Latest / Books4Guys / What You Overcome Defines Success | Bill & Dale Ann on Writing, Faith, and Resilience

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What You Overcome Defines Success | Bill & Dale Ann on Writing, Faith, and Resilience · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been to Pennsylvania.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're welcome.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can come here and visit.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Bring your wife.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have extra room.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's and there's so much to see in western Pennsylvania.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's bicycle trails.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We bicycle.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Pittsburgh has a lot to offer with museums.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to do around here.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're big-time bicyclers.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you are, but uh so my wife and I we're adventure.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have my wife and I, we love the outdoors.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: We love hiking, biking.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, our neighbor, he's he's from somewhere around the Philadelphia area.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And my wife's traveled there and she said it's beautiful.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've been all around.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've been New York, New Jersey, I've been DC, I've been all around you.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just hadn't been in Pennsylvania.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I gotta add that to my list somehow.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you do.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, come in the fall.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful in the fall, especially for riding the bike trails.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'll have to do that.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Bill and Del Ann, uh such a pleasure to be able to speak with you both as we've been emailing back and forth for quite a while now, as you guys had reached out to me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, probably six, seven weeks ago at this point, and we've been trying to get this scheduled, and I've been working on getting your books on the website, and I got one of them in the mail this week, above and beyond.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So great.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I got it, got it here, and there's some more coming.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no, such a pleasure to to speak with you both as I've you know been looking through your website and your work, and and we've already been talking before we push record here, but you guys have written uh several books, several different types of books.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I know Bill, Bill's the writer, and and Dale Ann, you do the hard part in editing and now talking about some some marketing and trying to get that out there.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Bill and Del Ann, I would love for you guys just to start and just share a little bit about your story and what what really led you to wanting to write and wanting to put these books together and just some of the messages that you're wanting people to take when they read these books.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks, Chris.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for uh having us on, and it's awesome.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a lot of people when you're trying to live your dream, they want to cash in on it, and uh, you know, they want money up front and things like that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just such an awesome thing you're doing.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: We love this, and we've watched so many of your uh videos.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's awesome what you're doing for writers, readers, authors, and you know, there's more than just Dell.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's a this is teamwork, and I'd like to thank Jennifer Fleming, who does our covers.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: She's, you know, our graphics person, and then we have another editor, Deb Hall, and she's out in Colorado, and you know, she edits.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have several um other authors that do beta reading for us.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to put out a top-notch product for this, you know, it's a business, so you gotta have quality in your stories.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, that's where I come from as far as right now, today as an author.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: What we draw from our life's experiences.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I could I don't want to belabor anything, but I I'll give you sort of a a quick synopsis on what we've faced in our life, if that's okay.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I was married before, this is my second marriage, and I was married 25 years.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: It it was a struggle.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was a trailer truck driver, I worked in a scrapyard.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: I went to night school, got electrical engineering and nuclear quality assurance education.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: My first wife got her doctorate degree, became a college professor.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then that, you know, things happened.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: It failed.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I left that marriage and started over again.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: I just gave everything back to my ex.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: I said, you know, you can have it all.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I ended up homeless and living in a tent for six weeks, scratching by, you know.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: But I, as far as my career goes, besides all the ones I just mentioned, I worked in health physics and nuclear power.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: I worked in instrumentation and control, working on all the controls in the control room.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Then I moved on to what they call system operations, which is switching on the grid, you know, the high power bulk transfers of power, storm recovery, things like that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Then I became the shift supervisor in that control room and what they called the reliability coordinator, who was what I was when I retired.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I always wanted to write.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sort of creative.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I I've also done oil paintings and tried to, you know, express myself that way.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I find that writing is very much like painting a picture, you know, only you do it with words.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so that kind of fit into, you know, where I was coming from.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: So then I, you know, did this career switch where for 20 years I've been writing, and we go to writers' conferences.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot to it as far as learning the craft.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, we've uh taken courses in New Hampshire, what is it, New Hampshire?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um Southern New Hampshire.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: Southern New Hampshire, yeah.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um university, master's level classes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that's what we're drawing from.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Now, uh as far as my personal life experiences that I draw from from my stories, we call ourselves Brave Knight writers.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the reason that we do that is because I had a son in my first marriage, five years old, that died of cancer.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and his favorite toy was the brave night.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I draw from that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then my second son in the first marriage, he had a heart infection, and I got him to the hospital just in time.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: He had uh they had to drain fluid out, it was crushing his heart.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: They said he only had like an hour before I got there and he would have passed.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: So that's another life experience that you know, you wanna where do your emotions come from?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, where do you get your feelings?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Myself, in 2000, I was diagnosed with hypogambigan anemia and histoplasmosis, and the doctor said, Okay, bad news, you probably only have five years.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's 26 years ago, so the story's there, okay?