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TWR Monday | The Hidden Costs of Indie Comics: How Crowdfunding Can Make or Break You! · The Whitfield Report

• 0:01
  The right to offend is not some pesky little part of freedom of
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  speech that we have to put up with.
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  It is the heart and soul and lungs of freedom of speech.
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  It is the coursing lifeblood of human process.
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  It is the instigator of liberty and modernity and science and
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  understanding. What a laughingstock today's
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  student leaders are that they can so casually dismiss the
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  right to be offensive without realizing that their lovely,
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  enlightened lives are the gifts of individuals who gave offence.
• 0:36
  Offensiveness is not just something we have to
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  begrudgingly accept. Offensiveness is the motor of
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  human progress. Now broadcasting from the Right
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  to Offend media studios in sunny South Florida, bringing you the
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  latest in politics, current events, art and pop culture.
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  This is the Whitfield Report live with Sam Whitfield.
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  But giving offense is good. In fact, it's essential.
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  And hello there, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to
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  today's Monday edition of the Whitfield Report.
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  I'm your host, Sam Whitfield, and joining me today once again
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  is Henry Brown, a Thriller Pope author.
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  And last time we were here, Henry and I discussed a little
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  bit about his comic threat Quotient, which he was still
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  developing the last time he came on the program.
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  But now as of the recording of this podcast, he's actually
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  getting ready to crowdfund for that comic book.
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  And so I've had a few other indie comic book authors on and
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  a couple other authors who have done crowdfunding.
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  So I'm so I'm very curious about kind of, you know, what he's
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  found out about that. So welcome once again, Henry
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  bound the program. How are you doing, Sir?
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  I'm good. Thank you.
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  Thank you for having me on, Sam. Not a problem.
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  So yeah, just to kind of refresh the audience in general, what is
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  Threat Quotient about? And you know what?
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  Can you tell us about it? Well I can tell you it's 108
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  page graphic novel full colour. It's a ensemble superhero epic
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  would be a good way to describe it.
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  And it is. I think this might have been
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  true last time too, but I have all the art for it, I'm just
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  stuck in the process of of colouring which is a lot more
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  time consuming than I ever would have guessed.
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  Yeah. But that's about the colouring
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  and lettering and shading and all that stuff is about 70 to 75
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  done. So I think I'll be able to
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  finish it and maybe this summer, I hope this summer and it'll be
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  ready to go to the printer, God willing.
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  So just to kind of, you know, recap, so you started out
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  writing pulp, you know, Nobel as much like myself and other
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  people we associate with in the in the author community.
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  But then you've also been working on Threat Quotient for a
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  while, and you've done everything more or less by
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  yourself, if I understand. Well, except I did not do the
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  illustrating on the interior pages.
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  I did some tuning up of of the line art, but actually I
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  commissioned an A comic artist to do that so and I could not
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  have done it without him. Aside from that, do I have been
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  pretty much a one man act since my second or third novel?
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  Probably. I do everything including the
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  editing and the formatting and the publishing and all that.
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  Yeah, and I, and I know about the, you know, formatting and
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  editing for books because I, I do much the same thing.
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  But for, I know for comic books it's a, it's a completely
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  different ball game. Not not necessarily as far as
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  like what you have to do, but the the you know the process is
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  much more complex. It's yeah, it's collaborative by
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  nature. Unless you happen to also be an
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  illustrator, which I did draw when I was very young, but I
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  quit. I never got as good as as the
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  guys who do it professionally. Right.
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  And I quit doing it. I kind, I kind of lost that I
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  never developed to the point where I would have needed to to
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  be to be doing it all myself. Yeah.
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  Yeah, when I was, when I was a kid, I used to write.
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  I used to kind of write, you know, superhero stories myself
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  and I had attempted, I'd attempted to kind of do artwork
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  on my own, but I was never I, I just never had that are, you
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  know, really artistic flair like beyond beyond sketching out
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  maybe a few, you know, stick fears.
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  And then when I was around, you know, I think I was 12 at the
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  time, I, I read Stanley's autobiography, Excelsior and
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  Shelf back there. Somewhere.
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  Yeah, same here. I've still got my copy that's,
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  you know, more than a couple years old now.
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  But I remember, I remember reading, you know, that and then
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  realizing he's more of a writer and other people do the art and,
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  well, writing is more of what I want to do.
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  So I kind of, that's when I kind of shifted into, you know, I
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  guess focusing on writing more or less so.
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  Yeah, with me when you ask me or when you say I started out doing
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  pulp, it all depends on when you consider the start.
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  Because when I when I started writing professionally, yeah, it
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  was pulp and his prose. But I really started, I started
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  out drawing when I was younger. And of course, I always had a,
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  had a penchant for superheroes. And over time, you know, the
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  adults in my life would tell me, well, if you really want to be,
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  you know, a serious creator, you know, you need to write prose if
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  you ever want to make money at it, if you ever want to be taken
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  seriously, you got to do that. So I started, I kind of started
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  writing as an adjunct of drawing because I want to make my own
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  comic books and my first comics I made, you know, with whatever
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  paper I could find laying around, whatever pencil I could
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  find laying around. And I stapled it together.
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  You know, it's, it's, it's as pathetic as you would imagine it
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  was. But I found that that writing
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  was more of a challenge. So I drifted more and more like
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  in the my teen years, I, I started drifting more and more
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  into prose without illustration. And eventually just the writing
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  took over completely. And now it's like the shoes on
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  the other foot. Drawing is a much bigger
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  challenge, but I don't have the patience for it that I had then,
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  if that. Yeah, no, it makes it makes
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  perfect sense. And I actually have AI actually
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  have a friend, Joe Fisher. He does a comic called Oh, I'm
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  I'm blunt. I just had it him on too, so
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  that that's that's bad. But anyway, he, he does all of
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  his own illustrations as well. So he's a, he's a natural
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  artist, but then he also kind of has the reverse problem of, you
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  know, writing is more of a struggle for him.
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  Oh. OK.
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  But I, so I guess it's like one of those things where if, where,
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  if you're good at writing, drawing is kind of a, a
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  deficiency for you. And then you know, vice versa it
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  seems like. Typically it's hard to find a
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  double threat, but there are some out there.
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  You. Know and absolutely when you do
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  write it for comics, it's a different, as I'm sure you know
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  completely different type of writing than than with prose
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  similar to screen writing, but it has its differences too.
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  There's different the medium doesn't fit perfectly with
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  movies. Obviously there's there's a
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  different, there's a different way to do it.
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  Yeah, there's, they're actually, it's funny you mention that
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  because I, I have like somewhere on my computer here, I do have
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  like a, a graphic novel script that I, you know, put together
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  like a long, you know, time ago just just to see if I could,
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  just to see if I could do it. And the thing what is, is it's,
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  it's hard because they're like, there are 9 different like
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  applications for writing screenplays.
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  You have final Draft, you have Celtics, you know, there are
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  even modules like in Microsoft Word that you can, you know, do
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  if you want to cough the money up for that.
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  But there's, there's nothing really dedicated, I guess, for
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  comic book writing, which is interesting because you would
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  think that, yeah, you would think that now in 2026, you
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  know, someone would have always come up with something for
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  dedicated comic book writers. But I I guess not.
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  I didn't even know that about the screen writing because back
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  in the day when I would do it, I don't even know if you can do
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  this in Word anymore, but I would create my own macros for
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  the formatting and then I would use those macros as I wrote.
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  Because you got, Yeah. Yeah, you can.
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  You can still do that. I mean, I, I don't pay for, I
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  use Openoffice. So you can still do that.
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  It just takes a little bit more setup.
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  So So what made you decide to dive into the Super genre for a
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  threat quotient? Because now everyone's talking
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  ow, you know, there's an oversaturation in in that
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  superhero comic book. Yeah, I don't think I've ever
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  been accused of having good timing.
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  So yeah, superheroes are kind of what got me into reading in the
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  1st place. Not kind of.
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  They were. They definitely were.
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  I don't know if I would have become such a voracious reader
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  if I had not discovered comic books.
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  And so that's what ignited my love of reading.
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  And actually, I don't know how, how down in the weeds you want
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  me to get into this, but I was reading.
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  I still, I still, it's not the same one, but it's the same
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  issue. I have a big, huge tabloid size
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  reprint of some Tarzan stories and one of those DC first
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  editions or yeah, first editions, I think.
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  And I was living in a pretty remote area, didn't have any
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  much to do. So I wound up reading the same
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  thing over and over again a lot. And I was reading this for the
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  third or fourth time and I decided to read the section in
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  the back and it was talking about a a book, a prose book
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  that came out like support. I can't remember at the time I
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  was in under the impression was non fiction, but it was a an
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  anthology of stories about humans who were raised by wild
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  animals. And of course, that's why it was
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  in the back of a Tarzan comic reprint and it was called Mother
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  was a Lovely Beast or My Mother was a Lovely Beast.
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  And it was by Philip Jose Farmer.
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  And just from reading that little segment about it, I was
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  like, I want to read that. And so I asked my mother, you
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  know, if next time she went to town, she she would pick it up
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  for me because she liked books too.
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  So she might go to the bookstore and when she came back, she had
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  a bag and it had the, the bookstores, you know, logo
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  printed on it and I could see there's a book in it.
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  So I got real excited. And when she pulled it out, it
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  was a, it was a Hardy Boys book. And I was like, and she, So what
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  happened was she had talked to a lady that worked at the store
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  and asked if the book I was wanted to read was appropriate
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  for someone of my age. And I was nine years old at the
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  time. And the bookstore clerk said,
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  no, absolutely not. So she, she brought home the
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  Hardy Boys instead. And I read that.
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  And after that I, I started reading a lot of prose books
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  after that. But superheroes were I never
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  completely gave up on them. It's it's a form of well, you
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  and I like and appreciate Pope and it Pope is a form of.
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  Right. It's a form of wish fulfillment,
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  right? And wish fulfillment, you know,
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  mixed up with escapism and all that.
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  Well, superhero comics are that on steroids.
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  Even long after I was supposed to outgrew that stuff, I still
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  really liked it. Same.
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  Yeah, OK, cool. I got disgusted like in the 90s
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  with what Marvel and DC were doing, 2 characters that I
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  actually liked. And so I gave up on, you know, I
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  haven't bought a Marvel or DC title for, I don't know, 20-30
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  years, but I still always appreciated the medium and
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  different genres within the medium.
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  And I still from the time I was young.
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  So this is how I think one of the reasons I became so creative
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  is because I was often left by myself when I was a child and
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  didn't really have anything to do.
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  I came up with ways to entertain myself.
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  And one of the ways I did was, like I mentioned, you know,
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  making my own comics or writing my own stories or whatever.
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  And so I created some heroes, some superheroes back, you know,
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  when I was very young. And a lot of them were stupid,
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  you know, derivative and, and, you know, pastiche or whatever.
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  But some of them I hung on to at least part of them.
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  And some of them I hung on to nothing but the name.
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  But I kept the name and I kept like over the years, even when I
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  never thought I'd be making a comic of my own one day, I still
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  like when I was bored, when I was driving a long distance or
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  doing something really mundane at work, You know, these old
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  ideas would come up and I'd refresh and refurbish them and
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  revamp them. And, you know, it would be
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  better, you know, it would be really cool as if I did this
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  with that character and if I told this kind of story.
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  So that's kind of how I kept, kept it alive all this time.
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  And, and lo and behold, now I'm at the point where I've made
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  one. And hopefully people are gonna
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  read it and love it. It's it's really interesting
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  that you break up that you lost interest in Marvel and DC in the
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  is because that's that's more or less when I, you know, kind of
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  got into comics was the 90s and 2000s.
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  Of course, that's also kind of the time here that I that I grew
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  up, but, you know, into, but I became a, you know, a really
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  hardcore, you know, comic book fan.
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  I'd go to the local, you know, comic book store every weekend
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  with, you know, my folks. And even after my parents got
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  divorced, you know, whichever one was with me, we would still
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  go like every weekend. So, so that was so that was
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  good. And then Roy, it wasn't until I
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  was at the high school, like around like the early twins,
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  when, when I lost interest in Marvel.
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  And it was partially because they had started doing all these
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  instead of doing like 1 special event, you know, thing like per
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  year like they used to. It would be a special event like
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  basically every six months, which meant which like, which
• 16:22
  meant like that the entire thing was a special event, right?
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  And it became a thing of like, I just, I couldn't keep up with
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  it, you know, with all these different yeah, with series and
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  school and Boy Scouts. And so I just kind of lost
• 16:42
  interest in the in the newer stuff.
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  And then when I was once I was in college, forget about that
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  because that's when comics it happened and all that, that's
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  when I got more into like pulp and, you know, the old James
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  Bond novels and what not. But.
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  You know, I was kind of ahead of the power curve there because
• 17:04
  most people didn't get give up on comics.
