Ep 16: with David Pariseau

David Pariseau is a successful businessman and the author of the Ndesa series of sci-fi books. The first novel in the series, 'Dreams of Verdure' was published in 2025, with the second book, 'Songs of Flint' due later in 2026.

If you like this episode you can check out my novel:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M22USRE?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

And my poetry collection, ‘Made in China’:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Made-China-Fifty-Sonnets-Modern-ebook/dp/B08DMLPYZR/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3KI41E4V5F5ZE&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Rf3HZYusIdvgYXofCbUMuw.B719F4EG3aqyn66kFLpvB2ttaeolJzDBvbqv2yfCZFo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Made+in+China%3A+50+sonnets+on+Modern+China&qid=1758932767&sprefix=made+in+china+50+sonnets+on+modern+china%2Caps%2C435&sr=8-1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome to another episode of What the Hate. I'm your host, Hayes Wolfenden, and today I'm interviewing the author, David Parisau. Okay, welcome, David. Can you please first of all introduce yourself and your work? Thank you. Well, thanks for having me, first of all.

SPEAKER_01: 0:22

I think it's wonderful what you do. My name's David Parisow. And as far as the writing goes, I've just started writing a few years ago. Well, actually, I wrote for a while before that, but I started writing a few years ago and published my first novel, my debut novel, in November of last year. So just recently. So in case anybody hasn't seen it. So change the merger. And then the second novel is just going to be coming out. So there's the second novel coming out in the series in just a few months. So we're just in ARCs now. And so I was a I did some writing. Oh, I think I've written on and off most of my life. And I was in a writing group for a bunch of years. But then I got really busy with work-wise. And so engineered by training and started a bunch of companies, was a consultant for years and years. I designed electronics and embedded systems and things. And so a few years ago, you know, everybody was starting to ask me, you know, about retirement, which is the big thing, the big goal, right? Because everybody wants to retire. But retirement really scared me. And I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But I really, I was really uncomfortable with the idea. Just because I've worked my whole life and I've always loved what I did. You know, it was very creative. I created new products and worked with lots of different companies. And it was such a big part of my life that I just didn't know what I was going to do with the hours, you know, with the time. You know, what could I do that would be as fulfilling? So on we were on vacation, my wife and I in Hawaii. And and I was kind of, it was sort of always in the back of my mind this whole thing of this retirement thing that everybody was so excited about. And I was playing around with the chatbots, which had just sort of coming out. And they had different characters, you know, like Isaac Newton or whatever it is. And you could chat with them and and and create things. And I started, I started just playing around with them and and just forcing them into different situations, you know, putting them on a job interview or or or just tweaking the narrative that was there. And it became really it sparked that that writing that writing bug again, just because you were creating situations and worlds and dialogues. There was some pushback from the chatbot which would take try to take it back into some direction. And it was very, it was very freeing. It limbered that muscle again that I that I had f that I'd really let lie dormant, except in you know, writing articles and you know, trade stuff. And so I started playing around with some ideas. I went from that to just playing around with some just story ideas, like the way I used to. And one of those story ideas, I had a few of them. I the first one was a take on the you know, the book Cold Mountain and if you mashed it up with Starship Troopers, uh, which are two pretty different genres, and having a sort of a more literary tale of a really campy sci-fi thing, which was pretty interesting with the characters. And and then the other one that that came to me as I started working on it was this young engineer who who gets stranded on this on this jungle world. And that's where the idea for the book came. And I didn't start off as, hey, I'm gonna write a novel. I was just going through this mental process of trying to deal with you know what comes next, and not really understanding that I was just doing this to sort of pass the time, not really understanding that this would be a viable next act. And uh it just took over. It just all of a sudden I was writing a lot. I mean, I wrote the first drafts of the book in about a month, and uh and I wrote the next four books about a month for each of them. So I wrote the entire series over the period of about six months, all five books. They were first drafts, so they were rough drafts, but but they were pretty, you know, I I got to know the characters and and when I was first starting, you just don't know where it's gonna go or what's gonna happen. So by the time I got to the end of the fifth book and came back to the first one, I wrote the second draft of the first book, which is pretty close to what the final is. Just started from scratch. Uh because then I by that point I knew the characters, I knew the sort of the arc of the story a little bit more. And that draft and and I'd gotten some feedback. You know, I I the thing that was wonderful for me is is I really did go out and get some beta readers. And you know, I hired a bunch of beta readers and a lot of them. So I was in a position to be able to do that. And and then I found that they're not all created the same, but that there's a very large spectrum there as far as what people like to read, what they're interested in reading, the kind of feedback you get. I had everything from folks that wanted to write the story for me, ghostwriters who basically said that they saw the story totally differently than I did by the way they would write it for me, which wasn't very helpful, to people who just say, Hey, I liked it, and that was the whole thing, to people who were really detailed, but maybe had a different vision. And then a few really gems who who resonated with the story and who I've kept the entire way, who read it and provide really thoughtful feedback as to, I just don't understand what's going on here, or what's this person feeling. And the the first feedback I really got that was super helpful was that as an author, you tend to see the world much more clearly than your readers do, a lot of the times. So it's what you have in your mind as to what's going on, a lot of times is so much clearer than what you put on the page because you've already got it in your mind and you're already trying to move the plot along. And you see it really clearly. But one of the comments I was getting early on was, I don't really, I can't really tell where they are. I don't really know what's going on, I don't really know what this person's, you know, what you know, what this person's feeling. And so that was really helpful in the second draft of it, the novel with with roughly the same plot elements, doubled in size, just because it became so much more immersive and so much richer in the setting of the of the in the actual setting where the world becomes a character largely, uh, and and the and the development of the people, all of the secondary cares, especially, became much more three-dimensional. Because they I one, I already knew where they were gonna go. I already understood their arc a lot more, their personality more, but two of them, just because I was much more intentional about about developing that interaction, letting the reader, bringing the reader along so that they could clearly they could see it as clearly as I could see it. And one, it really helped me see it more clearly that just by doing that, I was able to see it much more clearly myself. So that's kind of how it got started. That's the genesis and the origin of it, and a little bit how the how the novels evolved sort of along the way.

