Latest / The Whitfield Report / TWR Special | Eric P Bishop Kicks Off 2026 w/ "DREXEL"

Transcript

TWR Special | Eric P Bishop Kicks Off 2026 w/ "DREXEL" · The Whitfield Report

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  Offensiveness is the motor of human progress.
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  Now broadcasting from the Right to Offend media studios in sunny
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  South Florida, bringing you the latest in politics, current
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  events, art and pop culture. This is the Whitfield Report
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  live with Sam Whitfield. But giving offense is good.
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  In fact, it's essential. I can't hear you, Sam.
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  I heard. I heard you before you went
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  live, but I don't hear you now. Oh, oh, I guess I'm unmuted now.
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  There we go, that's a good idea. Yeah, well, again, welcome to
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  the show, folks. The Whitfield Report live here
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  on Tuesday instead of Monday. And I'm joined live by friend of
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  the show, Eric P Bishop. I believe this is your actually
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  your 7th appearance on the show because I had you on one year
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  for kind of like an end of the year review show.
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  I believe so. But as I was saying when I was
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  on mute, I am 6 for six of the books and I'm honored to have
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  that privilege. So happy publication day my
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  friend. Thank you Sam, I'm glad to be
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  here for Pub Day. I'm glad I can hear you 'cause
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  if I had just read your lips for this interview, it wouldn't go
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  very well. Yeah, and I, I don't think, I
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  don't think Google Gemini is great with liberating possibly.
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  Not possibly not, but no, I'm glad to be here.
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  Kind of wild to think Book 6 is out in the wild, is out in the
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  world now. I don't know how we got here so
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  quickly. It's but it's this.
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  This one was a long time in the making.
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  This book was. I started this one in 2015.
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  I never thought it would be published, honestly, I, I wanted
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  it to when I first wrote it, but then I just got rejection for
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  years on the first three books I wrote.
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  So I, I kind of figured this one would just in turn end up being
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  like an internship, learn how to write a book.
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  And then I was able to kind of pull things together.
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  And when I started my own press, I was looking through some old
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  stuff I had written. And this is one of the stories
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  that I'm like, man, the story holds up.
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  I just need to fix it. So I spent spent a year fixing
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  it. Yeah, so before we dive into
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  into that, I, I just wanted to kind of ask Sue you.
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  You've been doing a Tale of Two Scribes for quite a while now.
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  You just. Two years.
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  Wow, two years already. I know you interviewed Brad
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  Meltzer, who correct me, I'm wrong, is your favorite author.
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  And So what was what was that experience like?
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  And how do you feel after two years of podcasting under under
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  your belt? Well, it's hard to believe two
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  years has gone by, honestly. Yeah, interviewing Brad was, I'd
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  reached out to him when I first decided to do the podcast and he
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  was willing to come on, but he wanted to come on with one of
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  his fiction books instead of a non fiction or children's book.
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  And just happens that he had a four year gap between his Zig
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  Enola book 2 and the Viper, which is book 3.
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  So he was like, once I get close to a publication, reach back out
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  to me and and I'd be glad to come on.
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  He didn't really do, I'm sure he might have might have done some
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  other podcasts. Not that I saw though.
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  He mainly did big media. He did a lot of morning shows,
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  stuff like that. So it was kind of a kind of an
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  honor to come on a little podcast like mine and it was
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  great. Brad's been one of those people
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  that I can't remember what year I reached out to him, maybe
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  2017, 2018, somewhere in that time period, interacted with him
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  online. He started following me on
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  Twitter at the time, I think, which I, which was like the
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  highlight of that day when it said Brad Meltzer is now
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  following you. And yeah, over the years just
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  kept in contact with him. I'd ask him questions and he's
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  was kind of the one of the first kind of like big time authors
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  that actually gave me time and attention and really helped
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  helped me figure out some details on how things work.
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  So so he'll he'll special placemire and also I, I think
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  I've met him three or four times.
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  I can't remember now. I'm going to book signings.
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  I've never seen him outside of book signings, but he'd always
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  film videos like for my kids or for a friend of mine that he'd
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  film a birthday, you know, for a friend every time.
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  And because it was my friend's favorite author as well.
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  So yeah, he's just, he's kind of those ones that he's kind of
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  made it in the sense of being a successful author and the way he
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  treats his fans. I think it's a good model for
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  other authors. Yeah, well, I, I, like I said, I
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  watched that interview and it, it seemed like you had a, a
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  great time talking to him. You know, for me, I, I was
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  blessed I had that. I had a very similar experience
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  when I interviewed Kyle Mills last year because he was the one
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  who picked up Vince Flynn's books.
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  And unfortunately, I never got the chance to, you know,
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  interview Vince because by the time I picked up his books,
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  unfortunately he had already passed away.
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  But I, I had a similar experience where I'd reached out
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  to I, I think it was not him directly, but someone at Simon
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  and Schuster back when he picked up the Vince Lynn series.
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  And they and they said no, because of course I was, I don't
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  think they even knew what podcasting was really bad then,
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  which kind of goes to show how much the medium has evolved.
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  And then one of the Gentleman from Best Throwed books reached
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  out to me last year and said, hey, we like what you're doing
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  with all these, you know, authors on your podcast.
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  Would you like to interview Kyle?
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  And it was like one of those like, well, yeah, obviously.
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  So it really worked out well. And it's, it's, it's been
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  amazing, at least to me, to be able to see how this podcast
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  medium has really evolved for authors and how it's not just a,
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  you know, a political or a music thing anymore, how the Indian
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  publishing community has really utilized it.
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  I think it's awesome. Absolutely.
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  Let's, I think it's been one of those mediums where people can
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  actually get information out about themselves, about the book
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  'cause you know, speaking, just talking back on Brad, when he
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  got his break, he was 27, I think.
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  So probably not 30 years ago, but over 25 years he's been in
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  the industry. So when he started, the industry
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  was completely different. Yeah, you.
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  Didn't have the electronic versions of everything you have
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  now. You know, you had snail mail,
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  you had stuff like that, and you didn't have the medium for
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  people to go do. Press.
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  Unless you were getting on, you know, a big major television
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  network or CNN or Fox, I'm sure Fox News was there at the time,
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  but something like that where they didn't have, you know,
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  there wasn't Joe Rogan who brings limited authors on, but
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  he'll bring authors on and brings everybody on.
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  And you know, in such a wide array of you got the big ones
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  that do podcasts and then you got obviously just 10s of
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  thousands, probably millions of people, millions of podcasts out
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  there, maybe people, but millions of shows to choose
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  from. Yeah, I was really kind of in
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  the unique position and it was completely by accident where,
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  you know, I've been focusing so heavily on politics for a long
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  time. And then I I kind of got
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  fatigued doing that. And then when I interviewed you
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  for first time, I had just started writing again it and it
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  wasn't really in my idea to do author any views full time after
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  I had you on. I think someone recommended I
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  had Steve Stratton, who also published a book today.
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  Yeah, so. A publication day today, yeah.
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  I had him on and I had, I started to have a few other
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  people on and it just kind of became a thing.
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  And it's been amazing how I've been able to pivot because not
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  every podcast can do that. No, absolutely not.
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  No, it's it's, it's a lot of times you get stuck.
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  It's kind of like writing. You get stuck in one genre or
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  one type of thing. So to actually branch out and do
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  other things, a lot of times it's against you that the
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  industry is against you in a way of you're not accepted for you
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  to be able to change things up, which I think is not fair
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  because who says, you know, you have to always, you know, be a
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  chocolate chip cookie? Why can't you be a
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  snickerdoodle? Why can't you be, you know,
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  whatever other, you know, whatever other cookie you want
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  to be? So yeah, I mean it, it does help
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  that, you know, a lot of the people in the thriller, you
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  know, genre do integrate some if not directly political at least
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  like political adjacent, you know, themes even like yourself
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  with the with the body and series and dealing with White
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  House and whatnot. So that's always been helpful,
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  but. These stories write themselves
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  nowadays, I tell you what with Washington.
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  Oh. Oh yeah.
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  And with everything going on with AI and everything, it's
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  it's scary. Which kind of brings me to, you
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  know what? We're here to talk out with
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  Drexel. So you start off by saying you
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  came up with this plot in 2015 and then it kind of SAT on a
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  shelf or maybe in a box somewhere.
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  So what made you decide? Here's what it sat on it sat on
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  this hard drive probably or or one just wow.
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  It got moved over from another computer, but the hard drive
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  that's on here, the folder that's on here, that's.
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  Yeah, that that happens. I, I, as I've said before in
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  some of my interviews, a lot of my plots come off of this apple,
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  you know, of the, of the notes app.
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  I just had like a running idea for various books that I had and
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  couple of them I just picked off the list and turn into, and it
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  kind of expanded upon those. But sure.
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  Anyway, with Drexel, what was kind of your initial inspiration
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  and then what made you decide to kind of expand upon that all
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  these years later? So the first book I completed in
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  2014 was called Vengeance, which probably will see the light of
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  day in some form in the in the coming years.
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  We'll see when I actually dive into edits for that or if I I'm
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  sure I will, but probably not this year, maybe next year.
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  And as I was writing the story, which focuses on the Omega Group
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  and Troy Evans, there's kind of two parallel stories going on
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  with Vengeance. You got the good guy who's on a
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  quest of vengeance for the right reason, you got a bad guy who's
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  on a quest of vengeance for the wrong reason.
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  And as I'm kind of coming up with that and the good guy who's
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  on a path of vengeance, it's like, well, but why is he on a
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  path of vengeance? That's pretty dark thing to be
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  on. I didn't have Troy's back story
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  completely figured out when I wrote that first novel.
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  As I wrote it and as I kind of delve more into the story,
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  because I was definitely a 1000% pancer back then.
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  I'm less of a pancer now, but still a pancer.
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  Me too. I, I, I don't outline, but I, I
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  have a lot more concepts written down and, and in my head before
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  I write anything now. So as I was writing through
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  that, I kind of came up with the back story for Troy.
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  Why would he change his life and turn everything up on?
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  Why would everything gets turned up on its head?
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  Basically, which at the time when I wrote my second book,
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  which is what this one morphed into, the second book was called
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  the Zechariah Option. So vengeance got rejected from
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  agents, got put on a hard drive. Zechariah Option got rejected by
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  agents, put on a hard drive. And that's where they sat for
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  the better part of, you know, for the Zechariah Options sat
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  for the better part of nine years or whatever.
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  As I started going back through it last year and kind of going
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  through some of the stuff I wrote back then, I realized the
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  book held up the the characters, the back story, everything was
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  good. It needed tweaks, it needed
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  fixing, and it needed a new title.
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  I realized the Zechariah option is not a horrible term, but.
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  It. It it fills up like, you know,
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  90% of a cover even if you got small fonts.
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  Yeah, yeah. So I wrote out a big list of new
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  titles, and my son was with me at the time as I was going
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  through them. And I said, what jumps off of
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  you on this one? And he was like, Drexel.
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  And Drexel is actually the fictitious hometown where Troy
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  Evans grew up and where a lot of the action takes place,
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  especially the latter part of the book.
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  So yeah, so Drexel's a fake town I created back in 2015.
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  I wanted it. I knew where I wanted it back
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  then. When I was first starting to
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  write, it's like, where am I going to?
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  When I was writing the first book, even, it's like, where did
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  he grow up? And I realized I wanted a
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  fictitious town. I had, I had lived out West in
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  several states, so I kind of knew the lay of land, knew the
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  lay of the land pretty well and decided instead of putting it in
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  an actual town, I would put it in an actual area I knew, but
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  create a fictitious town because I needed certain things.
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  I needed, I needed a lake, I needed the dam.
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  I needed all these things. And yeah, put it together and
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  was really was really proud of how it came out and was sad that
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  it sat on a shelfer that are on a hard drive for nine years.
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  But nine years later or 10 years later, here we go.
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  Yeah. So how does a book like that?
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  Because you, you said you wrote this as your second book, but
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  then how does this, did you have like a full script?
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  Did you have a full manuscript or that you initially wrote?
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  Or how does this go from being chronologically, I guess the
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  second you wrote to now being your your 6th book that you.
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  Yeah, well, it's third in the series.
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  It's the third book in the Omega Group series, the Omega Group
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  series, the 1st 2. So chronologically it's out of
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  order. It's a little bit of Star Wars
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  action going on where the third book is the back story for Troy.
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  The reason I did that was I thought with the first two books
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  I gave enough hints about Troy and I wanted him to be kind of
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  the main. He's always been my main
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  protagonist. With the Omega Group, I wanted
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  to dive into more of why Troy worked the way he did, and so I
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  decided that at this point it would be a good time to just do
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  a book that really focuses solely on him.
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  It ties to the Omega Group at the end, but the majority of
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  this book is just Troy and his dad and the whole adventure
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  going on with different characters.
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  Yeah, so that's kind of the thought process behind it.
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  That's why it became so. It's the 6th published, but it's
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  the third in the Omega Group series.
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  Yeah, I see. Well, and also I, I don't know
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  if this is the case for you, but for me in developing characters,
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  when you first started writing, did you know the character of
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  Troy as well then in his back story as you do now?
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  Or was it kind of a develop the character as you go a long type
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  deal? Because that was certainly the
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  case. That was certainly the case for
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  my characters and also for Steve Stratton.
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  Yeah, I knew a lot about him before I started the first book,
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  but I didn't know his back story.
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  So I knew, like, what he liked. I knew his interests.
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  I knew what type of person he was.
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  But I wasn't. I hadn't yet figured out why he
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  had, why he had switched gears. I knew his dad was an FBI agent
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  and I knew he was going to follow in his dad's path and
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  try, try to actually, his dad became a special agent in charge
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  of a field office. He had aspirations to go higher
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  than his dad, but I didn't know what was the catalyst to switch
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  gears for him, why he would join the Army, become a Green Beret
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  eventually, you know, leave in a way, leave the Army and go in
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  this, you know, off the books group called the Omega group.
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  So I didn't have that all figured out, but I knew a lot
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  about him. In some ways, this is the most
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  personal book for me. And I think because it's early,
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  it's my first character I really developed and I'm not him in any
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  way physically or athletic or shooting wise and all that, but
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  right, traits of me that are definitely there or traits I
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  wanted that were there in him that I put into him.
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  So in a way, I have a deeper connection with him then then
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  say Nick Jordan, the body man or Eli Payne or some of the other
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  characters that I love. But Troy was always kind of my
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  guide to tell stories through and it didn't happen.
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  I just got rejection. I, I started in 20, finished the
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  book in 14. I think I've, I think I queried
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  the books between 15 and 1716 and 17, somewhere around there.
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  I don't remember the exact date anymore when I started querying
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  because I didn't know what I was doing at first.
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  But then I even went to Thriller Fest and, and, and pitched these
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  story ideas to agents there had good positive things.
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  And then they find a reason to reject them for one reason or
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  another. Just a lot of doors closed.
