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Gaslamp Fantasy with Becca Fox · WriterCon

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This week on the writer Com podcast, what comes to me the most was
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having twenty people work. Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers
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to share their knowledge about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William
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Bernhardt, best selling novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books on writing,
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and Laura Bernhardt, Award winning author of the want Land Files book series.
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Thank you, Jesse Ulrich, and Hey, they're writers. Thanks for joining
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us. As we record this, we're just about two months away from the
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writer Con retreat, which is that the Canine Brag Cane Break luxury resort near
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, and getting pretty excited about it. Laura, have you
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started packing your bag yet? Definitely have my hiking boots out, so probably
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won't be Yeah. I just I put away all the dresses from the crew.
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I don't think we're going to need those. I think I'm gonna be
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getting on my hiking boots. Definitely need a few swimsuits. I know there's
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a pool, hoping there's a hot tub, and then there's golf, fishing,
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golf spa. I don't mean really any clothes for the spa, but
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I need to find out how many times I get to go to the spa,
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I feel you should probably wear some clothes. It's just me, but
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something something I'll crack out on my writing themed, probably T shirts. It's
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gonna be July, it'll be warm. I can go T shirts, I
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think. But that'll be a lot of fun because we are going to be
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so secluded in this beautiful place away from everything out where we can walk through
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the woods or just get inspired, let our minds wander away from all the
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distructions. I feel like there are places. I mean, the other retreats
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have been fantastic, but we've had other things that we've wanted to do nearby,
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right, And there'll also be some writing stuff we should probably, right,
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And I'll be teaching, yes, and maybe I'll even get some writing
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done. That's in the small group work where you can get feedback on your
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manuscript, which can be invaluable. Right. Well, that is the most
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exciting part, is the opportunity to connect with more fabulous people, get to
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work with them on their writings. That is what it's all about. I
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love it all right. Our interview today is with Becca Fox, who is
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the author of The Andromeda Chronicles and The Dare duology, and she's got she's
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written fantasies, science fiction, romance. But her new book, Asta and
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the Barbarians, it's part of her series called Chosen by the Masters, and
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it's kind of a gas lap romanticcene novel. People are chosen by gods and
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goddesses to perform certain tasks that will bet or the world around them, kind
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of like the writer Con retreat. Come to think of it, I'm not
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sure she would approve of that, Endris Smith, but I'm going to make
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it anyway. We will talk to Becca, who's going to be at the
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writer Con conferences fall. We're going to talk to her about all this and
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much more. But first the news. All right, our first news story.
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Prepare yourself for this, because some people are calling it an act of
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betrayal. The last novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be published, and some
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people are really mad about it. Many of you will recognize Marquez's name because
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he was at the forefront of what came to be called the magic Realism movement,
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which started, of course, south of the border. His most famous
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novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is, in my opinion anyway,
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one of the five or ten great novels of the twentieth century, and of
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course he won the Nobel Prize, which is not too bad. But this
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he passed a few years ago. And this Colombian laureate's children have now published
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his last work, which is called Until August, and they've published it despite
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his stated wish that it should be destroyed. It was written when, according
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to some the author had dementia. It's coming, as I said, a
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decade after its death on what would have been his ninety seventh birthday. But
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it's been described by his sons, and here I'm quoting them the fruits of
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one last effort to carry on creating all odds, and tells the story of
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a woman who makes yearly pilgrimage to her mother's grave on a Caribbean island,
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and this trip becomes dominated by a series of chance sexual encounters. Anyway,
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like I said, in the face of increasing memory loss, Marquez, who
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was known as Gabbo to his friends, lost confidence in the work and asked
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for it to be destroyed. But it wasn't until now. The manuscript has
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been available to scholars at Marquez's archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Texas.
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But now his sons have made the decision to publish it, judging first that
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it's far better than their father belief. And so this is where that quote
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comes from. They wrote, in an active betrayal, we decided to put
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his reader's pleasure ahead of all other considerations. If they're delighted, it's possible
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Gabbo might forgive us that we trust Jesse you buying this or is this a
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shameless cash grab by money grubbing offspring? What do you think? Well,
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first of all, if you are an author and you write something, you're
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like, just you know, destroy this, destroy it, like if you're
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really worried about it, get read to beat a minute. Emily Dickinson left
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instructions for her sister Lavinia to destroy hundreds of poems that were in a box.