SPEAKER_00: 7:26

Yeah, it's interesting. You you use beta readers. I I'm using some beta readers as well for my my current novel, but I've not paid them. But then the the shortfall with with that is I find that obviously got lives and stuff, and not getting me the feedback I need quickly enough. I've got a little bit that can go on that does good feedback that I'm gonna use to edit a bit, but I have considered maybe paying or see, or maybe I uh uh maybe I can build my network and we can swap things like this. I don't know, but it you do need to get good quick feedback, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 8:02

Yeah, and I I treat them um so it it and they're not all created the same. Like I said, I I had maybe 30, and of the 30, probably three or four were really were the ones, you know, 10% of them are the ones that work out. Same thing with arc readers. I mean, I've got a bunch of arc readers, and I paid a bunch of money to go on NetGalle. I got about 30 arc readers, of which I got zero reviews. Zero. So the arc readers I've gotten have been through my my beta readers, through contacts I've made, other people I've gotten. And it's just done by Beaton Bush. I think once you have an established name, the dynamics change a bit. But with a debut novel, that's really tough. It's really, really hard to get that out there initially. And I use them, my beta readers, they're almost alpha readers. So what I did was I I would write three chapters, I would send them the I would send them to the alpha readers, essentially the alpha readers, and then I would start working in the next three chapters. And then I would get the feedback from those first three chapters, I would rework those chapters based on the feedback, which would often change the dynamic going forward. Because, you know, if I'm getting the same comment over and over, hey, I don't really see what's going on, or you know, this character was whatever. And they were really, they were really good because they weren't, they didn't have a lot of ego tied into it. A lot of times, if you go with a critique partner, somebody has their own style, you know, unless you get a really good somebody who can really put themselves aside and really try to be, you know, they're not trying to shape the story like something they would write, or they're not trying to uh teach or guide you or whatever, they're trying to help, you know. So it's really hard to find the the right the right critiques for yourself. It's really, it's really challenging. And it can it can be, it can be, uh I think it can be arresting for some writers, right? You go out with something you think is really great, you give it to somebody, and it comes back all marked up with stuff that if you take the commentary and you you don't know any better, you take the commentary and it turns into a book that you didn't really intend, you know, something something you don't really care for, but you're just doing it because you think you should. Or or you just become so discouraged that you lose the spark for writing, which I think I think it's a it's a really tricky situation to find the right feedback partners. And they don't have to be paid. I mean, I pay I'm in a situation where I could, and I spent a lot of money on editors early on, which was wasted because one, the novel wasn't really be ready to be edited, and the and the comment to the comments I was getting back were not helpful to the novel. It needed fundamental changes. And even though they may have mentioned it, it wasn't helpful to me as an author because I just didn't understand what they were I didn't know how to implement what they were telling you. You know, you I get the the old tropes, you know, show, don't tell, uh, you know, whatever. It you know, that doesn't help you at all. If you're just starting out and you've got you written, you know, a first draft and that's your comment. What, you know, how how do you show, you know, where are the parts that really need the work and and show me how to help me help me do it. Don't, don't, uh it was it was not helpful at in the early stages. What was really helpful in the early stages was more my beta readers who were really telling me the parts of the stories that that how how where they were getting lost in the story. And they often felt like it was their problem and not my problem. Well, you know, I got a little confused here, and you know, I I I I don't read this genre very often, or or or you know, it was it was couched in that way, which was which was really helpful because I could tell that there was no ego there. They they thought that the fault was on their side, where really it was my my you know, I wasn't conveying the story effectively enough. And and finding finding the right support and the right voice was was was really critical for me. Uh and you want you want people also that you want a uh smattering. You it's nice to have somebody who's a little bit of a cheerleader, oh yeah, I really love this part, I really like that part, because it's a swab, you know, you're writing a novel and and all you're getting back is feedback. It's this isn't working, that's not working, uh, I don't know what's going on here, you know, and and you're and you're putting in, you know, all your essentially all your free time into this thing and trying to get this way can be discouraging, whereas somebody, you know, a kind word every now and then saying, Hey, this was really cool, I really laughed here. It's it's really it buoys the sphere a bit and and really helps you get through those through the through the process of of creating these things. It took you know a few years from the time I I had that first idea until I was able to DV the novel. I wrote the second novel before I launched the first. I finished the second novel, pretty much finished. I had I did a couple more editing passes, but I want I didn't want there to be a large gap between book one and book two, so that if I got some readers and there was a momentum a little bit, I could follow through with that second book pretty quickly. Sort of my idea, but I don't know if that's gonna work out. Well, I think it's it's gonna work out, but it was a lot more work.

