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Episode 5: Favorite Childhood Books
42 Plays2 months ago
Lindsay and Paul dive into favorite childhood books, exploring why those stories were so special. These books shaped our young imaginations and helped mold us into the storytellers we are today, and guess what? Your stories have the potential to do that for the next generation.
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Transcript
Introduction & Holiday Theme
00:00:15
Paul Regnier
Hello everyone and welcome to the show. I am Paul Regner.
00:00:19
Lindsay Franklin
And I'm Lindsay Franklin.
00:00:21
Paul Regnier
And this is our last podcast episode of the year and it is taking place during Christmas time.
00:00:29
Lindsay Franklin
Yay.
00:00:30
Paul Regnier
Does that sound like jingle bells?
00:00:30
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, the bell.
00:00:32
Paul Regnier
This is kind of a sad jingle.
00:00:32
Lindsay Franklin
I love it. ah
00:00:35
Paul Regnier
This is sort of a broken jingle bell. I was trying to get Christmassy. Sounds more like something on the neck of a cow. Okay, sorry about that.
00:00:42
Lindsay Franklin
ah Well, you've got your little, your wreath in the background.
00:00:43
Paul Regnier
was trying to be...
00:00:46
Lindsay Franklin
So you're, you're there.
00:00:46
Paul Regnier
I got the wreath in the background. That's right. I got something going on.
00:00:48
Lindsay Franklin
ah ah
00:00:49
Paul Regnier
was trying to be festive and that sort of failed. um Merry Christmas to everyone out there. Merry Christmas.
Evolving Christmas Traditions
00:00:57
Paul Regnier
Lindsay, do you guys have a you and your family have like Christmas traditions that sort of favorite traditions that you do every year?
00:01:04
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, I love Christmas time. One of my favorite, favorite times of the year. So one of our big traditions, we always like to do some kind of big cookie thing in in our house where whether it's a decorating Christmas cookies, we've done that a lot of years.
00:01:15
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:01:20
Lindsay Franklin
Last year, we bought gingerbread house kits. So less baking for me. Whenever we do Christmas cookies, I want them to actually like be really tasty too.
00:01:30
Lindsay Franklin
And so i always bake them. um But less work for me when we buy the kits and the houses are not necessarily meant to be eaten, but they're really fun to decorate.
00:01:40
Lindsay Franklin
And so um as my
00:01:41
Paul Regnier
Yeah, they kind of taste like cardboard, don't they?
00:01:43
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. Yes, they do. Tastes like eating a real house with drywall and everything. Yeah, it's not not pleasant.
00:01:48
Paul Regnier
right
00:01:49
Lindsay Franklin
Not pleasant. um But super fun to decorate. And so my kids are all old now. Like my baby, she's ah a Christmas baby born just a few days after Christmas. And so she is turning 18 this year.
00:02:00
Paul Regnier
Oh, wow
00:02:03
Lindsay Franklin
So which is just wild. My kids will be 18 to 25. That's the span that I've got right now. So as they've gotten older, these traditions have evolved a little bit. And so the houses have become really fun to do as they can kind of do more of that on their own. And so sometimes we'll have their, ah you know, friends or people over to do that. So that's really fun. Something I always look forward to.
00:02:28
Paul Regnier
They're building like skyscrapers now out of car out of ah all the gingerbread.
00:02:31
Lindsay Franklin
ah right doing really like creative things or like referencing some meme or whatever in their decorations or yeah teens are so fun I love teens and young adults
00:02:33
Paul Regnier
It's way more advanced. ah
00:02:39
Paul Regnier
Oh, right.
00:02:42
Paul Regnier
They're using AutoCAD to design their gingerbread house.
00:02:45
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:02:46
Paul Regnier
Well, very cool. Oh, and I've got... You're drinking out of your mug. I'm going to say i got my Christmas mug. There we go.
00:02:51
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:02:51
Paul Regnier
For all the YouTube...
00:02:52
Lindsay Franklin
you are so festive you're so festive I just have my wombat in the background who I always have he's always there but i have Christmas nails that's all I've got guys
00:02:53
Paul Regnier
i know.
00:03:01
Paul Regnier
That's not Christmas. Oh, the Christmas nails. Wait, let's see the Christmas nails.
00:03:03
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:03:04
Paul Regnier
The YouTube people have to see.
00:03:04
Lindsay Franklin
Okay, Christmas nails. Yes, they are red and gold for everybody who's just listening to us.
00:03:10
Paul Regnier
Oh, that's good. And I've got my green Christmas pullover because Hallmark said I had to wear a pullover for Christmas. So I put that on.
00:03:18
Lindsay Franklin
Hallmark said.
00:03:20
Paul Regnier
um Well, hey, so this is sort the last podcast of the year. We thought we'd do something a little fun. We're going to talk about our...
Impact of Childhood Books
00:03:28
Paul Regnier
childhood, favorite childhood books that really made an impact on us early on in our formative years. um And we thought not only would that be fun, but it's also kind of a lesson that we can take to heart as authors.
00:03:46
Paul Regnier
that when we write something, it can really like be impactful for young readers out there. And it can really kind of shape the way, or or even like, you know I don't want to overstate things, right?
00:04:00
Paul Regnier
that This book could change their lives, like maybe. But like even like, sometimes I think we miss, we aim so high, or we we get so intimidated by those high goals that we forget about, um,
00:04:04
Lindsay Franklin
Maybe.
00:04:15
Paul Regnier
just the a great goal of lifting someone's spirits what if you could write something that a young reader maybe they're having a tough time and they can sort of lose themselves in your book for a while if you have this fun adventure or maybe there's something funny about it or um something that can really just kind of lift them up after like a tough day or a tough time in their life um don't know what do you think what do you think about that
00:04:43
Lindsay Franklin
100% agree. And as a child, books were really that for me. um All media really, or stories, I should say, story was like a place that I went to that was safe for me.
00:04:55
Lindsay Franklin
My childhood had you know a fair amount of trauma and and just things that were hard. And so that's where I escaped was into stories.
00:05:01
Paul Regnier
Mm.
00:05:05
Lindsay Franklin
And so it it really, and that it's a place where before I knew stories, the Lord, that was a place where kind of he met me and spoke to me before I even knew who he was, was through stories of authors who may may not have even had that on their their minds or their hearts as they were writing, but that was the way it was used to reach me.
00:05:17
Paul Regnier
Mm.
00:05:25
Lindsay Franklin
And so it just, story is so powerful and it it doesn't matter if we're not writing
00:05:27
Paul Regnier
Mm.
00:05:33
Lindsay Franklin
the next classic because most of us aren't. I mean, most, when I say that, I mean 99.9999% of all writers and storytellers throughout all of history.
00:05:35
Paul Regnier
Right. Mm-hmm.
00:05:43
Lindsay Franklin
Most of us are not writing classics, but that does not mean that our stories are not powerful. And I think as readers, because we're all readers too, you all know what I'm talking about, like, because we've had stories that just hit us and and reach us.