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  I mean, there's some that still read it, but most people didn't
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  give up on them until the the early aughts through the the 20
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  teens. And they got sick of, you know,
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  for several reasons. The ones that you sided with,
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  the constant gimmicks and the, the crossovers and the reboots
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  and the, and the retcons and also the woke garbage.
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  But it was, yeah, for me, it was mostly the cultural Marxism and,
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  and there was, there was some things that had no political
• 17:38
  implications, I guess that that I got pissed off about like in
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  the in the mid to late 80s, probably started before that.
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  But in the mid to late 80s, they turned Spider Man into a real
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  wimp. I thought he was and I didn't
• 17:53
  like that. Yeah.
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  I don't really like, I understand like especially in
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  the boomers, we're really into postmodernism, you know,
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  showing, making, giving the the hero a bunch of faults and
• 18:07
  giving the villain, sorry, the villain a bunch of virtues where
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  it kind of muddied it up and made you make you argue who's
• 18:17
  really the hero and really the villain there.
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  Which I kind of I kind of riff off that in a way and threat
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  quotient because I doesn't these characters attitude is much like
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  what you encounter in real life. In real life, nobody sees
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  themselves as the villain of the story, right?
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  They all see themselves as whether they're telling their
• 18:40
  own life story or they're telling you some anecdote about
• 18:42
  something that just happened. They're either the the victim or
• 18:46
  the hero of their own narrative, right.
• 18:48
  And so I don't I don't have any super villains per SE.
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  All of them are considered superheroes, but they're
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  ideologically opposed and both sides think that either think
• 19:02
  that they're on the correct side of history, or they at least
• 19:05
  think the other side is dead wrong.
• 19:07
  Right, that that seems to I mean, that's incredibly relevant
• 19:13
  to today's time too, because that's you know, I know it's
• 19:19
  kind of pass passage to say this now, but like art mimics, you
• 19:24
  know, life. And I mean, that's I mean, I
• 19:27
  guess that's always been true to a certain extent of, you know,
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  of humanity, But like especially, you know, now you've
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  got, you know, one side that thinks that they're righteous
• 19:38
  and then, you know, just because, you know, just because
• 19:44
  you disagree with them. I mean, you know, the left,
• 19:47
  especially they. It's perfectly acceptable to
• 19:50
  assassinate you if if you disagree with them on something.
• 19:54
  You know, to literally murder you if you, you know, if you
• 19:59
  disagree with them And you know, it's, it's interesting you
• 20:02
  mentioned deconstructing because I love Watchmen as a, you know,
• 20:09
  a graphic novel. But I've, I've reread that a few
• 20:14
  times and it's like, Oh yeah. Well, Alan Moore was definitely
• 20:16
  one of those. Nihilist.
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  Yeah. Deconstructive postmodernist
• 20:24
  boomers. Definitely, yeah, definitely
• 20:26
  deconstructionists and and well, so Dark Knight Returns and
• 20:30
  Watchmen, I appreciate both of them as stories.
• 20:34
  I thought they were very interesting stories, but at the
• 20:39
  same time, the messages that they were pushing annoyed me and
• 20:44
  still annoys me this to this day.
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  And I think by this time most people understand what Alan
• 20:50
  Moore's all about. Yeah.
• 20:51
  And deconstruction is it. It was a successful gimmick for
• 20:54
  a while. And like, everybody tried to
• 20:57
  copy that, especially Watchmen. And now it's it's like, it's so
• 21:01
  old and it's so tiresome. Yeah, that.
• 21:05
  I think it's, it's well past time to move beyond that.
• 21:08
  They've they've played that one out until it's, you know,
• 21:11
  completely spent. Yeah, at least in my opinion.
• 21:14
  Yeah, well, it's like, it's like anything like anything you can,
• 21:18
  you can do something well for a while, but if, but if you run,
• 21:22
  if you, if you run something into the ground, it's not going
• 21:25
  to be, you know, appealing any and.
• 21:30
  I like to say that my The Threat Quotient is not your typical
• 21:34
  cake comic. It's not, it's, I dare say that
• 21:38
  it's like nothing no comic anyone's read before, but it's
• 21:41
  not because I'm deconstructing or anything like that.
• 21:43
  It's, and I do, but I do introduce elements of
• 21:46
  verisimilitude in there that I don't really see from anyone
• 21:52
  else really. And again, I haven't read, I
• 21:55
  haven't regularly read comics asides from the ones I already
• 21:59
  had in my collection. I have not done that since the
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  90s. So there could be a lot of stuff
• 22:03
  that I'm missing. Maybe there has been something
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  like this before, not sure. But at the same time I try to
• 22:09
  same thing kind of in my in my fiction.
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  I like an exciting story with action, with adventure, but I do
• 22:15
  try to keep it grounded in reality.
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  Yeah. Anyway, superheroes, how
• 22:20
  grounded in reality can you be, actually?
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  But I do, I do try. Yeah, I I get what you mean by
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  that. Yeah.
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  But anyway, it's the whole, it's, it's definitely not left
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  wing and it's not even, well, here's the thing, it's, it's got
• 22:39
  some observations in it that we see in real life.
• 22:43
  And so some people consider that political and I, I can see why
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  they would because I'm making observations that no one else
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  dares make. Certainly no one in the
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  mainstream. Also people who are, you know,
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  the I just want good comics crowd.
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  But it is reality. And I don't, you know, it's not
• 23:00
  a right wing polemic or anything.
• 23:01
  And it's not, I don't have, I don't do what Marvel and DC are
• 23:05
  apparently doing where I have, you know, characters stop in the
• 23:09
  middle of the story and lecture the reader about what they
• 23:11
  should believe. I don't do any of that.
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  I just, but I do try to, it's in an alternate reality, but it's
• 23:19
  very similar to the world we lived in during the COVID
• 23:23
  lockdowns. And you probably remember some
• 23:25
  of the insanity that was happening then.
• 23:28
  Oh yeah, I got banned off I got banned off YouTube during that
• 23:34
  whole, you know, period of well, that's.
• 23:36
  Right. I think you mentioned that
• 23:37
  before. And I'm, I'm actually, this will
• 23:41
  be on you. This will be on YouTube because
• 23:43
  they gave me my channel back. Yeah.
• 23:46
  I mean, I I, you know, I, I was, I was one of those, you know,
• 23:52
  people who got de platformed not enough even because I was anti
• 23:57
  vax, but because I was like, you know, pro, you know, individual
• 24:01
  choice basically so. Yeah, it was really, it was so
• 24:05
  bad then. I think that was the peak of, of
• 24:08
  cancel culture. It was so bad then you didn't
• 24:11
  actually have to say anything opposing the, you know, the what
• 24:17
  do you, what would you call it? The dominant ideology?
• 24:21
  All you had to do is not not agree strongly enough and you'd
• 24:26
  be put on Santa's bad list and possibly cancelled.
• 24:29
  There were a lot of leftists who were cancelled just because,
• 24:33
  well, I mean, look at what they did to what's her face?
• 24:35
  The Harry Potter author. Yeah, JK Rowling.
• 24:38
  Rowling, Rowling, yeah. So a lot of people like that got
• 24:42
  on the the naughty list and they believed they were in agreement
• 24:46
  with the the woke mob and like 80% of what what they espoused.
• 24:51
  Yeah, well, there, there's, there was that, there was also
• 24:54
  that, that there was also that loud, that loudmouth, you know,
• 24:59
  comedian from New York. I can't remember.
• 25:03
  I can't remember his name off the top.
• 25:05
  Oh, Michael Rappaport. Oh, he's a stand up comic.
• 25:09
  Yeah, OK. Well.
• 25:12
  He's an actor because I've seen him in some movies.
• 25:14
  Yeah, so I mean, I well, I, I mean, I think he's I think he's
• 25:18
  done a variety of things. I mean, so he he used to be
• 25:21
  like, you know, full on, you know, anti Trump and you know,
• 25:26
  really kind of obnoxious. But then when October 7th
• 25:31
  happened, him being Jewish, he you know, he took like a very
• 25:34
  pro Israel stands and all of the sudden the far left wanted to
• 25:40
  kill him because he believed and you know, he doesn't want
• 25:45
  innocence being, you know, killed.
• 25:47
  But obviously, you know, he wants, you know, America and
• 25:51
  Israel to take out the terrorists and that that's too
• 25:55
  much for, you know, people. It's it's been funny because
• 25:59
  he's slowly been getting red pill, you know, on stuff.
• 26:03
  Maybe. Maybe Trump's not as bad as he
• 26:06
  thought. Well, some other.
• 26:08
  Ones too, like Bill Maher or Maher or however you pronounce
• 26:11
  it. Yeah, of course he's still a
• 26:13
  little lefty, but he's surprisingly come to his senses
• 26:17
  on some issues, or at least it seems that way.
• 26:19
  I don't watch him regularly but just I read stuff that he says
• 26:22
  and I'm like. Really.
• 26:24
  Yeah, No, it's, it's funny you mentioned Bill Maher because I
• 26:28
  on my segment on my show when I first, you know, I've been doing
• 26:33
  this for almost 20 years now. And when I started podcasting,
• 26:39
  like I used to have a segment where I would, you know,
• 26:43
  criticize or debunk a lot of Bill Maher's left swing things.
• 26:47
  But over the over the years, as the left, as the left has gone
• 26:52
  more left and more woke, he actually sounds more like Rush
• 26:58
  Limbaugh now then you know, then any than any like, you know,
• 27:05
  left wing commentator out there. And I actually, to your point
• 27:11
  about, you know, making fictional, making observations
• 27:15
  and fiction, I actually made, you know, a character that was
• 27:20
  based off him for American Inferno, who's, you know, he
• 27:23
  considers himself an old school liberal in my story, but he's
• 27:29
  not, you know, he's not for, you know, cancer culture or for, you
• 27:34
  know, or for his political opponents getting assassinated.
• 27:38
  So it's it's really interesting. Well, technically, if you look
• 27:43
  at the labels that we use now, if you look at what the words
• 27:46
  actually mean, technically I'm a liberal because for a lot of
• 27:52
  reasons, I believe, I believe a man is innocent until proven
• 27:55
  guilty. I believe that the law should
• 27:57
  apply equally to everybody. I believe that you should judge
• 28:00
  a man by the content of his character, not the colour of his
• 28:04
  skin. I believe that if you're not
• 28:06
  hurting anyone else, then what you do is your own business.
• 28:10
  Yeah. You know, well, and I, I should
• 28:13
  probably be careful about saying that because some people can
• 28:15
  take that to mean what I don't mean by it.
• 28:18
  But in other words, I believe people should be able to speak
• 28:22
  or print or publish what they want, even if their opinion is
• 28:26
  offensive. Yeah, to people.
• 28:29
  So those are all. By the way, our Constitution is
• 28:32
  very, very liberal, even radical document.
• 28:35
  Nobody in the world had had ever deemed to to follow a system
• 28:40
  like that before. So the founders were actually
• 28:43
  liberal. And in that sense, I'm liberal
• 28:45
  as well. Yeah, I mean yeah.
• 28:48
  I mean, so am I and I mean I, I, you know, the name of the
• 28:54
  podcast network I'm on is, you know, right to offend media.
• 28:58
  You know, we, we actually, you know, we encourage people even
• 29:03
  who disagree with us to come on and, you know, debate things and
• 29:08
  you know what? Not, you know, like I've, I've
• 29:11
  had a few, I've had a few liberals who, you know, they may
• 29:15
  disagree with me on some things, like regarding, you know, gay
• 29:20
  marriage, but it it's it's amazing because, you know, 90 on
• 29:24
  the morn stuff. We mostly agree.
• 29:27
  You know that like, cancer, culture is bad and big tech
• 29:31
  censorship is bad. Yeah, I'm with you on that.
• 29:38
  But getting back to Threat Quotient, so you mentioned last
• 29:43
  time you were here that you were starting a, a, a Kickstarter for
• 29:49
  this project. What has that process been like
• 29:55
  for you? I know that's one of the things
• 29:56
  you wanted to promote here. Been very educational.
• 30:01
  Well, it's been at times frustrating, at times
• 30:03
  terrifying. And it's still terrifying
• 30:06
  because the Kickstarter launches tomorrow morning and I have no
• 30:09
  idea what's. This is my first one and I
• 30:11
  understand most of them fail, blah blah blah.
• 30:15
  And I don't have a big enough e-mail list.
• 30:18
  That's something I did not take seriously enough for most of my
• 30:20
  writing career. And on it goes.
• 30:22
  But I did do my best to educate myself.
• 30:25
  So and all the months after, in this months that I was coloring
• 30:30
  the panels and shading them, cleaning up the lineup art 1st
• 30:34
  and then lettering and so forth. I was listening to podcasts from
• 30:39
  people who knew something about the industry.
• 30:40
  And actually the very reason I'm on Patreon in the 1st place was
• 30:46
  I, I did that to pay for some special extra content from some
• 30:52
  people who, and I did that because they were, they had done
• 30:55
  many successful Kickstarters before and I bought a book on
• 30:58
  it. So I've been learning everything
• 31:00
  I can and I, there's still so much I don't know.
