Latest / The Whitfield Report / TWR Monday | Rediscovering Adventure: The New Era of Pulp Fiction and Sword & Sorcery w/ Grayson D Sullivan”

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TWR Monday | Rediscovering Adventure: The New Era of Pulp Fiction and Sword & Sorcery w/ Grayson D Sullivan” · The Whitfield Report

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  The right to offend is not some pesky little part of freedom of
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  speech that we have to put up with.
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  It is the heart and soul and lungs of freedom of speech.
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  It is the coursing lifeblood of human progress.
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  It is the instigator of liberty and modernity and science and
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  understanding. What a laughingstock today's
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  student leaders are that they can so casually dismiss the
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  right to be offensive without realizing that their lovely,
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  enlightened lives are the gifts of individuals who gave offence.
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  Offensiveness is not just something we have to
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  begrudgingly accept. Offensiveness is the motor of
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  human progress. Now broadcasting from the Right
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  to Offend media studios in sunny South Florida, bringing you the
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  latest in politics, current events, art and pop culture.
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  This is the Whitfield Report live with Sam Whitfield.
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  But giving offense is good. In fact, it's essential.
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  All righty everyone. Good afternoon, evening,
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  morning, whenever you're listening to this and you're
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  watching and welcome to the Whitfield Report Labor Day
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  edition. I guess happy Labor Day if
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  you're watching on Monday. I'm Sam filled and we've kind of
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  been on hiatus from the Monday show for a while.
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  You know, everyone kind of being on vacation and what not.
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  But as promised, we're kind of resuming the author series and
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  interview viewing and joined today is first time guest on the
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  show but someone who has actually been on the show before
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  only his episode didn't air. Grayson Sullivan is joining us.
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  Well regarded pulp author from the men's adventure fiction
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  genre and that whole, I guess society or what not that I'm
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  affiliated with as well. And you know, Grayson is popping
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  up everywhere. He's been published in Savage
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  Realms, he's published his own novella.
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  He's very much into the sword and saucy genre, which I'm very
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  excited to get into. And he's one of the biggest hype
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  men just for other writers that I can think of.
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  So it's an honor to have him. Grayson.
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  Welcome to the show, Sir. How are you doing?
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  I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.
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  And that's some high praise you just laid down.
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  I appreciate that. Well, you, you did, you deserve
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  it. It's it's interesting because
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  for the viewers at home, like Grayson and I, we talk almost
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  every day in the men's adventure and discord.
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  And yet like, we haven't actually talked much on the
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  podcast. So it's, it's, it's thrilling to
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  have you on and discuss things that I know we've discussed like
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  offline, but you know, just to recap, so.
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  Happy to be here. Sorry about my camera, it's
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  glitching for some reason, I don't know what that's about.
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  But I'm there. I mean, yeah, green screens are
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  are weird, but, you know, technology, it is what it is.
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  Yeah. So I just kind of just start off
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  Grace and I guess just what is your general background for
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  those who don't know you? And how would you get started
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  with, you know, both as a writer and kind of just like as a
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  reader, what's your, you know, I guess, background as far as that
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  whole thing goes? Let's start with the reader
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  part. I really wasn't much of A reader
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  growing up. I was a movie kind of kid and
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  video game kid. You know, I read books here and
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  there. I, you know, I read like the
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  Merry Adventures of Robin Hood or Red Wall series.
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  I read The Hobbit, read The Lord of the Rings when I was in
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  middle and high school. Pretty typical nerdy stuff.
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  I guess. I was in the comic books and all
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  that. Grew up, My dad grew up in the
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  1940s. I was born late in my dad's
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  life, so he introduced me to all the stuff he grew up with.
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  So like I was introduced to the Shadow.
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  He came home one day with this big like case full of cassette
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  tapes, and it was the old Orson Welles Shadow radio show.
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  And then the Shadow movie came out in the 90s and we watched
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  that together. My dad introduced me to the
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  Rocketeer, to Indiana Jones, to Star Wars.
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  He introduced me to King Kong, He introduced me to Godzilla, He
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  introduced me to James Bond. He introduced me to so much of
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  this. Great American heroism in our
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  fiction, right? Like Batman.
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  But my first Batman was Adam West Batman.
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  My first Superman was the old Fleischer Studios animated
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  Superman's because those are what he grew up with.
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  But then I also grew up with stuff in the 90s, so I had
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  Batman the Animated Series, You know, I had Power Rangers, I had
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  The Legend of Zelda. I had all the stuff that we
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  really loved and adored. Jurassic Park.
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  So I had this really cool bowl of influence in my life.
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  You know, I never really thought I'd be a writer.
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  I always loved storytelling. Like I would watch the directors
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  commentaries on movies and listen to how they broke down
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  their storytelling. I would watch all the behind the
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  scenes stuff. I would study story structures
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  because I was a theatre kid too. It's really into Shakespeare.
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  When I was in high school, committed large swaths of it to
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  memory even because I was just so into the idea of
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  storytelling. So studied all this stuff
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  growing up, loved every bit of it.
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  Never saw myself as a writer. Tried to get into short film
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  making and it never happened. Because you need money, you need
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  a crew, you need talent. And I'm kind of a one of these
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  people that's like, if I don't do it decently, then I'm just
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  not going to do it. That's just my mind.
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  You know, I'm not going to produce that terrible YouTube
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  video that everybody cringes at. Like it needs to have some sense
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  of quality to it. If I'm going to, it needs to
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  come across like, yeah, I may be low budget and it may be rough
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  around the edges, but I do know what I'm doing, you know, at
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  least. So tried to get into that and
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  never did. Now a couple years ago on my
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  anniversary, and it's actually this week is my anniversary,
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  Nine years married. So I guess seven years married,
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  2022, six years married, something like that.
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  I don't know. I'm bad at math.
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  So am I that. That's why.
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  That's why I'm a writer. Yeah, yeah.
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  That's why I'm not like an engineer making a lot of money,
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  right? Yeah.
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  But a couple years back, my wife and I went to Dallas.
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  We live in Texas, or we, we're both Texan and grew up Texan.
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  We've lived all over the the country.
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  But a couple years back, we went to Dallas for our anniversary
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  and we went to Medieval Times, which is really cool.
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  I've never been chicken with your hands.
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  And you drink Pepsi out of a goblet and you watch two nights
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  joust each other and it's dinner theater and pretty cool
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  experience, kind of cheesy, but cool.
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  And on the drive home, I tell my wife that I could have come up
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  with a better story because they have like a whole story that
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  they tell. My wife is like, you could have.
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  And I don't know why you don't. And I was like, what do you,
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  what do you mean? She said, I think you should
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  start writing. So I came home and about a month
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  later, I had a novella written, first thing I'd ever written.
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  I loved it, but I knew that my skill set wasn't where it needed
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  to be. So I took a long time, about a
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  year and a half, to just write. Wrote short stories,
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  participated in Nano Remo, wrote a novel in 17 days, which is
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  crazy to even say, but I did it. And then, then I took my
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  novella, the very first one I ever wrote, and word for word
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  from the ground up, rewrote it. And that's what I have right
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  here. This is my first published work,
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  The Gnome World of Atera, the prisoner of Ruhok Tower.
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  I even drew a little map. Where'd it go?
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  There it goes. Drew a little map to put into
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  it. I'm a floating head anyway, so
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  it's a real short, real quick read, which is in keeping with
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  Sword and Sorcery. Sword and Sorcery tends to be a
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  short in its length. It's very action driven and you
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  can really sustain action for only so long before it's kind
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  of, you know, redundant, which is why a lot of adventure books
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  you read, James Bond, they tend to be QuickBooks you read, you
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  know, any of these guys? Fire in the Tall Grass by Luke
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  Goodish, who we both know. Great book, pretty short, not
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  much longer than this. It's just hard to sustain action
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  pacing for longer than you know, so many 1000 words.
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  So you really want to end at around 50,060 thousand, if not
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  sooner than that. Sword and sorcery really works
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  for short stories. That is to say, well.
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  So just to kind of, I guess interject here and we, you know,
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  again, we, we talk fairly fairly often, you know, offline.
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  But one thing I've noticed with you and several other guests,
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  you know, who I've had, who are kind of around our age, who are
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  our authors, is nicerly, this is kind of, you know, my story as
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  well. None of us really like grew up
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  reading for for, you know, pleasure, so to speak.
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  And in fact, like I think I've shared this.
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  I don't know if I've shared the story with you.
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  I think I have. But like, you know, I grew up
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  playing, you know, much like you, I grew up, you know, with
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  like, you know, Batman the Animated Series and, you know,
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  comic books and all these other stuff.
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  And I was also a gamer. So you know what?
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  But I like, I also, I don't know, I, I wrote, I wrote short
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  stories, like starting from the time I was like, you know, 10.
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  But as far as like getting them published or something like I
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  never know in my, in my family was like a published, you know,
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  author, at least as far as like fiction.
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  What my my grandfather actually wrote like a a business book for
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  like on human resources. But you know, like that was, you
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  know, that was like entirely different.
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  He was actually the one later on in life that kind of encouraged
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  me to start like writing and who, you know, encouraged me to
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  self publish, you know, later on.
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  Anyway, one of the things that I kind of find interesting is
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  growing up, I never really liked the young adult novels we had
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  growing up because a lot of them were like a lot of them, I guess
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  felt long and they weren't really getting, you know, and it
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  was too slow paced for me. And I, I had more than a couple
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  of of teachers being like, you know, these, these Dang
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  millennials, you don't, they don't want to read books.
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  They just want to, you know, play video games and, you know,
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  watch TV. And they, they were very, they
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  were very dismissive, especially like, you know, of kind of, you
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  know, men. So like, you know, so for a long
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  time I was kind of like, well, you know, reading is for snobs.
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  Feels that way. And then, yeah, and then kind of
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  like, you know, and, and then like between my junior and
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  senior, I took a gap year. And that's when a friend of mine
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  was like, hey, I, you know, I think you might want to read
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  like the the Mitch Rapp series, you know, by Vince Flynn, which
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  those are like longer novels. But it's like, you know, OK,
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  well, I don't have anything else to do in this, you know, gap
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  year, so I might as well. And, you know, I, I'd, I'd read
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  some of the James Bond, you know, books like in high school,
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  but like Vince Fun's books, it was kind of like, wow, I, you
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  know, I, I'd love to write in this style.
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  So like you, I, I wrote a short story and just kind of put out
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  there like on Amazon Kindle and it didn't sell like at all.
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  That was, that was in 2014. That was also kind of around the
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  point when like self-publishing was like, nobody really knew
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  what it was. And it was like, also if you
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  were self published at the time, it was like, it was like, oh,
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  well, he's self published. Like he's not really an author.
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  And so then during college, like I was actually a technical
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  writing major. So like, I was writing for
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  business. I also took like a lot of
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  creative writing classes and screen writing in particular.
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  And I kind of started to like, you know, get better at like,
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  you know, crafting stories, crafting narrative and, you
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  know, just improving everything. And then I graduated in 22 and,
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  you know, right after kind of COVID and, you know, the job
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  market in, you know, the technical writing role was not
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  great. Still isn't really unless you're
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  like a freelancer, which is what I do now.
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  But I was kind of like, well, you know, I'm like again, I, you
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  know, I might as well write, you know, rewrite this short story
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  since, you know, since I don't really have anything else to do
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  and I wanted to write during college.
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  I just didn't have, ironically, I didn't have the time to free
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  write because I was, you know, writing all the time for like
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  academic papers and whatnot. You know, I, I, I kind of just
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  published, you know, I wouldn't say rough draft because it was
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  more like a second draft, but I, I just kind of, you know, put it
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  out there. And that's shadows deception,
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  the first book, which in hindsight, like should not have
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  sold like well at all because there were airs and like I, I
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  don't like, I hadn't like, you know, I hadn't like nailed down
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  my style yet. I think.
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  I think people bought it because it was like, holy crap, Sam just
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  published a book and it was like, it was more like out of
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  curiosity more than anything that people bought it.
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  And I'm, I'm incredibly, you know, grateful, but it's like,
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  you know, Even so, like I got lucky and then, you know, I just
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  kind of started writing the series and ran into Luke on
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  Instagram. Never saw like any of his ads or
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  anything. He actually found me and I found
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  him, Fan found Nathaniel, and the rest is history, as they
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  say. Yeah, yeah, I feel you, man.
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  Yeah. It's really like, it's hard to
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  go back and look at stuff you've already written because every
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  time you write something, you grow up a little bit more and
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  you go back and look at it and you're like, oh gosh, did I
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  really write this? Yeah, yeah.
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  Other people may think it's great or terrible, but you
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  always look at your old stuff, like with this sense of like, Oh
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  no, like I, I thought I had confidence in this.
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  Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like a,
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  it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a catch 2022, right?
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  Because like when I, when I was writing the first shadow of, of
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  deception, I kind of had this, I kind of had this mindset that
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  like I was going, I, because I kind of wrote in secret and then
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  just like put it out there because my mindset was I didn't
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  want to be one of these people who says that like a party, I'm
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  writing a book. And then five years later you're
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  still writing, writing the book where it was like my mindset
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  was, OK, well, I'm just going to write the thing and put it out
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  there and if it sells, great. If not, though, hey, at least I,
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  I wrote a book and once I published it, I was kind of
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  like, oh, OK, I think I actually like this.
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  And it had, it had nothing to really to do with the, you know,
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  success or lack thereof, I guess, depending on your
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  perspective. It was just kind of like, oh,
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  OK, I, I can do this now. So, you know, and that's kind of
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  what I kind of like try and tell some of the up, up and comers
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  too. It's even though I am still kind
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  of up and coming myself. It's a weird parallel, but yeah.
