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Historical Fiction Strategies with John Phillips · WriterCon

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Speaker 1: This week on the writer Con podcast, I think.
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Speaker 2: I'd summon up the old cliche of killing your babies.
0:08
Speaker 2: That was a very difficult thing for me to do
0:11
Speaker 2: initially because I thought that it was just beautiful, prize
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Speaker 2: winning prose and it wasn't. So I think that's really key.
0:25
Speaker 2: That was difficult for me, as I said, And.
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Speaker 3: You just have to really.
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Speaker 2: Look at it with a hard eye and figure out
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Speaker 2: whether it's being cute where really.
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Speaker 3: Works in the story.
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Speaker 4: Welcome to writer Com, a gathering place for writers to
0:42
Speaker 4: share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Do
0:45
Speaker 4: you have a desire to write? Every successful writer started
0:48
Speaker 4: with their first book. All it takes is determination and knowledge,
0:52
Speaker 4: and writer con can provide that knowledge. Your hosts are
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Speaker 4: number one national best selling writer William Bernhardt, author more
0:58
Speaker 4: than sixty books, including The Superman Wars, and Laura Bernhardt,
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Speaker 4: Award winning author of the Wantlan File series and Shadow
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Speaker 4: of the taj.
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Speaker 5: Thank you, Jesse Ulrich. Hello there, writers, thanks for joining
1:12
Speaker 5: us today. This is of course our first episode of
1:17
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six, so I thought it might be instructive
1:21
Speaker 5: or possibly really embarrassing to look at the predictions we
1:25
Speaker 5: made a year ago and decided if any of them
1:28
Speaker 5: came true, and then on the next episode we can
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Speaker 5: make predictions for twenty twenty twenty six and set ourselves
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Speaker 5: up for further embarrassment and look foolish when they don't
1:40
Speaker 5: come true. Because you know, whatever else you want to
1:43
Speaker 5: say about the publishing business, it is not predictable. In fact,
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Speaker 5: I might be willing to say, after thirty five years
1:51
Speaker 5: in this business, it's completely unpredictable most of the time. Okay,
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Speaker 5: I went back and listened to our episode from a
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Speaker 5: year ago, and here are I'm going to call our
2:01
Speaker 5: three main predictions. Number one, AI use will increase in
2:06
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five. I don't know what do you think, guys?
2:08
Speaker 5: Did that come true?
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Speaker 6: One? Heck?
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Speaker 1: Yes, whether we want to or not.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, have you guys heard some of this? I mean,
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Speaker 5: people talk about AI slop, but now they are even
2:19
Speaker 5: AI songs that are showing up on Spotify and some
2:23
Speaker 5: people can't tell the difference.
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Speaker 6: Yeah.
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Speaker 5: So how long will it be till we have AI
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Speaker 5: slop books?
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Speaker 1: I think we already do do?
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Speaker 6: Yeah? This is like, this is our doom prediction and
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Speaker 6: it came true.
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Speaker 5: Why, I mean, are they labeled as such or.
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Speaker 4: I think in between now and last year, I feel
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Speaker 4: like we talked about Amazon putting a restriction on the
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Speaker 4: amount of books that can be uploaded in a day
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Speaker 4: because people were just uploading AI slop books all day long.
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Speaker 5: Wow, that's never been a problem for me.
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Speaker 6: I know, yeah, now, don't I don't think that they do.
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Speaker 6: You know, when you go to a photo, we have
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Speaker 6: to mark whether or not AI was used to generate it.
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Speaker 6: But I think the people who are uploading these books
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Speaker 6: are not going to admit to that. I mean, that's
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Speaker 6: that's that's never going to happen. So we have to
3:13
Speaker 6: be savvy consumers. We have to pay close attention and
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Speaker 6: be smart about things and pay attention to what you're downloading.
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Speaker 5: Sure, okay, prediction number two. See if you can discuss
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Speaker 5: this one without getting political tariffs will increase the cost
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Speaker 5: of books in twenty twenty five? Did that happen?
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Speaker 1: Maybe? I'm not honestly, I did. Did I buy that
3:38
Speaker 1: many books this year?
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Speaker 5: So I have seen well and you buy mostly digital books,
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Speaker 5: right I did. I don't think it affected digital it
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Speaker 5: did affect anything that needed paper. What were you saying, Laura, Yes, I.
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Speaker 6: I guess I can't prove that it was tariffs, but
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Speaker 6: absolutely I noticed that book production costs increase, which means
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Speaker 6: royalties decrease unless charge more for those books that we
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Speaker 6: put out there, and whether or not consumers are going
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Speaker 6: to go for it is a problem. I think that
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Speaker 6: I saw a decrease for sure, and I think it's
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Speaker 6: because of the rising costs.
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Speaker 5: Well, a lot of the paper that goes into books
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Speaker 5: comes from Canada, and there are exceptions that are supposed
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Speaker 5: to apply to books of some kind in some circumstances
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Speaker 5: blah blah blah, but not always, and paper is always
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Speaker 5: the highest cost of a paper book. What nobody, I
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Speaker 5: think anticipated was that Canada, Canada and Canadian citizens would
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Speaker 5: start boycotting American books, but that sadly has happened to
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Speaker 5: Prediction number three, Romanticy will plateau. At that point, when
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Speaker 5: the fourth wing was soaring high, it was easier to
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Speaker 5: make that prediction because it didn't seem like it could
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Speaker 5: possibly go any higher. I'm not sure about this, Laura.
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Speaker 5: I know Rebecca Yaros's more recent book in that series
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Speaker 5: has been criticized, but as far as I can tell,
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Speaker 5: it's still selling very well. What's your take.
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Speaker 6: I've seen some articles about this that say that romanticy
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Speaker 6: is starting to cool off.
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Speaker 5: But well, let's give ourselves credit for this one too.
