Latest / Reality Writes / Deleted Scenes—The Plots Left Behind

Transcript

Deleted Scenes—The Plots Left Behind · Reality Writes

0:00
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, and welcome to our very first episode of our new podcast, Reality Writes.
0:07
Ellie Alexander: That's right, Reality Writes, where we are going to give you behind the scenes information and insight into all of the things that go into writing mysteries.
0:17
Ellie Alexander: That's my end of what we do.
0:20
Ellie Alexander: And also, Tech Guy, do you want to tell them what you do?
0:24
Tech Guy: Everything after that, uh, everything from promoting books, marketing books, uh building readership audiences, um, managing all the technology, the logistics that go into simple things like book talks at bookstores, things like that.
0:43
Ellie Alexander: Um, and for anyone who doesn't know us, this is obviously our first episode of the podcast.
0:48
Ellie Alexander: So many of you may be familiar with um my books, perhaps, um, and they may have seen your face every once in a while on some of the live streams that we've done over the years.
0:57
Ellie Alexander: But I am author Ellie Alexander, and I have made a career out of killing people, fictionally speaking.
1:04
Ellie Alexander: And I don't know, maybe in this podcast, um we'll peel the curtain back and I'll talk about some of the people that I would love to kill fictionally in future books.
1:13
Ellie Alexander: We'll see.
1:14
Ellie Alexander: We'll see where it goes.
1:16
Tech Guy: And I am the tech guy, uh the other half of the Ellie Alexander Writing Empire.
1:23
Tech Guy: Um, and I manage all things technical and uh anything geek related, which is my background, uh bad in advertising.
1:33
Tech Guy: So here we go.
1:35
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
1:35
Ellie Alexander: Let's do it.
1:36
Ellie Alexander: Let's do it.
1:37
Ellie Alexander: So the first thing that we have to do uh is we have to come up with a fun and clever name for our listeners, aka viewers, because you will be able to listen to this podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
1:51
Ellie Alexander: And we will also be airing it on places like YouTube if you want to see us.
1:55
Ellie Alexander: And we'll sometimes be showing multimedia, right?
1:58
Ellie Alexander: We'll we'll be working in some imagery, but you don't have to watch it if if you're not into it.
2:04
Tech Guy: Right, right.
2:05
Tech Guy: Yeah, we'll we'll describe everything.
2:07
Tech Guy: I mean, we're we're gonna be talking about our successes, our failures, all the frustrations that's gone into things, the things that we're proud of, the things that uh we wish we had done better, that BL, it's gonna lend the gamut.
2:21
Tech Guy: But um, but yeah, sometimes we will show stuff.
2:23
Tech Guy: So we'll when we can, we'll we'll show it on video, and uh, but we'll try to make it as fun uh and entertaining as possible with just the audio.
2:33
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
2:34
Ellie Alexander: So for starters, we have to think of something the listeners would love to be called.
2:39
Ellie Alexander: And I keep coming up with murderous ideas, but I'm wondering if that's is is that too dark?
2:45
Ellie Alexander: Do we need to do something um, you know, more lighthearted?
2:49
Tech Guy: I think, I think probably yes.
2:52
Tech Guy: Um why?
2:54
Tech Guy: Come on.
2:54
Tech Guy: Try to keep this a little light.
2:56
Tech Guy: Uh uh, yeah.
2:59
Tech Guy: So um, but although I would like to hear some of your murderous ideas, um, maybe it'll spark some inspiration for other uh names.
3:08
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I mean, like um what keeps coming to mind is like dark horse.
3:14
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I have no idea why.
3:16
Ellie Alexander: Like the dark horses, it has nothing to do with my writing whatsoever.
3:21
Ellie Alexander: Not even remotely.
3:23
Ellie Alexander: All right, all right.
3:25
Ellie Alexander: Uh-huh.
3:26
Ellie Alexander: Um, the murderous mixers.
3:28
Ellie Alexander: Uh you know me, I always want to lean into alliteration.
3:32
Ellie Alexander: Um puns, yeah.
3:34
Ellie Alexander: Alliteration and puns.
3:36
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
3:36
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
3:38
Tech Guy: Yeah.
3:38
Tech Guy: Um, I don't know.
3:42
Tech Guy: That is uh that is a good question.
3:44
Tech Guy: I mean, it it has to be something different besides the listeners.
3:49
Ellie Alexander: Listeners is lame.
3:50
Ellie Alexander: Listeners is like, no.
3:53
Tech Guy: Got it, got it, got it.
3:54
Ellie Alexander: Um reality writers is also like, no, come on.
3:57
Tech Guy: Uh yeah.
3:58
Tech Guy: Yeah.
3:59
Ellie Alexander: Hey, all you reality writers out there.
4:02
Tech Guy: Well, not everybody's gonna be a writer.
4:04
Tech Guy: A lot of people.
4:06
Ellie Alexander: So yeah, reality readers.
4:08
Tech Guy: Yeah.
4:09
Ellie Alexander: You're realitiers.
4:10
Ellie Alexander: That isn't fly off the lips.
4:12
Ellie Alexander: No.
4:13
Ellie Alexander: No.
4:14
Tech Guy: Definitely not.
4:15
Tech Guy: Um uh yeah.
4:19
Ellie Alexander: Um see, this is really how brainstorming sessions for books go, too.
4:25
Ellie Alexander: Um, it's a lot of this where it's like you start with an idea.
4:28
Ellie Alexander: I think I might have had dark horse in my mind because it's my favorite wine.
4:32
Tech Guy: Um, I would have said it's my favorite comic book company, but um, okay.
4:40
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I we've been we binged slow horses, so maybe I also have like a bit of that in my head.
4:46
Ellie Alexander: But um, this is usually how the writing process works, where if you're helping me brainstorm, we will like, you know, sit outside with a fun drink, and it's a lot of yes, no, no, definitely no, no.
4:55
Ellie Alexander: And then, you know, at some point you land on something.
4:58
Tech Guy: Right.
4:59
Tech Guy: And, you know, a lot of the times you hear in brainstorming sessions that, you know, hey, just throw it out there, throw it out there.
5:05
Tech Guy: There are no bad ideas.
5:06
Tech Guy: Well, I'm here to tell you there are some really crappy ideas.
