Latest / Books4Guys / Beau L'Amour on Storytelling, Imagination, Adventure, and Continuing the Legacy of Louis L'Amour

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Beau L'Amour on Storytelling, Imagination, Adventure, and Continuing the Legacy of Louis L'Amour · Books4Guys

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Before we jump into today's episode, I want to thank our executive development partner, Standard Pursuit.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Founded by Hunter Didrickson, Standard Pursuit is a coaching community built for founders, entrepreneurs, and high performers who are ready to step into the next version of themselves.
• 0:16
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• 0:27
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• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's about health, mindset, discipline, leadership, and becoming the type of person capable of achieving the goals you set for yourself.
• 0:43
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• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's get to today's episode.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I am honored to talk with you as I, man, leading up to this episode, I went on a deep dive of learning more about you and your father's work.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't even know where to start because you guys have done so much and so many different things.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, you know, first thought, I was just like, what a life, you know, just just the the things you guys have gotten to experience and the work that you put out there and just different avenues is just incredible.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I know, you know, I'd I'd love I want to hear your thoughts and just your experiences and just kind of where life's taking you.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and again, I I had to reread too the stat of your father.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think has what is it, 300 million copies of work in print globally?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Probably some, probably somewhat more than that.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the very early days of paperbacks, they didn't count very well.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so it it could be more than that.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The the more impressive thing, however, is we're still in maybe the top 12 writers at random house.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the top 50 writers in the world.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's year on year.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's not cumulative.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that means that means each each year that we're we're kind of there.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're kind of a low-key success story, I hope.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Something, you know, I I wish more people knew about us, but uh there are there are plenty.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, and I I think that's part of the kind of the intrigue is that there is so much of y'all's work out there, but but I was I was someone new that got introduced to your work, and and I'm I'm I'm reading books and and looking at different things all the time, and then I saw saw what you guys have out there, and I'm like, how have I never heard of Bo or Louie and the work that they've done?
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: But most of my work is kind of behind the scenes, but uh my dad's certainly well known.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, no, well I Bo, I'd love for you just to take the take the mic for a couple minutes and just talk, talk, lead us into this a little bit because you've got a new book out, which I believe was released last week.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was it came out on June 2nd.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So last week, which is Sky Ring Water, and I know there's a unique part of this book because it's you and your father who have co-written it, but it it's kind of in a way where you've taken some of the manuscripts and notes that he had and then you formulated it to finish it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is that correct?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've been doing that kind of work for quite a while.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even back when my dad was alive, I was both adapting and in charge of adapting his books into in those days, we were doing audio dramas.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So these are not just somebody reading the the story.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a full script and sound effects and music and the whole thing.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, you know, I started off, I started off doing that.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, I have edited a lot of his work.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that takes because some of it was unfinished, some of it was in great need of editing, some of it was unpublished and needed this or that, sometimes that has been more or less rewriting.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, the last two novels that we brought out, I stuck my name on it just because people seem to start worrying about, you know, well, kind of who did what?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is somebody behind the scenes doing this?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sort of yes, me, you know, just so it's not, it's just so it's out there for everybody to know.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, that makes sense.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Bo, how did you talk a little bit about your your story first?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because you grew up in in California, and and again, I was looking through your background, radio magazines, editing, script writing, novels.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But just kind of paint the picture for our guest of just, you know, who you are, what your your path of of where that's led to today, especially with the release of this book.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So just kind of the path you've taken in and where you're at now.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I grew up in Los Angeles.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I particularly grew up in the West Hollywood area, West Hollywood in the days when I lived there, which was in the 60s and early 70s, was kind of like Hayde Ashbury or the East Village.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very beatniky, very beatnikky neighborhood.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was in those days a modestly successful but still struggling writer.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: He really, I wouldn't say he broke into notoriety.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was already pretty well known, but I'd say he broke into greater wealth and an easier, an easier life in the mid-1970s.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was pretty old before he was particularly successful.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: We moved to a much quieter and more conservative neighborhood in West Los Angeles.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I went to LA public schools.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I went to California Institute of the Arts, where I got a Bachelor's of Fine Art with an emphasis in film.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was lucky enough to study with two really great mentors.