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What's Kraken: Bert S Lechner Interview
15 Plays2 years ago
Jim recently sat down with Cosmic Horror Author Extraordinaire Bert S Lechner where we talked about everything from beginnings to Lovecraft as a gate way into madness. Plus, a few lucky listeners will nab Lechner’s new book on us! That’s right just drop us a line via socials and the first few will have that Kindle edition come your way! All this and more on the next What’s Kraken? Bert S Lechner Bert S. Lechner is an author on the autism spectrum born and raised near San Francisco, California. He studied music at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, […]
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Transcript
Introduction to Bert S. Lechner
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, Jim Phoenix here, and boy am I excited for this next author interview.
00:00:04
Speaker
We've got none other than the cosmic horror maestro himself, Bert S. Lechner.
00:00:11
Speaker
That's right, you can go to his website right now, Bert Writes Horror, B-E-R-T-W-R-I-T-E-S-H-O-R-R-O-R.com, and check out the introduction to the new thing.
00:00:26
Speaker
Coming soon.
00:00:28
Speaker
E-book format of the Roots Grow into the Earth.
Giveaway: Bert's Book
00:00:31
Speaker
Available on pre-order on Amazon.
00:00:33
Speaker
In fact, we might be giving a copy away ourselves.
00:00:36
Speaker
So hit us up.
00:00:37
Speaker
All this and more in the next What's Crackin'.
Bert's New Book Release
00:00:41
Speaker
Hit it.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey everyone, Jim Phoenix here.
00:00:48
Speaker
And boy, am I excited for this next What's Crackin'.
00:00:51
Speaker
We have our third...
00:00:55
Speaker
and her author series.
00:00:56
Speaker
Wow, her author series is freaking good.
00:00:58
Speaker
And we have got none other than Burst S. Lackner, which is the best cosmic horror writer we've found.
00:01:05
Speaker
And they've got a new book coming out, The Roots Grow Into the Earth, a collection of short horror stories coming out.
00:01:12
Speaker
Pre-order it now.
00:01:13
Speaker
October 7th, 2023.
00:01:15
Speaker
E-book and print and all sorts of madness as it goes through.
00:01:20
Speaker
Order it now.
00:01:21
Speaker
Burst
00:01:23
Speaker
So glad you're here.
00:01:24
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
How Did Bert Get Into Cosmic Horror?
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's a pleasure having anyone, because of our Kufulu backgrounds, it's a pleasure having anyone who is into cosmic horror.
00:01:35
Speaker
And I know you probably get this asked this a bazillion times, at least twice today.
00:01:40
Speaker
What got you into cosmic horror?
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think I pretty much started where I imagine a lot of people started.
00:01:48
Speaker
Right.
00:01:52
Speaker
getting introduced to things like John Carpenter's The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness, experiencing Eldritch in Dungeons and Dragons, all those sort of things.
00:02:05
Speaker
See, I think you hit it on the head, especially Lovecraft is the gateway drug for a lot of us for the cosmic horror.
00:02:12
Speaker
And then for those of you who are listening in 2023,
00:02:16
Speaker
We didn't have all those Lovecraft movies and TV shows and stuff like that growing up.
00:02:23
Speaker
That's new.
00:02:24
Speaker
That's like the 2020-ish.
00:02:27
Speaker
Like the last couple of years.
00:02:29
Speaker
So we had the thing like poor
Inspirations and Story Structure
00:02:31
Speaker
us.
00:02:31
Speaker
We had the thing like one of the best horror movies ever made.
00:02:34
Speaker
But so we had that we had Dungeons and Dragons.
00:02:37
Speaker
I'm so glad you brought up Dungeons and Dragons because that was one of the few places that you can do it, create it in your mind.
00:02:43
Speaker
And they had the monster manuals and the pendulums and they had awesome artists just drawing these things out into like horrors into reality.
00:02:53
Speaker
and then so wait you're doing dungeon dragons so that was that during the sally jesse raphael everyone's a satanist time was that after that uh i i wasn't around in that time period i'm just me so i got i got introduced to dungeons and dragons in like 2009 2010 oh oh you missed all the fun yeah in the 4.0 era um
00:03:19
Speaker
But yeah, there were those eldritch elements that were things that I was always drawn to.
