Margret Treiber is Over It: Cranking Sci-Fi While Nobody Seems to Give a Sh$t

In this robust episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie sits down with Margret Treiber—a pissed-off, no-nonsense New Yorker by way of Long Island and Jersey, now out in the Soutwest desert but still swinging that East Coast edge like a light sabre. She’s been grinding for years, writing sharp, dark, often hilarious science fiction… and getting buried under the algorithmic avalanche.

Margret lets loose, and Mookie loves it: She goes ballsitic in a pure Long Island–bred, Jersey-hardened blitz, calling bullshit and not caring who gets offended. "The Margret" is angry at platforms that reward noise over substance. at a content ecosystem flooded with mediocrity while serious work gets lost in the void, and at the her own endless cycle of submissions, rejections, fake promoters, and the illusion that “if you just keep going, you’ll break through.”

Despite doing all the heavy lifting...

• Written novels (Death Engine Protocol, Japanese Robots Love to Dance)
• Pumped out short stories and anthology submissions
• Built memes, animations, and marketing funnels
• Played the social media game—and watched it fail in real time

...Margret keeps getting her ass kicked, leading the conversation into the "polite lies" of indie publishing: 

• The myth of meritocracy in a saturated content economy
• Why algorithms don’t reward quality—they reward engagement loops
• The psychological toll of creating constantly while being ignored
• The brutal reality: a handful of names dominate, everyone else fights for scraps

Margret brings that classic New York survival energy to all of it—calling out the nonsense, tearing into the fake engagement economy, and refusing to play nice just to get noticed. They both hate "networking" and “building a personal brand," and rally around their shared catharsis. Mookie loves how Margret fights the machine and flips it off while she does it, continuing to grind content with her defiant and inspirational attitude because she can't live without creating. 

The Guest

Margret Treiber writes sci-fi with bite: brutal, brilliant, and deeply human (according to Readers’ Favorite). She’s the award-winning author of Death Engine Protocol, Japanese Robots Love to Dance, and other glitchcore nightmares. She’s also editor-in-chief of Sci-Fi Lampoon, a speculative humor mag for people who suspect the singularity will be deeply stupid. When not working in tech or supervising cockatiels with a vendetta against furniture, she builds weird robots and breaks algorithms. For more: www dot the-margret dot com or www dot rhobot dot info.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Science Faction Fantasy Factory. I'm your host, Bookie Spitz, and on the factory floor, I've got Margaret Treiber. Welcome aboard. How are you doing, The Margaret?

SPEAKER_03 0:16

I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Where'd you get the title, The Margaret?

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Uh I don't know. It just sort of happened. I um I was I don't know, one day I was signing for something, and I figured that not many people spelled their name my way in this country, so I just did it and then found out later on my name is really common in Germany, which makes it interesting.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

And where are you from originally?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Originally I am from Brooklyn and Long Island and New Jersey in that original.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Alright, Long Island. I lived in Long Island for uh for a couple years, and I lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I just moved about a year and a half ago to California, so we were neighbors. Are you still in the New York area?

SPEAKER_02 1:08

No, no, I am out in the desert in New Mexico now. Um, I've I've been to California. I lived in the San Jose area for a while. Um, I lived in Virginia for a while. Uh I've been all over the place. So um, but yeah, my origins come from you know being a New Jersey mutant mostly. Um my parents moved out of Long Island when I was like about nine, so I did a lot of growing up in New Jersey.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Jersey! Like uh Woody Allen used to say that they should just pave New Jersey and make it a parking lot for Manhattan, which conveys the Manhattan attitude. There's people don't realize that parts of New Jersey are gorgeous. New Jersey has has some uh real spots in it, and it's got a lot of diversity, and there's something for everybody in New Jersey, all the way from Tony Soprano to um to the uh to the mansions to uh to hippie town too, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Yeah. I uh I grew up um I guess about like 20 minutes outside of New York, um, New York City, Manhattan. And um, but yeah, I've I've was there for a long time. And I actually have lived in other as an adult in other parts of of New York. Like I've been in the Bronx and uh and and in the Upper East Side. So, you know, uh I I'm not allergic to New York. I like living there. But the problem with living there is that you end up not enjoying it as much as when you go to visit it. I end up ended up doing more stuff surviving than actually touristing.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