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: CalArts works on a mentor system where you have a particular faculty member who's your primary, primary contact.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was Alexander McKendrick, who is a great director, Scottish director from back in the 1950s, maybe one of the best film teachers alive at the time.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I also studied with Ed M.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Schwiller, who was who had been an artist who did a lot of book illustrations in the 50s and 60s.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we actually had a lot of connection because, you know, we we s we knew some of the same, some of the same people.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was obviously, you know, like 50 years older than me, but we had we we knew some of the same people.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And Ed also had done the first piece of digital animation in the world.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: He and Alvy Ray Smith did a piece of digital animation called Sunstone.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Smith went on to found Pixar quite a few years later.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had this kind of interesting background.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of classic Hollywood, classic movie business, and also something that became the future, but none of us knew it was going to be the future yet.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I went on to work in the motion picture business, did that on and off for quite a few years.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's still something that's a little bit part of my life occasionally.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then I went on to work in the earliest area, earliest parts of the audiobook business when it moved from being like books of the books for the blind to something that was more commercial.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We did a lot of audio dramas.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: We did about six audio dramas a year.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I really learned a lot about writing at that time.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I also learned a lot about writing from studying acting, which I was doing at that time, not really because I wanted to become an actor, but because I was writing scripts for those audio dramas.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in my opinion, the first customer of your script is the, you know, is the actor.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really the audience yet, it's the actor.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I felt like I needed to learn something, learn something there, learned quite a bit about writing, doing that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great chance to experiment.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: My dad passed away, had to organize, reorganize our business from the books that he wrote, the the two to four books that he wrote a year, into a business that was more backlist oriented, that took the whole catalog and was more about presenting the whole catalog as a unit.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Did a lot of interesting marketing things somewhere in the, I guess right around the in the late 90s, early 2000s.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: We did a big marketing program where we gave about a million books to the U.S.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: military.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Did some other things I've done I've done a lot of, I've art directed a lot of covers.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I kind of had this background in general art from school.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so then did a graphic novel sort of following up in that same area, adapted from one of my dad's short stories and a script that I wrote with a terrific writer that we we did a bunch of audio dramas together, Katherine Nolan, and then kind of got to the point where I think the probably the most the most interesting thing I've done in the last decade or so, besides this book and the things that go with it, would be this uh Louis Lemoore's Lost Treasures program, where we took many of my dad's notes and correspondence and all different kinds of sources, interviews that I did, and I wrote like a the story behind the story for a whole bunch of his novels and things.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's now in the new editions of those books that's packaged with the novel as a postscript, almost like a, you know, like the bonus features on a DVD or something.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were two books of material that didn't fit in with the novels.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's Louis Lemour's Lost Treasures, Volumes one and two.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those were unfinished books and short stories of my dad that I explained how they worked into his life and what you know what position they would have had.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: All of this project is sort of like the let's call it the the professional biography of Louis Lemour, kind of organized by project.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us up to Skyrim Water, and I'm I'll stop talking for a minute, let you ask some questions, and I can tell you anything you want to know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, I appreciate that.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a lot of things that I've learned.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you know, I as I was researching for this, seeing a lot of things you'd done and just the path.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to hear from your own words on just kind of what that looked like.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really cool because it seemed like you and your dad were very close.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of correlation of work together.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious to know, like you don't see that all the time, you know, it in a in a lot of ways.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: You're there's a I think it's very cool that you got to experience a lot of this with your dad.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like he had a really big influence on you and just the direction that you went as a creative person too.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what was that dynamic like?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you were a kid, is that what led you to to wanting to go kind of that same path?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what just what was your relationship with your dad like and and where did it seem like it was all good, but like what what did that look like?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was it was really an exceptional relationship.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't really imagine myself ever writing novels or anything of the sort.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I kind of wanted to be a filmmaker or work in the more technical arts.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was very happy doing the the audio dramas when that was going on because I I like I like the technical side of things as well as the creative.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we worked together very well.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more my dad was was very much of a the guy who would have all of the genius ideas and get things started.