Put Your Anger in Your Art (with Joe Chianakas)

In this episode, we talk with author Joe Chianakas to discuss his journey as a writer, the impact of storytelling, and the importance of diverse perspectives. Joe shares insights on his creative process, his emphasis on horror as a genre to tackle social issues, and the inspiration behind his works, including the 'Unveiling Aiden' series and 'Darkness Calls.' The conversation also delves into the healing power of fiction and offers advice for those looking to make a positive impact in their communities. 

00:00 Welcome to the Liberation is Lit Podcast

00:18 Meet Joe Chianakas: Journey of a Storyteller

02:53 The Writing Process: Consistency and Practice

04:44 Exploring Queer Representation in Fiction

07:53 Darkness Calls: Inspirations and Themes

21:33 Upcoming Projects and Writing Insights

27:06 Advice for Making a Positive Impact

30:36 Where to Find Joe Chianakas and Conclusion

Books by Joe

Darkness Calls

Singlets and Secrets

Pride and Persistence

Where to Find Joe

Facebook

Instagram

https://joechianakas.weebly.com

Thank you for being part of the Liberation is Lit podcast! If you have stories to share, want to suggest topics, or just want to connect, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @liberationislit or visit our website at liberationislit.com. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review! Remember, your voice matters, and together, through the lens of stories, we're making a difference in the world.

