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Writing "A Child Called 'It'" and Building an Extraordinary Writing Career | Dave Pelzer · The Daily Writer

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Ken Sanders.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: As the host of this show, I have the privilege of talking to lots of extraordinary writers, business leaders, and creative minds.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And today I'm really honored to bring you this conversation with a truly legendary writer for one of my best episodes ever, and I will stand by that.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: This was an absolute blast of an episode.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you a bit about our guest today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Dave Pelzer is a man who represents overcoming adversity, and he has dedicated his life to helping others so they can help themselves.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: As a former Air Force Combat Air Crew member, Dave's job entailed mid-air refueling of the once highly secretive SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Stealth Fighter.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: While on active duty, Dave was selected as California Volunteer of the Year.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dave has also received personal commendations from four U.S.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: presidents.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was honored as one of the 10 outstanding young Americans and later was the only American to be honored as the outstanding young person of the world.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty cool honor.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dave is also the recipient of the National Jefferson Award, which is considered the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Other recipients have included Sandra Day O'Connor and Colin Powell.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as if all that weren't enough, Dave is also the author of nine inspirational books, and I bet you've heard of at least one of these.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: His books have been on bestseller lists for well over 13 years combined.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: His most well-known book, A Child Called It, One Child's Courage to Survive, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for well over six years.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Dave is the first author to have four number one international bestsellers and to have four books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: For nearly the last 10 years, Dave has served as a California fire captain in two separate districts.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: During that time, he's been deployed to the state's most horrendous fires.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can find out more about Dave and his books and all the cool things that he's doing at his website, which is Davepelzer.com.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: In our conversation today, Dave shares how he came to write his famous book, A Child Called It, and how that led to an extraordinary writing career.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: We also discussed how he first got into writing, what it's like being on the New York Times bestseller list for so long.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about his marketing strategies and his thoughts on building a long-term successful writing career.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we also get into his new book, which is fantastic.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Return to the River: Reflections on Life Choices During a Pandemic.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And sort of as a little bonus at the end of the episode, uh Dave talks about the most important things an author can do to build their business.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a wide-ranging conversation.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dave is not just a really cool guy, he's a phenomenal storyteller, and of course, a very, very successful author.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot we can learn from him.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've got to say I have never interviewed anyone quite like Dave.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is a very, very frequent guest on podcast.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when you listen to this episode, you're going to see why, because he's a ton of fun and really, really smart and very successful.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're going to enjoy this conversation as much as I did with the amazing and wise Dave Pelzer.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, welcome to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen your books.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I said this a minute ago before I hit record.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen your books for decades and have been a big fan, and it really is an honor to have you here.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for making time to be a guest.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, sir, because uh I know you're very busy too.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at your office, you have thousands and thousands of books there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous, I know.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I tell my wife, I don't, you know, I don't really play golf.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have expensive crazy cars.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I just buy a lot of books.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's my downfall.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and you don't have to worry when the phone rings because you know it's not your mistress.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's the bookshop going on.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Come get them.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm I'm a full-time writer and ghostwriter, so I kind of look at it as, you know, I every time I get a book in the mail, I'm like, well, it's for my job, of course.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all good.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm excited to dive into your your author career and all the cool things that you're doing and talking about your new book and Citizen Kane, which I rarely get to talk about on the show.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about that before I hit record.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, take us back, if you would, to to the days when you first got interested in writing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know that obviously a child called it was your huge breakout book that was a massive success.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what was that like putting that book out into the world and the unexpected success that came from that?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I have to say, and um I want to be truthful because a lot of people think you can put pen to paper and then hours later, you know, you're you're on Broadway and you're selling both, you know, the great your Fitzgerald or Steinbeck or Hemingway.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like a lot of things in my life, it's accident.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Accidental.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was not planned.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was a young person, obviously, that was rescued from a horrific situation by my teachers uh and and placed in the protective foster care, God bless them.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, I was so ashamed of what happened to me as a child, you know, from kindergarten to the fifth grade, you know, stealing food from garbage cans and smelling, and and and I couldn't speak because I was, you know, living in existing in a basement if I wasn't in school.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wouldn't it be nice to get my act together and and to write a thank you letter to my teachers?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a child called it was initially a thank you letter to the teachers because I was in the Air Force at the time.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I had a very young boy uh involved in child abuse prevention.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was also a uh uh counselor at the local juvenile hall.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time in the in the mid-80s, everybody was a victim of something high tide, solar eclipse, whatever.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, if you can survive this thing, whatever it was, why can't you do something with it for someone or something else?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the letter was being crafted, and then eventually came a book, and the child called it was printed.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was never published initially, it was printed in 1993, and I'm very proud to say that the first printed copies were given to my teacher on the exact day of my 20 year anniversary of being rescued.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the the book, the first two books, as you know, was dedicated to my teachers.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was a beautiful thing because at the same time in the mid-90s, you know, teachers are terrible.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's the reason why America's falling apart, and they get paid too much, and blah, blah, blah.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, Kent, as adults, and we can say this, uh, the average teacher in California spends$300 a month buying pencils and paper, toilet paper.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's this amazing principal back east, and you've probably seen him on CNN and ABC News, who has uh storage facilities of clothes uh detergent and and and washers and dryers and everything, so the kids can come to school, wash their clothes.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, oh my gosh.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at the dynamic of how busy the parents are, you know, the teachers, and the school becomes, you know, like a relative in a sense.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I adore my teachers because if it wasn't for them, my mother certainly would have killed me.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: So when the book came out in '93, it was printed.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember 40 people would read it if one person bought it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the publishers were trying to submit it to publishers saying, let's get this published.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, no, this is not, you know, it's kind of like working in Hollywood.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: You get typecast, you get put in this tiny little box, fragment of a box.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I explained to the like one publisher, okay, listen, uh, I'm on the road.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: I do in-service trainings now all over the nation.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I do three or four events a day on the California Volunteer of the Year.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the outstanding young American, Chuck Yeager, Walt Disney, Elvis Presley, John Kennedy has this award.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when I would travel, uh, I would get interviewed a lot, and and and that kind of sponsored some of the sales.