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The Professional Writer's Life with John Wooley · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast. It was a long haul and at
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one point, very early in the morning, going through all those dark nights
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of the soul that every writer has, I realized it was a simple equation.
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You wear them down or they wear you down. That's the equation.
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And that's what I tell people. I said, you know, I used
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to know everything or want to know about books. Welcome to writer kN a
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gathering place for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world.
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Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of The Red Sneaker
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books on writing, and Renee Gutteridge, best selling author of over thirty novels
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and screenplays. Hey they're writers. Our guest today is John Woolley, one
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of my oldest and best writing buddies, someone who has managed to maintain a
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professional writing career now for more than five decades. To me, this is
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a great example of someone who may not be a household name, like say
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Lisa Gardner who's going to be next week's guest, but nonetheless John has had
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an incredible career and sold a lot of books through sheer, hard work and
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persistence and of course great talent. To me, Oh, come on,
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you knew I'd work writer Con into this somehow, right. This is what's
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great about the writer Con conference. There are so many wonderful, talented people
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that you soon see that there are many paths to success writing success, many
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kinds of writing success, and whatever you think your path might be, it
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can be achieved. And speaking of people with long and successful writing careers,
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renee hey, you've also written all kinds of things avage you do you have
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a particular project that stands out in your mind as a favorite. You know,
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I don't have necessarily a favorite really, when you have you know,
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longevity and everything that begins to be favorite moments in each project. You know,
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a great editor you work with here, a great collaborator, they're a
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collaborator there, and you know, great moment in this book. So they
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each have their own special moments I think. I mean, there's there's a
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few that I you know, I'm are not my favorites. Let's just soon
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forget sure, but which I want to go read those tonight. Those have
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their own backstory that we shall not go into. But but yeah, that's
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I would say it that way. Well, Jesse, I won't ask you
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if you have a favorite book you've written. But do you maybe have a
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favorite author encounter? Oh author encounter? Um guys, remember her name now?
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Was it Renee? Yes? The first time, I was so nervous,
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no, so weird enough. A band I like, the lead singer
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and his wife wrote a series of books and they went on tour for the
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book and I got to meet both of them. So I got to meet
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both the singer of a band I like and his wife who wrote a creative
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thing together. And that was a very interesting, like way of interacting with
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someone who's like music and lyrics. I like, also wrote a story,
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and so that was, you know, like a delightful way of interacting with
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somebody who like I had, you know, a huge like you know,
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nerd crush one. Are you saying we're gonna have to start bands now?
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I can't. I'm still working on social media. I cannot start a band.
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I bet you could. I can't. I got you to sing when
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you're a writer, khn very quietly but still standing in the back. So
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I thought that was great. All right. Our interview today, as I
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mentioned, is with John Woolley, who's a writer, novelist, lecturer,
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filmmaker, radio and TV host who specializes in everything, really, but in
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particular movies, literature, music, pop culture. He's written or co written
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or edited almost fifty books, including his new horror trilogy called The Cleansing that's
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made up of three books, Seventh Satan Swine and Sinister Serpent. There is
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a lot of sibilants a literation in those titles. Twentieth Century honky Tonk,
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which is the true story of Kane's Ballroom, and much more. We'll talk
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to John after this news segment, Jesse take us away, all right.
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News story number one, perhaps unsurprisingly to most of you, is about AI.
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The revolution continues to roll right. Thousands of authors are now urging AI
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companies to stop using their work without permission, and some of them are even
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suing about this business of programs like Open Eye and Meta scraping the Internet to
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get content. So thousands, including big names like Nora Roberts and Michael Shabin
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Margaret Atwood have signed a letter asking AI companies to stop using their work without
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permission or compensation, which is just one of many counter offenses the literary world
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has launched. In the last couple of weeks. Some offs including Sarah Silverman,
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the comedian, and Paul Tremblay and others signed on as plaintiffs in a
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class action lawsuit alleging that again open Ai and Meta trained their programs on pirated
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copies of their work. A spokesman, well, the CEO of the Author's
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Guild, said, and I quote, it's not fair to use our stuff
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in your AI without permission or payment, So please start compensating us and talking
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to us. Renee, what do you think, first of all, what's
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this about. Is this about publishing rights or money? Well, to tell
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you the truth, it's extremely complicated issue. I mean, it really is,
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and I would say it's probably about both, But first and foremost it
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really is about publishing rights and what AI is using and whether a robot can
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be held accountable for the same things that a human can. So it's really,
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really, really complicated. It's you know, again, these things had
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to be thrown onto the publishing world, the writing world. The writers are
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the first ones really having to deal with this sort of thing with AI,
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and other industries will follow. But we've got to get this sorted out early
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and now or it's going to be a real mess. Well it's I mean,
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it's a brand new technology. I think half the Internet was scraped before
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anybody even was going on, and now they're basically asking people to stop doing
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what they've already done. I don't know, Jesse, do you think that
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all these offensives offensives are going to accomplish anything? I mean, I think
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more the more attention you draw to it, the more people will realize that's
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happening. I read an article recently about someone who used open AI to sort
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of finish the Game of Thrones book stories but better. And well, here's
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the thing, Oh, you mean finished the book series. Yes, finish
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the book series. Yeah. And the way they did it was like they
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had Opening Eye like write a outline for each character and then take those outlines
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and expand upon it, and then like weave it into chapters. And Opening
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Eye was very good at certain things and very bad at other things. Like,
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for example, it's terrible at killing characters. Right, it just would
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not kill a main character, which is something very good harm. Yeah,
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And and so it was one of the things where like it is a great
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tool, but it's still never going to be as good as a human being
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who can supprise it with things. So it's not going to be as good
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right now. I'm just it will write it faster, that's for sure.
