Transcript
Speaker: type of type of speech.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: This fucking this podcast rules.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: So many good things.
Speaker: It fucking rules.
Speaker: You know what else fucking rules?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me as always is Phil.
Speaker: And on today's show, we talked to Kelly Gay.
Speaker: awesome.
Speaker: It's fucking awesome.
Speaker: We've been hoping for that for, God, about a year now.
Speaker: Ever since Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: Yeah, Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: We were supposed to talk to her, then the scheduling got messed up.
Speaker: We didn't get a chance to.
Speaker: But we got another chance this time.
Speaker: And it was great.
Speaker: She was wonderful.
Speaker: As you'll hear in the interview coming up soon.
Speaker: But before I do that, I gotta tell you about this website.
Speaker: And it's a website called
Speaker: I can't remember the name.
Speaker: What is it called?
Speaker: Patreon.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: It's coming to me.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: It's coming to me.
Speaker: I'm sensing it through the airwaves like a medium.
Speaker: It is patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
Speaker: Oh, I, okay.
Speaker: I've heard of this website.
Speaker: The spirits told me about that one and- The spirits, you should listen to the spirits.
Speaker: You should listen to the spirits because if you want to hear more from us, go to patreon.com slash pixelitpod.
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Speaker: If you want to give us money, you can... We're not going to say no.
Speaker: We have three tiers for that.
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Speaker: If you're feeling a little bit more adventurous, $5 gets you bonus episodes and ad-free episodes.
Speaker: So that's nice. $10.
Speaker: Gets you all the above, but you get your name shattered on the pod.
Speaker: So it's time to time.
Speaker: It's time.
Speaker: The episode where we shout out friendly friend.
Speaker: Jesus loves you and Ruthless mutter for being our friends.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: And backslash and Patreon speech.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Now to our interview with Kelly Gay.
Speaker: Listen.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, here we are with Kelly Gay.
Speaker: She is the author of the book that we most recently finished, Halo Epitaph, which told the story of the didact and his, well, you know, it's the epitaph on his story.
Speaker: Very good title.
Speaker: It does what it says right on the tin.
Speaker: So Kelly, thanks so much for being on the show.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker: So why don't we just get right into it?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We have read two of your books now.
Speaker: Love them both.
Speaker: Love them to bits.
Speaker: We even started throwing out sketch comedy bits for the first one, Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: That's still on the table.
Speaker: So, Kelly, what were your first experiences with Halo as a franchise?
Speaker: So, I got into Halo by way of Ed Schlesinger, who's, I'm sure you've heard his name before, from Troy, probably.
Speaker: But he is the editor of the Halo books at Simon & Schuster.
Speaker: And he actually bought my very first book,
Speaker: my first novel back in 2008.
Speaker: And then I went on to write about another three books for him.
Speaker: And so we worked together for about four years on those books.
Speaker: And then I moved on to write a young adult trilogy.
Speaker: And then during that time, Simon and Schuster had picked up the licensing rights to publish the Halo books.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So Ed had started doing that.
Speaker: And then I don't know, fast forward another year or two, and he was looking for a few more authors to round out the Halo Fractures anthology.
Speaker: And so he and I, we both love video games, and we would talk about our faves and stuff like that when we worked together.
Speaker: So he knew this might be up my alley.
Speaker: So he had lunch with my agent at the time and asked her if I'd be up for it.
Speaker: And she sent me this very cryptic email, which she liked to do, which just said, are your ears burning?
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Somebody was talking about me.
Speaker: But yeah, of course, I emailed her right back.
Speaker: And then she told me that they had asked if I'd be interested in doing a short story for Halo.
Speaker: And I said, of course, so, because I was a fan of the game, I'd already played the games and already knew a lot of the story.
Speaker: And so that was the start of it.
Speaker: And then when I finally got to talk to Ed again, which was so nice, because we had such a great working relationship before.
Speaker: But he was like, just pitch us some ideas for your short story and we'll go from there.
Speaker: The only parameter at that time was that it had to be set in post-covenant war era.
Speaker: And, you know, I guess sometimes I don't listen well because I only pitch one thing, not a bunch of things.
Speaker: But I already knew what I wanted to write about.
Speaker: And so that ended up being Into the Fire, which was a short story.
Speaker: in Fractures, which introduced Rhymeforge to the Halo canon.
Speaker: And then I got to expand on that little short story with the novella, which was Smoke and Shadow.
Speaker: And then Renegades was my first actual full-length book for Halo.
Speaker: So that's kind of the story.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: So they were just giving you more and more pages the more you wrote for them, basically.
Speaker: Yeah, basically, we started out small and we just kind of grew and grew and grew, which is nice because, you know, they didn't know who I was at that time.
Speaker: They just, you know, trusted Ed's judgment.
Speaker: And so I kind of liked going in that way because I could prove myself to them.
Speaker: And by the time Renegades rolled around, they, you know, trusted me with the story.