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Speaker 2: The well.
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Speaker 6: Bring a lot to the table there. Since I'm not
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Speaker 6: I don't write them, and so I can't say from
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Speaker 6: my personal experience whether I saw that plateau tank rise whatever.
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Speaker 6: But maybe somebody who knows a little bit more can
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Speaker 6: can come in and comment.
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Speaker 5: And by that you mean Jesse, who is this romanticy expert.
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Speaker 4: We did foresee the massive rises. At least we discussed
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Speaker 4: the massive rise of like weirdiche Roman romanticy combinations, and
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Speaker 4: we totally talked about hockey hockey romances and now he
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Speaker 4: did ravelries like the most the biggest TV show.
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Speaker 5: That's right.
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Speaker 6: Yes, we have a daughter who loves hockey romance. It's
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Speaker 6: like what she almost exclusively reads. Right now, I think
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Speaker 6: that's wild, But yes, you're right we called that.
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Speaker 5: We did, and for that matter, there are other sports
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Speaker 5: romances too, But I don't know why hockey led the pack.
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Speaker 5: Is there a I mean, it's not the most popular sport,
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Speaker 5: although it is a popular sport.
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Speaker 6: But yeah, we did want this or maybe some of
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Speaker 6: our listeners again in content and let us know why.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I have a theory.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: The theory, which is at least for people my age
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Speaker 4: and slightly younger, is people who grew up with the
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Speaker 4: Mighty Ducks franchise just have a built in love of hockey,
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Speaker 4: whether they actually like hockey.
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Speaker 5: Or not, whether they into a real game or not.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, there's just there's between My Ducks one and My
7:04
Speaker 4: Ducks two. There's just like a an idea that interesting
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Speaker 4: things happen.
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Speaker 1: In hockey even if we don't CHECKI follow the sports.
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Speaker 5: All right, but it seems like there's more to explore here.
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Speaker 5: Who's okay? Challenge to readers, to listeners and readers, who's
7:22
Speaker 5: going to write the first pickleball romance? I mean, isn't
7:25
Speaker 5: that just waiting to happen?
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Speaker 3: Yes?
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Speaker 6: No, now I have to go see it. Probably exists already,
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Speaker 6: but if not, we need to do it.
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Speaker 5: Yeah. Or is the problem that pickleball is people my age,
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Speaker 5: not young people like you like to see in romance novels.
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Speaker 6: Well, you know what, there is an audience hungry for
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Speaker 6: romance in later years.
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Speaker 5: Absolutely sense to me, given the readership. Is that true?
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Speaker 1: Yeah?
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Speaker 6: I hear from people that they would like to see
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Speaker 6: like people are don't connect as much with twenty something
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Speaker 6: protagonists and those young romances. We want to see something
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Speaker 6: a little more mature, and there's a huge audience there.
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Speaker 5: Okay, I love on the pickleball course.
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Speaker 4: I'm going to have to share this in the video
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Speaker 4: part there is There are pickleball romance novels. One of
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Speaker 4: those called Pickleballers. The book cover is delightful. Also on
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Speaker 4: good Reads there's a list of six pickleball romance novels.
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Speaker 6: It's Happening.
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Speaker 4: One's called All's Fair and Love and Pickleball. One's called
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Speaker 4: Pickle Perfect Love and Pickleball, a small town sports romance.
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Speaker 3: Oh I love it.
8:39
Speaker 5: Once again, I'm late to the game.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, well, if there's six, If there's only six so far,
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Speaker 6: I think we could still maybe hop in and you
8:48
Speaker 6: never know.
8:49
Speaker 5: I have a distinct memory of my agent at that
8:52
Speaker 5: time I was with Trient Media telling me, no, forget it,
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Speaker 5: the whole vampire book thing is over this before Twilight
9:00
Speaker 5: came out.
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Speaker 6: I'll just point out, oh, yikes, yikes.
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Speaker 5: Sometimes it doesn't have been so much on the trend
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Speaker 5: as what you do with it, you know.
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Speaker 6: Yes, that's a good point.
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Speaker 4: That's always true, Like These genre explosions happen because some
9:17
Speaker 4: author finds a good use of telling a story via
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Speaker 4: that genre, not that the genre itself is making a comeback.
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Speaker 5: Yes, all right, well, I'm giving us an a plus
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Speaker 5: for our twenty twenty five predictions, and let's hope we
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Speaker 5: do as well on the next episode. Our interview today
9:35
Speaker 5: is with John Phillips. John has been a bartender, a
9:39
Speaker 5: beauty product salesman, union rep, as you're about to hear,
9:44
Speaker 5: and a sports writer. But now he's written his first book.
9:50
Speaker 5: It's called Dress Whites. It's a collection of short stories,
9:54
Speaker 5: although they're interrelated, and it really reads like a novel
9:58
Speaker 5: set during the Vietnam War and bringing a host of
10:02
Speaker 5: wonderful characters to life in a terrific book. We'll talk
10:07
Speaker 5: to them about that and much more, but first the
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Speaker 5: news News story number one. I feel a little bad
10:26
Speaker 5: calling this news because it's about something that is not new,
10:30
Speaker 5: but the uproar, the protest from readers is new. What
10:35
Speaker 5: I'm talking about is reader's revolting against excessive keywords in title.
10:41
Speaker 5: What we're talking about is titles. If you've been to
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Speaker 5: the Kindles store lately, you probably already know what I'm
10:47
Speaker 5: talking about because you've wondered why half the titles theyre
10:51
Speaker 5: read like somebody copy pasted their entire search history after
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Speaker 5: the title. You know, instead of Chris's memorable titles, you
10:59
Speaker 5: get to tell title followed by a semi colon and
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Speaker 5: then a long descriptive thing which is not actually the subtitle.
