A Geek History of Time - Episode 154 - Bishop Takes the Night

Episode Date: April 17, 2022

And while we have a through line that states, Authorial intent means dick, right? I don't want to have to have the same haircut, you have dad. Sorry, I'm pretty something. Aww. Aww. So was this before or after the poster and you vomiting all over the couch? For those of you that can't see, Ed's eyes just crossed. It is fucked up. But it's not wrong. This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect an artery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock, a world history and English teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And the news in my world is that my back patio is now lit in the way that my wife and I want it to be. We have lovely cafe or bistro lighting depending on how fancy you want to be about the wording set up out here, which is why I'm able to broadcast from a Patio. I am here because my in-laws are the ones who did all the work and they're currently in the

office. I was so proud of the last time we were recording. So progress on my new home continues a pace. I am getting farther and farther into the land of home ownership, which still remains a broad and sometimes terrifying vista ahead of me. But that's me. Who are you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and drama teacher up here in northern California, all around Union Thug. And I have not been kicked out of my office in any way. I just have a nice background that nobody can see my office because months and months ago,

a shelf just completely fell and failed, like the whole thing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. And then one day I heard the whole thing fall. Yeah, and now the speaker in front of my TV is threatening to do the same. And I am mechanically inept. So.

Well, you know, I just managed to install a closer on a screen door earlier today. So at some point, I might have to come out there and help you out with my, you know, basic handyman competence. Yes. Hey, I'm far below basic to borrow from education. All right. So that would be great. I'm proud of the work borrow from education. All right. So that'd be great.

I'm proud of the work I did today. I just want to say Nice anybody who's actually a home improvement type. It's like, yeah, okay. That's that's great. Pat on head But like to me, it's like no, no look look at my basic competence and despair, you know So yeah, no, I'll call me that would be Yeah, that's what it's all so hey, we have another person who has entered the chat. Yes, yes, another person who has entered the chat, a very, very good friend of my oldest friend, as a matter of fact. And I don't mean that.

I don't mean that. Hey, no, hey, I don't mean that the way that sounds. I genuinely don't. No, I mean, the friend I have known the longest, my brother from another mother, Bishop O'Connell, author and all around, great dude. Give us an introduction, sir. Yeah, my name is Bishop O'Connell. I am actually in Richmond, Virginia.

I am working from home that's one of the upsides for me with the plague anyway. I do consulting work home that's one of the upsides for me with the plague anyway, is I do consulting work and BBA work when I'm not writing because writing doesn't pay the bills. And because I sit on a computer all day, I was able to transfer to work from home. And it looks like I'm going to be able to do that going forward.

And also during this time, I achieved an author level of achievement. I got a cat. And this is a warning to the listeners that if you hear me wins or cry on pain, it's because my kitten binis is decided that I am his cat tree again and his claw control is not what it should be. But when I am not working to pay the bills, I am a writer. As Ed said, I have the American fairytale series is an urban fantasy sort of modernized in fairy tales. And I will have a new book coming out on May 31st called the two gun witch. That is a historical fantasy or weird western that is, elves and dwarves are real set in a post-Civil War America.

Think of it as the elves joined with Lakota, Dakota and Dakota against Westward expansion and started winning until humans drafted the dwarves who introduced basically tanks and not only turned the tide of the war, but almost ended up wiping out elves entirely. And the main protagonist is now a bounty hunter who hunts humans who've been corrupted by dark magic

because it gives thorough reason to legally kill humans. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I am really stoked to read that. And while that's dark. It's the frown good hit of the summer. Yeah, clearly.

You took what was American history of genocide and displacement and made it darker. It's a gift. That is one word for it. Yes. Being Irish might help. Yeah. That's right. So, okay, I got a question right off the bat. You have got purchased a cat or you have acquired a cat.

You are writing about 1800s magic. How did you avoid the trap of naming your cat something really unfortunately racist? I am not a complete total jackass. Okay, and I have managed to start crying my head if I own ass. Okay, I'm not going to go so far as to say that it's completely out. But I think that at least my ears are cleared so that I'm able to listen when other people say things and not make an utter fool out of myself. Although I do on a regular basis, make a matter of fool of myself, but I have learned. Just not in that way.

Yes, when you're milking a cow. Right, yeah. I'm also going to, as the literary nerd of the two of us between me and Damien, I'm just going to point out that he's not writing weird fiction. It involves magic, but it doesn't involve cthuloid entities.

Okay. I mean, I like that you're like, as a literary nerd. No, let's be very clear. As the one who actually reads fiction books. Okay, fair. I don't do that. Yeah. Charlie don't serve you.

Well, don't you read the Star Wars series? Yeah, that's geography and ancient history. I don't see what. In a galaxy far, far away. You were the Star Wars. The Star Wars series. Yeah, that's geography and ancient history. I don't see what. In a galaxy far, far away. Yeah. Well, okay. All right. My daughter could tell you what's closer to Niklon.

Like, you know, she'll know. Yeah. Well, that's just because you're raising them right. Yeah. So, you know. So. Well, okay. Cool.

So you, when did you, my second question for you is, is very generic. When did you start writing as an actual author? Like how, when, when in your life, did you start with an urban fantasy? Now, I, I must confess, I've not yet read it, because again, it's a fiction book. So, you know, and words are hard. Yes, both of those things are true. So, but when in your life did you get started? Because what we found so far is most successful writers,

join the Navy first, and then they come back and... Most successful genre writers. Right, right. Yeah, science fiction writers. Yeah. Okay. I got around that because my dad was in the Navy. So, oh, that was that was my shortcut. Okay. Um, actually, it's it's kind of funny that I have always been interested in writing. I actually really remember clearly writing one and two paid short stories in first grade that the teacher would read at story time,

which I'm sure at the time they were horrible ripoffs of whatever cartoon or Disney movie or whatever I had recently seen. But that was also my first introduction into both critical acclaim and criticism of, you know, the kids wanted to kick my ass at recess because they didn't like the stories and the kids thinking that was cool that they did like the stories. I kicked my essay recess because they didn't like the stories and they kids thinking that was cool, that they did like the stories. I would say I didn't get into it seriously until my 30s.

My first book actually took me about 10 years to finish. I was that guy that's working on a book for way too long, but a dear friend of mine applied boot to ass and got me to finish that book and the second book I finished in three months. But then I spent the next three years editing it. And that book was actually the stolen, which was my first published book. So in that regard, I kind of need the average because a lot of authors I know who are published, especially traditionally published authors, as opposed to Indy, which for those who don't know traditional publishing just means you're with one of the bigger publishing houses Harper, penguin, in, yeah, Bane, Tor, one of those.

Sure. Whereas Indy you're with Henry Jones, LTV. Yeah, exactly. I'm not mad about that one. Indie is not mad about that one either. Or there are small publishers, for example, Tugan, which is actually coming out through a small press publisher called false networks, because while just about every editor, I submitted to really like the story, the, that was my cat, the marketing people didn't know how to sell it so they wouldn't let them pick it up. But I actually got picked up also in a very

unusual way that kind of a take the long way around here. Yeah. When I finished the stolen Harper Voyager, which is the science fiction fantasy branch or imprint of Harper Collins, had an open submission window. And for people who are not in the know about the literary world, that's never, ever happens. Typically, you have to get an agent first and then the agent submits the books out to the various editors and they decide whether that's going to get you. Well Harper Voyager was expressly looking for unadjointed authors. It was to launch a new imprint called Harper Voyager Imples. And the original idea of the window was open for I think it was three weeks and it was in October of Yeah, he knows his name

Ed is holding up the book. I'm pointing to the Harper Voyager impulse on the on the Black I had not I hadn't realized impulse was a big deal It was I want to say 2000 but it was I want to say 2015 2014 hold on I have the book here in front of me. It comes up to the copyright date. I was I was chiting Ed for actually like holding up the book to the author, but turns out this was useful and helpful to him. Yeah, copy right 2014. Thank you. Okay. So this would have been in 2012 or 2013. That makes sense.

October. And the idea was that they were going to pick 12 people. And they were going to release one author a month. To introduce this new imprint. And they were going to release all the names in December. Well, they got many, many, many, many, many, many more submissions than they expected. I believe the total was somewhere near 5,000. Oh, that's a lot.

And they changed their tactics and said that the original timeline is now loaned to hell. And whereas before we were just going to announce the winners, we weren't going to let you know if we didn't pick you. They said, we will now be informing everybody whether we are accepting you or not along the way. And if you're curious on the way, you can email us what you know. Well, time passed and time passed and time passed. And I think it was about six or eight months later, I hadn't heard anything. And of course, when you're writing for something like this, you're terrified that it's disappeared in your spam folder, and you deleted it by accident.

So I sent an email asking, you know, what my status was, and I never heard anything back. So part of me was like, well, they didn't email you back because you're out, you're more on, of course. And then the other part of me was like, well, maybe they just didn't get it, but I don't want to email them again, because I don't want to piss them off, because that will tip it out of my favor. And then they'll say, well, screw it. We were going to take you. But now you've annoyed us with the second email. We're going to we're not going to. I got out of a bitch.

I got asked how often have you heard of that happening in literary circles. It never. Right. This was the first time it ever happened, which is one of the reasons it had such a huge response. No, I mean, the I emailed them one time too many and now my book's not getting published. Never. Never. Right. Yeah. But but we all we all know about anxiety. Yeah, bring around. Yeah, you know, come on.

And if you meet any authors, really, rational is usually not an adjective that is apt. Well, I think rational applies in 99% of things, but when it comes to self-evaluation of your own work, rational goes so far out the window as like, let's hook up a rail cannon and and yes like no we're going we're going for low-earth orbit there is no rational no no yes that that that is very accurate um anyway uh to kind of press us down more and more time went and during this time a lot of buzz have been created about this and there was an on site community

uh called absolute right that where people can review agents and publishers and ask questions and stuff like that A lot of buzz have been created about this. And there was an onsite community called Absolute Right that where people can review agents and publishers and ask questions and stuff like that as they're trying to get picked up. And as you can imagine, this had its own monster thread that people were posting as anybody heard me think. So people were posting as they got confirmation. You have no on out, I'm out, all that.

