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Dr Randy Overbeck | The Christian Reeve Podcast #363 · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:46
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian Reeve
• 0:49
  Podcast. Today's guest is a returning
• 0:52
  guest, his third appearance on the show.
• 0:55
  It's the third year of him appearing on the show.
• 0:58
  His name is Doctor Randy Overbeck.
• 1:01
  He is a former college professor, retired teacher,
• 1:04
  podcaster and most importantly for this conversation, he is a
• 1:08
  professional author. Welcome back, Randy.
• 1:11
  How you doing? I'm doing fantastic.
• 1:13
  A little froggy in the throat from allergy issues but other
• 1:17
  than that I'm doing great. What would you get?
• 1:19
  Hay fever. Well, it's too early in this
• 1:23
  country for hay fever, but I definitely get hay fever.
• 1:26
  Yeah, I I have the good fortune of being allergic to most every
• 1:30
  tree that buds, so that's big. It's, it's the worst.
• 1:35
  I I really struggle with it myself.
• 1:38
  Sometimes I take these really tiny pills called antihistamine.
• 1:44
  Yeah. And it's, it's, it's the for
• 1:47
  anyone who's never used them, they are the smallest ever pill.
• 1:50
  But if you take more than one, it will knock you out like
• 1:54
  you'll be gone. Actually right.
• 1:57
  It's incredible stuff, but I'm quite stubborn so I won't take
• 2:02
  it until I absolutely have to. Like when I'm squeezing same
• 2:06
  way. It's just, I don't know, it's
• 2:09
  like maybe it's a an upbringing thing, but I've always been
• 2:13
  like, unless I'm damn near dying, I don't want to take
• 2:16
  pills. Like I've been, I've been having
• 2:19
  some pain lately and I'm like, OK, I'll take the pills and they
• 2:23
  work because I didn't take them in the past.
• 2:26
  It's like, OK, but that's the danger as well, getting reliant
• 2:30
  on them as well. You've got to be really careful
• 2:31
  with that. Anyway, as I said in in the, in
• 2:36
  the preamble, 3 years consecutively.
• 2:40
  If you're appearing on the show 1 year after another, this is
• 2:43
  your third appearance on the show.
• 2:46
  Let's talk a little bit about the year since you last appeared
• 2:50
  on the show. I've done a lot of changes here
• 2:53
  on the podcasts. We've switched from being a Zoom
• 2:56
  podcast to a Riverside podcast. But what's changed for you in
• 3:02
  the last year since since? There's many things, some in
• 3:08
  professional life, some personal.
• 3:09
  The perhaps most interesting. Last year we talked about my 6th
• 3:15
  then sixth novel, which was launched almost a year ago about
• 3:21
  10 months ago from by the small press that have printed
• 3:26
  published most of my books called Wild Rose Press small
• 3:29
  press in New York that has about 500 authors and publishes a
• 3:34
  whole lot of genres. But mine are mine have been
• 3:37
  primarily mysteries or paranormal mysteries.
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  It's called the Red Shadows of Saugatuck has done very well.
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  It turned out to win three more national awards since we talked
• 3:47
  last time, including Mystery of the Year last year.
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  So I'm very proud of that. But I've always wanted to try
• 3:54
  for the next rung on the ladder, which for those of you that
• 3:59
  don't know, that's a a major publishing house.
• 4:02
  To do that, you have to get an agent.
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  And that's what happened last year, this time in June, last
• 4:09
  year in June. I was fortunate enough to pitch
• 4:13
  my newest idea to actually 9 different agents at A at a
• 4:17
  conference. 8 of them are interested, three of them made
• 4:21
  offers to me and I selected one of the agents and within a month
• 4:25
  and a half, the agent sold my book.
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  So I'm, I mean, it's been a very a whirlwind.
• 4:30
  And that book will be published in three weeks.
• 4:35
  Absolutely. We'll talk about that book in a
• 4:37
  bit, but first I want to talk about how you approach pitching.
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  We've been talking about this a little bit on the podcast
• 4:44
  recently and it's quite a nerve wracking experience.
• 4:48
  A room full of people and you've got to pitch, you know, this
• 4:51
  work your creative baby. It's like, you know what I mean?
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  Because sometimes people, people can be brutal with their
• 4:57
  criticism. So walk me through, Walk me
• 5:00
  through your pitch when you're pitching your book.
• 5:03
  Well, I've been to several different conferences and
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  pitching is done differently at different conferences.
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  So the conference I've been attending most often is 1 called
• 5:13
  Killer Nashville. It's located obviously in
• 5:15
  Nashville and it's focused primarily around mystery
• 5:19
  thrillers. Of course, some horror, some you
• 5:22
  know, that's where the killer part comes from.
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  Their pitching is very different.
• 5:26
  Their pitching is actually a little less stressful in terms
• 5:30
  of preparation, but can be quite just as brutal.
• 5:33
  So their pitches, you have to read your first 2 pages aloud in
• 5:38
  front of a group of eight or 10 authors and editors or
• 5:41
  publishers or, or agents. And then they tell you whether
• 5:45
  it's worth anything or not or send me something or not.
• 5:49
  That has been that's been trying at times, but it's always been
• 5:56
  enlightening. And what what I happens when I
• 5:58
  walk away from that pitch arrangement is I often I walk
• 6:01
  away with an insight I didn't have about those 2 pages.
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  And the reason they do 2 pages is because that's what an agent
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  will give you about maybe if they pick up your book and read
• 6:11
  it. If the first 2 pages doesn't do
• 6:13
  it, they're not going farther. What have you been learning
• 6:15
  about those 2 pages you've been pitching then?
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  Well, you have to figure out. First of all, it forces you as
• 6:26
  an author to figure out where to start your story.
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  So you can't have this nice, let's you know, flowery, let's
• 6:33
  get into this. You can't have this person
• 6:35
  looking in the mirror and saying you have to have find some way
• 6:39
  to do what it's called in the drama world in media res, which
• 6:43
  means you start in the middle of things.
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  You just kind of drop drop the the reader right into the action
• 6:49
  at the very beginning of the story.
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  Bam. So that by the time you finish 2
• 6:54
  pages, you want the you want the reader, or in this case the
• 6:58
  agent to go OK, to give me more I that's not enough.
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  What's next? What happens next?
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  Now this is interesting because the television show or movie
• 7:10
  equivalent would be, well, a television.
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  I don't know what they call it in the movies, but you call it a
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  cold open right now. I understand that mindset, you
• 7:18
  know, throwing people right into the action.
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  Great. Whoever as an author, as a
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  creative, you must kind of get the feeling I get, which is kind
• 7:26
  of like, hold on. I have to cater the beginning of
• 7:30
  my book to what you what your expectation is.
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  What will you know, sell more, I guess, hook people in as opposed
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  to my creative vision for it. There is a compromise, no
• 7:44
  question there's a compromise involved there.
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  But I, I don't think one has to be sacrificed to do the other in
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  my, in my news book, which we'll talk about in a minute, which is
• 7:53
  about a, a secret spy in the Revolutionary War.
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  I don't, I don't think I sacrifice what I wanted for the
• 8:02
  creative vision. But the reader is dropped in the
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  middle of a very tense scene that, that, that that
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  immediately drags them into the action of oh, Oh my God, what's
• 8:17
  going on here? So I, I don't think it's one or
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  the other. I think you can fashion your
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  creative. And first of all, Chris, Chris,
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  I'm, I'm a realist, OK? If I make something that I want
• 8:29
  and nobody reads it, well, that's not really, that's not
• 8:33
  really what I'm looking for. So I got to I have to find some
• 8:36
  place in the middle that I'm happy with what I produce and
• 8:40
  that readers will have some interest in reading.
• 8:42
  Yeah, I, I get that. It's just, I, I think it's a
• 8:45
  little bit of a shame that it has to go down like that.
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  You know, although I will say this, there was the ability to
• 8:56
  release like a second version and a third version.
• 8:59
  And, you know, like that's kind of the joy of reselling, I
• 9:02
  suppose. When the book does well, it wins
• 9:04
  awards. And then the publisher or
• 9:06
  yourself kind of suggests like, why don't I post this?
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  There's more content there. There's, you know, stuff that's
• 9:13
  been caught, same as the movies when you have special features.
• 9:16
  So, yeah, I don't know. I just as a creative, I as a
• 9:20
  writer, I, I look at that a bit like, that's a shame.
• 9:24
  Sometimes stories do start slow, quiet.
• 9:26
  You know, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
• 9:29
  Depends. But if you think about, if you
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  think about really great writers, even great classical
• 9:35
  writers, they usually found a way to, to have an opening that
• 9:40
  that immediately drew the reader in, You know, think of Dickens.
• 9:44
  It was the worst of time. It was the best of time from A
• 9:48
  Tale of Two Cities. You know, I, I think, I think
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  you can do both. I think you can maintain your
• 9:55
  creative vision and find a way to hook the reader.
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  Now, hooking here means different for different genres.
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  You know, when you say when I say drop in the middle of action
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  for a romance, that's not the same as a murder mystery, you
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  know, So there's all kinds of ways of dropping them into
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  dropping the reader so that they have to kind of like get their
• 10:18
  feet on the ground to start running when they're reading the
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  book, I think. I think there are different ways
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  to do that. I don't know if I've asked you
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  this, but when I was thinking about your pitch and, you know,
• 10:27
  obviously the way that you draw people in with those first 2
• 10:31
  pages, I can hear from your voice that it's, you've got like
• 10:35
  that kind of classic audiobooks like voice, which is fantastic.
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  Like I, I love that you can, you can hear that it would sound
• 10:43
  good for, for, for a book, maybe even a children's book as well.
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  There's, there's that element to it.
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  No, I mean, I mean that with all respect, like some of the best
• 10:52
  books I ever read or listened to with the audiobooks had were
• 10:56
  children's books, you know? And there's this kind of like a
• 10:58
  warm feeling about it, right? How about, I don't know if I've
• 11:01
  asked you this, but have you recorded audio books?
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  No, I have not. I've I've looked at the
• 11:07
  possibility of doing that. In fact, with my newest book
• 11:09
  that we're going to talk about a little bit, the publisher came
• 11:12
  to me and said this is a mainstream publisher and said do
• 11:14
  you want to record your book? I don't have the equipment, I
• 11:18
  don't have any of the resources. I don't have any of that.
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  Not to mention it's a very time intensive process.
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  That's that's the thing. You know, and for me, if I were
• 11:30
  here's my fear Christian, when I get a book right, I, I might
• 11:34
  rewrite that book. I think I talked earlier on this
• 11:37
  podcast about my 14 different first chapters.
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  Didn't I share that with you. So in the first book in the
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  series on the short mystery series, the 1st chapter was
• 11:47
  actually rewritten 14 different times until I was satisfied I
• 11:51
  got it right. So I'm afraid that if I went
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  down the the yellow brick road of the audio book, I'd end up
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  going, Oh no, I didn't like the way I did that.
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  Let's do that again, you know, and that would be, it would be
• 12:02
  hard to hard to satisfy me. I think that's kind of what my
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  problem is. No, that's that's a fairpoint.
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  I'd never thought about it like that.
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  And just so I make it clear so that I don't mislead your
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  readers and Killer Nashville, if a writer is uncomfortable
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  reading their own work, the agent will read it for well,
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  actually the agent doesn't. The agent has an assistant that
• 12:22
  will read it for kind of it's somebody said by the conference.
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  So and there are authors, no, I can't read it.
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  You, you I can't read it. You read it.