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We probably wouldn't even know who she was today if Levinia had done it.
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From what I've learned my time editing this podcast and meeting other authors,
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authors seem to be the worst judges of their own work. Very true,
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and so if it's true that this book is good, I don't few this
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as an act of betrayal. I do understand like author's desires like they write
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something they're like, nope, this is not I'm not my best, Like,
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let this be. On the other hand, like he left it and
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so it's true, he could have destroyed it himself. He could have destroyed
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himself. Yeah, so I know this is it's tricky because again, you
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know, my view is if you're an artist, once you have created,
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finished your piece of art, it no longer you know, philosophically, no
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longer belongs to you, right, And so in situations like this, I'm
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always like, well, let me take a look, Like, let's let's
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read it first. If it is gobbledegook, then yeah, they shouldn't have
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done it. But if it's good, then share it with the world.
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M hmm. Okay, Laura, you're a writer, so I want you
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to weigh in on this. Should we respect the wishes of the author or
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do the rights of readers and scholars have more weight not? Unlike what Jesse
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was saying. And I think you know this better than anyone else. I
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mean, I have down days where I am convinced that I can't write anymore
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or maybe never could write to begin with, and feel like trashing whatever I'm
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working on, and my current know my current work in progress is out with
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preliminary readers right now, and I'm I'm at that point where I have no
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confidence right now. It's a struggle some artists really struggle with that. Was
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that a reflection of I mean, if he was starting to suffer from some
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early dementia, that could have influenced how he was viewing his own work.
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I like to think that his children see the merit of it and are trying
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to share something they see value in with the rest of the world. I
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like to think that. I like to think that my loved ones would make
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the right decision if I left something behind. Like Jesse said, he chose
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not to destroy it himself or couldn't destroy himself. But gosh, I don't
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know. That's a tough one. If someone says, just throw it away,
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I think, let me just tell you now in advance. There are
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some things I've written that I've chosen not to publish. But if I'm gone
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and the kids can make some money off it, go for it. Okay,
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thank you, thank you. Now I don't have to I don't have
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to deliberate and stress. I know how you feel about it. I likewise,
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if I leave something behind and people see value and merit in it.
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I'm good with that. Okay. News story number two this is about an
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AI powered publisher who has raised millions in funding. This company is an Israeli
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startup. It's called Spines. They've got a website and they have raised six
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point five million two and these are their words, disrupt the centuries old publishing
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industry. They've created an AI I mean artificial intelligence powered publicblishing platform for authors
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that basically automates the entire process of getting a book published, kind of what
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you know indie publishers are doing, like with their brains, but now there's
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an AI service apparently that can do it for you, even to the point
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of distributing physical copies. According to them, the publishing industry has been at
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a standstill for decades, not exactly the way I would put it, given,
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among other things, the boom in the indie publishing industry. But to
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be fair, I think what they're talking about is tech. They're complaining that,
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you know, people still do things manually, if you can imagine that,
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And so it takes the average publisher months to get books ready, and
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yeah, that might be the average, but we all know that it can
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be done much quicker if you don't care so much about various things. Anyway,
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Spines is giving authors the ability to see their books self published in just
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two weeks and supposedly reducing the costs of publishing by about thirty percent. They
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do this by using AI to automate a great deal of the process. They've
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got algorithms, of course, don't they all, and so it handles editing,
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proofreading, formatting, even cover design. Although I thought this was interesting,
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authors have the option of paying extra so they can have a human editor,
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which to me suggests maybe the AI editor isn't perfect, and each book
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will be assigned a human production manager to oversee the process. Laura, do
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you think this is going to disrupt the publishing industry? I don't. It's
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a risk of sounding like an old lady. I don't like it. This
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is giving me bad bad vibes we already have. I just read an article
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this morning about all the garbage books flooding Amazon. Right now. I fear
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that this is just going to make it even worse. So when you ask
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is it going to disrupt I mean we publishing industry is already disrupted by a
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lot of bad actors who are who are flooding our bookstores with true garbage just
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trash books. Absolutely, and there is always a need for a human editor.
