Author Interview: Ryan Cahill

Have you ever heard the expression "don't meet your heroes"? Well, it's complete nonsense. We had the absolute honor of having Ryan join us for a conversation and can confirm that he is just an incredible dude. 

We hope you enjoy our wide-ranging discussion, navigating life's big questions like what it's like to write as a new parent, how art can create community, and whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich (spoiler: it's not). 

Please tune in for the rest of our coverage of The Bound and the Broken and write in with any comments at booktwoisbetter@gmail.com, or find us on Reddit/Discord @booktwoisbetter! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome back. It's book two is better. It's your favorite co-host, Adrian Travis. We are blessed and honored today to have an amazing author. Uh, our first author on the podcast, Ryan Cahill. Ryan, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Thank you. And if I cough randomly, it's because my daughter gave me like a tickly cough. Just putting that out there because it's been killing me all day.

unknown 0:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Well, your first author to join the show, which means either you've been tricked or it could be the start of something great. You could get in on the ground floor.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

So this was the place to come for the free ice cream, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Exactly. Yeah, it's it's in the mail. It's coming from California, but you know.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I don't know if that's uh health and safety approved. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Well, Travis, where do you want to start?

SPEAKER_00 1:00

I think we can start a little bit uh in your backgrounds. Like I would love to hear a little bit about the transition from a professional career, the background in chemistry, uh, into actually taking the foray into full-time novel writing. Um so maybe uh just set the scene a little bit about what your life was like as a as a person in the chemical industry and um and what led you to to really go from dipping your toe into writing into committing full-time.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

And whether you want that life back.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

All right, next question.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

It's a firm no. Uh no, I I actually quite liked my job before, but just um there's a big difference between liking your job and truly, truly loving your job.

unknown 1:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Um, I think when it actually all started, the first time I ever, ever touched writing at all was probably it was earlier in 2020. Um, and I had a job that hired me like six months before they needed me because I was the first microbiologist globally that they'd hired. Because I was a uh I had a degree in pharmaceutical and biomedical chemistry, but I did um medical mycology and some um microbiology and stuff too. And so they wanted to hire me in, but they hired me in so that nobody else would get me. Um so I was literally sitting in a filing cabinet. Um, I had watched, like I tried to work and I was actually chastised for it. And so I watched, I think it was like four, I think it the number changes every time because I can't remember. I think it's like four seasons of The Last Kingdom on Netflix in work. And I was like, I need to do something reasonably productive with my time. And I just took a bit of time to start thinking about writing and come up with a few bits. And then I moved job and COVID hit. And with COVID hitting, I had no, I couldn't go anywhere. In in Ireland, in Dublin in particular, um, they had like a two-kilometer radius from your home that you were allowed to go. So like there were apps on your phone that would show you two kilometers from your home. And um, you could be stopped and asked, you know, uh, where do you live? And you know, how far are you from your home? Um and it wasn't like crazy, crazy, crazy intense. Nobody, we don't have like weapons or anything over here with police. It was just kind of like a get back to your home. Um so I wasn't able to do anything else. So I just said screw it and just started writing. Um and I got very, very, very lucky in that the decision to do all this wasn't really my, not that it wasn't my decision, but I wasn't forced to make it. So we were writing, or I was writing, uh started writing like late 2020 and then launched a blood and fire in March 2021. Um and then in July, in May, I left my job because my contract was up for a year and we were planning on moving to New Zealand because my wife's from New Zealand. And so we went to New Zealand in July, and then COVID hit New Zealand. So I couldn't get another job. And my wife got a my wife got a great job. She's uh she's a machine, she's she's incredible, and she got like a PR job. Um, but they weren't hiring in my field, and she just got out of, she was like, just go right. Like you're gonna be absolutely you're gonna be a miserable fucker if you don't go and and just do the thing. Like, because you're just be moping around the house. Um, and so I did it, and then we launched book two on New Year's Eve in 2021, and by New Year's Day I was full-time. Wow, unbelievable. And so the choice was just made for me. And I just never looked back, never went for a job again, and just kept writing as hard and as fast as I humanly could. I think when we were at Nexus, Dragon Steel Nexus last year, we realized that my entire career, so it's getting a bit windy here now. My entire career, all like one and a half million words of the books had been written between the release of Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth. So in that period of time, I released four of those novels of that size and three novellas, and now I think like seven short stories. And it was only when when Wind and Truth came out that it realized, oh, this is what it's like to face a Sanderson release. This is what it's like to have the all of social media fall into a black hole.

unknown 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

So yeah, it's been a bit of a weird journey, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yeah, it is weird. It's not something I think about in books, but you hear about it in like games that people will delay the release. So it's like, I'm not gonna release on the same day as GTA 6 or L.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

I legitimately delayed my release. It's probably the only author I do it for. Um not because I'm competing for space or anything in the in the charts, but for space in people's hands and people's eyes and people's hearts. Like a Sanderson and big stormlight release basically consumes like four or five months of a year. There'll be a there'll be a few months of a lead up with arcs, and then there'll just be the tale afterwards of major, major kind of craziness.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

The I imagine the Venn diagram of Cahill fans and Sanderson fans is just a single circle.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

It's it is very, very large, but that's that's a very good thing when it's not a stormlight release, and a very bad thing when it is a stormlight release when I'm releasing at the same time. Like if a stormlight release doesn't align with me, amazing. Um, but the problem is nobody would be reading my arcs if they're reading Sanderson's. Um, I think that has changed a little bit. I have some readers who might feel different ways, but in general, I would say that's a pretty safe bet. Um that if I just want to have a better day, I should probably release on a different day.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

So you must be psyched about the adaptations. Like, hey, go work on the screenplays. Yeah. Book six does not need to come out. Take your time, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Oh man. It's interesting that you know, there's so much uh, I think, pressure, it seems, to adapt to these larger fan bases, to really think about like a PR and marketing schedule, the length of the campaign for publishing and promoting a novel at this point in your life. Like, I'm curious how it feels now, where this is your profession, you're established, you're on stages with Brandon Sanderson, versus when you're kind of publishing yourself and just trying to find that initial audience. Like, what is it? What is the difference in feeling? And like, do you miss some of those indie days before there was pressure to consistently perform?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

See, it's hard, okay, because I had the incredible look of kind of just being successful, whatever you deem successful to be, like right out the gate. Um, there was a bit of a not like a not a lull, but when I started, like the series wasn't wild when I started. Like when I released the fall, I remember what was really incredible for me and seeing all these new editions come out for the books, is there are 50 copies of the fall. So we released 50 numbered copies. We released, I released 50 numbered copies of my hardbacks when I initially when we first launched. And I couldn't even sell them. Um, like I was hand numbering them and my family bought some, and you know, that was it. And then the fall came around and we did 50 numbered copies as well. And I distinctly remember sitting in my in-laws' spare bedroom, hand painting the edges with a pot of gold paint and a brush. Wow. Um so success without the gate maybe isn't it's it's successful to a larger degree than I had thought it would be at that time.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Um, but the negative to that is there was never breathing room. Um, and it's kind of one of the pieces of advice that I give to any author who asks, which is I think advice they weren't expecting, which is slow down um, or just don't rush to the finish line. I finish your book, but as soon as you start, as soon as you put a book into the world, that snowball is just going down the hill. And it does not matter how well it does, because expectation and pressure can be both extern external and internal. And if your book doesn't perform to the level you wanted it to, you have this internal pressure to arrest that fall. And you have this internal pressure to kind of save your career because human beings are dramatic creatures. Like that is the end of your entire career now in your head because the book isn't doing what you thought it would do. And then if it does really well, you have both external and internal pressure of people saying, Where's the next one? Why isn't it done already? I only read I read it in one day. Why can't you write it in one day? Um, you know, and and that is kind of there from the start. I would say now there is a much larger pressure to get it right. Yeah, you know, especially for book five and and this novella. It's there's a huge weight of expectation of man, I really hope I don't fuck up because I'm gonna ruin a lot of people's day. Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Um Does it feel like a completely new level of pressure going into the final book as opposed to you know putting out books? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's the last thing people are gonna remember, and like my goodness, like the last season of Game of Thrones. Like, people cannot forget or stop talking about it, even though there were many good seasons before that. Like it's just it's such a psychological thing.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