Transcript

0:06

Hey y'all. Welcome to the Liberation is Lit Podcast. For the power of storytelling, use the force of social change. I'm your host, Tayler Simon, and in this podcast we believe in the profound impact of stories. And I am so excited to be here with author Joe Chianakas and we're gonna talk about horror and books, and. So let's get into it. Hi Joe. How are you? I am Great, Tayler. Thank you for having me here. I love what you do. This is a podcast that is so important and thank you for sharing stories like mine. Appreciate Yes. Yes. And literally, this is why I wanted to start the podcast is because I want to talk about the stories. I feel I, well, I started, liberation is Lit because. I wanted to highlight the stories that you never hear about. You only hear about one universal experience, so I wanted to share diverse perspectives and stories. And to start off our conversation today, can you tell us about your journey as a writer and storyteller and author? Oh sure. I joke, I've been writing since the day I could hold a pencil, you know? And when I was in junior high, I, I was the geek who loved the Scholastic book Fair, you know, where you could get all those books to take home. So I had all the Christopher Pikes and RL Steins and of course all that good stuff. And, and when I finished the books that I had for the weekend, I would just start writing my own back of the book blurbs as a little kid. Just trying, you know, what. What crazy story could I come up with? And it was just, it's fun. It's just fun to create, to escape, to entertain. I think I always wanted to be part of the art that inspired me. It's like if something inspires me, it's like, oh, I want to do that for someone too. You know? I think that was always, I. motivation. So I wrote a lot of short stories in high school and college, and then into my adulthood. I, I started thinking, I'm gonna write a novel, I'm gonna do it. And you know, you start one. Yeah. That didn't take off 10 manuscripts, 10 ideas later, oh, is this ever gonna happen? And then, you know, when the story is right, it will happen. So I always want to tell writers out there, be patient with yourself too. The story will come to you. I was, it was about 10, 11 years ago that I sat down and got my first novel out. And ever since then, I just can't stop. It's like you turned on a fountain that you can't ever shut off. And now I, I mean, I am literally depressed on days I don't get to write. And I've been publishing and writing now for about a decade, with about a dozen different types of books out there. I love that. I definitely understand, once you publish one, you just keep, keep going. I'm on my fourth self-published book. Yeah, so I, and, and I'm trying to develop my own writing practice and I've done a couple of readings for my newest book, black Madonna, and I got both, both times I got the question of like, how do you. Write consistently or have a consistent writing practice. And I definitely wanna ask you that 'cause of the statement you made about like being depressed when you can't write. So I wanna ask about kind of like your writing practice and how you come up with the stories and why do you think they're important to share? Sure. Yeah. I think maybe part of the, the, when I get sad is, is probably because I just have too much other work to do. Too, too, you know, so there are probably multiple factors. It's like, oh, I don't have any time for this today, which is also sad for me. My, my strategy these days, I like to make a personal goal of 1000 words, a sitting, and I try to force my butt in a chair to write at least three to four days a week, if not more. And then I that. So that's when I'm doing a new manuscript, I'll try to get at least four to, you know, 4,000 words a week is not so bad. And if you think about, especially young adult fiction, 70 to 90,000 words, you can get that done in 70 to 90 sits. That's really not that overwhelming to me. I mean, it used to be once upon a time you're like, oh my gosh. Gonna take forever. I'm like, yeah, but just like everything else, the time's going to pass anyway. So if you create that discipline to sit down a few days a week, you're gonna look back on the last few months and think, oh my gosh, this is so cool. Look what I've got done. And I know, like me, believe me, there are many years I look back on the last few months and think, oh, I've done nothing. Oh no. And so that's sort of been the fire to help me stay motivated. And organized. I write L-G-B-T-Q fiction. I also love the horror genre, so I love my spooky stuff. And I, and I, and I alternate between those two worlds. So you, I'll take about six months out of the year to focus on my current series, which is my unveiling Aiden series. Singlets and secrets, and pride and persistence are the two books that are out there. In short, it's my Queer Karate Kid story. It is so much fun, but it is soul full of heart and representation. So like, even there, I could tell you like my, one of my, kind of connecting back to an earlier question, you know, I love stories, I love entertainment. I want to see more and more representation, not less, more, you know, and we've just touched the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, right? So like you can picture. Little Joe at six years old watching the Karate Kid movie and starting that and doing that for on repeat probably every year for the next 40 years of his life. Right. And, and then you see continuations. We live in a world of reboots and recoils, and you see a show like Cobra Kai, which to be honest with you, I think has fantastic writing. It's some of the. Best character