Books4Guys - Pat Daily

Pat Daily is a polymath, serial entrepreneur, gamer, and the author of the Spark
Chronicles, a near-future science fiction series. Pat began his professional career as an engineer and Air Force test pilot. After leaving the military, Pat worked at
NASA’s Johnson Space Center on both the Space Shuttle and International Space
Station programs before launching his first company. He has worked globally as a
human performance and safety consultant.

Social media links:
Website: https://thepatdaily.com
Blog: https://feraldaughters.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patdailyauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patdailypics/
X: @patdailyauthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21521042.Pat_Daily

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

No. Pat, man, I'm uh thank you for taking the time to join the Books for Guys podcast today. As I'm extremely excited to talk, talk with you just because your background is very interesting. I was looking at a lot of it with NASA and planes and doing a lot of cool things. And then I was like, okay, I can see where this translates into some of Pat's fiction writing and just where some of your interests are. And so, man, it is good to have you on today. Good to be here. I appreciate what you're doing. Yeah. No, and I I appreciate you being a part of it and being able to have this discussion with you. But Pat, I know a little bit about you, but I would love for you to share, just in your own words, just your story and just your career and how that progressed into your interest of writing this book series that you have out now. And uh I was gonna say right now, I've got one of your books on the website, and I've got to get, I've got to get the whole series on there. So by the time this is actually released, everybody will be able to go on the website and see the whole series. But no, Pat, I would love for you to tell about I was kind of mentioned, you know, NASA and a lot of your professional work. I would love for you just to share your professional journey and then just again how that's led into now becoming a published author.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Sure. Grew up in Seattle, uh, and then uh left left Seattle uh at 17 to go to the Air Force Academy, finished that, became an Air Force pilot, did that, uh, eventually went through uh Air Force Test Pilot School, flew as a test pilot for a bunch of years. And then uh, and then the Air Force was gonna make me sit behind a desk for the rest of my career. And I said, no, I think I got a better idea. So I I went to work for a large American airline based out of Dallas, Fort Worth. We can guess who that is. Yeah. Yeah. A year later, they furloughed me. And and I thought, how can they furlough me? You know, I'm good. I'm good. Didn't matter, mattered what day I got hired. So uh I got furloughed and I took that as a uh kind of a divine career pivot. So I um I started looking around for work, got picked up by Honeywell, eventually ended up running their defense and space electronic systems down at uh Johnson Space Center. So worked, worked with NASA on a bunch of projects, the Space Shuttle Space Station, thing called the X-38, which was supposed to be the lifeboat for the station. And then um, right as Artemis got kicked off as a project, I was talking to some friends of mine and they said, you know, we're doing a lot of consulting outside of regular work. Maybe we ought to start start our own business. So we did. And I started that company uh 15 years later, um sold my interest in that company. Along the way, I started a couple other businesses. And now, now I've kind of throttled everything back to where all I really do is I do consulting for high-tech uh aviation projects like hydrogen-powered and electrical powered airplanes, and then I write. So, you know, finally the the love of my childhood reading has translated into writing for people that I hope love to read it as much as I love to write it.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah. No, that's man, that's really cool, Pat. And I'm I'm curious to know. So I I actually had someone else on who was a part of the Air Force a few episodes back, and I I know a couple of friends personally who went through the academy and and uh went to play sports there, which was really cool. But I know how prestigious and hard it is to get selected to go into the Air Force. Did you, did you grow up always with an interest in planes, or where did that, I guess, passion get sparked from?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Well, it it really started with science fiction because I read all the classics, you know, Asimov, Clark, Heinlein, and that made me decide I wanted to become an astronaut. So I did a little research and determined that all the astronauts at the time had started as test pilots. So I go, okay, I need to start as a test pilot. Who has airplanes? The Air Force has airplanes. So I started thinking, okay, I'm gonna join the Air Force, be an Air Force test pilot, end up being an astronaut. Well, you know, two out of three wasn't bad, but uh, you know, it didn't quite make it into the cockpit of a spacecraft, but uh that didn't kill my passion for it at all.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