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  But for me, if I'm going to pitch my work, I'm going no, no,
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  no, I'm reading it. It's a lot, I know.
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  I remember going through scripts recently because I've started
• 12:38
  script writing for the first time in my life.
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  And this, this other guy that was there gave his opinion and
• 12:46
  it was a space like that where it was, it was open.
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  But he, he almost kind of like mocked, I didn't say anything,
• 12:53
  but he mocked it as far as like he said, he basically said like,
• 12:56
  Oh, have you ever written a script before?
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  And I was like, no, I literally said that like 10 minutes ago.
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  And he was like, Oh yeah, you can tell.
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  And I was like, that's kind of rude.
• 13:05
  I get what you're saying. That's kind of rude, you know,
• 13:08
  just a little bit. But anyway, obviously in in that
• 13:13
  sphere that you're talking about, it's it's kind of
• 13:15
  expected. Just a final question, but.
• 13:18
  Let's go to go back to your original question.
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  So when I pit, that's not the normal pitch.
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  The normal pitch is what happened.
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  And I, I went to the, the, the conference is called Thriller
• 13:29
  Fest. And it's basically about the
• 13:32
  same kinds of books, you know, action, adventure, mystery,
• 13:36
  thrillers, all that kind of stuff.
• 13:39
  And it's in New York City, so it attracts a lot of agents.
• 13:44
  I'm talking, I mean, Killer Nashville.
• 13:46
  You probably are have an opportunity to pitch to maybe 8
• 13:50
  and eight agents and editors, maybe 10 if you're very lucky.
• 13:53
  And Thrillerfest, they had probably 25.
• 13:56
  I mean, they had they had a ton. And they have a thing that you
• 13:59
  of course pay extra for everything costs more money
• 14:02
  called Pitchfest. And in Pitchfest, you line up
• 14:06
  and you let's see, you have 3 minutes to pitch to the person
• 14:13
  that you're pitching to, period. And they when you sit down they
• 14:16
  put on old timer. And you've got to do this in
• 14:20
  front of like I don't. Know, no, you're not in front of
• 14:26
  everybody, but everybody's in this big room.
• 14:28
  In fact, you're hearing everybody else pitch at the same
• 14:30
  time. And this gal, most of them are
• 14:33
  women. There are a couple guys, but
• 14:34
  most of them are women. Have to have to focus on what
• 14:37
  you're telling them and go, OK, occasionally.
• 14:41
  Now, I did that to 9. So you have how long did we
• 14:44
  have? Two hours, I think 2 hours.
• 14:46
  And then you have to stand in line and wait your turn, you
• 14:48
  know, And when you get up there, you sit down and go, hi, my name
• 14:52
  is Randy Overbeck. My book is like what kind of
• 14:55
  genre it is? And then and then I'd say, and
• 14:58
  then you launch into your pitch. So you have to make sure that
• 15:02
  that pitch is razor sharp. You know, you realize that
• 15:06
  you're only going to and actually you don't have 3
• 15:08
  minutes. Their recommendation is you
• 15:11
  should have the pitch done in about 90 seconds so that if the
• 15:15
  agent wants to ask something, there's time.
• 15:18
  And that 3 minutes said, well, what about this or how did you
• 15:22
  which, which in fact did happen. And I think I had it down to
• 15:26
  about wasn't 90, but it was close to that, probably a
• 15:30
  probably 100 seconds hundred 10110 seconds, under 2 minutes.
• 15:34
  And I was very, very fortunate. Several of the agents said when
• 15:39
  I got done, they said, OK, tell me more.
• 15:42
  Is it a series? And actually, I was at several
• 15:46
  of the stations longer than 3 minutes, which I'm sure the
• 15:49
  people in front of me are going get your ass out of the chair
• 15:52
  and Boo us. My turn it and it is a very
• 15:56
  harrowing experience, but you know, I've been through a lot of
• 15:59
  pitches and it used to be I was just tied up in knots trying to
• 16:03
  do this. But now I'm going, hey, I'm
• 16:06
  giving my best shot. If they like me, fine.
• 16:08
  If not, and I was very, very fortunate Christian, because I
• 16:12
  this the company that published my other books, the small press
• 16:16
  would take this the the new one in a in a heartbeat.
• 16:19
  There wasn't any question. They like my work so much.
• 16:23
  If I send it to them, they'll take it.
• 16:24
  So I had a back up plan anyway. But I wanted to get to the big
• 16:27
  boys and this is the step you have to go through to get to
• 16:29
  them. How do you deal with criticism
• 16:32
  in a space like that? Because obviously I know you're
• 16:34
  prepped for it. I know you're you know, you've
• 16:36
  got a thick skin, but how do? You do well, I I I I think you
• 16:40
  just move on this in this case there in this in in the first
• 16:45
  example that I told you about the two minutes.
• 16:47
  There is some significant I like this this is not very good or
• 16:52
  this this drew me out of the story or whatever the criticism
• 16:56
  is in this case in that when I when you're actually pitching it
• 16:59
  when you're actually doing your what we call the elevator pitch.
• 17:03
  You know, you know what that means, right?
• 17:05
  You're stuck in the elevator with Steven Spielberg and you
• 17:07
  got until it gets to the 11th Florida, You know, so there's
• 17:12
  not really a lot of time for them to Nah, I don't think so.
• 17:15
  They just and and I I want to be very kind here because the vast
• 17:21
  majority of agents that I've pitched have been kind.
• 17:26
  Even if they don't like it, they're kind.
• 17:30
  They'll will say it's not for me.
• 17:32
  That's not the kind of thing I do.
• 17:35
  I think you have a good idea, but I'm not sure that it will
• 17:38
  work. Or, you know, some of the agents
• 17:41
  that have passed on me before have used euphemisms, I think,
• 17:47
  because they would say things like, I don't know who I'd sell
• 17:51
  that book to. I'm a paranormal mystery, you
• 17:54
  know, and I'm going, well, how about people who like paranormal
• 17:57
  or people like mystery? But but again, nobody, I, I have
• 18:02
  never had an experience with an agent or an editor who literally
• 18:09
  crushes you. That's I've had plenty of no's
• 18:14
  but a lot more no's than yeses. But the No's have not been
• 18:17
  horrendous from a personal point of view.
• 18:21
  I guess I'm just a personal point of view.
• 18:22
  Yes, yeah, I, I guess it's just because I've seen so many of
• 18:26
  those, that TV shows over the years where they just tear
• 18:30
  people apart. Things like America's Got
• 18:32
  Talent, Britain's Got Talent X Factor, like I hate those shows
• 18:36
  just on a side note. But the way they talk to people
• 18:39
  sometimes I'm like, you could have said that in a more
• 18:41
  respectful way. You didn't have to destroy the
• 18:44
  man. Do you know what I mean?
• 18:45
  Like like in in the, in the OR the authors kind of realm may be
• 18:50
  like the equivalent of turning around to beating someone and
• 18:52
  being like, yeah, you should, you should stop writing.
• 18:55
  You should never write again. And it's like, come on, man.
• 18:57
  Like it's good. It's good to hear they're
• 19:00
  respectful. That's good to.
• 19:02
  Well, and you know, like they're probably some of their worst
• 19:05
  criticisms are things like, I don't think, I don't think
• 19:09
  you're ready yet. You've got a good idea.
• 19:11
  But from what you're telling me, I it's not there or I'm not
• 19:16
  seeing this, you know, it's just not not coming alive for me,
• 19:19
  which is a little bit like what I was saying before about for
• 19:22
  the 2 pages. You better grab that person
• 19:25
  right away. I've been told that an agent
• 19:28
  gives a new manuscript 90. I mean, yeah.
• 19:32
  Or an acquisition author. Either one of them. 90 seconds.
• 19:35
  Crazy. And it's in, or I read some
• 19:38
  more, or it's out, or I read some more.
• 19:39
  That's the. That's the option.
• 19:40
  So given that you've been in a lot of these spaces, obviously
• 19:44
  you've seen a lot of other people pitch.
• 19:46
  What would you say are the most common mistakes people make or
• 19:51
  or the things you should avoid in a pitch?
• 19:54
  Well, I, I think that the most common mistakes that I've seen
• 19:58
  are really two kinds. 1 is that the author did not do enough
• 20:03
  research to make sure that this agent or editor wants this kind
• 20:10
  of work. So I've made a mistake myself
• 20:13
  too, although I try to be pretty careful about who I'm pitching
• 20:16
  to. There was one of the 9:00 that
• 20:18
  that was the case. I all the conferences give you.
• 20:25
  Pretty decent information on the agents and what I do is if every
• 20:30
  agent, so I had identified, see I, I pitched to 9.
• 20:34
  I think I may have had like 11 in my notes.
• 20:36
  I don't remember. I didn't quite get everybody,
• 20:38
  but I got to almost everybody and every one of those I've gone
• 20:41
  to their website. I had checked what were their
• 20:44
  interest in if they had information.
• 20:46
  I checked to see if OK, in my case, I'm pitching historical
• 20:50
  suspense and thriller. So I wanted to see have they
• 20:54
  agented historical suspense or thriller, that kind of stuff.
• 20:57
  So I think the number one mistake is they're just pitching
• 21:00
  everybody. My book's so good, everybody
• 21:02
  will want it. Well, that's it doesn't make any
• 21:05
  difference how good your book is.
• 21:06
  If they're not doing that genre, they're not, they're not going
• 21:08
  to they're not going to pick the book up it it might be the next
• 21:11
  Harry Potter, but if it's not what they're looking for,
• 21:13
  they're not really going to go there.
• 21:15
  The the second one is they're not, they're not.
• 21:18
  They haven't carefully prepared enough.
• 21:21
  I mean, you really have to stand in front of the mirror.
• 21:24
  There you go. Ready clock 90 seconds.
• 21:26
  Let's do this. Does make you wonder, like, how
• 21:28
  many potentially incredible books are out there that we've
• 21:33
  just missed out on because a publisher didn't believe in it,
• 21:36
  you know? I'm sure we would be stunned.
• 21:38
  Well, you know Harry Potter was turned down by.
• 21:41
  So many people. So many.
• 21:44
  What I I think of the other way I'm thinking now imagine if you
• 21:48
  were the last agent that turned down Harry Potter.
• 21:53
  Same as same as like the the people that didn't sign The
• 21:56
  Beatles. I wonder like how they slept at
• 21:58
  night. I'd just be like, no.
• 22:02
  These guys will be a flash in the pan.
• 22:04
  What what's the big deal here? But you know, I, I'm, I'm so to
• 22:10
  finish up the, our conversation of how do we get from there from
• 22:15
  last June here. So last June, I do this pitch.
• 22:18
  I actually was lucky. I, I didn't accidentally, but I
• 22:23
  ended up pitching an acquisition editor.
• 22:26
  So for those that don't know, OK, you have to go through an
• 22:30
  agent and then the agent pitches to a company, a publisher, the
• 22:36
  person they pitch in the company is called an acquisition editor,
• 22:39
  the editor in charge of which books do we buy?
• 22:42
  Which books do we don't buy? And I act it was an accident on
• 22:48
  my part, on my list that I happen to have an acquisition
• 22:51
  editor listed in my agent category.
• 22:55
  And I noticed when I had time, free time, meaning I can't get
• 22:59
  in this line yet. And there was nobody in front of
• 23:03
  the, the, the let's give the gals, OK, her name is Tori
• 23:06
  Kirkpatrick. And nobody's in front of her.
• 23:11
  And I looked at my list and I went, she's on my list, alright.