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um then two years ago, I had an aneurysm and woke up in a bed full of blood, and I called Dale and I said, Hey, I think I have a problem.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, rush me to the hospital.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: She said they had me hanging by my feet to keep blood in my brain.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: I lost half my blood.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: My blood pressure was down to like zero.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And my uh pastor came in, you know, and I said, What's it mean?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I just near-death experience.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I thought I was gonna see a bright light and warm.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I saw flames, you know, what are those flames?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, You need more work is what that is.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, these are experiences that we've had, and uh a lot of them I draw from to put in the book.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I just want to give you those brief synopsis.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: You can ask me questions, because you know what your um, you know, your audience is looking for in that.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're here to, you know, expose the whole truth.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I'm exposing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: I used to have a ponytail, but I'm just holding down the glinger, you know.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: But that's my words to young people are enjoy it while you got it, because you know, I'm 75 and you know, still enjoying it, still enjoying what we have.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's incredible.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I Bill, that's exactly why I love having these conversations.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and really a a main driver behind Books for Guys is because I want people to experience there's so many things you can learn about people through reading.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone has a different story to share.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody has different struggles they're going through.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can understand that you're not alone in the world and and maybe read about somebody who's gone through something that you're going through, and you can see how they got through it.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you think life's so terrible, but then you you read about someone who's lost, you know, a young child or has gone through medical problems, and you realize, hey, my life's not that bad.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's change the perspective a little bit.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what I want to encourage people to do is read about people, learn about situations.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, there's a cheat code on if you want to accomplish something, you can figure out how they did it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they wrote about it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these different books and stuff out there.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And writing, I I, you know, I promote reading, but writing is just as important.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that was one of my questions I was going to ask you, Bill.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of answered it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You said you've been writing for, you know, 20 plus years.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Within that writing, did you do a lot of personal journaling about just daily things you were going through or just to keep up with just thoughts you were having?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Our our one book, Instead by Grace, is from a journal.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: It was a 100,000-word journal I kept while we went through the experience.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's a year's experience.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: We live in a house that we built.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we did, I'm talking hands-on.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: We lived in a camper.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: We had uh Porta John that we used, and we worked on this house.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and we had a break-in.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so this book, Instead by Grace, I had to shoot the burglar.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: I know you're not a gun guy, but you know, I grew up with that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I fired two warning shots.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not like, and that's, you know, you go through this thing where people second guess you and they, oh, I'd have killed him.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: You should have.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, I did what I should do.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: What I had to do was stop this guy.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, anyways, that book, Instead by Grace, Dark Delight, is about my wife had cancer at the time, so it involves cancer and the struggle with the legal system, the recovery.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna go on a mission trip to Africa.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't want to be left alone, obviously, because this guy was still out on the street.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: He only lives a couple miles from us and he was breaking into our house.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that's that book is a journal.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a journal, and I tried to keep it as close to reality and truth and not a rant.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't diss on the man who attacked us.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: He struggles with drugs and alcohol, make allowances for that.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's just his thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: What I was trying to write was our thing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: And what he stole from us was our security and um peace.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this property that we're on, we got twenty-two acres, we're rural.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: The last thing you expect is somebody to come at 2 30 in the morning and attack you.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: And 911 did not respond until I actually shot him.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And then they came.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then they had their guns on me.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: So uh because they didn't know.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of confusion in a situation like that.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that's an answer to that question.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Other books I didn't really create from journals, but memory.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: He said he worked out of his mind.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I work out of my mind.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, do you think though that the book It said by Grace, do you think you would have been able to put that together as well as you did without having a journal of events and stuff that you could draw back to?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm asking that question because I just had a recent guest on, and he he talked about the importance of journaling, and he he's got a book coming out, uh former NFL athlete, and he's gonna write a, you know, share what he went through in a season.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone who listened to the episode and watched it, they've reached out to me and I'm gonna start journaling, I'm gonna start journaling because we talk about the importance of everyone having a story to share and how you can go back in that journal and experience what you were feeling or what you went through and the importance of that when you when you maybe go to write that story.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it sounds like you kind of did something similar here, but just how important was that journaling in the in the work of your book?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I felt the journal was extremely important to keep things accurate.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: So as we started to get into the legal and other matters that we were sorting through, she had to go to counseling.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I'm gonna journal this.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna get all these details down.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: And the way I uh approached that book, it's not it unfolds and happens.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: I try to make all my books unfold and happen.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't tell the story.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I I let the story tell itself.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: But with that journal, I was able to reflect on a lot of details that I probably would have lost.