• 31:03
  I just, I just found out within the last few days that I had
• 31:07
  done some stuff wrong. And one of the big mistakes I
• 31:11
  almost made was, I assume because I chose the starting
• 31:14
  date and starting time, that it was just going to automatically
• 31:18
  go live at that time. And I found out, thank God, that
• 31:23
  no, that's not how it works. You have to go on there and and
• 31:26
  manually choose it's ready to go and now start it, which I'll be
• 31:30
  doing tomorrow morning. Interesting.
• 31:32
  That's my plan. Yeah.
• 31:34
  A lot of stuff too, like the there's a pre launch page,
• 31:38
  which, if you have time during this podcast, it's I'll, I'll
• 31:41
  share my screen and, and let's see what that looks like.
• 31:44
  And it's not exactly the same as the normal page you're going to
• 31:46
  see once it goes live and on, on the one that people will see
• 31:50
  tomorrow, there's a video embedded in it so they can watch
• 31:53
  one of my one of my trailers for the comic.
• 31:56
  And I don't know, I could go on for quite a while about the
• 32:01
  stuff. I don't know, but this is
• 32:04
  obviously going to be a learning experience and and I'll be
• 32:08
  whether it succeeds or fails. I should have a better idea how
• 32:11
  to strategize for the next one. Well, you know, you know, you
• 32:16
  know more than I do when it comes to, you know,
• 32:19
  Kickstarters. So I guess, you know, a question
• 32:24
  I would ask and a lot of people would ask too, is, you know, you
• 32:29
  do a lot of this. You know, you're doing a lot of
• 32:32
  this as a one man show. So what exactly would the
• 32:38
  Kickstarter be be helping to cover or pay for, I guess.
• 32:44
  OK. So primarily it's the it's the
• 32:47
  reimburse me for the money I spent on the art, right, which
• 32:51
  was it was as far as page rates go.
• 32:55
  Now I got a really reasonable rate, but it's still when you
• 32:58
  add it all together for 108 page graphic novel, it was, it hurt,
• 33:04
  it hurt scraping together the money.
• 33:06
  I had to make some sacrifices on other stuff to put that
• 33:09
  together. And so it would reimburse me for
• 33:11
  that and it would also pay for the shipping to the backers.
• 33:17
  So there's a lot I didn't know about crowdfunding.
• 33:21
  You know, it might be worthwhile me getting into that in a
• 33:23
  minute. Sure things I've learned.
• 33:25
  But so it would help pay for the shipping and the printing.
• 33:28
  So printing is not cheap and it's getting more expensive all
• 33:31
  the time. So I have to pay for those.
• 33:33
  I have to pay for the shipping, all the little extras I put into
• 33:36
  it. And I had to pay, I had to
• 33:38
  Commission cover artist for the for the alternate covers.
• 33:42
  So all that, all that cost money and, you know, different
• 33:46
  marketing stuff I've done cost money.
• 33:48
  And hopefully, God willing, the Kickstarter will reimburse me
• 33:53
  for everything I've already spent.
• 33:55
  It'll pay for the shipping and the printing and maybe have me a
• 33:59
  little bit leftover afterwards as profit that I can use to to
• 34:03
  fund the to start the next graphic novel in the series.
• 34:08
  That would be be made amazing. And yeah, I don't I don't think
• 34:12
  people Nestle realize, you know, too with with indie comic books,
• 34:19
  it's a it's a bit different because I know that like for,
• 34:23
  you know, self-publishing or just standard books as you and I
• 34:27
  have both done. It's still a process and it
• 34:29
  still takes work. But the one nice thing is with
• 34:32
  Amazon and a couple of the other services, you can basically do
• 34:37
  print on demand, right? You know now where you just.
• 34:41
  Cost you anything? Right.
• 34:44
  Yeah. You know, they just take a
• 34:46
  percentage or, or whatever. And as far as far as I'm aware,
• 34:51
  because I, I did look into this problem like, you know, 5 or 6
• 34:54
  years ago, there's no, there's nothing quite, you know, there's
• 34:59
  nothing similar for print comic books.
• 35:03
  No, no. So I had no idea how difficult
• 35:07
  it is, how time consuming it is, how expensive it is.
• 35:11
  It's really, really hard in this business.
• 35:13
  And it's something, well, of course, we already know this for
• 35:16
  writing. Like if almost everybody and
• 35:17
  their mother is, is becoming an author now, but it's a career
• 35:22
  path. I would not, I would advise
• 35:25
  people strongly against it. And unless they have an inner
• 35:28
  compulsion that just cannot be denied because chances are
• 35:32
  you're not going to get rich on it.
• 35:35
  Not only that, you're probably not going to even make enough to
• 35:38
  support yourself on it. Right.
• 35:41
  So don't do it unless you have a passion for it.
• 35:44
  And I would multiply that by a factor of probably 8 with comic
• 35:48
  books. So it's, it's a really risky
• 35:51
  endeavour. Chances are you're not going to
• 35:53
  make any money back, you know, knock on wood.
• 35:55
  If you're compelled to do it, if you have a real passion for it
• 35:58
  and you can't cut that passion off, that is probably a legit
• 36:02
  reason to do it. And you still probably lose
• 36:04
  money. Yeah, you'll sacrifice a lot of
• 36:07
  time and and everything else and, and I think some people are
• 36:11
  going to learn that the hard way.
• 36:13
  Yeah, well, even now, like writing professionally for
• 36:17
  business, you know, which is what I, you know, I got my
• 36:20
  degree in technical writing, OK. Even even that now though, you
• 36:25
  know, with, with a, you know, with AI and everything and, you
• 36:29
  know, marketing firms, you know, moving more towards the digital,
• 36:35
  the digital side. There's not, I wouldn't say
• 36:39
  there's, I wouldn't say there isn't a demand, but but you
• 36:43
  know, the demands are changing a bit.
• 36:46
  So it, you know, it's not, it's not as lucrative as it was like
• 36:51
  even, you know, COVID, COVID really kind and changed
• 36:56
  everything with that too. It was already on a trend line
• 37:02
  that yeah, not great for us because there's more and more
• 37:05
  authors all the time. I'm not even talking about AI
• 37:08
  slot. There's more and more authors
• 37:10
  all the time and there's less and less readers all the time.
• 37:12
  There's there's less literate people.
• 37:16
  There's less people willing to sit down and read a book as
• 37:19
  opposed to playing a video game or just scrolling on social
• 37:23
  media. Yeah.
• 37:25
  The younger generations coming out are functionally illiterate
• 37:28
  for the most part. Some exceptions, and I know a
• 37:31
  few, so I know they're out there, but for the most part
• 37:34
  they're like the last thing they're ever going to do is open
• 37:38
  a book and read it without somebody pointing a gun to their
• 37:41
  head. Yeah, well, and that that's, and
• 37:44
  that's, that's a real shame. Yeah.
• 37:47
  And also though, I, I think that's where like for me, you
• 37:52
  know, similar to you, I got into reading because of, you know,
• 37:56
  comic books as well. And, you know, back back when I
• 37:59
  was was a kid, you know, comic books were not, we're still not
• 38:04
  considered literature, you know, or anything like that.
• 38:08
  I'm told now by a few my friends who have become teachers that
• 38:12
  that has started to to change a bit, which is good.
• 38:16
  I guess teachers are more open minded than they were when even
• 38:20
  I was a kid, which is good. But still, you know, like the
• 38:25
  the reading rates are not that are not that great.
• 38:29
  I mean, I have trouble, I have trouble, you know, trying to
• 38:32
  trying to convince just my, you know, friends outside the author
• 38:36
  community to buy my books. I know, I know.
• 38:39
  Or or you know some of them. Some of them will.
• 38:43
  A lot of them will buy them, but they won't.
• 38:45
  You know they won't read them. Yeah, I've had a few friends and
• 38:51
  some family members who bought like my debut novel, and I think
• 38:55
  that's about it, with maybe one or two exceptions.
• 38:57
  So they are not my audience by any stretch, and I know exactly
• 39:01
  where you're coming from there. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I mean, I
• 39:05
  appreciate the, you know, I, I, I appreciate the support and I
• 39:09
  appreciate that a lot of them have bought my have bought my
• 39:12
  books. That always helps.
• 39:13
  But I would love people's feedback, you know, what they
• 39:16
  actually think of them. You want readers who are reading
• 39:21
  it of their own volition and who enjoy it and want more of it.
• 39:26
  It's just. Yeah.
• 39:27
  Yeah, well, comic books specifically, even by the time I
• 39:31
  came along and started reading them, there's still this
• 39:34
  prejudice that they're for kids. It's all kids stuff, right?
• 39:38
  That was that was changing. Your mate arguably had already
• 39:41
  changed by the time I started reading.
• 39:43
  They were still kid friendly enough where kids could get into
• 39:46
  them and pick up on it and follow the action and learn that
• 39:49
  the lore and the world building and all that on the fly.
• 39:52
  But this perception there was because when comics started out,
• 39:55
  it was really they were geared toward adolescent boys.
• 39:59
  Yeah. That changed with the Boomers.
• 40:01
  And so by the time I came along, that had pretty much changed.
• 40:05
  And I'm not saying that the writing was flawless back then,
• 40:08
  because I go back and read some of the ones that I really loved.
• 40:10
  And I'm like, man, their storytelling skills weren't
• 40:13
  quite as, you know, as deft as as I remembered them being.
• 40:17
  Yeah. But they were still, they were
• 40:19
  starting to incorporate adult themes.
• 40:22
  By adult, I mean like, well, of course, a lot of it was about
• 40:25
  relationships. And then you had like, the saga
• 40:29
  with where Tony Stark became an alcoholic and, you know, stuff
• 40:34
  like that. Yeah.
• 40:36
  It wasn't to, it wasn't to the extreme that it is now.
• 40:39
  We're like, everybody's got to be homosexual.
• 40:43
  And and, you know, you know, everyone who doesn't believe a
• 40:47
  certain thing is a white supremacist.
• 40:49
  It wasn't that bad yet. But you could see, you could see
• 40:53
  the seeds of some of that starting like even in the 80s.
• 40:56
  Yeah, I know you just mentioned the demon, the demon in the
• 41:01
  bottle, you know, store lighted. It's funny because I, because I,
• 41:07
  you know, I read that when I was, you know, when I was a kid.
• 41:14
  And by then alcoholism was, it wasn't as much of A taboo, but
• 41:19
  I, I read, I read like an article or you know, something,
• 41:25
  some, I think it was on sub stacks somewhere where someone,
• 41:29
  someone recounted that they read Demon in the Bottle as a kid
• 41:34
  when it first came out. And then they, they realized
• 41:38
  that their, that their dad was an alcoholic or something.
• 41:42
  So it was one of those things were like, yeah, back then
• 41:46
  comics were also, you know, they were doing in heavier themes,
• 41:50
  but they were also, they were helping kids, you know, explore
• 41:55
  like, more mature themes without going overboard.
• 42:00
  And I, I, and I feel like when the medium does that, that's
• 42:04
  when it's at its best, you know, to kind of explore complex
• 42:08
  topics without ramming things in people's faces.
• 42:13
  I think earlier than that preceding Demon in a Bottle by I
• 42:17
  don't know, maybe a decade even. I don't know for sure because I
• 42:20
  I never really read Teen Titans, but Speedy, who was Green
• 42:24
  Arrow's sidekick, He became a drug addict in one of those, so
• 42:28
  there. Yeah, yeah, I think I remember
• 42:30
  reading something like that. And there was like the whole
• 42:34
  mutant thing that I guess started in in the late 70s and
• 42:38
  through the 80s, you saw these little scenes where a superhero
• 42:43
  is trying to get from one place to another and they run into
• 42:46
  this big protest against mutants or demonstration against
• 42:49
  mutants. I at first that that started out
• 42:52
  as a civil rights metaphor. So it was trying to show the
• 42:55
  irrational hatred that some people had toward others based
• 42:59
  on, you know, genetics. And eventually that got out of
• 43:02
  control or that got that one somewhere where it didn't really
• 43:04
  need to go, in my opinion. But yeah, those were.
• 43:08
  So I guess they were seeking relevancy for quite a while.
• 43:12
  And then, yeah. But to my original point though,
• 43:17
  they weren't really just for kids anymore.
• 43:19
  And of course now like they they really committed suicide because
• 43:23
  they started telling so-called stories that do not appeal to
• 43:29
  kids at all. And they shut down the
• 43:32
  distribution to news stands and drug stores and grocery stores.
• 43:37
  I found my first one, my first comic in a a grocery store I
• 43:41
  believe. But you have to go to a
• 43:43
  specialty shop to get them now. And like, no kid, you know,
• 43:48
  who's too young to drive yet is going to find some specialty
• 43:51
  shop and say, hey, I think I'll check that out.
