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(Episode 332): Mastering Fantasy Writing: Insights from Todd Fahnestock · Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists

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Music.
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That's where we interview amazing storytellers and artists. This is episode 332.
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I'm your host, Barney Smith of StoryComic.com. And we're excited to have back
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with us the internationally acclaimed and award-winning epic high fantasy author, Todd Foddenstock.
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Thank you so much. It's so great to be here. I enjoyed this last time.
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This is the best. I love this podcast.
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Well, see, because I usually have what's called friend of the show.
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So when you're on three times, you get the official moniker of friend of the show.
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And I'll send you a P&G badge and all that stuff.
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And you stick it on the back of all the books and everything is fine. There you go.
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Great. Just give me the sticker. Let's put it on there.
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I just stick it on .com. Last year you were on, I was being slightly facetious
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saying that you literally write a book a week.
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And obviously you haven't read a book but you now once again how many books
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have you written since last year now you've we just talked pre-show you have
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like three three or four now yeah just two just two actually okay.
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So yeah I mean last year so I do a lot of appearances out in the world and I
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think the previous year I think I hit 15 comic cons but in 2023 I hit 21 I was
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gonna I was shooting for 18 my stretch school was 24. I hit 21.
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And so that cut down a little bit on my writing time. I think usually I managed
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to get three books out in a year and it doesn't go like, I mean,
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people probably think, oh, so you've got one by, you know, April,
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you've got one by August and you got one by the end of the year.
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That's not the way that I've, maybe some people work that way.
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I don't work that way. I'm like, I got nothing.
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I got nothing. I got nothing. And then all of a sudden I write a book in 13
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days and then I write a book in a month. And then like next year,
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all of it rolls over and I have five books coming out.
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And then the year after that, I have one book coming out. And then the the year after that.
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It's just so random, just based on inspiration.
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So I think that I probably would have been able to get a third one done if I
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hadn't been just on the road most of the time. I was out there a lot last year.
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You love writing. You have so many stories that you've been telling.
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You have these four series and other one-off books that you've been writing.
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How hard is it to, if somebody comes in and you meet at a convention and says,
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I can only afford to buy two books, What are those, what are the two books you want to sell me?
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Like, how, how do you separate out with like, they're all your babies,
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you know, like, how do you, how do you, how do you equally promote and sell
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all your titles at once when you go to these events?
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So, yeah. So, I mean, the question I get all the time is like,
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which one is your favorite?
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Like, like I'm going to tell them my favorite and then they're going to buy
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that book. And I'm like, I like, which child is your favorite?
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I don't, I don't have a favorite child.
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Like, what kind of stuff do you want to read?
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Are you more of the, I want it a little bit grittier.
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I want it a little bit sexier. Are you like, I want it to be clean.
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I want it to be high fantasy.
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And do I want it deep world building? I mean, like all of my novels have a little
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bit of this stuff, but some lean more heavily than others.
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So if they're an epic fantasy reader, I'll say, what's the last book you read?
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They're like Brandon Sanderson's blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I'm like this one right here.
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If they say something like, you know what? I read fantasy a little bit when
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I was a kid. I kind of want to get back into it. I'm like Kyvan the Unkillable.
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Kyvan the Unkillable is about as mainstream as it gets.
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Like it's going to suck you in. I don't care who you are, right?
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It hits the ground running, and you identify with the character,
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and then boom, you're plunged into this world.
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And my writing style is very...
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Very digestible like there and i'm not
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saying anything bad about any other writing style because i
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love the chewier writing styles you know by chewy i
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mean sometimes it can get very lyrical i'm a
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big fan of guy gabriel k and he's very lyrical
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when he gets into his world building and and that sort of thing
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but my type of style is very digestible it's
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clean it's clear and it moves at
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pace at least in the kind of in the unkillable book like if
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we lean towards the whisper prince with fair mist and that sort of thing
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is definitely going to get deeper world building we're gonna we're
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gonna you know play around with some of the elements that are
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part of this fantasy world so yeah it really depends on
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what their what their taste is and if they if they're
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like well i don't know what i want then i choose i kind
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of just use my basic sense of them and i choose and usually by
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the time i'm doing done doing a pitch most of
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them are interested because they really get a taste for the
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story right and and as you as you
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mentioned kiven the unkillable is is part of
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your your eldros legacy that's correct
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and then last year you had so last year you
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had kiven the unkillable and then l'oreal of the
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dark ran the the traveler ran
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the traveler and now you have two new
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books slater in the dragon and bane of
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giants that's correct yep so the
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eldros legacy is a multi-author shared world
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experience and my part of that shared world experience
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isn't that cool yeah it was founded by quincy j allen marie.