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually in '95, the book was published, officially published, which means you can get it in any store.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then two years later, after it languished just enough to keep it printed, the book made the New York Times.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the first book was on the New York Times for, as you know, well over six years.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the average stage, you know, is about uh what, two to three weeks.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's increasing.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was one of the only authors that have four books simultaneously on that list.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: And part of the thing was, and you know we go backwards, like almost like a citizen cane.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a child, my mother would uh plan her attention time on how much homework I brought home, and she would always brainwash me how stupid and slow I was.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, you know what?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna use that to my advantage.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would run from the school to the house and I would try to carry these books.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I do my chores and and all how much homework you have today.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I got three or four hours of homework, Maha.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I would read these books without glasses in the darkened basement.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking Treasure Island, Robinson Caruso, uh uh and the man in the iron mask, and all these adventure books about these boys, these children that had to overcome what the world saw of them.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's not how they were on the inside.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was very amazing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I remember reading Steinbeck's Mice and Men, which changed my life when I was in foster care.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just wanted a place of my own leave me alone type uh thread.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I really don't like writing.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I believe I'm a horrible writer because it takes me nine hours to get you a good paragraph.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm thinking like a film director, what is the premise of this sentence?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: How can I put the reader into the story rather than regurgitate something?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I want the reader to get involved, you know.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's I've had so much luck because uh I I I know my limitations, and I'm just so now that it's weird when you pardon me, when you uh are so busy, because one year, as I said before, I was on the pardon me, I was on the road.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me again, I apologize.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was on the road over 330 days a year, and I was working 16 hours a day solving people's problems, doing in-service training, doing fundraisers, visiting military bases because I hold the rank of chief for the Air Force, and and and even doing comedy presentations.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: But and I was so busy when someone said, Oh, you got four books in the New York Times.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I said, that's great, but I got to go do something with kids where I got into visit the foster kids.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: But now that I've kind of had a chance to settle, I have to tell you the truth, I cannot believe you know the blessings I've had, whether it's joining the Air Force and becoming a swamp cook in Florida to flying for the Air Force, you know, the SR-71 Stealth Fighter Program, unbelievable.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to study aircraft when I was a child in foster care.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then to become an actual published writer and all the ins and outs of that.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And even the child called it is like a Hollywood movie.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people say, Oh, you're you're crap and your book will never make it.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like you because you have recognition and I have nothing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you make it, oh my God, I loved you.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been in your corner.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was supporting him going, you are the one with the knives.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had a meeting, Kent, and I've never said this before, or I didn't take a meeting, but there was a meeting on the book.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: The child called it before it was officially published, like how are we going to launch it?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: PR and stuff like that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody on the table was like, oh my God, we've read the book.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: We know Dave, he's a pretty good guy, blah, blah, blah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And one lady, I swear to goodness, started the meeting and she said something effective, I don't know Dave Pelzer.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've never read a word of his book.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know these accolades, but I know he's an absolute liar.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, whoa, okay, let's, and and people like, oh my God, Dave must be a liar.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's roll that back, please.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know him, or I've never read about him.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the editor, this little editor relates, like, I've interviewed David's teachers, I've talked to his neighbors, he's given me reports.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is legit.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you don't, what are you saying?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's amazing how you know, if you struggle and you believe in something and you have a good heart, there's a chance, there's a chance you might break through.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very fortunate enough to do that and to do in-service trainings or to travel the world doing good work.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And as I told you before, even when I was semi-retired, I became a firefighter at age 52.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like uh training, it was called CAL FIRE training and took specialty classes and then was uh a fire captain in two separate districts.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were not connected, so I have to go two hours away back and forth.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had a uh I don't know if you heard about this.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: There was a flight flu strain called COVID.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I did hear about that.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: I happened to hear about that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it made the news, and and and then going back and forth and back and forth, you know, and and and I'm very proud of the work that I've I've I've I've been allowed to do.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And writing, of course, is is is is a very laborous intensive intensive thing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one time I was talking to a dear friend of mine, uh, Richard Paul Evans.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of like the Clint Eastwood of Christians, and he's the Jimmy Stewart of Christians.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I love his books.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm on I just got on his email list.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: He he he is a sweet man, and beauty in the he he has a book that just came out with his assistant called uh garbage bag girl.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm looking at the book now, and and she's an amazing lady, and Ricca helped with that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So one time we were talking, how's the wife?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: How's the kids?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Pelzer?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I says, Oh, I hate everybody.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been on this paragraph for two weeks.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't get out of this box.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we talked for half an hour and he goes, Zip.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, what is zip?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, I just wrote a chapter when I was talking to you.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, oh gosh, don't it, I hate you.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: I hate you.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he read me the first uh paragraph.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, now I really hate you because that's a great paragraph.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take that paragraph.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: His writing is is is is is very labor intensive.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there to me, I know some of your listeners are writers.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: To me, there is two writers, uh, people that can tell a story.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they color the lens, you know, they color the words, the emotions.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the other writer is the one who has great vernacular, but has no story skill.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and if you and I when I write, again, I feel like I'm a director of a movie because I love movies.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: I break down every scene in movies and what's going to happen.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and and if you look at at a child called it, the the lens was an eight-year-old male.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because boys, young boys are very fast-paced, they're very graphic, they're very visual.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at a child called it, I don't believe there's one word that has over three syllables because boys don't think at that level.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was very intentional on your part.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's weird because when you write, and I always tell good writers, write, you know, and and and always have like the hook at the end of before you go to bed.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be a hook, like, how is he going to get out of this one?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or don't open that door type thing.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to have some emotional action connection from you know, it's got to be visceral.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and and then when you read it again, you start to edit and add and edit and add and edit and add.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because I do what I call clean edit.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: When I remember uh I surprised my publisher, I gave them book, I think four.