Speaker: And so I think it worked out really well how it happened.
Speaker: Well, tell us more about how the process, I mean, because you started with a short story.
Speaker: When it came to the novella with any of these books, was it always like a pitch process or did they say, hey, we want a story about this?
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: What are the process?
Speaker: How does it look?
Speaker: It really depended a lot on the story.
Speaker: So like for Renegade, it basically started as a phone call, which everything starts with a call.
Speaker: With Halo, everything.
Speaker: But it's actually nice because between books, having that first call, we get to reconnect and chat and catch up with each other.
Speaker: But it always starts with a call.
Speaker: And I think for Renegades, it was me and Ed and the franchise lead, Tiffany O'Brien and Jeremy Petnuss.
Speaker: And it was basically just him asking me where I thought the Ryan Forge story would be headed.
Speaker: And which is kind of nice because I wasn't, you know, I'd never written a tie in novel before or working with Halo.
Speaker: So I really didn't, I wasn't really sure how the process went or if they were going to like present me with this fully fleshed out outline and I just had to, you know, paint by the numbers or whatever.
Speaker: But so I was really surprised when he was just like, you know, where do you think the story is headed?
Speaker: So that was really nice as a creator.
Speaker: to get asked that and then but he also said so you know I talked a little bit about where I would like the story to go and then he was he said so what do you think about including 343 Guilty Spark in your story and I don't know if you know 343 Guilty Spark but he's one of the bigger characters in Halo and yeah that was really unexpected and so I took a few days to think about that and
Speaker: Um, and then basically I just wrote up like a synopsis and sent it to everyone.
Speaker: And, and then we kind of ran with it, but, um, it is different every time.
Speaker: It's not always, um, you know, they're asking me, well, you know, what do you, well, yeah, they do every time ask me what I think.
Speaker: They're really great, but it's a little different every time.
Speaker: So like, um, and I think with point of light, the next book that followed, um,
Speaker: since that was a direct sequel from Renegades, we were talking again, and Jeremy was just like, so what do you see happening next?
Speaker: And I just said I wanted to carry on that story.
Speaker: You guys haven't read this book, so you don't know what I would talk about if I were to say it, but basically, yeah, so on you, but...
Speaker: Yet, yet, all of it, all of the, we're going, we're going, here's the thing.
Speaker: We started going out of chronological order with the past three Halo books, but we're, we're, we're still on board for the original old school one.
Speaker: So we're getting there eventually one of these days.
Speaker: You're going to be retroactive on it.
Speaker: Anyway, it's, it was basically like the librarian said in Renegade, she said five months missing and fix the path and,
Speaker: and write what my current kind turned wrong, which was having to do with the precursors.
Speaker: And, and so I said, I want to explore that line in the book.
Speaker: And they were like, okay.
Speaker: And so I wrote up another synopsis and we went from there, but I think for both Renegades and Point of Light, like my, my synopsis were like two to three pages.
Speaker: I like to keep it really, really simple.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't,
Speaker: And thank God they're okay with that because some IPs might not be, I don't know.
Speaker: But I don't like to put in too many details in the beginning.
Speaker: Then I feel like I have to fit those preconceived elements into the story as I write.
Speaker: And that kind of feels a little constraining to me.
Speaker: So the barest of bones I can get it, like the better.
Speaker: Um, but then like when Rubicon protocol came around, that was a totally different book.
Speaker: Um, that one, you know, I was writing that while they were also, um, creating the game and creating the story for the game.
Speaker: So, um, I think they came to me and they had like a, um, they had a setting and a time period, which was, um, right before, uh,
Speaker: the game started Halo Infinite.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the idea was, the idea was that they just wanted to have like a small group of soldiers in a, like an against all odds type situation.
Speaker: So it was like a real 300 type vibe.
Speaker: Yeah, it was cool.
Speaker: And I was like totally up for it.
Speaker: But at the time they had just done like the voice recordings for some of the Spartan messages you find in game.
Speaker: So I used some of those and the timestamps on them as kind of like mile markers for the story.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love to be able to work things into a book if it comes real natural.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that was one of the things I felt like could really be cool to exploit and really natural to exploit.
Speaker: But I think I had the most involvement with 343 on that book.
Speaker: Not so much in the planning stage, but during, you know, it was a challenge to stay consistent with each other.
Speaker: So, you know, so any kind of changes they might make to the game, even if it came down to like the color of a ship or something like that, like,
Speaker: I needed to know it because I might have a different color.
Speaker: So that was an interesting book because we did go kind of back and forth and there were some things that had to be changed when they changed things.
Speaker: But that was kind of the most involved book.
Speaker: And then when Epitaph rolled around, it was, they already had an idea for like the redemption arc part of it.
Speaker: And they wanted the didact to go through some of the past synchrons of his life.