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  Yeah, man. And I think it's important that
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  you keep in mind, like you said, you wanted this sense of like I
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  did this, right? And that goes to the real
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  question. What are what are we writing
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  for? I'm never going to be Stephen
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  King famous. So I'm never probably even going
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  to make substantial money. So what am I writing for?
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  And for me, the answer is for me because I'm, you know, I love
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  these kinds of stories. This is what I grew up on.
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  And frankly, Hollywood's not making the kind of movies that I
• 17:51
  want to see anymore. So I might as well write my own.
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  The other one is, you know, I started writing before I was a
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  dad, but I just recently became a dad.
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  And I want a kid one day when he's, you know, able to grasp
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  and understand what a book is. I want him to walk across my
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  living room, grab a book off the shelf and see my name on it and
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  come to realize that his dad did something cool.
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  So there are lots of reasons we get into writing.
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  And if you're in it for money, you are going to be disappointed
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  and you might be in it for the wrong reason.
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  Yeah, definitely, for sure. Well, you know, I'm that kind
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  of, you know, begs the question too.
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  I know we, you know, one of the things I asked behind our last
• 18:34
  podcast that never, you know, it got chewed up by the cloud or
• 18:38
  whatever. I'm not sure what happened, but
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  why, why, why? Like why sword and sorcerer?
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  Because that's a very that's a very esoteric genre, which I
• 18:50
  which I like, but like a lot of people, if you go to like in the
• 18:57
  like in the publisher YouTube channels that they say, well, if
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  you're writing fantasy, you should write high fantasy or
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  something. Because that's like, that's the
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  number one, you know, best selling genre, Ferny publishers.
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  And I'm like, OK, well, cool. But like, I actually kind of
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  like Sword and Sorcey better. So what is it about that for
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  you? Was it just what you grew up
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  with or what speaks to that genre for you?
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  The stuff I grew up with, you know, I grew up with like
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  probably my earliest introduction to fantasy was the
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  Legend of Zelda. First video game I ever played.
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  I was maybe 4 years old and it had a little sharp eared Link
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  run around shooting lasers out of his sword at monsters.
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  And still a huge Zelda fan to this day.
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  Then it was like King Arthur, you know, sword in the Stone,
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  Excalibur, Camelot, that kind of stuff.
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  And I just the appeal of somebody wielding a sword and
• 19:54
  fighting evil just always stuck out to me.
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  And growing up, you know, in the 90s, my parents tried to kind of
• 20:02
  shield me from a lot. And I'm thankful for it.
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  And for a lot of reasons and some of it, I'm kind of rolling
• 20:07
  my eyes and going really from that.
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  I didn't get to grow up with like Dungeons and Dragons.
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  I didn't get into Dungeons and Dragons until just a few years
• 20:14
  ago, but I did when I was in high school start playing The
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  Elder Scrolls and of course I read The Hobbit in Lord of the
• 20:22
  Rings and grew up with Narnia. So fantasy has just always been
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  one of those things that I really loved and I never really
• 20:27
  saw a difference in sub genres of fantasy.
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  I didn't, I guess I was ignorant but I was like it's just
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  fantasy. Lord of the Rings and Conan the
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  Barbarian are the same thing. It's just fantasy.
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  And growing up, I I didn't like Conan at all because I was more
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  into the aesthetic of Lord of the Rings and the kind of story
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  it was telling. But also the only exposure I had
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  to Conan was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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  And as much as I love that first Conan movie, now when you're a
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  kid you see a man in a fur diaper cutting off people's
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  heads in the desert, and it's not, you don't get it.
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  Well, yeah, go ahead. What?
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  What was it? Was it kind of like, because I,
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  I remember watching that as a kid, I'd be like, OK, this is
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  like my suspension of disbelief was like.
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  Yeah. I couldn't.
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  I couldn't do it. Was that kind of thing for you
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  at the time or? Yeah, I think it was that
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  because it was made in the early 80s and the, you know, for the
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  for its time, it was beautifully made and the special effects
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  were incredible. But when you're a kid and you've
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  got Lord of the Rings with the CGI troll and the excellent
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  production design, and, you know, it's beautiful to behold,
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  and then you look at Conan with the big rubber snake, it's kind
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  of like, yeah, forget that stuff, you know?
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  Yeah, as a grown up, I appreciate and adore the movie,
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  but I just never got into it. Well, so I just didn't see a
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  difference. All that to say, it's all
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  fantasy, right? So what happened is my wife
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  challenged me to write a story and I came home and I plotted
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  out an idea for like a high fantasy story.
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  And about 2/3 into plotting the story out, I was like, this is
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  just the Lord of the Rings copycat like.
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  And it hit me. Books like Aragon, which are
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  really good books are also Lord of the Rings copycats.
• 22:28
  And the Wheel of Time is the Lord of the Rings copycat.
• 22:30
  And Elder Scrolls in a lot of ways is the Lord of the Rings
• 22:33
  copycat. And what you get is you start to
• 22:36
  see that there's this tapestry of, yes, very high quality
• 22:41
  fantasy, but it's all really just a retelling of The Lord of
• 22:44
  the Rings. And I was like, this is dumb.
• 22:48
  If I can't be original, why do it?
• 22:50
  So I started listening to a few podcasts and trying to develop
• 22:54
  kind of an original idea. And one of them mentioned Conan
• 22:57
  the Barbarian. And I rolled my eyes because I'm
• 22:59
  like, man in a fur diaper cutting off heads, big deal.
• 23:03
  And what he described was something I didn't know and I
• 23:07
  don't know how I missed it. I thought that Conan was a comic
• 23:10
  book character from Marvel and they made a movie out of the
• 23:13
  comic book character. Yeah.
• 23:15
  This guy's talking about, and I knew about the the novels in the
• 23:19
  70s, but I still thought it was originated in the comics.
• 23:22
  This guy's talking about this guy named Robert E Howard and
• 23:25
  how Robert E Howard lived in the 30s and he was a pulp writer.
• 23:28
  And the original Conan stories were just so stupidly good.
• 23:32
  And if you can track them down and read them, you'll be stunned
• 23:35
  at how good they are. Now I got some problems.
• 23:36
  There's some pretty blatant racist ideas in them, which some
• 23:40
  people defend by saying it's an ancient world and the ancient
• 23:43
  world, that's how they did things.
• 23:45
  Others say that Robert was E Howard was really just a racist
• 23:48
  man. There's also just poor
• 23:50
  depictions of women, which is common in the pulps, right?
• 23:53
  This is the So you have to kind of take the meat and spit out
• 23:57
  the bones. But I'm just hearing from these
• 23:59
  podcasts how good Conan's stories are, and they kept
• 24:03
  attaching the word sword and sorcery to it.
• 24:06
  And for me that was just another type that's just another word
• 24:08
  for fantasy. And they're like, no, sword and
• 24:10
  sorcery is different from fantasy.
• 24:13
  And they explained that it's shorter and it's faster and it's
• 24:15
  more action oriented and the magic is mysterious.
• 24:18
  There's no explanation for the magic.
• 24:20
  And if you're doing magic, you're crazy, you're evil, or
• 24:24
  you know you shouldn't be trusted because magic's almost
• 24:27
  always taboo in a sword and sorcery setting.
• 24:29
  And generally it's just humans. Sometimes there are exceptions,
• 24:33
  but there's no prophesied hero, there's no dark Lord, there's no
• 24:36
  world ending stakes. It's a hero, singular, usually a
• 24:40
  thief or a mercenary or a pirate, sometimes a king,
• 24:43
  sometimes just a traveller who gets caught in a circumstance
• 24:48
  and he just works through that circumstance to its most logical
• 24:51
  conclusion. And it's just him with a sword
• 24:53
  up against evil. And I thought, OK, this sounds
• 24:56
  pretty cool, actually. This sounds kind of like The
• 24:59
  Witcher, which is very much a modern day sword and sorcery
• 25:03
  vibe. Yeah, but but.
• 25:06
  My Co host Morpheus who Co hosts the live show on Wednesdays.
• 25:11
  He loves the Witcher and so yeah, like I've turned him on to
• 25:17
  some of the Conan. Yeah.
• 25:20
  Stuff. And if you read the richer
• 25:22
  books, they're formatted a lot like the Conan stories, the
• 25:25
  first two anyways. They're short stories.
• 25:27
  Geralt gets hired to hunt down a monster.
• 25:30
  He tries to hunt down the monster, some twist happens,
• 25:32
  he's either getting betrayed or there's a evil wizard and he's
• 25:35
  got to use his wits and his Bron to get out of the situation.
• 25:38
  And almost every one of them, right.
• 25:40
  If you watch the Witcher show, it's like that too, Like crazy
• 25:42
  stuff. Like he, he finds a genie bottle
• 25:45
  and a lake and some idiot uncorks it and the genie gets
• 25:48
  out and it's not a good genie and he has to figure out how to
• 25:51
  deal with it. That's the whole plot, right?
• 25:54
  So sword and sorcery is just that.
• 25:55
  It's a very small, tight personal stakes plot.
• 26:00
  You don't, there's not a lot of globe trotting and that kind of
• 26:02
  stuff. So there I was.
• 26:04
  I figured out there was a difference all of a sudden
• 26:05
  between Lord of the Rings and Conan, and there's a difference
• 26:08
  between fantasy or high fantasy and sword and sorcery.
• 26:11
  So I tracked down some audio books on YouTube of people
• 26:14
  reading Robert E Howard's Conan and the first one I read was The
• 26:18
  Tower of the Elephant and it blew my mind.
• 26:23
  I'm laying there at like 2:00 AM listening to this story and just
• 26:26
  like this is like nothing I've ever read.
• 26:30
  Like this is not like Lord of the Rings, which I adore and I
• 26:32
  love and to this day, highly important books, beautifully
• 26:36
  written masterpieces. But this is just different.
• 26:39
  This feels more like Indiana Jones.
• 26:41
  You know, I've got a dude who's starts in a bar fight, and then
• 26:45
  the next thing I know he meets up with this thief and they
• 26:48
  agree to rob a wizard's tower together.
• 26:50
  And all kinds of crazy crap goes down.
• 26:52
  And before the end of it, Conan's running for his life
• 26:54
  while the towers collapsing around him.
• 26:56
  And I'm like, all this happened in the span of like an hour's
• 27:00
  worth of reading. Like, this is incredible.
• 27:02
  It moved quick. It was fighting, there was
• 27:05
  magic, there was monsters, there was all this great, great stuff
• 27:08
  going on in this story and I was hooked.
• 27:11
  So I just did like a scholarly dive on what sword and sorcery
• 27:14
  is, and I read lots of it and I've got some here actually.
• 27:17
  I'll make some recommendations to your readers or your
• 27:20
  listeners. Robert E Howard wrote Solomon
• 27:23
  Kane, he created the character Puritan that fights demons.
• 27:28
  Awesome, right? And this is really where sword
• 27:31
  and sorcery came from. This and another character he
• 27:33
  made called Cull, he just took historical fiction, mixed it
• 27:37
  with HP Lovecraft's horror and infused it with adventure.
• 27:43
  And then what you get is sword and sorcery.
• 27:45
  It's all it is. And that followed with Conan,
• 27:48
  his most famous and ah, you can't see it.
• 27:50
  Most famous, most popular character.
• 27:52
  There it is. Come on, come on.
• 27:54
  Anyway, Conan. And this is this comes in three
• 27:57
  volumes. If you wanted to read all of
• 27:59
  Conan's work, he wrote one Conan novel in his life, and it's in
• 28:04
  these volumes, multiple novellas and short stories.
• 28:07
  He was inspired by an adventure writer named Harold Lamb.
• 28:10
  He didn't write sword and sorcery.
• 28:12
  There's no magic in these stories, but they're some of the
• 28:14
  best adventure stories you'll ever read.
• 28:16
  It's a Cossack. He goes across the Middle East,
• 28:19
  gets involved in Iraq and Iran, travels up toward China, finds
• 28:24
  Genghis Khan's tomb. And this is a thick book, man,
• 28:27
  but it's awesome. These stories are just freaking
• 28:29
  awesome, and they're other writers.
• 28:32
  I dove into all this and studied all this stuff.
• 28:34
  There's a guy named Fritz Leiber who wrote Fofford and the Gray
• 28:37
  Mauser, a thief pair, and he's the first person that ever used
• 28:41
  the term sword and sorcery. And his writing leaves a lot to
• 28:45
  be desired. I don't love his style, but his
• 28:47
  stories and his characters are so cool.
• 28:49
  In fact, I have a graphic novel I can't.
• 28:53
  Come on, come on, come on, come on.
• 28:55
  There it is. Mike Magnolia did the artwork.
• 28:58
  If you know Hellboy, the guy that's at Hellboy did the
• 29:02
  artwork for this graphic novel, and he very faithfully adapts a
• 29:05
  bunch of the Foford and Graham Hauser stories, and they're just
• 29:08
  thrilling. It's just adventure stuff.
• 29:10
  It's just people. One of my favorite stories in
• 29:12
  here is they're travelling somewhere and they hear this
• 29:15
  howling, and the next morning one of them wakes up and his
• 29:18
  friend is gone and there's a tower off in the distance.
• 29:20
  He goes to the tower, and the tower is like this weird portal
• 29:23
  between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
• 29:25
  So he has to traverse into the land of the dead to get his
• 29:27
  friend back. It's like the coolest thing
• 29:29
  ever. So I'm like, you don't get that
• 29:31
  kind of stuff with Lord of the Rings or with Narnia, which
• 29:34
  again, they're amazing. You just don't get that sense of
• 29:38
  high adventure and excitement. You get a sense of beautiful
• 29:41
  poetry, excellent world building, incredible noble
• 29:45
  characters. You get a lot of allegory, a lot
• 29:48
  of a lot of lessons on the nature of the world and right
• 29:50
  and wrong. But you don't get that Indiana
• 29:52
  Jones running from a boulder because the little golden idol
• 29:56
  set off a trap. You don't get that right high
• 29:59
  fantasy, but you do from sword and sorcery.