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Whitaker and mark stallings and each of us have a continent
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on this world and we're all moving towards this war
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with these mythical giants if you want me to do the pitch for it later i can
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do that and so my story is five volumes in my continent and it's called legacy
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of shadow so you'll see the little sub type title underneath all the titles
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each of those subtitles will tell you which series it's a part of.
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And then the symbol down at the bottom, I can't circle it with my mouse,
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but you can see the symbol down at the bottom.
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It looks like a sun that's kind of having like these dark tentacles kind of
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go over the sun. Yes, that's it.
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That is the Noxanon symbol, and each of the continents has their own continent symbol.
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So you'll know which continent you're in by that symbol.
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So talk to us a little bit about your newest books that are out there,
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like Slater the Dragon, for instance.
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Yeah. Okay. So Slater and the Dragon, this is the fourth in the Legacy of Shadows series.
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And essentially the first three are introducing the world,
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introducing the main characters, and each one of
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the first three is a story in and of itself with like some
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meta plot threads continuing forward about this the
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giants are coming the giants are coming the giants are coming right and slater
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and the dragon is the first one where we open up and the giants are here you
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know it's like it's beginning the war is starting and slater and the dragon
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and bane of giants which is the fifth book which is also done i'm doing the
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revisions right now on that And it's coming out in July.
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So it's coming out in July is the second half of this story.
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Slater and the Dragon is the first half and Bane of Giants is the second half.
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So it's really more of like one book that's divided into two.
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And this one, I warn you, it is a cliffhanger.
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It is like a straight up, you get to the end and you're like,
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no, it's like Empire Strikes Back.
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You know, it's like, oh, it's all bad. And we got to, we got to figure out a way to make it better.
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And the other books are not like that. The other books have like a traditional
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arc. It's like they begin in one place, it's the growth of the character,
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and then it ends in another place, and the meta plot marches on, right?
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And this one, now we're in the meta plot, now we're down to it,
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this is what we've been waiting for the whole time, and it's here,
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and it's all happening, right?
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And it will get resolved in Bane of Giants. Is this kind of a ramp up for all of it, Bane of Giants?
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Absolutely. Or is it just, okay. okay yeah all right yep you know this is this
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is all one story but when i say that these are complete and of themselves that
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they have this mini story within them like this one the first one kiven the
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unkillable is how kiven comes to be part of this party this party of five characters.
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And and then then things start to move
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and then laurel's story is kicked off by something that
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happens at the end of kiven's story and then ren's story
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so there's a split at the end of kiven some
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of the group splits off and so lorell the dark and ren the traveler take place
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at exactly the same time it's just that this is that group and this is this
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group right and then slayer and the dragon is oh my gosh the giants are here
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we got to do battle and and here we go this is what this is the main event this
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is what you've been waiting for.
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Because we talked about this last time you were on too about just kind of like
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outlining outlines either through like we mentioned either through like a Joseph
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Campbell type setup or if like a save the cat type setup.
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Did you have all five of these books already outlined out or did you have them
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all outlined out one at a time and you just kind of had a vague idea of how
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it was the direction the next book was going?
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Yeah. So have you heard the terms plotter and pantser?
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Yes. And you were a pantser. I remember we talked about that.
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That's correct. Yep. So I'm a pantser.
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And for those of you that don't know what plotter pantser means,
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plotter is pretty obvious. You plot the book.
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Pantser is by the seat of your pants. You start writing and it starts to come
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together for you. Right.
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And so I am a dyed in the wool pantser. However, I appreciate other people's ways of doing things.
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And I feel like the more tools you have in your toolbox, the better off you're going to be.
