This episode is a conversation with Terry Mixon, bestselling Sci-Fi author of the Empire of Bones saga, among others. We discuss some of our takeaways at the conclusion of the 20Books Vegas 2023 conference for independent authors, but first we explore a little of the perspective of consuming fiction from the perspective of a military background. Terry Mixon is a veteran of the United States Army.

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A full [auto-generated] transcript follows below:

Oh, tricky. Okay.

Hello, and welcome to the Grand Hill Chronicles podcast. I am Don Bishop, writing as T. S. Pedramon. And I am here today with Terry Mixon.

[00:03:56] Terry Mixon: Mixon. M I X O N. Not Nixon. [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Don Bishop: Nope. I have met so many people over the past week. Um, so, you can see, if you’re watching us on YouTube, you can see we’re in a different setting.

I’m not in my basement office. Um, we’re, we’re squatting in a conference session room.

[00:04:16] Terry Mixon: Don’t tell anyone, they’ll come and

[00:04:17] Don Bishop: kick us out. You can see our lanyards. This is at the end of 20 Books Vegas. Um, and I’ve talked about 20 Books before, so any consistent listener knows what I’m talking about. Um, yeah, a conference for independent authors, and it’s been a busy week, and we’ll talk more about that later, but, uh, right now as we speak, The rave, the reader and Author Vegas event is still ongoing in the main, um, what do you call that room?

I guess it’s

[00:04:47] Terry Mixon: the grand ballroom.

[00:04:48] Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, or I think, um, they, they call it the event center, or it could be that too, the horseshoe event.

[00:04:55] Terry Mixon: We could call it what we want to call it. They’re not gonna

[00:04:58] Don Bishop: come after us. Yeah. And I, [00:05:00] um, yeah, I got, um, pictures with Larry Korea and um. Steve Diamond, and I got a picture yesterday with Todd McCaffrey, and I got, uh, an autographed book from him today, um, and yeah, a few others, a few other things, um, but, so, uh, Mr.

Mixon? You can call me Terry, please. Terry, alright, Terry, what is your background? Tell us

[00:05:26] Terry Mixon: all about it. Well, if you go back far enough, I served in the U. S. Army back in the 80s. I was a Helicopter Crew Chief on Scout Helicopters with the 101st Airborne Division. I got out of the service and got a degree, a two year degree, in computers and got hired by NASA to work on computers in the Mission Control

[00:05:46] Don Bishop: Center.

Um, you said Scout Helicopters. Mm hmm. What, um, what model? OH 58. Okay. I’m not a huge aficionado or, so, uh, OH 58,

[00:05:56] Terry Mixon: um. The Charlie models if you want to get specific.

[00:05:59] Don Bishop: Okay. [00:06:00] Some fans out there will appreciate that. I appreciate it, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know what an Osprey is, and I know what, uh,

[00:06:09] Terry Mixon: You see the news helicopters all flying around that all have that particular look?

The Bell Jet Rangers? The UH 58 is the military version of the Bell Jet

[00:06:19] Don Bishop: Ranger. Okay. Okay. Uh, so then you worked for NASA?

[00:06:24] Terry Mixon: I did for 16 years as a computer guy. Computers. Okay. I worked in the Mission Control Center and I still live in that general area. I

[00:06:32] Don Bishop: talked to, um, I’ve had another guest who was a, a programmer.

Um, I’m bad with names. Forgive me. We talked about Conlang. I don’t remember. It was like four episodes ago.

[00:06:48] Terry Mixon: That’s okay. It’s fine. I don’t remember what I had for

[00:06:49] Don Bishop: breakfast. Yeah. Okay. Um. We’re for NASA for 16 years. 16 years. That’s cool. Do you live in Houston? [00:07:00] I live just south of Houston. Okay. I was born in Houston.

My

[00:07:03] Terry Mixon: apologies and condolences

[00:07:05] Don Bishop: to you, sir. It’s a good town. I liked it. Which part of Houston? Um, well, I was born in Herman Hospital, but we, I don’t know where we lived at that point. Um, but then we, we moved to Utah and then a few years later we moved back. And I spent my elementary school years in, um, in, um, on the north side, um, Jersey Village area.

Yeah,

[00:07:34] Terry Mixon: I know where that is. We live in the south side in a town called Leak City, just over the Galveston border. Yeah.

[00:07:40] Don Bishop: Actually, so, uh, you know, I, we moved to Dallas when I was 10 and, um, I grew up and I went to a year of college and I did a two year mission and I went back to college, but after my mission, before going back to college, I worked a summer in pest control and I spent two months as a pest control [00:08:00] technician in Houston.

And so I, I, I loved being back in Houston. Um, and it was, it was kind of a good little reunion for my heart and I drove all over. So league city, Bay city. Sugarland like Yeah, it was good. I’m

[00:08:21] Terry Mixon: the only thing I don’t like is the summer weather where it’s hot and humid I can deal with the hot. I’d rather not have the humid but hey, you know, you got what you got.

[00:08:29] Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah So tell us about your books

[00:08:36] Terry Mixon: I Have written 40 books Most of them myself some co authored. I wrote the Empire of Bones saga Which is my own series, one of my own series. Okay. And I started that sucker off while I was still employed at NASA. Because I saw the layoffs coming. I had the longest layoff notice in history.

They gave me notice, you’re going to be laid off in three months. Then they extended it three [00:09:00] months. Then they extended it three months. It ended up being almost a year and a half that me knowing the end was coming. And so I said, I’m just going to go ahead and try to write these books and get them out there.

Got three of them published before the layoff happened. I’m

[00:09:19] Don Bishop: sorry, I keep trying to remember to look at the camera, look at the camera a little bit. Hi, we’re still here. Um, yeah, as long as I’m around, it’s going to be awkward. So, sorry for that, but, um, okay. So you, you, Did you say you started your first book while you were still at NASA?

[00:09:37] Terry Mixon: I published three books in the first series while I was still at NASA. And this book… What

[00:09:42] Don Bishop: year was this?

[00:09:43] Terry Mixon: 2014. 2014, okay. So the series itself is space opera with military elements of a society that survived after the fall of the Terran Empire. Okay. They don’t really know what destroyed it [00:10:00] because they lost so much during the…

The destruction. And the story is the exploration of the, the dead empire to try to find out what exactly happened there and finding out that it’s not quite as dead as they thought it was. So

[00:10:14] Don Bishop: what’s the um, where’s the political seat in, in this, in this series? If it’s not the Terran Empire, like what’s, where are these people from?

[00:10:25] Terry Mixon: I named a world Avalon. Okay. And stuck them off on that. They’re way…

[00:10:29] Don Bishop: Extra solar… They’re way off. Okay. Cool. Yeah, because you mentioned the death of the Terran Empire Made me think of Red Rising. Have you read that? No, I have not. I listened to the Red Rising Trilogy And there’s more after the three books, but I only half listens to the fourth one.

I didn’t care as much but the in in that franchise the seat of government for the solar system, so in that in [00:11:00] that franchise the Uh, society is still only within our solar system. Uh, it’s a little bit more realistic like that, but then again they have grav boots and, you know, but, um, and it takes months to go between planets if they’re far away.

Yeah. Uh, but, um, the seat of government and the center of society is on Earth’s moon. Yeah. Because centuries before this takes place, the, uh… Those who were working and living on the moon rebelled against Earth. So, anyway, yeah, you mentioned that and it, it, I think it’s really interesting to have, um, I don’t know, it’s, it’s kind of like a detail like that.

You picture humanity going out into the galaxy, um, and you imagine Earth is still being our center. But that’s not [00:12:00] the case, you know, it’s not the case, but

[00:12:01] Terry Mixon: the time they finally get back to it, books and books and books down the way, it’s basically a devastated wasteland where the enemy that destroyed the empire destroyed all the major cities using kinetic bombardment and all that’s left of humanity on the greatest homeworld of the homeworld of humanity are nomadic barbarians basically living in the wreckage that’s been left behind.

[00:12:28] Don Bishop: Okay. Well, cool. Um,

[00:12:32] Terry Mixon: the other series that I write is The Last Hunter that I write for Variant Publishing with, uh, J. N. Chaney as the co author. Okay. And it is much more military oriented, and it’s fighting off an invasion of robotic aliens and then the aliens that sent them, and trying to hold the Confederation against forces that they are ill concei ill prepared to deal with.

Did you notice we

[00:12:57] Don Bishop: just We scratched our faces in unison. [00:13:00] I did not notice that. It was kind of funny. Kind of weird.

[00:13:02] Terry Mixon: Yeah. But I got the idea for that story from watching, um, the movie Battleship. Where they take the ancient battleship and they take it to war against the aliens. I said, I could do something like that.

So the main warship is a battleship that’s hundreds of years out of date. And is a museum. And they have to take it to war. I,

[00:13:24] Don Bishop: I, I appreciate, um, Like, not just, not just you, but there, I’ve been surprised how many, uh, military or, or ex military people I’ve met at this convention this week. Um, so I appreciate that there’s somebody with a military background writing something military oriented.

Uh, because a lot of the time when I read or, or watch something, I, you know, it’s, it’s really clear that it was written by somebody who does not have a military background. And… Um, then even when it is, or [00:14:00] when they’ve heavily consulted with somebody, uh, and this is just me, but some things will bug me, uh, where it’s like, that’s not how it would happen or yeah, but then again, I have to, I have to remind myself that I don’t know everything and my, my experience is not representative of all like my, uh, 2000 and teens.

U. S. Marine Corps experience is not the case of all U. S. Marine Corps experience, let alone all U. S. military experience. And so, uh, like, me, uh, 11 years ago, coming fresh out of boot camp, and having the drill instructors just, um, not physically, but, pound into us, uh, how we are supposed to behave as young Marines.

Um, so I, I left bootcamp actually. I’ll, I’ll tell, I [00:15:00] left bootcamp, went through Marine combat training for a month, and then I went to my MOS school and I was a musician and, uh, walking down the hall of the Naval School of Music, I overheard a gunnery sergeant, um, E seven. E 7, I believe. Yeah, 7, sorry. I can’t believe that it even took me a moment to think about it.

Um, E 7 popped in my head, but I was doubting myself. Don’t doubt yourself. Confidence can keep you warm. That’s, that’s true. So, um, you know, translating for, for non Marines, E 7. Uh, this Gunnery Sergeant said to the Warrant Officer 5, Rosser, and I could not believe, like, In boot camp, it’s good morning, sir.

Good afternoon, sir. Um, you, you might like after boot camp, it’s understood you’re allowed to venture as far as like [00:16:00] URA, sir, or URA gunnery sergeant if you’re, you know, low private first class, uh, Lance Corporal, whatever. But I, I was taken aback and I, I was like, what? That is not what That is not how I was taught to behave in boot camp.

And that the fact of the matter is that my boot camp experience was not representative of the, of the current Marine Corps experience. No

[00:16:26] Terry Mixon: one’s boot camp experience is relevant to what they’re coming into because they train you in a different way. And then when you get out to where the work is actually taking place, you’ll find that it’s a completely different world.

[00:16:39] Don Bishop: That actually, sorry, I’m talking a lot. I do that. Um, that reminds me of, um, LDS missionaries that I went on a mission, uh, teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ for two years. And there’s, there’s a movie that exists called the best two years about an LDS missionary Uh, [00:17:00] in Denmark. Eh? Denmark? I

[00:17:03] Terry Mixon: don’t know. I don’t know much about the Nordic countries.

No, it’s not Denmark.

[00:17:07] Don Bishop: It’s the Netherlands. It’s the Netherlands. Um, and So you go to, you go to the Missionary Training Center for let’s say two months. It depends on your language that you’re learning. If you’re learning Russian, it’s probably going to be three months. Um, for me it was two months. Because I was learning Spanish.

Anyway, so, This, uh, This missionary arrives in the Netherlands, and he’s trying to speak Dutch with people, and his companion has a brief conversation with one of the locals, and the, uh, the new missionary turns to his companion afterwards and is like, What language was that? And he he’s from Oklahoma. He’s like, what language was that?

Oh, that was Dutch. He was like, [00:18:00] Oh, then I’m in trouble. Cause that is not what they taught me at the MTC. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, coming out of bootcamp, it’s a training environment and they’re, they’re trying to lay a foundation. Um, they deconstruct

[00:18:15] Terry Mixon: you as a civilian and reconstruct you into the mold of what they want.

And that’s the whole, one of the big purposes of basic training is to do that reconstruction so that you are not a civilian anymore.

[00:18:28] Don Bishop: Yeah. Um, I’ll take a moment for, for our listeners and viewers. Uh, I wrote down a few things like topics to hit on. Uh, like here we are at 20 Books Vegas. This is Terry Mixon.

Tell us about your background. What do you write? Um, we’re about to get to where do you find, where can we find your work? But, um, I actually left space to let the conversation flow. And I thought we were going to be talking about conference takeaways, and we probably will. But I think this is a great thing, [00:19:00] um, This is, this will be interesting for listeners, and for your information, My target audience for the podcast is It’s anybody.

It’s not aimed at other writers. Well, then you’re in a target

[00:19:17] Terry Mixon: rich environment.

[00:19:19] Don Bishop: Yeah, because it’s anybody. But, um, yeah, so I think it’s interesting. And you mentioned Battleship, the movie Battleship. That was obviously done with a hearty amount of military consultation. Because the, the uniforms were current naval uniforms of the day, uh, there, there were lots of technical things, uh, that you would need to have somebody with a military background, uh, in order to get right.

But then, and this is what kind [00:20:00] of, I fight with myself, they, they took that. And then, uh, they just, they chopped it up whenever they felt like it.

[00:20:08] Terry Mixon: Exactly. That’s how they do it in movies. So

[00:20:11] Don Bishop: the, the museum ship.

Okay, yes. It’s there. It’s a real ship. It’s actually a museum. But in the movie, of course it has fuel and the engines work. They start right up. They start right up. And maybe that would be the case. Maybe they keep it ready to go. I’m betting

[00:20:33] Terry Mixon: not.

[00:20:34] Don Bishop: But they would not leave it loaded with artillery. Like those shells would not be there.

There might be some, there might be some historic, uh, shells, but they would empty them out. They would not have any explosives in them. Um, and I made

[00:20:49] Terry Mixon: a big point when I started The Last Hunter of having an engineering crew there that was active duty that the ship, while it was a museum, [00:21:00] was still on the active rolls, even though it’s not been maintained, everything is falling apart.

The engineer has kept the engines working. Yeah. So I had a way to move the ship and at least give it a little plausible, plausibility to being able to be used. Well, and that might

[00:21:16] Don Bishop: very well be the case, but is it the USS Missouri that’s in Pearl Harbor?

[00:21:20] Terry Mixon: I think it is, but I don’t

[00:21:21] Don Bishop: know for sure. I could see that.

I mean, I, I’m just unaware of the specifics of the current condition of the USS Missouri. Um, but I could definitely see that. I, I would not be surprised in the slightest. That they keep the engines in working condition, because maybe they would have to move it. Um, One of the big

[00:21:43] Terry Mixon: things with that particular series was it took them two, three books to get even a reasonable percentage of their old weapons functional.