• 30:02
  So that's what inspired me to get into sword and sorcery and
• 30:05
  I've published several on my sub stack, a couple of sword and
• 30:08
  sorcery ish stories. I have one that I put in like an
• 30:11
  ancient Greek setting fictionalized.
• 30:14
  I've got dozens and dozens of stories sitting on my hard drive
• 30:17
  and a sword and sorcery novel, which hasn't been published.
• 30:20
  But I do have my novella, which is free or it's available on
• 30:24
  Amazon. I've also been published, like
• 30:27
  you said, in Savage Realms. I have a short story in here
• 30:30
  that's Sword and Sorcery. It's just my jam.
• 30:32
  I don't know what to say. It it just, it does it for me.
• 30:35
  It scratches that itch. It's not.
• 30:36
  Yeah. Yeah, I.
• 30:38
  I can, I can totally relate. And I, I mean, I'm really, as
• 30:43
  we're discussing, like I can notice, like I've noticed like a
• 30:49
  lot of parallels between kind of your genre with sword and
• 30:53
  sorcery and mine kind of with the political, you know,
• 30:56
  thriller genre. You know, I, I kind of, I read,
• 31:00
  I read like Tom Clancy. I think once in high school, I
• 31:06
  was kind of, I, I liked it, but I was kind of like, you know, I
• 31:12
  was like, oh man, I'll never be able to write a political thrill
• 31:16
  like thrill like this if I ever write 1.
• 31:20
  Because those books are, you know, the original Clancy books
• 31:25
  are like 800 pages, you know, like they're, they're, they're
• 31:31
  tones. And so in my mind, I thought
• 31:35
  that the, you know, I just thought that, well, that's how
• 31:39
  thrillers are. Yeah.
• 31:42
  So they're so deep, you know, they're so detailed and that
• 31:47
  they have to be because of all the political intrigue that, you
• 31:49
  know, they just demand that amount of depth.
• 31:52
  And then I remember my uncle at, you know, my uncle who has
• 32:00
  since, you know, passed, he he was the one who, you know, like
• 32:06
  I said, I was a big Bond fan growing up, but it really wasn't
• 32:09
  until I was like 13 that he actually recommended that I
• 32:14
  actually read, you know, the Bond books.
• 32:19
  And I, I read Casino Royale and I'm like, I'm like, wow, this,
• 32:26
  this is way different than, you know, movie Bond.
• 32:31
  And at the time, like at the time I had read it, Daniel Craig
• 32:34
  had just become Bond, too, which makes me realize now that that
• 32:40
  was 20 years ago when I first read that book.
• 32:43
  And that's, holy crap, we're getting old, Grayson.
• 32:47
  But you're telling me? Dude, I'm about to be 40 in a
• 32:50
  few years. Everything hurt.
• 32:52
  I just turned 30. But.
• 32:56
  But I digress. I mean, you know, book Bond is
• 33:00
  different from movement Bond. Yeah.
• 33:02
  I mean, I know that, you know, we've had debates over Bonds,
• 33:07
  you know, character in the, you know, in the, you know, in the
• 33:12
  discord and whatnot. Yeah, some good debate about it,
• 33:15
  yeah. What I what I find this thing
• 33:17
  though, is in doing research about Ian Fleming and doing
• 33:21
  research about, you know, some of the characters to I guess
• 33:29
  influenced James Bond. Ian Fleming was, you know, was
• 33:34
  actually part of like a, you know, naval intelligence during
• 33:40
  World War 2. And he was also, he was also,
• 33:48
  you know, a journalist. He wrote, you know, James Bond
• 33:52
  because he was like in his 40s and he hadn't like he hadn't
• 33:56
  met, you know, he hadn't met a woman until until later in life.
• 34:04
  He claimed that the love is of his life who was like a nurse,
• 34:07
  that she she was killed on a she was killed on like a on a Navy
• 34:13
  ship that I that I think the Germans bombed or some, or
• 34:20
  something tragic. Yeah, he was he was very much a,
• 34:24
  you know, a lonely, you know, mankind.
• 34:28
  And so I guess that kind of, I guess, you know, influenced
• 34:32
  maybe his, you know, take on, you know, women, which as the
• 34:40
  books, as the books go on, you know, quite as wrap around the
• 34:46
  edges. But that, you know, those first
• 34:48
  few kind of are. It's it's interesting because
• 34:53
  when you talk at like, you know, race or, you know, anything like
• 34:57
  that regarding that time, it's it's always interesting because
• 35:01
  it's like you have to, I'm not saying that like all of the
• 35:06
  behavior is excusable now per SE, but it's like you do kind of
• 35:11
  have to like, you know, look at things with it in the time where
• 35:16
  it's like, where it's like, yeah.
• 35:18
  Ian Fleming, like you might think that he was, you know, a
• 35:24
  misogynist by today's standards, but in his time, you know, he he
• 35:34
  might not, not of, you know, he might not have been.
• 35:38
  And also, you know, like some of the, you know, like some of the,
• 35:42
  I guess upper echelon of like, you know, Great Britain, like,
• 35:46
  you know, some of the women, like looked, you know,
• 35:50
  disdainfully towards him because he wasn't, you know, a noble or,
• 35:55
  you know, something like that, You know, where, I mean, just,
• 35:59
  you know, all that sort of sort of stuff.
• 36:00
  It was just like a different time frame.
• 36:02
  And it's like, and it's like, well, you know, these character
• 36:07
  flaws, they don't make people bad and they don't make people
• 36:10
  good. It's just kind of it is what it
• 36:13
  is. And people are flawed, and
• 36:15
  authors are flawed. Yeah, So my thinking I I
• 36:19
  somewhat agree about. You have to understand its
• 36:21
  context. Robert E Howard lived in Texas
• 36:25
  in the 1930s. I don't know what you expect
• 36:28
  from this man. Do you expect him to?
• 36:30
  Do you sincerely expect a man who lived 100 years ago to
• 36:34
  measure up to our current moral ideas?
• 36:37
  Like, that's not fair, You know, it's just not, it's not right
• 36:41
  morally in and of itself to expect that.
• 36:44
  Nor is it fair. That doesn't excuse anything.
• 36:47
  You know, the man had blind spots.
• 36:49
  Society back then had blind spots.
• 36:52
  You go back 100 years before that, there were even more blind
• 36:55
  spots, and 100 years before that, way more blind spots.
• 36:59
  So it's evidence that we've moved forward as a society,
• 37:02
  which is a good thing, and that we're standing on his shoulders
• 37:05
  to get here, which is another good thing.
• 37:07
  So it doesn't excuse, but you have to be able to look at it
• 37:11
  with some objective understanding.
• 37:13
  You also need to be able to realize that 100 years from now,
• 37:17
  people are going to look at us and go, Oh my gosh, weren't they
• 37:20
  aware of what they were doing? Don't they see the harm they
• 37:23
  were causing? Don't they understand they were
• 37:25
  mistreating people? And in our context, we're going
• 37:28
  how Right, right. So you have to have humility if
• 37:33
  you're going to have these discussions.
• 37:36
  So I'm sure Fleming had reasons for doing what he did.
• 37:39
  Do I agree? No.
• 37:41
  Do I appreciate the way he always wrote about women?
• 37:43
  No. Do I still like James Bond?
• 37:46
  Yeah. It's thrilling.
• 37:47
  It's fun. I can objectively reason this
• 37:50
  was the 1950s and 60s. This dude had a perspective that
• 37:54
  I don't share. But these stories are fun and
• 37:56
  I'm going to enjoy them. And if you can't do that, then
• 37:59
  how do you interact with anything in your life?
• 38:02
  How do you interact with the news on a daily basis?
• 38:05
  How can you sit here and say you support Coke products when you
• 38:08
  know that Coke has a history of using sweatshops in China?
• 38:12
  Like, if you cannot objectively consider and think through and
• 38:17
  acknowledge people are flawed, things are flawed, I can still
• 38:21
  enjoy flawed things. If you can't do that, how do you
• 38:23
  survive in the world? So that's my perspective on it.
• 38:26
  And I don't, I'm not mad that people get hurt over it.
• 38:29
  You know, for a woman to read James Bond and be shocked is
• 38:31
  completely understandable. And I'm not going to be upset
• 38:34
  with her or blame her for that. And if she doesn't want to read
• 38:37
  James Bond, that's fine. You know, and at the same time,
• 38:40
  if somebody takes that as like a role model moment, I should
• 38:43
  treat women this way, then I kind of want to step in and say,
• 38:46
  you know, it's good to appreciate Bond's confidence and
• 38:49
  charisma. It's good to appreciate his
• 38:51
  daring do. It's good to appreciate the
• 38:54
  action and all those things. But, you know, we really don't
• 38:58
  need to treat women the way Bond treats women, right?
• 39:01
  Like that's not something we should.
• 39:02
  We should learn from that. We should learn to be better
• 39:04
  than Bond in this area. And we should learn to be more
• 39:07
  like Bond in this area. If you're not willing to do
• 39:11
  that, then I'm not sure that you can read fiction with any
• 39:14
  honesty and get any enjoyment out of it.
• 39:17
  And, you know, I, I think that's kind of, I mean, I mean, it's,
• 39:22
  it's cliche to say that life art imitates life or life imitates
• 39:27
  heart. But you know, he he does, at
• 39:31
  least in the books he does, you know, change as other.
• 39:36
  Authors have sure. Yeah, you know, taken him.
• 39:40
  You know, it's also it's also weird because you know, it's
• 39:45
  kind of, you know, and same thing with like, you know, Conan
• 39:49
  and other characters, like, you know, different store, different
• 39:52
  characters are kind of readapted to fit their you know, times,
• 39:57
  right? Like, you know, we want to talk
• 40:01
  like the we want to talk like the negative of all, you know,
• 40:04
  of all these, you know, you know, heroes, but also like, you
• 40:10
  know, there's also like a lot of positives to like, you know, one
• 40:15
  of the things that I think is really kind of, you know, I'm
• 40:19
  not saying every show show does this, but a lot of books and a
• 40:23
  lot of modern characters. They spend an inordinate amount
• 40:27
  of time like talking about their their feelings and not
• 40:31
  necessarily like in a in a constructive way, but it's like.
• 40:35
  Yeah, yeah. They talk about their feelings
• 40:38
  and then have a scene where they're talking how they just
• 40:43
  talked about their feelings. And it's like, well, you're just
• 40:47
  double, you know, you're, you're just kind of, you know, breaking
• 40:52
  down what we already saw, you know, or something there.
• 40:57
  There's like there's they're just like what I find kind of, I
• 41:01
  guess problematic with a lot like Hollywood writing and a lot
• 41:07
  of like big pub publishing writing is it's it's dumbed.
• 41:11
  It's dumbed down to. Yeah.
• 41:15
  Because they think that, that, you know, that will be more
• 41:18
  accessible to, you know, I guess broader audience to honestly, I,
• 41:25
  I don't know if, I don't know if the demographic that they're
• 41:27
  going for. And I'm not naming anyone
• 41:30
  specific. I'm just saying in general,
• 41:33
  sometimes I feel like some of the big publishers are trying to
• 41:36
  just like go for any demographic, right?
• 41:39
  And they're, they're not, they don't really know who their
• 41:43
  audience is. Whereas like, I'm not.
• 41:47
  Whereas like, I'm not writing for everyone.
• 41:53
  I want anyone who wants to read my books to have the option.
• 41:58
  But if I'm trying to appeal to everyone and yeah, you know.
• 42:04
  Yeah. And I, you know, I'm a marketing
• 42:07
  major and one of the, the simplest lesson I can give
• 42:10
  anybody on marketing is that marketing is a reflection of
• 42:13
  your values. Like you're telling the world
• 42:17
  what your values are. That's all marketing is.
• 42:19
  When you look at recently, the big, big scandalous news story
• 42:23
  was Cracker Barrel, right? So what's Cracker Barrel's
• 42:26
  values? Country food, a nostalgic
• 42:30
  southern antique environment, Humble blue collar people.
• 42:35
  That's that's what their values have been and that's who they
• 42:38
  market to. And that's who, by and large,
• 42:40
  with some exceptions, goes to their restaurants as people who
• 42:43
  listen to country music. And they probably lean a little
• 42:45
  bit conservative politically, and they're probably work blue
• 42:48
  collar jobs. And they might just have grown
• 42:52
  up in the country. And Cracker Barrel reminds them
• 42:54
  of grandma's house. That's who they're trying to
• 42:56
  reach. And when they did their rebrand,
• 42:58
  the reason it backfired is because they forgot this golden
• 43:02
  rule of marketing, that marketing is about reaching
• 43:04
  people according to your values, matching their values.
• 43:08
  So when they tried to make Cracker Barrel for everybody,
• 43:12
  they lost their customer base overnight.
• 43:14
  They lost $200 million overnight precisely because they didn't
• 43:19
  understand you have one market that you're reaching one group
• 43:23
  of people. This cannot be for everybody,
• 43:26
  right? White collar New Yorkers who
• 43:29
  have never spent a day South of the Mason Dixon probably don't
• 43:33
  care about Cracker Barrel. They might try it and enjoy it,
• 43:37
  but is it going to be their number one place?