5:10
Tech Guy: So it's like, yeah, when people say that, they're they're lying to you because there are bad ideas for sure.
5:18
Ellie Alexander: There are such bad ideas, but I do I maintain the fact that there are no bad ideas when you're brainstorming because bad ideas often lead to good ideas.
5:27
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
5:28
Tech Guy: That's true.
5:29
Tech Guy: Um, yeah, they can.
5:31
Tech Guy: Um, they can also lead to worse ideas.
5:35
Tech Guy: Uh so you know sometimes they can also coming coming from the advertising world, I'll tell you, like, you can go into a client presentation and think that you have nailed it, that you have gotten that creative brief and you just nailed it and come up with the most creative like thing that a client is gonna love, and they will tell you that it is absolute garbage.
5:54
Tech Guy: And you're just you've got to go back to the drawing board.
5:57
Tech Guy: So, yeah, sometimes what you think is a good idea is really, you know, it's all subjective, right?
6:03
Tech Guy: Like books.
6:05
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, and that segues in nicely to the topic of our first podcast, uh, which is going to be all about the plot ideas that never made the final cut.
6:16
Ellie Alexander: I have had to kill my darlings so often because I had ideas that just were pretty bad and terrible.
6:23
Ellie Alexander: We didn't even set this up, but to loop back, maybe what we need to do is we need to have our listeners, uh, for lack of a better word.
6:32
Tech Guy: We'll go for we'll go with listeners for right now and and we'll like as the as the episode progresses, maybe something something will come up.
6:39
Ellie Alexander: Something will come up, but maybe they can also suggest ideas to us.
6:43
Tech Guy: That's true.
6:44
Ellie Alexander: They're more clever than we are, probably.
6:46
Tech Guy: Probably.
6:47
Ellie Alexander: For sure.
6:47
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
6:48
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
6:48
Ellie Alexander: Uh yeah.
6:50
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so we thought it would be really fun to kick this one off with all of the plot ideas that you know just failed to go anywhere.
6:57
Ellie Alexander: I'm pausing just because you're are you are you looking up something?
7:03
Tech Guy: No.
7:04
Ellie Alexander: Oh, you look like you're on your phone.
7:06
Tech Guy: No.
7:06
Tech Guy: I was trying to make sure the microphone wasn't falling.
7:11
Ellie Alexander: Okay, okay.
7:12
Ellie Alexander: I'm gonna start over from there.
7:14
Ellie Alexander: We thought it would be fun on this first podcast to talk about all of the plot ideas that I started with that we often brainstorm together and then that failed to turn into anything that should ever end up in a final version of a book, right?
7:32
Tech Guy: Right.
7:32
Tech Guy: And there have been a lot.
7:34
Tech Guy: I mean, going back to that advertising example, like there have been many were, you know, ideas, book ideas, plot ideas, I should say not necessarily book ideas, but plot ideas for books that you like, I think came up with and thought, wow, this is gonna be the best, absolute best.
7:52
Tech Guy: And then whether it was you yourself, which happens a lot, or or you know, one of your initial um friends or or you know, early readers are like, no, that's not yeah, that doesn't work, or you know, you can't do that.
8:07
Ellie Alexander: So exactly.
8:09
Tech Guy: Yeah.
8:10
Ellie Alexander: And we gotta start at the very beginning with the bake shop mysteries, I feel like, because um there are quite a few key ideas in that series in particular, when I was starting out that I thought were really gonna take off and then they went nowhere.
8:24
Ellie Alexander: But to back up even further, I have to tell the story of um how that series came to be.
8:29
Ellie Alexander: Because, in terms of writing, I was already writing a Pacific Northwest mystery series, and my agent called me.
8:36
Ellie Alexander: I will never forget this.
8:37
Ellie Alexander: You were at work and I was out at the lake.
8:40
Ellie Alexander: It was the middle of summer, and my best friend Cassie was visiting from uh my best friend from college was visiting from Alaska with her twins.
8:48
Ellie Alexander: And our son, Sky Guy, was about their same age, and they were playing.
8:52
Ellie Alexander: And I got a call from my agent, which, you know, at that stage in my career, anytime I got a call from my agent, I was just excited because it meant something bookish.
9:00
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I got the voicemail from him saying, Hey, I have this opportunity for you.
9:06
Ellie Alexander: I have a new series that I would love for you to write.
9:08
Ellie Alexander: And then I had no service to call him back.
9:11
Ellie Alexander: Um, and of course, I wanted to do it in the moment, which now I would be like, why would I have that conversation out at a lake with the kids?
9:17
Ellie Alexander: But you know, in the moment, I was excited.
9:20
Tech Guy: Yeah, it was well, you should have been.
9:22
Tech Guy: But uh, yeah, you were a little panicked too, but you and then you were worried that you were gonna take too long to get back to them.
9:28
Tech Guy: And yeah.
9:30
Ellie Alexander: Yes.
9:31
Ellie Alexander: So this particular series came to me as a brief from my editor Ed McMillan, who um she didn't have a lot for me to go on, but she wanted a mother-daughter baking team and sort of uh in the tone of the Gilmore girls.
9:45
Ellie Alexander: And so my agent was like, you have two weeks, two weeks to put together an entire series proposal with um the arc of the series, titles, and little mini synopses for the first three books in the series, and then the first 50 pages of the book.
10:03
Ellie Alexander: Two weeks.
10:04
Ellie Alexander: Um, and at this point in time, we also had, you know, like an elementary school kid and you were working full-time and I was working part-time.
10:11
Ellie Alexander: Um, and this series ended up becoming the my long-running series, The Bake Shot Mysteries, which is set in Ashland, Oregon.
10:18
Ellie Alexander: And one of the first things that I said is, okay, if I'm gonna set this in Ashland, we have to go to Ashland like right away, which is like a five-hour drive from where we were living at the time.
10:30
Tech Guy: Right, right.
10:31
Tech Guy: Yeah.
10:31
Tech Guy: So we packed up and we just left for Ashland.
10:36
Ellie Alexander: Literally, pretty much.
10:37
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, you were such a trooper.
10:38
Ellie Alexander: I'm like, we gotta go to Ashland.
10:40
Ellie Alexander: You're like, okay, we're going to Ashland.
10:42
Tech Guy: Yeah, I had never been to Ashland, so that was, yeah, that was a first.
