Latest / Books4Guys / Balancing Tech, Writing, and Creativity | Sam Robb on Storytelling, Sci-Fi, and Publishing

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Balancing Tech, Writing, and Creativity | Sam Robb on Storytelling, Sci-Fi, and Publishing · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool, cool.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a Steelers fan?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, I don't follow football, but when the Steelers are playing, yeah, I follow football.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if you're in that city, you gotta pay attention a little bit just with the and the draft was there.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot the draft was there.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was nuts.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: My office is like a mile from the stadium.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: So uh a couple of times walked down just to see what was going on, and it was it was insane, it was pretty cool.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, on TV I was like, holy cow, there's so many people there, right?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, which is wild.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm in Nashville and they hosted the draft year, I guess like right before COVID, and everyone still talks about it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, it was the most people we've ever seen on Broadway.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, we don't know if we want to have it again because it was kind of crazy, but it was cool.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've been down to Nashville.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that you would look at the draft crowd and think that was that was big.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can have big crowds, anyways.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is huge down there.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I loved my wife and I went for a walk with a friend of ours, just walking down the street, and you've got all this music playing, and you're just going from one venue to the other, and they had their their you know front garage doors open so you could hear everything.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was awesome.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: People always ask us, they're like, hey, so you live there, surely you don't like go to Broadway all the time.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, we don't go all the time, but we definitely go because it's just great.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's music on every level that it's always live music, no matter where you walk into.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just a fun time to go hang out and enjoy an afternoon or a weekend.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I'm glad you've experienced it because it's I mean, it's it's a cool place.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did, dude, to talk with you.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: We um I obviously we we came in contact, I don't even remember how, but it's probably been a couple of months now.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: As uh you've been you've been introducing me to some some fantastic authors.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I you sent over one of your books.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And man, I would love to know.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you you do a lot of different things.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You you have a professional job, um, and you're in the technology space.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a technology recruiter, so kind of side of things.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you got, Gone?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just curious.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm one of those guys that's probably calling you every week, like, hey man, I got another job for you if you want it.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But no, and you, but you author, you've written tons of stories and books and would just love to know, you know, just kind of your story.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get into to actually I mean, you probably always enjoyed writing, but like, where did the passion come from to start publishing and start getting these stories out there for people to to enjoy?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you were right.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've always enjoyed writing.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things, even when it when I was very young, I I thought I would like to be a writer someday.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Life kind of gets in the way, you know, I spent some time in the Navy, then went into technology.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But as a, you know, just as you know, a blogger, right?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would talk about you know what's going on in the world and comment on news, and then I would sometimes just have little ideas, little bits of story that I would write.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of my outlet for a long time.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh I'd say around 20, maybe, maybe about 2016, 2017, started uh reading uh Larry Korea.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's a writer, he does Monster Hunter International.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: We've had Larry on the podcast.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I know he's in the Pittsburgh area too.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: He well, no, I think he's uh Salt Lake, out in Salt Lake City area.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: But he's a big Steelers fan.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think he was yeah, he's from Pennsylvania.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's he is a fantastic guy, but uh started reading his blog and it he was talking about his writing process, and uh one of the things that he talked about was uh uh an acronym called BYCHOC, button chair hand on keyboard.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So he's like, Yeah, you just have to, if you're going to write, you have to treat it like a job.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have to sit down and spend your time writing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was like, okay, I've never given that a shot.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'll go ahead and try and do that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and over the course of a couple of years, I did.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I sat down, I finished uh first novel that I may immediately took and put in a trunk.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I may come back to it someday.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh then wrote then went on to uh work on some other some other stuff.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then about uh 20 uh I'd say about 2019, 2020, I had a a friend online who was editing a an anthology, and he was like, Hey, yeah, I'm looking for stories for this anthology.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I've got one I could send you.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ended up being you know, getting published in that anthology.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: That was my first official, you know, real publishing thing.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was like, hey, yeah, this is uh, you know, that that first hit was really, really good.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: I really liked it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to keep keep looking for it, and then found a a group of folks through Valerie Korea and his his uh writing podcast, uh The Writer Dojo.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: I found a bunch of other kind of newbie writers and uh got together with them, formed a group a writing group called the Alpha Mercs, where we critiqued each other's work and passed it around and worked to improve each you know each other and improve ourselves.