Speaker: and um and and use those in what cortana was doing in the galaxy to make him realize that he'd gone down a very similar corruptive kind of path and um and from that um i started just connecting to and scenes and characters and background and action all that stuff that needed to happen in between those markers um and we just kind of fleshed out um
Speaker: their original idea and their original outline and then I went from there so that's a really long-winded way of going through all the books but you know it's all different every time is a little bit different so that's cool which is which is really nice because you know every book is different every character that you write about is different and they're not going to kind of all be the same or come out of you creatively so I
Speaker: but it's nice that they kind of trust us writers to do the job they hire us to do, you know?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But they're, yeah, they're always there for like phone calls and texts and support and help and all that stuff.
Speaker: But they really do give us a lot of breathing room and, and, you know, they let us create a lot of things and that makes it really, really fun.
Speaker: And it makes you feel like you're a part of it and you make an impact on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's been really great so far.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: You brought up Cortana and the Didact seeing himself mirrored in Cortana's actions.
Speaker: And I just wanted to bring up this one point in the story in which Cortana, as Phil referred to it, Cortana gives her Evita speech out to the universe.
Speaker: And the Didact points out to her later that she plagiarized it.
Speaker: from him.
Speaker: And I was like, so I thought out loud, was like, is this like a take on how AI can't create anything?
Speaker: They can only recreate things.
Speaker: And I was like, you have to ask Kelly that.
Speaker: We have to ask her if she did that on purpose because that's so good.
Speaker: Darn it.
Speaker: now that you said it.
Speaker: Dang, I would have liked to sit here and say, well, yes.
Speaker: Fighting satire from kid and kid.
Speaker: But no, but that's interesting that people, that you can put things in place and
Speaker: And people draw those conclusions because then it tells you that you put them in place correctly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's really cool that you said that and you noticed it and
Speaker: But dang, I can't claim that one.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, it's such a big thing out there, you know, seeing the generative AI, the machine learning stuff kind of just taking, it's like, well, it's just regurgitating stuff that people have actually written.
Speaker: And then I saw, as soon as I saw Cortana just rip off his speech, I was like, well, this is now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So how long as, yeah, I mean, you, you, you took us through the process of working with three, four, three and how it changes with each book, but is there like a, is there like a timeline?
Speaker: How long do the books generally take?
Speaker: Like, is it like a year of lead up or is it, what's, what's the timeline like?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I can tell you, I definitely have gotten a lot slower in my writing in my old age.
Speaker: It used to be I could write a book in like four to six months, but now it takes me about a good eight to nine months, I think.
Speaker: I mean, that's still a great, pretty, pretty great rate.
Speaker: I think you're being hard on yourself.
Speaker: Only Stephen King cranks out three a year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I did that one year.
Speaker: It's hard, dude.
Speaker: It really is.
Speaker: Is there... But sometimes longer.
Speaker: Sometimes it takes me longer.
Speaker: Because also now, I also take a lot more time to...
Speaker: to let a story sit in my head and stew, you know, um, and decide how it wants to be written, which probably sounds weird, but, um, every story kind of, I don't plug my stories into like, like an author formula that I have.
Speaker: Um, every story kind of comes out differently.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Probably sometimes sounds chaotic to people, but like,
Speaker: Sometimes I will like start at the end and write backwards and sometimes I'll start in the middle and work my way in either direction or
Speaker: It's just however it wants to come out.
Speaker: I mean, I've heard they say with actors, for example, that there are some actors who become the character.
Speaker: They change themselves into whoever the character they feel needs to be.
Speaker: And then there are people like, for example, John Malkovich, who takes the character and makes it himself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Essentially.
Speaker: And I think I think authors are a lot like that, too.
Speaker: I think there's I think there's books rather are like that.
Speaker: Sometimes you're just going from beginning to end.
Speaker: And other times it's a piece here, a chapter there, that sort of thing.
Speaker: Bill, I got to say, unless it's rounders and then it's John Malkovich with a Russian accent.
Speaker: Yes, let's see.
Speaker: Well, that's all that's.
Speaker: That's the only exception to that rule.
Speaker: Kelly, is, is, is there now that are there any other franchises that you'd like to work on?
Speaker: You know, you've been, you've been doing a lot of halo.
Speaker: Are there any other film franchises, gaming franchises or anything like that, that you'd like jump at the opportunity to write for?
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: I would love to write a wonder woman novel.
Speaker: yeah so i'm a kid of the 70s and 80s right so um i was a huge fan of the tv series with linda carter and um and super friends that came on saturday mornings the cartoon um with all the dc characters and stuff and the wonder woman comics but i had them at a lunchbox i had the dolls
Speaker: And the all precious underoos.
Speaker: Oh, of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Can't go anywhere without those.
Speaker: No, absolutely not.
Speaker: My Wonder Woman underoos were like just, hmm, that was the best.
Speaker: Why don't they bring those back?
Speaker: I would wear those again if they brought those back.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I would wear them too.
Speaker: For adults.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Some of them were an adult size.
