Latest / Voices for Voices® / Crafting Fantasy: The Art of Building Worlds That Last (Ep 284)

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Crafting Fantasy: The Art of Building Worlds That Last (Ep 284) · Voices for Voices®

• 0:02
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast.
• 0:07
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm your host.
• 0:08
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Founder of Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes.
• 0:12
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us on this episode and our over 280 other episodes in our catalog.
• 0:19
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: We had this huge goal that we were going to try to hit in-studio episodes and out-of-studio episodes of a total of 300 by the end of 2025.
• 0:31
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: But this last 30, 45 days or so, we've really kicked things into high gear, so we're going to be hitting that 300 number a lot sooner.
• 0:44
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I don't know where we're at in 2025, but it's only because of you watching and listening, whether you're here in the United States or close to 80 countries, 800 cities across the world.
• 0:55
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you for taking the time out of your day.
• 0:59
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: If you're commuting or just hanging out relaxing, and some nice summer weather, if that's where you're commuting or just hanging out relaxing, and and some nice, uh, summer weather, if that's where you're at.
• 1:09
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I know some parts of the world it it's kind of the opposite, so we have a winter, winter type of conditions, but, uh, hopefully you're enjoying yourself.
• 1:19
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: And again, thanks for uh tuning in and, if you can do us a big favor, give us a big thumbs up like share, subscribe, follow all those things.
• 1:28
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: They're free and they help us march again towards our goal of wanting to help three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond this episode.
• 1:41
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I say this and I feel it in all the episodes we do, but this episode really has a double edge to it because the guest that we're going to be talking to today is a former military member, so he's a veteran, and so having that service to country learning that may possibly have affected kind of mindset, that goal, orientation of leading him into being an author and a mentor for so many, especially one of our guests that we have had on a few times here, david Solomon, and through his generosity of connecting with our guest, mr Ben Sanford.
• 2:45
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 2:49
  Ben Sanford: Thank you for having me.
• 2:50
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: You're welcome.
• 2:51
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Yes, well, pretty wide open.
• 2:55
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: We can maybe start with your military career and kind of just kind of go through a little bit of a timeline.
• 3:04
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Then we'll get into the publishing and then we'll get into current state.
• 3:09
  Ben Sanford: My military career.
• 3:10
  Ben Sanford: I was in the.
• 3:11
  Ben Sanford: I was in prior enlisted, then I was in ROTC, then I was a commissioned officer for years before I resigned my commission, but most of mine was in the reserves but most of mine after that was federal law enforcement.
• 3:20
  Ben Sanford: So I was in the border patrol and I was an air marshal for most of my career.
• 3:23
  Ben Sanford: So that federal law enforcement.
• 3:25
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: So I was in the border patrol and I was an air marshal for most of my career also, which is that's right, good sir, good thank you for your service.
• 3:31
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Those are also uh, important areas.
• 3:37
  Ben Sanford: Yeah, yeah, the air marshal bit helped me.
• 3:38
  Ben Sanford: I mean, I met so many interesting people traveling around the world.
• 3:43
  Ben Sanford: That gave me a lot in writing well, I have in my my one video.
• 3:50
  Ben Sanford: I did the first video I ever did on tiktok I had.
• 3:52
  Ben Sanford: I always said there's two types of writers in the world.
• 3:54
  Ben Sanford: There's those who are natural writers, who are looking for a story to tell.
• 3:57
  Ben Sanford: Those are people who are very gifted at writing.
• 3:59
  Ben Sanford: Then there's a second group of writers which, unfortunately, I fall under, and those are the people who have a story to tell and they're looking for a way to write it, and in some ways it's easier, in some ways it's harder.
• 4:10
  Ben Sanford: It's easier in some ways because you already have the plot outlined in your head and you have the characters in your head.
• 4:16
  Ben Sanford: Everything's all set except your ability to write it.
• 4:19
  Ben Sanford: And it takes a long time to write a story when you are trying to learn how to write.
• 4:24
  Ben Sanford: But at least you have the idea, the visions in your head.
• 4:27
  Ben Sanford: It just gets to put on paper one thing.
• 4:29
  Ben Sanford: With that, with that um in mind, it's like, if you don't have this, I mean I have, when I was writing in racks, another story popped in my head, so I'm trying to finish that one now too, and when those are done I don't know if I have anything else to write so no, it's interesting, my uh, a little bit of a little parallel.
• 4:51
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I talked to my um therapist on the mental health side and that and uh, there was a time where I was I said like I was afraid of things, that I think I was going to run out of things to do or to be a part of, and I said, justin, I don't think you're going to run out of things to do, but I'll just throw this out.
• 5:15
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I think you'll something, whether it's in the writing space or in combination with your law enforcement and ROTC career, because there's just so much, so much is day to day that goes on, that a lot of people just they don't know about, and I think there's a there's a big interest in that, like okay, so what does a law enforcement officer like?
• 5:42
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: What is the?
• 5:43
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I know there's no regular or average day, but just to learn some of those things you know there's.