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  And I thought, I thought for that period of time, once The
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  Body Man got published and got a book contract for The Body Man,
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  I figured, OK, I don't want these books to go away forever,
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  but somehow I'll bring this character back to life.
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  I just thought it would be a brand new, brand new books, not
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  dive back into ones I previously wrote and kind of, you know,
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  bring them back from the dead. Yeah, so so initially it seems
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  like you kind of thought that, you know, the body man would be
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  your gravy train, so to speak. And then you know you weren't
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  sure if try whatever see the light of day when you first.
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  Start When I wrote the body man and started pitching it, I
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  thought the body man would be the one that would make a dump
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  truck full of cash come to my driveway, which for some weird
• 20:25
  reason didn't happen. But that's what I thought when
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  I, well, I just thought it was such a cool concept and I had
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  other people and they're like, this is different.
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  This is different from what we've seen how you put it
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  together. And so I kind of ignorantly
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  thought this will be, and it's done well, I mean, I, I can't
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  complain. So I've I've done better than
• 20:41
  traditional published authors in some, but I've learned a lot
• 20:46
  about how publishing works and the the the dump truck full of
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  cash happens, but it doesn't even happen to 1% of them, it
• 20:54
  happens to the 1% of the 1%, so. Yeah.
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  The rare thing to happen? Well, that, that's, well,
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  that's, you know, that that's kind of been my summer
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  experience with podcasting too. You know, I I've, I've been at
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  this for, you know, as long as perhaps, you know, Joe Rogan,
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  but I haven't been invited to the UFC or, you know, I'm not
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  interviewing President Trump or, you know, anything like like
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  that, even though, you know, that would be awesome.
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  But you know, it's, you know, it really is that 1% of the 1% for
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  I think any sort of medium so. Spotify didn't give you 100
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  million plus? No, and it's it.
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  And it's interesting because I was exclusive with Spotify for
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  for a while. But.
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  Nonetheless, you know, they never, I never got, you know,
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  the, the check. Maybe it was because they didn't
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  like that I subscribed to Apple Music, but I I don't know, that
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  could be it. So Joe took all their money.
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  So sorry. Sorry, Sam.
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  Yeah. So reading from kind of this
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  description for Drexel, you have a very interesting premise in
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  the you introduce the Zach right option here.
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  It seems a bit, but then you're making the story closer to, you
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  know, Troy's hometown. So are you jumping back and
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  forth between time periods or I guess what is your overall theme
• 22:42
  that you're going for here in? No, it doesn't jump, doesn't
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  jump back and forth. So the end of the book does go
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  forward to more of a not present time, but to when Troy is part
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  of it gets invited into the Omega group.
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  But now that the key story, there's the, the prologue takes
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  place in the mid 90s. So there's a pretty long opening
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  sequence which kind of sets up the beginning of the book.
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  And essentially what what is going on is in the first, that
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  first scene, what happens is the FBI, which is a factual
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  statement, has lots of documents.
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  They have lots of classified documents.
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  So whether it's true or not I won't reveal, but my fictitious
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  take may be on it is that they have document repositories.
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  So in the beginning of the book they're moving documents from
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  headquarters to one of these secret depositories for
• 23:42
  classified documents which is being housed in a building right
• 23:46
  near the Liberty Bell. Well, that convoy gets attacked
• 23:50
  by a group because they are intent on stealing 1 certain
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  document, which is the Zechariah option, which is a document.
• 23:59
  Actually, they fail. It's a pretty spectacular
• 24:03
  beginning. And then they have to put those
• 24:06
  documents somewhere else. They bring them back to
• 24:08
  headquarters, but they don't want all these valuable
• 24:10
  documents to be in one spot. They want to put them, spread
• 24:13
  them out. So they decide to build a new
• 24:17
  repository. Several of them, but one in
• 24:19
  particular they decide to build under Building 7 World Trade
• 24:23
  Center. Then 911 happens and obviously
• 24:27
  that changes everything. And as they are clearing out the
• 24:32
  debris from World Trade Center 7, they and this is real.
• 24:36
  They really did bring the debris over to a place called Fresh
• 24:40
  Kills, which was an old landfill de conditioned and closed down.
• 24:44
  That's where all the Trade Center debris was brought
• 24:47
  initially before, you know, went on barges, did whatever they did
• 24:50
  with it and he remains, human remains were tried to be sifted
• 24:53
  through and found there. So in a fictitious set setting,
• 24:58
  I put AFBI command center there that's sort searching through
• 25:02
  these classified documents and they're trying to see what's
• 25:06
  destroyed, what's not. And then they have to send them
• 25:09
  out of headquarters, find a new spot for them.
• 25:12
  So in the course of that happening, the Zechariah Option
• 25:16
  document sees the light of day, which is something they never
• 25:19
  wanted to have made public. And it just so happens to point
• 25:23
  and that's how it kind of Troy's brought into the story.
• 25:25
  Is that what's going on? Without giving out too many
• 25:29
  details, what's going on with the Zechariah option directly
• 25:33
  ties back to this fictitious town of Drexel, which is where
• 25:37
  Troy happens to live. So Troy is kind of inadvertently
• 25:43
  pulled into the Zechariah Option Clap classified project from the
• 25:50
  Cold War era. Very, very interesting.
• 25:56
  So you're not, so you're not tying this directly to the Cold
• 26:00
  War as far as like jumping back in time, but you're kind of
• 26:05
  bringing, I guess, the ghosts of the past.
• 26:10
  Yeah, there's some chapters that take place in the past, but
• 26:13
  they're more just explaining how the Zechariah Option Project was
• 26:17
  set up, why it was set up, how it tied to the Cold War, and
• 26:20
  why, why these people in Washington decided to do this
• 26:25
  ambitious project secretly. That's the other thing.
• 26:29
  So what you end up finding out in the course of the story,
• 26:33
  without giving much away, is that the town of Drexel was kind
• 26:37
  of built in a a hydroelectric dam was created in a lake kind
• 26:42
  of as a cover for the Zechariah option is what what ends up
• 26:45
  being found out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:50
  So that's an interesting, you know, concept too, because you
• 26:53
  had a, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm a bit rusty on the exact
• 26:59
  name, but I believe there was a, you know, there was an, an
• 27:03
  entire town, you know, built in Los Alamos when they were
• 27:09
  working on the Manhattan Project and all that, that kind of
• 27:14
  encapsulated, you know, that whole project.
• 27:18
  So. Yeah, they, they built so like
• 27:20
  when they wanted to test atomic bombs, they built not small
• 27:24
  scale, of course, but they built towns just to see what the bombs
• 27:27
  would do to structures. So they built these things and
• 27:30
  they drop a bomb in the middle of it and then, you know, you
• 27:32
  know, they see what what's left. Yeah, it's the atomics angle,
• 27:38
  which is still a real, you know, hot button topic right now.
• 27:42
  I mean, it's been a couple years.
• 27:44
  We're about to, you know, start launching nukes or Russia's
• 27:47
  going to launch nukes or whoever's going to launch nukes.
• 27:49
  But yeah, it's something that hasn't gone away.
• 27:52
  It's, I don't know, some people think we might be closer to it
• 27:57
  than we were back in the, you know, back during the Cold War
• 27:59
  era, actually. Yeah, Well, well, we're always,
• 28:03
  you know, well, we're always somewhere on the, you know, on
• 28:07
  the Doomsday Clock, you know, in the John Birch Society, you
• 28:14
  know, and all that. I think the other thing that's
• 28:17
  interesting too is, you know, this whole, you know, kind of
• 28:22
  your theme here with the document housing, because that's
• 28:26
  been, you know, a thing has kind of come up too, you know, in
• 28:31
  recent years of, you know, storing all of these classified
• 28:34
  documents and bunkers and you know what not.
• 28:38
  And you know, well, how much does the government, you know,
• 28:41
  keep in, you know, on hard copy versus, you know, the cloud
• 28:47
  versus copy disks, you know? Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:51
  Even. Well, you know Mount Rushmore.
• 28:55
  There was actually a vault built behind Mount Mount Rushmore for
• 29:01
  the hope that they would actually at some point store
• 29:04
  like the Declaration of Independence.
• 29:06
  Right. So there, yeah, that the,
• 29:09
  there's a lot of real stories out there about stuff that I I
• 29:14
  saw something recently. I'm trying to think where I saw
• 29:17
  it or or where I heard about it. It was about that when the
• 29:22
  British were burning Washington, there was one man that went into
• 29:27
  the archives, got the Declaration of Independence, the
• 29:30
  Bill of Rights, got all the originals got again.
• 29:34
  I think it was a true story got them out.
• 29:35
  It's just, I believe it's a book that they made into, got them
• 29:39
  out of Washington, put them in a friends like barn in the, in, in
• 29:45
  the attic or the, the rafters of a barn.
• 29:47
  And they were there for like 3 years, you know, during
• 29:51
  everything that was happening during that time period and then
• 29:53
  brought them back. And then like it was, it was, I
• 29:55
  think he worked for the National Archives or whatever, whatever
• 29:57
  they were at the time. And you know, oh, here's the
• 30:00
  constitution, here's the Declaration of Independence.
• 30:02
  Like, yeah, that we Revere now that we're sitting in some root
• 30:06
  rafters of a barn for three years or whatever.
• 30:09
  It's, I mean, it's wild. You can't make this stuff up.
• 30:11
  Right. And so, you know, I guess was
• 30:16
  that one of the things that interested you in writing Drexel
• 30:21
  as, you know, a a concept? Not that story, but something.
• 30:27
  I'm a, I'm a history buff, or at least I was.
• 30:29
  I don't know if I I researched it as much as I used to because
• 30:32
  I have so many other things that are going on in my head, but
• 30:35
  I've always loved history. Years ago I loved the National
• 30:40
  Treasure movies when they came out.
• 30:41
  So I kind of loved that that play between real world stuff
• 30:46
  and some fiction, but yet documents that show things and
• 30:50
  do they really show things what you think and.
• 30:53
  Yeah, we. Always had an interest in that
• 30:54
  for sure, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, So what?
• 31:03
  What was your motivation then, I guess for, you know, the concept
• 31:07
  of, you know, writing Drexel and I, I know you said that you
• 31:15
  were, that you're focusing more on Troy's origin story a bit.
• 31:20
  So is this AI guess, are you kind of experimenting with the
• 31:25
  beginning of Troy's origins here?
• 31:29
  What, what's kind of your, I guess, ARC plan for this book?
• 31:35
  Well, I already have multiple books written after this so I
• 31:38
  don't want to. I don't want to give away how I
• 31:40
  end it, but how I end it will tie into future stuff for sure.
• 31:44
  But at at its heart, I've already introduced Troy in
• 31:49
  Ransom Daughter and in Babylon Will Rise and I've introduced
• 31:51
  him as a captain that's part of this elite group called the
• 31:54
  Omega Group. And I wanted this book to focus
• 31:57
  on what makes Troy tick. Why did he why did he completely
• 32:02
  alter his life? Because I hint at it.
• 32:05
  I hint at it and ransom daughter and I hint at it.
• 32:07
  Babylon will rise that he has. He used to have a lunch love
• 32:10
  interest named Kate. And what happened with Kate?
• 32:14
  Because he still talks about her affectionately.
• 32:15
  It's not like they broke up and he said, you know, she right
• 32:20
  broke up with him or it was it was, you know, it was Troy that
• 32:23
  actually changed. He did a lot of things.
• 32:25
  Yeah. This book really dives into what
• 32:28
  happened, dives into their love story, but it also dives into
• 32:33
  what changed in the course of his life to alter his future.
• 32:38
  And I kind of, you know, I kind of play at that a little bit
• 32:40
  with some of the stuff going on is that, you know, for people.
• 32:43
  And I, I would try to put some thinking stuff in there of like,
• 32:46
  you know, think about your actions, think about what's
• 32:50
  really important. And, you know, some things are
• 32:55
  some things are a big enough deal to walk away and to change
• 32:58
  your change your future. But is everything you know, what
• 33:02
  did you do is is important, which things you choose to
• 33:06
  follow and tried to explore that with it.
• 33:09
  And I really just I read through it again about two weeks, 3
• 33:12
  weeks ago, making sure I had everything where I wanted,
• 33:15
  didn't want to make any changes. All my edits had been done.
• 33:18
  People had editors had already got back to me.
• 33:21
  So I was able to just read through it for enjoyment.
• 33:24
  And I don't know that I'll ever read it again.
• 33:26
  Maybe not not anytime soon, but I was, I was at peace with what
• 33:29
  I had and made me smile. If if that's the thing, I put a
• 33:34
  video up there today of me opening the book for the first
• 33:37
  time. Yeah.
• 33:38
  And to me, that's why I write them.
• 33:43
  If I when when I write them and I type the end and I'm proud of
• 33:46
  that book, then that was my juice of why I did it.
• 33:49
  Yeah. I want to sell copies, and I
• 33:50
  want to sell as many copies as I can.
• 33:53
  I'm not dumb, but that's kind of more the gravy, you know?
• 33:57
  Yeah. Why I do it is I've got these
• 34:00
  stories that have come to me and I want to try to get them out of
• 34:04
  my head, get them on a piece of paper electronically, and then
• 34:08
  eventually get them published if if they merit it.
• 34:11
  I think you're one of the things I've always liked about your
• 34:16
  books, and I'm not just saying this as a friend, but one of the
• 34:19
  things that I've always liked about your books is your
• 34:23
  character development in the way you write characters.
• 34:28
  Not just like their personalities and whatnot, but
• 34:31
  their motivations and, and why they do things.
• 34:37
  I think specifically with breach of trust, which I have here on
• 34:42
  my shelf, I love the 2 twin brothers you have where you
• 34:48
  know, 1 is, you know, he's a protagonist, but he's a bit
• 34:54
  broken. And then you have his evil, I
• 34:58
  don't want to say evil twin brother, but you know.
• 35:01
  Always won, yeah. You know, maybe the pops and
• 35:06
  making, you know, them complex and I love what you did with,
• 35:10
  you know, Mayor C and Supreme Justice, you know, last year.
• 35:18
  Yeah, they're fun. I like crafting that and I try
• 35:20
  to give them and I know other authors do.
• 35:23
  I'm not doing anything unique in that regard, but I want to give
• 35:26
  them nuances. I can't stand when I'm reading a
• 35:29
  book and the character's just one-dimensional, you know?
• 35:32
  I can't stand when you have a bad guy that's wanting to be a
• 35:34
  bad guy. Because, you know, I mean, for
• 35:36
  years a lot of it was Islamic terrorists.
• 35:40
  They're out killing the infidels.
• 35:41
  They're going to strap on a bomb because that's what Allah wants
• 35:44
  them to do. Maybe it was cool for a little
• 35:47
  bit of time, but it gets old really fast.