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So I have studied story structure and though I don't plot things out meticulously and stick to them,
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I do plot them out and then deviate as needed right
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i mean as i get into it like so for example i use
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save the cat writes a novel i think it's a great take on
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how to form a structure for your story and it's based off of the original save
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the cat which was a screenplay writing how to that was so dead on about story
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that people were using it for everything not just screenplays and finally jessica
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brody took that and made a save the cat writes a novel saying okay so you know
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you can can you save the cat to write a novel?
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But here are some things that will make it a little bit more easily accessible
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for those of us that are novel writers.
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So I'll plot it out. There's 15 beats and you plot out the beats of act one,
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you plot out the beats of act two, you plot out the beats of act three.
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And pretty much for me, when I start a book, I'll plot it all out for some books.
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The first three, I definitely did this. The fourth one ended up being a little
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strange, but so anyway, so I plotted it all out and the first act,
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I will stick to about 90% of what I I plotted the second act.
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I'll stick to about 50% of what I plotted. And by the time I get to the third
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act, things have deviated so much. I only use about 15 to 20% of what I originally plotted.
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But I think the cool thing about that is you get, I think you get the best of
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both worlds. You get, you get.
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The, the, you can be on point when the more you plot something out,
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the more you can be like, okay, I'm doing something here and I want to make
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sure it follows, follows through here.
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And you can hit those emotional nodes hard, right? When you get there,
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you're like, okay, this is where this is going to be.
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But the cool thing about being a pantser also is that I will surprise myself.
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Like I'll be going through and doing something and all of a sudden something
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will pop up just from pure, the pure creativity in the deep well of the subconscious.
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It'll just just bubble up and since i'm free to do whatever
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i want i don't have to be like well that doesn't fit can't use that i'll use
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that in the next book instead i'm like okay this thing is here now let's
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make room for it and i get told a lot that they're
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you know it's like wow you're just on the raft and you're going along and you
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think it's going to be some way but then he comes and surprises me with this
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thing like i don't know how my my assistant calls them fauna shockers after
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my last name that like we have these twists and the reason that i can surprise
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people is Cause I didn't know it was coming. I didn't know it was coming either.
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And then of course, you know, if you're, you know, a decent editor of any kind,
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you can, so, so something will happen.
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Let's say I've got 40 chapters in a book and in chapter 32, something pops up
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and I'm like, well, that I didn't expect that to happen.
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But then you go back to chapters, you know, 22 and 11 and two,
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and you feather in a little bit of foreshadowing for that.
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And then all of a sudden you seem brilliant. You're like, wow,
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he was planning this all along. No, I wasn't planning that all along.
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It took me by surprise in chapter 30. And I had to go back and put in some things
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that smoothed it through the whole story and made it seem like it was coming
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every step of the way. So I feel like that is the best of both worlds.
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I get enough of a structure so where I can really make it tight.
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And then I get enough of the surprises so that I can really have some things
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that people weren't expecting.
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There's a third one. You got plotters and pantsers. Have you heard this one? Plancers.
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Plancers. Where you plant little seeds as you go and then you go back to them
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and like, oh, this is how it's planted.
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Let's feather that through. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the terms we use to
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describe things are always just as useful as you can use them.
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You know, I mean, plotters and pantsers, clearly not everybody is either a plotter or a pantser.
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Like you know there's there's mixings of both and probably there always was
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but it's it's fun for us to imagine that some people are just more plotters
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and some people are just more panthers so we can,
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categorize them in our mind i i don't know i mean like writing is it's a weird
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thing in the first place but like you brought up like i love that i love what
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you talked about being like yeah you are like i said a dyed-in-the-wool panther
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even the way you describe how you write is that going going backwards,
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it's almost like you're, you're, you're painting with wide brushes as you're going along.
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And then, then you've, then you realize that the pattern you made,
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I like that. So then you go back and kind of add it as it goes backwards as well.
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That's a pretty interesting thing. I like that. Yeah. And I,
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I think there's, I think there's a level of skill that you have to develop because,
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because I will do some things that are really detailed and then have something
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that is completely different that I wasn't expecting come in and I'll go back.
