Latest / The Elsa Kurt Show / A Doctor Turned Novelist Imagines A Post-Apocalyptic Antarctica with Norman Westhoff

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A Doctor Turned Novelist Imagines A Post-Apocalyptic Antarctica with Norman Westhoff · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Imagine imagine the very different world three centuries centuries from now where climate, climate grade, migration geography, and humans survive, survived, reaching civilization.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Let's well let's welcome to the show.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello there, sir.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Fine, right, Elvis.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am very good.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So listen, Norman, I gotta tell you, you you've lived a very boring life.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just wish you would have gotten out a little bit and done some fun things, you know.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, kidding aside, um, what what amazing adventures and experiences you've had.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And most of us cannot say we've done even a quarter of the things that you've done.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I find those adventures unique and fascinating.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Will you tell us a little bit more about some of those trips you've taken?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I blame it all on my father.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: He was uh he was a world traveler too.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: So that and he uh my my folks divorced when I was young.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: He uh had me uh uh seduced me to come visit him in Europe and turned out to be a one-year um uh expedition in Germany, and uh uh much to the uh disparagement of my mother, who thought it was just gonna be a summer adventure.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, that kind of planted the scene for uh for travel, I think, and uh been doing a lot of moving around ever since.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that spirit of adventure.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I am a little homebody, so I'm always intrigued by by people who you know really do get out there and see the world the way that you have.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, what a great experience.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: How old were you when when you had that first 12?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, there was a precedent or a previous uh adventure.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: He he uh I was a chaperone for my father's uh honeymoon with his second wife, and that was also in Europe, uh, but that was only for a couple of months.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So more taste of of more tribal tocome.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and you certainly put that to to good use, all of these travels uh when it came to your writing.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um you also you've had an entire career in medicine before becoming a published uh science fiction, or cli-fi as you call it.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I have to ask you quickly, did you come up with that term or is that a subgenre of science fiction?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: I had been calling it sci-fi, but um one of the um marketing people I worked with suggested that yes, there's a cli-fi subgenre and uh and my my stuff that's closer to that.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I learned something new when I was reading your your info.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like cli-fi, so climate fiction, guys.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh I should clarify that for everybody watching.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I I I learned something new.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: That was really cool.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, with your background uh as a medical doctor, um, what made you interested in writing a post-apocalyptic science fiction series?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well you know, we look at um, I think we tend to look at climate change with this impending sense of dread that um and and I'm not trying to make light of it in any way, but but there is a human society has always had to make adjustments to changes in their environment.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: And and uh this has been going on since since the ice ages, for instance, or previous uh warming trends in the earth, and and you know, I think we tend to we have our our home base, wherever that might be, and we say I'm happy here, and everybody just leave me alone, but it doesn't work that way.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and and my message, my underlying message is that as climate, as as global warming gets worse, there's gonna need to be some drastic changes for human societies to survive.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: But we've done it before, we can do it again.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna happen overnight, but it it is it it can be done.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's what I always find interesting is is, you know, as as you know just as well as I or anyone watching or listening knows, you know, opinions vary on climate change and all of those things, and everybody has their opinion and perspective, which is, you know, it is what it is.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I would imagine the one thing everybody can agree on, agree on with that is that it should be pressed upon us to care for our environment, right?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think, you know, so where wherever you stand on the conversation of climate change, I I think the standard probably just as a general baseline for it should be that we should be caring about our environment and and our earth and our our ground and our sky and everything in between, right?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's so fascinating that you took that topic and you imagined um this whole uh alternate universe, I guess, of the, and I always find this fascinating um this type of storytelling, the imagining what could have been or what could be, you know, how things could go if a certain set of circumstances um occurred.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm in such admiration of a mind like yours that can actually take that, gee, I wonder, and then create an entire universe around it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um take me through a little bit.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Your first book in the series is called Stoned Fever.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um it opens with a first contact scenario between uh nomadic cattle herders of post-glacial Antarctica and a small team whose plane has just crash landed there.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So why did you start there?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is that the beginning?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: What was significant or important about having your story start there?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh I played uh being the first time author, uh I went to lots of classes and listened to lots of seminars on how do you start a book.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you want to bring your audience right into it, and uh that was what they call it in media risk.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, start in the middle.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um uh so rather than the background, it's important, but we don't want to, you know, pander to um stuff that that that people probably would not be all that interested in the background if they didn't have some investment in the main characters.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I wanted to to start off with is uh who are these characters uh and and why should we care about them?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_03: And then then get to the background.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very interesting.