Latest / WriterCon / Memoir, Moms & Muhammed Ali with Thomas Hauser

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Memoir, Moms & Muhammed Ali with Thomas Hauser · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Con podcast, do It because you love it,
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Don't do it for the money. Welcome to writer Con, the gathering place
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for writers to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts
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are William Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of The Red Sneaker books on
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writing, and Laura Bernhardt, Award winning author the want Land Files book series.
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Thank you, Jesse ul Rich, and welcome to all the writers out
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there. Thanks for joining us. You know, by coincidence, I was
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just reading about Jesse's favorite writer, James Patterson. This prolific author has written
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around two hundred books, and his latest is Holmes, Marple and Poe,
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co written with Brian Sits. You know, he's collaborated with Dolly Parton,
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He's collaborated with Bill Clinton, and now he's doing that, and apparently next
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he's entering the world of legal thrillers, which you know, you can imagine
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my delight. He's got a planned trilogy co written with Mike Lupika called twelve
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Months to Live, featuring a hard nosed criminal defense attorney with guess what,
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eleven months to Live? It's the twist off the note that would be the
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no it's twelve and guess what the sequel, already already in the works is
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called. Well, that would be logical, but no, it's eight months
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to live and then four months to live and then I guess it's all over,
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really really squeezing that lemon. Unless it's a hit and there's a movie
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deal, then there'll be three months and twenty nine days to live. And
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yeah, that's really calendar to count down. Well, at least we all
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know how the story's going to end, right, one Christmas left to live.
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Yeah, So, Jesse, now that Patterson is writing legal thrillers,
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should I just retire? Well, no, because you're actually writing thrillers.
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Boom boom coming for you, James, Laura, how would you feel if
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James Patterson started writing ghost story? I don't think he's going to write women's
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fiction, but he might get into ghost stories. He can do whatever he
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wants. He's got his own I'm over here. I'm going to stay in
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my lane. I'm going to keep doing what I want to do. I
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have my audience. I don't think they're going to stop reading my books.
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They can read his two if they want. They won't be as you know,
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very Jesse won't know. I know my audiences is committed. So I
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love my I love my reader's voice of confidence. All right, Our guest
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today is Thomas Hauser, who's the author of a new lovely memoir about his
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mama, My Mother and Me. He's also the author of many previous books,
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including sports related books, a bunch about boxing, including a biography of
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Muhammad Ali, and a book on social tolerance that he co wrote with Muhammad
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Ali. He also wrote the book Missing, which became the film with Jack
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Lemon and Sissy Spasik, and another film. I've seen both of these films,
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another one called Final Warning the Legacy of Chernobyl. We will talk to
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Thomas about all that and much more, but first the news. On our
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last podcast, we talked about the author who is now suing Amazon over their
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sale of counterfeit books using his name, which is not a new phenomenon.
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This time, our news story is about another kind of very dubious book also
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being sold at Amazon. That's biographies of dead celebrities written overnight or virtually instantaneously
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by AI artificial intelligence, and that has become a boom market. Some of
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you may have noticed recently when Tom's Smothers. Some of us will remember from
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the smother Brothers Smothers Brothers comedy hour television show. Anyway, he passed on
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December twenty sixth, and that same day a new book appeared with the clunky
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and ungrammatical title Wait for this Tom Smothers revealing four. That's the number four,
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numeral four revealing for untold truth about half of Smother's brother Smother's brother singular.
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Yeah, and they think that AI is going to replace writers. Uh.
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Toby Keith recently passed. Great Oklahoma based country music star biography showed up
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right after his death. One get this. One of them had this disclaimer
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on it, quote the author and publisher make no warranties about the accuracy or
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completeness of the content. Is a supposed biography. And it also said resemblance
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to real persons is coincidental, which is not what you normally expect to see
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on them at least. But push came to shove when this happened to a
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man named Joseph Luliveld, and I apologize if I mispronounced that name. He's
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a former executive editor at The New York Times. He passed last month,
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and his brother, Michael, went online to see, you know, how
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he's being remembered. What he found was obituaries. Well, he expected that,
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but he also found at least half a dozen biographies published on Amazon in
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the days immediately following his brother's death, some of them available for purchase on
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the very day he died. The books, according to Michael, described his
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brother as a chainsmoker, someone who honed his skills in Cairo, and someone
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who reported from Vietnam, none of which is true. According to a program
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called GPT zero, which is designed to detect AI generated text, there is
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a ninety seven percent chance that the book was created by AI. I'm thinking
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maybe the odds are actually higher than ninety seven percent. This is just a
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macabre new publishing subgenre, these quickly slapped together, shoddy AI generated books about
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people who just passed away. Laura, are you outraged? I am horrified.