00:05:54
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:05:58
Lindsay Franklin
And you'll see for for both of our lists here, that it's not always the the big classics. Sometimes it is. That's why those books become classics, because they hit people that way for a long period of time.
00:06:10
Lindsay Franklin
A lot of people over a lot of years, that's what makes a classic. But those are not the only stories that that reach readers in that way and touch people that way. So we have the very rare privilege of of ah potentially doing that as authors.
00:06:26
Lindsay Franklin
So super cool thing to talk about and think about.
00:06:27
Paul Regnier
Yeah. No, definitely.
Favorite Childhood Books & Their Influence
00:06:30
Paul Regnier
Definitely. So today, each of us has picked sort of our three favorite books of childhood, books that um impacted us in some way.
00:06:41
Paul Regnier
And again, these might not be like the the big classics of all time, but they just meant something to us. and And we're going to do a little bit of visual for the YouTube watchers because we we're going to lift show the covers and kind of show how cool the books because I love book covers.
00:06:57
Paul Regnier
and um
00:06:58
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:06:59
Paul Regnier
But why don't you want to you want to kick us off there, Lindsay, and and start with your first book?
00:07:05
Lindsay Franklin
Sure. And if anybody who is listening has read The Unraveling of Emlyn Dulane, this is going to be no big surprise. The first one that I'm going to talk about, which is, let me see if I can do this without smashing my microphone.
00:07:19
Lindsay Franklin
Okay. Yes.
00:07:20
Paul Regnier
ah
00:07:21
Lindsay Franklin
This is The Wizard of Oz.
00:07:22
Paul Regnier
Oh.
00:07:24
Lindsay Franklin
Now, this particular... ah thing that I'm holding up is super thick with the shiny green ah pages there, which is really cool.
00:07:28
Paul Regnier
Wow, that's a nice hardcover.
00:07:32
Lindsay Franklin
This is the like Barnes and Noble, their classic. um Oh, what do you call them Like they have these hardcovers that they they've done all these classics in these beautiful hardcovers and they're super affordable and just really cool.
00:07:43
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:07:45
Lindsay Franklin
So I always love that table when I walk into Barnes and Noble and it's got all these cool things.
00:07:47
Paul Regnier
Yeah, I have some of those too. They're really cool, yeah.
00:07:49
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. I love it. um A lot of my copies of books, the ones that I did own, did not survive um all the way into adulthood. And so i' I've like been backfilling my collection a bit with some of these ah some of these. And my family did not have a lot of money when I was little. And so I was a library reader. So some of the my favorites and things that I were very impactful for me as a kid.
00:08:17
Lindsay Franklin
I have never owned those books, which is crazy to think about now. Like, why haven't you gone and and bought all of them? I don't know. Half of them are probably out of print at this point, but, um but I was a library kid.
00:08:29
Lindsay Franklin
And so, you know, it's, it's fun to backfill the collection and kind of fill up the shelves now as an adult, but yeah.
00:08:36
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:08:37
Lindsay Franklin
So the wizard of Oz.
00:08:37
Paul Regnier
Well, so now now Wizard of Oz, what was it in particular about Wizard of Oz that kind of meant something to you or spoke to you?
00:08:39
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:08:45
Paul Regnier
And how old were you when you read it, roughly?
00:08:46
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:08:49
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, wow. I can actually visualize being in my library as a kid, my little local library, and wandering over to the children's shelf and like pulling it off of the shelf for the first time because I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, book one.
00:09:01
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:09:03
Lindsay Franklin
a lot of people don't know that the Oz books, there are, I think, 14 that Frank, yes, yes.
00:09:09
Paul Regnier
What? I didn't know that. Huh.
00:09:12
Lindsay Franklin
It's true. So this big fat hardcover that I held up for the YouTubers, um that is the first five books. That's why it's so thick.
00:09:20
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:09:20
Lindsay Franklin
I have another another copy here.
00:09:21
Paul Regnier
Okay.
00:09:23
Lindsay Franklin
This is the one that I read to my kids when we were homeschooling. It was part of ah like Sunlight's kindergarten read aloud curriculum, actually.
00:09:28
Paul Regnier
Huh.
00:09:32
Lindsay Franklin
so I want to say I was probably like seven, maybe seven or eight when I read it for the first time.
00:09:38
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:09:41
Lindsay Franklin
Might have been a little bit older, but I don't think so. I was pretty young. And it kind of set me on a quest to find as many of the Oz books as I could in the San Diego County Public Library system.
00:09:55
Lindsay Franklin
um And I loved Oz so much because it is so imaginative and different. And forgive me for saying this, because it sounds negative, and I don't mean it negatively, but it's so weird.
00:10:09
Lindsay Franklin
It's just weird. the The world is weird in the best kind of way.
00:10:12
Paul Regnier
In the best kind of way, right?
00:10:15
Lindsay Franklin
And I was a weird kid. I'm a weird adult. And so it spoke to me. And ah something I didn't know at the time is that Baum, he would receive letters from his his young readers.
00:10:27
Lindsay Franklin
And he would sometimes incorporate their ideas into his subsequent stories. And so some of these really weird things that exist in the Oz universe are ideas that children had.
00:10:39
Lindsay Franklin
And that's why they're so weird.
00:10:40
Paul Regnier
Oh, that's cool.
00:10:41
Lindsay Franklin
Yes, it's because a child's imagination, it is sort of unbound and just kind of, you know, goes to to strange places sometimes.
00:10:41
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:10:47
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:10:50
Lindsay Franklin
So that really spoke to me and kind of began my love for portal fantasy specifically.
00:10:57
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:10:58
Lindsay Franklin
And think that because I was a kid who you know, maybe was sad in real life a lot, the idea of kind of going somewhere over the rainbow or through the looking glass or down the rabbit hole, like that really spoke to me.
00:11:08
Paul Regnier
Mm.
00:11:12
Lindsay Franklin
And I loved those stories where I felt transported in that very like concrete way, because the main character is also being transported in, you know, that portal fantasy sense.
00:11:24
Lindsay Franklin
So when I wrote the unraveling of Emlyn Dulane, there's a very clear Oz reference in all of that. And by reference, I mean, my main character literally dives into the wonderful Wizard of Oz and spends like a quarter or so of the book in in that story world. So there's a there's a massive Oz tie in there. um And it was so cool to get to revisit portal fantasy because it's one of the first things that I fell in love with as a kid.
00:11:56
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
Discovering The Hobbit & Narnia
00:11:57
Paul Regnier
It's funny. My wife tells the story of her dad was, um, like this kid when the the movie, the wizard of Oz first came out. That was like the first movie that was in color, Technicolor.
00:12:11
Lindsay Franklin
yes
00:12:11
Paul Regnier
right So there was this all that like, this movie's in color, right? So her dad goes to see it. And like, he was really, he was like six years old or something crazy. So I'm thinking like, why did your parents just let you go? But you know, I guess that was the time like,
00:12:27
Paul Regnier
Go be on the show, you're six. Go tend to the hog, go watch movies by yourself. So anyways, but the cool thing is he goes and he heard all this hype and he goes to the theater and it opens up and it's in black and white, like the first part.
