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Steve Berry Tells You How to Write! · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast, Listen to the little voice that's in
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your head telling you to write and write every day. Hey, writers,
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this is Bill Vernhart. Laura and I are traveling this weekend, so instead
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of the usual podcast episode, we've got a special treat for you, a
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classic interview from that we actually recorded in twenty twenty, but he buried the
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incredibly talented New York Times bestselling author several times over. Started with Cotton Malone
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as series character with the Templar Legacy, and he's just been getting better and
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more popular ever since. So we're combining the two interviews we did with him
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to the magic that only Jesse Ulrich can bring to this recording process and sharing
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it with you and Laura and Jesse and I. I'll be back with a
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normal episode next time, so enjoy. Steve, Welcome to the podcast.
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Glad to be here. Bill, all right, traditional first question, if
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you could offer one piece of advice to an aspiring writer, what would it
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be. Listen to the little voice that's in your head telling you to write
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and write every day. You know, I think a lot of people hear
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that voice, but how do you actually make yourself sit down and write well.
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You have to. It takes discipline writing. You know, writing is
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a discipline. It's not an obsession. You don't get obsessed with it,
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but it truly is a discipline. You have to determine. You know,
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what's your best time of day? When is you win? Are you most
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productive? For me, it's in the morning time. So I always set
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aside two hours every morning. I went to my law office at seven o'clock
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and I wrote from seven to nine every single morning. This is before I
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was published writing manuscripts. You find the time when you're most productive. You
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sit yourself down, you listen to the little voice, and you keep going.
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Now, you know, I You know you get asked all the time
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why do you write? You write because you have to. If you don't,
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the little voice will drive you insane. And I've been at it now
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thirty years, and the little voice still drives me insane all the time.
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So the best advice to a writer is listen to the little voice, get
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a routine, stick to it, and try to write your words. Try
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to write some words every day. I'm not sure everybody has the same degree
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of discipline that you do. I remember hearing you speak once and you attributed
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nuns at a Catholic school where you were educated for instilling discipline. Yeah,
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I was. I went to Catholic school for the first seven years, and
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the nuns taught me discipline because you really didn't. I mean, if you
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didn't you came in without your homework. You only came once without your homework.
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You never did it again. They were tough now. But the way
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it is that, you know when I hear writers say that all the time,
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you know, it all depends on what you want to do. You
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know, a lot of people don't know my story. I guess I's to
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say it very quickly. You know, from the day I wrote my first
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word to the day I sold my first word was twelve years. Twelve years.
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During that period, I wrote eight manuscripts. Five went to New York
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publishing houses. They're rejected eighty five times. I made it on the eighty
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sixth time, twelve years after I started. So I'm you know, I'm
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the living proof you can do it. So you don't want to make excuses.
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If you want to achieve, if you want to be a published writer,
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if you want to develop an audience and tell stories to people on a
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wide scale. Then you've got to get the discipline in place to produce the
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product, and you have to teach yourself how to do that. And during
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that twelve years of rejection, I taught myself how to write a novel in
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one year. And you have to do the same thing. It all depends
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on what you want. If you're just if you're just writing to write,
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and by the way, the vast majority of writers that's why they write.
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They just want to write. But if you're writing to become a commercial fiction
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writer, then it's a whole different story and requires a whole new level of
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discipline, I would think, absolutely. And that whole time you were doing
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the twelve years and eighty five rejections, you're practicing law full time, right
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absolutely. And I wrote seven novels still as a lawyer. I did not
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quit as a lawyer to novel eight. So I kept going doing that process
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because you know, I wasn't going to quit my day job for God's sakes.
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I mean, you know, I had to make sure that I could
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make a living at it. I was just fortunate that I was able to
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make a living at it. So you just, you know, to be
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a commercial fiction writer and write for a publishing house is one of the hardest
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goals to achieve in the business, There's no question about that. But don't
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tell me you can't do it, because I started with eighty five rejections,
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you know, and I made it so other folks can do it too.