• 5:50
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: You know, people like myself that just like to learn and go.
• 5:53
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Oh wow, like I never.
• 5:55
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I never thought about that.
• 5:59
  Ben Sanford: Yeah, it was.
• 6:00
  Ben Sanford: It's funny Cause that was in the air marshals for most of it.
• 6:02
  Ben Sanford: And the air marshals is a totally different job than any other law enforcement, because really you're just paid in case something goes wrong and if nothing goes wrong, then you did your job.
• 6:12
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: So really it's passing time sitting on an airplane for many hours which of the time writing because of yeah that time of clarity and more clarity and more more focused.
• 6:30
  Ben Sanford: Easier to focus than when yeah the thing you're going on I literally wrote the first, um, the first.
• 6:38
  Ben Sanford: My iraq series is a series of seven books.
• 6:40
  Ben Sanford: It's a fantasy series, and the first three I wrote while I was flying and it was basically, um, I wrote it by hand, and so when I finally finished with air marshals, when I finally typed it up, you know I had to go take all my notes, which are.
• 6:55
  Ben Sanford: I have them over here I still my wife refuses to let me throw them away because you might want to keep something.
• 7:00
  Ben Sanford: Why do I want to keep this?
• 7:00
  Ben Sanford: I'm not a pack rat, but I literally have a stack like three feet high of binder notebooks that I wrote chapter by chapter on.
• 7:08
  Ben Sanford: Then I had to piece it together and, and what I planned to be a trilogy ended up becoming, I thought, become six books, and it became seven eventually.
• 7:16
  Ben Sanford: Um, yeah, so it's all.
• 7:18
  Ben Sanford: It was all handwritten for the first three and a half books, and the first book in my freeborn series was handwritten as well.
• 7:25
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, for our viewers and listeners.
• 7:27
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Can you, can you name all the books, just so they can?
• 7:31
  Ben Sanford: have a name to the this is the first version of this is uh, this is I don't know if you can see it on there this is chronicles of iraq's.
• 7:39
  Ben Sanford: Book one of war and heroes I have.
• 7:42
  Ben Sanford: Uh, that's the first of seven.
• 7:43
  Ben Sanford: The second book is called the siege of corral, the third is called the battle of yaten, the fourth is called the making of a king, the fifth is the battle of tory north, the sixth is fall of empires and the seventh and concluding book is called restoration.
• 8:02
  Ben Sanford: That's all it.
• 8:04
  Ben Sanford: That's all.
• 8:04
  Ben Sanford: The whole arc goes from one to seven.
• 8:07
  Ben Sanford: It's done.
• 8:08
  Ben Sanford: There won't be any sequels unless I die and somebody else wants to pick it up and do a shoot-off.
• 8:13
  Ben Sanford: I left enough loose ends at the end so you could do other stuff if you wanted to.
• 8:18
  Ben Sanford: But it also has a conclusion where okay, this is where it's settled, hopefully forever.
• 8:22
  Ben Sanford: My other series is called the Freeborn Saga and that is now what's going to be a trilogy and now it's going to be four.
• 8:29
  Ben Sanford: I'm in the middle of book three called Dragon Wars, and book four should be the conclusion.
• 8:38
  Ben Sanford: I hope.
• 8:38
  Ben Sanford: I hope it doesn't go to, but hopefully it will be done with four.
• 8:45
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Great.
• 8:46
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: It sounds like you have as far as characteristics or traits in you of helping others, whether that was most of your time in the Air Marshal or with your books.
• 9:00
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: You're wanting to inform or entertain individuals that helping other mindset was that something?
• 9:10
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: That said and like at an early age or just over time, it just started to uh marinate, yeah well arax arax.
• 9:17
  Ben Sanford: I originally wrote the arax story um for my nephew when I was I.
• 9:22
  Ben Sanford: I wasn't um, I was in high school when I wrote the first version and or actually the second version.
• 9:29
  Ben Sanford: The first version I was much younger but I wrote in high school which is now basically books one and two, but really poorly written Um, and for several reasons.
• 9:38
  Ben Sanford: One, I was like when I was getting English class in high school I wasn't very good at English, cause I hated the subject and I hated the stories we had to read were so boring or um, you didn't understand them or basically they never catered to what I was interested as a, as a, as a young boy, you know like I liked wars, with adventure and war and action, and they didn't do anything in that English class.
• 10:00
  Ben Sanford: If you didn't, if you didn't couldn't read their boring stories and incorporate it and talk about it, then you wouldn't do well.
• 10:06
  Ben Sanford: And I was like, why don't we have stories that boys and even girls would love, like adventure stories?
• 10:12
  Ben Sanford: Why are we making kids read stuff that they don't like it's like, and make that part of the curriculum?
• 10:18
  Ben Sanford: And so, with that in mind, I wrote a Rax for that age group to spark imagination and I try to include in Rax though it's a story about following a war in a mythical world, I want to have the humor in it and the horror and the romance and the adventure and the mystery and the camaraderie and the friendship and the brotherhood and sisterhood of all the characters and all the things you love in all your stories, but all put it all in the one story that there's something for everybody and and something that you want to know what happens next.
