“He Was Bullied and Overweight. Then Wrote the Book ‘The Treehouse Avengers’ That Changed Everything”

 Kali Kat Tap Talks show sits down with Canadian author John Leister to uncover the story behind his book The Treehouse Avengers. What begins as a conversation about writing quickly turns into a moving discussion about bullying, addiction, faith, resilience and the life-changing power of storytelling. Before becoming a published author, John Leister struggled to find his place in the world. As a young boy growing up overweight and feeling different from the other kids around him, he became a frequent target of bullying. Those early experiences left lasting emotional scars and shaped how he viewed himself for many years. Instead of feeling accepted, John often felt invisible. As he got older, the emotional weight of those experiences followed him into adulthood. He has openly shared how he struggled with sugar addiction, which became a way to cope with stress and emotional pain. Like many people facing personal battles, he eventually reached a point where he realized something needed to change. That turning point came when he discovered the power of writing. What started as a creative outlet soon became something much deeper. Writing allowed John to reflect on the hardships he had experienced and transform painful memories into meaningful stories that resonate with readers. One of the most powerful results of that journey is his book The Treehouse Avengers. The story follows a young boy named Clint Wagner growing up in 1970s New York City. Clint struggles with bullying, loneliness and a difficult home life while desperately wanting to belong. When he discovers a neighborhood group known as the Treehouse Avengers, he sees an opportunity to prove himself and finally find acceptance. Readers connect with the story because it reflects something universal: the human desire to belong and the courage it takes to overcome rejection. During this episode, John shares how many of the emotions in the book were shaped by his own life experiences. At one point in the interview, the memories of those early struggles became so emotional that the conversation had to pause while he regained his composure. It was a powerful reminder that behind every book is a human story filled with real pain, growth and transformation. John also discusses how faith and perseverance helped him rebuild his life and discover a sense of purpose through writing. Today he is the author of more than twenty books, including his Lee Hacklyn private investigator series. Kali Kat Tap Talks goes behind the scenes with authors, entrepreneurs, creators and individuals who have overcome adversity to build meaningful lives. These conversations reveal the raw truth behind success and the courage it takes to keep moving forward. John Leister’s journey is proof that the challenges we face can sometimes become the very foundation for the life we were meant to build. If you have ever struggled with bullying, self doubt, addiction or finding your purpose, this conversation will resonate deeply. Sometimes the most powerful stories are the ones that remind us it’s never too late to start again.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, this is Cali CatTap Talks, and I have a guest. His name is John. So how do you pronounce your last name, John?

SPEAKER_02 0:10

You can pronounce it anytime you like, any way you want it to, but my dad always, who's kind of a pain in the neck about this kind of stuff, he was very fussy. It's pronounced Leicester. Leicester like Leicester, like Leicester Square. Like Leicester Square. Jolly old England. I'm very square.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Some will say you're not square. You're not square.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Monday to Friday.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

What about Saturday and Sunday? You're like circled?

SPEAKER_02 0:33

I like I like your beer sign in the background. I'm Canadian, so you know Canadians were very famous for our beer.

unknown 0:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

I think that's I think that's one thing. I think Americans do most things better than Canadians do, generally speaking. But I think there's one thing we do better, and that's beer. I'm sorry, but America. Our beer is like 8%, honey.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

We've got some stronger beers now.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Once it gets you there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

8%, but you know, you just some of us have we have to, you know, watch what you drink because you get kind of a little buzzed. You know, if you drink all the time, then there's an issue. So just sip it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

You know, I think our vices are okay as long as we control them and they don't control us.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, that's very true. But we got good beer. We've got good beer and we've got good moonshine. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