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Absolutely. And for that matter, I talk about practicing law. You held
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well, you held a public office, you were county what what was your
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office again? I was on the school board for four years and then I
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was a county commissioner for ten years. That's what I and that was all.
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That was all during the time I was writing. So I actually had
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three jobs during that time I was writing. I was a public official and
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I was a lawyer. And so you know, you just balance your time
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and manage your time properly and make it happen. Sure where in that process
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did you finally land your first agent? That was actually early on, which
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was really shocking to me. It was about I would say five years into
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the twelve I sent out about five hundred query letters to agents. I got
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about ten back that were kind of, you know, lukewarm interested, and
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then one took me, which is a miracle because getting an agent is probably
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harder than getting a publisher. And that's even true today, that's still true
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today. And I was fortunate that Pam Hearn in New Orleans took me and
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she submitted those five manuscripts to New York. And those were back in the
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days when you had to print out manuscripts and mail them off I remember,
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Yeah, lots of Manila envelopes and self address stamp returns. And she did
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that for seven years, and she fronted all the posted. She never sent
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me a bill for anything. And finally she was there when we did it.
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And now she gets fifteen percent of my first ten novels for the rest
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of her life. Well that's that's a fantastic story. The first book was,
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am I right? The Amber Room? First published book? Yeah,
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it was the fourth book that I wrote. Yeah, first pout. Well
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what do you think made the difference? I mean, was it was it
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your work improving or was it just the right book in the right time or
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what happened? It was all about timing. The world changed during the nineties.
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My genre was dead. I mean, the spy thriller died in nineteen
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ninety when the Cold War ended, so it kind of died and by two
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thousands and that genre was gone. And then the Da Vinci Code came in
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two thousand and three, and Random House had bought it in two thousand and
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two. Now they had no idea what they had at this point. They
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just knew they had something kind of fresh and different. And Dan writ's Action
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History, Secrets, Conspiracies, That's exactly what I was writing. And so
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Random House was looking for something to go with the Da Vinci and I got
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bought to kind of come in on the coattails of Da Vinci, and Da
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Vinci was published in spring of three. I was published in fall of three,
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and we wrote those coketails, said, God blessed An Brown. He
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brought that genre back to life. He did, and it's still going strong
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today thanks to him. And at some point you had a book called The
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Templar Legacy, right, which was the right word to having a title.
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Yeah, what happened was is I got the Amber Room, Romanov Prophecy and
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Third Secret were three of the five that went to the New York Houses.
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So I got there, they got bought the second time around. Once those
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were done, we had to come up with something new, and that was
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when I created Cotton Malone and wrote The Templar Legacy in the spring of two
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thousand and six, and that was my biggest bestseller and remains to this day
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my biggest best selling novel really, And that was the first with your series
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character with cotton Malone. Correct, Wow, cot Malone. Yeah, Templar
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was a magic word then, and it just did so good. And as
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I said, to this day, that book still sells solid. That was
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the How many Cotton Malon novels have there been now fifteen, the most recent
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being the Warsaw Protocol, right, correct? It just came out about it
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into February, I sounded as out now, and it's the fifteenth Cotton Malone
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Adventure out now. It's on the New York Times bestseller list as we're speaking.
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I was very fortunate this one went made it to number two, and
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I was very fortunate to get to number two. It's really cool. Yeah,
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what do you think of as you know, what lessons have you learned
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along the way after having done what at least twenty novels? Now, yeah,
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this is my This is the nineteenth printed book for me. I've written
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twenty four, right, but published nineteen. So what have I learned.
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I mean you learn a lot. I mean you you learn how to how
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to keep the story going, how to paste it, how to keep readers
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enter. You learn to try to find the right subject matters. You try
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to write a high concept book that's going to play well all over the world.
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You learn a lot. I've made mistakes too, I mean, I
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made my share of mistakes, and you learn from those as well. Well.