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Yeah, it will eventually be as good. Yeah. Well, if it's
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some like a non fiction summary like we've already reported Amazon as doing now with
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reviews and publishing houses, are you, I mean, that's one thing.
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Yeah, my son Ralph was showing me I think it's chat GBT, and
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he typed in give me good interview questions for William Bernhardt and clicked it,
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and like instantaneously, it had written questions and they were not only decent questions,
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they reflected knowledge of who I am and what I've written, because you
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know, in the blink of an eye, it can scan the Internet.
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On the other hand, do I think that program could do like a novel,
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some kind of creative work from scratch that I would want to read.
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I kind of doubt it. Yeah. The only reason the guy was able
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to do that with Game of Thrones is because it had already scrapped all the
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other Game of Thrones and George Armarine works, so it needs it needs a
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basis. And so yeah, my question is, does chat GBT no that
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Renee doesn't care about, you know, mergers and well, let's ask it.
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Yeah, let's for the next show. You'll know now because scrap an
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experiment. Well yeah, I mean, you know me. I'm always on
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the side of the writers, and I think this is whether it's any good
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or not going to take money from writers. According I mentioned the Author's Guild.
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According to them, the median income for a full time writer last year
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was twenty three thousand dollars. Good luck, we're living and writers incomes have
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declined by forty two percent between two thousand and nine and twenty nineteen. So
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I really don't think we need some big AI companies or programs sucking profits away.
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Okay. Second news story, which doesn't have to do with well,
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it probably does at some level, but it's a different slant at any rate.
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And that's about the huge layoffs and buyouts going on right now at Penguin
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Random House. Many top editors at Random House people who worked with major writers.
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I mean, only when you hear about light offs, you expect them
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to be firing the people at the bottom of the totem pole. But that's
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not what's happening here, as people who have been there a while and are
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successful and probably get paid more so now they're leaving the company as a series
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of buyouts and layoffs hit Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the
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United States, and this is just the latest in a series of shakeups at
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PRH, which lost both its global and its United States chief executives in the
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last six or seven months. Those laid off include staff members and many areas
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editorial, publicity, sales. More than sixty people, although it's hard to
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get all the details because many of them are not authorized to speak publicly,
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but the company's chief executive wrote an email to staff saying that the book market
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faced significant cost increases across the board, and that's a trend the company expects
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to continue. I don't know, Renee, like me, you've been doing
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this for a while. Is it finally time to start tolling the bell on
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Big Corp New York Publishing? Well, I don't know. Chat GPT could
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have predicted that answer. I think, yeah, I should ask chat GPT
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the answer for me. But but I will say this. I will say
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this. Companies are only as good as their talent, and the talent is
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not just the authors. You know, publishing is great editors, great marketers,
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great sales folks, and it's a team when you're in traditional publishing,
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and so you can have great writers, but if you don't have great editors
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behind them, and you don't have great marketers, I mean, you know,
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to lose folks like that is a real shame I think, And you
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know, I don't know if I'm answering the question or not, but I
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will say they'll find hopefully they'll find someplace to go, get a home where
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they deserve to be, because it really is sad to see I've seen editors,
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really really talented editors laid off over the years, and it just breaks
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my heart. They've been in it for thirty years, worked with some of
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the biggest authors, and then they're just gone, and that's a real shame.