SPEAKER_00: 13:05

Yeah, it sounds a lot of a lot of work, to be honest. Uh I think I think writing is though. I think you know what when you obviously you write first drafts and then you you you edit, you you send them out to be the readers, you get feedback, you re-edit, it it it just takes time, there's and and dedication. Uh there's no other way to really do it. I was gonna say, I listened to what you say, and it's interesting that when you send your novel out uh to be edited or to be you want to quite critique where don't you you know you can put your word out. I always I'm always reminded of what Neil Gaiman said about if if you're reading someone else's work, you've got to critique it like it's their work, not like you're writing it. And most people probably critique it like they're writing it. So it's it's almost used to that's the first one of the problems is just kind of like you know, it's best off just to kind of you mentioned Sean Octel. I'm I'm a big fan of show not tell, but you you're right, it could be specific and you've got to say, well, look at this but here you could do it like a thing about like critiquing is like I I've got some students at school and I'm trying to tell them that I try to just go ask them questions and just say, have you thought about this? And you know what? You could be wrong. I mean, I could be wrong. The the the the review of the editor could be wrong. And you yeah, I can imagine it was quite confusing, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01: 14:39

Yeah, and I think um the the good thing for me is that I was far enough along in my life, and I'd been through a lot of my career, that you know, I had gone, I understood that the process was going to be a learning curve. I didn't expect, I expected it to take some time. And so what I needed was was feedback that would help me grow as an author and to be able to discern what feedback would help me, which which wouldn't. As a brand new young author, let's say I was in my 20s or something, it would, I would have been overwhelmed and unable to maybe make that differentiation. I was old enough and had gone, I'd gone through enough of my life, in other words, in my career as an engineer, you're always getting feedback. And you start to learn to discern which feedback is helpful and which feedback isn't. And so that was really helpful to me to be able to find the voices. Because, you know, people say show, don't tell, but I think tell, don't show is just as viable because there's plenty of places where you should be telling and not showing, where showing doesn't add to the it just becomes tedious. In other words, if you show everything, in other words, you know, I get up, I go brush my teeth, I go to the kitchen, I make myself a cup of coffee, and then I go, you know, get dressed and comb my hair, and now I get in the car and now I'm driving down the road. Well, none of that was useful to the story unless something happened in there. But I'm showing, I'm not telling. I'm not saying, hey, he got up that morning, got in the community, went to work. In that sentence, people know what that means, right? But if I'm if I'm showing, not telling, I'm not serving the story. So I I think a good tell-do tell-don't show is really powerful in some places where you want to convey some information, but you but there's nothing, you just want uh the passage of time or a transit from here to there, or where nothing substantial is happening, but you don't need to show it because it just becomes boring. Uh, it's hard to sustain it. Plus you, the traumatic parts where there is action going on or something substantial in the dialogue, you pay more cloak, you know, you pay closer attention to it if it's if it stands in opposition to exposition, a little bit of exposition here. Again, you don't want to drag out, you know, and so many stories start that, hey, I'm gonna tell you about the world, and here's my my five chapters of world building before we actually see a character and anything happens. I mean, that's that's just not gonna fly, right? The average person's gonna read a chapter or a page and and not and not be drawn into it because you need the emotional investment. You need to find for me, if I'm reading a story, I need to be captured by some emotional, I need to be emotionally invested in the story early, very early. And if not, then it's hard for me to slog through, you know, there's this world and there's these people, and they have these jobs, and if I don't care about any of them, I don't really want to go on the journey. I'm busy, I'm tired, I got, you know, at the end of my day, why do I care about this this other world unless there's somebody I care about? I don't have to be sympathetic, but I have to be intrigued enough to want to go on that journey. So I think it's important to pull somebody in, but you also have to set the world a little bit, because if they also have just enough characters and you don't see anything, you you can't figure out where they are, what they're doing, or why there's stakes or or what's going on, then it could be the other way. You know, I have a lot of a lot of stories where I've read where the characters are really interesting, but there's really nothing going on, or they're meandering around, or they're repeating the same things over and over, or it starts to get tiresome because you're like, okay, well, aren't you gonna do something, or aren't you gonna grow, or aren't you going to face anything, or is there nothing happening in here? Or we just you just, you know, the author really loves these characters and we're just gonna spend time with them. That's okay for a while. But and it doesn't have to be huge stakes, right? They don't have to be changes saving the world, but there has to be something, something, right? Some some art for growth or or or development or interaction or something.

SPEAKER_00: 18:34

Oh yeah, for sure. I like what you mentioned about journey. Yeah, I think I think the readers do need to. I mean, okay, I myself as a reader, especially characters, maybe even the world. I like to know or think, believe that the character is gonna change over time, or maybe even the world is gonna change over time. Or or maybe a better way of putting it is the world's not the world is the world. Maybe the narrator, the author is gonna show me different parts of the world, maybe with especially with every book. And that's what I think that's one of the things about Game of Thrones when it was first released that people got excited about. Every book gave there was something new happening in a different part of that world. And it wasn't just the same characters running around the same parts of Westeros. It started going into SOS as well. And that that for me was was exciting at the time.

SPEAKER_02: 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:29

And in Game of Thrones, the characters, you didn't necessarily like all the characters or want to spend time with all the characters, but there was enough of variety in that that uh there were characters that you did care about. There's a few that you know uh a few of the of the of the plot points uh are or the story arcs I didn't care for as much. And I could sort of gloss over those ones a little bit and then get back to the ones I really I really enjoyed. But the variety was nice.

SPEAKER_00: 19:53

Yeah, with Game of Thrones, I I think in the end it just became like there was too many characters by. Yeah, and what by the time we get to book four, book five, there was like established characters that had been killed off and they the books missed them and the ones that had been set up to take their place. I forget the names now. The ones from like the Iron Islands, they just weren't as they were they're effective in their own way, but they just didn't quite grab you the same way. And it it that it is what it is. Uh I shouldn't criticize too much. I still think it's a great story.