• 35:49
  It's like, yeah, that's doing something for a little bit more
• 35:54
  of a, you know, a little more depth to their, to their thought
• 35:57
  process. Yeah, I think one of the things
• 36:01
  that is really interesting too is would you have, you know, a
• 36:06
  villain or someone who to the reader, they think, to the
• 36:11
  reader, it's clear that what they're doing is wrong or
• 36:15
  immoral. But to, you know, the
• 36:18
  antagonist, they think what they're doing is right or
• 36:21
  somehow, you know, justified and diving into those perspectives
• 36:28
  and not just making, you know, I've won a mustache twirling.
• 36:34
  Well, a well written villain is the, you know, is the good guy
• 36:39
  in his mind or her mind. They're they're doing things.
• 36:42
  Merci is a good example of that. I had.
• 36:45
  She was interesting. I I wanted to do something with
• 36:48
  that character. But when the Body Man came out,
• 36:51
  that was one of the most common threads I got from people.
• 36:54
  Or not most common, but it was it came from a lot of different
• 36:57
  people. They're like, I want to know
• 36:58
  about this Mercy, more about this Mercy character.
• 37:01
  Yeah, She was pretty one-dimensional when I wrote
• 37:03
  her. Her job was to look good, seduce
• 37:07
  the guys and kill the president. That was like it.
• 37:10
  Yeah. So I had to figure out why she
• 37:13
  wanted to do that. At some point.
• 37:14
  Why would you have this attractive woman who not just
• 37:18
  attractive and then poisons people or, you know, kills?
• 37:22
  I mean, she has to actually physically get herself in shape
• 37:25
  for some of the things she does. Who treats her, her body like it
• 37:29
  is a weapon. So it takes years.
• 37:31
  Well, why would someone who's smart, who's attractive, why
• 37:35
  would they just want to kill people?
• 37:37
  And she's I mentioned that she's killing scumbags.
• 37:39
  She's not out there killing. You know, Sam didn't say
• 37:43
  something that bothered her and she decided to kill Sam or
• 37:45
  anything like that. It's it's nothing like.
• 37:47
  Right. She's you know, maybe maybe if
• 37:50
  Sam killed her dog, you know, then then you're going to get it
• 37:53
  or something. But now, I mean, she she goes
• 37:55
  after dirtbags. But again, why would an
• 37:57
  attractive, smart woman just be killing dirtbags?
• 38:01
  Well, for money? Well, it's kind of really that's
• 38:04
  you want to kill people just for money.
• 38:05
  So I kind of had to flush out her back story, which then of
• 38:08
  course made it into Supreme Justice.
• 38:10
  But that was the she was one of those characters early on that
• 38:12
  people like, I want to read more about her.
• 38:14
  And I'm like, well, cool, because I want to tell more
• 38:16
  stories about her. Yeah, I had AI had a similar
• 38:20
  experience where I created this character named Jason Miller and
• 38:26
  the chatters of Deception universe.
• 38:28
  And I wrote I initially wrote him to kind of be a one off
• 38:32
  almost joke character, kind of a homage to the man with no name
• 38:38
  character from you know that Clint Eastwood did and kind of
• 38:42
  him be a modern gunslinger. And in one of the drafts of my
• 38:47
  books, I initially planned to kill him off.
• 38:51
  And then someone said, you can't kill, you can't kill him off.
• 38:56
  This character's too much of A, of a badass.
• 38:59
  So I kept him around. And then people kept saying,
• 39:02
  well, I want more of this character.
• 39:04
  So then I had to come up with, like, an origin story for him
• 39:09
  because the fans liked him so much, you know, And here I, and
• 39:16
  I mean, obviously, I think, I think I've also come to, you
• 39:21
  know, like the character a lot more, too, especially since I've
• 39:24
  made money off of his Silla book.
• 39:28
  So that always helped. But yeah, developing characters
• 39:31
  who, you know, are kind of, you don't always expect them to take
• 39:35
  off right away. I think that's part of the fun
• 39:39
  of this too. And by the way, I went to school
• 39:41
  to Jason Miller and I haven't thought about him in many, many
• 39:44
  years. We called him Sunshine.
• 39:46
  That was our that was our nickname for Jason Miller.
• 39:48
  So I remember I had a it was on our floor, like across the hall
• 39:52
  from name. I don't think it was my
• 39:53
  roommate. I don't know.
• 39:55
  College is a blur. It was many years.
• 39:56
  Yeah. The sun's bad.
• 39:58
  I remember sunshine now that you say that.
• 39:59
  So well, The funny thing about how I came up with his name is
• 40:03
  so Clint Eastwood's character in The Man With No Name.
• 40:08
  He changes names through all all the films and and when I was
• 40:13
  coming up with this character name, I'm like, what's the most
• 40:17
  generic name that I can come up with it?
• 40:22
  Unassuming. And for some reason, Jason
• 40:24
  Miller just popped into my head. And so, you know, he has a back
• 40:30
  story and, you know, that's a lot more complicated.
• 40:34
  But yeah, I mean it, it's always interesting to develop, you
• 40:39
  know, these characters who, yeah, you know, just sometimes,
• 40:44
  you know, come out of nowhere, so.
• 40:47
  I think the, I think the ones that come out of nowhere, I
• 40:49
  think, I mean, I plan characters all the time, but the ones you
• 40:53
  don't plan, and especially if you're a pantser and you just
• 40:56
  kind of put someone in a situation and cause a lot of
• 40:59
  times when I'm writing at night, I have an idea where I need to
• 41:02
  go. Yes, but I don't know who's
• 41:04
  going to be along for the journey.
• 41:06
  Yeah. Great.
• 41:07
  Someone that all of a sudden resonates with you or like you
• 41:10
  said, resonates with the reader. That's kind of some of the juice
• 41:13
  of writing. It's like, Oh yeah, I can have
• 41:16
  this character maybe be a little bit not just a not just a one
• 41:20
  off. They're not just there to, you
• 41:22
  know, carry someone's suitcase. They're there to carry the
• 41:25
  suitcase. And then they're going to slug
• 41:27
  someone with the suitcase and kill them and they're going to
• 41:29
  be on the run or something. You know, just some some wild
• 41:32
  thing that happens and all of a sudden they've got a little bit
• 41:34
  of an arc of, yeah, now we got to catch this guy because he
• 41:37
  just beat someone to death with a suitcase or whatever.
• 41:39
  Well, and so then that kind of leads into a next question
• 41:42
  because, you know, I initially thought when I first heard the
• 41:47
  title Drexel, I thought it was going to be like some science
• 41:51
  fiction techno thing because that that's kind of what it
• 41:55
  sounds like. And then once, once I saw that,
• 41:59
  oh, it's it's a town. And you know, you mentioning
• 42:01
  it's, it's a fictional town. What was your, what was your
• 42:05
  motivation to, you know, create this fictional place?
• 42:09
  And I mean, that had to take some thought to not only develop
• 42:13
  a fictional character, but also to develop a a fictional town.
• 42:17
  I drew, I drew a map back in the day.
• 42:20
  I actually had a map of the town drawn out because I needed to
• 42:23
  know where the where the dam was.
• 42:26
  I need to know where the goldmine was.
• 42:30
  One of the characters last name is Harding.
• 42:32
  I need to know where his house was for part of the stuff.
• 42:35
  I need to know where Troy lived. Well, I actually, and I'm not a
• 42:38
  drawer, so it was probably like stick figures on a small little
• 42:41
  horrible looking thing. But yeah, it's just the
• 42:45
  motivation behind it was just to create something fun and then be
• 42:49
  able to put characters in it. And just, that's why I kind of
• 42:53
  liked that it was a fictitious place that design what I needed
• 42:58
  to fit the story. I was thinking about versus if
• 43:00
  you set a book in Seattle, well, you're bound by the landmarks of
• 43:04
  Seattle. You're bound by the geographic
• 43:07
  markers and everything. Yeah.
• 43:10
  So, and I live in Seattle. I bring Seattle up because I, I
• 43:13
  lived there and I actually was trying to figure out last year
• 43:17
  as I was writing something of like putting characters in
• 43:21
  Seattle. And like, I had to think about
• 43:25
  it because I lived there for not terribly long, but I worked in
• 43:27
  downtown and I'm like, where were these things?
• 43:30
  So I spent a good amount of time on Google Earth looking up
• 43:33
  downtown landmarks and trying to figure out how far of a drive it
• 43:36
  was to the airport, to the certain building I needed the
• 43:39
  characters to go to. But again, that stuff's fun.
• 43:42
  I enjoy doing that. I enjoy the research side of it.
• 43:45
  If I can, though, I try to get and I I did live there, so I
• 43:49
  kind of worked a little bit off my brain, but I just need to
• 43:52
  fill in the details. That's why I try to get to
• 43:54
  places. If I, especially if it's going
• 43:56
  to be a real spot, I want to try to get to those cities.
• 44:00
  Yeah. And figure it out versus relying
• 44:04
  on Google Earth and Google Maps and all that kind of stuff.
• 44:06
  But sometimes you can't. And like we're talking offline,
• 44:09
  you know, about, you know, having, you know, the ability to
• 44:12
  just, you know, go to Jamaica or buy your own Fiji Island or
• 44:15
  whatever. Powerball might get you that.
• 44:19
  I don't know if publishing books get you that nowadays.
• 44:22
  So not easily. Yeah.
• 44:24
  So, yeah, I mean, I mean, that's the other thing too, is like,
• 44:31
  you know, publishing these things is a lot of fun, you
• 44:36
  know, I think. But I the one thing that always
• 44:39
  amuses me now is seeing all these, you know, when all, when
• 44:45
  people are new and they'll price a book and then they'll see how,
• 44:51
  you know what on return you get for Yeah, you know, it's I, I
• 44:57
  think now Amazon's taking like even more, at least for the
• 45:01
  printing cost of the of the book.
• 45:05
  They changed it for certain things, not didn't affect me,
• 45:09
  but yeah, they they did make some changes last year.
• 45:12
  Ingram Spark actually went up, yeah, theirs last year as well.
• 45:18
  So that was kind of discouraging.
• 45:22
  It's interesting, especially if you go the indie route, you
• 45:27
  really have to spend a lot of time learning where you get the
• 45:32
  most bang for your buck. Where do you, where does the
• 45:34
  audience going to buy the books? And because some people despise
• 45:36
  Amazon and they don't want to go buy books from Amazon from a
• 45:42
  author's perspective that also does his own imprint, I can
• 45:47
  offer the book for the cheapest amount from Amazon and then
• 45:52
  still get the most return on that.
• 45:55
  I can offer it lower on Ingram Spark, which feeds Barnes and
• 45:58
  Noble and Walmart and Target. You know, any online printer
• 46:02
  books-a-million bookshop.org. But obviously the lower the
• 46:07
  prices, the lower your royalties are.
• 46:11
  And that's The thing is you have to look at it from a business
• 46:12
  perspective. And I know people put books out
• 46:15
  there and just give them away, you know, or they, they put a
• 46:19
  book online on Amazon and they're like, I'll just put the
• 46:21
  e-book out there for $0.99. You're getting like $0.33 if you
• 46:25
  put a book out there for $0.99 as well.
• 46:28
  And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 46:29
  I've done it as a promo before. But man, if you have to pay for
• 46:33
  a book cover and if you have to pay for an editor and you have
• 46:36
  to pay for ISBN numbers and all that, you have to sell a lot of
• 46:41
  copies to start recouping thousands of dollars out.
• 46:45
  And so that's why I'm definitely a fan.
• 46:47
  And, and I, I, I like to see people price books
• 46:49
  competitively, but not screw themselves over where you're
• 46:53
  never going to make your money back or you're just going to
• 46:55
  have to sell 10,000 books. Well, that's so like if you
• 47:00
  actually look at the numbers of how many books sell for indie
• 47:03
  publishers for traditional publishing, the numbers don't
• 47:07
  justify pricing books at $0.99 to get your money back if you've
• 47:14
  you know for sure. No.
• 47:16
  And often what I'll, what I'll do for those types of things is
• 47:20
  if I'm, what if I'm writing like a short story or something with
• 47:24
  the, with the character. What I always tell people is I
• 47:31
  have these short stories that feature these characters.
• 47:34
  If you don't want to commit to buying a full book, check out
• 47:39
  these short stories that give a pretty good idea of, you know,
• 47:44
  John Ryder or someone else in my universe and kind of what
• 47:48
  they're about. And then if you know, if you
• 47:50
  like that short story, then check out these, you know, then
• 47:56
  dive into this series so. Ransom Daughters a good example.
• 48:00
  So Ransom Daughters, the first in the Omega Group series.
• 48:04
  I, I don't remember what it was priced at a year ago, Not much
• 48:07
  2, maybe 290-9399. I can't remember now.
• 48:11
  I brought it down to $0.99 'cause I said you know what,
• 48:13
  it's been out for a couple years.
• 48:15
  It's a novella really. It's only, you know, the print
• 48:18
  pages is 136 pages on print. The e-book is, you know, 30,000
• 48:24
  words or whatever. So it's, you know, it's a two
• 48:26
  hour, 2 to 3 hour read for people, right, $0.99 makes sense
• 48:30
  for that. If that was coming from a
• 48:32
  traditional publisher, it still probably would be 599 or 699 or
• 48:36
  799, even though it was only novella.
• 48:39
  That's one thing that kind of blows my mind is, you know,
• 48:41
  because I keep an eye and I, I plan on going traditional with a
• 48:45
  book that I'm working on now. I might not get my foot in the
• 48:49
  door and I'll go back to indie with it if I have to, but I
• 48:52
  think it's going to be something that I can actually get their
• 48:55
  interest with the concept I'm writing.
• 48:58
  But you know, their e-books or like 1499.
• 49:03
  Yeah. And it's just like I know for me
• 49:05
  as a consumer, because I'm a writer, I'm a business owner and
• 49:09
  I'm also a consumer of other people's books.
• 49:12
  I'm not paying 1499 for an e-book.
• 49:14
  And there's no, I have no knock of people that do that.
• 49:17
  But the price point for me is too high.
• 49:21
  I'm paying 1499 paperbacks. Trade paperbacks are normally
• 49:26
  running at 15/16/99. I'll get a physical book for
• 49:29
  that price. Yeah.
• 49:31
  Not a digital book, no. No way.
• 49:33
  So. Well, and that's, I don't know
• 49:35
  if you've, if you've encountered this, but that's been kind of a
• 49:39
  thing. I would count too of like all
• 49:41
  price paperbacks for 15, you know, for 1499 or 1599.
• 49:47
  And I'll have people who are like, you want $15.00 for, you
• 49:52
  know, for this. And I always tell them I'm like,
• 49:56
  well, it's 1599. But in reality, I'm only making,
• 50:01
  you know, 4-6 day or you know, or whatever the whatever the the
• 50:06
  cost is and you know. I'm I'm listening, but I'm I'm
• 50:09
  going on Amazon right now because this is terrible.
• 50:11
  I know this is the first day it's out.