• 23:15
  I went over there to her and I pitched it to her and I picked
• 23:19
  my little pitch. There was American Revolution,
• 23:24
  fictional story of the spy that we know very little about, blah
• 23:27
  blah, blah. And, and she went, that is
• 23:31
  really interesting. She said, do you have an agent?
• 23:34
  I said no, that's what I'm here. Not yet, She said.
• 23:39
  If you have an agent, have the agent contact me.
• 23:42
  I think we might be interested in that book.
• 23:46
  She was. She's the acquisition editor for
• 23:48
  Diversion Books, which is distributed by Simon and
• 23:53
  Schuster. That kind of, I didn't know.
• 23:56
  I didn't know all those details at that point.
• 23:58
  So eventually, you know, I'd go back and finish my pitching and
• 24:01
  I pitched to, like I said, 9 agents, 8 accepted, 88 requested
• 24:08
  partial or full manuscripts. Of the 8, three of them got back
• 24:12
  to me. Three of them wanted to
• 24:14
  represent me. I selected the one that I did,
• 24:17
  the lady named Ellen Skordato from Stonesong Agency within a
• 24:24
  week, you know, within a month, she's, she's got the manuscript.
• 24:28
  We we did some minor changes during sent it out within a
• 24:32
  month Later the book is sold to to this lady, Tori Kirkpatrick,
• 24:38
  who I met at the conference. That's a really quick turn
• 24:43
  around. That's incredible.
• 24:44
  Oh, it's an amazing turn around. And Tori Kirkpatrick told me I
• 24:48
  didn't know any of this. I had never heard of Diversion
• 24:50
  Books, although I've learned since it's a very well known,
• 24:54
  well respected imprint. But it they have up until
• 24:58
  recently only done non fiction books and they were branching
• 25:02
  out into fiction. And she said we might use yours
• 25:06
  to launch our fiction. All right, historical fiction.
• 25:10
  I'm going. OK, well, that's what's
• 25:12
  happening. So it's really exciting on my
• 25:16
  end because and, you know, everybody's been good to work
• 25:20
  with. It's been really nice.
• 25:22
  Plus, because here in America, we're celebrating our 250th
• 25:27
  anniversary birthday next in July.
• 25:31
  So I don't know. You probably know this because
• 25:33
  of all the podcasts you do. But the normal turn around with
• 25:35
  a major publisher is 18 months. They buy it to when it comes
• 25:39
  out. In my case, they accelerate all
• 25:42
  of it. So it was nine months, which
• 25:45
  meant of course it was a lot harder work on my part because
• 25:47
  everything had to be turned out, returned, you know, revised,
• 25:51
  sent back to edited back, you know, that kind of stuff much
• 25:55
  more quickly. Like they normally give you a, a
• 25:58
  month to read what they had butchered, you know, when they
• 26:03
  do their editing and decide what's OK and what's not OK.
• 26:07
  I had 10 days, you know, so it was crunch time.
• 26:11
  But it's well worth it. I'm, you know, it's, I'm
• 26:14
  thrilled with the final product. It's, you know, it's and my book
• 26:17
  was too long. You know, it.
• 26:18
  This is until they made me cut cut words and stuff.
• 26:21
  So based on what you just said that I think a part of you is
• 26:24
  like, I don't agree with that, but that's just the way it is.
• 26:27
  So, you know, we do what we have to, but you're like.
• 26:30
  Well, OK, what happened was some of the things that they had
• 26:34
  changed, I accepted others I said I stood pat and said Nope,
• 26:38
  that's staying in the book. I'm not, I'm not taking that
• 26:40
  out. I do have a really weird
• 26:41
  experience that that you would appreciate.
• 26:44
  So my book, my manuscripts, not a book yet at this point it's a
• 26:49
  manuscript was they used an AI editor on it and it turned out
• 26:56
  to be I was the beta test. Oh God, what a horrible
• 27:00
  experience. Did they let you know beforehand
• 27:03
  that they were going to do that? Yes, yes.
• 27:06
  First of all, they said it was an AI editor working with a
• 27:11
  person. OK, well, what I realized
• 27:14
  happened was that the person, the actual human editor did like
• 27:19
  the first 30 pages maybe, and then the AI person, AI editor
• 27:26
  took off from there and the AI editor did all kinds of weird
• 27:30
  stuff. So I'll give you just one
• 27:32
  example that'll just, if people are writers, they'll understand
• 27:36
  this. And if you're a good reader,
• 27:37
  know this, I tend to, I, I tend to deliberately use complex
• 27:46
  structures in my sentences. OK, they're not all simple
• 27:49
  sentences and stuff. The AI editor put all these
• 27:54
  semicolons in, in, in the, in the band screen.
• 27:59
  And if you're a regular reader, you will notice that in fiction
• 28:02
  you almost never ever see a semi colon.
• 28:05
  They use colons. You almost never see a colon.
• 28:09
  You know, I, I, I, at one point I got mad at the, the editing
• 28:14
  person that I was working with and said, first of all, I taught
• 28:18
  English for years. I know how to, and if I have a
• 28:23
  sentence fragment, it's not because I don't realize it's a
• 28:26
  sentence fragment. It's what I wanted in that spot.
• 28:31
  So that was kind of a difficult process.
• 28:37
  And it was also difficult because it, the way the AI
• 28:42
  program has set that up, I couldn't simply revert.
• 28:46
  I actually had to rewrite. I knew what I had to.
• 28:50
  I kept an old version of what was on my screen and the AI
• 28:53
  version. And then I went, no, I got to go
• 28:55
  back to the old, but I had to actually rewrite the old version
• 28:58
  back in. I couldn't just say revert that
• 29:01
  back. It's like this program I told
• 29:04
  you about that I use for the podcast now, Riverside.
• 29:06
  So it's a Full disclosure. I've said this before.
• 29:09
  I have strong opinions when it comes to AII think it should be
• 29:13
  used as a tool, not as a thing that you use to create things,
• 29:18
  but we'll get to that in a second.
• 29:19
  I do have a question for you about that.
• 29:21
  But what I will say is as a tool, it can be quite useful,
• 29:25
  but there are problems and it I guess it depends on the software
• 29:29
  you're using. Riverside doesn't seem the
• 29:32
  Riverside AI doesn't seem to learn your style.
• 29:36
  So like in mine, it will frequently say, Oh, you should
• 29:40
  delete this section because it appears to be behind the scenes
• 29:44
  talk and this is not relevant for the podcast or or whatever.
• 29:49
  And I get that. But my show is a quite casual in
• 29:53
  like how how the conversation goes right?
• 29:57
  And B, it's always at the end of the show and it's it's not
• 30:01
  behind the scenes. You can, you can tell the
• 30:03
  difference. I mean, it's just saying
• 30:06
  goodbyes really. You know, this is neither here
• 30:09
  nor there. AI is getting better over time.
• 30:12
  But I, I think that's kind of wild that they, they use that
• 30:16
  for, for your book because it, it, I don't think it really
• 30:22
  under necessarily understands like how authors write in a
• 30:26
  different way as well. Like, I'm sure there were things
• 30:29
  in there that said like, oh, you should shorten this so that
• 30:32
  it's. It's just.
• 30:33
  Yeah. And it's like, well, some things
• 30:35
  have to be explained because it's a novel and that's what you
• 30:39
  do, you know, If it's not fiction a bit, alright, maybe,
• 30:42
  but. Well, I remember the publishers
• 30:45
  1 of publishers primary goal was to shorten the manuscript.
• 30:49
  Of course, yes, I understand. That so I'm sure that was
• 30:51
  something that was built into the AI program, but but here's
• 30:56
  an example of the weird way that it went about shortening it.
• 31:01
  So in my program, in my program, in my manuscript, my novel, I
• 31:05
  have two PO VS OK, I have the American teacher who becomes a
• 31:13
  spy. And then I have a British
• 31:15
  officer who's very formal, OK. He's very polished, very, you
• 31:20
  know, well, well, well respected in his language and in his POV.
• 31:26
  He never used contractions because it's not appropriate for
• 31:30
  his position and and the woman in Abigail's POV she did.
• 31:38
  For some reason, the AI decided to put all these contractions
• 31:42
  into the other character's name is Parker into Parker's POV
• 31:48
  going, you know, so I'm assuming because it saved the word here.
• 31:54
  I, I don't really know why, you know, why it chose to do that.
• 31:58
  And, and before I finish, here's what there are a few things that
• 32:02
  AI was good at. I will admit right here on this
• 32:07
  podcast, I am a horrible typist. It's it's a, it is a very a
• 32:14
  laborious process for me. It's difficult and I do work
• 32:17
  really hard, but it is not uncommon that I have left a
• 32:21
  space here or there or the period is in the wrong place or,
• 32:24
  you know, comma. It was very good at those
• 32:27
  things, at finding the place that was missing.
• 32:31
  And, and I told him that I said, and I actually gave him a when
• 32:34
  I'm done, I gave him this big long scripted thing that says,
• 32:37
  here are five things that the AI program seemed to do well.
• 32:41
  Here are 12 things that had screwed up in the process.
• 32:45
  You and I told them cost me at least 24 hour extra hours to be
• 32:52
  able to fix what the AI program had screwed up.
• 32:55
  Wow. They said, I'm not sure we're
• 32:58
  going to use this again with another author.
• 33:00
  I said well don't use it until you fix whatever the problem is.
• 33:04
  Yeah, because there are, there are certainly advantages to to
• 33:06
  using a system like that. But again, I think we're a few
• 33:11
  years off before it's at the point where it's sophisticated
• 33:13
  enough to understand, oh, this is just the way this particular
• 33:18
  character talks or you know, etcetera, not quite enough.
• 33:22
  And I think it now, it's not my job.
• 33:25
  I'm not on that side of the publishing.
• 33:27
  But if I were doing it, I'd have somebody on their end go over it
• 33:32
  after the AI did it. Yeah, his stuff now they they
• 33:38
  were quite something. Like that, if you've got like a
• 33:41
  big, big book, I think you need at least like two or three
• 33:45
  editors just to kind of go through it.
• 33:46
  Because an important thing to think about as well is that
• 33:50
  people are going to look for different things.
• 33:52
  And that's kind of the advance, the advantage of having human
• 33:55
  editors. Can't believe I have to say.
• 33:57
  Them what not. Yeah, AI is, is unless you have
• 34:00
  like a different program, it's it's just always going to look
• 34:03
  for the same things unless you tell it to look for something
• 34:06
  else. So you still have to pumped it,
• 34:08
  which is like, yes, I know it speeds up the process, but also
• 34:12
  to get it where you want it, you probably need to just look at it
• 34:16
  yourself. Really.
• 34:17
  It's it's one of them. I do have one more AI question
• 34:21
  before we deep dive into your book.
• 34:23
  So I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on AI books and
• 34:29
  the use of AI in writing. It's a very controversial topic
• 34:34
  now, just the usage of AI in the arts and music and film
• 34:39
  etcetera. I've always been very
• 34:41
  opinionated on the topic. My current stance is fine as a
• 34:46
  tool, but to be honest, an unacceptable as, as a, as a, as
• 34:53
  a, as a main source of, of creation.
• 34:57
  I think it's fair to use it in like, OK, if you're talking
• 35:01
  music, I think it, it's, it's OK if it's not the main source of,
• 35:08
  of creativity. But if you're literally just
• 35:11
  sitting there telling me, like, oh, I, I typed a prompt into
• 35:14
  into ChatGPT and now it's written me a book.
• 35:17
  I'm sorry, but that's not, that's not good enough.
• 35:19
  That's that's why would anyone want to read that?