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

I I think I think it's it's interesting because it it departed from from what was traditionally done. I think that's the thing that was people like to see something that's fresh, right? If you're just doing the same book that everybody else has done, it's you know, it's interesting, but it stops being interesting a little bit. If you if you really have a different point of view, people are going to feel differently about it. They're going to be, you know, the stakes are higher all of a sudden, right? Because now the characters you care about, you don't know that they're going to make it at the end. Uh whereas, you know, you you sort of believe that about most books, right? Oh, yeah, here's the main character. He's everything's gonna come out fine in the end, which is okay. That's a good book, but but you now you have a book where, you know, right away the main character in the first book, he's he's dead at the end. Yeah. And so you're like, okay, so now essentially anything can happen. And and that's interesting because it's fresh, right? It's it's interesting and it's fresh. But it's like you say, it's it it has its double-edged sword a little bit, right? So if you're killing off the characters that people care about, what are you left with? You know, so I I think you have to you have to either do a really good job of introducing new characters, but then do people really want to become invested in these characters because they don't know whether they're gonna make it past, you know, a chapter or two.

SPEAKER_00: 21:41

Yeah. I think sometimes that's where writers, published authors, they need a good editor to just have a little whisper in their ear and go, do you really want to do this? Like it reminds me of there's a young adult book I read years ago called The The Knife of Never Letting Go. And it's about this alien world where you can hear what not just what other people think, but like animals as well. So you can hear what animals think, and it's so people that go mad for me and stuff. And the story follows the main boy character, and he's got like a pet dog. And at the end of the book, they offer kills off the dog. And it's pretty gruesome, but that's it, it the the thing is the dog is the is the the the funny element, the comic relief, because it's got all these funny like thoughts, and it's really good. And so you get to the second and third novel, it's not that good, being honest. The other animals are not nearly as effective, and it's quite effective at times. And it's one of those things I just imagine if you didn't kill off the dot, how good the rest of the Twitch would have been. I must admit at the time I was just I just couldn't fathom why you would have done it. It made no sense the story whatsoever. It wasn't it wasn't necessary. I don't know if these these things have happened, unfortunately. We we read but all the time gone like that. And we why why has it gone like this? I I was talking to someone about this now a few years ago, I was reading this. As it turned out, it was a romantic novel. I didn't know what romanticity was then. But the first half of it was really good. You know, this New World, Angels, Hour World, The Angel World, Hello Universe, it's really interesting. But then the second half is just romantic to the point where you're like, oh my God, what's got I really love him, I really love it, I really love her hundreds of pages. It's just and it's like, why have you done that? The good thing about that is if we can take one step here, is that published authors, especially published authors that make millions and sell millions, still make really pretty basic mistakes. I I I personally think it should give us a lot of hope that we can do it, if especially if we can see these errors as well. What I was going to ask as well, David, going back to your index series, what is it mainly about?

SPEAKER_01: 24:12

Yeah, so it's um it's there's a there's a few things to it. So it's a young engineer from a spacefaring world, right? So he's he grows up on the desert planet and grows up a little bit of a loner. He's uh gifted in the sense that you know his parents are are both professors and they're really involved in the career. He he overhears one night that he's sort of an accident, you know, they didn't expect to have him. Uh they never tell him that, but you know, but they they give him every opportunity. So he has tutors, he's he's advanced, but he's always a little bit of a loner. He doesn't have kids his age. So and he's always he's a dreamer a bit, right? He he basically he just wants to graduate and get a job and and see the stars. So he gets a job on a as an engineer on a mining ship um that's prospecting out in uncharted space, and there's an accident on the ship. This all happens in really early first chapter, essentially. And he's the only survivor. Okay, he is he's he manages to make to an escape pod, he's injured, and he lands on this planet, and he's unconscious, essentially. He's you know, he's very injured. So he's the main male male character, and then there's a there's a female character. So the people on this jungle, in this jungle world, this rainforest world, they live all in the high in the upper canopy of the rainforest, so off the ground, way up in the trees, and they see this ball of fire through the sky, and it lands in the forest next to them, you know, nearly kills them as it goes by. And so they go to investigate, they find this creature essentially in this what they think is this large egg, and it's injured or whatever. The main female character is really independent, young woman. The the at the very beginning is the little preface that basically says this is a world, uh universe, essentially, that was seeded by some older race that seeded life throughout, you know, the various planets on this thing and adapted them somewhat, right? Because I didn't want to have like, you know, a planet of spiders and a planet of whatever, you know, snails or whatever it is. I wanted to be humanoid and to make it some sense why there would be reasonable humanoids. Uh so they're all genetically similar but different a little bit. So they all have hands and are, you know, eyes, and you know, they're all like somewhat human. So they bring them back to the village essentially, and a bunch of stuff happens, but essentially he ends up having to face a bunch of different trials in order to be accepted in the tribe, whatever. So it's uh their ritual, but he doesn't know anything about the planet. He's never lived on anything like it. And so it's really insurmountable. Nobody expects him to live through any of it. And then there's small elements of magic in the sense that you know nobody's like casting spells or anything, but it's more natural in the sense that some of there's seers who can sow or glimpse parts of the future. They get visions, they can't always make sense of them. The young woman has the gift of touch where she can touch somebody and actually uh feel their thoughts. But she's always been, she always thought it was a curse. She she had an experience with it, she's never tried to use it or whatever. And then there's a bunch of other little bits and pieces along the way. But it's essentially that him. So it's essentially coming of age. They're both young adults trying to find their way through life, and so there's that element to it. And there's the element of found family, right? He's always been searching for his place. He thought he found it on the ship, had camaraderie with the people who were there, finally felt like he he belonged and that was ripped away from him. And he then eventually, you know, might find it on this on this, you know, we weird world. And so it's sort of along the line. It's it's heartwarming, it's lots of adventure. Some good characters. I mean, the characters have really gotten rich. The world itself is really immersive. So it's it it's very cinematic in a way. I mean, you really get a sense that you can see what's going on in you know, as it's happening around you. So it's a little bit of an avatar-like feel, like the movie, a little bit, but it's not quite. In other words, Avatar had more of the the great white human, you know, despoiling this world. It doesn't have any of that kind of motif or themes or whatever. It's more, you know, just a person finding, you know, really the found family theme is strong in there and and really adventurous, you know. So it's uh it's a good read. It's it's there's no there's a little bit of romance, just a tiny bit, you know, between the two characters, but there's no spice or anything like that. It's more feelings and it's more a feeling of belonging, just of happy, you know, we all want to have a place where we belong, where we find, where we find that. And that's really uh the heart of the book.