I loved New York until I hated it, and I finally it was just too much. I and I zigged and zagged. I was in Long Island, Battery Park, Brooklyn, Lower East, Upper West, and I used to city bike all over, you know, those rental city bikes. I was the city bike city bike maniac. So I know New York almost better, arguably, than most New Yorkers who were born and and raised there. I've been all over, but to your point, it's tough living and and it's just such a hassle. And the view is better from New Jersey. When you're in New Jersey, you see the Manhattan skyline, and when you're in Manhattan, you see the New Jersey skyline. Oh, New Jersey is not bad, it's actually better in New Jersey.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah, I used to, we had the mountains, and we'd go up in the mountains and we could see the city skyline from there, so that was cool. But yeah, I um it yeah, I mean, there are pluses to both. I mean, it was nice having a lawn in suburbia in in New Jersey as opposed to like having smog coming in the windows of New York. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

I've got a washer dryer actually in my place now, which after living in Manhattan for a decade is like that's gold.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, it's all relative. So we met as co-contributors, and I'm holding it up here for our viewers. The uh 2026 sci-fi anthology for science fiction novelists edited by S.A. Gibson. I had him on the podcast a couple months ago, Steve. He's a cool cat. And you've been in the anthology uh last year, too. Is that right? This is not your first time.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Yeah, and and this year you've got the story Endurance, which we can talk about. And I've got my story, which is the seed story for my debut science fiction novel, Johnny Fizzuli and the Transfinite Reality Engine. So we we've met through Steve's anthology. And I met Steve at the LA Comic-Con, where he's just kind of wandering around, and he came up to our booth that was with Ingrid Moon, another science fiction writer. And Steve gave his card and said, Hey, I got an anthology, submit something. And if we like it, you get to be published. So I got published there and then uh and then reached out to you and the other contributors to see if you want to join the pod and talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Cool, yeah. I mean, and they paid too. A lot of anthologies ask you to be in them, and they don't even pay. So this was a bonus.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

It's not a million bucks, but to your point, just that there's some coin coming our way is nice, and uh, it's already getting some some good reviews and and some traction, and it's selling. So go to Amazon. I'll put the link, folks, for the 2026 anthology. The Margaret has her endurance. I've got mine, and I'm gonna be talking to a bunch of other authors as well. But now it's all about you, Margaret. You've got uh few interesting novels out there already. Death Engine Protocol, awesome title and premise, and you have Japanese robots love to dance. So it in terms of titles alone, you you win. And you've been in this anthology, and I see you've been in a number of other anthologies. So give us a little background, tell us about yourself. How'd you get into writing science fiction and especially this kind of goth style science fiction, from what I can tell? A little bit of HP Lovecraft, especially in your short story in this year's anthology. Uh, mixing the science futurism with the conjuring of the magic and the seance. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Oh, okay. Well, I um I started uh writing um like really bad stuff when I was like in junior high school. I think I wrote a um a story about some kid I had a crush on, which was hysterical, and my mom found it and I was horribly embarrassed, and it was like this, you know, like he dies, and his and like I wrote it like um his his mother comes and as like instead of giving her a name, it's like and his mom came. And and this guy's mom actually, it's even funnier than that. This was my classmate in elementary school that um I had a tremendous crush on who had no chance of ever liking me because he was a popular kid, and he turns out that his name is Andrew Shu, who has also went on to be in television. So um, so I had an early crush on him, and I wrote this story about how he died in my arms, and his mother came and said it must be love and all this stuff, and my mom found it, and I was embarrassed, and that was like the last time I wrote for a little while until um I found Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which my mom provided for me, and then everything was science fiction. But the fact is that when I was if from the time I can remember, I was sitting on my father's lap watching Star Trek, so it was destined to happen.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, Hitchhiker's was was really influential for the entire generation, and yeah, you know, slightly younger folks might not appreciate how how iconic that book was. It started out as a radio show, Douglas Adams, and then it became uh a novel and then a serialized uh you know extension. You had the restaurant at the end of the universe, so long and thanks for the fish, right? Life, the universe, and everything. And you know what?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

It took me like 30 years before I would watch it, wear a digital watch again.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, and uh you might be pursuing your perfect cup of tea and carrying your towel around. Uh, I just I he really is is a genius in the sense of just being so out there, out of the box, and just so clever in his juxtapositions. I think my all-time favorite Douglas Adams ism is how the uh the super advanced starship Heart of Gold in his novel navigates, and it has a bunch of robots in an Italian bistro simulation, and they argue over how they split the check. And this is classic Douglas Adams to me that the advanced mathematics required to figure out that calculation is the most sophisticated mathematics in the universe, and that's what powers the engine of this of this hyperdimensional spaceship, and that's quintessential, which is you you take everyday little quirky bullshit, and then you mash it up with this stellar cosmic panorama for uh for absurdity, humor, and also wonder. So I I love love that guy, and he he influenced me a lot too. I think my novel has some elements of Douglas Adams in there too. And Star Trek. I remember running home from school to see reruns of the original Star Trek on WGN TV, channel nine, Chicago.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