Speaker: That would be the main factor for me, I think.
Speaker: The Depends version of it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: I'm being supported by Wonder Woman in many ways.
Speaker: I would love to write Wonder Woman, but I'd love to write a Destiny novel.
Speaker: I love Destiny, the game, Dragon Age, and Doctor Who, and Avatar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'll tell you what, if there is a Fifth Element franchise, I would go for it.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: It's a fun movie.
Speaker: Oh, I just love it.
Speaker: And the same for the Mummy movies with Brenda Fraser or like Indiana Jones, any of that stuff.
Speaker: Like if they continued those with like a novel series, I would just, I'd be so okay with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then, um, yeah, a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff.
Speaker: I think you've hit on something.
Speaker: I think the fifth element is a film that deserves a franchise.
Speaker: That's one of the few expansions because we're expanding everything nowadays.
Speaker: That's one of the few ones that I'd be like, I'm okay with this.
Speaker: If they made like a TV show or something.
Speaker: I would like, you know, a little, I would like to see the continuing adventures of Lilo Multipass.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: That would be so great.
Speaker: Ruby Rod.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What's Chris Tucker doing nowadays?
Speaker: We know he needs the money.
Speaker: He's got to be on Rush Hour 4, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So, Kelly, who are your, would you say, are your writing inspirations?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: For Epitaph or just in general?
Speaker: In general.
Speaker: First generally and then if you took anything, if you had any vibes from other sources for Epitaph.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess in terms of general inspiration, I've always been drawn to science and that
Speaker: that always has some sort of ancient mystery or deep like mythological foundation to it.
Speaker: So, you know, of course things like Dune or the Foundation series.
Speaker: Or Foundation.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It fits.
Speaker: But like even things again like Wonder Woman and her origins.
Speaker: But growing up, I read, you know, read a lot of the Earthsea and the Dragonriders of Pern and stuff like that.
Speaker: Those had a big impact on me.
Speaker: I read everything from Anne Wright.
Speaker: I loved her and I watched a crap ton of Twilight Zone and Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.
Speaker: But, you know, also like back in the 70s and 80s, that's when I mean, that's like just a golden age of movies, in my opinion, because we had E.T., we had Blade Runner, we had Indiana Jones, we had Lady Hawk, which is one of my favorite movies.
Speaker: Very high adventure stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, Mad Max, all that stuff.
Speaker: So just growing up with that stuff, like my mom was big into fantasy and my dad was like really big into science fiction.
Speaker: So we always watch stuff like that.
Speaker: And I fell in love with it too.
Speaker: So all that stuff is kind of what kind of shaped me as a creator.
Speaker: But in terms of like writing Epitaph,
Speaker: I would say, of course, Greg Baer's Forerunner Saga, which is no surprise to anyone.
Speaker: But he just wrote an amazing trilogy.
Speaker: And Epitaph really needed to be an extension of those stories.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So, you know, I just had to do massive deep dives into them.
Speaker: But taking inspiration was a necessity.
Speaker: But
Speaker: Also a great, great pleasure because I just love the books.
Speaker: Like no matter how many times I read them or go over certain passages, I'm always sucked in.
Speaker: It's just incredible.
Speaker: Like I always lose myself a little bit with that world and the characters he created.
Speaker: So that was a gigantic inspiration for Epitaph, for sure.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: I think I'm going to ask a question.
Speaker: I feel like the answer is obvious.
Speaker: The question I was going to ask is what was your favorite character in Epitaph to write for?
Speaker: And I think it's probably the Didact.
Speaker: But beyond the Didact, what were some of the characters in there that you really just found yourself having a lot of fun getting in the headspace of?
Speaker: Oh, definitely Harassus.
Speaker: Okay, good.
Speaker: I love Heraspus.
Speaker: I love him.
Speaker: I have a lot of feels for that character because it wasn't planned.
Speaker: His impact on the story, it was just originally he was just leading the didact through the synchrons, but he has such a natural evolution in the story and it just kind of revealed itself as the writing went along.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's what you kind of touched on earlier about like with certain characters and things like sometimes they just take on a life of their own and it suddenly doesn't feel like you're the one pulling the strings anymore which I think is like really cool because you're just in a very this is what you were referring to before but like just getting in a very deep state of immersion or something so you're not even realizing you're
Speaker: you're doing it which probably sounds weird too but um but that's what happened with him he just kind of took on a life of his own and he's really fun and really cool and a lot of fun with it yeah well we're we're both writers so we're familiar with the idea of getting completely wrapped up in that yeah yeah yeah no you're among friends here yeah
Speaker: I'm among the weirdness.
Speaker: Yeah, we're not normal people.
Speaker: Phil just had his first book published last year.
Speaker: His first novella.
Speaker: Congratulations.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: You have a new book and a new baby, right?
Speaker: Got a new book and a new baby.
Speaker: Both in the same year, by the way.