10:45
Ellie Alexander: Was that your first trip to Ashland?
10:47
Tech Guy: Yeah, it was my very first trip.
10:48
Tech Guy: I'd never been Oh my gosh.
10:50
Tech Guy: We didn't go in high school.
10:51
Tech Guy: Yeah, like yeah, you did um for the Shakespeare Festival, but we didn't do that.
10:57
Ellie Alexander: I had totally spaced that was your first trip.
10:59
Tech Guy: Yeah, first ever.
11:01
Ellie Alexander: Amazing.
11:02
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
11:02
Ellie Alexander: So awesome.
11:04
Ellie Alexander: We went all around town.
11:05
Ellie Alexander: I took a zillion pictures and was brainstorming ideas.
11:09
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I found a bunch of like the original materials that I have uh and I saved them all.
11:15
Ellie Alexander: So these are like original OSF brochures for everything that was playing at the time.
11:21
Ellie Alexander: Um, I had maps of town, uh, just everything I could possibly imagine.
11:28
Ellie Alexander: And after we did that trip, I came back home and I got to work.
11:33
Ellie Alexander: Also, this sort of dates us, but look at like the brochures from back then.
11:37
Ellie Alexander: It's this tiny little thing for it's like scenic maps of southern Oregon.
11:42
Ellie Alexander: And it looks like it's straight out of the 80s.
11:44
Ellie Alexander: This was what, 2010, maybe?
11:48
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
11:48
Tech Guy: No, it was yeah, yeah, right around then.
11:52
Ellie Alexander: 2012, something like that.
11:53
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
11:54
Ellie Alexander: Anyway, um, so I came back home and I started brainstorming, and I still have my original notebook of all of this is a big yellow legal pad of all of the ideas uh that I had initially for Jules Juliet Montague Capshaw, who becomes you know, Jules, who we all know and love.
12:16
Ellie Alexander: Her original name was gonna be Jules Hudson.
12:20
Tech Guy: Boom.
12:21
Tech Guy: Not as Shakespearean.
12:24
Ellie Alexander: No.
12:24
Ellie Alexander: Um, but then the first victim is Nancy Hudson.
12:27
Ellie Alexander: So clearly I was feeling Hudson for some reason.
12:30
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
12:30
Ellie Alexander: Um the bake shop, which is tort, was going to be Gooseberry Fool.
12:38
Tech Guy: I remember that one.
12:39
Tech Guy: Um going back to the there are no bad ideas.
12:46
Ellie Alexander: I think you might have vetoed that one.
12:48
Tech Guy: I did not like that one.
12:49
Tech Guy: I I think I was pretty honest about that.
12:52
Ellie Alexander: I'm sure you were.
12:53
Ellie Alexander: Um Shakespeare's Kitchen.
12:56
Tech Guy: That seems a little on the nose.
12:58
Ellie Alexander: Uh-huh.
12:59
Ellie Alexander: Uh-huh.
12:59
Ellie Alexander: Um Marzipan.
13:01
Ellie Alexander: Exclamation point.
13:04
Tech Guy: That one wasn't bad.
13:05
Tech Guy: Marzipan, but um exclamation point, yeah.
13:10
Tech Guy: Marzipan!
13:12
Ellie Alexander: Marzipan!
13:14
Tech Guy: Yeah.
13:15
Ellie Alexander: Um As You Like It.
13:18
Tech Guy: Yeah, that was good.
13:18
Tech Guy: I like that one.
13:20
Ellie Alexander: Cakes and Ale.
13:21
Ellie Alexander: Um Below the Salt.
13:30
Tech Guy: I never got that one.
13:32
Ellie Alexander: I have a note here because I think I was trying to convince you of it at one point in time.
13:36
Ellie Alexander: Salt was prized and was always at the head of the table in Shakespeare's kitchen.
13:42
Tech Guy: Yeah, but I'd like I'd love to hear from listeners.
13:46
Tech Guy: Um, whatever it's whatever to be named.
13:49
Ellie Alexander: To be named, yeah.
13:50
Ellie Alexander: Um below, I think everybody knows below the salt.
13:56
Tech Guy: You think everybody?
13:57
Tech Guy: Okay.
13:57
Tech Guy: I would so I'm just I'm I'm out of the loop.
14:00
Tech Guy: I'm not, I mean, I'm gonna I'm the first to admit Shakespeare is not my um my forte, but uh I've learned more about Shakespeare from you know being with you and you writing the series than I ever knew from school or anything, but uh blow the salt, I did no, I didn't know I didn't like it at all.
14:22
Ellie Alexander: Come on, that's amazing for who this is.
14:25
Tech Guy: No, it was just I I didn't think that like because with my my background in advertising and marketing, I immediately started thinking of like logos and and you know, merch and things like that that you know we could advertise it.
14:41
Tech Guy: And below the salt, I just I was like that, I don't I don't even know what like just there'd be just this cloud of it's the salt's coming at you, look out.
14:51
Tech Guy: Like it's just like I and the the first thing that comes to mind is like a sandstorm or something.
14:57
Ellie Alexander: So but I'm I could have been flown, so yeah.
15:00
Ellie Alexander: Uh with murder, yeah.
15:02
Tech Guy: But when you when you came up with tort, that was yeah, that was it.
15:05
Tech Guy: It was like because it that I mean that goes back to the the whole brainstorming thing, right?
15:10
Tech Guy: Is that you knew when you when you thought of that, you knew that that was it, right?
15:16
Ellie Alexander: Instantly, yeah.
15:16
Ellie Alexander: When you learn something like that, it you just yeah, then it all comes together.
15:20
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
15:21
Ellie Alexander: Um, so there was a lot of that.
15:23
Ellie Alexander: That was a lot of and a lot.
15:25
Ellie Alexander: We're still talking within two weeks.
15:27
Ellie Alexander: And obviously, what I wrote initially in that pitch morphed over time once I actually like signed the contract and then began writing the books.
15:35
Ellie Alexander: But um, I had to be able to build that world pretty quickly and to also think of a three-book arc.
15:42
Ellie Alexander: Um, usually, especially then, I was new in my career, I was never anticipating, as of this first podcast, um, I'm writing book 20 in this series.
15:52
Ellie Alexander: I never was anticipating, I would have been thrilled just to have it go three books at that point in time.