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um so being that it's you know the a first contact story, um, the interesting part, there's so many interesting parts, of course, but one of the interesting things is that the two groups meeting are human, two very different human groups.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think people, when they think of anything post-apocalyptic, um, they think, you know, aliens and robots and all of these things.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and I find that interesting that you chose two human groups.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me a little bit about um, and they're such rich characters too, very, very developed characters.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about that process of creating these characters um and making that choice that it would be it would be humans that that are meeting up and not some robots or aliens.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: The people who who fly into an article down this plane, uh including the main protagonist who's a young geologist from Canada, um they have advanced technology.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: They're basically um 300 years into the future, still retaining our you know innovations and um uh all the things that that we are moving forward with uh so quickly, uh even in our lifetime.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: But this other group that that had to migrate southward to Antarctica uh as their homelands became uninhabitable, they lost that technology.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: So what I tried to do was imagine uh what life was like for for most people 300 years ago.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we didn't have uh we didn't have factories, we didn't have um printing presses, we didn't have um you know a lot of the weapons of mass destruction that we do now.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and I've used that as kind of a basis for uh these nomads who come to settle Antarctica.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: So um they uh they rely on oral traditions uh because they've lost they've lost writing uh yeah along the way.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: And and so you know it's like stepping back 300 years, let's say.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: When you tell me about the nomadic group, there's a little part of me that almost envies them because we're like life is so crazy and the advances are so much.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's and the simplicity, like in my mind, I'm hearing it, I'm like, oh, that that almost sounds appealing here.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did you find anything surprised you about the way you felt about these characters as you were writing?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, good question.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um they are still driven by what drives us today.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of the characters is a 17-year-old girl who um loves horses, she loves being out on the open range, she loves exploring, and she's in fact the first one who comes across this plane that's crash-landed.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um her mother was a single parent, and uh her mother would rather she you know stay home and take care of doing doing homemaking, but she's much too um headstrong for that, you might say.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the other the other young character from this tribe is a would-be gaucho.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: He's 14 years old.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: He gets to ride along with the gauchos, but he's gonna have a tough time because he was born with a club foot.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: And not to give anything away, he develops an another injury later on.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: His he's gonna have to make some drastic adjustments in order to uh in order to uh come up with something satisfying.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: So those are all those those characters get to develop, and and it was a lot of fun um through that series seeing them develop, you know, letting my mind uh just just wander and see what what would be their ultimate narrative arc, what what would what's what lies ahead for them.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love that about series, especially as the author.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You you like I don't know if people understand this, that you know, that that aren't aren't writers, especially with series, that um you are get you get so invested in these characters and in their lives, and you're kind of like watching, watching them evolve and change yourself, even as the author.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I know people think we're crazy when we say things like that, but it it's so true.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, you just you even though you're creating them, you're also watching them, which is hard to describe, but that's the best I can I can do with it.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how how did you decide?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you even, I mean, maybe it just happened on your protagonist.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know that uh I'm sorry, Kel Kelton?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the name?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Kelton, yes.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: How did you know that this was going to be like your your main character?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I wanted yeah, I no, she is uh the main character.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I wanted someone who's independent but also grounded.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: In other words, she she has a profession, which is geology.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, she's a specialist on this this element iridium, which becomes a key uh turning point in in the whole uh in the whole series.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and that's how she's made her name.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: She's kind of a prodigy.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: She's already got her doctorate degree and has now been tagged for this special mission.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: She she's just sure that that uh uh this volcano, Mount Erebus, which actually exists in Antarctica, is going to be a source of this highly prized precious metal iridium, whereas other sources have become unobtainable.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so she she um you know has made has has really um moved quickly through uh she she's a prodigy of Wonder Kind, you might say.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but she's also um just to make it believable, she comes from a very poor family of uh what we call Native Americans in Canada, they're called First Peoples or First Nations.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so she has kind of a chip on her shoulder because of her ethnicity.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you know, just she's not just uh peaches and creams, there's an edge there.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and that I think that is the skill of a really um a really good storyteller, that you understand that your characters have to have dimension.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and for you as a first-time author, um, you know, that that's especially impressive because that those are like new, it's just nuance that not everybody understands.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, you can't, your, your character, your main character can't be all good.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they can't be, and your your antagonist can't be all bad either.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they have to be people that you can relate to in some way or another, or simply believe that that this could be a real person, you know, and and a tangible uh a possibility for for someone to be the way that they are.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh good on you for for having that instinct.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I'm curious because this is your you this is your first uh fiction book series ever, correct?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So how did you know or when did you know that this was a series and not just a standalone book?