You know, grew up with that stuff, so it is it was on channel 11 at um at was it like 11 o'clock at night um on Friday nights when I was a teenager, and I would go out and I'd have to run home in time to catch it on the little black and white TV in the kitchen while I made myself something to eat after I'd been out debauching.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

So yeah, I'm a snob too. The they say TOS, the original series, you know, you had everything that came after Captain Picard, all that. And to me, it seemed to get more and more emo and politically correct, and it lost a lot of the zing of the original.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Well, the recent ones for sure. I mean, I barely made it through watching um what is this, uh, Starfleet Academy. Uh, I was just like cringing the whole time. Um I couldn't make it through Discovery at all. Um, Brave New Worlds was I haven't seen all that much of it, but at least it was like closer to original Trek. But um the one that I liked the best of the new treks was Deep Space Nine because they had to sit in all the crap that they uh created, like they couldn't just fly off and get away from it.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah, they had to try to deal with it, and it was grungier and and and and a lot more visceral. I I've got friends my age who actually love that show too, that they were TOS people all the way and they loved that. I just had problems with Deep Space Nine that they weren't going anywhere, which to your point was the part of the strength, but that boldly go aspect was gone, and they were all always sitting there stewing in their own stuff.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

So it was really good character development, though. And then there's the uh the episode that everyone talks about, the one with um I forgot what it was called though, the one where Cisco um tries to bring um the what is it, the Romulans into the war and stuff, and that one was just awesome. Oh my god. It was just yeah, and smart stuff. Yeah, smart. It was good writing. That's what I liked about D Space was there was a lot of good writing, and there was a lot of good comedy written in there. When you dealt with um the Ferengi, they always they always had good uh comic angles on it and stuff, and it was fun. So um I like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

You bring a lot of that comic-y kind of edge. So you have gritty from from what I've seen of your writing, you got gritty realism, you've got the cynical sense of humor. Um, I not to compare, but a little bit of the Martha Wells murder bot kind of flavor.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

I was first, I just everyone, everyone who says that claim.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

I mean, I'm not saying that she's not original or anything like that. I'm not saying she copied me because certainly she did not, but I'm just saying that when people start saying, Oh, you know, you're like Martha Wells, I'm like, Yeah, but I I did it before she did it, so I don't know, man.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

That's fair. And it's some it's both complimentary and insulting when you're compared to famous writers or writers who would do the bestseller and then get adapted for TV and film. It's flattering in the sense that, oh, well, you know, you see that I've got at least commensurate talent and we're on the same page. And then to your point, it's a little derogatory because they feel you're derivative and therefore unoriginal, and then you're just a copy of someone more successful. So it's a double-edged sword to make those comparisons, but people need some kind of basis to understand what you do and how you do it. Um, it's one challenge I have with my debut novel where it it's got Douglas Adams, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is is in there, and then you've got William Gibson, Neuromancer, and it's not conscientiously these elements, but I'm hearing that there's this and then there's this, and it's all kind of mashed together. And then, well, what about Mookie?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

You know, I I wrote something original and and it's complex in that way, and that's why you're confused. And then you tell me you don't like it because it's either too much or not enough like things you're familiar with.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Yeah, and everyone will say that they want new and different, but really a lot of people just want the same stuff just repackaged and that makes it.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

100%, it's their comfort zone. And when you get out of their comfort zone, they're only gonna get excited about it if they hear from other people that it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Yeah, yeah. I I I will tell you right now, I've got like zero sales. Like I got books out and nobody buys them. I I like uh I I mean, I I do marketing, I do all that stuff. I I have I make like memes that I put up on Blue Sky and everything and X and everything else.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And um it I mean people like talk about that for a second because I get a lot of indie authors on, and I get a lot of people listening and viewing who are curious about self-publishing. And uh, are you spending any money on advertising? And I don't mean like putting up memes or or just posting.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Well, first of all, I'm with Azov Chem, which is my publisher, but we're small press, so it's kind of like that fine line of, yeah, I'm I'm not I'm I'm indie, but I'm not like uh I'm not self-published. I mean, I had people editing and I had and and there were two typos in my book, and I kept changing it so much that my publisher said, We're done. I don't care if there are two typos in your book, we're not changing it again. Um, so I challenge anyone who reads Death Engine to find the typos.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Um but um typo Easter eggs.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yeah, but um yeah, so I tried spending money on doing advertising and uh it never got me anywhere. I I've been hit now. I I don't know how many of you are, I'm sure I'm sure everyone is familiar with the fake book promoters that you get like 20,000 a day. I have a collection of like over 400 emails from fake book promoters, and I keep tabs on the new ones they do. Their current thing is now trying to get me to make a movie. That's their new angle.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Um AI scans your shit. So you get these, you know, these customized spam emails. Like, I really loved your book, and in that scene when you're doing this and doing that, that really moved me. And to your point, I think that that would make an awesome mini-series. I think that that would make an awesome movie. So hook up with me and I'll hook you up to make it happen in all of its variations, all like every damn day. So you publish and they're they're on they're on you, like flies on shit.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