And people were saying, there's anybody in, there's anybody in there's anybody in. Well, I believe it was the 18 month mark or right there about. I said screw it, I'm going to send another email. And I got email back and listen two hours, telling me that you blew your chance that this one email was the thing. No, fuck you, fuck you do this on. Yeah, I got an email back saying, hold tight. You're still in the running. We're processing this as quickly as

possible. And of course, I was like, Oh, shit, that's awesome. I made it this far. Right. It's it's it's kind of like the contestant who makes it like the second place in the big show, but it's like it really is an honor just to be nominated. Make it this far. It got mature. Oh, yeah. You still want to win. But even if you don't, that's still a pretty cool feather. in a big show, but it's like, it really is an honor just to be nominated and make it this far with Gopitr. Sure. Oh yeah. You still want to win, but even if you don't, that's still a pretty cool feather. Yeah. Well, and then it was, I think it was a couple, it was more than a couple of weeks later,

I got an email from an editor Harper, I saw at HarperCollins.com. And I saw the email on my phone, I was at work. And my email on my phone did a preview of the first two lines of the email, and it said, Dear Mr. O'Connell, we are pleased to offer you. And at that moment, I lost all of my shit. I lost all of my shit. I lost all of your shit. I lost everybody's shit. I went completely wrong. It took me several minutes to calm down. If actually people open the email and read the entire thing. You had to be in shit debtors prison for a while.

It was yeah, exactly. Luckily you'd set up a limited liability shit company, but like, you know, still you were still out several people's shit. My shit was still coming. It's still shit. It's yeah. It just you that's just, we're coming. I'm still shit. It's shit. Yeah, the shit dividends were through the roof. It was.

Yeah, they were shit. Yeah. I remember those great shit bond. Yeah. But anyway, it was a deal for two books. And as the negotiations went into as to what the deals were for the contract, I did not have an agent at that time. And they said, you can proceed with this if you want or you can go and get an agent

now to go on your behalf. Well, obviously it's much easier to get an agent when you already have an offer in hand. Yeah. And my agent who has since retired, God bless her, she was a wonderful one, but it just wasn't making it working for her. She actually rejected me three times. I think though she doesn't remember the first two. And I emailed her and somebody else back who had requested the full manuscript when I inquired them and said, hey, I have an offer. I'd like an agent. Do you want free money? Basically, you're going to get 15% for doing nothing other than looking over the contract and making sure I'm not getting screwed. And she was the first one to reply so she got the deal. Good work if you can get it.

Yeah, I'm in my own business. It actually turned out that the stole or well, let me, there's still more to the story than. So once I got this news, me being me, I try to be a nice guy. I thought, well, I haven't heard about anybody getting accepted anywhere. I'm going to let people know I got accepted. So I went to the Harper Voyager website,

and they have their blog with their entries about the open-sit mission window, and I posted a comment saying, hey, I just got my acceptance letter. And about eight seconds later, I got an email from my editor saying, Oh, yes, we should have told you, don't tell anybody. We want to announce everybody together. And now they took, now they took it away. Yeah, now there's a nope, nope, nope, nope. However, you get nothing, good day, sir. Right. Yeah.

Purple hat and all. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. However, in a new Coke level of marketing brilliance, I unwittingly became an internet sensation because I was the only person who anybody knew had got accepted. During this time, I had reached the point where I decided that if the stolen ticket got my heart, I was going to publish it myself. I had set up a blog, I had started doing some entries every now and then. Yeah, yeah, use on my blog went from small single digits a week,

mm-hmm, to tens of thousands a day. And that's not based on the merits of what you writ because nobody had read what you written. That's right. As far as that book goes, that, that's just based on people being interested in this genre, the newness of publishing and stuff like that. Right. And the 4,988 people who submitted the didn't get accepted. Yeah, I was going to say how many of those new visits to your blog were from other other

frustrated writers who hadn't heard yet. Well, I had to go to radio silence at that point. Oh, yeah, I had been participating in the absolute right community. So I went, I'm sorry, the what? Absolute right. Let's, let's unpack that first off. How is it spelled? Absolute like the word like absolutely.

And right W R I T. Okay. Thank you. And I'm on my community with the word right in it. Hey, hey, they're just talking about, they're talking about classical liberalism, the absolute rights of the individual. Okay. Okay. In self-expression. Come on. You know, the Irish. The Irish. Yeah, what's that? That's a good call, demon. I have a lot about that. Yeah. You know, you know, you have changed since I was participating in that conversation.

This is true. Where there are discussions of like, you know, the leprechauns were really the first slaves. You would not actually, you would not be surprised how many times that has been asked of me by people. Oh, my Lord, related to the Irish. I'm glad. Yeah. Anyway, so I went dark on this community and I got a private message from

somebody saying, Hey, I have also been accepted. I finally found somebody. But during my lurking, this place exploded about me that all of a sudden people were searching me wondering who I was. And for a good period of time with my name, if you google it, most of what you got for the first several pages was a child sex abuse scandal in Boston. Because of the fish up. Yeah. Yeah. The fish up O'Connell, who was in charge of the diocese out in that area. Right. Now I am on the first page of Google, but fish up O'Connell High School still beats me out in most cases. But anyway, the people were asking, who am I? Does anybody know anything about this guy? What's their stories about? Well, I found his blog. It's over here. Everybody go look at his blogs. It's over here.

Everybody go look at his blogs. So that's all about. Right. So that was great. Well, it turned out that the stolen actually launched the Harper Voyager impulse imprint. Whoa. The first book out of the gate.

Flagship of the fleet, baby. Yeah. And for a while, I still have a screen capture. For a while, the cover was on the header of the Harper Voyager website. That's awesome. Right next to some New York Times bestsellers, which was very cool, which is why I still have a screen capture.

Ironically, it was cut in such a way that my name does not appear. You know, they did that on purpose though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody was like, all right, we're gonna put him onto the webpage, but fuck that guy, we're not including him. Yeah, fuck that guy. Oh, no, for like very good read, like if you remember the amount of air bud posters

that were in J and Silent Bob's strike back, it was because then they're not using anybody's likeness. So it was much cheaper to not include a person, because that dog was long since dead and his grandson his grandchildren We're not able to access his estate anyway. It didn't have any kind of legal rights to that money exactly So I I think that it's entirely likely that they kept your name off it just in case Somebody bought like hey, you're using my name to pump this up kind of, you know Somebody brought like, hey, you're using my name to pump this up kind of, you know, in the butt as you would.

Yeah, is it where? Oh, oh, God, damn it. I had to get both of you on the, damn it. Really? You booked this? I know. I know I did. God, no.

So, no, anyway, so, but yeah, the stolen came out and actually did fairly well. It actually earned me enough to qualify for a SIFO, the Science Fiction Fantasy Riders Association now. It was Science Fiction Fantasy Riders of America. They have since changed the A to the Association because we have members all over the world, which was very cool. Nice. Because the likes of the people who are members of this group are the biggest big names in the in the various genres. So like Christy Golden, Timothy Zahn, Aaron, all well he's dead now, but Karen Travis, I'm only naming people that wrote Star Wars books, but yes, yes. But we're talking like those movers and shakers, are we talking about like other other types of folks?

Well, I mean, people who have not aged quite as well, like, you know, Asimov was, was a member. Asimov's work is aged okay. Asimov has a person. Well, that's a much. But yeah, I wouldn't reread the foundation series then. Do you have trouble separating the art from the artist? I know I do, but do you?

Not when they're dead? Okay, when they're interesting that it is much problem. Yeah When there's still a life my thinking is and I kind of stole this from John Scalzi who is a science fiction writer I know that name while people are alive He also runs a blog called a big idea, which is very awesome, which is awesome. Yes, I think I recommend it the big idea, which is very awesome, which is awesome. Yes, I highly recommend it. I highly recommend it. The way he takes it is, while somebody is alive, he does not want to contribute his money to these people

who have ideas that he opposes. Once they're dead, and I think he gives it a period of time with a few years, once they're dead, then he'll go through and enjoy the books. But he also does not go against anyone else who does still enjoy it if they can separate the two. Sure. For me, it's a level of degrees. We're if it's somebody who I just think

has a distasteful opinion versus say somebody like Rowling who has just become a monstrous trash fire of epic proportions. Well, she's doubled in quadruple down. Yeah, I was gonna, yeah, you beat me too. And I was gonna say she's quintupled down on, and she's doubled and quadrupled down. Yeah, I was going to, yeah, you beat me too. And I was going to say she's quin tuppled down on, she's forced multiplying, you know, yeah. Yeah, yeah. She is exponential at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. And the sad thing about rallying for me is that because rallying is connected to a whole bunch of other people, there are other folks that I now have, have a hard time. Like I love them dearly, but like I want to ask them, you know, really? Really? Why? Like John Cleese, I'm a huge fan of John Cleese's work during Monipython Incense, but like, really dude? Really? And I think, I think, you know, a couple of the older actors from the Harry Potter movies, who I'm a fan of, have also, you know,

they haven't necessarily supported what she said, they haven't supported what she said, but they have kind of, well, you know, her opinion is her opinion, but we love her anyway. I'm like, you were really, you can't, you can't, like say something stronger about that. Come on. Also when they said that,

because she's since doubled and tripled down more. So like, I could see, because I remember, oh, what's the name of the main actor, the one who played Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliffe. Daniel Radcliffe. Okay. Daniel Radcliffe, he said. I was going to say, why'd you look?