I had uh I had moonshine the night I graduated high school in 1983. I think it was 100%. It's a wonder I'm still alive. I remember one sip and it's just like upside down. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Alright. So tell tell us your story. I want to go behind the scenes with you. You have an interesting background. Um you write a lot of books. And just because you you live at what you are writing, so go ahead and tell the hindsight of your story.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Thank you so much. Well, I live in Vancouver, BC. I'm uh 60 years old, I'll be 61 this year. And I grew up in the 1970s. I was a comic book nerd. And you know, Canadian boys, we all love hockey, but I was an exception. I just wasn't into sports. I was I was ahead of my time. I think it's more socially acceptable to be a nerd these days. I mean, hell, a lot of nerds practically uh rule the world. But back in my day, if you liked Star Trek and comic books and sci-fi and all the nerdy stuff, you were somewhat pried. And I remember feeling sometimes like I was gonna get cast out, like like Thor getting kicked out of Asgard. And so I wanted to be a comic book artist, and unfortunately got lazy and I gave that up. And then after high school, I tried acting. Um, I don't know how old you are, but there was a Western in the 1960s called The Big Valley, and one of the stars of that show, Peter Breck, he came to Vancouver and he started an acting school called the Breck Academy. And this is in the 1980s, and that was when the film and TV industry was really booming. Steve J. Canal, who was a very prolific TV producer, did a lot of shows. So, of course, in later years we had Supergirl and The Flash and Arrow Man X-Files, which was shot in Vancouver. So I tried acting. You know, I I was uh uh I had an agent and I was going to auditions and I was doing some writing back then too. I was writing scenes for my scene partners and I was uh writing my own monologues, and I never got the part, I never got casted in anything. I did a lot of extra work. I was an extra in Rocky IV. I was a Rocky IV, believe it or not, for one day. I actually got to see the fight at the Agridome between uh Adam Drago and Rocky. I actually got to see I know that was an amazing experience. I lived my whole life over again just to have that experience. And so um Richard Dreyfus came to our school. He was filming Stake Out at the time with Emilio Estevez. I don't know how old you are, probably before your time. And there was another actor, Gene Hackman, who was a huge actor back in the day. He uh he was filming Narrow Margin at the time he came to school. So that was an amazing experience, but unfortunately I developed psoriasis. And I don't know if you know what that is. I think something that I was born with, and it just got got worse and worse as I got older. Uh psoriasis is a skin malcondition where some of us uh uh generate far more dry skin than would be considered normal. So I was doing this play, I was actually the lead in a play, and I was performing in front of some UBC students, and it was going very well, it was going fantastically, it was called the zoo story. And towards the end, I had a huge head of hair back in the day. I had very beautiful Goldilocks back then, and I actually ran through my fingers, through my hair, and this fireworks display of dandruff exploded from my scalp. And I remember the audience gasped. Now, to give myself a little pat on the back, I actually stayed in character. Like I was actually didn't, like I almost froze for a second. I mean, I was mortified. I was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. So unfortunately, I allowed that to kill my aspirations being an actor. And my diet sucked when I was a kid. I'm a recovering sugar addict. It's a wonder I'm still alive. I mean, I was eating KFC and pizza and MMs, every Snickers bars. I weighed 235 pounds. I think I maxed out at about 250 pounds. And so for 30. Oh, yeah, I was huge. I was bloated. I was a Canadian Canadian job, and and I was I've been working security for the last 35, 40 years. And of course, you know, most security jobs you work, there's a vending machine every every 10 feet you walk when you're doing your patrol. And so the temptation to to eat out, to pig out, and and to binge, you know, just was far too alluring for me. And then in 2019, my life changed. And here's where the story gets a little bit weird for some people. I don't want to be pushy or preach about this stuff, but I was able to develop a mindset that worked for me, and that's why you're interviewing me right now. I read a ton of self-help books when I was a kid. I read Anthony Robbins. Do you know who that is? Awaken the giant within. And he's a motivational speaker. And he writes all these self-help books about manifesting and believing in yourself. And never mind what other people think, and never mind whether what you do makes you any money, just do it because to not do it would be a sin. But I never was really able to implement all of that stuff consistently. You know, I had these windows where I take, like I did kickboxing for a couple of years, or I do some writing. I do crack, I've always been interested in martial arts here and there, but not until I reached out to God. That's when my life changed. I came home from work done one day and I realized that I was spending way too much time by myself. You know, someone once said, No man is an island or no woman is an island. We're social creatures. And we need to have, we have to be by ourselves sometimes if we want to do things like write a book. And so after I reached out to God and asked him to help me, I dusted off these short stories that I'd written around 2005. I created this character called Lee Hackland, plug, plug, plug. He's a private investigator. He's my boy. And I had written these short stories around, again, around 2005. I wasn't even thinking about self-publishing back then. I just wrote them because I was bored at my the security job I was working back then. And so I blew these pages off, and they were dusty and they were yellow, and the pages were cold, and I read them. And I don't know, Callie, if you do any creative writing. Of course, we're all our own worst critics. But I was reading this stuff, I barely remembered writing some of these stories. I was like, gosh, you know, this is not the worst stuff I've ever written. I mean, it's not Charles Dickens, it's not William Shakespeare, but it's not total garbage either. So that was the beginning of my true life's journey. I started with Amazon, and it was a tremendous uphill battle to get that first book posted, which is called The Collected Case of Lee Hocklin, 1970s Pride Investigator book one, which is it was sort of an omnibus of my first few short stories. Man, oh man, what a headache! I was implementing my uh or entering my my banking information, and Amazon was saying it's wrong information, and they go to the bank, they say it's right information. I was going in circles. If I didn't have God in my life, and my my relationship with God, I did I define as kind of like Big Brother from 1984. Do you know that book by George Orwell? 1984, Big Brother is Watching You. Have you ever heard of that?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Anyway, it's heard that. I'll be turning 60 this year. So I never would have guessed that Agent Scully, X Files, and U21.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