• 43:54
  I'll check out this, this strange store with all these
• 43:57
  adults in it and see if they have something there I can get
• 44:00
  hooked on. You know, it just doesn't happen
• 44:02
  unless an adult takes them there.
• 44:03
  They're not going to discover the medium.
• 44:05
  And so when the existing audiences age out, there's
• 44:09
  nothing to replace them. Yeah, no, when when I was when I
• 44:14
  was a kid, you know, they, they didn't have, they didn't have
• 44:19
  comics in the grocery stores as much like minus view exceptions.
• 44:24
  But when I was a kid, in fact, I think it was Terrence and I from
• 44:30
  the men's adventure fiction Discord and I were talking out
• 44:33
  that about this. They used to sell, they used to
• 44:38
  sell action figures and have like comic books included with
• 44:42
  the well, I think. I remember that, yeah.
• 44:45
  So that. That's how, like, a lot of, you
• 44:49
  know, people of my generation got into comic books at 1st and,
• 44:55
  you know, also reading the, you know, reading the, you know,
• 45:00
  newspaper comic strips, which still had a few of them.
• 45:03
  But now, yeah, it's like even even trying to find comic book
• 45:06
  stores in my area are tough now just because there's not,
• 45:12
  there's not a demand. And like I'm into comic books
• 45:14
  but I'm not really into DND or any of these other.
• 45:17
  Me neither. Hobby shops, but they're getting
• 45:20
  lumped in with that too. Right.
• 45:23
  And manga or manga, however you pronounce it is like taking over
• 45:27
  these comic book shops because it sells, whereas the big two
• 45:33
  are not selling very good, as I understand it.
• 45:35
  I mean, if there's people that are arguing with you about that,
• 45:38
  but the the manga, and I've read a couple and it's what I read,
• 45:45
  wasn't really my cup of tea, but they do, they do tell a story
• 45:49
  that I think that scratches the itch, especially for young
• 45:52
  people, better than anything Marvel or DC is producing.
• 45:56
  Yeah, I mean, I'm not really a manga guy either, but I did read
• 46:01
  a few of them. And let me say this, I I
• 46:04
  definitely understand the appeal of, you know, what they're going
• 46:09
  for. And it does kind of remind me
• 46:13
  of, I guess like some of the writing of American comics from
• 46:18
  from at least like, the 80s and, you know, in the 70s.
• 46:22
  Oh, really? OK, interesting.
• 46:24
  So I mean, well, I mean at least, you know, spiritually
• 46:28
  kind of in that vein, you know, where they're not trying to
• 46:30
  shove propaganda. Well, yeah, right.
• 46:34
  Yeah, I agree. You know, down your throat.
• 46:35
  So yeah. And it's funny because you
• 46:40
  mentioned that they that these spent comics exclusively for
• 46:43
  kids and now it's almost like the the reverse.
• 46:47
  Now they make some comics that are so, you know, gruesome and
• 46:51
  brutal and over the top that like they're not appropriate for
• 46:55
  kids at all. Like the boys is probably the
• 46:58
  most prominent example I can think.
• 47:01
  Now, have you? Have you watched that?
• 47:03
  Yeah, I I watched, I watched the show and then, well, I watched
• 47:10
  part of the show. I don't seen all the seasons
• 47:12
  because it's gotten a wood of gratuitous even for me.
• 47:17
  And I'm not someone who I'm not someone who shies away from
• 47:20
  blood or you know, or nudity. But it's it's a little, it's a
• 47:26
  little far even for me. But then the original comic book
• 47:29
  it's based on is like completely like.
• 47:32
  It makes Watchmen look like the Justice League.
• 47:36
  I bet you know comics, but by comparison?
• 47:39
  Yeah, when I first saw and I didn't hear anything about The
• 47:42
  Boys either. And I hadn't read the comic or
• 47:44
  knew it was a comic, but I saw it on I guess Netflix or maybe
• 47:50
  Prime. Amazon, yeah.
• 47:52
  Yeah. And then so I watched, I tried
• 47:55
  to watch the first episode and I didn't even get through it.
• 47:58
  And I was like, man, I don't need this garbage rammed down my
• 48:02
  throat. Yeah, it's already being rammed
• 48:04
  down my throat everywhere I go. And whenever my wife watches one
• 48:07
  of her shows, it's like it's in your face from the beginning.
• 48:10
  I don't need more of that. I'm not going to volunteer to,
• 48:13
  to put up with more of that. So I I once again, I gave up on
• 48:17
  it earlier than most people probably do.
• 48:20
  Yeah, I mean, the first season was was the first season was
• 48:26
  actually good, but then the rest of the show the writers got like
• 48:31
  severe Trump derangement syndrome and so everything bad
• 48:35
  became an allegoric Trump. And then in the later seasons
• 48:41
  I'm they adapted like some of the more gratuitous things from
• 48:45
  the conch. So I kid you not, in the later
• 48:49
  seasons they they have like literal orgies that are like and
• 48:56
  somehow it's improved on Amazon and it makes like it makes like
• 49:01
  70. It makes 70s, you know, porn
• 49:03
  look, you know, decent. My comparison.
• 49:07
  Look like AG rated movie. Yeah.
• 49:10
  Yeah, well, I didn't see any. I didn't wait to see any of
• 49:14
  that. It was, But right from the very
• 49:16
  beginning, I could tell that they were like the male heroes
• 49:21
  were all either pathetic or weak or abusive or there's like no
• 49:28
  redeeming qualities in them from what I could tell.
• 49:30
  And I see that everywhere. That's what that's what they're
• 49:34
  doing with every like and if if a property already exists and
• 49:40
  some one of these people get a hold of that IP, they'll take it
• 49:47
  and pervert it so that it's that way so that the the men are all
• 49:51
  weak or or abusive or or both. And I'm sick of that.
• 49:56
  And that's one of the things that's one reason why I like the
• 49:59
  old Pope and the old men's adventure fiction.
• 50:02
  And that's that's really what turned me off of it.
• 50:06
  I did watch a couple I like held my nose and watched a couple
• 50:10
  seasons of invincible. Don't plan on buying the comet
• 50:15
  ever. But I ran across something a
• 50:17
  comment someone made today, which I thought was pretty
• 50:19
  astute. They said that the the action in
• 50:26
  Have you watched Invincible? Yeah, I, I watched the first
• 50:30
  season, which I I actually thought was good, but I also
• 50:33
  like, I also like JK Simmons too, so that's OK why I watched
• 50:38
  it. Well, the comment that was made
• 50:40
  today was that their action sequences in Invincible, they
• 50:45
  might have been talking about the the comic and not the
• 50:47
  series, but I haven't read the comic.
• 50:49
  They said that they're, they're really poorly done and, and not
• 50:53
  very satisfying and they make up for the lack of excitement by
• 50:56
  being using gratuitous violence and a lot of blood and gore.
• 51:00
  And when I thought about it, I was like, you know what?
• 51:02
  They're right. They're right.
• 51:04
  That's why, that's why I never really enjoyed the show.
• 51:07
  Yeah, that that's also, I mean, yeah, that is that is an issue.
• 51:12
  And it's also, it's also an issue with with the boys too,
• 51:16
  OK, you know, with things or just either like complete, you
• 51:22
  know, war fest or, you know, or sex fest.
• 51:26
  And it's again, like, I'm not approved by any, any means.
• 51:31
  But I don't need to, I don't need to see someone's, you know,
• 51:35
  brain stem, you know, splatter get against a windshield or you
• 51:40
  know something and. I'm the same way too.
• 51:42
  Like if I see if there's a sex scene in a movie or even a
• 51:46
  couple or in a book, you know, that usually won't stop me from
• 51:51
  from reading the rest of it. And if it's a good book, I'll
• 51:54
  say so if I review it, I'll say, Hey, it's a good book.
• 51:56
  But you do have these kind of scenes in here that is going to
• 52:00
  if that is going to ruin the experience for you, then I don't
• 52:03
  recommend it. When that's all they can do.
• 52:05
  Or worse yet, I'm, you know, frankly.
• 52:08
  And when I talked about how they, they're all about like
• 52:11
  demonizing masculinity and like every male characters got to be
• 52:18
  either a monster or a weakling. That's the exception is if
• 52:23
  they're homosexual, then they can be, you know, a moral strong
• 52:27
  character. And I'm, I'm really sick of
• 52:30
  that. I've been sick of that for a
• 52:31
  while. And when I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 52:35
  That's the case also where like they've been, they've been
• 52:39
  demonized, you know, straight women now for, you know, for
• 52:45
  that too, it's it's not enough, you know, for a woman, just be
• 52:49
  straight. She has to be, you know, a
• 52:51
  lesbian or you know, a a queer, you know something well, and
• 52:57
  even the. Even the heterosexual characters
• 53:00
  in today's pop culture, they at least at the very minimum, they
• 53:03
  have to approve of homosexuality or they're a bad person.
• 53:09
  There was a movie like just as an illustration this they've
• 53:13
  become so predictable. There's a movie, it was supposed
• 53:16
  to be a murder mystery and I forget the name of it.
• 53:19
  I forgot most about it. My wife and I decided to watch
• 53:22
  it one night and like early on, like within the 1st 20 minutes,
• 53:27
  there's a character who who used the word faggot to describe
• 53:34
  someone else. And I was like, Oh my God, OK,
• 53:37
  he's the killer. Why did why am I going to watch
• 53:39
  the rest of this movie? Now I know that he's going to be
• 53:41
  the murderer. He's the most immoral person in
• 53:43
  the, you know, as far as the film makers are concerned.
• 53:46
  So they're really, they're so predictable.
• 53:48
  It's you get that? And I'm just, I guess I'm
• 53:55
  getting more and more cantankerous as I grow older.
• 53:59
  I'm less and less willing. I'm less and less patient to put
• 54:02
  up with that kind of stuff. It would, it would not be so bad
• 54:06
  if you, if you saw or heard an alternate opinion once in a
• 54:09
  while, or if most stuff was just apolitical or pretended to be
• 54:14
  apolitical as it was in like the 70s and 80s and stuff.
• 54:20
  But now it's just they're beating you over the head with
• 54:22
  it, ramming it down your throat all the time.
• 54:25
  I'm just I've had enough. I don't even think it, I don't
• 54:29
  even think it's an aged thing. Like for me, I, I'm only 31 and
• 54:34
  I, I was telling someone, it's not that life is too short.
• 54:37
  It's that life is too long. Life is too long.
• 54:44
  And you know, for me to be a lecturer constantly day in and
• 54:48
  day out about, you know, this, that or the other thing.
• 54:53
  And also, I'm not saying I'm a I'm not saying I'm a I'm not
• 54:58
  saying I'm the best writer ever, but a lot of these, you know,
• 55:03
  shows now and movies, usually I can figure out the plot, you
• 55:09
  know, like 10 or 15 minutes in to something.
• 55:13
  Yeah, you know, and it, and if I as you know, just like an indie,
• 55:18
  you know, author can do that. And you know, you know, I'm
• 55:23
  constantly like trying to figure out, well, how would I improve
• 55:26
  the show if if my thing as just like an average Joe blow is way
• 55:32
  better than yeah, Hollywood has a problem.
• 55:35
  So. That's the other thing too that
• 55:36
  I didn't really talk about so much, but at the same time that
• 55:40
  they're becoming more and more extreme about imposing their
• 55:45
  their politics on, you know, in their, in their fiction and
• 55:48
  their comics and their movies. At the same time, they're the
• 55:51
  talent is just dried up. They, they just like, 'cause
• 55:55
  people, you know, artists like going way, way back, most of
• 55:59
  them have leaned to the left, but at least they could tell
• 56:02
  good stories. You know, that doesn't seem to
• 56:04
  be the case anymore, at least in most situation.
• 56:06
  In most instances, it it does not seem to be the case.
• 56:09
  They have no ability to tell a good story anymore, a lot of
• 56:12
  them. And that's.
• 56:14
  So when we're looking at the people who say I just want good
• 56:18
  comics, for instance, they've got a point.
• 56:20
  I think there's more involved than that, but they've got a
• 56:24
  point. They just the writing today
• 56:26
  sucks on average just from what little I still see.
• 56:30
  Well, yeah, it's well, and it seems like to me, I mean, I've
• 56:34
  been I've been checked out of comics probably like
• 56:37
  contemporarily at least for probably like at least let's
• 56:42
  see, I'm third in one now. So probably like I haven't
• 56:46
  picked up a, a new comic since I was like 19 or 20.
• 56:50
  So it's been like all of under 12 years at this point.
• 56:54
  And like I'll, I'll read a lot of like old stuff that's been
• 56:58
  reprinted from like the 70s and 80s.
• 57:01
  But like as far as the newer as as far as like the stuff from
• 57:05
  the past 10 years onward go, it seems like all all these, you
• 57:11
  know, companies care about are the are the Movies Now and they
• 57:15
  just, they just half ass or not even half ass, but you know,
• 57:21
  less than that even on the actual comics.