00:03:28
Speaker
And I have a tendency to think of my books as Dungeons and Dragons as a fantasy setting with an injection of cosmic horror, as opposed to my setting, which is a horror setting with an injection of fantasy.
00:03:42
Speaker
I like that.
00:03:43
Speaker
That's great.
00:03:44
Speaker
And this is The Roots That Grow Into Earth, a collection of short horror stories.
00:03:48
Speaker
How many horror stories do you have in this collection?
00:03:51
Speaker
So it's a pretty short collection.
00:03:52
Speaker
Actually, I have a physical copy with me right here.
00:03:55
Speaker
This is one of the proofs.
00:03:57
Speaker
It's a pretty short book.
00:03:59
Speaker
150 pages.
00:04:00
Speaker
That's pretty good, though.
00:04:03
Speaker
Compressed of nine short stories and novelettes.
00:04:09
Speaker
Oh, I see.
00:04:10
Speaker
Now...
00:04:11
Speaker
I was wondering, it's like nine short stories, that can kind of do it.
00:04:13
Speaker
And you kind of like push it further.
00:04:15
Speaker
So when you're creating these stories, how does the idea come to you?
How Are Bert's Story Ideas Formed?
00:04:21
Speaker
So for the Roots Grow into the Earth specifically, it's just a few different inspirations depending on the story.
00:04:31
Speaker
Some of them were just like...
00:04:33
Speaker
ooh, this is a cool title.
00:04:35
Speaker
I'm going to write a story based off this title.
00:04:38
Speaker
I know the first story in this collection and the last were inspired by that.
00:04:45
Speaker
There were a few, I think four of them come from Instagram prompts.
00:04:50
Speaker
I just like those monthly horror prompt really hosts for you.
00:04:56
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, so there was those and then there's there were ones like my my largest novel.
00:05:06
Speaker
I think the largest one, the wall is just based off the idea of like, what if I made a wall, but it was evil.
00:05:15
Speaker
So, yeah, so there's those.
00:05:16
Speaker
And then one of them is based off of a dream, but like just kind of inspired by that.
00:05:23
Speaker
So it's just in general, I get I get inspiration for writing from a whole bunch of different places.
00:05:32
Speaker
No, that's really cool because I.
00:05:35
Speaker
I am not like you in a sense that if my titles come first, that's very scary.
00:05:40
Speaker
If anyone knows my original titles and most of my stories are all monkey songs.
00:05:45
Speaker
So I guess they're all Neil Diamond songs, to be honest.
00:05:47
Speaker
You know, then like the cover, all my things come from cover versions.
00:05:52
Speaker
So you actually can get the title in your hand and go, oh, I wonder if I can write something with this.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a handful of them.
00:06:01
Speaker
I just came up with the idea, like, their eyes were dust.
00:06:05
Speaker
That's a cool phrase.
00:06:06
Speaker
I'm going to make that a title of one of my books.
00:06:09
Speaker
So that's the first book in the series.
00:06:12
Speaker
And then going forward, I have at least one other story where the title came first, or two stories where the title came first, and then I've been working on a story behind them.
00:06:25
Speaker
Nice.
00:06:26
Speaker
Now, without any spoilers, do you have any recurring characters?
Novelettes and Recurring Characters
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:32
Speaker
So the kind of the way the book is set up, I have the three novelettes in there, interspersed with shorter stories.
00:06:43
Speaker
In the three novelettes... So you have the bridging then, right?
00:06:50
Speaker
Do I have what?
00:06:51
Speaker
Are the short stories bridging them?
00:06:53
Speaker
Uh, not really.
00:06:54
Speaker
I just, um, I kind of, I wanted to play with pacing of the stories in the books.
00:07:00
Speaker
So like I wanted a short book, longer novelette, few really short ones, just like kind of break up the pace of it.