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I'm toying with whether I should even ask, but okay, what are
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the mistakes that you made along the way? A couple of covers that were
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pour choices, sure, and I went along with both of them, even
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though I knew better on one. The other I loved, but it just
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didn't. It didn't work. Cover cover matters. Writers today better be aware
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of that. You cover on your book matters a whole bunch. And I
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made a couple of tactical mistakes with those covers, and I paid the price
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for them and poor sales. One of those was The Columbus Affair. The
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Columbus Affair cover, the original hardcover cover. I loved it. There was
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a beautiful cover, it was cool, it was different, it was interesting,
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and the Columbus Affairs a standalone novel. It's not a cotton malone book.
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It's a it's another character. And that book just tanked right out of
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the box. It did not do well, and we recover. We recovered
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it for the mass market, which did very well, and with the repackaging
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of it today that novel is my third or fourth best selling novel. So
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it's it's packaging matters. And we made up some packaging decisions that weren't They
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weren't good back then, you know, so you those those couple of things,
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you know, came back to bite me, and I learned my lesson.
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I'm very, very very conscious of covers today. Well was it too
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busy or the wrong color, or what do you think was the problem?
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Didn't have the elements that my readers wanted on there, the clear historical element.
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It didn't have it. It was too nebulous. It was also not
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a cotton malone book, which is another problem with it. I did not
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want to write the standalone My publisher insisted I do that. That's another error,
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but I didn't have a choice. That sounds like the opposite of what
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a publisher would ask you to do. Well, I would agree, but
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at that time they had this idea of bringing in new readers by doing something
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different. I was completely against it, but I did it as a team
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player, and sure enough my instincts were correct. It was not a good
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idea. Now, over time, that book has done exactly what they thought
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it would do. People read it, love it, go pick up the
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other novels. Because it's a different character. It's a guy named Tom Sagan.
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He's an ex journalist. But the book is action history, secrets,
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conspiracies, just like Cotton Malone. It's a terrific novel. I love the
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novel because it deals with something with Christopher Columbus, something out of the island
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of Jamaica that's real, some really cool stuff. And you know, over
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time that book has done really well and has driven people. If you go
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to the Amazon page for The Columbus Affair and look at what people also buy,
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it always includes all of my Cotton Malone books. So in the end,
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they were right. In the long term they were correct, and the
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short term, no, it was a disaster. You talked a minute ago
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about the importance of keeping this story going. Do you find that more challenging.
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I mean, you've done this twenty plus times now is that you can't
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just have somebody pull out a gun every time you need a chapter in Oh,
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it's becoming much more of a challenge because after twenty books, you've kind
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of run out of things you've done. You've got to come up with new,
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fresh things, and it gets harder. I was told once that the
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longer you write, the harder it gets, and they're absolutely correct, because
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you get a little better mastery of your craft and you produce a better manuscript,
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no question, but the originality begins to suffer and you have to you
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have to stay fresh. The one thing you don't want to do is the
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same thing over and over again. Right, You had a book which ends
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with and I apologize for not remembering the title, but just when you think
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Conton's going to get to sit down for a minute, he basically hears the
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noise downstairs, grabs his gun, and that's the end of the book.
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Yep, I did that. Which one was that? I believe that was
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in the Charlemagne pursuit, and I ended it that way. The story's over,
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everything's over, everything's tied up, there's no loose ends, there's a
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break, and then he hears that noise grabs his gun. I ended it.
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Then I started the next novel at that moment. Sure, and it
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worked great, It was wonderful. I just did it again in the Warsaw
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Protocol. I mean in the last year's book, the Multa Exchange. I
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did it there too, with it all being over. Cassiopia and Cotton are
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in the restaurant and Danny Daniels shows up. Look on his face, there's
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trouble. Book ended. Next book starts right at that moment. Well,
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that's why it's stuck in my mind, because as I read it, I
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thought, this is brilliant. That is different, something that hadn't I think,
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been in your previous books and works. So I mean, who isn't
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desperate to read the next book after that? Well, that's what you want
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to do. The one thing you don't want to do, and I would
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caution writers with this, is you do not want to leave a story element
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of that book hanging at the end, right because you cannot assume people are
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going to read the next book. That's creating almost a serial at that point.