development I've ever seen on tv. It blew my mind away. Of course, I'm, I'm biased'cause I'm a huge karate kid fan. Right. But the point also is at no, I, I mean, no offense to the Cobra Kai team, but there weren't, there wasn't really any good queer representation in the show. A side character who had, you know, maybe a line or two about it. But it was, I think that those are moments to say. don't, you don't even have to make it a coming out story. You just have one of your leads be a queer hero that we all, at least readers like me, would love to see. So that sparked the idea behind singlets and secrets and pride and persistence. I'm gonna write a queer karate kid story. I'm gonna have a hero on top. I'm gonna represent the people who need to be represented, and I'm gonna celebrate that community. I also take what angers me about the world. I put it into my art. I really think it's important. I mean, I'm speaking to the choir, but you've got to do something with the stuff that makes you feel down or makes you feel enraged. Whatever's going on. And isn't there something every single day I feel like every single day I'm like, well, I've got another plot point for this story.'cause. I am trying to a, put it into the art to kind of escape from what's happening in reality, but also to make sense of it. And when I can do that in a story, it feels really healing and therapeutic. And then I get to take those stories now. And for the last couple of years, I, I just spent 10 Saturdays in a row doing different book events and, and eight or nine of them were all pride events. And, and so I've been speaking and traveling and talking to. LGBTQ community and our allies. And what a wonderful, it's just, don't, you know, everybody who's kind of got that dream like me, wants to write and publish a book and somehow that dream just blew up into, I don't wanna just be on a bookshelf now. I wanna be in my community contributing, sharing and doing what I can to lift up other voices. Too. And so that's been, that's just been remarkable. I do that about six months a year, and then I, and I turn the page and then I go into my spooky stuff. But even though my spooky stuff might not have all the same themes and plot points, it still tackles a lot of these issues. When people ask me, why do you like scary stuff? there enough scary stuff going on in the world? Yes, and once again, I escape that scary stuff in my stories, so I get a little break from it, but I also then try to make sense of it in my newest release. Darkness Calls. The Monster, of course, can do terrible, terrible things. I can tell you more about the story later, but it's, but one of my ideas was also to create a monster with the theme that. Evil isn't just about doing bad. Evil is about getting good people to do bad things or getting good people to do nothing. And I see that. We see that right now. I don't wanna get too fired up about it, but I'm like, okay, I'm gonna put that into a story. And I hope when people are reading it, they, they say, oh, wow, okay. So when I see this stuff going on. Maybe I should actually say something about it as opposed to just walking them around my, you know, my house commenting to myself under my breath. You know what I mean? So those are all, that's kind of a big answer. Sorry. But those are all my motivations. I think that tie into my most recent work and, and why I, why I love doing what I do. I. And I really love using the genre horror as a vehicle to give that social commentary. And I really liked what you said about evils not just doing horrible things to people, but getting good people to do horrible things and not stop the horrible things too. And, we'll think that is so powerful. And we see, I'll admit at the time of this recording, I have not seen sinners yet, but we see the rise of sin in horror being used as both entertainment, but also social commentary. And I think that's really powerful. And so I kind of wanna explore a little bit deeper into your, your answer just now about why, or why horror as like a vehicle to kind of put your anger into your art. Yeah, it's the perfect genre for it because if you wanna create a scary story, whether that's a literal jump scare, a psychological scare, or whatever it is. gotta create the villain. I mean, that's writing 1 0 1. Who is your villain? What's the, what's the rival, the enemy, the obstacle that, that your characters are gonna have to overcome? And if you want for that, just look around in the world to see what's happening. So like if I, for example, I have a character in my story, her name is Fi. one of my favorite characters. She is not fully human. All right? This is speculative fiction. So I get to have a little bit of fun with it, right? But she is kind of half human. She, I mean, I should say she's a hundred percent human, but she's been changed by the monster in her interactions with this supernatural force, and so she's perceived as different by everybody else around her. I'm trying to, you know, without, without labeling it and calling it, as directly as I am right now about to do with you. This is meant to be a metaphor, I think is what for what's happening with our transgender community. I want to, I wanted to create a character who looks different, that people don't necessarily understand. They don't understand why she is who she is, and use that as a tool of discussion, not to lecture, not to say here's exactly how you handle every single situation where you encounter a person like this, but rather to kind of show the pain that that person might feel when people do react to them poorly and the joy they get when someone includes them and sees