00:12:40
Paul Regnier
Right. And he said he was so bummed out. Like, oh, he told me this thing was going to be in the color. Yeah. And then of course the big, yeah, false advertising.
00:12:48
Lindsay Franklin
False advertising.
00:12:51
Paul Regnier
And then when, you know, when she gets to Oz and the farmhouse door opens and all of a sudden like this burst of color, it's like, oh wow. Like imagine audiences at at the time you've seen black and white and all of a sudden boom technicolor and you're like, whoa.
00:13:02
Lindsay Franklin
Right.
00:13:06
Paul Regnier
And that just lend itself to the magic of this new land that you're going to.
00:13:06
Lindsay Franklin
Amazing.
00:13:11
Paul Regnier
So what a great, what a great movie to usher in like color movies.
00:13:13
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:13:16
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:13:17
Lindsay Franklin
Amazing. And if you've not read the original, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in the book, Dorothy's shoes are silver. She has silver slippers.
00:13:25
Paul Regnier
oh
00:13:27
Lindsay Franklin
They're not ruby. But for the movie, they made them ruby because it was going to be technicolor and that red sparkle looked so good on film.
00:13:34
Paul Regnier
The visual pop. Yeah.
00:13:35
Lindsay Franklin
Yep. looked so beautiful. And so that's why we have ruby slippers. And those, of course, have become so much more famous than the original silver slippers.
00:13:40
Paul Regnier
ah
00:13:43
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:13:44
Lindsay Franklin
um But, you know, that's how you can always tell if somebody like is a book fan or a movie fan. I'm a fan of both personally. That was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid as well.
00:13:53
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:13:54
Lindsay Franklin
But yeah, those silver slippers kind of just faded into obscurity because those red ones are so cool. Yeah.
00:14:00
Paul Regnier
Right. So vibrant. it all It's funny. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, the story, just like getting swept away into this really weird because Alice in Wonderland is weird when you get there, like a lot of crazy weird stuff going on.
00:14:06
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:14:13
Lindsay Franklin
So weird.
00:14:16
Paul Regnier
I tried to watch it again recently.
00:14:16
Lindsay Franklin
Another favorite of mine.
00:14:18
Paul Regnier
What's that?
00:14:18
Lindsay Franklin
Another favorite of mine. I loved that.
00:14:21
Paul Regnier
Oh, yeah. Well, there you go.
00:14:21
Lindsay Franklin
that
00:14:22
Paul Regnier
Yeah. But I watched the the cartoon again recently and I'm like, okay, there's so much weird stuff going on. like i can't And I'm not just talking about the Mad Hatter. Just everything is bonkers once they get there. But um but nevertheless, very cool.
00:14:38
Paul Regnier
um like Like we said, in the best weird and the best sense of the word.
00:14:42
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:14:43
Paul Regnier
Um, okay, well, I will I'm going to show you my first favorite. Let's see if I can get the hardcover here. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, R.R. Tolkien.
00:14:54
Paul Regnier
And this is like the case. It comes in this cool case. And for those of you just listening, it's like this really cool green, like a forest green hardcover. And it's got like this elvish writing along the border.
00:15:05
Lindsay Franklin
Beautiful.
00:15:08
Paul Regnier
And, uh, I think there's even illustrations in here. See if I can find one. I don't see any. Whatever. Well, there is. Trust me, there's some illustrations and they look cool. But anyways, yeah, here it is.
00:15:20
Paul Regnier
And The Hobbit, probably I would say my most influential book that I've ever read. I found it in junior high.
00:15:32
Paul Regnier
um and it was just like an assignment from my teacher uh my english teacher and she goes okay oh whoa i just hit my microphone sorry um and i'd never heard anything about it i didn't know you know and i hadn't really even read fantasy per se um except like maybe short little picture books or something And i will never forget.
00:15:54
Paul Regnier
i still remember, like you you said, you have this memory burned in your mind at the library when you first picked up Wizard of Oz.
00:15:59
Lindsay Franklin
Sad.
00:16:01
Paul Regnier
I have a similar thing. i went to school and I was late. um And so at my junior high, for whatever reason, if you were late, they made you sit in like the principal's office or the school office to wait your next period of class.
00:16:13
Lindsay Franklin
Oh.
00:16:16
Paul Regnier
Yeah, just like rub it in, I guess.
00:16:17
Lindsay Franklin
oh
00:16:19
Paul Regnier
You delinquent. You have to sit next to the principal and sweat it out until next period. So anyways, so so I was late. I had to sit there for the whole period. And so I'm like, well, okay, I got this new book in English class. I guess I'll flip this open start to read a few pages.
00:16:35
Paul Regnier
And I have never been so immersed in a book in all my life. I felt like everything around me, all reality, just faded away. and I was in Middle Earth with the Hobbits.
00:16:45
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:16:47
Paul Regnier
and and and And then the bell rang, and it totally, it was like coming up out of a pool, you know, for air, like, oh, oh, right. Oh, that's right. I'm in the school office.
00:16:57
Paul Regnier
I have school today. You know, oh, here's my hands. I'm a human. You know, it was like, it was so immersive. I lost all sense of where I was, and I was totally in the story world.
00:17:09
Paul Regnier
And I'd never had anything like that before. And it was crazy. And, know, um and then of course you know as soon as i got a chance i dove into the rest of the book and just lost myself and i love that book so much um i didn't really care for the movie that much but um i did like the lord of the rings movies the lord of the rings movies were pretty awesome especially that first one um is my favorite but um
00:17:25
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, same. Yes.
00:17:33
Paul Regnier
But yeah, it's the book that really opened my eyes to what a book could do, like what was possible.
00:17:40
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:17:40
Paul Regnier
Because I had read, i was a reader, but I read like, you know, shorter books and chapter books and things like that. And I had never read a book quite like this. And it just really, you know...
00:17:53
Paul Regnier
let my imagination loose and and just opened up the world and and it was fantasy right so it first kind of ignited my love of fantasy and fantasy stories and um yeah just definitely huge impact and um loved it and i still love it to this day
00:18:11
Lindsay Franklin
That is one that absolutely holds up. And I Honestly, if I had read The Hobbit as a child, it would 100% be on my list because it's one of my favorite books.
00:18:23
Lindsay Franklin
But I didn't read it until I was an adult. And there's a lot of of classics that...
00:18:25
Paul Regnier
o
00:18:28
Lindsay Franklin
And the reason for this is because they just did not happen to be in my library. And so my local library branch just didn't have a copy of a lot of things that were like...
00:18:33
Paul Regnier
Oh, right.
00:18:38
Lindsay Franklin
So many kids, you know, read them um growing up and I just I missed out on a bunch, but I have been backfilling, you know, for like decades now.
00:18:45
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:18:46
Lindsay Franklin
So The Hobbit is one of my all time favorite books. I tried to read The Lord of the Rings first and that was a mistake.