15:57
Ellie Alexander: So um I had ideas basically through that point and then um a few sketches of what could happen.
16:04
Ellie Alexander: But um, that leads me to, and this is a spoiler.
16:07
Ellie Alexander: Do we need some kind of like sound for a spoiler?
16:11
Ellie Alexander: Do you think?
16:13
Tech Guy: I mean, I have a lot of sounds, but um um I don't know if like yeah, we could come up with yeah, I don't know.
16:29
Ellie Alexander: Yes, yes.
16:31
Ellie Alexander: It's still going.
16:34
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
16:34
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I like that.
16:38
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so that you will now know, listeners, that there are spoilers coming.
16:43
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so this is the first big spoiler, which is, and I think this was a product of needing to write something quickly to get it out.
16:52
Ellie Alexander: Um, because what happened is after I did that in two weeks and sent that package to my agent, he ended up selling it in like another week.
16:59
Ellie Alexander: And then it was off to the races and I was writing, writing, writing.
17:03
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then I had a lot more time to really think about like the world and the plot and everything.
17:08
Ellie Alexander: But Carlos, who is Jules' estranged husband in book one in Meet Your Baker, I had written the first three books so that she was leaving him on the ship.
17:20
Ellie Alexander: And by book three, she was never gonna see him again.
17:24
Ellie Alexander: It was done, it was over.
17:28
Tech Guy: Very sad.
17:29
Ellie Alexander: So sad.
17:30
Ellie Alexander: I had I had an entirely different vision for who she was gonna end up with, and I'm sure her longtime readers will have some guesses as to obvious, yeah.
17:40
Ellie Alexander: Is it?
17:40
Tech Guy: Yeah, I think so.
17:42
Ellie Alexander: What's obvious?
17:44
Tech Guy: So what the the other option.
17:46
Tech Guy: Yeah, if it wasn't Carlos, who the other option was, you know, yeah.
17:51
Ellie Alexander: Come on, I get more reader mail about that arc than probably anything else.
17:55
Tech Guy: Right.
17:55
Tech Guy: I mean, because there was like for a long time, right?
17:58
Tech Guy: Early on, there were two teams.
18:00
Tech Guy: Uh, you know, like we and we can't I mean No, we can because we're spoiling.
18:06
Tech Guy: Okay, we did the dark.
18:08
Tech Guy: There was team, there was Team Carlos and there was Team Thomps.
18:12
Tech Guy: Yeah.
18:12
Tech Guy: And they and it got ugly.
18:16
Tech Guy: I I'm not gonna say it.
18:18
Tech Guy: Like it was it was a little uh it was ugly, ugly.
18:21
Tech Guy: Like it was a little like New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, uh Steelers, Browns, like it was it was your Steelers, Ravens, like I don't know, I'm a Steelers fan, so we've got a lot of lot of rivals.
18:35
Tech Guy: It got ugly.
18:36
Tech Guy: Like the two teams they battled it out.
18:40
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah.
18:41
Ellie Alexander: And that was also really cool at the time.
18:43
Ellie Alexander: Like I was kind of stunned by it.
18:45
Ellie Alexander: I wasn't anticipating that, and I hadn't written the I hadn't planned on writing it for like setting up this idea of Team Thomas versus Team Carlos.
18:54
Ellie Alexander: And so that just sort of happened organically.
18:56
Ellie Alexander: And then the first few big book events that we threw, and we'll have to do a whole podcast just on those because those were epic back in the day.
19:06
Ellie Alexander: Um people would show up with like Team Thomas t-shirts on and everything.
19:11
Ellie Alexander: I know it's like what?
19:13
Tech Guy: Or or like not so subtly threaten you of like, yeah, jewels better not end up with Carlos or tools better not end up with Thomas, and it was just like, whoa, we easy bear.
19:25
Tech Guy: This is just like mystery series, like I don't know.
19:28
Tech Guy: Um they people were passionate about it.
19:31
Tech Guy: Let's just say that they were passionate.
19:33
Ellie Alexander: Which, how can you not love that passion?
19:35
Ellie Alexander: Like, I have never cared about um, you know, being famous or anything like that.
19:40
Ellie Alexander: But if somebody like I have created something in my mind that someone else feels that passionately about, like that to me is the ultimate gift forever.
19:50
Ellie Alexander: Like, however, there were there was remember the reader who brought like pages and pages of notes of yes, what the thought might happen if I if I send jewels in the wrong direction.
20:04
Ellie Alexander: It was it was a little intense, let's just say.
20:08
Tech Guy: Yeah, that was a lot.
20:09
Tech Guy: That was a lot.
20:10
Tech Guy: That was when we decided that maybe it wasn't such a good idea for people to know your home address.
20:18
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah.
20:20
Ellie Alexander: There's like more than a little nugget of truth to that, but also like completely awesome that people are like, I'm all in, I am all in.
20:27
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then also um feeling a little bit of fear myself of like, oh no, I am going to, because it was really divided.
20:38
Ellie Alexander: I think it still is.
20:39
Ellie Alexander: Um, I am potentially going to really make an entire group of readers very angry with whatever path Jules ends up taking.
20:50
Tech Guy: Right, right.
20:51
Tech Guy: Well, and we talked about that because the you know, I mean, you you and I talked about that a lot because, you know, as you mentioned, this was early on in your writing career, and it's you know, I I think you might have had like five books or maybe six books out in the world at that point.
21:08
Tech Guy: Um, so you know, nothing compared to what you do now.
21:11
Tech Guy: But we I mean, we were am probably a little naively like worried that you were suddenly gonna lose like thousands of readers because of this one choice.
21:23
Tech Guy: And it like we're probably blowing it actually in hindsight.
21:26
Tech Guy: Oh, we we blew it a lot out of proportion, but definitely but it but you know it is funny, and and and we'll get into more of that, like I guess, in in later episodes, just about like kind of the growth of just our knowledge of the industry and and you know that that sort of thing.
21:45
Tech Guy: But that that was I remember at the time just we debated that for a long like that was a lot of like dinners and everything of just talking uh about what might happen if you chose the the wrong way.
22:00
Ellie Alexander: The wrong patch.
22:02
Tech Guy: To some readers, you know, others would be like, woohoo.
22:04
Tech Guy: But uh, but then there'd be others that'd be like, get the pitchforks, you know, like yes.