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And it's a bit of a dance and you kind of, it's like, it's like you're going
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back to connect these wires to these triggers earlier in the book and,
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you know, to make the arms move on this particular marionette at the end of the book.
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And if you do it deftly, you can weave it around all the other detailed stuff
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that you've already done.
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So it doesn't necessarily have to be like a really, really rough non-focused draft.
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Like it's focused in all these different places. And this one thing means that
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I have to uproot three paragraphs from this one chapter if you do it right,
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right? If you do it right.
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But of course, there is what I consider to be fatal flaws.
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And I ran afoul of this a lot. And it's a big thing for panthers where you go
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down a rabbit hole and you're 75% of the way done with the book.
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And then you realize, oh no, that's not going to work.
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And you have to like the timelines in Marvel universe, you have to go back to
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the branch in that timeline and snip that off and and continue on this way, right?
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Because it's just not going to work. I call those fatal flaws.
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And in my early years, I did a lot of rewriting on, you know,
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you get done with a 100,000 word book and then you realize that 70,000 words
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of that are just not going to work if you're going to try and convey what you want.
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And that is just like, you know, twist the dagger, stab yourself in the heart.
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And I don't like, I think my subconscious is trained enough that I can see those
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crossroads when I get to them.
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It's like, you're coming along, you're like, oh, I'm going to go down this rabbit
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hole. And you're like, wait, wait a minute.
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Let's look back, see what we know, check in. That's why I think that the,
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the beat sheet for save the cat writes a novel is so good because if you've
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done something, at least you can check in with that beat sheet and go, can I get away with this?
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Or is it going to be a total disaster later on?
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That's why those things can be helpful for even panthers. Right.
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So, yeah, I think, like I said, I think there's a lot of practice that goes
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into that. I don't do fatal flaws anymore.
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It's this is not going to work. If I go back and change something,
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it's going to flow with the story that I've already created.
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Have you seen anything from other writers or, or things that you've seen that
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you're like, Oh, what a fantastic idea. I wish I would have thought of that.
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Oh, all the time. All the time. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, jealousy is a great motivator.
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You see somebody, you're just like, man, that was so well done.
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I want to do that next time. i want to do that you know yeah
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or and but i always like morph it into a different way
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like i want to do it but i want to do it my way oh i'll give
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you an example have you seen the movie bullet train yeah i've seen
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i haven't i haven't watched it yet but i have i know what you're
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talking about yeah okay well the whole story it
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has like seven eight nine ten
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characters in it and and granted some of them
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are more main characters than others but like every single
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character they introduce has a backstory that they
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talk about now it may not be this sort of like the character
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dreams of their backstory but like some other character may
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be telling their backstory on this other character anyways and
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every single one of them has an arc and this movie is fast paced it's got lots
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of violence and gun you know gunshots in it so it's like this really fast-paced
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action movie but the character development is just exquisite i mean they develop
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characters with just a few lines that end up being,
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I mean, I'm still geeking out over it.
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I watched that movie probably two dozen times at this point,
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just like looking, not to mention the dialogue is scintillating.
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I mean, they just, it sizzles in every single scene.
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You should watch it. You should definitely watch it as a study in character
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development because they waste, there's no fat in that movie.
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It is all lean muscle and fast moving.
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And they use every single bit of that story
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to fit with every single bit of the rest of the story just
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amazing just amazing so yes that's an example of when
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i see somebody do something really well and i'm like i want it so
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and we talked last year about the how how incredibly important editors are for
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writers um have you seen have you seen yourself as the series of books that
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you've produced have you seen your writing increase increase in style better and better where you,
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you have less, less need for, I mean, you always need an editor,
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but you see less feedback from editors as the more books you write.
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It's hard to say which came first, me writing really clean, rough drafts because I became indie.
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And when you're indie, like I think the more work you do, the better the product is going to be.
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Like I would never dream of just doing a rough draft and then pitching it over
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to an editor and saying, tell me where I went wrong.
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Like, I mean, I'm going to make it tight by the time I send it to my editor.
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I want my editor to read this book and go, wow, all I could find were typos,
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you know, or this logic error here, this logic error there.
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So it's hard to know whether I just, you know, you never grow out of an editor.