SPEAKER_00: 28:42

Yeah, what was the inspiration then behind the world? You you you do mention about yeah, the like a bit like an avatar feel. Yeah, when you were talking about it, yeah, I pictured it, you know, straight away. Like, you know, Congo, tips of the trees. Yeah, what was the reason or reasoning behind like having like it is the whole world a rainforest world or just like part of it?

SPEAKER_01: 29:04

No, the whole thing, the whole thing. There's a mountain range that's involved. In the first book, you don't you really only see the the first book's the village. So the the whole set the whole book's centered around the village. He really doesn't have scope beyond that. The second book expands it a bit, and you start to see other villages and interactions with other things going on. And then it grows, you know, in subsequent books, it continues to grow a little bit. But but I wanted to make it one I wanted to show the contrast, right? It comes from a desert world. Most of the cities are underground, they're built beneath the mountains, you know, sand, dirt, whatever it is. He's from a techno technological world, right? They fly into stars, they have starships, they have science. Now you have the total opposite, which is a jungle world, really rich, really humid, lots of rain, lush forests, totally different than anything he's ever used to. It's a fish out of water, a little bit, right? And then I wanted to make it different, not just jungle, not just Avatar, but but I I set it high in the rainforest in the trees. So it's tree houses. The people have these lanyards, which essentially allows them to swing through the trees. So there's there's the the world takes place well above the forest floor. And the forest floor for them is is really dangerous. There's a lot of predators down there and things, and they're afraid of the forest floor, and part of the trials take place there. And so I wanted it to be somewhat different, not just you know, Tarzan of the jungle or Avatar or something like that. But I wanted it to be to be you know somewhat unique, but but not so unique that that it was unfamiliar and uh you know uh it got gimmicky to the point where you're like you know spending all your time trying to come up with something new that that doesn't add to the story.

SPEAKER_00: 30:47

Yeah, you're mentioning about I think you said predators. What are the animals like on the planet? Like what do they look like?

SPEAKER_01: 30:54

Similar to animals that we might you know, I didn't make them that different. So there's essentially like wild boar, there's tax of like hyena-like creatures, there's large cat. Uh the the apex predator is a really large, sort of jaguar-like cat, lar very large. So I didn't want to make the animals unrecognizable, you know, like large. There's a few, there's a few that are a little different, but uh, but in general, they're they're recognizable. So that as soon as like, you know, you mentioned a little bit about it, you don't have to describe it in huge detail and go into a huge world building thing about you know, some six-arm thing with uh whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 31:34

Yeah, sure, yeah. Sounds interesting. You mentioned about one of the themes was like a found family. Why why have you gone with that theme? What why did why have that why has that been included or why'd you pick it?