• 10:54
  Ben Sanford: I guess the best compliment I ever got from it was people said it was addictive and and my brother you know, he never heard, I never really cared if they were raised, but he loved, he loved.
• 11:04
  Ben Sanford: He said the one thing he always told me he goes.
• 11:06
  Ben Sanford: I didn't want it to end Right, so he was slowed down towards the end of the books and not want it to end, of course.
• 11:19
  Ben Sanford: Then again, those are my closest people to me saying that and you're never you're.
• 11:21
  Ben Sanford: What was the phrase I heard from one one author saying you never.
• 11:25
  Ben Sanford: You're not half as bad as your worst critic says you are.
• 11:27
  Ben Sanford: You're never.
• 11:27
  Ben Sanford: You're not half as good as your best fan says you are.
• 11:31
  Ben Sanford: You're somewhere, somewhere in between.
• 11:33
  Ben Sanford: But being what someone's saying is they're addicted to the story and that's that's a great compliment and they didn't want it to end.
• 11:40
  Ben Sanford: But as far as, like you're saying, what motivated me most is probably because it's like you know, I always see, like I watch movies and I criticize them like what they should.
• 11:49
  Ben Sanford: Why did they do this, why did they do this?
• 11:50
  Ben Sanford: And, like you know what, just make your own story and do it the way you would do it, like take everything you loved from all the different movies you loved and stories and books and songs or whatever, as you throw it all together and you get rid of the stuff you don't like and keep the stuff you do like.
• 12:06
  Ben Sanford: If you don't like you have love triangles your story, then write a story with no love triangles.
• 12:09
  Ben Sanford: If you don't want to have, um, drone on about endless descriptions, then make sure you you tailor it back and where you just give them just enough to move the story along.
• 12:19
  Ben Sanford: Um, and I'm sure people read my stories and take the same thing from them.
• 12:24
  Ben Sanford: They're like no, I don't like this and they want to reimagine what they want from something else, but that, in a gist of it is I wanted to make a story that kids would love to read.
• 12:35
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I think it's important for authors especially authors how the information is consumed and read to be real cognizant of the age range that you're writing towards and writing for making sure that the scenes and the characters and the plots and the plots and that really do line up, instead of having, let's say, a more mature book and saying, oh well, this is actually for eight to 12 year olds or just a number like that.
• 13:21
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: And I think that's important for me as a parent.
• 13:26
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: My daughter's six and so she's just getting started, but I'm starting to think about those types of things.
• 13:32
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: When we go to the library or bookstore and we start looking and if a book is in the section that lines up where my daughter is age-wise and reading-wise, that's going to be an area that I'm not just yourself to really just do that human, humane thing of all right.
• 14:12
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Well, I wouldn't want my son or daughter to read this at eight years old.
• 14:16
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: This is more like at 18.
• 14:19
  Ben Sanford: Like my sister-in-law.
• 14:22
  Ben Sanford: She loves the Rax books but she loves Freeborn more.
• 14:25
  Ben Sanford: But her grandson, my great-nephew, he's very creative and imaginative but he would love this story but he's still not.
• 14:38
  Ben Sanford: They're going to wait until he's a bit older for him to read it.
• 14:41
  Ben Sanford: So it's like I think 12.
• 14:42
  Ben Sanford: It's funny.
• 14:43
  Ben Sanford: Every author is very subjective, right?
• 14:45
  Ben Sanford: What is appropriate for what age group, right?
• 14:48
  Ben Sanford: Like for Rax?
• 14:50
  Ben Sanford: For me, um, there is, um, it's probably the violence.
• 14:59
  Ben Sanford: It's like cause, it's war.
• 15:00
  Ben Sanford: I try to make things realistic, right?
• 15:02
  Ben Sanford: So if you're looking at ancient war, for medieval warfare, and the gargoyles in my story are the antagonists, are like the major antagonists.
• 15:08
  Ben Sanford: There's bad humans too.
• 15:09
  Ben Sanford: But when you have creatures that can fly, it changes like, like.
• 15:13
  Ben Sanford: Imagine medieval and ancient battlefields, like rather, it's the Battle of Cannae or the Hercan Forest or any of these other ancient battles, vakari.
• 15:21
  Ben Sanford: And if you try to implement, instead of just two large armies with interlocking shields, jabbing each other with their swords and spears, if you have people that could fly over top of it, which changes the dynamic of the battlefield.
• 15:33
  Ben Sanford: But I try to do these ancient battles and I try to.
• 15:35
  Ben Sanford: But I try to do these ancient battles and I try to.
• 15:36
  Ben Sanford: Each battle is a little bit different in the books, unique to the setting that they're in.
• 15:41
  Ben Sanford: But it's like I have.
• 15:42
  Ben Sanford: I don't.
• 15:43
  Ben Sanford: I try not to sugarcoat the violence.