Speaker: But my wife says I'm only allowed to sell one.
Speaker: So we went with the book.
Speaker: Just kidding, Graham.
Speaker: Daddy loves you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Go buy juice.
Speaker: It's out in bookstores today, everybody.
Speaker: Plug for Phil's book.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: So what would you say?
Speaker: You mentioned the Forerunner trilogy.
Speaker: What was your favorite book, Halo book, that you didn't write?
Speaker: Silentium.
Speaker: which was the third book in the forerunner saga.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, also that probably comes with no surprise to anybody, but I just thought it was, it was amazing.
Speaker: It just was really, I don't know.
Speaker: Have you guys read them yet?
Speaker: No, we're not up to the, we're not up to the forerunner.
Speaker: You'll probably love them.
Speaker: But that was, that was the end book.
Speaker: So basically it just kind of like,
Speaker: pulled all these threads and storylines from the first two books and kind of pulled them all down into this final moment when the Halo rings were firing.
Speaker: It was just really, really beautiful and heartbreaking piece of work.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: My other favorite, because I don't listen and I have to say more than this one.
Speaker: Please, go for it.
Speaker: Troy Denny's Last Light, I love.
Speaker: Troy!
Speaker: Yeah, Troy!
Speaker: Friends of the pod!
Speaker: Friends of the pod!
Speaker: And New Blood by Matt Forbeck and then Nyland's Ghost of Onyx.
Speaker: And I love, love, love, and I don't know if you've listened to this yet, so put it on your list.
Speaker: The Hunt the Truth podcast.
Speaker: Have you heard of that?
Speaker: No!
Speaker: Oh, you'll love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: That's going on the list.
Speaker: You can thank me later.
Speaker: We will.
Speaker: We will.
Speaker: We will indeed.
Speaker: Investigative audio series set in the universe of Halo.
Speaker: Well, shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That sounds excellent.
Speaker: That sounds amazing.
Speaker: We're in.
Speaker: We're in on that.
Speaker: Well, finally, Kelly, what advice do you have for any up-and-coming writers for hire or just writers in general that you want to extol onto these young'uns who might have a book in them?
Speaker: Well, do you mean writers for hire for IPs or just...
Speaker: You know, I think one of the things that we keep running into is this is it's just kind of, you know, we know a lot of writers and the idea of sitting down and writing a book, a play, a story is it's not all that unusual.
Speaker: But the idea of writing for a franchise, writing for something that you've grown up loving or just grew to love over the years, that seems so kind of unobtainable sometimes.
Speaker: It seems crazy.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: More or less, that's what we're looking at.
Speaker: What advice would you have for somebody who wants to write for Halo themselves, maybe?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, I'll give two pieces of advice.
Speaker: The first, maybe, might sound tough love, but I don't mean it to be.
Speaker: But I've had this come up a couple of times recently, but you want to get hired.
Speaker: to write for an IP, then you need experience, just like with any other non-entry level job.
Speaker: And it's hard to get around that.
Speaker: So look at it this way.
Speaker: You might have an awesome recipe and can execute it great, but chances are you're still going to have to start at a dishwasher at that restaurant you love.
Speaker: you know um does that make sense oh totally um it takes work um it's just not going to happen um right away um obviously there are caveats to everything so you know stars could align and lightning strikes for somebody but um you have to work hard and you have to gain experience and you have to make a name for yourself um and you have to look at it um
Speaker: and I think this is good advice is to look at it from the IP's point of view.
Speaker: Like they want someone to bring their characters and world to life.
Speaker: So they're going to look for a resume and they're going to look for a safe investment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I tell you, I've had a couple of people get annoyed and even angry hearing that saying, you know, they'll say to me, well, that must be nice for you, but it's unfair, you know, that we can't get our ideas or our book in the door.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: you know, I just want to tell him what I couldn't have gotten in the door either at that stage.
Speaker: You know, it, every Halo writer out there, you all had to start.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: We had to hone our craft.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We had to write novels or work in the gaming industry.
Speaker: It, it might sound like the door is closed, but it just takes time to open.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I'm a perfect example because I'm still hoping the door will open for me with wonder woman someday.
Speaker: You know, you know, it just takes, it just takes time.
Speaker: And I, and I think, you know, writers have to be patient and, and they have to realize it and they have to put in the work and, um, you know, focus on our craft and write good stories and, and prove that they can create like amazing characters and worlds.
Speaker: And then people will say, Hey, we want you to do the same with their IP.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But yeah, you really have to get out there and try to do what you can to make a name for yourself.
Speaker: Whether that be on social media or writing articles or showing your love for the IP in lots of different ways just to gain attention or writing your own stories and getting published and getting reviews, all that stuff.
Speaker: You know, it's like money in your resume bank.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's not impossible.
Speaker: It's not impossible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would say don't get discouraged.
Speaker: And if you keep at it, you'll probably do fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's my first advice.
Speaker: That's great advice.