• 43:39
  Never under city people from Chicago who grew up poor, who
• 43:44
  grew up under racial discrimination.
• 43:47
  Cracker Barrel is probably not their place, right?
• 43:49
  They might try it, might even enjoy it.
• 43:52
  Still probably not their place. And the same thing is true with
• 43:55
  our books. You know, I mean, I mean even
• 43:58
  even more, you know, even more belated with, you know, with,
• 44:03
  you know, Budweiser. You know, I know, I know that
• 44:06
  you're not as much of A, you know, a drinker.
• 44:11
  Put all, you know, put all that aside though, you know, like
• 44:14
  Budweiser, you know, when you think of that brand, you think
• 44:19
  of, you know, just like a, you know, an all American beer that
• 44:24
  is, you know, it's not really supposed to be political or
• 44:29
  controversial. And I, I think, I think the big
• 44:32
  controversy with that was, you know, a couple things.
• 44:36
  Regardless of how you feel about, about, you know, the
• 44:40
  transgender issue and what not, the particular, you know, the,
• 44:47
  the particular person that they chose to present it is very
• 44:53
  polarizing and, you know, almost intentionally so.
• 44:57
  And, and I don't believe that they and I don't believe that
• 45:02
  they were aloof to that either or that they, or that they
• 45:06
  didn't or that they didn't know. So it, it wasn't like people, it
• 45:13
  was like people were like people weren't saying no, trans people
• 45:17
  can't drink, drink beer. It's like, it's like, I don't,
• 45:22
  it's like, it's like I, I don't think a lot of people cared, but
• 45:26
  it's like, well, now it's like way, the way this person, you
• 45:31
  know, is presenting The thing is like you're making, you know,
• 45:35
  Budweiser a political thing now. And I don't, and I don't like
• 45:39
  that because everything's, you know, political.
• 45:42
  I can't even drink a beer now without it, you know, being.
• 45:46
  Yeah. And again, it's a matter of
• 45:48
  values because when you think Budweiser, who do you think is
• 45:52
  the primary target audience for that?
• 45:54
  It's probably a blue collar worker or maybe maybe a white
• 45:57
  collar worker who grew up, you know, hunting, fishing, boating,
• 46:01
  camping. You're probably thinking of
• 46:03
  somebody who listens to Southern rock or country music or classic
• 46:06
  rock. You're thinking of somebody who
• 46:08
  watches football and. College, college frat boys who,
• 46:12
  you know, I will say that there are negative, you know, there
• 46:16
  are negative connotations with that.
• 46:18
  But you know, like also a lot of my a lot of my friends, you
• 46:23
  know, are, you know, are well, not anymore because they've
• 46:27
  graduated, but they were flat, you know, they were frat boys
• 46:31
  and that, you know, they're all they're awesome guys that you
• 46:34
  know, there's just that, you know, negative, you know,
• 46:41
  stereotype and so. So it's, I mean, it's just, it's
• 46:46
  a weird thing they do with marketing and they're doing it
• 46:48
  with movies too, trying to make it available to everyone.
• 46:52
  And it's like, everyone should be able to approach this and
• 46:55
  enjoy this in some respect, but it can't do for everyone, right?
• 47:00
  Right. Exactly.
• 47:02
  Same thing with Robert E Howard with his views on women and
• 47:05
  race. It's like I don't approve
• 47:07
  necessarily of a lot of what is going on there, but as somebody
• 47:12
  who even doesn't approve of that, I can approach and enjoy
• 47:16
  Conan for what it is. You know, I can do it.
• 47:19
  And to your point earlier about the navel gazing and a lot of
• 47:23
  modern stories, just the constant inward focus, right?
• 47:27
  You got this character, he's 12 pages of him thinking about
• 47:31
  himself, right? There's a place for that.
• 47:34
  But for my purposes, I'm going to point at a Conan story and
• 47:38
  tell you how you can have that, but it's not the focus.
• 47:42
  It doesn't take 12 pages. There's a story he wrote called
• 47:44
  Queen of the Black Post Black Coast.
• 47:46
  And in this story, Conan falls in love with a pirate queen in
• 47:50
  the most barbarian way ever. She raids the boat he's on.
• 47:53
  He starts cutting down people with his sword.
• 47:56
  Bloodbath. You know, everybody's dead
• 47:58
  except Conan. And he's drenched in his enemies
• 48:00
  bloods and holding his sword. And he's just cutting down one
• 48:02
  person after another. And this woman walks up to him
• 48:04
  and does like a mating dance. And of course, he's a barbarian.
• 48:07
  So he's like, oh, you know, he puts his sword down.
• 48:09
  And they embrace, fall in love and in true pirate barbarian
• 48:13
  fashion. And it's ridiculous to say it
• 48:15
  out loud, of course, but they go on.
• 48:18
  They spend their honeymoon looting and pillaging.
• 48:20
  And they find this old temple in this ancient city in the forest
• 48:26
  somewhere. And Conan gets a whiff of this
• 48:30
  plant that causes him to pass out.
• 48:32
  And when he wakes back up, she's dead.
• 48:35
  The pirate crew is dead, and there are monsters that did it.
• 48:39
  So he goes to kill the monsters and he gets like in a situation
• 48:43
  where he's about to die. Chick's ghost manifests, kills
• 48:47
  the monster for Conan. And how does Conan respond?
• 48:50
  The story ends with him standing on a beach, holding her sword in
• 48:55
  his hands. He sets the boat adrift with her
• 48:58
  body on it and lights it a flame.
• 48:59
  And he has his moment of that was the love of my life and I've
• 49:03
  lost her. Not 12 pages of thinking about
• 49:06
  himself. One moment where Conan is
• 49:09
  vulnerable, which is rare for Conan, where he's emotional,
• 49:14
  where he is thinking of someone other than himself, which is the
• 49:16
  love of his life that just died and he lost.
• 49:19
  He thought he found what he was looking for and it's gone.
• 49:22
  And now we have more motivation for Conan to move on and keep
• 49:26
  telling us more exciting stories because he's like, that's where
• 49:29
  his story should have ended. I found my one and only, but
• 49:32
  she's gone. Yeah, You know, I'm going to go
• 49:36
  do this now. And I think in the stories, he
• 49:38
  doesn't even take a queen until he's like 50 years old because
• 49:42
  he he has other women that he is in and out with.
• 49:45
  The dude's totally into that. It's just that this is the one
• 49:48
  that captured his heart until much, much later in life.
• 49:51
  And you get that moment. You get that moment of self
• 49:54
  reflection, of introspection where he's wounded and
• 49:57
  vulnerable. But it didn't take 12 pages of
• 50:01
  just self involvement to get there, right?
• 50:04
  So I think that there's a lot to be said about being succinct,
• 50:09
  being quick, being honest, but being expedient and remembering
• 50:15
  who you're writing to. Because this was the pulps.
• 50:17
  This is a guy that just got out of the factory covered in dust.
• 50:21
  He's got 30 minutes before he goes to bed.
• 50:24
  He wants to read a story, he reads Queen of the Black Coast.
• 50:27
  So it's it's all about just knowing who you're trying to
• 50:30
  reach and giving them what they need.
• 50:33
  Well, that, so that's the other interesting, interesting thing
• 50:37
  too, that I thought because when I was, when I first published
• 50:43
  Shadows of Deception, the first one and I started to tell like
• 50:47
  my, I all friends from, you know, college about it were
• 50:51
  like, they were like, dude, that's awesome, but I'm probably
• 50:58
  not going to read it. And I was like, I was like,
• 51:02
  like, OK, well, why? And they're like, well, I work
• 51:05
  or, you know, some of them I, I'm still in school and, you
• 51:08
  know, I just don't have the time to sit down and read a lengthy,
• 51:15
  you know, novel. And I'm like, well, it's, I
• 51:18
  think the first one was only like 100.
• 51:22
  I can't remember the exact pages, but it was like it was
• 51:25
  under 200 pages. And they were like, they were
• 51:28
  like, really, you can do that. So I kind of started to
• 51:32
  introduce them to the, to the pulp, you know, to kind of that
• 51:36
  whole thing. And Frank Theodore and I
• 51:40
  actually talked about this when he was on here.
• 51:42
  I think one of the things I find interesting is the pulps are
• 51:47
  kind of making resurgence for us, particularly with, you know,
• 51:52
  men who, you know, like I mentioned, we we were kind of we
• 51:56
  were kind of bullied by the, you know, by the snobby teachers who
• 51:59
  thought that, you know, who think that, you know, literature
• 52:04
  equals, you know, some 500 pay, you know, page book.
• 52:10
  And then we have to write like a whole essay on, you know what,
• 52:14
  so and so is breakfast, you know, order means or, you know,
• 52:20
  something like that. Whereas like it's like my, my
• 52:23
  book's not super deep, but it's just like a fun, it's just a fun
• 52:27
  read that you can pick up like on Friday and you know, hey,
• 52:30
  it's a long weekend, so you can end on like a Monday or
• 52:33
  something if you, yeah, if you want.
• 52:36
  Which valuable for me because I'm a dad.
• 52:39
  Like, yeah, I'm not going to work through 1200 page fantasy
• 52:44
  book or a 700 page Tom Clancy book, but I might work through a
• 52:48
  200 page LS goodish book, you know what I mean?
• 52:53
  Yeah. So it's just it's one of those
• 52:55
  deals where you have to know who you're trying to write to.
• 52:57
  You have to know understand what you're trying to communicate.
• 53:01
  But like you said, it's it's this this can't be for everyone.
• 53:05
  It has to be for a select type of people.
• 53:08
  And they're the kind of those that's your market, right?
• 53:11
  The pulp mindset for writing, for word length, for the kind of
• 53:15
  action centric story is coming back and it's coming back really
• 53:18
  hard. Yeah.
• 53:21
  With it is sword and sorcery coming back?
• 53:23
  Sword and sorcery has been trying to make a resurgence for
• 53:25
  years and years kind of disappeared after the 1980s
• 53:28
  because there was a slew of trashy movies featuring
• 53:31
  Barbarians and fur diapers cutting off people's hoods.
• 53:34
  So it's just got people just projected it.
• 53:37
  It's like, OK, this is stupid now.
• 53:39
  It's a self parody, but it's trying to make its comeback.
• 53:42
  All these old forms of storytelling are trying to make
• 53:45
  a comeback. And it's because we've been
• 53:47
  spoon fed the same stale cracker over and over and over again.
• 53:52
  You know, it's like, oh, another Lord of the Rings copy.
• 53:54
  Oh, another Tom Clancy RIP off. OK, here we go with another
• 53:58
  executioner RIP off. All right, I get it.
• 54:01
  You know, it's like, and it's just after a while it's like, so
• 54:05
  can y'all do anything fresh? And their idea of doing
• 54:08
  something fresh is well, let's just disrupt their you know,
• 54:14
  let's just do something completely off the wall and
• 54:16
  bonkers. Let's make Star Wars about
• 54:19
  lesbian witches instead of Jedi's.
• 54:22
  And you know what? If you want to tell a lesbian
• 54:24
  witch story, there's room. You've got all the you even have
• 54:29
  an audience for it. But you took a property that was
• 54:32
  familiar and comfortable for its fan base and you did something
• 54:35
  with it that you knew would be controversial and polarizing,
• 54:39
  and you did it anyway. So we just being fed either
• 54:44
  let's take it and twist it and make it unrecognizable, or let's
• 54:47
  just rinse and repeat and throw the same thing at you over and
• 54:50
  over. I think that's one of the pulp
• 54:52
  stories are coming back because they're simple, they're fun,
• 54:56
  they're focused, and you're not going to get this sense of you
• 55:00
  took my toy and you ruin. What what's funny though, too,
• 55:04
  is like I was, I was talking at this with a friend just today.
• 55:09
  So it's it's funny you mentioned the exec.
• 55:13
  It's funny you mentioned the executioner too, because the
• 55:16
  executioner, Jake, Jake Widmer is the one who like I had known
• 55:23
  about the executioner again from my uncle.
• 55:25
  And then I kind of forgot about him and then Jake reminded me of
• 55:29
  him. The funny thing about the
• 55:33
  executioner and same thing with like, you know, Robbie Howard
• 55:36
  is, you know, they're they're all these kind of expanded
• 55:40
  universes, you know, with the pulps, you know, to where like
• 55:44
  other characters crossover and whatnot, much like comic books,
• 55:49
  right? That's kind of where comics took
• 55:52
  that route from. But now we have, I mean, I, and
• 55:57
  I had to say it because it's kind of I, I feel like kind of
• 56:02
  trashing comic book movies has now kind of become cliche
• 56:06
  Marvel, you know, and the NDC to an extent.
• 56:10
  Everything has to connect. Everything has to like, it has
• 56:14
  to like a, you know, a spin off to set something something else
• 56:18
  up. Nothing can be its its own
• 56:20
  store. And what one of the one of the
• 56:23
  greatest, I, one of the nicest things that someone said to me
• 56:27
  is, is that like I, I, you know, I published the short story
• 56:37
  published in Vera in the Veritas Western thing ties into
• 56:42
  something in, you know, in my universe, but yet you know that
• 56:46
  I've already established with American instinct.
• 56:50
  Yet, you know, it stands on its own and it's not orally
• 56:56
  satisfied. I've been told.
• 56:57
  So there there's a way to do like, you know, setups and
• 57:01
  crossovers, but like Hall would just it's it's become the thing
• 57:06
  as opposed to, you know, a method, I guess.
• 57:11
  I think you're right. I think superhero fatigue is
• 57:13
  born from having to keep up with too much and from a stale
• 57:17
  formula. Yeah.
• 57:19
  Just over every movie is the same as the last movie.
• 57:22
  It's just a different Cape, right?