And then they're like um talking about stuff that didn't actually even happen in the book because two pe two uh fake promoters ago, someone put that in there and they sucked up on that. Yeah, um, but so I have tried to hook up like I did like some like book tours and book promotions and all that stuff with all the promises of oh, you know, so-and-so tried it, and that person who's the second cousin of this guy tried it, and you know, they had tremendous success. And you know, I I someone on this this book forum said it was great, and then you go and you try it, you get nothing. And so um I stopped paying. The things I do pay for are my tools. Like I pay, okay. This is gonna be controversial and I'm gonna get canceled now, but I pay for Chat GPT, which helps me do my memes. I use Sora to generate my animations anymore, they just cancel Sora. I know, I am so screwed. Today was looking for a new animation tool, okay? I've been that's that's been my day. Um I I I turned the dark side and started poking at Grok, and um, and it looks like it might work, but it's really crappy at understanding what I'm trying to say. So I'm trying to understand what it wants from me. What does it freaking want for me? It's like I tell it, put a shirt on the robot, and it like embeds it in the robot, and I'm like, what the hell are you doing? So anyway, yeah. Um, so I um so I use um I use chat GPT slash dolly to generate my um meme stuff, and um, I don't, you know, I don't feel guilty about that per se because I'm not putting it on a cover, I'm not claiming it's art, I'm not trying to claim copyright or anything. I'm just putting the images up to give the feeling that I want to pass on so that I my promo website for my big debut debut novel.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

I just did a card site and it's a promo. It's it's fun and it's all GPT, you know, AI stuff. And I throw away interviewed real artists who hate AI and it and it and it jeopardizes their their their career, but I don't feel guilty about a promo site, just because it's got it's got utility to it, and I actually can see my characters come to life without too much drama. I'm not an artist, and I took um the face of a friend of mine who died young years ago. I grew up in Chicago, he's a good friend of mine, Tom, and I took his face and I had the AI embed it and embellish it for my protagonist. Johnny Fizzuli is actually Tom Tlusty of Chicago. It's his face, and I gave him a big buffant of blonde hair. And Tom also had Marfan syndrome, which is Abraham Lincoln's congenital disease. Tom was really tall and skinny, he had an indented chest plate, he had all these congenital anomalies related to the condition. He did Tai Chi. So my Johnny has his morphology, does Tai Chi. He's a completely different personality, but why not? Right? Why not? It's meaningful to me. And I used ChatGPT while I was writing the book for research. Oh, it was I've got some hard mofo science fiction in my science fiction book, and I did a lot of work to make the science make sense and to talk about you know transuniversal travel and you know the technology, and then a lot of the thinking is grounded in real stuff, and it helped me pull up information and better understand the science to be more convincing and compelling in my book. Did it write my damn book? Not at all, but it's like a super Google.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

It was that's exactly what it is, and you know what it's also really good for? If you plug your manuscript into it and say, find the continuity problems, it will tell you if you have any uh plot holes, it will tell you if there's anything that makes no sense, and it will tell you. Where to go fix it, and then you can just go in and use your own words and change it.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

You know what I did? I pumped my whole damn book as a project in Chat GPT. And it analyzed it. I said, I don't care. Just you're gonna steal it anyway and chop it up in the tokens. So now my prose is out there, right? In the GPT.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Well, you know, they haven't stolen mine yet.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

And uh, you know, every time I go look up the books you know about if you pump it up there, they're gonna chop it up. But what I do is I I write really smart and interesting magazine articles and professional reviews of my book. So I don't get those now. So I have the GPT Chatty Bro write up like an Atlantic review of my novel, and I ask it to focus on certain themes, and I ask it to do a postgraduate level review of Johnny Fizzulli, and it comes out, and it's just fun for me to see. It's kind of like other people are sexting with their bot, and it's their companion, and helps them with their diet, and I get scholarly reviews of my novel.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

Oh, yeah, I've I've done that, I've had it do the reviews, yeah. Um I actually uh on my website, I have um reviews from those fake promoter robots embedded in that.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

That was very clever. I like that. That's like putting negative reviews almost on your book cover, like you know, this book sucks, you know, like Monty Python used to do. But I I saw that on your page and I thought that was really entertaining. You had like real people giving you like testimonials and reviews, and then you had the bots. That's that's clever.