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I really really hate that. Jesse, what's your take. You think
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this is an isolated incident or time period or is this the you know,
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is layoffs the new black for publishing? Well, someone who is an editor
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in a different field, they can tell you it concerns me. But I
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think it's one of those things where for some reason, large entities like this
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don't understand how are capitalistic system works where they're ups and downs, and maybe
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they shouldn't overhire when things are good, and like, maybe should have known
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there was going to be a paper shortage during our toilet paper crisis of twenty
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twenty, and like a lot of these things could have been predicted. But
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a lot of these business models are built off of what happened fifteen twenty years
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ago, and so true. I think a lot of these editors will find
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work in other smaller publishers. They might not be making as much as they
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were here. But isn't Penguin Random House the one that other people keep trying
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to buy and failing? Or is that Simon Schuster no other way around?
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Penguin Random House tried to buy Simon and Schuster but the DJ shut them down.
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But now Simon and Schuster is still on the auction block. Yeah,
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I think it's one of those things where I think it will come back around.
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I think people aren't going to stop buying books. I think it's just
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the way books are priced and the way I mean, haven't we talked constantly
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about how like people are buying more books now? So is there a delayed
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effect from when people weren't buying books and they were buying books again? And
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well, I think they're buying books, but not necessarily books published by the
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Big Five, and not necessarily well not even predominantly at bookstores. Yeah,
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maybe move your offices out of New York people. It's expensive there, right,
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I mean we call these New York publishers, but they're all owned by
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big corporations who are not a resident to New York. They just have offices
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there. So yeah, they could move. I should point out in fairness
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that it's not just Penguin Random House, like I just said, Simon and
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Schuster is still for sale and there's a group trying to buy it. HarperCollins
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also announced not long ago that they were offering buyouts because they want to cut
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their North American workforce by five percent. Hashett has also offered buyouts, so
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it seems to be industry wide. All right, that's enough news, Jesse,
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queue up the music and let's talk to John Woolle. Don Woolley,
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welcome back to the podcast. Hey, thanks, but it's great to be
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back. Yeah, always great to have you on. Okay, I think
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you already know what the first question is going to be. If you could
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offer writers one piece of advice, what would it be? Let me tell
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you a story about that. So you must be a fiction writer. Son
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Wolfe and I sold our first book, which just came out in another edition
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from Babyla Hunt as you will very well, which our first sixth time it's
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been published or something. Yeah, the German edition it is, and so
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came out in nigeen eighty three, and I thought I was on my way.
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Ron and I had written this book which sold it. It had gone
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to auction in New York. It was nine years before I sold another book,
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and there was a lot you know, one of the books I wrote.
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My agent got a letter back from a nice publisher who said that,
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well, you know, if this were in the nineteen sixties, we published
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this book. But John Willick could be a major American writer, but we
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just can't take any kind of a chance on this midlist stuff now. So
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I was just it was a long haul, and at one point, very
17:27
early in the morning, going through all those dark knights of the soul that
17:32
every writer has, I realized it was a simple equation. You wear them
17:40
down or they wear you down. That's the equation. And that's what I
17:45
tell people. I said, you know, I used to know everything or
17:47
what's to know about books? And now you count the ones I've addited fifty
17:51
some odd books down the line. I know two things. I know that
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they either wear you down or you wear them down. And I also know
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that you need to work every day. Take off weekends if you want to,
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but every week day at the same time, at the same place.
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That's all I know about writing anymore. You guys, really so I'm getting
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the impression. Then there must be a lot of people you've worn down.
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It's an ongoing process. Yeah, but without and we've interviewed a lot of
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people on this podcast. But more than any other writer, you have written
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about every kind of writing there is to write. Let me try try and
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make a list, and then you tell me what I left out. Okay,
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novels, nonfiction, journalism, music, criticism, histories, biographies,
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ye horror, yep, plays, screenplays, comic books, a comic strip,
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yep. I think you've even written trading cards, and I don't even
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know what that means. Who did you write the backs those? You know
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where the text is on the backs of trading cards? Oh? Okay,
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big trading card boom in the nineties, and it was like a hip thing
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to do. Trading cards have been published by the Kitchen Sink Press, all
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these different people and I and I yeah, I did several those. The
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Mami van Dorn Trading card set. I did that Confidential Trading Cards set.
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Yeah, I mean I so yes, I did do trading cards as well.
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Holy smokes. Okay, So what's I mean? Normally people stick to
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one genre? Yeah, like four hundred not to mention different Okay, first,
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first question? First? What did I leave out? Um? Let's
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see, I've done a lot of I've done a lot of introductions, which
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I love doing to pulpe magazine collections us of old pulp magazine writers. I've
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edited and written introductions for a lot of those, and really that's one of
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the things I love doing the most. Now am I writing thinking? Your
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most recent book is thanks thanks a lot. I believe that's correct. Yeah.