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that was about the same time that Rackantour Press started doing anthologies.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so a lot of us were hey, this is an awesome opportunity.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have somebody we want to write, we want to write stories.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a publisher who's telling us I, you know, we want stories, we want uh you know, science fiction stories about space marines, we want fantasy stories about a goblin market telling us exactly what to write, and we are like, fantastic.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go ahead and do that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Starte publishing, publishing short stories, getting getting noticed by publishers, ended up turning uh a couple of those short stories into novels, or at least you know, the ideas behind them into novels.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I've got a collection, a bunch of short stories, a uh collection of flash fiction I did in conjunction with uh a friend of mine, Cedar Sanderson, and uh two novels out.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, yeah, Sense of Murder is out now.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: It uh it just published and released on on Amazon a few days early.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, that is incredible.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I've got that one on the Books for Guys website.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, I got that one on there this week so people can find it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, and Sam, I I got this wrong.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking of a different Larry, but I I have had Larry on the podcast, but there's another Larry, and I'll send when I pull his name up, I'll send him to you because he's also in Pittsburgh because his background when we did our interview was actually a Pittsburgh Steelers background.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: He writes a similar style book, so that's where I was getting a little confused, but I'll send him to you.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, Larry was actually one of the first guests, a Correa back in October, I think, on our podcast.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: So wow, yeah, very cool.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But no, so Sam, like I can hear your passion in in your in this in your writing, and I can just tell it's something you love to do.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do you personally, you know, I'm always curious of this because I've talked with people who are full-time authors and speakers, and I've talked with people who, you know, that's not their main job, you know, it's kind of a a side work, and maybe it does turn into to a main role one day, which would be super cool.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's something you'd be like, yeah.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would love that.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: How do you balance your time?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do you organize your personal life to be able to be a high achiever in in the professional space, but also be able to write books and help others with this other world that you spend time in?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's actually a uh a meme that I like.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a picture of a candle, and uh it's it's burning at one end, and it says what my what my uh what my doctor said I should be doing.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's lit at both ends, and it says uh what he's afraid I'm doing.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's fires all through it, little fires in what's actually happening.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's my life.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's little fires all all over the place.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It keeps me off the streets, so I guess that's a good thing.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, uh, I spend a lot I spend a lot of time.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just working all the time.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's really what it comes down to.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Between my day job, which is doing software development, I wake up in the morning, I sit down, I spend about two hours maybe working on Raccour press stuff.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I work as a publicist for them, and then I'll you know, roll into either working remote or or going into the office for for the day, spend the day working heads down, come home, and then sit down and either continue with with raccoon press stuff or uh you know work on whatever it is that that I have to do, you know, my own writing, trying to fit in into that, you know, helping my wife with you know stuff around the house, taking care of, you know, taking care of the kids.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: My kids are grown, but they're they're but you know, I've got two daughters that are home from college and one that's getting ready for a wedding, so there's always something going on.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's a a a big part of it is uh I think for for me, one of the things that helps is uh a couple of years ago started started walking.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I can get out, I can clear my head, I try and do that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um my goal to do that is at least three to four times a week.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Even if I can't do that, I do go into the office two to three times a week.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that means I'm in I'm in the car, I can turn on the radio and listen just listen to music and let my thoughts wander, or I can turn turn off the radio and just be alone with my thoughts.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So get that decompression time is really important, I think.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what allows me to keep keep working at this pace.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple things uh I want to unpack there.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: One is I'm a big proponent of walking.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have a dog, so that helps.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's got um I work from home as well.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's a pit bull that's two years old, tons of energy.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if he doesn't get his mile and a half loop walk in the morning, then he's probably bugging me, and I'm having a really hard time quiet while doing calls and and podcasts and such.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that helps.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Big proponent of that because you're right.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm similar to you.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm up at five, putting in a couple hours of work, doing my normal job at night doing the same thing, but having those just little breaks throughout the day that you sometimes have to force yourself to take to just go breathe, just put the phone down, see the trees, the sky, and just kind of get get refreshed.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a bad thing.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you're doing something you really like to do, you know, it feels good too.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's it's just something you want to you want to do.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I'm sure you're the same way.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to get up and start working.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the first thing I jump into, and that night I'll turn a game on in the background.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I love sitting there like figuring out, you know, how to improve this or that.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so it's not you know, I think a lot of people they talk about burnout, but you don't really get that when you're doing something you really like to do.