There's something about the ending to something that can spoil the entirety of its body. Um and I'm not nervous about it in a way that like I know what I wanted to do. I've known what I wanted to do from the very start. So, like, I I won't be sitting here for the next 12 years writing a book. Like, I know what I want to write. There's a lot of stuff I don't know, and I'll work around it, but that's actually the joy of writing. If I knew everything, I wouldn't have fun. Um and it's it's not a worry about being able to finish the book, it's just a worry about hey, I hope I do it justice. I hope that the people who've been following me the entire way finish this and go, that was worth the journey. You know, that's that's the pressure I think a lot of authors will feel. Um, and especially when it comes towards that end, and especially when there's a lot of eyes on it and a lot of, if it does well, more and more people join and more and more people build together. And then also you start to reach outside that initial sphere of people who are your kind of perfect audience and new expectations appear. And I keep saying this with people, like with book four, for me. Book four is the best rated book in the series by an enormous distance, like enormous. I think it's still at 99% four and five star reviews, at like five and a half, six thousand things, which is incredible, right? But I still lost readers on that book. You know, there's people who think it's the worst book I've ever written, and they are completely entitled to think that way. Um, and it's something that you kind of have to accept as an author, is no matter what you do, you will lose readers with every book. Doesn't matter. Like there'll be people who think it's the best, people who think it's the worst. Um and I think getting that in your head makes it a little bit easier to work forward and kind of go, hey, look, I just gotta make sure I keep doing what I'm doing and don't listen to anyone on the outside, be it positive or negative, with like where they want the story to go. It needs to go where I was planning it to go. Otherwise, we're gonna finish the series in a different way than when we started it.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

I think that's an interesting point to stick on is like the kind of constructing your new identity as an author at this point with the the benefit of reflection. But also, like you mentioned, the advice of slowing down. Like, I mean, I'm curious as you look forward beyond book five and you think about a new series, a new audience, like you're a new parent, you've got an amazing growing family. Like, there is no such thing as work-life balance as a parent, I don't think. But how are you thinking about it? Or as an author, exactly. But how are you thinking about approaching that for yourself? Like, how are you thinking about carving out space and structure and some semblance of that?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Kind of kind of already done it. Like right before this podcast, we just uh took my daughter to the park to feed ducks for three hours. Like, and I think it's one of those things that it's why, it's why book five isn't coming out till late 2028. Like, in reality, I I hope to have that finished at the end of 2027. Um, but I want to make sure I get everything right for it. You know, I want to make sure it does time. I want to make sure because inevitably stuff will go wrong. But also, after having my daughter, so my daughter was born when I was in the thick of the last hundred thousand words of book four. Um and it kind of made me realize that I wanted to be able to leave my office and like find my daughter in the kitchen and play with her for an hour without having a panic attack if I'm gonna miss a deadline. Um and I realized that I needed to set my time up to make sure that happened. Um, and so what I'm kind of doing at the minute is I wake up, have a coffee, answer some messages, um, some emails, and then I kind of work. I write like a thousand, fifteen hundred words, maybe two thousand words. Um, and then we take a few hours off, go to the gym, go hang out with my daughter and my wife, and then at about 10 p.m., 9, 10 p.m. go back and then do like another thousand, two thousand words. Um, I'm kind of at the minute doing that seven days a week. But then when this novella, my last novella is finished, then we'll tone it down a little bit and bring it back to like 1500, 2000 a day, which is consistent, I think probably 2000, a bit more than that a day, um, five days a week. And for the first time in five years, I'll have weekends. Wow. Um, which will be nice. Because I had been working seven days a week, 365 days a year, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

You're a terrible boss to yourself.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

You really should give yourself a only problem is when I sent the email to HR, it was it just went nowhere.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah. If you can't keep up, are you considering firing yourself and replacing yourself with AI? They could have that book done in minutes.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Tomorrow. With so there's so many with so many avenues I do not want to walk down. Like, holy shit. If you want to soak all joy, life, the heart of creation, passion, and the purpose of of all creative endeavor in the world, then yes, we can we can touch on AI.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Man, I was I went into this like misanthropic spiral. Um, I was flying out to Mississippi for my sister's wedding, and I was sitting in a plane behind two, I don't know, probably like 65, 70-year-old men. And the guy on the left was shopping for guns the entire flight. The plane wide just on one site, which is weird. You love other sites. You can't beat Terminator if we're not armed. That's true. Exactly. But the guy next to him was just watching an AI television show. Like there's not a human hand involved, there are no human faces. It was just what it's like, what have we done? And what's happened to older people's brands? Really, it really, I was just walking around the airport like our society is crumbling.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

And I don't know how I don't I don't think it's gonna go that. This is a whole different conversation of gone for hours, but I don't think it's gonna go that direction solely for the fact that I think most successful new technologies um and new products are in response to a demand. Um it's where something is missing and we fill it, we fill a gap with something. Um and I just I just don't think we were missing 150,000 iterations of um a completely ridiculous-looking Pikachu um or all of your friends dressed in battle armor at the Met Gala. I just don't think we were missing it. So I feel like it's always gonna be there, of course it will. Um, but it will, it just won't be the same. It won't be where it is now. And a lot of people argue with it in writing. And I think the worst argument you can use is saying that it's not good enough because it will always get better. Um I think the argument that I will always use is what the fuck is the point?

unknown 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Like, where's the demand? Where's the need? We don't need, like, it's not like we're short on stories. Right. Like there are millions of books. We don't need 10 million more. Hi, Ella. Sorry, my my baby has decided to uh appear. Hi. Um we have questions. We don't need 10 million, 10 million more regurgitations that with no soul or heart. Like they're just not required.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Um I think eventually it'll just it's so not what I want. Like I want something that a human made. I feel like that's the joy of it. It's like the wonder of what some other human brain did that's similar to our own. Like I'm not here just solely for the story, right? Like it's an interaction between me and the author when I'm reading and taking that out, like there's no real interest in it for me. Like, yeah, it's the the whole question. It's the only question I end up asking the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

It's just like, why? You know, what what the hell are we doing this for? It doesn't make any sense. There's no need for it.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Um So like heading into book five, is there something just from a technical standpoint that you think is going to be a particular challenge? Like you talked about a little bit of the expectations and you want to get it right, but is there something just that you think is going to be technically hard about wrapping up this story that's unique to that book?

SPEAKER_02 17:43

I think yes and no. So like I don't know if you've heard any of the like podcasts we've done before, but usually, especially when I write my novellas, um in the novellas, I tend to tackle technical deficiencies I feel like I have. Yeah, you know, um, or not not quite that, or things I just I just want to get better at, you know? So when you go through the history of the books, like with the Blood and Fire, a Blood and Fire originally was meant to be what what a darkness and light is, right? It was meant to have all those points of view, it was meant to be that epic scope. And I just was just really conscious. I just was not good enough to write that book. Um, so I thought, okay, well, how can I still write what I want to write without tripping over my own feet? So I focused on one main point of view, but sprinkled in a few extras just to let readers not be shell-shocked when they got to book two. And then I used the fall to practice narrative voice to take four characters in one battle, one scene, and show the differences in who they were. And I used that then to be better for book two. And then you get to the exile, and I was like, right, well, I want to see if I can hit emotional punches while skipping time. I want to see if I can not need to dig into everything and still make a reader feel. Um, can I show the history of something without like getting into the nitty-gritty? And um, when I was coming into book three, then it was it was very much a okay, now how can I use that to bring everything together to make this larger story work? And I came to the ice and it it was very much right now. I want to practice that one character kind of like investigation, like with Ace and as you go into it. And when you finish of War and Ruin, the way it should work if I've done my job right, uh, he should be the one character you're happy to see a novella about because you're probably pissed off at him. Um and so for coming into this last book, again, it's trying to take all those different skills and try and put them together because the technical thing I think is going to be hard for this last book is actually going to be expectation. And it's and I I'll explain what I mean by that, but expectation and delivering on promises, right? Because that's a very technically difficult thing to do with one and a half million words of cannon behind you, because there's so many Chekhov's guns left on shelves, so many um little tiny pieces, uh, some of which, if are if they're not fired, will actually be quite glaring in the last book, some of which could be left. And some of which could be left, but if I if I do it right, it could massively enrich the story. So I think like the the technical aspect that is gonna be the hardest is that is actually going to be story continuity and it's gonna be trying to work all of those things in in a way that feels fluid, you know, because the other part is book two is breakneck pace. Book three is as breakneck as a book that large can be. Um, I wanted book four. Book four is slower and it's meant to be slower because book four is where a huge amount of all of the threads being woven through the series finally start to come together. And so another technical aspect for book five is making book five a marriage of book three and four, where I can take the pace from book three, take the emotional poignancy of book four, and then try and create the best book in the series. Um will it work? I don't know. I hope it will. I mostly believe in myself. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