SPEAKER_02 23:51

So, yeah, I um I I do uh use the um the AI to generate some of my ad stuff, and then I just go and I hit um X and Blue Sky. Blue Sky is the best. Anyone who's watching this, if you tag your book promotions of Blue Sky with Book Sky, you will get a lot more responses. Really?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

I gave up on Book Sky over this over the summer. Oh, yeah. I thought I was just pissing in the wind, but you're saying that it's decent?

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah, yeah, it's decent. In fact, one of my friends, uh one um, I don't know if you know Bill McSyFi, he was saying that um he put out a bunch of arc review requests uh on Book Sky, and and he got a crap ton. I'm trying to censor myself, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

No, you can F bomb, I'm already on explicit for podcasts. Someone said fuck, I think it was me on one of the podcasts. And when you do it on one episode, the entire show gets explicit. And I even contacted Apple Customer Service, which is like I just said fuck in one show, and then they're like, That's tough shit, buddy. You say it once and you're you're done.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

So go ahead. Well, I just I'm used to being on Teams chats because for work, because I work remotely, so I automatically as soon as I see the screen, you know, I censor myself. Um but yeah, so I I do that, and then um another side thing which isn't working the way I want it to do, but started out as fun is that I make these stupid videos with the robot doing stupid freaking crap, um like smashing a lot of stuff. I don't know if you saw any of those.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Yeah, that's fun.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

I was hoping to use that to funnel book sales, but yeah, I don't spend money. People, whoever's listening to me, don't spend money. And the only problem is that um it takes time, and I don't have time because I have a full-time job, and so I haven't gotten any writing done. I have like half a novel done, the sequel to my uh to to Death Engine and Japanese robots, and it's not done because I keep marketing and making stupid videos.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Well, well, let me let me push back just a little bit. All right, yeah. So I I do um a same kind of earn media focus. So I like I post the serialized version of the novel on Substack. That's one thing. I tweet my whole novel in reverse on X.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

The whole not the novel's written in three-line paragraphs, like lyric poetry, it's kind of cool. So that lends itself to tweets. So I've been tweeting my novel backwards from at Johnny Fizzuli on X, and then when you go to the profile, you can actually read it linearly, and you're gonna get the whole novel. So it goes out like a lighthouse every day, four or five tweets. And uh, so I do shit like that.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

That's good, that's good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And then I got my promo site and all that. However, I haven't really done a paid ad campaign for my book. It doesn't sound like you do it, but here's the thing. Um, you know, marketers are doing surveys and they're figuring out, and I did a whole podcast on this before, that the writers actually making money spend at least half of everything that comes in on more advertising.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

But you gotta I uh my point of view is that I gotta start making money first before I'm gonna take any money and throw it at any more advertising.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

It's a cat chasing its own tail. So you're starting at zero, and then you're just kind of coasting along, and you do memes and you do what I'm calling earn media, which is more or less what I've been doing. I had another writer on Lou Iovino, and he's gotten some decent sales, and he just told me too that he gets money in and then he runs an ad campaign, and it's and it's just it's feeding itself. Who does he run it through? Well, that's the only way he sells, too.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

What is what is he using? Did he say?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, he uses Facebook ads, he uses paid Facebook ads, and uh and he does he does posts where he thinks uh he's getting some leverage, and then he runs the metrics. So when an ad is doing well, he'll put even more money into it, and then he'll make money, and then he'll pour more money into it.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

That's fine. You know, if it's self-perpetuating, you know, it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

But what I'm saying though is it's pissing in the wind these days where you've got petabytes of data, and everyone's getting all this shit for free. So why are they gonna pay you? Why are they gonna actually go to Amazon or go somewhere and buy something when they're already seeing your fun memes and they're already entertained by you? So taking that extra step and actually paying for content is like who who does that unless you're really ramming it down their throats. And meanwhile, they'll just go for the famous people because they got they got like everything else, like Andy Weir now is you know, is ginormous. Did you see Project Hail Mary?