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Now, cereals work great in mysteries, they work great in romance,
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they work great in fantasy. They do not work so great in thrillers.
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No, that's not what you've told. You've finished the story and then gave
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people a little teaser of what's next, right, And like I said,
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I liked it, So I did it again last year and I started Warsaw
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at the moment the other one ended. Really good stuff. What you mentioned
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thrillers. I think that you've always been devoted to thrillers, Like even before
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you were published, thrillers were your main jam right. Oh, yeah,
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that's what I love to read, absolutely so that history. I love to
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read history and thrillers. And I want to mention that you were one of
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the founding members of ITW International Thriller Writers and been president or co president I
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don't know how many times, but you're the driving force. Just once,
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I was one of the founding members and I served three years as co president,
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and then I've been on the board as vice president of publications for many
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years. Am I right in thinking that it tw now has over six thousand
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members? It's a approaching six thousand years. I mean, is there any
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other writing group that even comes close to that? That's extraordinary. I don't
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know how many are in MWA now, I don't know the answer to that
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question. I know that when I was president we had about three hundred members,
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because I was president in its infancy when it's first starting when I left
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office, we had about fifteen hundred or so, and it's just been growing
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steadily ever since. And now we're in like forty countries around the world.
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So the word international in international thriller writers is quite significant. And am I
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right in thinking the organization still doesn't charge dues, not a bit. We've
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got rid of those in two thousand and seven. I think we support the
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organization from our publications. We've been very fortunate. We've had some very successful
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publications that have made us a lot of money. So the organization is properly
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endowed. Fantastic, Steve, thanks so much for being on the podcast.
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Great to be here, Bill, Steve, welcome back to the podcast.
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Great to be back again. Bill. I wanted to talk to you this
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time about series characters because I know there's a lot of interest in series characters,
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a lot of demand for them. Seems to be more of a popular
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way for writers to go than it has been in the past. And you,
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of course, with Cotton Malone, have one of the most successful series
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characters out there. But I remember you didn't start with Cotton Malone. You
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did two three novels, three novels, and then with The Templar Legacy,
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introduced Cotton Malone. What made you decide to create a series character? Well,
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it was really random. House's idea marked the money. My editor at
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the time said let's create a series. And that was a little weird for
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me because I don't need series. I mean, I never really have read
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series. Now. I read Dirk Pitt, you know, Clive Cussler,
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but those really aren't a series. Those are each kind of standalone books.
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Every one of them are standalone books. They just happened to go one after
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the other. I was a big series character reader, so it was a
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little difficult for me to figure out how to do that. So we created
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Cotton Malone and wrote The Templar Legacy. And when I wrote it, I
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did not have any illusions that I was going to get to do this fifteen
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more times. I was just hoping to get through it one time. So
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I created Cotton and he did very well, very very well. I mean,
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as I said, that's my biggest selling book then and biggest selling book
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of all time is the Templar legacy. It still sells a lot of copies
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today, and Cotton was created and so we kept him going. Now what
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I've learned, And I learned this from Lee Child. He taught me this
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because he writes the Jack Reacher books, and each book in a series has
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to be the same but different, the same but different. Now how does
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that? How do you make that's a that's a tough that's a tall order?
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Now? So how are they the same? Well? There, every
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book is action history, secrets conspiracies. Okay, how is it different?
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Different history, different protagonists, different, So what's different? Settings? Everything
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about the book is different than the other. The only thing the same is
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action history, secrets, conspiracies, and of course the character Cought Malone.
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So I've learned that trick I write. I've written fifteen Cotton Malone books and
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I get asked all the time. Do you have to read them in order?
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Absolutely not. You can read them in any order you please. I
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write them where you can come in and out of the series however you want.
