my son-in-law, my daughter obviously had, you know, long
• 1:30:27
  maternity leave. My son-in-law had an equally
• 1:30:30
  long paternity leave, which didn't exist, which absolutely
• 1:30:35
  did not exist when, you know, when my kids were born, you
• 1:30:38
  know, 25 years ago and more. So I think I, I think I was off
• 1:30:44
  for a day and 1/2 or something to help out when I was back at
• 1:30:48
  it. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:30:49
  So, so, so it's different, but again, you know, you have, you
• 1:30:56
  have to be thoughtful and intent, you know, attentive to
• 1:31:00
  when you are home, that you are present with the kids.
• 1:31:02
  And you know, again, I'm, I'm the last one to give, you know,
• 1:31:07
  parenting advice, but we've, we've been blessed and, and
• 1:31:11
  successful with our family and, and, you know, we had, we had
• 1:31:16
  the support of other family members to help when, when
• 1:31:19
  needed. And it was just a different
• 1:31:21
  world than it is today. It was, you know, it's funny, I,
• 1:31:25
  I was talking to a friend of mine this weekend and she was,
• 1:31:29
  and, you know, they were complaining, him and his wife
• 1:31:31
  were complaining that, you know, their family lives a little far
• 1:31:34
  away in another state. And they feel bad saying that
• 1:31:37
  they're kids. They have like I think 3 kids
• 1:31:39
  under the age of 5 or 6. They said they feel bad saying
• 1:31:42
  their kids take up all their energy because they know how
• 1:31:44
  wonderful it is. But I said, I said to them, I
• 1:31:47
  was like, you guys are living in one of the first generations in
• 1:31:49
  history, you know, where family doesn't just like, move in with
• 1:31:53
  you and help out or you don't move in with family and like,
• 1:31:56
  like, you guys don't live together as one big unit where
• 1:31:58
  everyone helps take care of each other.
• 1:32:00
  You know, like, this is one of the first times ever that
• 1:32:02
  someone moves, you know, away from a different state, you
• 1:32:06
  know, from their parents and has kids and is just left by
• 1:32:11
  themselves in this new state trying to raise the kids by
• 1:32:13
  themselves. I was like, you shouldn't feel
• 1:32:15
  bad about being exhausted. Isn't, you know, like the world
• 1:32:18
  didn't, I don't think the world really, you know, like you said,
• 1:32:21
  when you were gone, you had other family members that were
• 1:32:23
  able to, that were able to help step up.
• 1:32:24
  You know, but that's true. Yeah.
• 1:32:27
  And you're right. The, the, no, I, my family, we
• 1:32:32
  had moved, you know, away from, from my parents family support.
• 1:32:38
  So it was a big deal for us to see our grandparents.
• 1:32:41
  You know, it was a once a year thing that, that I, I always
• 1:32:45
  thought it was so cool to, you know, it was exciting to go see
• 1:32:48
  your grandparents. And I couldn't understand how,
• 1:32:51
  you know, my, my friends, they see their grandparents every
• 1:32:55
  weekend. You know, they live next door,
• 1:32:57
  they live down the block. And that was totally foreign to
• 1:33:00
  me. And then the way our lifestyle
• 1:33:04
  has developed, my, my brothers, there's three of us and we live,
• 1:33:08
  you know, across the country from each other.
• 1:33:10
  So my my one brother still lives in California, where we grew up,
• 1:33:15
  But the other one is lives on an island off the coast of
• 1:33:18
  Washington State. And I'm out here in Detroit.
• 1:33:20
  But I spent, you know, I spent almost 20 years and well,
• 1:33:25
  actually more than that between Washington and and New Jersey.
• 1:33:29
  And so, you know, we're used to having families spread around
• 1:33:34
  and then valuing our time together when we can get
• 1:33:37
  together with everyone. And we're making more of an
• 1:33:41
  effort now to do that to, to, you know, have I heard it
• 1:33:46
  called, you know, experiential rather than, you know, Christmas
• 1:33:49
  is where we, you know, the, the girls don't need another purse.
• 1:33:52
  The guys don't need another watch.
• 1:33:55
  You know, So the last few years we've been thoughtful about, OK,
• 1:33:58
  at Christmas, we're going to all go together on a trip someplace
• 1:34:01
  and go, you know, scuba diving and, and, you know, or what
• 1:34:07
  whatever the case may be, go on a cruise one year we did.
• 1:34:10
  So, you know, just trying to be together when we can.
• 1:34:14
  It's so funny you say that because you know, I, I, my, my,
• 1:34:17
  the. The, my, my primary job is I do
• 1:34:19
  sales. And so even though I've, I've
• 1:34:21
  been work, I've been working remote since 2019, since before
• 1:34:24
  it's cool. And you know, and I, and so even
• 1:34:30
  though I'm always remote, I'm never off the clock.