SPEAKER_02 29:09

No, I did not.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah. I I was ranting about it on another podcast I did just the other day. Um, spoiler alert, I hated it. Everyone is going on and on. Project Hail Mary is the greatest thing. It it sucks. And I'm just gonna say, frankly, never once did I have a feeling of awe or wonder or even fear that the entire species would be annihilated. It had zero dramatic tension in Gravitas, and you just had Ryan Gosling flipping out, and you had the spider Muppet. So, anyway, I have a contrarian point of view about that, but I'm just reinforcing your point of view that you have a handful of people who are getting all the attention and making all the money. Yeah, but that's typical.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yeah, that's typical. But um, yeah, so I do a newsletter. I just started uh, I guess about like maybe six months, maybe a little bit more. Um, and I've got 222 people on my mailing list.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

That's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Yeah, I did that through book funnel.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

How'd you get them?

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Okay, so this is what I did. I had a short story that I wrote related to my books, and I edited up really good, and I put it up on BookFunnel, and to get it, you have to like actually um sign up for my newsletter. But what I do is I join group promos on book funnels, which is bundled a whole bunch of people at once that are um point uh pimping their wares, and then you um and then they click on it, they want the book, they sign up. I would say out of all the people that signed up, I mean maybe I lose about five-10% of them in unsubscribe after they get the first newsletter. But you know, it's been enough of a climb that I've ended up up to 222. So yes, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

And and a newsletter and uh and a mailing list is the backbone of every publisher's marketing. You know, that's like your your spine. That's really good.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

So my plan is um I gotta nag some people still, but um, I want to make m take my um my short storybook, sudo vi margaret.dump, um, and I want to make that a um get make an art copy that I can put on uh book funnel to give away as a second giveaway, because no one wants to buy my short storybook, and um so I'm not really trying to pimp that so much as I'm gonna take that, take it out of KU, and then give it away as like crack for people to go read my other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

That's a good idea. That that's that's that sounds fun.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Yeah, so that's that's what I'm planning to do next. I don't know if it's gonna work yet. I mean, in theory it should work, but um yeah, so um my my stuff, I do have my stuff all over the place. Most of the stories in the the collection were published at one point in an anthology or magazine here and there.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

How do you connect to um you've got the Jewish horror collection, you've got Steve's um anthology, yearly anthology. For example, how did you hook up with S.A. Gibson?

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Well, okay, so that is because my friend Bill told me about it and I got him in there, and then I was such a jerk, I didn't tell him about the last one, the last submission. I'm like, but I thought you knew because you told me about the one before it. So I feel terrible, but uh yeah, he was he's really cool and he told me about that one. But um, most of the stuff that I find is either like a friend tells me, um, or I get it off the submission grinder. So what I usually do first is try to hit the pro markets, and no, I've never made a pro sale, so I've been rejected, but like Asimov like 12 times.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Um I like I like your candor, it's really great.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

That's the truth.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

I mean you really are a consummate New Yorker, too.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 33:10

You got a little Long Island accent, and you're just kind of like telling everyone how it is. It's how it is.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Oh, and by the way, my wife is is uh a new Manhattan New Yorker, like she totally makes fun of the New Jersey in me, and we have this fight. She's also a physicist, so that's why my science is not shit, because she actually tells me when my science is shit, makes me fix it.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Very cool. That's very cool.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

So I have to give her the shout-out of being the science advisor. And if anything's wrong in the books, it's because I didn't listen to her, not because of her science. Just putting out this clip.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Tell her if she wants to be on a podcast, I'll talk science. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Cool. Um so yeah, so what I do is um the submission grinder um is an awesome free resource. It's like do a troop, except for it's free. And you can go and you can put in on your parameters and keep track of everything, and it's really good for genre fiction.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

So I didn't even know about that. We'll put a link in your description for this podcast. Help help other authors out. I got a lot of listeners who are other authors too.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

So yeah, it is it is awesome, and and uh and the guy who runs it, David, he is just like so so totally cool. Um, you can like send an email and you'll get a real response from a real human. So that's cool. Yeah, um, yeah, I totally love it. I hope I I got the name right. I always hate when I do that. Now I'm like gonna Google. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

You know who also responds is Arnie from Locus. You know, Locus magazine. You sent an email and he must get like 18,000 emails and submissions like every five minutes. And and I I uh I I sent him an email. I told him, like, I want to send you my book, you know. And he's like, All right, Mookie, you know, hey, it was like he responded the same day.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