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was always in love with starting a new project, and I'm I'm much more of the like, I'm gonna dot all the I's and cross all the T's and get the editing perfect and try to, you know, try to finish everything up, round everything up.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we're kind of a good compliment for one another.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what I was picking up on.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: You guys had like your own unique skill sets and interests, and it really balanced well to where you guys were able to do so many of these cool things together.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And again, you don't see the very often.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of times I'm just thinking of young men, you almost, you know, we have good relationships with our dads, but sometimes we kind of defy them and we're, you know, trying to create our own path, but you guys seem to have your own interest and it meshed well to where you guys were able to do some of these cool things and put this work together.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: What's something that you look back on and you're still, you're still continuing this work?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: But what's been the most, I don't know, the most enjoyable aspects of it and something that you're just you kind of pinch yourself and you're like, I can't believe I got to do this.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Probably, you know, two things very different from one another.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The Law of the Desert Born graphic novel was a very charmed project.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was, it we were, there was about five of us, the adapter, Charles Sentino, and Thomas Yates, the illustrator, and myself, Paul Odell, who I've worked with for a long time, who's our webmaster, but also just handles a lot of the nuts and bolts technical stuff on our end.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Catherine Nolan and all coming together to do this particular project and very much complimenting one another, having a great time working with one another.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Paul was doing kind of the electronic post-production on that.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, we'd find a, we'd find a panel where Thomas had moved like a character's pocket from like one side of his vest to the other.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul was like, oh, I can go in there and Photoshop and fix that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, every and then eventually we got to a point where, you know, Thomas would draw like several pockets for him and just send him the pockets so he could put them where he needed to put them if anything like that happened before.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know that that's an exact example, but that's the kind of thing that happened.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we all worked very, very well together.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the book is beautiful.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, we were nominated for an Eisner Award, which is like an Academy Award in the comic book business.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was still back in the days when the Village Voice existed, and the Village Voice said it was one of the best, you know, it was one on one of those best of the year lists at the Village Voice and stuff like that.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was really terrific.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, that was kind of working with a team.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then working solo, Sky Ring Water, this new book, is just something that has been a remarkable experience of just kind of diving into this adventure and almost uh, I mean, it's not like I didn't plan it out and everything, but also almost experiencing the elements of the adventure along with the characters and kind of experiencing my dad's life, because my dad wrote very much in a stream of consciousness kind of kind of way, much more than I do.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And just being able to go on this incredible adventure with these, you know, these crazy characters, this pair of arms dealers who get in over their head and are chased around the world and move from Barcelona in the 1960s to Israel, to Egypt, to Venezuela and Argentina and Chile, and you know, have then have to recover this, salvage this submarine.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I created these challenges for myself that were kind of crazy.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I said, uh okay, I have to break into, it's like a it's like a locked room caper.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have to break into a submarine that is on the floor of this fjord in very cold water and it's sealed and pressurized.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's booby trapped too.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's full of gas and explosives, but uh it's sealed and pressurized, and divers have to break into it without flooding it with water.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I had, you know, luckily I had some wonderful kind of submarine experts who helped me out and people who knew things about salvage and stuff like that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: But throughout the process, we would discuss it and we would, you know, come up with a plan, and then we would suddenly go, oh no, there's this, there's a better plan.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an here's another way of doing it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of incorporated those things into the story.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the mistakes we initially made planning are the mistakes the characters make.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and then they come up with with better ways of doing things.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it was this, it was just a very exciting process of working out these stories that crisscross one another and character the way the characters intertwine and the way the characters are, you know, work out their their problems.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, interesting.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was thinking of of another question for you in particular about this book.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, different books.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking of your dad just in general.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you think his creativity came from?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Were they experiences or or how did he come up with his novels?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did you ever, you know, did you ever get the insight on just kind of like his world and and how he created these stories?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think, you know, people used to ask him, you know, like, you know, kind of where do your ideas come from and things like this.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he would always say, well, if I if I didn't have ideas, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be in this business.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, some of it, I don't know that his experiences or mine really spark the plot of the story.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they more fill in the details of what happens throughout it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: But they are, you know, you do get into this sort of what if, you know, situation.