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This is so skeazy and honestly, this is not a good look for
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AI, AI has or Amazon. Yeah, good use, Yeah, there
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are great times to use AI chat GPT, but yes, why is Amazon
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continuing to allow this garbage to clog up their system? I hate it?
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But also I'm going to say it buy or beware, right, if you've
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got a disclaimer or a title like that, don't buy that mess. If
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we stop buying it, it'll dry up and go away. People are only
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doing it because they're making money on it. It's like every other scam.
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You've got to you've got to protect yourself and don't fall for it. Well,
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yeah, and why is it dead celebrities or the Leader? You know,
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it's not just on Amazon. I know the Facebook group site for writer
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Con for a long time was being plagued with all these fake posts about set
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dead who aren't dead, but click here, someone's gonna recognize. Yeah,
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absolutely, it's it grabs attention because people recognize it, and if they've passed
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away, it's let's go now. Yeah. Pair one of those posts about
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not dead celebrities with a link to an AI written biography of the not dead
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celebrity, and I don't know, Jesse, you're stroking your beer. Does
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that mean you're disgusted or you're thinking about how you can get in on this?
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I mean, well, listen, part of my mind's always like how
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can I make money off this? But like I don't actually do any of
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those things. I mean, this is definitely one of those times. Like,
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yes, like Amazon should easily be able to write some sort of algorithm
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that says biography of person like date of death, earliest time a biography could
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possibly come out like months at least, right, it does not seem like
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it would be that hard. No, But in this particular case, I'm
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more mad at the people buying these books, Like what are they thinking,
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Sure, here's a book that came out. Well, they read the obituary
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and they think, oh, I always love Tom smothers, I'd like to
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know more about him, and boom, there's the biography and like the like
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I guess like Amazon's half of smother brother. Yeah, Like, like I'm
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very curious about what the fake Toby Keith's biography title was and if it included
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red solo cups or not, if they got the color of the cup wrong.
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You know, it's this is one of those things where like you understand
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the emotional connections of how people get to the thing. And again, Amazon
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is just like still like the wild West of regulating what's being sold on their
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platform. And well we reported this on this earlier, but now when you
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upload a new book to Amazon, if you're self publishing or or if you're
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a publishing house, it asks you was AI used in the generation of this
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content? You check yes or no, but it doesn't seem to make any
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difference. The book's going up no matter what if you click. If you
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click yes, a human being should be forced to look at it. Amazing
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again, Bill and I will split the one percent of your profits to do
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that for you. Yes, we're here Amazon, who's checking for accuracy of
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that because the person who's producing that terrible biography is not going to be honest
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and say, yep, I just told GPT to knock out a click biography
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for me. That that chat GBT zero thing should be built into Amazon's publishing
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platform. All right. News story number two, which is much better news
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for authors, But I really just picked this story for you. Jesse Boy
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involves Brandon Sanderson, who has single handedly gotten better, more author friendly royalty
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rates for everybody at Audible, which of course is the audiobook distributor which is
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also owned by the aforementioned Amazon. He's been concerned about the low royalty rates
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they offered and the lack of transparency, meaning we can't tell how you got
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to that number from your royalty state basically, and he thought authors should do
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better. So when it came time to sell his very popular books as audio
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books, he was in the catbird seat. Some people will remember last year
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we covered this story where he kickstarted some books into production for a huge sum
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of money. And now he's got his own printing press and distribution center.
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I mean, he's into book publishing in a big way, so they would
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listen to him anyway. His efforts negotiating with Audible have paid off, not
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just for him but for everyone. They have now increased minimum royalty rates so
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authors get more. He's improved the transparency so authors get more detailed information,
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and authors will receive their royalties more frequently monthly. In other words, exactly
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what Author Equity recently announced they were going to do at their publishing house.