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You always need an editor because you can't see certain things, right?
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And that's why editors are critically important for the process.
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But as far as building the story, I think I have gotten better at creating the
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story arc and having it do the thing that I want.
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But that's come from a lot of paying attention to it because I'm working in the indie market And,
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you know, sometimes I use very different, you know, various different editors
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and sometimes they, this editor does this one thing and this editor does this
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other thing that, you know, and they don't match up.
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So, so you got to do a lot more work on your own when you're,
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when you're an indie author, just make sure that it's cleaner before it goes on to somebody else.
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So, cause you're waiting, you're spending money, you know, if you send it off to an editor.
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So it's like, it's the more corrections they make, the more it costs you before. Yeah.
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Yeah. The more time they spend and that sort of thing. Yep. And I mean,
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there are different styles of editors.
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You've got developmental editors, you've got copy editors, and then you've got typo editors, right?
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And copy editors are the ones that are going to go through and say,
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well, this sentence doesn't really make sense.
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Or they're going to go through and they're going to say, you had a logic error
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here and it didn't fit with there.
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Or you said here that the ring will only be for this one person,
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but then in chapter two, this other person was holding the ring.
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So what gives, right? right? I mean, they'll find stuff like that's copy editor, typo editor.
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It's what it sounds. They make sure that, you know, I mean, typos like copy
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editing, it could go one way.
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It could go another way. Most of the time it's like you made a mistake and you
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didn't cover your tracks and they're going to find it.
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But a developmental editor is like that, that, that high level,
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like they're, they're kind of writing the book with you.
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They're essentially trying to make sure that your vision is what's coming out
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in the book. And you say, okay, I'm doing this.
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And meant to do this, but what you actually did was this. So what we need to
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do is we need to marry those two up in the pros because it's not showing.
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You say that you want the girl to be the badass swordswoman who's going to take
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over the world and be gentle to everybody that she's with and she's a bitch
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to everybody that she's with, right?
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So you wanted to do one thing and you are doing another, right?
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And we want to make sure that it comes across the way that you envision it.
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That's what a great editor does.
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They don't go in and say, well, your story needs to be this. they don't
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do that they go in and they say what is it you want to do this
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okay this is what you want to do this is what you're actually doing
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let's try and make those match right and obviously you'd want to have a developmental
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editor first before you go into copyright i mean the copy editor and type of
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editor yeah it would make sense for them yeah yeah and i think i mean I mean,
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developmental editors,
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I think are, that's kind of exactly what they are.
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Like if you're, if you're a fledgling author and you are still trying to figure
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out how to, how to find your voice, how to find your story structure,
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how to, you know, create your character arcs and stuff, developmental editors are indispensable.
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I think at the point where I'm at, where I've put out 27 books,
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I'm not as, I'm not as interested in a developmental editor.
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I mean, I'm not saying I couldn't benefit from one, but first of all, they're expensive.
21:52
Offensive and second of all i i think i'm pretty much saying what i
21:55
want to say at least that's the feedback i'm getting from my readers so what
21:58
i really need is a copy editor and a typo in always
22:01
need a typo editor i mean typos always come out they're they're pesky little
22:04
creatures and they will they will find their way to the final draft no matter
22:08
how hard you try to shoot them down which is what a good beta reader team is
22:12
good for i mean as an indie author i have a large beta reader team and pretty
22:16
much i send my manuscript up to the editor then i send it out to my beta data readers and these,
22:21
these super fans, they'll catch stuff that, I mean, you wouldn't believe the
22:25
stuff that they catch. It's great. It's great.
22:28
Does somebody have to read the first three books before they pick up Slater and the Dragon?
22:35
Yes, for sure. I mean, you could probably catch up, but you wouldn't want to do that.
22:41
I mean, I would say with the first three books, you could probably jump in on
22:45
any one of those books and read it first, and it still would be entertaining.
22:49
It's going to be far more rich to go one, two, three.
22:52
Kaivin, Laurel, Wren, in that order. But like I said, Kaivin sets up Laurel
22:57
and Ren, which happen at the same time, right?
22:59
So each one is a story in and of itself. But Slater, it's the beginning of the
23:04
metaplot. You don't want to start there. You wouldn't want to start with Slater.