60s and you 21. Obviously. I think you and I are living proof of that. Well, especially you. But uh yeah, so so I when I posted that first book for the first time, this after a month, I was losing my mind because going in circles. I was uh constantly asking people to help me. And this is another important life lesson, too, especially for men. You know, we alpha men, or I like to think of myself as a quasi-alpha male anyway, in a good way. You know, I don't again, I don't want to stereotype, but we hate asking people for help. You know, our egos get in the way. And when that happens, it becomes uh it becomes a roadblock, it becomes a stumbling block. So if I hadn't put my ego on the shelf and asked people to help me, you'd be interviewing somebody else right now. When I saw on the screen for the first time, after a month of attempt after attempt, congratulations, your ebook has been published. I lost my mind. I remember walking down the streets of Vancouver and I just want to shove my phone in people's faces. Hey, look at me, I'm a self-published author. It was a very unusual feeling for me to start something and actually cross the finish line. You know, some people live their whole lives that way. You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a perfect example, right? To me, he's the epitome of a man or a woman who has this like unstoppable Terminator-esque self-belief, right? They have a goal, they move towards it, there's hiccups along the way, there's stumbling blocks. You know, Schwarzenegger broke his leg. He actually had a broken leg for six weeks when he was young, but he was thinking I miss the end of my career. No, he pushed through, he pushed through, and this is this is an important life lesson. When we embark on a new journey, we have to have in our minds that in advance, this is what trips people up. It's like when you go to the gym. What happens when people go to the gym, right? They work out for a week or two or maybe a month with all this enthusiasm, right? They're excited, right? I'm changing my life. I'm I'm fat, I'm overweight, I'm bloated, I want to get in shape, and it's great, but it doesn't last. And there's a reason. The reason is because they're going into the gym with the same mindset that got them fat in the first place, right? You have to change your mindset before you do anything else in life. So my mindset changed once I started to believe in God. Once I started to believe in God, because to me, God is the epitome of everything that is good about a human being, then I started to believe in myself. And I started actually implementing all this stuff that I learned from all these self-help books. And I was in therapy for a year uh back in the early 90s. I had a really great therapist, and he said to me, you know, human beings have to like, we have to like ourselves unconditionally. So, in other words, if you say to yourself, I like myself if I have a million dollars, or I like myself if if I if I drive a sports car, you might get the sports car, you might get the million dollars, but you also might lose it. So, what are you gonna do if you lose that stuff? What are you gonna do if the government decides to take all your money away? Are you gonna go back to hating yourself? Are you gonna go back to living a life of self-invalation? It's a lousy way to go through life because your emotions are flip-flopping all the time. It's like a bipolar kind of thing. Like you're really happy one day, and then you're really miserable the next day. And it's draining. It it it it takes a toll on our physical health. And I believe, I'm kind of all over the place here, but I believe there's a direct correlation between how we feel about ourselves and our physical health. I mean, you can feel good about yourself and still get sick, obviously. But I think that generally, the better you feel about yourself, the more and it takes practice. It, you know, my mindset didn't, I'm not suggesting that all this tap of stuff happened overnight. It was days, weeks, months, and years. So now it's 2026, just to jump forward to the present. You can jump in any time you like, because I have a tendency to filibuster. Sorry about that. No, it's a good jab.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

You're you're you're very interesting. You're very interesting because it's like you pack me on waka waka waka. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

So now it's 2026, and I don't know how many of these Lee Aklin stories, they're they're getting shorter and shorter. The first few books were written were about 100 to 200 pages long. They're getting they're getting short. You know, was it Oscar Wilde said brevity is a solhway? I see my series now as kind of like a long-running Netflix series. And I've discovered since 2019. I go to Starbucks every morning before work, I have my coffee, I open my notebook, I take out my my dollar store pen, boom. I don't have, and then this is another important life lesson too. If you have to will yourself to do something, like you hear a lot of people say, Oh, I have these uh uh affirmations that I have to do before I go to bed. That look, that's fine. Look, if that works for you, I'm not mocking that. I'm not. But for me, I then then this is just my opinion. This is subjective, this is completely a subjective opinion. But for me, it's like, gosh, if you have to go through all these rituals to do what you want to do in life, then maybe that's not what you want to do. Like Schwarzenegger said the same thing. He said, a lot of guys I work out with, they said they have to psych themselves up before they work out. He says, I never have to psych myself to work out. I can't wait to work out. And that's how I feel about writing. I can't wait to write. When I see the blank page on the table at my Starbucks every morning, I get and I open my pen or take up pick the cap off my pen, I get excited because I'm about to embark on an act of creation. And there's nothing more satisfying in life, again, in my opinion, than the act of creation, whether it's a book or bringing new life into the world, or or maybe it's a table that you build with your bare hands. Because we're not taking anything with us. You know, these bodies that are our souls are driving, they have expiration days. Hopefully, hopefully not today, but they're gonna conk out someday. We need to have a sense that we've made the world a better place somehow. Because if we don't, then we're just gonna go our last what are our thoughts gonna be on our last day? Nothing but regret and what if? Oh, if only I believed in myself. Oh, if only I hadn't dropped out of high school, oh, if only this, if only that. No, no, no. We, you know, we have to live our lives in the present. And this is another thing. Once I started reaching out to God, my mindset changed in so many ways. I've been recovering news junkie. I used to watch the news all the time. I used to listen to all these political John John and Ken and Ben Shapiro and uh the Alex, you know, Alex Jones, the the the globalist guy? I used to listen to Alex Jones every day for four hours, and it's driving it was entertaining and it was stimulating, and I and I agreed with some of it, but it was also driving me insane because all these guys, and I respect those guys, and I respect what they what they're doing, and they're following their bliss. They're following, they're following their bliss. But all they ever talk about is what sucks about the world. You know, just the mayhem and the chaos and the corruption, and that's and if you and if you inundate your brain with all that stuff, what motivation are you gonna have to achieve your goals, whatever they might be? You're not gonna have that motivation. If you think the world is suck it sucks, if you think that there's no good qualities in other human beings, then then the temptation to become an alcoholic or drug addict. I mean, I'm still working security, I work downtown Vancouver, and I'm dealing with drug addicts every day. And I my heart goes out to them. I really do, I have tremendous compassion for them because they're suffering. I mean, mind you, nobody puts a gun to their head, you know, then it's not like they're under duress to stick a needle into their arm and light that crackpipe, but they're suffering so much. They're they're in so much emotional pain. And that's why they essentially they want to die. They just they they want to die quickly, but they want to die having a good time. They want to die in a state of euphoria. And they and I think that's why some people become criminals. You ever see that movie Goodfellas? Remember when the boy, you remember when the boy is looking out the window and he sees the gangster? He's like, Yeah, I want to be a gangster. Yeah, that looks really cool. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I'm like, that when I was a boy, I wanted to be Superman. When I was a boy, I wanted to be a hero. You know, I wanted I wanted to run into school bus and save the kids. Like, that's the kind of guy that I always wanted to be. And I like to think that I am a little bit, you know, it but again, this is that God gave us free will. We're not a race of robots, we're a race, we're not even a race of races, we're a race of individuals, and we all have something unique to offer the world. And so that's my story in a very long-winded and breathless nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Thank you so much. No worries.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