22:12
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
22:12
Ellie Alexander: And ultimately, um, I think that decision, maybe more than anything else that I've made in my writing career, really um like set the path for how I approach my writing.
22:26
Ellie Alexander: And even when I say this now, it still feels so cheesy, but it's true.
22:32
Ellie Alexander: Like, I really thought Carlos was gonna, that arc was gonna end at the end of book three.
22:38
Ellie Alexander: And that, you know, there wouldn't, there wouldn't be a ton of animosity.
22:41
Ellie Alexander: I wasn't thinking anything like that.
22:42
Ellie Alexander: Like they just they they had this intense love affair on the cruise line, and and he had the secret that really sent her reeling and ultimately sent her back to Ashland, which was was my whole goal with that, right?
22:55
Ellie Alexander: I it was just a plot device to get her back to Ashland.
22:58
unknown: Yeah.
22:59
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, exactly.
23:00
Ellie Alexander: Because her story was really about finding home early on.
23:03
unknown: Yeah.
23:03
Ellie Alexander: Um, and so I had that in my head the whole time.
23:06
Ellie Alexander: And then every time I would sit down to write something, it would be like Carlos would just be like, hola, you know, yeah, I'm back.
23:16
Ellie Alexander: Here I am again.
23:18
Tech Guy: How many pictures of like hot shirtless mint you have hanging on the wall?
23:24
Ellie Alexander: I was trying to find all of my I'd love, yeah.
23:30
Tech Guy: I exactly.
23:31
Tech Guy: I'd love, I'd love to hear from readers.
23:34
Tech Guy: Like if this if the tables were turned and I was writing a book and I just had like scantily clad women hanging all over my office, that would not fly.
23:44
Tech Guy: I have a feeling that would not fly.
23:47
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, totally unacceptable.
23:48
Ellie Alexander: This is art.
23:49
Ellie Alexander: This is trying to get into a character's head space.
23:52
Tech Guy: This is this is the author.
23:54
Tech Guy: That's what I heard so many days.
23:55
Tech Guy: This is the author's process.
23:56
Tech Guy: I go I have to do it.
23:58
Tech Guy: What are you talking about, Carlos?
23:59
Tech Guy: I have to be able to see this imagery.
24:02
Ellie Alexander: Exactly.
24:04
Tech Guy: Yeah.
24:06
Ellie Alexander: But in general, what I do think that for sure.
24:11
Ellie Alexander: For sure.
24:11
Ellie Alexander: I I agree.
24:12
Ellie Alexander: I agree.
24:13
Ellie Alexander: Um, go ahead.
24:14
Ellie Alexander: You should write like something, you know, thriller-esque and you know, put up a bikini babe in your office and and I'll come in and rip her neck.
24:21
unknown: Yeah.
24:24
Ellie Alexander: Um, but no, what I think that process taught me was to um just trust the creative flow.
24:30
Ellie Alexander: Um, because then it really, and I think if you go back and read the early books, I never go back and read them, but I'm sure you see you could probably believe that Juliet was planning to go down this path with Thomas, right?
24:47
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then as I got to know the characters better, as they did like take up more space in my head, I would plot out.
24:55
Ellie Alexander: I know with book four, five, and six, I would plot out these stories that he wasn't in, and then it would be like, oh, nope, I'm riding away.
25:03
Ellie Alexander: And here he is, he's showing up again.
25:05
Ellie Alexander: Um, but I think it's made the story so much richer.
25:09
Ellie Alexander: There are um so many things that I've been able to develop with her.
25:13
Ellie Alexander: It it's like the characters do at some point in time take over, and that's amazing.
25:20
Tech Guy: Yeah, totally.
25:22
Tech Guy: I mean, it was it was really cool to see the um the the kind of whole process and how it played out.
25:29
Tech Guy: Because yeah, I mean, you did, and and I don't think like even longtime readers don't you don't understand like how much uh angst went into that decision, even when even when it came to you and you're like, of course, this is the story, this is why, but you like there was just a lot of like second guessing, I guess, that that you know went on um in terms of trying to make sure you were finding the right, the right path for jewels.
25:55
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, totally.
25:56
Ellie Alexander: Um, yeah, and it's just a good reminder of like if you if you just sink into the process of writing, and this is true for anyone who, you know, who might be listening who's writing themselves, um, the story always like finds its way through.
26:08
Ellie Alexander: Not that you also don't want to have some sort of plans and visions, which I always do, um, but letting that be malleable a little bit and like giving yourself room to change things as you go.
26:21
Tech Guy: Right.
26:21
Tech Guy: Well, and that's the whole point of this episode, right?
26:25
Tech Guy: Is that you had those visions and they changed.
26:29
Tech Guy: Um, yeah.
26:30
Tech Guy: You wanna um can we talk about um uh the next one?
26:37
Tech Guy: Um that involves okay, okay.
26:39
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:40
Ellie Alexander: Um, I think we need another spoiler sound here though for that.
26:45
Ellie Alexander: This is gonna be another spoiler.
26:47
Ellie Alexander: Okay.
26:47
Tech Guy: Um, how about uh okay, I like it.
26:53
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so this is just a spoiler for book one.
26:56
Ellie Alexander: Um book one is Meet Your Baker, and I had written the entire book, felt great about it, had a fantastic motive for the killer, understood the killer's motivation, how it had all come together.
27:11
Ellie Alexander: I was working on the third draft of the book, and I suddenly realized I love the killer, and I want the killer to be an ongoing person in this series.
27:25
Ellie Alexander: Who is the killer?
27:27
Ellie Alexander: Do you want to reveal or should I?
27:29
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, you can reveal.
27:30
Tech Guy: Yeah.
27:31
Tech Guy: Sterling.
27:32
Ellie Alexander: Sterling.
27:34
Tech Guy: Yeah, who knew?
27:36
Ellie Alexander: Who knows?
27:37
Tech Guy: In the span of a couple of weeks, he went from being a uh a murderous scoundrel to like one of the most loved characters in the entire series.
27:47
Tech Guy: I still get so quite the quite the turnaround.
27:51
unknown: Yeah.
27:52
Ellie Alexander: Quite the turnaround, yeah.
27:52
Ellie Alexander: And I still to this day get so many lovely messages, DMs, emails about Sterling, and who's my inspiration for him and how people want a real Sterling in their life.