[00:21:54] Don Bishop: And which, what’s the series called again? The Last Hunter. The Last Hunter. And where do we find it? [00:22:00] You can find

[00:22:00] Terry Mixon: it on Amazon, where all my books are at. Okay. I’m Amazon exclusive.

[00:22:04] Don Bishop: Oh, okay. Okay. So that makes it easy, doesn’t it? Yeah. And, uh, you do have your own site. It’s…

[00:22:12] Terry Mixon: TerryMixon. com Yeah, that’s what I thought.

And it’s got links that go right back to

[00:22:15] Don Bishop: Amazon. And that’s, um… So, I’m gonna…

Right here, like, I should be holding TerryMixon. com Uh, if I remember to edit this in here.

[00:22:37] Terry Mixon: That was one of the funnest parts of the first book. Was the horse trading and various shenanigans they had to get, to get even some of the parts and pieces they needed to get that ship able to go when the um, initial invasion happened. To try to just get it out of orbit, get it into space, get it doing things.[00:23:00]

And so that was a lot of fun to write that.

[00:23:03] Don Bishop: I’m just gonna make sure the audio is still

[00:23:04] Terry Mixon: rolling. Yeah, that would be very good if the audio was still rolling. It is. Good. It’s just that

[00:23:10] Don Bishop: the screensaver had turned on. So. Alright. Um. Yeah, it sounds, sounds interesting. Um, do you mind if we go ahead and talk about conference takeaways?

Sure, let’s do it. Um, what’s, what’s one for you? What have you

[00:23:27] Terry Mixon: taken? The biggest take away I have from this conference is that this is your one chance to be in an environment with thousands of other writers that you can talk to, that you can network with, that you can ask questions of, and that you can form relationships that are going to help you further down the line.

[00:23:48] Don Bishop: And I have, I have done a lot of networking myself. That’s, um, and I’ve, I have farmed the conference for podcast guests. I, uh, got a lot [00:24:00] of business cards, uh, sent a few emails on the spot just to establish contact. So we should have, uh, a good roster of, of interviews, uh, in the coming weeks and months. So, um, another takeaway is, I mean, I just, just learning the, the business of, Publishing, I guess.

And I went to some craft sessions as well. But as far as like the, the business of it, Um, as of today, Cause it, it was after midnight, Um, as of today, You can find, um, You can find as a serial fiction, Uh, my Nightshade Unicorn. Story. Uh, you can find the first chapter right now in Kindle Vela. Um, [00:25:00] and so like I, I took a moment and I spoke with Craig Martel who has been basically running these conferences.

Um, he’s stepping down and it won’t be 20 books next year. It’ll, it’ll be right. Author Nation. Author Nation next year. Um. But, uh, yeah, I took, I took a moment to ask him like, Hey, what would you suggest, um, strategy wise and financial strategy wise? So I talked to him about where I am with Nightshade Unicorn, um, where I have a manuscript and, um, I’m, I just finished my first pass through it to get rid of, um, dictation artifacts.

You’re a

[00:25:46] Terry Mixon: dictator like me. Yeah.

[00:25:51] Don Bishop: Um, so I just finished my first pass through it, uh, to, to do that. And I, um, [00:26:00] it still needs some massage, massaging, the book does. And I, I, after talking to him and then, and then sitting in the final, um, watching the final panel at the end of the conference, I decided, okay, what I’m doing is, I’m gonna serialize it, starting immediately, and I, I did, like I, up in my hotel room last night, I started serializing it.

Um, and then I set a release date, so I’ll, I guess I’m announcing that right now. Um, unless things go wrong, cause this is my first time publishing a book. Um, the release date for Nightshade Unicorn Forerunner. Uh, which is book one in the series will be February 28th, 2024. Um, yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to steal the fun.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It came up. No, that’s great

[00:26:56] Terry Mixon: news. So I’m Publishing your first book is

[00:26:58] Don Bishop: real important. [00:27:00] Yeah. And, and because of rules with Kindle Vela, that means that I have to finish serializing it at least 30 days before. Um, so yeah, it, I’ll, I’ll serialize it. Uh, over the next couple of months, and then I’ll publish the book.

Uh, and while I’m serializing, I’m going to be writing book two. I’m hoping to start dictating book two on my drive home, uh, which I will start this evening and, uh, get home Monday evening. Um, but, uh, also I need cover art, you know? So that’s another point of networking. I spoke to artists. Um, I spoke to artists.

It’s not what I meant to say, but that is true. I spoke to artists, uh, and we will communicate further to, to see if, um, to see if they are an, [00:28:00] an aesthetic match for what I’m looking for and if, uh, I wish to meet their price point. Um, what I meant to say though was that I spoke to authors whose. Covers I liked and I said, who is your artist?

Who, who drew that for you? Um, so yeah, I’m getting the ball rolling on, on purchasing some cover art for nightshade unicorn. Uh, in the meanwhile, the, uh, serial is using an AI image, AI generated image. This

[00:28:35] Terry Mixon: interview is over . No, it’s not over. No.

[00:28:38] Don Bishop: Um, I’m glad for AI in this case like. I, um, I am definitely going to hire art for this, for this book.

Um, but the AI lets me have an image that I can work with right now. Uh, and so that’s, that’s really fortunate in, [00:29:00] in my opinion. With my first

[00:29:01] Terry Mixon: book, I went to, uh, stock art sites and found a decent image that I could use for the first book in the series. And that helped me get off the, off the

[00:29:11] Don Bishop: ground. I considered stock art, but, uh, You, you can’t find stock art of a, uh, What’s the word?

Of an intimidating black unicorn. That would be more problematic. Yeah. I need an intimidating black unicorn on my cover. Yeah,

[00:29:28] Terry Mixon: that, that is a challenge I’ll grant you. Yeah.

[00:29:32] Don Bishop: Um, what’s another takeaway?

[00:29:35] Terry Mixon: Before we go to another takeaway, I want to ask a question to you about your dictation. What do you use

[00:29:42] Don Bishop: mostly Microsoft word?

Um, I also see Microsoft word has some, some drawbacks. It irks me that it stops listening after about 10 seconds without dictation. Yeah, that would be very problematic. And Microsoft [00:30:00] So if you take a moment to think, which I do frequently, it stops, and you have to start it again. Um, there’s a keyboard shortcut, at least, uh, which I, I learned after having to go and, and, and use the mouse, like, as somebody who likes to use computers very quickly, and I, I use all the keyboard shortcuts I know to flip back and forth between windows.

Every time you reach for the mouse, you slow yourself down. And. Whether your hands are on the keyboard or not, every time you reach for the mouse, you’re slowing down time a little bit. Unless you’re just really good and precise by nature, and I’m not. Um, so I, and the button to begin dictation isn’t that big.

And so, and, like if you go and click it, in the act of doing that you move the mouse, so the next time you have to click it again you have to move the mouse back to where the button is. Yikes. Um. [00:31:00] Actually, so I have a, I have a, a, a drawing monitor. What’s it called? It’s, it’s, it’s a little drawing pads. Yeah.

A drawing tablet. That’s what it’s called. It’s a monitor that has a pen for input, but it has some programmable buttons on the side. Um, and I got a treadmill off of Facebook marketplace for 80 and it barely fits in my basement office, but. It works and it’s helpful. So I, um, I take the drawing tablet, and I put it on the, the treadmill’s, um, thing where you would put a book, and I can see Microsoft Word right there, and I put the microphone, uh, on a shelf behind the treadmill, and as I’m walking along, and if I take a moment and it stops dictating, there’s, I programmed, One of the buttons on the monitor to that [00:32:00] shortcut.

So I can start and stop dictation with a single click, which was helpful. Is it very accurate? Um, it’s, it’s pretty good. It’s,

[00:32:12] Terry Mixon: except for fantasy names. I was going to say, with fantasy names, that seems like that would be

[00:32:15] Don Bishop: problematic. Yeah, and anybody who’s listened to me in the past few weeks already knows that I have substituted words.

Um, so in Nightshade Unicorn, there is no state of Alabama. But the first, the main character’s name, Alabva, is not something Microsoft Word will recognize. So I say Alabama, and then later I Control F and Find and Replace. Um, so yeah, Alabva is Alabama, and Geronimon is Honeymoon, and Sakala is Sockeye. Um, cause I, I don’t really talk about different breeds of salmon.

[00:32:52] Terry Mixon: Wow, I would, I would totally lose my mind trying to remember everybody’s shortcut name.

[00:32:56] Don Bishop: Yeah, that has been, um, [00:33:00] yeah, that’s a difficulty. I

[00:33:02] Terry Mixon: did invest years ago in Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and I’ve updated it over the years, and it’s pretty good at you programming in different names and getting the spelling right.

Um, it’s been… It’s pricey, but it was one of the best investments I made for dictating more than, out of 40 books that I’ve written, I would estimate 30 of them have had their first drafts narrated, dictated by me through Dragon.

[00:33:29] Don Bishop: I missed the chance earlier when you first said that you wrote 40 books right after I mentioned that we’re at 20 books in Vegas.

So is that 40 books to 100k? You

[00:33:39] Terry Mixon: know, it’s 40 books to significantly more than 100k.

[00:33:43] Don Bishop: Nice. Okay. Yeah. So it works. It does work.

[00:33:48] Terry Mixon: Um. It really does. Long series are king.

[00:33:51] Don Bishop: Okay. Oh yeah, I was going to ask. So you only have two series? Oh

[00:33:54] Terry Mixon: no, I’ve got other series that, that I’ve got, if I had to break it down, I’ve got Empire of Bones.

It [00:34:00] has 14 books. The 15th book is written and I just have to go through the editing process to make it happen. Uh, Last Hunter has 11 books currently out in it. I’ve got four books in the Humanity Unlimited saga that I’ve written. Three books in Imperial Marines and two singletons that, that didn’t warrant going to further books in the series.

[00:34:23] Don Bishop: What is Humanity Unlimited? Is that enhanced? I think it’s

[00:34:27] Terry Mixon: more like Stargate type stuff with aliens and strange humans mixing it up on Earth. Okay. Okay. Much more near term science fiction than what I’ve written before.

[00:34:46] Don Bishop: Um, back to dictation. Another thing that I have used is called Oh,

[00:34:53] Terry Mixon: Lil and I co wrote five books with Glenn Stewart.

So those are the other ones. Yeah.

[00:34:59] Don Bishop: [00:35:00] Okay. Um, another dictation tool that I’ve used is Lily speech. Or is that I think it’s Lily, not Libby. Um, but if Lily doesn’t come up, then it’s Libby Lily speech, which is Uh, it runs off of Google’s speech to text engine, and it does not stop listening unless you tell it to.

[00:35:24] Terry Mixon: Neither does Dragon, and it also has a program called Dragon Anywhere that you can pay the monthly fee for it to do constant voice recognition over a connection out to the internet. I’ve never used it, but since we’re talking about it, I should mention that they have that option. I prefer doing it at my computer.

It’s too noisy of an environment to do it out walking and doing other stuff.

[00:35:48] Don Bishop: But as I, uh, as I drive home, I want to dictate, I’ll just be recording it. And then I’ll, I’ll use either [00:36:00] Microsoft Word for the web or Descript to, uh, transcribe it. And it

[00:36:08] Terry Mixon: can go ahead and take that incoming file and… And run it through the mill and spit out the words for you.

Yeah. Good deal. Dragging can do that as well. But I’ve noticed that it’s not as accurate as when I’m just doing it myself.

[00:36:21] Don Bishop: Yeah. It’ll take more cleanup on the back end. Because, um, if I’m watching it… Maybe I shouldn’t watch it. But if I’m watching it and I see it mess up, then I often go back and fix it. I don’t

[00:36:35] Terry Mixon: watch it anymore.

I have my monitor going, but I slide my chair back far enough so that my Bluetooth headphones still works, and I can see that it’s still doing stuff, but I can’t read

[00:36:44] Don Bishop: the words. Does, does Dragon, is Dragon good at punctuation? Yes. Because Microsoft Word is not that great at punctuation. Well, I dictate my own

[00:36:53] Terry Mixon: punctuation.

[00:36:54] Don Bishop: I, I do that. Yeah. And if I’m not watching it. I sometimes forget to punctuate. [00:37:00] I forget to close quote

[00:37:01] Terry Mixon: and… Dragon is really good with, with interpreting the punctuation that I say and putting it where I want it. Okay.

[00:37:09] Don Bishop: Cool. Um, what else? What else do you take away? From

[00:37:15] Terry Mixon: here, the biggest takeaway that I have is you have to take everything that you’ve learned from wherever you learn it, pick out the pieces that are most important to you.

and actually implement them. There’s so many people that go to conferences that get good advice, that they make good notes, they do that and then nothing happens. They don’t actually implement the things that they’ve learned. Even if it’s only just some minor change or one good idea that you think would be good.

If you go to a conference and you pull away a couple of things that makes your writing or your publishing better. If you have paid for that conference. But if you don’t put it into practice, all you’re doing is socializing. [00:38:00]

[00:38:00] Don Bishop: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I, I guess I, I’m going to give myself a good grade here because I, I haven’t gone home yet and I’m already…

You still have time. I haven’t gone home yet and I’m still, I’m already implementing, you know, I, I… There you go. I threw the thing on Vella and, uh, cause, um, Russell Nolte was in a panel and… No. That was something different. Who did I talk to about Vella? But basically, why not? I talked to Craig Martel about it.

And I was like, I don’t see any reason not to serialize it for now.

[00:38:41] Terry Mixon: In the liter PG world, a lot of the people that are writing books in that, They’ll publish it, not on Vela, but they’ll publish it on a site called Royal Road, which is a free site. And as the books are ready to come down, they’ll take all of it down and then publish it.

They’ll also use [00:39:00] Patreon, so that if you really want to pay money to get further ahead, you can get however many chapters further ahead of what you’re doing by going to

[00:39:08] Don Bishop: Patreon. You just reminded me, that’s, I, um, since I’m moving into, uh, being… like being out there. Really? Um, I need to work on my ecosystem.

Uh, cause I, I want to do subscriptions. Um, I messed up setting up my Ream account and I need them to reset it for me. So I’m right now I’m waiting for them to do that again. My fault. Um, so I can get started there and uh, uh, I have a Patreon. I have, uh, Uh, Kofi, um, but, and I have a sub stack, but there, I need to figure out exactly what I’m doing with all these different platforms.

Um, and

[00:39:59] Terry Mixon: you need a [00:40:00] cohesive and a comprehensive plan

[00:40:01] Don Bishop: to implement. Yes. And I think I took one step in that direction before the conference, uh, in making my little business card. Um, so this is, is. NFC enabled. So if you tap your phone on it, then that’s pretty spicy. It pops up, uh, pops up my contact in like you, so you can save it to your phone, but that doesn’t always work for everybody.

So there’s a QR code on the back. Um, and the QR code leads to a, uh, my digital contact card, right? Um, these are kind of like dot cards, uh, except it’s not a dot card. I ordered blank NFC cards and some blank, uh, sticker labels and did the rest myself. Um, and so that, that digital contact card is like, it has my picture and it has my pen [00:41:00] name and it has links.