• 57:24
  You're going to get the stupid humor, You're going to get the
• 57:26
  villain that has really weird, nonsensical plot.
• 57:29
  You're going to get some sort of theatrics, and then rinse and
• 57:32
  repeat. And it has to be connected to
• 57:34
  this one. You won't understand this movie
• 57:36
  if you didn't see this movie. And it's just like a spider web
• 57:38
  of yeah. Which that's like, that's like
• 57:41
  the hardest one. Like I like I should have to
• 57:45
  watch like every single thing to, you know, And, and so like
• 57:50
  that's why in some aligned books, like even if I'm
• 57:54
  referencing something else, you know, in previous books, I don't
• 57:59
  know that someone has read all the previous books.
• 58:02
  So I try to very quickly, you know, reference something that
• 58:07
  happened previously in a way that will, you know, it might
• 58:11
  not rehash it directly, but it'll give the reader enough
• 58:15
  info to know why something in the past is, you know, is
• 58:18
  relevant. And then if they want to go back
• 58:20
  and, you know, read or whatever, it makes, you know, more sense,
• 58:27
  they're not going to be, they're not going to be overly, you
• 58:30
  know, confused. One of the things I love, and
• 58:34
  Conan does this, and a lot of the swords and sorcery stories
• 58:38
  do this, and it's something that with some of my stories I'm
• 58:40
  trying to achieve, is the episodic story format as opposed
• 58:45
  to ongoing narrative, right? There's place for an ongoing
• 58:49
  narrative. But if you go back, let's talk
• 58:51
  about Batman and the Animated Series one more time.
• 58:53
  You look at Batman and the Animated Series, What's your
• 58:56
  favorite episode? And that tells you the story
• 58:58
  about the Sonic storytelling. It's not just that you're
• 59:01
  getting this ongoing arc. It's that you have one singular
• 59:05
  adventure that you love more than the others.
• 59:07
  And for me, that would be, I guess, Christmas with the Joker
• 59:12
  is the episode where the Joker takes over the observatory at
• 59:14
  Christmas. Like, you know, Batman's
• 59:16
  fighting like, little toy soldiers and stuff.
• 59:19
  Yeah, but it's like, let's move on to another one.
• 59:22
  The Clock King, the villain of the weak structure.
• 59:24
  This is Batman. Same setting, roughly the same
• 59:27
  time period you're getting when you put them all together,
• 59:31
  you're getting a sort of grand story narrative.
• 59:35
  But they're not. They're singular adventures.
• 59:37
  It has a beginning, middle and end, and one story at a time.
• 59:41
  And that is, for me, the ideal way to tell a story.
• 59:45
  You can connect it to what came before and you can foreshadow
• 59:48
  what's yet to come, but that's not the point.
• 59:51
  This episode's about this episode, right?
• 59:54
  And when you watch them all in sequence, you get that sense of
• 59:59
  narrative, character growth and story development.
• 1:00:02
  But if you watch them just as an episode, you still get a full
• 1:00:06
  complete story that's perfectly enjoyable all by itself.
• 1:00:10
  You can't do that with Game of Thrones.
• 1:00:11
  You ask somebody what's your favorite episode of Game of
• 1:00:13
  Thrones and they're going to go. But if you ask them what their
• 1:00:15
  favorite episode of Batman and mid series is, they know
• 1:00:18
  immediately. Because they watched it.
• 1:00:20
  They remember that story. That's their favorite one.
• 1:00:22
  That's the one they had the most fun with.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, Sotic storytelling should make a comeback.
• 1:00:27
  Or if they're, or if they're like me with, with B toss,
• 1:00:30
  because looking back, B toss also just from watching it
• 1:00:35
  influenced my writing style immensely as as a kid, that's
• 1:00:40
  how I got into noir and detective fiction just in
• 1:00:45
  general. And you know, you know, Femme
• 1:00:47
  Fay tells and you know what not you know, all the things that I,
• 1:00:52
  you know, I kind of, you know, have have evolved and you know
• 1:00:56
  what not. But you know, to answer your
• 1:00:58
  questions specifically with that, like I think I mean, there
• 1:01:03
  there are so many episodes, but I think possibly my favorite
• 1:01:07
  episode is looking back now is Mad Love, which is one of the
• 1:01:13
  way. Harley Quinn.
• 1:01:15
  Which is one of the later episodes, but like that's one
• 1:01:19
  where it's a self-contained story, but it also goes into the
• 1:01:24
  history of, you know, the Joker and Harley Quinn and really how
• 1:01:33
  abusive the Joker is. Well, also, you know, like
• 1:01:39
  Holly's not, you know, that great of a care, right?
• 1:01:44
  I I hate this retcon. They've tried to do where like
• 1:01:48
  they they've tried to make her like an anti hero and they've
• 1:01:52
  also like they've also, bizarrely, I always know when
• 1:01:56
  I'm talking to to like A to like a Gen.
• 1:01:59
  Z or a Gen. Alpha who hasn't watched the
• 1:02:04
  toss because because they'll say something like Joker and Harley
• 1:02:08
  Quinn are coupled our hashtag couple goals and it's like no,
• 1:02:14
  no. They're not yes, we're they're a
• 1:02:16
  horribly psychotic codependent relationship.
• 1:02:19
  And that's one of the reasons I don't think they should have
• 1:02:21
  ever broken them up and made Harley independent, because it's
• 1:02:24
  like they can't function without the the other.
• 1:02:27
  They're kind of a different type of Batman.
• 1:02:29
  Joker structure because Batman only exists because the Joker
• 1:02:32
  exists. That's why he won't kill the
• 1:02:34
  Joker, right? These the villains justify his
• 1:02:37
  existence. If he killed them, he couldn't
• 1:02:39
  be Batman anymore. And the same thing's true with
• 1:02:41
  Harley and Joker. It's like if he kills Harley,
• 1:02:44
  he's got nobody to abuse anymore.
• 1:02:46
  Harley kills him, she's got nobody to feel affirmed by
• 1:02:50
  anymore because she's hung up on this idiot who keeps hurting
• 1:02:52
  her. So I don't think they could have
• 1:02:54
  ever taken that aspect away from Harley and Joker.
• 1:02:58
  That is, that is one thing that, you know, Speaking of noir, like
• 1:03:03
  Frank Miller, what Frank Miller, as I've gotten older is also,
• 1:03:07
  you know, an influence on him. I don't, I don't really ascribe
• 1:03:11
  to anything that he says. You know, personally, I, I think
• 1:03:14
  he's, you know, he's one of those cases where I separate the
• 1:03:17
  art from the artist. But one of the one of the cases
• 1:03:19
  that he, you know, he's made and a lot of people make is I I get
• 1:03:25
  the whole argument that, you know, if Batman kills, then he's
• 1:03:30
  no like I get that argument. But there is something to be
• 1:03:33
  said for OK, I understand, you know, 2 faced, I understand
• 1:03:40
  Riddler. But there is kind of thing where
• 1:03:43
  like where Batman even admits at one point in various like
• 1:03:47
  comics, like, yeah, I've I've killed, I've kind of killed like
• 1:03:52
  a crap ton of people just by allowing.
• 1:03:55
  Letting you live, yeah. This guy to live, but there
• 1:03:58
  there's actually there's actually a hilarious AI thing
• 1:04:02
  where where where the where the pun, where the punisher is even
• 1:04:06
  like the only the only reason I exist and do what I do is
• 1:04:11
  because, like extreme cases like the joker, I'm not here murder.
• 1:04:15
  I hear like, you know, punishing, you know, jaywalkers
• 1:04:20
  or even bank robbers. I'm I'm taking out the trash of
• 1:04:25
  like of the very worst that that type of thing.
• 1:04:28
  Well, again, this is something I think Batman the Animated Series
• 1:04:31
  did wonderfully, and it's a pulp thing.
• 1:04:34
  The pulps came up with this going back to the right with The
• 1:04:37
  Shadow or Doc Savage or Conan or whatever.
• 1:04:40
  Very rarely in Batman the Animated Series did you see the
• 1:04:44
  Joker get arrested. You see him breaking out, but
• 1:04:47
  you very rarely see him arrested.
• 1:04:49
  Instead, what you see is the Joker either fakes his own death
• 1:04:53
  or just by some miracle gets away.
• 1:04:56
  And that's how the Batman justifies constantly having to
• 1:04:59
  take him out, right? And that comes from the pulps.
• 1:05:02
  That's the reoccurring villain trope.
• 1:05:03
  It's the whole he escaped with his life at the end of the last
• 1:05:06
  encounter, and he's back with a vengeance now.
• 1:05:09
  You know, Conan was a little less merciful in that regard.
• 1:05:13
  Conan cut off a lot of hits, but someone like The Shadow of Doc
• 1:05:16
  Savage had repeating villains. Dick Tracy did, Zorro did.
• 1:05:19
  And that's something that people say is cliche and whatever.
• 1:05:23
  And I'm like, I think it just justifies you to be able to keep
• 1:05:26
  telling these stories with these characters without making it
• 1:05:28
  look like, gosh, I wish he'd just kill them.
• 1:05:31
  Like if he's slippery and you can't kill him, then he can come
• 1:05:34
  back and fight again, you know? Have you watched the show Dexter
• 1:05:41
  at all? Man, I got like 2-3 seasons into
• 1:05:44
  Dexter and realized I was, yes he was like killing serial
• 1:05:49
  killers, but I was still rooting for the bad guy.
• 1:05:51
  Like this is a despicable man. I just couldn't do it anymore.
• 1:05:56
  OK, well, I mean, yeah, I I get it.
• 1:06:00
  I like I love the Dexter series. The later seasons get a little
• 1:06:04
  weird, although this current 1 is really good.
• 1:06:08
  But there is kind of I don't know what season you stopped off
• 1:06:14
  at, but but there is there is one villain in particular.
• 1:06:18
  I don't want to say who it is where it's like even though
• 1:06:21
  Dexter killed this one, like, you know, season villain, there
• 1:06:26
  are few where like that villain. Even though Dexter killed him,
• 1:06:31
  the the villain kind of got the last laugh because everything
• 1:06:34
  else. You're talking about John
• 1:06:36
  Lithgow because that's that's where I stopped.
• 1:06:39
  Oh well, OK, as as long as you saw as long as you saw the
• 1:06:43
  Trinity killer yeah, season like that that is you know, you're
• 1:06:48
  you're you're good to kind of skip the rest of the series as
• 1:06:51
  far as I'm. Yeah, that last scene where,
• 1:06:54
  yeah, he he killed the Trinity Killer, but he comes home and
• 1:06:58
  Trinity Killer definitely gets the last laugh.
• 1:07:00
  That was just bone chilling. But that's where I was just
• 1:07:02
  like, I don't think I need to keep going with this show.
• 1:07:05
  This is this is crazy. And now he's got a kid, he's
• 1:07:09
  going to teach that kid to be a serial killer.
• 1:07:11
  I don't know. Gosh man, this is.
• 1:07:14
  I mean, Dexter resurrection is really is really good.
• 1:07:19
  Also, though, like that's that's another thing that makes me feel
• 1:07:22
  old is like, I'm old enough to remember when that kid was born
• 1:07:26
  and now he's like 20 and now like Harrison's going to call,
• 1:07:32
  you know, like, dude, it's like, yeah, so kind of moving topics,
• 1:07:38
  though. So, you know, you rate you ran
• 1:07:40
  in sort and sorcery. I know that's kind of your your
• 1:07:43
  bread and butter, but you and I have also kind of ran in
• 1:07:46
  different genres too, mainly, you know, with this bad boy.
• 1:07:51
  The Veritas was from here tales. You know, I wrote my I wrote my
• 1:07:56
  first Western with, you know, not at the vigilante, but like,
• 1:08:01
  again, that was kind of, you know, a departure for me as
• 1:08:04
  well. So you and I are both kind of, I
• 1:08:07
  guess, experimenting with different genres.
• 1:08:10
  Talk about that for you. How does I guess changing?
• 1:08:16
  Do you feel like there's a challenge or like is writing
• 1:08:19
  different genres harder for you or what has your?
• 1:08:22
  Experience been. I've written in a few different
• 1:08:25
  genres. I kind of have a tribute to
• 1:08:26
  James Bond, Indiana Jones. I don't know if I wouldn't call
• 1:08:30
  it noir. It has noir elements.
• 1:08:32
  His name is Mr. Risk. I had those stories up on
• 1:08:35
  Amazon, but I'm embarrassed by them because they're so poorly.
• 1:08:39
  I'm going to revise those things eventually.
• 1:08:41
  And because I like that character a lot.
• 1:08:44
  A lot, a lot. But he lives in the 1930s and
• 1:08:47
  sits in a jazz club and drinks whiskey and waits for orders to
• 1:08:50
  go fight the mob. Like that's, that's his MO, You
• 1:08:53
  know, with the Westerns, I've actually written a handful of
• 1:08:55
  Westerns just to stretch my arms a little bit.
• 1:08:58
  And this is the only one I've got published.
• 1:09:00
  But Westerns are adjacent. Sword and sorcery.
• 1:09:04
  You could take a Western story, stranger rides into town on a
• 1:09:08
  horse, sees a girl getting roughed up, beats up the dude,
• 1:09:11
  shoots him dead in the streets. They try to take him to jail but
• 1:09:13
  he's a wild guard and breaks out of jail and then he finds out
• 1:09:16
  the mayor's corrupt so he's going to go after the mayor and
• 1:09:18
  before you know it there's a shootout in the streets.
• 1:09:20
  You could easily same story with sword and sorcery.
• 1:09:23
  It's it's very adjacent so it's similar.