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I gave them book four.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, pardon me, book five, the privilege of youth.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: They weren't even expecting it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know I was in production.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when I gave it to them, boom, the day after Labor Day, they thought, oh my God, I'm going, yep, even though I'm working hard.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the thing, too.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: 80% of the work is done by 20% of the workforce because people manage their time.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I would be on airplanes or be in the bathroom and I'd write a little here and write a little there.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just amazing.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I call clean editors, you want to edit your own work so it's less intensive for the publisher so they can see your picture.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of people think, like in the days of Jan Weir and Hunter S.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thompson of Rolling Stone, he used to submit napkins and and loose paperwork again.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, oh, it was terrible.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, this before the fax machine, he would just mail stuff from all over.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it was their job to piece it together and edit this and that.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like to because then, but then they can have more control over the story.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to have a clear, clear story in a sense.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the the that's that's the thing too, and and this is important for your writers.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I always say to young people in the military or in the fire department, I say, live a grad adventure.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: So to tell a great story.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And the other uh uh maxim is you know, you have to write about what you know, whether it's heartache or overcoming something, or having this an unusual adventure.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's the great thing about writing is that everybody has a story, and you control the story, you know, you control the the medium to hopefully bring people into your world.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I feel like I could go back and dissect everything that you just said three or four times.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much wisdom packed into it.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is I don't I don't I don't know about that.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm an old man, no hair, no country.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: So well, hair is overrated.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's why that's what I say.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I but and I'll I'll give you something I never said before too when I was in foster care.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I I was probably maturity-wise eight years behind.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything about anything.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being in junior high in the and I had John Denver hair, long blonde hair.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And these these girls would like, do you use brick?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, what's a brick?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: A brick?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't use a brick.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what is V Dall says soon?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, that's a name I cannot pronounce.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now I feel more, I feel I feel like George Clooney, which I will, which I will own.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get to your new book here in just a moment, um, as well as some other things.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm curious, you mentioned your friendship with Richard Paul Evans, whose books I absolutely love.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just have read several of his uh recently.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I love love Mitch Album, and I mean there's so many authors that I really, really love.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious, because of because you know a lot of successful authors and and well-known people, does it ever get easier as a writer as the years as the years go by, or is it does it still feel as difficult as it did in the beginning?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I I always feel as a writer, and this is a good uh maximum for the listeners, is I'm crawling on glass.
• 19:21
  unknown: Wow.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always looking for the perfect word.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and and again, it has to be a visual word, it has to be a very uh over overly syrupy adjective or a great verb.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when I did uh when I write, I'm slow, but when I did the last book, uh Return to the River, I was uh moving in, uh trying to move into the Russian River and get the house together.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you had COVID still going on, so you know you're it would take six months to get a bolt or a nut or some piece of something.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and because I have insomnia, I thought uh when I'm when I'm when I'm when I think about writing, I think about it for maybe six to eight months prior.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's my next project?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like a James Bond writer, where is the world going to be at a year from now?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then how can my story fit into that?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you look at the Bond films or even like the recent Mission Impossible series, they have to think two or three years ahead because it takes that long for to produce it, put it together, market it, and throw it out there.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh, if you look at Mission Possible 7, Dead Reckoning, it's about the the biggest threat we have is AI.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: How can it control our lives?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: What do we think is real?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: What is nonfiction?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Our words fictionalized in a sense.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So when I write, I'm thinking, okay, what where is the world or the country at?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: How can I put a footprint in there to kind of open this up?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when I did return to the river, I thought, well, what if we have, you know, myself, a far first responder, going back and forth, uh, going through two unfortunate situations that I didn't see at the time about to hit me.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then how can I be of service in the middle of all this chaos?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, okay, single moms do that every day.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Someone with cancer still has to go to work.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's something on the inside that no one sees or knows.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you still have to, like, how are you doing?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing okay.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: You still have to proceed.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Return to the River was my fastest production.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: It usually takes me 18 months to write a good story.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: 18 months, and then I'll add another four months of what I call you know, line edit, line edit, line edit.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Clean that up, go back and forth with uh the office staff, and then there's the book.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think start to finish uh Return to the River is like six months max.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Six months.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it was my best writing ever because I got to open up as an adult with the vernacular and adult situations.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like about Return to the River is you get to a certain age, part.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Me, that you take self-inventory.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: All of us do.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would like you go to more funerals than you do weddings or celebrating kids' birthdays, in a sense.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to say, what did I do right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: What did I do wrong?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what can I do with my time as the world is still spinning off its axis, in a sense.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a very quick book book for me.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And because you and I love films, I was expressing to you, I love movies, I love good directors and stories.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: And what's this and how am I involved in this story?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And Return of the River to me is a haunting, romantic love story about family dynamics.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's about loss, but at the same time, too, okay, we all lose, we've all been wronged, we've all been pained.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: But what do you do about it?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Can you make yourself happy?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can you find your utopia in a sense?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and and that's what I wanted to do with Return of the River.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, we're gonna get through this pandemic.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have to live with it and adjust to it.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: But every day we don't have we do we test negative is a great day.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've amazed, I'm amazed that uh, and this is a riff.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: I have people coming out and say, okay, I had a I was doing a book sign one time, Kent, and and there was this one guy just jumping like a jumping bean.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have 300 people, but he wants to be the center of attention.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I I you know do some do a couple well, you know, sentences and and QA.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this guy says, Oh my god, I was abused too.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Joe.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: He says, My father yelled at me once for 10 seconds when I was 10.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's like, What?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And and he's still abusing me.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's been dead for 20 years, but he's still abusing me.