• 50:12
  What about? What do I got Drexel priced at?
• 50:14
  I do all that way in advance. I've I've got it.
• 50:18
  It's. 1699 OK, so I got a price now I did that.
• 50:22
  Why did I come to that price point?
• 50:24
  Well, I'm looking to get a certain return and I'm also
• 50:26
  looking at other books that are comparable.
• 50:28
  OK, well, what are they charging for?
• 50:29
  Because why am I going to price a book?
• 50:32
  Because Amazon's keeping, you know, 60% of that sale price.
• 50:39
  You know, they're keeping, they're keeping a good chunk of
• 50:42
  that. Is it 60 or 40?
• 50:44
  I think it's 40, the last time 40.
• 50:48
  You're, you're paying, but as the sorry, my number, too many
• 50:51
  numbers in my head, but you're paying the print cost as the
• 50:54
  person putting it up there. So you're paying the print cost
• 50:56
  in Amazon 40%. So when you calculate the
• 50:59
  numbers, sure, you could mark a paperback down depending on the
• 51:03
  page links to maybe 10 eleven, $12.00, but you might be making
• 51:08
  a buck on it. Again, it comes down to the
• 51:10
  thought process behind it of what are the costs you put into
• 51:15
  that product and how much do you need to charge to in a
• 51:18
  reasonable time period, you know, make your money back.
• 51:20
  You're not gouging when you're paying, when you're charging
• 51:22
  1699 for a paperback, you're not making 1599 or 1499 or 13.
• 51:29
  You're, you know, you're making $4.00 on it, 450, whatever the
• 51:32
  breakdown is. So, and that's to me that's
• 51:36
  reasonable of hey, then I know how many books I have to sell
• 51:42
  just to even get back to square one.
• 51:44
  Because all those costs as a publisher for the editing for
• 51:47
  the book, the cover design, all that stuff, you pay that out way
• 51:52
  in advance before that book ever hits the market.
• 51:54
  Yeah. And that, that's so that's one
• 51:59
  of the reasons to to kind of pivot.
• 52:02
  I know that in some of your marketing and whatnot for Drexel
• 52:07
  and you actually mentioned this to me offline a few months ago,
• 52:11
  you started using AI for marketing things and you, you.
• 52:16
  Said images, yes. Nothing for nothing with dealing
• 52:19
  with the actual book itself. But the, you know, the covers.
• 52:22
  The covers are done by someone. But yes, marketing the images
• 52:25
  and creating graphics, yes. Yeah.
• 52:27
  So you said that you want, you said that you wanted to talk
• 52:31
  offline a bit about that. So I, I wasn't really sure if
• 52:35
  you had any questions for me regarding that or anything, but
• 52:38
  I, I'm just kind of curious, you know, out of.
• 52:44
  The I don't remember saying that, but I I might have.
• 52:47
  I, I'm just kind of curious, you know, out of the, you know, just
• 52:51
  kind of off the top, what are kind of your thoughts on AI, you
• 52:56
  know, creatively in. We're all dead, Sam.
• 53:00
  We're all dead when the when the T1000 comes marching down the
• 53:04
  street and starts vaporizing people, no one's no one
• 53:08
  remembers Terminator. They're all dumb asses work out
• 53:11
  just fine. It's like, yeah, let's give this
• 53:13
  autonomous being a weapon and be like, hey, just go after the bad
• 53:16
  people. We're.
• 53:17
  All Yeah, yeah, believe me, I, I that's my that is my main
• 53:23
  concern regarding AAI. That's my I'm joking about that
• 53:29
  or I would be getting a cave. I'd be moving to Drexel, Idaho
• 53:32
  and looking for an old man in goldmine to go bury myself in.
• 53:36
  So. Maybe you should hide your
• 53:38
  manuscripts there, who knows? Maybe they are there, Sam.
• 53:42
  Maybe, maybe, maybe we're going to have a little bit of a
• 53:44
  treasure hunt here in a few years.
• 53:47
  Can you find Drexel and what's buried in an old gold mine?
• 53:50
  So trust me, I'm thinking down the line.
• 53:54
  I. Don't know the AI stuff though,
• 53:56
  to be, to be serious about it. I'm I'm kind of on the fence
• 53:59
  with it. I think it's a great tool.
• 54:01
  Sometimes I think and I, I do read a lot about it and watch it
• 54:05
  podcast about it and try to be knowledgeable and I'm still very
• 54:09
  ignorant to some degree. I don't know if it's going to be
• 54:13
  as big of a deal as they say it's going to be or if it's if
• 54:17
  there's a lot of hot air being blown.
• 54:21
  I know Musk has talked a lot about it.
• 54:23
  And I mean, Musk also said something, Musk said something
• 54:28
  recently that he did not think there'd be retirement funds in
• 54:31
  my generation, my lifetime. Yeah, saving for retirement.
• 54:35
  He's like, I'll just have a global, you'll have, you'll have
• 54:37
  a universal income high and likely it'll be a high level
• 54:40
  income and there won't be a such thing as currency.
• 54:42
  Well, everything will be digital.
• 54:43
  And all that starts getting some scary talk in my mind because,
• 54:48
  you know, there's a lot of people that are a little bit
• 54:50
  concerned of saying, hey, we'll have a, you know, we'll have a
• 54:54
  global credit score. You know, if you'll have this,
• 54:57
  hey, if you want to go to the grocery store, you just.
• 54:59
  Were you a good boy to this week?
• 55:01
  Yeah, I was. But wait, wait, wait.
• 55:04
  You ordered steak twice last week.
• 55:07
  I'm sorry. There's too much methane gas in
• 55:09
  the environment and you can only have steak twice a month, not
• 55:12
  twice a week. And.
• 55:13
  Yeah. No, if that stuff's coming, then
• 55:17
  it's going to be a kind of a weird I just bought a bunch of
• 55:19
  steak tonight. I was at the grocery store
• 55:21
  before we jumped on it. I, I like being, I'm on
• 55:23
  carnivore right now. So, man, I'm not going to do
• 55:26
  very well if they just tell me I can have kale and Pinto beans,
• 55:31
  you know? Yeah, I mean, so the thing with
• 55:37
  AI is I I think it's I think it's so I mean it's such a
• 55:44
  nuanced yeah, combo combo topic, specifically AI.
• 55:49
  Maybe it's just because I'm I'm a nerd, but they're also there
• 55:55
  are also various like different types types of AI.
• 55:59
  Like for example, if you think about it, I've been using text
• 56:04
  to speech dictation for probably about 20 years now in one way or
• 56:10
  the other. And without being able to
• 56:14
  dictate, I wouldn't have been able to make make it through
• 56:17
  college, much less writing in my books, you know, without that
• 56:24
  technology. And so it uses AI to, you know,
• 56:30
  process what I'm saying and then turn it into text.
• 56:35
  And when it first, when the technology first came out, I had
• 56:40
  to be in a quiet room like I am right now and I couldn't talk to
• 56:44
  you like I like I would normally I I would only had to speak in a
• 56:48
  monotone just for it to understand me.
• 56:52
  And right so now as the technology has gone smarter, I
• 56:56
  can speak more naturally. So I like that aspect.
• 57:02
  I also like the fact that like as far as using as an author,
• 57:07
  I've used it to turn my list into like more thorough outlines
• 57:15
  because, you know, to kind of help me keep on track because
• 57:21
  I'm the type of person like you, I like to pants and I, I hate to
• 57:24
  outline, but if I can at least like have a, you know, general
• 57:30
  idea of which ideas I'm going to go with, you know, in
• 57:34
  chronological order, that helps. The other thing that's helpful
• 57:37
  is if I'm, once I've finished my, my first draft, you know,
• 57:45
  after reading through and kind of catching things on my own,
• 57:48
  I'll put it through the Grock or something and have it read and
• 57:54
  it will, it's pretty good at like saying, Oh, you, you could,
• 57:58
  you could trim this. This is a bit wordy.
• 58:01
  You might need to expand more, you know, in this, in this area.
• 58:05
  So I'm not, I'm not having it like write the story for me, but
• 58:10
  more like edit, edit. I'm, as I've explained, I'm
• 58:12
  using more as like a writing assistant.
• 58:15
  I don't, I know authors who are completely anti that and I
• 58:19
  don't, I think as long as you're using it as like an assistant,
• 58:23
  I've no problem with that. And as As for covers and
• 58:29
  whatnot, I design A lot my own covers and I do use the grog lot
• 58:34
  for that. I I think I think if you can't
• 58:36
  afford to hire a. Sure.
• 58:40
  A cover designer it certainly helps, but if you can I think it
• 58:45
  helps with like mocking up maybe concepts.
• 58:50
  I, I was looking in a couple years ago, I was looking in
• 58:52
  different things for like book trailers and stuff.
• 58:55
  And I mean, 2 to $400 to for a book trailer is not outrageous
• 59:00
  for people to charge. And that's like a third, that's
• 59:03
  not a, a Grok 6 second book trailer, that's a longer
• 59:06
  trailer. But yeah, I can do a six second
• 59:10
  book trailer, you know, short trailers and I can do a bunch of
• 59:12
  them in Grok in like 2 minutes. And that's actually multiple
• 59:16
  attempts to get it right. And it's free and I get the
• 59:21
  concept of, hey, you want to be able to hire people to do a
• 59:25
  special job and to be able to do something like graphic artist.
• 59:27
  I don't knock that at all. But if I have the option of
• 59:30
  either using Grok to create an image or create some sort of a
• 59:36
  trailer. So it's a brief trailer for, for
• 59:38
  a cover, like what I've done with changing my covers and
• 59:41
  having them have action in it. Or pay someone 5000 to $300.
• 59:47
  I'm probably not going to pay someone to do it.
• 59:49
  You know, that's that, that's a luxury that most authors don't
• 59:54
  have, even traditionally published authors.
• 59:56
  Yeah, getting a bunch of money. So they're kind of the mercy of
• 1:00:00
  what they're what graphics that their publisher will provide for
• 1:00:04
  them. So I definitely think it's a
• 1:00:07
  good tool to have. I do see where the danger kicks
• 1:00:12
  in as well. And it's complicated.
• 1:00:14
  It's like you correct word to start with.
• 1:00:16
  It's nuanced and it's it's not going away.
• 1:00:20
  So that's kind of the thing that people I think need to kind of
• 1:00:24
  get through their head of they think, well, it'll just, I mean,
• 1:00:28
  I don't see this just disappearing overnight at some
• 1:00:31
  point. Yeah, we're not using AI
• 1:00:33
  anymore. It's here.
• 1:00:34
  The question is, is how, how overwhelming and will it change
• 1:00:40
  our life? And I don't know where that's
• 1:00:42
  going to go. I've, again, I've seen both
• 1:00:44
  sides of the spectrum, people saying gloom and doom, This is
• 1:00:46
  it. There's gonna be no more jobs.
• 1:00:48
  I work for a large Fortune 500 company.
• 1:00:51
  I have a finance job. We have AI technologies that
• 1:00:55
  we're starting to utilize as a company.
• 1:00:58
  And you know, that gave me some trepidation at first when I
• 1:01:01
  first heard that, 'cause I'm like, whoa, are they just going
• 1:01:03
  to have all their finance done by this AI thing and I'm out of
• 1:01:06
  a job? I don't think that's the case
• 1:01:08
  short term. Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  Five years from now, will they still need certain positions or
• 1:01:14
  a couple years from now? I don't know it it's going to
• 1:01:17
  be, it's going to be interesting so.
• 1:01:20
  Over overall, I think the whole concept and maybe the maybe I'm
• 1:01:23
  just unique. I mean, I wish everyone had this
• 1:01:27
  mindset because I think people, I think, I think if people had
• 1:01:31
  this mindset, it would be, it would be better.
• 1:01:33
  But my mindset is like I said, to use AI to enhance my workflow
• 1:01:38
  instead of replace it or or rely on overlay.
• 1:01:44
  I think if people, I think if people used AI like they do word
• 1:01:48
  processors or something like that, it would be a lot more
• 1:01:52
  beneficial rather than just relying on it.
• 1:01:55
  What what worries me though, is oddly enough, like you said,
• 1:01:59
  like the the T, you know, 1000 thing.
• 1:02:03
  I'm not I'm not sure I want the computers to literally be hooked
• 1:02:08
  up to the missile defense system at nor at NORAD.
• 1:02:13
  I know, I know people, I know people who work for military
• 1:02:18
  contractors who are, you know, considering doing that.
• 1:02:23
  And I'm like, well, I have an outline for a thriller that the
• 1:02:27
  vice president or the president might want to read before going
• 1:02:30
  down this path because it might not end.
• 1:02:35
  Well, well, look at what just happened in Venezuela.
• 1:02:37
  So real world thing that happened so far in 2026 is, you
• 1:02:41
  know, we sent in a team of Delta guys and took out anywhere from
• 1:02:46
  80 to 100 plus of Maduro's guards didn't lose a single
• 1:02:51
  person. And some of the some of the
• 1:02:54
  stuff that's been coming out, whether it's widely known or
• 1:02:57
  not, is that they didn't just shoot all of them.
• 1:03:01
  They had other weapons. And there was one guy there was
• 1:03:03
  a again, I don't know if it was true, but it was interesting.
• 1:03:06
  I read this thing of one of the guards was basically saying that
• 1:03:09
  they were hit with some kind of a Sonic weapon, you know, no
• 1:03:13
  bullets or anything like that. And you know, guys around him
• 1:03:16
  were bleeding from the mouth and ears and different stuff.
• 1:03:19
  And so, you know, you're starting to get into a world
• 1:03:22
  where, you know, you don't just have to have a bullet shot at
• 1:03:27
  someone. You might have a weapon that
• 1:03:28
  shot at someone. I mean, Speaking of, you know,
• 1:03:30
  that you have EM. PS You know, we kind of talk
• 1:03:32
  about, you know, which is kind of what what Drexel has some
• 1:03:37
  some stuff talking about stuff like that is nuclear and EMP
• 1:03:41
  type stuff of, you know, that's that's all you need to take you
• 1:03:45
  back to the Stone Age. It's not a nuclear bomb.
• 1:03:48
  It's the EMP that's created with a nuclear bomb, but also can be
• 1:03:52
  created independently of a nuclear bomb.
• 1:03:55
  So you don't have to go bomb the United States.
• 1:03:57
  You just need to sneak in some EM PS and have them.
• 1:04:00
  Yeah, critical areas. And I mean, our infrastructure,
• 1:04:02
  our power. I was just part of the Verizon
• 1:04:06
  thing. Was that last Wednesday?
• 1:04:08
  We. Oh yeah.
• 1:04:09
  Last Wednesday I was working Co worker messaged me and said hey
• 1:04:14
  I can't get a hold of you you're going straight to voicemail.