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And that's what I learned from Lee. The same but different. I
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mean, you're basically saying every book can't be exactly the same, but sort
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of. Every book needs to be the same, exam in different words,
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different in different settings and different motivations, all those kinds of things. Every
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one of my books are utterly different, utterly different, but they are the
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same because they involve action, history, secrets, conspiracy. Is it challenging
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to come up with those new fresh elements, extremely challenging. It's harder and
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harder every year because I want something that no one's ever touched before. I
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don't want to do what someone's someone's updone, and it's hard. I have
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to find that thing from history, that thing from the past that's real.
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I cannot make it up. It's got to be real, and it's got
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to be something that's going to interest me and is going to interest the reader.
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And then I have to make it relevant today. It still has to
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matter today. That thing from the past. I call it the ow factor,
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the thing from the past thing it kind of should go ooh, like
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Templars or Charlemagne, those kinds of things. And then the other thing is
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the so what who cares if we find the Library of Alexandria? Who cares
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if Queen Elizabeth the First was a man? Who cares? You know about
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the templars one way, does it matter? I have to have that so
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what today? And they're hard to figuring, harder and harder to find.
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But thankfully I'm okay for about four more years at least, and then a
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new series character. No, no, I just have to come up with
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a new idea I have. I have. I'm okay for twenty one,
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two, twenty three. I'm okay. Oh you're saying you've got four years?
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Four years of ideas? Are stakes planned? Yeah? Well, well,
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the twenty twenty one novels finished. It's already turned in because you know,
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you do a year in advance in the book business. So I turned
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it in this year to publish next year. I'm writing the twenty twenty two
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novel that will be turned in later this year, and then I've already got
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the ideas for twenty three and twenty four. So, as I said,
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I'm okay for four years. Hopefully within the next four years I'll find a
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couple more ideas. I have a hunch you will. What were the elements
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or what were you thinking of when you created Cotton Malone Copenhagen used bookseller former
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government sir, What were you trying to do there, How are you going
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to make him appealing? Well, I wanted him to be different. You've
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got to create somebody a little different. So I was in Copenhagen when he
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was born. I was in I wrote plots, which is a square there.
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I was eating at the Cafe nor Dawn, and there I was,
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and he came into my brain. He's going to be a retired Justice Department
23:48
agent. He's going to own an old bookshop because you love owned bookshops,
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right bookshops. Yeah, And he's going to get himself into trouble all the
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time. And he kind of came into my brain and I wrote down the
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elements of what he should be, and I went back when I wrote the
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Templar Legacy and created him. Now that what I wanted from him. He's
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not a Daniel Craig kind of guy. He doesn't work out every day,
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he doesn't run twenty miles. He does a bench press. He's an ordinary
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guy who can do extraordinary things when called upon. And I think that's why
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he's kind of caught on because he's not a superhero. He makes mistakes,
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he screws up, but he fixes it in the end, you know,
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you mentioned Daniel Craig James Bond actor obviously, but it occurs to me that
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in the early Ian Fleming novels, James Bond is much more ordinary, even
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talking about how boring he is in real life, but rises to the occasion.
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That's where some of that came to me from reading those early in Fleming
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novels. The James Bond of the movies and the James Bond that Fleming created
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originally are not the same character, right, especially in the early novels.
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Right. And because the best spy is the one you never noticed, which
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makes a lot of sense. Who would not notice? And I assume that
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Cotton was a former government agent because that gives him skills. Even if he's
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not working out every day, he can't handle himself if he needs to.
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You have to have that element in there. But I bade him retired,
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so he quit early, and he moves to Copenhan again, divorces his wife,
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moves over, owns an old bookshop, and just kind of gets drug
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back in all the time against Bill, you know, and so. And
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I use those personal motivations for a lot of books, but till about eight
25:55
or nine books in you just run out of them, so I had to
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transition him over and now he basically works for hire right now, speaking of
26:03
not being James Bond, Cotton is very successful, you know, professionally dealing
26:11
with the bad guys, but considerably less so in his personal life. Was
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that a deliberate choice? Yes, he's terrible with women, terrible because he's
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not good with it at all. He's divorced from his wife. He has
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a son that's not biologically his. He has to deal with that. That's
26:30
dealt with in several of the novels. And he has a father that died
26:34
when he was aged ten, and that was dealt with in the Charlemagne Pursuit.