You should. We believe. We have faith. We've been loving it so far. Silly question, but are there any like cans of worms, check ops guns that you wish you hadn't put in the first four books? You're like, fuck, I really gotta close this out and kind of wish I hadn't started this.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

Yeah, I think there's a few small ones, but I think like I think if you don't do that, if you don't have any of those, you're not taking enough risks.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

You know, if you don't have those things, that's also it's kind of what I what I enjoy. Like Book three was extremely successful for me. And I could have just written book three again for book four, right? It would have worked perfectly. But I didn't want to do that because like I need to find joy and challenge in writing. Um, and I think those kind of things that you fired and you're going, fuck, what the hell am I gonna do with this? Um, or maybe like there's one or two chapters that I literally just wrote at the last minute was like they're going in. Um I think that's the fun as an author. Like, uh and it's part like going back to the AI thing is that authors aren't machines. Like yeah, you know, this is a thing that I find joy in. It's a thing that I find challenge in. It's a thing that gives me purpose. And so like just churning out something is not enjoyable. Like I need to, I need to have to sit there and fix these things. You know, yeah, it's a pain. Um, I think oftentimes what defines your ability to produce is whether or not you are able to make yourself find joy in the challenge.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. I mean, to that point of growing, you know, growing as you grow a series, like that's been some one of our favorite things to talk through is, you know, you read the these seven to ten years of an author's life and kind of see how they see the world differently. Um, but I'm curious for you, like you've talked about in the past how you kind of just imagine how the characters might be feeling or how they might be acting in a certain moment as you design them. Like as a parent now, do you ever reread your writing of parenthood in your early novels? And how close were you? How accurate were you? What is that process like?

SPEAKER_02 23:33

I don't feel like a huge amount has changed now that I'm a parent. I think the only thing that's changed is me understanding that I was never in my head, I never truly understood just how deeply a parent can feel. Um, but like I was very lucky in that I have fantastic parents. Um, and so my concept of parenthood in the books didn't come from me, it came from them. Um, it came from the things that they did for us growing up and the sacrifices they made for us growing up to give us what we had and to make sure that we were always capable of challenging for whatever it was we put our mind to. Um I was very lucky in that regard. So I think that's where a lot of that came from. So there wasn't a huge difference when I came to do it. I just I think there was a point where like you look down at this child and you're like, I would actually burn the fucking world like if someone touched you. Um man, yeah. I I was right when I was writing this character, but I did not quite understand just how literal it was.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Were you aware of how how strange it is for your novels to feature uh just loving families who care for each other? It's not not a fantasy trope by any means.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

That was actually an extremely intentional choice. Um, and it was kind of led by the wheel of time, and why I really hated what happened in the show. Um, because I don't want to get into it too much, that's a whole other tangent. But like I'm I'm ready to go deep on the Wheel of Time show anytime. Reading, reading Wheel of Time, Tam Altor Al Thor and Abel Cawthon were two of the only positive father figures in fantasy of the books that I had read at that point in time. Truly positive. Um, always there for their children, no matter what. And like I remember loving Abel Cawthen because he thought Matt what it was to be a man, he taught him how to treat other people, he he taught him how to stand up, he taught him how to fight with a quarter staff, like everything that Matt was, every single decent quality, and Matt was an asshole in the first three books, right? Nobody liked him in the first three books. And every decent quality he had from there on the whole way through came from his his father. And then they turn his father into an abusive alcoholic um in the show.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Wouldn't this be better if his father was horrible?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah, and I was just like, man, this is this is sad. Um so I really wanted to to put that in as much as I could. And it's also not just like parenthood, like I got a lot of emails in the first two or three years, like actually, like quite a large number. We're probably getting triple figures, of people asking me if basically at one point or another every male character was gay because they were showing each other emotion and affection. And I was like, look, there there are gay characters in the world and in and in the cast, and then and I don't focus on on sexuality, be they straight or gay or anything. It's it's not like heavy sexual um imagery and romance, sexual romance is not worth. There's a lot of romance in the series, I would argue, when you get through it, but not a lot of sexual stuff. It's just when I'm writing, I don't ever think of it. So it's just it's not where my head goes. Um but but I think you might need to readdress um, you know, where you feel healthy emotions lie if just asking a friend if they're okay um is considered homoerotic. And that word was used multiple times. Wow. Um which I think it's fine with. There's a difference sometimes. I think sometimes um you might have readers who who are gay and who grew up without seeing themselves in books and really want to see that. And sometimes they'll go, Hey, please tell me one of these characters is gay because I would love that. Um that's a totally different email. These ones were like, Why are there so many gays in the book?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

You know, I never ask my friends if they're okay. I don't check on them ever.

unknown 27:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

But like that that's the thing, is like it's not that wasn't where the email ends. It's like, look at these guys asking each other, and like all it just it got so weird. And I was just like, this is one thing that I'm trying to portray. I think it was in book three, when I finished book three and I went through the draft, I'd I'd re- I truly realized then how much of a of a message in my writing was male mental health. Um, and that wasn't intentional. Like this, uh it was and wasn't, like I wasn't trying to shoehorn that in. I just realized that as I was writing, when I went back, I was like, yeah, this is something that like when I'm giving these characters life and when I'm doing that, that that is coming up. And I feel like it's something that maybe I feel was lacking in a lot of people. I've lost a lot of friends, and you know, I think it just kind of comes in there naturally when you're writing. And I was like, right, well, you know, uh, this dude who just goes and murders someone or kills someone for the first time, he should feel pretty shit. Um he maybe, you know, might lose a little bit of himself. And maybe when he goes to war for the first time and watches thousands of people die, he might not just have a cup of tea afterwards and smile. Um there might be some trauma, there might be some grief. And, you know, that's where true friendship and love and everything grows from is you know, helping people stand up when they fall. You know, that's kind of the point.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

That is one of the things that I think we've been we've heaped a lot of praise on this series for is friends look out for each other, they care for each other. And, you know, I if like I I love the Wheel of Time, but if I have one rub, it's that every husband hates his wife and everyone, you know, every wife is an intolerable nag and every husband's like a layabout. I'm exaggerating. Obviously, there are good relationships.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Oh no, but that that's that but it that's actually like a thing in Wheel of Time. I but I also think that's extremely intentional in Wheel of Time, where it's just like everyone thinks everyone of the opposite gender is wrong in every way all the time.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yeah, it's so baked into the world, but it's sort of nice to see like, no, these people are married because they love each other, they care for and like your friends, you're gonna look out for them. You're not gonna hold secrets from them to create plot tension or just because you don't trust your best friend who you've known since they were eight. Like it's it feels a little more grounded in the way people actually act.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Um Yeah, and I I feel like people keep secrets, all right, but people also pay the cost for those secrets, you know? That's uh and they should also keep them when it makes goddamn sense. Not when it makes sense to the plot, when it makes sense to the character.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Do you is that something that rubs you in other writing where Yeah, okay, because that's like a huge bugaboo for me. It's like, I just don't think these characters would treat each other this way. And like this series wonderfully like hasn't run into that issue.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