• 15:45
  Ben Sanford: I don't over glorify the violence, but I just tell it exactly.
• 15:47
  Ben Sanford: I try to make it realistic the way it is.
• 15:51
  Ben Sanford: It's like language, right.
• 15:52
  Ben Sanford: It's like some people may consider swearing to be if you use the f-bomb or use the lord's name in vain and some people like think you know, even if you say crap or use the s-word, that's swearing or you know, I do use the s-word a little bit.
• 16:05
  Ben Sanford: I have some characters from earth there and they're a bit more different than everybody else.
• 16:08
  Ben Sanford: So there's a couple, maybe once per book.
• 16:10
  Ben Sanford: There's a word in there that might be borderline.
• 16:13
  Ben Sanford: So is it appropriate for a 12 yearyear-old?
• 16:15
  Ben Sanford: Oh, absolutely.
• 16:16
  Ben Sanford: It would be fine with them.
• 16:18
  Ben Sanford: It would be rated G as far as the language.
• 16:20
  Ben Sanford: But violence I mean that's pretty subjective.
• 16:24
  Ben Sanford: Some people might think it's.
• 16:24
  Ben Sanford: The violence is not graphic.
• 16:26
  Ben Sanford: I've had reviewers say that violence is not graphic at all and other people are like they wouldn't have their child who's 10 years old read it because it's pretty.
• 16:33
  Ben Sanford: It's kind of like if you see Lord of the Rings, you see lord of the rings.
• 16:35
  Ben Sanford: You see the orcs.
• 16:36
  Ben Sanford: You see the battle at minus tirith, when they, when gothmog drops off, chops off all the the, the gondorians heads and he shoots them over the wall.
• 16:44
  Ben Sanford: You know he says release the prisoners.
• 16:46
  Ben Sanford: Um, that's pretty graphic scene, but other people like that's not graphic at all, so it's really subjective.
• 16:52
  Ben Sanford: So I would suggest, like if a parent maybe read the book with their kid if they're under 12, and you can filter out some of the stuff you can.
• 17:01
  Ben Sanford: You know when you read, like I read stories to my kids when they were younger and I was like you know, if there's something that's a little bit, I would just skip over it and I think over my entire rack series there's two scenes, two love scenes and one in book one and one in book five.
• 17:14
  Ben Sanford: No books, no book one and book six on a wedding night.
• 17:18
  Ben Sanford: I try like writing love scenes is not my thing.
• 17:21
  Ben Sanford: I didn't want to be a prude and not show anything, but I wanted to have.
• 17:25
  Ben Sanford: I didn't want to be obscene, I want to leave enough to the imagination.
• 17:27
  Ben Sanford: And if you look at the now, if you look at the bible, you look at the song of silence.
• 17:33
  Ben Sanford: Okay, it's very.
• 17:35
  Ben Sanford: It alludes to stuff but it doesn't get into detail.
• 17:37
  Ben Sanford: So you try to make it as subtle as possible at the reader user imagination.
• 17:41
  Ben Sanford: You don't want to leave it out either, because it's part of the building up of the story.
• 17:44
  Ben Sanford: It's really important to these characters, um, cause it serves a certain purpose and a point in the story.
• 17:49
  Ben Sanford: That's kind of like uh, the old phrase, uh, people don senseless violence, and I always use the phrase like I like violence.
• 18:00
  Ben Sanford: That made sense, like, yeah, if you ever saw die hard.
• 18:02
  Ben Sanford: Um, when you watch die hard, every time john mcclain there's 12 of the bad guys.
• 18:06
  Ben Sanford: He kills one of them you're like, wow, that's great, you got that guy.
• 18:08
  Ben Sanford: And every time somebody good dies you feel bad.
• 18:10
  Ben Sanford: So you should have you should feel pain when a good person dies in the story and you should feel elation when a bad guy finally gets you, or a sense of relief.
• 18:20
  Ben Sanford: You should have some emotional attachment.
• 18:22
  Ben Sanford: If it's that much cost, if life is on the line, like the value for human life, you should have some emotional attachment to that.
• 18:32
  Ben Sanford: Yeah, but I try to make the books as realistic as possible, though it's a fantasy setting and that means everything, whether it's the humor, the horrifying part.
• 18:42
  Ben Sanford: The scary part should be scary, the horrifying part should be horrifying and the romantic part should be romantic and the adventure part should be adventurous, even though the story starts off a little slow at the very beginning because you're trying to ground the characters.
• 18:55
  Ben Sanford: So the problem is, you don't want to lose your.
• 18:57
  Ben Sanford: You don't want to lose a reader at the beginning, but you also want to have, especially in a long epic with so many characters.
• 19:02
  Ben Sanford: You have to start off grounded with the main character and invest the person first about who he's about and his origin.
• 19:11
  Ben Sanford: Try to do that without boring people.
• 19:13
  Ben Sanford: That's the magic sauce.
• 19:16
  Ben Sanford: I don't know if I nailed it or not, but people can read it and find out.