But that's his answer first. That's the meme. Yeah. Yeah. No, Elijah Wood, he played Spider-Man. But when Daniel Radcliffe spoke out in loving rebuke of JK Rowling, Yeah. That was when she had just said like two shitty things. Yeah. And he was like, look, you know, like we love her. And basically we hope

she comes back to the fold. But like, you know, what she said was shitty, but like her book still touched millions. So it's cool. But like now if he came out and said that, then you'd be like, dude, come on. Like he did say that at the, when we didn't know how shit issue was going to be. Right. Yeah. No, sadly, the example that gave of John Cleese, that was after I think the triple down. Yeah.

And what I have to remind myself is that, you know, John Cleese is, of course, a member of the silent generation. And so, a British member of the silent generation. The generation is different across the pond. That is, that's true. Yes. But, you know, and, and yeah, I mean, it has ruined life of Brian for me or anything, but like I can't get excited about his new work. Like with him that's kind of where the dividing line falls for me.

Yeah. Like the stuff that he did back when is awesome and wonderful and whatever, but like his one man stage show, I'm like, yeah. No thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's it's different to depending upon what the medium is because to take an example of another dumpster fire, Joss Wheaton.

A lot of people I'm a fan I like the show Firefly. I never got into Buffy, but I know a lot of people that are really into Buffy. And a good way I've heard it is on a television show or a movie, when you're boy kind of, it's not just against that one individual. That is a work of Legion. There are hundreds of people involved. There were actors, producers, directors, screenwriters, other writers, editors, all those lighting guys, grips, electricians, all kinds of people involved.

So with that, that one, I have an easier time still enjoying the work that their name is on. Yeah. Because I know that it's, in a sense, I'm helping some of the people that he probably victimize too, that they're getting residual checks. OK. With books, it is much different because, yes, some of the people that he probably victimized too, that they're getting residual checks. With books, it is much different because yes, it's still a group effort, but it is a much smaller group. It is based on the editor. More of a stoke in their editor. Yeah. Yeah.

And the editor basically, their job is, their pay is done once the book is at. Unless the publishing deals work differently than I understand, editors don't usually get a piece of royalty sales. Although I'm sure they get bonuses, you know, it goes to Stephen King and sells, you know, four trillion copies in the first week. I'm sure they get a nice bonus. But well, you know, anybody who edits Stephen King is working, you know, 96 hour weeks because the man just like does not sleep. So yeah, but 95 and a half hours of those are simply reading what he sends. Because when you can be Steven King's level of his editor is basically like, yeah, you missed a period here. Yeah.

And that's that's a good point. Yeah. That's one of my favorite. Oh, gone. Oh, no, I was just going to say one of my favorite jokes about was when he, he got that car accident. It was really bad car rack and like broke his hip. There's a lottery hub that needed to be done and they said, yeah, it slowed down the release of his next book by like 45 minutes. Famiguy actually did a joke about Stephen King getting hit by a car and he flips through the air and while he's in the air, he finishes a book. Nice. Yeah. But it's that that works for Stephen King because Stephen King, I'm not particularly a fan of his writing. It's not my particular cup of tea.

Sure, but the man is a marvel at writing. He knows his craft. He knows his shit. Right. JK Rowling reached that same level of success without necessarily earning it. Most people I know who know anything about writing will tell you the deathly hollows probably could have been about two thirds of the length it was and not have lost anything for the story. Um I'm gonna go so far as to say it could have been half as long. I was trying to be generous for the sake of her editors. I, you know, I, I, I get that point. She was an ATM though. Like, yeah, nobody was going to tell her now. Exactly. Yeah, she had become the studio. She, she, she, she was sort of stupid. Oh, god, dammit. Beat me to it by milliseconds. Son of a bitch. Yeah, she was because, because, and, and now I'm just gonna elaborate

on that, of course, we've already talked about it, but like, you know, when he was making the prequels, you can see in the behind the scenes footage, everybody was terrified to say no to the man. Like the way they're looking at him is not the admiring, oh, you know, look at seafood, look at our guru, look at the master, it's, oh shit, look at the boss. If he makes eye contact,

fucking run, you know, like, like, to the point where they did that. They did that funny little joke when they had Seth Green meet with him and somebody mentioned Mara Jade and he flips out on the guy and kicks him out of the room. Because Mara Jade's not his correct is creation. Yeah. It took me a minute to realize that that was a joke and not a real thing that had happened. Oh, I didn't realize that was a joke until you just said that. Yeah, no, it's all that's all 100% a joke. Like he's really good at being able to laugh at himself. Right. And I imagine it has to do with

the billions of dollars that he has. It's it's one really easy to not take yourself too seriously when you're sitting on that kind of a pile of cash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and you still sound like Kermit the Frog made it with Harold Ramos. You literally laugh all the way to the bank. Yeah. Yeah. Which limousine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fill with cash. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Made of more cash. Yeah. Right. Um, but now I think we've we've spent enough time mentioning the unmentionable one's name. Yeah, we can move on. Now we're back to you.

You're the author. We're interviewing. Yeah, yeah, you actually. So just to sort of tidy up my start. Little by little other authors that were picked up. We all got in touch with each other and kind of started an email ring. And we actually to this day, I still have a Facebook group. Only a couple of us are still with Harper, but we all still team up

and it's kind of a group therapy session. Nice. We're all kind of there for each other. We're all, you know, in the same boat, we all know which words coming through. Some new people have come in and on the way. Some, I think a couple of older people have dropped up. One guy, I can't even

remember his name, but he was the biggest pompous ass I've ever come across who his ego was way too big for the level of success. He's right here. Yeah, I'm, yeah, I'm, you be damn it. He's beating me to all my good lines tonight. I was gonna say, you know, I'm sitting right here. You've known me since I was, since before I was seven fucking great. You could just be honest. Like come on. This guy basically thought that he was too good for Harper, who was at the time the biggest publisher in the world.

And it's like, first of all, you're in a B rate imprint of their sci-fi imprint. So, like, so, so the sci-fi ghetto, like we're all in the sci-fi ghetto and and this particular group we're all hanging out in the dive bar in the shit part of the sci-fi ghetto and you Yeah. We were all very happy for him to go. Yeah, it sounds like it. I can, I can understand why. But no, it's, it then the, my original deal was two books. So the stolen and the forgotten came out. Okay.

The stolen, um, that's a back and forth. I actually, I learned, I have actually hired freelance editors before I got picked up by Harvard because fun fact, I was rejected by 118 agents and three publishers before I got published. And none of those agents only rejected me once. I am a Bacichus of the year or the decade. Of, yeah. No, I don't, I think you've gone past the year. I'm just gonna say that's. I use that story. And authors who are working and still trying to get public.

Yeah. And I mean, one of my favorite books, Zen and the other motorcycle moments until recently held the record for the most rejections for a New York Times best seller and I think he was 51 or 53. Wow. Oh, yeah. Well, because like, I mean, if you're, if you're an imprint editor, if you're, if you're working for a publishing house and you get a book like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Like, how do you even fucking categorize? I mean, it's it's clearly genius. Right.

Like, I'm sure there were any number of editors who read it and were like, I really, really want to sign this guy. But what do we do with that? But what do we fucking do with this book? Like, you saw this. I don't know. I don't see how they didn't go to the same people that that published Dune.

Oh, Chilton's the voter, the motor manual. Yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, well, you know, and another fun fact, I actually got that book from my father, who was a remarkable shit heel. He bought it. Hold on. Let me finish this story. I only sensed you, Ed. Ed knows my father knows what an amazing shit heel he But he thought it, hold on, let me finish this story, I'm gonna make sense to you, Ed knows my father knows what amazing shit heel is. Okay. He gave me the book because he thought I'm not in joy, because he was disappointed because it had nothing to do with motorcycle motorcycle maintenance.

That's like me with a kilomocking bird. I was very upset. Yeah. No, no manual on how to, in fact, end the life of mockingbird. And, and even promise that you could like murder one in the top part of a house if it was a small enough bird. And no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no about how to punish ducks for their many crimes against humanity and all that is godly like in that's because ducks are rich beyond belief and unreachable they have duck you money okay there you know oddly not bad um but like so you you mentioned the part of that story about your dad giving you that book is I'm kind of amazed to find out your your dad Read read Like actually believe it not was was a fairly voracious reader, but only of Mac Bowling books, which were a

Really really bad pulp series like James Bond, but without the plot and depth of character Well, yeah, I mean, I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember, I wasn't Mac Bowling, we talked about, but it's, Mac Bowling is in a similar, similar line to the series that inspired the Punisher. Oh, they wrote the executioner. Yeah, the executioner, yeah.

It's, yeah, it's the same, it's the same shit. I mean, it's boilerplate, you know, murder fantasy. Yeah, which, you know, my father, that is completely, no, that's, that's, that's, uh, Self-aggrandizing. Yeah, it's 110, yeah, 110% in character. It's, it's like if Clive Custler had even more of an attitude problem. Like, like my dad, my dad, who is not,

they, you know, you know, omega level shit heel, is a huge, dark pit fan. not a, you know, omega level shit heel. Is a huge dirt pit fan. And dirt pit is like what happens when you take Mac Bowling and put him on an anger management program. Wait a minute. You know, Mac Bowling is the executioner.

Yeah, that's right. I was like, why is this sounding so familiar? Yeah, because it is. Because of my research. Yeah, because I've never actually read any Mac Bullin books. I've just looked at the covers of them and been like, yeah, I'm moving on. In those cases, you actually can do it. Well, because that's how they advertise. That's, you know, that's their target audience. But, you know, another buddy of mine and I had a joke for a long time going about, you know,

Clive Custler is that guy who who lives, spends his time in the attic above his mom's house. And he's typing, well, he's, well done. Nice callback, but he's typing away on a Clive Custler, you know, novel about, you know, any, any, you know, grabbed her and push her up against the wall and she smacked him, but then she leaned into Kiss him because she wanted him so bad. And then, you know, from down below him, from, from, you know, the parlor, Clive! Clive, I need you to come down and make the cucumber sandwiches for my tea group. Okay, mother, fine, you know, and she's like, is this, is this it kind of be pent up? Fuck her.