• 1:04:16
  I looked down at my phone and said SOS and I'm like well it's
• 1:04:19
  odd. So I turned my phone off came
• 1:04:21
  back on SOS turned it off again. I did it 3 or 4 times and I
• 1:04:26
  waited a little bit and I'm like is this is the tower down near
• 1:04:29
  me? So I googled it.
• 1:04:31
  Hey nationwide outage Verizon. I'm like, oh lovely, I can make
• 1:04:36
  an emergency call because it will jump off another carrier
• 1:04:38
  that's not Verizon. But I can't call my kids, my Co
• 1:04:42
  worker can't call me. You know, you realize how
• 1:04:48
  integral these are to our lives, which actually is not good.
• 1:04:51
  Yeah, yeah. And I mean and I think AT&T also
• 1:04:56
  had a had an outage too or MATE was just more local.
• 1:05:00
  But yeah, I had AI had an outage and I had an outage too.
• 1:05:06
  And so yeah, that was, that was not fun.
• 1:05:12
  It's fun stuff to explore in books, but when it when it comes
• 1:05:15
  to the real world and you're kind of like, you know, I like
• 1:05:18
  it better when this is fiction, I don't, I don't know if I like
• 1:05:20
  the, I don't know if I really want the T1000, you know, going,
• 1:05:25
  you know, I like Arnold, he's great and all, but I don't want
• 1:05:27
  Arnold, you know, from the first movie coming out and trying to
• 1:05:30
  kill people. So, yeah, well, the the other
• 1:05:31
  thing too, like one of the themes in my books too that I'm
• 1:05:37
  working on and I I remember Brad Thore had to throw kind of about
• 1:05:41
  this probably 15 years ago or something is social media and
• 1:05:46
  like how, you know, you can create like fake, you know, news
• 1:05:50
  and disinformation and cause. Absolutely.
• 1:05:54
  A panic and that you seem like you know spectacle fiction 15
• 1:05:59
  years ago it's it's not so much now on on for.
• 1:06:02
  No, unfortunately, yeah. 7:00 I I think the estimates are they
• 1:06:07
  think it could be upwards to 70% of online social media accounts,
• 1:06:11
  at least for Twitter at the time they were saying it, I think it
• 1:06:14
  was 70 are fake. Yeah.
• 1:06:17
  Hot real accounts. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:20
  And I mean, and, and a lot of people will read something
• 1:06:23
  online that they think. So I, I was up in Connecticut
• 1:06:28
  this weekend visiting family before the book came out.
• 1:06:30
  I flew home just yesterday, had snow up there, which is kind of
• 1:06:33
  cool. My daughter doesn't get to see
• 1:06:35
  it. I don't get to see it very often
• 1:06:36
  anymore either, even though I grew up there, living down in
• 1:06:38
  the South. I came back and my one of my
• 1:06:41
  buddies had messaged me, actually.
• 1:06:42
  I said, man, we're going to get probably another big storm, but
• 1:06:44
  down here when you're back. And I'm like, oh, wow.
• 1:06:46
  So I was kind of looking last night and yeah, one of the
• 1:06:50
  graphics someone put up was like a kind of the United States with
• 1:06:54
  color coding. And one of the color codes was
• 1:06:56
  saying is going to be like 76 inches of snow.
• 1:06:59
  And some of the belts they're showing, I'm like really 76
• 1:07:03
  inches in like a wide swath of the United States.
• 1:07:07
  I don't think that's real information, or maybe it is.
• 1:07:09
  I lived in Denver and we got hit.
• 1:07:12
  We were in Westminster 2003 or so for somewhere.
• 1:07:17
  Else yeah, I I remember that snowstorm.
• 1:07:20
  And and we got 3 feet in Westminster and the foothills
• 1:07:23
  got 8 or 9 feet as you got for closer into.
• 1:07:27
  The Rock. So those things can happen, but
• 1:07:31
  they don't normally happen for across, you know, 12 states, you
• 1:07:35
  know. Yeah, no, I, I remember, I
• 1:07:38
  remember I grew up in Colorado and yeah, I, I remember when
• 1:07:42
  that snowstorm hit, like the I, I was, I was out of school for a
• 1:07:49
  month literally because I think like the roads were just, there
• 1:07:55
  was all the snow and they had nowhere, they had nowhere to put
• 1:07:58
  it for a long time. And like a lot of, a lot of
• 1:08:04
  roofs claps just because of the, of the weight and whatnot.
• 1:08:07
  Yeah. The weight behind it,
• 1:08:09
  absolutely. So yeah, it's, I don't know,
• 1:08:12
  Mother Nature always wins in the end, so.
• 1:08:14
  Yeah. Well, and then I mean, also
• 1:08:18
  though, you know, going back to kind of the whole social media
• 1:08:21
  thing, like I remember when I was talking to, you know, Kyle
• 1:08:24
  Mills, one of the things that he was saying is, you know, he got
• 1:08:28
  people who were angry at him because he didn't, you know,
• 1:08:33
  write the Mitch rap character as well as they thought as well as
• 1:08:37
  they thought he should have and got like some negative.
• 1:08:41
  And I mean, and I mean, some people just, you know, they they
• 1:08:48
  lose. I don't want to say they lose
• 1:08:50
  their humanity, but I mean, people behave differently on
• 1:08:54
  social media. Yeah, they, well, you're you.
• 1:08:56
  You can be a hero and be courageous because you can.
• 1:08:59
  You can call someone every name in the book, but they're not in
• 1:09:01
  front of you, you know? Yeah, well.
• 1:09:03
  In front of someone and start saying the hateful things and
• 1:09:06
  get punched in the face. You probably will only do it
• 1:09:09
  once, especially if it's a bigger person that can punch
• 1:09:11
  you. You're probably your your
• 1:09:13
  courage disappears quickly. But you have you have it leaps
• 1:09:17
  and bounds when all you got to do is message someone and say
• 1:09:19
  they're ugly, they're fat or they're this isn't that or you
• 1:09:21
  hate them. Yeah, well, there's no
• 1:09:23
  repercussions to that, so. Yeah, well, and you know, that's
• 1:09:28
  also the thing with reviews. I, I check, I check reviews, you
• 1:09:33
  know, fairly often if the, if you know, and if, if they're
• 1:09:37
  constructive criticism, that's one thing.
• 1:09:40
  But if they're just, you know, trolls or whatever, I don't
• 1:09:45
  really pay much attention. Yeah, Mark Cameron told me years
• 1:09:48
  ago when the Body Man was coming out, he said don't look at your
• 1:09:51
  sales numbers and don't look at your reviews.
• 1:09:54
  Yeah, I have to look at the sales numbers now because I run
• 1:09:57
  the business side of it. So I look at them all the time
• 1:09:59
  because I need to pivot for marketing, for ads and all that
• 1:10:02
  stuff. I still look at reviews, but not
• 1:10:06
  I look at the number of reviews I have.
• 1:10:08
  It's kind of rare to ever read the reviews.
• 1:10:12
  Not super. I'll look at the five star ones
• 1:10:14
  because I'll I'll pill for them for marketing material.
• 1:10:17
  But one or two star, I've looked at them.
• 1:10:20
  I, I know the body Man had a few.
• 1:10:23
  Someone reached out to me years ago with one of the body Man
• 1:10:25
  ones and they were mad at it. I read it and I just laughed.
• 1:10:28
  I was like, whatever my thought with that is, I've read a lot of
• 1:10:33
  crappy books. I have never once put anything
• 1:10:36
  online about how crappy a book was.
• 1:10:39
  I kind of stick to that mantra. If you don't have anything nice
• 1:10:42
  to say, don't say anything at all.
• 1:10:44
  Because I know every author that writes a crappy book, they
• 1:10:47
  probably like their book. They probably put a lot of
• 1:10:49
  effort into it. So I'm not going to give someone
• 1:10:52
  a five star review or rating on a book that I do, but I just
• 1:10:56
  won't give them a rating. I'm not going to, but I'm not
• 1:10:59
  going to put out there and crush their dreams in a negative
• 1:11:01
  review. And I think people will do that.
• 1:11:04
  Like for Jack Carr and he used to read reviews, negative
• 1:11:08
  reviews. And I people have started and I
• 1:11:09
  know they did because his publicist reached out to me at
• 1:11:12
  one point to kind of help ask Amazon to take one of the
• 1:11:17
  reviews down because people were putting reviews up there just so
• 1:11:20
  he'd read them, you know, oh, I want Jack to read my review.
• 1:11:23
  So we'll just do a really negative.
• 1:11:25
  And I think one of the reviews even said I actually really
• 1:11:27
  liked the book, but I want Jack to read this.
• 1:11:29
  So then they said a bunch of crap or whatever, you know, I
• 1:11:32
  want Jack to read my review. And it's like, folks, go get a
• 1:11:36
  hobby, man. Go get something else to do with
• 1:11:38
  your time SO. Yeah, his he's a very
• 1:11:42
  interesting case because, you know, he's I mean for, for lack
• 1:11:49
  of a better term. And I and I, I hate to make the
• 1:11:51
  comparison because I do think it's unfair to Jack, but he is
• 1:11:58
  kind of for all intensive purposes as far as fame goes, my
• 1:12:04
  generation's equivalent of Tom Clancy, where he is kind of a, a
• 1:12:08
  large, you know, media figure. He's kind of the he's kind of
• 1:12:13
  the persona non grad of thrill authors.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah. Now I but I think that's unfair
• 1:12:19
  to him kind of because I, I don't know about you, but people
• 1:12:25
  always are like, well, you know, when are, when are you going to
• 1:12:29
  sell as many books as, you know, Jack Carr or something like
• 1:12:32
  that, or. You're not.
• 1:12:34
  Just remember, you're not. And that will help your
• 1:12:36
  psychological health. Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  Or you know what, when is when are your books gonna get made
• 1:12:44
  into a show? And it's like, well, I, I'd, I'd
• 1:12:46
  love that. But like right now I'm just
• 1:12:49
  trying to, right now I'm just trying to, you know, keep on
• 1:12:52
  writing the books and maybe conclude this series in a few
• 1:12:57
  years if I can. You know, I'm, I'm lucky that my
• 1:13:03
  books have sold better than some indie, better than I guess some
• 1:13:07
  traditional published authors and then others of others of my
• 1:13:13
  books have maybe only sold like 5 copies.
• 1:13:16
  It's just you never know, so. Yeah, that's where you got to be
• 1:13:19
  careful with the comparison game.
• 1:13:21
  And everyone falls into it. So it's not like you can't just
• 1:13:24
  say I never compare myself. Of course people do.
• 1:13:26
  Do you have to be really careful with that?
• 1:13:28
  There's always someone more successful for you than you.
• 1:13:31
  There's always someone less successful than you.
• 1:13:33
  There's always someone that sold zero books.
• 1:13:35
  There's a lot of people that sell zero or one books.
• 1:13:38
  A lot of them. So what if you sell 50 books?
• 1:13:40
  Are you better than the person that sold one?
• 1:13:42
  Well guess what? Plenty of people sold a million
• 1:13:44
  books too. There's not plenty.
• 1:13:46
  A handful of people sold a million books.
• 1:13:48
  Are you worthless compared to them?
• 1:13:50
  No. And you know when it comes to
• 1:13:52
  the Hollywood stuff, OK, when people get 7 figure deals for
• 1:13:58
  their books to be turned into something, that's pretty rare
• 1:14:01
  though. And the other thing I try to
• 1:14:03
  tell people too. And trust me, I'm on that list
• 1:14:05
  of people. I'd, I'd rather have the problem
• 1:14:07
  of Hollywood giving me 7 or 8 figures and going, how do I deal
• 1:14:12
  with this? How do I follow up with a good
• 1:14:14
  book after this? But that's part of the problem.
• 1:14:16
  You get money for a book and that book maybe delivers.
• 1:14:21
  They're going to expect the next one deliver.
• 1:14:23
  And what if you get a lot of money for a book and it doesn't
• 1:14:26
  deliver? They don't give you much rope
• 1:14:29
  before they before you hang yourself, you.
• 1:14:31
  Know. After you real quick.
• 1:14:33
  So that's where I think I try to encourage people and even myself
• 1:14:37
  of be be grateful where you are. Keep trying to strive.
• 1:14:41
  Do better. You know, Drexel is right behind
• 1:14:43
  my shoulder there. Having that book out is a
• 1:14:48
  blessing. Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  I want to sell 100,000 copies of it.
• 1:14:51
  Sure. Am I going to sell 100,000
• 1:14:53
  copies of it? Probably not even even remotely
• 1:14:57
  close to that. You're a fraction of that.
• 1:15:00
  Maybe that's OK. That's OK.
• 1:15:02
  If it happens, it happens. And I'll work hard to try to
• 1:15:04
  make it happen, but that's not my motivation for getting that
• 1:15:08
  book done. That's not my motivation for
• 1:15:09
  writing it. I think if that is your
• 1:15:11
  motivation now, if you have to put food on the table, if you're
• 1:15:16
  if you're a full time writer and if your book sells or doesn't
• 1:15:18
  depends on if your kids are going to get fed or if you're
• 1:15:21
  going to have a house to live. I get that.
• 1:15:23
  I'm also grateful I don't have that pressure.
• 1:15:25
  That's why I'm going indie. I have a full time job that pays
• 1:15:28
  for everything. The books pay for themselves.
• 1:15:31
  They, they, they, they're profitable.
• 1:15:32
  They're they, I don't have to use any money to covers and all
• 1:15:35
  the other stuff. But I don't need that money to
• 1:15:38
  go, you know, pay a mortgage payment or a car payment or
• 1:15:41
  grocery, you know, went grocery shopping tonight.
• 1:15:43
  I didn't have to say what's in my business account.
• 1:15:46
  Well, how many books did I sell yesterday or in the last, you
• 1:15:49
  know, time Amazon gave me my money because that was the new
• 1:15:52
  level of stress. If you're doing this because
• 1:15:55
  this is a hard gig. Oh, we.
• 1:15:57
  To, to, to do, to make a living off of.
• 1:16:01
  Yeah, I, yeah, it, it definitely is.
• 1:16:04
  It, it's more the thing I'm surprised at is that it, it's,
• 1:16:08
  it's more monetizable than say YouTube, because YouTube now is
• 1:16:15
  nearly impossible to get monetized unless you unless,
• 1:16:20
  unless you really work at it, you know, 247365 and you know,
• 1:16:30
  even then it's difficult. But you know, even even even
• 1:16:34
  doing indie books that I guess this is another thing is you've
• 1:16:38
  kind of, I guess you've kind of become known for doing the doing
• 1:16:44
  the body. And like if I search your name
• 1:16:47
  out of a clean out of a clean Google search and log out of all
• 1:16:51
  my accounts, the body man is still your first is still the
• 1:16:56
  first book that comes up if if I type in your name my.
• 1:17:00
  Best selling book, I'll be honest, it's my best selling
• 1:17:02
  book. And that's pretty common.