23:08
And so before we went live, you're talking about how many pages is each one
23:15
of those then, Slater and the Dragon?
23:16
Dragon so yeah so slater and the dragon i'm gonna have to go by words so i think
23:22
kaiven the unkillable is 110 000 words and i believe laurel is 110 ren is 110 slater is 130.
23:32
And bane of giants is 145 maybe even
23:35
150 i mean they get bigger as they go along
23:38
so that's probably i'm thinking 100 000 words is
23:41
about 375 to 400 pages depends on whether
23:44
it's a hardback each one is
23:47
between 350 and 400 pages and then the other ones are getting bigger
23:50
as we get we might be approaching 500 pages with
23:53
bane right and that's it for eldros legacy on
23:56
your on your continent then yeah on my continent so so
23:59
my continent is noxanon and the main storyline
24:02
is legacy of shadows right and the legacy of shadows storyline is five books
24:08
that ends with bane of giants starts with kiven the unkillable ends with bane
24:11
of giants so right and that's in And so now are you visiting some of your other
24:17
series after this now? So many. Yes.
24:21
So I've got different groups of fans. I've got my Threadweaver series,
24:25
which is complete, thankfully.
24:26
And that is a four-book series that starts with Wildmane, ends with Guard of Dragons.
24:30
Then I've got my Whisper Prince series, which starts with Fair Mist,
24:33
ends with the Slate Wizards. And that one is also complete.
24:36
Then I have my Tower of the Four series, which starts with the Champions Academy
24:40
and is not done. None. There's two volumes of the omnibuses and there will be
24:45
two more volumes for a set of four.
24:47
Right. I plan to do 12 episodes, four volumes, four of the omnibuses.
24:53
So and i would love to get those done this year
24:57
my tower of the four fans some people like the tower of
24:59
the four series the best even over elder's legacy and i really want to get them
25:05
done for them so so that's that's probably what i'm going to work on next i'm
25:10
also working on my wishing world series which is a middle grade series that's
25:17
sort of my harry potter kind of series.
25:19
And it's just such a fun, fun book.
25:23
And it's about 11-year-old Lorelei and her nine-year-old brother.
25:25
And they tumble into the wishing world, which is this magical place where children
25:29
transform into their ideal hero.
25:32
And they go on this adventure to try and get their parents back.
25:34
And the whole world is actually this patchwork world of things that children have imagined.
25:39
It's like an elephant graveyard and a robot factory and live sandcastle that's
25:44
It's like, you know, full size, all these different crazy things.
25:47
So it's very whimsical and silly.
25:48
And it's got creatures like flim flams and rat sharks and swisher slashers and
25:52
beatlins and rock grim rocks and, you know, all kinds of crazy, crazy creatures.
25:57
It's a great series. And I've got the third one. The rough draft is written.
26:01
I just have to go through it. I wrote it like three years ago and I have not
26:03
had a chance to get back to it. So, okay.
26:07
Yeah. So it's, that's also on deck, but the thing, one of the things that I'm really excited about.
26:12
I've been thinking about this single book, this standalone epic fantasy book that I'm kidding.
26:19
I'm not kidding you, is 1500 pages, maybe 12 to 1500 pages.
26:24
At this point in my mind, I call it the tome.
26:27
And I feel like epic fantasy readers are so tired of the never ending series.
26:33
We've been waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish his...
26:38
Song of ice and fire for so long a minute and the hbo show gave us some you know kind of.
26:43
Resolution but i think that we would all like to see what george
26:45
martin would do with the ending and then of course patrick rothfuss such
26:49
great books name of the wind and i can't
26:52
remember what the second one is called off the top of my head but such great
26:55
books and i think we've been waiting 10 years for him to come out with his next
26:58
one it's so frustrating and so i was thinking that these fantasy readers that
27:02
i want to give them what it is that they want i think i want to give Give them
27:05
just one big story all at once and just make it one volume.
27:10
I mean, I haven't seen that in a while and I'm not sure exactly how big I can
27:13
make a book and still have it published as one book,
27:15
but I've got this notion of three different factors, factions in this fantasy
27:20
world that is essentially built on something that is temporary and they don't know it.
