Latest / Arroe Collins Like It's Live / Cold War Suspense Times 100 From Author And Art Director Beau L'Amour
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: So we've created this podcast network. It's called arrow dot
- 0:03Speaker 1: Net A r r oe dot net. Twenty different podcasts
- 0:07Speaker 1: to choose from daily. One of the biggest plays on
- 0:10Speaker 1: there right now is called something our parents would say.
- 0:13Speaker 1: Come on, we all said it, and it had to
- 0:15Speaker 1: start somewhere, and it usually came from your parents, your grandparents,
- 0:18Speaker 1: your great grandparents. What is the history of what people say?
- 0:21Speaker 1: You'll find it on arrow dot net A r r
- 0:24Speaker 1: oe dot Net. Enjoy your exploration. Hello, and good morning,
- 0:28Speaker 1: Happy Friday to the world.
- 0:30Speaker 2: Well that's a wonderful greeting. How are you? This is
- 0:34Speaker 2: bolamore Bo.
- 0:36Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I love your name, why you're
- 0:38Speaker 1: not in movies in Hollywood, and why you're not on
- 0:40Speaker 1: the radio. I mean, my God, with a name like that,
- 0:42Speaker 1: you need to be just stretching out there.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Well, I had beatnik parents.
- 0:50Speaker 1: To do this book. What was the actual inspiration? Because
- 0:54Speaker 1: there's so much going on here that and I got
- 0:57Speaker 1: so involved with what's happening. And I don't know if
- 1:00Speaker 1: it's because I was born in sixty two and this
- 1:02Speaker 1: takes place in sixty one, but it just it really
- 1:05Speaker 1: took me into an area where I was like, Wow,
- 1:07Speaker 1: I'm not in twenty twenty six anymore.
- 1:11Speaker 2: Oh that's wonderful.
- 1:13Speaker 3: I'm glad. I I'm glad I succeeded to some extent.
- 1:16Speaker 3: You know, I think we're we're all kind of fascinated
- 1:19Speaker 3: by the world that created us, but the world we
- 1:23Speaker 3: don't really remember. You know, that came just before our birth.
- 1:28Speaker 3: I think my dad was like that too. He was
- 1:29Speaker 3: born in ninth so I'm about you know your age. Also,
- 1:33Speaker 3: my dad was born in nineteen eight, and of course
- 1:35Speaker 3: he wrote a lot of novels about the West, which
- 1:38Speaker 3: was you know, a similar, similar time, similar time period,
- 1:41Speaker 3: similar time prior to his prior to his birth. But no,
- 1:46Speaker 3: it's a very exciting I mean, I had a lot
- 1:48Speaker 3: of fun writing it. It's a it's a it's a
- 1:53Speaker 3: fun book. It's got some very unlikely characters who get
- 1:58Speaker 3: in way over.
- 1:59Speaker 2: Their heads, and.
- 2:00Speaker 3: Uh, you know, I think that Uh. I also just
- 2:05Speaker 3: think that's a very evocative time period. There was so
- 2:09Speaker 3: much going on, you know, Bay of Pigs in the
- 2:12Speaker 3: Berlin Wall, and uh, you know, the Cold the Cold
- 2:16Speaker 3: War was very much at its height, and European colonies
- 2:19Speaker 3: were disintegrating, and there's just a lot of action in
- 2:22Speaker 3: the world.
- 2:23Speaker 1: But see, you know what's really interesting is that, because
- 2:24Speaker 1: there was so much chaos in the world, two people
- 2:27Speaker 1: unlikely meet and it's like, wait a second, all of
- 2:30Speaker 1: this chaos and there's beauty. There's a moment, there's something
- 2:34Speaker 1: that we're all going to embrace.
- 2:35Speaker 2: Here, Uh, I guess I mean, because.
- 2:40Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's what I love about when when
- 2:42Speaker 1: when when things are going really super bad my eye
- 2:45Speaker 1: when and maybe because my father used to read your
- 2:47Speaker 1: father's books and there was always something in those books
- 2:49Speaker 1: that my my dad just could not get enough of.
- 2:52Speaker 1: But there always seemed to be hope, you know what
- 2:54Speaker 1: I mean, And and and that, and that's what I
- 2:56Speaker 1: feel in this book is hope.