Yeah. Well, and I can hear just your passion and just where your interests lie. And I could see where being behind a desk is just not something that would suit you and and make you very happy for very long. So it's it's funny how you can pick that up. But no, that's incredible. I'm I'm sure you've gotten to experience it. To me, I'm not I'm not very conceptually in tune with how planes and hydraulic and how they're structured. I don't have that engineering technological mindset, but I think it's so fascinating how these things are built and work. And obviously, just recently with the space shuttle going and coming back within the last week was a big deal that I was following. Um I'm sure you were too. So actually great timing for this conversation. Um, it kind of correlates there. But so, Pat, you said you've all you grew up reading a lot too, which is pretty cool because I would say 75% of my guests and probably a hundred percent of my friends did not grow up loving reading or writing. And uh it's kind of just where Books for Guys was born out of, honestly, was just trying to encourage more reading at an earlier age, just so you can get that curiosity journey started sooner. Um, because I learned how important reading was really later in life. I mean, I always knew it was important, but I didn't really start like loving it personally until post-college. And I was like, man, if I'd have had the same passion as a kid, like just how much further along I could be, and just the knowledge I'd have. And so I think it's really cool that you had that passion at an early age. I guess my question for you is where did that come from? Were your parents readers? Did you have, you know, within school and teachers? Like, how did you learn to enjoy reading at such an early age?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, that's uh that's interesting to hear that from you, your perspective with your guests and your own background. My parents were always avid readers. My mom loved historical fiction, and my dad loved detective stories. Okay. So Mickey's plane, all that kind of stuff. So part of my childhood that I don't remember but take for granted is that every day when I was a wee lad, one or both of my parents read to me. And they read, they read kids' books. And then uh, so by the time I got in elementary school, I was kind of reading on my own. And then uh in junior high school, one of the electives I could take was this thing called Individualized Reading Center. And I thought, wait a minute, I get credit for sitting there and reading whatever I want for an hour. I go, yeah. So so yeah, both my parents read to me. My sister and I were uh were and are still avid readers. It uh, you know, it gradually became part of my everyday routine. And as I got busier with work and stuff, didn't read as much during the day. But every night before I turn off the bed, I'm reading for like 30 minutes, sometimes more, depending on what I'm reading and how gripping it is. Uh so yeah, started early.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I can assume, too, with the work that you've done professionally, that fiction, even even science fiction that that kind of correlates and you can kind of get creative with it, creates a sort of outlet for you to kind of turn things off from the professional space a little bit and kind of get lost. And I think I've found the importance of reading more and more fiction over the last couple of years. And I really challenged myself to do that because um, I don't know, in this crazy world there's so much information and knowledge, and my brain feels fried, but I can get lost in a in a fiction book and it just I don't know, it's just relaxing. Give you story, it's entertainment without scrolling and watching a screen. And so I just find I'm starting to just preach that more and more to people. Like, hey, pick up a I know personal development's great and you want to be great at business and all this stuff, but like a good fiction book can really balance that out a a lot. But I really want to dive into your books, Pat. So you you have is it four or five books now in the series? Uh, there's four books in the series.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Okay. And I'm calling the series done for now. Yeah. Four books in the series.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah, cool. And how did you talk about your process of putting it together? When you first started, was the plan for it to be a series? Or as you started writing, did it genuinely become a series?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I always planned it to be a standalone book, just one. And as I was writing it and then and then doing revisions and uh redoing the ending, it wasn't until I wrote the last paragraph of the book that I realized, oh, there is way more to this story that I could tell. So so then it it became a series from that point on.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, that's cool. And so, but you're saying for now you've kind of completed this particular series as far as you plan.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah. Yeah. I might go back to it later to do some offshoot stuff. But one of the things about writing is you end up with these ideas and and they start fighting for headspace. And eventually you gotta you gotta let one out. And so I knew I needed to put the whole Spark Chronicles aside because I had uh some other ideas that really wanted were demanding my time. Yeah. I wrapped up that series and then started on uh my next fiction book and my next nonfiction. And I think uh I think they're both gonna be standalone. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah, yeah. And I wanna I want to get to some of the work you're working on, but talk about the Spark series a little bit. Just without giving too much away, because I want everyone to to read the series. What was the idea? You know, I guess the just the general um framing of your book and some of the storyline to it. Just kind of give a high-level overview of it. Sure, sure. It came about.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