00:18:52
Paul Regnier
Oh, that was a mistake. Yeah.
00:18:54
Lindsay Franklin
That was a mistake. I was like, hmm.
00:18:55
Paul Regnier
You got to ease your way in. ah
00:18:57
Lindsay Franklin
but Yes. Hmm. But but i I devoured The Hobbit um first time i I read it.
00:19:03
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:19:04
Lindsay Franklin
And I've read it, I don't know how many times since then. But love, love that story. And I love Middle Earth.
00:19:09
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:19:10
Lindsay Franklin
I love that story world. And I think The Hobbit still, The Hobbit for me is like the best story.
00:19:12
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:19:17
Lindsay Franklin
vehicle for Middle Earth. um Lord of the Rings is fabulous and expansive and wonderful, but I just love the pace of The Hobbit.
00:19:24
Paul Regnier
Yes, me too.
00:19:24
Lindsay Franklin
And yeah, just love it and agree with you completely about the movies. Lord of the Rings movies are great. Hobbit movies, not so much.
00:19:32
Paul Regnier
Right. they tried to They tried to milk it too much. They're like, oh, it's a short book.
00:19:36
Lindsay Franklin
Way too much.
00:19:36
Paul Regnier
I know what we'll do. We'll split it into three movies. Like, what?
00:19:39
Lindsay Franklin
Yikes. Needed to be one movie. One really well, well-crafted movie.
00:19:41
Paul Regnier
One movie.
00:19:43
Lindsay Franklin
Stop adding stuff, guys.
00:19:43
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:19:44
Lindsay Franklin
What are you doing?
00:19:45
Paul Regnier
Exactly.
00:19:45
Lindsay Franklin
Stop ruining perfection.
00:19:47
Paul Regnier
ah
00:19:47
Lindsay Franklin
Why? ah
00:19:48
Paul Regnier
ah ah All right. So we are moving on to you for your second second book.
00:19:56
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. So I'm cheating. We talked about this in advance. Paul and I are both going to cheat a little bit today because we said three each, but we're cheating.
00:20:02
Paul Regnier
Yep. Right.
00:20:05
Lindsay Franklin
Okay. And I have chaos spread out all across my desk, which is not surprising. And I didn't even know for sure which three I was going to grab while we were on. So, okay, here we go.
00:20:16
Lindsay Franklin
So this is actually to represent two books, ah two different stories, but by the same author. So this is
00:20:23
Paul Regnier
Wait, the the glossy, gleamy, it's it's I'm trying to read it.
00:20:26
Lindsay Franklin
I know. I'm so sorry for are YouTubers.
00:20:27
Paul Regnier
The light keeps hitting it.
00:20:30
Lindsay Franklin
Okay, so there we go. I think I've got the glare off of it now.
00:20:32
Paul Regnier
Oh, that's better.
00:20:33
Lindsay Franklin
this This is called The Farthest Away Mountain, and it's by Lynn Reed Banks.
00:20:33
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:20:39
Lindsay Franklin
Now, she is much better known for The Indian in the Cupboard.
00:20:44
Paul Regnier
Oh, right.
00:20:44
Lindsay Franklin
um She's, yes.
00:20:44
Paul Regnier
Okay.
00:20:45
Lindsay Franklin
So she's the author.
00:20:46
Paul Regnier
I've heard of that one. I haven't heard of the one you just put up.
00:20:47
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. Yes. I feel like few people have um heard of The Farthest Away Mountain, but they a lot of people have heard of Ending in the Cupboard. And I found The Farthest Away Mountain because of Ending in the Cupboard.
00:20:57
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:21:01
Lindsay Franklin
And so that's my cheat here is i'm I'm using both of those stories and my my copy of Ending in the Cupboard, because it is one that I did own um as a kid. it did not survive childhood.
00:21:13
Lindsay Franklin
It got ruined, which I was devastated by. um But this one did. This is actually my copy from back in the day, my original here.
00:21:24
Lindsay Franklin
And it cost $3.50 apparently back in the day. So crazy.
00:21:29
Paul Regnier
Good deal.
00:21:30
Lindsay Franklin
I know, right?
00:21:31
Paul Regnier
for the paper That's the price for the paperback?
00:21:31
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah. for the paperback, $3.50.
00:21:34
Paul Regnier
Wow.
00:21:35
Lindsay Franklin
We'll have to see what would that be with inflation, you know, these days, but,
00:21:38
Paul Regnier
Back in my day, you could get a book for $3.
00:21:42
Lindsay Franklin
but right? Oh my goodness. And I did not open this. Okay. So for the YouTubers, if you can see that, that is, my dad wrote that in there. I apparently stamped a little turtle stamp in here and my dad wrote this book belongs to Lindsay Powell.
00:21:57
Lindsay Franklin
And so for our our YouTube watchers, you all can see my dad's beautiful handwriting.
00:21:59
Paul Regnier
Oh,
00:22:03
Lindsay Franklin
He's an illustrator. And so he has like gorgeous.
00:22:05
Paul Regnier
ah cool.
00:22:06
Lindsay Franklin
yeah it Anyway, didn't know that was in there. But um yes, so yes, sentimental value.
00:22:10
Paul Regnier
Sentimental value.
00:22:13
Lindsay Franklin
So anyway, ending in the cupboard was Probably this experience you're describing of being captivated. I think that was the first book that did that for me.
00:22:26
Lindsay Franklin
i think it's the first one I can remember. And that was something that my second grade teacher, so I would have been, what, seven? maybe, how old are we in second grade?
00:22:37
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah, like seven, eight, maybe.
00:22:39
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:22:39
Lindsay Franklin
um She read a chapter from Indian in the Cupboard to us every afternoon. Like at the very end of the day, she would have all the little second graders come and sit and she would read a chapter, maybe even if it was less than a chapter, I can't remember.
00:22:53
Lindsay Franklin
But I so clearly remember running up to the front of the group of kids so I could sit right by her feet where she was going to read aloud to us. And just listening to this story that I thought was so magical.
00:23:08
Lindsay Franklin
And again, i i think that I have a a liking for stories where it is the fantastical that's touching the real world in some way.
00:23:09
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:23:17
Lindsay Franklin
um And that was another thing about Ending in the Cupboard. It's not really portal fantasy, but it's like, you know, little boy, has this like cupboard and he puts a plastic ah toy, you know, he's playing Cowboys and Indians or something. And he has this little plastic figurine and he puts it in the cupboard, locks it. And that ah makes the little toy become real.
00:23:40
Lindsay Franklin
So he then has, you know, like a real little person when he opens the cupboard again. And so it was again, a story where the fantastical was touching our real world.
00:23:51
Lindsay Franklin
And I was just so immersed. And I was that very like nerdy kid sitting right by our teacher's feet and getting so mad at the other kids who would not settle down and be quiet and just like listen to the story.
00:24:04
Lindsay Franklin
i was like, you guys, do you not understand? This is magic happening right now.