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Sorry you think now. We just attended a conference where one of the
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speakers advocated first dictating your book and then using an AI program to clean it
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up to do all the editing and proof reading and punctuation, which to me,
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I just thought, yeah, and you deserve what you'll get. I'm
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yes, as an editor, easy right right, And I see the suggestion
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uestions and autocorrections that are wrong. There are so many things that AI just
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still doesn't get right unless they have improved it massively. But I don't see
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it. There's a big difference between you know, my friend Karen went to
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the store, or you know my friend Karen, she went to the store.
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There's it will always try to put that comma there and sometimes it is
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wrong. And that's just one example of things that AI can't seem to differentiate
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between it. Now we'll understand your style, correct, Jesse. I'm going
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to give you a chance to stand up for tech you've used AI. Can
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you see this taking off or more importantly, being actually useful to writers?
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So it depends on what it does well and when it doesn't do it doesn't
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do well. For there are there are still barriers to publishing that if they're
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If spines gives you the ability to do one part of it easier then it
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used to be, then I'm for it. I'm not for like AI doing
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all the different parts of it. Again, AI is great at analyzing your
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text, it's not great at fixing it, right, And so if this
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helps writers like give it a draft and it tells them like, hey,
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you like we use this word a lot, or like, hey, like
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you mentioned this character a lot, but we don't know anything about said character.
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Those things are useful, right, But I don't think it's going to
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revolutionize publishing. It's just another another tool, especially for I would say self
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published self publishing types to like do the things that you need to do to
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actually release a book, right, I would be surprised, But to be
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fair, I have been surprised once or twice before in this business. Who
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knows. All Right, Jesse, cue up the music. Let's talk to
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Becca Fox. Becca. Welcome to the Hi, thanks for having me,
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guys, thanks for being here. Okay, traditional first question, if you
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could offer writers one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh?
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Boy? I think what helped me the most was having other people read and
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critique my work. I know it's terrifying when you're telling a new author,
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oh, you got to show this to somebody. They're like, no,
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no, my baby, I don't want to write. I don't want anybody
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to see or oh what if they hate it? And it's it's it is
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hard sometimes to hear somebody tell you the truth. But I feel like,
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for sure you will grow faster and learn more if you have an open mind
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and if you're willing to take that hard criticism, because sometimes you know you're
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too close to the project and you can't see the things that need to be
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cut. Yeah, for the good of the project. So it's you need
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to surround yourself with people who who love you. Yes, but we're not
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afraid to lie, to tell you the truth. That won't lie to you
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and be like, oh, yeah, this is perfect, you know,
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because that's that's not helpful. It's it's really not. Yeah, I make
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you feel good for a little while, but it's not can make the book
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any better. No. I love that answer, because that's exactly what we
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do. At our retreats every summer, and as we record this, I
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think we're about two months away from the writer con retreat. So perfect answer
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A plus. Okay, tell us about Asta and the Barbarians. So geeze
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A long story with Austa. So Austin was actually the first book that got
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up publishing offer from a little vanity press called tur Guard Publishing. This was
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back in twenty eighteen and they only published ebooks at the time. But I
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was just excited, you know, to get my book out there. So
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I signed a contract and we went and it was It was rough. It
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was really rough, but I learned a lot. And the peopleeople at the
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Turner Publishing are great. They were so supportive, they were helpful, they
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did everything they possibly could. But I think it was just too immature at
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the time, and it just wasn't it wasn't the right time. So when
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the five year contract was up, I got the rights back for my book,
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and then this year I republished it through independently through Amazon, through olg's
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all the drafted digital, all the yeah, all the different outlets, and
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now it's out there again, this time after going through some heavy edits and
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I'm so proud of it, though I always have been. It was my
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first attempt at a gas Lamp kind of fantasy, so yeah, I'd always
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have a special place in my heart. Since twenty eighteen, it was so
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funny. I have written these small novellas, which is the rest of the
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series, chosen by the Masters, that introduced other characters in different parts of
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the same world, so it doesn't follow Asta, but they will all come
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together later in the book that I'm working on now, which is the last
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book in the series. At least I hope it be the last book.