You ever played the game Pokemon Go? A little bit, yeah. Well, I have two daughters, and they were both playing Pokemon Go. And like any father, I think you need to know what your kids are into. Yeah. And so I downloaded it, I started playing it, and I'm, you know, I'm multitask. So I'm playing it while I'm walking my dog in the morning. You know, so I'm out in the dark, the pre-dawn darkness, and I'm I'm scrolling along and I'm trying to catch the Pidgeys that are pop. And and I had one of those stop in the middle of the street with an idea moment. I thought, what if, you know, what was enthralling to me about Pokemon Go was you used your camera's phone to capture the real world. And then it superimposes a virtual fictional character on that real background. Uh, and I thought, wow, this would be so cool if you could turn it into a Disney-sized theme park. And, you know, I'm also a gamer, and so I thought, wow, this would be a great way to do quests, and you could have anchor quests and side quests, and every, you know, all your restaurants could be themed. And so uh I started thinking about that more and more. And then um, that led me to think about the technology, and then the technology kind of fed into the story itself. And that's what that's what really got me launched on the first book.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, yeah. No, that's cool. How does it I was talking with someone about this the other day, and I think you'll understand this just from the style of your book. I think a long time ago, I had a really challenging, I guess my interest was challenged because it was hard for me to understand science fiction. I wasn't necessarily super intrigued by it or interested because I just really didn't understand how it worked. As I was saying, like, I don't know how, I don't even know how my own car works. You know, I just want it to work. But I think now with all of the technology of AI and just phones and TVs and Bluetooth, like I can see things working. And it's led me to be more interested in science fiction and fantasy because it's almost like I can almost touch it. Like I can see where some of this is headed and it's coming very fast. How do you, I guess, like blending your professional career and your passion for this, and you know, technology and fantasy and stuff, how I guess I'm sure it was a real joy putting this together because you think in these these terms too. And I'm sure you can even see the vision clearer than I can because you you understand better how this technology works. But just how was it for you implementing, I guess, just what was the process of it all? And how did you put pen to paper and organize this? Because, you know, this is your first book series. Yeah. Just how did you go about? I guess I was just curious to know your process behind it.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Okay. Well, I started with an outline. And the first book had an outline that was maybe a page long. And then I kept that as the bottom of the document, and I just started telling the story. And somewhere along the line, somebody gave me the advice, or I heard it on a podcast, that you should write fast, bad, and wrong. And the point behind that is don't be afraid of gooning stuff up at first. You can hit it later. And so I did that. And one of the things that stopped me along the way is I'd start writing about some technology or some technical aspect. I'd stop myself getting, no, that's BS. That's not going to work like that. So I'd have to go do a little research because I mean, I know I know a lot about aviation, uh, but I knew really fairly little about solar power and about AI, both of which play big roles in my book. So I ended up doing a lot of research on those things. Then, and then with, you know, feeling a little more comfortable as I wrote about them, that helped me a lot. You know what? So I wrote and wrote and wrote, and and the biggest thing, it's like getting in shape. The most important part of your physical fitness program is getting to the gym. That's the hardest part. Because once you get to the gym, that's like, all right, I'll work out. So it's like actually sitting down and setting off aside some time to write. Go, okay, I'm gonna do nothing else in this two-hour block but write. I'll give myself permission to do nothing but sit and think, but I can't do anything else. You know, I can't pick up my PS5 controller, I can't scroll, nothing but writing or thinking about it. So you had to have, I had to have a little discipline to do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