• 19:21
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I think so.
• 19:22
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: As far as how important is networking and I'm saying the writing, the author industry to bounce ideas off or just have a conversation, not trying to take any information from another individual's stories, but just on like, oh, I never thought about that, like I could maybe be a little bit more efficient, or I never thought about this particular way.
• 19:55
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Is that?
• 19:56
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Have you found that to be important with any online?
• 20:00
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Groups or or any my problems.
• 20:04
  Ben Sanford: I wrote.
• 20:05
  Ben Sanford: I wrote my iraq's books before I knew anything about book publishing.
• 20:08
  Ben Sanford: Like, I read a lot of books and I wrote them.
• 20:10
  Ben Sanford: Um, now I'm doing the marketing.
• 20:13
  Ben Sanford: After the fact, and it's the biggest mistake I made you need to market a book before you release them, and if you have your last book my last book just came out in January, but even then I didn't understand from the people who helped me publish it that you have to start marketing before it gets released and if you wait, then you're basically crap out of luck because it's hard marketing.
• 20:36
  Ben Sanford: The only thing you can do is you have to do social media, and I was never, because of my line of work, I never did social media.
• 20:42
  Ben Sanford: Me and my wife were like no, no, I don't do, because I couldn't put my face on tv for anything, or even a podcast or even facebook or any of that stuff, without there's an air marshal.
• 20:48
  Ben Sanford: I had to go.
• 20:49
  Ben Sanford: You know I was covert.
• 20:50
  Ben Sanford: Um.
• 20:51
  Ben Sanford: So, that being said, um doing social media.
• 20:55
  Ben Sanford: If you've never done it before, especially like a diet store, like I am, it is it's different.
• 21:00
  Ben Sanford: I mean, I just joined facebook a month ago, along with instagram.
• 21:03
  Ben Sanford: Instagram I did a year ago but I didn't really put anything out there and we did maybe a couple posts and I did tiktok, um, the first video I did is probably like four or five months ago and that's a, and that took me.
• 21:14
  Ben Sanford: I remember my first video.
• 21:15
  Ben Sanford: It did take me like eight hours to figure out how to even work the device and like know how to cut up and cap and add all these different stuff to it.
• 21:21
  Ben Sanford: And so that's probably the biggest challenge is because anything you do that like a skill set, like writing, or like writing a book, or maybe inventing something or creating a product, whatever you do, that's part of it.
• 21:36
  Ben Sanford: But the bigger part is marketing it, because if you can't market, it't mean and that's a totally marketing.
• 21:41
  Ben Sanford: It's a totally different skill set than than writing.
• 21:43
  Ben Sanford: So you can write a masterpiece, but if you don't know how to market, it'll just sit there lost along 20 million other manuscripts.
• 21:49
  Ben Sanford: And if you are self-published like I've gone to self-publishing around um, and you edit your books and I've edited my books so many times and then you still find mistakes, even because there's stuff that spellcheck doesn't catch.
• 22:02
  Ben Sanford: And you try to catch stuff and it's maybe grammatically it's not a misspelled word, it's just a wrong word.
• 22:08
  Ben Sanford: It's like, and you don't catch it In your human eye you only can glare a page so long.
• 22:13
  Ben Sanford: You're going to miss things.
• 22:15
  Ben Sanford: And it's kind of like if you see, like a courtroom, when they rely on witness testimony and they swear this person did it, and then they find out 20 years later and you convicted somebody on that one witness's testimony and 20 years later down the road they find out no, the person was innocent, the witness was wrong.
• 22:31
  Ben Sanford: It's because our eyes trick us.
• 22:34
  Ben Sanford: We see things that aren't there.
• 22:35
  Ben Sanford: So when you're editing you're going to miss.
• 22:38
  Ben Sanford: You have to edit over and over and over again and even then you're still gonna catch, especially if the manuscripts you're like you know you got a four or five hundred page book, it's.
• 22:45
  Ben Sanford: It takes a long days we a couple weeks to go through a manuscript.
• 22:49
  Ben Sanford: Then you gotta that's just one time through and you probably still miss stuff.
• 22:52
  Ben Sanford: And when you already wrote a book and you go back and you find it and even your own editors didn't catch it and it's still.
• 22:58
  Ben Sanford: That's just frustrating.
• 22:59
  Ben Sanford: So but you're going to have that.
• 23:02
  Ben Sanford: But the worst part is because you have words that are spelled right.
• 23:05
  Ben Sanford: They're just used wrong.
• 23:06
  Ben Sanford: That's the biggest mistakes.
• 23:07
  Ben Sanford: And if you're Rick, create a fantasy world, if you misspell your own words that you made up and no one can catch that.
• 23:17
  Ben Sanford: But you right.
• 23:22
  Ben Sanford: So you have to know, like like arax was hard for me because it was a different planet altogether, so there's different animals and different plants and different trees.
• 23:27
  Ben Sanford: You know if, if I created, create a whole different um ecosystem, and so you have to use all these different words you make up, you gotta.