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I have to have one over here for anybody wants to look if I
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hold it up? Is that what you want me to hold it up?
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Or is that? Yes? Alice do by Dolly? There it is right
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there. It's the biography of the of the Country Music Hall of Fame disc
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jockey and country artist Billy Parker. That I did with Brett Bingham, and
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on the back it says, Billy Parker will always be one of the greats.
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I'm proud that he has this autobiography to really show who he was and
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still is. Dolly partner and there's Dolly's signature there. So yes, yeah,
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that's the latest one we've that's the latest one we've had published by by
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Battylon in fact, and before that, I want to talk about because I
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think this was a big hit for you twentieth century honky tonk. Yes you
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mean you know you mean this one? Oh yeah, good, yeah,
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thank you. Yeah, we've done this if for the audience, he's just
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got the audio people, he just got a stack of them, apparent lace
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right. Yeah, this is a Brett Bingham once again worked with me on
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this and this is a history of the Cans ball Room for seven five years,
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from nineteen twenty three to two thousand, however that works out, or
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however twenty four died nineteen ninety nine or something. Anyway, it's the first
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seventy five years of the Kenes ball Room, which is an iconic got place
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that has known all around the world. And yeah, we've done really well
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with that book. I gotta tell you, when I first heard about this
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book, I thought, well, that'll sell nicely in the Keynes book gift
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shop. It was totally wrong. It's sold all across the world. You've
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sold it in Australia and I wouldn't even bet had heard of Kyne's Ballroom.
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How did that happen? Well, a lot of acts in the time period
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that we cover in that book. There were a lot of acts that was
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when UM record labels were putting acts on the road, and you know,
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they'd play these small kind of honky talk places, these small little dives,
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which the Canes was a stop for so many of them. Because Larry Shaffrew
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owned the Cane at the time. We'll take a chance on anybody. So
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he booked Van Halen for fifteen hundred dollars, He booked the police for fifteen
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hundred dollars, helped him buy a van so they could get around. I
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mean, so there was so every all these acts that were going that they
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were trying to build up the major record companies at the time. We're coming
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through the Canes ball Room and all they all seem to remember, Wow,
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okay, let's shift gears. While I'm thinking about it and talk about Ryder
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Con because you're joining us for the big conference Labor Day weekend in Oklahoma City.
22:36
You have, in fact been a frequent I would say regular, that's
22:41
when. But people can see why. Now we're never going to run out
22:45
of things you can talk about, so we might as well just jack of
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all trades, master of name. You have graciously given up your time.
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Why what do you like about conferences stuff? Well, you know, we're
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all we're all kind of in the same boat, aren't we. I mean,
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we all have there's riders just share a lot of things, and we're
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all trying to get hurt and we're all trying to I like being around riders.
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I like hanging out with right too. Yeah, it's fun, I
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mean, and we all kind of have a certain there's a certain level of
23:22
discourse that you get when you're with people like you. So you know,
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when we're to Riders conference and we start talking about great riders, you don't
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have to say you don't have to tell anybody who have Scott bet geralds is
23:36
you ask what's your favorite Scott Fitzgerald novel? Right, because you've already got
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that established. So that's nice. To be just among people, people that
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you are like. And then it's also nice because I mean, I've been
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doing this since I've made the commitment seventy nine. Of all things, I'm
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seventy four years old, made the commitment seventy nine to write full time.
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And so I've learned a few things along the way. I certainly hope I
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have, and I'd like to be able to maybe share that and keep people
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from perhaps having to go through some of the more negative stuff for themselves,
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even though, as you know, the business has changed so radically, you
24:17
know, about one more reason you need to get together and change stories about
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what's going on now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, Okay,
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So we're gonna pivot again a little bit and talk about movies. So you
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you write screenplays, You've had the movies produced. That's an entirely different beast
24:38
than the novel and a very different kind of technical writing actually too. So
24:45
how did you learn to write screenplays? And which of your movies is your
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favorite? Well, you know, I've done mostly documentaries today I had I've
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noticed, you know, like everybody else that has anything out lee watch like
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Amazon dot com to see what stuff of mine is selling. The best and
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all of a sudden and old Doctor Rennery I'd been did back in like ninety
25:10
nine or ninety seven or something called Hauntings Across America, which was on the
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Learning Channel, and it was narrated by Michael Dorne from one of the Star
25:19
Trek things. Yes, and he was ours jumping up and down. Even
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though he's off the screen right now. He knows that Michael darn is too
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go ahead, and so all of a sudden, I look and there that's
25:30
selling. Um. You know. I did one called Still Swinging, which
25:34
is about Western swing had to Sleep at the Wheel and Tracy Byrne in it
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that I have a soft spot in my heart for a little feature as funny.