• 1:09:26
  Now, I've done some flash fiction and other genres like
• 1:09:31
  war or sci-fi or, you know, I even did a Superman flash
• 1:09:35
  fiction about Jimmy Olsen. I think it's important to write
• 1:09:38
  outside of a genre. The reason is because it equips
• 1:09:42
  you with more tools, right? It teaches you things about
• 1:09:46
  writing that you wouldn't learn if you stuck with one genre,
• 1:09:49
  right? So I just recently wrote a noir,
• 1:09:52
  a true noir. It's a whodunit and detective
• 1:09:54
  story. And you, you were gracious
• 1:09:55
  enough to read over it and let me know if it was working or
• 1:09:58
  not. And I it's written in the first
• 1:10:02
  person. I generally don't write in first
• 1:10:04
  person, but that taught me things about.
• 1:10:07
  Neither do I. Yeah, and it taught me a lot
• 1:10:10
  about scene descriptions because it's like from the third person,
• 1:10:13
  it's like he did this, he went here, he saw this.
• 1:10:16
  This is what it looked like. But when it's first person, it's
• 1:10:18
  like, man, I walked into the room and it smelled like rotten
• 1:10:20
  eggs. That does something way
• 1:10:23
  different than third person. It taught me a lot about scene
• 1:10:26
  description. And the pacing is slower with
• 1:10:29
  first person because you're stuck in their head.
• 1:10:31
  So making that exciting is a bit of a challenge.
• 1:10:34
  And it you more about writing to write in another genre.
• 1:10:38
  One day I'm going to get risky and I'm going to try romance.
• 1:10:41
  Not right now, I'm going to do that.
• 1:10:45
  I'm going to try it. I've written horror.
• 1:10:47
  Horror works, but horror is sword and sorcery has elements
• 1:10:51
  of horror, so it felt kind of familiar.
• 1:10:53
  But horror is all about just building that sense of despair
• 1:10:56
  or you know, that that sense of what's waiting around the
• 1:11:01
  corner, You know, that just kind of gnaws at people as they read.
• 1:11:04
  And that can be difficult to do. It's all about just gaining new
• 1:11:10
  tools to help you do your job better.
• 1:11:13
  So I think writing outside of genre is super important.
• 1:11:15
  And, and also like, kind of like many my stories blend genres,
• 1:11:22
  even even subcontract consciously.
• 1:11:25
  I, I, I guess too, which is, which is, which is awesome.
• 1:11:29
  It it's also interesting because like writing the same character
• 1:11:35
  and same universe, but in different person perspectives.
• 1:11:38
  I'm, I'm writing something for blood ties, which is kind of my
• 1:11:42
  Neo, you know, noir kind of anthology series.
• 1:11:47
  I'm writing one character right now.
• 1:11:49
  I've written stories forum where it's in the third person, right,
• 1:11:54
  but now I'm writing them from a first person perspective just to
• 1:11:59
  get inside that character's head a little more and you know, kind
• 1:12:05
  of like what the audience see what that character is thinking.
• 1:12:11
  So are we always interested so. Yeah, I think it's just
• 1:12:15
  important. And I know I'm a sword and
• 1:12:17
  sorcery writer, but I don't want to be known solely as a sword
• 1:12:20
  and sorcery writer. I'd rather be just adventure
• 1:12:24
  writer. But sword and sorcery is really
• 1:12:26
  my Ave. you know what I mean? If that makes sense.
• 1:12:28
  That's the thing I want to probably focus on the most.
• 1:12:32
  Yeah, no, no, totally. My my mindset is like, I guess,
• 1:12:36
  you know, the thriller, the thriller genre in particular,
• 1:12:40
  you know, that's kind of like what I'm known for, but I'm not
• 1:12:43
  I'm not afraid to jump into other genres as well and see
• 1:12:48
  what you know and see what you know, goes like I was, I was
• 1:12:53
  really kind of surprised that when I wrote night of the vagina
• 1:12:57
  in my first, you know, W run it, It's it's you know, it's a quasi
• 1:13:03
  thriller slash, you know, westerns or ties into my
• 1:13:06
  universe. And I was kind of like I was
• 1:13:11
  kind of like, well, I'm not sure how this is going to sell, but
• 1:13:14
  I'm going to put it out and you know, it's just there.
• 1:13:18
  It's now. Ever since I published it like
• 1:13:21
  earlier this year, it's it's like been the book that has like
• 1:13:26
  made, you know, the most money since I first started like
• 1:13:32
  publishing. I've not, I've no idea how or
• 1:13:36
  why, but like, it's, you know, it's sold well and I and I'm
• 1:13:41
  happy, you know, am I going to pivot entirely?
• 1:13:46
  No. But like, I think, I think I'm
• 1:13:48
  changing up the genre and having like multiple genres that you
• 1:13:52
  write in. And sometimes publishing is good
• 1:13:54
  too because it tells readers, well, I don't know if you don't
• 1:13:58
  like this genre, you might still like this author because they
• 1:14:00
  also write in the in this genre. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:05
  I've never ridden sci-fi. I really don't have a vested
• 1:14:08
  interest in sci-fi. Maybe if it was kind of like
• 1:14:10
  Halo, like an action sci-fi. One day I'll probably experiment
• 1:14:14
  with that though, because military sci-fi is a really big
• 1:14:17
  seller. Like people might want to try
• 1:14:20
  it. You know, if you don't like my
• 1:14:21
  fans, sci-fi, I don't know. I I I love reading sci-fi.
• 1:14:27
  The the thing, The thing is like a lot of stuff that I would have
• 1:14:32
  written like in middle school, that was sci-fi then is like, is
• 1:14:39
  actually like reality. Yeah, now.
• 1:14:43
  Yeah, we have AI and face like what we're doing right now was
• 1:14:47
  impossible when I was a kid. What's interesting is I I went
• 1:14:52
  over like, I went over like some of my notes for like when I
• 1:14:57
  wrote the first like initial draft of like of like John Ryder
• 1:15:02
  uses like an AI supercomputer to, you know, like locate
• 1:15:09
  information on bad to like hack into, you know, foreign
• 1:15:15
  databases or something in the initial draft.
• 1:15:18
  Like of, you know, this is back in 2016.
• 1:15:21
  I have it scratched out and I have like Nah to science
• 1:15:25
  fiction. Fast forward to like, you know,
• 1:15:27
  2023, you know, there there's, there's ChatGPT, which it, you
• 1:15:34
  know, it's just like, that's just like a fraction of what the
• 1:15:38
  US military has has at their disposal.
• 1:15:42
  So it's like it's, it's, it's interesting.
• 1:15:47
  Yeah, I feel you. It's hard. sci-fi has always
• 1:15:50
  been hard. There's always more of a
• 1:15:51
  political commentary to sci-fi too, or social commentary, like
• 1:15:56
  if they connected to the apes, it's like evolution versus
• 1:15:58
  religion or Logan's Run, you know, like dystopian tyranny,
• 1:16:04
  you know, that kind of thing. Hunger Games, there's always
• 1:16:06
  that element to it. And I'm just really bad at that
• 1:16:08
  stuff. So I don't know.
• 1:16:10
  We'll see. I mean, the other thing too is
• 1:16:13
  like is when you're, when you're ready to write it, you'll know.
• 1:16:18
  You know, once you are like you'll, you'll be, you'll be
• 1:16:24
  good at. I never approach anything and I
• 1:16:26
  don't feel like I can't, you know, if I'm not in the right
• 1:16:31
  mindset to write it. But once I am like, I'm usually
• 1:16:34
  good to go. I guess another question that I
• 1:16:36
  always like to ask guess is what would you say your biggest
• 1:16:40
  success is as a writer? And then and then like, what's
• 1:16:44
  your biggest man? This sucks or this is a
• 1:16:48
  challenge? I don't know, I feel really
• 1:16:51
  happy and successful having been published, not just self
• 1:16:54
  published, but having my work pass through an editor screening
• 1:16:58
  and make it, that's very affirming.
• 1:17:00
  Like an editor somewhere thinks that my work was worth
• 1:17:03
  publishing. That's super affirming for me.
• 1:17:07
  And hearing back from people like somebody in the Discord of
• 1:17:11
  one of the girls in the discord read my novella.
• 1:17:14
  And the best thing she said was just, I wish it had lasted
• 1:17:18
  longer because I was having so much fun.
• 1:17:21
  And I'm like, that's just, that's what you want.
• 1:17:24
  You want people to, you know, be sad that it's over because it
• 1:17:27
  was so much fun. You know, my biggest struggle,
• 1:17:32
  the thing that I feel like biggest let down.
• 1:17:34
  Last year I started work on a 30,000 word novella set in the
• 1:17:39
  modern day featuring dinosaurs. Kind of a cool modern take on
• 1:17:43
  the lost World. And it was based on some true,
• 1:17:46
  some sense, true events. In China, they found this
• 1:17:49
  sinkhole that opened up, and inside of the sinkhole is a
• 1:17:52
  perfectly preserved prehistoric forest like plant species.
• 1:17:55
  We've never seen all kinds of stuff.
• 1:17:59
  And I thought, what if that happened all over the world?
• 1:18:01
  And what if a team of researchers hired a survivalist
• 1:18:06
  because they've never been in an environment like that, and they
• 1:18:09
  go down into one of these sinkholes illegally.
• 1:18:12
  So there's a high stakes already.
• 1:18:13
  Like if we get caught, we're in trouble.
• 1:18:15
  The government won't let anybody in here.
• 1:18:17
  We're in trouble. So they go down into the
• 1:18:19
  sinkhole to explore the forest. And once they get down there,
• 1:18:21
  there's dinosaurs. That's that's the premise.
• 1:18:25
  Cool premise, I think. Very cool.
• 1:18:28
  I'm a chapter and 1/2 from finishing that book.
• 1:18:32
  I started it this time last year.
• 1:18:34
  I hate writing it. I hate writing it because it's
• 1:18:39
  modern day. I don't know why.
• 1:18:41
  What it is about me writing modern day.
• 1:18:43
  I prefer to write period pieces or fantasy.
• 1:18:46
  Something about writing modern day just bores me to tears.
• 1:18:49
  I don't, I can't. I hate it.
• 1:18:51
  I hate writing that book. I will finish it.
• 1:18:54
  Is it good? I don't think so.
• 1:18:55
  You know, I doubt it. I I have no confidence in this
• 1:18:58
  book at this point. I will finish it, I'll let
• 1:19:01
  people read it and they will decide if it's even worth daring
• 1:19:04
  to try and publish somewhere. But I hate it.
• 1:19:07
  I hate it. I hate it.
• 1:19:08
  I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. It's just not fun anymore, you
• 1:19:11
  know? And that's, that's the big
• 1:19:12
  question is if I'm not having fun doing it, why am I doing it
• 1:19:16
  right? So that's one of the biggest let
• 1:19:18
  downs is you get 95% complete on a book and you just give up
• 1:19:23
  because it's like, I can't do this anymore.
• 1:19:24
  I just can't. There are other things I could
• 1:19:26
  be writing, you know. Yeah, I, I get that.
• 1:19:30
  I've had, you know, that's that's why I kind of, you know,
• 1:19:36
  I, I don't know if you know him or if you know him well, but I'm
• 1:19:40
  sure you know who Zach James is. Zach James in the Discord, he
• 1:19:46
  gave me a piece of, I wouldn't want to say writing advice, but
• 1:19:51
  when I was talking to him about like his writing process, he
• 1:19:55
  told me that he has he's working on two or three projects at any
• 1:20:00
  given time to pub to publish. And at first I'm like, this guy
• 1:20:05
  is nuts. But when I asked him kind of why
• 1:20:10
  he's like, well, he's kind of like, well, I don't want to get
• 1:20:13
  he's like, well, I have a lot of different interests and
• 1:20:18
  sometimes I get really into, you know, a.
• 1:20:23
  He's like, I really get into one projects and then sometimes I
• 1:20:26
  hit a wall or I just get bored with it and rather than like
• 1:20:31
  half writer's block or just get stuck writing that, he's like I
• 1:20:35
  have, I have two other topics of interest that I'm interested in
• 1:20:40
  I can be working on as well. So I'm like, huh, that's
• 1:20:46
  interesting. So I kind of started, you know,
• 1:20:53
  implementing that into my oak flow.
• 1:20:57
  That's why I like people. People are kind of like, man,
• 1:21:00
  Sam publishes a lot like two or three times a year.
• 1:21:04
  That that's why though, is because like, you know, I don't
• 1:21:08
  just focus on one single. Yeah.
• 1:21:12
  You know thing I I have different irons that kind of
• 1:21:15
  strike my fancy at at different times.
• 1:21:20
  Yeah. And I've learned that if I'm
• 1:21:22
  frustrated with the story, I need to take a break.
• 1:21:25
  I'll go write a short story and come back to it.
• 1:21:28
  Right now I'm in the middle of developing a novel that I want
• 1:21:32
  to write, and I'm really, really, really excited about it.
• 1:21:36
  But being a new father means that I only have so much time,
• 1:21:41
  so I'm not devoting the sort of time to it that I want to
• 1:21:43
  devote. And I'm eventually going to have
• 1:21:46
  to I promised several weeks ago to the Discord that I was going
• 1:21:48
  to start drafting it. And the night that I sat down to
• 1:21:51
  start drafting it, my kid had like a a mind meltdown.
• 1:21:55
  And I had to, you know, and there's no tired like father
• 1:21:59
  tired dude of. Course.
• 1:22:01
  All you do is hold him all day and you're more exhausted than
• 1:22:07
  working a 12 hour shift at a factory.
• 1:22:09
  I don't know what it is, but it just, it just has not gotten off
• 1:22:14
  the ground yet. It will eventually.