00:24:07
Paul Regnier
right
00:24:07
Lindsay Franklin
Like, shut up. I need to hear every word of what's going on. um So i looked up, you know, my, oh my gosh, I just unlocked another memory of looking up the at the computer, there was like this one computer at the library where you could go like look up and it's this old like, you know, C prompt kind of a interface, know, it's like before Windows, because this would have been the late 1980s guys.
00:24:33
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:24:35
Lindsay Franklin
um And so I remember looking up this author. and discovering some of her other work. And so The Farthest Away Mountain was the one that was my favorite throughout childhood.
00:24:47
Lindsay Franklin
And that remained my favorite book probably until I hit my teen years. If you had asked me, you know, what's your favorite book?
00:24:53
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:24:54
Lindsay Franklin
I would have said The Farthest Away Mountain.
00:24:55
Paul Regnier
is Now, is it ah is it a fantasy book?
00:24:56
Lindsay Franklin
So yes, so this one is actually probably the first kind of high fantasy book that I fell in love with, or that I could, again, that I can remember falling in love with.
00:25:08
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:25:10
Lindsay Franklin
There may have been others before, but it has, it's not that kind of fantastical touching, you know, our real world. It is just straight up high fantasy. And It has like a quest and there's, you know, this girl's trying to do this thing.
00:25:20
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:25:24
Lindsay Franklin
And, you know, it just has much more of that classic fantasy kind of feel to it. There was multicolored snow on this mountain, the farthest away mountain. And that also really appealed to me.
00:25:35
Lindsay Franklin
I am really visual and always have been. And so when a visual can take hold of me and sweep me away, then I'm kind of like sold. You've got me at that point as an author, if you can give me a really good visual that, that, lights me up, I'm here for the experience.
00:25:49
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:25:51
Lindsay Franklin
So this is one that I'm actually afraid to read. I've not read it as an adult, because I'm afraid it's not going to hold up for me.
00:25:57
Paul Regnier
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:59
Lindsay Franklin
I don't know if it will.
00:26:00
Paul Regnier
Isn't that a shame? i hate that feeling.
00:26:01
Lindsay Franklin
oh Right? I just don't want like my childhood memories to be, you know, destroyed.
00:26:07
Paul Regnier
i know.
00:26:08
Lindsay Franklin
But I think I'm kind of in that place where even if I read it, and it doesn't hold up for me, it'll be okay, I can still like separate that from what it meant to me as a kid. um But I've avoided it for decades at this point because I just don't want to i don't want to ruin it.
00:26:21
Lindsay Franklin
It's perfect just as it is.
00:26:23
Paul Regnier
ah I just with, with the, I'm going to show one of my books. I'm going to show you. I actually did that. I went back and I'm like, oh, darn it. It's not as good as I remembered.
00:26:34
Paul Regnier
But again, it spoke to me at that age.
00:26:34
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:26:36
Paul Regnier
So, you know, there's something to be said for that.
00:26:36
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. And... and That's what it is. It's being the right book for you at the right time. It doesn't mean it's objectively the best thing that was ever written.
00:26:43
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:26:46
Lindsay Franklin
Again, that's not really what we're going for because what kind of bar is that?
00:26:46
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:26:50
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:26:50
Lindsay Franklin
That's a crazy bar.
00:26:51
Paul Regnier
Yeah, exactly.
00:26:51
Lindsay Franklin
We're just, we're writing the best stories that we can at any given moment. And
00:26:57
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:26:57
Lindsay Franklin
hoping, and and it will, that that story will reach somebody right where they're at exactly when they need it.
00:27:02
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:27:04
Lindsay Franklin
And that's kind of the most amazing thing that we can hope for as authors. And this is, it's a perfect example of these stories hit us at the right time in our lives. And they spoke to us in those moments So it doesn't matter if like craft wise or whatever, it doesn't hold up as an adult who now tells stories professionally, like we're going to have a different perspective, but um it it doesn't take away really from the magic that that we had when we first read them.
00:27:23
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:27:28
Paul Regnier
Yep. Yeah, no, totally.
00:27:30
Lindsay Franklin
So how about you? What's your, your second, your second book?
00:27:31
Paul Regnier
Totally. Okay. Second one.
00:27:33
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:27:35
Paul Regnier
I'm going to try to knock. not not I'm going to try not to knock anything over on my desk because this next one's a beast. about ah It's like heavy. I'm doing weightlifting. Okay. This is it.
00:27:46
Paul Regnier
This is the full Chronicles of Narnia in hardcover.
00:27:49
Lindsay Franklin
yes
00:27:50
Paul Regnier
Can you look at the size of this? It's like a college textbook. But this has all the Narnian books, all seven?
00:27:54
Lindsay Franklin
gorgeous yes
00:27:58
Paul Regnier
Is there seven? All of them in one. So kind of cool. Cool illustrations. um Once again, I'm trying to show illustrations. And I can't find any.
00:28:10
Paul Regnier
But they're in there. Oh, wait. I found one.
00:28:14
Lindsay Franklin
ooh yeah love it so cool
00:28:15
Paul Regnier
Anyway, so there's stuff like that along the way. But, oh, and then you've got like this cool map on the back, right? So anyways, yeah. Again, we said we're sort of cheating on some of these, and this is like a cheat because it's really seven books, not just one.
00:28:30
Paul Regnier
um But when I first read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that, again, was kind of a similar experience where I was really just whisked away to another world.
00:28:42
Paul Regnier
And talking about going being able to go back to books that you read as a kid, Narnia definitely holds up.
00:28:47
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:28:49
Paul Regnier
like I'll read it now and just be as enchanted as I was when I was a kid, which is crazy you know because I'm so jaded now.
00:28:55
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:28:57
Paul Regnier
um But like I don't know what it is about Lewis's... magical world, the way he describes it, the just the way he writes, it takes me right back to being a kid again.
00:29:12
Paul Regnier
and I don't know how he does it. and it's just like Again, there's almost something magic about the way he writes about magical things.
00:29:18
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:29:19
Paul Regnier
It's it's crazy.
00:29:20
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:29:21
Paul Regnier
So, um yeah, i I really love those books. um When I first started, I would always say like, oh, you know, Lion, the Witch, and the World Roof, that's my favorite one of the whole series.
00:29:31
Paul Regnier
I love it. But as I read through, and especially as I went back and read, my favorite now is The Magician's Nephew. which is kind of like the origin story.
00:29:40
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:29:42
Paul Regnier
Cause I love, I'm a sucker for origin stories.
00:29:42
Lindsay Franklin
Mm-hmm.
00:29:45
Paul Regnier
Um, the origin story of Narnia and how it came to be and how we got this portal into this magical world from our world and just like really cool.
00:29:55
Paul Regnier
So, um, yeah, definitely, uh, Chronicles of Narnia. That's, that's a standout for me.
00:30:02
Lindsay Franklin
That is a great one. And exactly the same as for Hobbit with me. This would be on my list if I had read it as a kid, but I read these for the first time as, no, in
00:30:09
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:30:11
Paul Regnier
Oh, you didn't read Narnie as a kid? Oh.