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Oh my goodness, it's turning into a monster of a book. I might
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have to split in half and do it one part, two part, but
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yeah, no, it's it's been a ride. It's been so cool just
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to just to learn more about myself as a writer and about the genre,
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about the characters. It's it's been awesome. I've been really enjoying that that
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genre. I might actually stick with that genre. I've jumped around since then,
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but I really do love gas Lamp. It's got a special place in
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my heart. Like I said, so, where did you get the idea
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for this? It's it's a series of books, right, you're chosen by
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the masters or the at least the world of these books, where did you
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get the idea? So it was a bit of both. So I had
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recently fallen in love with kristin Cashore's grace Ling series. I don't know if
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you guys are into that at all, but it does introduce the whole idea
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of people with different colored eyes having very specific talents that are almost like magical
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but not quite so I use a bit of that in my in My world,
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but I also got some inspiration from Rick Reardon's you know, with the
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for an Olympian gods and they're kind of like they select champions, you know,
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to do some things for them in the in the human world. So
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it's a bit of both. You have people with special abilities that are granted
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to them by these gods, but also you have some people that are just
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kind of their lives are interrupted because the gods are like, hey, I
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need you to do something for me. And then of course there's that like
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well I don't want to, but you take them on a journey and at
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the end, of course it's the hero's journey. By the end, they're
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like, okay, I understand why it had to be me, right,
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and they better the world around them and it's fun. But of course I
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weave some romance in there, We've some mystery, some action, but you
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know, it was mainly influenced by just the people I was reading at the
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time and the different worlds that they created that I just kind of like,
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Okay, let's do a mashup. Let's see if I can make it my
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own, And oh gosh, it was so much fun. I love that.
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I love that. Hey, you dropped writer or con once, but
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you're actually coming to the conference this fall, right every day weekend in Oklahoma
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City. This may be a horrible question because we really haven't discussed that much,
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But what are you going to be talking about? That is a great
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question, and I will get back to what figure out. I've been breaking
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my head open over it because I wanted to tie in with the theme of
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walking in the souls of these characters. And I'm just sitting here like,
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oh geez, what can I talk about that hasn't already been talked about over
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and over again concerning character creation. But I don't know. I think I
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might just go up there and just share my experience building characters because I feel
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like every writer has a different process for how to build their characters. It's
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like you said, some of them just they just start writing and the characters
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just kind of blossom in front of their eyes. And other people kind of
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like, Okay, what's the deepest, darkest secret, right, or what's
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their favorite color? We start here and then we work our way around.
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So I think it'd just be cool to explore the different processes for sure,
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and yeah, and get some conversations going about the strengths and the weaknesses and
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just my experience, and yeah, make it fun. Make it fun for
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the people that are attending. So you've written you've written both science fiction and
21:02
fantasy. Is that right? Excellent? And and also romance or is it
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more like you you kind of layer the romance in with the science fiction and
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the fantasy. Yes, so it is definitely layered in. It is not
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the focal point of the story, although it is. It is pretty high
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up there on my list of priorities. I love romance. I think it's
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so much fun to write. But yes, so we have gas lamp.
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I've written sci fi. I even wrote like a crime kind of fiction sort
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of novel that stands alone that has romance arc as well. And then I
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did write a duo for high It's like a young adult duo. It's just
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high school students, you know, dealing with emotional stuff and family stuff and
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falling in love in the process. But but yeah, so far, gas
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Lamp and the sci fi were for me anyway, the most fun to write.
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But yeah, there's always some romance in my books. With your fantasy
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then probably would you call it romany would you do you think that fits in
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that genre or something else for you? Yeah, the novella's actually they are
22:00
a little bit heavier on the romance side, but they do have like several
22:04
action scenes, so they'll have like a mystery woven throughout or something like that.
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Nice's that's a hot one right now, that would be a good one
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to hop into. Yeah, that's fun. Now. Your website says that
22:18
you are passionate about creating realistic couples who struggle and argue but in the end
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choose to love each other despite their baggage and flaws. That sounds fantastic to
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me. And I'm curious why you think that trope has such appeal to readers.
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Well, I feel like it's I don't know. You have two different
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sides of it, right. You have the audience that are like, give
22:45
me all the fantasy. I don't want any realism to this. I want
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him to be perfect, right, the guy that I've always wanted and want.