• 1:22:16
  That's another frustrating thing though, is projects you really
• 1:22:19
  want to write that you just cannot seem to get traction on.
• 1:22:23
  I hear you. Well, that was kind of and I
• 1:22:25
  know you and I have talked kind of privately about about this,
• 1:22:29
  but that that was one of my biggest kind of that's kind of
• 1:22:34
  been one of my biggest frustration is I just released,
• 1:22:38
  you know, since the assassin the 4th John ride, a book back in
• 1:22:44
  July, I've had reviewed by, you know, authors in the in the
• 1:22:52
  discord and you know, others on Twitter and you know, Instagram.
• 1:22:58
  It's gotten like really good at climbing.
• 1:23:00
  It sold real well for like the past.
• 1:23:03
  You know, it sold real on July when it first came out and then
• 1:23:07
  August sales just for whatever reason, they just dropped off.
• 1:23:12
  I think I still like I sold 3 copies and I'm kind of like,
• 1:23:18
  kind of like I spent a year, you know, writing this 200, you
• 1:23:23
  know, page not really like putting, you know, a lot of
• 1:23:29
  effort and into, you know, more, more effort than I usually do
• 1:23:33
  on, you know, on a, you know, on a novella.
• 1:23:36
  And it's and like, and sometimes like people aren't even seeing
• 1:23:41
  on social media. And it's like, and I don't mean
• 1:23:44
  to, to, you know, to complain, but it's like that.
• 1:23:46
  That's one of the things like you put a lot of effort into
• 1:23:50
  something and then you sell and it doesn't take off, you know,
• 1:23:55
  as much as you hoped or even if at all.
• 1:23:59
  And meanwhile, you know, the, the, the night of the, which I
• 1:24:05
  only spent like 8 months riding, it's like that one's selling
• 1:24:09
  like hot cakes. And it's like I didn't put
• 1:24:11
  nearly as much effort into it, but it's like, why is that one
• 1:24:15
  selling versus the one I little like, you know, cried over
• 1:24:21
  sometimes, you know, trying, maybe not literally, but you
• 1:24:24
  know, like, yeah, it's always. Kind of a gamble, huh?
• 1:24:28
  Yeah. So I mean, and it's, and it's
• 1:24:31
  stuff like that. The other thing too is, yeah, so
• 1:24:36
  you know, it's it's stuff like that.
• 1:24:37
  And you and I have talked at the marketing thing, it's ever
• 1:24:40
  changing. You know, we both work in
• 1:24:43
  marketing. That's always frustrating and
• 1:24:47
  you and I are somewhat of experts on that also that I
• 1:24:51
  think for me personally, like the other frustration I have and
• 1:24:55
  it you know, it's not one that is like major, you know, can
• 1:24:58
  kind of grading is like people don't people don't realize that
• 1:25:02
  unless they're into like, you know, reading books and what
• 1:25:05
  not. There's kind of the perception
• 1:25:09
  that we just sit down and write a story and publish it on Amazon
• 1:25:16
  and because we had like, you know, success, people just think
• 1:25:20
  it's easy. And so like, you know, they
• 1:25:26
  don't, they don't understand how much effort we put in, you know,
• 1:25:30
  into our work, which can be frustrating.
• 1:25:34
  First of all, if it's that easy, then everybody can do it.
• 1:25:37
  Right, right. Exactly.
• 1:25:39
  You know, it's just not easy. It may come more naturally to
• 1:25:43
  some than others for me to sit down and write a novella or a
• 1:25:46
  novel. I wrote my novel in like 716,
• 1:25:48
  seventeen, 18 days during Nano Remo, something like that.
• 1:25:52
  But you didn't see what I did the months before Nano Remo
• 1:25:55
  started, which was plot the heck out of that thing.
• 1:25:59
  I wrote down every detail just so that when I sat down to
• 1:26:02
  actually type the story, I didn't have to think about
• 1:26:05
  anything. It was all just ready to go.
• 1:26:08
  That was a lot of work, you know?
• 1:26:11
  And even then, like when I published this thing, my
• 1:26:13
  novella, yeah, I wrote this in like 2-3 weeks.
• 1:26:16
  I rewrote it in 2-3 weeks. I wrote it twice.
• 1:26:21
  That's not easy. But then I ran a Kickstarter on
• 1:26:24
  it. Man, I've never done more work
• 1:26:27
  in my life than on that stupid Kickstarter.
• 1:26:30
  I'm never going to do another Kickstarter.
• 1:26:32
  Forget that. Like, yeah, sure, I got to pay
• 1:26:34
  for it. And yeah, I got it edited and
• 1:26:36
  yeah, I like, I could, you know, but no, like, forget that.
• 1:26:41
  I'll never do that again. Because it was a pain in the
• 1:26:44
  neck just to get people to be interested in the Kickstarter,
• 1:26:47
  much less interested in the book.
• 1:26:49
  And sure, I ended up with a finished copy.
• 1:26:53
  The people that contributed to my Kickstarter pain campaign
• 1:26:57
  were super cool and super generous.
• 1:26:59
  It was so much work to do from the time that I first wrote this
• 1:27:04
  in 2022 to the time I published it, it was three years almost.
• 1:27:07
  Yeah. So like, you think it's easy?
• 1:27:10
  It's there's nothing easy about it.
• 1:27:12
  And yeah, it's that's just an absurd notion, an absurd
• 1:27:16
  sentiment to say that something like it was easy.
• 1:27:20
  Yeah, I mean, and, and by the way, like props to you for doing
• 1:27:24
  the Kickstarter too, because like, I remember when, you know,
• 1:27:27
  you were doing it and like, my thing is like was like, wow, I
• 1:27:32
  you know, I'm glad that his Kickstarter, like, you know, was
• 1:27:37
  a success because like I started, I started like AI tried
• 1:27:42
  to start like a Patreon for my podcast, like, you know, a few
• 1:27:47
  years ago. And just like nobody, you know,
• 1:27:49
  subscribe to like any of the bonus content, which like, I
• 1:27:52
  don't necessarily like, I don't necessarily like I'm not mad,
• 1:27:57
  you know, or anything, but it's like, it's like they're just, I
• 1:28:00
  guess there just wasn't that interest.
• 1:28:02
  So, you know, like to do a game store to like the fact that you
• 1:28:06
  did it. The other thing though, was
• 1:28:07
  like, I guess the other thing that annoys me is like people
• 1:28:10
  who are like, and I don't know if this has happened to you, but
• 1:28:13
  like, I'll get, I'll get friends who, or rather I should say
• 1:28:23
  acquaintances who, you know, they're, they're friendly and
• 1:28:28
  they, they meanwhile, but they're like, they're like, hey,
• 1:28:32
  can can you, you know, can you give me a copy?
• 1:28:37
  Can you like give me a copy of of your book?
• 1:28:40
  And I'm like, I'm like, sure, you know, go on.
• 1:28:44
  You know, I'm like, you know, here, here's the link.
• 1:28:47
  Or if you, if you have a copy, I'd be happy to, you know, sign
• 1:28:52
  for you or I, you know, I've got like copies at home I can bring
• 1:28:55
  you. And they're like, well, I don't
• 1:28:58
  really have the money to. So you know, I was hoping you'd
• 1:29:03
  just give me one for all time sake.
• 1:29:04
  And it's like, and it's like, I know that they mean well, but
• 1:29:08
  it's kind of like, well, I'm, I'm, you know, like I'm not in
• 1:29:13
  it to make money. I'm not in this to make money.
• 1:29:15
  But at the same time, it's like, yeah, I'm not doing this for
• 1:29:19
  free either. It's just a very disrespectful
• 1:29:22
  thing to see you write something.
• 1:29:26
  In my case, you know, from 2022 to 2025, I've been trying to get
• 1:29:31
  that book out. Yeah.
• 1:29:32
  And I invested all that time and effort and energy and commitment
• 1:29:36
  to it, and you want it for free? I didn't.
• 1:29:39
  It wasn't free for me to write this.
• 1:29:42
  No, yeah. And I, yeah.
• 1:29:46
  Well, you know, well, and the other thing is like, I think my
• 1:29:48
  books are like pretty reasonably, you know, prized
• 1:29:52
  too. And I'm not, I mean, I'm not the
• 1:29:53
  only author who goes, you know, through the site.
• 1:29:56
  So this isn't just me complaining, but.
• 1:29:58
  But someone was like, was like, you're charging $15 up from up
• 1:30:04
  from 12. And it it's like, well, yeah,
• 1:30:07
  because inflation has, you know, gone up.
• 1:30:09
  And so like, you know, I don't think $15 is that much.
• 1:30:15
  And I'm not going to say this part out loud, but like for, you
• 1:30:17
  know, for some people, like I know, I know that they spend
• 1:30:21
  more than $15 on coffee, you know, on their coffee orders.
• 1:30:25
  Yeah, every week. So it's like, you know, you want
• 1:30:29
  us home. I get that you want to, you know
• 1:30:33
  that you say you want some, remember, but do you really That
• 1:30:35
  that's why, that's why I. Want to?
• 1:30:37
  Yeah. And then the other thing too,
• 1:30:41
  but like, I, I, I want to let people know because they're
• 1:30:44
  like, well, you get books for free all the time from authors.
• 1:30:47
  And it's like, and it's like, well, yeah, I do.
• 1:30:50
  But like, that's because I'm doing, you know, review like
• 1:30:56
  Kyle Mills, you know, New York Times best seller was on my
• 1:31:00
  show. He asked me if I wanted, you
• 1:31:02
  know, a copy, you know, to help, like promote.
• 1:31:04
  I did not ask for this. He just sent it to me.
• 1:31:08
  But yet when his book came out, like I I still bought a copy on
• 1:31:12
  Kindle because this was good. Check out Fade In, by the way.
• 1:31:18
  But like, I don't think a lot of people understand that.
• 1:31:21
  Like, yeah, authors, the reason why we exchanged, the reason why
• 1:31:26
  we, the reason why we get free books is because we're like pure
• 1:31:30
  viewing with, with each other. Yeah, it's not.
• 1:31:34
  It's not, you know. I don't just like them better
• 1:31:37
  than you. That's a that's a an associate
• 1:31:40
  or a, what do you call it? I guess a collaborator.
• 1:31:43
  Yeah. This is somebody who understands
• 1:31:45
  my craft. Who?
• 1:31:47
  Is able to give me feedback. This isn't them getting a book
• 1:31:51
  for free, this is me getting another set of eyes on it so
• 1:31:56
  that they can analyze it for me. It's not the same.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah, and, you know, and give me a blurb if they like it and if
• 1:32:03
  they and if they don't, tell me why, you know, tell me why they
• 1:32:06
  don't. Yeah, why they don't like it.
• 1:32:08
  And you know, sometimes it's worn criticism, sometimes like
• 1:32:13
  they're like, yeah, this book, this book is good.
• 1:32:15
  It's not for me, which is, you know, it's perfect, but like,
• 1:32:21
  but you but like, you know that that's it's better than just,
• 1:32:24
  you know, than the average Joe Joe Schmo thing.
• 1:32:28
  Sam just gets book books for free because, you know, because
• 1:32:33
  these authors are nice to me. It's like it's like, well, it's
• 1:32:37
  like, well, it's like, well, it is nice that you know, they're
• 1:32:40
  my friends and they are going to like also it is a business thing
• 1:32:43
  kind of too. We're helping each other out.
• 1:32:47
  So and I and they're just, they're just a few things.
• 1:32:51
  I just wish kind of the general public understood a little bit
• 1:32:56
  more and that's, that's one, one.
• 1:32:58
  Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
• 1:33:03
  On the flip side, the the camaraderie is awesome,
• 1:33:06
  especially in our little, you know, corner of the of the
• 1:33:10
  Internet too. Yeah, we have a really great
• 1:33:12
  community on the Men's Adventure Fiction Discord.
• 1:33:15
  I found them just by trolling YouTube and seeing the podcast
• 1:33:19
  and realized they had a discord and joined in.
• 1:33:21
  And it's like, dude, I belong here.
• 1:33:23
  Like, you know, these are my people.
• 1:33:25
  I've got some of these guys phone numbers.
• 1:33:27
  I talk to them almost every day. And you know, I've gotten to
• 1:33:30
  meet super cool people like Brena Williamson, awesome
• 1:33:33
  artist, awesome, awesome writer. I've met Luke Goodish, I've met
• 1:33:36
  Nathan Hummel, I've met you, I met Jake.
• 1:33:39
  I've just met so many cool folks.
• 1:33:41
  And it hasn't been a toxic community.
• 1:33:44
  Mostly we had a, we had a couple bumps in the road, a couple
• 1:33:47
  people came in that wanted to cause problems and that was
• 1:33:50
  dealt with. But for the most part, it's just
• 1:33:52
  a really, really cool community that's really supportive of each
• 1:33:55
  other. And man, it's, it's been a heck
• 1:33:57
  of a ride. I've enjoyed it immensely.
• 1:33:59
  The community you build as a rider is just awesome.
• 1:34:02
  Awesome. Yeah, it it, it really is like
• 1:34:06
  that's I think that's another thing that keeps me going too,
• 1:34:09
  is like, you know, there are, there are there are other
• 1:34:14
  authors that, you know, with both pause and negatives.
• 1:34:19
  I can at least like, you know, talk to them like I love this or
• 1:34:24
  man, this aspect of writing is really giving me.
• 1:34:28
  Did you hear that motive? Sorry.
• 1:34:31
  I did. I guess.
• 1:34:33
  I guess John Ryder's coming to you know, that's right, your.
• 1:34:38
  Or probably going to get you though maybe.