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And then he meets Cassiopia. And in the beginning, Cassiopia was not
26:45
supposed to be really a love interest for Cotton. She was just kind of
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kind of come in and go out. But she's stuck around and she's there
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now and now they have a relationship and they and she's become a very popular
26:57
character. And when I don't put her in a book, I catch hell
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for it. She was introduced am I thinking right in one of the short
27:04
stories. She was introduced in the in the Templar Legacy when I actually introduced
27:11
her there. But she was a kind of a she was not a major
27:15
player in that, okay, so I wasn't going to keep her. But
27:19
Elizabeth, my wife, said that that wasn't an option. So she had
27:22
to stay. So because Kessiopie is basically her ah, she wanted, she
27:29
wanted her to continue, and so she has. And now I actually broke
27:33
them up at the end of one of the novels. I actually ended their
27:37
relationship completely. And she had read the she's the first reader of my manuscript
27:42
when it's finished, and she read it. She came in, she threw
27:45
it on the table and she says, that's not going to happen. That's
27:51
fantastic, not going to happen. I fixed it next book, so I
27:56
did, oh wow, that's it's like Edgar Ice spurs to kill off Tarzan's
28:00
Jane, and publishers saying I would say Liz earned a new pair of shoes
28:07
on that one. She did. She tried. I mean, I never
28:14
intended Cotton to be monogamous. And let me tell you why. And because
28:18
when you write a series, and if you'll notice this on television and all
28:22
the protagonist of the TV series almost never have a family, right, They
28:27
never have a wife, they never have a husband. They have ex wives,
28:32
ex husbands and ex families. And the reason for that is, as
28:36
you well know, you've written this too, they get in the way after
28:38
a while, you know, they just kind of get in the way.
28:41
We're writing a story. Each one member has to be the same but different,
28:47
and you can't sit around and deal with a family and every story and
28:51
introduce everybody and go through all of that. It's better to keep them kind
28:55
of freelance. And I always wanted Cotton to play the field. He was
28:59
never to be monogamous. But again, Elizabeth, there's where she stepped in.
29:03
She says that's not going to happen either. So he's now kind of
29:07
settled down with Cassiopia. And I confess I wish he could play the field
29:12
a little bit. I think it'd be a little more fun from a writing
29:15
standpoint. Well, a relationship limits, you know, cuts off. But
29:21
then again, given how poor Cotton was with women, maybe this is for
29:25
the best. Yeah. And she understands him, and she gets him,
29:29
and she knows how to deal with him, and he knows how to deal
29:32
with her, and it's worked out very well. Cassiope comes about every other
29:36
book. I don't have her in every novel, about every other book.
29:40
And when she's not there, I bring in another character called Luke Daniels.
29:42
She's a younger guy. He's a younger version of Cotton, so I can
29:47
have a character who can make mistakes and screw up and really, you know,
29:51
because he's learning on the job. And Luke comes in when Cassiopia is
29:56
not later. Maybe it's my imagination, but I think that Cotton's imperfections not
30:03
good with women. His personal life was a mess better now with Cassiopia.
30:07
But I think that's part of the appeal. I think that's what humanizes him
30:11
and makes people want to read more of him. That's what I was hoping
30:15
too. I mean, that's why I gave him those imperfections. I wanted
30:19
him to be someone we all know, and someone like you don't mind being
30:25
stuck on an elevator with him, that kind of you think you'll get tired
30:29
of Cotton. You mentioned Lee Child a minute ago, who, of course
30:32
has announced that he's done writing the Reacher books. He's going to take them
30:38
over, right, So you think you'll ever do something like that. I
30:42
think I time soon. I think me and Cotton are going to be together
30:45
for a while. He serves me well, he does a great job,
30:48
and I like him and I enjoy him, so I'd like to keep him
30:52
going. I wouldn't mind branching out a little bit. I wouldn't mind Luke
30:56
Daniels having his own book. I wouldn't mind Cassiopia heard own book. That
31:00
would be fun to do. But I don't want to get rid of Cotton
31:03
them. That's sensible. Can we talk a minute about history? Your books
31:10
are so steeped in history, that too, is clearly one of the appeals
31:15
people learn a little something at this same time they're being entertained. How do
31:22
you come up with that stuff? What kind of research do you do?