• 57:25
  It's sad. That's another sad factor of
• 57:29
  this is that most of the people running in the comics industry
• 57:33
  now, they don't love the medium. They're not in it because they
• 57:36
  like it and they want to do it. They're in it because they see
• 57:39
  it as a springboard into Hollywood or something.
• 57:41
  Because basically DC and Marvel have become IP farms.
• 57:47
  Yeah, I'm not the first one to to observe that.
• 57:51
  But when they're not even committed to well, and obviously
• 57:58
  they have no respect for the IP that they've inherited.
• 58:00
  So you get a lot of well, and that's, that's a thing too.
• 58:03
  So another reason why crowdfunding is is a godsend in
• 58:07
  a way and necessary is it's the only way right now that an
• 58:12
  independent creator can compete with, you know, the big two and
• 58:17
  the other and the smaller, you know, ones that are part of the
• 58:20
  mainstream comic industry. They can operate at a loss
• 58:23
  because they are mostly an IP farm.
• 58:26
  They're like owned by Warner Brothers or owned by Disney or
• 58:29
  Sony or something. And they can operate at a loss.
• 58:32
  They can they can print stuff in bulk to save on shipping.
• 58:36
  And the indie comic traders don't have that advantage.
• 58:40
  So we have to. And I know I started buying
• 58:43
  indie comics and indie graphic novels a few years ago when I
• 58:47
  was kind of doing my research on the industry, and they're
• 58:53
  expensive. I mean, you cannot.
• 58:54
  You cannot get them for the same prices as what Marvel and DC can
• 58:59
  offer them for. Yeah.
• 59:02
  Because we don't have, we don't have the big.
• 59:04
  We're not owned by a big conglomerate that can afford to
• 59:08
  lose money. We don't.
• 59:09
  We're not able to order these humongous print runs.
• 59:12
  I wish I could. I wish I could get enormous bulk
• 59:16
  discounts, but that depends on how many of them out there back
• 59:19
  it. So we have to offer what we sell
• 59:25
  at a higher price, which turns everybody's all about getting
• 59:29
  stuff for cheap or for free now. And that makes it difficult as
• 59:33
  well because we cannot operate at a loss.
• 59:37
  I'm not a not a millionaire who's just spending an
• 59:39
  inheritance doing this. I have to actually be able to
• 59:43
  make sound business decisions. And part of that is offering it
• 59:47
  for a price where I can, where I can pay for the stuff that it
• 59:49
  requires to make it. Crowdfunding is a godsend in
• 59:53
  that way because it it eliminates the middleman
• 59:55
  somewhat and it allows you to get your you know, that the
• 59:59
  product that. You know, nobody in the
• 1:00:01
  mainstream would probably ever touch with a 10 foot pole.
• 1:00:05
  It allows you to get that straight in front of the
• 1:00:07
  audience that you're shooting for, or at least hopefully it
• 1:00:10
  will. Yeah.
• 1:00:11
  They can decide whether this work should exist or not.
• 1:00:18
  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, crowdfunding.
• 1:00:24
  Crowdfunding, when done properly, can be immensely
• 1:00:27
  helpful for creatives and, you know, authors who I've, you
• 1:00:34
  know, who I've encountered and the one, the ones who do and
• 1:00:38
  have had success, I think it's, you know, a really good thing.
• 1:00:43
  I wish. It does seem like there are, you
• 1:00:47
  know, there have been a few grifters, you know, I, I don't
• 1:00:50
  know any of them. Yeah, more than a few.
• 1:00:53
  But there are definitely grifters out there who also
• 1:00:56
  sadly, abuse, you know, the Kickstarter thing.
• 1:01:01
  And that's always unfortunate because it poisons kind of the
• 1:01:06
  well for the rest of us who do want to put out good, good work,
• 1:01:13
  you know, honestly and with integrity.
• 1:01:16
  There's always a few jerks, or at least a few jerks who ruin it
• 1:01:19
  for everyone else. That's definitely the case.
• 1:01:22
  I do want to mention this about crowdfunding because I was I was
• 1:01:28
  had some wrong ideas about it for a long time and and some of
• 1:01:31
  your audience may also I had before I even started chasing
• 1:01:34
  the stream of comics when I was just a prose author.
• 1:01:37
  A friend of mine suggested, and this was shortly after I first
• 1:01:42
  ever heard about GoFundMe and I knew somebody who used GoFundMe
• 1:01:46
  to finance something or other. They said, hey, you really need
• 1:01:48
  to check out this crowdfunding deal and consider it for your
• 1:01:51
  next book. And I poo pooed it.
• 1:01:53
  I dismissed it out of hand and my ignorance because I assumed
• 1:01:57
  it was all about charity because that's all I'd seen with
• 1:02:00
  GoFundMe. It's just like, help me pay for
• 1:02:02
  my wedding, help me pay for these hospital bills.
• 1:02:04
  So or whatever, whatever the case was, we're doing this
• 1:02:08
  animal rescue thing, you know, help us pay for that.
• 1:02:10
  It's like, I don't want people to buy my books out of sympathy
• 1:02:15
  or out of charity. I want them to buy them because
• 1:02:18
  they want to read them. And so for, I don't know, 15
• 1:02:22
  years or so, I just didn't even consider crowdfunding, not
• 1:02:25
  knowing that other authors were using this as a way to bypass
• 1:02:29
  the gatekeepers and build up a, a big loyal following.
• 1:02:33
  And then like, there was an alternative that wasn't, you
• 1:02:36
  know, as in as entrenched in cancel culture called give,
• 1:02:41
  send, go. But that also is mostly a
• 1:02:44
  charitable thing. So when I heard about comic
• 1:02:47
  creators using crowdfunding, I was like, why would you do it
• 1:02:50
  that way? And I didn't even consider that.
• 1:02:53
  What I found out was that there is that kind of crowdfunding.
• 1:02:57
  There is charitable crowdfunding that still exists and people
• 1:02:59
  still do that. But platforms like Kickstarter
• 1:03:03
  and Indiegogo and Fund My Comic are not charitable.
• 1:03:07
  But what you do is you pledging a mountain and that, and you can
• 1:03:11
  make a pledge where you don't get any reward.
• 1:03:13
  But for the most part, you can. You choose a reward and you
• 1:03:19
  pledge the amount that that reward is worth if you follow
• 1:03:22
  me. And then if the crowd fund is
• 1:03:25
  successful, then the creator gives you that reward.
• 1:03:30
  Whether it's like the standard issue or deluxe edition or you
• 1:03:35
  know, something with a fancy cover with a foil cover or
• 1:03:39
  whatever, it's bundled with a poster.
• 1:03:41
  Those are the different reward tiers that you can choose from
• 1:03:44
  and it's not charitable. You actually are getting a
• 1:03:47
  product when you do it and you're helping people like me,
• 1:03:50
  for instance, like get their feet off the ground or, or bring
• 1:03:54
  bring the the dream to life, push it over the finish line.
• 1:03:59
  So I'm saying that not because I want to insult anybody's
• 1:04:02
  intelligence, but because I didn't understand this for the
• 1:04:05
  longest time. No.
• 1:04:07
  And I, and I think that in, I mean, I was, I was in a slower,
• 1:04:11
  I was in a slower boat to you where, you know, I thought that,
• 1:04:17
  you know, a lot of, you know, crowdfunding things were just
• 1:04:20
  for, for charity. And, you know, some of them were
• 1:04:24
  charities and they were for people who, you know, who I
• 1:04:26
  knew. So I actually, you know, I've
• 1:04:28
  pitched in a few books on, you know, a few bucks for those on
• 1:04:32
  occasion. But yeah, I had the same
• 1:04:34
  hesitancy because I don't want people to, you know, buy my
• 1:04:38
  books, you know, or anything out of, you know, pity or, you know,
• 1:04:43
  anything like that. I want them to buy them, you
• 1:04:45
  know, because they gently enjoy what I'm putting out.
• 1:04:49
  So yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad they're more creator
• 1:04:52
  based, you know, I guess, you know, platforms like that wish
• 1:05:01
  the one thing that I do wish that, you know, there there was
• 1:05:05
  more of a space for is like on Instagram, on in Facebook.
• 1:05:11
  Like I've noticed that, you know, indie creators, they don't
• 1:05:15
  seem to get like a lot of traffic unless they're paying to
• 1:05:18
  boost posts, which is, you know, quite honestly a shame because
• 1:05:25
  word of mouth used to used to hang out for a while.
• 1:05:29
  So. Well, and I think social media
• 1:05:33
  is pretty much useless for marketing at this point in
• 1:05:37
  history. I think when it was new, if you
• 1:05:40
  knew how to work the system, you could succeed at marketing on
• 1:05:45
  whatever social media platform. But really I think it's it's and
• 1:05:50
  social media itself is rigged too.
• 1:05:52
  There's with the shadow banning and the deboosting and all that
• 1:05:55
  stuff. But even that aside, it's just
• 1:05:59
  and you know what sub stack was from everything I read and hear
• 1:06:03
  from other people, it was pretty good before I cut on it because
• 1:06:07
  people readers went there because they wanted long form
• 1:06:11
  content and there was a presumption of some kind of
• 1:06:15
  monetary transaction because you know, you it's very easy on the
• 1:06:20
  platform. I think the whole point of the
• 1:06:21
  platform is to shift over to where you have paid subscribers
• 1:06:26
  and then so people have that expectation to begin with.
• 1:06:30
  So for a while, it was a good place for a writer to build a
• 1:06:33
  following and possibly get into Neo patronage and stuff.
• 1:06:37
  From what I can tell right now, it's not such a great it's kind
• 1:06:39
  of becoming. They're trying to turn it into
• 1:06:41
  another Twitter. Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  So it's, I wish I'd gotten on it sooner.
• 1:06:48
  I wish I'd heard about it sooner.
• 1:06:50
  Well, they're trying to turn it into another Twitter, and
• 1:06:52
  they're also trying to turn it into another like podcast
• 1:06:55
  hosting. Yeah, platform as well.
• 1:06:58
  Yeah, which isn't, which isn't bad.
• 1:07:01
  I mean, I suppose, I suppose it's great if you're, if you're
• 1:07:04
  already on sub stack and you like have a newsletter.
• 1:07:08
  I I suppose it is really convenient to have like a one
• 1:07:11
  stop shop for everything. But I'll tell you, it's it's
• 1:07:15
  really hard. Like for me personally, I spent
• 1:07:18
  like, you know, I spent like 15 years building a following on
• 1:07:25
  Twitter. So now it's really hard for me
• 1:07:29
  to ask, you know, a lot of people to go, you know, to go
• 1:07:33
  over to this other platform, you know, for my news, you know, for
• 1:07:38
  my newsletter. So I, I, I think, I, I think
• 1:07:43
  people are getting platform fatigue from, you know, from
• 1:07:48
  just jumping on multiple things. So.
• 1:07:50
  Speaking of which, I'm sure you've heard advice, you know,
• 1:07:54
  as I have for the last few years of build your own platform.
• 1:07:58
  And even before people started saying that this was something I
• 1:08:02
  wanted to do, but I, you know, I didn't have the money I didn't
• 1:08:05
  have the time. I kept putting it off.
• 1:08:07
  I was busy with other stuff. But I can say now that I have
• 1:08:10
  built my own platform. So I have a, a online store as
• 1:08:16
  part of my website where people can go there and buy my ebooks
• 1:08:20
  directly from me. It's not, I'm not a drop drop
• 1:08:23
  shipper yet. I mean, I'm going to have to see
• 1:08:24
  if this succeeds before I get to the point where I can sell
• 1:08:28
  publish on demand paperbacks or something.
• 1:08:30
  It's a start. And so I've gotten there.
• 1:08:32
  And if anybody wants to visit it, it's a virtual Pope.
• 1:08:35
  press.com. Well, yeah, so the Oh yeah,
• 1:08:40
  that's cool. So yeah, talk about that a
• 1:08:43
  little bit too. So I mean, obviously I can kind
• 1:08:47
  of understand what the impetus for that would be, but I mean,
• 1:08:50
  what was the, what was the process like that for you?
• 1:08:55
  Boy. So actually, can I share my
• 1:08:57
  screen? Yeah, yeah, I'll show the
• 1:09:00
  sample. I'm talking about it.
• 1:09:01
  Yeah, absolutely. If I can figure out how this
• 1:09:05
  works. There should be a a screen.
• 1:09:17
  Yeah, well, OK, obviously that. So when I clicked on I got two
• 1:09:21
  options screen or presentation. Screen.
• 1:09:25
  OK, Oh, good. And now it gives me a choice of
• 1:09:27
  what I can show. All right, so let me show this.
• 1:09:32
  So this is my website. I'll start at the top and then
• 1:09:38
  I've got my Paradox series here. You can go straight there and
• 1:09:43
  that's my time travel conspiracy thriller, sports adventure
• 1:09:49
  series. And then of course here's Threat
• 1:09:52
  quotient, which is the first book in the first graphic novel
• 1:09:57
  in Tales of the Earthbound, the series that I, you know, I have
• 1:10:02
  swimming around in my brain. Here's my retread series.
