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Author and Activist Pat Green
19 Plays1 day ago
Pat Green and WLF talk consent and allyship, why grammar nazis kinda suck, plotters versus pantsers, why we need storytellers, and inspiration.
TW for discussions of religious abuse, suicide, and sexual assault.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Mentally Oddcast
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast, where we talk with creatives about neurodivergence, trauma, addiction, and all the other things that impact and inform our art. Our goal is to show everyone that no matter what you're going through, you are not alone and you can make art about it.
00:00:25
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Music
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You are listening to the Mentally
Meet the Host and Sponsors
00:00:36
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Oddcast. My name is Wednesday, leave Friday, and we are sponsored by Sometimes Hilarious Horror Magazine. Do find us on Ko-fi.
Introducing Pat Green
00:00:45
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This week, our guest is Pat Green.
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Pat Green is a columnist, author, documentarian, and freelance photojournalist. Currently, Pat is the editor-in-chief of X Watch and the managing editor for Barnstormer Publishing.
00:01:01
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His photographs and documentaries have been featured in the APO Cultural Center in Chicago, the Metro in also Chicago, Flower of Life Gallery in Lockport, Illinois, and Art Bar in Aurora. Hey, that's where Wayne's World is.
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Yes. When not doing all of this, Pat seeks solace and delight collecting watches to, let's see, to outtaking street photography and getting lost in vintage nostalgia while enjoying time with his blind cat, Bitty the Kitty. Welcome, Pat.
00:01:35
Speaker
Hi, how are you? I'm all right. Good. Cool. Well, it's great to have you here.
First Horror Movie Memory
00:01:43
Speaker
um If you are not a regular listener, you might not know this, but we do start by asking guests to tell us the story of the first horror movie that they remember seeing. So please do.
00:01:55
Speaker
All right, the first horror movie, and I don't know for horror fans if it will qualify, but it was October of 1978. I am at a Cub Scout Halloween party dressed up as Luke Skywalker. And before cosplay was cool, my grandmother put some major details into that outfit.
00:02:14
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And we saw Kiss vs. the Phantom of the Park. And i what can I say about Kiss vs. Phantom of the Park? It had horrible production quality.
00:02:27
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And because it was Gene Simmons and the rest of the gang, it had terrible acting. But oh my God, this was thrilling to watch the adventure at Magic Mountain, which is a place I had been to as a little kid.
00:02:41
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And it opened up myself. I mean, I remember nothing about the movie, if I'm being honest with you. But what it did was while I was watching it with a bunch of my friends, my friends started telling me about Son is Finguli, which was this local thing that existed before MSTK 3000. Mm hmm. Long, long before. And and it was it was wonderful to listen to.
00:03:05
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And that was my exposure to horror films was watching these cheesy films on Son of Senghoolie. And as a teenager in the 80s, it perfectly set me up for all of the Friday the 13th movies, the Halloween movies.
00:03:18
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We saw it as fun, entertaining. We knew it was cheesy. And, you know, you had moral lessons like the couple that does it gets turned into a shish kebab. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, that that was really my first entry into visual horror.
00:03:33
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And I'm glad for it because it showed it as something that was entertaining and where you could laugh at the macabre. That's awesome. What a great story. Yeah.
00:03:46
Speaker
I just, ah <unk>m I'm reminded of like my own TV horror host as a kid. It was Sir Graves Gastly, and that guy was a badass. But the movies were like, you know, a lady turning into a snake, or just you know all these crazy um like seventy s and and before things.
00:04:09
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you You did see some horror at a young age, but it was not like the realistic scary kind. When did you start watching the good stuff?
Defining Good Horror
00:04:18
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Boy, I don't know when you qualify the good stuff because, i mean, in in in the 80s, we were – there was this whole – um Renaissance of horror horror series we had Friday the 13th we had Halloween and Hellraiser and all these other things coming to light but I think the first one that I remember that actually scared me was Poltergeist
00:04:44
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Okay. and and And, you know, I mean, the two that bring to me the most terror to this day is when the guy is staring in front of the mirror and he's peeling his face off.
00:04:55
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Yep. And then you have the scene with the um stuffed animal. I don't remember if who was a clown or what it was underneath the bed. That was. Oh, it was a clown.
00:05:07
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That was horrifying. I mean, that was truly terrifying, but at the same time, it was yet thrilling. So I really would have to say that that is probably, um in in the genre of the silver screen, my first exposure to actual horror. And then obviously a little while later, I was at a party with some friends when I was in high school. We saw The Exorcist.
00:05:30
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um Oh, holy holy cow, did that freak me out. um you're You're allowed to say swears, just so you know. Okay, awesome, because it's really hard for me to not.
00:05:43
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Yeah, we're going to talk politics in a bit, and that's usually when I start swearing. um think Yeah, it's it's it's a wild thing, because there were some serious horror movies, like, before we came up, you know, you had Psycho in 1960,
00:06:01
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Oh, what's the yeah Dementia 13? You know, the early Coppola thing that's kind of set the scene for slashers. But yeah, once you get into like, I guess Halloween was like 78 and then the first Friday of the 13th was 1980, I think.
00:06:16
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yeah, at that point. so yeah at that point everything took like a hard slashery turn. And even things that weren't slashers like Poltergeist and The Exorcist were like so committed to just scaring the hell out of people as opposed to You know, like the silly, schlocky stuff that that came before when it was because I think that horror started out as a genre that was meant to get kids into the theater on a Saturday afternoon.
00:06:47
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Right. and it didn't It wasn't really taken seriously by a lot of directors until much later. course, you did have things like, you know, the hagsploitation stuff, ah Baby Jane and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Nanny, stuff like that.
00:07:02
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But it it just wasn't as mainstream as it it should have been. And I mean, some people would argue that horror still is not as mainstream as it should have been and because once a horror movie gets nominated for an Oscar, they start calling it a drama.
00:07:16
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Right. Well, and at the
Experiences with Dyslexia
00:07:19
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same time, i think for me, um at least the entertaining um spaghetti Western style cheesy stuff was a good introduction into the genre to be able to get you accustomed to this thrill ride. Otherwise, you know, with the trauma in my life, I just would have to disassociate and not be able to enjoy it. But because of that introduction,
00:07:44
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I was able to go from the cheese to the substance. It's interesting that you would bring up the spaghetti Western style because that was an argument that my stepdad used to have with me as a kid because I watched a lot of horror and he didn't especially like it.
00:08:00
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And he would say, well, why can't you watch something nice? I don't watch violent tv when he had just watched a show where two dudes had a shootout in the middle of a town and the whole town came out to watch these guys kill each other.
00:08:15
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Like, how is that worse than a horror movie? Explain it to me like I'm fine. Because I am. Oh, my God. Yeah, it and that's the thing is a lot of people will say, oh, I don't watch horror. And then you find out that they like, you know...
00:08:33
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13 Reasons Why or something that's just like morose and focusing on death, but isn't, you know, technically, I mean, nobody's in a ski mask stabbing anyone. So it must not be horror.
00:08:46
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Like, well, hmm. So were you ah were you encouraged to watch horror in your household, like as a kid or were you not?
Media Influence and LGBTQ Representation
00:08:56
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No, no. i was I was really neither encouraged or discouraged. my my I spent a lot of time of my formative years with my grandparents.
00:09:05
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And my grandparents, ah they were really into books. They encouraged a culture of reading. um But as far as television and movies go, they didn't really care about my cinema tastes, but they were really on top of um network television at night.
00:09:23
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Oh, okay. there there were certain shows that they didn't want me watching i remember threes company being a no-no and yeah and at first i thought it was some sort of prudish thing i later found out um my grandparents were extremely liberal And they felt that ah some of the tropes about LGBTQ people in those TV shows, Soap and Three's Company specific, were insulting and demeaning, and they didn't want me to ingest that.
00:09:56
Speaker
You know, that's really interesting because they're not wrong. Like, those shows were seen as being very forward for even mentioning those things. But Jack Kerber was not gay. He was just being made fun of by the landlord because the landlord thought he was gay. That little, uh, the little, like, Tinkerbell motion that he used to do. I'm doing it with my hand now, but you can't see it.
00:10:18
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please But no, i'm I'm totally aware of that. And then, like, on Soap, You know, like, I understand network people saying, oh, look how brave we are for having a gay character.
00:10:30
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But they weren't even sure if Billy Crystal was gay or trans. There was talk about him, like, wanting to shave his legs as a kid and, like, weird stuff that didn't really, like, have you watched those shows since?
00:10:44
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ah Three's Company, yes. Soap, no. Oh, wow. Soap is actually the same production team as the Golden Girls. No kidding. And it's real, real funny. Yeah, it's same creators and everything.
00:10:58
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But the Golden Girls did such great, solid representation. Well, the thing about Soap is that they were trying. They just didn't have gay people on staff to come in and say, no, that's that's not right. Like, they really were trying, but they didn't.
00:11:15
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understand i would recommend sitting down and watching soap um it's it's genuinely funny i mean the way it makes fun of soap operas like you know there's an alien baby and a uh like an exorcism or something i mean it's it's extremely dated and there are a lot of issues that they try to tackle and then miss But I think it is well worth it, especially, you know, as I mean, i'm I'm bi, but married to a guy. So I'm like LGBTQ on the easiest difficulty level.
00:11:50
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Right. But I think that LGBTQ folks, there there is something to gain from watching soap, even though they don't get it right, just to parse what it is that they're trying to do.
00:12:02
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and and Billy Crystal really meaning well. I mean, he's not... but But it's kind of like... I mean, I would liken it to The Shark from Jaws.
00:12:13
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Like, they're trying to make a movie that shows real behavior, but they just don't know. Okay. and Obviously, when it comes to gay people, there were gay people they could have asked, and they didn't. Right. So that's a fail.
00:12:26
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But given how... the rest of media was was treating gay people at the time i think the first movie i ever saw that had gay people in it was cruising with al pacino oh my good god no way should i have been near that movie as a kid but also like it it did not paint a flattering picture of the community
00:12:50
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No, and and in that time as a kid, you know, I mean, not to get too far into this ah tangent, but, ah you know, Maude had an episode or two that really tackled it very well.
00:13:01
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um there There were a couple people that really succeeded. And, you know, I mean, even in the early 80s, I wrote a article, I want to say about a year and a half ago, about the queer coding that was laden throughout Miami Vice.
00:13:14
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um Nice. I bet that was well received. it Actually, it was um because you can you can literally make a case that Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson, can be interpreted as a bisexual character.
00:13:29
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And there's one episode that is so full and so rich of the queer coding that you can no longer see it in streaming. If you've got the DVD or the Blu-ray, you can see episode 20 of season one, Evan, but you're not going to find it on streaming.
00:13:45
Speaker
And it's very. Wow. I had no idea. That's amazing. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because now that I think about it, I'm thinking about shows that predate soap that handled such issues better. I'm thinking specifically about All in the Family and there being a drag queen who I think, I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure if Beverly LaSalle was actually trans or if they were like ah
00:14:16
Speaker
man who played a woman like as a drag queen, but, but that was not their identity. I'm actually not sure. Cause they, the show did not parse that, but it was very clear in the message that people who want to hurt people that do those things are wrong.
00:14:35
Speaker
Cause Edith, I mean, her, her friend was beaten to death in a hate crime and she lost her faith in God. Like it was a big fricking deal on the show. I'm going to have to rewatch that because just hearing you talk about it gave me chills. And for some odd reason, it also made me think of Ed Wood with Glenn or Glenda, which he was actually in his own way trying to do something very serious with a message. He just did it, you know, Ed Wood style because that's who Ed Wood was.