00:07:10
Speaker
Like you would do it for a paragraph, short sentence, longer sentence, long, long, short, long, long, short, short, short.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:15
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:16
Speaker
Pretty much that except with like short stories, but, um, like in regards to recurring characters, I do the, the, um,
00:07:23
Speaker
at least two of the novelettes sort of have some character overlap, and they're all characters that I'm either planning on exploring in future novels or other shorter works.
00:07:41
Speaker
That is pretty cool.
00:07:42
Speaker
Now, when you have these stories, do you see them from start to finish in your head first?
00:07:50
Speaker
Or do you come out and kind of like piece them together?
00:07:53
Speaker
Like some people, I know people like will outline a story or paste out like, oh, I don't forget where are my script writing cards?
00:08:00
Speaker
Like I'll do scripts and index cards first and then I'll flash it out that way.
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah, most of the time the story's already fully developed in my head before I put it onto paper.
00:08:13
Speaker
Every now and again, there's a surprise that gets thrown at me or a direction I wasn't expecting it to go.
00:08:20
Speaker
But usually I've got it nailed down before I put it on paper.
00:08:25
Speaker
I think we're the same way with that.
00:08:27
Speaker
The entire story is kind of told to you and you're like, I must get this out now before I forget it.
00:08:30
Speaker
Da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:08:32
Speaker
Did you ever forget, not so much forget a story, but did you ever try to ignore a story or maybe more than one story came in at once?
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, I do.
00:08:41
Speaker
I do have a really bad habit on working on multiple things at once.
00:08:45
Speaker
Like if I start to lose steam on one project, I'll jump over to another one to just like keep the writing going for the sake of writing.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:58
Speaker
That's important though.
Maintaining Writing Habits
00:08:59
Speaker
One of the hardest things and I'm getting old, but I always think like, was this in basketball?
00:09:06
Speaker
Like I'll never get these up.
00:09:07
Speaker
And then of course, like the first time I played basketball, I was like this week and 20 years later, you know, and writing is something you're supposed to do.
00:09:14
Speaker
It's a habit.
00:09:15
Speaker
You need to get in that habit because once you get out of the habit, it's really hard to get back into it sometimes.
00:09:19
Speaker
So I'm glad you could the approach of like spinning the plates, right?
00:09:22
Speaker
You have one project here, one project there.
00:09:25
Speaker
this one goes so far creatively, like, okay, now I unlocked my mind to do this part.
00:09:29
Speaker
And sometimes what it is, do you find that sometimes it's not so much like a writer's block or anything like that, but sometimes it helps to do another story to unlock a key to the different story?
00:09:48
Speaker
I think sometimes...
00:09:51
Speaker
Sometimes I'll be writing a story and just get to a point where I know that I'm not ready to write this part of the story.
00:10:01
Speaker
I don't have a technique for this.
00:10:04
Speaker
I'm going to write another story in the meantime.
00:10:07
Speaker
And then I'll come back with new techniques for writing.
What Is Bert's Editing Process?
00:10:12
Speaker
I've heard that a couple times, not just during this author series, but I've heard that a couple times.
00:10:17
Speaker
One of the best ways I've heard for comedians who bomb on stage, one of the advice that Pete Correale, a comedian in New York, gave was, it's not a bad joke.
00:10:28
Speaker
You're just not strong enough to tell it yet.
00:10:30
Speaker
And sometimes like it's not a bad story.
00:10:32
Speaker
It's not a bad moment.
00:10:33
Speaker
It's not a bad scene.
00:10:34
Speaker
You have to get stronger to tell that scene.
00:10:37
Speaker
And so it's like you're working out.
00:10:38
Speaker
You're working out your writing muscle on other stories that you still have.
00:10:43
Speaker
You know, you can unlock it and come back.
00:10:45
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:10:47
Speaker
I've heard that more than once.
00:10:49
Speaker
It's what was the advice?
00:10:51
Speaker
Like if you wanted to edit your own stuff, put it in a freezer for a while.
00:10:56
Speaker
and then go and be like, oh, now I can read it with fresh eyes because something in your mind is going to lock it, right?
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:02
Speaker
How do you edit, by the way?