• 1:10:06
  So here's my, And of course you can click on this and go there
• 1:10:09
  and look at all the books. And I have it set up so that
• 1:10:12
  it's it's similar to Amazon where you can read a blurb.
• 1:10:16
  You can buy it there. And now I'm in the process
• 1:10:19
  currently of putting in chapter excerpts and stuff.
• 1:10:25
  And then of course, down here there's a carousel with all the
• 1:10:29
  books so far. Now there are a couple of the
• 1:10:32
  shorter ones that I have not yet put the the epub and the PDF in,
• 1:10:40
  but I'm working on it. And then down here, there's
• 1:10:44
  going to be hopefully within the next few days, there's going to
• 1:10:48
  be a window into my blog, so you'll get the latest like 4
• 1:10:51
  blog posts. Cool.
• 1:10:54
  Now, the process was, of course, I I strategized and I envisioned
• 1:10:59
  this for a long time about how I would do it when I do it.
• 1:11:03
  And finally I went and hired AAI.
• 1:11:07
  Guess you'd call him a Webmaster.
• 1:11:09
  That's what some people call him.
• 1:11:10
  Yeah, yeah. That's that's also one of the
• 1:11:13
  things I do so. You do that, OK.
• 1:11:17
  Yeah, I, I don't, I don't do the hosting, but I've done web
• 1:11:20
  design for people, so yeah. OK, anyway, so that's the long
• 1:11:25
  and short of it. I got someone I told them what I
• 1:11:27
  wanted and the first person I got was was a not the best, but
• 1:11:38
  so I had to eat the cost of that.
• 1:11:40
  But I went back and got a guy who's who did this for me and I
• 1:11:43
  really like the way it came out. Oh also I forgot you can go to
• 1:11:46
  view all books and just see them all there and.
• 1:11:50
  Nice. Yeah, I envisioned someday
• 1:11:52
  having like, now there's me and like two other names, but I have
• 1:11:56
  another guy who's who's wanting to put his books on there.
• 1:12:00
  And eventually maybe I'll get a bunch of people, a bunch of
• 1:12:04
  writers in my stable, so to speak, to do this.
• 1:12:09
  But while I'm here, let me look at before I forget, let's look
• 1:12:11
  at the you can actually up to. I have most of threat quotient.
• 1:12:18
  I formatted it for vertical scroll and put it here where you
• 1:12:22
  can look at it for free as well. Nice.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah. And so we can, we can look at
• 1:12:31
  some of these as I talked and OOP, OK, I thought I was signed
• 1:12:36
  in, but nevermind. But actually, if we go, you can,
• 1:12:41
  you can scroll through this way and see the different, different
• 1:12:48
  episodes here. So this was another thing I did
• 1:12:52
  that was very time consuming and a pain.
• 1:12:53
  But I understood there's a lot of people who like to read
• 1:12:57
  comics on their phone. And so that's why I formatted it
• 1:13:01
  for vertical scrolls. So I had to go through and, and
• 1:13:03
  separate all the panels on the pages and put them, you know, in
• 1:13:11
  that format so people could look at it on their, on their phone
• 1:13:14
  and hopefully, you know, decide whether this was, you know,
• 1:13:17
  something they wanted to do or not.
• 1:13:20
  Same thing over here. But actually while I'm sharing
• 1:13:27
  my screen, I should probably go. Can you see this Kickstarter
• 1:13:32
  page? Not yet, I think.
• 1:13:38
  If you want to. Maybe you have to go back and
• 1:13:42
  change what I'm sharing. Yeah, in the program.
• 1:13:45
  OK, so let me stop that and try this.
• 1:13:52
  Your your site is is really cool looking though.
• 1:13:56
  Thank you. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty happy with
• 1:13:59
  the way it looks. OK.
• 1:14:01
  Yeah, I can see that. OK.
• 1:14:03
  Yeah, I can see the Kickstarter. So this is the pre launch page.
• 1:14:07
  It doesn't have the video embedded or that it's not
• 1:14:09
  exactly the same as it's going to be, you know, tomorrow when
• 1:14:12
  it goes live. But it does give you a chance to
• 1:14:14
  see what the what the pages originally look like with all
• 1:14:18
  the panels compiled, the way the artists did them and the way I
• 1:14:21
  colored them. So I think every time I see
• 1:14:25
  them, like in the in the page layout, the way it was intended
• 1:14:28
  to be, I just like it better then separated panel by panel
• 1:14:32
  for vertical. I just think I think it looks
• 1:14:35
  much better. But, and I did put this, I have
• 1:14:39
  three of these. I made my own little comic
• 1:14:44
  strips, I guess you'd call them that are kind of like I used
• 1:14:48
  some panels from the story and I had some made specially for them
• 1:14:51
  to introduce you to the characters, But so you can look
• 1:14:57
  at that too anybody who goes to the page.
• 1:15:02
  Yeah, I mean you seem to have everything Roy put well together
• 1:15:06
  on the on the Kickstarter too. So is your is your content still
• 1:15:17
  so are your books still available on Amazon then or or
• 1:15:21
  are you moving them all over exclusive?
• 1:15:24
  No, they're still on Amazon, but I kind of see the writing on the
• 1:15:27
  wall at Amazon. Yeah.
• 1:15:30
  For instance, I didn't even I found this by accident that I
• 1:15:35
  had over 11,000 followers on Amazon, which as I told you
• 1:15:41
  before I was I was too ignorant and I didn't work hard enough at
• 1:15:44
  building an e-mail list over the course of my career and that
• 1:15:47
  hurt me. Although e-mail lists are not as
• 1:15:50
  effective as they used to be apparently.
• 1:15:51
  Yeah. But so Amazon was a place where
• 1:15:55
  I wanted to build the following and I did apparently over 11,000
• 1:15:58
  people followed me there. But I would swear to you, well,
• 1:16:01
  maybe not swear, but I would bet money that Amazon has not sent
• 1:16:06
  one single alert to those people when I come out with a new book
• 1:16:10
  and large probably for political reasons.
• 1:16:14
  There's, there's other evidence I could, you know, compile and
• 1:16:17
  tell you about those bore you the tears that that would give
• 1:16:21
  you an idea why I believe that. But so they already don't like
• 1:16:26
  me. They haven't outright banned me
• 1:16:28
  yet. And maybe they won't.
• 1:16:29
  Maybe they've got their algorithms fine-tuned to the
• 1:16:32
  point where they don't have to overtly do that to anybody
• 1:16:34
  anymore. But also with the inundation of
• 1:16:39
  limitless slop, whether human slop or AI generated slop, it's
• 1:16:45
  all, it doesn't matter. It's burying everything else so
• 1:16:48
  that if you're not already established as a big name, it's
• 1:16:51
  almost impossible for for readers to find your work by
• 1:16:56
  accident or coincidence. Yeah, that's, that's something
• 1:17:00
  that's that's been hard for me. I, I, I hate to say I've only
• 1:17:08
  been in, I've only been in like self-publishing for three, you
• 1:17:12
  know, and a half years. Because to me that, I mean,
• 1:17:15
  that's not like a super long time, but it's not like I'm a
• 1:17:18
  new, you know, it's not like I'm the new kid on the block anyway.
• 1:17:21
  You're not a rookie. And Even so, like it's been like
• 1:17:26
  it's been really hard to, you know, just get like unless I,
• 1:17:30
  unless I share the link directly to people, like most people
• 1:17:34
  don't find me just, you know, wandering on Amazon or something
• 1:17:38
  or, or very few of them on, on on occasional I'll get like, you
• 1:17:44
  know, tweets or emails being like, Hey, I found your, you
• 1:17:47
  know, off the page on, you know, on Amazon, but not as much as I
• 1:17:52
  used to, so. Yeah.
• 1:17:55
  So I noticed, I think it was about 2019.
• 1:17:58
  Up to that point, I'd been building momentum on Amazon and
• 1:18:01
  I was getting, I wasn't there yet, but I was getting closer to
• 1:18:06
  the possibility of quitting my day job and doing this for a
• 1:18:09
  living. And then something happened, and
• 1:18:11
  it might have been Kindle Unlimited, I forget what, but
• 1:18:14
  something happened and the floor just dropped out from underneath
• 1:18:16
  me and my, you know, the annual income I was making with my
• 1:18:21
  books just fell. Just plummeted.
• 1:18:25
  That's I've heard similar stories from other authors.
• 1:18:28
  I can't really attest to any of that personally because I, I
• 1:18:32
  started my first book was published in 2023.
• 1:18:37
  OK, but like, even with me, like my, my first couple books did
• 1:18:41
  really well. American Inferno, my latest book
• 1:18:45
  here, has also done really well as well, But that's because like
• 1:18:50
  I've been pushing it like non I've, I've been driving people,
• 1:18:54
  you know, to purchase it like, you know, personally, whereas
• 1:18:58
  like I, you know, if it weren't for people sharing around, like
• 1:19:02
  I don't think we'll be getting a traction at all.
• 1:19:04
  You're right. Well, it's getting so bad and
• 1:19:07
  it's been this way for a couple years that I know some other
• 1:19:10
  writers who you can actually enter their name and the title
• 1:19:14
  of their book specifically in Amazon's search bar.
• 1:19:18
  And that's the only way you can find their stuff.
• 1:19:22
  And then when you get there, there's their book, the one that
• 1:19:24
  you searched for specifically. It's still not going to be at
• 1:19:26
  the top of the list of results that they give you.
• 1:19:29
  So, and I think I'm almost there at this point.
• 1:19:32
  So it's like I said, I can see the writing on the wall.
• 1:19:36
  I don't think Amazon is a viable is going to be a viable platform
• 1:19:41
  for very long. It certainly should not be the
• 1:19:44
  only one that you have. You should not be putting your
• 1:19:46
  your eggs all in one basket at this point.
• 1:19:50
  No, it's it's really tough not to though, like with, with
• 1:19:56
  Kindle, with Kindle Unlimited, you know that like I know that
• 1:20:02
  digitally with Kindle Unlimited. You're kind of like
• 1:20:07
  contractually, you know, like you have to make your e-book
• 1:20:13
  exclusive to them if you're going to be with Kindle
• 1:20:17
  unlimited. However, if the floor continues
• 1:20:21
  to kind of drop, what I'll probably do is I'll probably
• 1:20:24
  just take my books off of Kindle unlimited.
• 1:20:29
  Still all people to buy them, but you know, just opt out of
• 1:20:32
  the unlimited thing and then put them on my own site or or
• 1:20:36
  elsewhere because I mean, it seems like it seems like I'm
• 1:20:41
  kind of losing ebook money by not having you know it on other
• 1:20:45
  platforms like Apple or wherever else you can distribute ebooks
• 1:20:49
  yeah on now so. Yeah.
• 1:20:53
  So I'm not, I'm not ready to quit Amazon altogether.
• 1:20:56
  I'm still getting a trickle of sales.
• 1:21:00
  Well. Nothing like I used to.
• 1:21:03
  Unlike or not, is the the best place still where you can find
• 1:21:08
  visible, you know where you people can find you visibility.
• 1:21:13
  Yeah, especially if you get you get put on somebody's also
• 1:21:16
  bought list. Yeah, which I feel.
• 1:21:20
  Could pay dividends. Yeah, which has been helpful for
• 1:21:24
  me, but also like if people just search my name, my Amazon page
• 1:21:30
  is usually the first one to come up for people.
• 1:21:35
  Either that or either that or the Whitfield import Spotify
• 1:21:39
  page, one of those two things. So I'm going to try.
• 1:21:45
  It now to test that. Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  I, yeah, I would. I would be.
• 1:21:49
  I would be curious about that, Yeah.
• 1:21:57
  I mean, it seems like it seems like the, I mean, the algorithms
• 1:22:04
  change so much too. And I mean, I know people have,
• 1:22:10
  I know people have like mixed feelings about AII personally
• 1:22:14
  like it because I've figured out a way to integrate into my
• 1:22:17
  workflow. One of the things ironically,
• 1:22:20
  that I've I've done is I use it to help generate keywords so
• 1:22:27
  that like the algorithm will, you know, will put me back in
• 1:22:33
  into it because right. How how do you like my logic Is
• 1:22:38
  this? How do you get how do you talk
• 1:22:40
  to a robot? Like through another robot I
• 1:22:42
  guess. Yeah, well, see, I do see it as
• 1:22:46
  it's a tool. Right.
• 1:22:47
  Yeah, that's exactly how I see it.
• 1:22:50
  I don't. I don't plan to ever have it
• 1:22:53
  write my books for me, but I did.
• 1:22:55
  For instance, when Grok was still free and you got so much
• 1:22:59
  usage every day. I used it to animate panels from
• 1:23:04
  my comic and that's what I used to make my trailers with.