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I want her to be strong and independent but of course vulnerable and meets
22:55
this guy. And then you have the other audience that are just like,
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oh gosh, this is this is so unrealistic and I can't even get into
23:02
this because there's no way he would ever say that or do that, you
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know, Right. So I kind of tend to be in between as a
23:08
reader personally, where I do want some realism, where it's like, yeah,
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yeah, if this happened in real life, I'd get upset about it
23:14
too. But at the other hand, you want the fluttery feelings, You
23:18
want the first love kind of feel to it too, So I do I
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do try to include a bit of both. But also it's been impressed upon
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me that the more you consume something, the more you start to believe it
23:30
to a certain extent. And I feel that if we just keep pumping out
23:33
those romances that are not realistic at all, then we're just setting our readers
23:37
up to fail in real life. You know, if they're looking for that
23:41
one specific type of relationship, then I mean, how are they supposed to
23:45
find happiness with anything else? So I guess I'm just trying to promote that
23:49
side of Yeah, so we're gonna argue, we're gonna get mad at each
23:52
other sometimes, but yeah, there is there's still hope. You know that
23:56
we can make long lasting and meaningful relationships despite all that. So I've been
24:03
I've been married for nine years now, so I have a little bit of
24:07
experience in that. So I feel like it's it's it's important to pass that
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on for sure. No, that's brilliant. I've also heard that movies,
24:18
shows, books, they set up this kind of unrealistic and unattainable ideal and
24:23
that it is starting to affect people when they're dating and trying to find someone
24:30
that they want to share their life with. I kind of love that.
24:32
That's brilliant. Thank you. You've mentioned You've mentioned character a couple of times
24:37
now, and I you've said that creating characters that the reader can identify with
24:42
and champion is very important to you, as I think it is for all
24:48
of us. But I also think maybe that's easier to say than it is
24:53
to do. So how do you how do you develop your characters? What's
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your process? Like? Okay, so I do I do start with the
25:07
surrounding circumstances, because I do believe that circumstances do shape a character to a
25:11
certain extent. But I do also think that surrounding the people that they surround
25:15
themselves with will influence them as well. I do you start with some very
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basic core values? Okay, what does she believe in? What does she
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hate right? What are some of the things she would never be caught doing?
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But I do feel like that it's important to stick to certain values,
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but also to have the character learn along the way, because that's realistic as
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well. So sometimes there is a big decision that needs to be made that
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it's like, Okay, this is how she would have reacted, but now
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I have to stop and think, Okay, like based on all the experiences
25:45
that she's had, like, would she still make the same decision or would
25:48
it be different? And how is that going to affect the story? So
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it's just it's fun to play with that as well. But lately, especially
25:56
with the sci fi trilogy, I actually sat down one of my my,
26:00
my husband's best friends, and I said, Okay, the guy is a
26:03
lot like you, like, how would you approach It's fantastic And then yes,
26:12
it's also sound like okay, are you willing to answer some weird questions?
26:15
And he's just like, sure, you know, hit me. I
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did, and he was very honest, and I feel like it's a good
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friend. Yes, and his answers shaped the story like in a completely different
26:26
direction than I would have thought. So it was it was so cool to
26:27
be like, Okay, you presented me with a new challenge now because now
26:30
I have to change the story because that's not what I thought you were going
26:33
to say at all. So it's it was really cool. But I do
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feel like a different I mean, I feel like maybe guys can identify more
26:41
with that story now because it's more realistic in that sense that, oh,
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yeah, I would do this. It doesn't sound as much like, I
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don't know, like a girl. Maybe i'd have to ask a guy.
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But I love that you did actual real life research and interviews for your romantic
26:57
romanticy. But that's great. Okay, here's something I love on your website.
27:03
You talk about and I'm quoting describing scenery and random and sometimes annoying detail.
27:11
That's always a balance, right, giving enough without slowing down the story.
27:18
How do you approach that? Oh jeez, so a lot of read
27:22
throughs. I if I stopped writing in the middle of a chapter and then
27:26
I start writing again later, I always have to start at the beginning of
27:27
chapter and read through and be like, oh, that's a lot of definition,
27:32
you know, not a description of the trees and the flowers. And
27:33
I'm like, I love it, but well, the reader really love this?
27:37
I'm like, yes, moderate myself, yes, or describing a room
27:44
in a house that I'm like, okay, I want them to know what
27:45
colored the tapestries were in the rug and I was sitting here like, but
27:49
do they really care about this? Like I have to really really watch myself
27:53
for sure, but I want them to know exactly what it looks like.
27:56
And some readers are like, I don't really care to just scroll. I
28:00
go, oh, there's conversation now, Okay. I don't want to lose
28:03
the reader. So I always have to remind myself about me. It's what
28:06
is the what is the reader? You know? What is important for the
28:08
reader to know and then let them use their imagination, you know, but
28:11
it is hard. I do love to describe everything for sure. That's great.