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and you you say, you know, well, what if this?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: What what if the, in this case, Skyring Water, what if the, you know, greatest treasure of the 20th century was uh abandoned and nearly forgotten at the end of World War II, and the few people who remembered that it existed didn't know where it was, but were forced to to tr to try and to try and find it and thus, you know, either uh save the world by finding it or save the world by destroying it, depending on what interpretation you really wanna you really want to look at.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you, you know, uh a lot of it a lot of it is just kind of asking yourself that question.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you don't have a lot of what if questions, you don't you don't come up with story ideas.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then once you have that idea, your experiences start to fill in the the blanks and start to fill in the experiences of the characters and the way they react to one another.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think your life interacts with it more at that point, at least, at least in the way that we work.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: You might you might find some writer who's definitely writing more from things they personally experienced and and working out one version of it or another.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm always curious, especially on like the fiction side of things, you know, what's going on in your world at that time that may be influencing what you write about.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as you write, you know, what external influence is, even from start to finish on a novel, you know, like what influenced you towards the end of the book that, you know, that wasn't influencing at the beginning, and and what triggered this idea or this part of the story or this direction.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And again, as a creative person, there's so many different ways you can come up with that, but I'm always curious of like the external impacts of things going on and how that molds what you're putting, you know, on pen to paper.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in in this case, I I actually think a lot uh there was yeah, COVID had a lot of impact on this book.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's this big kind of globe trouting book that moves around the world, you know, and you know, of course, I was like stuck at home.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was a chance to travel around.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It also has, you know, it also has a certain cynicism towards government and things like that.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot a lot of its cynicism is very rightly aimed at the government of the Third Reich, but uh it's also aimed at other other governments and the the characters that it follows are arms dealers who are very cynical about the role that governments play and how they're, you know, what they're what they're up to and what they, you know, how they kind of have to redeem, ultimately redeem themselves throughout the throughout the process of the story.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there was, you know, there was some of that.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of it was also it's set in 1961, which is the year that I was born.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're all kind of fascinated by the conditions of the world that created us, you know, but we weren't really aware of them because we were too young.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: My my dad was born in 1908, and so and he wrote a lot of Westerns.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, he's looking at the world just before he was born and uh kind of fascinated, you know, maybe more by the era of his father's, you know, his father's youth or his grandfather's youth.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I'm looking at this, you know, I I knew a lot about this period because I've been studying a lot of my dad's life in order to write a biography.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably my next project.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad's career devo, you know, the his the modern part of his career that we all kind of know about developed in the 1950s and 60s.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had some information on that, and I was very interested in that in that world.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I guess that's how we get there.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, very interesting.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I actually it's really cool you say that because I found myself, especially more recent, more recently, thinking about events when I was born and just what things were like then.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and maybe I don't know, maybe I'm just social media is wearing me out, and I just want some nostalgia in a way, you know, and I see these videos like what it was like in the 80s and the 90s, and I kind of remember a little bit of that, and I was like, man, times were so Good.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just hanging with your friends, riding your bike, going around the neighborhood, not telling your parents where you were going, going to the video store.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, man, and I'm now I'm really interested.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what was going on back then?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's funny you say that.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that that's also, you know, the the book, the book really uh grows out of a time period in a genre, you know, so the Cold War thriller.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like the grandfather of the Cold War thr thriller is kind of Ian Fleming writing James Bond.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's Ken Follett and Jean Le Carey and more modern people like Clive Cussler, all the way up to, I guess Cussler kind of takes you to the end of the the end of the Cold War.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it having read some of those books and and love them during that time period, I really wanted to do something that kind of fit into that, you know, into that particular area.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it it's it's fun.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like there's like it's a w, you know, it's a world without cell phones, it's a world without the internet, it's a world without, yeah, almost without computers.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: There there is a little bit there the first computers in the world play a little role, uh a small role in this, in this particular story.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's uh it's a it's a different, it's a different place, and it's kind of, you know, even in even thinking back to my 20s in the in the 1980s, it feels closer to this world and it has it, I don't know, there's a lot of fun and nostalgia to it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it and I talk to people a lot about just how how much we've progressed in the short amount of time, you know, it's just different than what the progression was like 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, it seemed a little slower.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't, you know, conceptually all there then, but you know, knowing w what I hear from others.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: But Bo, as have you gotten any early feedback on the book that maybe has surprised you a little bit as far as just, you know, people reading it, then then saying something about it.