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I mean the response has been enthusiastic as well. It should be, because
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here is an author who is at the top of his game and using that
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clout to help everyone. Jesse, So your writer hero strikes again. Is
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this a big a deal as it seems like to me? Well? I
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think so, because most authors of his stature will happily take a better deal
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for themselves. But he specifically held out right and like was not able to
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offer his his fans something that they wanted, because he's like, I want
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to do better for everybody. Are you listening, James, I mean,
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and he calling out the only author who might have as much or more,
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Yeah, Brandon Setter, Steve Stephen King, James Patterson, Like all of
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those old tier writers could also do this, and they don't feel like they
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need to because they're already making enough. And he even said in his response
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to getting these things, he's like, I didn't get everything I wanted.
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There's still work to do. But he's like, at least now you know,
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independent, independent authors will get more than they were getting before. And
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I just it's just a really respectful thing to do. I'm just, I'm
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I'm I'm proud of a person I've never met whose books so I agree it
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was. It was just great work. Laura, you think this will spread,
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You think this is going to increase royalties at other places, other audiobook
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distributors. Well, it took one person of his stature to really stand up
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and make this happen. It's very impressive, But how many years have groups
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of maybe less less powerful people banded together in an attempt to make the same
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thing happen, and it doesn't. So it really does take someone to really
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get their attention and push change through, which is impressive. So I but
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again, I feel like it has to so I don't. I don't think
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anyone's going to say, maybe we should do that, Maybe that is better
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for authors, maybe we should do it too. I think people only make
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I think corporations only make these changes when they are forced to when it really
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is a bad look. If they don't, somebody points it out, just
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like when we were talking previously about the case that Goggins brought. So many
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people are getting ripped off like that, but only when he was calling them
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out and making Amazon look really bad did they go in and police the pirated
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books that were taking money away from him. So I feel like corporations,
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if they have no reason to, they'd don't make these changes. Well,
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it seems to me the only I mean, for instance, Find a Way
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Voices, which we've talked about on this program before, their primary selling point
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was we give you better rates than Audible does. Of course, Find a
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Way Voices and now been purchased by Spotify because they're trying to break into the
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audiobook market. Jesse, did you have a thought there? Well, I
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don't know if you've been following this up this other story where like authors are
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noting there's been a like change in the terms with Find a Way Voices and
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Spotify, where like you're giving them some control over your own ip like Spotify
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can then use some of those things and then write other stories. And people
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are like, don't sign this, And I agree again, like can you
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not just be a marketplace? Why are you trying to like also create things
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and also sell things, like just be the thing? Yeah, you are
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to be fair. I think Find a Way Voices backed off that pretty quick,
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but only after people started complaining about it. Yeah, but again it
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was it was the attempt and they only pulled back because people noticed, like
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they chose to do it anyway. So you're right, all right, Well
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that's the news in the writing world, good and bad. Jesse, cue
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up the music. Let's talk to Thomas Houser. Thomas, welcome to the
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podcast. Good to be with you all, Good to see you too.
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Okay, first traditional question, if you could offer writers one piece of advice,
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what would it be. Do it because you love it, don't do
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it for the money, because you're probably not going to make much money.
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And that's not the message, Thomas. That's actually really good advice. I'm
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sure you've had countless authors say to you, why haven't my book sold more
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copies? Why haven't I made more money? As a rule, that doesn't
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work that way. Every now and then you get lucky. But you get
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lucky exactly. So many people come to me and say, and then it'll
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get made into a movie or a TV show or this or that, And
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I think we can always hope. You know, I started off with a
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very lucky success. The first book I wrote was Missing, which was made
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into a feature film. And I said to myself, well, this is
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easy. You write a good book, it gets reviews, they make a
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feature film out of it, it's translated into twenty languages. And no,
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that's not the way it works. It doesn't happen every time. Yeah,
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but I still love it. Right. Well, that's the same advice Laura
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and I give, because I know in my experience. I mean, I've
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been doing this for thirty plus years, you two, and I've had hits.