28:15
No, because you know, you know, to go back and double
28:18
check and maybe cut a little bit. That's good. Yeah, we have
28:23
a lot of aspiring writers in our audience, so it's great for them to
28:26
hear the processes that authors go through. Can you describe your path to publication
28:33
how you got started? Yeah? Yeah, So I took a writer's class
28:40
at a community center and it was being taught by an editor and she gave
28:44
us all her card at the end and said, hey, if you have
28:47
a manuscript that you want me to look at, by all means, you
28:48
know, hire me. And Yeah, after stressing over it for entirely too
28:52
long, I was just like, just you know, just do it.
28:55
I just got to do it. I have to know, right if I
28:56
even have a chance. So I sent it to her, this mom through
29:00
monster novel. It was like four hundred, five hundred pages long, and
29:03
she was very gracious and she worked with me to kind of cut it back
29:07
and to refine it, and she said, yeah, no, you definitely
29:10
have talent. It's it's gonna be a lot of work though. She said
29:15
you published nowadays, but she says, I keep at it. You know
29:18
you can, you can do it, And that was all the validation I
29:22
needed. By golly, I was just like, I can do it.
29:23
I'm gonna do it. So I was on writers forums, I was doing
29:27
Twitter or x or whatever you want to call it. Now. I was
29:30
doing a pitch madness for a long time where basically, you know, you
29:34
just was it two hundred characters or less, you pitch your book and there's
29:37
a participating publishers and agents there. So I did that a lot, and
29:42
then I was you know, blogging. I was trying to create a social
29:45
media presence and doing a newsletter, and and then of course writing writing,
29:49
writing, learning everything I possibly could, and then reading too to gain inspiration.
29:55
But in the end, yeah, somebody, Turgar Publishing found me on
29:59
through through pitch madness. I always recommend that to people if they're asking,
30:03
like how do I get in, I'm like, bitch madness because that helped.
30:06
When you like, that's great, I don't know that I had spoken
30:08
with anyone who found success that way, so that's fun to hear. I'm
30:14
glad that worked for you. Many paths. What does a typical writing day
30:19
look like for you? What's your writing process? Oh, it's so scattered.
30:25
Now I have three little's four three and that'll do it. Yeah,
30:30
so if I have Lately, we've implemented a system where mommy gets one hour
30:33
a day and I close my door and you leave me alone for one hour
30:37
and Daddy's Daddy's in charge, and I will write as much as I can
30:41
in that one hour. And if I get an idea in the middle of
30:44
dinner, I have my phone. I'm like, I have Google Docs on
30:47
my phone, so I can just like hide it out real quick and then
30:48
I'll add it to the rest of the document later. Or Yeah, if
30:52
we're traveling. When I was nursing, that would that was so great.
30:55
I'd have my phone there and I'd be writing scenes out on my phone what
30:57
I was saying and my good just at a time, just adding it here
31:00
and there and slow favorite way back then like that too. Oh my gosh,
31:04
I'm hearing so many familiar things. I'm waiting past that now, but
31:08
I've been writing. I was writing back then too, So missing and speaking
31:15
you would be very popular with our boys, I think because I got this
31:18
from your website too. You watch anime and play video games next to your
31:23
gamer husband, who we now know is also your research victim. Or oh
31:30
yeah, oh yeah, I wrote them into my madness. Yes, do
31:33
you have a favorite game or anime or what? Oh my goodness. Okay,
31:37
so right now we are really into We're waiting. We're waiting for Black
31:44
Clover's new season to come out, waiting on baited breath because our favorite character
31:48
got kidnapped and we're like, no, what's gonna happen next? We are
31:52
working our way through Blue Exorcist and Jiu Jitsu Kaisen and yeah, yeah,
31:57
we got quite a few that were doing right now, we're on a kick.
32:00
And then as game game wise, oh geez I am. We we
32:07
do some PlayStation, but we also do some switch, so there's a bit
32:10
there. I I'm always going to be for Super Smash because that's what I
32:13
grew up on. That's nostalgic for me. But we've done Yeah, we've
32:15
done Skywrin, We've done Dragon Age, we've done Mass Effect, we've done
32:21
a bit of everything. We found this game called It Takes Too, which
32:23
literally you need two players to play, Like, done that with my son.