• 1:23:09
  So it was, well that was a lot more work than most people would
• 1:23:12
  guess too, because you get you get about 20 different 5 second
• 1:23:18
  animations before you find 1 you can use on average.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah. Because of the hallucinations
• 1:23:24
  and it ignores your instructions and it's it's like working with
• 1:23:28
  some of these human artists. I've I've tried working with.
• 1:23:31
  It's extremely frustrating. But yeah, so I can see using it
• 1:23:35
  as a tool and I'm going to try to do that more and more.
• 1:23:38
  I'm going to try to remember to use it for keywords and SEO and
• 1:23:43
  maybe even see how it does writing blurbs.
• 1:23:45
  I'm not real impressed with it so far, but I might be using the
• 1:23:49
  wrong one or something. I've.
• 1:23:51
  I've used both ChatGPT and grok to, I wouldn't say really write
• 1:23:58
  my things, but more like publish my more like, well not not
• 1:24:04
  publish, but I guess Polish my my writing and my drafts.
• 1:24:08
  And we'll see. Now I'm thinking about that
• 1:24:10
  because as good as of an editor as I am, you're never as good at
• 1:24:15
  editing your own stuff as you are editing others, right?
• 1:24:19
  And even some stuff I've, I've gone through and I've had
• 1:24:22
  proofreaders go through and thought it was good.
• 1:24:25
  Something causes me to go read a passage of it again and I find
• 1:24:28
  out there's a, there's a homonym or something that I missed, or I
• 1:24:31
  put an apostrophe where it wasn't, or I did not put an
• 1:24:34
  apostrophe where I should. And so, you know, maybe I can
• 1:24:38
  use AI to go through and, and Polish like that.
• 1:24:41
  Yeah, of course. Now there's this crazy inversion
• 1:24:45
  of reality where now if your, if your prose is polished, then
• 1:24:48
  people assume it's from AI. It's not realistic.
• 1:24:51
  It's not. It doesn't have that human touch
• 1:24:53
  or something if you don't have enough mistakes in it.
• 1:24:55
  Yeah, that's actually, that's actually a problem that they've
• 1:25:00
  they've run into now because like colleges, you know, I guess
• 1:25:04
  they're using, you know, these AI detect detectors to try and
• 1:25:09
  detect, you know, AI for students plagiarizing.
• 1:25:13
  But now what they've found too is even if someone doesn't use
• 1:25:18
  AI at all, that those AI detectors will still flag your
• 1:25:21
  writing. And I guess the reason being is,
• 1:25:24
  is the AI rights similar to how you're taught to right now in
• 1:25:29
  schools too. So it's kind of like one of
• 1:25:33
  those damned if you do, damned if you don't thing.
• 1:25:36
  Yeah, that's what it seems like. But I'm I always try to do stuff
• 1:25:41
  right. And it's like I'm compelled to
• 1:25:43
  do it. I'm compelled to put titles of
• 1:25:45
  books and titles of movies and italics and all those, all the
• 1:25:48
  stuff that that they used to teach in English classes.
• 1:25:52
  I still do that. And I don't care if somebody
• 1:25:54
  thinks I'm AII challenge anyone to find an AI that writes like I
• 1:25:58
  do. Another.
• 1:26:00
  Human being that does, for that matter.
• 1:26:02
  Yeah, what I mean, the other thing is like, I'm, I'm open
• 1:26:05
  about how I use AI now. I like I said, I don't use it
• 1:26:11
  necessarily to tell the story, you know, just just Polish it.
• 1:26:17
  I think if I think if people don't, I think if people don't
• 1:26:21
  at least try it or you know, at least play around with some of
• 1:26:26
  these things, people are going to get left behind so.
• 1:26:32
  These authors who are using it, they're incredibly, some of them
• 1:26:35
  are incredibly prolific. Right now they're just popping
• 1:26:38
  out books like nobody's business.
• 1:26:41
  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm not going to lie, it's as far as like
• 1:26:43
  organizing my ideas. It's helped me like put out like
• 1:26:47
  3 books, you know, a year or something.
• 1:26:50
  Granted. Lords man, See, I can't compete
• 1:26:53
  with you either. Well, granted, like 2 of them
• 1:26:55
  are well granted, like 2 of them are like shorter novellas.
• 1:26:59
  So but then I'll have like 11 big ones.
• 1:27:05
  But yeah, I, I have like, I have like one of those brains where
• 1:27:08
  I'm always thinking of ideas though, too.
• 1:27:10
  Well, me too, but that's stifled for most of the day because I'm
• 1:27:15
  doing my day job and I can't put the ideas down, you know?
• 1:27:18
  Yeah, that is, that is one advantage of working from home,
• 1:27:22
  I guess. You work from home, see?
• 1:27:25
  I need to get there. I need to do that.
• 1:27:27
  Yeah. So that yeah, that definitely,
• 1:27:33
  that definitely helps. But but it also, it also has
• 1:27:35
  its, you know, downsides to a certain extent to.
• 1:27:40
  Not as not as much exercise or sunlight I guess.
• 1:27:43
  Mainly just being mainly kind of just being tied to tied to a
• 1:27:47
  computer somewhat more than I like so.
• 1:27:51
  Well, see, that's the advantage you have is like, you can do
• 1:27:54
  more marketing and all the crap that comes with the writing
• 1:27:57
  career these days. Yeah, if you're in front of
• 1:28:00
  your, you have access to your computer all the time.
• 1:28:03
  So I can see, like if I get to the point where I'm able to
• 1:28:05
  retire or God willing to be able to support myself through sales,
• 1:28:10
  then I would probably have to intentionally take breaks and
• 1:28:14
  force myself to take breaks and get out and get some exercise
• 1:28:16
  and some fresh air. That is, yeah, that is one thing
• 1:28:21
  that I that I do have to do is kind of and in being in Florida,
• 1:28:27
  it's not that bad depending on what time of year.
• 1:28:30
  Right. In winter time it's great, but
• 1:28:36
  in the summer it's, it's kind of like you want to get out early
• 1:28:39
  and not, you know, or super light.
• 1:28:43
  For quite a while, so I know exactly what you're talking
• 1:28:45
  about. Yeah.
• 1:28:47
  Even on the days when it's like 30° in the morning and that
• 1:28:50
  humidity feels like your bones are snapping, by the afternoon
• 1:28:53
  it's hot again. Or pleasantly warm, I guess,
• 1:28:56
  during the. Winter, although we had we had a
• 1:28:59
  really cold January, surprisingly we had like one of
• 1:29:05
  those cold friends come down from Canada and luckily I still
• 1:29:10
  have like a lot of, you know, jackets and what not from when I
• 1:29:15
  was in Colorado. Yeah, that's what the people who
• 1:29:18
  are acclimatized to Florida like.
• 1:29:19
  It gets down to 60° and they start putting on snow suits and
• 1:29:23
  stuff. It's really comical when you
• 1:29:25
  first move there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:28
  And when I, yeah, when I first, when I first moved here, I was
• 1:29:31
  like, I was like, what, what are people doing?
• 1:29:34
  And it's like, and now after being here for 13 years, it's
• 1:29:37
  like, oh, I get it now. Yeah, though.
• 1:29:40
  Your blood thinned out. Yeah, so, but anyway, see,
• 1:29:47
  you've got the you've got the Kickstarter going on.
• 1:29:51
  Any other books in your pulp series going at all or or are
• 1:29:57
  you just mainly focused on the comics right now?
• 1:29:59
  Yeah, I have. So again, this thing has been so
• 1:30:03
  time consuming. I haven't had a chance to work
• 1:30:05
  on anything since I published the Paradox series, which by the
• 1:30:08
  way is pretty recent and I could tell you some stories about it.
• 1:30:11
  But I do have ideas. There's a science fiction like a
• 1:30:16
  space opera I have. I've been thinking about now and
• 1:30:19
  I'm thinking about maybe, possibly.
• 1:30:22
  I've been hearing a lot about Royal Rd. and I've been thinking
• 1:30:25
  maybe I should try that and I should.
• 1:30:28
  Rather than spending all the attention to detail and all the
• 1:30:32
  characterization and world building like I like I've done
• 1:30:35
  up to this point. It seems like the new generation
• 1:30:38
  of readers just want, you know, action action action.
• 1:30:45
  Give me the meat and potatoes and nothing else.
• 1:30:46
  Which I think might be why lit RPG is so popular.
• 1:30:53
  Anyway. So I've been thinking about
• 1:30:55
  maybe baking the series and like trimming all the all the
• 1:31:00
  traditional literary membrane that you put around an action or
• 1:31:06
  adventure story and releasing it episodically on Royal Rd. or
• 1:31:15
  some some platform like that and see if I see how I do with that.
• 1:31:20
  Yeah, I've thought of I've thought of doing something
• 1:31:23
  similar, just doing like one off stories.
• 1:31:28
  The thing, the thing with that though, is like, you know, you
• 1:31:32
  know, again, will people, you know, will people come and also
• 1:31:37
  like, and also the way my brain works, I'm like, oh, this, this
• 1:31:42
  could, you know, turn into like a whole universe or something.
• 1:31:46
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm not even going to
• 1:31:48
  fight that because I know it's going to happen and I the idea
• 1:31:51
  I'm I'm thinking of is is got potential for a lot of mileage.
• 1:31:56
  But, you know, if my luck adheres to the pattern it has so
• 1:32:00
  far, when I finally do get on Royal Rd., it'll be, you know, a
• 1:32:04
  worthless platform that's. Well, yeah.
• 1:32:07
  Not good for building a crowd audience.
• 1:32:09
  You and I are kind of unfortunately, you know, in the
• 1:32:13
  same boat with that sort of things yeah, especially I'm not
• 1:32:19
  real one too early adapt anymore since so many you know platforms
• 1:32:24
  kind of fall off before they before they before they begin
• 1:32:30
  so. Yeah.
• 1:32:31
  And as I mentioned, Threat Quotient is just the first the
• 1:32:36
  graphic novel in a series I called Tales of the Earthbound
• 1:32:40
  that I have planned, which is going to be at least 4 or maybe
• 1:32:43
  5 different books in the series. And then after that, I don't
• 1:32:47
  know. It all depends on how successful
• 1:32:49
  I am. I would like to build a comic
• 1:32:51
  universe which I'm introducing with this and eventually get to
• 1:32:55
  the point where I could have, you know, spin offs and solo
• 1:33:00
  titles of so many characters I'm introducing and like do little
• 1:33:03
  mini series with them and so forth.
• 1:33:05
  I don't know if I'll ever get to, you know, it was a dream
• 1:33:07
  when I was a kid to be the next Stan Lee and have like a stable
• 1:33:10
  of writers and artists working for me.
• 1:33:11
  And I don't know if I'll ever get to that.
• 1:33:13
  I don't know if I want to, frankly, because I don't know if
• 1:33:16
  anybody would share the vision that I have and be as dedicated
• 1:33:20
  to it as I am. But I'd like to get to the point
• 1:33:22
  where I could do that. And if I do, I don't know if I'm
• 1:33:26
  going to have time to to do this space opera that I'm thinking
• 1:33:30
  of. Well, if, if, if you ever, if
• 1:33:33
  you ever did, if you ever did get that to that point, I would
• 1:33:37
  join in in your public, I would join in your publication or you
• 1:33:42
  know, whatever. First recruit.
• 1:33:44
  Yeah. No, actually, I have an artist
• 1:33:46
  who's interested in working with me.
• 1:33:48
  Maybe not necessarily being part of my stable, but interested in
• 1:33:51
  working with me anyway. Yeah, I know.
• 1:33:53
  I I mean, I, I would suddenly be interested in, you know, joining
• 1:33:57
  a stable. Thing is, it's tough to find
• 1:34:01
  like other, you know, people kind of in the community.
• 1:34:06
  Yeah. And it's not, it's not, it's not
• 1:34:09
  Even so much a thing of like, I know there, I know there are
• 1:34:13
  people out there. It's just, you know, tracking
• 1:34:15
  everyone down. It's finding each other really,
• 1:34:18
  which should be easy in this age of the Internet, but it's it's
• 1:34:22
  finding others and then also writers are, it is kind of in a
• 1:34:29
  way it should not be because we can have friendly competition.
• 1:34:34
  It's not like if somebody buys your friend's book, they're
• 1:34:38
  going to stop reading anything else.
• 1:34:40
  It's like they're never going to buy your books again.
• 1:34:44
  We should not be afraid of competition, but writers are
• 1:34:47
  really busy. We're busy doing our own stuff,
• 1:34:49
  and we don't have time to read like we did before.
• 1:34:51
  At least I don't as prolifically as I once did.
• 1:34:55
  And also like, when you get consumed with the business, with
• 1:35:00
  the hustle and everything, you become kind of selfish.
• 1:35:03
  And that makes us less willing to work together and stuff,
• 1:35:09
  especially Generation X, because we're kind of loners to begin
• 1:35:13
  with. We're we're used to surviving
• 1:35:15
  out there on our own. Yeah.