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I've had complete bombs. But if you wrote the book for the reason
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because you cared about something in the first place, then it doesn't matter so
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much. The books still on the shelf. Right well, if you love
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writing it and you're happy with the end product, it's not a bomb,
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it's well creative legacy, and it's there forever. That's right, very nice.
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All right now we just barely touch it. We mentioned Missing, But
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you have a remarkable backlist. You've got nonfiction, sports, nonfiction, more
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general, uh well, and actual fiction. You've even got a children's book.
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Can you just not make up your mind what you want to be when
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you grow up? Or you know. One of the things that I've been
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told by publishers again and again is you shouldn't switch genres, right because the
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key to financial success, commercial success is you know. John lecare wrote one
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spy story after another. Stephen King did one horror story after another. The
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first two books I wrote were dramatic nonfiction stories, Missing and The Trial of
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Patrolman Thomas Say. Then I decided to write a love story set in a
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large Wall Street law firm called Ashworth and Palmer. And the editor who liked
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the first two books didn't want that, And then the editor who loved Ashworth
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and Palmer didn't want the philosophy on moral values, and then the editor who
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bought that said, what am I going to do with the book about boxing?
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So what? I write what I want to write. And I've written
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novels about Charles Dickens and Mark Plain. I've actually just started writing a novel
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about Sherlock Holmes, and I love it because I can pick anything I want
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to write about, learn about, and do it. Now I have to
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ask is this a Sherlock Holmes story or is it a book about Sherlock Holmes.
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It is a Sherlock Holmes novel. I am writing as doctor John H.
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Watson, as the original Sherlock Holmes novels short stories were. And right
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now I'm still in the research stage, which means I have to read everything
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that a Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes, look at some of the early
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movies. I'm not looking at the more recent Sherlock Holmes books and movies because
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I don't want influenced by them. But I'm having a great time. And
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the wonderful thing about fiction is you can take the book anywhere you want.
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I spent half a day researching Lewis Carroll last week because There's an important dinner
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party scene in the book, and I thought, well, the dinner party
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would be more interesting for readers if there was a famous guest there. Who
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should it be? And I said, well, how about Lewis Carroll.
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His life a Sherlock Holmes overlaps. So there we are very fun. I
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want to talk some more about that first book of yours Missing, that's described
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as a chilling true account of a young American's disappear apearance. It was nominated
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for the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award.
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That's a pretty impressive debut. Can you tell us a little bit about the
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book and what inspired you to write it. I was working as a lawyer
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on Wall Street at the time. I wanted to try my hand at writing.
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And this is a true life story of an American named Charles Horman,
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who was one of two Americans killed during the coup and Chile in nineteen seventy
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three that overthrew Chilean President Salvadoreende. And it's now quite clear from everything that's
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been revealed that the United States government played a huge role in fomenting the coup.
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There were three questions surrounding Charles's death, and when I started researching,
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we didn't have answers. By the time I finished, we had two of
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the three questions answered. The first is was Charles killed by the Chilean military
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because they said his body was just found on the streets, and there was
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convincing evidence that he was. The second question was did United States government officials
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seek to cover up facts surrounding his death, and again there was convincing evidence
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they did. The third issue was whether the United States government officials had fore
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knowledge of, or possibly even ordered Charles Hormann's execution to keep quiet things that
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he had learned about at the coup, And in twenty fourteen, many years
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later, at Chilean court, after examining all the evidence, found that yes,
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our government had played a role. A man named Ray Davis, who
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was the head of the United States military group in Chile, had passed Charles's
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name on to the Chilean military and things happened from there. At the time,
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it was a trailbazing book and more so, trailblazing movie. Costaavors was
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the director. It was the first overtly political American film that had been made
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and I got involved because I had known Terry Simon, who was the woman
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in Chile with Charles and his wife when he was killed. I met the
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parents through Terry, and when I decided to leave, Lawn right just seemed
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like an important story, dramatic story, and I figured, let me try
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my hand and see what happens. And that was the start of it all.