Like, right, it's all shit because his mom runs his life. Yeah. You know, there are issues there. Yeah, there are. And yeah, so. That's it. All right, so back to you in your books. Yes.

Yes. Yes. That applies to us, Tesla and being cut by his mom. Yeah. No, so the, the, the Stolman did fairly well. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm think it broke a hundred or just on there. But the Forgotten was 120 in the first draft. So I had to literally cut a quarter of the book. Wow. How many of your Garlings had to die? Well, originally what the Forgotten, part of what inspired it, have you ever seen the movie vantage point?

Yeah. A movie, Dennis Quaid is in it. He plays a secret service agent. And the premise is that there's an attempted assassination of the President of the United States, plays in Spain. And the movie is basically, I think it's the same 15-minute snippet told

from different people's points of view. Oh, OK. So you watch the events, and then it rewinds and goes to somebody else and shows the same events from their point of view. Oh, it's like a modern day, but Roshamon basically. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I was going to do that originally with the forgotten to where you saw the same scene about six or seven times with small changes for the reader to pick up. And my editor said, yeah, no, this is really great. It's not going to work. And you're going to piss a lot of people off. So we're going to cut like five of those six. So that helps.

That actually helped her. It did. But by that point, my editor was fantastic. She was absolutely great at Rebecca. She has since left the publishing world. But she was, I couldn't have asked for anybody better to work with she was fantastic she was very collaborative she was very supportive and she was actually the one who introduced me to fact this is something that a lot of people

don't realize especially people that are hesitant to get into traditional publishing the editor does not get final say on the book, the author does. There were things that she suggested cutting and there was, in most cases, I agree with her, but either I didn't care enough about it to worry about keeping it, or I agree with her that it trimmed the book down and made it better. But there was one scene that she wanted to cut, that she thought I should cut, and I was fighting her on it, and we went back and forth in the emails a couple of times, it's pointing our points in view. And the end result she said, well, ultimately this is your book.

If you want to keep it, we'll keep it. This is my idea. My points are just suggestions. My reply was, wait, what? I have to do everything you tell me. However, what I did was, and this was actually the stolen that that happened. What I ended up doing was rewriting the scene

until she understood why it was important to the story. So that helped me refine my, I learned more working from Burr with the four books that I did through Harper than I did at any point like we're working with freelance editors or any books I'd read or any classes I'd take. It was phenomenal. But when the stolen was a book I thought was the Urban Fantasy book I thought Urban Fantasy book should be. It makes sense. Yeah. I love fantasy. I started on fantasy as a kid, you know, started with, you know, I started

talking at a young age. I still found thought I remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Yes. Mission, our books, all of those. Cut my teeth on that. And then when Urban Fantasy started becoming popular, that was kind of like, that was my jam. And it. I could tell you the last for you to thought now. Stolen was the urban fantasy book you thought urban fantasy book should be.

It was, it was a story, I wanted to write it originally started as a short story, which I run up to enough so the two then which, and somebody told me this is an short story, this needs to be a full novel was too much in it. But in its original version, it was a werewolf and vampire book. And the main character was a werewolf who was not harmed by silver. And because of that is why he was an outcast from his tribe, or his clan. And the first advice I got this was from a freelance editor was trust yourself. That I pulled from so many different pre-existing mythoses and mythologies, shakes, beer,

and traditional Irish and Dungeons and Dragons and everything kind of matched altogether. But I had some points in there that were my own and the editor said, these are great, run with these. And the key point to this decade was L's using cell phones. And sorry, my cat just decided he wanted to get into my next mess. Not allowed. So that's what I wrote.

And don't get me wrong, I am very, very proud of the stolen. It's my first book. It's my first baby. But I would definitely not write that book that way if I were to write it again now, obviously. And when I first started getting reviews, some authors can not read the read. They can keep themselves from reading the reviews. I am not that writer. I want to read review because so my childhood I thrive on external affirmation, validation. So I wanted to see what I'm ready, the good and the bad. And to briefly show why my head is not completely out of my ass here, one of the

reviews, one of the first one star reviews I got was a scanning review. And the reviewer, I presume it was a woman based upon the name she used, said that she hated the book and that I fridged a woman in the first chapter. And up until that point, I had never heard that term before. I had no idea what that term was. I was sheltered privileged, sister at Whiteboy living in his own bubble. And I had no idea that that was a thing. I went, I looked it up. My reaction was, oh shit, she's right. I totally

did that. And she said, another thing, she said, it passes the bet go test, but only barely. And I had to look that up and I was, oh shit, she's right about that too. And I am a firm believer in the fact that authors should never respond to reviews. You should never comment to anybody about reviews. They are not for you. They are for the readers. Once you put a book out into the wild, it does not belong to you anymore. Stay the hell out of it. I almost sent her a message saying thank you for pointing these things out. I am going to work on improving those in future stories. And I did, I increased the diversity ratio and the forgotten you, increased so differently and got even better in the return, the fourth book. And this series, though, technically the third book is a short story collection.

But yeah, it's, it's, if you can take bad reviews and actually see the criticism and the legitimate callouts and use it to improve, I think there's value in that. Let me just go ahead, finish that. But then I want to go back. I only replied to one person's review and it was because that the person was doing this part of a blog review that they agreed for a free copy of the book they would give an honest review type thing and they had said that they were very upset because the characters go to Tierenog. It's in the, what's called the flat copier,

the blurb on the back, so usually the short of what the book is about. And she said, you know, I was looking forward to them. It doesn't happen to me at the end. And it sets it up like it's supposed to be this big twist, but I knew it was happening. And I sent her an email and I said, I am very sorry about that.

That was not my call. I didn't get the right to flat cop. My editor did. I was hoping to have kept that out. So there was a big twist at a surprise. It's probably worth reading the book. I didn't get the right the flat copy. My editor did. I was hoping to have kept that out so that it wasn't a big twist of the surprise. It's one of our charity members read the book. But if you look at the flat copy, it's not.

Most of that out for eight years. I'm, you know, we have, Damon is usually one telling me you don't need to worry about spoiler. We were talking about a 30 year old fucking movie. So that's the only one I responded to. And she actually replied back and said, oh, I appreciate knowing that. I'm really sorry you got stuck that way. She said, I like the book. That's just that was just a point.

Sure. So I want to I want to circle back to a couple aspects real quick. You had mentioned fridging the woman just for those of our listeners who are in the car driving. Friaging the girl is essentially somebody attacked Hal Jordan's girlfriend. And actually it wasn't Hal Jordan. It was Hal Jordan. It was Kyle. No, one Hal Jordan. It was the new, no, it's the new.

Very West. Yeah. Yeah, it was a very West girl friend, a super villain. No, you asked. No, not very. It's Jim Johnson. Jack Johnson. Joe Johnson.

No, no, just. What is this? Joe Jackson. Now I got to look it up. God. Well, while you're doing that, they fridge. So basically attack the Green Lanterns girlfriend to get it Green Lantern. And basically did horrifying things to her ands girlfriend to get it Green Lantern.

And basically did horrifying things to her and stuck parts of her body in the refrigerator. So from the God how to pray, we are using a woman's body to further the plot for a man's descent and then rise back into redemption. So that's essentially fridging the girl. Yeah, there's a little bit more nuance to it. It's the woman doesn't have any back story agency. Her only purpose in this story is to serve as a plot point to drive a man's character development.

There. All right. A trial ranger, God dammit. Yes. Yes. A plot, Claude Reins, girlfriend. And the back-and-test for people who don't know is was set up by, I can't think of her first name. Maybe it was Mary back Allison.

Allison. Thank you. Was that the past this test, a bulk needs to have two female characters in it who talk to each other. Who are named the right. Yes, thank you. Two named characters who speak to each other and the conversations they have do not involve a relationship with one of the other characters. And specifically, specifically a man. Yeah, a man, a relationship with a man, and it doesn't have to be romantic.

It could be, you know, your brother blah, blah, blah. And it, the totality of the conversation need only be two exchanges. Right. Yeah. So hello. It is a very, very low bar. Yeah. Low weather, bad weather, isn't it? Yes, it's terrible. Right. Yeah. So hello. It is a very, very low bar. Yeah. Low weather.

Bad weather, isn't it? Yes, it's terrible. That would pass. And if, yeah, if you fail the back deltast, you really, really fucked up. But honestly, you know, that's a vast majority of how like 80 something percent of Hollywood movies still don't pass it. Oh, look at every, look at literally every romantic comedy ever fucking written up until Yeah, you know, the last week like the last 10 years, you know, in fairness romance is in the name. So like that scene with

Carrie Fisher and Meg Ryan in Winery, Mitzali, they're literally talking about romance in a romantic comedy. I'm kind of more okay with that. Okay. All right. All right. But in every other genre, I think it's egregious as well, including shit like Wonder Woman. Like yes, it casts, but it should have passed by much more flying colors. Yeah. Yeah.

And the fact that I had passed it without even being aware of it, shows you how easy it is to pass it. And I, yeah, grew up with all those privileges and levels. But yeah, I did take that and then reshape the the forgotten. And three promises is book three or book 2.5 and it's sort of the DVD extras because I'm with stolen ends on a cliffhanger, which I won't reveal. But originally that cliffhanger was going to be resolved in the forgotten.