Advocating for Diverse Expression
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Now you have dyslexia. Yes. And as a writer, I have to think that that is especially irksome. How is that going? It's going very well, and the irksome is not with my writing. I mean, I already know my challenges, but for 21 years now, I have been a columnist, never as a full-time trade, but you know I've had my own byline in some local papers, some magazines, um professional online productions like Patheos.
00:15:38
Speaker
ah So, you know I mean, I've always been a columnist, and I've always known that this is a part of me. What I have had in all of those organizations are editors that understand it, and they are not grammar Nazis. They are people that have an understanding that good storytelling and ah and the ability to craft something great doesn't necessarily need grammatical correctness, but that's something that can be fixed on the back end before it goes to production.
00:16:05
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um And, you know, I mean, this was something in life in the 80s as a dyslexic versus life now are completely different. I wasn't diagnosed until about a year after I graduated high school and I never had any problems with reading comprehension because I was a very visual reader. So, you know, you can put together the context clues even if you don't have all the words and still get the story, just like when you're reading a comic book.
00:16:32
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um But when I was writing, that was where it started to manifest itself. So, you know, you've got this grade school kid that had a collegiate level reading comprehension level, but was a flunker in grammar and always struggled with that. And nobody really decided to say, hmm, maybe there's something here until after I graduated high school.
00:16:55
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um So yeah anyway, where I'm going with this is, When you, you know, back in the 80s, you had flashcards, you had a lot of other different techniques to learn how to read around your disability.
00:17:08
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um And I have done that and I've always kept it a secret and I've always had good editors behind me. But now comes social media. Now comes, you know, having your cell phone with ah instead of a tactile keyboard where you know where all the letters are, you've got something else.
00:17:24
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And so I'm prone to In casual conversations through text message, through social media, I am prone to um make mistakes and a lot of typos.
00:17:36
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And whenever I do my own blog, I always have to take extra measures of caution to be able to, ah you know, if I don't have an editor behind my back, I got to self-edit.
00:17:47
Speaker
And in my world, I've grown very comfortable with my mistakes. Because that's a part of me. And the less ableist I become, and the more I realize the ableist culture is, the more I push back.
00:17:58
Speaker
Because first off, ah one thing that I believe in is right speak is often white speak. And there's a bit of a racist undertone here that that ah doesn't allow for diversity of expression, words, thoughts.
00:18:13
Speaker
Um, you know, Shakespeare could make up his own words, but ah not Dr. Maya Angelou. um And that's just a fact. ah The other thing is I've started pushing back. you know, somewhere in my 50s, I finally decided to tell all these people, some of them are friends of mine since high school, where I've just said online, dude, I'm dyslexic.
00:18:32
Speaker
And then suddenly they're like, oh, my goodness, I'm so sorry. i I'll not do that again. I'm like, well, why did you do it in the first place? Let's let's have that conversation. Why did you think that was okay? Why is grammar what you consider to be? Because, you know, it's not just neurodivergence. It could be lack of income, lack of education, lack of ah lack of being able to eat a quality meal is going to interrupt your ability to do reading, writing, and arithmetic.
00:19:01
Speaker
There are so many things. And if you are so intelligent, you have the ability like I do every day when I read to pick up on the contextual clues and know exactly what the hell the other person is saying.
00:19:15
Speaker
So, you know, my answer is I surround myself with good editors for my professional writing. And with my casual writing, I no longer try so hard because I'm not ashamed anymore. Nice.
00:19:26
Speaker
Nice. I'll tell you that I have... had to really struggle with like i'm autistic and i found out really late in life and that's why bad grammar makes me like wits when i see it written down it's like it's like getting getting flicked by your little brother in the back seat that's that's just trying to annoy you it gives me this like weird react and the thing is I had to think about it logically, okay? Because obviously it can be ableist to make fun of people's grammar or their clothes they got at a garage sale. I mean, whatever's going on there.
00:20:10
Speaker
It's usually a form of bullying when you call people out for things like that. So I have restricted my grammar critique to MAGA boys who call me stupid.
00:20:23
Speaker
And that's good thing.
00:20:27
Speaker
Well, that's the thing. It's like, if you are going to go around calling people stupid when you can't put a fucking sentence together, have something to say about it, especially when it's punctuated with, if you want to live in America, you got to learn English.
00:20:42
Speaker
Like you first, Billy Bob. um if If you want but yeah want to live in America, you have to speak the language bestowed ah upon us by our former oppressors in England. Got it.
00:20:57
Speaker
yeah Exactly. Exactly. English is the official language. Actually, we don't have one. um Which, I mean...
00:21:08
Speaker
It's like that whole press one thing. Like people get so mad they have to press one for English. It should be the default. Like it is the default. That's why it's one. Well, it's funny because the top three languages in America is um English, Spanish and ASL.
00:21:27
Speaker
Those are the top three. But um we we you know, there are too many people that don't give any regard for the other two top three spoken languages. Yeah, my as ASL is not good.
00:21:39
Speaker
I mean, i I can get through most of the alphabet and, you know, I have some some fairly good vocabulary, but it's as bad as my Spanish. You know, I could muddle through it, but for someone with a college education, my ability to be multilingual is not good.
00:21:57
Speaker
not not Not strong. And that's that's the thing about like when someone is not from here and they're their ESL and people still want to make fun of their grammar, it's like, dude, you speak one language and you suck at it.
00:22:09
Speaker
right Maybe give props to people that speak more than one language. Mm-hmm.
00:22:16
Speaker
um But yeah, so let's see. ah to to to to i I make a list of questions for people who are listening. I make a list of questions and then I want to go through them in a different order um just to to keep things flowing. um Let's see. So
Overcoming Trauma and PTSD
00:22:35
Speaker
you... um You have PTSD. I have that here in my notes.
00:22:40
Speaker
yeah um if We don't need to discuss the the origins of that necessarily, but um I'm someone who has ah PTSD as an adult from childhood trauma, and it left me with a lot of things to untangle as I was trying to...
00:22:57
Speaker
Learn how to have ah respectful, loving relationships with people because I didn't know how. I'd never had that modeled for me. And the PTSD, I think, made me more defensive and and reactive than was helpful at the time. What was your experience like?
00:23:17
Speaker
um it's It's still a work in progress. I mean, I have no problems i have no problems discussing it openly. um as a As a suicide survivor, I am somebody who feels that it's important for us to speak openly.
00:23:31
Speaker
um But yeah, my PTSD stems from um childhood molestation. ah that happened at the hands of a man that my mother married and his friend.
00:23:42
Speaker
And then it happened again ah when I was in evangelical youth groups in my teens. And so, you know, I have these multiple points of trauma um that really left me riddled and depersonalized. I mean, that's the best way I can describe it. And um Unfortunately, ah religion got a hold of me, but evangelical religion got a hold of me ah long before ah therapy did.
00:24:10
Speaker
And, um you know, so I'm sorry, when you when you say that it got a hold of you, um are you saying that you accepted the teachings of the church as facts and and you were trapped in that?
00:24:22
Speaker
Or were you surrounded by religious types? ah it It wasn't until I was in high school. When I was in high school, I joined theater, which we'll touch on more later. But along with that, there were a lot of kids that went to church youth groups, and they were taught to recruit other kids.
00:24:39
Speaker
And if you are somebody who is um who is going through a lot of trauma, who is lost, you are easy to recruit. You want to have a sense of purpose. You want to have a place of acceptance.
00:24:52
Speaker
You don't have any of that. And the youth group gives it to you along with all these toxins. um You know, these toxins that gay people are bad, women are less. um there's There's not a racist problem, but maybe those people need to be more respectful to police, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah blah So I was I was taken into evangelical culture because it was a place that I could find acceptance. It was a place that I could find hope.
00:25:14
Speaker
But I also didn't realize how much gaslighting was going on, how much manipulation was going on and how much separation from my family was going on. And that, you know, yeah I wasn't I didn't have demonic energies on me.
00:25:29
Speaker
I had trauma that needed to be addressed. And I actually went on to be – there was a window in my life, which my books tie into, ah that where I almost broke away from that world.
00:25:42
Speaker
And then some more trauma happened, and I got sucked back into that world and actually became a minister for a good 16 years of my life before I tapped out um to become veteran.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, I tapped out. I mean, my kid came out of the closet and I had to be a parent. Now, I knew years before that my child was something and I accepted it. I just had the wrong letter, but I was sniffing in the right direction.
00:26:08
Speaker
But, you know, at that point, it was time to leave my marriage, time to leave my church. And time to discover a new life. We were off to good steps when we stepped away from religion, but especially as an ex minister who had been in this subculture for so long, that is a difficult road.
00:26:24
Speaker
And I was doing it by myself and I was toxic as all get out. And I take full responsibility for my toxic behavior. But I was also a victim of epic level gaslighting that started at the age of nine.
00:26:38
Speaker
So when yeah I was 49 years old, November 11th, 2019, I finally tried to check out, almost succeeded. And after two and a half days in ICU, we did three weeks of inpatient.
00:26:53
Speaker
And then i had to put my life back together again. And so with that trauma, um my experiences,
00:27:04
Speaker
i've never had room to be myself because of codependency. I would do, I was personality tofu. I became whatever I thought you wanted me to be so that I could gain acceptance to the point that I had no sense of person.
00:27:19
Speaker
And um finding that sense of person again has been amazing and it's been beautiful and who I am as a parent, who I am as a friend or a partner or or an activist um is because of this is who is authentically me and what's left of me for the first time in my life. I actually love who I am.
00:27:47
Speaker
Right on. That is so powerful, man. No question. Because, I mean, it is amazing how many people you don't even realize are just going through life in survival mode.
00:28:01
Speaker
You know, they have terrible childhoods and then they try to go out into the world. And, you know, especially like there' there are so many predators. I mean, not just for sex things, but but for, you know, I mean, like Scientology is still out there doing its thing.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah. looking for people who have an obvious need for something and then saying, wow, I could really take advantage of that person. And then they do it to the best of their ability.
00:28:29
Speaker
um And it's, it's just so amazing and impressive that you've been able to come through that. And, and as a parent, it's so amazing because, you know, i'm sure how many people,
00:28:44
Speaker
are abused as child children, even sexually abused, and then they grow up and they repeat the cycle and they convince themselves that it wasn't that bad and, you know, the whole, my parents beat the crap out of me and I turned out fine. Like, maybe not.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, and statistically, you're usually going to go in one of two paths. You are going to either continue that chain of abuse or you're going to continue the chain of, I hate using the word victimhood, but you're going to continue that change of chain of codependency where you are going to be taken by another person, another person, another person.
00:29:20
Speaker
It's going to be a different way. But the analogy I think of is if you've got an addictive personality, how many people, you know, you give up heroin and you take up alcohol, you give up alcohol, you take up smoking, you give up smoking, you're eating a pound of chocolate a day.
00:29:34
Speaker
um That addictive personality is just going to keep you in that cycle until you ultimately break the cycle. And it's unfair that other people have created this brokenness in you and you're the one who has to clean up the mess.
00:29:46
Speaker
But that is unfortunately the reality. Yeah, it is. and And it can be hard as hell to get yourself out of it, especially when it's compounded by societal things, whether it's homophobia or extreme poverty or mental illness, like any of those things that that get like caught up in it you know Because being treated badly as a child, and I don't mean to diminish what you went through by just calling it bad treatment, but I mean like in a general way, when you have a terrible childhood,
00:30:19
Speaker
even if you're not mentally ill or have some sort of intellectual issue where you you know you you can't read properly or you can't do math or learning disabilities, whatever, like it can be so difficult just to untangle it all and see like what part of it was organic to you as a person and could have been dealt with as a kid, how much of it was done like to you by other people.