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, oh God.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Dave, save my life.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Two words, change my life.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now the clinic sweet part of me says, grow up.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But the the outside Dave's like, oh, be happy.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Be happy.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Three words.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Be happy now.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Grow up now.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Forward, save me, Dave.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Forward.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh be happy now, dammit.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's amazing because we survive to be happy, to be functional.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've never had anybody can't that come up to me crying saying, I'm a victim of cancer.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: They say I fight the cancer, I survive the cancer.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one time I was doing a uh a show, internet show, and I and I and it was like uh night, what is it, 2009, and I had a cigar, whatever, and I have the screen.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Welcome to the Great Recession.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love this.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the phones are going crazy.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: I said, you know what's great about the Great Recession is we're not wasting money.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're not buying 20 Blu-ray DVDs every day.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we're we're not going to fancy restaurants every day that we can't afford.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe once in a while we go to Applebee's.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is great.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Every time we can pay our rent, every time our kids come home from school, every single day is now a blessing.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Every day that we don't lose someone from COVID or we test negative is great.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: The best thing, the best lesson, and this is a little sadistic to some people, the best blessing I have received is I have clean sheets.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I lived in the basement on an army cot with no blankets.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I smelled so bad.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would walk out of school and kids would regurgitate.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had what yellow waxy skin because I wasn't allowed to bathe.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't talk.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't pronounce the A-E-I-I-O-U until I was 14 because my mother did not allow me to speak because I swallowed pneumonia twice in 24 hours.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is why my larynx sometimes collapses and I cough and my voice kind of quavers in a sense.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was a movie called, it was a loser movie called Castaway with this loser guy called uh Tom Hanks and his friend Robert Semakis, who directed amazing films that you might have heard of called Back to the Future.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a line in the third act of the film.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's rescued and he's back home, and there's a big celebration party for the character, and there's lobsters and shrimp and everything, and there's so much of it, right?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they say, How you doing?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: How you like the party?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: How's it going?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Tom Hanks' character just looks around and nods, he says, I'm okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have ice.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Always the smallest little elements that we can appreciate every single day.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I have clean sheets.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I get to be on your show.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, I can give out a good lesson.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to inspire and encourage, and I want to be useful.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Useful.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm at the age right now, I want to be the ambassador of goodwill to help other folks out.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, I have been blessed more than anybody on this planet.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I've studied Walt Disney, Robin Williams, uh Ron Reagan, President Kennedy.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've studied Timothy McVeigh, our domestic terrorist.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: I study people who are not nice, very evil people.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I always want to look for the thread.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: What makes this person want to go here to try to attempt to do something?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I believe too, as writers, there's going to be stories out there about how do we move forward from COVID.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because the mental part of it is we're seeing more shootings every day, more wanton violence, and more per se people who seem who hopeless.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we as writers we have a responsibility to move the agenda to inspire and encourage.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Casablanca is the most amazing love film ever made.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the boy does not get the girl because the boy says, I have to give up my love for a higher cause.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there was actually a thread of that in Return to the River.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was a very serious thread about that, what that you read about with my former wife.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had to make a choice and I wanted to be of service, and it was what it was.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a beautifully written book, and as I mentioned before we hit record, um As I even just finished the first chapter or two, I just found myself wiping away cute wiping away tears because it was so beautifully written and so moving.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I it's just really a really wonderful book, and I'm I'm so glad that you took the time to to give this to us as a gift as reading.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to interrupt and thank you because when I do interviews and shows, okay, so let's talk about DBs, TV use, TV use, I'm going, okay, yeah, that's that's just the side note.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the McGuffin, as Alfred Hitchcock would say.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's the driving force, but let's talk about the inner drive, the inner story.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I love doing shows about writing and the dynamics of writing or the dynamics of publishing, because because again, people think you sign a contract and you're off to the races, and I'm going that's step 10 of 10,000 steps.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I also tell people the worst thing that happens to you once you make it, you make it suddenly, and then it's World War Z.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody comes after you, you know, and you you have less, you're fighting off zombies more than you are, you know, being creative in the fact.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, too, I always tell people if anybody comes up to you and says, I love your work, and I'm your biggest fan, and I want to help, and I'm I'm I'm I will always protect you.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: I will always that's the person you shoot in the middle of the street, basically, and say, Are there any questions?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the one that's gonna get you.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you always want that marriage, like this is semi-combative.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you doing?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you doing this?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: So there's balances and checks because I've been embezzled three times.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Three times.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and and one person said, Hey, yo, it's not, it's not uh, it's not personal, it's just business.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, well, it's kind of personal to me.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you knew I was embezzled twice before.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, you were kind of doable.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, really, really.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, I mean, everybody's had that situation.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the first things that when I talk to authors or to entertainers and stuff like that, we talk about our kids first.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then we talk about so how many times have you been uh screwed over?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's amazing.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: You you look at the lovely Tony Braxton, you know, she almost had to sell her Grammys for goodness sakes, Red Fox, uh, Willie Nelson, all these people uh uh uh uh you know that you see on the screen or listen to their beautiful music or their books.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, gosh, you're fighting off so much stuff.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a slow roll, you want to be careful, you know, and and and again, writing to me is arduous.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would definitely make a good film director.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would want to be on different sets and see how other people, good and bad directors, put pieces together and say, Yeah, I would be a good director.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: But writing is so hard.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Writing because you have to fill the pages.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, uh, the only person who's really good at filling fluff is is is Grisham, John Grisham.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: He'll do two pages like he walks into a library and the tapestry and the artwork and the smell of the roses, the diffusers, and the light coming through the window.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, this is nothing, but it's beautiful, and I got to keep reading.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of a I'm kind of a especially the return to the river.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a mission impossible.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Dun dun dun dun dun dun.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: It has a certain pace and it just doesn't let up in a sense.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what I like about stories, particularly Return to the River, you think it's about one thing and it's really about something else.