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Right now, I'm in the middle of working with r SUTV, which
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is which is a public TV station my part of the country on this end
25:52
of the Turnpike, and um, we're working on a concept that I've wanted
25:56
to do for years called Tulsa Terrors because Tulsa, what's the place really where
26:03
the maide for home video movie really took off. It was a horror movie
26:10
called Blood Cult made it for twenty five thousand dollars gross to Mellion and this
26:15
is nineteen eighty five and I've been working on this documentary and this is really
26:21
shaping up, really, And I said, because I was there. I
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was working as an entertainment writer for the Tulsa World at the time, so
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I was on whole those sets. I'm in some of those things, and
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so I'm really really excited about that. But one of the films that we
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cover is a little basically kind of film festival film that was based on a
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one act play I did called Cafe Purgatory, and it had the star of
26:47
the Slime People in it, Bill Boyce, who was in nineteen sixty two,
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I think a slime people. He was the young heroic marine that fought
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the slime creatures and he moved to Tulsa and we became friends. Great cast.
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It never went anywhere, we never sold a lot of them. I'm
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very, very proud of it. And of course there's Dan Turner Hollywood Detective
27:07
that brought in my love of pulp magazines because that was a character. It
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started in nineteen thirty four in the pulp magazine Spicy Detective, and I took
27:15
one of the stories and adapted it to the movies, and it was a
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made for TV movie came out in nineteen nine of Mark Beastmaster singers as Dan
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Turner and as Tracy Scoggins and Klugulager and gosh, there was the time Paul
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Bartel was in it. It was really and was shot in Tulsa's That was
27:33
a really nice I was thinking Eddie Hudson was in it. Is that something
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else? If yours now Eddie Deason, isn't it? Oh well, one
27:40
of those eddies. Eddie Deason is kind of that. Eddie Deason is that
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kind of Jerry Lewis kind of character that was in It was nineteen forty one.
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You know, he's in all those things. He plays the operator of
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the Himalaya Ride. And I think I was at the first ever public screening
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of a Cafe Purgatory. I love that, Thank you so much. It
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wasn't exploited my copy anyway, God bless you. So you're the one,
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you know, like it wasn't exploitable. We got good reviews. It was
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the um Um. It was the fort Worth Film Festival in nineteen nineteen,
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nineteen ninety, I believe in nineteen niney nine. I'm sorry for film festival
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in nineteen ninety nine. We were the crowd pleaser. We got the crowd
28:22
pleaser. Ward never forget. There was some guy from like some Eastern European
28:27
country, you know, and they're all like sort of dour and he stands
28:32
up and I can't remember where he's like he's from, like SE's I don't
28:34
know, Transylvania or somewhere, and that's probably not transylvan but he's you know,
28:41
he's from one of the Eastern European country. He says that. He
28:42
says, I think that people in my country would love this picture, even
28:47
with the happy American ending. That is quite a compliment. We do that
28:56
well here in Romania. That's where he was what some of this transling,
29:00
so I think he was remaining anyway. Yeah, but you yeah, I
29:03
didn't answer your question, Renee. And I you know, I don't know
29:07
how I learned, see right, I was writing comic book scrip. It's
29:10
so writing comic book scripts and writing movie scripts a lot of like And when
29:15
I was at Central State which is now UCO University of Royal Corner, they
29:21
had a great program Master's Deree program for writers. Marilyn Harris was was the
29:29
writer in residence at the time who had just really hit it big with Hatter
29:33
Fox, which was a Yeah, that was it was it was a movie
29:37
of the week I think in BC. And uh so I was back what
29:41
I was in Vietnam when I was in the Navy and when I came back
29:45
in seventy three. Um, I went to grad school on the GI built
29:52
because I was, and so we had all these people. They had a
29:56
Wanda Duncan and her husband were teaching a scriptwriting class. So that's probably where
30:03
I learned because she had she had done a lot. I see her you
30:06
know when you watch those old like Half Gun, Will Travel and stuff.
30:08
You see her credits a lot on it. And she was teaching there.
30:14
So that's probably where I learned initially. Okay. And that was that was
30:18
long before we had scriptwriting, yes, ma'am. Yeah, you had to
30:22
format and macro it and hell we barely we barely had typewriters then. Okay.
30:30
So still on the film Topicum, as the official expert on Oklahoma film,
30:36
you've curated recent exhibit at the Oklama History Center. Yeah, how did
30:41
that come about Oklahoma two movies? That was because they had contact to be
30:45
down there's Bob Blackburn at time, Larry O'Dell was down there and Jeff Moore.