them for who they are without just. Insulting their appearance or their identity in some way. So that's a theme in so many different types of stories. I mean, not just mine, of course, but I think that's, that's one of the reasons why I think it's such a good vehicle, is you can take an issue like the way the transgender community is being treated or any marginalized community. If you make them kind of your main characters in a story fighting a sense of evil, it just, it adds layer upon layer to the threats that these characters face. You know, they also tell writers, I love saying this, the thing that I hated the most as a student was the idea that every story's already been told. I had a creative writing teacher who was real inspiring and told us that, and I thought, ugh, you know, thank you, thank you for, thank you for that motivation today. So we should just all give up, right? Is that what you're saying? Or you don't want any papers to grade? I'm not sure, my perspective, 'cause I'm, I'm a full-time teacher, so the, so teaching is, is my number one passion with writing write. Side by side or a close number two. But I tell my students not every, yeah, sure. A lot of, almost every story has been told. If you want to say that. I'm not gonna argue with you, but I will tell you this. Not every story's been told through your. Point of view, not through your perspective. So go take the queer Karate Kid story, take a monster in the woods story that's told through a queer point of view, and you're going to get something fresh and wonderful. And that's the beauty of, of just different perspectives in any genre, I think too. And I also love what you said about taking that perspective as the main character. And I feel like that is the crux of why stories and reading and storytelling really builds that empathy skills because you're put in a position where you're rooting for somebody. And when it's told through the point of view of from the stories that we don't see a lot, you get to put yourself in that perspective of rooting for someone. Who, you may not think about their perspective a lot. You are put in the position where you get to see the world and the obstacles they face through their lens, and that is incredible for empathy building. So tell us a little bit more about Darkness Calls and, that story that you're, you're telling there. Oh, I love darkness calls so much. It's got so many different unique inspirations. It's been a story that was building in my mind for years, so it's definitely probably the one I've worked the longest on. And I'll tell you maybe. Let me, let me give you the top two, maybe top three inspirations. But my first story, I grew up near the biggest cemetery in the state of Illinois where I live. It's a huge cemetery. Like it literally got lost there so many times as a kid, to the point of like tears, like, oh my God, I'm never gonna get home. I mean, and, and yet those are some of my favorite memories. Now, looking back, I was like, oh, you remember that great time getting lost in the cemetery and thinking, you know. It's the end. And then, you know, years go by and you take your friends through it and you have all these journeys and you create these stories. I remember one adventure in particular as a child, we got lost. My childhood friends and I, we weren't supposed to be there. We lied to our parents of course, and we stumbled there. There were all these, trails and huge amount of woods all surrounding the sedentary too. But we got lost in the woods and we stumbled upon upon something. That to me is like a, I dunno, maybe I was. 9, 10, 11 years old. It was the most magical thing in the world. I don't wanna tell you what it is yet because, because it's part of the story, but I, we, we came across this thing that was like, oh my God, is this really like, you know, 10 minutes from my house that I never knew this, this, this thing existed this whole time. Hidden in the cemetery and it became this sort of bridge to ter like story where this, not only do we have the physical thing that I'm, I, I'm being ambiguous about, but we created stories around it and it was wonderful. Well, fast forward 20, 30 years, you, I'm an adult. I've got a full-time job. I've forgotten about these childhood mysteries and I love the thought. One of the questions was this, what if one, what if your childhood secrets came back, not just to haunt you. But to kill, I mean, I wanted to go as dark and as, and as and as fun as possible in this, in this particular adventure. So as an adult, I decided I'm gonna try to find this thing that I thought I found as a kid, because I started questioning my own memory too. Did I make it up? You know how we do sometimes? Was that even real? Did I watch a movie and think it happened to me? I have maybe, to be honest with you, those were the, the honest reactions that I had. So my husband got me a bike for my birthday when I was like, I don't know. 35, 36 years. A few years ago, we'll just say a few years ago. And I hadn't biked in forever and so I took the bike and I went through the cemetery and right then and there, that itself felt like magic. When was the think about someone who is, or, I like the question, when's the last time you did something for the last time? Without realizing it. Think about a parent dropping their kid off to school, not realizing that's gonna be the last time they ever have to drive them and drop them off. Or think about putting your bike away at the end of a summer vacation and it's the last time you're ever gonna get that bike out.'cause the next year. Life's gonna take you in a different direction. I think those are sad and sweet