00:30:45
Speaker
And in the end, like I've had doctors tell me like therapists say, well, it doesn't matter how you got here. Like, well, it it does, though, because it absolutely does. My God. Yeah. and And it's pretty shocking because, like, I think acknowledging what happened to you and how you became the person that you are now for better or worse.
00:31:08
Speaker
is that essential for moving forward. The armchair quarterbacking of people analyzing other people's lives. um My 25-year-old actually works for a domestic violence and sexual assault shelter, and they have repeat clients because it takes several tries to be able to break that cycle and get out. And For an addict, it's going to take a couple tries before you stay clean, and even then you're dealing with this monkey for the rest of your life. I am so much better than I used to be, but I would be a liar if I still didn't struggle with negative self-talk, if I still didn't wake up at night in a cold sweat because of a trauma flashback in my dreams.
00:31:50
Speaker
I mean, this stuff, at Rick Springfield said it best when he was talking about his depression in an interview once. He said depression is a life sentence. And he's right. um and And these things stick with you and they form you.
00:32:05
Speaker
And the, you know, you went on your tangent. My tangent is this. I get so tired of the people that say, well, aren't you grateful for it? Because it made you strong. It made you resilient. And it's like, bitch, please. Nope. I would have just liked to have been loved. I would have liked to have been safe.
00:32:19
Speaker
I would have liked to have been respected so that I wouldn't have had to carry all this. I still could be all of these inner strengths and all of this inner resolve without that fucking shit.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yep. Yes, indeed. Indeed. So you describe yourself as a feminist and an LGBTQ ally.
00:32:42
Speaker
um and And you've worked on some of the toughest issues there are, like suicide prevention. Right. So how does that...
Ministerial Past and Social Issues
00:32:51
Speaker
Like I used to work at a, ah I volunteered at a ah women's shelter before I actually had to stay at one as a client. and ah Surprise, surprise.
00:33:00
Speaker
um And I found it often like equally rewarding, but also frustrating and draining. How do you um not take that with you everywhere you go?
00:33:14
Speaker
um the There's two ways to answer that. The first answer is honestly, I do carry it with me sometimes. um Compassion fatigue is a real thing.
00:33:26
Speaker
But ah the reminder that I always give myself is is I do have the privilege, and and I use that word um with dual meaning here. i do In my privilege, I have the privilege to be able to walk away from it and breathe and get my shit back in order before going back into the fight.
00:33:44
Speaker
um Somebody who's trans or somebody who has breasts is going to always be there and be visibly seen as what they are and always be under attack for it.
00:33:55
Speaker
um and And so, you know, I mean, what I can tell you is this, as somebody who used to be a minister, I feel I am part, I feel that I am complicit in some of the things that have happened and is going on now.
00:34:12
Speaker
ah Because the world that we live in right now is an evangelical's wet dream come to fruition. Yeah, it is. but you know i mean as a parent as somebody who is who is a friend um i think one of the for well i was already having wakeup calls because ah me and some other pastors back when i was still in the game had started seeing women who were victims of domestic violence differently than a lot of evangelical culture in that we're like we got to get these women away from these situations
00:34:45
Speaker
Their lives are on the their lives are on the line. And it's not about restoring marriage. It's not about some biblical definition. These women are in danger and we have to figure out how to help. So we started talking to um experts in the field that would give us non-religious experts, secular experts.
00:35:05
Speaker
So that was my first wake up call. But I think. Oh, yeah. Evangelicals aren't going to be even the Catholics aren't really having that. No, no. But and and then the thing is, um when I was in the middle of my, you know, after I had separated from my marriage and I'd left ministry, um there was this thing going on called the Me Too movement. And I think a lot of progressive men who pat themselves on the back for being an ally and ah say you know they pat themselves on the back for never having raped anyone in an alley. right They don't ask the hard questions because I started doing a lot of self-analysis and the self-analysis, have I ever used alcohol as a social lubricant?
00:35:44
Speaker
Have I ever begged, bargained, used guilt? Hey, I brought you dinner. Have I ever done anything that may may have been driven to get what I wanted out of the dinner.
00:35:55
Speaker
And if the answer is yes, and it's going to be for almost every man out there, you've got the uncomfortable things that you have to face. But the only way that's going to happen is if you actually face it.
00:36:07
Speaker
and And honestly, I don't think we would, you know, i we we when this is something that I'm very cautious about because I have a lot of people give me accolades. Oh my God, you're such a great guy.
00:36:17
Speaker
It's like, but I have to be on guard because honestly, i don't think Joss Whedon and some others intended to become the assholes that they were. I think they got so full of their shit and patted themselves on the back. that They didn't continually challenge their toxicity. When you are raised in this culture, even if you are raised in a good progressive Democrat home, you're surrounded by misogyny. You are surrounded by the patriarchy.
00:36:44
Speaker
You are surrounded by all of these influences. And you go to high school where there is locker room talk and you're trying to discover yourself as to the measure of a man And this is a constant deconstruction. And that deconstruction has to go on until your dying day.
00:36:59
Speaker
Because at the point that you get comfortable and you start patting yourself on the back, you think that you are ready to lead the charge instead of being a humble assistant. And at the point that you lead the charge, that's like Pat Boone trying to lead the civil rights march and telling Martin Luther King to take a step back and learn something. That's fucked up.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Well, it's it's a wild thing because I know, i mean, obviously I'm not going to hang out with MAGA boys. I hang out with with men who identify as liberal and progressive.
00:37:33
Speaker
But there's still a ways to go. i mean, it's not just, you know, the Thanksgiving dinner where all the men are still sitting there watching sports while the women are serving food and then cleaning up.
00:37:44
Speaker
But the idea, for example, of ah coercion, because coercion is not rape. You know, and a lot of men will talk about how they convince women to to have sex with them.
00:37:57
Speaker
I actually had a man say to me, but I drove all the way out here. Right. Like that, that was his, his convincer that he drove all the way out here. I was, you know, like somehow 20 bucks in gas and 45 minutes of his time necessitated that that, that I put out on a first date.
00:38:17
Speaker
So yeah. I was well, here was another wake up call. I was in a relationship. um This is several years back. And um she had gotten dirty flirty with me while we were out to dinner.
00:38:28
Speaker
And then when we got back to the condo, she but her mood had changed and I was being a pouty little bitch about the whole thing. And she just looked at me and she goes, let's go outside and have a cigarette. And I'm like, oh, shit.
00:38:42
Speaker
And so we go outside and she looks at me and she there was there was an amazing thing that happened. She goes, one of the great things about this relationship is you have helped teach me that nobody should treat me with disrespect and I will be God damned if it's you.
00:38:58
Speaker
I know what you want. I know why you're being pouty. And this is not helping your case. And it also hurts my feelings. And it does something to you on a very fundamental level. And I need you to understand that.
00:39:10
Speaker
And so from that point on, the rest of our relationship became extremely consent driven. And if neither party was on board with it, it didn't happen. And, you know, a lot of people would say that's unromantic. But, oh, my God, when both parties are on board, when you say you want to.
00:39:28
Speaker
Well, yes. Do you want it? Well, hell yeah. That is it is the best intimacy ever. Now, this transpired beyond our relationship. Let's say one of us wanted to go to karaoke and the other one didn't.
00:39:40
Speaker
You know what? That was OK. That had to be OK. um and And that just, that that one conversation affected the quality of an entire relationship.
00:39:51
Speaker
And I am so grateful, not for having screwed up, but I'm so grateful that somebody felt comfortable enough to call me out on my shit and trusted me enough to say, i believe you can change if I tell you that you're being an asshole right now.
00:40:06
Speaker
And that is so huge. Just that kind of communication, that so many people are, I don't know if they're even bad at it or if they just don't ah realize how important it is.
00:40:20
Speaker
it it is It is hard to feel safe. It's not just about me being a safe person, but that other partner had her own trauma. She had her own incidences. She had her own life where she had been hurt many, many times by different people.
00:40:37
Speaker
So it's not just me. It's, you know, I mean, people that take... that take that personally, they've got to get past themselves. It's not just you, dude. It is everything that person has experienced and you're creating a trauma trigger, whether you intend to or not. Most microaggressions are happen innocently, but they still hurt the other person. And you have to understand that.
00:40:59
Speaker
This is why I'm very nervous about using the term ally um because I see so many performative allies out there.
Critique of Performative Allyship
00:41:08
Speaker
Um, I it's, it's, it's, and I know I'm jumping ahead on a question here, but I feel that it's germane.
00:41:14
Speaker
Um, you, you have to be knighted by the royalty. If, if, if, if a woman calls me an ally, if a queer person calls me an ally, then I accept it. I don't run around with that title because that's something that exists for a lot of motherfuckers between June 1st and June 30th and in July, you're back to whatever.
00:41:34
Speaker
And I don't like performative allyship. I don't like memes that say, this may be hard to say and I may lose friends, but I'm an ally. Oh, pumpkin, don't make it about you.
00:41:47
Speaker
Fantastic. I definitely want to get back to the issue of communication because i think what one thing that I noticed is that there's a lot of entitlement there.
00:42:02
Speaker
And that that's what stokes that whole coercion thing. Like, I've been nice to you for X amount of time. i want sex. Give me the sex now. And...
00:42:14
Speaker
And that's coupled with, there was a push a few years ago, and I mean, it's it's still a thing now, but people are taking it more seriously, about getting affirmative consent at every point of a makeout session, particularly the first time.
00:42:30
Speaker
But really every time, because the fact that you consented to something once doesn't mean that like you always get it from then on. But I think the entitlement and that lack of communication, because I don't know if you remember um that Bill Cosby had some stand-up making fun of of that, of getting consent at every stage and talking about how it ruins the mood and it's unromantic and...
00:42:58
Speaker
I have found in my own life that saying things like, oh, do you like that? You want me to keep doing that? Like, I mean, and the mood was not killed. it The mood was just friggin' fine and after that.
00:43:12
Speaker
And that's how you get can consent. It doesn't have to be this like, excuse me, ma'am, would it be all right if I put my hand upon thine breast? it's just... You know, there there are ways to do things that are not ridiculous. Try those, fellas.
00:43:28
Speaker
And I mean, I shouldn't even say fellas because anybody can be coercive. It's not 100% fellas before I get at it about it.
00:43:39
Speaker
it um So, yeah, so I love that. And i agree that self-identifying as an ally is ah certainly can be problematic um because I've had people...
00:43:52
Speaker
and just Just on the issue of fatness, because I'm a fat chick, so there'll be people that make fat jokes and then say, oh no, I'm an ally, look, I'm 10 pounds overweight. Like, okay, first of all, fuck you.
00:44:03
Speaker
But secondly, like, you including yourself in a demographic and then presuming to speak for everyone in that demographic? No. No, sir.
00:44:15
Speaker
yeah That's not going to be a thing. The great irony is that they don't understand that when conservatives speak, if the sentence starts off, I'm not a racist, but racist shit is out of their mouth. Right behind that is the right behind that is the um Well, I have black friends. Well, I have gay friends.
00:44:34
Speaker
So now I'm about to say something extremely racist and homophobic and therefore it's okay. No, that's not how it works at all. um i I, you know, I try to be, a when when I wrote for Patheos, I um wrote a lot about trans issues and I knew why Patheos hired me to do that. I was a cishet.
00:44:54
Speaker
Um, so I was very careful and with, with, with, you know, I lived in two worlds with fellow set sets, Game was on. i was I was going to check you every turn I could.