Boom, boom. So it’s a centralized location for me. It’s not complete yet. Right. Yeah, you know. Um, and I, I haven’t figured out what I’m doing with the subscription platforms. So, I’ve kind

[00:41:17] Terry Mixon: of crippled my own. I used to do all of my stuff on Patreon before I published it more as accountability for me because I’m more likely to produce things quickly if I’ve got an audience that is paying for the privilege of seeing it.

And And now that I’m co writing, I can’t put those chapters out there so I can write my own stuff, but it’s more like a chapter a week rather than something more frequent than that. And I occasionally feel bad about

[00:41:45] Don Bishop: that. Maybe you could, no, I don’t know, I don’t know, that’s, that’s something to think about.

Um, yeah, start a, start a company with [00:42:00] your co author and, and. I don’t know, somehow split the proceeds. But then, now we’re talking about setting up a whole other…

[00:42:08] Terry Mixon: Added complication may not be worthwhile on that one. Yeah. Yeah. And as far as that, the co author, I’m the junior partner in that. He’s the one that has the say.

Okay.

[00:42:21] Don Bishop: Um, yeah. Excuse me. What else, what else did you take away this week?

[00:42:33] Terry Mixon: That’s it for me. I’m sure there’s other things in my head. Yeah. What about for yourself?

[00:42:38] Don Bishop: Uh, a lot of networking, a lot of upcoming podcast guests, but not only that, but, um, people to reach out to. Um, there was somebody I talked to who has a subscriber list, an email, a newsletter subscriber list of 30, [00:43:00] 000.

Um, Mine, I think, is at 11 now. 11 or 11, 000. 11 individual. Oh, okay. I was gonna say

[00:43:10] Terry Mixon: 11,

[00:43:10] Don Bishop: 000 is pretty good. Cause I haven’t pushed it yet. I haven’t pushed it. Um, but I asked her, like, can, can you help me? How do I, how do I build this? So I’m gonna be talking with her and. Is this the newsletter ninja? Um. Tammy?

No. No. Just somebody else that. I found myself next to in a session that we both attended and, and

[00:43:35] Terry Mixon: there’s a couple of books on Amazon called Newsletter Ninja. And there’s a lot of very good basic advice on newsletters in those. So I would recommend that to you. Okay. Tammy is the one that does it. And I’m, if I try to pronounce her last name, I will massacre it.

So I’m not going to try to do it. Tammy, uh, something. I’ll [00:44:00] look it up because I don’t want to, I don’t want to massacre somebody’s name because that’s awful.

[00:44:07] Don Bishop: And, uh, I mentioned earlier that I, I had a financial strategy question for Craig Mortel. And that was about editing because I have, uh, you know, I’m leaving my day job without being published first.

And so I’m, I’m, I’m cutting off my income. But I have. Some money in the bank. I could pay and run the gamut of editing But I At the same time. I’m I’m still learning the craft and it probably It might not be worth it to me at this time to pay for full service edits so he suggested I I do pay for copy edits Um, and, and lean on beta readers for the [00:45:00] developmental edits.

So. Oop. Keeps on

[00:45:06] Terry Mixon: jumping to that. Fine. I’m not, it’s gonna cut, it obscures the name. Okay. But, Newsletter Ninja. Cool. It’s a great book to go ahead and get some basic fundamental ideas on things that work with newsletters. In my books, when I started out, I read this before I started out, at least I think I did, and I went ahead and put a link to my newsletter in the front matter, as well as being right at the back of the story, right after the end, basically.

So my also bots and the newsletter are on the same page, front and back, and having it in those two places, I think has helped me accumulate people for the newsletter. They might not see it in the front. They might see it as soon as they finish reading the story and go, Oh yeah, click, right there on the spot.

I like that guy, let’s go ahead and do [00:46:00] that. And it bore fruit immediately with book one, building that newsletter. So, don’t miss a beat there, go ahead

[00:46:11] Don Bishop: and put it in the front and back. I definitely need to be working on, on uh, on a following. Cause, you know, I need it. A good launch, you know? Let’s see if I can pronounce her

[00:46:23] Terry Mixon: name, because it’s terrible.

[00:46:24] Don Bishop: I guess I need to remind myself I shouldn’t stress too much about I shouldn’t stress at all about launching my first book. I should do what I can to make sure it’s as good as it can be. Good as I can make it, but

[00:46:39] Terry Mixon: That’s why I wasn’t wanting to, you know, masquer any names, you

[00:46:42] Don Bishop: can L A B R E C Q U E I would say Librec?

Maybe?

[00:46:49] Terry Mixon: I’m terrible with names to begin with, so I don’t want to be, be massacring somebody’s name right out of the bat.

[00:46:57] Don Bishop: So, yeah. [00:47:00] Um, what was I just saying that, um,

Oh, right. So, launching my first book, I shouldn’t stress about the launch going well. I should do… The, the things that have been shown to work, and then not worry about it, and not stress about it. And move on to book two. Yep, yep, book two. Cause they say, they say a lot that, um, The best advertising for your book is to write a new one.

Is your next one. It’s true. And they say, um, as far as like running ads, paying for advertisements on Facebook or Amazon or Google. Um, I’ve heard a couple of people. Did I hear it this week? I definitely heard it last year when I came. They say, um, don’t, don’t [00:48:00] advertise until you have three books. And then when you have those three books in the series.

You advertise the first one.

[00:48:08] Terry Mixon: I know that the last part is true. When you’re advertising, focus your attention on that first book in the series. Because that’s where the entry points are. You’ve got to focus your advertising on the entry points that readers are going to find for you. If you advertise book 10, that’s probably not going to grab somebody.

[00:48:25] Don Bishop: Yeah. Oh, excuse me. Entry points. That’s important. Um. Okay, I think this has been a good conversation. We could probably wrap up unless you do it. Uh, to remind our listeners, this is Terry Mixon. You can find him at TerryMixon. com. You can also find his books on Amazon. Uh, Mixon

[00:48:49] Terry Mixon: is Terry Mixon writing science fiction.

[00:48:51] Don Bishop: Yeah, just search probably just for Mixon and that would…

[00:48:55] Terry Mixon: If you search for Terry Mixon, you’ll find

[00:48:57] Don Bishop: me. Yeah. [00:49:00] Uh, and I would remind our listeners and viewers about our Fan Tasty contest. Uh, we’re coming to the last couple of weeks of the contest now. Um, so take a picture of what you grew in your garden or that you cooked in your kitchen, and you can tweet it at me, um, at, uh, Grenthill Cron.

And, or you could email it at fantasty at thorn dot link, um, or send it to me on Instagram as well. But, uh, send me those pictures and Thanksgiving dinner counts. And this is good for a 35 gift certificate to the restaurant or retailer of your choice. And the contest closes November 30th. Uh, that will be the last day for submissions, and then we’ll choose a winner in December and contact you to send your, you, your, [00:50:00] uh, prize, so.

Thank you, and thank you, Terry. My pleasure. And we’ll see you next time on the Grand Hill Chronicles podcast.

In today’s episode, I discuss and explore the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction, with author Devon Eriksen. Maybe you’ll agree with our opinions, or maybe not. Weigh in with your thoughts! Devon’s new book, “Theft of Fire,” releases on Saturday, November 11, 2023. You can check out his work at: https://devoneriksen.com/ https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0CLFRLZ43/

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CONTEST! -Don’t forget “fantasty” – it’s still open, since we haven’t had a chance to really push it. I’ll close it 30 November 2023, and announce a winner in December. $35 gift certificate to the restaurant or retailer of your choice. (I previously said $30, but I couldn’t remember while I was recording if it was $30 or $35, so there you go.) Enter by: send picture and “#fantasty” to fantasty@thorn.link, or – @grendhillchron on social media. Or on Facebook at profile: https://www.facebwook.com/t.s.pedramon
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A full auto-generated transcript follows below:

Don Bishop: welcome to the Grendhill Chronicles podcast. I’m your host, Don Bishop, writing as TS Pedramon. Today is October 27th, 2023 as we record this.

That’s correct. That’s the same date that I recorded my last episode. Our chat with Matthew Kent. Um, [00:06:00] it’s just, yeah, public. Um, sorry. I stutter sometimes pub publishing them on, on different days. Today we are welcoming author Devin Erickson to the podcast. Uh, now do I call you Mr. Erickson?

Devon Eriksen: Thank you. Um, yeah, all of this is always recorded weeks in advance. You know, I, we fix everything in post. I’m actually a talking kangaroo and he’s not wearing any pants and we all just sort of put it together later.

Don Bishop: These faces just

AI deep fakes.

Devon Eriksen: Yeah. It’s, it’s all fake. Nothing you see on camera is real, but regardless, I’m glad to be here.

Don Bishop: I’m glad to have you Now, what can you tell us about yourself a little bit? Um, tell us about your background and, uh,

I don’t know what, what you studied or, or your day job.

Devon Eriksen: how did I come to this?[00:07:00]

Well, how I came to, this is a short story, but a long journey. I’m actually the son of one of the lead programmers on the Voyager spacecraft. So I spent a lot of my childhood hanging around JPL and, uh. You know, going to all of the Voyager press conferences where the, uh, the photographs of the outer planets were coming up live on the screen, and

Don Bishop: What’s the,

what’s the JBL Oh,

Devon Eriksen: Propulsion Laboratory.

Don Bishop: JPL. Okay.

Devon Eriksen: Yes. Yes, yes. Sorry. My, I, I mutilate English on a regular basis. You know, I have no first language, English is my second language. My first language is just grunts, um, But, uh, so I, I got a very sort of close up view of what I thought would be the future. You know, I was imagining [00:08:00] at eight years old, oh, we are going to go out there. And

at the same time I was spending my weekends in the back of a library, uh, you know, with I. Head high piles of science fiction classics, you know, nivan and heinen and that sort of thing. So when I was a teenager, I wanted to be a science fiction writer and a bunch of, uh, older people said, oh honey, that’s not a very good dream. You should go do something

practical. And, you know, I wanted money. So I tried a bunch of different careers and eventually wound up as an engineer for about 20 years. And then when I retired, I said, okay, well now I don’t have to worry about paying the bills. I can do what I want. I’m going to go back [00:09:00] to the first thing I wanted to do when I was a child, and that is tell fantasy and science fiction stories.

So here I am.

Don Bishop: Yeah. And that reminds me, and I, I think I’ve mentioned this on the podcast before, but, uh, I heard a story of Jim Carrey. Uh, Jim

Carey’s father

actually, um, played the saxophone and apparently played it not too shabby,

shabby. Um, but you know. , that’s you, you don’t want to go and, and live in the gutter.

So he became an accountant

Devon Eriksen: uh,

Don Bishop: and, uh, worked for some accounting firm up in Canada. And um, then at, at one point he was, he was laid off or something like that. And, and it wasn’t even his fault, you know, there was, there was some economic downturn and,

or, or maybe his company was

Devon Eriksen: he was

Don Bishop: acquired by another company.

Devon Eriksen: his.[00:10:00]

Don Bishop: And so, so here he was, um, without a job failing at providing for his family at, at something that he didn’t really want to do.

Devon Eriksen: Yeah,

Don Bishop: And so that the takeaway for, for Jim Carrey was, you know, why fail at something you don’t even want to do?

At least try to do what, what you’re, you

dream so.

Devon Eriksen: yeah. You know, sometimes we have to work a little bit to get there, but when you’re doing creative work, you’re always swinging for the fences. And if everyone played its safe, we would have nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to listen to, nothing to fire our imaginations. And that’s what I think is so important about science fiction because if we look at pretty much every technological advance for the last. A hundred [00:11:00] years, you can always go and you can find a science fiction writer who anticipated it beforehand. Now,

they don’t always get 100% of the details right.

But always invention is preceded by imagination. You know, now we’re going back to the moon. We’re thinking about colonizing Mars. We’re trying to create artificial general intelligence. And none of this would’ve happened if we hadn’t had this sort of societal conversation in the hypothetical about, wow, we could maybe do these things and they might work, and here’s what they might be like. And gosh, that’s, that’s kind of neat. I, I want that.

Don Bishop: Yeah, some, uh, some weeks ago I watched 2001 A Space [00:12:00] Odyssey, which I had seen before, but I was,

I was a kid when I did, and it’s interesting to go back and, and watch it from this perspective. Um, and, and see what the, see what they got. Right. Or kind of right and see what they got wrong. And it’s,

it’s interesting, like we have video calling.

Um, we do have, um, more space fairing than, than there was before,

but not nearly as, as much as was imagined then. We

don’t have like a stewardess in space with magnetized shoes,

you know? Uh, in fact, I, I’d say that that’s

very different because

society has

Devon Eriksen: yeah.

Don Bishop: I mean, apart

Devon Eriksen: goal,

Don Bishop: shoes just wouldn’t work like that.

Devon Eriksen: the goal is not to get it 100% right, because if I could. Design a fusion engine and an artificial general [00:13:00] intelligence that is, is copied from a human memory. And if I could design neural implants that gave everyone virtual and augmented reality displays in their own heads just to name a few, uh, technologies from my debut novel, it’s sitting on the shelf behind me there. Um, then I wouldn’t be writing science fiction. If I could design all these things in an utterly realistic fashion, I would be, I would be starting several companies and actually making these things. So, you know, when you’re one guy and your tool is your imagination and a keyboard, then you’re not really supposed to get it 100% right.

You’re supposed to make it convincing and you’re supposed to make it compelling so that people’s imaginations go [00:14:00] there and then, you know, maybe you inspire some engineers. I was an engineer for 20 years, so I was, I was definitely inspired by a lot of science fiction in the things that I tried to build, but that’s sort of the, the social role of the science fiction writer

is, is to imagine the possible, and not to finish conversations, but to start them.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. And, um, let’s, uh, let’s give you a plug for, for your book. You said

it’s, it’s. Not yet launched

Devon Eriksen: It is launching on November 11th.

Don Bishop: November

Devon Eriksen: on Amazon and Ingram Spark. So it may eventually be in bookstores. Um, it is available for pre-orders right now for eBooks and starting November 11th. You can get print copies [00:15:00] like this lovely hardback right here, or the paperback behind me if you prefer that. Some people like dead trees, some people like eBooks.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Well, um,

and this is, this is timely ’cause I’ll publish this maybe next Thursday the second, or

maybe

Devon Eriksen: good, good,

Yes,

Don Bishop: the following

Thursday the ninth.

Devon Eriksen: yes, And it is this, this is a love letter to every stack of science fiction classics I ever hid in the back of a library.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: You know, uh, with, um, it’s, you know, it’s got some modern touches thrown in there as well. Little, little bit like the expanse, little bit like the Martian, if you enjoyed those titles and you, you want some of the, maybe like the old science fiction classics like Ring World a little bit with some character depth thrown in there and you know,

so I had a lot of fun [00:16:00] writing it.

Don Bishop: Yeah. And so Theft of Fire. What,

um,

Devon Eriksen: a fire.

Don Bishop: theft of fire is this? Uh, and it also says orbital space is this part of

a series.

Devon Eriksen: the first of a series

Don Bishop: Series called Orbital Space.

Devon Eriksen: Yes.

Yes, I am working on the second one box of trouble right now.