28:03
Ellie Alexander: Like that would have been so bananas.
28:06
Ellie Alexander: Why, why, why, why did I think that?
28:10
Tech Guy: Yeah, that one uh um that would have been interesting too.
28:13
Tech Guy: That that would have been almost as interesting as uh I mean, he hadn't um he hadn't quite been around or been as involved as uh Carlos or Thomas, but but it still would have been interesting to see the reader reaction had he ended up being the fill in that one.
28:30
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, exactly.
28:31
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, and then it was so much work to have to go back and rewrite the entire book to change it.
28:39
Ellie Alexander: To still he was still a suspect in book one, um, but I had to change so much because the way that I had penned him the first time around obviously did not line up with the character that he became.
28:51
Tech Guy: Yeah, that that actually is um that's a good point because that took a lot of uh rereads and rewrites and the everything to catch all that stuff.
29:01
Tech Guy: Um, because once you go down one path, uh going back and catching all of the all of the pieces that um you need to remove or change in order to go with the story that you ended up, you know, the path that you ended up choosing, that that is tough.
29:18
Tech Guy: Um, it's tough to catch all that stuff.
29:21
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah, I know.
29:23
Ellie Alexander: Um, all right.
29:24
Ellie Alexander: Should we segue and talk about Sloan a little bit?
29:27
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
29:29
Tech Guy: Leavenworth.
29:31
Ellie Alexander: Leavenworth.
29:32
Tech Guy: Wow, yeah.
29:32
Ellie Alexander: I know.
29:33
Ellie Alexander: We're gonna be there in a few weeks.
29:35
Tech Guy: Yeah.
29:35
Ellie Alexander: A month or so?
29:36
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
29:36
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
29:37
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
29:38
Ellie Alexander: Uh yeah.
29:39
Ellie Alexander: So originally I had had this idea for this beer series, and I had pitched it to my agent, and he was like, I can't sell beer, can't do it.
29:50
Tech Guy: No, ridiculous.
29:52
Ellie Alexander: Ridiculous.
29:53
Ellie Alexander: Um, and you were homebrewing at the time, so that was already like in my head.
29:58
Ellie Alexander: But that series originally was gonna be set in Portland.
30:03
Tech Guy: Right, right.
30:05
Ellie Alexander: And I think I'd also talked about Bend.
30:07
Ellie Alexander: I have all these notes about Bend too.
30:09
Tech Guy: Well, at the time, and they still are to a certain extent, but at the time, like Portland and Bend were like the center of the craft beer world, um, you know, for the at least for the Pacific Northwest.
30:24
Tech Guy: And so um, it made sense to set it in one of those places.
30:30
Tech Guy: But then then you started thinking about like Portland and Bend are pretty big cities um in comparison to the kind of tight-knit village atmosphere they wanted to create.
30:45
Ellie Alexander: And then we went to Leavenworth for Oktoberfest.
30:47
Ellie Alexander: And for a book event not related, I was doing a signing for my other series, and I was like, oh my gosh, no, it has to be here.
30:54
Tech Guy: Yeah, we were immediately like, this is it, this is it.
30:57
Tech Guy: And so, yeah, we went from a city with what Portland at the time was, I don't know, close to a million people with the the surrounding area, and Ben was probably a hundred thousand, and then the 120,000, and Leavenworth is 2,000.
31:14
Ellie Alexander: 2,000 residents.
31:16
Tech Guy: So I mean, they have huge festivals.
31:18
Tech Guy: They they get what over a million tourists a year.
31:22
Tech Guy: But the the full-time residence in Leavenworth, it's like 2,000, to 2,000 or 2,500, something.
31:29
Tech Guy: It's very, very small.
31:31
Ellie Alexander: Tiny, tiny.
31:32
Ellie Alexander: Uh well, the one um plot uh idea that definitely, or this is a name idea again to start with, that definitely did not make the cut is the brewery that our that Sloan Krause ends up working for is nitro in the book.
31:49
Ellie Alexander: And we brainstormed this together a lot.
31:51
Ellie Alexander: But the note that I have um that I was desperate to keep originally the brewery I wanted to call Bruins Brewing.
32:02
Tech Guy: Yeah.
32:04
Ellie Alexander: Do you remember that?
32:05
Tech Guy: It's that alliteration again.
32:07
Tech Guy: It's like I know.
32:08
Tech Guy: I'm like, holy crap, not everything needs to arrive.
32:12
Tech Guy: Can we just get like plus I made the case that tort being a one word, one syllable name, like it was just perfect.
32:24
Ellie Alexander: It's clean.
32:25
Tech Guy: It's clean.
32:26
Tech Guy: Yeah, it instantly gives you that visual of like a really high-end uh pastry, you know, face shop type um uh um setting.
32:38
Tech Guy: Sorry, couldn't think of the word.
32:41
Tech Guy: Um, and uh and I thought that was great.
32:44
Tech Guy: And so I felt like we needed the same thing for this, um, it rather than Bruins Brewing.
32:52
Ellie Alexander: And the reason I wanted that is because our good friend Erica, who was doing a lot of marketing and everything for me in the early days, her youngest son was Bruin, and he was just this wild child, and I was like so inspired by yeah, he was not brewing, obviously, but he was like Bruins brewing.
33:10
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, that didn't get.
33:11
Tech Guy: He could have been.
33:12
Ellie Alexander: I don't I don't think it would have worked.
33:17
Tech Guy: Totally, yeah.
33:18
Tech Guy: No, I mean it uh um yeah, that was do you have other do because you had more than just that as uh name ideas.
33:26
Tech Guy: Do you have other ideas still written down?
33:28
Ellie Alexander: I have so many ideas still written down for that.
33:31
Ellie Alexander: Um, and they're all terrible, they're all just really like, yeah.
33:36
Ellie Alexander: Um taps on flow?
33:39
Ellie Alexander: What?
33:41
Tech Guy: They just kept getting longer, too.
33:42
Tech Guy: That's the thing I don't understand.
33:44
Tech Guy: I'm it did go the other way, like, yeah.
33:48
Ellie Alexander: And what does that even mean?
33:49
Ellie Alexander: Taps on flow?
33:50
Tech Guy: Yeah, taps flow, but they hopefully there's a glass under them.
33:54
Tech Guy: So yeah.