No, and I love hearing about people's processes just because everyone's so different. You know, some people, families and careers, and and you're balancing two acts. I'm always curious, like, hey, do you write in the mornings? Like, do you write, do you take notes while you're driving, picking your kids up from school? You know, and other people they have all the time in the world and they're like, oh, I'll do it, you know, an hour here. Really strict deadlines on themselves. Hey, I'm gonna write 4,000 words today. I'm gonna complete five pages. So I just love knowing people's processes and just how just the back end work because I know it's so much work. I know, you know, you put this finished product out there, and I'll talk about this too. You see the finished product go, oh, that's great, you're a great writer, you did this, cool, but they don't see the process behind it all and how much effort and time and discipline it takes. Especially for someone who it's not just one book for you. You've got four. You know, it's a lot of work and progression. Did you find yourself from book one to book four? I'm always curious about this too, because I I I talk with some writers about this and how how different your writing can change just based off simple things of what's going on in your life, what's going on in technology, what's, you know, new ideas being sparked, playing Pokemon Go and seeing the way that works. What were some of the things you experienced, I guess, from book one to book four that maybe changed your style of writing? Or were there things that you can tell, like, oh, this is different than book one because of what's going on in the world right now, or something like that?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, I I do pick up some topical things, you know, what's going on in the in the world. Uh when I was a kid growing up, the bad guy was always the Russians. Yeah. Uh, and and that's changed now. You know, now the bad guy is is either terrorists or it's China, depending on on your perspective or what day it is. Um So yeah, I think I think my writing has gotten better. I'm more conscious about breaking some of the bad habits I had early on. For example, we use the same words and the same phrases a lot in our everyday conversation. Well, you start reading a book like that and seeing it on every other page, it starts getting a little tedious. So, so thank God for my editors early on, they pointed it out. And so I in revisions, I'd go back and I'd change it. Better way to phrase it. What's the right word to use here? And then um, and then as I've as I've written, my outlines have gotten a lot longer. You know, now, now a beginning outline for a book is four to six pages. And I still keep it at the bottom of the document so I can scroll back down and go, oh, I forgot all about that, and then go back and do a little rewrite, or yeah, it's not gonna work anymore because the characters have pivoted. So yeah. So I I try to keep keep pace with what's going on in the uh science and technology world. Make sure that I don't come off as a complete buffoon.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Yeah. No, I don't. I've seen some crazy uh some crazy work out there where I'm like, I can't understand this. No, so Pat, you said you're working on some some new work now. You've got this one, you know, put there. It's it's always probably gonna be your baby as your first series. But you said you're working on both a fiction and nonfiction project, which is actually gonna be one of my questions for you before I jumped on here, was just I guess I was gonna let's start here. I know I'm all over the place on this, but do you read both fiction and nonfiction books, or do you steer one way or the other typically?

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yep. I I would say probably 60% of my reading is fiction, and the other 40% is nonfiction because hey, like you you talked about early on, I want to be better. I want to be smarter, I want to, I want to figure out how to do things better or understand things better. I mean, could you know you go to the story, see a million supplements, and it's like, what do I need? Is it any any of it really matters? So you start maybe following some people that talk about it or reading some books like Lifespan uh that really gets into it. Uh and then and then there's other things that I I'd never thought really much about. Um Darwin's Black Box that a buddy of mine recommended, and then a book called Just Six Numbers that I that I just finished. So that that kind of feeds my nonfiction. And then sometimes I'll also read stuff that's a military history because it it's it's intriguing to me that the history of the Korean War as I learned it going through the Air Force Academy and as it's now known is vastly different, particularly in terms of the air war. Just because China and Russia have have Russia have opened up their records. And so now we have what their historians said, and we can meld all this together and go, whoa, you know, we weren't just uh Superman we thought we were. There was a little more going on there. So uh so I think I've wandered away from from what your actual question was.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