Speaker: That probably sounds harsh, doesn't it?
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: It makes sense.
Speaker: And I mean, everybody that we've talked to, we like to get everybody's different takes on it as we've interviewed several different authors.
Speaker: But it all kind of boils down to, yeah, you got to put in the work and you got to hone your craft and all that stuff.
Speaker: This is one that I love to share because I absolutely live by it.
Speaker: Um, and it's from the, the great and very prolific Nora Roberts, um, which basically, uh, is you can fix a bad page, but you can't fix a blank one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's basically another way of saying, you know, don't be afraid to give yourself permission to write crap.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically like it's okay.
Speaker: You can fix the crap.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: you can word smith the hell out of it, you know, but you can't get anywhere if you don't start or, or if you stay stuck on the same page or the same chapter.
Speaker: I think a lot of new writers and myself included in this fall into the trap of trying to make everything perfect right from the beginning.
Speaker: And we just keep perfecting the same beginning and the same section over and over.
Speaker: And, and we never really progressed because,
Speaker: all the writing time we do have is spent on that.
Speaker: And I say, you know, learn now, perfect it when it's done or you might never get done.
Speaker: But when you have deadlines, you have no choice but to keep going even when the writing's bad.
Speaker: Or when you don't know what to write, right?
Speaker: So that's, I always tell writers, don't be afraid to write badly because, you know, if you get into a place where you're not sure what happens,
Speaker: You just stick in a note like he falls off the cliff and it hurts like hell and then move on, keep writing.
Speaker: But literally like in dialogue, I will literally have written things like blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: That's in my draft.
Speaker: We'll come back to this.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Or like, this blows, fix later.
Speaker: I write notes to myself just so I can get past it and not dwell on it and keep going to the end because
Speaker: Because I know once I'm done, that's my favorite part is once I'm done so that the wordsmithing and the word crafting part is just the absolute best.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: So if I can get through that really shitty draft and get to the end, I know I can fix it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So when I heard her say that, I heard her say it a long time ago at a writer's conference.
Speaker: It's stuck with me ever since because it's so true.
Speaker: 100%, 100% makes sense.
Speaker: And just fun fact, as a side note, Nora Roberts has written over 225 romance novels.
Speaker: That's what she's talking about.
Speaker: She has written every combination of words ever.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: Mathematically speaking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I wonder what that comes out to be like.
Speaker: How many millions of words?
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Somebody is going to do the math.
Speaker: Somebody has.
Speaker: One of the fans.
Speaker: We'll leave that to one of our listeners to do the math on that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because generally, like a book is about 80 to 90,000 words.
Speaker: And however many she wrote.
Speaker: Well, I mean, and she didn't that she doesn't write novellas, you know, like that.
Speaker: She wrote pretty chunky books.
Speaker: And that's just that's not I think that's not even counting the J.D.
Speaker: Robb stuff.
Speaker: Oh, for Pete's sake.
Speaker: I don't think I knew that was her.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, that's her.
Speaker: It's so she she publishes romance under Nora Roberts.
Speaker: Her her her police procedurals are under J.D.
Speaker: Robb.
Speaker: Pete's sake.
Speaker: It was like pulling teeth to get my first book out.
Speaker: And yeah, some people just hammer it out, man.
Speaker: Some people just hammer it out.
Speaker: But that is, that's all the questions that we had.
Speaker: Kelly, thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker: We're big fans of you here.
Speaker: You're welcome.
Speaker: You're welcome.
Speaker: I'm big fans of the podcast.
Speaker: Oh, that means the world to us.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great to hear.
Speaker: You guys are so funny.
Speaker: Sometimes you say like, like,
Speaker: I think that sounds so wrong, but it's like so right.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: That's going on the website.
Speaker: We have to quote you on that one.
Speaker: It sounds so wrong, but it's so right.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty much the... I used to cut... Early on, early podcast days, I used to cut some of that stuff out.
Speaker: And about two years ago, I stopped.
Speaker: I was just like, you know what?
Speaker: Phil and I are going to say something terrible, and we're going to leave it in there.
Speaker: We're just going to leave it in there.
Speaker: And it turns out that's what the people crave.
Speaker: We like the wrongness.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you, Kelly, so much.
Speaker: Thank you, Kelly.
Speaker: Oh, you're welcome.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Bye, guys.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Hey, when we're back, that was great.
Speaker: That was Kelly Kay.
Speaker: She likes the show.
Speaker: I want you guys to know that if I sounded a little more fan boyish on this particular episode, it was because I couldn't keep, cause she wrote, Kelly Gay wrote my favorite Halo book, which is Rubicon Protocol.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that, that just, that's extra exciting.
Speaker: So it's, it's excellent to have her on the show.
Speaker: Finally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she loved the AI theory that I threw out there.
Speaker: Did not take credit for it.
Speaker: So she's very humble.