00:30:15
Lindsay Franklin
i was in my twies
00:30:15
Paul Regnier
Your library didn't have like so many good books. What is going on with that library?
00:30:18
Lindsay Franklin
I know. know. And it was kind of a small library, you know, but still. And it could be that they were there somewhere and I just didn't stumble upon them.
00:30:28
Lindsay Franklin
But this was so in the zone of what I was reading that I feel like if they were there, I would have found them, but maybe not. So I bet you they were in my school library and I just didn't like
00:30:35
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:30:38
Lindsay Franklin
know to go looking for them. um
00:30:40
Paul Regnier
Hmm.
00:30:40
Lindsay Franklin
But I loved Narnia books. ah When i first read them, I was in my 20s, I think. um And I'm pretty sure I read them during middle of the night feedings with my second son, who is turning 21 soon.
00:30:54
Lindsay Franklin
So that that was how it's been a while since um I first read them. And i was
00:30:59
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:31:00
Lindsay Franklin
still technically a young adult, maybe 22, 23, when I read those for the first time, but absolutely captivated me as a grownup reading for the first time and love, love, love that world and what Lewis did with those stories.
00:31:12
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:31:15
Lindsay Franklin
So definitely holds up in my opinion.
00:31:16
Paul Regnier
and And they're sort of they're they're lighthearted um you know children's fiction. I put that in quotes because there's such a depth underneath it all.
00:31:26
Paul Regnier
you know um you know there's There's these great spiritual themes.
00:31:27
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:31:31
Paul Regnier
There's these great um just themes of family and and courage and like, I mean, I could go on and on, but like just, and as you read it, you can almost sense this depth underneath it all.
00:31:44
Paul Regnier
And it's just awesome. You know?
00:31:47
Lindsay Franklin
Yes. And there's like a humor to Lewis's writing as well, which I really appreciate.
00:31:52
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:31:53
Lindsay Franklin
And, and I think you kind of like stumbled on a really important point here is sometimes we sell children's fiction short of like, like that it, it can't do more than just, you know, entertain or or be, you know, it's, it's for kids and and therefore is, is not as deep, which is just not true.
00:32:07
Paul Regnier
Yeah. Right.
00:32:13
Lindsay Franklin
And a lot of these books that do, you know, hit us so hard when we're kids and then stick with us all the way into adulthood.
00:32:13
Paul Regnier
right
00:32:20
Lindsay Franklin
it's because there is there's something that's being said in there. And so it just, you know, it it resonates and continues to resonate ah for many years to come. So yeah, children's fiction, young adult fiction, middle grade, now that we have this, you know, as like a separate category in in our modern fiction world, all of those those categories can do so much more than people think that they can sometimes.
00:32:42
Lindsay Franklin
So yeah, Lewis is a great example of that.
00:32:42
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:32:46
Paul Regnier
Yeah. Awesome. All right. Time for your third choice. Oh.
00:32:50
Lindsay Franklin
All right. This is where the chaos ensues because what am I going to pick? You know, I've got my little stack of like classics with my Anne of Green Gables and my secret garden and those sorts
Love for Genre Fiction
00:33:01
Lindsay Franklin
of things. But I think what I'm actually going to pick is some Genre fiction, and again, cheating, because this is like almost a whole category, um but genre fiction that was super popular in the 80s and the 90s when i was a child.
00:33:15
Lindsay Franklin
And so one of those things, this says, let's see. Sweet Valley Saga, if y'all can see that, this is just nonsense. But this is one of the the copies that survived all the way through adulthood.
00:33:31
Lindsay Franklin
But if you know about Sweet Valley, there's Sweet Valley Twins, which we would now kind of call middle grade. There's Sweet Valley High, which we would call YA. And these were, yes.
00:33:40
Paul Regnier
That's the one I've heard of.
00:33:42
Lindsay Franklin
And I think that came first. And I think Sweet Valley High came first. And then Sweet Valley Twins was like, when the the twins who are in Sweet Valley High when they were younger. um And these were some of the pioneers in the YA genre. Like when that that wasn't quite a term yet, and they were kind of forging that path for YA writers like me who were going to come. We were reading these as we were growing up. And of course, the Harry Potter series had a big, you know was like a big final push towards making this like you know, a category that was going to stick around forever. But there were, there were forerunners to, to what happened with Harry Potter and sweet Valley is one of those forerunners. So my sister and i our library had a ton of these and she's, my sister is three years older than I am. So she was like reading sweet Valley high while I was reading sweet Valley twins, massively impactful in shaping me. And like the audience that I was eventually going to end up writing for, um
00:34:45
Lindsay Franklin
And similar, Babysitter's Club, same era, and kind of like, you know, those were on the little spinny racks at our library, right next to the Sweet Valley Twins books. We had the Babysitter's Club ah books, and kind of the hitting that same ah that same target demographic and that same place for me. I mean, I was so invested with these characters. I think that's what really gripped me about these these stories. And these are series that have dozens and dozens and dozens of books in them. And it's really the characters, I think, that pull you
00:35:21
Lindsay Franklin
through because you fall in love with these people and you get really invested in their stories. And this nonsense that I have still, um this Sweet Valley saga, which is this like kind of thick thing, and it goes through like different historical periods.
00:35:36
Lindsay Franklin
So there's that glare again. But I believe if I'm remembering correctly, this one down um here is the twins mom, I want to say. And so this is like mom and grandma and great grandma.
00:35:47
Lindsay Franklin
So it's going back generations in this family and telling the story of these different generations throughout periods of history and how, you know, this family sort of came to be where it's at in this space where we know them as readers.
00:35:49
Paul Regnier
Ah.
00:36:04
Lindsay Franklin
And so again, really wonderful classic literature, maybe not, maybe not so much, but, but it still was such a wonderful source of entertainment for me as a kid.
00:36:19
Lindsay Franklin
And I loved it. I gobbled it up. And I could still tell you about Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, the twins from Sweet Valley. And I could tell you who they are and about their personalities and all of that.
00:36:32
Lindsay Franklin
I remember decades, decades later, i have not read a Sweet Valley book in years and years and years. And I can still tell you about these people and their friends at school and who the bullies were and who the boyfriends were and all that.
00:36:44
Lindsay Franklin
I mean, it's just, it's crazy, but really, strong characters have the ability to do that, kind of stick with the reader, even when you're not necessarily writing a big, great literary classic, you're just writing really entertaining fiction.
00:36:59
Lindsay Franklin
And again, dealing with themes that matter. They talked about stuff like bullying and, you know first crush and stuff like that. It was so relevant to the audience who's reading those books.
00:37:11
Lindsay Franklin
And so genre fiction can do all those things.
00:37:13
Paul Regnier
Yeah. I was going to say, I've heard of these books. I think I heard of them growing up. I never read them, probably because I wasn't a 13-year-old girl. But aren't they geared aren't they geared towards that young teen girl reader?
00:37:23
Lindsay Franklin
Probably.