So that's I mean, I think there'll always be points. I think you need to, for me, uh trust an author. And it's when you get to the end of something. So, for instance, again, we'll just bring this up uh Rings of Power, all right? So I actually, as a general thing, quite liked season two. I flipped a coin whether I was going to watch season two of that or wheel of time and and very one of it. Yeah, and and and I know, and and season season two was actually good enough to make me watch season three, but not good enough to tell me to make someone watch season one. Um but when I was watching the first few episodes, I was like, all right, okay, I'm not loving all the writing. Um, I actually quite love being back in the world. Um, but I have faith, you know. I I think this would be okay because there's absolutely no way, no way that Sauron would be sitting on a raft because that would be terrible writing. So clearly that's not Sauron, because it couldn't be. And I put my faith and then I got to the end. Sauron was sitting on a fucking raft. And uh I never felt so betrayed in my life. And I think that's the thing when I read books, is if I see this come up, all right, and I'm like, why would they keep that secret? Why would they do this? Or why would they treat them that way? I am trusting the author, they're going to explain it to me, and there's a reason, right? I'm fine if there's a reason. Like I might be annoyed at the time because why would they treat them that way? But then if I go to another chapter and I see a point of view and it's explained, you know? And that's also part of the craft is knowing how long you can delay that explanation. You know, how how how much of a trust have you built up? Uh, how much tension is there? How long can I delay that release for is part of craft. Um, but if I if you don't get that explanation, that's when that's when I yeet a book out the window.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

It's it's such a common mistake. What do you think leads to it? Are are do you think writers are just sort of tied to the plot and they're like, this will be an exciting reveal and you know, characters be damned, or or just like a lack of sense of what they're actually doing.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

I think this is something that I've thought for a long time. And I think it's a lot harder to write a book than it is to find flaws in a book.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

So there are a lot of people who will read a book and review a book and be able to critique it and their critiques make sense. Um but if those same people went to write a book without those flaws in it, it wouldn't work. The flaws would be there. Um, and so I think that can happen a lot when you're writing it, is that you're writing it and you're you're trying to find that balance, and maybe sometimes you just don't find the balance the right way. And then someone comes to read it, and because they're reading it from a fresh perspective, uh, they will see it. You know, they see the thing that you miss, you know. Um, and I think also when you're writing, you might have read that book like nine times. And depending how long the book, you might have some people 20 times, depending how long it is, there's a lot of things to trip over. Um, and it's what can happen. I know, like with with my last few books, because they get so long, you know, there is a lot of density to it, and you're trying to get through all these things, and there's a there's a lot of different checkboxes you have to go back through, and you're more inclined to miss stuff. But I I do think that is the the whole that is kind of the crux of it for me a lot of the time. Um is it is as the person closest to the work, sometimes you get too close, and if you don't step back enough or if you don't get the right people over your shoulder um at the right time, those things can be missed um quite quite easily. And I think from an authorial perspective, that can be where beta readers and or beta readers for me in particular are the most important. So I have a team of about 30 of them and they all get their own separate documents and I combine them all at the end. And so one of the things that I'll do is if someone says something or if someone like has a critique, right, that I don't agree with, I'll just I'll leave the comment there and I move on. All right. Kind of like, you know, when you play a game and you get stuck on a level and you want to throw your controller through the goddamn screen, and because you're an adult, you don't, all right, you leave and you go downstairs and you wait till the next day and you come back and you complete that level in 60 seconds, right? Because you're no longer frustrated. So I find I do that when I when I edit, I leave it. But then if I have a lot of people, you know, who will agree on something, hey, something's wrong here. If they tell me what's wrong, they're almost definitely wrong. Um, but if they tell me there's something wrong, there's probably something wrong. And I feel like having that team of beta readers helps me to to find a lot of those moments in the series because these are the readers who are big um in my world who understand all the twists and turns and the lore. And they're also readers who just love reading. So when something feels off, and I have a whole document at the start of my beta reads being like, look, I don't want you blowing smoke up in my ass. I don't want you just telling me shit's great when it's not, but I also don't want you beating me over the head just because you want to look smart. Okay. Uh I need you to kind of, if something feels weird, even if you don't know why, just say something feels weird. Say it in the comments, in line. Right? If someone tells a joke and it doesn't land with you, tell me. I might think your sense of humor is shit and I'll ignore you, but at least I know you didn't think it was funny. And then if seven or eight other people don't think it's funny, I might have to look at the joke that I made. Um, I find that cross-section of opinion massively helps me to pick up on things that my closeness to the manuscript can sometimes prevent me from seeing myself.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

That's really insightful. And actually sticking on the topic of like literary criticism in general, this is something we've been talking about with each other on the podcast a lot, is kind of bemoaning the loss of like D.E. Lawrence writing full novels full of literary criticism about other authors, sometimes very mean, sometimes very praising. But you do you solicit other authors in your community as critics for your own writing? And like, what do you feel is the role of an author at this point?

SPEAKER_02 35:58

I don't. Um, I know a lot of people who do who use critique groups, but I didn't grow up as a writer. Like, I think that's the weird one. And it's why where a lot of my imposter syndrome comes from. I just I started writing in late 2020 and my first book came out in 2021. So I didn't grow up in that sphere of like writers trying to make it and kind of forming these bonds in these groups where I feel like some of those groups come from. And then a lot of the time, people who go through the traditional publishing channels will find those groups because, say, they'll have groups with all of their agency clients or groups with their publisher clients, which as now that I have stuff, it's it's different. But um, at the time when I was coming through as an independent author, I didn't, I didn't have any of that. So I I tend not to, and I have a I have a hardline rule. Um, I do not in any way criticize another author in a public forum ever. All right. And, you know, there's some people who will sit there and they're like, oh, well, that's just cowardly or that's just it's like, no, you tell me a job, any job in the world, where you can walk in and start criticizing your colleagues. You know, it's bad form, it's bad etiquette, and it will only come back to bite you and slap you in the ass. Um, like if I'm a lawyer, I don't walk into another lawyer's office and be like, I thought your work on that that brief was shabby. Um you don't you don't go and put form that critic criticism unless it's it's asked. If someone asks me to as a lawyer though, someone have done that to you. People have done that to me. But did you find it a good thing? Yeah, that's that's what I mean. So, like, yeah, and that's what I mean. So people do it. People do it, but they're almost always considered the assholes of the company.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

All right, yes, and and and it'll only ever come back to to bite you because people look at you that way. It's not a positive thing, it doesn't benefit anyone. I think all it would ever do would satisfy my own ego in wanting to feel smart. Um, and I think yeah, it's just something you gotta be really careful of. Um, and it's something that like reviewers or booktubers, people like that who want to transition from a critical space into um a writing space need to be aware of that too. Because one of the things you're gonna be doing, and whether it's direct or not, is like if you make a kind of not a living, but make, and some people do make a living, make a living or make a career off heavy criticisms or salty criticisms of people's work, you you fucking better not make those mistakes in your book because people are gonna cope with it.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Hoping to find mistakes. Oh, they're waiting.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

They they're sitting there with with pitchforks and knives and they're like ready to carve you up.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

We were we were on this, we got on this path because I I watched this fascinating and bizarre interview with Philip Pullman, Golden Compass, um, in which he suggested that A.A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh was a pedophile, you know, was just generally taking every shit on C.S. Lewis that he could find. Um he started criticizing like the narrative of the death of Jesus, and he's like, it really would have been better if Ju Judas had kissed him and teleported him away from the rock. It was a fascinating interview. But then Travis and I were talking about it, and like there is a whole rich history of other authors being like, I do need to tear other people down to create my own space. Like, if you look at like Nabokov's. I wish you hadn't said that because it's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

It's such a great, like what you just said is such a great point. But in my head, I was like, I wanted to go back because I thought you were saying myself and Travis were talking, we're thinking, man. Authors were on a lot of acid back then. Crazy shit that people said back at that time. And like he's Stephen King is just like, dude, I don't even remember writing those books. Um I remember all the cocaine. But what you were saying was a really poignant point. I'm sorry for stepping over it. I just my brain was laughing and my face couldn't.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

I needed to reconcile. If we need to talk about Frank Herbert and drugs, we can do it.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

Yeah.

unknown 40:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Well, um, I have another criticism question. It's a little bit different, but I think one of the you talked about family. I think how close-knit yours was and the the um influences that has had. And I think it's very special you get to work with your brother on the art for the book. Yes. How do you handle criticism if you don't like something he's drawn?

SPEAKER_02 40:23

One of the solutions was pay him more. Um no, seriously. So when we started out, um, it is hard. It can be hard to work with family because I remember one time I asked him for a piece. Okay, and we just started, asked him for a piece. He just sent over a different piece. He's like, this is what I'm drawing. And I was like, no, this this can't fucking work.