00:45:07
Speaker
But if a trans person spoke up and said, hey, what you said was hurtful what you said was incorrect, stop, listen, understand, and then research. Because that person is not the ambassador for all things trans.
00:45:21
Speaker
If they say that hurts, it's not up to me to ask them and say, why? That's not on them. That's up to me to do the research and look and understand why that's problematic. um You know, I mean, we if we when we talk about books more later, one of the things that I hate is, um you know, as somebody who's got a lot of Gen Z people in his life, i've I've got a lot of trans and non-binary people that are in my life that are friends with my kid and so forth.
00:45:48
Speaker
And as such, you know, we've read a lot of bad YA literature featuring trans characters that you could tell that the person did zero research, but they still want the ally pat on the bat back for trying. And it's like, no, you're literally hurting people with shit representation.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's a mirror, sure, but it's a broken mirror like a carnival of horrors. Well, and there's really no excuse for not doing your research. There's really no excuse for not having a sensitivity reader because those people are out there and they're available.
00:46:23
Speaker
Every time I clear my throat, someone is offering to beta read for me. And, you know, that people are so... Because the thing is, if you don't understand a particular demographic and you want to and you're polite and respectful...
00:46:41
Speaker
On the one hand, nobody is obligated to teach you, and that's just a fact. But on the other hand, there will be people who will be perfectly happy to sit down with you and explain the things that you don't understand if you are willing to listen.
00:46:55
Speaker
You know, it's it's like, ah I mean, i have friends who are trans. I have friends whose kids are trans. And so I've known them since they were born as having one set of pronouns, and now it's a different one.
00:47:08
Speaker
And if I screw it up... I mean, i acknowledge it and apologize because that's really all I can do. But my point is that I've never had someone be shitty to me about it or accuse me of being hateful because I said the wrong word.
00:47:22
Speaker
And I think a lot of haters want to make it sound like, oh, wow, people treat me so hatefully when I say the wrong pronouns. Like, well, did you say it on accident or did you say it and then tell people that you don't have to participate in their delusion?
00:47:38
Speaker
Because that's what fa people say, you know? And so, yeah, I mean, I forget where I was going with this. You know why? Because I was centering myself in a conversation where I should not be centered. It's a big problem I have.
00:47:55
Speaker
That's okay. Um, just to add to this random tangent that we're on, um, but Even yeah i would say even if you think you know about a demographic, the research and the sensitivity reading still matters. I um have a character who is profoundly deaf in my current book series and.
00:48:14
Speaker
Though I had a sister that was deaf and though I had a friend that this character is based on who is profoundly deaf and i know ASL, I am not of that community.
00:48:26
Speaker
So before writing the character, I did a lot of research with a writer from the deaf community and I had sensitivity readers ah for women of different age groups that were of the deaf community that gave me my sensitivity readings.
00:48:41
Speaker
And whatever they said was gospel. um You know, it wasn't about, well, I have to have it serve the story. No, I have to adapt the story to serve this character and not hurt anybody.
00:48:52
Speaker
Because the last thing I want to do is to have somebody read this and be hurt yet again. um the best thing that would happen is I would love somebody who's profoundly deaf to read it and say, this is all right, but I could do a better job and then go out and fucking do it. Nice.
00:49:09
Speaker
nice Yeah, I love that. um So are you are you referring to Hearts of Glass, that series? Yes, yes. Okay, so this is this is your current series that's out right now.
00:49:21
Speaker
Correct. So tell me more
'Hearts of Glass' Book Series
00:49:24
Speaker
about it. Make me want to buy it. um Okay, ah the the elevator pitch is this. Hearts of Glass is a coming-of-age story set in the late 80s.
00:49:34
Speaker
You have three characters in a found family situation. You've got Ford, who is a former child model living out his own trauma. You have Cassie, a DIY punk girl who has a stalkery ex-boyfriend.
00:49:48
Speaker
And you have Jenny, a girl who's got an it factor trying to make it in the modeling world. but cannot be recognized over something that is not her fault, but the fault of other people. Together, they're going to face dangers and foes that are well above their pay grade as teenagers.
00:50:03
Speaker
Will Hearts of Glass be able to survive living in a real world?
00:50:09
Speaker
So basically what that long pitch is, is that it's semi-autobiographical. And it's um really about three people that find each other and using the 80s as my backdrop, um you've got this perfect time in the mall, which is the epitome of capitalism.
00:50:33
Speaker
And you've got religious figures that is the epitome of faith. And these things don't resolve anything for these kids that all work in a mall and live in a religious community.
00:50:45
Speaker
it actually exasperates their problems. And what gets them through it is that found family, that togetherness. Being able to trust each other in their brokenness is how we survive.
00:50:57
Speaker
And I think we dismiss um teenagers and young adults way too often and forget that we as Gen X we were robbed of a childhood many many times and we have grew up far faster than we should have and we went through some very real shit and today's kids are going through some very real shit so my goal is to build a generational divide here or not a generational divide but a generational bridge where we can have a reminder that the 80s weren't awesome because of the music, but that like in season one of Stranger Things, we discovered that music while some shit was going on in the background that we had to drown out.
00:51:40
Speaker
Oh, very much so. I mean, yeah, like, men at work were pretty cool and everything and adamant. But, yeah, that whole, like, being latchkey kids and not getting very much attention and raising your siblings and all that there. I mean, the thing is that I think a lot of Xers are resentful...
00:52:04
Speaker
That society has developed in such a way that kids are less dismissed now than they used to be. I think they're more listened to and people are paying more attention to their feelings.
00:52:16
Speaker
And, you know, you hear these boomers that are like, oh kids today can't even change your tire. Like, well, you know what? I can tell my kid that I love them and I'm not embarrassed to buy my wife tampons.
00:52:27
Speaker
So, you know, give a little, get a little, huh? um Yeah, I love that. i love that premise. The characters sound like people I would want to hang out with.
00:52:39
Speaker
um but was i'm I'm a very found family person. I went no contact for my family of origin in 95. And since then, I've been putting family together. And I think most of us have. and And, you know, I mean, this whole idea that we owe somebody something because we share DNA is fucked up.
00:52:57
Speaker
Family is where love is and where safety is. And that's where family is, you know, and and the thing that really this was a very short period of my life.
00:53:13
Speaker
where I was able to actually be myself as a young adult. And we get to explore a lot of things because ah with this trauma, um I talk about, you know, in the first kiss, I'm not a spice writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I wanted a first kiss that was consent driven, where the main character understood what he was about to do with this first kiss.
00:53:37
Speaker
what it meant. And this was no longer grabbing a girl and kissing her. Uh, this was something else. And in the second book, we dive in deeper into how the hell do you get information about how to do it for the first time?
00:53:50
Speaker
Um, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's really the information, good information. You got your friends, you got parents that just tell you the biology and you're just kind of lost. You, you know, back in our day, we were left with hustler and pan house. What could possibly go wrong?
00:54:06
Speaker
ah Yeah, go ahead. I mean, well, that is just, you know, I'm a sex writer during the day. So I have a lot of strong feelings about the fact that we don't have national sex ed standards and that it's possible to graduate from high school and not know very basic things.
00:54:26
Speaker
You know, like, I mean, I've met grown men who think that all women get their period on the 15th of the month. Yeah. Like literally 15th. Yeah. um Like, what about February?
00:54:38
Speaker
But no, I mean, just zany stuff that like, you know, how babies are made, like how like they understand, you know, PIV intercourse and that that's how babies are made.
00:54:50
Speaker
But they don't know that it needs to be at a certain point and in a cycle, for example, or that there even is a cycle. You know, or I mean, i've I've spoken with grown men who really honestly believe that the female orgasm is a myth and that people are trying to trick them into thinking it exists to make them look silly trying to provide one.
00:55:13
Speaker
Like that's a thing that that men grow up thinking. besides right you
00:55:19
Speaker
Besides Ben Shapiro, that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, I've never had a conversation with Ben Shapiro that I'm aware of, although I don't know all of his alias username. So I suppose it's possible.
00:55:32
Speaker
You know, and the thing that the the thing that boggles my mind is back when we were growing up and as teenagers in the 80s, I assume we're about the same age. um When I was a teenager in the eighty s we didn't have many checks and balances for the bad information we got. We would have to to library and research that, and who knows how to use a card catalog. But today, valuable, easily accessible information is at your fingertips from cited, valid sources. So to be walking around with these myths is just very disturbing. And then the other thing that I will say is, you being you being an an author of Erotica and Spice, what
00:56:14
Speaker
What I love about that is in my world, my first exposure to healthy sexual expression actually came in my 40s when I discovered the kink community. um you know I actually need to just correct you on one thing.
00:56:29
Speaker
I don't write erotica and spice. Forgive me. i'm an in It's fine. A lot of people don't realize. Like a sex writer, um is it it's a type of of journalism actually, like being a sports writer or a food writer.
00:56:42
Speaker
um i write about sex. I write informational articles, and I also do a lot of product reviews. Okay, so we're talking we're talking more Dr. Ruth than if I'm going to use an 80s vernacular.
00:56:54
Speaker
ah Yeah, without the cool accent, unfortunately. But no, I agree. I used to listen to Dr. Roots on the radio with my Walkman in bed, unbeknownst to my parents.
00:57:05
Speaker
And it was so interesting. And I wondered why i had already had sex ed in school and they hadn't given me any of that information. Like I knew that a clitoris was the thing that existed, but that's all.
00:57:19
Speaker
I listened to her, too, around 13, 14, 15, and I thought I was going to hear salacious stuff. What I didn't realize was I was going to learn shit. um And also, she was cool as fuck because she got to hang out with Billy Idol. I've seen the photos on the internet. It's amazing.
00:57:35
Speaker
Billy Idol topless, her in a rubber suit. What could be more 80s than that moment? A butt. No, it it was it was it was through kink and learning safe words and everything being consent-driven. That was really something that, that was where I had my first healthy understanding. And as a parent, um I didn't have a singular birds and the bees discussion. As my child grew older, we had different discussions.
00:58:01
Speaker
At 10, we talked about the biology. as As they grew older, we were talking about the importance of consent, pleasure, safety, so on and so forth. By the time the kid's in high school, I'm ready to have conversations about foreplay, not to make my kid uncomfortable, which I did.
00:58:18
Speaker
But but also to say, you know what, I want you to have a good life and I want that life to include a good sex life. we We treat this thing as this separate article of our personhood when actually it's integrated into the whole of us.
00:58:34
Speaker
And if we can be mature enough to accept that as a fact, we can better parent, we can better partner and we can better friend. Yep, that's so true.
00:58:45
Speaker
And I mean, it all starts with just like most things with knowing what the heck you're talking about, knowing what's going on. um And that's why it's just such a it's such a shame, because even like I realized after my sex talk, like a few years went by, I started having like boyfriends and stuff.
00:59:05
Speaker
And I realized how incredibly inadequate it is to have one sex talk that covers everything from menstruation to birth control to this is what you can expect on your wedding night.
00:59:19
Speaker
Which was what my mom squeezed into one conversation. i mean, she looked up the word menstruation in the encyclopedia set that we had and and told me to read it. and I was like, okay.
00:59:30
Speaker
Well, that sounds awful. How long is that going to be going on? and And, but it wasn't, there was no discussion of like feelings or, or like when you should even know if you want to say yes.
00:59:44
Speaker
Like nothing like that. It was like, boys are going to try to get it from you. You can't let them until they want to marry you. And I think that if we had, I think that that's actually one of the reasons that conservatives fight sex ed, because they don't want to equip young people with the facts and information that they need to protect themselves from predators.