So, my you know, my my I feel like a writer though.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

So, you I mean we talked about, yeah, so what I I know you said God inspired you and all that, but yes, uh when you say, I am going to write this and I am going to publish this, and I am going to be successful because you are very successful with what you are writing and what people are buying. They want to read what you are putting in these little mini books.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

So I hope so. I mean, the important thing, look, if I knew in advance that I was the world's worst writer, if I if if if God said to me, you know, nobody's gonna ever buy your books, forget about the Netflix deal, it's not gonna happen. I would still do it because at the end of the day, I'm doing it for me. And you look at every successful author, you look at look at George Lucas, just as one example. He was pitching Star Wars back in the day in the 1970s, and I've read his story, I read his biography, Skywalking. Everyone told him, everyone turned, he got turned down a million times. J.K. Rolling got turned down a million times, they all got rejected over and over and over again until you every every best-selling author, some someone thinks it's total garbage. Your favorite movie, another person thinks that's just that's just the way human beings are. You only need a few people to like what you're doing in order to have a career. You know, if a few thousand people you cough up a dollar to watch your podcast, you know, I don't know if you have a day job other than your podcast, you probably wouldn't have to do your day job. And wouldn't it wouldn't it be nice? How many people go to work every day doing the thing that they really want to do? Look, I respect bank managers. I worked in banks for many years as security guards. It's a hard job, tremendous. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't last half a day as a bank manager. I would quit. I wouldn't I wouldn't even consider that job. And I respect the men and women who do it. But there's no five-year-old boy or girl who wants to be bank manager. When we're children, the visions that we have for ourselves, they're they're pretty cosmic. You know, we all want to be astronauts or movie stars. You ever watch game shows back in the day? Remember when they had kids on as contestants and the whole say, What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be president of the United States, right? And the audience would lose their minds. The audience loved to hear that, right? And so what happens? What happens is some of us are more sensitive than others, and I was a very sensitive boy. God was ever. I just was a Charlie Brown kind of kid. I just let everything get to me. And I remember crying myself to sleep night after night. And I was every night, every day in my life, I had nothing, you know, I had everything going for me. I had a good mind, I had my arms and legs. I wasn't the worst good-looking kid either. People were telling me you're a good-looking boy. I heard that all the time growing up. But these feelings of low self-esteem were just were just like this albatross around my neck that I've been struggling with my entire life until 2019. Until I reached out to God. You know, the Bible says, and people ask me, what's your religion? My religion is John Leicesterism. That's my religion, or John Lysterality, or whatever you want to call it, ology. That's it's it's it's it's it's a little bit of this. It's uh when you when you develop a mindset for yourself, uh look it's like what Bruce Lee did when he when he created Ji Kune Do, which was his martial art. He just looked at all the pre-existing martial arts and he said, you know what, I like this, I think this is makes no sense at all. This is a waste of time, right? And he cherry-picked and then he added in his own, like what a concept. He actually added techniques that he created himself, right? And so many people I feel, and this is why the there's so much pain in the world, the reason there's so much pain in the world is because there are too many people who don't believe in themselves. There are too many people who are so desperate to fit in, they're so desperate for other people to like them, which I get, and and I and I kind of admire that, but not at the sacrifice of yourself. We have to be selfish sometimes, otherwise we have no self.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

That's so true. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

You gotta people need to look in the mirror and say, Is this really me, or do I want to be this person? No, be yourself. Enjoy yourself and live with yourself as long as you're happy. I totally agree. So, what what's the first book that you wrote?