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's really cool that you're doing your passion and and having fun with it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that is that is your hobby, you know.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that's how to do.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I like to work on this.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the other thing that's really nice is that software development is a very logical, problem-solving part of your brain.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Story is a much more is a different creative side of your brain.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: The stuff that I do with Rack and Tor Press, a lot of that is there's a little bit of creativity involved, but a lot of that is very just very detailed work, just checking things off and and moving down through the list.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: So depending on on where I am and what I'm what I'm doing, just moving from one task, you know, like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a break from looking at code and I'm going to look at, you know, what my checklists are for this book, and then I'm done with that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go spend some time working on the short story or whatever.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Being able to switch back and forth like that with different tasks that engage your brain differently, I think is is what works for me that lets me keep going because I'm taking I'm taking a break by by doing some different type of work.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Just like you said.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, exactly.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I got your website pulled up here, Sam, and I'll like my first thought when I was looking at some of your covers, I was like, these look like awesome Xbox video game covers.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh yeah, they're books, but I'm like, I bet these could be turned into a game really easily and one I would enjoy.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: But Sam, how do you come up with, and I know it's like a creative thing, and it's, you know, hey, I, you know, take time and these stories and characters come to my head.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned the term, you know, panther and plotter.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the difference between those, but you know, kind of a two-part question.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: How do you come up with your stories?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what where do you get the inspiration from for characters, for the environment?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And do you plot it out, or do you just kind of fly by the seat of your pants and let it come to you organically?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna reverse that and answer the first second one first.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: I am a pantser, but I am trying to become a hybrid.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: They some people call that a plancer, right?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to plot out the story and and have fun with it as it as it goes.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe take it in a direction that I didn't originally plan, but I do want to at least get to the point where I have a I have a plan for where I'm going to go.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: As for ideas, uh, they can honestly come from anywhere.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of a lot of times it's just you know uh a matter of letting different things pinball in your brain.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: There, there's often just one inciting thought or one thing that you see.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's another thing that I that I like about walks or reading outside of, you know, I I like to read a lot of nonfiction these days uh because there's a lot of lot of ideas in there.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of weird things that happened in the world, but there's it's almost always just taking something that looks a little bit or looks strange or is strange and saying, What if?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So sigils is a book that I set in uh in Pittsburgh.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually uh behind me is a is a building that no longer exists in Pittsburgh.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's now being it's been turned into a uh set of condos, but you can see there's a little table back there in the middle of this old abandoned uh uh shell of a building.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually did some run writing for sigils back there.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I sat down with my laptop and did some writing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a story about graffiti artists in Pittsburgh and uh you know, a young man who writes you know his tag in the wrong place at the wrong time and attracts attention of something something else.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: But that all came from being on a walk and seeing some graffiti that was under a bridge and it was a huge, huge circle that someone had spray painted under, I mean, easily like 20 feet tall.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea how they managed to do it, but it's this huge circle and written above it in French, of all things.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why French, it said my French stinks, but it is uh uh something something like this is not a door.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked at that, I knew enough French to know what it was saying, and I'm like, dude, this is totally a door.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is exactly what somebody who so now I'm like, okay, we've got doors under bridges, where do they go?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that kind of all bubbled together with with some other stuff.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had this this idea of this if you've got doors, you've got people trying to open them and people trying to keep them closed.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, and from that, you know, kind of blossoms this idea that that, oh yeah, there's it's uh, you know, obviously door, you know, circles, fairy circles, it's doors, doors to fairy, and there are things that try to come through, and there are people in Pittsburgh, obviously graffiti artists, because that's where we're showing up, that are trying to keep these doors shut.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's basically just taking that that one spark of an idea and letting it pinball off of your consciousness until you until you say, Yeah, okay, this is cool.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: I can run with this.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And characters, a lot of times, sometimes the characters come full-blown, like, I'm going to write a story about this guy.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Other times it's okay, well, this is the story I want to tell.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of guy would be, for example, what kind of guy would be an individual who would take keeping the doorways in Pittsburgh shut very seriously?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like, yeah, Marine, Marine, ex-Marine.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: He actually went into the service.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: He joined as a Marine because he wanted to get training with uh weapons and explosives and whatnot, because sometimes you need those.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't he didn't want to do anything halfway.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to know exactly what he was doing.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: So now that now I've got these characters in my head, and once you get to that point, they just kind of again pinball off of each other, bounce off of each other.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You throw the situation out there.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: How would this guy react?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know exactly how he would react, and that's bad, and now that's going to cause complications, but that's okay because that's fun to write.