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Did you know all along or so I started writing Stone Fever and you know, working through the drafts of that and going to seminars, writing uh conferences and this and that, and uh heard from several sources along the way that there's a better chance of of selling books if it if they're a series.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so that got me taking loop.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it took quite a long time.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um it took uh eight years even to get that from the initial concept to publishing the first book, and then two years for each of the subsequent two books.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: But um, but once you know, once I made that decision, you know, it's gonna to it's gonna have if it's gonna have any chance, it really has to be thought through.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh then I mean it it was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun to, like I say, develop the narrative arcs for each of those characters and uh and see what happens in the long run.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Was there anything about the process that surprised you?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: Ooh.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: I guess nothing that uh other than how much time it took.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's another thing that people underestimate too, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and sometimes, and don't get me wrong, uh, you know, some people can write books very quickly and just pump them out.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's also a time thing.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you have a if you have a day job, it's not so easy, you know.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're you know fortunate enough that that is your day job, just writing, then you know, bully for you.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but yeah, it's such a labor-intensive process, isn't it?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_03: It helped that I was getting closer to retirement and winding my practice down so that that did give me more time.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Has there any has there been any particular part of the writing, publishing, and promoting process that um that has been your least favorite?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And please don't say promoting, please don't say interviews.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: This is fine.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't understand, I still don't understand the marketing part of it, and so I rely on professionals to help get that done.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: Things like how to promote uh looks on Amazon, let's say.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: I sure not into um the media part of it, so I need professional help for that.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, as do most people because it is it's the wild west.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just wild out there.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's there's actually almost too much, you know, there's too many options and possibilities and ways and lanes so to pick out you know which ones make the most sense for you.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it is a task.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it was always it used to be in the beginning, used to be the editing.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: I always hated it because I'm very fly by the seat of my pants.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Once I do something, I want to move on to the next thing.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I in the beginning, I found editing very, very tedious and boring because I'm like, I already know the story.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Boo, I'm done.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: I did have a I've had several great editors along the way, and uh, you know, the most important thing they provide is I really don't need this, you know, section.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you don't want it to drag on on and on and on.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: So let's cut to the chase.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, or once in a while she'd say, Oh, that doesn't sound quite as good.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there, let's let's give it another, you know, put in a little more motivation and and um so yes, it's yeah to have a good editor.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so important to have an outside perspective um because that's who's gonna be reading your books.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not you just you reading your book, it's gonna be other people reading it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So to get those other perspectives, um, especially professional ones, obviously, you're so right.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is so helpful and it just it it deepens and and um makes the the the text more rich and more compelling.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: One theme running through the series um seems to be that civilization may change enormously, of course, but human nature doesn't necessarily change with it.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um you still have greed and ambition and loyalty and love and tribalism and courage.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Was that intentional, or did it just develop as you wrote the story?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um I never thought of it in exactly the the terms that you just used, but um but I I try to keep the idealism tempered with the you know real life uh motivations, what what makes people behave the way they do, and and um yeah, I think that has some benefit being in you know being in my 70s now and and have a hopefully a better understanding of human nature than I did 30, 40 years ago.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um your second and third books also introduce environmental activism, sabotage, and eventually ecoterrorism.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Fascinating, right there.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did you deliberately want to explore the question of when a righteous cause can become unrighteous in the methods used to pursue it?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: No, not so much.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um that ecoterrorism part is mainly um a way to showcase some of the point of view characters, uh going, you know, powerful people going up against each other and um and trying to you know keep keep the audience uh engaged in it's not it's not just what happens in Antarctica, although that is the main setting, but there are other parts of the world stage that that uh and I believe that that not necessarily eco-terrorism, but I I believe that uh despite what we're um what we're seeing in the news right now, that there'll be a lot of actors, a lot of countries, a lot of regimes that um continue to um kind of butt heads and and you know stay tuned.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: There's there's a lot more uh interesting stuff gonna be happening.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I I think that's one of the things that makes your series that much more compelling that as you read these these books, these stories, you you can look at them and kind of go, yeah, I mean, I could see that happening.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's not so far fetched.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes something, you know, you you suspend your disbelief in certain books or movies for that matter.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know that it's you know impossible and probable.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not going to happen, not likely, but uh uh stories like this, you're kind of like, mmm, well, we could head down that road.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not so crazy.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that's part of what's so compelling about it.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I don't know, maybe, maybe hopefully it's also a little tiny bit of a cautionary tale, right?