• 1:35:19
  Where millennials are more collegial, you tend to be better
• 1:35:22
  about teamwork and stuff like that.
• 1:35:23
  You have some advantages that we don't.
• 1:35:25
  So these things all play a part. But still.
• 1:35:29
  That said, I would love to get to the point where I had a
• 1:35:32
  stable of other, Well, maybe not, maybe not a bullpen for
• 1:35:37
  comics, but it'd be great if we could all cooperate to the point
• 1:35:41
  where we like, linked our websites together or something
• 1:35:44
  and we had some central central clearinghouse or what would you
• 1:35:48
  call aggregation where like readers could find all of our
• 1:35:52
  stuff and like browse all of our sites and picked out what they
• 1:35:55
  like. Yeah, there, there used to be.
• 1:35:58
  I used to be part of one of those like for, for like a
• 1:36:02
  couple podcasts. And then I like the the
• 1:36:04
  Webmaster. I don't know if he died or I he
• 1:36:09
  or just got busy or whatever, but he he quit doing it so that,
• 1:36:13
  you know, the domain just expired or.
• 1:36:15
  That's a shame. Or whatever.
• 1:36:17
  But yeah, I mean, that's one of those things where, you know,
• 1:36:21
  again, the the Internet is changing.
• 1:36:23
  So it's, you know, it's where do we go to next?
• 1:36:27
  Yeah, and I've wondered about, you know, if we could go back to
• 1:36:32
  like the old web rings or so. I don't know you, that's
• 1:36:35
  probably before your time, but or at least like everybody, you
• 1:36:38
  know, put links to each other's author site on on a sidebar or a
• 1:36:43
  block roll or something. Because again, it's not a 0 sum
• 1:36:46
  game. Just because they buy your books
• 1:36:49
  doesn't mean they're not going to buy mine.
• 1:36:51
  In fact, it might whet their appetite.
• 1:36:53
  So they want to buy more books from different authors as well.
• 1:36:56
  I don't. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:36:58
  I have one single author that I only read from them is like on
• 1:37:01
  my shelves. I get all kinds of different
• 1:37:04
  authors and I get in different moods.
• 1:37:06
  I get on different kicks and sometimes I'm in the mood to
• 1:37:09
  read one guy's stuff and sometimes another.
• 1:37:11
  So I'm sure I'm not the only reader who's like that.
• 1:37:14
  Yeah, it's well, it's funny you mention that because the last
• 1:37:17
  time I had you on the the podcast, which I I want to say
• 1:37:21
  would I want to say was last year, but might have it might
• 1:37:26
  have actually been 24. But after I had you on I, I, I
• 1:37:31
  got a message from a few people saying that they, they picked up
• 1:37:35
  your, your military pulp books, you know, from, from having on
• 1:37:40
  the, on the podcast. So yeah, kind of doing the, the
• 1:37:43
  podcast, you know, networking thing does tend to help.
• 1:37:47
  I I've noticed so well. That's awesome, I hope it works
• 1:37:53
  again. Yeah, I I hope so too.
• 1:37:57
  Ironically, like I have, I have the, I have the issue where I'm
• 1:38:01
  great at hosting other people on my podcast, but then I'm
• 1:38:04
  terrible at going on other podcasts for my own stuff.
• 1:38:07
  So. OK.
• 1:38:09
  That's that's too. You're more comfortable doing
• 1:38:14
  running your own show. That kind of makes sense.
• 1:38:17
  No, it's not. It's not Even so much that it's
• 1:38:19
  that like everyone's, everyone's busy and I don't want to, you
• 1:38:23
  know, I don't want to impose on other people or, or they live in
• 1:38:28
  what, you know, or they or they live in like different, you
• 1:38:31
  know, or they live in like really strange time zones or
• 1:38:34
  something. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:38:36
  Like I, I have a couple, I have a couple people from Europe who
• 1:38:40
  want to have me on their show. But it's like, you know?
• 1:38:43
  Nice. They're like, they're like plus
• 1:38:45
  like 6 hours. So it's like.
• 1:38:48
  Yeah, Yeah, I've had to deal with that too, because I went on
• 1:38:51
  somebody's podcast who they live in France right now.
• 1:38:55
  And yeah, getting getting our schedules to mesh was a
• 1:38:58
  challenge, yeah. Yeah, someone bought, someone
• 1:39:03
  bought my, someone bought my my books in Norway or something.
• 1:39:07
  And I'm flattered that my books have gone that far.
• 1:39:11
  But it's also like, it's also like, yeah, I'm not really sure
• 1:39:16
  what the time difference is in Belgium.
• 1:39:18
  So that's going to be like, you know, that's going to be hard to
• 1:39:21
  coordinate that. Yeah, I've run into that too,
• 1:39:27
  like different countries, like the Netherlands.
• 1:39:29
  One time in South Africa, that guy, the South African and I
• 1:39:33
  actually were social media pals for a while and it was him,
• 1:39:38
  partially him, who convinced me to write the sequel to my debut
• 1:39:41
  novel. Yeah, awesome.
• 1:39:44
  So yeah, there, there seems to be a lot of the of the, there
• 1:39:49
  seems to be an audience for like a lot of the old school like
• 1:39:52
  Western stuff in Europe I've noticed too, which is
• 1:39:57
  interesting. Have you ever heard of the
• 1:39:59
  Piccadilly Cowboys? I don't.
• 1:40:04
  I think I've heard of them. I don't really know what that
• 1:40:08
  is. I know of them.
• 1:40:09
  I don't know, I'm not well versed in it or anything, but
• 1:40:13
  it's, it was a group of of Western authors who were
• 1:40:18
  British, they lived in Britain and apparently they were quite
• 1:40:21
  successful during the in maybe the Seventies, 60s and 70s
• 1:40:25
  maybe. Yeah.
• 1:40:27
  That that that would make that. Yeah.
• 1:40:32
  But yeah, there are there's so these genres that we think of as
• 1:40:35
  American, they're they're popular elsewhere as well.
• 1:40:39
  I mean, well, going back to comic books, look at Americans
• 1:40:42
  invented the comic book, unless you want to listen to those guys
• 1:40:45
  that think the Bayou Tapestry, that was the first comic.
• 1:40:48
  But and now look, the the Japanese are doing it, the
• 1:40:51
  French are doing it. The Spanish have been doing it
• 1:40:53
  for quite a while. It's, yeah, it's worldwide now.
• 1:40:58
  Yeah, it's, it's it's. Yeah, you probably have a lot of
• 1:41:02
  contacts from the Men's Adventure Fiction Discord, I
• 1:41:05
  would imagine. Yeah, I, yeah, I, I, I still
• 1:41:08
  have, I still do have contacts that community.
• 1:41:14
  It's still active. Not as much though, just because
• 1:41:17
  again, everyone's everyone's kind of busy with, you know,
• 1:41:20
  wife and what not, but. I had to cut way back on it
• 1:41:24
  until I'm not even really lurking there on the regular
• 1:41:27
  anymore. It kind of got overwhelming.
• 1:41:29
  There's so many people on there and so many different threads
• 1:41:32
  going up that I couldn't keep track of, which is unfortunate.
• 1:41:35
  I'm really glad there's a community for us, but I just
• 1:41:39
  don't have time to pull my own weight there anymore.
• 1:41:42
  No, I, I, I hear you. I talk, I talk to like four or
• 1:41:45
  five people consistently and, and, and you're, you're, you're
• 1:41:50
  one of them. I was, I was, I got to the point
• 1:41:55
  where I, I was spending more time in there talk, not writing.
• 1:41:59
  And then I actually was writing. So yeah, I kind of had to cut
• 1:42:03
  back, but that's yeah of that. Yeah.
• 1:42:06
  Yeah, but I mean, it's a, it's a great group and I definitely
• 1:42:09
  send people there as well, you know, when I can.
• 1:42:14
  Yeah. But anyway, well, it must be
• 1:42:18
  getting light where you're at too.
• 1:42:19
  So anything else you want to promote or?
• 1:42:27
  Well, that's a big one that your audience saw on my website, so I
• 1:42:30
  encourage you to go there. If you already do e-commerce
• 1:42:34
  somewhere else, you might not even have to enter your
• 1:42:37
  information anew there. So I recommend you check out my
• 1:42:40
  books there or on Amazon if you want.
• 1:42:42
  If you look up virtual pulp and put it in quotes, you'll see at
• 1:42:46
  least a few of my books will pop up on that search in Amazon.
• 1:42:49
  The easiest way is to go to my website and then Threat
• 1:42:52
  Quotient, which the Kickstarter starts tomorrow.
• 1:42:55
  So it would make me incredibly happy if you watch this show and
• 1:43:00
  and go back my Kickstarter and I'm really hoping it's
• 1:43:03
  successful and I'll be able to put a book in your hands and in
• 1:43:06
  a a reasonable amount of time. Yeah, I would, I would love to,
• 1:43:10
  I would love to back it. And I will definitely include
• 1:43:15
  the link in the, you know, episode description and in the
• 1:43:18
  video description for those watching on YouTube as well.
• 1:43:23
  Awesome. And if you want, I can also send
• 1:43:26
  you links for the trailers, and if there's one of them that you
• 1:43:28
  feel like sharing, that's cool too.
• 1:43:30
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I always I always try and share
• 1:43:34
  out the work of people who have been on the show pretty can
• 1:43:40
  consistently. So I.
• 1:43:42
  Appreciate that too. So well, happy to have you on
• 1:43:47
  and you know, good luck with the Kickstarter.
• 1:43:50
  So really appreciate it, Henry. Thank you, Sam, and thanks
• 1:43:54
  again. I really appreciate you having
• 1:43:55
  me on the show and letting me talk.
• 1:43:58
  Oh, no problem. Where?
• 1:44:00
  Where can people find you on social media if they want to get
• 1:44:03
  in touch with with? OK, I am on the place I'm the
• 1:44:07
  social media I spend the most time on is sub stack.
• 1:44:11
  So if you, you can look up me up by my handle, which is machine
• 1:44:15
  trooper, one word on sub stack or you can let's see it's sub
• 1:44:18
  step Hank brown.substack.com. I think if you want the actual
• 1:44:22
  address. And then I also have the same
• 1:44:25
  handle on Twitter. So I I check in there
• 1:44:27
  occasionally. I'm on Gab as well, but Gab's
• 1:44:31
  pretty much like a ghost town now.
• 1:44:33
  Yeah. So I don't hang out there much.
• 1:44:37
  I think that I have started a Pinterest and I'm not as posting
• 1:44:42
  as consistently as I should, but you can then, you know, I think
• 1:44:47
  it's either O and TikTok, TikTok on VPP or virtual Pop press
• 1:44:52
  there so you can see stuff that I posted on all of those
• 1:44:57
  platforms. Yeah, well, I'll, I'll be sure.
• 1:45:00
  I mean, I know I, I already follow you on a bunch of them.
• 1:45:03
  I, I, I just got on to TikTok now.
• 1:45:06
  It's now it's American. Yeah.
• 1:45:09
  So, so I'll follow you there as well.
• 1:45:12
  But yeah, I'll have all your links in the description and all
• 1:45:15
  your socials. So they.
• 1:45:17
  So again, thanks for going on man, and I appreciate it.
• 1:45:21
  Thank you, Sam. It's a pleasure.
• 1:45:24
  All righty. Yeah, folks, that we appreciate
• 1:45:27
  you for coming on and watching and listening.
• 1:45:32
  So we'll have the links to Henry's work and everything else
• 1:45:36
  in the description. Feel free to give him a follow
• 1:45:40
  and of course back his Patreon as well, so and Kickstarter.
• 1:45:47
  Take care and we'll see you on the next episode.
• 1:45:50
  See you all. The right to offend is not some
• 1:45:58
  pesky little part of freedom of speech that we have to put up
• 1:46:01
  with. It is the heart and soul and
• 1:46:04
  lungs of freedom of speech. It is the coursing lifeblood of
• 1:46:08
  human progress. It is the instigator of liberty
• 1:46:12
  and modernity and science and understanding.
• 1:46:15
  What a laughing stock today's student leaders are that they
• 1:46:20
  can so casually dismiss the right to be offensive without
• 1:46:23
  realising that their lovely, enlightened lives are the gifts
• 1:46:28
  of individuals who gave offence. Offensiveness is not just
• 1:46:33
  something we have to begrudgingly accept.
• 1:46:36
  Offensiveness is the motor of human progress.
• 1:46:40
  Thank you for watching the Whitfield Report live on the
• 1:46:43
  Right to Offend Media Network. Make sure to check out Sam's
• 1:46:47
  books on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle.
• 1:46:50
  You can follow Sam on X at Sam W under Score NGC and the Right to
• 1:46:57
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• 1:47:02
  Like, comment, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 1:47:06
  And until next time, God bless God save this great nation.
• 1:47:12
  God, freedom, legacy, in that order.