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, no, that's awesome.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting here, you know, when I've when you're talking about like graffiti doors underneath the bridge.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to a podcast the other day, and it was like the crazier this world gets, the more he was like, I feel like I'm in a simulation, and that's how I feel.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, some of this stuff, you know, specifically that you write about, you know, it's fun, it's entertaining, but like sometimes it feels like, and I guess that's the point to write something that feels real and that you can escape, you know, normal life from.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also like, again, like I guess with me, now with AI and technology advancements, like I didn't used to be as interested in like sci-fi fantasy or things that just seem too far out of reach.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's almost like, like, man, there's gotta be aliens just like right out there.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: This universe is so we're so small in the grand scheme of things, and then like just stories that I'm like, man, some of this stuff seems closer to being real than not.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's for me, it's led me to being more interested and like open to reading more of these style of books or watching these style of movies just because I'm like, huh, that doesn't seem like too far-fetched, you know, from yeah, experiencing now.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us have a tiny little square in our pocket that can connect us with anybody in the world.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: We can look up things.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: My wife and I do it all the time.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: I refer to it as my external brain pack, right?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I can pull out my phone and Google things that I never would have even thought to look up, you know, because I'm like, I wonder exactly how, you know, how do or how do birds migrate?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: How, why do they form those Vs or what?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, you know what?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have to wonder that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can just look it up and and find and go on this deep dive with you know, reading about biology and and all this other stuff.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh again, like I said, you you read these weird things, these, and it doesn't even have to be all that weird, just surprising to you.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden you've got ideas in your head, like, wow, I wonder what about this?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I find myself doing that more and more every day, which is fantastic, I guess.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was actually gonna ask you about your background because like a whole separate conversation we could have, but I'm I'm always been intrigued and fascinated by like abandoned buildings and abandoned, like just like what what was this building?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: What did it look like in its prime?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: How many people were there?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: What was on?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: What did the energy look like?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just see these buildings that have graffiti all over them, and uh you're like, man, what goes on in there now?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I'm asleep, what's going on in there?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is it bad?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is it good?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: But like, what what did it look like 60 years ago?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I love learning about, or kind of like y'all go down a rabbit hole and just start googling abandoned office buildings or hotels or warehouses.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's super cool that you get a little inspiration from like that particular spot because I I could spend hours in there just like wondering, you know, what this place was like.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I know Pittsburgh, I learned a lot about the graffiti part of Pittsburgh just from again the draft as they were talking about on the bridges trying to clean it up a little bit, it seemed.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's there's a really it's interesting too.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: When I when I started writing sigils, I did a like I said, did a deep dive reading a lot of books about graffiti culture.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's it's one of those things like when you're when you're an author, 95% of what you read and research doesn't actually make it in the books, but it's it's there lurking under the surface.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh just finding out, right, that that there was this culture in New York and Chicago and LA, these different graffiti cultures.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then a lot of the books that I that I read would talk about like, oh yeah, and there were there were less you know, not as big groups or cultures uh out there in places like Pittsburgh.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was always Pittsburgh getting a mention is like, oh yeah, if you're if you're looking for if you're looking for a little bit of different sort of graffiti, go to Pittsburgh.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, how in the world did we ever begin?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it got tied into In Pittsburgh, it got tied into the punk rock scene, which is an entirely different way to go.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's just all sorts of interesting stuff that when you start reading about history and start reading about the world and what's going on around you, you know, forget the politics.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: The politics and all the the oh my goodness, we're all going to die.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Step back, go back to like the 70s and read about Pittsburgh graffiti culture and Pittsburgh punk culture.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you'll just be fascinated with this stuff that's you've never even realized and it's lurking right under the surface.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, man, I wish I could have been part of that.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're probably about to send me down another rabbit hole today now.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Look at Pittsburgh graffiti, which my neighbor's from Pittsburgh, he's gonna love.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk to him about this, get his get his thoughts.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But Sam, of all your books and all the work you've done, you know, I always ask people kind of like, do they have a one that's been their favorite to write?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But have you been surprised from people who have read your books and stories?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like which one has been the most popular or had the most questions around it, or is it kind of been expected of like I liked writing this one the most, and it seems like it's gotten the best reception from from people who have read it?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: But like, what's how's that experience been of people reading your work and like your thoughts on huh?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that was going to be as popular as it was, or yeah, there's uh there's one that one that I wrote called Benediction and Lead.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was a weird West story, but the idea, the idea behind that was that Elijah in the Bible passed on his mantle to Elisha.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea, the idea behind that is that that that mantle has continued to be passed passed down to people doing God's work, and it ends up with a preacher in kind of this weird West that doesn't exist, right?