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, oh, I didn't actually think about that, or that's interesting that you not you know, not really, but we're only about a week into it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very early to get that out there.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's hard, it's hard to tell.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I also try to kind of distance myself from what whatever is going on in the uh in the in the audience world.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I am obviously interested in getting out there and selling it and telling people that it's this wonderful, exciting, you know, exciting book that's you know, a a thriller in every sense.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, I haven't heard too much back, too much back yet.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be interesting.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that too, because most people I talk to, there's always, I don't know, someone usually reads it and says something where they're like, oh, it's very interesting.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you you pointed something out that maybe I just didn't think about, you know, with this.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, that's always true.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I talk about other you talking about other projects.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: That is a you if you if you have a project, I've noticed this with a number of like film type projects and stuff.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you take a script or you take a short story or whatever it is and put it in front of somebody and don't tell them anything, just let them read it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then the best feedback you can get is never, ever, ever in the world ask anybody if you they liked it or not.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's totally unimportant.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Get them to tell you the story.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what they come back with is sometimes just remarkable.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's remarkably different sometimes than what you expected you were going to hear.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: The good part about it is anything that you hear, you know, use it because they think you created it.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and so it's like that's what the story was doing to them.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you you should, you know, you should pay strict attention to that.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I think tell me the story is the greatest critical input you could ever get.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I'm thinking, again, as a your own, your own creativity and your own world and your own thoughts, they're all so different from everyone else's.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the way you've put together this world or this this place that you're trying to describe, someone else may have a completely different way that they're creating it in their mind as they read it.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's the great thing about books, though.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: You get to create your own storyline, not storyline, but your own world around it, your own imagination, your own thoughts of what this person looks like or where they're at and what they're experiencing.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: You the the audience is one half of the creative experience.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's it's really remarkable because of that.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Bo, just a couple more questions for you.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: For this book in particular, what are you hoping?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a message?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is there an experience?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: What are you hoping people take away from reading the book?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just hope people have a lot of fun with it.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be exciting and surprising, and I'm hoping people are getting that out of it.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping that they're transported to other places.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping that I've written a well-enough layered, kind of deep enough, detailed enough story so that they will be able to read it several times and and continue to get, you know, continue to get more out of it.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's always it's always my goal is to create something that you can you can do a couple of times and kind of go, oh, wait a minute.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that was.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I I enjoyed the story, but now that I'm reading it again, I'm getting more out of it.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I hope I hope I've created something that that somebody can react to that way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I had another question for you too.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna kind of ask them like what some of maybe your it your work in progress is.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like maybe a biography of your father is in the works on potentially something uh of a project.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: But Bo, last question for you.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I ask everyone who comes on the podcast this question.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's really just a books for guys question of more curious to know what what people are interested in or what good recommendations are out there because everyone seems to give something different.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious to know, Bo, what is a book or two that has meant a lot to you personally or professionally?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what's a book that you love to recommend to other people?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's difficult because a lot of my reading, particularly recently, has been nonfiction and it's been just reading for the, you know, for the information.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say if it's a books for guys question, it's like what are the good books for guys?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Which all of your book and your father's books are by far good books for guys.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on getting all of them on the website, by the way.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've got the new one on there.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Working on getting them all on there.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be great.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that would be great.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're on that.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: It should be done soon.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the uh I think I think the big books for guys question is mid to late 20th century popular literature.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Robert Heinlein, Ross McDonald, you know, my dad, Elmore Leonard.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: These are these are great books to read.