• 31:18
  unknown: Right.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the the I like the third act, the crescendo, in which my character finally, finally has that confrontation with my my passive, never there father.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's the thread in there.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And as you read, uh, when I was being abused, he would always say, you know, one of these days, Dave, I'm gonna, David, I'm gonna talk to your mother.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna set this straight.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: You just wait.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: One of these days, I'm going, okay, I've heard that since I'm four.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm 12, I weigh 60 pounds, I'm about to die.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you're a firefighter.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Can you just take my hand and let's run away?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I love the there's a scene for the readers, I don't want to give too much away.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: The threat is how I always wanted to escape, but I didn't have the courage to escape my situation.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And there's an important scene in which my parents are separating, um, and my mother gives my father his life uh belongings in a cardboard box that's soggy as can be.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm in the car and I want to escape.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I opened, I finally opened the handle by accident because I was shaking so bad, my wrist was shaking.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly my father closes it.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was always thinking as a child in foster care and as an adult, did he do it deliberately because he didn't want to take care of me, or was it simply an accident?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it has that little Christopher Nolan, oh my gosh, different viewpoints.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's great about writing.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's you lure the reader into the situation, but they don't know exactly what they're coming into.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought that was uh we were we were lucky to put that that scene was probably six to eight weeks for like three pages.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I almost felt like uh James Cameron because he shoots 10,000 million hours of film, but only gives you three because you have to just edit it in such a way.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what I would do too is I I would give out uh people, two people knew who I was when I was writing Return to the River, and two people never heard of me.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was kind of like, Do you want to look at this?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or I had a lady I was working in the bar, it was so cold, or a restaurant, and this young bartender would give me water and OJ.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm just writing another book.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dave.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, my parents love you.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she would, I would go to the bathroom and I sit on the computer reading.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, Oh my god, you're not supposed to do that.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it was amazing to see how they got lured into the rough draft of of the book.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's when I kind of knew I had something because this, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a good book.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I really think at the end of the day, uh from what I've understood, we've had readers uh, you know, try to mend those fences with their siblings or with neighbors or even themselves.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I was uh talking to a lady one time and she says, Will this person ever ever forgive me for my sins or for my bad deeds?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Sweetheart, the first thing that you have to do is learn to forgive yourself.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's what my character had to do, you know, is learn to forgive myself for what happened to me back in the time because it's not just me being abused, it's the dynamic between the husband and the wife that splinters my poor siblings that had to hide, you know, or just disconnect as I'm being beaten, not even 10 feet away from them.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they got to turn up the TV to dial it down.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: My neighbor saw me.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: I will never forget, Kent, that um I interviewed uh several of my teachers and I was wrapping up a child called It for timeline and making sure everything fell into place.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my teacher, Mr.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ziegler, told me why I was rescued because I never knew why I was rescued.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: I somehow blanked it out.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: And and and then he said, There's not a day that goes by, David, that I don't think of that little boy.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we all we would on Fridays, they they knew it would be a hell weekend for me because I wouldn't be able to eat food.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd go to the teacher's lounge and they'd have coffee or maybe adult libation, they'd talk about me and how emotional they were, and how emotional they were when I was finally rescued.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's always, it's not just you, there's a bigger dynamic involved.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I I swear to you, I'm just so lucky.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because um, when I was in foster care at age 14, a year and a half, and we expressed this in the uh the Lost Boy book, this Doc Brown psychiatrist with the wispy Christopher Lloyd hair said to me and my social worker and my foster mother that because of the abuse and the length of the abuse, and and and because I didn't speak, that I would never, never, never make it.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, and this is good for everybody to hear, if I can survive all that I did without any help or any training, what can I not possibly try to attempt?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that was that interdrive.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in the in the return to the river, there's a scene in which I have to uh uh uh give myself medical attention because I was stabbed by accident and pus was coming out of the wound.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I took care of it, I squeezed out all the pus, and then I was so tired I crawled back to the base of the stairs, and I just kind of took a quick nap and I dreamed that I was flying through the air.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: In psychology, this is important because children or even adults, when they're in danger, they want to get away from danger or go somewhere safe.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Children, we believe we fly to a safety zone.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I believed I had a red cape and I can do anything.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was the Superman character.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I say this, whether it's writing or being a parent, whatever we do in our life, there's the outside world.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: They see us for whatever they want, but on the inside, your interstellar, whether you're the backed man or the wonder woman or the X-Man or the Black Panther, you know, so there's a certain duality involved.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of like uh I'm fairly autonomous, which is great, uh uh where I live right now.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I feel a little bit like little, little, little Clint Eastwood.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's Dave here.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: Where does Dave hang out?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody says, Oh, I think he went over there.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's gone.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: He's not the the town's very protective of me.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm trying to convey is I like doing the work I do.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I like kind of just like being settling Dave.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm at that stage I want to just kind of settle.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get back to the conversation in just a moment.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: But first I want to take a second to give a big thanks to today's sponsor, The Word Wizard.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might have written an awesome book, but it's not ready for publication until it's been in the hands of a master editor.
• 37:48
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• 37:57
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• 38:11
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• 38:18
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• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's Karen Hunsinger.com to get your free sample edit today.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now back to the conversation.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: A minute ago you mentioned Christopher Nolan in in film, and I want to make sure and ask about this.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about this for a moment before uh hit record earlier, about your process for weaving threads through a book.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was so interesting, and I would love to see if you can explain what you meant by that and how that works.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I do as as a writer, um uh I uh first off, I gotta clear my head.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta clear all the decks.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'm gonna take on something, you know, I gotta make sure my brain is clear.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll take walks.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking, okay, I'm doing a podcast show, you know, and I've always been asked to do the pod.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I did actually a show on the internet years ago live from Baghdad.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know how many writers can say they did a show live from Baghdad.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not very many.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: I had SNL commercial skits, and people thought they were real.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh my goodness.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to clear the decks.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, you know, there's so much going on with the COVID thing.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's so much anger.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, what if I put a character, which would be my character in third person, in a situation that was obviously involved with COVID as a first responder?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the threat is, okay, he has two, I had an unexpected divorce.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my wife and my four, my my former wife and I, we still love each other, but she had moved away to be closer to her family for a few months, then a year, then a couple of years, and it ended up to be six years.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm up north being firefighter, you know, Jack Bauer, James Bond, going back and forth.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, what if we have the World of the Worlds pandemic, which everybody's involved in, and yet still dealing with life and unexpected aspects of life?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And again, the self-inventory.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, okay, self-inventory is a threat.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you're over 40, 45, you take a lot of inventory about your mortality.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: What have I done right, wrong?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a parent.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: What can I do better?