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Speaker 5: It's stuff like, in one example, a dark, addictive thriller
11:11
Speaker 5: for fans of X and Y, per in a totally
11:14
Speaker 5: gripping book novel book one and per in that sort
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Speaker 5: of thing. It's like putting your promo social media post
11:23
Speaker 5: into the title. And of course the reason people do
11:27
Speaker 5: this is because that's they're trying to attract the attention
11:32
Speaker 5: of the Amazon algorithm. Amazon's built this system where keyword
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Speaker 5: heavy titles are rewarded. They often perform letter better because
11:44
Speaker 5: they'll come up more times in response to what people
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Speaker 5: are searching for when they use all those keywords. Self
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Speaker 5: published authors small presses are doing it all the time,
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Speaker 5: but they're not the only ones now. And you know, well,
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Speaker 5: if your business lives or dies by whether some stranger
12:04
Speaker 5: reader can find your book, the title stops being a
12:09
Speaker 5: search for something memorable and relevant to your book. And
12:12
Speaker 5: becomes you know, this strategic battleground. Jesse. We know that
12:21
Speaker 5: you buy digital books. So would you read a science
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Speaker 5: fiction novel that really interests you to you but had
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Speaker 5: all of this stuff attached to it.
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Speaker 4: I think by the time I do read one that's
12:36
Speaker 4: like this, it's going to be done ironically by a
12:40
Speaker 4: well established.
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Speaker 5: That would be funny.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
12:44
Speaker 4: Neil Stevenson has already thinking about a funny way to
12:46
Speaker 4: title a book via this.
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Speaker 1: So, I mean, here's the thing.
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Speaker 4: I get it, like, Amazon has never actually been good
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Speaker 4: at search, display and whatnot, and so if you are
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Speaker 4: an independent author, you're going to try to do whatever
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Speaker 4: you have to do to get your book in the.
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Speaker 1: Front of the store.
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Speaker 5: Yeah right, that's right.
13:08
Speaker 1: But if it's angering your customers, then you'll stop doing it.
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Speaker 6: That's a good point I've seen. I've seen how to
13:17
Speaker 6: articles written about this, blogs posts articles telling you how
13:21
Speaker 6: to use this to your advantage, because indie authors have
13:25
Speaker 6: to do whatever they can to try to get some
13:28
Speaker 6: eyes on their books and get it out there.
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Speaker 5: This is something you would do you've got books out there.
13:34
Speaker 6: I don't because I see that and I think, well,
13:36
Speaker 6: now that's screaming that that's an indie author trying to
13:39
Speaker 6: get some book that maybe can't get attention otherwise. So
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Speaker 6: I but I'm older, you know, I'm not the younger crowd.
13:47
Speaker 6: But it does it bothers me to see that all stuff.
13:50
Speaker 6: Right to me, it looks unprofessional. I haven't ever been
13:54
Speaker 6: a fan, but I wouldn't criticize somebody for trying it,
13:57
Speaker 6: especially if it worked for them and it helped them
14:00
Speaker 6: find more readers and bring more people to their books.
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Speaker 5: Well, I know in my series books at least, for
14:06
Speaker 5: say that Daniel Pike books, each one has pren not
14:11
Speaker 5: Simmy Colin, which suggests a subtitle, but prin Daniel Pike
14:15
Speaker 5: Legal Thriller Series book Sure five or whatever it is.
14:20
Speaker 5: That's just kind of that thing you're telling you're trying
14:23
Speaker 5: to capture people who are searching for legal thrillers, and
14:26
Speaker 5: that makes sense.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, just clearly labeling the series title and which book
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Speaker 6: it is in there that I think is helpful so
14:35
Speaker 6: that readers don't have to go search if it catches
14:37
Speaker 6: their attention and they realize that it's part of a series.
14:40
Speaker 6: I think having that front and center, this is actually
14:43
Speaker 6: book three makes it much easier for them to go
14:45
Speaker 6: and find book one. For your peers like me, you
14:48
Speaker 6: got to start at the beginning, so maybe if you
14:50
Speaker 6: don't notice it until book three or four, I think
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Speaker 6: that's helpful. I think that's the most important thing, is
14:55
Speaker 6: helping readers not have to work too hard when they're
14:59
Speaker 6: trying to their next read.
15:01
Speaker 4: Truly, I've read a couple of series of books recently
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Speaker 4: where they don't say what number it is, and I'm
15:06
Speaker 4: constantly having to check the Internet.
15:08
Speaker 1: To make sure I'm reading them in the right order.
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Speaker 1: That is actually very frustrating.
15:11
Speaker 6: Yeah, I agree.
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Speaker 5: All right, News story number two. Now, speaking of making predictions,
15:19
Speaker 5: you remember, I think it's in December last year we
15:23
Speaker 5: talked about how Amazon is now offering authors AI based
15:28
Speaker 5: translations into foreign languages, which we speculated, or I did,
15:33
Speaker 5: that might be at least a good starting point, you know,
15:36
Speaker 5: for a translator, and might save your money. Well, you know,
15:41
Speaker 5: this is the sort of thing that people at small
15:44
Speaker 5: presses or self publishers always get accused of doing, but
15:48
Speaker 5: it's ten It's really more a case of those people
15:52
Speaker 5: coming up with the idea and then ten seconds later
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Speaker 5: traditional publishing copies it and sure enough, guess what Harlequin
16:01
Speaker 5: just announce. And Harlequin is a big company. Let me
16:04
Speaker 5: remind your Canadian based and yes everybody knows the romances,
16:08
Speaker 5: but they have lines that do thrillers and all kinds
16:11
Speaker 5: of stuff. There's much more to it than that. Anyway.