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I did all my research, and I was putting all my notes on
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index cards. This is pre computers. And finally I had finished all my
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research and I had a stack of index cards, you know, this high,
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and I remember looking at them one evening and saying, boy, you've
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really done it. You left a good, secure job as a lawyer on
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Wall Street. How are you going to turn this mess into a book?
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And I said, well, you know, I've broken this down into twelve
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chapters. Let me put the index cards into twelve piles. That'll make them
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a little easier to work with than It went from there, Yeah, great,
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So Missing becomes a movie, something most writers dream about. What was
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that experience like for you? It was fun. It was a little heady,
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you know. I hear athletes say all the time, boxers who win
24:23
world championships when they're young. You know basketball players who win titles when they're
24:29
young, and later on they say, I didn't appreciate at the time what
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it meant, and now it was evolved, and how lucky I was for
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this to happen. I knew it was a lot of fun to go through.
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I didn't realize how rare the experience was. I've had one more film
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made since then. But the satisfaction for me, really, the greatest satisfaction
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is in the books. I've always said I got too much credit for the
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movie Missing and not enough credit for the book. With a book, you
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can control what you write. And from my point of view, once the
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book is out there, if I've written it the way I want to,
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if it's nicely published, and you know, Admission Press has done a beautiful
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job with publishing my mother and me. They really have Flara, thank you.
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At that point, I'm happy, Sure, that's there forever, It's
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part of my creative legacy and in this case, part of my mother's legacy,
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and anything good that happens after that is gravy. The nicest thing about
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a book selling well isn't even the money, as much as the fact that
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the message is being read by more and more people. You mentioned another movie
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that's Final Warning, right, the TURL booky, And you've also written both
25:55
a biography and co written a book with Muhammad Ali, right right right.
26:00
That was an experience. That was a wonderful experience, no doubt. Tell
26:04
us about that. Well. The big book, Muhammad Ali Is Life and
26:07
Times, came when I was approached in October of nineteen eighty eight by Mohammed
26:14
and his wife. They wanted, we all hope would become the definitive Muhammad
26:18
Ali biography. And I don't think I'll ever have a professional project that brings
26:25
me as much joy as that one did. And then later we wrote a
26:30
short book together. The thoughts were both of ours. I obviously did most
26:33
of the writing, but it was called Healing, and if you spell out
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Healing, the three middle letters are Ali Ali, which was and is a
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short journal of tolerance and understanding. What we did was we had an essay
26:52
at the beginning, and then we took about one hundred quotes from people throughout
26:56
the ages, from everybody from you know, Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King
27:03
Junior to Saint Augustine to the Qoran to just quotes across the board that would
27:11
hopefully get people to think about tolerance and understand. And then with the help
27:15
of HBO, we went to a number of schools across the country, high
27:19
schools and middle schools where we talked to students about our theme and that was
27:25
a lot of fun. In fact, they are all sorts of wonderful memories.
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One that just popped up into my mind was we were at Richard's Middle
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School in Atlanta, Georgia, and we got out of the car that had
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taken us. There actually was a bus. There was a media bus with
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us, and Mohammed and I got off the bus and we had to walk
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through a whole long line of cheerleaders. We were standing there, tom palms,
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singing, chanting, really float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
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Richard, Welcome's Muhammad Ali. The two kids at the end would say,
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and Thomas Houser eighteen people channing, float like a butterfly, thing like
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a being, Mohammad And then at the end of two at the end and
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Thomas Hauser. That just popped in my mind. Hadn't thought of that for
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a long time. That's lovely A nice memory. All right, let's talk
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about your impending release. My mother and Me A beautiful tribute to your late
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mother. What can you tell us about it? Well, my mother lived
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to the age of ninety six. She had a long, wonderful, privileged
28:41
life. I was very fortunate to have had her for as long as I
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did, and being a writer, I wanted to write a book about her.