Speaker: Kelly, if you're listening and you decide that you made a bad call and you would like us to reverse.
Speaker: We'll take the episode right down.
Speaker: We'll take it right down.
Speaker: We'll take a right down.
Speaker: We'll edit it all out.
Speaker: We will make sure that officially you came up with that yourself.
Speaker: That is what your writing means to us.
Speaker: That's how much it means to us.
Speaker: And we'll just, I'll just cut it to like you saying, I would love to take credit for that.
Speaker: And then moving on to the next question.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: And we're done.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Easy.
Speaker: That's what we would do for you.
Speaker: You just give the word, give the word, Kelly.
Speaker: Give the word.
Speaker: Now that the interview's over though, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I actually the answer might shock you.
Speaker: I'm not going to put Bellatro in our I'm not going to put Bellatro in the slideshow for Thursdays for our.
Speaker: What do you play?
Speaker: Don't bother.
Speaker: I think at this point you guys can just, because I've been making these and it was like a couple of episodes, Kevin's been playing Bellatro.
Speaker: And then it's like, and Phil's playing, and then they're both playing Bellatro.
Speaker: And I think you get it.
Speaker: And I think it's safe to assume that we're both playing Bellatro in the background.
Speaker: We're all playing Bellatro.
Speaker: We're all playing Bellatro.
Speaker: Everyone's playing Bellatro.
Speaker: Everyone Bellatro's down here.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We all Bellatro down here.
Speaker: We all Bellatro down here.
Speaker: Georgie boy.
Speaker: Georgie boy.
Speaker: Buh, buh, buh, Billy boy.
Speaker: Bring your best Tim Curry to the... Now, I have been playing that.
Speaker: I also got in... I got a couple of other games in.
Speaker: I finally... I celebrated EA's release of several of their old franchises, their old games, by buying both Dungeon Keeper Gold and Dungeon Keeper 2.
Speaker: I started playing Dungeon Keeper Gold, apparently made an appearance on one of our friend's streams.
Speaker: So that was fun.
Speaker: And I got to say, I want to get into it, but I think it's this weird situation where it is an old enough game that the size of my monitor is actually too big.
Speaker: I know that kind of sounds like, look, she said my dick was too big.
Speaker: No, I mean, like, actually, like, it's... I still had water in my mouth.
Speaker: And I nearly spit take the spit take there, which would not have been good with electronics in front of these are expensive pieces of equipment here.
Speaker: It wouldn't have been worth it.
Speaker: Not that joke.
Speaker: No, but it is.
Speaker: But it does.
Speaker: It sounds like a humble brag of some kind, but it actually is that.
Speaker: the pixelation and everything like that is so huge on this monitor that I have to I'm going to have to fiddle with it and just get it windowed down or something and also mess with the mouse sensitivity because it is bonkers.
Speaker: Right off the bat though, it was really nice and it kind of took, just takes you back to a very special time in gaming history with this.
Speaker: It just, it's, it's, it was, it made me feel very good to even get it started.
Speaker: Beyond that, I actually did finally pull the trigger and buy Darkest Dungeon for my Switch.
Speaker: I don't know why it took so long.
Speaker: because I feel like that's kind of the perfect game to play on your Switch.
Speaker: It's very much a... Something about Darkest Dungeon feels very handheld coded.
Speaker: Yes, there's something very natural about the idea of playing that with a handheld.
Speaker: And I got to tell you, I think the port is pretty good.
Speaker: I think it's done a good job.
Speaker: It's satisfying.
Speaker: I've really enjoyed that.
Speaker: So that's been nice, kind of revisiting all that and listening to Wayne June threaten me and stuff like that has been great.
Speaker: Always a joy with my son.
Speaker: I love Wayne June.
Speaker: My son screaming in the background.
Speaker: And I'm like, I know Wayne Jude scary, right?
Speaker: Like I just it's you remember our venerable estate.
Speaker: It's so violent and imperious.
Speaker: I'm never going, I think Darkest Dungeon for me probably holds the record of game that I have most frequently reinstalled on my computer when I was drunk at one in the morning.
Speaker: I just want to play Darkest Dungeon and the next morning I'm like, oh, am I doing that again?
Speaker: Shit, okay.
Speaker: And so it's good to have it on the Switch, I think.
Speaker: You wake up hungover.
Speaker: Wayne June, like, turns around in your computer chair.
Speaker: I've been waiting.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: But that's been me.
Speaker: That's been me.
Speaker: What have you been playing, Kevin?
Speaker: Well, I've been playing this game called Bellatro.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Also, okay.
Speaker: Bellatro.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't need to talk about Bellatro every goddamn week.
Speaker: Cause it's going to be here.
Speaker: It's going to be like vampire survivors was.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Two years ago.
Speaker: That is exactly the right comparison.
Speaker: It's just always going to be in the background.
Speaker: You know it.
Speaker: I know it.
Speaker: We were always at war with vampire survivors.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: It was always there.