• 35:22
  There is an argument because there's a lot of non fiction
• 35:26
  books churning out stuff right now from AI and it's quite quick
• 35:33
  to do it. But I, I feel uncomfortable with
• 35:36
  the idea of people earning money off the back of that, you know,
• 35:39
  because no efforts got in. But what are you?
• 35:43
  What are you? Well, I mean, let's start off
• 35:45
  with the number one problem. And the number one problem is
• 35:49
  that the companies that have put these AI programs together,
• 35:56
  whether they admit to it or not, they've pirated all of this, all
• 36:00
  this information they used to train the AI.
• 36:02
  You know, John Grisham testified in front of Congress and said,
• 36:05
  look, you're welcome to use my books.
• 36:09
  Movie people use my books, but they pay to do that.
• 36:12
  They don't just take the book and then, hey, I'm going to make
• 36:15
  a movie out. He said using a using books to
• 36:19
  do a train AI is no different than using books to make a movie
• 36:23
  out of it. It's my intellectual poverty.
• 36:25
  So where I start from is they should never have been allowed
• 36:29
  to do all of this without going to every everyone and say, Hey,
• 36:34
  we'll give you X. You know that that's that,
• 36:38
  that's the first problem. The other problem is that I
• 36:41
  think what we'll end up getting is something very derivative.
• 36:47
  You know, when I think of authors that I really love, it's
• 36:51
  because of how they're able to come up with incredibly new ways
• 36:56
  to. Let me give you an example.
• 36:57
  So my one of my favorite authors is William Kent Krueger.
• 37:00
  If you haven't read him, you should read him.
• 37:03
  He, he has a, he's a best selling series called the Cork
• 37:07
  O'Connor Mysteries. I think he's in 20, the 23rd 1
• 37:11
  is coming out this summer and they're all very interesting
• 37:17
  mysteries. They take place generally in
• 37:19
  northern Minnesota. It's a very, it's a, it's a
• 37:22
  storytelling area that's not been used a lot.
• 37:25
  That's really interesting. But what I find fascinating he's
• 37:28
  he is he is a he does a better job than any other I've ever
• 37:32
  known of capturing the scene in poetic language.
• 37:37
  And what I look to his books every time I see his books, his
• 37:40
  new books, he comes up with new ways of describing the sky in
• 37:44
  the lake and the in the woods and everything that makes the
• 37:47
  book so moving. Well, an AI isn't going to do
• 37:51
  that. It's going to copy what was done
• 37:53
  before and it's going to end up churning out books.
• 37:57
  No offense here, James Patterson, but it's going to end
• 38:00
  up turning out books like the books that are the 25th, 28th,
• 38:04
  30th, 15th, 100 book of what James Patterson did because it's
• 38:08
  all done on a formula. This goes first, then this
• 38:11
  happens, and this happens. I don't use AI.
• 38:15
  Well, you know, I use AI to sometimes for research.
• 38:19
  I use AI sometimes to nail down a particular fact.
• 38:22
  Although I will be honest, as I was writing this book and I'm
• 38:27
  actually in the middle of writing the sequel right now, I
• 38:30
  have found AI to be in error about one out of every three
• 38:33
  times. So that's the other hidden
• 38:35
  problem is that, you know, like I'm writing a scene and now I
• 38:39
  ask, well, what? When did this particular
• 38:43
  character, his name is Robert Townsend, when did Robert
• 38:45
  Townsend do such and such? And the AI will fill something
• 38:48
  up on them. And I type back, no, that's not
• 38:50
  right, you know, And then I'll type back and say, oh, thank you
• 38:54
  for the correction. No, that is not right.
• 38:57
  I'm going great. So now I'm training my they're
• 39:00
  AI. That's pretty much summarizes
• 39:04
  what the way I think Yeah. And and I I think it's great for
• 39:09
  people to use AI in that matter what it's I see that no
• 39:12
  different than using Google. We've used Google for 20 years.
• 39:17
  You know what happened in 19? You know what happened in 1776?
• 39:21
  Give me the five major thing having Well, we used to look
• 39:24
  that up anyway. AI just makes it a little
• 39:26
  shorter route to get the same information.
• 39:29
  Yeah, it's, it's a very good point.
• 39:33
  I think the you know, I literally spoke about this on
• 39:35
  the show that I just released today.
• 39:40
  The problem is people now are are just using AI instead of
• 39:47
  doing research. It's like, Oh no, just do this
• 39:49
  for me. I don't need to do anything.
• 39:52
  And of course you don't learn, you know, because obviously the
• 39:54
  difference before is, yeah, you would have looked those things
• 39:56
  up and then now you've got a basis for an essay or, yeah, a
• 40:01
  book where you can start off of that.
• 40:03
  But then you still have to do your research, deep dive into
• 40:06
  it, etcetera. But I digress.
• 40:09
  You could talk all day about AI. We're not here to talk about AI
• 40:12
  all day. Yeah, 'cause it it would.
• 40:14
  I'll just get angry. To be honest, I don't like the
• 40:17
  way it's being used. And, and I, you know, I, I have
• 40:22
  man, not a score, maybe 15 books that I've read or read part of
• 40:26
  or pulled part of. So I have all this information
• 40:29
  before I go to AI 'cause when I go to AI, I'm looking for like a
• 40:32
  tiny particular thing. And that's how come, and because
• 40:36
  I have the background, I knew it was wrong.
• 40:38
  I'm going no, that you have the wrong war.
• 40:41
  That's not didn't happen in that battle.
• 40:43
  That's a different battle, you know, But if you don't have
• 40:45
  that, you don't really know. It's crazy that it has
• 40:49
  essentially the access to the entire Internet and everything
• 40:54
  that's ever been put on there, and yet it will get things
• 40:57
  confused and give you the wrong information.
• 40:59
  And it's like, yeah. And that's why when you go on
• 41:02
  Google, you see, oh, generative AI, it's not 100% accurate.
• 41:06
  And it's like, well, what's the point of using it then?
• 41:09
  Yeah. You know, I want accuracy, but I
• 41:12
  digress. Now, it's always an honour to
• 41:15
  have an author on the show. It's always a massive honour
• 41:19
  when they send me their book. I have it here.
• 41:23
  It's an advanced copy. I did.
• 41:26
  Thank you so much. Real, real pleasure.
• 41:28
  It's called Abigail Trench, It's your latest book.
• 41:30
  It's upcoming. It's dropping in a couple of
• 41:33
  weeks in June and I'll make sure the show is ahead of that.
• 41:36
  So there we go. Yeah.
• 41:40
  Abigail Trench, a novel of Washington's spy ring.
• 41:44
  What can you tell us about this book, Randy?
• 41:46
  They haven't already told. Us Well, the book is centres
• 41:50
  around the culpa ring, which most people even in America
• 41:54
  don't know the culpa ring. So part way into the war, George
• 42:00
  Washington organized the culpa ring to help find out the
• 42:04
  secrets behind enemy lines and what was going on.
• 42:07
  And that in when those days of being a spy was not what we
• 42:12
  think of today, being a spy was a despicable.
• 42:16
  It was just one step above being a murderer.
• 42:19
  So no one it was not a it was a especially to British people.
• 42:25
  It was a smear on their honor. So those people involved in that
• 42:30
  business, there are six men and one woman.
• 42:34
  They kept that secret with them to the grave, most of them.
• 42:40
  In fact, here in America, we did not know the identity of the
• 42:44
  final, the 6th man until 1930. That's how long it took.
• 42:49
  And we were able to do that by matching historical expert match
• 42:53
  handwriting, handwriting analysis.
• 42:56
  And we have never been able to identify, to establish the
• 43:00
  identity of the woman. We have references in letters
• 43:04
  and in dispatches to, to what they called the agent was 355A.
• 43:10
  But there's no name, there's no background.
• 43:12
  So what I did is I created a fictional character to step into
• 43:16
  those shoes. And I explained at the very
• 43:19
  beginning that my, that my, my book is fiction.
• 43:22
  It is not non fiction. It is not history, even though
• 43:26
  all the pieces of the story are drawn from actual historical
• 43:30
  events, but my character participation in those we know
• 43:36
  from the from what little references we have to 355 some
• 43:41
  of the secrets that she helped uncover.
• 43:44
  So I we I wove that those secrets into the story of the
• 43:48
  book and created a character that I thought might be there.
• 43:53
  Is this the first time that you've done this, that you've
• 43:55
  sort of taken? Yes.
• 43:58
  You know what I'm saying? Like a historical background and
• 44:01
  and things that have happened, but then obviously creating a
• 44:04
  fiction within that. That's that's quite.
• 44:07
  I mean each of my mysteries or generally drawn from a
• 44:13
  historical example. So in Blood on the Chesapeake,
• 44:16
  the first of the Haunted Shore mysteries is about a lynching.
• 44:23
  OK, so when I created my murder lynching, I actually used the
• 44:30
  particulars from the lynching that occurred in that same place
• 44:33
  some 20 years earlier than my story takes place.
• 44:36
  So I I've stolen from history before the craft, my novel, but
• 44:41
  not anywhere near to the extent of this one.
• 44:43
  And this one. I work very carefully to to
• 44:46
  weave in things that we know happen, like the attempted
• 44:49
  assassination on George Washington, like the hanging of
• 44:52
  Thomas Hickney, like Nathan's Hale execution, the I weaved in
• 44:58
  things that are part of the American Benedict Arnold's
• 45:02
  treachery. Those kinds of things are woven
• 45:05
  into it, but it's all told from a fictional character's point of
• 45:09
  view. Why did you decide to write this
• 45:11
  particular book? You know the story of Abigail
• 45:14
  Trench, all right to be more exact, the story of Agent 355
• 45:18
  has fascinated me ever since I started stumbled upon the culpa
• 45:23
  ring, started reading about the culpa ring.
• 45:24
  I've read pretty much all the the books have been that have
• 45:27
  been published about the culpa ring.
• 45:29
  And it's just, I thought So what little they knew about the culpa
• 45:34
  ring, at least according to historical experts, is that this
• 45:36
  woman had to have access to British officers secrets.
• 45:45
  They had to have some way of getting that information through
• 45:48
  the message pipeline stuff. So and there many historic and
• 45:53
  historians don't agree on who she was, even what class that
• 45:57
  she belonged to, you know, any of those.
• 45:59
  There's kind of like different point of view.
• 46:01
  So what I did remember, I'm an educator.
• 46:05
  So my hero is a teacher. But in those days, most teachers
• 46:10
  were actually tutors. So what I do is I have her
• 46:12
  stumble, really stumble into becoming a tutor in the family
• 46:17
  of a important British officer's house and by accident actually
• 46:24
  ended up hearing the secrets that are going on in the house
• 46:27
  while she's tutoring the two children.
• 46:31
  I thought it was something that a teacher would do.
• 46:34
  I thought it was a reasonable thing for that kind of character
• 46:37
  to do. And the way and the way she
• 46:40
  reacts is very heroic, which is part of my goal in portraying
• 46:46
  people who have that profession of, you know, she's very her
• 46:49
  concern always from the very beginning, even when her life is
• 46:52
  threatened in the middle is about the the children, what's
• 46:55
  going to happen to the kids if this happens and this happens.
• 46:59
  That's important to me. It's always an exciting thing as
• 47:03
  well when you've finished and written a book, you've spent
• 47:07
  many, many weeks, months, in this case, nearly years.
• 47:11
  You know, like 18 months and it's gone down to nine months.
• 47:14
  And it's long process as you as you put out there, but you're
• 47:19
  already writing a sequel and this book's not even released
• 47:23
  yet. What we feel, that feeling, what
• 47:26
  that feels like. And clearly you're very excited
• 47:29
  about, you know, just delving into the story more.