And my editor told me I had to cut that scene out because it does not tie at all with the story. We just read, it doesn't fit. And I said, okay, but you've got to let me reveal this somehow or readers are going to be pissed that they got away for a whole mother of book to find out what happened. So her answer was, okay, well

do it as a short story and Well, if it's over I think it was 45,000 words. We can actually do a physical printing of it by the interest in the book and We'll read these stats. So I Unefficient we're my way to getting a third book. Well, none. So three promises is sort of a DVD extras Well, no, so three promises is sort of a DVD extras that includes a couple of stories that were outtakes from the forgotten that didn't make it and a resolution to the stolen and a bonus for story about a group a military magic group called the Legion of Solomon that introduces them that comes into more play in the return. But most people have told me that the forgotten is clearly where I found my voice. I think the forgotten is a much better story than the stolen is. It feels much sure to me and it's much more my story rather than the story I thought it should have been told. Okay, I want to delve into that a little bit. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna dig in on that. But in what way? In what way do you feel that that it's more yours

as opposed to the stolen? Because you're saying the stolen was the the story you felt should have been told. And I want to know, I want to know kind of how how did you when you were writing the stolen or when you were working on, you know, editing it and getting it through the process and getting it out into the world because, you know, vomiting it out onto the pages, just the first step. You know, how do you, how do you feel like the, the, the forgotten is, is more you than, and, and how do you feel the reboundaries that I had to work. If I was writing an urban fantasy book, I had to, and it was a fairy story, I had to fit within these lines. And for some genres, there are very specified,

um, call, uh, aspects you have to hit to quote the props that you have to, do you have to tag? Romance is a perfect example for a book to be categorized as a romance book, there are very specific things that have to happen in that book. Otherwise, it's not a romance. Things are a little grayer with fantasy,

urban fantasy, science fiction, all that. That's another point I'll make here in a minute. But when I was writing this stolen, it was more of a story that I thought was, I don't want to say marketable because that wasn't really what my thinking was, but it was more of these, the books that I have read look like this. And this is how books are supposed to be written. I have some ideas that are really weird and off off, off, you know, really kind of strange that aren't going to work, so I'm some ideas that are really weird and off off, off, you know, really kind of strange that aren't going to work. So I'm not going to put them in this.

Okay. Okay. With the forgotten, I had started working on the forgot before the stolen got published. And with forgot, I thought, you know what? Fuck it. I think these are really cool ideas. And I'm just going to run with it. Okay. So do you mind if I break in here just for a second? Yeah. You've mentioned urban fantasy like four times. Can you, can you go off on that a bit? Yeah, because I mean, clearly it's a through line through your books. Right. And it's, I mean, just the two words combined are not words you normally would think of together.

Right. So, you know, I've got ideas that come to mind about it, but you're the one who writes about this stuff. So I imagine there's a lot more that you could bring to it than ideas that come to mind about it, but you're the one who writes about this stuff. So I imagine there's a lot more that you could bring to it than me just going, well, it's probably like supernatural. Right. Yeah, it's, it's, and actually supernatural is another subgenre.

So you've got different genres of books, obviously, you know, mysteries, romances, science fiction and fantasy. And then you have subgenres underneath those. Under these science fiction, you have space opera, you have hard science fiction and fantasy and then you have sub genres underneath those. Under these science fiction, you have space opera, you have hard science fiction. That's so funny. I put space opera and fantasy all the time. Well, there's crossovers. I mean, like Star Wars is actually a fantasy story that's set in space. Exactly. It doesn't really rely so much on science, but, right.

Under fantasy, you have high fantasy, which is what most people think of in the air fantasy, which is castles and nights and dragons and typical. Ed broke that the high and low fantasy. He broke that down in the Conan series, but I don't mind you going over it, but yeah. Yeah, no. And then urban fantasy is basically modernized fantasy. The first urban fantasy books, and I actually looked at this up before this, this show just to kind of get my my feet under me to have some cool facts. I did not realize this, but the first urban fantasy books were published in the late 30s. And they were a cult detective stories. Okay, that kind of makes sense.

Okay, yeah, based makes sense. Okay. Yeah, based on what the pulps were publishing at the time. Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Yeah, so, and then it progressed into there, but urban fantasy as a genre, didn't really kind of get its name or get take off until the 80s, which is when the 80s and the 90s, and borderlands is probably one of

the first books or shared worlds where urban fantasy starts to take off. That was Terry Winling. And the borderlands was a world between the failands and the real world where technology magic didn't work very well. The sort of, or magic technology map and you have things like elves on suit up motorcycles. And it's the idea of taking magic and putting it to a modern world. Now, let me, let me ask you, I'm going to just jump in with a bunch of follow up questions, because I know next to nothing about fantasy or books. So, this way to bury the lead there.

Sure. All right. But like what you're describing sounds a lot like Shadow Run, the role playing game. That's actually Shadow Run does qualify as urban fantasy. And I actually think in my personal, my personal place, I think Shadow Run was a response to Cyberpunkpunk. Okay. That's what I thought to a science fiction took where it went the dark gritty path in the 80s and 90s and shadowrun was fantasy saying well, we can do that too.

You want to get all dark and goody we can get dark and goody too. Yeah, you can do the same thing. Yeah, and that's where you've got things like there's there's also some different genres within urban fantasy. There's sometimes called magical realism and magical realism is it's that's kind of where I land where magical realism is where you find ways to explain your fantastical elements. blame your fantastical elements. Well, and there's, and there's also, like if you, if you get really literary, there, there are, there are authors, yeah, fuck you, don't we all know it. But, but there are, there are authors who managed to get away with writing near fantasy without having to fall into the ghetto because it's, well,

you know, it's magical realism. Right. And, um, yeah, or paranormal, you know, I'm thinking of a gailier seer Bernal, you know, a thousand years of solitude and that kind of stuff. And that's, that's like the extreme, I want to say almost non-magical edge of magical realism, where well, no, I'm a literary author, and this is all metaphorical, and this is all symbolic of shit. Yeah, because I've always heard magical realism. I've always heard magical realism as being specifically tied to Latin American cinema. Like you see it pop up a lot in Latin American and oddly enough Norwegian cinema. And so I always, I didn't know a magical realism was a book convention as much as it was a movie convention,

a film convention. Yeah, no, it is. And it's kind of interchangeable for urban fantasy. The lines between some of the genres, and the point I was said I was going to make later on make now is that I'd say even the line between science fiction and fantasy now whereas before there were very, their polar ends but the areas between them are very, very, very scary gray. It's a slanted line like I was in the bookstore and it just sci-fi slash fantasy.

So it's just a slanted line. No. The line that I'm is important. And I actually think that I think Arthur C. Clarke is to be blamed for that and with our development, his third law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. We've reached the point, I think, of our understanding of the world and science, particularly once we started doubling the quantum mechanics and people started understanding how weird the quantum world was. I think that just opened the door for people to start saying,

Ha, magic is quantum! And quantum is the new buzzword. It is what atomic was for Asimov and his generation. Is it as misunderstood? As in, because quantum means tiny as fuck, and everybody thinks of it as being enormous, because of the TV series Quantum Leap. And everybody missed how close everything was. And confirm that yeah, quantum gets abused, like like. And I got the advantage of it too.

Sure. The idea for the forgotten actually came from, and the forgotten is where I go from being really urban fantasy to delving in the magical realism because I started explaining the magic in terms of science. That the way I explained it was, you know, if somebody throws a fireball, we know a fireball, it is, you're just exciting the molecules to a point where they combust and consume fuel. That's it. It's not magic. It's scientifically explainable. We know teleportation actions is because we know wormholes are theoretically possible. Quantum leaping is actually a thing. It's

just a subatomic level. Yeah, it's tiny. An electron disappears from one from one's level stage, whatever the technical term is. And reappears better remember that doesn't cross the space in between Right, you can cast blindness on some Yeah, you can fast blindness on someone and you've blinded them with science Okay, that one pisses me off No quality has nothing to do with whether or not it Nothing to do with whether or not it is a month. Nothing to do with quality. Good day, sir. Hi.

Everybody's stealing headlines tonight. I don't know, bitch. But in the forgot in the main character, Rafe, her magical understanding is on the level of quantum information that she and this is a bastardization of the quantum information really is, but she can actually see quantum information and by changing the quantum information

to her force of will, which I happily ripped off from major the ascension, the white wolf game, as well as beyond the supernatural. Where is the image? Damn it. She can change the probability of things because at this point we're basically of the understanding that anything is possible, it's just that some things are so incredibly unlikely that they're improbable to an up-degree. If you walk into a wall at F. Times, you will eventually

walk through the wall because the way the atoms one line up, but the number of times it will take for that to happen in the odds that are so slim. What rate does she basically change his probabilities from being astronomically improbable to being an absolute certainty? Nice. And my whole idea for rate came about because of the double slit experiment, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with that. It's optics, right? No, it's it's it's it's, it's, it's, it's,

you gotta clear your history when you look it up. It's just, yeah, it's the idea being that as we understood, and most of them mentioned the way you guys were taught in school is that light is photons, which are like particles. Yeah. What they move like waves, but they're still particles. And the idea was that if you set up a barrier with two slits

in it and you shine a light through it, you should, you'll see two light markers of the light shining through. Okay. But if you do it in water and send a wave through, you get a pattern of waves. It's an interference pattern. Well, what they found was when they which fire photons through, well, when you sign light through, you also get the interference pattern because the light interferes with itself or interferes as it goes through, right? Like a wave. So what they did was they fire individual protons through each the slits randomly and some will bounce off where it hits the barrier, some will pass it, one slits, some will pass the other. And what you would think would happen when you do this

is that you would then see two bars, right? Because it's one proton of time. It isn't. You still get an interference wave. And scientists said, well, this is really freaky. Why is this happening? So they set up detectors in front of the barrier, right where the slits were, to monitor the protons. And the minute they

did this and they'd bring the experiment again, they got two bars. They never got the interference wave. Because the protons didn't want to get caught out. So they're like, oh, never mind, guys, let's just do it uniform. And layman's terms, they forced the photons to go from a wave to being terms they forced the photons to go from a wave to being a particle, by simply by observing them and doing them. Yeah, by virtue of observation, which is okay. So she's shroding her cat, she makes the cat decide to be dead or alive. Yes, essentially. Yeah. So she is as changing the outcome by pushing her observation onto levels of things that aren't normally observed. Oh, that's some doing level shit there. Yeah, it actually is. Yeah, I did it in my own ass on it. I'm not gonna lie. But it was a lot of fun because the tagline I used for Rafe was

never cross a girl who's good at math. I like it. Because I wanted I, I, I, one of the main characters, she's a homeless teenage girl, which I was actually homeless twice myself when I was in college. And that became a big thing for me and still is. I wanted the main character to be a homeless girl, and I wanted her to be a mathless, because partially, you don't see very many girls that are really good at math is the hero of a book. Right. And a key part for me was at the end of it, she didn't wind up with a home. She didn't get adopted, she didn't find a family, she didn't find a home,

she was still homeless the end of the book because that's how the world really is. And the side point, there are other kids, they call themselves slingers on the street, which is short for spell slinger. So those are the wizard kids. Most of whom have a specialty in one particular area or another, but then you have 50s because in my book are you going to be fake or are you going to be human? And that's actually a plot point in the stolen. The L run, but yeah.