Speaker: That's all there is to it.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bilatro, it's there.
Speaker: It's going to be there for a while.
Speaker: Probably I'm going to stop playing it and local funk's going to be like,
Speaker: DLC.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That sounds about right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm back.
Speaker: I played a little bit more of Redfall.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Not good.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's enough of an arcane game just to piss you off.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker: It's like, I see it, but god damn it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, as of this recording tomorrow, I'm recording with Hot Cider and Jesse Gratia an episode on bullet time about Redfall.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: They got a lot farther in it than I did.
Speaker: Okay, okay.
Speaker: We chatted this afternoon, so tomorrow should be fun of just us really...
Speaker: being sad about the game and probably talking about Bellatro instead.
Speaker: I mean, my prediction for that episode of bullet time, you gotta do what you gotta do to get through it.
Speaker: I understand.
Speaker: I understand.
Speaker: What else have I been playing?
Speaker: I got and I downloaded and I installed Pacific drive.
Speaker: Oh shit.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm hoping by the next time we talk, I'll have gotten into that.
Speaker: Yeah, it is very interesting.
Speaker: So you play, basically it's set in some like exclusion zone in the Pacific Northwest where some sort of experiment wet happens and reality is a little unstable.
Speaker: and you play a character that is just going into the exclusion zone for some reason.
Speaker: I didn't catch a reason why, but you're just going there.
Speaker: It's been like 30 years since the exclusion zone walls went up.
Speaker: And you get in there and you get in a... You get thrown into this, through the wall and into the zone and you find a car that is still running.
Speaker: And it's called like a remnant, which is an object.
Speaker: If you think of like Alan Wake and Control or Alan Wake 2, you think of the object of power type thing.
Speaker: It's a little bit like that.
Speaker: So your job, your goal is basically exploring the exclusion zone to figure out what's going on and also keep repairing your car.
Speaker: So you got these missions.
Speaker: It's got a real like it's interesting.
Speaker: It's like you're you're doing the my summer car stuff.
Speaker: You're fixing the car and then your missions are really survival horror.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker: Because very much survival, because as you go through, as you are wrapping up your mission, like the region instability goes up and you have to get out of there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you're like driving this jalopy car that's half repaired and it's so tense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I've only finished one mission so far, but it's a really fascinating game.
Speaker: The layers of genre that are kind of on top of each other are very neat.
Speaker: So I'm going to get into it more hopefully in the coming weeks just to see what it's like.
Speaker: The car is a station wagon.
Speaker: I really hope I can make it look like a Ghostbusters car.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: That really should be the goal.
Speaker: Yeah, I get it.
Speaker: That really should be the goal.
Speaker: If I can make something look like the Ecto-1, I'm gonna.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What choice do you have?
Speaker: What choice do I have?
Speaker: None.
Speaker: But that's all I've been playing.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that'll do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: If you liked the episode, rate us five stars.
Speaker: If you didn't like the episode, rate us five stars.
Speaker: I really don't care if you liked it or not.
Speaker: Please rate us five stars.
Speaker: That'll get us.
Speaker: Yeah, that'll show us.
Speaker: It'll show us.
Speaker: If you hate us, rate us five stars.
Speaker: Man.
Speaker: You can leave the angriest comment you want as long as you rate us five stars.
Speaker: In fact, I challenge everyone who hasn't yet given us a rating to give us five stars and leave the meanest comment with those five stars that they possibly can.
Speaker: No mothers, but everything else is fair game.
Speaker: You really asking for that smoke?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: These these kids are young and mean.
Speaker: I don't I felt they really do cut to the quick of of of what I'm insecure about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a reason I'm not a teacher anymore and it's not incompetence.
Speaker: I promise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So five stars, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Speaker: Give us a little positive thumbs up.
Speaker: You can follow us on, as mentioned before, on Patreon.
Speaker: Also on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn.
Speaker: We don't have LinkedIn.
Speaker: We're not going to have LinkedIn.
Speaker: We're not there yet.
Speaker: We're not there yet.
Speaker: Only if we're out of our current jobs and this is our full-time thing, then we'll make it a LinkedIn thing.
Speaker: And what a day that will be.
Speaker: We will pop a court and celebrate.
Speaker: What a day that will be.
Speaker: We will have a LinkedIn page for Pixel It, and it's going to be the most, it is going to be the worst LinkedIn page ever.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: So bad.
Speaker: It's going to be so bad, and it's just going to be making fun of LinkedIn posts.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: People are going to friend us and then unfollow us very fast.
Speaker: Very quickly.
Speaker: As we write fake posts about hiring a guy who didn't know any of the answers of the quiz I gave him and had no resume, but he believed, so we hired him.
Speaker: Yeah, so we hired him.
Speaker: That's how that works.
Speaker: That's the power of hiring.
Speaker: That and he works for $5.25 an hour.
Speaker: That's the end of our show.
Speaker: Bye.
