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CTP (S3ESepSpecial5) Trauma, Healing, and Human Connection

• Joseph M. Lenard | Christian Activist & Author in Politics

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CTP (S3ESepSpecial5) Trauma, Healing, and Human Connection
Linda Williams joins us to discuss her debut collection "The Beauty and the Hell of It and Other Stories," a powerful series exploring trauma, healing, and human connection through 14 short stories.
• Collection of 14 stories ranging from 10-15 pages each
• Title comes from a line about marriage—choosing your partner every day is "the beauty and the hell of it"
• Stories follow women through periods of trauma, mental illness, grief, and loss
• One story explores a sexual assault survivor's unexpected reaction to seeing her abuser again
• "Blind Date" offers lighter fare about a woman who pretends to be someone's date after he's stood up
• Final story uniquely written from male perspective, linked to another story from female perspective
• Book dedicated to a friend lost to suicide
• Writing provided catharsis for Williams while potentially helping readers process similar experiences
• Currently working on a literary novella and another collection centered on themes of betrayal
Find Linda Williams at www.lindawilliams.ca

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Constitutionalist Politics Podcast, aka CTP. I am your host, Joseph M Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. Ctp is your no-must, no-fuss, just me, you and occasional guest-type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. As Graham Norton will say, let's get on with the show. Hello everyone, Welcome to another episode of Christitutionalist Politics Podcast. Joining me today is Linda Williams, who doesn't know how to spell Linda. Or should I ask do you parents not know how to spell Linda with a Y instead of an I? And then you became an author. Your parents can't spell and you're an author, Linda Williams, with a Y.

Speaker 2:

You know, there's actually an interesting story about my name. They didn't discuss how to spell it and then they decided to take out life insurance about three weeks after I was born. And then, of course, they had to decide and somebody asked them is it with an I, Is it with a Y? So they thought fast.

Speaker 1:

And you said Linda Carter of Wonder Woman fame back when I used to love that series and so glad this is way off topic already, but so glad finally they corrected the error of their ways when they rebooted and finally she had a cameo in, I think, the third film. To me, when you do reboots like that, you owe the original that you're piggybacking off of at least a cameo 100%. So for those looking behind the scenes, I am holding up my notes the Beauty and the Hell of it and Other Stories a stunning debut story collection that echoes life's challenges, by Linda Williams Linda with a Y. Okay, I'll stop doing that now. Hopefully people have got it in their heads now. And of course, the video behind-the-scenes version. I'll have your name spelled along the bottom, but we needed to repeat it multiple times for the audio only crowd and the transcript reader crowd.

Speaker 2:

Thank you much.

Speaker 1:

So before we get to the book, let's do the proverbial. I like to joke. Cue the who song right. Who are you, who, who? Where were you born? Where were you raised? How much time in prison, for what crime, did you spend those sorts of things?

Speaker 2:

Well, the crimes are all ahead of me, it's the prison time, but you're not ruling any out.

Speaker 1:

That's good, nope.

Speaker 2:

I was born and raised in the eastern townships of Quebec and when I was 19 years old I moved to Alberta. I actually made the trip on a Greyhound bus suitcase, full of dreams, didn't know what I was getting into and, yeah, I moved around quite a bit in those first few years, all within Calgary, spent a stint in Edmonton, moved back down to Calgary, packed away some dreams, which included a lot of stories, I put in a drawer and when the pandemic happened I decided to pull those out and get a book together.

Speaker 1:

Perfect. I myself have a book how to Write a Book and Get it Published, hence Tips and Techniques, which is exactly aiding people who you know. I've got these stories, but how do I really get them into a book, right, the concept to the actual writing, to the publishing and the marketing thereafter, because a lot of people got stories but they need help taking those first steps.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely we get stuck right those first steps. Absolutely we get stuck right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, and even the biggest named writers can have a writer block at some point. It's normal. It's natural, and I talk about that in the book and that also to try to you know, pressuring yourself to write might only make it worse, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think everybody has a different process and part of it is just discovering what your process is right.