00:37:28
Paul Regnier
And there's nothing magic, right?
00:37:29
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:37:30
Paul Regnier
Isn't it just twins in high school or something?
00:37:30
Lindsay Franklin
No.
00:37:33
Lindsay Franklin
Yep. These are contemporary fiction. And so, yeah, it's the Sweet Valley High is geared towards, you know, my sister and I are both readers and readers, we read up, right?
00:37:43
Lindsay Franklin
So whatever age we are, we're always reading like a couple years beyond.
00:37:44
Paul Regnier
Oh, right. Right.
00:37:47
Lindsay Franklin
So my sister was not in high school when she was reading those books.
00:37:48
Paul Regnier
right
00:37:50
Lindsay Franklin
But um And I was not in middle school when I was reading Sweet Valley Twins, but we're you know a few years younger than that. But yes, speaking to all of those things that we as girls, you know, were experiencing in school, these, you know, fictional girls were going through a lot of the same things.
00:38:07
Lindsay Franklin
And so, yes, definitely. This is why, yes Paul did not read these because they were they were they were targeting Lindsay and her sister. Not not so much, Paul. but
00:38:18
Paul Regnier
And I'm sure there's no drama at all in these books, right?
00:38:21
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, yeah. Super drama free. No, it's all about the drama. That's the point. The drama is the point.
00:38:29
Paul Regnier
funny. Well, very cool. Yeah. Actually, my wife told me about those books too. She grew up reading and loving them. And I'm like, I think there was a show I kind of remembered.
00:38:36
Lindsay Franklin
see
00:38:39
Paul Regnier
Didn't they turn it into like a TV show or something?
00:38:40
Lindsay Franklin
Oh, I think you're right. I had forgotten about that, but I think you're right. They did turn it into the Sweet Valley High ones, I think turned it into, it's probably like a CW type show, you know, that kind of like really YA sort of thing.
00:38:44
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:38:50
Paul Regnier
Right. Right.
00:38:53
Lindsay Franklin
um And they actually, for Babysitter's Club, this was really interesting. They brought that back where those are still out there, but I noticed my daughter had like a, scholastic book fair thing that she brought home from um charter school that that we were attending at the time.
00:39:11
Lindsay Franklin
And I opened it up and there was the first book in the Babysitter's Club series. Crazy, you know, 30 years after I had first read that book. um But they had turned it into a graphic novel, which was fascinating to me and kind of reaching that
00:39:24
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:39:26
Lindsay Franklin
you know, different generation with it. Same story. I'm imagining that they've maybe updated it a bit because certain things from the 80s are not going to translate to modern kids, but they had put it in this whole new format, which I thought was really cool. I can't quite bring myself to read read them in that format for some reason, but I'm really glad that it exists for this next generation to kind of discover in a new way. It's really cool.
00:39:51
Paul Regnier
Yeah, i have this I have this joke that like if you go back and see a lot of movies or shows from like the 80s, so many of their problems could have easily been solved if someone had a cell phone.
00:40:02
Paul Regnier
you know It's just like, they're always running, I can't get a hold of this person, hurry, we got to drive here.
00:40:03
Lindsay Franklin
Just the cell phone, right?
00:40:08
Paul Regnier
you know like now like How about I just give them a text and you know problem solved?
00:40:08
Lindsay Franklin
Right?
00:40:12
Lindsay Franklin
Right? Like Home Alone. Speaking of Christmas, Home Alone, which, I mean, that movie released, what, in 1990, I think?
00:40:14
Paul Regnier
Right, right.
00:40:20
Lindsay Franklin
And, you know, so, yeah, I would have been like eight or something when that movie came out.
00:40:20
Paul Regnier
I think so, yeah.
00:40:24
Lindsay Franklin
Love that movie. I still watch it every year um at Christmas time.
00:40:27
Paul Regnier
Sure.
00:40:29
Lindsay Franklin
But um yeah, that whole thing, if cell phones existed, I mean, you know, mom's going to be tracking with the GPS location and like, you know, texting Kevin and we're going to, you know, make sure that that he's not home alone ah for long.
00:40:29
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:40:41
Paul Regnier
Right.
00:40:41
Lindsay Franklin
So yeah, that whole plot just completely falls apart. We It's hard these days to write, you know, that ah plot like a ah contemporary modern day plot that has all of the obstacles and things that we need in order to create an exciting plot with the technology that we have today.
00:40:56
Paul Regnier
right
00:40:59
Lindsay Franklin
We have to be really creative to do that.
00:41:01
Paul Regnier
Oh, yeah. yeah i had this I had this mystery series that I wrote and it's in like this small mountain town. so Anytime I want them to be in parallel, I'm like, oh, darn it. um My signal's not working.
00:41:12
Paul Regnier
My cell phone signal. What?
00:41:14
Lindsay Franklin
Perfect. Perfect.
00:41:15
Paul Regnier
Why did I go on this road again where the signal always goes out?
00:41:17
Lindsay Franklin
ah
00:41:19
Paul Regnier
Okay, I'm glad you shared those books because that helps me to share this because we're we're so now going into like our sort of our guilty pleasure kind of books, right? Not classic.
00:41:29
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:41:30
Paul Regnier
And that perfectly leads into my last one, which is I'm going to do two books because essentially they kind of did the same thing for me.
00:41:30
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:41:38
Paul Regnier
um as far as opening my mind up to what's possible with a genre that i already liked and i'm going to show this on my tablet here and don't know if you can see that this one is called another fine myth and it's by an author named robert aspirin i don't know if you're getting a glare off this but um and then similar to that is this book from terry brooks and it's called magic kingdom for sale
00:41:55
Lindsay Franklin
It looks good. Yeah.
00:42:02
Paul Regnier
And um I found another fine myth when I was probably like early teen.
Writing Breakthroughs & Authenticity
00:42:09
Paul Regnier
So while you were reading Sweet Valley High, I was reading another fine myth, which is a fantasy book.
00:42:15
Paul Regnier
um But it's it's funny. It's a humorous fantasy book.
00:42:20
Lindsay Franklin
see
00:42:20
Paul Regnier
And this hit me at a time when I was like, you know, knee deep in, you know, Lord of the Rings. And I found these other fantasy books, like the Sword of Shannara and all these kind of cool. So i I had already found this genre that I loved, fantasy.
00:42:35
Paul Regnier
And all of a sudden i get to this book and it's like funny. And I'm like, oh, you can have humor in fantasy books.
00:42:39
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:42:43
Paul Regnier
This is cool. And the same thing with that Magic Kingdom for Sale book. So these books hit me at a time where I um i guess I just didn't even think that that was a thing, right?
00:42:55
Paul Regnier
Because most of the fantasy I'd read had been very epic and serious and like, the world is crumbling and we must save it by sword and valor and right. And then all of a sudden this one comes along and it's just real tongue in cheek, lighthearted, fun, funny adventure.
00:43:09
Paul Regnier
And I'm like, oh, wow.
00:43:10
Lindsay Franklin
Yes.