16:13
Speaker 5: They've issued a press release acknowledging that some of their divisions,
16:20
Speaker 5: including the French one, are using software to do AI
16:26
Speaker 5: software to translate their books into French or back from
16:30
Speaker 5: French to English, which is saving them a lot of money.
16:35
Speaker 5: Their sales apparently have dipped in in some countries and
16:39
Speaker 5: this is their way of trying to recapture the market,
16:42
Speaker 5: although they have emphasized that no, none of their books
16:48
Speaker 5: is strictly an AI translation. They just start there and
16:53
Speaker 5: then give it to a translator who fixes it up
16:55
Speaker 5: and theoretically makes it better. Okay, Laura, I bet I
17:00
Speaker 5: know what you're going to say, but this does sound
17:03
Speaker 5: like something you would ever use or read for that matter.
17:07
Speaker 6: I think we Yeah, we talked about this before. This
17:09
Speaker 6: is exactly what we said. Even if you use it
17:11
Speaker 6: as a starting point, you have to have somebody, you
17:14
Speaker 6: have to have a human being came in and listen
17:17
Speaker 6: and they it might it might get better. Well, I
17:22
Speaker 6: think if you still have to have a translator come
17:25
Speaker 6: in and listen to it, there has to be a
17:27
Speaker 6: reason if they say there's saving on it, it must
17:30
Speaker 6: be less time consuming or something like that. Me myself,
17:34
Speaker 6: that's too much effort to put into it. I actually
17:37
Speaker 6: attempted using an AI to record an audio book, same
17:43
Speaker 6: same idea I would. I would think about trying these
17:46
Speaker 6: things until it turns into a big quagmar when I
17:50
Speaker 6: when I heard the mistakes that I had to go
17:53
Speaker 6: in and fix already as it was, it just becomes
17:56
Speaker 6: true time consuming for me. I just don't have that
17:59
Speaker 6: kind of time right now.
18:01
Speaker 5: So yeah, my concern, Oh, go ahead, somebody.
18:04
Speaker 6: Like Harlequin, though they probably.
18:06
Speaker 7: Have a lot of titles, bigger budget, maybe some people
18:13
Speaker 7: that are accustomed to doing that type of work, and
18:16
Speaker 7: if they already have those translators in place, maybe this
18:19
Speaker 7: saves some time, like it takes the books to a
18:23
Speaker 7: linen fix.
18:25
Speaker 5: My worry would be that even when you bring in
18:29
Speaker 5: the human, at that point, that human is basically just
18:31
Speaker 5: translating the AI translation, not the original books. So how
18:37
Speaker 5: do you really how can you gauge how accurate. It is, Jesse,
18:41
Speaker 5: what do you think you read books? Would you read
18:43
Speaker 5: one of these?
18:44
Speaker 3: You read books?
18:45
Speaker 5: Like that's a surprise.
18:47
Speaker 4: But anyway, well, I think again, like if this is
18:50
Speaker 4: and this is something all indestries are going to have
18:52
Speaker 4: to realize, is which is like, Okay, yes, you can
18:55
Speaker 4: save some time and some money by having your books
18:59
Speaker 4: translated the AI. You're still going to have to have
19:03
Speaker 4: human translators who are It's not going to save you
19:06
Speaker 4: as much time as you think. It might save you some,
19:09
Speaker 4: but it's not going to save you a lot because
19:10
Speaker 4: that person's still gonna have to read both books right,
19:14
Speaker 4: one of the original language and then then the AI
19:16
Speaker 4: translation and then fix what the problems are, or maybe
19:19
Speaker 4: even just read the AI translation and when they see
19:21
Speaker 4: something weird, refer back to the original one.
19:23
Speaker 1: Which is still going to take some time.
19:25
Speaker 4: This isn't going to make it instantaneous, and it's not
19:27
Speaker 4: going to make it ridiculously cheaper. But I will say,
19:31
Speaker 4: if you are someone who translates, your job to translate
19:34
Speaker 4: books in different languages, I.
19:36
Speaker 1: Would say.
19:38
Speaker 4: Over time, this will save you sometime, but it's still
19:42
Speaker 4: gonna be a lot of work. It's still not going
19:44
Speaker 4: to be automatically. You try to translate a single sentence
19:47
Speaker 4: and it's never.
19:49
Speaker 1: Accurate, right, so true?
19:52
Speaker 6: And is it cutting into again, is it cutting into
19:55
Speaker 6: their pay? I mean, we've talked about this before, people
19:58
Speaker 6: who make their living doing this sort of thing. Is
20:00
Speaker 6: AI really beneficial to those people? Meanwhile? Are we losing quality?
20:06
Speaker 6: That's my concern. If we're losing quality, I don't want
20:10
Speaker 6: our books, our audio books, our translations to turn into
20:14
Speaker 6: the equivalent of AI slop and it's just flooding everything
20:20
Speaker 6: where everything that we use to consume books. I don't
20:25
Speaker 6: think that's a good thing for us to aim for.
20:28
Speaker 6: I want I want us to put more effort into
20:31
Speaker 6: quality books, not quantity that just gets thrown out there quickly.
20:36
Speaker 6: I think we have to keep our standards higher. And
20:39
Speaker 6: that's my concern that we're sacrificing quality for quantity and
20:45
Speaker 6: we're just kind of watering it down and not really
20:48
Speaker 6: improving anything.
20:50
Speaker 5: All right, let's move on to Craft Corner. Our Craft
20:55
Speaker 5: Corner segment this time is from friend of the podcast,
20:57
Speaker 5: Betsy Koulakowski. She's the all of the acclaimed Verita Veritas
21:03
Speaker 5: Codex series, which, by the way, just released. It's I
21:08
Speaker 5: should say her eighth volume in the series, The Sultan Stone. Today,
21:13
Speaker 5: she's encouraging writers to write the book that only you
21:18
Speaker 5: can write. Take it away, Betsy.