No, no, I I love that because I I find that stuff interesting too. And that that's what's funny about these conversations. Sometimes my brain goes 10 different directions just as I'm thinking of again, like I I love your background because you're not just someone who you became a writer and you've written stories or nothing, like you have this whole professional career that's kind of blended into your interest in writing. So I just I love learning about both sides of that. So your nonfiction work, is it is it a memoir type of book? Is it about a specific subject that you've learned and I guess used throughout your professional career? Or what what way are you going with that one?

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, this one's a little, a little different and very interesting to me. A guy that was a CEO of an oil and gas company learned about Spark, you know, the first book in the series, and then learned that I'd that I'd written more. While he was CEO of this company, a significant event occurred at the company. I'm not going to go into too much because I don't want to spoil a book. But he has since retired and he approached me. He said, Hey, do you want to write my story? I said, Well, you know, it's really your story. We could, you know, we could write on it together. So we could, we've been working on that. And it's it's not so much the mechanics of what got them there to the to the event that happened, but it's the how it played out and how he fought his way for his company out of this really dark forest. And and And brought them back, you know, and ended up having to, you know, the the whole thing was messy. He ended up having to testify before Congress. And so anyway, now I'm working with him on the uh on the nonfiction book.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Like a biography, in a way.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, yeah, but it's I think it's really going to be more a business book.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, like Jack Welch wrote the GE Way, and it's a little bit about Jack Welch, but it's really more about the business itself. And this is about how you build a business to be resilient and to recover from something bad.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah. How um how different are these projects for you? And which one do you think? And this may be hard to project, but I'm I'm curious to know which one you may go down, like what path you may go down with fiction and nonfiction. I was actually talking to another author who's done both, and he was talking about the differences of, you know, when you write fiction, it can be sometimes lonely because it's just you, your thoughts, you're you're trying to put this together. But with nonfiction, you're seeking out people, you're having conversations, you're learning different things, you're having to go knock on doors and have these, again, conversations where it's not just you. What process, I guess, have you enjoyed more so far? Is it this new nonfiction story where you're having to have those conversations, or is it equal? You know, I just I know they're so different.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

It's it's yeah, it's just different. And that's probably the best way to put it because you're right, writing fiction by yourself can be kind of lonely. It's just you. The big difference is though, when you're writing a book on your own, there's only one opinion. And when you're writing a book with somebody else, they have an opinion. Like, what the heck? How dare you have an opinion about your own story? It's it's uh not what I want to write. Yeah, so it's it's uh that that's a growth opportunity. Get to to see, you know, my work in somebody else's eyes in almost real time. Because we're bouncing pages back and forth. Uh, no, I don't really want it to be like this. And and well, I think you need it to be, you know, you need to make it a little more personal so people get more engaged. So, so those kind of conversations have been fun. And conversations never have writing fiction. So it's it's different, it's interesting, and it's given me a whole different kind of research that I'm doing now. I'm I'm looking into the public record more, and and and honestly, that's the great thing about the public record is that someone else has written it and stands behind it. And so when you use that as source material, you know, it you got a little bit of protection there. If you're writing it completely from your memories, then there's always the what if I didn't remember right? I mean, heck, sometimes there's days I don't remember when I had for breakfast. So something that happened five years ago.