• 1:17:03
  First books, a lot of times are the big ones that sell and, and,
• 1:17:07
  and even if the next one does well, it's common for that
• 1:17:09
  number to start going down if they go up.
• 1:17:11
  Trust me, the indie publisher loves that or the OR the
• 1:17:15
  traditional publishing loves and they want your books to go up.
• 1:17:18
  But it's not always the norm that it happens that way.
• 1:17:21
  Does does that, does that surprise, does that surprise you
• 1:17:25
  still that the body and is your most successful or I guess is
• 1:17:29
  there? Doesn't surprise me because I
• 1:17:33
  knew enough about the market. It disappoints me in a way
• 1:17:35
  because you want to have, you want to see a bell curve going
• 1:17:39
  up. You don't want to have the
• 1:17:40
  downward curve of stuff. But I also, because I've had
• 1:17:44
  that conversation with people before, they're like, well,
• 1:17:45
  maybe, maybe you should have just instead of going with a
• 1:17:48
  small publisher with the body man, maybe you should have just
• 1:17:50
  kept grinding and found an agent and got a deal with a big
• 1:17:55
  publisher and, and gone that route.
• 1:17:57
  And I definitely thought that years ago as I was going through
• 1:18:01
  the process, maybe I should just keep trying.
• 1:18:03
  Maybe I should keep trying. But I made peace when I signed
• 1:18:05
  with a small publisher and said, Hey, I'm, I'm getting, you know,
• 1:18:09
  I'm putting a chip down on the table finally.
• 1:18:12
  Because I also view it as, and it's not an arrogance.
• 1:18:15
  It's not an overt confidence. I know what's inside me.
• 1:18:19
  I know my abilities. I know my storytelling ability
• 1:18:22
  that I do not for a second believe The Body Man will be my
• 1:18:26
  best selling book. I think that's still to come.
• 1:18:29
  I don't know what that's going to be.
• 1:18:31
  I doubt, you know, I'd love her to be Drexel.
• 1:18:33
  I don't think it's going to be Drexel, but maybe it's going to
• 1:18:36
  be Drexel. I think it's going to be one
• 1:18:38
  that I'm working on now slowly that I'm going to hopefully dive
• 1:18:41
  in full time in the spring just because of the concept.
• 1:18:46
  Like I've explained a few, a few people have read the first few
• 1:18:48
  chapters, very few and a few people know the concept behind
• 1:18:51
  the book and they're basically all base.
• 1:18:54
  The the common response I'm getting is damn, damn, that will
• 1:18:58
  get you your deal and I hope it will.
• 1:19:01
  Yeah. Maybe it won't.
• 1:19:02
  And that's that's where I go back to my piece with doing this
• 1:19:08
  is that I love telling stories and I love trying to get them
• 1:19:10
  out and I want to sell them. Absolutely.
• 1:19:13
  That's not what pushes me every night.
• 1:19:15
  It's not pushing me to say, man, you know, I joke about Ferraris
• 1:19:18
  and Fiji and you know, whatever, I'm 49 years old.
• 1:19:24
  I know if tomorrow I get a windfall of money and it's
• 1:19:28
  stupid money, money that you can just go do crazy stuff with.
• 1:19:32
  I'm not happier than I am now. I have more resources available.
• 1:19:36
  I probably have more stress because all of a sudden my buddy
• 1:19:39
  Sam's like, Hey, what's up? Can you send the G650 down to,
• 1:19:45
  you know, bring me up and you know, I'm going to need some,
• 1:19:49
  you know, can you, you know, kidding, well complicate
• 1:19:52
  everything. You get something like that.
• 1:19:55
  Life gets a little more complicated.
• 1:19:56
  So I don't material stuff too, is not.
• 1:20:00
  I love experiences and you know, people that follow me on social
• 1:20:03
  media, see what I post. That's just me being me.
• 1:20:08
  Yeah, I love to do the things I do.
• 1:20:10
  And, you know, more resources would let me do more.
• 1:20:13
  Absolutely. But if that doesn't happen,
• 1:20:16
  that's OK. I'll keep working hard, putting
• 1:20:18
  money away, going on fun trips when I can, and I'll enjoy the
• 1:20:22
  journey that way. That's totally, totally
• 1:20:25
  acceptable to me. Yeah, I think, I think the way
• 1:20:28
  in which you tie the themes of the books to your, you know,
• 1:20:34
  everyday experience is something that's really unique and, and
• 1:20:38
  cool too. And yeah, like I, like I said, I
• 1:20:44
  think your books have a lot of heart to them.
• 1:20:48
  And I mean, I'm, I'm, like I said, I'm really excited for
• 1:20:53
  Drexel and I'm also really excited to see, you know, where
• 1:20:57
  you go next with the Botan. Bonefall, summer 2026.
• 1:21:03
  I'm writing it now, the hint on that, and it's already hinted at
• 1:21:08
  the end of breach of trust and I reference it in Supreme Justice.
• 1:21:11
  Supreme Justice is taking place at the same time Downfall is.
• 1:21:15
  So it's book three, Supreme Justice, book 4, Downfall, but
• 1:21:19
  they're happening at the same time, a little bit of a
• 1:21:22
  different concept to do for books.
• 1:21:24
  And so what's happening in Downfall is all the former body
• 1:21:27
  men are being targeted. The question is, is why what,
• 1:21:31
  what does someone want from them or what do they know that
• 1:21:34
  someone wants? Because what would someone, what
• 1:21:36
  would they know that spans literally from Kennedy, the
• 1:21:40
  first body. But the first chapter of
• 1:21:42
  Downfall is the first body man. And there's a cool experience
• 1:21:47
  happening and some people have read the chapter, a handful of
• 1:21:49
  people, something got dropped. Oh, well, sorry for that.
• 1:21:55
  Knock something over. But yeah, that first, first
• 1:21:58
  chapter in Downfall is the first body man.
• 1:22:00
  And something cool is happening. And the second chapter then is
• 1:22:03
  many years later and something bad is happening to that same
• 1:22:07
  first person. So it's been a fun one to ride.
• 1:22:10
  I'm still need. I'm probably knee deep in it.
• 1:22:13
  I'm not near. I should, I should be this high
• 1:22:15
  with it now, but I'm not. I'm way behind.
• 1:22:18
  I went to Spain back in September and I thought I was
• 1:22:23
  going to set part of it in Barcelona.
• 1:22:26
  And then the last full day I was there, I took a cruise up the
• 1:22:30
  Mediterranean and went to Tosa de Mar.
• 1:22:32
  And Tosa de Mar is going to be in.
• 1:22:35
  I haven't written the chapters yet.
• 1:22:36
  I've got my notes and everything and pictures, but there's going
• 1:22:39
  to be a couple chapters or in Tosa de Mar.
• 1:22:41
  And that's to me, the fun stuff when I can plan a trip and say,
• 1:22:45
  OK, I don't know how I'm going to work this into the book, but
• 1:22:48
  I want to put this area in the book somehow.
• 1:22:50
  And I kind of like that I do that because then it opens up
• 1:22:53
  the canvas and it something touches me or I, I get a feeling
• 1:22:56
  in this while I'm in a city and they're like, this would be a
• 1:22:59
  cool place for a scene. This would be a cool place for a
• 1:23:02
  murderer. Or yeah.
• 1:23:05
  Or whatever needs to happen. Yeah, I I love doing that.
• 1:23:09
  I'm I'm planning a trip turn 50 in November this year and I've
• 1:23:14
  got four of us are tentatively you got to start booking
• 1:23:17
  everything, flights and everything, but we're going to
• 1:23:19
  Australia, New Zealand in September.
• 1:23:22
  So big kind of like a pre 50, you know, go big or go home
• 1:23:27
  trip. So hint for future there will be
• 1:23:31
  a body man story so I can write the trip off and takes place in
• 1:23:34
  New Zealand and Australia so. Awesome, awesome, awesome.
• 1:23:38
  Yeah, that those, those, those, those Australians, those are,
• 1:23:44
  there are tough people, some of them too, so.
• 1:23:47
  I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. I'm gonna try not to box a
• 1:23:50
  kangaroo while I'm there, but we'll no promises so.
• 1:23:54
  No, but maybe. Punch one just to see what
• 1:23:56
  happens. But but you know, maybe a, maybe
• 1:23:59
  a kangaroo wheel wield a G'day K-47 or something would be a
• 1:24:02
  cool, you know, would be a cool book concept or something.
• 1:24:06
  I I don't know, I don't know. See, that's the fun part to
• 1:24:10
  writing to me, though, is to kind of kind of figure out where
• 1:24:13
  you want to go. And then then kind of basic.
• 1:24:17
  I did it last year. So I did it with Supreme
• 1:24:18
  Justice. I decided I was going to, I kind
• 1:24:22
  of figured out a little bit of ahead of time.
• 1:24:24
  Yeah. I wanted to put Mayor C in
• 1:24:27
  Ireland and I changed things when I got over there, when I
• 1:24:32
  realized, oh, this would work. But I met someone over there,
• 1:24:37
  met met one of my readers, Tony Cronin.
• 1:24:39
  I met him in Cork. He took me to a place called the
• 1:24:42
  Mutton Inn and got me a beer there.
• 1:24:45
  And it was a cool experience. And out and and there's a
• 1:24:48
  chapter that takes place in Supreme Justice with Tony and
• 1:24:51
  Mayor C Same thing happened. It was me and it was me and Tony
• 1:24:55
  having this experience. My mom was there, but like where
• 1:24:59
  I'm at in the bar, the people that were there, the YouTube
• 1:25:01
  poster was all me sitting there experiencing this.
• 1:25:04
  And I just decided to take myself out of the story and put
• 1:25:07
  an attractive woman so Tony could flirt with her because he
• 1:25:11
  wouldn't want to flirt with me and it wouldn't go over well if
• 1:25:13
  he did because I wouldn't be receptive for that.
• 1:25:15
  Right, right. Yeah.
• 1:25:16
  So no so super. Actually, I have it's back.
• 1:25:20
  Oh, it's off camera. I have a a plaque that he gave
• 1:25:23
  me while I was there, which was super just again, that's kind of
• 1:25:26
  one of those neat things about writing that I never thought
• 1:25:29
  about ahead of time is you're actually going to sometimes meet
• 1:25:31
  some people that read your books and you're going to have these
• 1:25:34
  really amazing experiences in doing that and just kind words
• 1:25:39
  and you know, you make legitimate friendships out of
• 1:25:43
  this. I, Brad Meltzer talked about it,
• 1:25:45
  I think in the podcast I did with him.
• 1:25:46
  I know I also watch his podcast, so I could be confused, but I
• 1:25:49
  think he mentioned in mind that one of his first readers early
• 1:25:55
  on, I think of his first book invited him to her wedding and I
• 1:26:00
  think he went. But I know at least if I'm
• 1:26:04
  getting that part of the story wrong, I know to this day he
• 1:26:07
  keeps in contact with that person 2627 years later.
• 1:26:13
  And that's the kind of cool thing that Brad's especially the
• 1:26:16
  real the real one to see how he deals with his fans and how much
• 1:26:21
  he just he's finished up a book tour just this week.
• 1:26:24
  I think he finished it up. You know, he draws a room of 3-4
• 1:26:27
  hundred people to come out to his book signings, versus
• 1:26:30
  there's plenty of New York Times bestsellers that draw two people
• 1:26:34
  or one people, right? Or 20.
• 1:26:37
  It's not super common for people to draw large crowds for a book
• 1:26:40
  event, but Brad's fans are. They're die hard, and they're
• 1:26:45
  die hard because he writes great books and he's a great guy.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah, well, I, well, and that's the, that's the other thing that
• 1:26:53
  I love about the author community just in general, is I,
• 1:26:57
  I was not expecting for the, the writing thing to be, you know,
• 1:27:04
  as much of, of, of a community as it is.
• 1:27:08
  I mean, I interact with you. I interact with Travis Davis,
• 1:27:12
  Andrew Andrew Nelson, all of these people who, you know, I
• 1:27:16
  can, I consider you all friends, you know, some more than people
• 1:27:22
  who I've actually met, you know, in real life.
• 1:27:26
  Not to take away from any of those people.
• 1:27:29
  You know, the fact that we have that we all have the writing
• 1:27:33
  thing together kind of I guess binds us together in ways that.
• 1:27:38
  Yeah. Other people don't necessarily
• 1:27:41
  appreciate because we can talk out, you know, the insurance and
• 1:27:45
  outs of writing and publishing. Whereas most people, yeah, they
• 1:27:50
  might support the book, but they, they only see the
• 1:27:54
  published, you know, finely printed, you know, the polished,
• 1:28:00
  right, final copy. People won't write.
• 1:28:04
  They might say they will, but they won't, and it takes a
• 1:28:06
  special thing to. Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  Get together, but also to stick with it and that's not not a
• 1:28:14
  peek, not a knock at someone that doesn't stick with it, but
• 1:28:17
  to get to that point to make yourself finish a book.
• 1:28:22
  There is a lot of effort that goes into that and you're also a
• 1:28:25
  nice. I've said this many times in
• 1:28:26
  interviews and I said on my own podcast is if you want to finish
• 1:28:30
  a book or if you want to write a book, you're going to give
• 1:28:32
  something up. You can't do that and also have
• 1:28:36
  a full time job and watch TV every night or have this all
• 1:28:40
  engrossing hobbies. I guess you can, but it might
• 1:28:44
  take you 30 years to write a book.
• 1:28:45
  But if you want to write a book in a year, man, you're going to
• 1:28:48
  have to put hours into it. Yeah.
• 1:28:51
  And really, hours almost every night for, you know, a solid
• 1:28:55
  period of time. You can write a book.
• 1:28:57
  If you write 2 hours a night, yeah, you can write a book in a
• 1:28:59
  couple of months no problem. But research and all the other
• 1:29:04
  stuff you have to do, do you, can you really devote 2 hours a
• 1:29:07
  night to a book? You know, But yeah, it's a, it's
• 1:29:10
  a big, it's a big undertaking. But like I try to tell people
• 1:29:13
  when I hold up my book, when I open them and all that is man,
• 1:29:17
  when you open it up and you hold that book for the first time, a
• 1:29:21
  lot of the hardship that got you to that point of being done with
• 1:29:25
  it and, and getting to hold it kind of fades away a little bit
• 1:29:28
  because you hold that thing and you're like, man, I did it.
• 1:29:30
  I got this book in my hand. The downside on it is it does
• 1:29:35
  disappear pretty quickly. So I held my book last night.
• 1:29:38
  It was super amazing and I didn't think about it again
• 1:29:42
  until probably I'm talking to you right now because I had a
• 1:29:44
  busy day. I had to do social media this
• 1:29:45
  morning, had to work during the day.
• 1:29:47
  I went to the gym before we talked before I went to the
• 1:29:50
  grocery store. So I I might pick up the book
• 1:29:52
  again tonight and be like, Oh yeah, cool, this feels good.