21:25
Speaker 1: Craft Corner.
21:26
Speaker 8: Hi, everyone, This is Betsy Kolakowski, the author of the
21:29
Speaker 8: Veritas Codex paranormal thriller series, and I'm here with today's
21:32
Speaker 8: Craft Corner. Recently, I was at a book show and
21:35
Speaker 8: had somebody ask me why I wrote the Veritas Codec series,
21:39
Speaker 8: And it's really one of the easiest questions that I
21:41
Speaker 8: can answer. I wrote the first book because I wanted
21:46
Speaker 8: to read it and there wasn't anything else out in
21:48
Speaker 8: the world that was like it. It was something I
21:51
Speaker 8: was interested in, it was something that was unique, and
21:53
Speaker 8: I thought, well, I'll just write this book for practice,
21:55
Speaker 8: and nobody ever has to read it, so I can
21:58
Speaker 8: be as outlandish as I want to be. I can
22:00
Speaker 8: throw everything onto the table and it's okay, because again,
22:03
Speaker 8: nobody's ever going to read it. But after I wrote
22:06
Speaker 8: the first book, those characters just would not leave me alone,
22:10
Speaker 8: and I found myself writing a sequel, and then I
22:12
Speaker 8: wrote another one, and I wrote another one, and I
22:16
Speaker 8: did it for practice. I wasn't writing to a market.
22:19
Speaker 8: I was writing for me and of course the few
22:21
Speaker 8: trusted readers I had, like my mom. So some things
22:24
Speaker 8: that I have learned in this process is that trends fade.
22:28
Speaker 8: You have to write the book that only you can
22:30
Speaker 8: write because your perspective it is what's important. I wrote
22:33
Speaker 8: about something I genuinely loved, something that I was interested in,
22:38
Speaker 8: and something that was important to me. And I've come
22:41
Speaker 8: to learn as a writer how important my life experiences
22:44
Speaker 8: are because they become they become little easter eggs in
22:48
Speaker 8: my story. I find things happen in my daily life
22:51
Speaker 8: and my career, in my experiences that I have kind
22:54
Speaker 8: of woven into the pages of the book. And when
22:57
Speaker 8: one of my readers finds one of those easter eggs
22:59
Speaker 8: and read out to me, it delights me to know
23:02
Speaker 8: and to know that they found that little nugget of
23:05
Speaker 8: wisdom or something that happened and want to know more
23:08
Speaker 8: about how that found its way onto the pages. What
23:12
Speaker 8: I think is really important as a writer we have
23:14
Speaker 8: to remember is that readers remember how we make them feel.
23:18
Speaker 8: It also reminds me of how I feel when I'm
23:22
Speaker 8: writing the book and when I'm reading it, because I
23:25
Speaker 8: know I'm going to read that book a lot. You do,
23:27
Speaker 8: as you know, as the process goes through, you have
23:29
Speaker 8: to edit it, and you're going to read that book
23:31
Speaker 8: a lot, so you better enjoy it. And it's important
23:34
Speaker 8: to lean into your experiences, what you've noticed, what you fear,
23:38
Speaker 8: what you love, or the things that you question. So
23:41
Speaker 8: if there is a book out there that you want
23:42
Speaker 8: to read and you can't find it, that's the book
23:45
Speaker 8: you need to write. It's what I did, It's what
23:47
Speaker 8: worked for me. It can work for you too.
23:50
Speaker 5: Thank you, Betsy Koulikowski, and check out her new book,
23:54
Speaker 5: The Sultan Stone. All right, now let's talk to our
23:58
Speaker 5: interview guest, John Phillips. John Phillips, welcome to the podcast.
24:13
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Bill, Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity.
24:16
Speaker 3: For sure.
24:17
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you could be here. All right, traditional
24:20
Speaker 5: first question, I think you already know what it is
24:22
Speaker 5: going to be. If you could offer writers one piece
24:25
Speaker 5: of advice, what would it be.
24:29
Speaker 2: I think I'd summon up the old cliche of killing
24:33
Speaker 2: your babies. That was a very difficult thing for me
24:37
Speaker 2: to do initially because I thought that it was just beautiful.
24:45
Speaker 2: Prize winning pros and it wasn't. So I think that's
24:51
Speaker 2: really key. That was difficult for me, As I said,
24:54
Speaker 2: And you just have to really look at it with
24:58
Speaker 2: a hard eye and figure out whether it's being cute
25:03
Speaker 2: where it really works.
25:04
Speaker 3: In the story.
25:06
Speaker 5: Yes, and sometimes I think the writer is not the
25:09
Speaker 5: best judge of that, but.
25:11
Speaker 3: You have to iNTS no, he isn't here, she isn't.
25:16
Speaker 2: That's a whole other subject about about who to trust
25:21
Speaker 2: to read your stuff.
25:24
Speaker 3: And I found that to be.
25:28
Speaker 2: A little disconcerting coming to that, that decision, for instance.
25:34
Speaker 2: And please stop me if I'm rambling too much.
25:36
Speaker 3: But.
25:39
Speaker 2: My wife has been a reporter for many many years
25:43
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal, of Reuters, et cetera, and.
25:45
Speaker 3: As a good writer. But I did not show her word.
25:50
Speaker 2: One until after the book was accepted, because I don't
25:56
Speaker 2: think it's just my personal thing. Other people work there differently.
26:01
Speaker 2: I don't think it's fair it would be fair to her,
26:05
Speaker 2: and I couldn't trust myself to believe what she said,
26:09
Speaker 2: what she pulling punches, and I just needed real, sort
26:16
Speaker 2: of unencumbered response to my work. So I think that
26:20
Speaker 2: to me, that's a whole complicated thing. I don't do
26:23
Speaker 2: bookshop bookworking or whatever they call it. But for that
26:29
Speaker 2: same reason. Yeah, it's just for me a very difficult
26:35
Speaker 2: thing to figure. So I worked mostly by myself and
26:40
Speaker 2: my wonderful publisher who had just so much patience as
26:46
Speaker 2: I've worked through a lot of things.
26:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, we all worked differently. I have many hands looking
26:54
Speaker 5: at my work, although only after I think it's done,
26:57
Speaker 5: including Laura. But but I am a little you know,
27:03
Speaker 5: sometimes you got to take input, not talking about Lars,
27:06
Speaker 5: but any input with a grain of salt, because particularly
27:11
Speaker 5: when you're writing fiction, nobody knows the story as well
27:14
Speaker 5: as you do, right.
27:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think certainly for me, going through this
27:21
Speaker 2: experience gave me a certain confidence and a certain thicker skin.
27:27
Speaker 3: Perhaps and I will do that. Yeah, You've written.
27:31
Speaker 2: So many books and gotten so many accolades that that
27:35
Speaker 2: I think you can judge it a little bit better
27:39
Speaker 2: and more accurately than rookies. So that's and that's one
27:45
Speaker 2: of the great things that this book has done for me,
27:47
Speaker 2: is to give me that that confidence.
27:52
Speaker 5: Now you have one of the most interesting pre writer
27:55
Speaker 5: biographies I've ever seen. You were a bar tender, a
28:01
Speaker 5: beauty product salesman, a union rep. And that's all before
28:05
Speaker 5: you got to sports writer and writing. Correct.
28:09
Speaker 3: Yes, the union rep was overlapping.
28:11
Speaker 2: I was the president of the union at Reuters, and
28:16
Speaker 2: then when I left Reuters after being a sports writer,
28:22
Speaker 2: then I went full time as a union rep for
28:24
Speaker 2: several years. So there was both before and after Rutters,
28:29
Speaker 2: the union rep.
28:31
Speaker 5: Business and beauty product. Tell me you weren't an Avon
28:35
Speaker 5: person going door to door.
28:40
Speaker 2: Yes, that's that's mostly because while I was in college
28:47
Speaker 2: and a few a little while after that, I worked
28:51
Speaker 2: for a supplier and I would go through bay Own,
28:56
Speaker 2: Jersey City, Brooklyn, those areas with samples and products and
29:04
Speaker 2: two beauty saloons, saloons, saloons.
29:07
Speaker 3: And salons.
29:10
Speaker 5: That might be more appealing, but.
29:13
Speaker 2: Exactly so, that's where the beauty product salesman comes in
29:19
Speaker 2: and the bartending. It was my father's bar on Staten Island,
29:26
Speaker 2: and I've come to realize over the years and sort
29:31
Speaker 2: of really came home to me a couple of years ago,
29:35
Speaker 2: what a traumatic experience that was for me to run
29:39
Speaker 2: and my father got sick in the hospital. I had
29:42
Speaker 2: to leave college and come home and run the bar.
29:46
Speaker 2: And so I'm this, you know, fancy free whatever the
29:51
Speaker 2: cliche is college boy running around chasing girls and maybe
29:55
Speaker 2: going to school, going to classes, to coming home to
30:00
Speaker 2: a real blue collar ball and beer joint and having
30:05
Speaker 2: to adjust that to that. And some of my relatives
30:11
Speaker 2: and friends have said, that's where my accident really started
30:15
Speaker 2: to change, become more Brooklynes, because I had to fit in.
30:21
Speaker 2: I was already a young whipper snapper tending bar and
30:25
Speaker 2: a ball and beer joint, as I said, And you
30:29
Speaker 2: could not give off any whiff of college, any whiff
30:33
Speaker 2: of being other than the guys that grew up with,
30:37
Speaker 2: you know.
30:39
Speaker 5: And then you segue into sports writing, and I know
30:43
Speaker 5: you've covered like the Olympics, the World Series, the Super Bowl,
30:47
Speaker 5: and many many might be some sport you've missed, but
30:52
Speaker 5: you've covered a lot of them. How'd you get into
30:54
Speaker 5: sports writing?
30:57
Speaker 2: Well, actually, sort of ironica, I was a sports writer
31:01
Speaker 2: many many, many years ago, but I went into public
31:07
Speaker 2: relations and then didn't like that. And a friend of
31:12
Speaker 2: mine there was an opening at Reuter's on a very
31:15
Speaker 2: very junior level, and the boxing beat opened up. Unfortunately
31:21
Speaker 2: through death of the boxing the chief.
31:24
Speaker 3: Guy and.
31:28
Speaker 2: Reuters there are a lot of a lot of fancy
31:33
Speaker 2: kind of boxing was kind of beneath them. They wanted
31:39
Speaker 2: to do tennis, they wanted to do figure skating and
31:44
Speaker 2: all these lotty doll things. I wanted to do boxing
31:49
Speaker 2: because I was fascinated by that world, and so I
31:53
Speaker 2: was able to put my bid into be the boxing guy.
31:56
Speaker 3: And then.
31:59
Speaker 2: At Reuter's, the largest news agency in the world, I.
32:03
Speaker 3: Might add.
32:05
Speaker 2: I uh so I did that, and kind of it
32:09
Speaker 2: was one of these situations and there wasn't much guidance
32:12
Speaker 2: at all. Uh, it was okay, go go cover this
32:16
Speaker 2: title fight, go cover Tyson fighting Larry Holmes or wherever
32:19
Speaker 2: it is, and write us a bunch of stories. Well,
32:24
Speaker 2: after a very nervous start, like well, okay, what kind
32:30
Speaker 2: of stories do you want, they hand and hard.
32:34
Speaker 3: They didn't really know.
32:35
Speaker 2: So my philosophy came to be, uh, stop me before
32:40
Speaker 2: I kill again. So I'm just gonna I just wrote
32:43
Speaker 2: wrote the hell I wanted to write. They were more columns.