00:43:12
Paul Regnier
which is kind of what I write now. So this was kind of a big influence for me early on to show me like, oh, what you can do when you add humor into a genre you already love.
00:43:23
Paul Regnier
And so um like the first books I published were humorous science fiction, and now I've moved into like humorous fantasy. But so those two books were really like, I guess, formative as far as opening my eyes to what you could do in a genre that you already loved.
00:43:40
Paul Regnier
um So yeah, there you go.
00:43:41
Lindsay Franklin
love that. That's so cool. and this is something we both like to do. We both like to use humor in our books. And I've noticed that as like a common thread between, you know, ah our our catalogs.
00:43:57
Lindsay Franklin
And that's like, i think something that you don't always realize as a fantasy author, unless you have read, you know, other other books in the genre that do that, because fantasy does tend to have a really serious and epic tone to it.
00:44:10
Paul Regnier
Mm-hmm.
00:44:11
Lindsay Franklin
And and that's that's great.
00:44:12
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:44:13
Lindsay Franklin
That's totally fine for, you know, those books that that's what they're doing or those authors who write that way.
00:44:15
Paul Regnier
Yep.
00:44:18
Lindsay Franklin
But if you are you know, the type to maybe throw in a joke or to have a little bit of humor or, you know, to have the like funny sidekick type character or whatever in um your story.
00:44:28
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:44:29
Lindsay Franklin
It's really freeing to kind of see that in in the genre, like, oh, I am allowed to do that. And even because I read, i didn't, ah clearly I didn't only read fantasy, but I, you know, read across a bunch of different genres as a kid, I never had like a hang up about putting humor into my fantasy when I started writing.
00:44:36
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:44:52
Lindsay Franklin
But there was a barrier with my voice where I was trying to sound like more epic and more, you know, something that I really was because in my mind, well, that's what fantasy is supposed to sound like.
00:44:59
Paul Regnier
Mm, yes.
00:45:04
Paul Regnier
Same here, same here.
00:45:05
Lindsay Franklin
It's supposed to, yeah, like fantasy voice, I call that now, where you're like trying to sound ethereal and very like big and epic and fancy. There's something fancy about it. And it actually took me writing a YA contemporary book.
00:45:19
Lindsay Franklin
So very much in that sort of Sweet Valley High, um little bit different, probably more serious than a Sweet Valley High. But I wrote a YA contemporary novel kind of between my two big fantasy things that I was trying to get published at the time. And the second fantasy thing being the story peddler. But in between those, I wrote this YA contemporary piece. And on that book, I discovered my voice.
00:45:41
Lindsay Franklin
And it was kind of that breakthrough moment where you go, oh, this actually sounds like me.
00:45:47
Paul Regnier
who
00:45:47
Lindsay Franklin
And that felt natural in contemporary. But I'm looking at my fantasy manuscript going, oh, that's part of the problem with this one is it does not sound like me.
00:45:58
Lindsay Franklin
It sounds like me trying to be fancy. And that's probably not what we want here because it didn't sound authentic because that's just not who I am.
00:46:01
Paul Regnier
Yes. Yep.
00:46:07
Lindsay Franklin
I'm not going to be writing the the Tolkien Middle Earth, you know, kind of a vibe. It's just not what I do. And so... That was where, like in Storypedaler, I was able to kind of blend those two things, the the fantasy and you can have the epic quest and all of that, but having more humor and that voice that was more natural to me in there.
00:46:26
Lindsay Franklin
And so it's so cool that you have these like, these are the ones, the books that kind of facilitated that breakthrough for you with humor in your fantasy, gave you permission.
00:46:34
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:46:36
Lindsay Franklin
You're allowed to do that.
00:46:37
Paul Regnier
It totally did.
00:46:37
Lindsay Franklin
Yeah.
00:46:38
Paul Regnier
Yeah. And it, yeah, it totally, it gave me permission and it was just like, oh, I didn't even know you could do this. This is so freeing, you know? And it's like you said, when I first started trying to write fantasy, I did the same exact thing.
00:46:45
Lindsay Franklin
Yep.
00:46:49
Paul Regnier
I'm like, oh, I have to sound like Tolkien or Lewis, you know, you, you, put you have these big mentors, writing mentors in your mind. And on on the one hand, it's great because they're inspiring.
00:47:00
Paul Regnier
But on the other hand, it's sort of like this comparison thing that can like, crush you because you think, oh, I have to emulate them. It's like, no they're there to inspire you, but you've got to be yourself. And it wasn't until I wrote, I think Space Drifters was the first time where I just thought like, you know, I'm just going to have fun with this. I'm just going to do this fun story. And I wasn't even thinking of like, oh, I'm going to publish this. So I got to do all these things. for I just thought like, I'm just going to write this and have fun and just like kind of be free and just be myself. And I don't even care. i think Tosca Lee,
00:47:34
Paul Regnier
has this great quote where she says, um write like no one's going to read it. you know where it's just like You're not worried about all the the judges looming over you, you know watching your every word.
00:47:40
Lindsay Franklin
Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:47:47
Paul Regnier
You're just like, you know what? I'm having fun with this and I'm going to just like enjoy the writing process and just have fun with my characters and not even think about, not worry about all these other you know judging voices or whatever.
00:48:01
Paul Regnier
So there's definitely something powerful to that.
00:48:04
Lindsay Franklin
And that ended up being your breakout series. That was the one that got contracted.
00:48:07
Paul Regnier
Yep. That's the one that broke through.
00:48:10
Lindsay Franklin
That was the one.
00:48:10
Paul Regnier
Yeah.
00:48:10
Lindsay Franklin
And it was the same exact thing for me is the one that broke through was the story peddler where I was like fantasy and my natural voice. Let's try this. And it was the same thing.
00:48:20
Paul Regnier
yeah
00:48:21
Lindsay Franklin
I'm just going to be free and natural and have fun with it. And that was the one finally that got contracted. And so We accidentally had this really important lesson for all of you writers out there.
00:48:33
Lindsay Franklin
We were just doing this kind of fun, you know, fluffy Christmas episode. But this is such an important thing um to to take away that just being who you are in your work is the thing that's actually going break through.
00:48:40
Paul Regnier
Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:48:49
Lindsay Franklin
and set you apart with you know your readers and just set you on set you on that path. That's what it is when we're not trying to sound like anybody else. We're not trying to emulate.
00:49:00
Lindsay Franklin
We take the the great things that we learned that resonated for us in other people's work, but then you just have to be yourself in how you execute those things in your own stories.
00:49:11
Lindsay Franklin
And that's going to be when your breakthrough moment happens.
00:49:16
Paul Regnier
Yes. I can't add anything to that. That's perfect. I think we should stop right there because that kind of sums it all up, right? All
00:49:23
Lindsay Franklin
Quit while we're ahead, man.
Holiday Wishes & Sign Off
00:49:27
Paul Regnier
all right. Well, Lindsay, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Merry Christmas to everyone listening out there and hope you have a great end of the year, New Year's and all your holiday celebrations. And we will see you in 2026.