• 1:29:54
  And then I'll go to sleep and I edit.
• 1:29:58
  I, I remember when I first interviewed you, you know, you,
• 1:30:03
  one of the things you said to me is, you know, you might, you
• 1:30:07
  might read a book once, once it's finished it, but then
• 1:30:09
  you'll never read it again. And I was kind of like, what,
• 1:30:14
  you know, what do you mean? Like I'll be reading Shadows of
• 1:30:17
  Deception for, you know, years, you know, once I and I haven't,
• 1:30:24
  I haven't. I have, I have my own book on my
• 1:30:27
  Kindle, but other than like going back through it for
• 1:30:29
  references, I don't think I've read any of my books, you know,
• 1:30:35
  in their completion since 2023. Yep.
• 1:30:42
  Jamie Mason, who's an author. I don't know that she's come out
• 1:30:44
  with any books recently. I haven't talked to Jamie in
• 1:30:46
  several years, but I I knew her at the time.
• 1:30:48
  I had an office up closer to in Hendersonville, NC.
• 1:30:50
  We met for lunch several times and I'd see her at some
• 1:30:53
  conferences. She told me that before I got
• 1:30:55
  published. Once you once it's published,
• 1:30:58
  you'll never read it again. Or I never read it.
• 1:31:00
  I was like, that is that's the dumbest thing in the world.
• 1:31:03
  You're going to be so proud of this book.
• 1:31:05
  And then I went through the process and I'm like, oh, she's
• 1:31:08
  right. Why am I ever going to read this
• 1:31:09
  book again? And I, I mean, I, I looked at
• 1:31:12
  something last night in Supreme Justice.
• 1:31:14
  Yeah, because I'm working on downfall and I've got pieces of
• 1:31:17
  downfall in Supreme Justice. Let me pull back Supreme
• 1:31:20
  Justice. What did I call that?
• 1:31:22
  What was this thing? I don't remember.
• 1:31:24
  I wrote that chapter a year and a half ago probably, so I don't
• 1:31:27
  remember all the details. So yeah, for reference.
• 1:31:30
  And maybe one day I'll just pull out the books and read through
• 1:31:33
  the series or whatever. But I'm always, you're always
• 1:31:38
  looking for the next thing. I'm always willing to write the
• 1:31:41
  next thing. I'm not stuck in what, you know,
• 1:31:43
  I did in the past. So like back to what you're
• 1:31:45
  saying before about, you know, like the body man.
• 1:31:47
  Yeah, it's my biggest seller, but OK, go write something
• 1:31:51
  that's going to be a bigger seller with the with, with
• 1:31:53
  Drexel or with the next book I'm working on or whatever.
• 1:31:56
  I'm, I don't want to, I never want to be stuck in the past
• 1:32:01
  because life moves forward. Life doesn't stand still.
• 1:32:03
  Life doesn't. And you don't get any retakes.
• 1:32:06
  You know, this is your life. So you can learn from what you
• 1:32:10
  did leading up to this point leading up to today, but you
• 1:32:13
  can't change anything you did previously.
• 1:32:16
  So move forward. If you want to write a book,
• 1:32:20
  write a book, but know what you know, know what you're getting
• 1:32:24
  into. Maybe it's good that you don't
• 1:32:25
  know what you're getting into, but just realize it's going to
• 1:32:28
  be something that's going to be rewarding, but it's going to be
• 1:32:33
  something that's going to be a challenge at the same time.
• 1:32:36
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's very well said.
• 1:32:40
  And I mean, I think it's, you know, this, this is a lot harder
• 1:32:45
  than people make out to be it. It's not, it's not the most
• 1:32:50
  excruciating thing. But even if you know, even if
• 1:32:53
  you're, even if you, even if you're using tools like I do
• 1:32:57
  with ChatGPT, you know, for character bibles and whatnot,
• 1:33:01
  even if you, even if you have really good tools, you still
• 1:33:04
  have to put the work in and it still takes a lot more time than
• 1:33:09
  you might think. And it, you know, it's better to
• 1:33:14
  keep your expectations low, I think, rather than than have
• 1:33:19
  these super high expectations, because if you set your
• 1:33:23
  expectations too high, you'll be disappointed every, every.
• 1:33:27
  Time, you got to be careful with that.
• 1:33:29
  But the flip side, and I say that all the time, and the flip
• 1:33:31
  side though, is it's nothing wrong with dreaming and wanting
• 1:33:35
  to achieve something more than you probably will even be able
• 1:33:38
  to because that keeps you motivated.
• 1:33:40
  You know, that keeps you kind of pushing of saying, OK, the last
• 1:33:42
  book didn't sell very well. What can I do different with the
• 1:33:45
  next book? Is that was it the story?
• 1:33:47
  Was it the marketing? Part of the problem is you never
• 1:33:50
  it's. It's difficult to know what went
• 1:33:51
  wrong. Right.
• 1:33:55
  This last year was not very as strong and I talked to a lot of
• 1:33:58
  different authors that saw a lot of myself included, saw sales
• 1:34:01
  numbers go down. Yeah.
• 1:34:03
  At the global economy was that the uncertainty in the world?
• 1:34:06
  Was that AI was that you know what, what was the common thing?
• 1:34:10
  And at least from what I was trying to figure out in the fall
• 1:34:12
  is I didn't know anyone that could crack what was going on.
• 1:34:17
  So it was just like, and then So what do you do?
• 1:34:18
  I mean. I'm you.
• 1:34:20
  Don't know what's going on with it.
• 1:34:22
  I'm glad to hear you say that because I was actually, I was
• 1:34:29
  actually somewhat depressed in August because I did really well
• 1:34:34
  in March of 2025 through May. But then I released book 4 of
• 1:34:44
  Shadows of Deception and there was a lot of, there was a lot of
• 1:34:50
  hype for it, it seemed like, and a lot of people promoting.
• 1:34:54
  So if I got, you know, Travis Davis really helped my mode.
• 1:34:58
  I know that you did a few things, which I'm really
• 1:35:02
  grateful for, but I think, you know, All in all, it only sold
• 1:35:05
  like 1010 copies, you know, maybe by the end of the year.
• 1:35:11
  And so that was kind of, you know, compared to my other
• 1:35:15
  books, that was really kind of kind of a bummer.
• 1:35:17
  But yeah, I mean, I guess that was kind of talking to you and a
• 1:35:21
  few other people that was kind of across the board for books
• 1:35:25
  and yeah, numbers. Go down and again, I don't know.
• 1:35:29
  I didn't get a straight answer that I couldn't figure out what
• 1:35:32
  was going on. Other people I talked to
• 1:35:33
  couldn't seem to figure it out as well.
• 1:35:36
  I I, I think a lot of, I think a lot of it was economical.
• 1:35:41
  I. Think so.
• 1:35:43
  But you know, and again, that ties back to kind of what I was
• 1:35:46
  kind of what we were talking earlier is explaining to people,
• 1:35:50
  hey, I may be charging $15.00 for this book, but I don't I
• 1:35:54
  don't make $15.00. So do you have, do you have like
• 1:36:03
  AI? Don't know if I've asked you
• 1:36:04
  this before, but do you have like a definitive like planned
• 1:36:09
  ending for the Omega group series or for the body Man
• 1:36:12
  series at this point? Or do you just write them as
• 1:36:18
  they come so far? When I originally started the
• 1:36:23
  Omega group series and Troy, I had seven books planned out and
• 1:36:30
  that's actually one of the agents that rejected me at
• 1:36:32
  Thriller Fest one year actually gave me a hard time.
• 1:36:36
  Like almost like you haven't published a book.
• 1:36:39
  How did how almost like they're almost like incensed that I said
• 1:36:44
  I was going to write 7 books and I had planned them out.
• 1:36:46
  It's like how could you think you could do that?
• 1:36:48
  I'm like how would you not come up with your plan?
• 1:36:50
  I think I modified it over the years, especially as I kind of
• 1:36:53
  went on to the Body Man series. I multiple books planned out for
• 1:36:59
  both series of where I want to go with them because I down
• 1:37:04
  follows the next Body Man book. I do know what the title and
• 1:37:07
  what the concept is behind the 5th Body Man book, which I won't
• 1:37:10
  reveal yet. The Body Man books, though, have
• 1:37:15
  always to me been not necessarily just about the Body
• 1:37:18
  Man, It's been about the cast of characters around the body.
• 1:37:21
  Yeah. So that's part of why like book
• 1:37:24
  3 in the series focused on Mayor C Supreme Justice.
• 1:37:27
  Yeah, the body man was in there played up played an active role,
• 1:37:30
  but it wasn't a body man story downfall and much more follows
• 1:37:34
  the body man and other body men. Mayor CS not really in it as as
• 1:37:39
  what I'm writing so far at least it's happening at the same time
• 1:37:42
  her story's happening. The following book after
• 1:37:46
  downfall will be begin tied back to some other characters in the
• 1:37:51
  body man world and the body man at the same time.
• 1:37:54
  But he will not do the heavy lifting in that one.
• 1:37:57
  So yeah. But As for how far I'll go down
• 1:38:00
  with it, I don't know. I I'd like to have the problem
• 1:38:05
  of, in a way, a book contract and saying, OK, I've got to
• 1:38:08
  write this character for 20 years, but I don't think I do
• 1:38:10
  want that problem in most time. I like the idea.
• 1:38:15
  Like I like the idea of the body man being a role.
• 1:38:18
  So if I decide at some point, yeah, Nick Jordan's going to get
• 1:38:21
  whacked, I can have another body man step in.
• 1:38:25
  As long as I write a good character that's going to take
• 1:38:27
  the place of the body, man, I kind of like that.
• 1:38:29
  I've gotten bored with the and it's, again, this isn't a knock
• 1:38:32
  at any of the authors or the series.
• 1:38:35
  I've gotten bored over the years with the main protagonist
• 1:38:38
  carrying one book after another. Because I think part of it is I
• 1:38:41
  know when I start that first chapter and such and such
• 1:38:44
  characters there, well, they're going to be there in the last
• 1:38:47
  chapter too, because that author's got a four book deal
• 1:38:51
  for this character. Yeah.
• 1:38:53
  I don't, I'm not as interested in those.
• 1:38:54
  Those don't interest me from a reader perspective and I don't
• 1:38:57
  think it would interest me or I don't feel like it interests me
• 1:39:00
  from a writing perspective. So I kind of like to keep things
• 1:39:03
  mixed mixed up a little bit and. Yeah.
• 1:39:07
  I well, I'll have expiration date.
• 1:39:09
  I'll have an expiration date, so maybe that's when all the series
• 1:39:11
  end. I don't know when that is.
• 1:39:12
  Hopefully, like you know, 80 years from now when I've broke
• 1:39:16
  the record, but probably, probably won't break the record.
• 1:39:20
  Well, no, I, I, I, I just asked because someone actually asked
• 1:39:23
  me the, the, you know, the other day, like, you know, do you have
• 1:39:27
  like a plan ending for John Ryder or, you know, my
• 1:39:32
  character? And I said, well, I don't
• 1:39:34
  remember. I don't know the plan ending.
• 1:39:35
  I, I came up with him when I was 20 initially.
• 1:39:40
  And my mild thing is because we're similar in age, I'm
• 1:39:44
  helping to write the character, you know, as far as I can.
• 1:39:51
  Maybe he'll be in more of like an in an administrative role,
• 1:39:56
  you know, as years ago by maybe he won't be jumping off
• 1:39:59
  buildings. But you know, as far as like a
• 1:40:03
  definitive ending to the series. I don't know if that's going to
• 1:40:07
  be the case because I mean, if you write a good character, you
• 1:40:13
  just. Keep wanting them to go on on
• 1:40:15
  adventurers. Yeah, I think if you can keep
• 1:40:18
  them relevant, if you can keep them there, I can see the the
• 1:40:20
  value of that. Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
• 1:40:23
  I don't know what, I don't know what the future holds.
• 1:40:25
  I don't have a definitive like Nick Jordan's dead by book 7 or
• 1:40:29
  book 5 or book 6 or I don't have anything.
• 1:40:32
  But I also don't think Nick's going to make book 20.
• 1:40:34
  I don't think I'll go maybe in if, if there's ever 20 books in
• 1:40:38
  the Body Man series, I think it'll be a different body man at
• 1:40:41
  some point for sure, which I've already kind of prepped a little
• 1:40:44
  bit about that in in in other books.
• 1:40:47
  But yeah, I don't have AI don't have that deep of a master plan.
• 1:40:50
  So. Yeah, I, I.
• 1:40:52
  Boxed in. I don't like being boxed in and
• 1:40:53
  saying, OK, by this book you have to have this person switch
• 1:40:56
  over to this or you have to have that.
• 1:40:58
  I like the open endedness of where does my imagination go?
• 1:41:02
  All all all I can say is I, I love the Nick Jordan character
• 1:41:06
  and I think as far as endings go, I think he deserves to ride
• 1:41:11
  off somewhere in the sunset as opposed to doing a Daniel Craig,
• 1:41:15
  you know, James Bond thing. You know, if you decide to
• 1:41:20
  sacrifice him in some noble way, that's your prerogative as well.
• 1:41:25
  You're you're the author. There is, so I don't condone
• 1:41:28
  either of these two words I'm about to use, but I'm using them
• 1:41:31
  for this concept. There's a a joke that happens.
• 1:41:35
  It's mentioned in breach of trust I believe, and it's also
• 1:41:38
  rehashed a little bit in Downfall where basically the the
• 1:41:41
  stressful job of the body man is is extremely stressful at times.
• 1:41:46
  Yeah, yeah. The running joke is that, you
• 1:41:48
  know, we'll just hookers and blow.
• 1:41:49
  That sounds like hey, that sounds like a it's just, you
• 1:41:52
  know, give me an island with that.
• 1:41:53
  But. Yeah, it's not.
• 1:41:55
  Yeah. Body Man, and that's what you
• 1:41:57
  find out in Downfall, because I'm writing that now, is the
• 1:42:01
  people that do this role, they're obviously type A
• 1:42:05
  personalities. They're in control to some
• 1:42:07
  degree when they're put out to pasture, when they retire,
• 1:42:12
  they're not the kind of people just sitting on the tropical
• 1:42:15
  island and drink fruity drinks and just, you know, do nothing.
• 1:42:19
  They're type A. They want to stay busy.
• 1:42:21
  They want to stay active and so they've they've got to have a
• 1:42:26
  new adventure. Even if they can't serve that
• 1:42:28
  role anymore, they need to keep active.
• 1:42:31
  And I think that's a lesson for people in general.