01:00:07
Speaker
And I think I'm more and more right about that every time something happens in the news. Yeah, yeah. You're going to get no discreement or exposition from me. i Yeah.
01:00:22
Speaker
But we kind of moved away from your book series, and I don't want to do that because... Sorry, go ahead. Well, what I wanted to ask actually is when you start writing a book series, are you one of those people that has a planned ending in mind or are you like a seat of your pants guy?
01:00:39
Speaker
A little bit of column A, column B. I know that I am a pantser, but I needed to be a plotter whenever I did this because there's an etymology to this. I have um an online column that I call Gen X Watch, and I invite contributing authors, and we write about nostalgia in the news, and we sometimes do investigative reports about ah about um ah mixtapes, which is actually serious because it's the advancement of hip-hop, and ah helped end the Cold War.
01:01:07
Speaker
So anyway, I did this thing called Femme Friday. And during Femme Friday articles, I would celebrate women from our era that ah were influential to Gen X that are still making a difference today, be it Cyndi Lauper or many other people. But then when I wrote about Tina Turner, a black woman, suddenly I had crickets from my audience, no views,
01:01:30
Speaker
And I had mostly a Gen X and millennial female audience that were white, and I started getting some passive-aggressive comments. So I got pissed off, and I decided the following week, my entire middle finger to the audience, ah if if if Tina Turner, a black woman who who survived abuse, was too in your face, I'm going to throw an article at you about Joan fucking Jett.
01:01:53
Speaker
And where and i'm not only am I going to write about Joan Jett, I'm going to write about this girl named Sarah that I met at a Joan Jett concert in 91 in Ohio, and we did horrible things to each other, fully consensual for four amazing days, and there was also drugs.
01:02:10
Speaker
What I didn't expect in that was that my audience loved Sarah. um Joan Jett was fine, but Sarah was somebody who they could relate to. They knew somebody like her.
01:02:21
Speaker
um so i So then i started writing about other women that I knew back then that was this beautiful window in my life where they were my mentors, my teachers,
01:02:35
Speaker
that even after I went back into a evangelical hell, they were the seeds planted in my garden. They were the weeds that choked out the flowers of hate that were rooting inside me.
01:02:48
Speaker
And they gave me something beautiful that stuck under my skin. And so, you know, I wrote about Heather, a girl who was a Madonna fan. So there was always a celebrity connected with the person.
01:02:59
Speaker
And then I wrote about Kathy, who was my first love. And this girl that I met while working at the mall, and I never expected to write about her.
01:03:11
Speaker
And when I did, people really connected with her. So then i wrote two more articles about her and telling our story and the readership exploded. So did the comments people related to her.
01:03:26
Speaker
And then I wrote about some other people in our found family circle on my Fem Fridays and people fell in love with these people. And I realized that there was something important going on here And the person who the profoundly deaf characters based off of contacted me and she's like, I know you haven't written anything in 10 years, but dude, you got to write this as a book.
01:03:52
Speaker
And I'm like, what about memoirs? She goes, no one's going to give a shit about your life, but they'll give a shit about us and these characters do it. And so I realized I had to plot a story arc because book one,
01:04:06
Speaker
is pretty much on point with everything that happened. We just change the names and condense the timelines. Book two is about a 50-50 mix. Book three is going to be allegorical into life in middle age, but it's going to take place in the early ninety s and try to find And so I had to figure out how do I give this story a better ending?
01:04:26
Speaker
How do I give this story beauty? And how do I make it matter to
Impact of Book Series
01:04:31
Speaker
feminists? How do I make it matter to survivors? How do I make it matter to people who have a disability? How do I make it matter to sensitive boys who believe that it's okay to listen to women?
01:04:41
Speaker
um How do I make this better? good and so i plotted out uh i spent about two months plotting out all three books in the outline and then i just started writing them now in writing them uh because though these characters are based off of me and this person and that person cassie ford and jenny really become their own people And they are their own people. And sometimes your characters decide what might be more true to them and change the story if you're a pantser and you allow that.
01:05:17
Speaker
So yes, I plotted it out, but there has been a lot of room for adaptation as I discover the characters. And they, I know this sounds nuts, but they want me to go in different directions and it just feels right. And I go with that flow.
01:05:31
Speaker
and also with sensitivity readers, people who are experts in domestic violence, sexual assault, people who are survivors, people who are profoundly deaf, as they read and gave me feedback, now it's become a collaboration where I am telling our story.
01:05:48
Speaker
And, um, I, and, and though I don't have many comments yet because I'm building a fan base from nothing, I love what women who are my age are saying, ah particularly about the character Cassie, because they either were her or they relate to her. And then they see the character Jenny and they admire her strength and they find Ford as being a good, solid character.
01:06:12
Speaker
um person and Ford is not a hero because he's the best book boyfriend. He's a hero not because of the things he does but because he listens, he believes, and he's willing to hold space and you can criticize him and he'll pivot.
01:06:26
Speaker
um So that's what makes him a good book boyfriend and a good friend to these people. And I truly love what is happening there. There was one reviewer from the UK who was a man who I'm assuming is about my age, who his review started off with something to the effect of this book is about crimes that happen to women and they think it's their fault.
01:06:51
Speaker
And everybody who has a daughter needs to give this book. He's discovering he is discovering toxic masculinity and misogyny. So for him, this is a revelation. Oh, my God, every girl needs to know about this. This is horrible.
01:07:04
Speaker
Because he's looking at Ford's eyes, and he's just like, oh, my God, this kid's right. These girls shouldn't be treated that way. And that was an unexpected benefit. I wanted...
01:07:16
Speaker
women to be touched. I wanted that. That is amazing and to be touched. But, you know, and he's not the only one there was there was another man that wrote a review. I think it was on Barnes and Noble where he said something to the effect of, you know what? And he doesn't preach at you.
01:07:30
Speaker
If you walk, he doesn't tell you what you should think or believe. But if you walk away from this book feeling like you were told that you were a bad person, it's probably because you are and you need some analysis. And I'm like, yeah, ah oh, my God, thank you.
01:07:42
Speaker
um You know, I mean, living with imposter syndrome your entire life, when you read these beautiful things where people are relating to these characters and this story and they're seeing they're not just being entertained, but they're also being moved and touched and finding some inner strength.
01:07:59
Speaker
That means everything. Well, yeah, I mean, my my favorite reviews are always the ones that say this made me feel seen. yeah Like that's that's the whole frigging point.
01:08:11
Speaker
And I think as writers, I notice that there are a lot of people putting out whole ass books that don't have like a theme or a point.
01:08:25
Speaker
You know, it's just a bunch of so stuff that happened. And I shouldn't say that that's not valid because if people simply want to be entertained, that's that's none of my business. be Be entertained and enjoy it.
01:08:37
Speaker
But for my money, if I'm going to spend a year, year and a half writing a book, it's going to have a point. There's going to be a reason why i am telling, I'm, you know, taking the time to tell these stories because I'm illustrating some kind of point.
01:08:55
Speaker
And I always hope that I'm not hitting people over the head with it. But it sounds like you are really reaching people without hitting them over the head with it.
01:09:06
Speaker
And that is deliberate. I think as an ex-minister and as somebody who was once married to somebody who was a huge Ayn Rand fan, I know where that line is. um You know, I mean, she'll go into a 70-page silico about her life philosophy. No, fuck that. Let the story be the story.
01:09:25
Speaker
And let the plot... and and And I love storytelling. I love paying attention to stories. um the the For me, the first book is A Hero's Journey.
01:09:35
Speaker
The second book that I'm almost done with right now, I'm ah i'm almost done with the second draft, is A Greek Tragedy. And the third book is going to follow um more or less the Phoenix story. So, you know, I love delving into classic storytelling. I love delving into messages.
01:09:54
Speaker
And I love trying things because since this is set in the 80s, I do minor homages to classic 80s moments, um but I want them to be effective. Like in in the second book, for instance, I've written an entire driving montage where one of the characters is just really upset and driving.
01:10:13
Speaker
While the song plays and they have flashbacks and they're also in the present moment. This is an homage to Miami Vice's In the Air Tonight scene. um And it was a challenge and I felt like I executed it so well.
01:10:25
Speaker
But along with that, it has to fit in with a greater story. In the first book, the story... you know We are dealing with, there is a series of shit that happened, but in that series, the tie together is we've got the common themes of trauma.
01:10:40
Speaker
We've got sexual assault. we've got ah you know We've got domestic violence and partner violence. But along the way, the ultimate plot is we may not slay the dragons, but we're going to win our battles by found family, and that's got to be enough.
01:10:56
Speaker
But it's going to follow all the points of a hero's journey to get there. um So, yeah, absolutely. The story absolutely matters. Otherwise, you just have a series of bummers and then you name the song Ironic and there's nothing ironic in it,
01:11:16
Speaker
I love Alanis Morissette as God in Dogma, but that song, I think the only ironic thing about it is there's nothing ironic.
01:11:26
Speaker
Indeed. Did you watch um the the show that she was on as a teenager? Oh, ah on You Can't Do That on television? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I was a great fan of that show. There was a guy on there called Kevin Kubusiewski, and I thought he was just so adorable.
01:11:44
Speaker
um What I wanted to ask you, though, is are you familiar with the writing of ah Frank Pulido? I'm familiar with the name. um Yeah, he's he's a gay author, and he writes, I think now he writes a lot of cozy mysteries, but at first, his first two books, I'm hesitant to say the title, but it's called Band Fags.
01:12:08
Speaker
And it's it's a semi-autobiographical story about his his teen years and and being like discovering that he was gay and and you know the the aftermath of that, how he like found himself and everything.
01:12:24
Speaker
i am I just wonder if, I mean, i think thematically you guys are so much on the same page that I want to make you read each other's work. That's that's my sinister plan.
01:12:39
Speaker
we're I'm going to have to take a note from you after the show so I can write it down again. um But no, it's it's it's fascinating because before I started writing this, I love YA fiction.
01:12:50
Speaker
I stopped reading it and forgot all that I knew um because I didn't want to fall into some YA tropes, and I wanted this to be authentic.
01:13:01
Speaker
Because I also knew that though this is YA in its theme and it's a coming of age story, I also knew that because of its theme that there were also going to be a lot of people my age reading it and there's going to be a lot of millennials reading it.
01:13:13
Speaker
ah But isn't that true with all YA literature? um But, you know, I mean, it was it was really hard to distance myself away from an amazing genre to make sure that I didn't fall into somebody else's work, if that makes sense.
01:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, it does. i just, I always wonder, I appreciate when an author wants to avoid tropes, because obviously that speaks to originality and being able to surprise people and like all of those things are important.
01:13:46
Speaker
I'm a horror fan and a horror writer. ah Horror is made of tropes. It's a bunch of tropes stitched together into a fanciful quilt. Like very little, ah like it's all about what you do with the tropes, how you make them meaningful.
01:14:01
Speaker
You know, i just, ah I'm trying to break myself of the knee-jerk reaction against tropes. Well, here's the thing. There are tropes in this because it is set in the eighty s However, um if ah if I can come up with a better and analogy than the word salad I just spewed, I heard...
01:14:20
Speaker
I heard Kevin Smith in an interview talking about the movie Jersey Girl, which which I actually like, but not a lot of people did. um And he was talking about getting criticized for the slow clap ah trope at the end of the ah school musical scene.
01:14:35
Speaker
And what he said, he goes, yeah, I know it's been done before. Yeah, I know it's a trope, but this is my slow clap. And I think that's what I'm trying to convey is I want the tropes to be my interpretation,
01:14:46
Speaker
I have the same last name as as as a very well-known YA author, John Green, Patrick Green, but I don't want to do tropes his style. I don't want to do tropes um this person's style. I want anything that I do to be my style, and um I once wrote an article that was accidental plagiarism.