32:47
Speaker 3: Than they were.
32:49
Speaker 2: The typical wire service bing bing bing bing and you're
32:53
Speaker 2: out of the story, eight hundred words in your out.
32:56
Speaker 2: They were because the Rotters people in London didn't have
33:02
Speaker 2: a clue what they really wanted. And you know, I
33:05
Speaker 2: wrote stuff I wanted to write. I wrote about about
33:09
Speaker 2: the people around boxing. I really, frankly could care less
33:12
Speaker 2: about the hooks and the jabs and how he doubled
33:15
Speaker 2: up on his jab to throw, you know, right to
33:17
Speaker 2: the head that kind I did that about how to
33:19
Speaker 2: write that, of course, but it was more interested in
33:22
Speaker 2: the people around boxing, fascinating, fascinating characters. And I have
33:28
Speaker 2: to tell everybody who might not know it or think
33:32
Speaker 2: about it. At the championship level, fighters boxes are very
33:39
Speaker 2: bright people. Mike Tyson was a very bright person. Ignorant,
33:44
Speaker 2: gross and anti social, but a very very bright guy.
33:51
Speaker 2: And you have to be to be a champion because
33:54
Speaker 2: you have to be able to figure out very quickly
33:57
Speaker 2: are you going to get your head knocked off? What
34:00
Speaker 2: the other guy's going to do, what his reactions are
34:02
Speaker 2: to what you do? And I think I'm rambling a bit,
34:07
Speaker 2: so I will stop.
34:10
Speaker 5: I want to ask you about your new book then, though,
34:12
Speaker 5: and then Laura, I'm hoping you'll jump in and ask
34:15
Speaker 5: about their writing process. But you have published John your
34:19
Speaker 5: first novel, Dress Whites, correct, that'll just about that.
34:24
Speaker 2: Yes, it's collection short stories and they are about the
34:32
Speaker 2: people left behind during the Vietnam War era. The people
34:37
Speaker 2: on the home front, the wives, the own wives, the girlfriends,
34:41
Speaker 2: the brothers, mothers and fathers, friends left behind? What was
34:46
Speaker 2: it like during those years to be and afterwards and
34:52
Speaker 2: the impact. The stories follow a range from from the
34:56
Speaker 2: Vietnam War days themselves all the way fifteen twenty years
35:01
Speaker 2: later and what happens in the somewhat often the dramatic
35:07
Speaker 2: repercussions of having lived through that period as I did,
35:12
Speaker 2: and as I try to deal with being of draft
35:19
Speaker 2: age and all around me people It was a very
35:24
Speaker 2: tumultuous time.
35:25
Speaker 3: As you know.
35:28
Speaker 2: America love it or leave it. This was just war
35:31
Speaker 2: rara America dealing with that. Do you want to be
35:34
Speaker 2: drafted and go hump a gun through the jungles? Or
35:40
Speaker 2: do you want to try to avoid it? And those
35:42
Speaker 2: were very very difficult years. So that's pretty much what
35:48
Speaker 2: it is. I have a young widow at twenty three,
35:51
Speaker 2: what happens to her. I've got a guy from Spanish Harlem,
35:55
Speaker 2: what happens to him and people he knew? A fighter
36:00
Speaker 2: comes back from Vietnam and the settles in Las Vegas
36:04
Speaker 2: to try to make enough money to find his Amerasian
36:09
Speaker 2: daughter that he left behind in Vietnam and about her
36:14
Speaker 2: and she finally comes to the States.
36:16
Speaker 3: So it's it's that kind of a thing.
36:17
Speaker 2: It's not a war book per se, but it certainly
36:22
Speaker 2: is the ramifications of that war.
36:26
Speaker 6: And it it is a collection of short stories, that's true,
36:31
Speaker 6: but it reads almost like a novel because all of
36:35
Speaker 6: these characters and all of their stories intertwine, and it
36:42
Speaker 6: is a continuing journey. So even though we do a
36:46
Speaker 6: deep dive into quite a few different characters, and it's
36:50
Speaker 6: a it's a beautiful study of this group of people
36:55
Speaker 6: and what their lives are like and how they respond
36:57
Speaker 6: and react it. It does have of a through line
37:01
Speaker 6: to it, and it does continue to progress forward and
37:04
Speaker 6: you hear about the same people and what happens to
37:06
Speaker 6: them years later. So it's really brilliant the way that
37:09
Speaker 6: it's all tied together. It's a really interesting read.
37:15
Speaker 3: Clara, thank you. I don't know why I couldn't.
37:18
Speaker 2: I mean thank you with you, So we'll just cut
37:20
Speaker 2: out what I said and put.
37:25
Speaker 6: But and it's beautiful. It is. It's literary. It's very
37:30
Speaker 6: literary and a careful examination of the human experience. It's
37:36
Speaker 6: just it's really moving book and hearing about your experiences
37:41
Speaker 6: as a writer covering boxing matches. It makes total sense.
37:48
Speaker 6: One of those stories that you tell about Calvin, for sure,
37:50
Speaker 6: are where did the rest of the ideas come from
37:54
Speaker 6: from this book? Are the characters based on people you knew,
37:58
Speaker 6: stories you heard about? How did that all come together
38:01
Speaker 6: for you?
38:03
Speaker 2: It's a real good question because I'm trying to figure
38:06
Speaker 2: that out myself as we speak.
38:09
Speaker 3: I'm kind of a visual guy. I really I like details, and.
38:15
Speaker 2: What I remember most from a lot of that prompted
38:20
Speaker 2: a lot of these stories are a little small details.
38:27
Speaker 3: Maybe.