- 2:59Speaker 3: Well, I think in dark times, you know, that's what
- 3:02Speaker 3: comes through. And also there is something that's interesting about
- 3:05Speaker 3: those kind of mid Cold War years. I remember quite
- 3:10Speaker 3: a few years ago I went to a exhibit of
- 3:12Speaker 3: just all kinds of Cold War oriented stuff at the
- 3:16Speaker 3: Los Angeles County Art Museum with my girlfriend and we
- 3:21Speaker 3: were looking at a picture of this house. I think
- 3:23Speaker 3: it was built around Palm Springs or something like this,
- 3:25Speaker 3: but it had sort of this slanting roof that slanted outwards.
- 3:30Speaker 3: It was like the opposite of a normal roof, and
- 3:33Speaker 3: these glass windows all around the sides of the house,
- 3:37Speaker 3: enormous glass windows looking out all over the Coachella Valley,
- 3:41Speaker 3: and I was sort of like, that's not a house
- 3:43Speaker 3: that was built by somebody who was afraid of anything.
- 3:47Speaker 3: And it was interesting, you know, because it was right
- 3:50Speaker 3: in the middle of this exhibit. It was all full
- 3:53Speaker 3: of air aid sirens and bomb shelters and other newspaper
- 3:57Speaker 3: articles and stuff. And the museum wasn't pointing it out
- 4:01Speaker 3: like that. It was just showing you mid century architecture,
- 4:05Speaker 3: but it was. It was a strange time, and I
- 4:07Speaker 3: mean we both lived through the you know, the end
- 4:10Speaker 3: of that the end of that era, and it vascillated
- 4:14Speaker 3: back and forth as to how American culture dealt with it.
- 4:19Speaker 3: But you know, particularly in that early to mid sixties era,
- 4:25Speaker 3: there were some interesting choices made and people had interesting
- 4:28Speaker 3: approaches to it.
- 4:29Speaker 1: Is this one of the main reasons why that it's
- 4:31Speaker 1: more than just reading a book that we're actually going
- 4:34Speaker 1: to learn something that we might actually hit chat, GPT
- 4:37Speaker 1: or Google and go searching for answers and stuff. Because
- 4:40Speaker 1: you plant so many easter eggs all the way through this,
- 4:42Speaker 1: in the way of going wow, I didn't know that.
- 4:46Speaker 3: I tried to do that as much as possible, and
- 4:49Speaker 3: some of it is Yes, I would I would love
- 4:51Speaker 3: a reader to, you know, follow these two kind of
- 4:57Speaker 3: arms dealers who get in over their heads and have
- 5:00Speaker 3: this great adventure. But I also wanted I wanted people
- 5:05Speaker 3: to look things up and be more interested in the
- 5:07Speaker 3: time period, but also just have something to reread it for.
- 5:11Speaker 3: I always try to write in enough layers so that
- 5:15Speaker 3: someone can read the book a couple of times and
- 5:17Speaker 3: get more out of it.
- 5:18Speaker 1: Well, I mean arms dealers. I mean this to me
- 5:21Speaker 1: is like a modern day Western even though it's said
- 5:23Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. I mean that to me is
- 5:25Speaker 1: like wow, that because it's almost like there are many
- 5:28Speaker 1: of us that would we would like to have the
- 5:30Speaker 1: secrecy of being something like this. But at the same time,
- 5:32Speaker 1: it's like, oh, man, that's what it's all about, the
- 5:36Speaker 1: bad news, the bad guys bringing it to our world.
- 5:40Speaker 2: Get I guess.
- 5:41Speaker 3: I mean I chose arms dealers because I knew as
- 5:45Speaker 3: I was writing the book, I knew somehow I was
- 5:46Speaker 3: going to put a twist on making them kind of
- 5:50Speaker 3: good and moral at the end.
- 5:52Speaker 2: But I also.