SPEAKER_01: 31:44

I think it plays to him a little bit. I think it plays to all of us, really, you know, everybody wants to find their place, right? So it's a strong theme. And you know, if you're not going to lean into the romanticy side, if you're not going to make it a love story where the person finds their forever person, then I think you have to have something that the character wants, as opposed to, hey, I just want to stay alive. Everybody wants to stay alive, but but it it works from both sides, right? I mean, they a bunch of the characters become attached to him through the story. There's there's some strife in the village, there's a lot of tension that happens, and they also want to build that with him. So I think it's a universal thing that we all kind of want. I mean, if you look at most things, it's most books, you can find that that same theme in all those books, right? Whether it's Game of Thrones, the people are wanting to belong or wanting to be a part of something, or whether it's it doesn't really matter what book you pick a book, it's kind of there, that feeling of finding your place. And it was compelling, and it it it also fell out of a little bit of his life, right? I mean, he's he's always been a loner who's been really looking for that. I mean, he's he hasn't had hardship in the way of you know a lot of death or a lot of whatever, and on this on this jungle world, death is a real big possibility, right? People often go into the jungle and they'll come back kind of thing. So that's a unique kind of it's a new thing for him, the idea of being able to lose people. And some things happen along the way. And you were talking about earlier one point that you that you did make, which was I thought interesting about the dog, right? The author kills the dog. And as an author, there's often a an interest in being surprising or in being naughty. In other words, hey, I'm gonna do something nobody expects. I'm gonna kill the dog. Because that's neat, nobody'll nobody'll ex nobody expects that. And so people will get to it and they'll go, Oh my god, he killed the dog. And you can think, hey, that's a cool idea, but then you give it to your beta readers and they're like, You killed the dog. And they don't get beyond, they're surprised, all right, but maybe not in the in the best way possible as far as you know, you know, because you are sharing a story with them and you can write it for yourself and make and do whatever you want to do, obviously. But if you're writing a story that you really want other people to resonate with, killing the dog isn't always the best idea, even though it can be the surprising turn. Making it that people think you momentarily kill the dog is maybe more powerful. Because you know, or or killing your your the the characters that people have come to love. In other words, if if if if if uh Martin had killed Jon Snow in the second book or whatever it is, it might not have gone the full five books, right? The or the or or Generis or whatever, you know, if if if he'd have killed the people that were the heart of the story, uh which he sort of does in the first one, you know, with Ned Stark or whatever. Yeah. It for me, I didn't get beyond that at that point because one, there was no other character in the book I cared about. I didn't care about anybody else really, because they were all conniving, especially in the books. In the series that they did, the HPO series, they did a better job. They had the actors did a really good job of bringing up their humanity, but but you know that you don't see that in the first place. So you have this one character who we really care about, but he's doing stupid things the whole time. So at some point you're like, you know, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? Why are you going along with this? And at some point, and then you kill him. And so at that point, I'm okay, all right. I I I'm spending all this time in characters I don't care about. I I I don't I don't like, I don't enjoy, you're not making him redeeming in any way. And then you kill the main, you kill the one guy who looks like, you know, I keep expecting him to grow, and he doesn't. So I think you have to make those decisions carefully, and I think your beta readers are great, really good readers. For me, uh one thing I learned about writing is it's expected it to be a solitary endeavor. In other words, you sit there, I always imagine this way the book gets written, right? You sit there in a room, you have this thought, you write, you type it all out, and essentially you have the entire book pretty much done. And then an editor comes in and puts in a few comments, you know, asks you about a word choice here or there, but essentially that's the whole process, and then it gets printed and then it ends up on a on a bookstore shelf, which is what makes it intimidating, right? Because if you imagine that the books you've read came out like that, you're like, holy shit, I can't do that. I mean, I can't sit there and write a book that well in a sitting or in, you know, you know, you see the the the you know the novelist in a cabin somewhere cranking out this magnum opus uh over the period of a couple weeks and then being done and hands it to his editor. And that's the way it's portrayed a lot. And so if you're looking at that, you're saying, Well, I I can't I couldn't do that. But it's so much more collaborative than I ever imagined. Uh and you know, I was an engineer, I was collaborating my whole life, and I approached the writing that way. And I I surrounded myself with people that knew more than me, and also with with readers, you know, not just like other authors who are trying to, you know, know whatever it is. And the readers don't necessarily know how to fix the problem. Is it Oscar Wilde that said that? said you know, they don't always know, they don't always know, they always know what's wrong, they don't always know how to fix it. So they'll point out something that that's nagging at them, or oh, you know, I don't really understand why so-and-so did this or what or this happened, whatever. And if you know that it's going to get answered or that it was important for them to have that feeling, then that's great. But if it comes to you as a surprise, you're like, what? You know, I shouldn't have killed a dog. If that comes to you as a surprise, then there's an opportunity there before the book gets published to fix it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:35

That you don't lose your readers. I think when you when you're reading a book and you become emotionally invested in characters, and we mentioned earlier that word journey. It reminds me of like the book, The Maze Runner, too. It's not it's not a great book, it's an okay book. It's a good story. Yeah, I like the world. I like the world actually that the maze. I like the opening a lot. It's a really good opening. There was a secondary, secondary character. I think his name was Chuck, and I could be wrong. He was like a short, like fat kid, everybody bully. And he was the comic release.

SPEAKER_01: 38:11

A little bit, right?

SPEAKER_00: 38:12

Yeah. And he was very he was a really good character to follow and kind of draw with. And then he got just got killed at the end. And I and and then I tried to read the second book, and it just wasn't good. And it was it missed that character, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 38:27

He he gives it humanity, right? He gives the he gives the book humanity that we sorely need. And I have characters like that in my book, and those are characters turn out to be some of the strongest ones people relate to. Not necessarily the main characters they like, but it's the secondary characters, the ones that are the underdogs, the ones that are trying, and that really are the heart a lot of times of that story, of the world, you know, that make it that make you want to live there. Yeah, it it's really helpful. Those little things, and we don't always notice them. Some sometimes the author puts that in there and not thinking that just wanting to have some variety in the characters, not everybody's able to do everything, but but misses the misses the value of those characters. I think they're really valuable. That humanity is really valuable.

SPEAKER_00: 39:15

Yeah, it's true. I think for me, if I want to kill a character off a secondary character, I'm typically gonna I'm gonna do it with someone that I think's maybe not interesting. Or in my mind, when I'm riding it, and I know I'm riding it, and I'm like, this character isn't quite doing it for me. They need to be there for whatever reasons, the friends with one of them or something, but something's gonna happen. So some I'll do I'll do something. But a comic relief person, you know, which is it's quite it's probably not that's not a fair summary of of the characters. They're more than comic relief. They give it a bit of a it's the character that has the humanity, right? The character that does the human. Yeah, you give the humanity. And I think you also said contrast. I think we have. Provide contrast as well between the main character as well. And so without them, you're right, you don't quite have the humanity, don't quite get the contrast. And yeah, as a reader, I feel kind of let down at times. I'm like, oh, I was invested in that character, waste of time. That can be annoying. Yeah, that's what I've got to do.