30:52
And they called when they were doing an earlier exhibit which was called Another
30:59
Hot Oklahoma Night, and it was an exhibit on Oklahoma rock and roll,
31:03
and asked me they were doing, um, what do you call it an
31:06
exhibit book? What do you call those things when they do a hardcover book
31:08
to go along with the exhibition? And they and they asked me to Yeah,
31:11
I asked me to write a couple of stories for it because for the
31:15
Froo, the Tulsa World and other things, I've learned quite a little bit
31:18
about Oklahoma music and written quite a little bit about it. And uh,
31:22
I said, yeah, what's it pay? And they said, oh,
31:25
well it doesn't pay anything, but you know, will will make it up
31:30
down the line. Well, you guys right, how many times I've heard
31:33
that? Yeah? Well yeah, sure, yeah. So but I went
31:37
ahead and did it. I mean, I knew the book was going to
31:40
be nice and everything. Well then about six months later they called me and
31:45
they said, how'd you like to be a how would you like to be
31:48
a guest curator for Oklahoma to Movies exhibit and this is what it pays.
31:55
Oh so it was actually I got it. I did out. They didn't
32:00
lie. I've got a paying gig out of it. It was a good
32:01
pain. They made it up to you, yea indeed? Yeah, yeah,
32:07
yeah, Okay. All this stuff about you know, movies and contracts,
32:14
that's it. But what people really want to hear about his celebrities.
32:17
Right, So, what's what's your best celebrities story? Well, I don't
32:22
know if I can tell it? Is it okay to use it? You
32:25
can't word on the air? Okay? Um, My best celebrity story,
32:30
the one I always tell is the one about Ray Charles. Okay, all
32:34
right, and there will be one. Just a warning, folks, there's
32:37
one bad word in it. So I was interviewing Ray Charles. And of
32:40
course the big thing to remember, like in the newspaper business and stuff,
32:45
they always want you to interview the star that's coming to town by phone,
32:50
because if you wait till they get there, it's not gonna do anybody any
32:53
good. If you do them my phone and then the story comes out early,
32:57
I'll help sell tickets. So it's kind of a symbiotic relationship, you
33:00
know, a star interview helps sell papers. Your interview helps sell tickets for
33:05
the star. So I was interviewing Ray Charles and talking to him on the
33:08
phone, and I'm a big Bob Wills takes his playboys fan of western swing
33:12
really took off in Tulson, and so I was asking, I said,
33:16
I asked, I said, mister Charles, I had him on phones.
33:19
Mister Charles, you know who Bob Wills is, and it says you Kidney.
33:22
Of course I didn't. And we're talking. I said, it seems
33:24
like you did the same thing that Bob Wills did, only come up from
33:28
a different way. You know, you did your modern sounds and country and
33:30
western music, which you're a rhythm and blues artist, and you went to
33:35
country music. Bob was a country music artist who absorbed blues and rhythm and
33:38
blues into his music. In fact, I told mister Charles best his favorite
33:44
singer was Bessie Smith, the blues artist, And Ray Charles said, well,
33:47
I didn't know that. He says, you know who my favorite artist
33:51
was when I was growing up. I said, no, he says Grandpa
33:54
Jones. Now, Rene, you're too young. Bill is because Bill remembers
34:00
Grandpa Jones from he hoog glasses in a little hand. Okay, a musician
34:07
like you would never put him with Ray Charles in a thousand years. So
34:12
we were talking. So anyway, I got Donny says, I'd like to
34:14
see you when I come to town. He was playing at what was the
34:17
Brady Theater then, and I never went backstage unless they specifically asked like that,
34:22
and I said, sure, I'd be happy to meet you. He
34:24
didn't want to meet Ray Charles. So I remember when it was because the
34:28
Hansons had just hit with Bob and they were backstage. I think it's so
34:37
they were backstage wanting to get the picture take of Ray Charles right, and
34:40
I was backstage visited with him a business with everybody. And he's in the
34:44
green room and the road manager opens the door and he says, I'm sorry,
34:47
mister Charles isn't feeling well. Um, he's not gonna be able to
34:52
see anybody. So I said, okay, and I walked up and I
34:54
had a copy of my story, and I said, I told mister Charles,
34:57
I'll bring him a copy of the story, so here it is,
35:00
thank you, and tell him a load for me. I started to leave
35:01
and I ran into somebody and then I was talking. Door opens again,
35:05
right road. Manager comes out and he says that journal is still here.
35:09
I said, yes, or I'm over here, says mister Charles wants to
35:12
see you. So here. I go into the green room and man,
35:17
he looks like Ray Charles, you know. I mean, he's got those
35:21
and he's got this leisure suit that's kind of can with his chocolate accents.