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're fast reads, they're a they're a lot of fun.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were really written for more for with a, I don't know that they were really written with a male audience in mind, but I think a lot of times when you look at what's popular literature out today, it's very female oriented.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this was back in the days when, you know, you had a lot of guys running things and the material had that quality.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like there weren't women doing interesting, you know, interesting things like Patricia Highsmith and people like that.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: But there's there are a lot of there's a lot of great reading experiences, fun recreational reading experiences that I think fit a modern guy's profile, which is, you know, a tight, tough read that is is really good.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say, you know, I'd say start start around 1930 or 1940, maybe 1940 is a little bit better, and just like go all the way up through maybe the the mid-90s.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that came out in paperback, you're gonna have you're gonna have fun with.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And those are also good.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of that reading is good for you younger, you know, for teenagers too.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it doesn't have this problem that you see in the book business today, where everything's siloed into this, like, oh, this is for tweens, this is for this, this level reading, this is for that level reading.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because what happens is as your kid grows older, those writers stick in those categories.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to change writers and they have to kind of they have to change everything they do.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just it's just better to lock into something and get going with it.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we could have a whole other discussion on how things are set up today from a marketing and publishing standpoint.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I you get a lot of I've learned a lot of those processes and how things are siloed a little bit.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I love your recommendations, Bo, because I think it's we're always on to like the next new thing.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's good for us to take a break and go back a little bit and read and kind of just explore different worlds and different people who have written in different times and kind of just open yourself up a little bit more to learning about just different things in that that time.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, we get so caught up on just what's now, what's next, technology.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that again, I I promote reading.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love that you recommended those books in particular because it's easy to recommend a uh personal development book or something, you know, something of that nature today.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: But fiction seems to be so important, especially at a young age, for guys to get hooked on reading as it's Gosh.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is I I'm actually talking with someone later this week who's who's really deep dived into that situation.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm fascinated to learn more of just the studies around that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let me jump in here and say this.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think the loss of fiction reading in young people, particularly young men, it stunts the imagination.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, if you don't practice turning the the code of English language into an imaginary process, an enjoyable imaginary process, you're not developing the mental muscles that will be able to turn that around and say, invent something.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's basically you engage in this imaginary process where you're inspired by what you're reading to imagine things.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exercise for your taking your own imagination and putting that back in the world, creating some piece of computer code or a 3D item, you know, a watch or, you know, piece of electronic equipment, whatever it is.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But your imagination has to be trained to do that.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that in turning off that aspect or turning it down, I don't think things like movies necessarily turn it off, but they really turn it down.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so glad you said that.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm that again, it's a big reason behind Books for Guys is just promoting that imagination and that development and the curiosity and just getting your brain turning and interested in things and curious about things.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: As I I don't know, it's just so easy to get dumbed down and just doing these repetitive entertainment things where it just it doesn't give you enough to think about or to to to just critically dive into.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I love that you said that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I and again, I'm interested to learn more and promote more about that, especially fiction books, because they do seem to be so important, especially at that young age for development.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I look back at it now, I'm so glad that I was and I enjoyed reading, you know, I but I'm so glad I had people in my life that really took notice and and really encouraged me to read.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't do enough of it by any means, but I at least wasn't totally away from it.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it like some some kids today seem to be, and it's like, oh man, what are we doing?
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've got to get back to this, you know, and highlight the importance of it.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so I really appreciate that aspect and and your thoughts on that, Bo.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: But man, this has been amazing.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I I as coming into this conversation with you, Bo, I was looking at all these different things that you and your father have done.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, man, I cannot wait to to just learn more.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you've got we've got the new book on the website.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working on getting all the others on there too to promote them.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we're we're proud to do that, and we're proud to spotlight you and your father's work, and can't wait to see your future work.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And and we're gonna be proud to spotlight that too.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when you get get the get your next books out there, we'll have you back on the podcast and talk about it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that'd be great.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that'd be great.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Bo, thank you, man.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a pleasure.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.