SPEAKER_01: 40:19

My first feeling I think is really critical. The waste of time. In other words, you you have a certain amount of energy that you can invest in the book, like emotional energy. And then when you found out that that's wasted, in other words, I really cared about this part of your book. I really, I really resonated with it. And now you've this is the part of the book I really that really was heartwarming to me. And now you've ripped that away. So I'm left with the rest. And I'm looking around, and there's not really anything else that I care about as much as what you just took away. And and that's a problem, I think. It may not be a problem for the first book. You leave it and you're like, okay, well, I like parts of it, it was good. But it makes you really leery about picking up that second book, right? Because then you feel like the author's gonna do that to me again. And I shouldn't like that. And so I don't necessarily want to go down that road again again with you because I don't trust you as an author anymore, that you're not going to make me care about something and then take it away. Yeah. And I don't like I don't like main characters who can do everything, right? You've got the ex-Navy SEAL who plays the cello, wrote a symphony, and oh also, by the way, yeah, he's a you know, he's a mathematics PhD who hang glides on the weekends. And okay, does a person like that exist? I don't know, but he's not relatable. And everything comes easy to him. In other words, he he does everything, and he's never really in peril, and he never has second deaths. And so is he really human? Is he relatable? Is he I I like the guy who's trying but stumbles. Not stupid, not not, you know, he he does his he does his best. He's not like always falling the same trap or whatever it is. I don't like that guy too much, but somebody who's like human, who's not the best at whatever it is, but gives it all, gives it everything he has, and somehow the people around him, with their help and with his own whatever and some luck maybe, is able to hang on and and persevere. I mean, that that journey is much more interesting to me for me.

SPEAKER_00: 42:19

Yeah, totally agree, totally agree. I think I think so. I don't know if it is it is it a trope of modern literature. I've I've seen a few characters popping up like that. I mean, I like the Jack Reacher books to an extent, but the last one I read, he was a bit like that. You know, he was he seemed to graduate.

SPEAKER_01: 42:36

And they were just purely, I mean, you read them, it's almost like James Bond, right? You read them not expecting that there's going to be a lot of growth in the character, not expecting really a whole lot from the story, aside from the fact of just being entertained with him like beating up a bunch of people and somehow coming out on top. You don't see much, you don't see you really don't see much from that character. But I think it's after a while it gets old, right? Because it's the same book over and over. Yeah, yeah, yes. Yeah. It's just you just you just change the you just change the place and you change the the names. And maybe but it's the same book. It's a formula that after a while, you know, it's comforting. It's a little bit like watching something where you're not expecting, you know what you're gonna get when you go in. Like James Bond, it's gonna be a lot of chase scenes, it's gonna be a lot of shooting around, they're gonna chase him, he's gonna get you know, they're gonna put him in an impossible situation, he's gonna escape from that, and at the end he's gonna save the world. That's okay. There's a place for that, and that's enjoyable going into it. But you know, it's it's it's not the other. James Bond's not gonna be not gonna become a different guy at the end of the book, right? He's not going to all of a sudden you know, settle down with a white picket fan somewhere and and you know have a little hobby farm. That's not gonna be him.

SPEAKER_00: 43:49

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I told us gonna ask you as well. Um do you have any like favorite like sci-fi and fantasy, whether it's you know, TV, movies, or books? Yeah, I mean a lot. I mean, I I I I read a lot of different things.

SPEAKER_01: 44:02

So not just sci-fi. Well, I we talked about budget and but it's but I I really loved sci-fi and fantasy growing up. I mean, I read a lot of it. And uh I was in a DD early on, like way back before anybody knew what it was. Uh and and I grew up in northern Canada, so I was the only you know, me and two other guys were the only guys who I think maybe in the within 200 miles of us had any idea what it was. So I I read a lot of different things. So I read, you know, Lord of the Rings and and and and those things. As a matter of fact, I'm just rereading it now. And I mean the book, I don't think the book would ever fly now just because it meanders so much uh initially. It's interesting and it it's it's it's fascinating because he envisioned a world that had never you know he was breaking new ground. And so it's really interesting to see how how this how things have changed over the period of 100 years or wherever it is. Which is pretty dramatic. It's it's pretty dramatic there. But I I like a lot of different things. I I really like Jim Butcher, you know, the Harry Dresden series specifically, but he wrote another series as well. That was really interesting. And mostly the humor in it and the humanity of the main character is what really drew me to that series. Martha Wells, you know, the Murderbot thing. And again, even though Murderbot is uh essentially a robot, semi, semi-sidebord kind of thing, the humanity in there is what really draws you in. You know, that it's a found family's story a little bit too, right? I mean, searching for his plays, searching for you know, for himself through that thing. Jeez, there's there's so many of them. Just trying to come up with Salazni I really loved growing up, the Night Princess Amber. I don't know if you ever read that series, the first five especially. And that's you know, that's something that I I really enjoyed growing up. Recently I read the the Dungeon Dungeon Crawler Carl. I don't know if you've if you've seen those books. They were really interesting, and that brought me back to the old DD days, the Dungeons Dragons books uh ser uh game. So and it's not something I would normally pick up, but but the just to preface what the story is, essentially, it's this guy, you know, the the whole world gets gets sort of taken over by this alien race and turned into essentially a game that they bet on and they and they watch like a reality game. And they essentially anybody who's who's inside essentially gets killed initially, and all the people that are outside uh get stuck in a dungeon, and they have to face a bunch of different things and either kill them and or get killed, and then move on and level up and get, you know, whatever magical items and stuff like that. And that part's not that interesting. I mean, it's interesting, but but the part that is interesting is the humor that's sort of built into there. So it's this guy who gets caught outside because he's trying to save his fiance's cat from a tree and he's standing outside in his underwear, and now he ends up in the dungeon in his underwear with this cat that's always been, you know, it's never liked him. So you know, they've had they've always had this adversarial relationship, but they're together now because his fiance, ex-fiance or whatever it is, dumped him and left him with their cat. And that's the premise that that's cute is the two of them, and the cat early on now can speak, you know, something happens and whatever. So now the cats can speak and is really snarky, a little bit like that dog you're talking about. And that's what carries the story is the story of this guy in his underwear running through the dungeon with his snarky cat and their sort of their weird relationship that grows over time as they meet other characters in situations. But it carries the story in a way that's really compelling. Then anything that Andy Weir's written, I I love, just because he does such a great job of characterization in the worlds he creates. And again, the Hail Mary, which is his latest, has that humanity again, that that feeling of of uh of found family, and because essentially it's a found family troll place. Well, right. I mean, the end he finds his family, which is not the family he initially thought. John Scalsey's stuff I like. Dan Willis was a is an author that you don't see a lot of uh his books. I don't know where they're distributed, I think maybe out of the UK or somewhere, I'm not sure where, but he's not it's not one I see a lot, but I really enjoyed. So he had um books uh and the premise of that is is runes, you know, written runes that actually have power and can do things. But the it's all it's uh a little bit like a noir kind of feeling to it, like 1930s, like Sam Spade kind of thing, and he's a a rune right. It's it's it's it's it's really kind of cute and and well done. Oh geez, so many, but those are just some of the ones that come to mind.