00:11:04
Speaker
I'm curious.
00:11:05
Speaker
So I do the forbidden act of editing while drafting pretty often.
00:11:13
Speaker
I'll just go back with it and tweak it.
00:11:17
Speaker
But generally, by the time I get to the end, it's...
00:11:21
Speaker
Not too much of my own personal editing left to do.
00:11:24
Speaker
It's just a matter of getting it to a proofreader or a copy editor.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's pretty important.
00:11:33
Speaker
Now, yes, there's a couple of schools of thought of editing like you should always never do, you know, revise it compliantly.
00:11:39
Speaker
Don't like take two steps forward, one step back.
00:11:42
Speaker
There is a historical writer named John Vernon out of Binghamton University, and that was his style of editing.
00:11:48
Speaker
He would write like four or five pages that hour, and then the next time he wrote, he'll skip back two pages, then edit and go, and then add on a couple more and skip back.
00:12:00
Speaker
I mean, it works.
00:12:00
Speaker
Whatever you need to do, it works.
00:12:02
Speaker
But I'm glad you brought up getting a proofreader or a copy edit from someone else.
00:12:11
Speaker
Have you ever tried doing your own stuff and missed like a thousand things?
00:12:15
Speaker
I did do... So yeah, I published all of the stories in this collection before I compiled them into one.
00:12:23
Speaker
And I did it pretty much entirely the wrong way in every single step of the process.
00:12:31
Speaker
using generic covers, not getting an editor, doing no promotion before I just threw it onto the web.
00:12:38
Speaker
But that's it.
00:12:41
Speaker
That's how we learned.
00:12:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:42
Speaker
So when I did get the roots grow into the earth, proof edited, I had about 250 suggestions and 242 of them were commas that I missed.
00:12:56
Speaker
I laugh because I've seen commas and commas splicing as any writer, especially if your first language is English, because we're taught commas or pauses in dialogue.
00:13:12
Speaker
They're not.
00:13:13
Speaker
They actually have a grammatical function.
00:13:15
Speaker
But, you know, we're taught this like K-12.
00:13:17
Speaker
We're taught that like this is what the comma is used for.
00:13:20
Speaker
So we either omit them entirely or put them in like rain.
00:13:26
Speaker
When in reality, it's that very specific usage.
00:13:30
Speaker
I think that's just United States education, not to bash the U.S. It's just what we grew up with.
00:13:35
Speaker
I'm pretty sure you were taught it's a half a pause, a period's a full pause.
00:13:40
Speaker
It's like half breath.
00:13:41
Speaker
That's what it was.
00:13:43
Speaker
I see that a lot.
00:13:44
Speaker
I was never taught that.
00:13:45
Speaker
I completely forgot it.
00:13:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah?
00:13:48
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:13:50
Speaker
But that's the thing.
00:13:51
Speaker
These are things that we would not see ourselves.
00:13:55
Speaker
And no matter how well you think, you know, I'm going to read it backwards.
00:13:58
Speaker
So it was like, read it backwards.
00:14:00
Speaker
And so it doesn't make sense to your mind.
00:14:02
Speaker
Well, grammar backwards is still kind of be skipping over.
00:14:06
Speaker
So I'm glad you got this published.
00:14:07
Speaker
And you mentioned something else.
00:14:10
Speaker
Not having the generic book cover, right?
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yes.
00:14:18
Speaker
So you now have an artist doing your book cover and you're having like the –
00:14:24
Speaker
Look at the book cover now.
00:14:25
Speaker
It looks like a photo probably, right?
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:28
Speaker
So this book cover, I used Canva Pro to make my own book cover this time around.
00:14:35
Speaker
And I heavily tweaked and edited a stock photo that they use just to make it my own.
00:14:42
Speaker
I like it.
00:14:43
Speaker
It's very dark.
00:14:44
Speaker
It fits.
00:14:46
Speaker
It fits.
00:14:47
Speaker
I'm looking at it right now.
00:14:48
Speaker
And the book for them looking at right now, of course, is the roots grow into the earth, a collection of short horror stories out October 7th.