Don Bishop: Okay. I will, yeah, we will definitely talk again. And, and we, we mentioned this briefly before we kicked off the episode, um, that I’m also, uh. Pre debut novel, although I’m not as close as as you are. I, I just finished my manuscript last week, so I will be, I will watch with interest, uh, how, how this release goes for you.

Devon Eriksen: Yes, well, we will definitely have to, to talk and try to pass on some of the things that we have learned in this process

because getting from, I have a completed manuscript to, here is my Amazon page upon which you may [00:17:00] order. It is a, is a long journey with a lot of hurdles

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: and the, the traditional publishing industry is no longer what it was. So often you have to figure out these steps for yourself, but that’s both bad and good. It’s, it’s bad ’cause it’s a little more work, but it’s good because it gives you a lot more creative control and allows you to keep a lot more of your hard-earned money so that you can afford to put out the next one.

Also, it puts you in this wonderful position where you’re only responsible to the reader. You

don’t, you don’t have to please. Publishing houses, agents, these kind of things where they all have, you know, nowadays a lot of them have very strong opinions on what people should read rather than on what people want to read. And you know,

being independent allows [00:18:00] you to focus on giving readers something to love and not really caring about industry pundit opinions so much and just, just developing that direct connection with the audience you’re hoping to build.

Don Bishop: yeah, and I, um, so I’m, I’m standing at, um, a precipice. You could say

Devon Eriksen: Mm-Hmm.

Don Bishop: I am. On an internship during my last few months on active duty in the Marines

and this internship, uh, I’m, I’m interning with Full Magazine Publishing. They’re a small,

independent publisher. They, they focus on, uh, graphic novels, but they’ve allowed me time to work on my manuscript so I could, I could get my book written and, and, uh, pursue everything within the nexus of, of the business, including podcasting like I’m doing right now.

So come, uh, come December 1st, [00:19:00] I’m going to be without income and, you know, I have, I have some savings and I’m,

I’m

Devon Eriksen: Burn the

Don Bishop: up, build up a new career,

Devon Eriksen: Burn the ships.

Don Bishop: so what I was

saying, uh,

Devon Eriksen: ships. No retreats.

Don Bishop: I was talking to somebody about this yesterday, how like at work I am responsible to somebody else. He gives me a task, and I am to see that task completed to his specification,

which he may or may not clearly communicate to me.

Devon Eriksen: Yes.

Don Bishop: And so while I’m doing the task, I’m constantly guessing in my mind, trying to, trying to guess what he’s gonna want, what his

vision is, without there being time

to find out like, do you mean this? Do you mean that there’s

just not time

Devon Eriksen: yeah.

Don Bishop: and worrying that I’m gonna come back, having done it not to his liking,

and be judged for that.

Now, with, on the, um, [00:20:00] contrast that with working on a computer or a car and it works or it doesn’t, there’s no opinion, there’s no judging. And if it doesn’t work, it’s because you miss some detail and nobody’s upset about that and it’s just, it works

or it doesn’t.

Devon Eriksen: frequently they are because they, they spend a great deal of money to make sure this engineering project worked.

And quite frequently there is some ambiguity there because the definition of work. To perform the desired task, which means that somebody somewhere in English has to be describing what the system you’re building is supposed to do.

Don Bishop: Yeah. But if, if I’m trying to moment, the moment my, my son is here,

we speak Spanish. Um, if, if I’m working for myself to get the car to, to operate the way I want it to,

Devon Eriksen: Yes.

Don Bishop: I decide if it’s good enough

for me. Now,

Devon Eriksen: yes.

Don Bishop: publishing books is [00:21:00] kind of a mix because

Devon Eriksen: Yeah.

Don Bishop: I need to publish a story that works for a lot of people,

Devon Eriksen: Uhhuh.

Don Bishop: but I can view that, that, broad readership as a matter of fact thing.

And it’s not up to your opinion or your opinion. Like if I have a hundred people that loved the story,

I don’t care if I, if I have 30 people that don’t.

Devon Eriksen: find their audience. You’re, you’re trying to write for thousands and thousands of people, but you don’t necessarily know which those thousands and thousands of people are. So often you’re writing for yourself and feeling like, okay, maybe there’s enough people out there who enjoy the things that I do,

but there’s still some ways in which you’re beholden to the reader, and

one of those is that regardless of who they are and how that audience works, you have to treat them with [00:22:00] respect, which is one of my sort of hesitations about the traditional publishing industry in this part of the 21st century is that I. You know, a lot of people working at these sort of Big Five publishing houses have very strong opinions about what people should read, what they should be exposed to, and they’re more sort of predisposed to, to talk and to articulate what they think people should, should hear and should read. And they’re not quite as disposed to listen.

They see readers as the sort of passive receptacle of whatever message they want to put into a story. And I don’t think you can write very well if [00:23:00] you see readers that way. I think you have to view them as intelligent people who have tastes

Don Bishop: Uhhuh.

Devon Eriksen: and you want to give them something too. Love. I.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Excuse me. I’m gonna blow up a. Punching balloon for my son while we, while we talk. But is that why you went, why you

decided to publish independently rather?

Did you look for a publisher or you

immediately,

Devon Eriksen: I think it sort of went in reverse, um, in, in reverse of that statement where I wrote what I wanted to write, what I felt was a good story in isolation without really looking at what was fashionable in the publishing industry or, or what’s hot these days. Because the publishing industry tends to always chase the last thing. You know, they [00:24:00] told Brandon Sanderson to, can you make it darker? Because he was trying to break in when George Martin was selling very well.

Don Bishop: uh.

Devon Eriksen: And, you know, goodness knows what they would’ve told Tolkien. You know, imagine that it’s 1932 and you are trying to pitch Lord of the Rings in terms of the literature that existed in 1932.

Don Bishop: Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: You know, how do you, how do you even phrase that? So readership often craves the new, but that

which is new is, is by definition difficult to describe. So I wrote something the way the story needed to be written, the way the story cried out to be written, and I found out, okay, you know, the traditional publishing industry is now very [00:25:00] focused on message fiction and some of the alternative industry is, is playing it a little safe. You know, there’s a lot of this sort of third person military science fiction with space Marines shooting aliens and this kind of thing, which can be an awful lot of fun, but it wasn’t what I was doing.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: And so I had some very cordial conversations with a lot of people. And the general idea was, this is, this is, this is not something we’re used to.

This is a little risky for us. And at the same time, I was feeling like I had seized some of my independence by going, I’m not gonna work for someone. I’m gonna write it. I’m gonna write books. And I’m like, I want to seize more of that independence by publishing this myself and having full control of the process so [00:26:00] that I’m going to be beholden to no one but my readers.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: And that really, when I figured that out, I really, you know, I really just came alive with enthusiasm because it’s like I have an audience and the only thing that matters is making them smile and applaud. I don’t need to ask anyone’s permission to be to create, I don’t have to wait for someone say, you can create do.

So I’m going to say I can create and I will do so whether you wish it or not.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: you know, the only people who matter are the people who are picking up the story, you know?

And if they’re not putting it down, and if they’re happy at the end and they want another one, then that’s success. [00:27:00] I don’t need or want a Hugo Award or a Nebula Award or anything like that. I want people to say, wow, I enjoyed that. That’s, that’s my award. That’s the award I want.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think the, um, the, the challenge that that could face

is

Devon Eriksen: Yeah.

Don Bishop: people not being used to it, and they don’t know what kind of thing this, this new thing is.

And,

Devon Eriksen: Yeah. And

that goes into how you, how you present the book, how you frame the book, how you describe the book. Because your goal, for example, when you have cover art, and this is some of the work of, uh. French woman named Thea McGrand, who is, who is just brilliant. Um, part of the role of things like cover art and your back cover text, and you know, how you describe it, how you [00:28:00] publicize it is not so much to make people say, oh, I want to buy this book, because that’s their decision. That’s not your decision. You have no control over that. What the goal is, is to describe the experience that they are going to have so that they can decide for themselves. Oh, the way this Devon Erickson guy writes sounds like something that I would enjoy because it’s got these things that I’m into, or no, I’m not into that.

I prefer Agatha Christie, locked room mysteries. You know, you don’t want to trick people. Who aren’t your audience

into picking up your book.

’cause they’re gonna write one star reviews and they’re not going to enjoy that. You’ve wasted their time, you’ve defrauded them. [00:29:00] So, you know, I’m looking for the people who are into this kind of thing.

Don Bishop: Yeah. I saw, I saw, um. I saw something recently said there are two kinds of negative reviews

Devon Eriksen: Uh

Don Bishop: and one is, is your, from your true

audience

Devon Eriksen: uh

Don Bishop: giving feedback

Devon Eriksen: Yeah,

Don Bishop: that.

I wish I could remember it

Devon Eriksen: No, this is very

Don Bishop: like,

Devon Eriksen: to

something, sorry,

Don Bishop: good, but you know, this aspect of the story

just, I felt let down by this or whatever, and

that’s like, that’s like actual

feedback to your book.

The other negative

Devon Eriksen: saying. I get

what you’re saying.

Don Bishop: is

Devon Eriksen: I say often.

Don Bishop: shouldn’t have been your customer in the first place.

Devon Eriksen: Yeah. Yeah. What I say very often is I, is, I put it like this, there’s two kinds of bad reviews. There’s, you overcook the fish and there’s, I hate fish.[00:30:00]

Don Bishop: Uhhuh,

Devon Eriksen: the first one is a failure of your writing. The second one is a failure of your marketing because you didn’t make people understand that if they hate fish, they shouldn’t order this because it’s salmon.

Don Bishop: Uh huh. Yeah.

Devon Eriksen: So you, you know, the both are useful feedback, but you have to understand. Which one you’re getting. Are you getting it on your, your targeting or are you getting it on your writing? And you know, there’s always going to be some people who pick things up for inexplicable reasons, and then they’ll say, oh, you know, you protagonist swears like a sailor possibly.

That’s because he is a sailor

of sorts, .And they’re in tense situations and they don’t always say, oh [00:31:00] gosh, darn it all to heck But, you know, you, you try to make clear what it is that you’re doing. So that’s, that’s all part of the process because a book is never really alive until, uh, you know, somebody reads it and experiences it.

That’s the whole intention.

Don Bishop: Yeah.

Devon Eriksen: So you, I’m sorry, you, uh. You, uh, prefaced this interview in the emails we were sending back and forth with a very interesting question,

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: and that was something about the, uh, the difference between fantasy and science fiction

Don Bishop: Yeah. And that, uh, for our listeners, that was the I was, I was about to when I said, so just now. I was,

I was gonna bring that up. Um. Because this is a really interesting conversation. Uh, and I was actually, I was in my head, [00:32:00] I was wondering if we should just continue and let the conversation flow naturally

Devon Eriksen: No, no. I was very

eager to talk about that.

Don Bishop: the, um, well, I mean, we could make that its own episode.

We could, but No, let’s, let’s jump into it. So the, the nominal, um, topic of the interview that be before we jumped into it was going to be, um, the difference between science fiction and fantasy. And I, I think we probably see it kind of the same way,

Devon Eriksen: Uh,

possibly, possibly. Grit minds think alike.

Don Bishop: rich minds think independently and that

often coincides.

Devon Eriksen: yes, yes. Well, there’s a reason why people often compare and contrast fantasy and science fiction. You know, you’ll see bookshelves in bookstores labeled fantasy and science fiction. [00:33:00] You don’t, you don’t see like fantasy and Agatha Christie, you know, nobody’s shelving. Tolkien next to Danielle Steele.

So, clearly fantasy and science fiction have something in common. And I’m gonna lead this off with a bit of a controversial statement. And then I’m gonna back it up a little bit so it makes sense.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Devon Eriksen: fiction is

fantasy.

Don Bishop: I mean, where’s the lie? It

is.

Devon Eriksen: here’s how, here’s how I define fantasy. Fantasy is any story that takes place in a hypothetical setting, which is different enough from the reader’s daily experience that the author has to explain it to them. So you’ve got this [00:34:00] hypothetical counterfactual world that you’re putting your story in, and whether it’s fantasy or science fiction, really kind of just depends on where are you getting. The, the sort of the thematic underpinning for your hypothetical universe. But that’s the reason that these get shelved together and why their fandoms overlap to the point where the Venn diagram is almost a circle.

Don Bishop: uh.

Devon Eriksen: because there’s a particular kind of reader. And, you know, personally, I think this is because they have active imaginations and they’re very smart and, you know, they’re, they’re just, they’re just better readers in my totally unbiased opinion, um, where, where they like to imagine these alternative universes and to do that [00:35:00] rewarding mental work of figuring out as they go along. So

Don Bishop: And I would,

Devon Eriksen: I’m writing science fiction, but I consider that to be a subset of fantasy.

Don Bishop: yeah, and I would say the, um, I, I would use your definition of fantasy,

or I would, I mean, in my words to put in my words fantasy is, um, uh, a setting or, or a story with, with major . Elements or any elements honestly, that differ from our reality. Um, and science fiction falls under that umbrella. Like, think about, um, Dr.

Who, the tus

this time traveling spaceship. Like how does it time travel? Uh, we have no,

Devon Eriksen: Who caress?

Don Bishop: we can’t time travel. It

just [00:36:00] handwaving.

It works, it time

travels. And so the, um, the, it, it’s, it’s magic. It’s a

magic element added to the story so that we

can explore

Devon Eriksen: and

that’s a, that’s a lovely writer’s trick there that they used because it allowed them to create a series with consistent characters, but an ever-changing setting

Don Bishop: Uh, yeah.

Devon Eriksen: you could go anywhere and you could experience anything. And if you want to create an episodic TV show, which still has an element of growth, which still has character arcs, you can do this.

And whatever you want to do with your character arcs, you can pick out a setting for the next three episodes or whatever that’s going to play to that. So the doctor who was a was a very cleverly designed [00:37:00] show and you know, if you watch some of the older ones now, they’re maybe a little bit dated because they didn’t have much of a budget.

I, the D are pretty silly, but it, they had a terrific amount of just imagination and writing skill to come up with some of this stuff.

Don Bishop: so I would say to try to define . Science fiction, it’s fantasy where the fantastical elements are largely, uh, technologically explained

Devon Eriksen: They come from

Don Bishop: in the context of technology

Devon Eriksen: know, personally I think that, uh, I

Don Bishop: or science,

Devon Eriksen: have

been called engineering fiction. Rather than science fiction because

Don Bishop: well,

Devon Eriksen: maybe, maybe I’m a little bit tired of engineers doing all the work and scientists getting all the credit.

Don Bishop: now. What about, um, [00:38:00] what about this? I saw this movie on Netflix and, um, there, there, I also recently saw, uh, Kong versus Godzilla. Is it Godzilla versus Kong? Uh, and it’s one of those things where you, you have to turn off large parts of your brain and, and then

Devon Eriksen: Well, you have to accept the basic premise of the story. And there there’s some litmus tests for quality here.

Don Bishop: So that, that’s not the movie

that I wanted to, to mention. Uh, it was, um, a romance.

Devon Eriksen: A romance.

Don Bishop: Is it called Upside Down? I think

Devon Eriksen: Upside down. I’m not sure I’m

Don Bishop: 2012. Yeah, it’s upside down.

So it’s, uh, it’s, uh, well, IMDB calls it a fantasy romance,

Devon Eriksen: Okay.