SPEAKER_04 40:45

This this doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 40:47

I was like, this needs to be a professional, a fully and I paid him at the time, but it wasn't a huge amount. This needs to be a fully professional transaction. I need to pay for the ability to say something's wrong. Um, and that was the only way we kind of navigated that once we got to that space. Honestly, there haven't really been any issues with it. Like, that's something that we've worked through pretty well, to be to be totally honest. Um, it helps that I like Aaron's work.

unknown 41:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Um, and it helps that a lot of the time he kind of understands what I'm trying to say. Um, he's done less and less pieces as the series gone on, just because it's not his job. Um, he's a photographer, a videographer. He used to do a lot of art, but just um not as much anymore. Um but yeah, that that that was a funny one at the start. Like literally just getting pieces that were not in any way what I asked for. And he was like, well, suck it.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

I was inspired to draw Dan drinking mead, and that's what you get, my friend.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

This is a unicorn. I don't see your point.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

It was referenced once? Uh oh no, it gets referenced quite a lot. So we have um that that has been speculated on the show. Or like there's no way there's a stray reference to a unicorn in book one and doesn't it doesn't come up again. Oh, yeah, I know it comes back. It comes back. It has to.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

There's there's not a single stray reference in those books that does not at least manifest itself in the physical world. Like in a blood and fire, there's a reference to the wooden spoon of retribution. And now I get like I get spoons, like in their in their very large numbers brought to me at at like events. One of the one of the readers went in a guy called Adam, um, he went and designed and got engraved like a shitload of a blood and fire world tour spoons with like dragon eggs engraved on the head of the spoons, and then shipped them to readers in the different countries where the world tour was, and they were like bringing them to the events. That's so nice.

SPEAKER_00 42:43

I gotta say, you have an amazing reader community. Like we we've hopped into the Discord and the Reddit, and they're such nice people. It's all right.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

And that's just fucking crazy. Yeah. And if I didn't say that about them, they would be upset.

unknown 42:55

You know?

SPEAKER_01 42:56

Is it is there a part of you that's like, I like my books, but they're not that they're not this good. You guys gotta chill out a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 43:03

Honestly, it hasn't gotten to that level yet. Um, if anything, it's more been a case of like some of the stories that I've heard and some of the emails that I've gotten. Um I think it just makes me more in love with what I do. Like I sit there with my wife, and like she's read some of them, and um, she's been there when some of the readers have come up and and said some things. And you know, even she we're sitting there drinking a glass of wine or something, and she's just like, You are actually affecting people's lives. How does that feel? Um you know, you're sitting on a computer most of the time just writing a story and um making all this stuff up, and people coming to you being like, Hey, uh, you know, uh there was a few points where I considered not being here. And I read your books and I'm still here. Um obviously they're longer than that, but there's kind of little more in the world that I think I could ever assume. So it's been it's been a weirdly cool and emotional journey um where I never thought sitting alone in a room would would uh would kind of bring to fruition. But they they have a bit more room for craziness is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Yeah. I don't know, as like a young, pretentious English major or whatever, I probably thought that art would change the world more than it does. Um and you know it doesn't. It doesn't get people elected and we don't have free healthcare in the US. But like on the individual level, it changed every country in the world.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:39

Yeah, unfortunately. Um but like you can change that one person's life. Like it does add so much richness, like on the individual level. And that's not like something to be you know sniffed at meaningful.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

It's you you affect a community by affecting individuals. And I think it's why I always see that falsehood when people talk about voting and they're like one vote doesn't change anything. And I say, no, it doesn't, but each one vote collected can. You know, so helping one person and helping a second and a third and a fourth, that's how communities are built. That's why I have a readership. That's why people get behind other people. And it's it's that loss of belief that one person can affect the many. Um that is one of the saddest things for me because I think that's the way we look at it, is you know, you're saying as a pretentious uh English major thinking that art would affect the world and change the world, it does. It just doesn't affect it, you don't see the effect uh the way you think you would. You know, it's not like you know, Bruce Springsteen isn't running for president or but Bruce Springsteen and Born in the USA, for the people who understand what that song actually means, um that affects people's way of thinking. When someone they look up to, someone they respect puts music out like that. I would hazard a guess that there's quite a lot of people who listened to that song in their youth around the time when it came out who are different people today because of the people they met um in those communities that were built going to Bruce Springsteen concerts and then going to rallies and then going to the it changes everything. It's just with threads that we can't see.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Yeah, and I I appreciate the way you've kind of described your own genres like grim heart in the past. Like there's the level of like hope in heart that is inspiring. And uh, I mean, that's why I got I got into fantasy and COVID reading Brandon Sanderson and like the treatment of Kaladin and depression, the yeah, you know, moving on to Gwyn and his narration of grief. Like that's really helped me think about how to process those same emotions and doing it with a friend where we can process together is like even all the all the better. Um I just love what you're saying about the power of of the stories, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Absolutely. I I think it's kind of what I wanted to do with that. I I always loved epic heroic fantasy, and I I love having those people, those good people, and who will still make mistakes, they'll still fuck up, they'll still do bad things, but they they they really want to do good. And I feel like that is real life, is putting them. I feel like where a lot of Grimdark's sensibilities went to a place where I didn't feel I wanted to be, was where it's that worldview that no, this is the real world, this is what it's like. And I'm like, no, no, to me, the real world is this world that has a lot of dark things, a lot of dark stuff. There's people who want bad things, people who want good things, but there are also really, really, really good people who who want to do good, who want to help others. Um, and I wanted to try and find that balance uh when I was writing. And I feel like I feel like like with anyone, like I really started to find it when I went into book two because like book one is the first thing I'd ever written in my life, and you're still trying to learn who you really are as an author and learn what your voice is and and learn what the world is no matter what you do. And I feel like I was lucky enough to kind of find my feet like by book two. Um I'm so very, very, very proud of book one, but I feel like book two is where what I wanted to tell uh was actually coming onto the page.

SPEAKER_01 48:20

All right. I hope don't hang up. You can. You know, okay. So as I'm sure you're very aware, the of blank and blake of blank and blank naming convention has become a big thing in the past few years, I think, in no small part due to Sarah J. Mass and romanticy in general. One, has anyone ever picked up your book thinking it's romanticy and told you about it?

SPEAKER_02 48:47

No, strangely enough. Um my bigger worry was always fire and blood. And there was actually like a point where like we're like, oh shit, really shouldn't have picked this name. And then there was a point where uh my book started taking over in the SEO, and that's when we're like, oh wow, this could be a thing. Like it's actually coming up when you Google it. Uh no, the romantic one never never really happened, but I think um I think one of my friends, Zach Argyll, who is who's a who's an author as well, um, he decided to mock up uh some fake uh romanticy covers for my series, which I believe he called um he kept the name, The Bound and the Broken.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

Um that's kind of in a strange way.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

I believe, I believe I was Ryanka Hill, and it was of blood and boning, I'm pretty sure was the was the first one.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Oh my god. We did we actually posted this in the Sun Eater rep Sun Eater subreddit. I did a mock-up of all of the books renamed with like the Court of Thorns and Roses art style. Um and tried to draw from the from the text of um Why did you rename the series? I didn't oh maybe just Sun Eater. No, we didn't do the series.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

So many missed opportunities there.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

Um It was uh I think it was well received. I think some people did find it a bit sacrilegious, but Oh yeah, like you gotta understand, Christopher.

SPEAKER_02 50:15

I love the dude. He is actually such a nice guy. And he he he would take those things mildly seriously. Um I would pay to see his reaction.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

I mean what's the one?

SPEAKER_01 50:34

That was our whole feeling about yeah. That was our whole feeling about doing the show, because our like show is definitely comedy-tinged and a bit irreverent. And he's you know, not a criticism, but a fairly self-serious person. And our whole feeling doing it is like, oh fuck, he would hate this.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

He actually he has a great sense of humor, um, but he is, he's very serious. And like I know there's the the stickers that the publisher made. He hates me for telling people this. Um the the it's sunny time stickers. As soon as I saw them, I was like, he's gonna, he's gonna fucking hate these. Like he understood, he understands that they're great. Like he understands that the readers love them. Um, but I knew he'd be like, no, it is the Sun Eater.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

I poured my heart and soul into this. This is my opus. Do not laugh at it.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

Nah, Chris Christopher is a is a great, great, great dude. He does he doesn't have a very good sense of humor, but I would I would pay to see his reaction to um to romantic names for the Sun Eater series.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

Okay. I did, I did find it. So have you read Sun Eater?