00:14:56
Speaker
You're beating me to the publication.
00:14:59
Speaker
Oh, punks.
00:15:00
Speaker
Oh, you whippersnappers.
00:15:02
Speaker
And you can do it as a pre-order ebook and paperback.
00:15:07
Speaker
Matter of fact, if you're listening to the podcast right now, if you're listening right now, it'd be really weird.
00:15:11
Speaker
It's just you and I. So it's one of us that listen to it.
00:15:13
Speaker
But you know, when this podcast comes out, the first four listeners email me at jimphoenix at hauntedmcl.com.
00:15:22
Speaker
I'll buy it for you.
00:15:24
Speaker
Then we get to four copies.
00:15:25
Speaker
Boom.
00:15:26
Speaker
Onto your Kindle.
00:15:27
Speaker
Bam.
00:15:28
Speaker
Into your mind.
00:15:28
Speaker
Get it instantly.
00:15:29
Speaker
Instant grab a notification.
00:15:30
Speaker
We always want that.
00:15:32
Speaker
Now, when you are getting these out as a collection and it's your collection, you
00:15:41
Speaker
I am going to ask more of the publication aspect of, okay?
00:15:48
Speaker
When we're going through these, I know you put them out on, like, what was it?
00:15:54
Speaker
I'm looking at Amazon right now, so obviously Amazon.
00:15:56
Speaker
Amazon and maybe Ingram, and maybe it's going to be, not Book Blur, but, oh man, I'm blanking out.
00:16:06
Speaker
Not Book Funnel, Book Funnels for ARCs.
00:16:09
Speaker
I do have a BookFunnel ARC program for this going on now.
00:16:14
Speaker
Do you?
00:16:15
Speaker
And I do.
00:16:16
Speaker
So I have it on BookFunnel, BookSirens, and I'm consistently sending out ARC copies all the way until the release date.
00:16:28
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:16:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:29
Speaker
For those who don't know, and thanks for bringing this up as my mind kind of spins out on draft digital.
00:16:37
Speaker
That was the one I was trying to think of.
00:16:40
Speaker
My mind was gone.
00:16:41
Speaker
I'm so sorry.
00:16:42
Speaker
I don't know how I got book funnel from draft to digital.
00:16:45
Speaker
But I'm glad you talked about book funnel for a bit because that was one of the things when I have... Okay, I have a new book.
00:16:53
Speaker
I'm not going to push my book out.
00:16:54
Speaker
But we, as a publishing company, we never use book funnel.
00:16:56
Speaker
We never use book funnel.
00:16:58
Speaker
And sometimes it was like...
00:17:00
Speaker
putting the anthologies so like, you guys do the work.
00:17:03
Speaker
I'll put some tweets out.
00:17:05
Speaker
I'll pay some Amazon ads, Facebook ads, whatever, and hopefully lightning strikes if it does.
00:17:11
Speaker
But BookFunnel is new to me.
00:17:15
Speaker
And they are mostly like they deliver the ARCs, the advanced reader copy for people who don't know, to different readers.
00:17:22
Speaker
Do you get a lot of feedback from them or what are you getting from BookFunnel?
00:17:27
Speaker
Sorry, you broke up there.
00:17:30
Speaker
Could you repeat that?
00:17:32
Speaker
Sure.
00:17:33
Speaker
Like for book funnel, because they're sending mostly arcs out for book funnel.
00:17:39
Speaker
So I was wondering, do you get a lot of feedback from these arcs?
00:17:44
Speaker
Are you hooking them into maybe a reader's list?
00:17:47
Speaker
What is your goal?
Using BookFunnel for ARCs
00:17:49
Speaker
What was your main purpose for book funnel?
00:17:52
Speaker
Uh, for me, for book funnel, um, and just for all the arcs in general, really, um, my main purpose is just to like get my book into as many hands as I possibly can before the release and just like hopefully get, get a nice chunk of reviews that people can see day one really.
00:18:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:13
Speaker
So you're also preloading your reviews with this.
00:18:15
Speaker
That's a good idea.
00:18:16
Speaker
Yeah, so I got on BookFunnel pretty recently also.