And the street kids who are change links, call themselves 50s, which is short for 50 50. They're human have to. Right. And the 50s are actually a standard for the LGBTQ kids because almost half of street kids are LGBTQ. Right. And it's the same premise that these kids who, in a certain age start developing powers

and not fitting in and not understanding who they are and not sure of themselves and have families that freak out and don't wanna deal with them and they get the boot kick on the street. So they could choose between basically living a closeted life or being who themselves being true to themselves. But they have to do it on the street, which that's something I was telling people is you know a lot of kids that are on the street, but when I say kids I mean kids under 18, right, aren't there because they just got Patti one day and ran away. They're on the

street because the street was the most reasonable choice for them. Yeah. Out of all the options they had. Okay, I'm going to need to just real quick step away from the table here and go into the room and hug my kid. Yes, by all means, but man. Yeah, I was lucky that my my my bouts of homelessness were fairly short. I was in college and it was when the dorms were closed and I had no place to go. I could have gone home, but I didn't want to because it wasn't a good place for me. But the people I met when I was on the street were not so lucky and I got some insights into a lot of things. Sure. But anyway, on a lighter note, Raython that had quickly become my favorite character, to the point to where she was a person I wanted to be

when I was that age. And her confidence grew as my confidence in writing group. And probably the coolest thing that has happened to me as an author, I have gotten some fan mail, not much, but I have gotten some. But the coolest piece I got was I got an email from a woman, or a girl, a color woman, who was sending me an email from a halfway house that she had found that

forgotten and read it and the book meant so much to her that she just wanted to reach out to me and let me know that she's so appreciated seeing homeless kids accurately portrayed and portrayed in a way to where they didn't get this great happy ending at the end. And that she was now working through a halfway house, her and her boyfriend were engaged and they were working for an apartment to get themselves set up. And that she had named one of her pet rats, Rath. Oh wow. And she just wanted to let me know. And she said that anytime she sees the forgotten, she tapes a youth resource card to the inside of the cover. Oh wow.

And she wanted to know if I was okay with that. And I said, not only am I okay with that, I think that's probably one of the coolest things I've ever heard. That's a hell of a legacy right there. So, please. Yeah, that's, that is, that is, from this point on, my level of success,

I don't know if I'll be able to top that. As a writer, I have achieved something that I didn't think I'd be able to. Hey, you transcended your genre and you transcended your story like you, you touched humanity. Well, I mean, every writer I know, ultimately, what they're looking to do with their stories is that they want to connect to other people. They want to give somebody a story to where they see something in and of themselves or it's it's it's yeah they want people to be entertained by the story obviously. But your secret hope is that there's that one person

out there who's going to read this book and just go oh my god, this is so good, this is this means so much to me that's why this has had an impact on my life. This is something that I want to talk to people about that it just it resonates with me. And I know some writers who have had that happen and all of us are just like, when you reach that point, there's just that's it. You're done. I don't need to be a New York Times best seller. I don't need to make millions of dollars off these books. Those would be nice. I won't turn away if they happen. But knowing that I have achieved this

and that I have made a difference in another person's life, it's really, really cool. So, and is rate develops into the return, she grows both as a character as a person. And it's, it actually was harder for me because I had to age her as the books. And I spaced them books about a year apart. So she ages a year through the book.

So she starts it around 15th, the return. She's about to turn 18. But through all of those, she never, she's always a street kid. And she is working to help street kids. And in fact, she gets some help from the fake court that resides on Earth, from one of the characters Bridgid, who, Miles Boyler here, was the same Bridgid of Catholic fame, was the patron saint of children.

And I'm kind of curious about what the resident Catholic thinks about that, but. Oh, okay. So, the resident Catholic thinking about that, if you ask any Catholic authority outside of Ireland or the Irish diaspora, Bridget is a saint. If you try to tell anybody in Ireland or in the Irish diaspora that Bridget is a saint, you're going to get a pair of black eyes.

Okay, filming it. It's a confirmation name. Fuck you. Yeah. Like, no, no. Okay, fill you in on this one. Yeah, please, please. So again, as the non-cathlete.

Yeah, as well. Yeah. Okay. So, And I'm not just Irish. Yeah. But your name is Bishop. So, Which means you not just Irish. Yeah, but your name is bitch. So, which means you're like, you know, 25% Catholic, whether you, whether you mean to be or not.

It's there's a term for people who are a Abrahamic and that is culturally Jewish. I do believe that culturally Catholic is a thing. Yeah, the term I've used with another one of my very good friends who grew up going to Perochial school and is now a pig. and I say, no, you're ethnically Catholic, fuck you. You don't get away from it. No. And so for those in the audience who are, you know, pradis or non-Christians, Bridget was a Celtic goddess of the pre-Christian Irish.

She's one of several. Okay, that's why I know that name. Yeah, okay. And her and Sheila, you may have heard of Sheila Nagig, the figure that you see in churches, that's a very clearly Y yonic kind of figure carved into carved into church or goddess of surfing in Australia. Yeah. Nice. Nice. Nice. Well done. Yeah.

Not even oddly in this context. Not even mad. And so anyway, as the Catholic Church did remarkably well, I'm not even going to say Catholic as the early Christian church did remarkably well everywhere it went, they appropriated local beliefs and local ideas and bridged and Sheila and a couple of other goddesses that I can't think of right now got transformed into Saint figures.

Okay. There was actually a great article that I think Bishop is the one who shared it, but I read it earlier today, that was about Sheila. So like canonized by secretion. Kind of, yeah. Okay. Yeah. That was a popular demand, basically. Yeah, essentially, it's like, no, no, like, we're not we're not going to give up venerating this figure. So you've got to figure out a way to include her in the festivals. And so it's a mythology like that. So the the the lore in Ireland is that Sheila was the wife of Patrick. And Bridgid was this, you know, goddess figure who got turned into an early Irish saint. Okay, so so Bridgid is not not assained through the Catholic faith, but more through the Irish culture. Yes, popular. Yes. Okay, cool. Thank you for clarifying that for me. Yeah, yeah, no worries. But one of the things that that is you read the books, each of the books takes place in a different city.

And what I wanted to do with the ultimate premise was the American fairy tale series, what the thought behind the theme was that America is a melting pot of cultures. which being an excellent example of that, the line that Englishes hides out in alleys and bugs and knocks out of the language as opposed to the pockets for loose change. Yeah. I like the one that says it's what you get when Germans learn Latin to shout at Vikings. Yes. Yeah.

So what I want to take was that America really didn't have its own fairy tales. All of our fairy stories, all of our mythologies really are from the cultures that fed the United States because we're an immigrant culture. We may have put our own twist on them, but ultimately they started from there. So I wanted to make a world where the United States

wasn't just a melting pot of cultures, but it was also a melting pot of very ideas. It was our own fairy stories. So the stone one is based in Boston, so it's very very heavily Irish influenced. I was gonna ask so may I break in here now when you say fairy tale, you mean actual like the fae? Yes, I mean the old world Celtic spelling F-A-E-R-I-E. Okay. And there was actually something came on Facebook about the difference that spelling versus the typical F-A-I-R-Y.

Right. In my view, when you see the A-R-Y, it is typically geared towards children's stories. It's usually softer from front to front. Right. Fractured fairy tales, for instance. Yeah, but it's more gentle. Yes, traditional fairy tales from the old world were about to scare the ever loving shit out of you. They were warning tales. They were telling you not to go

into the forest because bad things are there that want to trick you and each you and steal you way to another land and you'll come back, my leader is later in a really dead. Right. There's a reason that in Ireland to this day, they build roads that go around trees that there are some trees, they don't cut down. They literally route roads around some trees. Sure. Yep. So I wanted to have an Americanized fairy tale, an American-based fairy tale. So in this world, the Fay are split into two, there are two main courts.

The traditionally you have had the Celianian city, which are in the back. Oh my daughter's gonna just love this. And mine, it's the Don Court and the Descourt. Okay. But there is a third court called the Rogue Court that exists on Earth. The other two exist in Ternanog, or the tier,

which Ternanog is the land of eternal youth in Irish, but it's my catch-all for the fairy world. And a lot of the original premise of the stone is going to be that a lot of the creatures that we think of as monsters are actually fairies that we misinterpreted. And in my book, there's actually a gloss at the end of a stolen that will tell you the Irish and the Welsh that I use what it means.

But one of the bad fairies you're into is the EKG, which in the book it looks like it's Wojci, but because Irish is a pronunciation guide to confound the English, is a pronunciation guide to confound the English, it's pronounced like Ikea or Ikea, and they basically look like Goth 10-year-olds, but all their teeth are sharp, and they were the cultural inspiration for vampires. So vampires exist, but they're not vampires, they're bad fate.