- 5:54Speaker 3: Liked dealing with them because you can sort of using
- 5:57Speaker 3: an arms dealer, you can say this person is a
- 6:00Speaker 3: person who can act like a covert operative, but at
- 6:04Speaker 3: the same time they don't have any structure to be
- 6:08Speaker 3: responsible for their independent operatives. So it gave me a
- 6:12Speaker 3: lot of room to move them around the landscape and
- 6:15Speaker 3: do different things with them.
- 6:16Speaker 1: Hey, please don't move. There's more with Beau Lamore coming
- 6:19Speaker 1: up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
- 6:24Speaker 1: with author Beau Lamore. One thing that's really fascinating me
- 6:28Speaker 1: right now is the fact that nineteen sixty.
- 6:30Speaker 4: One we're in the Cold War.
- 6:32Speaker 1: We're also in that area, Oh my god, where we're
- 6:34Speaker 1: things between the United States and Russia. We're not looking good.
- 6:38Speaker 1: Do you know what the and you're doing your research,
- 6:40Speaker 1: was there an atmosphere of expression from real everyday people,
- 6:44Speaker 1: because if that threat were to come up today, people
- 6:46Speaker 1: would still go whatever it say. I read about it.
- 6:50Speaker 1: I just feel like it was a different America back then,
- 6:53Speaker 1: or a different world.
- 6:55Speaker 3: Well, everybody remembered, you know again, you we remember this
- 7:01Speaker 3: from our childhood.
- 7:03Speaker 5: World War two was only fifteen years in the past.
- 7:06Speaker 3: And when you deal with the generation that were our parents,
- 7:11Speaker 3: which is pretty much what I'm writing about, those people
- 7:15Speaker 3: all went through the war. All these characters in this
- 7:18Speaker 3: story have a backstory in World War Two that actually
- 7:22Speaker 3: plays itself out in the narrative. But with World War
- 7:26Speaker 3: Two making everything more serious and more focused, I think
- 7:30Speaker 3: that's important. I also think when we look at it today,
- 7:33Speaker 3: we sort of look at the threat from various things.
- 7:36Speaker 3: And you know, even when you look at however crazy
- 7:39Speaker 3: the Soviet Union was and however dark that system was,
- 7:44Speaker 3: those people had been through that incredible loss and terrifying
- 7:49Speaker 3: violence themselves, and they had respect for it. And I'm
- 7:53Speaker 3: not sure that you look around the world and see
- 7:55Speaker 3: world leaders, particularly world leaders that are opposed to us,
- 8:00Speaker 3: and you know they have a respect for the horrors
- 8:03Speaker 3: of war.
- 8:05Speaker 1: Who better to know that than the members of the
- 8:07Speaker 1: sex Pistols from the nineteen seventies, because I've had the
- 8:09Speaker 1: opportunity to talk with them, and they have reminded me
- 8:12Speaker 1: every time, saying earroh, you don't know anything about WHOA.
- 8:15Speaker 1: You don't know what it's done to our country. And
- 8:17Speaker 1: so when you said it was only fifteen years earlier
- 8:19Speaker 1: for World War two. I went right there to those
- 8:22Speaker 1: conversations because they're right. And I think maybe that's my
- 8:25Speaker 1: attraction to this book, is you're letting me into a
- 8:28Speaker 1: world I don't know much about, but by god, I
- 8:31Speaker 1: feel like I'm part of it.
- 8:34Speaker 2: Well that's wonderful.
- 8:36Speaker 3: And I know where those guys are coming from, especially
- 8:39Speaker 3: you know, especially in Europe, especially in England. The echoes
- 8:43Speaker 3: of war lasted a good deal, lasted a good deal
- 8:47Speaker 3: longer than they did here. We were over it, you know,
- 8:50Speaker 3: we were over it quite quite quickly, and so I
- 8:57Speaker 3: enjoyed dealing again in the book. I enjoyed dealing with
- 8:59Speaker 3: that because that's a lot of it. It's like, how
- 9:02Speaker 3: did the war play itself out in Europe? How did
- 9:05Speaker 3: the aftermath of war play itself out in Europe and
- 9:09Speaker 3: the Near East and the Mediterranean kind of the Mediterranean Crescent,
- 9:14Speaker 3: you know, North Africa, things like that.