32:29
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so we're trying to play that. It's
32:31
been a little tricky lately to find time to do that, but we're trying
32:36
so hard to stick with it because in my case, I mostly just sat
32:39
there and Ralph told me what to do and then I but, hey,
32:44
you're bonding. That's awesome. Good for you. Did you watch Jamison's Fallout?
32:50
Have you? Did you watch that or did you ever play? Not?
32:52
Yeah, I've my husband. That's my husband's like nostalgia for him too,
32:55
his fall out. So he's very like cautious. He's like, I
32:59
don't know if I want to because if they ruin it, you know,
33:00
I'm just gonna be so mad. So like he's kind of like waiting on
33:05
that. But I've heard some good things, so we might. Yeah.
33:07
Might. I enjoyed it, but I'm video game adjacent, so I have
33:09
awareness of it and know what the idea of it is. But I did
33:14
never actually play it. But I've heard from people who played it that said
33:17
they enjoyed it too. Okay, Yeah, yeah, I would understand that
33:21
he doesn't want it ruined for him. Yeah. Well, one last question,
33:24
Becca, let's talk about the days ahead. I mean Obviously the most
33:28
important thing in your future is writer Con, But beyond that, what are
33:35
you working on now or next? What's coming next? Event wise, I'm
33:39
doing the local comic con. It's called Fanfusion. That's Emerald Day weekend.
33:44
I'm just going to be signing books and selling books and trying to talk to
33:46
as many people as possible. Book Wise, I'm working on the sequel or
33:51
the last book in that series hopefully. Oh here's hoping for chosen by the
33:55
Masters. Yeah, I kind of had to kind of step back from writing
34:00
because I've been doing a lot more of I'm trying to do more speaker engagements,
34:04
trying to engage more with other writers. I did some local library events
34:07
too to try and meet more local, more local authors. But I'm coming
34:13
out in a magazine called Successfully that's coming out on a couple of weeks here.
34:16
We're really excited about that. Just yeah, just trying to get my
34:21
name out there more because I got I got quite a few books on the
34:25
shelf already. So I met with a marketing consultant and that was the first
34:29
thing she said. She says, I think you can take a break from
34:31
writing for a little bit and just focus on promotion and marketing and stuff,
34:35
because yeah, you need to get your face out there. I'm just like,
34:37
oh, okay, but yeah it was right. Well, I can't
34:44
wait to see it. Writer come this fall. In the meantime, thanks
34:49
for being on the podcast and see you soon. Thank you. B parting
35:05
words. Of course, we already mentioned the writer Con retreat, which is
35:08
coming up in July. That's July seventeenth through twenty one at King Break not
35:14
far from Tulsa. And also, don't forget the writer conconference because Becca will
35:21
be there and Laura and I will be there and about fifty other speakers and
35:24
about seventy different sessions over the course of three days. It's a you know,
35:30
unlimited pitching contests, chances to get author photos taken, manuscript reviews,
35:37
one on one with a person of your choice, consultations. What am I
35:42
forgetting, Laura, you're forgetting to mention the unbelievably low price that someone can
35:49
join us for if they act quickly before May thirty first, right early bird
35:55
price for a basic package is two hundred and ninety nine dollars for three days
36:02
of program. For three days of instruction, I'm telling you three full days
36:07
of three days now one two. I go to a lot of conferences.
36:14
How many days was it, Jesse? Not one, not two? Technically
36:19
it's four, but the fourth day or not one? Not two, not
36:22
even three? Four full days? Look I go to I have attended.
36:29
I have attended a lot of retreats and conferences myself, and I've never seen
36:34
one at this price. I almost always have to pay more, and I'm
36:40
not going to be ugly about them that I I the quality of hours is
36:45
just so high. I know that I'm not objective when it comes to this,
36:49
but I truly do believe our quality is much better. I learn things
36:53
every year at our conference every year, and I have sometimes been to other
37:00
events where I walked away and thought didn't really learn anything, and that's frustrating
37:06
to me. So the value for what you're spending is something to consider well
37:10
great, And if you want to learn about the retreat or the conference or
37:14
any of the other things we do at writer Con, go to the website.
37:17
It's writercon dot com. All right, thanks for listening, everybody,
37:22
and hey, remember keep writing. You cannot fail if you refuse to quit.
37:30
See you next time.