Okay. And I wanted to do that with basically every monster from history, but I kind of abandoned it. I took pieces of it, but I abandoned it is the overwriting aspect. Um, the forgotten takes place mostly in Seattle. So there we delve into some German. some Native American mythology. Okay, I was going to ask about that because like you talk about fairy tales, you talk about monster tales and I'm thinking like the melting pot works in so much as you're talking about white folks. You know, it's much more of a salad with an oppressive amount of dressing poured over some groups and not others. But I was going to ask because you've got people here already who

had their own mythos. So, okay. So in Seattle, you actually have these. Now, are these a blending or is this a collision or an abrasion? Or it's actually the the the the the Fay and my world are the fairies are kind of like the look at something out of the fifth house. And there are five houses of supernatural beings. Okay. The beings that we would think of as belonging to the indigenous cultures, mostly our shape shifters are called the first house. Okay.

We were the ones who basically set up this alliance between all the supernatural entities. Gotcha. And I believe it's in the forgotten where she actually started, Bridget actually started breaking down just in whether the houses are. So for example, dragons are a house all their own. Okay, they just haven't been heard from in centuries. I think God and Celestials are another house and race comment was, and this was before Guardians of the Galaxy, I would just like to point out, race comment was and this was before Guardians of the Galaxy

I would just like to point out race comment was I assume you don't mean the really big scary guys from the Marvel comics, right? Nice. Nice. So even though she's homeless, she is still a geek. She does still make a lot of quips. And the shape shifters make an appearance when we get to the return which takes place in New Orleans. And that takes some Creole and Acadian mythology. And what I was surprised about was I wanted to look

at what kind of mythology or stories were popular in New Orleans. I was very surprised to find out that werewolves and shapeshifters are a big thing in Louisiana. And it's so it doesn't carry over from the French, the Lou Garou. Yeah, I was going to say you got a lot of French and Italian coming in. But in Louisiana, they're called Rougarou because, you know, the Louisiana, we're kind of French, but fuck the French. Right. We're the ones. So Louisiana is the French equivalent of the Appalachian expansion in the rest of the country, which is to say, Appalachia was settled by the Scots and the Irish.

You got kicked out by the English, it was like no go off into the bleeding edge of our empire and go colonize because you're expendable, you're also crazy tough. And so Louisiana was the French version of that. I had a lot a lot of fun with that because I actually have been to all the cities that I mentioned in my book. So I can add in some details that you would know if you've been to the city. My personal favorite one is in Seattle. I would recommend anybody do this. Look up the free not troll and Adam sure you're well familiar with that. Oh, yeah, I know I have all kinds of self-reflectuals. There's a sculpture that is under an overpass. Oh, I know that one, yeah.

Of a troll who has his hand over an actual VW beetle. Yeah, that's how it is. They featured it in 10 things I had about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And kids climb all of it well in the forgotten, the Fremont troll is an actual troll and he is a protector of children and he just stays in his stone shape

when people are around. So that he doesn't scare the shit up people but he always makes sure the kids are taken care of and they're safe. I like it. Which I had a lot of fun when I attended Emerald City Con, which is in Seattle. And I got to use that as a selling point for my book for people from the areas. Hey, the free mind. I don't care for my book. Oh, I get a mic. I got to read that. Yeah.

Hey. So yeah, it was the idea that I wanted to take all of these disparacultures and how they all interact it and not all of them get along very well. The premise being for the the return, this isn't any kind of a big giveaway, but the reason that the characters from the stolen Caitlin and Edward are meetup with Rafe, ultimately for like a full-on adventure, is because they're venturing to New Orleans and the Fay don't have control over New Orleans, the Louisiana. That is a part of the country that is controlled by the first house. So the Fay don't have the ability to just walk in that, that's their jurisdiction isn't there. So they ask great to go in to watch over the Caitlin Edward. And of course, since it's New Orleans, there is of course zombies and there's some dodo. But interesting.

It's going to ask about the Loa. Yeah, both Seattle and New Orleans also have a fairly substantial homeless kid population. Well, because they're both places that are near water. And yeah, they're transit centers and any place where there's a lot of people, where there's more people around. You have an easier time finding food, you have an easier time. Exactly. You find squads. I was going to say they're big port towns too, so you have a lot of this fell off the dock, you know, friendly folk who will, you know, very often tend to

the urchins of the street. And um actually there is another story now that I think about I do have another book in the works that Harper did not renew my contract after the return. I wasn't selling well enough so they didn't pick it up. I think part of it was because my editor had also left Harper at the end of the return and I got a new new editor in one of her first comments when I sent her what I had of the next book, which was gonna be called The Broken, was yeah, this is okay, but fantasy isn't really my thing.

And I'm thinking, then why did you get assigned to a fantasy? Why am I working with you? They might have had the same question. No, well, and I think it was, I think that was the polite way of them sort of showing me the door. My books weren't, the sales ready, my books had dropped off

at that point. They weren't doing very well. This is why I tell people, if you like a series, please for the love of God by the books as they come out. Because if you wait for the whole series to be completed before you buy the books, you may not get the entire series. They only let an author keep writing books in a series if people are buying them.

If you're not buying them, if you're looking for the series to finish, they can get finished. Okay, so here's an inside baseball question because this brings something up. If you were to complete the broken and shop it around, would you not be able to do that because it was good? Oh, no, I can't sell that.

Okay. The way my contract worked was the after my last book in the contract was fulfilled. I was obligated to give the next book involved in that universal with those characters. I had to give Harper first pass at it. I had to give Harper a pass on it. It was mine.

I could do whatever I wanted with it. The downside to that is, it wasn't ever going to get picked up by another traditional publishing accounts, because no publishing else is going to want to pick up book four or five in a series when they're not going to make any money off the earlier books. Currently, much to my dismay, the forgotten is out of print and physical form.

It's still available in the book. I still have copies that I still when I go to events, but when those are gone, they're gone. However, because it's out of print, I can now get the rights for it back and Harper and release it myself. And fall staff is actually expressed interest in picking it up and putting it out. But don't want to get the books out there. Cool. And then you could also get an omnibus at some point kind of thing going. And they have expressed interest in the broken so that would give me an excuse to write that because I have had people, you know, I'm asking when the next book is they feel like the characters are like the stories. But there is a novella out as well

another fun twist. I was invited to be part of a story collection called a very fairy Christmas and there were six or seven of us and we also admitted novellas that were Christmas themed. Everybody else submitted pretty much what you would expect that they were kind of flowery, friendly, nice Christmas themes. Mine was a rate story, so it was not. Everybody here is old enough to remember the, we are the world song. Yes, Christmas. There's that great line that Bono sends that tonight thank God it's them instead of you. That was the theme of my story. Oh, lovely. It starts with Raith breaking a traffic, a Russian trafficking ring.

Rescue. Oh, okay. And they're being trafficked by Russian mobsters. And basically losing her shit and kicking. And Raith is great for this because I get to live I carry this with her. So she kicks the ever loving shit out of these mobsters. So you cannot add you know me, you can imagine how much I enjoyed writing those songs. Oh, I'm sure. I mean, I have actually lately in my mind, been thinking, God, I wish

Ruth was real because she would be in Ukraine right now, just like pulling helicopters and jets out of the air. Literally, literally pulling them out of the sky. Yeah, nice. But the earth evader style, all I see are all I see is fear and dead men. That's right. Like, but the premise of that novell and that one is available. That one I actually did with this myself on e-buck is that rate gets dragged into help because

a hope child was born. And this is basically a child that if they're raised correctly, they become the embodiment of the best of winter, which is solstice, Christmas, all that of us. We come together so that we all make it through winter. We share food, we share gifts, we share warmth, so that we all survive. If this child is raised in the wrong conditions, they'll basically grow up and become a crampus or crampus. That they will become the worst parts of winter. The dark, the cold, anger, the fear, and a bit of a spoiler here. The reason they lost track of this kid is because the kid is trans. And the identity of the name that they had that they reasoned to track the child doesn't working or because that's not the kid's name anymore. And it's their dead name. It isn't anymore. Right. So Raid has to draft some help. That's this one sent in New York City. Rae Thress, the help of a kid who was actually named after the woman who sent me the email.

She got a character named after her who helps Rae do this misadventure through New York City to try and find what's going on. And you find out that there's basically an entire underground city of homeless people, homeless kids, especially a homeless supernatural in New York City. And as I progressed to the books, one of the things I tried to do was, this is another thing that changed with the stone. The stone is very much, it could be a shadow run or a D&D type campaign. There's a lot of heavy door kicking and big fights and grandiose fights. And I think I write fights very well.

But as you do, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I do. As the stories progress though, especially with Raith, I wanted the stories to be resolved. I didn't want the answer to always be, we have to kill the bad guy to solve the problem because I think that that is a lot of American culture and a lot of our gun fascination is that's that's when something is wrong that we have to find the bad guy to kill

the bad guy and the problem goes away, well, it's more complicated than that. Right. So in that. Right. So in the forgotten it, some of that happens, but in the return, there is actually don't think anybody gets shot in a return at all. I mean, there's some fist fights, but that's the closest thing that comes to violence. The broken dials back more into that because unfortunately life on the street is tough and there can be violence. And it's not always expected to rarely between other homeless people. It's it's often from outside world cops, particularly or business owners or homeowners. homeowners, but yeah, that was something that was very important to you that I've dealt into. Two gun witch by its very nature, it kind of had to, I mean, it set post-Civil War America. Right. Well, you're working with that mythology.