35:25
He grabs my hand and he says, you remembered, you remembered, and
35:31
I said, well, of course I remembered, mister Charles, I said,
35:35
I said this, it's so great to me. She says, well,
35:37
what you think about the show? And I said, well, frankly,
35:39
mister Charles, I was a little disappointed. He stops, says you
35:45
were, and I said, yes, sir, I said, I watched
35:47
the whole show and you didn't do one. Grandpa Jones saw and he started
35:53
that Ray Charles laughing and rocking back and forth and gets right nose to nose
35:58
of and he says, man, you gotta have the right kind of cats
36:00
to play that ship. And that's my favorite celebrity story. I knew i'd
36:07
always remember what Ray Charles told me, yeah, that's a great one.
36:12
Okay, well, we're already practically we are talking about music, but I
36:15
want to make the point that you are also yourself a musician and have written
36:22
many things. Of course, the one I want to talk about is that
36:23
song that was covered by Steve Ripley Red Dirt Rangers and then the oak Ridge
36:29
Boys. Right. It was a whispering Bill Anderson with the oak Ridge Boys.
36:32
Right. Yeah, it's called Gone Away. Steve Ripley and I went
36:37
back to a Stillwater. He's younger than I was younger than I, but
36:42
we were both at the radio station at the time. I was at OSU,
36:45
which was sixty six through seventy. The campus radio station was a rock
36:50
and roll station, KBR. Oh. And if you and I was a
36:53
biology major of all things, go figure. But because I'll tell you exactly
36:59
what I was biology major. I wanted to write. I had a grandmother
37:00
who wrote I wanted to write for when I was a kid, and my
37:04
mom, who was a depression here oak He said, this writing's fine,
37:07
but it's something you can fall back on. So I got biology. I
37:12
worked by biology degree for seven months when Rolston Purina's plant opened in Edmond.
37:17
I was the first plant Sanitarian lab analyst there. I would have gone back
37:22
to the service before they had to hold it open for me. I said,
37:29
no, thanks guys, you know, but I'm sorry I got off
37:32
track a little bit. So anyway, Steve and I knew one another from
37:36
Stillwater because we both were at the radio station. I took that as an
37:38
elective, djaying as an elective, and then when I went to the Service,
37:43
I was the program director for the ship's radio station. I was a
37:45
hut on a helicopter carrier called the USS New Orleans, and so I was
37:51
all kind of full of radio. Well. I came back and Steve,
37:55
at the time got was working with the church studio and it and the tractors
38:00
together, and so we got reacquainted. Well after that. Ninety four,
38:06
I believe it was, Steve calls me one day and he says, look,
38:09
he says, I'm wanting to write a nostalgic song called Gone Away.
38:15
He says, I've already got Tim Dubois, who was then the head of
38:19
as Arista Nashville Records, and he was from Locust Grove, I believe,
38:24
And he's got Tim Dubois has a couple of lines in it. He says,
38:28
you got anything that you might want to add? So, I mean
38:31
Steve was on. I mean these guys were This was the Tractors from Big
38:36
Deal. This was his first solo album after the Tractors, or in between
38:39
the Tractors, and he says, you want to help, And so I
38:43
wrote a bunch of love. I don't know how much he used, not
38:45
a whole lot of it, but I got ten percent of the song and
38:49
it came out and it was his first single. Well, in order to
38:52
be listed as a songwriter, I had to start my own publishing company and
38:58
register it with BMI Broadcast Music for the for the rights distribution. So it
39:05
cost one hundred and fifty dollars and Steve hooked me up. I guess I
39:07
had laugh thought I'd die music, and we had gone away, and I'm
39:10
listed on the credits as a songwriter. Well, it was the first single
39:15
off that album. Got a lot of airplay all around the country. I
39:20
got one check from BMI for eighty one cents to this day, So to
39:28
this day, I'm in the hole, like you know, one hundred and
39:30
forty nine nineteen or whatever it is. But and then and then uh whisper.
39:37
Bill Anderson and the oak Ridge Boys picked it up and recorded it,
39:42
but it never made a little noise. But these days it's like royalties for
39:46
books. Songwriting royalties are so small. We were in a film. The
39:51
song was in a film called A Round and Round and a lot of things.