Don Bishop: but the, um, [00:39:00] the fantastical element is gravity and so

it, it feels more like a,

Devon Eriksen: oh, yes. I’ve

seen some of the marketing for this.

It’s it’s sort of a Japanese animation. Yes.

Don Bishop: No,

no. So it, it stars

Devon Eriksen: of something

Don Bishop: Kristen Dunst.

Devon Eriksen: Okay.

Don Bishop: Um. And I don’t remember his name,

but, um, there, there are two worlds.

They, they rotate the same star, whatever, but they’re, they’re sitting in space right next to each other.

Um, but they have like two flavors of gravity. And one world has its own gravity.

The other world has its own gravity,

and neither one affects

the other at all.

Devon Eriksen: physical consequences of this would be

Don Bishop: Like,

Devon Eriksen: far reaching,

Don Bishop: it’s, it’s crazy to, to

think about and try to start constructing what that,

what all those implications are. Um, [00:40:00] but then you have to realize that they breeze over some things,

Devon Eriksen: yeah.

Yeah.

Well, like I said, I’m not actually inventing fusion drives or general artificial intelligence, so I’m breezing over a few things too. there’s there’s really kind of two elements to this. First of all, how easy is it to accept your premises and that. That is, you know, partly not having ridiculous premises, but also how you present those.

And then the second one, which is vastly more important because this is where a lot of stories that fail, really fail and fail hard, is once you’ve accepted this stories list of gimmies, like, okay, we have working fusion technology, or you know, [00:41:00] oh, you know, you have SP sprites from another universe that turn into swords or whatever it is that you have going on, or two flavors of gravity once, once the reader or the viewer has accepted those things, does the rest of the story follow from those things in a logical manner? You know, and oftentimes you will get people who, who are writers or directors or producers who don’t really understand this,

and you know, they will, they will react to criticism, oh, you know, that that season of this show didn’t work for me. And they’ll say, well, you’re just, it has dragons in it. Well, okay, I was, I was unaware that I could [00:42:00] just abandon all the rules of plot logic by putting a dragon in. I mean, you know, if that’s a cheat code, I’m gonna put dragons in every book.

You know, nobody could criticize my massive plot holes for anything

It’s like, it’s, it’s the, the, the element of fantasy is that you have dragons. Once you accept that you have dragons and you’ve been told some things about how dragons work and what they do, you have to be consistent with that, and you have to have people react realistically to that, and you have to have things that would happen if you have dragons happen.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Um, and I think it’s interesting how, how sometimes it’s like viewing science fiction as a subset of fantasy.

You might, you might wonder, well, what about [00:43:00] hard science fiction?

Devon Eriksen: Oh, sure.

Don Bishop: what is hard science fiction?

Devon Eriksen: you know, I have spreadsheets. You know, I got help from…a mathematician. I. To, you know,

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: all this out. You know, I had to do relativistic calculations. I had to, you know, do rough designs for spacecraft weapons that would actually work,

Don Bishop: So are you

Devon Eriksen: so,

Don Bishop: have you been writing this book for, for a long time?

Devon Eriksen: yeah, yeah.

It, it took me nine months to produce my first manuscript, but, uh, you know, so the harder you derive the, the more you derive it from projecting current engineering trends, the more you are hard science fiction. But again, even in hard science fiction, there are some GIMs because you can’t actually design the technology. It’s just about [00:44:00] making it believable. And when you make it believable and when you treat the reader’s intelligence with respect, then of course you can get away with a few things. I mean the basic premise of one of the greatest modern hard science fiction stories, Andy Weir’s The Martian, which if you haven’t read the book, read the book, it’s wonderful.

Don Bishop: I haven’t seen the movie either.

Devon Eriksen: Uh, well see the movie. It is wonderful. It then read the book. It is wonderful too. Um, but you know, the, the premise involves an accident caused by a Martian dust storm and the atmosphere of Mars is actually about 1% the density of ours. So,

you know, 70 or, you know, 90 or 120 mile an hour winds on Mars would just be a gentle shove

you know, they wouldn’t really do anything to [00:45:00] you. So, but you know, the rest of the book is just so wonderful in all of its science that we’re like, okay, we don’t care. We’ll give you that one. We’ll give you that one because every author, you know, there’s always, okay, you gotta gimme this. So I can tell the story, but I’m not gonna ask for too much. And I’m gonna ask for it in a manner where it, it makes sense and it flows.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: you know, that’s maybe the dis, maybe the distinction between hard and soft science fiction is just how much you’re asking for

Don Bishop: Uhhuh,

Devon Eriksen: and how you ask for it. Because all of this is a little bit vague. Genre is not a thing for writers. Genre is for readers Genre exists to describe what the story is like so people know how to pick up what they like. You know, when [00:46:00] you’re writing, you don’t think, oh, you know, this is going to be a, you know, a hard science fiction novel. Or a soft space opera, science fiction novel with fantasy elements like laser swords and telekinetic powers, or this is going to be a werewolf romance. You don’t, you don’t categorize yourself like that.

You just write a story

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: you know, when it hits the bookstore, somebody’s gotta shelve it somewhere.

And that’s what genre is for.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Um, I was gonna say that, um. Yeah, I mean, it’s a question of, of how far you want to speculate

and there’s, there’s that umbrella term of speculative fiction, uh, that people

use to

describe both fantasy and science fiction.

Um, and it’s like, do we wanna speculate? [00:47:00] Okay, let’s say we have dragons in this world,

or do we just wanna say that?

Let’s pretend that we, that AI gets to the point and robotics get to the point, gets to the point where we have believable androids,

Devon Eriksen: Yeah, yeah,

Don Bishop: which, you know, hypothetically could totally happen.

Devon Eriksen: yeah,

Don Bishop: Um, we’re just not there yet.

Devon Eriksen: yeah,

Don Bishop: So

Devon Eriksen: yeah.

Don Bishop: actually, I, I have a,

Devon Eriksen: Uhhuh

Don Bishop: I have a, a short story, uh, involving, not, not, not believable human looking, but, but in self-aware robots, you know.

But it’s set in, in like 10 years from now, um, maybe 15 years from now. And the, the only deviation from our world, um, as far as what’s realistic, [00:48:00] uh, is that we achieved these, um, self-aware robots, and then they overthrew us. You know, but

that’s,

Devon Eriksen: Yes. Yes. Artificial intelligence plots tend to follow one of two patterns. Yeah. These are, these are very popular tropes. And they’re popular tropes because people like them

and they’re either the Terminator and they want to wipe out their creators or their Pinocchio, and they want to be a real boy.

Don Bishop: or the, um.

Devon Eriksen: yeah. Those are the

Don Bishop: Or the Matrix, and they want to enslave their creators

Devon Eriksen: Variation on

Don Bishop: variation of the first.

Devon Eriksen: variation on the Terminator.

And one of the things I set out to do when I created an AI character was that I didn’t [00:49:00] want to do either one. I mean, I don’t, I don’t think these two plots are played out. You know, I don’t think they’ll ever be played out.

There’s always new variations. As Brandon Sanderson said, nothing done well is a cliche, but I wanted to try something different. So I created an AI character who, you know, her, her conflict is a little different. She doesn’t want to be a human being, and she doesn’t want to destroy them. She’s just trying to figure out her place in the universe.

You know, what am I, what am I supposed to do? You know, what is it like being this, this, unique and novel thing that, you know, you can, you can count the number of them in existence on the fingers of one hand.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: So, and I felt there was a lot of unexplored territory in there in the sense of. [00:50:00] You know, when we create characters, it’s like, okay, what is it like to be this person? Well, what is it like to be this person who’s not a human being, but is made by human beings to act like them? You know, we spend, you know, decades of all sorts of obstru philosophy, wondering there is or isn’t a creator God, then what we should or shouldn’t do about that. And the, the position that the AI is in is a very different one because, you know, she’s standing right there

Don Bishop: Yeah,

Devon Eriksen: like you can have a conversation with her

Don Bishop: well.

Devon Eriksen: not always a very nice person.

Don Bishop: It, and I would say it’s not, not just the, um, the very [00:51:00] obvious presence of the, the creator human,

but the, the fact that the, the AI character is living in the creator’s world,

Devon Eriksen: yes,

Don Bishop: um, whereas

the, the, the prevalent thought in society today is that if there is a God, he’s up in heaven

and doesn’t like we’re living on this earth,

not in his heaven.

Devon Eriksen: Yes, yes, The creator’s environment is designed around the creator, not the created in particular.

And that’s, that leads to all sorts of very interesting existential questions for an AI character, you know, especially one as, as I wrote her, I. Where you, you sort of get artificial general intelligence by kind of, you know, [00:52:00] cribbing off evolutions notes and

copying human memories.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: you’ve got an artificial intelligence that never actually was a human, but it remembers being

one.

Don Bishop: Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: So there’s a conflict between your memories and what you know to be true.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah. That’s intriguing.

Devon Eriksen: Yeah, I just, I threw in a lot of just little sort of what ifs

Don Bishop: So,

um.

Devon Eriksen: you know, you just kind of shake ’em in a bag and eventually a story comes out.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Um, I, I feel like we’re probably winding down, but I do want to ask if you can give us a, a, a quick, um, what’s the word? Um, not summary, but um, starts with an SS[00:53:00]

Devon Eriksen: Synopsis.

Don Bishop: synopsis. Can, can you give us a synopsis of theft of fire?

Devon Eriksen: Ah, well, the whole Orbital Space series, uh, starts very small and gets very large. It starts with a petty criminal being blackmailed, and it ends up in the technological singularity and the fate of the galaxy So starts out with this, this guy, he is kind of broke. He’s turned to petty crime to make the payments on his spacecraft.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: And somebody comes along and turns his life upside down, he blackmails him and she’s, she’s got plans for what she needs him to help her do and he doesn’t want to he’s got plans of his own. And as it turns out, they, they both end up finding out that a plan is a list of things that don’t happen.

Don Bishop: A list of things that, what?

That

Devon Eriksen: A list of things that don’t [00:54:00] happen. you know,

no plans survives, contact with the enemy. So it’s, it’s, and it starts out as this little adventure story said in this future society that’s colonized the solar system, you know, it, a lot of beta readers said it reminded of them, them of the expanse or the martian,

and then the stakes kind of escalate from there because what, what this mysterious blackmailer is trying to do actually ends up being pretty important. So he has to figure out how he feels about that. It’s very driven by a lot of the conflicts and how these characters eventually resolve their differences.

Don Bishop: Okay. Well, yeah, it sounds really interesting. And, um, I guess for, for my sense, can you tell me the word count? Just like a sense of how [00:55:00] long it is,

Devon Eriksen: Well,

a hundred,

Don Bishop: count for our

Devon Eriksen: 150,000 words,

which in hardback ends up being the new version is 4 99, uh, somewhere around,

Don Bishop: Three, four oh oh

Devon Eriksen: uh, 450

pages or so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it’s a, it’s, it’s a pretty long read, which from the perspective of some people is a good thing. I mean, I’m, I’m not targeting people who, who don’t like to read.

Don Bishop: Well, and in the days

of, uh, in the days of Audible, people look for long books

specifically, and that’s how I first got into Sanderson. Uh, I had a long commute, so I had

Audible and I

didn’t want to run out of a 10 hour book and then have another month

before I could listen to Audible again.

Devon Eriksen: Yeah. I’m not quite up to writing Sanderson length stuff yet, but, uh, I, [00:56:00] I don’t cut things to the bone.

I cut them as much as they need to be cut and no more. It should be t it shouldn’t be thread bear.

Don Bishop: Uh, they say that, um, you know, there’s, there’s advice and I would say it’s not bad advice. That, um, if something isn’t serving to push your, your, your plot forward,

then you should cut it. But then you have to ask, what does that mean? Like, you’re not gonna have all action in all, every scene

throughout the entire book.

You have to have character development.

Devon Eriksen: yeah.

Well, I would.

Don Bishop: what kind of person this character is, and, and he’s gotta go and do something that has nothing to do with the plot, but you need to get to know him so you understand

his actions in the

Devon Eriksen: I would replace, push the plot with spark joy. If it does not spark joy in the reader, throw it away. [00:57:00] You

know, it’s, it’s that simple, you know, it, it’s, every, every word is there so that someone can enjoy reading it. So, you know, when you write your first manuscript, you know, you end up using a little bit of verbiage and you come up with some ideas that maybe, you know, you thought they were going somewhere at the time and, and they didn’t quite work with the rest of the stuff.

So you, you cut that out. But when you’re wielding that knife, you always have this idea that I’m going to cut something out when it doesn’t help the story be a better story that they, that people can enjoy.

If it’s enjoyable, then leave it in.

Don Bishop: It’s like Tom

Devon Eriksen: for the readers to like,

Don Bishop: Tom Bombadil was cut from the movies. [00:58:00] From Peter Jackson’s Lord

the Rings trilogy, and the story was there and it worked

just fine. Um, and it’s been a long time since I read

the Fellowship of the Ring, so I, I don’t remember a lot,

uh, Tom Bombadil. But going off of what other people say, it’s a good addition to the story.

It’s, it, it belongs in that world and it’s part of the Hobbits experience on their way to Dale.

Devon Eriksen: Well, it’s, it’s all about whether the readers enjoy it or not.

You know, it’s, and I don’t necessarily think the Tolkien. Has the, uh, has the deciding opinion there. You know, ultimately stories are bar by writers, but they’re for

readers and, you know, maybe Tolkien who lived in a very different era and was a very different sort of person than a lot of his readers. [00:59:00] You know, maybe he had some ideas about his mythology that he wanted to throw in there, where the readers were more interested in a more tightly focused story. So, you know, personally, if I have been, if I had been his developmental editor, I would have advised him to cut it. But there are some people who love it.

So,

you know, maybe, maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. We all

enjoy different things about a story.

Don Bishop: I like that you point out that, um, it’s not really, even the author’s

Devon Eriksen: Yeah,

Don Bishop: say whether it it necessarily has value there or

not. I mean, it’s, it’s his say, it was his

say, whether was there or not.

Devon Eriksen: yeah. Oh, yeah.

Don Bishop: coming from a, a,

musician standpoint. When I was in college and, you know, going to my, one of my first music [01:00:00] education classes, and they’re like, what is music?

And I’m like, well, everyone knows what music is, right? But

you think about It

and as you think about it and, and try to form

a definition that, that matches everything that you yourself

consider to be music.

And you, you can, you really try to be frank and honest with your definition that you find the definition expanding.

And it, it comes down to, um, sound, which occurs in time, often utilizing pitch and timur as, uh, as aspects

Devon Eriksen: Yeah. But you know,

you can fiddle around with these definitions

Don Bishop: But then like, is Bird song music is the sound

of a, a babbling brook music?

Devon Eriksen: yeah. Well, you

know, that’s, that’s like asking whether submarines can swim,[01:01:00]

Don Bishop: Yeah. So like is, is bird

song music

Devon Eriksen: it’s just how

Don Bishop: who is singing? Maybe not. Maybe the bird’s just saying, Hey, I’m hungry. You wanna go get some seeds over there? Maybe it’s not music to them,

but I listen to it and it makes me feel happy.

It’s music to me.