• 22:17
  unknown: Right.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe a lot of a cautionary tale.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so now is book three the end, or is there more to the story?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um I tried my five point of view characters going through their narrative arcs and I try to what should we say, find peace or find some some spot where they have either realized their ambitions or it ain't gonna happen.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I try to to uh bring some closure to it at the end there.
• 22:52
  unknown: Yes.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking that same word.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna ask you, do you feel like your characters and the stories have closure?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: You must, because you did you said this is this is it, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I commend you so much on uh on all aspects of this, the the seriousness that you took the writing process um and the story and the time that you put into this.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, I don't know if people understand how much of a labor of love um and passion writing stories, particularly fiction stories like this, truly are, because it's there's so much that goes into the entire process of it.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's you know, it's it's our blood, sweat, and tears that goes into the whole process.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end, you have you have these uh you know incredible books that you get to you know look back on and now still keep you know kind of reliving in a way by you know promoting them and sharing them and and all of that.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I and I know my audience is gonna be very, very intrigued with these.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything that you wish I had asked you about these books that you want your the audience to know?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um well, who is that audience?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh this was something that was in that I thought about who when I started writing the stone fever.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, who what market am I aiming for?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And um and the answer is uh a what a young adult market, but I think there's enough in it for for uh people of all ages.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_03: And and so so it's it's trying to cover both faces.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: As with the subsequent books, what I try to do is sort of like what uh KK Rowling does for her Harry Potter series, and that is make each book a little denser, a little longer, uh, you know, a little more challenging for her uh YA readers.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: And and so that second book has a longer timeline.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's a little bit longer than the first.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: The third book is longer than the second one and has an even longer timeline.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: So um so yeah, hopefully you get hooked by the first one and then we're gonna follow that story through to the end.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I love that you did that because I know when I read series, um, I when I know I'm getting close to the end, I have that like pre-anxiety, that already that little bit of sadness.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And people always make those last books too short.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: They just they cut corners on them, and you know, we just don't get enough of them.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that you actually instead you gave more.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: So as a reader, I thank you for that because it's it's really um, yeah, you really feel like you've we talked about that uh a little earlier, closure.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: You really feel like you get true closure with those characters and you can, you know, close that last, that, that last, that back cover and go, okay, I'm okay.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay with that.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is over or over for now because you never know.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you ever I always have to ask this too.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever envision this as a streaming, you know, as a movie, as anything along those lines?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: If anybody uh reads that and thinks it has potential, I'd be happy to talk with them.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't turn them down, right?
• 26:16
  unknown: I would turn them down.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, you heard that, guys.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna turn it down.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and put those offers out there so we can see that play out on the screen because that would be uh that would be mighty, mighty cool, I think.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can you yeah, can you tell everybody where they can find your books?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, guys, um, before he does, uh don't worry, I will put it in the show notes so you'll have those links, you'll be able to click right on them.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: But go ahead if there's a website, um, any any places.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: My my website is called Erebus Tales, E-R-E-B-U-S-T-A-L-E-S, one word, uh, dot com.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so that uh would be a good place.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Amazon, just uh just uh my name will bring up all three of the books.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh there's there's Spanish editions.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the Spanish edition of the first book just came out, and uh the other two are will be out within a year um in Spanish.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: And um yeah, uh it's there.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Norman, thank you so much for spending a little time with me and sharing your story and the background and and information about your books.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I'm so excited to share this with my audience, and and I know that they will truly, truly enjoy this series so much.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Alsa.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right, guys, thank you all so much for watching or listening or doing both.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Both are great, and we look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: You've got a story worth sharing.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's time to tell it well.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're an author, entrepreneur, influencer, or podcast guest, stepping in front of the camera or microphone can feel overwhelming.
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