• 23:35
  Ben Sanford: You have a book, tons of books, just a catalog for one whole notebook just for plants and trees, one for animals, one for all the cities and the armies.
• 23:44
  Ben Sanford: And in the back of my Iraq's book I have the appendix sections in book one.
• 23:49
  Ben Sanford: I have appendix section in each book, but in book one I have a timeline of their history over the last 3,000 years.
• 23:55
  Ben Sanford: I have a listing of the armies.
• 23:57
  Ben Sanford: I have a map in the back of the book and a listing of the armies.
• 23:58
  Ben Sanford: I have a map in the back of the book and the listing of the armies for each of the different realms and where they're located in the map.
• 24:03
  Ben Sanford: So if you're following the story, you can follow, you can see where, which, where, all these different armies are.
• 24:09
  Ben Sanford: I just don't make it up out of.
• 24:10
  Ben Sanford: You ever see a story where you're watching it seems like they just won, they had a huge victory.
• 24:14
  Ben Sanford: You think they won the war, but then the next, the next story, they're like oh no, they have this other army.
• 24:17
  Ben Sanford: It should come out of nowhere.
• 24:18
  Ben Sanford: Well, where did they come from?
• 24:19
  Ben Sanford: At the very beginning, you know where everything stands.
• 24:23
  Ben Sanford: You know exactly what the strength is from every kingdom and realm.
• 24:27
  Ben Sanford: And I have a ship the Earthers.
• 24:30
  Ben Sanford: There's people from Earth stuck on this mythical planet set 500 years in the future, and the people from Earth have advanced technology that these people don't have.
• 24:39
  Ben Sanford: So these people are fighting with bows and arrows, the guys from earth.
• 24:42
  Ben Sanford: They build a seafaring ship from their the crash starship and it's called the stenics.
• 24:46
  Ben Sanford: That which is the name of my llc and my stenics publishing is because of that ship.
• 24:50
  Ben Sanford: So I have a diagram of that ship in the back of the back of the book so people can see what that ship looks like by the synopsis.
• 24:58
  Ben Sanford: But all those little details I try to put in there after a while it gets a little overwhelming.
• 25:03
  Ben Sanford: It took so long to write a Raxi.
• 25:07
  Ben Sanford: You lose yourself in the world you create and it's like when it's finally over, you're like, wow, I can breathe again.
• 25:14
  Ben Sanford: But I have this other story I've got to finish.
• 25:16
  Ben Sanford: This is another fantasy world.
• 25:17
  Ben Sanford: So I tell you this right now if I do write, ever write anything, ever again, it's going to be a contemporary book, probably something to do with football, but it's going to be nothing to do with fantasy realms.
• 25:28
  Ben Sanford: I am done with fantasy.
• 25:30
  Ben Sanford: After these two books, these two series is there.
• 25:31
  Ben Sanford: If you ever, if you ever end up doing reading my, my iraq series, you get to the end you'll be like, wow, yeah, I I don't think I could ever, if it's a big burned up.
• 25:40
  Ben Sanford: I don't think I could write them ever again.
• 25:41
  Ben Sanford: I'm like I can't go back and do that.
• 25:43
  Ben Sanford: That's too much work.
• 25:45
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Yeah, and to your point, it takes, uh, I mean, a lot of jobs, a lot of things we do.
• 25:52
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: It takes time and patience and I would think that patience would if you didn't have patience before you got into the editing process and and, uh, you have four or five hundred page books that that that's.
• 26:08
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: That's something that you, you learned.
• 26:10
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: But, like you said you, you got to finish the editing before the book can come out, and it takes some time yeah it's, and originally my the first person that the first publishing group I had to publish my first arax book.
• 26:27
  Ben Sanford: When I handed the manuscript they made me they said you gotta cut.
• 26:30
  Ben Sanford: It was actually books one and two of arax because it was that big.
• 26:32
  Ben Sanford: Like I didn't realize how big the book was because you don't really know it was 600, some pages single space, but it ended up being it would have been a thousand page book and they made me break it in half.
• 26:40
  Ben Sanford: So now, yeah, you don't, or I can cut 170 000 words out of it.
• 26:45
  Ben Sanford: There's some stuff I might have should be able to cut, but most of it I thought was pretty necessary for the story and it's either.
• 26:50
  Ben Sanford: So either you cut, break it in half, or you um cut parts off, but then again it's kind of like there's lots of.
• 26:58
  Ben Sanford: Every author has their darlings, have their stuff, they everything they write they don't want to throw away because they put so much time in writing it.
• 27:04
  Ben Sanford: A better editor might help you cut that out.
• 27:08
  Ben Sanford: But I'm still thinking the first two books, what I could have cut out and I don't know what I could have cut out to keep the story going, probably because there's so many characters as the story goes on and there's so many different storylines going on that go concurrently and it's trying to cut something out without.