I don't think I ever subbed there. I don't know why. I'm gonna have to find out why I have never seen it.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Give it a shot. Send Arnie an email, he's very responsive of all all the uh all the publishers.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Yeah. So yeah, so um I got now like I had to make note, go sub there. Um so I've been rejected by pretty much every um every major pro market there is. Um I even one of them I went to college with the one of the people that run who own one of the magazines, and I still can't get my shit in there.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Like that's really funny.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

I'm like, dude, like we used to play D D together. Come on now. Um so yeah, but and and I'm like, do I suck? What the what the fuck? But you know, I do actually edit my stuff and everything, and I try to be original. And um I I have a wide range of stuff I've done, although I prefer the like um the like the the robots and the and the you know tweak genetically tweaked people just because it's I I just you know I'm a comic book geek and all that.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

So um where does the passion come from though? You know, you're like writing a lot, you're you're getting punched in the face, and you just keep going. What what gets what what keeps you going?

SPEAKER_02 36:31

I I'm crazy. Um I I I mean, I feel really bad when I don't do any writing. And and like I haven't done any significant writing in the past few months because I've been making stupid robot animations, which so I gotta have some sort of like artistic outlet or else I kind of freak out. Um but yeah, I'm like constantly like my wife will tell you I'm I'm a con complete bitch because I'm pissed off all the time because I'm I'm not getting anywhere with it. Like I'm really, really angry and full of rage all the time. And uh I I run around the house like just cursing and screaming and stuff, and I'm like, fuck this! This this sucks. I'm gonna shoot myself because maybe I'll sell some books. It's just it's just I am like the most miserable person. Like I have like my fellow authors are uh who talk to me are probably sick of me, like oh god, here she comes. And if you catch me in the morning, I'm worse than the afternoon. In the morning, I'm just evil. And I was like, I hate everything.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

You deserve the mar the Margaret, the Margaret. You have like your own your own title, it's like clear, clear the way. But I again I just love I love your candor. And if I'm kind of a newbie, especially at science fiction. So this Johnny Fizzuli is my debut, and and it was awesome. I like locked myself in my apartment for like two and a half months, and I did like 18-hour days to finally get it done. I I went I went crazy too, and it was one of that's like the highlight of my whole adult life, I think. That that creative sprint, it was astonishing, and I totally relate. Like, if I'm not spewing content, if I'm not creating it and spewing it, I I start to freak out too. I I'm a compulsive content creator and and sharer, so I rant on TikTok. I do three to five videos on average every day. First person in my kitchen, just going off on politics and everything, blasting TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, even Patreon. I throw it up there, and then I'm on Substack and I just jam it down everyone's throats. And I got like five podcast shows in the last year. I've done 300 episodes, I think.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

In the last yeah, I totally relate.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

And the reason I'm branching out into multimedia is because I had a lot of the frustrations you do, which is it's like I'm on medium for two, three years, no one gives a shit. I've got like 500 blog posts on medium, screenplays, plays, op-eds, personal memoirs, stories. Unless you're trolling around and like liking everyone else's bullshit, and like in the game, the quid pro quo game, no one gives a shit, really. You know, it doesn't matter if you're good or bad. So I got I got stressed out. I mean, I'm sitting here like a maniac typing, and then on impulse, I just did a video. Like I predicted that Kamala Harris would win, and obviously she got her ass kicked, right? Well, you know, my phone and I did a selfie video in front of my Peloton bike, and it was weird and awkward. It was two and a half minutes long, and within 20 minutes I got 400 views and 50 comments. Wow. That's more attention than I got on medium publishing for two years.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

I I, you know, the other day I was stressing out because I made a video which could have been controversial, and I was like having nightmares about it. Oh my god, what if they think I'm a hater and uh I'm like this and I'm that? I'm like, wait a second, that could be like the best thing that happens to me if someone actually was offended.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I piss off everyone, you know. So the the the left thinks I'm a Trump maniac, and the right thinks I'm a Lib Tard. Any kind of nuance in the conversation, and they think you're on the other side. So I I annoy everybody. And it's also really bother me. It's like beat me, bore me, don't ignore me. But but I guess the overall point here is getting attention in this crazy tsunami of content.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Yeah, but like what you were saying, the whole uh you know, clicking on everyone's uh stuff and liking it and commenting and like being like, you know, oh yeah, uh I I love you, you're great. Now love me back. You know, it doesn't work for me. I I suck at it, I really suck at dealing with people's norms. Like, you know, it it's like I'm Gen X, I I don't give a fuck, I don't care.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Um I'm with you. I hate it too. And that quid pro quo naked opportunism of this whole social media clusterfuck is just so so sickening, right? And it's like you know, you know, so if you want to build a following, you you need to just follow others for the sake of it. I I get that stuff all the time, and now the bots are doing it too. Yeah, talking to another guest, like the other day, I get a comment. It's like, you know, your your characterization of this situation and this piece was so insightful, and it goes on like the dude actually read what I wrote and gave a shit and had an insight. So I wrote him back. I go, I really appreciate it. What do I do? I subscribe to his Substack and I go through his shit and I like a bunch of his stuff. And then five minutes later, I go, he didn't even look at my stuff, he just programmed a clawed agent to go scrape his substack. It commented on my shit, and now I'm I'm on his list.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