33:56
Ellie Alexander: This goes back to the no bad ideas, though, because that ultimately led to nitro.
34:00
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I think that came out came about because we were out having a beer somewhere talking about the series, and you got something on nitro.
34:10
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, I was and I was like, that's it.
34:12
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah.
34:15
Tech Guy: Yeah, it was uh like it was winter at the time, I think.
34:18
Tech Guy: And it was like I think so, yeah.
34:20
Tech Guy: That was on nitro.
34:22
Tech Guy: I was very smooth.
34:24
Ellie Alexander: It's perfect, yeah.
34:26
Tech Guy: Um and that was that was yeah, because we said uh I remember just like drinking that and going, oh, this is smooth.
34:34
Tech Guy: And and we started talking about what makes it smooth.
34:37
Tech Guy: And I was talking about the difference between uh um uh nitrogen and carbon dioxide and how the nitrogen bubbles are so much smaller, like they're just so much smaller than um the carbon dioxide bubbles.
34:54
Tech Guy: So when when you use nitrogen to um uh to um when you add nitrogen to a beer uh uh to carbonate it instead of carbon dioxide, um it the carbonation is very uh drinks a lot smoother than it does with a um uh with the carbon dioxide.
35:17
Tech Guy: But we we were talking about it and and that's when you were like, nitro, what about what if we did nitro?
35:22
Tech Guy: And so we were both like, yeah, that sounds great.
35:25
Tech Guy: And that's it's perfect.
35:26
Tech Guy: Um there it was.
35:29
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
35:30
Ellie Alexander: Um, okay, these next two are also related to Sloan, and they're they're like spoiler adjacent.
35:37
Ellie Alexander: I don't think it's gonna matter, so I don't think we need a sound effect for them.
35:40
Ellie Alexander: Um, because they're things that just like they would make sense, but they didn't come to fruition and they're not spoiling anything per se.
35:48
Ellie Alexander: So the first thing um that I had a whole stack of notes and plot points on was that so Sloan goes to work for Garrett at Nitro.
35:58
Ellie Alexander: He's starting this small startup nana brewery, right?
36:01
Ellie Alexander: And um, she had been working for years at Dirkeller, which is her soon-to-be ex-husband, Mac, his family brewery.
36:09
Ellie Alexander: Um, and Mac wants her back.
36:11
Ellie Alexander: Um, we learn in book one that he's shagging the beer wench, and that's what sends Sloan packing, and she's done with him.
36:17
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I had this whole plot point that throughout the series, Mac was constantly going to be sabotaging nitro.
36:26
Ellie Alexander: I don't think I don't even know if we ever talked about that.
36:30
Tech Guy: Um that this is like that does not ring a bell.
36:35
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
36:35
Ellie Alexander: Um, he was gonna be like sneaking in at night and like disconnecting hoses and like stealing that remote.
36:43
Tech Guy: A bunch of illegal stuff.
36:44
Tech Guy: Yeah.
36:44
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
36:45
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
36:45
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
36:45
Tech Guy: Okay.
36:46
Ellie Alexander: Um, and I had that charted out for like the first five books that it in each book.
36:51
Ellie Alexander: And he wouldn't, he was never gonna be a suspect for murder, but it was always gonna be there was gonna be something shady that he was doing.
36:57
Ellie Alexander: And then um, as I started writing the first book and got to know him and the characters more, same thing, I realized like, no, he's gonna have a growth arc too.
37:07
Ellie Alexander: And I wanted him and Sloan to um co-parent together.
37:11
Ellie Alexander: There were all these great things about him as a character, too.
37:15
Ellie Alexander: Like they weren't right for each other anymore, but he's not just an asshole.
37:19
Ellie Alexander: He's not a terrible guy.
37:20
Ellie Alexander: Um, he's made some really bad choices, and there's a reason for that.
37:25
Ellie Alexander: But Sloan is also like she's sort of gone along with this marriage for the wrong reasons, too.
37:30
Ellie Alexander: So there's a lot of growth for both of them.
37:32
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then it also just maybe seemed, I don't know, a little bit too campy too.
37:36
Ellie Alexander: So I think I just ditched that.
37:38
Tech Guy: Right, right.
37:40
Ellie Alexander: Plus could have been fun.
37:41
Tech Guy: It's sad to see somebody ruin a lot of good beer.
37:44
Ellie Alexander: Oh, see, I did not think about that.
37:48
Tech Guy: Yeah.
37:48
Tech Guy: Yeah.
37:49
Tech Guy: That would have been very sad.
37:52
Ellie Alexander: I did have, I did have one note, and you know, you know how this came up.
37:55
Ellie Alexander: We had um, we had a beer fridge in our basement at our old house.
38:03
Tech Guy: This is terrible, terrible.
38:06
Ellie Alexander: And you would brew little small batches, and so we would have it on tap in the basement, and our niece came for a visit.
38:13
Ellie Alexander: Do you want to jump in and share the rest of the story?
38:16
Tech Guy: Well, I wasn't there.
38:18
Tech Guy: I was actually with your your dad and brother, I think, at a game down in Eugene.
38:24
Tech Guy: But um, but I remember hearing the the sultan uh secondhand.
38:30
Tech Guy: It was it was awful.
38:32
Tech Guy: So she was how old do you think she was at the time?
38:35
Ellie Alexander: Three.
38:36
Tech Guy: Three, yeah, three, four.
38:37
Ellie Alexander: Three, four, something like that.
38:39
Tech Guy: Something like that.
38:39
Tech Guy: Um, and so uh you and your sister and Heather, our sister-in-law, was um were watching the game on TV, and Mackenzie, our niece, had like wandered out of the family room into the second kitchen we had on the in the basement there and and um pulled one of the taps.
39:03
Tech Guy: And I had I hadn't replaced it yet.
39:06
Tech Guy: I had two taps, uh, one that was auto-close.
39:10
Tech Guy: So when you pulled it, you just let it go and it would close, you know, to avoid situations like this.
39:14
Tech Guy: Unfortunately, she pulled the other one, which is not auto-close, no, and left it going and then went in back to show the three of you.
39:25
Tech Guy: Look what I did, guys.
39:26
Tech Guy: Come see what I did, guys.
39:28
Tech Guy: Come see what I did, guys.
39:29
Tech Guy: Come see what I did.