and nostalgic. And so those, these are all themes that play into darkness calls. So I'm starting riding my, my bike. I'm on the cemetery. I'm feeling this childhood magic that I hadn't felt in years and I thought, I'm gonna find this thing I spent, I kid you, not a year, searching, and I'm not exaggerating. This is a huge cemetery too. Every little corner I could and I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it. I thought I made it up. I must have made it up until about a year later when I saw these railroad tracks and I thought, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I started following the railroad tracks. Out of the cemetery. There's a wooden trail near the railroad tracks. I followed the wooden trail and there it is. There's the secret. In darkness calls my monster in the woods Guards a secret. That secret is this thing I'm describing to you. So I'm half tempted to reveal it and I'm half tempted not to 'cause you. That way people listening can, can pick up the book and, and, and discover what this secret is. Did I really find this as a child and rediscover it as an adult? The answer is yes, 100% it exists. One day I'm gonna do it. TikTok or something over there. I think it's like, look, this thing that's in the book, it's real. I just, it's, it's hidden. It's, it's, \ it's, it's absurd. It's wonderful. It's, it's, but it's real. Now I add a supernatural twist to it, of course, which isn't real, obviously, but that created sort of the fun story. So I, I tie, I dive into. Childhood secrets, haunted nostalgia, the things that scared us as a kid, and yet the things that we long for and miss at the same time. That's what I think of as haunted nostalgia. So there's a great big layer of that throughout the story. So a lot of magical lore and atmospheric haunts. It's all there. That's one big motivation. The other big one is my mom passing away, you know, best person in my life, right? My mom got lung cancer and passed away in 2016. She was too young to pass away. It was way before her time, and it was, it was the worst year of my life. Now, my mom and I also shared a, a jean, a bond over the horror genre. She let me watch the movies when I was a little kid, and I mean, even as an adult, like I think the last movie I took a, this. Took her to see it in theaters before her passing was the, I think the second Conjuring movie. And she loved it so much and she screamed and she had the best time and, and she died a couple months later. But again, not to be sad on anybody, but that also reminds me of how wonderful this genre is to get out of your head for a couple of hours and just scream and jump and have fun. When she passed away, I wanted to write this book as a tribute. So on one hand it's meant to, like, I wanted, I, I thought to myself, how would I scare my mom who loves all these things so much? What would I do to really scare her and at the, and also celebrate her? The monster in many ways is also a metaphor of cancer, A a a a monster. I wanted a monster that can attack anyone for any reason at any time, and there's nothing you can do about it. not really. Right? And that to me was what happened to my mom. And there was just, you know, we, we fought it as much as we could, but ultimately, you know, the nature wins in this particular case. So there's also a character, his name is Teddy in this story, and his mom, I have four main points of view, and Teddy's one of them. But Teddy's mom's passing away, or dying of cancer in the story. And, I'm gonna get to do in fiction what I wasn't able to do in. Reality. And so I hope when anyone reads this story, they not only get some of these haunted childhood wonderful things of nostalgia and magic, but they see something with a lot of heart too, that it's like we all can relate to losing someone of the. Thought of losing someone and it's something that we're all gonna have to, to do. One of my characters at one point responds to a character who's going through this and says, I, I know what you're going through. Only those who have experienced loss can speak its language and can see what you're going through. And you know, it's like that's what I really wanted to get into is how do we grieve? How do we understand loss? What is the purpose and the meaning of life? All the big questions that we all love to tackle at times are in this wonderful monster in the Woods Mystery. And those were sort of my two main inspirations. My childhood adventures in the passing of my mom kind of created what became this, this big adventure through, haunted woods and all sorts of, all sorts of different things like that. O. Yes. And I, that's why people are always like, oh, why do you include fiction books when. You're including lists of books to teach people about things, and I'm like, fiction is one of the best ways to teach us about things. It's the best way for us as humans to explore possibilities that we can't do in reality. So I, that's why I love the power of fiction, just how. You use storytelling as a vehicle for healing your own personal story, but also hoping other people get that message as well, so I love that so much. What are some of your upcoming projects since you know, you write a thousand words at every sitting. Well, you know, and then by the way, back to the writing process, I will say once I get that draft done, though, it goes away for a month. Work on something else, pull it back out. And then I go through the editing process. So I like taking a couple months where I'm just editing too, so it's not always trying to crank out a thousand words. I just finished edits yesterday for, fearless and Fabulous, which is my favorite