Speaker 1:

Exactly and how to write a book and get it published. Hence tips and techniques. I indeed write. I can't tell you exactly how to write something, but I could talk about some of the different methodologies and what works for some people and hopefully something I say helps you Exactly, because I know several people who indeed writing books with the aid of my book currently that'll be out later in the year or next year. So the beauty and the hell of it, and other stories. What was the? It's a Christian show. So the joke genesis of that.

Speaker 2:

So the genesis of the title is actually a line from the final story in the book and the line is about marriage and basically it's talking about how we don't just choose our partner when we say our vows. We're actually choosing them over and over every day, which is the beauty and the hell of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you're expecting all rainbows and lollipops, you shouldn't be getting married, right, and that's just not realistic. We are all human, frail and flawed. We all have our expectations, which sometimes aren't realistic, and things aren't always going to go our preferred way. And a marriage is indeed. I still wear my wedding ring, but I'm divorced. So been there, done that, understand right. So your book, then, is indeed about give and take and human condition and things of that nature.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. A lot of the stories follow women through periods of trauma, mental illness, challenges related to grief and loss. There's actually a lot of death in the book.

Speaker 1:

So hey, you morbid people. I'm laughing, that's a joke, but I guess maybe not really For the morbid folks. This is your kind of book, but seriously so, how many sub-stories are in there?

Speaker 2:

So there's 14 stories in the collection, ranging from about 2,500 to 5,000 words. So in the 10 to 15 page mark nice and short 5,000 words.

Speaker 1:

So then, the 10 to 15 page mark nice and short. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Right, because that's the other thing, I call it the Twitter attention span. Right, everybody give it to me short, book reading is on the decline, in fact. Right, kids in school want to use AI to cheat and give me the synopsis of the book that I could turn in, rather than me read it and actually write something about it. A lot of people don't.

Speaker 1:

My Terror Strikes book is only 250-ish pages, the actual story. For the same reason, I was on a show the other day talking about it and Savage, unfiltered, I co-host and Michael asked is there a chapter on like riots? Because we're dealing with LA riots. So I guess I better say, for the benefit of everyone hearing or seeing now or reading, we're recording on June 11th of 2025, despite whenever you may be hearing it. And no, I didn't put a chapter in about riots or cyber attacks or attacking the electrical grid and putting us all back several centuries, because the book would have got too big even for a novel. For today, everybody's short attention span and with the economies the way they've been, people seem to have less disposable income. Keeping the cost of the book down. Is your book on Amazon? I take it.

Speaker 2:

It is available on Amazon and through Barnes Noble on my publisher's website, if you're up here in Canada.

Speaker 1:

Uh-huh, uh-huh, and so what's the overall page length?

Speaker 2:

I think it comes just under 200. What do I have? I think it's like 187. Right, which?

Speaker 1:

again helps, then in these tougher times and people with less disposable income, your book will be far more affordable than some others' books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That wasn't your initial thought, though, when putting it together.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't my initial thought, but it's definitely a bonus. And even when we're talking about attention span, it's my own as a writer what I have the bandwidth for. There's a reason I write short stories and not novels.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in my how to Write a Book, get it Published, I talk about some people have short stories that are similar and really you can weave three or four short stories into one novel, tying them together as subplots to make one full novel, if that theme is somewhat the same through them. Yours sound like they have a lot of the same themes, but still, again, as you said, right, your method is not my method, which is not somebody else's method, and what you're comfortable writing is short stories. So that's what we got.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I think you're right about the themes being very close together. I think every writer has a topic that they gravitate towards and that's okay. Like there's a time when I tried to work against it. I thought I should have more range. You know some writers do that well, but you know, if there's an area where you shine and where you sing, you stick with that right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, right. Like to use Beyonce as an example, right? People ragging on her about the country album. Well, I come from a musical family and wrote and recorded music myself for a while but never got a record deal like my father was able to have father was able to have. So I get. Musicians, though, want to expand and spread out and do something. So people love either the Beyonce country album or they hate it. It's like way back when to Van Halen the third woman and Children first album and there was keyboards on there, some people who wanted to hear Running with the Devil with a different set of lyrics over and over and over again were upset, right. But Eddie said you know, I'm a musician, I want to do some other things too, not just the same old thing over and over.