39:53
But so far I've made eighty one cents on it. All right,
39:59
congratulation, Yeah did you cash it or frame? Oh? Well, rock
40:05
you always? Yeah, of course you did. Yeah, okay, worst
40:09
piece of writing advice you've ever received. Or for the muse, Oh that's
40:16
oh yes, I got you exactly. And I thought it should be tell
40:23
tell your mute swin to show up because I'm going to be up in that
40:28
chair at six. Yeah, it's up to the muse. It's yeah,
40:32
yeah, you know, people will tell tell you, oh you know,
40:37
you know, just wait for inspiration. You can't do it. A matter
40:39
of fact, I told when I do stuff like a Ryder con, I
40:45
always tell people it's like, um, I knew I was a professional writer
40:49
the day I wrote when I didn't want to the first day I wrote when
40:52
I didn't want to ride, I know it was a pro, and you
40:54
know you can't wait, life's too short. Well, I'm dying to ask
41:00
this question because John, I honestly don't know how you do all this,
41:05
Like it just blows my mind. Just what I mean, there's only twenty
41:09
four hours in a day. How what do you so? This is the
41:14
question? Um, so you clearly have a writing day, and what does
41:20
that look like? What does your writing day look like? What's the time
41:23
of day? What do you drink? What's the what's Well? I do
41:29
drink, but two separate things, the writing day and later the drink got
41:36
you? All right? No, Usually I'm up at six o'clock, walk
41:40
the dog, do the exercise, bike, have breakfast. I'm usually at
41:45
the typewriter, or if not the typewriter, sorry, I'm usually at the
41:49
computer by round eight, and I knock off about twelve thirty and have lunch,
41:53
and then I go back up between one and two and ride until four
41:58
or five. Usually I keep the stuff. That's gosh, I hate the
42:04
term because, hey, what do you guys think of making creative into a
42:07
noun like I've been hearing so much of lately. That just the worst thing
42:12
ever. I didn't want to use the term creative. But the more creative
42:16
stuff, you know that that I always do that in the morning. If
42:21
I'm transcribing an interview or something more onerous or more wrote like that, I
42:25
save that for the afternoon. Okay, yeah, all right, Well,
42:30
it just doesn't seem like you're have enough hours in the day to also host
42:35
a radio show, all the all the things. But you're definitely an inspiration
42:42
that I really feel like I'm a slacker. No, it's not that much
42:49
of inspiration, believe me. You just you know, writers are driven,
42:52
you know, and uh you know you're you're driven to create. It's very
42:57
important. And when that's the most important thing, everything else us to fall
43:00
along those launch you know. Absolutely, girl, John, thanks so much
43:05
for being on the podcast always, and we'll see you at Ryder Con where
43:10
we're going to hang out with all the creatives, right, all of us
43:14
creatives. Yeah we are, Uh see you soon, John, Just a
43:29
few parting words, Renee, talk about your success with the Screencraft Contest finalist
43:37
right, finalist. Yes, it was amazing. Round of applause. Who
43:45
absolutely, absolutely they just they've announced the winner. Um it wasn't me,
43:51
but uh really winning finalist on Screencraft is uh is a big deal and it
44:00
will give me a lot of I don't know a lot of open doors to
44:06
this project than working on so I'm excited about it. The Screencraft folks have
44:10
been amazing. I've gotten to know them, so yeah, I'm pretty excited.
44:16
Excited. Well, congratulations. It's always good to see good deserving people
44:22
get recognized like you. And of course I'm going to say something about writer
44:29
con. I've been talking about writer KHN for weeks and probably won't stop till
44:31
September. First, but I did notice looking back, I usually talk about
44:37
kind of the big group stuff, classes and pitches and contests and whatnot.
44:44
I wanted to make the point that we also provide many opportunities for a small
44:47
group or even private or one on one encounters, like the manuscript reviews,
44:52
which actually was a very brilliant Renee idea, and the private consultations. Basically,
44:59
when you sign up for those, you know you pick from a list
45:02
of our speakers who you want to read your manuscript or whose brain you want
45:07
to pick and talk to for a while, and then you know they'll read
45:12
or prepare in advance and will schedule it and you'll get a half hour to
45:16
talk to whoever it is you've selected about your work, or to ask the
45:20
questions that you really need some answers to. And I think that's just a
45:24
you know, it's it's a great addition. It's a large scale conference,
45:28
but with a lot of small scale stuff. You know. That's why we
45:34
talk about writer kN being a family, and that's why we see so many
45:38
people leaving not only with knowledge and inspiration that they need to succeed, but
45:45
also with friends, you know people. It's sometimes hard to find other people
45:51
who have the same bizarre desire to write that you do, but they're all
45:57
over writer KHN and people make friends and stay in touch and change exchange chapters,
46:01
and I just love seeing that happen. Anyway, writer Con at September
46:06
one through four, that's Labor Day weekend in Oklahoma City. For more information,
46:10
please visit our website, which predictably is Writercon dot com. All right,
46:17
until next time, keep writing, and remember you cannot fail if you
46:23
refused to quit. See you next time.