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Um, gosh, uh, I can't remember right now. Well, the first standalone novel I wrote was called the called The Treehouse Avengers. That was my first quote-unquote novel. My Lee Hacklins were all collections of short stories. And the Treehouse Avengers is uh basically uh a sort of a fantasy version of my autobiography. Uh the main character is Clint Wagner, who's a 10-year-old boy. He's bullied, his dad is terribly abusive, he likes comic books, and he wants to be a part of this group of kids called the Treehouse Avengers. So these four boys that hang out. I guess I base it on that episode of The Simpsons a little bit, where these four boys hang out in a treehouse and they read comic books after school. And my hero, Clint, he wants to be part of this group. He like does he want that more than because he wants to be he wants to be with other boys who like comics, because back in the day, comics were kind of shunned. So the leader of this group says, Okay, Clint, you want to be in? You want to be part of the gang? Then you have to do seven tasks. You have to like the seven labors of Hercules. So, for example, he has to fart in class while the teacher's talking. He has to pull on the bra strap of a girl that he likes. And then I don't want to give away the whole story. And meanwhile, he's getting bullied by these two terrible boys named Pug and Mike, and and he the the high school principal uh befriends him and actually teaches him how to box. So, over the course of the story, it's it's it's a coming of age story. Over the course of the book, Clint loses weight, he gains self-confidence, he learns how to box. And so, by by the end of the story, these bullies show up. I'll spoil it a little bit. It's okay, it's okay. At the end of the story, these bullies show up. I'm trying to pitch the book. I hope because actually, of all the books that I've ever written, it's probably the one I'm proudest of. But anyway, these bullies show up and they try to burn the treehouse down. And Clint saves the day. You know, he runs into the kitchen of his friend's house and he get grabs a couple of buckets of water and he puts the fire out and then he gets into a fist fight with these two bullies and he and he kicks their asses. You're right. I would love to see this into a movie. I think this would make an awesome movie. Of course, I'm biased. I'm very biased in that opinion. And so the leader of the Treehouse Avengers says, Oh, you're in! You're in, Clint. You know, you're a Treehouse Avenger. And he's like, F you. I don't want to be a Treehouse Avenger. I just want to be Clinton.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

So, how much of that book is a part of you?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Um, I'd say about 90%. The only part that's different is that Clint, when he graduates, the I the story ends in present day. So I'm getting a little bit emotional.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Um, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

You know, I sorry just mean that.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

I'm giving you one of those hugs, and I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

So it's present day and uh Clint becomes a very successful. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Just let me take a breath. Okay, better. So it's present day, and Clint becomes a very successful producer and writer. So he's able to manifest. He's able to manifest his ultimate version of self. And he's watching a YouTube video, and it's a video on how to build trioses. And so he builds a trio for his kids, and that's how the triouse vendors ends. Spoiler warning.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Well, it sounds like that's gonna be an amazing book. An amazing oh man.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Uh I mean, I'm I'm impressed, you know, it's like choosing who's like who's your favorite kid? You know, no parent wants to say, Well, this is my favorite kid, right? Even though they might actually have one. You know, that's how I feel about everything that I've written. I mean, look, I I like to think that I'm a better writer now than I was back then, and this is an important life lesson too. And I'm sorry for being such a wuss. I'm Canadian.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Okay, it doesn't matter. Canadian or no Canadian, American, or at the end of the day, at the end of the day, people are people, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:32

We all have the same feelings. Yeah, we all this is an important life lesson that I hope your your viewers will get get something out of. If you do something every day, it's almost impossible not to get good at it. And now, if you go out of your way to self-sabotage yourself with drugs and alcohol and junk food, well, yeah, then you're then you're kind of true, you're kind of slitting your own throat. But if you pick up a guitar and if you spend 10 minutes playing that guitar every day, well, pretty soon that 10 minutes is going to become 20 minutes. And then then you know, pretty soon you start to reprioritize. And so I've been writing, as far as I can remember, pretty much every single day since 2019. And that's why I like to think that I'm I'm good at it. I mean, it's the one thing that I feel really secure about. And so it's again repetition. If you you repetition, and and you get it, and again, if you feel like you're going living your life one step back, two steps, one step forward, two steps back, it's because of the way you're thinking, and it's the hardest thing for so many, because we get into our rats, we get into our grooves, and sometimes we have to hit that that rock bottom place. We shouldn't have to, because time goes by so quickly, right? There's never better time in our life, there's no greater gift in life than the present, right? But if you can change your mindset, and for me, for me, what what what precipitated this transformation or this evolution as I like to think of it, is is loneliness. I was just spending way too much time by myself. And so this lifestyle, this quote unquote lifestyle of being a couch potato and watching 20 hours of of DVDs a week and and eating KFC every night and and binging on candy bars all day long. It's like suddenly, suddenly that I felt a sense of disgust. And not that I was judging myself, because I think that at the end of the day, we need to forgive ourselves. You know, if if if we've harmed other people in the past, and I think that we all have, or if we said something or if we did something, we try to fix it. You know, we try to reach out to those people, but we have to have it in our mindside that those people might not forgive us. And that's okay. At least we made the effort. But we have to, again, we have to prepare for that. Because you know, the Hollywood movie, the father and the son, they've hated each other their whole lives, and then they have it all out. They they have and then they hug, right? That's a Hollywood movie. That can happen, it can work out that way, but not necessarily. You know, well, I had it out with my dad, and we still had hard feelings. I said everything that I ever wanted to say to him that I was angry about, and and it didn't work. It actually made our relationship worse. And I didn't have that in my mind's eye when I was a young man. So ultimately, we have to forgive ourselves for our quote unquote transgressions. Because if we don't, and I feel like this is something that good people do, if you're a good person, a lot of good people, like bad people, they don't have guilty consciousness, right? That's why they're bad people, that's why they're bullies. They get off on having power over the people. But if you're a good person, and if you beat yourself up over one little said thing that you said at work, you know, you cracked a joke and nobody laughed, or maybe you made a mistake, if that's all you're thinking about, then you will not have any motivation to manifest your goals. And again, the temptation to indulge in junk food, which is what I did for 35 years, or alcohol or hard drugs in more severe cases, it'll become much more alluring because it's an escape. And that's why those people do that. And I understand, I understand their mindset, etc.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

No, I mean you talk about uh bullyism a lot. So were you you were bullied?