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: What can I do better for myself?
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the more you save the world, the less you work on yourself.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then, okay, moving.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have to move.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody moves forward, but I have to physically move, have to pack boxes.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Boxes, reference hurt lockers.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you open up what happened at age six, you open up what happened at age 50.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was not there for Johnny's recital.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: I missed my dollar's uh ballet dance.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to have these threads and kind of ratchet up the tension, you know, about and part of the story of Return to the River is actually being on scene on certain uh calls, fire calls per se, whether they're structure fires or given CPR and trying to work with the younger generation, like, hey, this is our job, this is our responsibility to be of service.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to have certain threads.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the main thread was the dynamic between my father and myself, as I, you know, just kind of explained.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because I went back to a child called it per se, and I opened up the lens on certain situations, like when I was uh burned on the gas stove at age eight.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I did a double scene in which uh my mother uh threw me downstairs in the basement after she burned me because uh she didn't know it, but I manipulated the situation.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know what happened was she wanted me to lay down on the gas stove and burn for her after she's burned my arm.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I locked onto the kitchen clock thinking, I've got to manipulate this, I've got to steal time before my brothers come home from their Boy Scout meeting.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: If I can do that, I won't die.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a big statement.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: So in the bottom of the basement, I've got blisters from the palm of my hand all the way to my bicep.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I remember raising my hand and promising myself, you know, I've got to do something about this.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna quit.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give this my best shot.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot change my external environment, but I can change the interior environment, hence Superman per se.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: That dynamic changed everything because at age eight, which people kind of forget in psychology is that's 90% of your makeup, your psychological makeup.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like who am I in the world?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: How will I fit in the world?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a teacher, I want to be a police officer.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: And here I was in the basement crying, and upstairs at the same time, my mother is lavishing my brother with praises.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're a special boy.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought to myself, you're kind of special.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're a beautiful boy.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not ugly.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna do amazing things.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I will.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you get to see that thread, that dynamic.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to carry the dynamic of how my mother came to be Darth Vader, in a sense.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Darth Vader, of course, was sponsored by Darth Maul, which was my grandmother's character.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I opened up, if you look at the series of A Child Covet, Lost Boy, and so forth, everybody says, What made your mother go crazy?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we really put that thread in there throughout the book.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you get to discover, oh my gosh, my mother never had a chance.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's a horrific scene as a as a writer, and it's very psychologically dark, in which I'm in the bottom of the basement, I'm sitting on top of my hands, my neck is backwards.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh what the coldest summer I ever spent was in, or the coldest winter I ever spent was in the summer of San Francisco, Mark Twain once once uh said, and it was January, February, and I'm actually shivering.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: My grandmother burst into my mother's home after my parents separated and just screaming and yelling, you're doing this wrong.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is why your husband left you.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Your kids were terrible, blah, blah.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And my mother has been used to this since she was four.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's silence.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: And when there's silence in a war zone, that's very dangerous.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: A few seconds later, the door pops open above me.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: The light is flashed on.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: And my mother basically says, There it is.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are you happy now, mother?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: I told you that's where it lives.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: And my grandmother, my grandmother standing, you know, uh in front of my mother, kind of nods up, nods, and she says this line that I'll never forget.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the most pathetic child I have ever seen, or the most sorry child I've ever seen.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: And my mother, a half a beat later, says, and that's exactly what you used to say to me.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have these small little threads that you can open up.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I love the crescendo.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: At the very end of the book, my character basically has moved his former wife's things out of the house right before hours before the pandemic shutdown.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still doing firefighting, first responding.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: I have to pack up my boxes, physical boxes to move in, psychological boxes in my head, you know, and find a place to live.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: And there was nothing out here where I wanted to live in the Russian River, the little town of Grenville.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because people were fleeing concrete city of San Jose, of San Francisco, of Oakland, to, you know, to be in a sparse area for their own safety.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, by God's blessing, I found a place, had to unpack hundreds and hundreds of boxes, and I couldn't do it.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was just too overwhelming.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Dave, it's just one more box.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hence, when I work with people in program, it's one day at a time, or sometimes it's one hour at a time.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: As a writer, it's one paragraph at a time.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to have these beautiful little threads that came together nicely without some of the readers to even know, oh my God, I wasn't even looking for that answer.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there it is.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's when you're looking for something, you never find it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: That phone is never going to ring.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: That person's not going to call when you want them to.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's always when things are unexpectedly happening that really cements it, whether it's good or bad.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I also believe, and this is important for everybody, you have no idea who the hell you are until you're psychologically pushed up against that wall.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't even move.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can't even breathe.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: You find out what you're made of.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I really believe, on more of a uh maybe a spiritual, psychological uh uh lens, we did great as a country and as a world because we still lived our lives, we still provided for others.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And again, now that things are slowing down, we can appreciate the gifts that we have.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And again, writing provides that medium.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very, I think Return to the River is my best writing.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: I really, really do because I got to open it up from the adults, adult's perspective, rather than a linear uh uh child call that is kind of linear in a sense, it's very choppy, boom, boom, boom.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that's why, again, I just love a good story.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I read Great Gatsby once every three years, and every time I read it, I'm going, God, this is so sad.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is so sad.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I read uh Sweet Thursday and Canary Row.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, can uh mice and men, you know, which sign that you're walking through, you know, Salinas, you're going through the wheat fields, you know.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just you can smell, and and I love how you know good books just can resonate with you, not just when you read it, but as you mature and see life through a different lens.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I'm at right now because I this sounds terrible.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading a book on it.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is probably the last time I'm gonna read it.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: This last time in my life I'm gonna read it because I wanted to read other stories I had.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I told I I feel like the old man right now.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, son, okay, hang on a second.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: I got leftovers for you.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is a good bag.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: You've got to use this, it's a great bag, son.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you this book, these books, you have to keep all of these books.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Don't you, don't you, let go of this book.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think books are so important, you know, and I'm proud to say this, and maybe I shouldn't, but uh a child called it is still on the banned reading list in some places.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I mean, they banned Kill a Mockingbird, Meissen Man, uh uh oh my god, Huckleberry Fern, uh Finn.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and I can understand there's some vernacular there, but the thing is that's how things were written, that's how we saw things at the time.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: That does that means we can change things too.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a reason why that that the book was um partially banned, and and I don't want anybody to cry.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have a tissue here.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: My goodness.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Someone said the reason why a child called it was banned was my character at age 12 uh cursed God once.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I basically said, I didn't say F you, God, but I said, I'm done with you, God, because at age 12, uh, hours before I thought my mother was gonna kill me, and I hadn't slept in days and eaten in days, and I used to pray all the time to my higher power.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I finally said, You don't hear me.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: My parents are separated, I'm about to die, so get lost.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then what people forgot was two sentences later, my character wants to go to sleep, starts to slumber, and does the Lord's prayer.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we ended a child called it, if you remember.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's it's amazing how people can take a little thing and make pay out of it that's so useless.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, and this is important as writers too, there's a lot of vapidness per se out there.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of white noise, you know, and we saw it with keeping up on the Kardashians.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, why don't we eat 5,000 pounds or tons of potato chips?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Who are they and what do they do and what do they provide for society?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something else, too, as a good writer, or even as an adult, these master motivational, professional speakers who know all and do all and walk on wada.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if I saw any of them during COVID who walked an old lady across the street.