SPEAKER_02 51:35

No, no. Both of us started reading her first book of the others and then got distracted by our own books.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

Okay. Well, my favorite, there's a big, there's a big torture arc. Um Kaylin's got nothing on Hadrian as far as as far as I'm in your book, too. But yeah, that that one we we titled A Prison of Piss and Pain. Um then uh book six or book five was I Just Met a God and She's Cute, which is another that's more of an anime title than that one. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:02

That's out there. That was like a choke dingle title.

SPEAKER_01 52:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

I just met a god and she's cute in my butthole.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

Pounded in the butt by Hadrian, who's cute. Yeah.

unknown 52:13

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Okay. Okay. So built building on this, I have pulled together a list of real of blank and blank titles and fake ones that I made up. And we're gonna see if you can see if you can guess which one I made up and which one is real. Are you right?

SPEAKER_02 52:32

If I was more versed in Romantic World, this would be easier. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Yeah, I tried to pick because there are a few big ones, like obviously you would now. I was thinking about doing a song of ice and fire just as a joke, but no, we we okay okay. So starting off, is this a real or fake book? The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

SPEAKER_03 52:52

I was it fake.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Incorrect. That is by Carrie Ryan. Okay. That's good because now your confidence is shaken. Okay.

unknown 53:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Okay, like I feel like there's such replaceable words. It could be anything.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Okay. Next up, Sons of Steel and Honor.

SPEAKER_02 53:12

Oh, that has to be that has to be a book name. It's not gonna be though now, is it?

SPEAKER_01 53:16

It's a book name I made up. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

If you want to write it, this is definitely real. I knew it was too real to be to be real.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

Okay, okay, just a couple more. Knight of Cake and Puppets. I'm gonna say real. Yeah, it's too fucked up to be fake. It is real. Yeah, that's by Laney Taylor. I need a synopsis of that, of course. Yeah, I do need to look that up. Okay. Girls made of snow and glass.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Oh, that has to be like a harem title or something.

SPEAKER_01 53:47

We'll check Crunchyroll and see if it's on there. It is real. Yeah. Yeah. That is by Melissa Bachardoust. Okay, and then lastly, A Ship of Storms and Lust.

SPEAKER_02 53:56

That'd be a real name. Sorry, continue.

SPEAKER_01 53:58

Yeah. A Ship of Storms and Lust.

SPEAKER_02 54:03

I feel like I'm gonna say fake because there's only been one fake in it so far.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

That's the problem. You're correct. Yeah, I came up with that one, and we'll be writing it soon. You know what?

SPEAKER_02 54:12

I'm actually pretty happy with my percentage there.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

That's not bad. That's good because yeah, this was not an easy test. Other than Night of Cake and Puppets is too strange for me to have come up with it.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

Yeah. We've done this with anime titles and there's a lot of double negatives that could have existed there. There's something like that.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Yeah, we did the same exercise where Travis pulled together real and fake anime titles. And the one that really blew my mind was Cautious Hero. The hero is c overly the hero is overpowered but overly cautious.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

That's definitely real.

SPEAKER_01 54:46

It is real. We haven't offered it, but it's out there if you need it. Yeah. Unbelievable. Okay. Travis, you wanna you wanna take the wheel here?

SPEAKER_00 54:54

Yeah, we we were inspired by a conversation about buckfast and some of the liquors.

SPEAKER_02 55:00

Jesus Christ. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:03

I studied abroad in Ireland. No, and um, I told him that when you say buckfast, it gets a gut reaction from Irish people. And I'm really glad it did.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

It's not an alcohol of joy.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Well, I was wondering so there's there's no buckfast representation in the series. You weren't like on on the low, this is buckfast.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Um no. I I no.

SPEAKER_02 55:26

No.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Yeah. Well, just I mean, you've got one more book to write, so I know. Can you throw a little feature in there?

SPEAKER_02 55:34

No.

SPEAKER_01 55:35

Highly caffeinated wine.

SPEAKER_02 55:38

There's there's enough, there's enough fucking sorrow in that world.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, sorry, Travis has depth on your.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

But we I mean, we've loved both the pub names in the book. That's one of my favorite things. Like there's some there's some gems in there, but also the the new drinks that you've invented as part of the lore. So our our next question to you is kill fuck Mary.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Oh Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 56:02

Sweet Mary Piece. Yeah, sure. Sweet sea breeze, worm's blood, and drafan and whiskey.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Oh, okay, okay. Worm's blood, I would definitely kill.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Um, you don't want to have a wild night with worm's blood, though.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

No, no, I did that. It was a bad night. Um it's difficult because I'm a whiskey guy, but the zebra, I've had that I've made that cocktail, and it's it's pretty nice. Um, and like I'm a big fan of like a Kuiperina, um, which no, that's not Cacha, that's but like I would make it with Cachasa. Ah do you know what? I'm gonna say I I will think about this for hours. This is the problem. Um I would say fuck the whiskey in this instance solely because the drafanin make it so goddamn strong that I just don't know if I'd be able to drink it forever. Um whereas the sea breeze I could have every night.

SPEAKER_01 57:06

Fascinating. I thought you were because I knew you were a whiskey kid. I love whiskey. But there's no casual way to have a glass of drapan and whiskey.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

Oh, there is. Like my favorite, my favorite like times to drink whiskey are like, and it's really funny. Um, please don't crop this because um so many people are like, oh, you know, I don't have a problem drinking, but one thing I won't do is drink alone. And I'm like, drinking alone is actually one of my favorite activities. But there's a difference between like drinking an entire bottle of whiskey on your own and rocking back and forth in a chair at night, um, and like having one or two glasses of whiskey while I read a book in the house, or when I watch a good movie or something like that. That's I I prefer you won't find me knocking back like 15 glasses of whiskey, but like having having a few glasses of whiskey while doing something nice and chill that I enjoy is one of my favorite things in the world. Um but I just if I if someone sat there with me and said the only thing you can drink for the rest of your life is the whiskey or this nice and easy to drink cocktail. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 58:07

That's a rational choice, much like your characters. That's very fair.

SPEAKER_02 58:11

Sometimes, sometimes I'll tell we always talk about this. Like, you know, people talk about you know, uh, are you in a character? And I'm like, no, I'm not in a character, but there are tiny, tiny pieces of me in every character.

SPEAKER_03 58:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:21

And like my that logical thought and kind of tangential ADHD that wrist clearly has is definitely a piece of me that's in there. And there's definitely a sense of humor in Dan.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

Oh, Dan, my favorite. Can't wait to get more of him in book three.

SPEAKER_02 58:38

I think I only gets way, way, way better.

SPEAKER_01 58:41

Yeah, he he's sort of backseat in book two, and we're we're we're dying for more Dan, which I'm sure is coming. Like, there's no it seems like there's no way to get it.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

There's just so many characters that there's a point where like people are like, Oh, we want more of this one. I was like, you don't. You don't, because the book will get exponentially longer. Like the fun fact before you guys go into the the rest of the books is uh so for word count, like Kalen's story in book one is he gets about 130,000 of the 147,000 words. And then in book two, he also gets about 130,000. Um, and then in book three, right, which is nearly double, just less double the size of book two, um, he still gets about 135,000, 140,000 words. And then in book four, exactly the same. So, like the main story for Kalen never bloated. We just added so many other stories that it got larger. So, yeah, if I start expanding on all the other guys' stories more and more and more, and I don't pick certain characters to come to the fore in certain books, we would not be sitting uh here right now because I would still be writing book three.

SPEAKER_01 59:49

Yeah, I cannot imagine the wheel of time if Matt and Perrin got just like full focus every book.