• 1:34:32
  And so for our anniversary this past year, you know, we had a 1
• 1:34:36
  1/2 year old and my wife was expecting and we had no idea,
• 1:34:38
  you know, like it just kind of snuck up on us and I put my
• 1:34:42
  phone away for the first time. I was like, I'm just not going
• 1:34:44
  to take any calls today. We're just going to go to the
• 1:34:46
  beach and just walk, you know, we live 5 miles from the beach,
• 1:34:48
  but we never go there, you know, and we had such a pleasant day
• 1:34:51
  where we just acted like tourists in South Florida and I
• 1:34:54
  just put my phone away for just the day and we just spent time
• 1:34:56
  together and it was so it was so wonderful, you know, and I'm and
• 1:35:01
  I'm and I'm craving for that. And, you know, and like, you
• 1:35:03
  know, I'm thinking the next time I could take a vacation like
• 1:35:06
  that because I, I, I really do, you know, I, I think that
• 1:35:12
  there's always a give and take and we always take certain
• 1:35:13
  things for granted. But I, you know, I think that
• 1:35:17
  everyone reaches a point in their lives where it, it could
• 1:35:19
  have been earlier or later, But, you know, where, where the
• 1:35:24
  quality of what you're doing matters so much more than like,
• 1:35:27
  you know, the amount of money you spent to get there or where
• 1:35:30
  you're eating or what you're doing or something like that.
• 1:35:32
  You know, 100%, I agree. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:36
  Yeah. So tell me about scuba.
• 1:35:37
  Diving real quick before we before we hang up because.
• 1:35:40
  Apparently there's a passion of yours and I would love to hear
• 1:35:42
  about it. It is and it's.
• 1:35:44
  Something my. Wife got sick of me talking
• 1:35:46
  about SO. I remember again, so it might
• 1:35:49
  have been our way back when on our anniversaries, we used to
• 1:35:53
  just try and get away. So this was probably our second
• 1:35:58
  or third anniversary. I think we we might have had one
• 1:36:00
  kid that we left with my with my mom.
• 1:36:02
  And we went out to Catalina Island and spent the weekend up
• 1:36:06
  there. And I was walking down the pier
• 1:36:10
  and the guy said, hey, you want to try scuba diving?
• 1:36:12
  I said sure. And he said, OK, put this on,
• 1:36:14
  put this on, put this on. Breathe through this, let's go.
• 1:36:17
  And we jumped in the water. I don't know how I didn't drown.
• 1:36:21
  And then, you know, Fast forward.
• 1:36:24
  Yeah, Fast forward. And I didn't drown, thankfully.
• 1:36:27
  And Fast forward, you know, 30 some years later, I was still
• 1:36:32
  talking about, you know, wanting to do that for real and learn
• 1:36:36
  how to do it. And we had a couple of tropical
• 1:36:39
  trips lined up, kind of what I was just talking about, you
• 1:36:43
  know, what we're doing with the family.
• 1:36:45
  And she said, will you shut up and just do it already?
• 1:36:47
  And I'm like, you know, I'm 60 years old and, you know, can I
• 1:36:51
  really do this at 60? And it turns out I could.
• 1:36:54
  And I fell in love with it. Yeah.
• 1:36:56
  I absolutely loved it. And so I've really gotten into
• 1:37:00
  it. And every opportunity I can, I'm
• 1:37:03
  I'm diving, even though I tend to get seasick and I have to
• 1:37:06
  deal with all that problems once I'm under the water.
• 1:37:09
  And you know, it's, you know, that whole new world and there's
• 1:37:12
  a technical challenge to it that I find exciting and, you know,
• 1:37:17
  making sure that I get down there and get back up without
• 1:37:19
  any drama. And so I've, I've done, I've
• 1:37:24
  gotten, you know, wreck certified, you know, diving
• 1:37:27
  wrecks down in South Florida. And and you know, I've, I've go.
• 1:37:31
  You have to let me know. I would.
• 1:37:34
  Are you a diver? I'd love to.
• 1:37:35
  Well, I'm not a diver, but you could teach me.
• 1:37:38
  And if not, I'll have you open. Yeah, I could.
• 1:37:40
  I could definitely you. Know I could, I can, you know.
• 1:37:43
  Influence you? Yeah.
• 1:37:45
  So yeah, I love diving down in the Keys.
• 1:37:47
  So I've done a lot of diving down there.
• 1:37:50
  I dove overseas every time we go on vacation I I find the
• 1:37:53
  opportunity to dive. I dove in Turkey and Greece and
• 1:37:57
  places like that. I I've dove in Missouri.
• 1:38:02
  You wouldn't think there's a place to dive in Missouri, but
• 1:38:04
  there is. It's it may be closed now I'm
• 1:38:07
  not sure. Called the bond Terre mine.
• 1:38:09
  It's an old Civil War LED mine that's got, you know, it's 160
• 1:38:15
  feet deep of crystal Clearwater and and it's like an underground
• 1:38:20
  lake. So it's not cave diving because
• 1:38:22
  you can't, you can't get to the surface.
• 1:38:24
  But it's a, it's this underground lake now.
• 1:38:27
  It's a, it's, you know, an old guy like me, it's rough.
• 1:38:30
  You're, you're humping all your gear down, you know, a quarter
• 1:38:33
  mile underground to get to the dive platform to then dive this
• 1:38:37
  thing and then have to haul everything back out again.