• 50:03
  unknown: Interesting.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if any of these masters of the universe predicted how bad this pandemic would be.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And did they ever go outside themselves and do something nice for someone?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a saying in the Spider-Man film, which with great power comes great responsibility.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think storytellers have such that's that's a cross that we have to bear.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are you saying?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you saying it?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: And how can this affect other people's lives?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: As a writer, I always, when I do classes, what are you trying to say?
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then say it, live it.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's why, again, you always write about what you know.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Danielle Steele is is the most romantic person of the universe in the 80s and 90s.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: She loves romance, so she writes about romance.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Me, I write about the, you know, hopefully about resilience and you know, that thread that we used to call Americana.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I went from the worst case of child abuse in California to the volunteer of the year for this state, and I received the National Jeffson Award, you know, a few years after that.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and again, I've been very, very lucky, but I also believe it's what you do with your luck to make that difference.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone, you can have all the money and all the girls and cars and boys or party your little butt off.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's that's just white noise.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very proud to say that I've been able to do something with it.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: And this is uh probably an exclusive for you.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm busy.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, um, I'm this is the first year I've I came up with something called the Dave Pelzer Humanitarian Award for people who live in the Russian River area that do extraordinary things, whether it's feeding you know homeless people or cleaning up trash.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or I have a gentleman that I used to work with, he's been a fire, volunteer firefighter for over 50 years.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: Years and on his uh he's gonna rack up 15,000 calls.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, well, wouldn't it be great being involved as the ambassador and to continue to kind of move the agenda forward of praising others?
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have been very fortunate.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, this has been an absolute blast.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I feel like I could talk to you for hours.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: We should do this again, and next time we won't be why so serious.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'd I love it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'm I'm a fellow uh huge fan of movies, comic books, all that stuff.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you're speaking my language with that for sure.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's take an extra minute for the listeners.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're one of your favorite films, and my favorite film of all time.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was considered the most uh amazing film of the last century, done by the Wonder Boy, a 27-year-old boy from back east, who used to do 10 radio shows a day.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why he was able to do this, and I don't know if you know this, he hired an ambulance to take him from one studio to another, to another, to another.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Mr.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Orson Wells, the greatest.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Orson Wells, by the way, has the same award I do, the 10 Outstanding Young American Award.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the film Citizen King.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is, I have the script.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have, I've seen everything and read everything on how they shot things and the and the stress, because you have to think about the most amazing film ever made.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, Mr.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hearst, Randolph Hearst, was on his heels every single day trying to get on the set with his crew, trying to make sure it didn't get distributed.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: They were going to buy the print and then burn it.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the film, it it had a pretty good run, but it didn't have the because uh again, everybody thought it was fraud and so forth.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't really accepted until like the late 70s and then early 80s, just like uh A Wonderful Life in a sense.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that is, I think, your favorite film.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that one and It's a Wonderful Life are my two favorite movies.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I watch them both a couple times a year.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I stayed at uh uh at the La Kinta Inn, or not La Quinta, La Quinta Resort in La Kinta, California, and I stayed at the Frank Capper room, where they still have the actual typewriter.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they have like a little velvet rope, you know, like you're not supposed to touch them going, yeah, I'm gonna touch this.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take photos.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's just amazing how again, how people or society or entities or conglomerates can view you.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: But it's kind of like a divorce.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they didn't get good ratings with Johnny Depp and Amber.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've seen it all, we've done it all.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to a divorce or something bad, I say, let the horses run the race.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Some get out fast, some get out slow, and then there's sea biscuit.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Eats too much, sleeps too much.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: But if you let sea biscuit do what it needs to do, boom, boom, boom.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of like life.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and and I've I've been very blessed because I don't like, I don't make out well in front of my parents per se.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like people who hover over me.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let me do what I do best.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna attempt to try.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go over, under, through, dig like a mole, and I will try to do something to either better myself or try to push that agenda.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hence, wonderful life.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hence the man in Citizen Cain has everything but has nothing on the he has nothing on the inside.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hence, he collapses.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say, you know, be of good spirit, and let me leave your readers with this, or your writers with this.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_01: The purpose of man is to live, not to exist.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: I shall not waste my time trying to prolong them.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: I shall use my time.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a writer, uh Jack London.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Live a grand adventure to tell a great story.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's from uh California Nosonoma Coast firefighter 4412, Captain Pelzer.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Live the Grand Adventure to tell the great story, and that's what writing is.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a fantastic note to wrap up this interview.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, those are some wonderful words of wisdom.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, I feel like you've given us about uh you've somehow condensed 10 hours of of wisdom and podcast interviews into basically one.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you taking time to make me look so good, Kent.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's you know, it's you make this easy when I just come and ask a few questions and then you share all this wisdom and insight into writing and life and publishing and success.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's wonderful.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I and I appreciate the opportunity because again, sometimes with shows you're kind of put in the box, and I'm not a good box guy.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I don't do what I call the corporate speeches because I can't I have to move my hands and I you know try to make it interesting and engaging.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I must say this too, Kid, the work that you're doing for writers, because writing is an isolated thing.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Nixon said the best memoirs are written in jail because you got nothing else to do.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but uh I appreciate the work that you do because you're inspiring writers, you know, and you're giving them little threads what to do.