SPEAKER_02 59:54

It would be needs to switch back and forth. Like the wildest thing, and I'm gonna come out and say it in one of the in the literary world, is the fact that Ramp is barely present in the Dragon Reborn.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:06

Wild.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

And that's a hot take. He's crazy and kills a bunch of people. That now I I just want to talk about the Wheel of Time. That's that's one of the fascinating things about the series, is you can see him sort of changing his mind a little bit about like how things are gonna progress because you know it's gonna be a trilogy and then it got expanded. And then on the back end, when Sanderson got a hold of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:31

Nah, not three books, mate. Fourteen. Fourteen.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

And then when Sanderson got a hold of it, I was thinking about this when we were talking about like opening cans of worms that you have to close at the end. I felt like I could see the ones that he was not interested in. He's like, I need to probably have to do those. This RM plot line has to end. And uh we're ending it, baby. It was it like somehow made it more enjoyable. It's like maybe it didn't wrap it up perfectly, but that is fascinating to see how this guy's doing this kind of impossible task.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Yeah. I don't think there's anybody else enough phase in time who would have come into a series.large and said, All right, how do I get rid of the three-woman harem? Um that's that's tough. That that's uh I don't think there's a don't think there's a single reader who read that and was like, yeah, this is what the story needed right now was a three-person harem.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

That was something I was interested in. Like the show obviously is canceled, but I was like, I can't wait to see the 55-year-old creep. Oh, they were going to be able to do it. I cannot believe they broke up the harem. That was essential.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:36

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, on a little bit more serious note, at least, character sprawl, right? Like it's something we talk about in series. I mean, we moved from a single POV series in Sun Eater to now a very wide multi-POV. And, you know, I know you do a lot of your world building in advance. I think you said like 85% before you even started writing. How do you think about when too many characters there, how many characters is enough? Do you ever feel like you need to cull the herd? What's your what's your thought process behind that?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

Yeah, I feel like I don't know if there's ever a definitive answer. Like how many is too many? It depends how many the author can handle. Um, how many threads are too many? It depends on how interwoven they are. Like, and it's actually part of why I write, because this is a whole thing where people are like, oh, you know, long books need to justify their word count. Okay. And I kind of I kind of strongly disagree because I feel like every book has to justify its word count. Um the longer books just have to justify why they should have been told in the long form instead of the short form. So why is my book three one book and not three books? Why is my book four one book and not three books? Um, and my answer for that is because of the type of story that I wanted to tell. And sometimes people are like, oh, you could have split this. I was like, I couldn't. If if you can find a satisfying narrative point in that story that would provide you with two equally satisfying endings and books that people would recommend, then I have failed. You know, because that's not the type of story I was telling. And if we all tell the same type of stories, the world would get very boring. And what that does in that style of story I'm telling is allows me to handle this character sprawl because I wanted an interconnectedness of story threads in a way that every chapter was affecting the next chapter, and and every story was affecting the story that came before and after it. Not just what happened in this story affected the next book and affected the next book, and we see them in stages. I wanted to have something constantly changing and where you can see it. I think in book three is the first time you're gonna really, really see that hit home. Um if you don't, then I might not have done my job well. But yeah.

unknown 1:03:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Hopefully, is it is it a big point of emphasis for you? Like obviously, this is a big series, you're gonna finish it, but like how much do you care about each book sort of standing on its own, or do you think of them as kind of volumes of this one large story and they don't need to like kind of wrap up super tidily at the end?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

They are they're both. Um, I think the most important thing um is the overall story. Um, and I actually think someone in my Discord said this a while ago. They were talking about um people reading these types of books and not being used to the types of books that they are. And I thought they actually made a really good point I'd never thought about before. They're saying how a lot of the modern storytelling styles um are basically how can we get from plot point A to plot point B as quickly as humanly fucking possible. Um and every book needing to wrap up something. Where's the next baddie? Did we defeat this baddie? Who's could who's the next baddie? And then who's the next baddie? And it needs to have these dopamine hits at the end of a book where like level complete, level complete, level complete. And in some of the larger epics, um, it's not about that at the end of each book. It is about the overall longer story. And a lot of people who aren't used to that kind of struggle with how to feel um when they're when they finish one of those internal books, like say like a book three or a book four, because they're like, well, we didn't defeat a baddy, you know. Um, how did we end that that that this book must not be a good book because we didn't defeat the baddy there. Um, but I do feel like each book needs to stand on its own. You know, they need to carry their own weight. Um, each book needs to be an experience. Um, I would just hope that less so I would hope that all of the books building up create a better experience for the next one. But then my hope is that with each book that comes out, people retroactively can enjoy the previous books more. Um, you know, there's a few readers who Go back and read the full every few books because there's little bits that were there that they're they're only really make sense now. And especially after book four, there's a lot of things in book one. I kind of I kind of did they realize after a while uh how much of an idiot I was um like you you're meant to like you can do things as an author, okay? Like you you can let readers have trust in you to kind of just go and do stuff, right? And just trust me, it'll work. But as a new author with your first book, you haven't built that trust. Um so it's a bit of an idiot ballsy move to try and count on a trust you haven't earned. So, like for instance, you finish book two and you know what the ending for book two is. I like the prologue in book one doesn't pay off until that moment.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:55

And I I had always built that, but I wasn't thinking about people trusting me. And I know when the book came out at first, people were like, hey, that prologue meant nothing. We haven't seen anything. Um but there's also a lot of stuff in book one that doesn't pay off to book four. There's stuff that that's there that might not seem like anything, but then the hope would be that when you read book four, um, you can go, oh shit, this thing has been there the whole time. Um, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:29

Yeah. I mean, I think I've enjoyed having I I feel like I'm kind of on the right track guessing at some of these. Like I was like, oh, his brother's alive. I know it. I know it in my heart.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:39

Uh I hope this is a spoiler podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

We've already covered the first two. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:45

Okay, all right, cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Although we've now, I used to have a rule. Like, if there's a dead sibling and I haven't seen them, they're not dead. And then Travis put the theory out. I was like, I don't know, man. I feel like he's pretty dead. And never again. I will never be fooled again. There's no dead, there's no such thing as a dead sibling. No. Always coming back.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:03

No. But it didn't feel like we got hit over the head with any foreshadowing.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:07

Like it was a it was a really nice balance of my hope would be I look at those things like you look at a murder mystery.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

Right. You know, the idea would be that 90% of people don't guess it, or maybe 80% of people don't guess it. Um, but when it is revealed, everyone should be able to trace the breadcrumbs back. You know, like there's bits in there beforehand where he's talking to Kalinvar about his mother and how she's a healer and how she liked flowers. And, you know, there's there's these small things that I think people do pick up on and go, oh shit, this is very clear. And then other people, there's a whole tag in the Discord of I knew or I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:43

That's that is weird that the best reveal should make the reader feel dumb. It's like, how did I miss this?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:49

It was right there. Yeah, and and that's it. It's it should for me, there should always be breadcrumbs. It should be traceable. That's that's the the main thing to allow satisfaction, is that you need to have been able to figure it out. If the reader wasn't able to figure it out, then you wrote it poorly.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Yeah, I think that's I I've been struggling with some other books recently where there's these very large grand plans that happen off-screen. And it's it's not that there's nuggets throughout little conversations of the characters that lead to a bigger plot reveal, but it's it's an entire new reveal that has no grounding actually in the story. So it's exciting when you're seeing something new, but but it doesn't, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of trust in you and as a reader to not get bored with a plan, you know, being executed in part.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:35

So that's one of the challenges that I'm facing with the last novella, with a challenge I knew I was always gonna face because it's like none of the ones I've written before. Like I have to take all these characters because I don't know if you guys know or not, but basically the the new the last novella is going back to the fall and it's going a little bit before the fall as well. And so we're going to follow some of these characters and show the events that happened leading up to the fall. But then the challenging thing is, hey, there's like 500 different events I could pick. Um, but I only have so much page count. And so you have to kind of jump between these major events with a lot of stuff being missed in between, like big events being missed, because you can't cover them all. And so that's like the the tech technical challenge is trying to make it satisfying for a reader, even though they're going to be missing like huge swaths of major story.

unknown 1:10:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:27

When you're like obviously you've read a ton of epic fantasy, so I think you're grounded in that. But like when you're starting the novellas, do you ever, you know, try to pick up short fiction or something like that to sort of get a taste of the craft, or do you just trust yourself to do it? Like, I don't know if you're picking up doubliners or whatever to see, you know, how people are doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:44