title yet, fearless and Fabulous is book. Three in the unveiling Aiden series. So it follows Aiden throughout high school. Aiden's a queer teenager in book one and singles and Secrets. It kind of starts off with he's been bullied. He joins the wrestling team to get tough. You know, he wants to learn how, you know, he just wants to build some confidence and some strength in himself. Two things happen. He follows, for the wrestling captain and the wrestling team's, a bunch of homophobic bullies. So we've got that as our starting point for the story. The wrestling captain and him are, it is gonna be, it's a beautiful friends to rivals to will They, won't they? Is he even like me? I'm, you know, and I really, without spoiling anything, I know that some. We understand some tropes and I think hope to have some come, you know, true. This is the end of book one of Singles and Secrets. I always tell people if you're not cheering and crying by the end, I, we just won't be friends. All right. I mean, it's got this ending that I hope will just make you feel, but you're gonna go through some stuff to get there. I, I've gotten emails that thank you for helping me. heal when I didn't realize I still had parts of myself that needed to be healed from my past trauma. You know, it was, it's that sort of story. So Aiden ultimately quits his wrestling team. He finds a surprising mentor in his English teacher, Mr. Samuels. It's gotta be an English teacher, right? Of course. And Mr. Samuels also knows karate. So that's my Mr. Miyaki like character. He teaches Aiden Karate. Behind the scenes, my homophobic wrestlers decide, oh, or I like to phrase it this way. Small minds have big egos. Right. Small minds have big egos. I, yes, I see, I see that on TV almost every day, but I won't say who. Anyway, small minds have big egos and the wrestlers challenge the, new karate kid and this new club to a battle of sorts, and it's a lot of fun, but it's really a story of love overcoming. Hate. That's the point of the story, but I wanna follow it. Throughout high school, book two, I introduced a transgender black belt, and I have a lot of, I have a lot of fun just setting up twists and, and I, I am, I am a twist writer. It doesn't matter what book you pick up from me. I love RL Stein's Format, right? Every book has three parts. Introduction The Body. And the twist. Alright, so when you get into my stuff, you're gonna have a lot of fun.'cause I'm gonna try to surprise you in everything I do. But you know, like I have this scene where without spoiling too much, in the second book, one of the things that we, I decided to do was to try to tackle the sense of equality and transgender athletes in sports and all of that. So the. The organizer of a, they, they set up a mixed martial arts tournament in book two and my organizer's kind of a weird guy and a bad guy overall I would say. But I'm working with him a lot trying to see growth in all my characters. But he decides you want equality, everybody fights, everybody, men, women, trans I don't care. And so I, I'm like, all right, let's do this. Well, my main character, Aiden, has an opportunity, to fight and to win a big prize, and he gets pinned against his best friend who's a girl. And he decides, he says, this is just one of several examples that popped in my head. Sorry, but I just love this example.'cause he goes, I'm not fighting you. There's just no way I would fight you. then my transgender woman gets in the ring and he does fight, and later he goes, why didn't I have a, why didn't I, why didn't I feel the same way with that? And he is gonna struggle with that. I want my main character to have some flaws and to ask some questions and have some struggles. And so we're gonna, we're gonna tackle these themes while dealing with romance and action and love and it's just so much fun. And that's book two, book two. I really try to get into, some of the issues affecting our transgender community in particular, and it's called Pride and Persistence. And my theme couldn't have been more timely. What happens when we fall? We rise. It is a book about what happens when our community gets knocked down because I am coming, you know, I mean, you can't write a story without having obstacles. Book two throws a lot of obstacles at our character's way, and it sucks, but that's life sometimes too. And I wanna show at the end that we can get back up. So my goal was to make that. Third book in the series, the most joyful, a celebratory book, a book where we can show that we heal. Oh gosh, I've got some big battles and some epic rivalries, and it's the biggest thing I've written yet, but I, I, I really worked on the ending just yesterday, so it's why it's so fresh in my mind. And my goal is to take, I wanna stop fighting the people who should be our friends. I see that in our political divide in our communities, in my own neighborhood, in my classroom. It's like, we gotta stop fighting the people who should be our friends? How do we do that? Book three is going to tackle that. Fearless and Fabulous comes out May, 2026. But the first two books are out now, so I hope that that sounds interesting to anyone. You jump right in to that series 'cause it's a lot of fun. And I should also say Darkness Calls is a, is a two-parter. One a book, one is available now. I al the second book is already finished. I'm hoping that'll be out by next Halloween, but so I have been working on that one as well. Oh my gosh. Busy. Busy. But I love it. I love it so much and I'm so excited to dig into this series, and I will make sure to link all of the books in the show notes so you can make sure to get them. And my last question