01:15:10
Speaker
And whoop I didn't realize it until three years after the fact. Nobody else picked up on it. I had borrowed somebody else's what I thought was a compelling idea, and it was mine. And then a couple years later, three or four years later, I found the original article ah by Kathleen Falsini, and I – You know, it was too late. It was it was in a print newspaper when I was a columnist for that print newspaper.
01:15:34
Speaker
It's already out there. It's no longer online. The damage is done. But I literally sent her an apology letter. And she was like, you know what? I have seen people borrow this concept so many times. You were the first person to do this.
01:15:45
Speaker
Thank you. And I'm sure it was an excellent retelling of my idea. And I'm like, oh, my God. ah Wow. is you know i still had the original copy and i saw it saw it back to back with kath with what kathleen falsini wrote and i'm like dude you were so close to the edge here um so you know i try i try to be careful of because it's so easy to be inspired And it is so wonderful to be inspired. And let's face it, there's not any original songs out anymore. There's not any original stories out there anymore. And that's okay. All of the good ideas are out there for us to borrow from.
01:16:27
Speaker
All of the words are out there and this language is out there for us to create new renditions of these classic stories. um Be it your own hero's journey, your own whatever, your own space opera.
01:16:38
Speaker
But um we must be mindful if we're going to write a space opera not to have Jedi, if that makes sense.
01:16:47
Speaker
Yes, very much so.
01:16:52
Speaker
Now, I want to get into this new question, which is that this is actually a question that we only ask with prior consent. We don't spring this question on people because it's a tough one.
01:17:02
Speaker
But you have given us consent. And so I'm going to ask you to tell us about a time when you found yourself in fear for your life.
Life-Threatening Experiences
01:17:14
Speaker
There are two. um The first one was the day that i tried to self-unalive myself and remove myself from the equation.
01:17:25
Speaker
um It almost worked. And when I first committed to the act, I'm like, yeah, here we come, death. Let's bring it on, motherfucker. ah You know, as an atheist, I gave one last prayer to God. I looked up the sky and I said, told you, motherfucker.
01:17:42
Speaker
And i was just done. But then came a point where I had regrets and I realized that I wanted to live and I was scared that maybe I took this too far.
01:17:53
Speaker
And when the police came and the ambulance came, I had this sense of relief. I might make it. I might make it. I can undo this damage. I don't know what happens next anymore. I don't care what happens next, but I don't want this right now.
01:18:11
Speaker
And that was terrifying. to know that I could leave this life behind. I made the biggest mistake of my life. And for me, I do, that was, that was the most prolific one. The other one, and um
01:18:30
Speaker
I was a taxi driver. And I won't go into the details, but as a taxi driver, this is my first job after I left ministry. um And you're cash register on wheels, and there are some people that want to exploit that.
01:18:46
Speaker
Now, me, the first couple of times I let people rob me, after that, I became a fighter. It was like, you're gonna try to rob me, motherfucker? i'm gonna i'm gonna I'm gonna fight you, and I'm gonna take your wallet and leave you on the street.
01:19:00
Speaker
um Oh, damn. But there was there was one, um it was a very dark time. um But there was one instance with somebody where I didn't know if I was going to walk out of it alive.
01:19:16
Speaker
And in that moment, I regretted all of my aggression. I regretted my wanting to lean into a fight. And I regretted that I didn't have the sense enough to run away from danger and that instead I leaned into it because I was dead inside and I just wanted the adrenaline rush.
01:19:33
Speaker
um So those were the two instances. And the common bond between both of them is that they were both instances that could have been avoided if I'd have gone a different path.
01:19:48
Speaker
Well, and it sounds like they were both instances where you changed your mind halfway through. Yeah, yeah. and you know And that's that's actually, um if I may, that's that's the part I'd like to to focus on. um when you When you attempted self-unaliving, do you think that you chose a stoppable method on purpose?
01:20:13
Speaker
um If I did, it was unconscious because it was subconscious because for about two or three years, I was having daily ideations that I didn't tell anybody about. And my daily ideation was jumping in front of a train.
01:20:31
Speaker
um There was an express train that would come right before the five minutes before the train that I took to work every morning. And every day i thought about jumping in front of that train. And I, Veterans Day, i woke up and it was a very impulsive moment. I'd been up the whole night. I felt like life was spiraling out of control.
01:20:52
Speaker
The trauma triggers, the flashbacks, um and the ideations had just hit a crescendo. And um I OD'd and followed it down with the fifth.
01:21:04
Speaker
And i I thought it was going to work. um But, you know, it's it's um fortunately um I'm you know, it's OK to not be good at everything the first time.
01:21:18
Speaker
And I know that's dark humor, but that's my humor. I'm I get it. But it's – well, it but there is something funny about your story um because there was also addiction as part of my life, and there was a time where I was a caretaker for somebody that was ill.
01:21:35
Speaker
When I got home from the hospital after – three, three and a half weeks. I open up my fridge to see if there's anything left that I can still eat that hasn't turned turn green.
01:21:47
Speaker
And inside the back of my fridge was a full thing of medical grade morphine and a syringe. And i so you I stared at it and I just laughed my ass off because I'm like, you know, those ads from the seventies and the eighties, I could have had a v eight yeah I was no longer in that place, but I just looked at it and I just laughed and it's like, well, shit, that would have worked.
01:22:14
Speaker
And, um you know, I'm glad that I was impulsive and I'm glad that I didn't think it through because had I thought it through, i don't know. i You know, the answer to your question is I don't know because I was so impulsive in the moment that when I did it, it was just kind of a gotcha to the world. It was I surprised myself when I did it. I just went for it.
01:22:38
Speaker
Wow. Wow, man. Yeah. Sorry, I need a minute. um So, um yeah, we're we're going to do a sharp subject change there.
01:22:51
Speaker
Okay. Because you're not just a writer. You also publish. how How's that going? Okay. um It's going well. I mean, we've got two things that I work with.
01:23:02
Speaker
One is Gen X Watch. Gen X Watch, which is genxwatch.com, was meant to be this thing where I was going to be editor of an online magazine. It was going to be me and people writing for me. Patreons were going to pay off and pay for it all. And I actually did have some very beautiful guest columnists.
01:23:22
Speaker
We had one physical magazine and we were publishing three to four articles a week, but eventually it became just the Pat Green Show. And Patreon says things got economically hard.
01:23:33
Speaker
People didn't leave me because they like they didn't like me. People were actually very polite, and they're just like, dude, I got some i got some home fires I got to take care of. I've had to cut out a lot. It hurts to do
Publishing Challenges and Ethics
01:23:43
Speaker
this. I'm like, I get it.
01:23:44
Speaker
Go for it. um But you know I didn't have enough money to pay people what I wanted to, so I left that arena. I've still got Gen X Watch going, and every once in a while I'll publish, but it's mostly dormant l after i finish this until after I finish this book series, and then I'm going to revisit it.
01:24:08
Speaker
because right now it is being used as a resource for a lot of music historians, fashion historians, stuff like that. I wrote some good investigative shit. um But the other thing is Barnstormer Publishing. That's the micro-publisher that published me.
01:24:25
Speaker
And my role right now is, you know, we're very new, we're very young, we're very aggressive, but we're also very ethical because in the self-publishing world and micro-publishing world,
01:24:37
Speaker
There is so much predatory nonsense out there that prays. Yeah, there is hopes and dreams of other people. So we are creating a mechanism where we want to get as many of those voices out there as possible.
01:24:51
Speaker
And it only happens one story at a time. But right now, I'm working with a young man who um he's got an amazing fantasy adventure that's going to be in five parts.
01:25:01
Speaker
First part is really solid. His only struggle is he doesn't always know where commas go. And I'm working on that right now and ah doing the edit and having an editorial pass put on it. And he's almost ready to go. So what I love about this is my my CEO, ah Ton Michaela, she's the one who's doing all of the hard work, I have to find a talent, wrangle them in, and find a way for all of them to communicate with each other and start bonding and have their own found family experience.
01:25:34
Speaker
um Right now, my main focus is on my stories, but after I'm done with this trilogy and a short story collection that expands that universe, I'm done writing. I just want to help
Predatory Publishing Practices
01:25:45
Speaker
inspire other writers, and I want them to do it in as non-toxic and as encouraging a format as possible And instead of having gatekeepers decide whether or not they're good enough, let's let the readers decide.
01:25:56
Speaker
Let's let the readers buy and be exposed to this as opposed in in a non-predatory fashion where they get the lion's share. um So, you know, I mean, this this is – you've got three people in Barnstormer Publishing that are old veterans of the writing world.
01:26:16
Speaker
that remember how it used to be but not in a nostalgic way and are trying to figure out how to have less gatekeepers and better pay for these new voices instead of having them being taken advantage of wow that is dope Because, man, it is crazy out there. I talk to new writers all the time that run these deals by me, and they're like, oh, yeah, I got offered this and this, and this is all it's going to cost me. Like, cost you?
01:26:46
Speaker
you You wrote a book, and you're giving them a book. It shouldn't cost you anything. Exactly. And it's it's terrifying that people, you know, like the the ignorance. Well, because, I mean, you remember when the internet, like when people first started like being on the internet and there was live journal and stuff and the common email scams were, I'm a prince in another country and I want to send you lots of money.
01:27:11
Speaker
and now the common scams are, we want to hire you and we want to publish you. Like those are two of the most common scams that I see. And the thing to me is I can't think of anything more evil. I don't remember the name of the company, but there's a company out in England that had this self-publishing model where they would publish you if you raised enough money in their kind of internal GoFundMe.
01:27:34
Speaker
And there are now writers that are – they sold the company to somebody else. These writers, the books are still being sold. The books are still being marketed. These people are locked into these contracts, but they don't get a nickel of the royalties until the new ownership becomes solvent.
01:27:51
Speaker
Until they operate in the black. And this is predatory. And i see it it is I see it happening with the publishing models out here in the U.S. all the time.
01:28:02
Speaker
And to me, I can't think of anything more dangerous, more wicked, more evil than taking advantage of somebody's dreams and profiting off of that. I mean, it's bad enough.
01:28:14
Speaker
you know My audio book that just released, if you buy it from Audible, I get, me me and my voice actor and my publisher, we get 80%.
01:28:25
Speaker
If you buy it from Audible, ah you know if if If you buy it from Spotify, we get 80% of the cut. If you buy it from Audible, which is the biggest game in town, they're going to take their twenty they's they're gonna there's a 20% cut for you know the cost of us having done it through Spotify, but then Amazon takes another 75%. Yeah.
01:28:49
Speaker
So that means you buy it from you buy it from Spotify, you buy it from Barnes & Noble, you or wherever you buy audiobooks, you're I'm going to get $4 of that action. If you buy it from Amazon, who does absolutely nothing other than put the file out there and fly dick-shaped rockets with pop stars into space, um I get less than a dollar.
01:29:12
Speaker
And so does my audio, my voiceover artist, and my voiceover artist is so amazing and deserves to be paid. and I deserve to be paid and my publisher deserves some recognition for making this possible and all of these young hopeful people that I'm meeting they deserve to be seen.
01:29:32
Speaker
Ten years ago whenever I wrote my last book um I didn't realize how much better the industry was. I was able to sell 5,000 copies overnight and I hardly had to step onto Facebook or any of the or or or Twitter and have to talk about it a lot. I didn't have to do all of this work that I have to do now because the algorithm is so inherently broken that to get content creators and people who desire that form of content to be able to even find each other is a Herculean effort.