Devon Eriksen: yeah. You’re gonna, you’re going to treat it like that. And, you know, ultimately these, these stories, the goal is how the reader is going to treat them and enjoy them as an author. You are the God of your universe. You can do anything you want, but the readers are guests in your universe and you’re not the God of them.

Don Bishop: Mm-Hmm.

Devon Eriksen: You can’t force them to enjoy something. You have to have an idea of what they already enjoy and and cater to that.

Don Bishop: Yeah.

Devon Eriksen: So, you know the question of, of something like Bombadil where some people say, oh, you know, you should have left that [01:02:00] in because the author put it in, or No, you should cut it because you know, people don’t really enjoy it and it disrupts the flow of the story. You know, both of those are valid opinions, but ultimately the criteria that we judge stories by is, is whether or not we had a good time reading it.

Don Bishop: Yeah,

Devon Eriksen: And if you don’t have a good time reading it, then what’s the point?

Don Bishop: yeah. All right. Well, um, I think we’ll, we’ll cut it off for there for today. Um. If you could stick around for a minute after

you close out. Uh, now I would like to, oh, where can listeners find you on the web? I, I mentioned that early on. Where can they find you?

Devon Eriksen: Ah, I have a website, deon erickson.com. That’s D-E-V-O-N-E-R-I-K-S-E-N, and that includes a preview of the first [01:03:00] three chapters of theft of fire, links to social media and various pieces of short writing. Um, Amazon page where they can pre-order the book if so inclined. And actually when this goes out, it should be live for actual orders, if you like, dead trees. Um, so yeah, the, the website is definitely the hub to find all the other different places that I can be read on the web.

Don Bishop: Okay. And looking at your website, uh, it looks like you will be at Chatter Con

in January.

Devon Eriksen: yes, yes.

Don Bishop: Confinement, Lebanon

Devon Eriksen: Aha. I,

I, yes, I think so. Uh, yes. I, I, I make

a number of con appearances

and I’m afraid I can’t keep those all straight in my

Don Bishop: So, so for the

Devon Eriksen: the if it’s on the schedule, I’ll be

Don Bishop: Yep. It’s on, uh, it’s on your page under

events.

Devon Eriksen: Yep.

Don Bishop: So, and yeah, these are not terribly far. Uh, ’cause you’re, you’re in Georgia or [01:04:00] Alabama?

Devon Eriksen: I am in Tennessee,

Don Bishop: Tennessee. Okay.

Devon Eriksen: I sort of, I sort

of travel all

Don Bishop: morning’s guest was in, was in Georgia. So

Tennessee, I’m in Virginia,

so, um, I don’t know, maybe I’ll see you at, uh, Chattan in January.

Devon Eriksen: well, I

certainly hope so.

Don Bishop: are you going to 20 books?

Devon Eriksen: I’m sorry,

Don Bishop: Are, uh, are you going to 20 books? Vegas you’re not, not

familiar with?

Devon Eriksen: actually don’t know. I have to confess that

I’m not 100% in charge of my own schedule

Don Bishop: Okay. Um, if you’re not aware, so

it’s, it’s a writer’s conference. It’s not, it’s not a Comic-Con, it’s not really for the, the readers. There is a,

Devon Eriksen: Okay. Well,

I will,

Don Bishop: event on the last

Devon Eriksen: have my staff check it out.

Don Bishop: It’s very soon.

Devon Eriksen: That sounds

very ous.

Don Bishop: week after next. So, um, yeah, there’s a, there’s a Facebook group called 20 Books to 50 K.

Um, [01:05:00] and that’s, the name comes from the notion that you’re probably not gonna make a living off of one published book. You know, uh, one of the founders had looked at his, his Kindle royalties one day and it was

$7. And he is like, well,

he did some math, and he is like, if I had 20 of these, I’d be making 50,000 a year.

So, um, but that conference, they, they have a conference every year. Actually, this year is the last . 20 books conference. Uh, they are handing the reins over, uh, just ’cause they have some people retiring from the, from managing the conference.

Devon Eriksen: Mm-Hmm.

Don Bishop: Uh, so there will be a new conference built, uh, similar, very similar and, and all, like, all the vendors are being handed over, um, for next year.

But yeah, 20 books to 50 K is the Facebook group where you could look

into it if you

Devon Eriksen: I will, I will,

have my my people have a look at it

Don Bishop: conferences in Vegas, November 6th through 10th.

Devon Eriksen: Uh,

yes,

Don Bishop: [01:06:00] So anyway, so maybe I won’t see you there, but maybe I’ll see you at the

Chatan,

Devon Eriksen: Uhhuh.

Yeah. Or if you go to Liberty Con, that’s another good one.

Don Bishop: Liberty Con.

Devon Eriksen: Tennessee in this, right? Yes. Tickets

sell out very rapidly, so if you want to go,

Don Bishop: Utah in June.

Devon Eriksen: uh, yes.

Don Bishop: Okay. All right. Um, so. For our listeners and now like I promise, we, we really are closing out. Um, don’t forget our fan tasty contest. Uh, so, you know, that came from a slip of the tongue and we ran with it. Uh, fan Tasty. So take a picture of food that you cooked in your kitchen or that you grew in your garden and send it to, uh, send it to us via email or via social media.

Um, you can send it to Fantasty at Thorn link or you can find me on social media at Grand Hill Cron on, uh, on uh, Instagram, or you can tweet it [01:07:00] at me. Um, my name is Tss Riman or Don Bishop writes as ts riman on Twitter and there will be a $35 gift certificate to the restaurant or, or retailer of your choice.

That we will award in December. We’ll close the contest on at the end of November. Uh, so yeah, enter our Fantasty contest and we will see you next time on the Grendhill Chronicles podcast.

In today’s episode, I discuss and explore the LitRPG genre with author Matthew Kent.

LitRPG is short for literary Role-Playing Game, and is a genre that incorporates game aspects in story form. Please enjoy the discussion! You can check out Matthew Kent’s books at:

https://peregrineepress.wordpress.com/ https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B01N26PQ3H

===========================
CONTEST! -Don’t forget “fantasty” – it’s still open, since we haven’t had a chance to really push it. I’ll close it 30 November 2023, and announce a winner in December. $35 gift certificate to the restaurant or retailer of your choice. (I previously said $30, but I couldn’t remember while I was recording if it was $30 or $35, so there you go.) Enter by: send picture and “#fantasty” to fantasty@thorn.link, or – @grendhillchron on social media. Or on Facebook at profile: https://www.facebook.com/t.s.pedramon
===========================

A full auto-generated transcript follows below:

Don Bishop: [00:00:00]

All right. Well, um, if you’re ready, I think we can. Jump in. So welcome to the grand hill Chronicles podcast. Today is October 27th, 2023. As we record this. And today I would like to welcome our guest author, Matthew Kent. Uh, now. Should I call you Mr. Ken, should I call you Matthew?

Matthew Kent: Matthew is fine. When I hear Mr. Ken, I think of My father.

Don Bishop: Okay. I reminds me

Matthew Kent: most of. us do.

Don Bishop: reminds me of crash on a. Finding Nemo.

But, uh, okay. So. Uh, Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Um, your background. And if you want, if you’d like, like tell us what you studied or. I

Matthew Kent: Oh, I’ve studied quite a bit. Um, I went to college. Uh, with a, for a bachelor’s in fine arts with a minor in education.

Don Bishop: So

Matthew Kent: for a few years, [00:01:00] I was an art teacher. But I put myself through school as a real estate appraiser, which is what I currently do. I live northwest of Atlanta. With my family. I have three kids. My daughters, are going to turn five on Halloween. And then my son he’s six and he’ll be seven. in February. So

Don Bishop: so these, these daughters are the twins alluded to in your, your author page, your Amazon author page.

Matthew Kent: yes, Uh, they were born. at 28 weeks On Halloween.

Um, I swear to God, I think that, uh, they were going look. You’re saying we can’t be born on Christmas, Halloween. will do. So they obviously wanted a holiday.

Um, was very interesting. uh, they were in the NICU for four months. Um, One of my daughters is named Victoria, which is [00:02:00] going to be. The name, Victoria is a character in a book. that I’m been working on for the past few years. I just haven’t gotten it right, So I haven’t really released it. Uh, for general distribution. So still working on it. But we wound up using, uh, Victoria as one of the names for our daughters.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Cool. Um, Yeah, we, uh, we have three kids ourselves. Uh, my wife and I, and. Our oldest. Um, Now I’m trying to remember. We’ve w my. My writing and preparing to publish has some commonalities with. With our kids’ names as well. Um, Where we have, one of our kids is, is rose, you know, and, and. My website is thorne.link. Uh, and it’s it’s from that common ground. So, [00:03:00] but you said you, you were an art teacher.

Matthew Kent: Mm hmm.

Don Bishop: Um, so do you paint, do you illustrate.

Matthew Kent: I paint. Uh, I do watercolors oils and a little bit of acrylic. Uh, because I was an art teacher. I was a… Got a very general, and broad background in the arts. I’ve done sculpture photography. Currently, what I’m doing is a little bit of woodworking. Uh, doing Epoxy river. charcuterie boards, and I’m eventually going to make an Epoxy river table. Or desk for

Don Bishop: me. Yeah. I, I like the way those things look like to watch the videos, people making them.

Matthew Kent: Fantastic. I’ve got, uh, the wood that I’m going to use eventually. It’s just I’m trying to get the skill so that I can do it

Don Bishop: well.

Matthew Kent: Um, it comes from being an artist. Artists don’t. Generally like to waste materials because they don’t know it’s going to work out

Don Bishop: with. Yeah. You probably have, um, Some crowded area of your house. [00:04:00] I hold on to stuff too.

Matthew Kent: Yes. We’ve actually uh, tried to uh, get rid of stuff, but art supplies is one thing that you can never really force yourself to get. rid of because You’re always

Don Bishop: going in.

Matthew Kent: I’m going to use

Don Bishop: that?

Matthew Kent: And you probably will. 10. 15 years down the road, but you’re going to use it.

Don Bishop: My, my wife is standing over there right now. And she’s, she’s chuckling. Like, yep. Yep. We know, we know how that goes.

Matthew Kent: And it’s also one of the reasons right now, my kids are one of the reasons I don’t do a lot of art. because I like to leave my supplies out so that when I’m inspired or ready to go work, I can go work.

Don Bishop: But.

Matthew Kent: Art supplies and kids don’t really mix well, it’s kind of like oil paints and cats.

Don Bishop: Well, it’s, it’s more like art supplies and kids and the carpet don’t mix. Well,

Matthew Kent: That’s true too.

Don Bishop: Yeah. We actually, so in our, um, And our [00:05:00] house, we have a craft room. I in our, in our old house we had. The, the main area of the room. Covered. Because we had small kids and they’d get in there and they’d help themselves to things that they weren’t supposed to. And.

Matthew Kent: Yeah,

Don Bishop: the carpet from the spills.

Matthew Kent: Have a storage cabinet that we try and keep locked.

Not as always successful as we would like to be.

Don Bishop: But

Matthew Kent: I told my wife long ago. No glitter.

Don Bishop: No

Matthew Kent: glitter.

Don Bishop: So, um, You said you, you got a degree in, in what was it? And

Matthew Kent: Uh, fine arts,

Don Bishop: fine arts. Okay.

Matthew Kent: With a minor in education.

Don Bishop: Okay. Yeah. Aye. Majored in music, education myself.

Matthew Kent: Okay.

Don Bishop: Yeah,

Matthew Kent: I taught for four years. Um, I love the teaching. but I wasn’t really OCD enough [00:06:00] to make a great teacher.

Don Bishop: Um,

yeah. Like yeah. Cause you have to be really prepared every day and.

Matthew Kent: Everything has to have its place and it has to go right back there.

Don Bishop: And.

Matthew Kent: Most artists. I know aren’t OCD enough.

Don Bishop: Yeah. And it’s like, it’s it’s good enough. It’s. It’s over there. I can get it. When I need it.

Matthew Kent: I know where it is.

Don Bishop: Yeah.

Yeah. Um, So now you’re here. Um, because this, this podcast has to do with. With writing. So what, tell us about what you write. Um,

Matthew Kent: the genre I write in generally is called game lit.

Don Bishop: Uh,

Matthew Kent: and more specifically I write in what’s called lit RPG, which is a sub genre. And it’s with game worlds and game, world mechanics that you’re talking about. With characters. [00:07:00]

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: the first series I’ve got out right now. Is, uh, Arabella online. And the first book is the apprentice of Arabella and the main character. Uh, it’s kind of in the future a little bit dystopian. He’s trying to figure out how he can proceed in his life. After having everything he’s worked for taken away from him. And he’s Finds a way to proceed. and he starts playing a game where he thinks he can make money. To get kind of out and away from everything.

Don Bishop: Hmm.

Matthew Kent: Um, and as he’s progressing in the game, he figures out that he can use what skills he has as an artist. And to make money and make items that will sell. But in doing so he also runs afoul of, an AI. that’s, that’s hunting him down. The second book [00:08:00] is he figures out that he has inadvertently gotten players caught. By the AI and they’re trapped, and he has to go and try and save them.

Don Bishop: So this is, um, is this air Bella? You’re talking about. The apprentice. So a variable, the prisoner Verbella.

Matthew Kent: Mm hmm.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Matthew Kent: And then I’ve got a third one that I’m working on originally. I had it nearly finished and then I lost my hard drive.

Don Bishop: Oh,

Matthew Kent: can be a little bit Devastating. But So, I’m actually reworking the story. I’ve got a couple of things that occurred to me that I think will be really good. to Include.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: The second part of the story ends as they go back in time. And this is where you really start to realize why the main character is hated by

Don Bishop: the AI

Matthew Kent: the AI and why it’s been hunting him down.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Matthew Kent: Um, So we’ve got them back in time, but they’re electronically [00:09:00] inside a computer. That’s being run by the government.

Don Bishop: Hmm. So.

Matthew Kent: From there it’s going to proceed more into the future and tell a little bit more of the story going on. Um, I’m also working on another story right now called, uh, the. The sources of San Antonio.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: I usually tend to start my stories with the names. And they can be very evocative. of the feeling. So she starts out. And it’s her birthday, her 16th birthday. She was born on a leap year. So on her birthday at 16. She gets a message that she’s being introduced into the system. And she has no idea what’s going on. So she comes to find out that she is descended from people who have been fighting for the system.

Don Bishop: To

Matthew Kent: fight monsters that are killing humans across the globe. [00:10:00] And It’s a semi secret thing. that The government knows about. But they don’t really acknowledge so much. And it’s in the background. And she’s going, why me and she comes to find out that she was an adopted embryo. Now do you know what that is?

Don Bishop: Um, like growing fruit, grown in a test tube and then later placed in a home. No.

Matthew Kent: Um, and they actually have an adopted embryo program for embryos of people that were taking fertility treatments. that have donated them to couples. that can’t have children on their own.

Don Bishop: Oh, okay.