SPEAKER_00: 48:51

Yeah, I need to read more Andy Weir. I know I've seen the movie The Martian. I I kind of wish I'd read the book first.

SPEAKER_01: 48:59

I've read the book several times and I've seen the movie multiple times. Yeah. They both stand alone really well. Matter of fact, there's some things in the book that are not in the movie because they have to cut stuff out. Um in the book that you don't see in the movie just because they just don't have the space for it.

SPEAKER_00: 49:16

Yeah, it looks yeah, I should I should no, I really should I should read it. Well, what's Hail Mary about?

SPEAKER_01: 49:21

Oh, uh, oh I uh it's the basic premise is that the earth is facing a huge problem because of the sun. Something's going on with that, and life on Earth is in prospect of potentially ending, and we don't really understand what's going on. So they put together a spaceship with a few people on some scientists and a few other people on it, to send out to try to figure out what the hell's going on. And um, everybody on the spaceship essentially dies except for one guy on it who's who's like an ex-this is a little stretch, this little part here, it's an ex-middle school science teacher. But it's his journey as he tries to figure this out, and he encounters a a ship from another world with a different a different race, a different creature on it, and who's also trying to do the same thing. They're trying to figure out what's going on because they're going to die as well. Their planet is under the same jeopardy. And it's their unlikely friendship and and interaction that carries the book. That's that's the heart of the book. It's the those two characters, and they're very different. And he's not humanoid, the other character's not humanoid. But it's yeah, it sounds interesting. Yeah, it's really it's really well done. And Hail Mary, I think, is along the lines of you know, I want last gasp effort, you know, how do we how do we save our planet in our race? But it's it's really that friendship that that that carries that carries the book.

SPEAKER_00: 50:52

Yeah, I'll have to definitely check both out. It's been on my periphery, and I've just he's he's he stayed there. I'm aware of him, I've just not checked him out, and I should do.

SPEAKER_01: 51:05

Yeah, he did Art Man, which was set on the moon, which was okay. Which it was good, but it wasn't as good as The Martian or Hail Mary, which were both, which I think really good.

SPEAKER_00: 51:17

Yeah, I'll de I'll definitely check it out for that one. Well, what was the so the book you were talking about, about the guy locked outside in his underwear with the cat? What's the name of that book? Uh that tends to be the interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 51:31

It's Dungeon Crawler Carl. Right. Oh, okay. It's not a book. Again, I would I kept seeing it on I think YouTube or something. I keep people kept people kept talking about it, kept being reviewed. And I was like, what is this book? And I just got it from the library just to have a look. I figured, you know, I'm just it this is not going to be something that's because the lit RPG thing, you know, literary role player game kind of stuff is not something I normally read. Just because a lot of times it's it's a recap of some adventure somebody went on, and they're just giving you a chronicle of what happened. And it's not often a novel. It's not really, you know, they're really enjoying writing up what happened, but it's usually plot points and it doesn't have the characters and all that other stuff. So it's not normally a form I'm that interested in. But this one, and you know, I've read I think uh five of them. The fifth one, I started losing me on it a little bit because it's we start to we start to get a lot of characters, a little bit like we're talking about Game of Thrones. You start to end up with lots and lots of characters, and the plot point keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and we start losing the the depth of the interaction between the main characters, the cat and the guy, which is really the heart of the story. We still see them, but but that dynamic is is starting to wane for me. And you know, I don't really care about a lot of the other characters. I really care about them and the story. And I understand where he's go where the author's going with it, but it's losing me. And I think I don't know how many books there are, but there's a bunch of them. I don't know, maybe 10 or whatever it is. And they get bigger. Some of these are huge. And I'm like, okay, you know, at some point, you know, you need to you need to feed me a little bit, you know, uh more what's going on with them to make me want to slog through pages, you know, more of these pages. But the first the first uh few books are are really entertaining. In a way I had really hadn't expected some because I I just hadn't expected to to go on this journey with it.

SPEAKER_00: 53:25

Yeah, but yeah, I'll definitely check it out for sure. Okay, David, I think we can end things there. Uh I think that's a good way to uh bring it to a conclusion. A man winning outside and he's underway with a cat that hates him. I love it, I love it. Okay. I've been great talking to you. Uh I'll stay in touch, of course, about the episode and uh I'll be available uh in a few days. It's been great talking to you, it's doing your story, obviously talking about the entire series of the future, but I'll stay in touch, okay?