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Oh, yeah. I was uh I was a bully magnet because I was a big kid, I was a big strapping lad, you know. Very often I was the biggest boy in class, and like I said, I just wanted to be everybody's friend. I never stood up for myself. I let all the and all the kids that were bullied me were much smaller than me, you know, and and it wasn't until um I started taking karate and I did boxing, like I said, did kickboxing for a couple years. I think this is just my opinion. I think all kids should learn martial arts. I I think that should be part of the regulars, that should be part of PE. You know, PE, they have soccer, they have basketball. They should have like one month of martial arts. I know a lot of parents that would they would lose their minds if you're a very liberal think kind of thinker, and that's fine. That's different strokes. It's uh that's their opinion. I respect that, but they're wrong. Yeah, because because bullies pick on what looks weak. You know, a bully doesn't walk into a police station and pick a fight with a cop, right? A bully picks on someone who looks nice and friendly and open, and that's why so many people become a-holes. You know, you ever work with someone that was really hard to get along with? Oh, absolutely. We all have, right? Why are they like that? Absolutely. They're like that, and I probably was like that too sometimes when I was a younger man. They're like that because when they were young, they tried to be kind and it didn't work. So they say, you know what, to hell with it. People are a-holes, so I'm gonna be an a-hole too. And some people live their whole lives that way. And if that's the way they want to live their life, that's absolutely fine. But you and I, and any everybody watching this podcast, we don't have to live our lives that way. We can set an example, and I like to think that I'm doing that much more so than before 2019, when I was just content to stare at a screen night after night and wolf down 10,000 calories of of garbage night after night. I will never go back to that life. Wow, and better late than never.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yeah, and you got that right.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

So, do you write with the readers in mind, or do you write for yourself first?

SPEAKER_02 27:59

Yes, 100%. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

So for yourself first, I think I think I okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Here's here's an example. I wrote uh my my latest reaclin, I wrote a very racist villain character. And I almost used the n-word. I almost I was almost gonna put write that down. I said, you know what? If I do this, I mean Quentin Tarantino, I don't know how he gets away with it. He he, I mean, his characters he uses that word all the time in his movies, and nobody seems to care. And then somebody else says it, and and then suddenly their their lives are over. He said, You know what? It's too much of a headache. I know it's just people are gonna crap on me, and maybe deservely so. So I just wrote, yes, I killed that, dot, dot, dot, ellipses. And then I wrote, he used a word that that you can, you know, just use your imagination. So I yeah, I'm I I will compromise a little bit out of sensitivity to other people's feelings.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Right, right, okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

But that aside, no, no, no, I'm just writing for myself. That's what George Lucas did when he wrote stars. I think if you try to write for other people, I mean, look, you you might you might concoct a screenplay and be able to sell it based on what you think other people want. But if you're writing what other people want, I I guarantee you that they're already tired of that thing. They're already, right? It's like nobody was making science fiction movies in the mid-70s. Hardly anybody was. That's why George Lucas wrote Star Wars. Yeah, I think it's better to look at like what's not out there. And I think that my stories, sorry, my voice is drying up. Sorry, pardon me. What's unique about my stories, and I mean you mean to beat my chest about it, is that they're old school. You know, so many Hollywood movies these days, again, I don't want to get on my high horse, but I feel like they're very PC, they're they're very preachy, like the last Jetta, they're very anti-male. I that's just my opinion. If people, if you disagree, that's absolutely fine. My stories are old school. My boy Lee is a badass, he but he's kind, he's he's warm-hearted, but he's absolutely ruthless. He'll pull the trigger and he doesn't feel guilty, but he has a beer after. He'll absolutely pull the trigger on someone who's asking for it. He doesn't a hero doesn't initiate violence, a hero stands up to violence. And it amazes me how many people they don't seem to make that distinction. They say violence begets violence. I'd like, what are you talking about? You Hitler, kind words were not going to stop Adolf Hitler, right? The only thing that was gonna stop Adolf Hitler was guns and bombs and tanks and brave men who were willing to throw themselves in harm's way. And men like Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt, if it wasn't for them, we would be living in a very imagine looking out the window and there's a swastika instead of the stars and stripes. It'll be or they're instead of the maple leaf in Canada, it would be a very different world. Yeah, so I'm just certainly yeah, I'm certainly not an advocate for violence. I'm the most peace-loving man you'll ever meet. But there are some real a-holes in the world. You know, the Sad Hussein's and the Bin Ladens, there are some really, really horrible and the funny part is they don't think they're horrible. You know, they think they're doing the will of God. I think they're doing the will of the other guy. Again, that's just my opinion. So, so again, yes, I'm writing for myself. I'm I'm I'm writing the kinds of stories that I want to see. You know, I like stories about heroes, I like stories about men because I'm a man. I mean, if I was a woman, Lee would be a woman. And and you know, again, I don't mean to be sexist. That's just that's you know, again, it's it's kind of a wish fulfillment. I mean, Lee's basically me. He's a writing about yourself. I understand. He's a much cooler, he's more handsome, he doesn't have rosacea, he's he's more of a ladies' man. Um, but um, I think that's what a lot of writers do. I think that's what Ian Fleming did when he wrote, when he created James Bond or Robert E. Howard, when he created Conan. It's it's a wish fulfillment. But again, if you just think about it, you know, then you're just fantasizing. But if you're actually creating something, well then you know, you you're leaving something behind. And and again, it's again, it's what what we leave behind matters. Uh, Bruce Lee, my brother and I, oh, my brother and I plug, plug, plug. So my brother Paul, my brother from Another Mother, we grew up together, Paul Bell. He and I have he started a podcast called The Canadian Bro Show. We have 62 episodes on YouTube. And he started on the coals. He's like Johnny Carson. I was make man, I laugh at all his jokes. And um, our last episode was on Bruce Lee. We did a whole, you know, Bruce Lee, we we love we're Bruce Lee fanatics when we were boys, and to this day. And Bruce Lee was a not only a great physical specimen, but he's also an intellectual specimen and a philosophical specimen. And one of his favorite sayings was the key to immortal the key to immortality is having lived a life that's worth remembering. If you spend your life hiding under a blanket, as I did for so much of my youth and my middle years, nobody's gonna remember you when you die. And if you don't care about that, that's fine. God gave you free will. But if you do care, then you better get off your keister, boys and girls, and be truthful and be honest with yourself. I mean, look, if you feel like you suck at everything, but but you like Star Wars and you like, you know, Disney and Marvel and all this, all the super, if you like that stuff, forgot, you know, I'm 60, and I'm just about the only one I know in my in the group of people that I work with and hang with. Me and Paul, we're 60. Everybody we know is much younger than us. We're the ones you're you're you're in our age bracket. We have podcasts. Isn't that weird? Yeah, these young people, they don't, and that that always blows me away. And I always tell these kids that I work with, because I'm I'm the oldest guy where I work by by decades, and I love my coworks, but I say, for God's sakes, do a podcast. It's fun, you can talk about anything that you want to talk about. You know, you you might you might get monetized, you might get a sp you might get sponsorship, you might meet someone that you spend the rest of your life with. Bless you. So you know, you have to you have to put yourself out there. And again, and I have to wrap this up pretty soon because I have another podcast book for three things.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