39:30
Tech Guy: And there were somewhere between three and five gallons of beer on on all over the floor.
39:37
Tech Guy: I had just been spewing out of that tap.
39:40
Tech Guy: So that tap was flowing.
39:41
Tech Guy: It was flowing.
39:43
Ellie Alexander: Taps of flowing.
39:44
Ellie Alexander: Taps of flowing, taps of flowing.
39:46
Ellie Alexander: Uh so I had written this scene where Mac had snuck into nitro late at night and hit all the taps and like flooded the whole bar, right?
39:55
Tech Guy: Yeah, tragic.
39:59
Ellie Alexander: He could have died from that.
40:02
Tech Guy: I know.
40:04
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
40:04
Ellie Alexander: So that did not make the cut.
40:07
Tech Guy: Okay, kid.
40:08
Tech Guy: I'm glad that would have been yeah.
40:09
Tech Guy: I would, I I I don't have much editorial say in what you write, but that I would have I would have played my played my chip there.
40:18
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
40:19
Ellie Alexander: No, you cannot murder the beer.
40:22
Tech Guy: Murder people, but not beer.
40:24
Tech Guy: Yeah.
40:24
unknown: Yeah.
40:25
Ellie Alexander: Exactly.
40:26
Ellie Alexander: Um, and then there's one other plot point for the Sloane Cross series that I had in mind.
40:32
Ellie Alexander: And this kind of goes back to the whole Carlos thing.
40:35
Ellie Alexander: So Sloane is very close to her brother-in-law, Hans.
40:39
Ellie Alexander: Um, and we we know that from day one.
40:43
Ellie Alexander: And I had had this vision.
40:45
Ellie Alexander: Um just didn't have pictures.
40:50
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, exactly.
40:51
Ellie Alexander: Uh-huh.
40:52
Ellie Alexander: It's true.
40:53
Ellie Alexander: Um, I had had a vision that at some point farther into the series, that Sloan and Hans might end up together.
41:03
Ellie Alexander: Uh, and I think you can kind of pick up again, kind of like Carlos.
41:07
Ellie Alexander: I think you can kind of pick up a little tiny hint of that, maybe in the first couple of books.
41:13
Ellie Alexander: And then again, I realized, no, that's not right.
41:16
Ellie Alexander: Like she she's a foster, a former foster child.
41:20
Ellie Alexander: Like her whole arc is about family and creating her own family and and recognizing that she's done that herself.
41:27
Ellie Alexander: And he's such a brother to her that um that just felt wrong.
41:31
Ellie Alexander: And then that would have added, I mean, I guess from a writing perspective, this is good, but that would have added so much tension in the family dynamic with Mac and Hans and yeah.
41:43
Tech Guy: So that would have been uh pretty much crosses a line.
41:47
Tech Guy: I I don't know.
41:48
Tech Guy: Like you if you can't really get together with your brother's ex-wife.
41:53
Tech Guy: I I I'm uh well, I mean, maybe in real life, but like in the cozy mystery world, I think that it's gotta cross like several lines of bad stuff that you you can't do, right?
42:09
Ellie Alexander: Well, there's still time.
42:10
Ellie Alexander: I don't know.
42:11
Ellie Alexander: We'll see.
42:12
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
42:13
Tech Guy: That's yeah, that would have been a rough one.
42:15
Ellie Alexander: I got axed too.
42:17
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
42:18
Tech Guy: Yeah.
42:18
Ellie Alexander: I know, but it's so fun to think back through all of those, like, it's like, you know, thinking about the multiverse.
42:25
Ellie Alexander: Like, there are all these possible book ideas that could have happened, and any of these that we've discussed today would have radically altered the path for both of these series, I feel like.
42:36
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
42:37
Tech Guy: Well, and you've actually had readers suggest that too.
42:39
Tech Guy: Like, you should go back and write it, like the alternate version where you chose all this stuff.
42:44
Tech Guy: And I was like, uh, I mean, it's kind of cool, but I that the problem with that is that it would get people would mix up the books, and then it would be like new readers to the series might get like version like books one and two would be version A, and then book three, they picked version B on accident, and they have no idea what's going on.
43:04
Ellie Alexander: Right, they're completely lost.
43:06
Tech Guy: Like, wait, who is this person?
43:07
Tech Guy: And like I thought that guy wasn't the killer, but now he is.
43:12
Tech Guy: I don't know what's happening.
43:13
Ellie Alexander: So, yeah, yeah.
43:15
Ellie Alexander: No, I feel like it's all worked out the way it was meant to be.
43:18
Tech Guy: Yeah, definitely.
43:19
Ellie Alexander: Usually in spite of my own initial bad ideas.
43:24
Tech Guy: Caps of flowing and gooseberry what?
43:28
Ellie Alexander: Gooseberry tart, uh, gooseberry fool.
43:31
Tech Guy: Gooseberry fool.
43:31
Tech Guy: Gooseberry fool, yeah.
43:33
Tech Guy: So so all all you listeners out there, we we have the tort bait shop and the nitro craft brewery, or we could have had the gooseberry fool bait shop and the um taps of flow and craft brewery.
43:51
Ellie Alexander: Something to think about.
43:52
Tech Guy: I think you I think you chose the right path.
43:54
Tech Guy: That's my that's my opinion.
43:58
Ellie Alexander: Okay, all right, bye.
43:59
Ellie Alexander: Uh well, that seems like a good place to end our uh our first episode on that note, yeah?
44:06
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah, this is fun.
44:08
Tech Guy: Um, I can't wait for more topics.
44:11
Tech Guy: We've got a lot uh coming up, a lot of peaks behind the curtain.
44:16
Tech Guy: Um, and we're gonna be taking suggestions from people as well.
44:20
Tech Guy: So uh I can't wait to get back at it with another episode.
44:24
Ellie Alexander: I know, it's gonna be great.
44:25
Ellie Alexander: And if you have a better thought for listeners, dark horses, etc.
44:31
Ellie Alexander: We'll come up with some suggestions for the next one.
44:34
Ellie Alexander: I like it.
44:38
Tech Guy: Yeah, for sure.
44:40
Ellie Alexander: Okay, till next time.
44:41
Tech Guy: Till next time.
44:42
Tech Guy: Bye.
44:44
Ellie Alexander: Bye.