I did a little bit with some short stories. I read the, is it the called it the paper tiger menagerie? Is that the one by Ken Liu? Um, I should know. I think I I might have gotten the name slightly wrong. Um, but what that actually made me realize was um writing short story and novellas um within an established world with established boundaries and lore and canon is a very different craft to abstractly writing short stories and novellas. Um because I have certain things I need to achieve in each story that is relevant to the major arc. Um whereas if you just write a general novella or a general short story, you're not tied by those bounds. Um so I found I I that's all I really did because with the novella, with the fall, I just ended up writing it because it's what I needed. And I didn't really look up what novellas were meant to do. I looked up what novellas were meant to do, and I realized I'd kind of broken all of those rules. Um like it's meant to, it's like, you know, one one point of view, one point in time, one moment, because it's it's short fiction. So it's the rules are trying to allow you to restrict your word count and trying to allow you to stay within that bound. Um and then obviously with the the fall, there's four points of view, um, which is like you know, quite a large bit past the one point of view you're meant to have. Um no, I feel like they're different arts, different, different crafts, different store styles of storytelling. Um I didn't go up and look up a lot of them, but for me, what I needed was quite simple, you know, finish it and then go through from start to finish and go, hey, am I satisfied? Did I write a good story for this word count? Do I think people will enjoy it? Did I achieve the message that I wanted to achieve? Did I do what I wanted to do? If the answer is yes, then fantastic. Off to edits we go. And if I didn't, then back to the drawing board.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:36

I mean, I think we've covered a lot of our very serious questions about authorship and the series. Uh is a hot dog a sandwich?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

No, it's a hot dog. There we go. This is this is an argument that I had went over to America, right? Because what I what I realized was is we have different definitions of what makes a sandwich in a burger.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:01

Right? So for you for us, what makes a sandwich um is dependent on the bread. And for you, what makes a sandwich is dependent on the filling. Um because I went over there and I was like, Like, do you want a chicken sandwich? I'm like, that's a that's a fucking chicken burger. Like it's in a burger bun. What? Oh, it's not ground, it's not a ground into a ground meat and shaped like a patty. I was like, yes, that's because it's not a patty, but it is definitely a burger. It's like, no, no, it's sandwich. It's like, we are never going to agree on this. The burger is created by putting things between two burger buns.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:40

Got a point. I think you're right. I mean, personally, personally, I'm in hot dog as a taco camp, but I think I'm pretty alone in that.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:45

No, no, it's it's it's like a sub. It's like a it's like a hoagie. Like it's it's it's not a sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

We were joking about opening the interview with that. I was like, what if we just started with like a tired internet question from four years ago? But then we we feared you would not catch the irony in that. Okay. I've got some I've got some Irish stuff for you. Okay. First, importantly, Murphy's or Guinness?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:08

Oh, Guinness.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:10

Yeah. Is that even is that a crazy question? Or would some people be like Murphy's definitely? Why are you even asking me?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

I don't know a single person in my life who would give that answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:19

I was lied to by some Irish people that were like, they're diehard Murphy's.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

Actually, one of our favorite things to do is to lie to Americans.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:25

Ah, fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:26

Yeah. Well. I once convinced a group of tourists that it was not called a leprechaun. That was insulting, and the name was actually Leprecian.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:35

Check your privilege, do your research on air.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

I can't wait. I'm going to Dublin for the first time in August. I will I will be pronouncing it like that 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

Come and say hi.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:47

Hello, doggy. Yeah, I still spent one glorious semester at Trinity College Dublin and in uh undergrad.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

And uh you spent a whole semester there and still asked me that question.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:59

Because I'm telling you, these people from Cork, they're like Murphy's. You gotta try it. It's the other one.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

The other one, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:06

Yeah, well, okay, there, there we go. Okay, and then all right, Irish musicians, blind ranking. I'm giving you four, and you gotta slot them in.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:17

Okay. Number one, Van Morrison. You gotta slot him one through four.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:23

Oh, sorry, I thought you assigned him number one. No, no, no. Van Morrison. He has to be number Astral Weeks and two. I'm gonna stick him at three because with only four, I feel like there has to be some some big hitters.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:37

Gotcha. And uh he's sort of he is like a dark shadow of Neil Young these days. I don't know if you've tracked present-day Van Morrison. A little kooky. Uh worth a Google. Worth a Google. Okay. Not surprised. Uh next up, okay. We got Van Morrison three. You two. Oh, two.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:57

Okay. Wow. Reserving the number one spot. Okay. Next up, Enya. Four.

unknown 1:16:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:05

That would have been my one. Slander. Just because I want her life. I want to live alone at a castle and not do press or anything. Um and then finally, cranberries.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:16

I'll happily leave cranberries at one. I probably would have put you two to one and cranberries down to two, but I'll have happy cranberries at one.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Who did I miss? What's the Irish musical act that I should have put in?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:27

Oh, there's Thin Lizzie.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

Oh, wow. That's such a good point. Boys are, in fact, back in town.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:34

The boys are back in town. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:35

That's our outro. That's easy. They're like such a deeply underrated band in the US. Like people really know only that track.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:42

Yeah, no, they're a fantastic band. There's this there's so many. And as soon as I say there's so many, that my brain kind of dies on them. But there's a there's a fan, there's an unbelievable uh artist that I love who's a modern artist. He's only, I think he's like 30, probably 34. Uh, Dermot Kennedy is incredible. I know it's not like legendary status, but I think he will be eventually. He's pretty, he's pretty great.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:04

Yeah, I guess Hozier's Irish. Like Hosier's Irish as well, yeah. Yeah. Wonderful voice. Yeah. Okay. Travis, any other fun and games before uh before we let our man go take care of his child and dog?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:16

My last one is I gotta call you out for such an amazing map. The interactive large map that you created is a godsend. I love playing with it. It makes me very happy. Um, what is your favorite map outside of the one that you've built? Could be any anything cartographical.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:36

Like I do always love the red-inked token maps for Middle-earth. Um, but I also I'm trying to think, I I've always loved the Dragon Age maps. Uh the Dragon Age maps are incredible. And kind of anything Francesca Birald paints, um, she's done an unbelievable map. It's it's not really a navigable map because of the amount of art that's on it for Game of Thrones. Um and I've also loved the Game of Thrones maps because it's just Ireland and England flipped upside down, um, which is which is always nice. Uh I'm trying to think, I fucking love maps. I'm a I'm a big I'm a big map dude. I think there's like seven variations of the world already, or of like that continent already made. And I'm I I'm gonna be commissioning like a full globe map eventually, which I'm excited to do. I love maps.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:31

Ryan, before we we let you go, anything that uh you want to promote? Anything you want to call out for fans to take a look at?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:38

Um yeah, the re-release of the fall, uh the traditional publishing re-release is coming out in June. Um June and on June 25th, uh, I'm gonna be doing an event with Brandon Sanderson in Utah to celebrate the launch, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:52

That's amazing. I saw on your Instagram you were signing the shit out of some copies of the fall. Do you think you sign as well and as quickly as Sanderson, or are you still trying to teach?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

I actually found out that I do sign as quickly.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:04

Wow. Wow. That's an art.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:06

I was I was chatting to the team when I was over at MCM Comic-Con London, and they're given averages per hour, and I was like, yeah, we hit that. Actually, for one hour we beat that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:15

Um now SPMs.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:18

I do feel like if he wanted to kick in as afterburners, he could. Um, but I was pretty, I was pretty fucking happy with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

You just have to do a podcast now while you sign, and then that's uh, you know, that's the real job. I just found that horribly distracting that he's sitting there signing.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:33

It's like, are you listening to your co-host? I couldn't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:41

Okay, I am gonna go and I'm gonna kiss my daughter goodnight.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:44

And yeah, and we'll we're we'll let you go. We uh Ryan, we appreciate you being on so much. This was a blast for us. We have to learn. Yeah, a true pleasure. Uh we we can't wait for the rest of the series.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:55

And I thank you guys, and thank you, Frozen Avery.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:59

Oh God, it'll be on frozen in the clips you get. All right, cheers. All right, thanks. Thanks, Ryan.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:05

Bye bye.