• 1:38:41
  But that was a unique and different experience.
• 1:38:43
  So have you, have you been to Crater Lake in Oregon or
• 1:38:48
  Colorado? I have not, no.
• 1:38:50
  Yeah. Do you know what it is?
• 1:38:52
  Are you familiar? With it, Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:38:54
  Yeah. Yeah, I do, people.
• 1:38:55
  Do people dive there? Because that's like.
• 1:38:58
  I think the size of a mountain. Yeah, I, I think, I think, I'm
• 1:39:03
  sure somebody. Has, but again, you have to get
• 1:39:06
  all your gear up there and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:39:08
  So but you could drop them to the surface.
• 1:39:10
  I mean, I, I drove, I, I, I took, I used to live in in.
• 1:39:13
  Washington and I I drove down to San Francisco once to meet a
• 1:39:17
  buddy. We took one to go South.
• 1:39:19
  We took five more inland on the way up and then on the way up we
• 1:39:24
  took we stopped at Crater Lake and.
• 1:39:28
  I'm not. Exaggerating when I say within
• 1:39:31
  45 minutes, the temperature went from being 115° in desert to to
• 1:39:36
  being snow covered mountain tops with, you know, with this
• 1:39:41
  beautiful lake that's just in the center of it.
• 1:39:44
  But I mean, you can, you can walk right up to the surface of
• 1:39:46
  the lake if you wanted. I'm sure, I'm sure there's
• 1:39:49
  people that dive it then, you know, and here in Michigan.
• 1:39:52
  We have tremendous wreck diving and, and they're, they're not
• 1:39:56
  purpose built, you know, wrecks that were sunk on purpose to be
• 1:40:01
  a reef like like in, in Florida, the Spiegel Grove and, and the
• 1:40:05
  Dwayne and, and some of these massive wrecks that are down
• 1:40:08
  there, up here, they're, you know, 1800 vintage.
• 1:40:14
  You know, wooden schooners that went down in the Great Storm of
• 1:40:17
  1913 or something like that. And so there's and it's fresh,
• 1:40:21
  cold, fresh water. So they're extremely well
• 1:40:24
  preserved. So there's some fantastic wreck
• 1:40:26
  diving up here in Michigan and Lake Huron and Lake, MI and
• 1:40:31
  others that that I've enjoyed, you know, diving some of those
• 1:40:34
  racks. So, yeah, so I that that's a
• 1:40:37
  whole another podcast, but I can talk about diving a lot and I
• 1:40:41
  just continue to try to get better at it.
• 1:40:44
  Honestly, it's as cool to me as everything else you've spoken to
• 1:40:47
  today, You know, I mean, I. Find the whole, I found the
• 1:40:49
  whole underwater world just so captivating and so, so
• 1:40:54
  mysterious, you know, and you're in a perfect place for it down
• 1:40:57
  there. I was.
• 1:40:59
  It's so funny because you mentioned, you know.
• 1:41:01
  Like a guy you know, an older guy like me.
• 1:41:04
  I read I was reading a biography recently.
• 1:41:07
  I hope. I hopefully will have the author
• 1:41:08
  on the podcast soon, too, the Grateful Dead biography.
• 1:41:13
  And Jerry Garcia, you know, who is not known for his health
• 1:41:17
  habits, to say the least, you know, became an avid diver in
• 1:41:22
  like 40s or 50s. Yeah.
• 1:41:24
  And he and he loved it and. He said the.
• 1:41:28
  Same thing and not the same thing, but he said that, you
• 1:41:31
  know, once he got underwater because physically he was he was
• 1:41:34
  in the worst condition, you know, a person could really put
• 1:41:38
  themselves into. But you know, as underwater, he
• 1:41:42
  was just like, it's another universe.
• 1:41:44
  And even the way that you move and the way that you function
• 1:41:48
  and and your interaction with the world is so fundamentally
• 1:41:51
  different that oh, yeah, it just feels like a whole new life,
• 1:41:54
  like you're just living a new life under there.
• 1:41:56
  So, yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll do Part 2 about scuba
• 1:42:01
  diving or in a couple of months and your next book is ready to
• 1:42:04
  come out. You can let me know.
• 1:42:06
  I'd love to. But Scott, this is it's so much
• 1:42:08
  fun talking to you. This is real pleasure.
• 1:42:10
  And, and I'm really excited for to see what your career is going
• 1:42:15
  to be, what your writing career is going to become.
• 1:42:18
  Thank you very much. Look forward to checking out
• 1:42:20
  your book, reading it, and really diving.
• 1:42:23
  In and then and then when. I when I get a couple of beers
• 1:42:25
  in you one time when you come to South Florida, you'll tell me
• 1:42:27
  what's made-up in the story and what's not.
• 1:42:30
  I'd be happy to do that. I really appreciate you having
• 1:42:32
  me on. I've very much.
• 1:42:34
  Enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
• 1:42:36
  I hope there's a good podcast experience.
• 1:42:37
  You should have many more. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:42:39
  It was great. Thank you.
• 1:42:40
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:42:41
  Bye. Bye.