Matthew Kent: So that kind of struck me because my wife and I with our kids. We had to do in vitro fertilization. And there’s one embryo sitting out there and we’re both going. What do we do? And it’s kind of, well,

Don Bishop: is it

Matthew Kent: alive? Is it not alive? You know, We could donate to science or we can let somebody [00:11:00] adopt the embryo.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Matthew Kent: And we’re still struggling with that

Don Bishop: thought. Yeah. Nope. That’s interesting. I, I. Wasn’t aware of that people did that night. I, I did know that, um, Fertility clinics would often, uh, They’ll often. You know, cause you’re dealing with such tiny cells, you know, and. So since it’s really difficult to, to produce just one. Let’s do like a batch and.

Matthew Kent: They do.

Don Bishop: and no. But when I heard about this, this was like way back in the nineties. And so like, they would, they would do batches of perhaps thousands.

Matthew Kent: Well, no. Not thousands but usually about, they will try and start with about. 10 to 20. And some of the, uh, embryos are more viable than others. We started out with a batch of eight, uh, eggs. And we wound up with three viable embryos. [00:12:00] Um, we intended to have two children. We started out with our son and we were both going, okay. This is working out pretty well. Then we decided to go for one more. And, uh, the embryo split. So we had identical twins.

Don Bishop: Oh, Okay.

Matthew Kent: And my wife. Uh, the day of the first ultrasound, the ultrasound tech, just very casually waves, her wand, and she goes, okay. Are you ready to find out about babies? And my wife goes, wait, what? No, no, no, no, no. There’s one. She goes, no, there’s two They split. And my wife looks at me and I look at her and. We’re going.

Don Bishop: Oh,

Matthew Kent: no. So, yeah, surprise. And uh, everybody has asked, well, you’ve got one more are you going to have another, And I’m like going no, No, no, no, no. The first one. We had one. The second we had two. Third would not be our charm. Uh, [00:13:00]

You know, but. We’re older parents. Uh, three is more than enough right now.

Don Bishop: Twins can be fun though.

Matthew Kent: It is, it is. Uh, we’re very lucky. We have a twins group in the area. So my wife is able to talk to people that also have twins or triplets. Sometimes quadruplets.

Um, but it’s

Don Bishop: out there. There’s. Somewhere out there in the internet, there is a video of. I think it’s quintuplets. And they’re sitting around a table that was apparently special made for them because they’re their babies. And so this table was made to. To have them come and, and eat at the same time at the same table. But they’re laughing. And. There they, you know, one laughs and the others laugh. And then. There’s all kinds of. Uh, the laughing balances [00:14:00] around the table and it’s, it’s really cute. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve, we’ve had some fun thinking about twins, but we haven’t, we don’t have any twins of our own. Um,

Matthew Kent: Most people do. And then they’re like, going. oh, that would be great. That would be cute. And it’s like, yeah, it is up until about 3 a. m. when they’re both wanting to be fed.

Don Bishop: Uh, huh. Well, that’s, I mean, that, that is arguably better than one of them wanting to be fed. And then as soon as that twin has done, the other one wants to be fed because then.

Matthew Kent: Well, that’s actually how it usually worked out with us. because we were in the NICU for so long, they came home and they were on schedules And their schedules were slightly offset, which made it a little bit better, but there would be times they both want to be fed at the same time.

Don Bishop: Okay. But

Matthew Kent: you know, that’s why it takes two to be parents.

Don Bishop: Yeah.

Matthew Kent: I can’t imagine trying to be just one parent taking care of twins.

Don Bishop: what is your day job?

Matthew Kent: I’m a real estate appraiser. Um, I’ve been an [00:15:00] appraiser since 94 and held my license that long. I was a teacher for four years during the middle of that. And I still appraised a little bit while I was teaching.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: So I’ve got a little bit of experience with that as a residential appraiser in the Metro Atlanta area.

Don Bishop: Okay. And, um, Are you. And we can, we can skip over this if you want, but are you, are you generating good income from your books so far? Uh, is that

Matthew Kent: Not as much as I would like. Uh, the past few months have picked up quite a bit. Uh, part of it is I only have a few books out, uh, as you can tell from my uh, page. I’m a little bit eclectic as far as what I write. Um, I had a couple friends that they wanted to, um, They were asking me for different recipes that I used because they liked them. So I’m like, okay, well, why don’t I just put out a recipe book for busy dads of things that are really [00:16:00] quick and easy that we can do? Cause a lot of times moms are like, You’re a guy you can’t cook. It’s like anybody can cook. Just do we do it well. Uh,

Don Bishop: yes. It’s just like on a movie Ratatouille.

Matthew Kent: Yeah,

Don Bishop: anyone can cook. Not anyone can be great necessarily, but.

Matthew Kent: Well, it’s like anybody can write, but not everybody should.

Don Bishop: Um, But

Matthew Kent: I’ve got that, uh, I’m into 3d printing, as you can see, I did a book about that several years ago when it was just starting out.

Don Bishop: I actually, I have a 3d printer. Behind me I’ll show the. The view. Oh, Nope. Nope. I can’t bring it into. That’s all right. It’s it’s over there.

Matthew Kent: Yeah. And what’s. Funny is that, uh, I got into it about 2010 ish, So 13 years ago, And I talked about it to my brothers and I told ’em how great it was and how cool it [00:17:00] was. And they go. Look.

Don Bishop: 3d

Matthew Kent: printing is a fad.

Don Bishop: There’s

Matthew Kent: not gonna go anywhere nobody’s gonna be interested now. They both have three D

Don Bishop: printers. Well, and I have. These, these instruments I have on the wall. There’s a clarinet and there’s a. That’s an iwi. It’s an electronic wind instrument. Um, but both of those are mounted to the wall with mounts that I. I drafted in 3d printed. Okay.

Matthew Kent: Well, you know,

Don Bishop: practical.

Matthew Kent: It’s practical. That’s one of the practical aspects of it. But there’s so much more that can be done. Uh, I’ve seen people making guitar bases with it. I’ve seen people making instruments with it. It’s just what you’re willing to try. And what you’re willing to do it’s just an absolutely amazing technology.

Don Bishop: I have, um, I have printed a few clarinet parts. Um, really just the second piece of the clarinet, the barrel. [00:18:00] Um,

Um,

it doesn’t look anything special in it’s. It’s not, but. It’s just as good as the regular barrel. Yeah. Um, and yeah, if I’ve not with this one, but I have. I’ve played in concerts with a 3d printed barrel.

Yeah.

Matthew Kent: It’s a fascinating technology. that Can change things tremendously. Um, Well, one of the things I’ve recently heard. Is that a lot of newer HUD homes. Are being sold. With 3d printers so that they can print. Electrical white plates. And some of the things in the house that might get broken, they’re able to actually make their own replacement parts right there.

Don Bishop: Hmm.

Okay. Well, um,

As interesting as this. Is, I want to get into, uh, the, the [00:19:00] topic that we had slated, like, and that is, um, Lit RPG. As a genre or as a sub genre. Of, um, okay. Well, I guess it’s, it’s usually considered a sub genre of fantasy, but it sounds like you’re talking a future dystopia. That would probably be more Saifai.

Matthew Kent: Well, it can be a lot of different things. Uh, Gameland is the overall, um, Top uh, overall genre. But it has sub genres. There’s , Isekai, which is uh, where

Don Bishop: of the

Matthew Kent: dies and is Transported to a new world. There’s portal. Where somebody goes through a portal to another world or comes from. a portal into this world. there’s uh, game lit. There’s cultivation.

Don Bishop: Here’s the

Matthew Kent: harem lit.

Don Bishop: Which. Kind of

Matthew Kent: self explanatory, Uh,

Don Bishop: but

Matthew Kent: it all really got started. Uh, and people think that the, it all got started with ready player one. [00:20:00] it actually predates that. By about 20 years here in the United States. Uh, I think it was Dragons of the Flame. Where players were playing. A role playing game. and They got sucked into the game world.

Don Bishop: Uh, huh.

Matthew Kent: Uh, And then some of them wound up staying in the game world. And it had gaming mechanics.

Don Bishop: Well, I suppose there’s. We could, we can trace it back to Tron, right?

Matthew Kent: While we could, Tron is a very good example of, uh, the lit RPG or the game lit. Because it didn’t really have the statistics, but it did have the gaming aspect to it. Um, main character human gets sucked into the game. And he’s there for a specific reason. Uh, to gather information. Now he doesn’t realize that at the time. But so.

Don Bishop: There is that,

Matthew Kent: um, and it’s really grown from other areas around the world. One of the main places that really [00:21:00] got started was in Russia.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: Very different sensibilities though. Um, I know that you had mentioned that you try and keep the language on your show. Clean.

Don Bishop: Russia.

Matthew Kent: Not so much. Um,

Racism misogynistic, very… Very not good for kids. More adult themed oriented. But it also got started over there and it’s been very, very popular in Russia. And then it spread into Europe and then it spread back. into The United States.

Um, and it’s gotten very big in the United States. One of the big titles right now is dungeon crawler. Carl.

Don Bishop: Carl.

Matthew Kent: Uh, by Matt Deniman, And he is on book six right now. Uh, about to go to book seven. Uh, he just book uh, six, just came out. And it was [00:22:00] competing on the New York times bestseller charts. Um, which is absolutely amazing. Then you’ve got other authors. Um, he Who fights with monsters. by Sherda Loon. A lot of them use, um, pen names. Then, uh, Sean Oswald, is another very good one. Um, Charles Dean, um, his work actually, he uses a lot of things. From Shakespeare. And kind of borrows things from them

Don Bishop: for his own works.

Matthew Kent: Uh, one of his, uh, Uh, my favorite that he has right now.

Don Bishop: Is,

Matthew Kent: um,

Let’s see, it’s uh, death’s favorite warlock and he is on the fourth book right now that he’s working on for that. And. Very interesting character He’s dealing with. A lot of the [00:23:00] aspects of what’s called cultivation.

Don Bishop: Where.

Matthew Kent: If you’ve ever read a cultivation novel or a light novel.

Don Bishop: The.

Matthew Kent: Asian influence is that. Um, might makes right.

Don Bishop: Uh, huh.

Matthew Kent: And so.

Don Bishop: Uh, we lost you there for.

Matthew Kent: you, because

Don Bishop: We lost you for a second. We lost you for a second. I heard you say that, um, the Asian influence there is, might makes right.

Matthew Kent: Right. Might makes right. And that you’re expected. If you’re strong to oppress the weak around you.

Don Bishop: Hmm. Um,

Matthew Kent: You know, he’s writing the tropes that are expected in that he doesn’t necessarily agree with them. I know him as an author. He’s a very good guy. But, uh, it’s a very interesting way of dealing with things. Another very good series that’s actually been completed is the cradle [00:24:00] series.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: Which does deals with cultivation? And the character starts very weak. And grows very, very strong and it deals with his progression. of becoming a stronger character. Which, that’s also one of the parts. under Gamelit, is progression fantasy, where the character is

Don Bishop: Yeah. Progressing. Um, yeah, I was, I was actually going to mention that. I think we should also mention for any listeners who are. And I’m not terribly familiar with lit RPG. Um, I’m just kind of on the outside of it, but. For anybody less familiar than I lit RPG is a literature role-playing game. Uh, we’re role-playing game. Um, That you could either trace that to tabletop like Dungeons and dragons, which I’ve never played. But, um, you can also trace it to the video game console.

Way back [00:25:00] to the first final fantasy and, uh, Probably final fantasy, more so than the legend of Zelda.

Matthew Kent: Well, you can, um, If you really want to get into it, it could go all the way back to the first computers. Uh, like the temple of Apsai was a game that they had for the TRS 80 model 3. And it was actually uh, somewhat text based, But you could only play it. And if your character died. It would reset everything. So you didn’t know what the dungeon was going to be, that your character was playing in.

So…

Don Bishop: I think it’s. Yeah. Wow. I just realized does the text-based games, um, They’re there digital. Choose your own adventure stories, right.

Matthew Kent: That’s right.

Don Bishop: Uh, and, you know, choose your own adventure books. Never really caught on. They [00:26:00] they’ve. They’ve had some. Some spurts and starts. Uh,

Matthew Kent: They have. Um, they were very big when I was a kid in the 1980s.

Don Bishop: Uh, huh.

Matthew Kent: Uh, then they kind of fell by the way. after about five or six years. But, um, yeah, the choose your own adventures. And again, this is kind of what it is. You’re the writer telling about the character, choosing its own adventure. Choosing how it’s going to develop. And the statistics are often used as a way to show how it’s going to progress and how it develops. And. As part of it. Those statistics have an effect on the rest of the story.

Don Bishop: So

Matthew Kent: if somebody gets very, very strong. You have to find a way to show how that strength

Don Bishop: It is

Matthew Kent: affects them in the game and affects everything around them.

Don Bishop: And it’s, you can kind of see. Uh, and how to train [00:27:00] your dragon. There’s there’s one character he’s, he’s kind of geeky. And in the second movie. He sees the giant dragon. Uh, that, uh, that obeys. The bad guy and. He’s he kinda geeks out. He’s like, oh, level. A little five, little six behemoth. And. Kind of speculating on yeah. Like he’s assigning levels to it. Um, which is something that we don’t usually do in the real world, like, oh yeah. I’m a, I’m a level 20 powerlifter. You would you instead say, I, I can, I can lift. Two 50 or three 50, you know, you, you would assign, you’d say that the amount of weight that you can lift. But.

Matthew Kent: You wouldn’t, You wouldn’t go, oh, he’s a level five doctor. He can take care of you. No. It’s like, you don’t have levels to tell somebody how good you are. You know, you just have to kind of show that in the real [00:28:00] world. But in a game you would have the level differentiation. And it would be telling somebody how good at something you were supposed to be.

Don Bishop: Would you, would you, uh, equate. Do you think it’s fair to apply this concept of leveled characters? And say that. Pokemon is that. The Pokemon falls into that category because we see Pokemon evolution.

Matthew Kent: Yeah, Pokemon could fall into that. Uh, kind of, there are actually a series of stories out. Where card decks take part in the story. Um, whether it’s a card that somebody internalizes so they can use that power. Or if it’s a card deck that they use to pull monsters and fight. In fact, the latest Matt Deniman book has that as an aspect of the current game, where they have to collect the cards. And then they have to use the cards in battles.

Don Bishop: So, um, [00:29:00]

Just kind of exploring around the.

To see where the. This genre. Begins and ends. If I were to write, say a progression fan, well, progression is. Not the same thing as lit RPG. And I see a lot of crossover.

Matthew Kent: Yeah, there is a lot of crossover all over the board. Um, The main thing progression is that you have to show that the character is increasing in skill and ability as he’s going through. Now LiveRPG Tends to show more that more. By showing the increasing skills. And breaking it down as numbers. You have hard out RPG. Where it shows all the numbers with the character sheet. And breaks it down. and It shows the level of damage that they’re doing. Where soft, lit RPG.

Don Bishop: Kind of

Matthew Kent: show. Talks more about how they’re [00:30:00] progressing and the build of the character. But it doesn’t necessarily show a character sheet.

Don Bishop: What, um, Are you familiar with the wheel of time? Did you read that? Would you consider the wheel of time to be progression or is it not. I mean.

Matthew Kent: Wheel of time is actually really its own kind of thing. It could be considered progression, I guess. But really, um, it doesn’t take that into account. You do see the characters advance and become more skillful. But it doesn’t really talk about how they’ve progressed or how it affects the characters.