31:25
Well? It takes. It's about an eighteen month process to research one of
31:27
my novels. I do it six months the last six months of writing the
31:33
novel, or I start researching the next one. And so I use around
31:38
four hundred sources to write a novel, and those are books. I use
31:44
physical books. Wow, my vast majority of them at a giant used bookshop
31:51
here and it's in Jacksonville called the Chamblin Book Mine. It's a wonderful place.
31:56
He's got incredible selections in there, just foul tens of thousands of volumes.
32:01
I'm very fortunate to have that where I can go get the material I
32:05
need. And I don't read four hundred books, but I do read large
32:09
chunks of four hundred books. And I take a lot of notes out of
32:14
those books, and those notes stack about six inches high. And of that
32:19
stack, I'm only going to use about ten percent of the information in there,
32:23
and I don't know when I'm going to use it till I start writing
32:27
the novel. The hardest thing for folks in my genre is mixing information with
32:34
action. It's the hardest thing to do. And I'm not saying I'm great
32:38
at it or I'm wonderful at it. I'm only saying I'm very conscious of
32:42
it, and I make a very conscious effort to mix the information with the
32:45
action as carefully as I can, so you don't get too much of either
32:51
one of those, right. No, Actually, you're very good at it,
32:53
that integration of exposition, so the plot doesn't ground to a halt.
33:00
People feel like they're being lectured, but still you give it that fascinating nonfiction
33:08
extra layer or subtext, whatever you want to call it. It's one of
33:13
the things that makes your book special. Thank you. The trick is is
33:15
for them to be reading down the page and all at once they just realized
33:20
they learned something. Yeah, exactly, and they never they never realized it.
33:24
So they got about three paragraphs down they go, oh, I just
33:29
learned something. That's the trick. Do that, that's the goal. Yeah,
33:35
since we're talking about history, can we talk a minute about History Matters,
33:38
your nonprofit, which, among other things, I think, is helping
33:44
to preserve historical landmarks. How did that come about? About eleven years ago
33:51
we decided we will try to give back a little bit. So Elizabeth not
33:53
created History Matters. And what we do is we go around the communities.
33:58
We help them raise money for their low historical projects. We've done libraries,
34:02
buildings, posters, documents, books, cemeteries, you name it. We've
34:07
raised money for it about ninety projects around the country and one in Canada,
34:13
and we've raised a little over two million dollars for those various historical projects.
34:20
Historical preservation is a local thing. There's no one going to come do it
34:22
for you. You've got to do it yourself, and we help communities with
34:27
that. It's been very gratifying, and we don't do as many as we
34:30
used to. We do one or two a year now and we try to
34:34
find the right thing and if we find the right thing, we go for
34:37
it. That's fantastic work though. You've really taken on some fantastic projects,
34:44
Steve. Thanks again for being on the podcast. Great for your building.
34:49
Bye bye. Thank you again, Steve for that wonderful interview. And let
34:58
me remind everyone first, of course you knew I was going to say this
35:02
final verdict, the sixth and final bit. Daniel Pike book is now available
35:08
for pre order, and this is a great time to send me any suggestions
35:15
regarding this podcast, my website, the writer con website, the conference,
35:21
the retreats, or anything else. My email address again is WB at William
35:25
Bernhardt dot com. Your ratings and reviews of this podcast are always appreciated.
35:35
Until next time. It'll be a whole new year when I talk to you
35:40
next. So you know what I think your New Year's resolution ought to be
35:46
deep writing. Make yourself write every day and remember you cannot fail if you
35:57
refuse to Quino assass