00:18:22
Speaker
It's the newest thing for me.
00:18:26
Speaker
Before that, I was just doing it manually, asking people if they wanted to be ARC readers.
00:18:33
Speaker
And so the first of those reviews have started coming out on Goodreads.
00:18:38
Speaker
But hopefully the BookFunnel ones will start coming out soon too.
00:18:42
Speaker
And that's a great point because a lot of times, like I said, especially when Haunted MPL first started out as Rookie's Backyard, our reviewers were like, you send them PDFs, like the free e-book type thing, even if it wasn't a Kindle or a Mobi or what it was.
00:19:00
Speaker
Like, here you go, and I hope they give you a review.
00:19:03
Speaker
They might not.
00:19:04
Speaker
Like, oh, okay, maybe I just didn't send the right PDF person, but...
00:19:09
Speaker
And now you have a system because the way bookselling works, you want to front load.
00:19:16
Speaker
You want to get the momentum going into it.
00:19:18
Speaker
And then you have this big launch and go jazz hands.
00:19:20
Speaker
Where the way it used to work before, this is all author signings.
00:19:23
Speaker
You go to a different event back in the 90s.
00:19:28
Speaker
And author signings, especially after COVID, were kind of like, even before COVID.
00:19:34
Speaker
Someone asked me for advice for author signing before.
00:19:36
Speaker
I'm like, bring your friends so it doesn't look like you're alone.
00:19:40
Speaker
I was like, your mileage may vary on author signings, especially if you have no word or press before that.
00:19:46
Speaker
So I'm glad to seeing that you're using BookFunnel.
00:19:49
Speaker
That's very cool.
00:19:50
Speaker
And absolutely getting some professional to do, especially the, it's just proofread, copy edit and proofread.
00:19:57
Speaker
They're two different things, but they kind of go hand in hand.
00:20:01
Speaker
You know, you do one and the other.
00:20:03
Speaker
Now, if you were to give young people,
00:20:09
Speaker
Bert S Lechner advice before your very first short story, what advice would that be?
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh, that's, that is really tough.
00:20:19
Speaker
Um, you know, I think, um, I don't think young Bert would have listened to any advice I would give him knowing me.
00:20:31
Speaker
Um,
00:20:32
Speaker
But I think my advice would just be persevere, right?
00:20:40
Speaker
Everything's going to come out well, just right, really.
00:20:44
Speaker
I like that.
00:20:46
Speaker
I think it's honest, and I think it's what people need to hear because a lot of times you hear something like, I'm going to make a bazillion dollars by first book.
00:20:55
Speaker
I'm like, no, you won't.
00:20:56
Speaker
You won't.
00:20:57
Speaker
So you might get rejected 5,000 times by an editor.
00:21:01
Speaker
It's a 5,001th time that's going to get you through.
00:21:03
Speaker
It's like maybe you weren't strong enough to write that one short story, but it's this short story that's going to hit.
00:21:09
Speaker
It's you keep working at it.
00:21:11
Speaker
You keep writing.
00:21:12
Speaker
It's something that has to keep pushing you.
00:21:15
Speaker
And I like that.
00:21:16
Speaker
Persevere.
00:21:16
Speaker
Now, if you were going to give new writers, new writers that haven't even started writing at all,
00:21:29
Speaker
haven't started writing at all that might be too shy to write or too shy to do the marketing or too shy to do something.
00:21:36
Speaker
What advice would you give to a brand new writer who not, not just to persevere, which is great,
Advice for New Writers
00:21:42
Speaker
but something that's going to be, what did you wish you knew before you started?
00:21:51
Speaker
I think we mentioned a little bit with the, uh, the covers and stuff like that.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:56
Speaker
Um,
00:21:58
Speaker
I think you could fill a book with things that you probably should know before you publish a book.
00:22:04
Speaker
That is true.
00:22:11
Speaker
Something that stalled me into getting to where I am now that put me back really far is being discouraged by people who tell you how hard it is to write or how hard it is to successfully be an author.
00:22:29
Speaker
Right.