01:30:05
Speaker
Oh yeah,
Algorithm Challenges in Book Promotion
01:30:06
Speaker
no no question. I think i it was easier to sell books from LiveJournal than it is on three different meta platforms. You know, because, I mean, you know, Zuck, he just buries everything. You can't share links.
01:30:23
Speaker
You know, their accounts, like the Takeys, Brad and and George Takey have really super popular accounts, millions of followers. When they post a link, nobody sees it.
01:30:34
Speaker
They have to put their links in the comments like everybody else, because that's just how jacked the algorithm is. yeah Whereas Facebook used to be the place for letting people know about your events, letting them know that you have stuff for sale. When I first started my business, and that was like 2016 when I started Scared Soakless, and it was easy to just post pictures of what I was selling on Facebook and people would be all excited and see it. And now, I mean...
01:31:02
Speaker
You pay for an advertisement and it's still just a stupidly small number of people that see it. And they'll say, oh, congratulations, you got views. Like, no, don't congratulate me. You're supposed to be showing my content to the people that said they want to see it.
01:31:18
Speaker
Don't congratulate me because occasionally people can see the things I post. Right. i Yeah. it's it's It's dystopian. and And I'm still trying to find a better way.
01:31:34
Speaker
I mean, once upon a time, I used to be master of SEO metrics. But these days, it's a puzzle. And nobody's told you what the picture is. And the shapes of the picture are changing constantly. Right.
01:31:47
Speaker
There is, you know, I mean, there's the old joke, the only way to be able to make it in music or the only way to be able to make it in ah publishing is to write a book about how to make it in publishing and how to make it.
01:31:59
Speaker
But the thing is the artistic drive is there and the people that are discovering my book makes it worth it. I mean, my last book that I 10 years ago. um That book, I had 5,000 copies sold almost overnight.
01:32:13
Speaker
This, it's going to be a harder hustle to hit that metric, but it's worth it. And if I don't believe in my story, then who the fuck is? um Right. so you have but it's so hard because every artist well not every artist but so many artists they're suffering from imposter syndrome and our trauma is so connected with our creative impulse that we are fragile beings.
01:32:36
Speaker
And if you are not, and I hate the term resilience, but if you are not resilient, if you are not street smart, if you do not have a strong sense of self, these motherfuckers are going to eat you alive.
01:32:49
Speaker
And I hate it.
01:32:51
Speaker
Yep. Well said. I mean, i know, I know, I know, i know bad paper when I'm looking at it, but when you're young and hopeful or just hopeful, you don't.
01:33:03
Speaker
you just see Right, because one of the fears is, if I don't believe in this project, if I don't do whatever it takes, it's going to be my fault if I fail. And that's how people get roped into all these fucking scams. Because people have just this wide-eyed, like, well, you want to do this, right? you want to You want to get out there, you want people to see your work.
01:33:25
Speaker
And you do, so you get taken advantage of. And it is, i mean... I'm with you. That's one of the shittiest things you can do is take advantage of someone's dream.
01:33:37
Speaker
Because, I mean, how long does it take to write a book? If you're really, really fast at it, maybe you wrote your first book in a year.
01:33:47
Speaker
And to tell people, I mean, it's bad enough that people will say, oh, you spent two years writing this book? Well, sorry, but $4.99 is still way too much for me to pay. Like, okay, well, read an AI book then. Get out my face.
01:34:01
Speaker
do um Yeah, and and and that's the other thing. ah Nama Wapro, or however you say it, um I'm not a big fan of that either because you're telling people that if they can't hit 20,000 words in a month, they're never going to make it in this industry.
01:34:16
Speaker
That is such an arbitrary matrix. Now, me, I'm weird. weird and i have my own neurodivergence, I can hammer out 30, 40,000 words in a month without any problem.
01:34:28
Speaker
However, that's Pat Green. Somebody else, it might take them a year and a half to write 10,000 words. you It takes you as long as it takes because that's who you are.
01:34:42
Speaker
And like Mr. Rogers, I like you just the way you are. When you come into, we we we if I approach a writer, It's not going to be about deadlines. It's not going to be about, hey, how much time do you need?
01:34:53
Speaker
Well, i'm it's gonna take
NaNoWriMo Controversies
01:34:55
Speaker
if if this this first person that I'm working with right now, and I've got some others, but this first person I'm working with right now, if – he's ready for us to go to press in three months, then that's when it happens.
01:35:07
Speaker
If it takes him another three years because there's some things that he wants to, that's him. That's who he is. And that's okay. Now me, i can i can hammer out a book in about four months.
01:35:21
Speaker
And that's through all three drafts. But that's me. Stephen King can do it in two and a half to three months from idea all the way through to final drafts. that's him.
01:35:32
Speaker
We are all individuals and that needs to be respected. And I hate hustle culture and I hate toxic positivity that drives people to feel like they have to be something that they're not be who you are.
01:35:44
Speaker
You know, it's interesting because like maybe 18 months ago, i would be vociferously defending NaNoWriMo. um I wrote my first three novels that way.
01:35:55
Speaker
I love what they do, their children's writing programs. I love how they sponsor people. I think that having that kind of contest can be inspiring to the people that instead of saying, oh, I wish I had time to write a novel, to actually plan and take the time. I think that's really helpful to a lot of people.
01:36:15
Speaker
But ah it it is also putting, as as you mentioned, it puts a lot of emphasis on word count over things like quality. And they're very upfront about that in their information.
01:36:27
Speaker
But the yeah the issue with NaNoWriMo is that this past November, they received a large donation from an AI company and then decided that AI was an okay way to write your NaNoWriMo novel.
01:36:45
Speaker
So it became a writing challenge that did not actually require any more writing than prompt, a prop ah single prompt. Even before that, um the path, because I was going to do a um I was going to do an investigative report on them because I've never liked them.
01:37:06
Speaker
um But um I was afraid of getting sued. But what I will say is it's pretty much public information to discover the path of the money and see where it goes and realize that they are they're they're making money off of the hopes and dreams of everybody else.
01:37:21
Speaker
And they're making a lot of it.
01:37:24
Speaker
Really? say Say more about that. um I don't have my fact sheets in front of me right now, so that's as far as I will go for now, but um maybe maybe I'll grow a pair and write that article after all.
01:37:37
Speaker
um You know what? I gave them money every year for well over a decade. i would very much like to know if that money is not going to help young writers. Well, here's, here's the interesting thing.
01:37:49
Speaker
Is money going to help
Amazon's Market Influence
01:37:50
Speaker
young writers? Yes. But are there also people that are making money in other ways that you don't see, but is also publicly disclosed because they have tax filings and stuff?
01:38:01
Speaker
Yes. I mean, the end of the day, I'm not going to call them the evil empire. There are empires in this industry that are even more evil. I mean, the fact that Amazon has over 80% of the book sales market share, and by the end of this year, they're going to have probably 90% of the market share, while ah you know independent authors are struggling to survive and independent bookstores are barely making it and the margins are getting worse and worse because IngramSparks is charging higher and higher margins to or higher and higher costs to try to figure out how much pain we're all willing to collectively take.
01:38:35
Speaker
How much pain is the ah independent bookseller going to take to be able to have access to these books? And how much more of the cut of my work and my publisher's work are we willing to take just to get our books out there into the bookstores, just to have them out there. So, you know, I mean, we are surrounded by predators and we're trying to do something beautiful.
01:38:57
Speaker
I recently heard, um, oh golly, I can't remember her name. Um, a famous female author. I heard her on NPR. She was talking about how she if she it may have been Anne Lamott, but I could be wrong on that. She was saying how if she could do it all over again. She would just go directly to Lulu. And it's like you've already been discovered. And I know you talk about men who have already been discovered.
01:39:18
Speaker
And I don't mean this bad of you because you are a badass and you are a queen. But I think once you've made it, you forget what it's like for those who haven't. And you don't realize how dystopian it actually is for the new author.
01:39:32
Speaker
I honestly don't think that in today's age, Mark Twain would ever be published. I don't think we'd see ah Mary Shelley. I don't think that we would see Anne Lamont. I don't think that we would see um Handmaid's Tale happen today. I don't think that a lot of these great artists of the 19th and the 20th centuries were would be published today and would be discovered today under what we've got right now. And that is terrible to think about all of the beautiful stories that are being told and all of the beautiful stories that you and i want to read, but we're never going to hear this year.
01:40:10
Speaker
i have made a
Supporting Indie Authors
01:40:11
Speaker
commitment not to buy anything that is easily available. I'm only buying from the indie authors that I can't find in a bookstore this year. And I am loving the journey.
01:40:22
Speaker
And these books are so much better than what we realize. And they deserve to be seen. And the thing is, I get why our retail local small bookseller is not selling them.
01:40:34
Speaker
Because with the margins that they're making right now because of Ingram Sparks and other agencies, they hurt they yeah two they have to put out there what people will buy. And they can't take a risk on Hearts of Glass living in the real world.
01:40:48
Speaker
And that's fine. I'm not bitter with them. They're not the ones choking the creativity. I mean, my story, the people that are discovering it, this is where I sound arrogant for a moment.
01:41:00
Speaker
It's a good story. I'm proud of it. I love what people are finding. I love that they see Cassie in themselves or that they see... Somebody that they used to know through Cassie.
01:41:11
Speaker
I love that they admire Jenny and want to be a strong, badass woman who is self-assured like her. she's I found it was not irony that I made the profoundly deaf character, the most self-actualized character. The person she is based off of, that's who she was in real life.
01:41:29
Speaker
and ah creating a character that listens to women and cares about them. these I love what I've done. I'm proud of what I've done. Whoever reads it, reads it.
01:41:40
Speaker
And I wish, I just wish that I had a better shot without marketing money that I don't have. to be able to get it into the hands of more people, not to become a New York Times bestseller, but because I love the connection that I'm having.
01:41:55
Speaker
I'm loving the conversations. I love the emails. My God, I had this 17-year-old girl from New Mexico send me fan art. Wow. That, that,
01:42:08
Speaker
That moved me. It didn't make me feel cool. It didn't make me feel like a badass, but this is a connection with somebody. A teenager decided to send me something and say, hey, this is what I think your characters look like. And I'm like, it doesn't matter what I think. This is beautiful, kid.
01:42:25
Speaker
Thank you.
Personal Connections and Storytelling
01:42:26
Speaker
Well, inspiring artists to make more art, that is hardcore, man. Yeah. Yeah. And, ah you know, I mean, God, that...
01:42:37
Speaker
I don't ever want that to get to my head. i don't. yeah Yeah. If I became successful, I would be terrified of not appreciating every beautiful encounter.
01:42:49
Speaker
A couple months ago, I was at Phoenix Fan Fusion and, ah you know, I was peddling my book at that con in in the writer's row. And. There was this woman that came up to me, and the first day I was bombing. I was outside of my element. I've never tabled at a comic book convention or anime convention or anything like that.
01:43:10
Speaker
And this I this woman was asking me about the book and she walked away from me in mid pitch. And I just had this look of hurt and frustration on my face. And I heard And I heard a voice to my left say, I'm paying attention.
01:43:23
Speaker
And I look at her and we start talking. She buys a copy. I take a selfie with her later on in the night. She gives me a shout out. And it turns out she's one of the most popular burlesque artists in Phoenix.
01:43:36
Speaker
And the next day i have these people coming over to purchase the book. By the end of the day, Saturday, I had five copies left. And it wasn't just from her energy. Her energy of her fans gave me confidence. And that confidence had me out there believing in this and believing in myself.