You have a lot of thank you, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

You do you have to you have to be you have to be willing to fail, you have to be willing to look foolish and not feel bad about it afterwards. You know, the other day I was at work, I was doing my patrol, I'm still like I was doing my patrol, and I don't know what I have two left. I'm clumsy, I'm like Jar Jar Binks. I'm seriously, I'm the Canadian Jar Jared Binks. I have two, I I just face planted in the middle of my patrol. Like I just hit the surface like a ton, and it was on camera too. I was like, oh, you know, they're gonna send me home. Unfortunately, nobody fortunately nobody noticed, or maybe they did notice and didn't say anything. But I felt a little bit embarrassed because something because I didn't find some people, but you know what? I just got up, dusted myself, and continued my patrol. You know, if there's a pebble in your shoe, you know that story, that's sort of a parable. You take it out and you get on with your day. But if you if you take if you have a pebble in your shoe and you go, Oh my god, there's a pebble in my shoe, it's you know, like two guys walk out of a bar and their car is a toad. This is a better, this is a better example, right? Their car is a toad. One guy's like, oh, my car was toad sale of V, right? But the other guy has a nervous breakdown. He swears, he shakes his fists, he's gonna send an email to the city, blah, blah, blah, right? He's gonna think about it for the next five, the indignation, even though and some people live their whole lives that way. They will not achieve their goals. They won't. Because they're they're just so the pet peeves. They're wrapped up in their pet peeves, and they're wrapped up, their brains are their brains are focused on what's beyond their control. This is why I don't watch the news. When I start to watch the news, my mind automatically moved towards what's within my control. And we need to think that way in order to feel empowered. If we think about what was what was beyond our control, then obviously we're gonna feel weak and helpless. And again, the temptation to just indulge in in a life of vice will become very alluring, like a siren song. So that's my story in a nutshell. This is my journey.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

That's your journey, and it's how do you stay connected to your audience across all your platforms?

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Well, I mean, I'm I'm Kobo, how do how do you say that?

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Sure, Kobo's correct. I think so, yeah. So I I'm a social media junkie. I I'm on social media probably three to four hours a day. And so my Facebook page is called Johnny's Way. Uh, my Facebook page is John Leicester, I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn and Threads, and I and I just post stuff every day. And I'm in a lot of writers' groups, you know, Facebook, and and I'm always sharing um other people's uh uh covers and reviews, and they're sharing my stuff, and sometimes we read each other's stuff, and we I mean, it's absolutely wonderful to be part of this creative community. When I go to Starbucks every morning, it's like you know, you ever watch that show Cheers? Yeah, customers know each other, and everybody knows your name. Yeah, everybody knows your name. It's wonderful. And I see people around me, and they're all most of them are doing what I'm doing, they're writing in their notebooks or they're tapping away on their laptops or the thumbtime, you know, and it's absolutely wonderful because that energy, and it's another important lesson, life lesson too. You need to be with people who are like-minded, not necessarily politically or religion. I don't really care about any, I don't care if you're agnostic or an atheist, if you're Jewish, whatever you believe in is whatever works for you. But you need to have you need to be around people who have a positive energy. Yeah, I feel like that the more that we do, because we feed off each other, it becomes contagious. If if you have people in your life who are negative, and this is a controversial thing to say, and I need to wrap this up pretty soon, Callie. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