• 27:28
  Ben Sanford: It's kind of funny because I get to the final battle in in my last book and because there's so many characters, if you, you want to touch base with all of them, to give them all a little bit, even the minor characters to give, because this is the end, this is the final thing.
• 27:43
  Ben Sanford: So let's say you're writing a book, writing these chapters for a final battle and you touch base with one character, for he's a minor character, but you give him like a half a page, even though they say half a page, right, and then before you know it, if you touch base a lot of like 15 different characters, you're already in, like you know, getting into 10, 15, 20, 30 pages and without even really moving the story around a lot.
• 28:04
  Ben Sanford: So it has to be a part of the battle that they take shape in, or you want to put them in a perspective that they experience a certain thing at the battle, that you can tell what's going on over here by using that character.
• 28:15
  Ben Sanford: But by the time you get done you've got to be careful, because you're sort of a balloon out of control.
• 28:20
  Ben Sanford: I always thought when I was in high school school the problem was writing enough words to do a 200-page or 500-word essay.
• 28:27
  Ben Sanford: Now it's like trying to take words out and still tell the story.
• 28:31
  Ben Sanford: So you want to make the story as lean as possible, but if you leave too little information, people can't conceptualize what you're trying to tell them.
• 28:39
  Ben Sanford: So that's the dilemma I think every writer deals with.
• 28:45
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: And the other biggest problem.
• 28:46
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 28:46
  Ben Sanford: No, no, no, you're fine, continue please the other biggest problem is if you're doing a series of books and your first book is book one, you have to understand your your worst written book you'll ever do is your first book and if people don't like that first book, they're not going to read your great books you write later on.
• 29:02
  Ben Sanford: You could write if your last books are like classic, like the best books ever written, but your first book in the series is C-spot run.
• 29:11
  Ben Sanford: No one's ever going to read your masterpiece because book one sets the standard and that's the problem.
• 29:16
  Ben Sanford: If I could do things over again, I would have taken book one and just read, read through it.
• 29:20
  Ben Sanford: I'd read it down, lots of parts of it to really make it really stand out that's.
• 29:25
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm glad you mentioned that.
• 29:26
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I I've never heard of that, but that that makes so much sense.
• 29:30
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: But right, you have a yeah, you have book one that's gonna just like anything your first time practicing or doing anything and it's still still a lot to learn and tips and tricks and all those things and to have that, like you said, that's something that is not interesting enough to readers.
• 29:53
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: They're not going to have an opportunity to actually get to the later books where you're going to more refine your craft than that now your covers.
• 30:05
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm wondering do you do you do your own art or what?
• 30:11
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: What's that like?
• 30:12
  Ben Sanford: okay, there's two.
• 30:13
  Ben Sanford: Each of the book series have different types of covers.
• 30:16
  Ben Sanford: So my iraq series um, I needed a cover artist to do the covers for me.
• 30:20
  Ben Sanford: Um, my friend of mine recommended his cousin named carl mullein, and I never met carl.
• 30:26
  Ben Sanford: I called him, I'd always talk communicator over the phone and he would take about six months to do each cover, and so I don't know if you guys can see on the screen, but this is book one.
• 30:36
  Ben Sanford: This is a racks of um of war and heroes book one.
• 30:41
  Ben Sanford: Now I gave him a rough idea of how to do it and and he basically was, uh, he worked for Marvel comics and he also did a lot of the graphic novels he did cover art for he always went to a lot of you know, a lot of comic cons and sold his stuff.
• 30:52
  Ben Sanford: Um, so his are more like like a graphic novel type covers.
• 30:57
  Ben Sanford: They're kind of like comic book type covers, which my wife doesn't like.
• 30:59
  Ben Sanford: She likes classic, like fantasy, fantasy, romancy, freaking covers which they have, which my freeborn is, more more traditional covers.
• 31:07
  Ben Sanford: So for carl, I gave him the ideas and he wrote or he drew all all those and he put the colors on them.
• 31:12
  Ben Sanford: But when he get into the seventh book.
• 31:15
  Ben Sanford: He did.
• 31:17
  Ben Sanford: He did the outline, he did all that but he didn't color it in because he died right before he colored in.
• 31:24
  Ben Sanford: So my last book, which is called restoration, this is the author's copy with a little band across the front they give me.
• 31:30
  Ben Sanford: That's called restoration.
• 31:31
  Ben Sanford: So this one's a bit different than the other ones because this one does not have his colors on.
• 31:35
  Ben Sanford: This is what the publishing company they just had they did.
• 31:38
  Ben Sanford: One of the people just fill in the color of the colors.
• 31:39
  Ben Sanford: So this one looks a little bit off compared to the other ones.
• 31:42
  Ben Sanford: The other ones are looking a lot sharper because that was carl's work.
• 31:46
  Ben Sanford: Um, so I actually dedicated book seven and I put the dedication for the whole series for him, for his contribution, because you're really the covers I think really stand out for and I wanted I should explain to my wife.
• 31:56
  Ben Sanford: I was like look, the iraqs is a track.
• 31:59
  Ben Sanford: It's original audience is supposed to be young teenage boys.