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now, my other books I do lots of research.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I'm big on research.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the jobs I've had, like as a system operator, we had to have you had to have a really good memory because we had a giant screen with all the breakers in the system on there, and you had to remember them and what their consequences were if you opened a breaker or closed a breaker or did so.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: My mind was kind of trained along that those lines to have key things trigger you on I need to remember that, that'll happen.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: So my brain kind of journals itself.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that sort of ties into our devotionals as well, because uh there's they're devotional with a journal, and so it's like a very short bite-sized bit of reading and reflection, and then room to journal each day as well.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, very important.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've seen I I have daily devotional.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a a sports specific one just because I like sports, so it's like my daily Bible reading.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I read the Bible for the first time last year, actually, from from front to back.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too last year.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I grew up, my dad's a former pastor, or I guess still a pastor, but I've never actually read the entire thing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: I and I did that, and now it makes the daily devotional even more interesting because I'm able to kind of understand stories around what I'm reading, and then you know, obviously it's fun to apply it to one of my interests.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: But Dale Ann, question for you because you guys obviously do this together, you know.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would say power couple, that's the term you know, we could use here.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: But what is it like for you from an editing standpoint to to look at what Bill's writing and be able to?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, is there is there ever a time where you're like, Bill, this is ridiculous?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what are you thinking here?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: When we first started out with Have a Soup I, there were some huge fights, and and I'm like, we're either gonna be writers or we're not gonna stay married, you know.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so we came up with a deal.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like he works it out as best he can, and he hands it over to me and he's done.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then he moves on to his next project.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't go with feedback we can't and the other editors.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we correct things, and you know, I've gained a lot of tolerance.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's gained a lot of skills.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's really grown as a writer, and so now, like the last book I edited for him just recently, we just published it a week or so ago.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was a joy, actually, to go through because, you know, there was very little that I had to correct and just nuances.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's interesting.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's that's why I wanted to ask, you know, my my in-laws, they work together, but they talk about, hey, those first couple years, you gotta figure each other out when you're around each other all the time doing the same thing.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I figured you guys probably have a story a little bit about that too, where it's like we gotta we had to find a process here to make this work in the in the right way.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it it even incorporates itself into everything.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_02: We built this house.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: We built it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: We put the ceramic tile floors down.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: We lived in the camper.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I said, this, if we survive this, we can survive anything.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I mean, there was hands-on, this house is concrete, poured concrete.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: I brought in a pumper truck.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: And during that time, there were stresses.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like when I went to build the house, I had the cash.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if you remember 2000, and I lost$300,000 in three days.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the money to build the house.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So then I and the other thing was I designed the house, and we could not get a contractor to build it.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: They all said, no way.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: So then I had to become the general contractor.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I was a general contractor, and I hired some subs to do some things, but then we did wiring, plumbing, the heats, the floors are all radiant heat floors.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was a lot.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Plus, we were working full-time jobs and living in a camper.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, those kinds of things make you a team.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think, yeah, we each have our roles.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like for that, we had our roles and we have our roles with he's a storyteller.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's a great storyteller.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's Irish, he embellishes, you know.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't embellish that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: I do embellish for entertainment, but we're we're being on the truth scale here, you know.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love it though.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love I love the story.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: I had to take loans out because I had lost so much money.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: But in the meantime, it's like I said, you know what?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: I had all this money in the Bank of Ireland, and it went from$27 a share to three cents.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: I said, let's go to Ireland.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we flew to Dublin, you know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you gotta roll with the punches, you know what I mean?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's, you know, we travel through Europe and you miss trains, or this happens, that happens, and you just go, oh, well, I'll go to a pub, you know.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: We'll catch the next train.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So you gotta approach life that way.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you get punched and you get knocked down and you get back up, and then you go another direction, or you're not gonna get punched.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, that's my our philosophy.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that that kind of perfectly leads into to one of my last questions for you.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've got just a couple more, but it's around, you know, when people read your books, and there's different, you've you've got different style books and and different things you've written, but if there's one thing you hope people take away after they read your work, what what is that one nugget that you hope they they learn or or enjoy learning about you?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you hope your readers get from reading your books?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: See, we that's our payday.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: We get feedback.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: We've had feedback from people that had cancer, and they say, Oh, I read your book, and it's like, I didn't face anything like you did, you know?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it's to try to give people hope that no matter how life knocks you down, that you can get back up.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not what you acquire in life, it's what you overcome.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's success to me.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: That you know, what you overcome is success.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I want people to really take away.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody has this perfect life, and you have to overcome.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's what life's about overcoming.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I also think our books all have a theme of seeking after truth and wisdom.