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: What I like to do is come on and knock down the dominoes and say, okay, try this, try that.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a golf lesson.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: The best golf lesson is butt up, chin down, swing away.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you can do it 10,000 times, but you will find your them.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I wanted, I like to do.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for the opportunity.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I do mean this.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do this again.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about the the more than the dynamics of writing or you know, the the publishing, you know, the the the spider webs of publishing in a sense.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of directions we could go, particularly with marketing and with how do you get the word out about your books and being a being a successful full-time author.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many dynamics we could dive into.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the answer to that.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and I want the writers to write this down become an entity.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: Become that would be the name of the next show.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: Become an entity.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: Become the Arnold Schwarzenegger of XYZ, the Oprah Winfrey of XYZ, the Dave Letterman of XYZ, the Christopher Nolan XYZ.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you do.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna write that down.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Get a tattoo.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: Become the entity.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Become the topic of our next conversation in a few minutes.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you very much, and I want to wish everybody a great new year.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's what I want everybody to do: be useful.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Stay busy, do something nice for others.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which which does happen to be the speaking of Schwarzenegger, uh, the title of Schwarzenegger's new book, Be Useful.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: How did I know that one?
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's weird.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I used to I I hung out with him a couple times, and he always goes, You're the guy to do this my voice.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, Yes, sir, governor, yes, sir.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: You give me the good stogies.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, yes, sir.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I don't know if I should say this.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm taller than Arnold now.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I can run faster away from him now.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: You bet.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's his big thing right now.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: He always says, This is fantastic.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going, no, sir, this is not.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a good friend of mine who uh is actually one of my so I was a college professor for years and years before I got into ghostwriting and author coaching and podcasting.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my former students is the the video guy for another gentleman named Rich Roll, who has a very successful podcast called the Rich Roll Podcast.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, they interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger three or four months ago.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so my my former student and friend Dan, his name is Dan, uh, he they were in Arnold Schwarzenegger's office, and so he was texting me these pictures of, oh, here's like the uh the gun from you know Terminator or whatever else.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just so cool to see one of my former students in a setting like that.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: That was awesome.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and and this is you know a nice lead-in, but but if you look at Arnold's story, and and and and you know, I don't need to plug this guy because I I I I studied Arnold uh right before he really made it in the movies and his psychology of life.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a series by Netflix called Arnold, it's a three-part series.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: Part one, bodybuilding, two, the movies, three, becoming a governor, and at the end, and and most of it is like cigars, and he's doing the Arnold show.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the third act, and this is so important for writers and for all of us, he comes clean.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: He says, I made a lot of mistakes.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: I really screwed up.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've lost so much.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's lost his friend Franco Colombo, Ivan Reitman, people and it came and go and come and go in his life.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he said something I thought was very haunting.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: He says, None of us are self-made.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was sponsored to come to America.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was given a little room upstairs by the gym and made the most of it.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: How we found an agent that believed in him and all the tumblers, and we'll talk about next time, that came into play.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you saw the tumblers in my life in Return to the River.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was so magnificent of him to say, you know, all of us owe, and we have to do better with the time that we have.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hence, be useful and stay busy and be productive.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: And here's this man, 77 years of age, skiing down the slopes of Austria, still living life.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now I think his focus is to be a great statesman.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's we we don't have to save the world to make a difference, whether it's parents or tone, a story that is there forever.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: Once it's in the library of Congress, not even the Nazis on their best day can come over and burn our books.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a great story in itself.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a great book.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, I I I have it in queue as we as I'm as as as I'm I'm rereading Truman again, President Truman.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's like 1800 pages.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: I got I want to see how it ends again.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: That would be that that that the Arnold story is great for all of us.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll check that out on Netflix.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't watched that yet.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Arnold, and it's not a foo bar when you want Arnold.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: Three-part series.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, gotcha.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm plugging Arnold.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Where's my commission, Arnold?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: Give it to me.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, please.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Show me the money, Arnold.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Dave, thank you again.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: This has been an absolute pleasure, and I'm looking forward to doing this again.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate us riffing back and forth because that's just life.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why so serious?
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: My best to you, your family, and I swear to you, my best to your your listeners and and the writers.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: So start the writing.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a been a total pleasure.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: My honor, sir.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you, sir.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I told you up front this was gonna be a wild conversation, and Dave did not disappoint.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love Dave's energy, his wisdom, his storytelling, and man, what a fun podcast guest.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you took some notes and and have landed on a few things that you can apply to your own writing, whether you're doing client work or whether you're getting your own fiction or nonfiction books out there, or whether you're in business building mode or whatever it is that you're doing.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dave is such a ball of energy and such a uh a wise and amazing storyteller that you cannot help but be inspired by him.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to thank Dave for making time to be a guest on today's episode.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really enjoyed our conversation, and I'm looking forward to the next one as well.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: And for everybody listening, again, I know I say this every episode.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your support of the show.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.