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: This territory that never existed where things supernatural and spiritual things are going on.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that actually ended up being a very dark story for me.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was I was surprised how where it went.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: I had an editor who said that it absolutely gave her the the ick when she when she read it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um she's like, great story, but it icked me out.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, well, this is this is uh to me, you know, it was a good story and I enjoyed writing it and I enjoyed the characters, but I'm like, yeah, this is this is a very niche story.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people liked it.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, uh, okay, I guess maybe I you know, I I like to write things that are uh I think uh overall I would rather write uh amusing and funny stuff.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'd rather be a Terry Pratchett, I'd rather uh do, you know, be a be a Douglas Adams sort of sort of writer where things are less serious and more amusing.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I do tend to uh I think grab gravitate between those two points, you know, kind of talking about the going back to talking about re you know, refreshing your mind between different types of work, different types of writing.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna be very serious now.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm going to talk about, you know, uh you know, Australian surface zombies, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Back and forth between the two kind of helps clear the palette, the mental palette.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was very I was I was very surprised at how many people like that story.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a couple in uh a couple of uh very, very short uh 1500, 2000 word stories in uh uh my my collection One October Night.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: I did that, I mentioned with uh Cedar Sanderson.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: She was doing Inktober, she did uh Picture a Day, and I would sit down and try and write a story to go with that picture.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned the covers earlier on my books.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of those are from Cedar.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: She is an outstanding, unbelievably talented artist.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're great.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're awesome.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she did a lot of covers for uh Rackitour Press as well.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we we were working on that project, and a couple of stories that came out of that, I think, are people are like, oh yeah, that's kind of cute.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, this is one of the best things I've ever written.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is my favorite right here.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a couple of stories in there that I really loved that people the receptionist seems to be kind of like that was cute.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Other ones where where I'm like, oh, that was this is going nowhere.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I I can't, I'm not I'm no judge of taste here.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was telling someone the other day, I was like, we we don't know anything.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like we just don't, you gotta put it out there and let let it go where it's gonna go.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I always find, especially people who have written a lot and have put in a lot, either short stories or a lot of books out there, that seems to be the consensus.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, I thought this one was gonna be the favorite, but it ended up being this one over here.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I have no idea.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a guy that I follow, and I I I can't remember, I think his name's Harold.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: He does Facebook reels, but he talks about the history of music and the number of times that you hear the story of a band, this song was going to get thrown into the bin, but somebody liked it, and it went on to become a number one hit for 20 years, right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's really you can't tell what will click with people sometimes.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, I mean, it's just like everyone's got different opinions, different tastes, whatever you're thinking is the best.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Usually someone else disagrees or goes a different route, and it's kind of like you got to think about that a little bit, I guess, or not really think about it, just put it all out there and let, you know, yeah, pretty much you want to read.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Sam, just one more question for you.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of hinted on it earlier about just like your interest in reading.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, a two-part question.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, with as much, and it kind of goes back to like the managing of your time.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've asked a lot of people, like when they're writing a lot, they admit, hey, it's tough to read, you know, and especially if you read similar style books, you kind of start getting like the editor uh mind where you're like, oh, I would have phrased this differently.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, you can get a little like Yeah, yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you also mentioned you personally enjoying a lot of nonfiction books.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just curious to know, you know, what are some books that have meant a lot to you, either personally or professionally, and and what are some books you like to recommend to others?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's a actually a series of books.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I can't remember who the who the press is, but they're they're like haunted Pittsburgh, Haunted Pennsylvania.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's some really good books in the in that series.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic reading if you are interested in just the weird, the unexplained.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And Pittsburgh, strangely enough, has a lot of that, a lot of that stuff.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's an old city, it's been around for a while.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have a book that I would eventually like to write for sigil.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of a prequel to my Pittsburgh graffiti story about sigils.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm I'm looking real quick because I just ordered it.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's a it's a new stuff.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: So any of that with old cities, I'd I'd love those kind of series.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was a new book.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I I wish I could give I want to be able to give the the guy that I ordered it from props on it because it was a I'm not seeing it and I have it, I'm not seeing it in my in my email and I have it downstairs, so I can't quote it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it's basically a history of lost spaces in in old Pittsburgh.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: So like back in back in 1840, there was this little uh community that lived, you know, on the north side between the city of Allegheny and and Allegheny City in Pittsburgh, and it was where uh you know uh clothing dyers lived.