for you is what I ask all my guests, what advice would you offer listeners who wanna make a positive impact in their communities? Oh my goodness. Here's the thing. Number one, I, I, I look at, I'm gonna say at least two things, maybe three. But number one, I think you've got, we gotta start treating people the way they want to be treated. I. like to twist that word around. Now that comes, that's not my idea. It's a communication lesson. All right. But we, we've all been grown, brought up. A lot of us have been brought up in Western culture on the golden rule, treat others the way you wanna be treated. And that's fine. I'm not here to criticize that, but you brought up, you said this earlier yourself about empathy. I think the way we start to really becoming more empathetic towards others is it's not just how would Joe react in this situation. It's how would Tayler react in this situation? And then if you tell me how you. Feel or what you experience my goal is to believe you. Hear too often about, oh, well you're just making it. You shouldn't be scared. This isn't gonna happen to you. Why would you be scared? No, be quiet if someone in a, especially in a marginalized community, is telling you, I'm scared about what's going on and happening here. Listen. to them. Treat them the way they want to be treated, and I think if we can start listening to each other and communicating in that way, we learn a lot. My second is. this comes from kind of a classroom idea, if you ever catch yourself or hear someone else, I, I hear it all the time. don't understand this group, but I. And then they got a comment to say, alright, I hear it a lot with like the L-G-B-T-Q community, but you know, it can be applied to all sorts of different things. I don't understand this group, but, well, let's just stop right there.'cause if you're going to use that word, but what follows is probably not a good thing. Right. I don't understand this group, but I don't, I don't know why you would ever, you know, that type of thing. It, it's the, I'm not racist, but like, if you ever hear that right, I, you know, if I hear that, but I was like, stop. I don't wanna hear what you're about to say. I don't think anyway. Right. So I tell people, if you genuinely don't understand. Listen to yourself, stop. Go to the source. And that's the biggest thing is know when you don't understand something and then go to the source. I am not going to talk to people about what I think the transgender community I. Is or needs or their issues. I'm going to quote you what my transgender friends have told me. I'm going to quote the source and when I don't understand something, I'm going to the source. Tell me about your experience. How do you feel? I think that the biggest problem I have in politics in the world today is that the people who aren't. People or politicians legislate things legislate things about communities to which they don't belong which they don't understand, right? So we've got to make sure that the people who are actually being affected have a voice. And if you're like me now, look, I, I have a lot of. Privilege on my end. I'm a cisgender white male. I still get hate. And I tell people if I get hate, think about what some of my transgender friends get. Think about transgender people of color and we've got to have empathy and understanding and treat people the way they wanna be treated. Learn to listen with the goal of understanding. And that's sort of my biggest thing that I would say, I think the top of my head anyway. Yes. Oh my gosh. This conversation has been so great and I feel like. Sit and write after this. Yes. So, yes. And again, I'm gonna link all of the books that we talked about in the show notes, but where can listeners find you and your work and keep up with all your new releases? Sure. So Joe Chianakas is not necessarily an easy name to spell. I know, but you can Google singles and secrets or pride and persistence or my name, but my website is, uh, besides my name, you could go, you can get to it by Fright Fest four d. Dot com cheesy name, but it's there's a long story I won't get into today, but it relates to an older scary story I wrote. I wrote, but I kept the website. Fright Fest four d.com. I'll take you right to all my stuff. I'm on Amazon. You can get book these wherever books are sold. I encourage, and I wanna say this, i, I just said the A word, but I'm like, support your local bookstores. Alright? Get to your local bookstore. Order from them. I'm on bookshop.org. If you are, if you're a listener and you've never heard of bookshop.org, you can order anything through them, like you would through Amazon, get it delivered to you. But the difference is bookshop supports your local book sellers. So you can select the bookstore that gets the commission. So anyway, go to wherever you prefer to buy books. Make it easy for yourself, of course. But you can. Pretty much get my stuff wherever books are sold and I'm on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, so, please feel free to look me up there too. Yes, and I will link the website and all of the social media, in the show notes as well. And so thank you so much Joe, for such an amazing conversation. And thank you listeners for being a part of the Liberation is Lit Podcast. If you have stories you wanna share or wanna suggest topics or just wanna connect with us, you can find us at Instagram. Facebook and TikTok at Liberationist Lit or our website, liberationislit.com. You enjoyed the episode. Please consider leaving a review. And remember, your voice matters. Then through the lens of stories, we're gonna make a difference in the world. Until next time.