- 9:15Speaker 1: You know, you give us kind of a view here,
- 9:17Speaker 1: and it could be just my interpretation, but you know,
- 9:20Speaker 1: we've all seen the History Channel, we've all read the
- 9:23Speaker 1: books and things, but you give us a different view
- 9:24Speaker 1: of a someone with a Nazi past, and we all instantly.
- 9:28Speaker 1: I don't know if it's because it drove. It was
- 9:29Speaker 1: driven into my head with my father with that word.
- 9:31Speaker 1: But the thing is is that it's that you give
- 9:33Speaker 1: us a different side of this storyline with this.
- 9:37Speaker 5: Well, I never mean to excuse it in any way.
- 9:41Speaker 3: Yeah, But at the same time, I think one of
- 9:44Speaker 3: the interesting things in this story is there's a young
- 9:47Speaker 3: lady character who was a younger woman during World War Two,
- 9:50Speaker 3: and one of our main characters was an adult, a
- 9:54Speaker 3: young man during World War One, growing up in the
- 9:56Speaker 3: Weimar Republic, years participating in science projects during World War Two.
- 10:02Speaker 3: And he says it very well. He says to the
- 10:05Speaker 3: to the young woman who's a pole, he says, you,
- 10:09Speaker 3: you know what happened the Third Reich happened you overnight
- 10:13Speaker 3: tanks like rolling across the border. It happened to me
- 10:16Speaker 3: a German over twenty years. And it's kind of like that,
- 10:20Speaker 3: you know, frogs boiling in a pot sort of thing,
- 10:23Speaker 3: and it's kind of like the situation got worse, but
- 10:25Speaker 3: it got gradually worse, and so there's you know, there's
- 10:30Speaker 3: different points of view on that. I also think that
- 10:34Speaker 3: you know, there's a chapter in there that goes into
- 10:36Speaker 3: goes into this in great detail, and that that's not
- 10:39Speaker 3: just history because there's some there's some aspects of him
- 10:43Speaker 3: rationalizing his position. It's it's not supposed to be everything
- 10:48Speaker 3: in this everything he says is supposed to be exactly right.
- 10:51Speaker 3: It's a look under the hood of the process that's
- 10:54Speaker 3: going on in his head.
- 10:56Speaker 4: How about the woman with no name?
- 10:57Speaker 1: Boy, there's a catch for you if you know being
- 10:59Speaker 1: if this were hit song in radio, we would be
- 11:01Speaker 1: on it in a heartbeat, because you create that. Well,
- 11:04Speaker 1: it's the connection, it's the hook. It's like, oh, my god,
- 11:06Speaker 1: I'm going to give her name myself. If he's not
- 11:08Speaker 1: going to give her one, I'm gonna call her Violet.
- 11:10Speaker 1: That's what I'm gonna do.
- 11:12Speaker 3: Well, I actually give her quite a few different Yeah,
- 11:15Speaker 3: you do, but none of them are none of them are.
- 11:18Speaker 5: Certainly are certainly hers.
- 11:21Speaker 3: Yeah, No, she's she was a Polish resistance fighter and
- 11:26Speaker 3: then she becomes a massad agent and so no one,
- 11:30Speaker 3: not even her.
- 11:31Speaker 2: You know, the man.
- 11:33Speaker 3: Who is closest to her knows actually what her her
- 11:39Speaker 3: real name is.
- 11:39Speaker 1: Yeah, but see that's we all want to be somebody else,
- 11:42Speaker 1: and we I mean, my god, even as a radio jock,
- 11:44Speaker 1: I use several different names and stuff, even as a writer.
- 11:47Speaker 1: So so maybe that's my relationship with her as I'm
- 11:49Speaker 1: going I know what you're doing. I know what you're
- 11:51Speaker 1: doing because I can be anybody I want to be.
- 11:53Speaker 1: I'm just going to change my name.
- 11:56Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's it.
- 11:58Speaker 3: I mean, obviously she has reasons, you know, being a
- 12:03Speaker 3: Mossad officer, she has reasons to do that. But yeah,
- 12:10Speaker 3: she was a lot of She was a lot of
- 12:12Speaker 3: fun to write, and based on that. Story of hers
- 12:16Speaker 3: is based on a true story of a young woman
- 12:19Speaker 3: and her sister who were involved in resistance organizations during
- 12:22Speaker 3: World War Two.