• 47:32
  Well, when I, when I wrote this book originally, I, I really
• 47:38
  didn't think much beyond Abigail Trench.
• 47:40
  I'm going, OK, go do this. And as soon as the agents
• 47:43
  started talking to me about it, they said this is a series
• 47:46
  because publishers are more interested on, on whether it's a
• 47:50
  series or not, because if readers like one, they'll
• 47:53
  probably buy 2, you know, that kind of thing.
• 47:56
  So I went, well, how could I do? So what I ended up doing was,
• 48:00
  oh, and then let me kind of cut to the chase.
• 48:03
  When this publisher, the version books bought the book, they not
• 48:09
  only bought this book and gave me an advance, they they their
• 48:14
  contract gives first dibs on the second book.
• 48:17
  They they didn't make, they didn't make a two book deal yet.
• 48:20
  That's what my agent was trying for.
• 48:22
  But if this book works, we want the second book.
• 48:26
  So I started immediately. Well, not immediately.
• 48:30
  I started in January this year working on the second book.
• 48:33
  Now what? What?
• 48:33
  This is a different kind of series because each book will
• 48:36
  focus on a different member of the Culpa Ring series.
• 48:39
  I've only ever sort of asked the question I'm about to ask I
• 48:43
  think one time and it was years ago and it was more, I might
• 48:48
  have even asked yourself, you know, it was to do with
• 48:52
  self-publishing and stuff like that.
• 48:54
  But basically I just want to understand a little bit more
• 48:57
  about the business side of things.
• 48:59
  So you said there that they purchase the book right now?
• 49:05
  The rights book. Yeah, right.
• 49:06
  Right, right. And I would understand that to
• 49:09
  mean the rights to distribute it, sell it on your behalf.
• 49:13
  But for argument's sake, you know, I walk into a store or I
• 49:17
  go online and I purchase this book.
• 49:20
  Like do you get a cut from every book that is sold or like how
• 49:26
  does that work exactly? Well, I don't, I don't really
• 49:29
  know. Well, I have to calculate what
• 49:31
  my cut is going to be in this particular book, but the answer
• 49:34
  is yes, let me let me use my previous books because I, you
• 49:40
  know, they're sold and I know what.
• 49:42
  So the previous books sell anywhere from 19 to the newest
• 49:48
  one is $23 because of inflation. Out of that amount, I get about
• 49:54
  less than $2.00. Oh my God.
• 49:58
  And I will get a little less than that this time because an
• 50:03
  agent will get 15% of what I would have gotten.
• 50:06
  Now the hope is I'm with a bigger publisher, they've got a
• 50:10
  bigger footprint, they've got more resources, so there will be
• 50:14
  more sales. Therefore there's more, more
• 50:18
  money. Even even the big guys only make
• 50:20
  a small amount out of out of like James Patterson only makes
• 50:24
  a little bit. But when you send sell millions
• 50:26
  and millions of books, it doesn't matter that you only
• 50:29
  make a dollar, a dollar and a quarter, $1.75, two dollars on a
• 50:33
  book, because you're selling millions of them.
• 50:38
  I'm not going to sell millions of copy about a historical
• 50:40
  thriller. You never know.
• 50:43
  Yeah, well, I mean, I'll say this every time an author
• 50:46
  especially has been on my show and they've spoken about a
• 50:49
  particular book series, whatever in my head, sometimes I can
• 50:52
  already see like, oh, this could be a series, this could be a
• 50:54
  film. And in some instances they've
• 50:56
  turned around and been like, yeah, we're working on the
• 50:58
  documentary, We're working on the films.
• 51:00
  Like, I knew it. I knew it.
• 51:02
  But anyway, oh God, it just seems tremendously unfair.
• 51:08
  I get it. I get your point.
• 51:09
  It's like, well, you know, this gets it out there.
• 51:12
  There's always the opportunity for things to grow.
• 51:15
  And it's like, if you wouldn't go for a deal like that, then
• 51:18
  it's it's just not going to get out there.
• 51:19
  And and that that's to me, it sounds very much like old music
• 51:25
  contracts being that, you know, the record label makes all the
• 51:29
  money, but that it just seems so unfair.
• 51:33
  So I guess my next question is, are there opportunities to earn,
• 51:36
  you know, outside of book sales, things like, you know, signings?
• 51:41
  I don't know how that works like you.
• 51:43
  Don't make any money. So I mean children the the
• 51:46
  exception is children offers. So I when I ran school
• 51:49
  districts, we had we had children offers.
• 51:52
  Offers often come to the district and I had conversations
• 51:57
  with them about well, my librarian did all the work and
• 52:01
  she invited me to lunch. So I got a chance to talk to
• 52:04
  several really famous children's authors and they said they made
• 52:08
  much more money from the, I think we paid them, I don't
• 52:13
  know, 5000 dollars, $3000 for the whole week to come and talk
• 52:17
  to kids. Said they made a lot more money
• 52:19
  from the appearances than they ever made from their books.
• 52:22
  And I was surprised at that now, but I don't, I mean, and I'm
• 52:25
  sure if you're a big name that they might be paying you to come
• 52:29
  to the signing. In this case, my publisher said,
• 52:33
  I don't care if you do any signings or not.
• 52:34
  We, they don't really gain much of anything.
• 52:37
  He said really. So and I'm, I've limited my
• 52:40
  signings very strategically. There's only I live in in Ohio,
• 52:46
  in a place right, right near right in the southern part of
• 52:49
  Ohio. And I'm actually in a in in I'm
• 52:53
  actually in a town that's kind of halfway between Dayton and
• 52:58
  Cincinnati. So there's one book signing in
• 53:02
  Dayton and there's one book signing in Cincinnati.
• 53:04
  And that's all I'm doing. And and so you'll appreciate
• 53:09
  this the book store. Let me give them a plug.
• 53:13
  So the Cincinnati one and both of they neither one of them are
• 53:16
  the big are are big chains. So the Cincinnati 1 is a company
• 53:23
  called Joseph Beth book. I think they have two or three
• 53:26
  stores, that's all. And the other one is called is
• 53:31
  books and company, and they're part of the books-a-million
• 53:34
  family, which also doesn't have that many stores.
• 53:37
  Anyway, both of them expect me to drive people to their stores
• 53:42
  to buy the books. They will not drive traffic
• 53:45
  there. Now they're going to put my name
• 53:47
  up and you know, I and they'll, they'll publicize it and they'll
• 53:50
  be on their website and they're going to do social media and all
• 53:52
  that kind of stuff. But I've learned long ago when I
• 53:56
  first started this, I thought we had a book signing and people
• 53:58
  like this kind of genre, they'd come to see the book sign.
• 54:03
  No, they don't have a reason. They don't know the author.
• 54:07
  They don't. They're nobody's showing up just
• 54:12
  because they're interested. You really have to generate that
• 54:15
  interest. So you're really doing this for
• 54:18
  the love of writing then? Well there, yeah.
• 54:21
  Well, I learned a long time ago I wasn't going to make any money
• 54:24
  at this. That's, and I think hidden in
• 54:28
  your question, which I thought I heard was, well, wouldn't this,
• 54:32
  wouldn't you do better if you were self-publishing?
• 54:35
  And the answer from a financial point of view is true that
• 54:38
  there's question I have, I have self-publishing friends, authors
• 54:41
  that have self-publishing and from a financial point of view,
• 54:44
  at least in terms of what they make per book, they do much
• 54:46
  better. The $19.00 book, they probably
• 54:50
  make $10 on something like that. Depends on their, you know who
• 54:53
  else The difference is I, I didn't want to go through all
• 54:56
  that. I didn't want to do be
• 54:59
  responsible for doing everything, set the book up,
• 55:01
  blah, blah, blah. I want to concentrate on
• 55:03
  writing, although I've learned you can't do that.
• 55:05
  You got to concentrate on marketing just as well, which
• 55:08
  I've learned it. I'm, I'm OK with that.
• 55:11
  You, you have to kind of, and the only reason anybody would do
• 55:16
  this is because they love what they what writing.
• 55:20
  You know, the, the response I get back from my readers is what
• 55:23
  keeps me going. OK, I'll do another book.
• 55:25
  All right. I will say this though, there's
• 55:29
  a, there's a few things I want, I want to elaborate on there
• 55:31
  because it sounds like we're just dissing the publisher at
• 55:33
  this point. No, I, I think your share could
• 55:36
  be higher. I'll say that I, I think it
• 55:38
  should be higher, you know, because you're the author.
• 55:42
  But that's, that's, I'll just leave that there.
• 55:45
  I agree. You spelled it out very, very
• 55:49
  well, which is that obviously the more books you sell the
• 55:52
  better, you know, Like I just quickly calculated just there
• 55:55
  and it was an easy sum and something.
• 55:57
  I'm terrible maths. Let's say you sold like 100,000
• 56:01
  books at $2.00, that's 200,000, you know.
• 56:06
  So there is obviously the more you sell the better it's going
• 56:08
  to be. The other side, which I think is
• 56:12
  important to stress, is those self publishers, yeah, they have
• 56:15
  to do everything themselves from the distribution, getting the
• 56:19
  books made, getting them put out and, and published and and
• 56:23
  released physically and online. Whereas you've got a team taking
• 56:28
  care of that for you. And that's a big part of this
• 56:33
  to, to because obviously, you know that I mean, it's, it's
• 56:36
  professionalism, isn't it? You know, I believe or not, I
• 56:40
  have books self published. Can you buy them?
• 56:44
  No, you used to be able to. Can you get physical copies?
• 56:47
  No, because I don't, you know, I don't have someone to distribute
• 56:50
  that for me, right? I could go down that route.
• 56:53
  But then, you know, as we've outlined in previous shows, you
• 56:58
  know, you have to go for a lot to, to get there to, to get that
• 57:01
  opportunity. So it's, yeah, I, I can see it
• 57:06
  both ways. You know, as as much as it's it
• 57:08
  sucks from a creative standpoint, I I can see the
• 57:11
  benefits of that. Well, and it's, you know, it's
• 57:15
  what the, it's what the author is either willing to put up with
• 57:18
  or wanting to do, or you know, and let's don't.
• 57:23
  I will agree that having this publisher, whether it's Wild
• 57:28
  Rose Press for my earlier books or diversion books for, for this
• 57:31
  new one, having them look at my work and giving me feedback on
• 57:36
  what, what they think could be done is definitely helpful.
• 57:40
  It definitely gives me another set of eyes that I wouldn't have
• 57:42
  otherwise and I think makes the book better there.
• 57:46
  You know, as long as you stand your ground and it's you don't
• 57:48
  end up giving up important part of your of your manuscript.
• 57:52
  I think you actually put together put out a better book.
• 57:55
  One of my constant complaints is that too many self published
• 57:59
  authors haven't had eyes and they published stuff that isn't
• 58:03
  ready to be published or shouldn't have seen the light of
• 58:06
  day in the 1st place or needs more, you know, whatever.
• 58:09
  So it kind of smears that whole Ave. although there are other
• 58:15
  authors that do a remarkable job, you know, and have even
• 58:19
  gone on to be published by major publishers after they've put
• 58:21
  together put out a really great book, you know.
• 58:24
  Have you, have you shared the book with anyone else yet?
• 58:28
  Have you got like feedback aside from the sphere of publishers
• 58:32
  and editors and such? Meaning.
• 58:35
  Who do you mean by any friends? Family, anyone that you have
• 58:38
  shared books with previously? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 58:41
  So I think I mentioned this before.