• 32:03
  Ben Sanford: It's like you have a young son who loves to read and wants an adventure story.
• 32:06
  Ben Sanford: It's for him and they find it's funny.
• 32:10
  Ben Sanford: When I go to comic cons or I do to, I go to book signings or book fairs, it's the men are usually drawn to Iraq's, the women maybe freeborn.
• 32:18
  Ben Sanford: So it's it's, though there are crossover Like.
• 32:21
  Ben Sanford: I have a lot of like I've had.
• 32:23
  Ben Sanford: I have a lot a lot of girls I know have read racks and they love it.
• 32:26
  Ben Sanford: Um, and a lot of a lot of guys have read Freeborn and they love it.
• 32:29
  Ben Sanford: But the covers themselves are more like very diverse as far as, like, there's a racks, it's a, it's totally one type of cover and Freeborn is, you know, more of a traditional fantasy government.
• 32:42
  Ben Sanford: It's all because of him, because of Carl.
• 32:47
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I love him.
• 32:47
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: It's such detail.
• 32:51
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: It's just incredible for someone to have their mind work in that.
• 32:58
  Ben Sanford: I can only draw stick figures.
• 32:59
  Ben Sanford: I don't know how people draw anything.
• 33:01
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm right there with you.
• 33:02
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: How can people learn more about you?
• 33:08
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: How can they find your books?
• 33:10
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: How can they purchase them?
• 33:12
  Ben Sanford: for anybody who's watching and listening and wants to check it out I have a website called stenixpublishingcom and it had all the books are there.
• 33:22
  Ben Sanford: Um, you can look it up.
• 33:24
  Ben Sanford: Like it gives a little bit of synopsis of what they're all about.
• 33:27
  Ben Sanford: Um, they're all on Amazon as well, so you can go to Amazon and purchase them up.
• 33:32
  Ben Sanford: And and Goodreads I've had.
• 33:33
  Ben Sanford: I have a lot of reviews for books one and two of Iraq's on Goodreads and as well as freeborn.
• 33:39
  Ben Sanford: Um, so I'm thinking like, if you go to Goodreads, the only problem is if you look at Benjamin Sanford and you go to like Goodreads, there's other people named Benjamin Sanford selling books that are not me, but you can see that.
• 33:52
  Ben Sanford: If it's Chronicles of Arrax, if you look up Chronicles of Arrax, book one of War and Heroes by Ben Sanford, and you'll find it on Goodreads, it'll pop up and all my other books are connected to it by there.
• 34:02
  Ben Sanford: There's other books there by people named Ben Sanford that aren't me because it's at the bottom of the page, but you'll see all of them on there.
• 34:08
  Ben Sanford: But if you go to Stenox Publishing, which is S-T-E-N-O-X publishingcom, that has everything on it and also links where you can purchase them.
• 34:20
  Ben Sanford: If anybody has Kind kindle unlimited, I put the all.
• 34:27
  Ben Sanford: All the books are on there for free.
• 34:28
  Ben Sanford: If you have kindle unlimited, because they reimburse you by just paying, you get paid per page if people read them.
• 34:32
  Ben Sanford: So if you want to read them, the only problem with the racks I will say if you get on kindle unlimited, the problem with the racks is the map and the timeline and all it's in the back of the book.
• 34:42
  Ben Sanford: So I don't know, I should.
• 34:44
  Ben Sanford: I should have had them when they did that put that, the map at the beginning of the book.
• 34:47
  Ben Sanford: So I don't know about you, but if you're following the story, you need to see a map to see where the characters are going and it all.
• 34:52
  Ben Sanford: So it all makes sense.
• 34:53
  Ben Sanford: Um, yeah, so we'll see.
• 34:58
  Ben Sanford: I don't know if you guys know what the stories are about, but about, but Arax is more of a.
• 35:01
  Ben Sanford: Gargoyles are the main antagonists and they were created by their creator and they betrayed their creator, who cast them down upon Arax in mortal form, not if that rings a bell or not.
• 35:15
  Ben Sanford: So they can't possess people's minds or be like demonic entities, but they're.
• 35:21
  Ben Sanford: But they breed in great numbers and they want to destroy mankind.
• 35:24
  Ben Sanford: And the whole story of arax is in the author.
• 35:31
  Ben Sanford: History is the war between man, humans and gargoyles and in the in the recent years, before the start of the story, uh, one human named tyro aligned himself with gargoyles and that tipped the balance.
• 35:42
  Ben Sanford: So now he's threatening to conquer everything.
• 35:45
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: I'm going to have to cut you off.
• 35:46
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: We're out of time, so if you don't mind, can we come back and do a second episode?
• 35:52
  Ben Sanford: Absolutely.
• 35:53
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Okay, cool.
• 35:53
  Ben Sanford: Well, let's log out It'll take about five minutes for Zoom to do this thing and same length, perfect, all right, great.
• 36:01
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: Thank you so much.
• 36:01
  Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes: We'll see you soon.