- 12:23Speaker 4: See.
- 12:24Speaker 1: I love that kind of stuff when you can take
- 12:26Speaker 1: history and you can make it a modern day storyline
- 12:29Speaker 1: like that. So now I got to ask you about continuity.
- 12:31Speaker 1: What did you have to do in order to make
- 12:33Speaker 1: this book happen, Because you know how history buffs are,
- 12:35Speaker 1: they're going to come knocking on your door.
- 12:39Speaker 3: Just an awful, an awful lot of research if that's
- 12:42Speaker 3: what you're talking.
- 12:43Speaker 4: About, exactly what I'm talking about.
- 12:45Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, And I knew I was going to write
- 12:48Speaker 3: the book for a very long time. I knew it
- 12:51Speaker 3: was I knew it was something I was going to
- 12:53Speaker 3: do for about twenty years, so I was kind of
- 12:56Speaker 3: moderately reading and catching up on things. I had a long, long,
- 13:01Speaker 3: long ramp up to it, and then you know, just
- 13:05Speaker 3: wonderful reading material and a number of advisors. I worked
- 13:10Speaker 3: with a couple of guys who knew submarines very well.
- 13:15Speaker 3: A Vietnam era seal who had served, who had served
- 13:20Speaker 3: on subs and cross trained I worked with early on
- 13:25Speaker 3: in the process, when he was still alive. I consulted
- 13:28Speaker 3: a bit with Thomas Payne, who was head of NASA
- 13:32Speaker 3: during Apollo. But Tom also was an engineering officer on
- 13:38Speaker 3: American submarines or an executive officer in American submarines, and
- 13:43Speaker 3: he had like the world's greatest submarine library, and it's
- 13:46Speaker 3: been given to it was given to the Navy after
- 13:49Speaker 3: he passed. But I had a chance to dive into
- 13:53Speaker 3: that really early, and just a whole bunch of other
- 13:57Speaker 3: people like that that I was very, very lucky to
- 14:01Speaker 3: be able to interact with over the years and learn
- 14:04Speaker 3: the things that I needed to learn.
- 14:05Speaker 1: Do you feel like a historian or just or an
- 14:08Speaker 1: archaeologist in the way of digging up some history but
- 14:11Speaker 1: putting it in a modern storyline.
- 14:14Speaker 3: I think archaeologist is kind of good. I don't have
- 14:16Speaker 3: a historian. I'm a lot of these things are kind
- 14:19Speaker 3: of in my head and then I use it, and
- 14:21Speaker 3: then it's kind of out of my head and I'm
- 14:23Speaker 3: onto the next next project. I'm not somebody who's, you know,
- 14:26Speaker 3: consistently maybe exploiting the things that I that I learned,
- 14:31Speaker 3: but using the different elements to When I'm thinking of archaeologist,
- 14:36Speaker 3: I'm thinking of somebody rebuilding ruins or something, and I
- 14:41Speaker 3: the rebuilding aspect is is, Yeah, that's that's very close
- 14:45Speaker 3: to the way I feel about it.
- 14:46Speaker 1: Well, well, where can people go to find out more
- 14:48Speaker 1: about you? Ten minutes is not going to be enough time.
- 14:51Speaker 1: They need to know everything that you're doing well.
- 14:54Speaker 3: Louis Lamore dot com has tons of information on my
- 14:58Speaker 3: dad and to a certain extent, my self if you want,
- 15:01Speaker 3: sort of an owner's manual to this book, a path
- 15:05Speaker 3: through it, and interesting information on many of the details.
- 15:09Speaker 3: Skyring Water dot com s K y R I n
- 15:12Speaker 3: G One Word Water w A T E R dot com.
- 15:16Speaker 1: Wow, you got to come back to this show anytime
- 15:18Speaker 1: in the future. The door is always going to be
- 15:19Speaker 1: open for you bo I would love it.
- 15:22Speaker 5: If there's anything I can do for you, just let
- 15:24Speaker 5: me know.
- 15:24Speaker 4: Excellent, Will you be brilliant today? Okay, thank you, thank you,