unknown 24:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

It's cool how this opportunity kind of came to you organically, because maybe it's something that without that individual approaching you about it, maybe you don't go down this route and write a nonfiction book. Maybe you stay with fiction. But I love that it's the challenge of doing this and how the opportunity presented itself and you're taking it on. Like, all right, let's do this. You know, let's, let's, let's jump in and go this route that maybe you weren't considering before. So I always I always find that fascinating too, just the opportunities and how they, again, they present themselves. It's so cool how that happens, you know, and you just gotta be the one to say yes and take it. So Pat, I've got really just one more question for you. This is such a a great conversation. I love learning all about just what you're doing and just the approaches to it. I think it's so cool. But one question I ask everybody who comes on the podcast, because again, I'm always interested in what people are interested in. From a reading standpoint, you know, just for books for guys' purposes, I always ask, what's a book or two that has meant a lot to you personally or professionally? And then when asked, what's a good book that you like to recommend to other people?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Sure, sure. There's there's a bunch of them. Let me let me probably start with the one I've given to more people than any other book. And it's called Bad Science. And it's by a guy named Ben Goldacre. And it's it really is a good book for helping organize and clarify your thinking when you see something presented as science, and you start thinking, uh, is that really true? And you dig into it a little more. So I I liked that a lot. Then, gosh, several years ago, a buddy of mine recommended uh this book, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. And um, it's by a guy named Lawrence Gonzalez. And it's a it's fascinating. He looks at people that are side by side in survival situations, and one of them will perish and another one will thrive. And it ends up it's not physical fitness or what you had for breakfast or anything else. It's mindset. And so he does, he's got that book. He's got another one out called Surviving Survival, which talks a little bit more about that mindset and getting beyond traumatic things. Honestly, one that I think every man on the planet should read is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. And uh, he's he's one of the fathers of the philosophy of stoicism. And he never wrote it. This is his diary. He wrote it to himself. And a lot of good quotes to take away from it, like stop thinking about being a good man and be one. So a lot of good stuff there. And then there's another one. I don't I don't remember who wrote it, but it's called I'm looking at my bookshelf there, it's called Fooled by Randomness. And it's it's a little bit about thinking statistically, in that often things happen that are just random. And how do you tell if it's random or if it's a sign of a trend or something that you ought to be paying attention to? So so those probably be my biggies.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah. Man, those are good.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

I'm gonna add all of those. Yeah, you got another one? I got one more. Yeah. I would be remiss because I gave this book to both my sons-in-law, Tim Ferris, and the book Tools and Tips of Titans. He's he's got a lot of great stuff out there, but what I like about this book is that he's pulling the nuggets out from all of the conversations he's had with people that have been highly successful in a vast variety of endeavors. So, yeah, that would be the last one, I promise.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

No, you could you could give me recommendations all day. I love all of your recommendations. Number one, I haven't read any of them. I've heard of a couple of them, but I'm also a big fan of the books you recommended because I don't know why, but lately I've been really challenging myself and others to read more literature that leads to critical thinking and really maybe changing your perspective on something or just challenging yourself to say, like, hey, I don't know enough about this. Let me dig in a little bit deeper. Um, but I just I don't know. I've gotten really into this trend where I'm I'm seeing so many people just catch a catch a short clip and all of a sudden their opinion is this, and I'm like, yeah, you know, like dig deeper. That's there's probably that's probably not the whole story. And then someone gave me this quote the other day, and it was like, believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see, just because of the perspective of things. And so I love books that that challenge and really make you think, and then you can really formulate your opinion and your thoughts once you dig in a little bit deeper. So I love all those book recommendations because I feel like all of them get kind of challenge you to think and see things in different ways and and open up like that. So I'm adding all those to my reading list because and I'll probably crush them over the next month or two because it's in that zone right now. So great recommendations. Yeah. But Pat, man, this has been, man, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And like I said, by the time this episode is out, all of your work will be on the Books for Guys website. So if anyone's interested, they can go find you. And obviously, we'll include links and everything so everyone can go purchase the book and support you. And obviously, your future work, now that we know that you've got some projects you're working on, we will get those as well. And then we're gonna have you back on the podcast because you've got different books coming out, especially you know, the nonfiction route, too. I would love to talk with you about that when it comes out and learn more about that story and share that. And so I'm looking forward to having you as a future guest as well, Pat. Hey, happy to do that. I've had a blast. Yeah. Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it. All right.