Speaker 2:

We want to grow as artists right.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, but at the same time, as you said, not try to push something you're not comfortable doing. Precisely, yeah, precisely yeah. I mean some of the heavy subject here, like one of the stories is dealing with a woman that dealt with rape, so so that one comes.

Speaker 2:

I wish it didn't come from a bit of personal experience. But if you've been assaulted, whether it's sexually or physically, there's stages you go through. I think of grieving, of loss for a sense of safety that you don't get back. Don't get back. But at some point you often wonder what would I do if I ever saw this person again. So that's where the story came from, and it isn't actually a particularly triumphant story.

Speaker 1:

We often have we all want that happy ending yeah.

Speaker 2:

We want the happy ending and sometimes what we want is a revenge fantasy, and that doesn't happen in the story. It's actually a very quiet encounter in a way, because a trauma response that we don't talk about all the time is fawning right where you just kind of you're paralyzed, you freeze, so that's sort of what happens to her in the situation. It's not what she expected at all, and exploring that territory was just, it was healing. For me. It sounds like, oh, this would be really depressing to write this or it would make you really angry, but it was very cathartic and can be others also, which is part of the point why I say you have a story.

Speaker 1:

You might not think you may be good at being able to tell it, but it's like there's an audience for everything. The question is whether you find it and it can be helpful to people, that particular story. Helpful to someone who's dealt with assault or knows someone who has and may be uncomfortable around them because they don't know what to say or do or think in being their friend.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Absolutely, and that's really my hope for the story that it can resonate with people, provide comfort for them, maybe help people connect. As you said, people don't always know how to react right, so it can start conversations, too, around that how to react right, so it can start conversations too around that.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, I myself don't like talking about it but feel I need to talk about it. I am a suicide attempt survivor, so in my Terror Strikes book there is a suicide prevention sub-thread. Through it, Again, sharing in the hopes that not just cathartic for myself but hopefully can help others at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and that's another connection to the book. Actually it's dedicated to a friend I lost to suicide.

Speaker 1:

I see this is why I don't free script shows. Right, you came into the green room. I said the only one thing I'm going to joke about your name to get it sick in the people's heads. Beyond that, we're hitting record. We're going whatever rabbit hole opens opens, and indeed there we went Exactly. Yeah, so what other? And I don't want to give all the stories away. At the same time, though, we want to tease enough of it to make sure they want to buy the book, knowing it's not a traditional novel but a collection of short stories.

Speaker 2:

So there's some lighter stuff in the book too.

Speaker 1:

It's not all about death, be able to laugh at ourselves or we shouldn't be laughing at anybody else. So I'm glad to hear you say amongst the serious stuff there is also lighter stuff. Please go on, now that I've interrupted you.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. There's a story called Blind Date and it's about a woman who's recently lost her job and she's kind of struggling with her identity because of that, because she's kind of shaped herself around her work so a lot of people do, yeah, exactly. And she's coming to the restaurant where her brother works just to drop off the car keys. She's borrowed it and she notices this man who's allegedly waiting for a blind date, but he's been there for 25 minutes. He's clearly getting stood up and she makes a split second decision to take advantage of the situation. She takes the seat and she decides she's going to roll with it, see if she can carry it all the way to dessert, and the story just follows that evening.

Speaker 1:

Very interesting, very different, certainly not something that's normal fare. So very much indeed. An attractive addition, so much different than anything else. Although, when you said that about the blind date and the guy's been there for 25 minutes, so something obviously was up my mind immediately went to the Blumhouse horror film oh what, I can't remember the name of it. It's a one-word title where indeed a guy's at the restaurant, he's playing as if he's there for a blind date and in fact someone shows up and he's an ass because he else who's actually on a blind date to murder the person she's on the date with. I wish I could again, it was a Blumhouse film, it came out several months ago. I wish I could think. It's like an app, the name of it, I can't think of it, but anyway, someone looked up Because again, that's like wow, that's really different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then there's the final story is different to the other ones just in the sense that it's written from the perspective of a man. It is a little bit sad, but it's also the only story that's linked to another one in the book which is written from the perspective of the woman he's in love with.