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we we that's the sort of books we enjoy reading, are things that are seeking truth and wisdom, and so we hope to present some of that in our books.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: And part of this truth is that I've had life on the dark side too.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a lot of people, you're uh Christian, writer, uh and then they get this stigma about it, and it's like, well, in this next book, it's it's called Nightly Ramblings, and it's about encounters on the dark side, you know what I mean?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's part of Christianity, that's part of forgiveness.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: So these are all true stories in the book about different experiences, traveling around Europe, we've motorcycled around Europe, we've jumped trains, we hiked the coast of Cornwall, and you know, it's just it's for enjoyment.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I I want people to realize this is what Christians do, you know.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to admit, most of my life I didn't come to Christianity until I was in my 60s.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, you know what?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: I had a helping hand getting through all the encounters I had.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't do that on my own.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: So and you know, when you get blessed, you have to share your blessings.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I feel we've been blessed.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't share your blessings, they become So, you know, that's our message.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we're trying to get across.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm looking forward to reading this new book of yours.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like I one I'm going to very much enjoy.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm excited for you to share that.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Bill and Del Ann, I've got one more question for you.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one I want each of you to answer.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because I ask if if you've watched episodes, I ask everybody this question.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what is a book or two?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I want both of you to answer this, that has meant a lot to you, personally or professionally.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what's a book that is one of your favorites to recommend to other people?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you know, as far as books go, I like certain authors.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, being my age, uh you know, I like C.S.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Lewis a lot of his things.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: I like the screw tape book that he wrote.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: I like Hemingway, you know, a lot of his, you know, his style.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, I I I've been compared, some of my styles have been compared to certain authors.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Steinbeck, if you read St.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: Croix, it's a Steinbeck novel.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh heavy into character development.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: All of our books are are based on some sort of experience we had.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: And they're they're embellished.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Some aren't, some aren't.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: But and and then I I don't know if you and the Bible is definitely there.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll start with the Bible then.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been reading it for forty some years.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I read a psalm, a proverb, an old testament, and a new testament chapter every day.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it speaks to you differently at different times of your life.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Also, like I've not had a TV for the majority of my adult life, and so I read extensively, and I like reading truth seeking and wisdom seeking, and so I read Dennis Prager.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: I like to read The Big Brains, Jordan Peterson, and C.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis, The Weight of Glory is one that I read over and over again.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas Akempis, the imitation of Christ, that you can just read a paragraph or two a day and get a lot of wisdom right there.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she told me I don't have time for a TV.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't have a TV in the U.S.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like and a more recent author that I am really enjoying is um Raymond Ibrahim.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: He does a lot of research, uses you know, original resources and so on.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, I love that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you mentioned I I used to wonder, you know, I was like, how can someone read the Bible over and over and over?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've realized, like a lot of things, there's a lot that can mean or be translated differently depending on what you're experiencing in life and what you're going through.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, it was really cool for me to talk with my dad about that when I finished.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Oh man, just keep reading it because there's gonna be new things you pick up on or new new things you thought you knew and it changes, you know.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's um that's been my experience too.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I go to church and the pastor says, and I'm I'm like, wait a minute, I never thought of that, you know.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's just part of life.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's it really is.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's a guide.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I write the dates in in my Bible.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I write the dates in when it spoke to me, like a you know, whatever verse speaks to me that day.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great idea.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I love Proverbs because it's one of those easy things you can just catch a take a nugget every day and apply it.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's my favorite book.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I loved going through Proverbs, and I could see where it's just kind of a daily message that you can uh quickly take away and use.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I know it's a popular book for for a lot of people.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a good, even if you don't, I don't know, follow along that much.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Proverbs is something everybody can read and take something away from, which is really cool.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Bill and Dale Ann, this has been such a fun conversation.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I thank you again for taking the time to do this.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll have all your books on the website.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, we've got three of them so far.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be adding the others over the next couple of weeks.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you've got another one that that'll be coming out, so we'll get that one on there too.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the show notes of this episode, we'll make sure your website's there for everybody to go follow along that wants to as well.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've got all your social media channels through that too.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: But no, Bill and Delane, again, such an honor.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: This has been such a joy, and I can't wait to see your future work.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited about it, just knowing what's coming out, and I just can't wait to see what you continue to do.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you both for taking the time to do this.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you, Chris.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for everything you do.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we're taking uh a reset.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're going away for three months, taking our bicycles, a month to get to Alaska, a month in Alaska, and a month to come back.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: So that might become a story.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that might be a future book.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that sounds great.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks, Bill and Joanne.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, thank you very much.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.