• 58:43
  I have a very complicated process that I use it before the
• 58:47
  book ever sees anybody else. So I have a set of beta readers
• 58:50
  that read the book in process. OK.
• 58:53
  There's about a dozen and they give me feedback on.
• 58:58
  So I give them to the book at about 3rd, a third of the way
• 59:03
  through, 2/3 the way through, and then all the way through.
• 59:06
  And they have a set of questions that they respond to me and they
• 59:08
  tell me whether it's working and this is working or not.
• 59:11
  And OK, so that's my first one. Then I belong to a writers group
• 59:15
  that that they examine chapter by chapter, not the whole book,
• 59:19
  but enough of it so I can kind of fix what's wrong in there.
• 59:23
  And that's before this ever gets to anything.
• 59:26
  Anybody professional. Then I have a diagnostic editor
• 59:31
  who looks at the book as a whole and gives me her feedback, and
• 59:36
  she's fantastic. And she will say you hit the
• 59:40
  ball out of the park, but here are two or three places where
• 59:43
  you struck out. And she'll show me places in the
• 59:45
  novel that could be strengthened.
• 59:47
  I go through all of that before it ever goes to an agent or a
• 59:51
  publisher or anybody else. And then as we just mentioned,
• 59:55
  the publisher gives me their feedback on what what they think
• 1:00:01
  would make it stronger or better or shorter or tighter, whatever
• 1:00:05
  words, whatever language they want to use.
• 1:00:08
  I'm really interested in your response to this next question.
• 1:00:11
  Where do you think this book ranks within your collection of
• 1:00:17
  books? All the books you've ever
• 1:00:18
  written? Where does this rank?
• 1:00:20
  I think, I think, I think this is, I think this is the best
• 1:00:24
  work I've done. Like most things, the more you
• 1:00:27
  work, you know, the better you get.
• 1:00:28
  But this is this is my writing on a different sphere because in
• 1:00:33
  the past, research has always been a big part of what I do in
• 1:00:36
  terms of my books. Because in addition to writing a
• 1:00:40
  good murder mystery and I, I need to be fair and writing a
• 1:00:45
  fair murder mystery. Other people write better murder
• 1:00:49
  mysteries than I do. But mine are mine are good, but
• 1:00:53
  not great. But what is great about mine and
• 1:00:55
  the research that drives mine is the research about the location,
• 1:01:01
  about the lure of the town that this or the area that just takes
• 1:01:05
  place. The research about the social
• 1:01:08
  issue that's connected to the murder.
• 1:01:10
  You know, like in the last book it was about the MMIW murdered
• 1:01:14
  and missing and murdered indigenous women.
• 1:01:16
  So all of that research is all part of my process as I am
• 1:01:21
  putting the fabric of the novel together.
• 1:01:24
  So I doing the research is a very, that's a very natural
• 1:01:27
  process for me. So when I jumped over to this
• 1:01:30
  historical sphere, even though the research demands were much
• 1:01:34
  greater because everything about the book has to be researched, I
• 1:01:38
  had to research what do their clothes look like?
• 1:01:42
  What do the streets smell like? They have this huge fire that
• 1:01:47
  happened in New York City in September of 1776 that burned
• 1:01:51
  down about somewhere between a third and a half of the entire
• 1:01:54
  town. So and that that's that's part
• 1:01:58
  that's part of the story of the book.
• 1:01:59
  What what was that like? What why did it keep burning?
• 1:02:04
  Why didn't they put the fire out?
• 1:02:06
  You know, all of those things. What kind of person was Nathan
• 1:02:10
  Hale? Nathan Hale was the man hung for
• 1:02:14
  being a spy for George Washington at for your listeners
• 1:02:17
  that may not remember and and we know what his personality was
• 1:02:22
  like. And he had he had a particular
• 1:02:24
  scar on the one side of his face that made him kind of a tough
• 1:02:29
  guy look, even though he was really a mild guy.
• 1:02:31
  Anyway, all of those things had to be meticulously researched so
• 1:02:36
  they could be woven into the historical fiction that I was
• 1:02:40
  creating. That's, I think, what elevates
• 1:02:44
  this book to the next slip. I love the answer as well
• 1:02:47
  because you, you said to say, you said what I expected you to
• 1:02:49
  say, but you know, you're honest too.
• 1:02:51
  It's I, I think whenever you're, I say the same with the podcast.
• 1:02:57
  I'm like people, people ask, where should you start?
• 1:02:59
  I say the latest episode. Work your way backwards.
• 1:03:03
  You know, I can pick out certain bit ones a bit like this stood
• 1:03:05
  out to me in the first year or the second year or third year.
• 1:03:08
  But ideally any artist, any creative, whatever would say
• 1:03:14
  their best work is their most recent work because it's the
• 1:03:17
  most advanced version of their work.
• 1:03:19
  It's where you're at now. And obviously there's always
• 1:03:23
  arguments like, oh, well, this error was better or this book
• 1:03:27
  was better or so on and so forth.
• 1:03:28
  And it's, I think at the end of the day, it's all a matter of of
• 1:03:32
  opinion. I mean, going back to what you
• 1:03:34
  said before, you know your own perception of your own writing.
• 1:03:38
  I mean, it's again, it's, it's just, it's, it's all just
• 1:03:43
  subjective. It's all what people think, you
• 1:03:45
  know, it's. And I mean, I would say that I
• 1:03:49
  can find examples of of I think most authors get better as they
• 1:03:54
  go, but I can think of examples of authors that have gotten to
• 1:03:57
  the point where it becomes kind of like wrote and the later
• 1:04:02
  books are not as good as some earlier books, But generally you
• 1:04:06
  get better as you practice. There's also that thing as well
• 1:04:09
  where I sometimes writers, musicians, whatever, sort of
• 1:04:14
  become a parody of themselves. They start like writing to
• 1:04:18
  appeal to the audience and what they're expecting rather than
• 1:04:22
  just writing what what works for them.
• 1:04:25
  You know, I've had similar criticisms about people say I
• 1:04:28
  should be niche. People say I should only focus
• 1:04:31
  on certain types of things. And you know, I like just the
• 1:04:35
  other day. I mean, granted, the person was
• 1:04:38
  being just a bit mean, but online, surprise, surprise.
• 1:04:41
  But they said like, oh, why don't you only focus on
• 1:04:44
  interviewing musicians? And I'm like, I didn't actually
• 1:04:46
  get the chance to to fully answer, but because it'd be
• 1:04:50
  boring, to be honest. And I love music.
• 1:04:52
  I love musicians. But if I only got to interview
• 1:04:55
  like one particular type of person, it really restricts the
• 1:05:01
  conversations I can have. And the whole point of this
• 1:05:04
  podcast is to interview people, hear about their projects, hear
• 1:05:10
  their life stories, you know, stuff like that.
• 1:05:13
  When you think of like, the most successful podcast out there,
• 1:05:16
  Joe Rogan Experience, he interviews people from all
• 1:05:19
  backgrounds. And this person that was arguing
• 1:05:21
  with me was like, oh, yeah. But, you know, he started in MMA
• 1:05:24
  and I'm like, yeah. But then what happened, he
• 1:05:27
  branched out and became more successful because there's more
• 1:05:31
  of a universal appeal. He didn't stop doing the MMA
• 1:05:34
  stuff. He just did a separate show for
• 1:05:35
  that. And it's like, that's what you
• 1:05:37
  should do. You know, if I had more time, I
• 1:05:40
  would, I would certainly think about doing another show about
• 1:05:44
  something else and 0 in on something.
• 1:05:46
  But again, when you're when you're working, you know, it's
• 1:05:51
  it is what it is. You know, you got a like
• 1:05:53
  unfortunately, I would love for this to be my career, but we're
• 1:05:56
  we're not quite there yet. I think people who don't do what
• 1:06:01
  you and I do with as far as a podcast, they, they completely
• 1:06:04
  underestimate what it takes to put something together.
• 1:06:08
  All they pick up and go, that was nice.
• 1:06:10
  They don't understand it took hours to get that 20 minutes,
• 1:06:13
  half hour, 40 minutes, whatever segment delivered to them.
• 1:06:18
  And talking podcasts, it's been about a year since you started
• 1:06:22
  up. Great stories about great
• 1:06:24
  storytellers. You were kind enough to give me
• 1:06:27
  a chance to do a little plug on one of your shows, so thank you
• 1:06:31
  very much for that. That was fun.
• 1:06:32
  It's exciting for me. It was a first for me.
• 1:06:35
  According to your website, and this is really exciting, your
• 1:06:38
  podcast ranks among the top 50% of podcasts in the US.
• 1:06:43
  That's amazing. What did it mean to achieve
• 1:06:46
  that? It's, it's, it's stunned me when
• 1:06:49
  I, I got that info that that was part of the report when I, I got
• 1:06:54
  the, the analytical report on the podcast that I received at
• 1:06:58
  the end of 25 that said that it was in the top 50%.
• 1:07:02
  I think part of it has to do with longevity.
• 1:07:05
  This is actually, believe it or not, this past month I dropped
• 1:07:09
  the 52nd. So it's the, I'm in the fifth
• 1:07:12
  year of the podcast. So because I do one, I do 1
• 1:07:16
  episode a month, every month around the month.
• 1:07:20
  So this is, I just dropped the and part of it I think is I've
• 1:07:25
  found the niche that is not out there.
• 1:07:28
  And I tell, I tell stories about storytellers and I tell stuff.
• 1:07:33
  So I just finished one. My most recent one is on Isaac
• 1:07:37
  Asimov was one of the three fathers of modern science
• 1:07:40
  fiction and his story is a fascinating story about what he
• 1:07:44
  was able to accomplish and and his quirks in terms of who he
• 1:07:49
  was as a person and how that affected what he did.
• 1:07:52
  So I think, and that's what I do on every podcast on the 1 you
• 1:07:55
  sponsored, you know, that I try to find some interesting aspect
• 1:08:00
  of that person's life that they people would not they've heard
• 1:08:03
  of him. They might even have read their
• 1:08:05
  books, but they really, I didn't know that, you know, if they
• 1:08:09
  haven't listened to the one on JK Rowling, they may be stunned
• 1:08:12
  to find out that, you know, she was a single mom writing this
• 1:08:15
  manuscript and her ex-husband stole the manuscript from her
• 1:08:19
  and tried to sell it. And, you know, it's so I try to
• 1:08:26
  dig for those kinds of things on every author or poet or director
• 1:08:31
  that I that I do. And I think it resonates, or at
• 1:08:35
  least it's starting to resonate with people.
• 1:08:36
  So I'm, I'm pretty thrilled about that.
• 1:08:39
  And obviously, as you mentioned before, it sounds like you've
• 1:08:42
  kind of gained an appreciation for how tough podcasting
• 1:08:45
  actually is. What What have you learned about
• 1:08:47
  podcasting in the last year? Yeah, without a doubt.
• 1:08:51
  And I heads off to you because what so far my podcasts are only
• 1:08:56
  audio, which you know, and I've been getting I've been getting
• 1:08:59
  comments from other people saying, you know, you need to go
• 1:09:02
  video, go go ahead. And so I'm trying to decide, but
• 1:09:06
  again, that will take even more time so.
• 1:09:09
  I consider this a free plug for Riverside.
• 1:09:15
  It's I I've got to say look for for for a program I only
• 1:09:19
  switched to with within the last year.
• 1:09:21
  I can't remember exactly when I made the switch but honestly
• 1:09:25
  it's a game changer. The AI function, as much as it
• 1:09:29
  pains me to say it is really helpful.