Speaker 1:

So you kind of took the he said. She said principle. All the other ones are from a female perspective. So you thought let's do one from the other perspective.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. It's a bit of a bonus story and I'm not sure if I write as strongly from the perspective of a man as a woman. We'll see what people say.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, that's understandable. Right, that's understandable. Okay, at any rate, my shows don't go very long. So do you have a website yourself where people can find you? I certainly do. I have a landing page at wwwlindawilliamsca Of course, the ca, because you're in Canada. Most countries have an extension based on the country, whereas the US, with so many domains, we've got a whole bunch of other weird extensions. I was hoping, when my Terror Strikes came out, to do a TerrorStrikeslook site. But that extension being a former IT guy, I pay attention to all that While it's been talked about coming out for years, it still ain't there and it's like that seems like something that there should be a dot book, because even though people are reading us with self-publishing, it seems that more and more and more books are on the market, so that's a perfect extension. So when I'm thinking of any book name, a dot book should be there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's so interesting you work in IT, so does my husband.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I used to. I'm on disability now, but yeah, yeah, small world, as they say, right? Yeah, I loved working in IT, mickey, your publicist. I'm talking with a few people that Mickey helps publicize their work. I just talked with Allison McBain the other day about AI, and that hasn't aired yet either. It'll likely air before the one with you, though, so people will be able to look back to that. I saw that AI stuff coming years ago and yet the law, of course, is now in a, is all messed up and people in a panic and all kinds of cases in court, because the laws were never changed to be able to deal with the issues of copyright and plagiarism and fair use and all that stuff. So that leads to an obvious question you didn't use AI to cheat, right? You actually wrote everything in your stories, yes, Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And oh, ai terrifies me it's coming for us. I don't think we have a choice about whether it's going to happen. We crossed that exit a long time ago.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that lexicon is crossed and you can't put the paste back in the tube, as the saying goes Exactly yeah, but I really do feel for the writers who've had their work ripped off right.

Speaker 2:

That's oh, it just makes me so angry and that's why I don't use it. Right, you know, you have to remember where it's coming from.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. In some cases you can't trust what it's giving. The terms of service may say you're using us, you can claim it as your own, but you don't know what they've lifted without a proper accreditation and attribution and you're the one on the hook if something in there lands up being plagiarized from something and someone wants to raise a stink about it. Exactly, someone want to raise a stink about it, exactly. Yeah, I didn't again unscripted, right? I sure didn't plan on talking about AI with you, but there's that connection with me and your husband, both IT, me being former, so it was a logical question to ask, and something I do go into how to write a book and get it published. Don't cheat. You're the one on the hook for the fraud or the copyright or plagiarism violations, should they occur.

Speaker 1:

Not to say I don't use AI to like, create an image. Oh, give me an image with this and that and the other thing, but then I put underneath generated by Galaxy AI, you've got to cover yourself. But these kids just feel like, well, I typed in the prompt, I get to use whatever it gives me as my own. No, life don't work that way. Exactly, do you have something else in the works now coming?

Speaker 2:

I do have a couple of things on the go One thing that looks like it's turning into a literary novella, which is always again short, and then I'm working on another collection of stories centering around themes of betrayal, so how we betray ourselves, each other, the earth, and so on.

Speaker 1:

Uh-huh yeah, some people are good at lying, even to themselves. Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly yeah.

Speaker 2:

I think those might be the biggest lies we tell right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Ones, we sucker ourselves into believing yes, exactly, okay. So thank you, linda, with a Y Williams, for coming on today. Glad you came, take care, have a good night. Thank you so much. It's been. You came, take care. Have a good night.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure Take care.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for having tuned in for Krista Tuchel's Politics Show. If you haven't already, please check out my primary internationally available book, terror Strikes, coming soon to a city near you, available anywhere books are sold. If you have locally run bookstores still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time the fancy high production items will come. But for now, for starters, it's just you, as a very appreciated listener by me. All substance, no fluff, just straight to key discussion points. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian, us constitutionalist lens. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care, god bless.

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