Don Bishop: Okay. Now in, um,

Lit RPG. Where. Will you, your, your. Applying numbers to things. Um, How likely or impossible would it be for a. Uh, if, I mean, you let me back up. [00:31:00] So you’re talking about applying numbers to things. Do you have like a level 10 swordsman who might go up against a level 15 swordsman? And then what are his chances of winning that fight? Like none or maybe.

Matthew Kent: It’s a, maybe there a lot of the stories. deal with what they call the tyranny of rank. That’s where somebody. that’s of a higher rank if they’re fighting somebody lower rank. Is going to be more powerful and more able to hit. But the person that’s of a lower rank is going to be less likely to be able to hit them or harm them as.

much. So it would be possible. And if you think about it as a real world thing,

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: There’s the story in, Japan. of the courtier who was, uh, made tea for, a noble, But because of the position that he held, he was considered noble. He was challenged to fight a samurai. Well, he. [00:32:00] Of course had to go through with the duel And he was given the advice of before the duel to sit down. And do what he normally did to prepare the tea. And it calmed him down. And made it to where he was able to face the swordsman who seeing how calm and ready he was backed off.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: Now in a real world setting a guy who makes tea versus somebody who is very knowledgeable about a sword. He’s gonna die. But seeing him calm and ready. The swordsman backed down thinking, oh my God, I’m about to die.

Um, and, and that can be the same thing as far as lit RPG.

Don Bishop: Is

Matthew Kent: sometimes a person might be low, skilled. But they might or low level, but they might be highly skilled in one thing. So. it Every story is going to be very different and it’s going to be what the [00:33:00] writer wants to tell.

Don Bishop: Now I know that in, um, In tabletop games. In a Dungeons and dragons. They’ll they’ll have somebody. Attempting to do something. And they, they roll a 20 sided die. And. Whatever number that comes up, determines how likely they are to succeed. And some of those I’ve seen, um, I’ve seen memes and posts in social media about. Uh, something ridiculous happening. Uh, somebody like. Somebody like

Matthew Kent: D games and yeah, it depends on the, uh, GM. Um, one of the things that we had in one of our groups was if you rolled a natural 20 on a D20 That you naturally succeed everything. So we had one guy, uh, and he was fighting. We wound up fighting a dragon. And he goes. I attack its head jumping from the [00:34:00] roof on top of them. And dry my sword and the DM’s like, Okay, whatever. Roll a 20 to hit. And the guy had rolled an actual 20 and he’s going son of a

Don Bishop: and.

Matthew Kent: You know, he hit and he wound up getting critical and killing the dragon. and Everybody’s looking at each other. going did that just

Don Bishop: happen?

Matthew Kent: But if you think about it,

Don Bishop: There’s

Matthew Kent: in real life, we call it the golden BB. You know that

Don Bishop: one, never.

Matthew Kent: a million shot that can take down an airplane or a battleship if. it hits just right.

Don Bishop: Uh, huh? Huh?

Matthew Kent: So you’ve got to have that aspect in. You know, the gaming world and in books too.

Don Bishop: There. So

Matthew Kent: there’s just that one chance

Don Bishop: in a million.

Matthew Kent: And sometimes. It happens.

Don Bishop: So in the, um, And in the book, do you. How do you reflect this? Um, this, this roll of the die. Is it just like, like, do you, do you say. [00:35:00] Um, The. The level 15 swordsman, you know, he’d had a. Uh, rough night. Uh, of indigestion and his ankle was sore from. Uh, along March that he had to do the previous day. And so things were against him and. So the level 10, one. Like

Matthew Kent: That very well could be, or he could just be having a bad day or he didn’t clean his sword. Well, and it broke.

Don Bishop: I mean,

Matthew Kent: there’s all kinds of things that you could throw in there. Um,

to Talk about that.

Don Bishop: Okay. So how, how does, um,

Can you go a little bit more into the mechanics of your world, uh, of, um,

Uh, era Bella and how this.

Matthew Kent: Well with Arabella, I looked at some of the online games that I’ve played in the past. [00:36:00] Um, And tried to figure out the mechanics behind them. You know why the strength was the way it was or why the characteristics were the way they were and how that would apply in the gaming world. So for instance, if you are more dexterous, say you. What is that going to do for your character? Well, it’s going to make it to where you can move better. It can make it to where you move faster. Um, how does wisdom and intelligence. affect you.

Don Bishop: Well,

Matthew Kent: As a player you’re not more wise, it doesn’t make you more wiser.

Don Bishop: Your

Matthew Kent: character more wise. It aids, the progression. uh, And the. Um, your mana, how, how it grows and how it replaces itself. So the more, your more wisdom you have the faster, your mana replenishes. The more intelligent you are, the more mana you have. So in that aspect. [00:37:00] That’s not going to change you as a person. it’s going to change how your character interacts with the world. And that’s really what the statistics are, is how you interact with the world. If for instance, you have a luck stat. The higher your luck, the more things are going to either go your way really well.

Don Bishop: Or

Matthew Kent: go against you really badly. So the higher, your luck is the more extremes you’re going to see. in your luck. for instance.

Don Bishop: The

Matthew Kent: thing about the level 10 swordsman versus the level. 15.

Don Bishop: Well,

Matthew Kent: the level 10 swordsman’s got really high luck. So they’re fighting and the level 15 slips on a nut that just fell from a tree. And loses his footing.

Don Bishop: So, you know, This is the level 10 score has been Matt coffin. From the Wheeler is the level 10 swordsmen math, Matt Coffman coffin from the wheel of time.

Matthew Kent: Matt From Cawthon, But, uh, Just. It is those things of how [00:38:00] those statistics affect the game world around the character. And that’s how a lot of the lit RPG authors use those. Um, and you try and explain it. Uh, as you go through how it affects things, you don’t want to give a big dump of everything at the beginning of the book. Because that’s really boring. You want to tell it as part of the story. And engage the reader as they’re going, Okay. That makes sense. And just give them a piece at a time so that they’re building up an understanding of what’s going on around them. And around the character in the book.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah. Show don’t tell.

Matthew Kent: Show don’t tell. And that’s, a, that’s really a hard thing to do a lot of the time.

Don Bishop: Yeah,

Matthew Kent: Uh, right now for the book, uh, sources of San Antonio. I am redoing it, uh, her introduction into the world and she’s getting a lot of information. On what’s going on and how she got where she is. [00:39:00] So that’s one of the aspects that you have to be very careful of what you show. But it’s being told to her, but it’s still in a way of showing and I don’t want to make it too long. but I don’t want to make it too short so that the play, Uh, that the. reader can understand what’s going on and how this is going to affect the character.

Don Bishop: Okay. Well, this is all really. Fascinating. And. If I had more time to pick up a book. Uh, I I’d have to.

Yeah, I’d have to pick up some of these. Lynn RPG and progression fantasies.

Matthew Kent: Well, one of the nice things is audiobooks. I do a lot of driving for my job, so I’m able to listen to them as I’m driving.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: It helps. Uh, but, uh, some of them are really good. Uh, right now I recommend, as I said, dungeon crawler, Carl.

Don Bishop: Uh, [00:40:00] I

Matthew Kent: Uh, I also recommend he who fights with monsters. And defier of the defiance of the fall are really good.

Don Bishop: Okay. And where, where can we find you on the web for our listeners?

Matthew Kent: Uh, I, uh, my, you can find me on at Peregrine ePress. Um, there’s a link I’ve provided you. if you’re looking for me on Facebook, you can find me as Matthew Kent. Actually there’s a lot of us on there. But, uh, you can also find me in a lot of the, uh, lit RPG forums.

Don Bishop: So is that a paragraph E press.com? Just all one word. No hyphen.

Matthew Kent: All one word. No hyphens.

Don Bishop: Okay. And, um, I was going to say something else. What was it? It was. Oh, I was thinking about, um, I think you’re in a good spot right now. Like you have what? Three books out.

Matthew Kent: I have three books out in the, uh, [00:41:00] Pernissa, Uh, Arabella online series.

Don Bishop: So you have the apprentice. The Verbella the prisoner Vera, Bella, and the Aribel Chronicles, which has two stories in it.

What’s the relationship of air Bella Chronicles. With the series at large,

Matthew Kent: you’re introduced to in the first book and the second book.

Don Bishop: Say it again.

Matthew Kent: They were two stories that I really just felt I needed to talk, tell about the two characters so that you could understand their motivations a little bit. a

Don Bishop: Okay.

Matthew Kent: Little bit graphic, much more graphic than the other book. Or other books. But, uh, they are fun stories.

Don Bishop: Okay. Um, did you ever read the Animorphs series?

Matthew Kent: I did not.

Don Bishop: Okay.

Matthew Kent: That was actually a little after my time.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Yeah, I, I read them. Um, as far as I know, I read them all. Um, including the one. Alternate morphs. Which was a choose your own [00:42:00] adventure. Book. Okay. But, um, yeah, so the, the Animorphs follows this group of friends. Um, there’s an alien who, who lands while they’re cutting through an old construction site at the say Indian lands. He’s injured. He’s dying. He’s like your world is in danger. Come here. I’m going to give you this power and they’ll put their hands on this. Cube. And he gives them the power to morph into any kind of animal that they can touch for a moment. So they, they touch an animal and absorb its DNA. Um, So this gives them. The ability to do a. Um, espionage, right. As, as there’s. An alien invasion going on. By these alien slugs called year. Cause the crawl into people’s brains and control their bodies. Um, so it’s a, it’s a silent and invisible invasion going on. Uh, but the, the Animorphs, [00:43:00] this group of. Of teenage friends. Um, They spy on the bad guys. They occasionally, for other plans. Like that’s, that’s the. The gist of the series. And it’s a long series. I think there were 54 books in the main series. Wow. Short books though. Like. I’d sit down and read a book in a couple of hours.

Matthew Kent: Well for kids and teenagers, that’s kind of to be expected.

Don Bishop: Yeah. Um,

Matthew Kent: Yeah. LitRPG can be very long. Some of them can be very, very long. Uh, one of the series that I’ve been enjoying is called, um,

Don Bishop: Well, this one bring in.

Matthew Kent: And the first Audio book is 54 hours. I believe.

Don Bishop: Like the Stormlight archives.

Matthew Kent: Yeah.

Don Bishop: But, um, I was going to say about Animorphs that there’s. This [00:44:00] story that follows this main group of friends, but there’s a couple of offshoots side series. Or, or one-offs like, there’s a book called the Dear Chronicles not tells the background of. An alien race that the bad guys already conquered. Um, there’s the elements Chronicles that tells the backstory of one. Very powerful character that sits in the background. And theirs. Um, Mega morphs. Which are.

Kind of side stories, but it still follows them anyway. So yeah, they’re. There’s these, these backstories and side stories. So I get what you’re saying with the, the Chronicles of our Abella. Um, and getting back to that, like with, with three books out. Um, So. Week after next, I’m going to the conference for. 20 books. Um, are you familiar with that?

Matthew Kent: I am 20 books for 50k. I am familiar with it. [00:45:00] Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to make it this year. Um, but it’s very popular. In fact, I believe there’s going to be a contingent there from the lit RPG groups.

Don Bishop: Yeah. And, and, um, So I’m, I’m going, I went last year. I’m going this year. I, I don’t have any books published. I have one manuscript that I finished a week and a half ago. Um, the F that’s the first draft though, you And these anyway, so I’m, I’m, I’m trying to say that. Uh, One thing that they say. For, for all three was trying to build a following and, and, and readership. Is they, they suggest you get. You publish a series. So people get to know what to expect. And if people like your first book, there’s a much better chance to like your second book. Uh, so you don’t, you don’t write a bunch of one-offs. Because somebody likes, likes your story and then it’s, it’s done. You know, so you write a series. So [00:46:00] they read that first one. They like it. They’re going to look for the second one. They find it. Uh, they’re going to look for another one. Um, So they say. They say. That. You write a series and then once you have three books out in that series, Then. Start advertising the first.

Matthew Kent: Then I’ve heard that too. Um, what I’m wanting to do right now is finish my third book in the overall

Don Bishop: in the main.

Matthew Kent: In the main series. And then I’ll start advertising it more. one of the things for LitRPG is that a lot of the readers. don’t want to start reading a series unless it’s already finished. It’s very counterintuitive because most authors aren’t going to finish a series. If it’s not producing any money.

Don Bishop: Uh,

Matthew Kent: but the lit RPG readers are very voracious. Most of the ones that I know read on [00:47:00] average 10 to 15 books a month.

Don Bishop: Um,

Matthew Kent: so a lot of the authors are producing. Um,

Don Bishop: One

Matthew Kent: two a month. Uh, there’s one writer. I know. his 150,

Don Bishop: average output is

Matthew Kent: 000 words. A. month.

Don Bishop: Wow.

Matthew Kent: I know, right.

Don Bishop: That’s like I had a hard time. Producing a manuscript. Um, trying to keep a word count. You know, what I, what I was doing. I didn’t, I didn’t set a goal to finish. The manuscript by such and such date. Um, I was following a plan to produce 2000 words per day, but I, I interpreted that on a. On a weekly basis. So I. You know, I’m not going to, I don’t want to work on Sundays. That’s how I do. So I’m like, all right, I’ll do 14,000 words per week. And if I can squeeze that Monday through Friday, then I get two days off. [00:48:00] But, um,

Yeah. So I like that. That was a. Hard pace for me to keep up. Um, and I did. 80,000 words in a month and a half. And I was. Tired.

Matthew Kent: Yeah. And let me guess you were also working a full time job at the time too.

Don Bishop: No, I’m actually on an internship right now, which gave me time to write. Okay. So, I mean, even, even like having the time to write. Uh, I’m not totally free. Cause I, I have a lot of things going on in my life. I have. Our old house. Um, I’m letting out rooms on Airbnb and. Uh, I’ve had some. It’s it’s over now, but I’ve had some friction between guests. Uh, staying in different rooms, but in the same house. And so I’ve. For, for a few weeks there, I was going over there to do my writing over there. [00:49:00] And my laptop is old and slow and frustrating. So, you know, it, it reduced my capability. Um, And then other things, just kids getting kids to school and.

Matthew Kent: Trust me, I understand. I drop the kids off in the morning. Then from there, go to do my inspections and come home. And my wife usually picks them up in the afternoon, but sometimes I have to pick them up. And. Trust me. I understand.

Don Bishop: Okay. Well, um, I think, uh, it’s about probably about time to wrap up. All right.

Matthew Kent: right.

Don Bishop: I watched.

Matthew Kent: I appreciate your time today.

Don Bishop: Yeah, thank you. And I want to remind our, our listeners of our fan tasty contest. So whatever, uh, You cook in your kitchen or you grow in your garden. Send us a picture with the hashtag fan tasty. And we’ll send you a gift [00:50:00] certificate in December. Um, I think it was $35. And, you know, I’ll go ahead and stick with that $35. Gift certificate to the restaurant or retailer of your choice. Uh, and you can email it to fan tasty@thorn.link or send it to us via tweet or Insta. But, uh, yeah. Thank you. Uh, that’s Matthew Kent. Thanks for joining us.

Matthew Kent: Thank you. You have a good evening.

Don Bishop: You too. Bye. Bye.