• 1:09:31
  Like, I use it entirely for clips and for the show editing
• 1:09:35
  and stuff, and I still go through it and comb it and just
• 1:09:37
  make sure it's there and everything.
• 1:09:39
  But it makes those clips for you.
• 1:09:41
  And if you're going to do a video version, I think it's good
• 1:09:45
  because it gives you what it thinks the audience will be most
• 1:09:49
  interested in. You can edit everything from
• 1:09:52
  like how you crop things, just fixing the audio, just
• 1:09:57
  everything you know, and yeah, to drive traffic towards what
• 1:10:01
  you're doing. It's good for that.
• 1:10:03
  I will say it's made no difference for me as far as
• 1:10:07
  clips are concerned because I did clips for like 4 years, I
• 1:10:12
  think because the show's been going six years.
• 1:10:15
  So I did it for four years. I stopped doing it because of
• 1:10:18
  just how much time it took and it just wasn't going anywhere.
• 1:10:22
  And then I didn't do it for like a year.
• 1:10:24
  And then people were like, oh, you should be doing clips.
• 1:10:26
  And I'm like, I did it for four years.
• 1:10:28
  And I was like, wait, well if I'm going to do it again, let's
• 1:10:30
  try something I've not done before.
• 1:10:32
  Let's use this Riverside program.
• 1:10:34
  Let's use the AI. Let's see.
• 1:10:36
  Made the switch, saved a bit of money from doing that as well,
• 1:10:40
  from going away from Zoom and getting rid of a video editor in
• 1:10:46
  favour of. So yeah, audio editor in favour
• 1:10:49
  of having a video editor and this and honestly, yeah, real
• 1:10:53
  game changer. It's taken a lot less stress off
• 1:10:56
  my plate. Yeah, man, I mean, it's like,
• 1:11:00
  this should be fun as much as possible.
• 1:11:02
  Like sometimes there are laborious things, you know, like
• 1:11:05
  you mentioned it with, with writing a book and editing, like
• 1:11:08
  it's just part of the process, you know?
• 1:11:12
  But that being said, you can streamline things a bit and
• 1:11:16
  still make it a somewhat enjoyable experience.
• 1:11:19
  Like one thing I really like about going back and editing the
• 1:11:23
  podcast is that I can listen back over things and be like,
• 1:11:26
  yeah, that was a great, that was a great podcast.
• 1:11:28
  That was a great show. And, and the AI has figured out
• 1:11:32
  what maybe some of the better conversations were and and it's
• 1:11:35
  just like great, fantastic. Moving it forwards about your
• 1:11:39
  podcasts. What's what's been the the main
• 1:11:42
  feedback you've been getting about the show, Good and bad,
• 1:11:45
  Just anything. Well, I think one of the things
• 1:11:50
  that people really like is the podcasts are all short.
• 1:11:53
  So they can, it's their podcast. Each episode's 10 minutes, 12
• 1:11:57
  minutes, 11 minutes, something like that.
• 1:11:59
  So they can, it's a quick listen, which they kind of
• 1:12:02
  enjoy. There's usually humor involved
• 1:12:04
  in the in some aspect of it or kind of a quirky kind kind of
• 1:12:10
  humor. I've gotten good comments on my
• 1:12:13
  podcast voice and lots of people go, you know, you're a great
• 1:12:17
  voice for podcasts. I never really thought of it
• 1:12:19
  that way. So I that's kind of a, that's
• 1:12:21
  kind of a you do. I I, like I said, I mean it, I
• 1:12:26
  understand I don't do audio books for this reason, because
• 1:12:29
  of just like how long it would take there was sorry, side note,
• 1:12:32
  So I, I'm a voice actor as well, actor, etcetera, right?
• 1:12:35
  And I apply for stuff every day or audition every day.
• 1:12:40
  I always turn down audiobooks and people have said, Oh, but
• 1:12:43
  your voice should be great for this.
• 1:12:44
  It'd be good for this. And you know what, they're
• 1:12:46
  probably right. But when you've got to do 8000
• 1:12:50
  pages in some cases, I'm like, I don't want to do that.
• 1:12:55
  And no amount of money and unless you're going to pay me
• 1:12:57
  like a million or big figures, I'm not doing it right.
• 1:13:01
  Because if it was for a lot of money, I'd be like, you know
• 1:13:03
  what? I'll do it.
• 1:13:04
  I'll figure I'll just take 3 mums off and I'll do it.
• 1:13:09
  The problem is the pay is for the for the audio version.
• 1:13:12
  It's pretty similar to what it is for the author.
• 1:13:14
  It's like. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, I, I
• 1:13:17
  had a a wonderful woman on the show years ago called Nancy
• 1:13:20
  Peterson, who does it for a living.
• 1:13:23
  And the one thing I got from that conversation is that she's
• 1:13:29
  adjusted everything to do that. But it is a lot honour.
• 1:13:34
  Like it's, it's a lot of energy, it's a lot of time.
• 1:13:38
  It's you, you deep dive into it. It's like with you in your
• 1:13:41
  writing, like you've clearly every time you've got a book,
• 1:13:44
  you're like, right, right. In this book, we're committing
• 1:13:47
  with this, however long it takes, editing, publishing, it
• 1:13:50
  said, I'm there for the full journey.
• 1:13:52
  And it's only really till the end that you start kind of
• 1:13:55
  reaping the rewards of that. So you you have to love it
• 1:13:59
  podcast, you know, people number one reason people ask me or say,
• 1:14:03
  if you ask me why I do this show, I do it because I love it.
• 1:14:06
  Like I want to see it succeed one day if that's ever going to
• 1:14:11
  happen. But even if it doesn't know
• 1:14:13
  that, I always did this because I love to interview people.
• 1:14:16
  I love podcasting, I love hearing stories and telling
• 1:14:19
  stories. That's the main reason above all
• 1:14:21
  else SO. And that's as it should be that
• 1:14:24
  the I do my podcast. Yes, it's all part of my
• 1:14:27
  platform. Yes, it's part of a way to get
• 1:14:30
  the word out. But I do it because I think
• 1:14:33
  finding these authors or directors and finding what
• 1:14:37
  people don't know about them and telling that story makes them a
• 1:14:41
  more human person. Make, you know, it's more than
• 1:14:44
  just a name on the page. It's.
• 1:14:46
  Oh really? So that's, that's the fun part
• 1:14:50
  for me, you know, And it's, it's another form of writing
• 1:14:54
  different from yours. Mine, all mine is all scripted
• 1:14:57
  ahead of time. So everything has to be written
• 1:15:00
  in advance of when I give the podcast.
• 1:15:02
  So I have pages. So it's also keeps sharpening my
• 1:15:05
  writing skills to keep it, make sure it's tight, make sure I
• 1:15:08
  don't have extra blah, blah, blah, blah built in because
• 1:15:12
  people don't want that. So that that that's an advantage
• 1:15:15
  as well. All right, couple final
• 1:15:17
  questions for you, Randy, to round off the show, completely
• 1:15:20
  unrelated to today's show. You know what's coming.
• 1:15:23
  But hey, it'd be interesting to see if they're different from
• 1:15:25
  last time. And there's a new question in
• 1:15:27
  there that I've only started asking people in the last year.
• 1:15:30
  So let's have some fun with this.
• 1:15:33
  What's the worst advice you've ever received?
• 1:15:35
  The worst advice As an author, what's the worst advice I've
• 1:15:38
  ever received? Doesn't have to be as an author,
• 1:15:40
  could just be anything in life first in that comes to mind.
• 1:15:46
  The worst advice as an author that I've ever received was
• 1:15:51
  like, you should give this up. You're never going to.
• 1:15:56
  You're never going to achieve anything.
• 1:15:57
  You know, it's too hard. The whole thing is too hard.
• 1:16:01
  Don't spend your time doing. Don't commit your time doing
• 1:16:04
  this. Let me ask you this just as a
• 1:16:05
  follow up before you continue. That person that said that to
• 1:16:10
  you, are they a published author?
• 1:16:13
  They're an agent. All right.
• 1:16:15
  What was their reason? What was their reasoning behind
• 1:16:18
  that? He didn't think I had the chops
• 1:16:20
  to be able to. Well, I, I, I want to be fair.
• 1:16:23
  He, he didn't think my writing was good enough.
• 1:16:25
  That's definitely part of it. He didn't think that where I was
• 1:16:29
  going was, there's enough readers to make it worthwhile.
• 1:16:33
  You know, you have to go where the, where the audience is, all
• 1:16:37
  that kind of stuff. And I wanted to write what I
• 1:16:39
  wanted to write and said, well, I wouldn't do that if I were
• 1:16:42
  you. I, you know, and I, I guess my I
• 1:16:47
  in response to what that bad advice I got, I kind of steered
• 1:16:51
  halfway. So I try to make sure that what
• 1:16:54
  I have in there is interesting now.
• 1:16:56
  Yeah, here's a perfect example. I know going in that there is
• 1:17:00
  not the built in audience for historical thriller that there
• 1:17:03
  is for mystery. Mysteries are much larger.
• 1:17:06
  You know, it's the mysteries are second only to romance in terms
• 1:17:10
  of the number of readers that are out there.
• 1:17:12
  And histories are pretty far down the list.
• 1:17:14
  So I don't expect to find the, the as wide a range for, for the
• 1:17:20
  historical thriller that I do for the mysteries.
• 1:17:23
  But but I love, I love the whole aspect of the history part.
• 1:17:27
  So that's why I went ahead and did that anyway.
• 1:17:29
  And I'm hoping by going with a major publisher I might negate
• 1:17:33
  that the the numbers game. We'll see.
• 1:17:35
  I don't know. I wish you the best of luck with
• 1:17:38
  it. What's the best advice you've
• 1:17:40
  ever received? That's the best advice I ever
• 1:17:44
  received. Well, what?
• 1:17:47
  Going back to my education process when I was working for
• 1:17:51
  my PhD. But people haven't.
• 1:17:54
  If people don't know that there's a ruling difficult
• 1:17:57
  process. I don't know if it's who would
• 1:18:01
  care about the statistic, but 99% of everybody who starts in a
• 1:18:06
  PhD program does not finish. Jesus.
• 1:18:11
  So the numbers are even worse than the NFL.
• 1:18:13
  You know, it's just it's hard and it is very grueling.
• 1:18:17
  And I was 2/3 of the way through having put a lot of money into
• 1:18:24
  this trying to decide seeing a huge dissertation in front of
• 1:18:28
  me. And I'm working full time and
• 1:18:30
  part of this and one of my professor, you know, and I'm
• 1:18:33
  doubting I don't is this going to pay off?
• 1:18:35
  Is it is it worth it? Do you know I got to sacrifice
• 1:18:39
  time with my family to get all this done The best, one of the
• 1:18:43
  best advice. He he said, look, I have
• 1:18:45
  confidence in you. We had already talked about in
• 1:18:48
  the group at 99% not finishing. It's called Abd all but
• 1:18:52
  dissertation. So he, he said you'll, you'll
• 1:18:56
  get across the finish line. You have the determination and
• 1:19:00
  the stamina to, to get this thing done.
• 1:19:02
  So don't, don't doubt yourself, don't look back.
• 1:19:05
  Just keep moving forward. And that's what we did for
• 1:19:10
  everything. Thanks for sharing.
• 1:19:12
  I appreciate that. I think I know the answer to
• 1:19:14
  this next question, but I I still want to ask just in case.
• 1:19:18
  Obviously off the back of what you just said, you know, Yeah,
• 1:19:21
  you're a doctor, man. I introduced you as a doctor.