27:25
This sort of galactic plate that is going to dissolve at a certain point and
27:29
they've got to figure out how to work together.
27:32
And make, I mean, I haven't, this is all just sort of in my mind right now,
27:37
but I want to, I want to write this book and I want to just do it beginning,
27:41
middle and end, put it out and say, this is it, the whole thing,
27:44
all at once, all in one volume and see how fans react to that.
27:49
And maybe they won't like that. I mean, a lot of people like series, right?
27:52
But I don't think anybody likes the fact that they have to wait 10 years for
27:56
the next, next book to come out. So we'll see what happens if I put out just a single book.
28:01
So 1,500 pages. So for you, Todd, that's going to probably take you at least
28:05
a month to write that down, right?
28:11
Oh, I wish I were that prolific. I mean, you never know. When I get taken by
28:14
the news, it's just crazy how fast it comes out.
28:18
Like Summer of the Fetch, I wrote that book in 13 days. I kid you not. 13 days.
28:24
And it got painful towards the end. I mean, all this stuff was coming.
28:28
I'm like, I just want to keep typing while it's coming. My wife would come up
28:31
and say, do you want dinner?
28:32
I'm like, uh-huh, I do. I do want dinner. So she'd bring me dinner.
28:35
And I'd just gobble it and keep going because it wouldn't stop.
28:38
It just wouldn't stop. And I
28:38
wasn't going to go to bed. I wasn't going to sleep until the rush stopped.
28:43
And it just didn't stop for 13 days. And I got to tell you, around about day
28:46
11, it wasn't fun anymore.
28:48
At first, it was like, woo-hoo, I'm going to get this whole thing done.
28:51
And then by day 11 or so, it was like, ow, ow, ow.
28:56
And it wouldn't stop. It just wouldn't stop. It was great. It was one of the
28:58
coolest experiences. I've never had that happen before or since.
29:03
Right. So, so Todd, if people want to learn more about your work,
29:08
where's the best place they could go to?
29:09
Yeah, we've been surfing at the whole interview, toddfahnestock.com.
29:14
So yeah, for our listeners out there. So you go to toddfahnestock.com and the
29:18
link will be in the show notes and it is spelled as it sounds basically. Right.
29:25
With a silent H thrown in there. that's true yeah
29:28
so f-a-h-n-e-s-t-o-c-k so
29:32
you know and it seems apropos that you
29:35
have the word stock in your name with the fact that you actually have like
29:38
a library of books if you've written so far so yes not to mention multiple copies
29:45
of them in books in my office as i go out to these so i have lots of stock for
29:48
sure yes yeah you have a ton of stock stock sorry i do i do i have I have a
29:54
talk on a stock and then my entire.
29:59
So listen, so you're going to have to come back on again then next year when
30:03
you have your next books. I want my, I want my speaker.
30:05
I want my friend. Yeah. You got to get, yeah. You got your friend of the show sticker.
30:10
Music.
30:11
Thank you so much. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
30:34
I had a buddy of mine does that he started picking up
30:37
blacksmith thing and he's that's where i learned about you know like how many
30:41
times you can fold something and all that stuff and making it stronger and i
30:45
mean he started off making he wanted to make a vest like tending all all the
30:51
time spending that and he decided i'm just going to make knives instead it's much quicker,
30:57
imagine a steel vest would take a while well because
31:01
he had all the pieces and he was like he was actually pincing them together
31:04
and all that stuff and yeah he's like yeah i'm just going to make knives that's
31:09
quicker and you're making one you know vest of steel or you can make three three
31:17
or four knives probably.
31:18
Yeah. It's like, I'm just going to make knives.
31:22
Yeah. Because of what it comes down to the cost benefit analysis,
31:25
the time you spend putting into making the knife as compared to the price you
31:30
can sell, like, like, like, like, you know, just a ring, a ring mail vest.
31:36
He was like, it's going to, it doesn't make sense. Like I can't,
31:39
if I was going to spend the amount of time I'd make spending a knife,
31:42
the time I'd make a knife and how much I'd spend making ring mail,
31:46
I'd go broke he's like I can't.