I got you, no worries.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

If if you have people in your life who have nothing to talk about but how lousy the weather is, or their pet peeves, or politics and global events. Oh, did you hear, did you hear that 10,000 people died in in some country I never heard of? Boy, that energy is absolutely it's it's it's life's it's like it's like a black hole. You know, the black hole, the black hole is when a star collapses, right? And nothing escapes. Some people are black holes and they will suck all the light out of you if you let them. So, you know, if you visit your dad once a week at the old folks' home and you leave feeling miserable, and but you feel like you have to do that because you have an obligation, I would say, well, instead of visiting for half an hour, maybe visit him for 10 minutes, right? Just say, I'm sorry, dad, this is the best I can do. Or even maybe once a month instead of once a week. Because unless you have a really strong, you know, we need we need to be like the Starship Enterprise. You know, the Enterprise and the Shields. We need to have the shields up all the time because we're constantly bombarded by negativity. I mean, you walk into an elevator nowadays and there's a screen on the elevator that's gonna give you some information. Is that information gonna be uplifting? Is that information gonna be useful? No, nine times out of ten, it's gonna be something horrible. It's gonna be about a terrorist attack, it's gonna be about a volcano that killed 50,000 people. It's gonna be about, and most of us have feelings, unless you're a complete sociopath. So, you know, if you're on your way to visit your husband and and you're excited and you want to have lunch with your husband, you walk and tell that and you see it, it's gonna undermine the good time that you're in. So that's why I try to focus. I like to take pictures of flowers. I take pictures of flowers almost every day on my way to work, and I post them on a Facebook page. And and I do that because I want I want to focus on mind as much as I can while I'm still here, because these bodies, you know, they're gonna conk out one of these days.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yes, it's important to. So as we as we wrap this up, how do people get a hold of your book?

SPEAKER_02 39:10

Oh, thank you so much. Okay, well, my my email is um, I don't know if it'll be on your on your on your podcast, but my email is johnlicster 611 at hotmail.com. Time permitting, I'll be more than happy to email. Or look, I want to make money doing this. I want to be, I want to be a professional writer. But I love to share my stuff. And time permitting, I'll be more than happy to share any of my books or any of my short short stories for free. Um my stuff's on Kobo. If you go to Kobo or Barnes and Noble and type in John Leicester. Also, if you go to YouTube and if you type in John Leicester, uh you you'll see some of the other podcasts that I've been on. And um, as I said earlier, I co-host a podcast called the Canadian uh Bro Show. I think we have 63 episodes now. It was started by my brother Paul Bale, and he has another version about basketball and another iteration about uh about real estate. He's a real estate developer. And um, I oh and I have a Facebook group page uh called Johnny's Way. I think I have over a thousand followers. I actually took a I'm a very avid reader. I took a picture of myself uh holding a book by a guy named Mike Madden. He writes the one like the Jack Ryan series. You know, Jack Ryan, he was created by Tom Clancy, he's a best-selling author. This guy sold millions of books. I don't mean to brag about this, okay? But I posted a picture of myself holding this book on his Facebook profile page, and I told him about my group page, Johnny's way. And guess what? He joined this best-selling author joined my group page. When I saw new members the next day and I saw his name, and I clicked the link and saw this actually him, I lost my mind. Like, this is the world that we're living in. This we're living in a golden age, and you'll never hear that on the news, right? This technology gives us more opportunity that our ancestors ever could have dreamed of. So that's my story. I think I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

All right. I know you got like two minutes right before you leave because you got another podcast. And I want to take the time to tell you thank you for reaching out. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry if I talk to your ears.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

How about your ears? Are your ears still on your head?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah, my ears are still on. Oh, good. My ears are still on your head. And if you can hear me, you can hear me, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:16

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

Your voice is mellifluous. What is your legacy that you would like to leave behind?

SPEAKER_02 41:24

Oh gosh. Oh, you're putting me on the spot now. My legacy is just well, my books are my legacy. You know, I uh barring an asteroid or or or if God decides to smite the world with another flood someday, please don't do that, Heavenly Father. You know, give us another chance. Um I like to think that my stories will outlive me. I like to have in my mind that I my legacy, after I die, someone out there will be reading one of my stories. And maybe getting something out of it. And maybe in Okay, okay. My legacy, I want I want people my age to feel that that it's not too late. Because I know there are a lot of people who are who are our age who are just like, I'm done. You know, I'm 60, I had my 20s, 30s, and 40s. You know, someone once said if you never make it by the time you're 30, you never will. I'm living proof that that is BS. That that that is a BS philosophy. And some people hang on to that stuff because it's easier. It's much easier to hang on to what other people think than it is to think for yourself. We have to live our lives fearlessly and heroically. And and my legacy is that that I was able to make these changes in my life, and that it was worth it, and that I have a goal. I I I I intend to become a professional writer. I intend to reach, I intend to connect with that one person who believes in my story so much life. And again, after I die, you know, reruns of uh uh Lee Hacklin Private Investigator will be on YouTube. And if people don't pay, that's absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

Anyway, this is this is my journey.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Yeah, this is John's journey. This is Telecat chat talks, and we're gonna tap right on out.

SPEAKER_02 43:07

Alright, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

Thank you.