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just the history of that pulling it out of old records and whatnot.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that sort of stuff is fascinating.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love reading it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think I get it from my from my dad.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was a a history buff.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: But there there's I've got that on my pile.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: What else am I?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was there was another, strangely enough, I've got actually, I think it you can see it in the background, Blue Jackets Manual.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I have my background hidden.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Blue jackets, I've got a pile of books in the back behind me.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the blue jacket's manual, navy blue jackets manual, because I've got a pirate story that I want to write and I want to get some of the terminology correct.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am a former Navy guy, but you know, you forget things.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: So there's all you know, I'm yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always all you know looking for something, something new and interesting to to pique my interest.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I love it's it's an unfair question, but I love asking it because it depends on like what's going on in life.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like your answer for for books could be different a month ago, a year ago, or different in two weeks, you know, what's fresh on your mind.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I always love that question because I'm always trying to add recommendations to my personal reading list, or you know, again, for books for guys' purposes, just providing as many options that people might be interested in as possible.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I love just asking that.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are you reading?
• 30:45
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So give me something.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've got um, I'm actually reading a leadership book right now called A CEO only does three things.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I had Trey, uh, who wrote the book on the podcast earlier this week.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Georgia.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just it does a lot of investing, just a lot of business savviness.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And just as someone who's trying to learn, you know, business, how do you grow?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: What are some ideas?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are some pitfalls?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's one I've been reading just as I like walk on the treadmill sometimes.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of nonfiction uh for the most part, but there's another book that's called, I think I've got it underneath here, uh, Keep Moving, Keep Shooting.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Had that author on.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fiction book, it's kind of like a uh Jack Carr uh style book, military action, fiction.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was pretty exciting.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was a military guy as well, and I think he was also a consultant for like the Jack Ryan series on Amazon.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so like super cool guy, like writes really well.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually gonna start his second book, which I've got that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I read that one in like four days, but big, you know, action-packed.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the fiction book I've been reading lately, just to kind of balance.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: I try to balance, I try to go back and forth as much as possible between fiction and nonfiction.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I love learning about people.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I love biographies, I love stories about that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes, like from work and everything, it can be a little bit overload.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I need to get, you know, I need to read like one of your books that just takes me to a different world and gets my mind kind of tuned out.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to do my best of balancing and I try to, you know, I try to be everyone I have on the podcast.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: I really try to do my best to read their book or, you know, a book that they've written just to better understand them and their interest and stuff too.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I really just need a full-time job where I can just read all day and maybe I can catch everything.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: That would be lovely, man.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really would.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an audiobook guy, so it's super hard for me.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I love podcasts, but I've never been able to do audiobooks just because my mind starts wandering to other things.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas podcasts, I just feel more the conversation is a little bit easier, but yeah, I'm a physical book guy.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I'm the same way.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Podcasts, I don't mind.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: If I miss something, I can rewind.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, I'm just picking up.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: The couple of times I've done audio books, my problem there is that when I do get caught up in them, I get caught up, I end up pulling into the driveway and sitting there for another 30 minutes to get to the end of the next chapter or something.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with podcasts, you can kind of miss something and still gather what the conversation is.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: But with a book, it's like if I miss a key part there, it's gonna really I gotta go back and it's when really I could just read, put my bookmarker there and come back to it and kind of catch up.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: But no, I again I love just hearing what people are reading.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love sharing what I've reading.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know what this is all about, just discussion of you know, encouraging more reading among men specifically, but everybody, you know, reading is so important, and I hope, you know, I hope that's the message we continue to share.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: But Sam, man, this has been awesome.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate it.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad we got connected, and I'm so glad.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to many more conversations as we're gonna have to make this like a quarterly thing as you as you put more books out there, because I mean you're you're not stopping anytime soon.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're gonna have so many more works that you publish, which is gonna be really cool to see, especially now that we've met.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: So uh man, keep doing what you're doing.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to see all the work you put out there and uh excited to follow it, man.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and happy to share it on our website and and promote it as we can.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but I appreciate it, Sam.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: This has been awesome.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, sir.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a great meeting you do.