01:43:56
Speaker
And every day she kept on coming back, just say, hey, how are you? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I so appreciated her. I never, ever want to take people like that for granted. Everybody who reads my story, thank you. Everybody who reviews it, thank you.
01:44:11
Speaker
every Everybody that... tells a friend and I don't even know about it or they send me a picture or they tell me a story. God, that is so fucking beautiful.
01:44:23
Speaker
That means that I did my job as a storyteller. I inspired, I made, I made a point, I changed something. And that for me, you know, if we're going to talk about trauma and horror,
01:44:37
Speaker
yeah if if i If I may real quickly, the books that I read inspired me. They kept me alive. They kept me believing in the worst part of my abusive childhood.
01:44:48
Speaker
I had Douglas Adams in A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I had Ray Bradbury with um with um Mr. Dark and Something Wicked This Way Comes.
01:44:59
Speaker
And i had all of these beautiful storytellers giving me another day and they gave me friends. And those friends are are just as real as the people that bullied me.
01:45:12
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, very
AI and Authenticity in Art
01:45:14
Speaker
much so. That's relatable. We need stories. We need storytellers and people still crave them. And, you know, I mean, yeah,
01:45:25
Speaker
yeah I don't know what the right answer is about AI. And, you know, I mean, where's the line between it being as a tool for spellcheck? You know, is Grammarly's fine, I guess, but this isn't.
01:45:37
Speaker
I don't know where that line is, but I do know that as we lose the human touch, we're going to be less connected. And already we have people creating things. deep relationships with this AI, i would rather have them have, but when they have a deep relationship with Cassie or Ford or Jenny or any of the characters you've created, when they have that relationship, they're at least having something that is connected through our mutual humanity.
01:46:01
Speaker
Because that character is a piece of me. And you identifying with it, we're identifying with each other, even if we've never met. That's beautiful. I don't want to lose that. And I fear that we are. Yeah, ah very very much agreed. I'm i'm terrified of of what will happen to the arts as a whole if we start, like if if the reliance on AI, I don't even want to call it art, increases because it's it's all imitation. It means there won't be advancement because it's just imitating what's come before.
01:46:34
Speaker
You know, that doesn't help us and that doesn't allow us to, I mean, so much of, of art and and literature is about commenting on the world that we live in, like where we're going, what we're doing, why it should be different.
01:46:49
Speaker
well And so if, if AI is, if generative AI is just regurgitating things that we've already said, we're not progressing. What I love about it is I love the – and on the other side, we've got the false AI sleuths that are criticizing writers. I've been talking to a lot of people
Music's Influence on Writing
01:47:11
Speaker
professors. I mean here's my thing.
01:47:12
Speaker
I love the MDash, and the reason why I love the MDash is I'm slapp sloppy with grammar. So m when I want to create a pause, I – I honestly can never remember if it's a comma or a semicolon. So I'll use ellipses or an M dash. This is how I do it. This is how I roll.
01:47:28
Speaker
And I love the poem. That's huge with Xers. Xers love the M dash. Yeah. And the thing is, I've had people say, I think you're using AI. It's like, motherfucker, I like M dashes.
01:47:40
Speaker
ah is but I, no. um i suspect ai would do far better with with with ah with ah some of the elements because there are parts of me that are sloppy but there's parts of me in my writing that are deliberate because for instance um when i write the book hearts of glass living in the real world if you're a blondy fan you understand that the book, that's two Blondie songs strung together.
01:48:07
Speaker
And the second book of the series is Hearts of Glass, Fade Away and Radiate. The third book is Hearts of Glass, um Die Young and Look Pretty. And the short story conglomeration that expands the universe is called Fragments of Hearts of Glass, another two Blondie songs.
01:48:22
Speaker
So anyway, music is a huge part of this. I know it's weird to say, but my book has one of the best soundtracks I've ever read read in a book. Yeah. I've got 31 songs and I put out a playlist for it.
01:48:34
Speaker
ah But in this, each chapter, there's not in each chapter, but in most of the chapter, there's a song that is mentioned, but that song is the beat. While I'm writing it, I am listening to that song on repeat and I'm following the beat and I'm channeling my inner poet because I love poetry And each each one has a beat. So there's going to be different uses of pauses. There's going to be cut scenes. There's going to be ellipses. There's going to be asterisks because I'm writing poetry as much as I am the story because I want that chapter to embrace that beat, that moment, even if you aren't aware of it.
01:49:15
Speaker
I know what Clem Burke's drumbeat in that song by Blondie is. I know what the baseline of that song is by um by Fleetwood Mac. um i know i know what's going on there with when McVie takes to the baseline. So that baseline, that rhythm, that's part of my writing.
01:49:35
Speaker
um So I
Favorite Horror Novel
01:49:36
Speaker
don't write clean. I write very, very dirty because I believe all bets are off whenever we are creating art.
01:49:46
Speaker
Yes. Very much so.
01:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm into that. So, yeah, think. We're actually. Yes? Oh, no. Go right ahead. um You said we're actually, so I lost my thought. What are what were going to say? Oh, I'm sorry. wherere We're actually getting to the end of our time.
01:50:07
Speaker
um So I wanted to ask you if there was anything that you wanted to cover that we did not get to. um two things the first is tongue-in-cheek um whenever you when we never got to talk about horror novels my first horror novel and still to this day my favorite is ray bradbury's something wicked this way come um i think it's important for anybody that's listening to this part if you read it as a child obviously will and jim are going to be the protagonist but if you read it as a middle-aged adult uh the dad uh charles holloway he's going to be the protagonist because you see this as a father that senses his failures as he's approaching Mr. Dark.
01:50:48
Speaker
um But then I also say tongue-in-cheek that um ah Needful Things by Stephen King is an homage to it because in both books you've got- it Oh yeah, very much so. Yeah, he outsider attempts a small town.
01:51:03
Speaker
The ordinary is invaded by the supernatural. You've got desire as your engine of destruction. ah chain reaction storytelling a moral battleground with allegorical undertones um that is my favorite horror book and i've read a lot of great horror books but i will always always come back to the sublime beauty that is um that that is something wicked this way comes and i don't care that it's a child's book it is my favorite horror book um i'm going to ask um the only other thing that i would love to bring up is um
01:51:36
Speaker
If you do like stories about
Promoting Trauma-Focused Books
01:51:38
Speaker
trauma that will make you feel seen, I really hope you give the book a chance. I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to you to give it a review.
01:51:48
Speaker
It's available on audiobook. Don't buy it on Audible. um It is available wherever you buy books online. um And we also have it on ebook. um That's going to be the shameless plug for the moment.
01:52:00
Speaker
I don't do very good. Well, we'll have links in the description. I appreciate that. we i I get so lost in the craft of storytelling that I forget to talk about the book, but it's important. And especially if you are survivor, I promise you, you're not going to be hurt in it. I would never hurt you because I would be hurting myself when I do that. And I just want the listeners to understand that that means everything to me, that we all heal together because stories like this matter and they need to be good stories. um That's all I
Pop Culture's Evolving Acceptance of Horror
01:52:28
Speaker
got on the things that I wished I'd have mentioned.
01:52:31
Speaker
Okay. And I do like to give guests an opportunity to ask me a question if they have one. So if you do, now is the time. Okay. I have two questions for you. First question is, is there anything you wished you'd have asked me, but you didn't? Okay.
01:52:49
Speaker
ah No, no. I made a list of everything I wanted to ask, and then I went through it. So, no. Perfect. um The second question is this. As a fellow survivor, what has given you in popular culture the most healing and the most beauty?
01:53:11
Speaker
Oh, gosh. um I think... i I can't point to one specific like movie or show or book in popular culture.
01:53:23
Speaker
um But what I would point to is the shift in popular culture because when I was a kid, people who really liked horror and and learning about serial killers and true crime, those people were considered freaks.
01:53:41
Speaker
And that's not true anymore. I mean, when I was a little kid and I made, like, zombie maps so I'd know how to be safe in my own neighborhood and where we could go and I wanted to be prepared for zombie apocalypse, I also grew up in a county with an active serial killer.
01:53:59
Speaker
So I was aware of serial killers at a really young age and everybody thought that was just so weird and why do you keep talking about Helter Skelter? And I just, I wanted to know because I felt that knowing things would make me more prepared.
01:54:13
Speaker
And now the in the zeitgeist, like every streamer has a bunch of serial killer shows. They're constant. And, you know, zombie shows, kind of the same deal, man. Everybody knows about zombies now. Everybody has a favorite, even non-horror people have a favorite, like, zombie thing.
01:54:33
Speaker
So the culture finally caught up to me, I guess. That is a beautiful answer. Thank you.
Conclusion and Appreciation
01:54:44
Speaker
All right, man. It is time for the Mad Lib. Are you ready for this? Yes. All right, cool. We're going to start with a bunch of adjectives. Looks like one, two, three, four, five adjectives.
01:54:57
Speaker
Okay.
01:55:00
Speaker
Oh, I have to name them right now. Yes, you do. I'm going to write them down. Okay. The first adjective we are going to go is with blue.
01:55:12
Speaker
Okay. Then we're going to go with... um Boy, you know what? I thought I was ready for this, but um okay. So the first one, I have to name five adjectives.
01:55:27
Speaker
So, okay. Then we're going to have um ah red. All right. Happy.
01:55:40
Speaker
Furry. ah And then um abrasive.
01:55:50
Speaker
Okay, cool. Did hit five? That is five. So now I need ah need one, two nouns that are singular. Oh, singular nouns. Oh, now we're going to get specific.
01:56:03
Speaker
um Singular nouns. Hat.
01:56:12
Speaker
Loaf.
01:56:15
Speaker
All right. I need three verbs. Ran.
01:56:23
Speaker
Um... Stabbed. Okay, we're gonna do these present tense. Oh, stabbed. Alright, one more.
01:56:34
Speaker
Okay, yep, got it. One more. And then, because this is all horror, I like the fact that I've gone dark here with this. Kill.
01:56:44
Speaker
Alright, I need a type of food, plural.
01:56:51
Speaker
Hot dogs. Try something else. Okay. um Hamburgers.
01:57:02
Speaker
How about lentils? Lentils. We'll go with lentils. Lentils. See, there we go. I don't usually guide the guest, but in this particular case, um I need a plural noun.
01:57:15
Speaker
um Buildings.
01:57:21
Speaker
All right, and finally i need a number. 166. Okay, and that's what we have here.
01:57:33
Speaker
So this is called Take Me Out. Every blue baseball game follows the red tradition of the seventh inning stretch.
01:57:44
Speaker
Midway through the seventh inning, you stand up, run, and sing this famous song. Take me out to the ball hat. Take me out with the loaf.
01:57:56
Speaker
Buy me some lentils and buildings. I don't care if I ever get happy. For it's root, root, stab for the abrasive team. If they don't kill, it's a shame.
01:58:09
Speaker
For it's one, two, 166 strikes and you're out at the furry ball game.
01:58:20
Speaker
It's demented and sad, and I love it. It's demented and sad, and I love it. Thank you. that made I haven't done a Mad Lib since I was 12 years old, so this was sublime. Fantastic.
01:58:33
Speaker
Well, hey, it was really great having you here. I'm glad that we could talk and get to know each other a bit. um I want to contribute to your EXER publication, definitely.
01:58:47
Speaker
We'll talk. Yeah, yeah, let's definitely do that. All right, cool. I want to um remind listeners that we can be found on Ko-fi.
01:58:58
Speaker
ah Sometimes Hilarious Horror sponsors the podcast, so the best way to support us is to support the magazine. Our magazine pays people, so it kind of costs a lot of money. It's a good idea to slide us some cash.
01:59:09
Speaker
um And we'll see everybody next week.