00:22:29
Speaker
Like people, people really like to tell you how low your odds of success are and how much work goes into being an author.
00:22:40
Speaker
And I had that experience with, with somebody who just flat out was telling me to just keep it as a hobby.
00:22:47
Speaker
Don't pursue being an author.
00:22:50
Speaker
It's so much work.
00:22:53
Speaker
So I would just say like the biggest advice for just new authors is like,
00:22:59
Speaker
It is a lot of work.
00:23:01
Speaker
So just do it in baby steps.
00:23:05
Speaker
Just do your passion, do your writing, start one social media platform, get used to it, then start the other ones.
00:23:14
Speaker
Just do everything little bit by bit until it's in just whatever sort of pieces you need to do it in.
00:23:21
Speaker
I enjoy that.
00:23:22
Speaker
I like the baby sets approach because I think, and this is something we all as authors can reflect on as another social media platform pops up like whack-a-mole.
Social Media Strategy
00:23:33
Speaker
Like, oh, I have to go to this one now.
00:23:34
Speaker
Well, you might be really good at one, but you won't know until you try them.
00:23:38
Speaker
And that, like, you find your lane and like, oh, I'm really good at this one.
00:23:43
Speaker
I can do okay on this one.
00:23:44
Speaker
So you know which way to kind of, like, go towards.
00:23:47
Speaker
And I like that.
00:23:47
Speaker
And I like the babysitter approach.
00:23:50
Speaker
And that's what I was trying to say is, like, it's not going to be like you're going to write one book and be done and walk away from it.
00:23:55
Speaker
It's going to be like, okay, that was your, oh my gosh, everyone went wrong on a fire book.
00:24:00
Speaker
Now you learn from that and now you make another one and you learn from that one.
00:24:04
Speaker
You make another one.
00:24:05
Speaker
You learn from that one.
00:24:05
Speaker
You make a learn.
00:24:06
Speaker
It's a, it's a progressive and it's like a lot of stuff like,
00:24:11
Speaker
Even like today, I've been doing this for like decades.
00:24:14
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, man, book funnel.
00:24:17
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:24:19
Speaker
Fine.
00:24:20
Speaker
I guess it's no longer a street team of a bunch of punks in the parking lot.
00:24:25
Speaker
So I appreciate the time.
00:24:28
Speaker
And again, Bert S. Lechner, we are going to do cosmic horror.
00:24:33
Speaker
It's the roots grow into the earth.
00:24:35
Speaker
A collection of short horror stories.
00:24:39
Speaker
Pre-order it October 7th.
00:24:41
Speaker
Pre-order it now.
00:24:42
Speaker
Don't wait for October 7th.
00:24:43
Speaker
Do it right now.
00:24:44
Speaker
Do it before it gets to September.
00:24:46
Speaker
And remember, did I say the first three?
00:24:47
Speaker
I meant the first four listeners who call in.
00:24:51
Speaker
Call in, wow.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's been a long day.
00:24:54
Speaker
If you call in, I'll be very surprised.
00:24:56
Speaker
I'll be very surprised.
00:24:57
Speaker
My mom's getting one, I guess.
00:24:58
Speaker
who write in the Jim Phoenix at hauntedmdl.com or Instagram tweet, or I guess X now, or thread us like TikTok.
00:25:08
Speaker
I don't know where I am anymore.
00:25:10
Speaker
We will buy you the book and we'll ship it out.
00:25:15
Speaker
Or, well, actually, Amazon will ship it out.
00:25:17
Speaker
I'm not going to ship it out to you.
00:25:17
Speaker
Or Barnes & Noble.
00:25:18
Speaker
Whatever your bookseller is, they'll ship it out to you.
00:25:21
Speaker
All right.
00:25:22
Speaker
So once again, Burgess Lechner, thank you very much for your time.
00:25:26
Speaker
And that's wonderful.
00:25:27
Speaker
Cosmic Horror, we need more of that.
00:25:29
Speaker
We need more Cosmic Horror.
00:25:30
Speaker
I'm so glad you're here.
00:25:31
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me.
00:25:34
Speaker
Bye.