• 1:19:24
  Both. Both previous times.
• 1:19:26
  I think I did on the first one. I don't.
• 1:19:27
  I don't know. I don't recall, did I?
• 1:19:29
  OK. I think you did, yes.
• 1:19:33
  How come you you don't use the title on your books or you know
• 1:19:37
  what when you're advertising online?
• 1:19:39
  That's a very good question. Now part of if you see my
• 1:19:41
  website, you'll, you'll see a reference to Doctor, but it's
• 1:19:45
  not it's not headline. And I have discussed this with
• 1:19:50
  both the public, both publishers, both times in fact.
• 1:19:54
  And it the discussion was even greater because this is a
• 1:19:58
  historical book as opposed to a mystery that the response to the
• 1:20:03
  publisher before said it makes no difference.
• 1:20:07
  You want to put it on there, it's OK.
• 1:20:09
  It's probably not going to help. Nobody's going to read a book,
• 1:20:12
  nobody's going to read a mystery because a doctor is in front of
• 1:20:15
  the name. I said that's that's just not a
• 1:20:17
  draw with the with the history. It's a little different.
• 1:20:20
  And their advice what which I agreed to was that if they
• 1:20:26
  thought they were, they feared the doctor would mislead people.
• 1:20:30
  In this sense, As I said before, this is not a historical piece
• 1:20:36
  of scholarship. This is not historical
• 1:20:39
  scholarship about the time I deliberately play with places
• 1:20:43
  and dates and facts as part of my fiction, even though it is
• 1:20:48
  largely grounded in historical reality.
• 1:20:51
  They were afraid the Doctor would tend to lead people to
• 1:20:54
  believe that it was more history than less fiction.
• 1:20:59
  I hate to say it, but I agree. I don't, I feel like having,
• 1:21:04
  having your, your doctorate on there might stand against you.
• 1:21:11
  And I, I think it's silly because it's, it's your title,
• 1:21:13
  it's who it's who you are. But at the same time, you know,
• 1:21:18
  like I can see that the book in front of me and it literally
• 1:21:21
  says it's a novel. But you, you do, there was the
• 1:21:24
  decision to put that there to, to make sure people know it's a
• 1:21:28
  novel and it's not, it's not. But then there's other things
• 1:21:31
  like if you go to the shop, it's going to be in the non fiction.
• 1:21:33
  So the fiction section, you go online, it's going to be on the
• 1:21:36
  fiction section, you know, But it's, I don't know, interesting.
• 1:21:41
  Well, when I some people get a doctorate and, and everything
• 1:21:45
  they ever do says doctor, this doctor, that doctor, that's
• 1:21:49
  never been. That's not why I got the
• 1:21:51
  doctorate. It's not what I do with the
• 1:21:52
  doctorate. The doctorate gave me research
• 1:21:56
  and educational skills and backgrounds I didn't have
• 1:21:58
  before. That's what I want.
• 1:21:59
  I'm still, in my opinion, I'm still benefiting from what I
• 1:22:02
  learned that then in my writing life now.
• 1:22:06
  So because much of the research skills I honed during my PhD
• 1:22:11
  time is what I use and adapt for, for my fiction in order to
• 1:22:16
  make sure that it's accurate and as as much as I can to the point
• 1:22:20
  and what I generally tell, like I, you know, as I mentioned to
• 1:22:22
  you earlier, I do a lot of speaking.
• 1:22:25
  I've got you'll, you'll appreciate this.
• 1:22:26
  So I've got a gig going for the I have, I think I have 25
• 1:22:30
  scheduled so far in the next couple of months.
• 1:22:32
  It's called 5 reasons we won the American Revolution.
• 1:22:36
  And it's not what you learned in school and they're not what you
• 1:22:39
  learned in school. And I give five different
• 1:22:41
  reasons of and one of those reasons has to do with the
• 1:22:44
  culprit ring that most people don't know about anyway.
• 1:22:47
  They always say, well, how do I introduce you?
• 1:22:48
  And I, my answer is the very first time you introduced me,
• 1:22:52
  you can call me doctor ready. And then from then on, it's just
• 1:22:55
  Randy and that's fits my personality.
• 1:22:58
  It's it's kind of how I interact with my with my participants and
• 1:23:02
  stuff. And I'm comfortable with that.
• 1:23:04
  That's. Well, it's it's just interesting
• 1:23:08
  as well. Like, you know, our
• 1:23:08
  conversations, it started off doctor and you're like, yes, you
• 1:23:12
  know, and you'd sign off as Randy and you you said I'm Randy
• 1:23:16
  and I'm like, OK, I'll call you Randy.
• 1:23:19
  That is a bit like, is this disrespectful?
• 1:23:23
  I don't know. I'm going to go with how you
• 1:23:26
  react and it's OK. It's interesting.
• 1:23:29
  I mean, like I just had a professor from from a university
• 1:23:34
  that I used to attend years ago on the show and I always called
• 1:23:37
  him by his first name because that's how he introduced
• 1:23:40
  himself. I can't recall if I called him
• 1:23:45
  professor. I do remember there were times
• 1:23:47
  at uni when I would say professor, doctor, etcetera.
• 1:23:51
  And it was interesting to see. I call it like I say it who had
• 1:23:56
  an ego and who didn't, because some people would be like you,
• 1:23:59
  you call me, you must call me this.
• 1:24:01
  And other people were like, and Ayo, since his name, I, I really
• 1:24:05
  get the impression he doesn't care either way.
• 1:24:08
  It's yes, it's there, but like, So what?
• 1:24:11
  It's just interesting. What's the biggest life lesson
• 1:24:14
  you've learned so far? Any.
• 1:24:16
  Oh, the biggest life lesson, the biggest life lesson probably has
• 1:24:20
  to do with family. If you follow me, you probably
• 1:24:24
  know family is really important to me.
• 1:24:26
  I just came back from 9 days with my immediate extended
• 1:24:31
  family, a three day cruise and we just spent, I just spent two
• 1:24:34
  days with in Universal with my 22 and 19 year old grand
• 1:24:40
  grandchildren. It's wonderful, but I'm
• 1:24:43
  exhausted. And then two more days I leave
• 1:24:47
  for four days to spend with my five brothers.
• 1:24:52
  But I'm I'm one of seven brothers.
• 1:24:54
  My old we talked about four of my oldest brothers past.
• 1:24:56
  So there's six of us left. So we're all we'd get together
• 1:25:00
  every six months or so. So family is very important to
• 1:25:03
  me and the life. I think the most important life
• 1:25:06
  lesson is that you know you, you can't let small hurts or
• 1:25:11
  anything get in the way of maintaining the relationship
• 1:25:15
  with those people that are closer to you than who you love.
• 1:25:18
  And most important, not today, just this week I lost a really
• 1:25:21
  important friend of mine few years older, died of Parkinson's
• 1:25:27
  and his death reminds me that you don't get these times back.
• 1:25:31
  You know, I, I really did not have the time to spend 2 days in
• 1:25:35
  universal. I should be home working on
• 1:25:39
  propping up everything for the book.
• 1:25:41
  But I realized I wasn't going to get that time back with my
• 1:25:43
  grandchildren, that we weren't going to have another chance
• 1:25:47
  where we get to hang out and just talk about everything for
• 1:25:50
  two days or waiting forever in line.
• 1:25:52
  Oh my God for the roller coasters.
• 1:25:56
  What if the relationship is 1 sided?
• 1:25:59
  Yeah, I we have that. We have a problem of that in in
• 1:26:02
  my extended family as well. I think my answer is that if my
• 1:26:08
  answer is you still keep trying to reach out, doesn't mean it's
• 1:26:14
  reciprocated. It doesn't mean but you keep,
• 1:26:18
  you keep letting the other party know.
• 1:26:21
  In this case, in my family, it's a father to a son that I'm here
• 1:26:25
  for you. When you're ready, I'm, I'm
• 1:26:27
  going to be here for you. I don't, I'm not.
• 1:26:29
  I love you. I might not, I might not
• 1:26:31
  appreciate what you're doing, how you're acting.
• 1:26:33
  Now, that doesn't diminish the fact that I love you.
• 1:26:37
  And I guess the most important thing is if you keep the door
• 1:26:42
  open, if you let the person that is in your family that you know,
• 1:26:48
  that you still love them, even though you don't love what
• 1:26:51
  they're doing or the choices they're making at the time, that
• 1:26:57
  is still the right thing for you to do, even if it doesn't
• 1:27:01
  produce the change that you hoped that would happen.
• 1:27:04
  You know, you should be able to show love to those people, even
• 1:27:07
  if that love is never, never responded, even if, you know,
• 1:27:12
  children aren't always and parents, but it works both ways.
• 1:27:16
  You know, sometimes they're a pain in the ass.
• 1:27:19
  I, I, I get it, you know, and, and I don't pretend that I'm
• 1:27:25
  right. I'm just this is that this is,
• 1:27:27
  that's my lived experience. I don't have other people's
• 1:27:31
  family, so I don't really know. And I know of people who have
• 1:27:35
  families are so horrible that they can't be with them because
• 1:27:41
  they're afraid they'll bring them down.
• 1:27:44
  And I and I respect that. It's a hard one.
• 1:27:48
  I I agree with your sentiments about keeping the door open.
• 1:27:53
  It's something that I've really struggled with over the years in
• 1:28:01
  as much as like when it is 1 sided, I'm like, well, why am I
• 1:28:04
  making this effort when I'm just not getting anything back, like
• 1:28:07
  or what I'm getting back is not what I'd hoped.
• 1:28:11
  And you know, I think it's a fairpoint to say like, well,
• 1:28:16
  still leaving the door open. And, you know, I don't think I'd
• 1:28:18
  ever be the sort of person who would shut the door.
• 1:28:20
  And unless it's like this person has done something unforgivable.
• 1:28:26
  Thank you for for that insight, that advice.
• 1:28:29
  I appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:28:31
  And the appearance on the show. It's, it's been a pleasure
• 1:28:35
  having you back. Randy, excited.
• 1:28:37
  Do you know, I, I really think this, this book's going to do
• 1:28:40
  well for you. This is an interesting departure
• 1:28:44
  from what you normally do. You know, it's, it's always a
• 1:28:48
  step into the unknown, but you've, you know, you've done
• 1:28:50
  your research, you've really gone for this.
• 1:28:53
  I really hope it works out for you really well.
• 1:28:57
  And yeah, just a real pleasure having you on the show as
• 1:28:59
  always. Thank you so much.
• 1:29:01
  Thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed our
• 1:29:03
  conversation. It's amazing.
• 1:29:06
  We've had three different conversations and three times.
• 1:29:08
  Every one of them is different and have all kinds of things to
• 1:29:11
  talk about, so wish you the best.
• 1:29:14
  Till the next time and through the listeners of the Christian
• 1:29:17
  Wave podcast, I'll make sure to provide links to how you can
• 1:29:20
  find Randy online and purchase his books.
• 1:29:22
  And as as we're speaking, I'm going to probably release this
• 1:29:28
  episode next week. So it will be, I guess, a couple
• 1:29:31
  of weeks before the book is released.
• 1:29:33
  When, when do you have an official date?
• 1:29:36
  June 9, June 9th. There we go.
• 1:29:39
  So look out for that. Abigail Trench, Randy Overbeck
• 1:29:44
  June 9th To all the listeners of the Christian Reef Podcast, I
• 1:29:47
  hope you enjoyed this show as much as I did.
• 1:29:49
  And as always, be safe, be well, and I'll see you all in the next
• 1:29:54
  one.