38:27
Speaker 2: So I'm nineteen twenty running my father's bar and I
38:30
Speaker 2: asked a bar, a guy at the bar cement truck
38:34
Speaker 2: driver if he ever had any daughters, because we're talking
38:37
Speaker 2: about kids, and.
38:38
Speaker 3: He told me about his daughter.
38:41
Speaker 2: And I won't spoil the kicker in that story I
38:46
Speaker 2: was talking about. Yeah, it was so stunning and so shocking,
38:50
Speaker 2: and so I probably just said, oh, okay, Georgie, that's
38:56
Speaker 2: great and ran down the bar to fill somebody's glass
39:00
Speaker 2: because it was such a shocking thing.
39:02
Speaker 3: But it was only.
39:05
Speaker 2: Thirty words, and it's been haunting me for fifty years,
39:10
Speaker 2: and so that's where that came from. Another quickie. He
39:15
Speaker 2: was coming back from a fight with a friend of mine.
39:17
Speaker 2: It's one o'clock in the morning. We're going back to
39:20
Speaker 2: Caesar's palace, and there was a man up on the
39:23
Speaker 2: top of the roof threatening to jump. The cops were around,
39:28
Speaker 2: sirens and people were hawking, and my friend said, Wow,
39:33
Speaker 2: imagine what would have drawn somebody to do that. What
39:38
Speaker 2: sadness there was? And so then that kicked off my whole,
39:43
Speaker 2: my whole cousin Eduardo story, which ends it makes sense
39:50
Speaker 2: to what I'm saying because it ends that way. So
39:53
Speaker 2: those little things that have stuck with me and I
39:58
Speaker 2: don't know.
39:58
Speaker 3: Then then all of a sudden, I guess I'm a
40:03
Speaker 3: big believer.
40:05
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm saying I'm not saying anything radical, but
40:08
Speaker 2: of the subconscious and these things I think were sitting
40:12
Speaker 2: with me forever and they just came out.
40:17
Speaker 3: I know it sounds a little true frue.
40:19
Speaker 5: But not at all. But it makes me wonder, is
40:23
Speaker 5: there going to be a second book? Are you working
40:25
Speaker 5: on something now? What's coming next?
40:27
Speaker 2: Well, I've just completed, hopefully least in my opinion, a
40:32
Speaker 2: short story. I'm now going to be writing country based stories.
40:39
Speaker 2: Since I retired. I spent a lot of my time
40:42
Speaker 2: in rural northeastern Pennsylvania doing just two maybe three things.
40:50
Speaker 3: I write.
40:51
Speaker 2: I fell at raising many tomatoes and crops, and I
40:57
Speaker 2: ride my motorcycle.
40:59
Speaker 3: And those are really the things to do.
41:01
Speaker 2: And then I go and I hang with with guys
41:04
Speaker 2: up there. I go to Terry's garage and he's always open,
41:08
Speaker 2: and Terry's always has a fridge full of beer, and
41:12
Speaker 2: I hang out and I've gotten to be friendly and
41:18
Speaker 2: with the guys, and that's where I'm going now with
41:23
Speaker 2: the story. It's just taught me a lot about another
41:29
Speaker 2: part of society that I didn't know about.
41:31
Speaker 3: I've had a.
41:32
Speaker 2: Certain empathy for it, a certain awe, a certain shock,
41:37
Speaker 2: And so that's what I'm trying to do now. And
41:40
Speaker 2: I have my short stories. It's about four thousand words
41:46
Speaker 2: about a guy focusing on him all the other characters,
41:50
Speaker 2: who has a metal plate in his head and it
41:54
Speaker 2: just so happened. It's from Vietnam, but I'm not reproducing
41:57
Speaker 2: the Vietnamese stuff.
41:58
Speaker 3: But he.
42:01
Speaker 2: Can hardly walk, he really can't speak. We all like
42:06
Speaker 2: him and hang with him, and so that's what I'm
42:12
Speaker 2: working on.
42:13
Speaker 5: Sounds fascinating. Well, we'll have to have you back again
42:16
Speaker 5: at some point.
42:17
Speaker 3: I would hope.
42:18
Speaker 5: So the book is called Dress Whites. It's available now
42:22
Speaker 5: and highly recommended. John, thanks so much for being on
42:25
Speaker 5: the podcast.
42:26
Speaker 3: Bill, Lara, thank you very much.
42:28
Speaker 2: And again I want to say publicly, Lara, I'm so
42:32
Speaker 2: beholden and you have been just so wonderful through this process.
42:38
Speaker 3: So thank you.
42:42
Speaker 5: There we have it all right, thanks, bye bye. Just
42:54
Speaker 5: a few parting words. We are not even two months
42:58
Speaker 5: away from the writer con cruise, and I hope you
43:02
Speaker 5: will give it some thought. It's a wonderful experience, not
43:05
Speaker 5: only a fun cruise, but a great opportunity to get
43:10
Speaker 5: hands on writing instruction more than twenty hours only when
43:14
Speaker 5: the book is at sea, not when we're in a port,
43:17
Speaker 5: and learn from not only Laura and I, but Betsy,
43:21
Speaker 5: who just did the craft Corner is going to be there,
43:24
Speaker 5: and Catherine Sans, one of the top agents working today,
43:28
Speaker 5: will be there. She has already said she's willing to
43:31
Speaker 5: speak privately, like one on one, with every single participant
43:35
Speaker 5: on the cruise. So that plus a beautiful cruise scenic experience,
43:42
Speaker 5: what more do you need? It's March seventh, through the fifteenth.
43:47
Speaker 5: Visit our writer Con website that's www dot w r
43:51
Speaker 5: I T e r c o n dot com and
43:56
Speaker 5: check it out and register. All right, till next time,
44:01
Speaker 5: keep writing and remember you can't fail if you refuse
44:06
Speaker 5: to quit. See you next time.