• 1:42:34
  I'm nowhere near retirement age, but it'll get here before I know
• 1:42:38
  it. But I think especially like
• 1:42:40
  what's this? The stats are, and I don't know
• 1:42:43
  crisply off the top of my brain, but it's something like the
• 1:42:46
  average male in America when they retire, if, if they don't
• 1:42:52
  do something else like a part time job or or heavy volunteer
• 1:42:55
  work or whatever, if they just like, hey, I'm gonna sit at the
• 1:42:58
  house putter and maybe golf. I think they're dead within like
• 1:43:01
  4 to 6 years. And I think part of that is
• 1:43:04
  because I don't think God designed us to just sit around
• 1:43:07
  and watch Netflix and golf once a week and work in a shop in our
• 1:43:12
  backyard. I think he designed us to stay
• 1:43:14
  active and, and part of that staying active mentally.
• 1:43:17
  And I think that's one of the ease of writing books is that if
• 1:43:20
  you have your intellect and can keep, you know, keep, keep
• 1:43:23
  putting stories together, you have a way of kind of keeping
• 1:43:26
  your brain active for years and years to come as you kind of
• 1:43:29
  keep creating in your world that you've created.
• 1:43:32
  Yeah, it's it's definitely all spend cathartic for me also
• 1:43:36
  because you know, with some of the topics that I write about,
• 1:43:41
  they're pretty, you know, heavy. But also I I think writing
• 1:43:46
  fiction with some of these topics is a good way to explore
• 1:43:50
  heavy. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:43:51
  You know, subjects in a way that, you know, you can explore
• 1:43:57
  various topics in ways that you can't that might be difficult to
• 1:44:01
  approach head on and non fiction.
• 1:44:05
  And that's that's when I've found, you know, with my work.
• 1:44:10
  And I mean, even with some of the stuff that you've covered
• 1:44:14
  with, you know, breach of trust and.
• 1:44:20
  If this, if this was non fiction, the Secret Service
• 1:44:22
  would have visited me a long time ago and they might still
• 1:44:25
  show up one day. I'd be like, yo-yo, yo, there's
• 1:44:28
  books behind me. These this is fake.
• 1:44:29
  I'm just making shit up. It's I'm sorry that it offends
• 1:44:31
  you, you know, guess what? But.
• 1:44:34
  Well, you know, I, I don't know if I told you this, but someone
• 1:44:37
  actually asked me if the bodad was a real position once someone
• 1:44:42
  who someone who I someone who I recommended your books to.
• 1:44:47
  And I said, well, I said, I don't know.
• 1:44:50
  But I I do know people who are former Secret Service so.
• 1:44:55
  If, if, if it's real, I couldn't tell you.
• 1:44:57
  And if it's not real, then maybe I just made-up a good story.
• 1:45:00
  I don't, I don't know but. That that's always the.
• 1:45:05
  That's always the. Man across from me with the dark
• 1:45:08
  glasses on and a gun says. I answer that we don't know if
• 1:45:11
  that's real or not. Well then in that case, tell
• 1:45:15
  John Guadier I said hello so. It's not John Veneer.
• 1:45:22
  Speaking of security guys, so. Speaking of them, so hopefully
• 1:45:27
  I'll see him on some shows this year.
• 1:45:29
  Shinedown's gearing up May, starting a world tour in May for
• 1:45:33
  two years, So I think off and on so.
• 1:45:36
  Yeah, there'll. Be some Shinedown shows in the
• 1:45:38
  future. Need to need to get you if they
• 1:45:39
  come down to Florida, need to get you to 1.
• 1:45:41
  I would love to so but I. Know I know a guy, I know a guy
• 1:45:45
  I can maybe make some calls for you so.
• 1:45:46
  Yeah, I, I would, I would appreciate that So.
• 1:45:52
  But Drexel is available in a hardcover, paperback and ebook.
• 1:46:02
  Have you no audible? Yeah, yeah, for any, any of your
• 1:46:06
  books. So I had someone, I had someone
• 1:46:09
  lined up for the Body Man. I had a contract and everything.
• 1:46:11
  And they, they, they pulled out. They, they bailed on me last
• 1:46:14
  year. So I'm in the midst of auditions
• 1:46:17
  again for new narrators for The Body Man.
• 1:46:19
  So yeah, hopefully one day. But yeah, just yeah, that was
• 1:46:24
  kind of a that was a difficult couple months there working on
• 1:46:27
  that stuff. But yeah, I've been fortunate
• 1:46:30
  enough to have the same guy do the do the shadows of deceptions
• 1:46:35
  argument. But for but for some other book
• 1:46:38
  series, man, it's yeah, it's it's hard.
• 1:46:42
  And I, I would, I would, I would voice books.
• 1:46:46
  My, I would voice my books myself.
• 1:46:48
  But it's, it's weird because I do the podcast, but as far as
• 1:46:53
  reading fiction, I don't like the sound my own voice when it
• 1:46:56
  comes to reading fictional stuff.
• 1:46:59
  And I, I know that sounds weird, but I understand that it's Yeah,
• 1:47:04
  it's. I've been told by a lot of
• 1:47:06
  people over the years I need to do my own books.
• 1:47:09
  I take it as a compliment, but I have 0 interest to read my own
• 1:47:12
  books for for recording 0 interest.
• 1:47:15
  Yeah, it's, well, let me put it this way.
• 1:47:19
  And I'm, I feel like I could maybe do your books better if
• 1:47:26
  you want me to, as opposed to me doing my own fictional work.
• 1:47:32
  Understand. If that makes.
• 1:47:35
  I think it's always easy. Someone else is doing your own.
• 1:47:38
  Yeah, Very, very challenging. I know a couple authors that do
• 1:47:40
  it, but very rare. It's very rare for it to happen.
• 1:47:44
  Yeah, so but. Ebook, paperback, hardcover.
• 1:47:48
  It's out today as we're airing this live.
• 1:47:51
  It's already already climbing the charts a little bit.
• 1:47:54
  I looked a little bit earlier. I sneaked a little, sneaked a
• 1:47:56
  glance on how the versions are doing and yeah, more to come.
• 1:48:00
  I'm I'm excited. I'm excited it's finally out
• 1:48:03
  here. It's glad to have my copy behind
• 1:48:05
  me. I got another copy on the way
• 1:48:06
  that was supposed to be. I got the paperback hardcover
• 1:48:08
  didn't come today. It was supposed to be here today
• 1:48:10
  and it didn't show up. So.
• 1:48:11
  Hardcover. Yeah.
• 1:48:13
  Hardcovers. Never I I think Amazon prints
• 1:48:17
  them somewhere else. They have like, yeah, they're,
• 1:48:21
  they're not done in all the same.
• 1:48:22
  They're not done at all the presses that they have because
• 1:48:24
  they have printing presses in multiple places but not all the
• 1:48:28
  hardcovers. Yeah, well if I if I order
• 1:48:30
  paperback you of any book, it usually comes in like a day or
• 1:48:36
  two whereas the where it's hardcovers it's usually at like
• 1:48:42
  2 weeks or something. My hardcovers are three or four
• 1:48:46
  day turn around, maybe because of my sales they they'll they'll
• 1:48:48
  print some in advance or whatever.
• 1:48:49
  But they do come a little quicker.
• 1:48:50
  But my author copies take a while.
• 1:48:53
  So when I order author copies hardcovers, those take wheat
• 1:48:56
  multiple. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:58
  Author author copies take they take forever, so.
• 1:49:02
  My paperbacks are, my paperbacks will be here in about a week and
• 1:49:04
  a half. They're, they're already ordered
• 1:49:06
  and they'll be here. It's less than two weeks for the
• 1:49:08
  paperback hardcover, hardcover. I haven't ordered yet because I
• 1:49:11
  haven't had the, I don't have the hardcover.
• 1:49:13
  So I always buy my, I always, you know, I ask people to buy
• 1:49:15
  the book and I say this in my podcast, I say it online, I
• 1:49:19
  always go out and I, I pay full price for the ebook, A paperback
• 1:49:23
  copy and a hardcover copy. And those are my 3 copies.
• 1:49:25
  I do order other copies, but I either give them away, sell them
• 1:49:29
  on my website or at book signings.
• 1:49:31
  And I as as weird as it says, I don't care about any other
• 1:49:35
  copies. But those 3 copies I buy myself
• 1:49:37
  from Amazon and pay full price. Those are the, those are the
• 1:49:40
  ones I keep. I actually, I, I write a note in
• 1:49:42
  all my books. I write a note to myself, just
• 1:49:45
  brief, but it's just something that years from now I can open
• 1:49:48
  back up and I'll remember something, something I want to
• 1:49:51
  say to myself in the future, basically about putting that
• 1:49:53
  book together. So I wrote, I got Drexel
• 1:49:56
  yesterday and I wrote myself a little no.
• 1:49:58
  And I'll do the same thing when I get the hardcover.
• 1:50:00
  Maybe tomorrow now, since it didn't come today, so.
• 1:50:04
  Very, very cool. Well, unless you have anything
• 1:50:10
  else you want to cover with Drexel any any final thoughts or
• 1:50:15
  anything you want to plug? I hope hope people get a copy
• 1:50:21
  and leave me a rating and review on Amazon.
• 1:50:23
  Goodreads always helps as well. I hope they enjoy Troy's story.
• 1:50:26
  The the initial early advanced reads I got and reviews were
• 1:50:30
  pretty pretty spectacular. So universally loved so far.
• 1:50:34
  Sure, someone might not like it at some point and so that person
• 1:50:38
  that doesn't like it, I always say the same joke, just buy the
• 1:50:41
  next one. Maybe you'll like the next one
• 1:50:42
  better so. Yep, indeed.
• 1:50:45
  And and it's Health 2 scribes. I know that you've cut back on
• 1:50:50
  doing that a little bit. Yeah, are.
• 1:50:53
  You a month now? Yeah, just it's too much going
• 1:50:56
  on became it was starting to become a job and I have some
• 1:51:01
  jobs already and I was just starting.
• 1:51:03
  It was just it just said I had a wall with it last year that it
• 1:51:06
  was just once a week was just too much on me.
• 1:51:08
  So I said, well, I don't want to stop doing it and I didn't want
• 1:51:12
  to do it like once, you know, I didn't want to do a block of
• 1:51:14
  them and put them out every couple months.
• 1:51:16
  I just decided I'll just tone it back to like every other week
• 1:51:20
  for the most part. We'll stick to that schedule for
• 1:51:22
  now. I'm I'm lined up for another
• 1:51:24
  couple months of of ones I've filmed or guess I've got lined
• 1:51:28
  up and yeah, it's all good. I've got a hopefully I'm working
• 1:51:32
  on a big one. Hopefully this big one will come
• 1:51:35
  together that I haven't filmed yet, but I'm hoping to.
• 1:51:38
  I'm hoping to film that one and I'll be pretty, I'll be pretty
• 1:51:40
  proud of that one if I can pull that one off.
• 1:51:42
  But but all my guests are enjoy. I'd love I enjoy talking to
• 1:51:47
  people about books in the process.
• 1:51:48
  So it's always, always fun to talk about the creative process.
• 1:51:52
  Indeed it is. And I still get, you know,
• 1:51:55
  comments on our episode that we did together and glad you had me
• 1:52:01
  on last year. So really, really appreciate
• 1:52:04
  that. And actually, you know, as much
• 1:52:08
  as, you know, I I had to laugh when you said that you were
• 1:52:12
  cutting back on episodes because, I mean, I still do do
• 1:52:16
  this weekly. But I mean, yeah, it does take a
• 1:52:19
  lot of a lot more production time than I think people think
• 1:52:23
  to do weekly episodes. And so I don't blame you for
• 1:52:29
  cutting back, you know, on episodes a bit.
• 1:52:32
  I'm just. I'm in.
• 1:52:33
  Whenever he wants to give me a Spotify money, then we will you
• 1:52:37
  know some some rogue and Spotify money then I might renegotiate
• 1:52:40
  and do a couple of week but. Yeah, well.
• 1:52:43
  Don't see that happening. So, well, you know, if if he
• 1:52:46
  gets that I, I might move, you know, I might move TWR over to,
• 1:52:52
  you know, spear talk as well. Your talk could could, we could
• 1:52:55
  use a whole family of them. You never know.
• 1:52:57
  So indeed. But I think right now we're all
• 1:53:00
  a hodgepodge. John has come out with very many
• 1:53:03
  in the in the months. Him and Eric have only done one
• 1:53:05
  in like the last month and a half, I think.
• 1:53:07
  Will's not doing any right now. I think either got married or
• 1:53:10
  was getting married and moving. So Will's Will's one Ode to
• 1:53:13
  ghosts has been a minute. So I'm probably the most
• 1:53:16
  consistent one right now, which is every other week.
• 1:53:19
  But yeah, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how it keeps going.
• 1:53:22
  Yeah, we've been pretty consistent at right to offend
• 1:53:25
  media here. It's it's been it's been fun to
• 1:53:28
  I do a a weekly gaming, a weekly video game show too, which is
• 1:53:33
  fun. And Andrew G Nelson is also
• 1:53:37
  coming on to that one to promote his book.
• 1:53:40
  So he's cool to talk to him. So And yeah, it's it's these are
• 1:53:47
  by far my favorite ones to do the author interviews.
• 1:53:52
  So but. I appreciate you.
• 1:53:54
  I appreciate you doing this, Sam.
• 1:53:55
  Appreciate you having me on for my for the debut or the release
• 1:53:58
  of Drexel and we'll have another one hopefully out and well that
• 1:54:03
  well, I'll just say this summer, maybe latter part of the summer
• 1:54:06
  and maybe we'll do it again. So.
• 1:54:07
  I, I appreciate it and folks, we appreciate you for tuning in.
• 1:54:13
  One last thing before we go kind of some housekeeping things.
• 1:54:18
  I posted an announcement for my next book, which you can read
• 1:54:24
  the description for that on Twitter and then some stack
• 1:54:29
  American inferno, which comes out on March 10th and yarks
• 1:54:36
  aren't out there yet, but I'll get those out at the beginning
• 1:54:40
  of February and who knows I'm at I might have the bottom end
• 1:54:45
  Courier delivery. That's Mr. Eric Bishop here, but
• 1:54:50
  you can pre-order that now as well, but you all should go and
• 1:54:54
  pre-order in order Drexel and all of the other books that
• 1:54:59
  Mister Eric Bishop has out there and check out to help 2 scribes.
• 1:55:04
  Everything will be linked below and we appreciate you for tuning
• 1:55:08
  in. So until next time, God bless
• 1:55:13
  and thank you for listening everyone.
• 1:55:17
  The right to Offensiveness is the motor of
• 1:55:59
  human progress. Thank you for watching the
• 1:56:03
  Whitfield Report live on the Right to Offend Media Network.
• 1:56:07
  Make sure to check out Sam's books on Amazon, Audible, and
• 1:56:11
  Kindle. You can follow Sam on X at Sam W
• 1:56:16
  under score NGC and the Right to Offend Media Network at RTO
• 1:56:21
  Media. Like, comment, subscribe and
• 1:56:25
  share with your friends. And until next time, God bless.
• 1:56:31
  God save this great nation. God, freedom, legacy, in that
• 1:56:37
  order.