• 1:34:40
  More. It's Brady.
• 1:34:42
  Maybe he's just. Afraid you?
• 1:34:44
  He drove here from Arizona. I don't think so.
• 1:34:47
  Me and Brady, everybody thinks we're enemies.
• 1:34:49
  We're not enemies. Me and Brady are.
• 1:34:50
  No, no, I, no, no. We just like.
• 1:34:53
  To Heckle each other. Yeah, well, he's, you know, he's
• 1:34:57
  he like he likes to bust people's chops so.
• 1:35:00
  But yeah, I know. I mean, it's, it's that
• 1:35:02
  camaraderie that like the authors have with each other
• 1:35:06
  that's like really awesome so. Yeah, we have a great community
• 1:35:13
  on the Men's Adventure Fiction Discord, and if your listeners,
• 1:35:17
  viewers, whatever, if they joined it, they'd get to talk to
• 1:35:20
  us. They'd get to see what our
• 1:35:21
  community's like. It's really, really.
• 1:35:22
  Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:25
  It really. It really is.
• 1:35:29
  Well, what are your next? What are your upcoming projects
• 1:35:34
  you know in the future? Man, OK so you know I haven't
• 1:35:39
  updated my Instagram in a while, but I announced it on Instagram
• 1:35:42
  and I even announced it on my sub stack, which I haven't
• 1:35:45
  updated in a while because my hands are full of spit up and
• 1:35:47
  diapers. I have a new Cologne, man.
• 1:35:49
  It's called spit up. It's great.
• 1:35:50
  Smells like spoiled milk. It's all I smell like anymore.
• 1:35:54
  But I have a new project coming up called Wind Shadows Fall,
• 1:35:58
  which is a quote that comes out of Dante's Inferno.
• 1:36:02
  So it's very layered, right? Basically, the premise of this
• 1:36:06
  book, it'll be a full, it'll be a novel.
• 1:36:08
  I'm aiming for about 60,000 words.
• 1:36:09
  I'm really excited about it if I can just get it going, man.
• 1:36:14
  But the premise of this book, you ready for this?
• 1:36:16
  Yeah. Let's see.
• 1:36:18
  It's like a historical fiction novel set in 1295 in medieval
• 1:36:25
  Italy. And we're going to take history
• 1:36:30
  and we're going to take medieval theology and demonology, and
• 1:36:36
  we're going to treat all those tapestries with redskin demons
• 1:36:39
  and Clovenhoof demons and Dante's Inferno and Paradise
• 1:36:43
  Lost and all these ancient medieval perspectives on demons
• 1:36:49
  and the devil. And we're going to treat them
• 1:36:51
  hyper literally. And we're going to take our
• 1:36:54
  historical fiction and we're going to put those things
• 1:36:56
  together. So what I have is a story about
• 1:36:59
  a Knights Templar who's come back from the Crusades.
• 1:37:03
  He's living in a monastery trying to sort through the
• 1:37:07
  craziness of what he experienced in the crusade.
• 1:37:09
  And at some point these red skinned Clovenhoof and demons
• 1:37:14
  are going to descend on the town.
• 1:37:16
  And it's going to be fast, like Robert E Howard's Conan stories.
• 1:37:20
  It's going to be dark, dark, dark, like dark fantasy.
• 1:37:23
  It's going to have like, a realism to it, like historical
• 1:37:26
  fiction. And it's going to treat the way
• 1:37:29
  they saw the spiritual world in the Middle Ages like it's
• 1:37:33
  literal. So yeah, Hell has nine circles,
• 1:37:35
  and Satan's in the 9th circle, and it's icy on the 9th circle.
• 1:37:39
  Paradise Lost. Yeah, Satan fell and he built a
• 1:37:42
  palace called Pandemonium in the depths of Hell.
• 1:37:46
  And it's going to be a little bit of Faust Satan's bound.
• 1:37:49
  So he sends out a Mephistophiles from Faust and that's his
• 1:37:52
  ambassador on the Earth. There's actual, I found old
• 1:37:55
  witchcraft hunting manuals from that Middle Ages.
• 1:37:58
  So some of that's going to make it into the novel.
• 1:38:01
  You know, we're using the Lords of Hell from a little pamphlet
• 1:38:05
  that got passed around in the Middle Ages called The Lanterns
• 1:38:07
  of Light. So like Satan has certain
• 1:38:09
  generals and these are their names and here's what they do.
• 1:38:12
  I'm trying to synthesize all of that into a comprehensive lore
• 1:38:16
  for medieval theology. And I've even read Aquinas, I've
• 1:38:20
  read Augustine, I've read the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Rule
• 1:38:24
  of Saint Augustine. I've read up on the Benedictian
• 1:38:26
  monks, the Franciscan monks. We're really bringing all the
• 1:38:29
  historical stuff together, even the stuff that's super bizarre,
• 1:38:33
  like, you know, this, the sort of things that like, the way
• 1:38:36
  demons interacted with humans, like the way they possessed
• 1:38:39
  people in the Middle Ages, all I'd have to do is tell you Satan
• 1:38:43
  take you and the devil would crawl in through your ear and
• 1:38:45
  you'd be possessed. That kind of stuff.
• 1:38:47
  Bizarre to our modern eyes, but horrifying to a medieval
• 1:38:52
  audience. I'm taking it all, stirring it
• 1:38:54
  up into a big bowl and telling a story with it as if it were
• 1:38:57
  factual. And what I'm really trying to do
• 1:38:59
  is reclaim what made that so scary for the Middle Ages.
• 1:39:03
  But I'm also trying to tell this really cool high octane demon
• 1:39:08
  slashing story at the same time. So if I can pull this off, this
• 1:39:12
  will be one of the coolest, most unique projects I've ever worked
• 1:39:15
  on that I've. I haven't seen anything else
• 1:39:17
  quite like this anywhere out there.
• 1:39:20
  So if I can pull this off, it's going to be super cool and I'm
• 1:39:24
  really hoping that it will be so.
• 1:39:26
  Yeah, I, I, I'm listening to you describe that, you know, and
• 1:39:33
  again, like, I'm not, I'm not as much of A fantasy guy, you know,
• 1:39:39
  as you are, but just like hearing that description, I'm
• 1:39:43
  like, OK, that's, you know, that premise is something that would
• 1:39:46
  just grab my attention, you know?
• 1:39:51
  Right. I mean, yeah, like I just want
• 1:39:53
  to take it all hyper literally. Like an actual grim Reaper with
• 1:39:57
  a scythe and he's a skeleton with a black cloak like.
• 1:40:00
  All of that stuff, we're going to take it literally as possible
• 1:40:04
  and present it to you in a way that's believable.
• 1:40:06
  And that is awesome. Well, you know, I know people
• 1:40:11
  are going to hear this, so I don't really, you know, I would
• 1:40:14
  probably announce anyway. But right now I'm kind of
• 1:40:17
  working on it on like an alternate history thing for
• 1:40:21
  Shadows of Deception. I'm, I'm actually going to, I'm
• 1:40:26
  going to submit this to Veritas actually.
• 1:40:29
  But you know, John Ryder, my main, my main character, he
• 1:40:33
  comes from a line of, you know, Navy Seals.
• 1:40:37
  And his, his dad has been referenced, you know, in the
• 1:40:41
  books. But you know, his dad is also in
• 1:40:45
  the, the current timeline, his dad is dead.
• 1:40:47
  But his kind of these older Vietnam Veterans and cold, you
• 1:40:51
  know, and Cold Warriors are, you know, in the current books kind
• 1:40:54
  of as old men. But now I'm going back to kind
• 1:40:58
  of the 1980s, and specifically I'm going back to 1981,
• 1:41:04
  immediately after President Reagan's assassination,
• 1:41:10
  assassination attempt. You're killing Reagan.
• 1:41:14
  No, I'm not. I'm not necessarily killing him.
• 1:41:17
  But what I am doing is after the Trump assassination attempt, all
• 1:41:25
  kind of you a behind the scenes thing, people started to really
• 1:41:29
  drop parallels, understandably to the Reagan assassination
• 1:41:33
  assassination attempt. And there there was a conspiracy
• 1:41:37
  theory out there that like that. Well, I wouldn't really say it
• 1:41:41
  was even like a conspiracy theory in the way that we think
• 1:41:45
  the the way. But there were concerns,
• 1:41:47
  understandably because of the height of the Cold War that the
• 1:41:51
  Soviets who when who did have like a an illegal program like
• 1:41:57
  it's, you know, it's been declassified that we had KGB
• 1:42:01
  people in the country in the in the Cold War.
• 1:42:05
  So what if this was actually a Soviet plot?
• 1:42:08
  And OK, what if the Hink. So Reagan, even though he, you
• 1:42:13
  know, even though he he does survive, he approaches, you
• 1:42:19
  know, James Fryder that, you know, the father and I was like,
• 1:42:25
  we're going to tell, you know, we're going to tell people that
• 1:42:28
  he employee, you know, was the was the one.
• 1:42:35
  And he kind of he kind of minded them.
• 1:42:38
  But they're, you know, I'm going to dive into, you know, the the
• 1:42:42
  Soviet, you know, kind of, you know, theory that they may have
• 1:42:47
  been responsible. We're going to get into MKLMK
• 1:42:49
  Ultra, you know, secret societies, kind of the whole
• 1:42:54
  deep state thing before it became a, you know, a
• 1:42:58
  conspiracy. That sounds exciting man, I dig
• 1:43:01
  it. I like alternate history stuff.
• 1:43:03
  I think that's. Yeah, well, the I mean the other
• 1:43:08
  thing too is I is I like the one thing that I guess I like kind
• 1:43:15
  about like writing in the 1980s facility that time period is
• 1:43:20
  it's modern enough to where like, you know, we do have we
• 1:43:25
  have kind of, I guess primitive computers back then.
• 1:43:28
  It's not like there's not like an over real alliance versus
• 1:43:32
  like, you know, now it's like so and so can just hack into this
• 1:43:36
  computer, you know, terminal and like, you know, it's like, you
• 1:43:43
  know, it's it's more like cloak and dagger.
• 1:43:44
  There's not as much like, you know, cyber warfare as like a,
• 1:43:48
  as like a convenient plot, you know, point so.
• 1:43:53
  Plus. The 8 plus the 80s is just
• 1:43:55
  awesome as a time period so. We really don't have enough 80s
• 1:43:59
  stuff, do we? Not as much although, although
• 1:44:04
  duty Cold War was pretty cool a few years ago.
• 1:44:08
  I remember that we had Wonder Woman do the 80s thing, but that
• 1:44:11
  was that was whatever. Yeah.
• 1:44:15
  And and that had such a that had such potential to be good, too.
• 1:44:20
  It really did. It had strong potential but
• 1:44:22
  squandered. Yeah, and I'm not.
• 1:44:25
  I'm not even mad at Gal Gadot. She did good.
• 1:44:28
  I think everyone who was in the movie did OK.
• 1:44:30
  It was just the writing was. Yeah, it needed another pass for
• 1:44:35
  sure. Yeah.
• 1:44:38
  But anyway, man, well thanks for coming on.
• 1:44:41
  And where can people you know find you and chat you up?
• 1:44:45
  Find me on Instagram GDS storyteller.
• 1:44:48
  You can find me on Sub Stock Grayson D Sullivan Storyteller,
• 1:44:52
  and find me on the Men's Adventure Fiction Discord.
• 1:44:55
  Yeah. And you know, the other thing
• 1:44:58
  too is we're going to be, you know, you're the one who's kind
• 1:45:02
  of getting into, you know, role-playing tabletop.
• 1:45:05
  So that. Yeah, we'll be doing AD and D
• 1:45:07
  session sometime, yeah. Yeah, that'll be interesting as
• 1:45:10
  well. Looking forward to that so well,
• 1:45:13
  Sir, I want to thank you for coming on.
• 1:45:16
  I I know we talk often but the conversation is just always
• 1:45:20
  fascinating and whether on or off air and really appreciate
• 1:45:24
  your time. Yeah, I'm happy to be here.
• 1:45:26
  Thanks for having me. And go check out this man's
• 1:45:29
  books. Everyone will have I'll have
• 1:45:32
  your Amazon page and anything else you want links in the
• 1:45:36
  description. And, you know, happy, happy
• 1:45:39
  Labor Days, everyone. And I'll see you folks for the
• 1:45:42
  live show on Wednesday night. But until then, take care and
• 1:45:46
  thanks for watching, folks. The right to offend is not some
• 1:45:51
  pesky little part of freedom of speech that we have to put up
• 1:45:54
  with. It is the heart and soul and
• 1:45:57
  lungs of freedom of speech. It is the coursing lifeblood of
• 1:46:01
  human progress. It is the instigator of liberty
• 1:46:04
  and modernity and science and understanding.
• 1:46:08
  What a laughing stock today's student leaders are that they
• 1:46:12
  can so casually dismiss the right to be offensive without
• 1:46:16
  realizing that their lovely, enlightened lives are the gifts
• 1:46:20
  of individuals who gave offence. Offensiveness is not just
• 1:46:25
  something we have to begrudgingly accept.
• 1:46:28
  Offensiveness is the motor of human progress.
• 1:46:33
  Thank you for watching the Whitfield Report live on the
• 1:46:36
  Right to Offend Media Network. Make sure to check out Sam's
• 1:46:39
  books on Amazon, Audible, and Kindle.
• 1:46:43
  You can follow Sam on X at Sam W under score NGC and the Right to
• 1:46:50
  Offend Media Network at RTO Media.
• 1:46:54
  Like, comment, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 1:46:59
  And until next time, God bless. God save this great nation.
• 1:47:05
  God, freedom, legacy, in that order.