Right. Yeah. So, you know, you're beholden to those tropes when you do that. Right. Well, in the main character, she uses, and just to digress just a bit here, that the title too, then which comes in the fact that, as an elf, some Elven women are in this world of magic exists, which you can only use magic

to magical devices. And you use these devices with your right hand. You draw in power through your left side, you project it out through your right through whatever this magical device is. A small portion of the population can make these magical devices but cannot use them. The majority of people can use them that cannot make them. So magical devices while they are available, they are also very expensive because not very many people can make them. However, some Elven women can use magic with both hands

and the favored weapon at this time, particularly for these bounty hunters or stalkers, is what's called a spell iron. And it looks just like a revolver, but it has runes and sigils over it. Instead of holding bullets, it holds components and it fires spells. So you can pull the trigger and it shoots a fireball

or it shoots lightning or it shoots a cone of cold or a force blast. And she can use two at once. So the humans have started calling them two gun witches. How much how much of that was was you playing Deadlands as a kid? Actually I never played Deadlands. No shit. Okay. Because you totally yeah, hex slinger came to mind when you said that. Yeah, it's the entire premise of the story. I know Ed Willough, I don't know if you will, they may be a recognition, but it came from a cover of the song Big Iron,

which is a Marty Robbins 70s country song, but Mike Nestle, the lead singer of social distortion, did a cover album of Old Country Song, which is it's under the influence. Fantastic album, highly recommended, but he does a great rockabilly cover of Big Iron. And Big Iron is just a story about a martial world of the town, and the Big Iron is his gun.

Right. He has Big Iron on his hip, and it's just the traditional stereotypical standoff at high noon that he's coming to to bring it out on and they meet in the street but he's the quicker drawn he shoots the guy down you know this guy is killed by the other other woman and as I listen to this song and I really got into it I was like wow what did be cool we always hear about wizard tools would it be cool if there were wizard tools like that in the old class, that it was wizards, like, face off with spells in the street at high noon.

Nice. But what if their wands look like their revolvers instead of wands? And it just went from there. Yeah. I like it. That was the spark that's, that's permanent all. So nice.

Well, we are actually coming close to an end here as far as our episode lengths go and things like that. So do you you said that you are shopping this one around you've already finished this one's this one's this one's already it's going to be released on May 31st. Oh, holy moly. Okay. So just a couple of months there's actually there's a local convention in Richmond called Ravencon because it's around Pulse from this area. That's my local time that I try to go through every year. Obviously for obvious reasons, it hasn't happened the last couple of years. We're hoping it will happen this year, not blood, if things don't turn really bad really quick. We have a range for a soft

release there. So the people who went to Ravencaw will be able to pick up an early, excuse me, an early copy of it. But the national release will be, excuse me, May 31st. And I am attempting to work on the sequel. It's planned to be a trilogy. OK. And Ed will appreciate that this is sort of a bonus for your listeners listeners that the title for the second book

is going to be the stain of a nation because the humans that are corrupted by black magic are called the stained. Nice. They're so nice. And of course that's a play on birth of a nation that is horrible. So that's kind of my way of giving the finger. Nice. Yeah, and very good to be honest at that time. There were a lot of stains on the nation at that time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They'd wiped out a few of the bright spots quite honestly. Yeah. Okay, so where can people find that particular book after May 31st? It will be available anywhere. The books are sold. You can order from any book store you can find it on the evil empire Amazon. Okay. Barnes and noble Apple books. Do you have a favorite local bookstore that people can go to the website and order through that? call from if anybody in this podcast comes out it should be set up by then. But there is the fountain bookstore in Richmond, Virginia. They do ship all over the country and I'm going to be

setting up a deal that if you pre-order the book through them you will get a print on 11 by 17 of the entire cast of Tuganwetch that I had commissioned by an artist who actually does work for Marvel. She did some Gwen Pool and some Miss Marvel covers and comic art. If you do not pre-order it, you will not be able to get all of them in one. I do have it set up to where each of them will have their unusual postcards that all offered events, but those postcards will not fit together to make a hole. You can only get the hole by doing those pre-order. Okay, so pre-order through what website again? The fountain, the fountain bookstore. It is,

I believe it's just the fountain bookstore.com. Okay. One quick second I can tell you. Sure. Right now. So I would much rather people give money that way. You know, y'all can spare five bucks for shipping out here in California. It is just www.fountainbooksdoor.com. Excellent. The challenge is the philosophy is a fantastic person. An Indian bookstore is a local bookstore. They are fantastically supportive. Excellent.

And they also tend to keep my stuff and stock from the American fairytale and have signed copies of anybody's interest in the nose. You can also order them to them. They're like, you ship all over the country and it's media mail, so you can also order them to them. I like to see you ship all of the country and it's a media mail, so it's fairly inexpensive shipping. Nice. Well, there you go, folks. That's where you should go.

So now, where can, you know, let's just, you can listen to other podcasts as to where you can find me and Ed. Yeah. Let's keep all the focus tonight on, on Bishop and his effort. So Bishop, where can people find you on social media if they want to reach out to you or is there a blog or any other presence that you have online you want to alert people to. Yeah, the easiest way to find me is going to be to my blog. It's a quiet pint.com all one word.

And there are the links there for all my other social media's. I am also on the Twitter as Bishop M. O. Con, the MSI who will denote me from any high schools. Also on Instagram as Bishop M. O'Connell, though, to be honest, I'm not overly active on the Twitters of the Instagram so much and more. I am on TikTok as I believe it's author Bishop, oh no, not this, wait no, my actual username is Bishop M'Connell. My handle name is not the school. And I have a Facebook page which is Bishop O'Connell author or author Bishop O'Connell. But I said, if you go to a quietprin.com, it has links to all my social media

where you can find me there. I do have a few years with a blog post that mostly talking about writing and the progress that I went through. So if you're an aspiring writer, there may be some nuggets and then you can find it, you'll find useful. Fantastic. And beyond your own book, is there anything else that you would recommend to folks? Yeah, I actually, if you're interested in urban fantasy, a lot of people, these are probably going to send familiar to people. One that I particularly liked was the Sam Ants Slim Series by Richard Caggery.

He's actually just finishing up the last book in the series. It is sort of, I think of it as Harry Potter meets punk rock. It is if Harry Potter hung out and died bars in the bad set of town and cussed a lot. The main character goes to hell for a number of years and then escapes to come back. It will make you want to listen to the sorts of distortion and the kinks, at least it did mean.

So, yeah, so there's your motivation for loving the series right there. Like, yeah, for, yeah, okay. I personally have a big fan of the Dresden file series by Jim Butcher. Highly highly recommend those. Those are really good. There's a lot of those up now. If you like the genre blending, like with the Forgotten Word, it's kind of a mix of science fiction fantasy.

This is what's been out for a little while, but it's called The Pray of the Gods by Nikki Dredin is a fantastic book. It's set in South Africa. And I will just tell you that the book has, and it's climactic fight scene, it is an ancient god takes on a giant robot. And that description of love should make

just about anybody want to read the book. Yeah, no kidding. Well worth it. I'm on board. Giant robot, like two words you had me. Anybody who lives in the podcast, is okay, well that's where Ed sold. Like episode three.

Yeah. And yeah, just as a fantasy side, if you want to read a high fantasy, but you're kind of fired at the European centric. I say, and I'm going to butcher her last name, check, we're boarding, wrote a series of books. The first one is the City of Brass. Next one is the Kingdom of Copper.

And the last one is the Empire of Gold. And it is a Middle Eastern set, high fantasy. Did focus. She does with Jen, what I do with Fay. Oh, and they are really, really excellent. So really good books. I recommend those. One quick question.

I'm going to, I'm going to kick it back to you to plug your book one more time just because I want to end with your stuff. My daughter's nine, Prokoshis loves reading. Are your books? I'm not going to say accessible because she'll she's reading Earthsea right now. Yeah, because her brother bought that for her Christmas. Are your books something that I should wait until she's about 1314 to read? Based upon what I know of you, I would say she'd probably be okay with it. My books, there's not really any sex in them. There

is some violence, especially in the stolen, there's some pretty brutal fight scenes. Mostly it's just the scary factor. I mean, the overriding premise of the first book is that a little girl gets kidnapped by fairies. Right. It's stolen on my head. She can be fine with that. Avery Fad fairies.

Yeah. No such thing. If she doesn't get night minister like horror, like scary movies should be perfectly fine. I'll run it by her and see what she thinks. I don't think she'll have any problems with it. I'm gonna interject here that as a parent, you might have more trouble with the stolen than she does. Yeah, fair. Because I know I did. Yeah, yeah, like no, I heard that from a lot of people that that that that scene when when Fiona gets taken.

Most I actually got a couple of emails. People just fuck you. Fuck you. Just fuck you. I think that's pretty, that's an eloquent response. I'm just going to say like. I might give her a couple of years. She's got eddies of sensitivity. So yeah, but thank you. Yeah. Okay, so one more time, your book.

So I want to end with that and then we'll close out. It's the American Fairy Tale series. The first one is the stone. The second book is the forgotten. Which after the forgotten is when I learned that all my book titles are going to be single titles. The last is the returned and between the forgotten and the return to three promises which wraps up things in the stolen. So if you're going to read them in order, it's the stolen the forgotten three promises in the return. However, with the qualifier, I specifically wrote the book so that you could read them out of order or

standalones and you would not miss anything. There will be some additional context and you'll understand a little bit more of what's going on, but you are not required to read any book to read any other book. Next one. Well, cool. Bishop O'Connell, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, guys. This was the easiest podcast I recorded in a long time. Yeah, because Bishop was carrying it instead of you. Exactly. It was great.

Yeah. Something about when we talk about books, I get to take the night off. It's great. Pretty much. Almost are comic books and the backhand. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Even then, the books, you notice I didn't touch.

Yeah. That was all him. It was all the cinema. Yeah. So cool. And if we talk about anything historical, he's done all the reading. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Okay.

Wow. Yeah. So all right. Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight. For Geek History of Time, thank you for coming by Bishop O'Connell. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, watch out for Black Eyed Children.