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I realized very early on in the process that I couldn't write about my
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mother without writing about me, and I couldn't write about our relationship with that
29:00
writing about me. So it's autobiographical as well as biographical of her. And
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it's really a book not just about two people, but about the bonds between
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a mother and son, growing old, growing very old. And it's a
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book i'd like to think that mothers would want their sons to read, sons
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who want their mothers to read, and daughters don't want to throw daughters out
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of the equation. What I say at one point of the book is that
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ninety nine point nine to nine percent of us who ever live, are gone
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and forgotten not long after we die. I mean, for a while there
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are people alive who knew us, and then we just become names on a
29:48
family tree, but most people cease to exist completely in memory. And I
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wanted my mother to have this marker, and she has it now, and
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this book takes her through all the stages of her life. There are enough
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cameo appearances by people like Barbara Sisant and Muhammad Ali and Don King and John
30:11
Voight and some others. It's fun for anybody who look, there's a great
30:18
story about John Voight. That one made me laugh out loud. That's funny.
30:22
Yeah, I'll be looking that up tonight. It was wonderful for me.
30:30
It was people asked, what was it cathartic to write? Not really,
30:36
not really. I didn't. I thought I would start writing as soon
30:41
as my mother died, and I didn't. I just wasn't ready to.
30:44
There was just too much else going on in terms of, you know,
30:48
the details of her death and then setting up her a state and whatever else
30:52
was going on in my life. So it took a while for me to
30:56
start writing, and then it took even longer to find the right formula for
31:00
it. As I said, part of that was understanding that I had to
31:03
write about myself first before I could write about my mother, but it just
31:10
it did bring back a lot of very nice memories. I'm very thankful that
31:15
I had the opportunity to write it and now put it out to the world
31:19
to share who this woman was. Very nice. I can't believe our time
31:27
has already expired. It seems like we just started. But let me ask,
31:33
what are you working on now? What can we look forward to in
31:34
the future. It's a story by doctor John H. Watson about Sherlock Holmes.
31:41
I had the opening sentence in my mind about five years ago, and
31:48
when I really started putting it together, I realized the first thing I had
31:51
to do was change my opening sentence. A lot of fun that I've got
31:57
a nice plot, got characters that I'm enjoying spending time within my head,
32:04
and I'm looking forward to the point where I finished my researching and outlining and
32:09
sit down and actually start to write. That's always the best part with a
32:15
non fiction book. The interesting part is the research, and by the time
32:19
you're writing, you say, well, I know this already. Great part
32:23
is when I start to write, because that's when the characters take on a
32:29
life of their own and start to do things that I hadn't planned. For
32:34
them, and that's an awful lot of fun. Yeah, well, ikes
32:38
your lack homes fans. Yep, I'm excited to read that one. So
32:42
I need to have you back on the podcast later, but for now,
32:45
thank you for joining us, Thomas. I'm glad to be here and hopefully
32:51
we'll have fewer technological problems next time. Part of the game. Thanks bye,
32:58
Byeks. Just a few parting words. I have to remind you about
33:07
the writer Con conference, which of course is in Oklahoma City every Labor Day
33:12
weekend. We've got a newly revised website and the registration page is active so
33:19
you can register, and of course if you do so now you get the
33:22
early word price that won't be around much longer, but right now you can
33:24
save at least one hundred dollars. Come out to writer Con. More than
33:30
fifty speakers from all aspects of the writing world lined up already. Laura,
33:36
what's your favorite part of writer Con. I really enjoy getting to meet people.
33:43
I like getting to meet the people that have been coming for years and
33:45
years, and this is the only time that I really see them face to
33:49
face during the year. But I also really enjoy meeting our newbies. And
33:53
I will do what I did last year, where I will have the night
33:58
before a time setup where we meet the lobby so that anyone who is coming
34:02
in fresh and new does not have to feel overwhelmed or out of place.
34:07
I'll come meet with you, I'll introduce you, I'll show you around.
34:09
We have some people who are still connected and made a friends group from that
34:15
initial meeting the night before last year, so I will absolutely be doing that
34:20
again. So nobody's a stranger at writer Con. We are a great,
34:23
big family. Yeah. That's one of the pluses of the small group retreats,
34:28
which is in July and Branson this year. But those people stick together.
34:34
You not only get a great retreat, you get beta readers for the
34:37
rest of your life anyway. All right, there's enough of that. Thanks
34:43
for joining us for this podcast, and until next time, you keep writing,
34:49
and remember you cannot fail if you refuse to quit. Okay, see
34:53
you next time. The Band of BA