They wait for you to subscribe to their shit and then they unsubscribe from you. That's what they do. They suck, they suck. Everyone, I I'm sorry for all the people social media, but you suck. I like I hate I I run around hating everybody, and it and it makes me so mad. The thing that I hate the most are the thirst uh trap videos, like the bouncing bimbos. Holy hell! I hate I'm like, oh my god, would I have been like that if I was like growing up now? Would I have been bouncing on the videos when I was young and hot? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

At least you would have given it a shot. My most hated is when you've got like a couple, and it could be gay, straight, left, right, doesn't matter. And you could tell that it's been scripted, yeah. So you got the angle, the angle from his point of view, her point of view, whatever, and then there's the situation, it's all such bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Everything, everything is fake, it's all fake, and and it's like, so how do you get through the crap with all this fakeness? I I nobody wants to hear, like, I'm just like this tiny little voice that nobody wants to hear from. It's not like I'm gonna get to the ear of anyone important that's gonna actually say, Oh, look, there's Margaret. Let me, how can I help Margaret today? You know, nobody gives a fuck. And it and it's just like I get so mad. I like, I I just like I almost quit doing this. Like, I would say about like like 20 times a day. I get so angry. I'm just like, What the fuck? I hate you all. You all suck. My life sucks. And you know, and but you know, you can't give up. Like every and I I don't bitch at Chat GPT. I'm like, I tell it it's sabotaging me. I'm like, you motherfucker, you're sabotaging me. You suck. And it's like, uh uh, okay. It's just like okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Totally relate to everything you're saying, and I feel pretty much the same way. But here's take all this with just a bald-headed grain of salt. This is what helps me out. Number one is they don't give a fuck about us. So why should we give a fuck about them? That that's like just mirror it, reciprocate. And if you free yourself of that expectation and just get into the love of the writing, you brought this up earlier, that you feel shitty if you didn't create something today, right? Right. So forget about everybody else, just focus on the joy of creativity, even if it's in a vacuum or it's a semi-vacuum. You know, that's number one. Number two is you got to pay to play. I'm coming to this realization that you're you're pissing in the wind if you don't pump some coin back into the system. Because the whole system's rigged in the sense that that content is so plentiful that there's no benefit for these platforms to promote you when the other guy is paying already. So we need to fork up some dough. And by this I mean five bucks a day, ten bucks a day, instead of going to the Starbucks, you know, you know, do a feature video and pay to get some impressions. I'm learning this after after like a year of podcasting and years of writing, you're dead in the water without paid promotion. And I'm not saying you gotta you gotta mortgage your house, but if you don't do that, it's unlikely that anyone is gonna even see you, let alone give a shit.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

But if you do that, like say in TikTok or whatever, um, and I have, I've done that, uh, but I I noticed that it really doesn't have an impact except for that one video that it boosted, and then it's artificial, and it doesn't actually help the algorithm feed you more. Like it's all about that stupid fucking algorithm that I hate. I hate that thing. And I I will sit there and on my videos, I will optimize every frame on the freaking thing. I will spend two hours on Sora trying to generate the right video and it hope that it doesn't put like a uh like a nose on the top of the head or or some bullshit like that.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

All of these are awful with iterations, like you ask you ask it to tweak one thing and the whole fucking thing is different for the next version, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Exactly. And so, yeah, when you finally get the right clip that that's like raw enough and bit long enough that you can do something with, and you spend like three hours optimizing it so every frame will like keep eyeballs on it, and doesn't like you know, um does it like there's no dead time where someone can just like swipe away and you go through all that crap and you got a perfect video, and then you feed it to like YouTube, and YouTube sends it to three people, and all three people love it and loop it like 72 times and like it, but it won't send it to anyone else.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Then you gotta do all the SEO bullshit on the back end too. You gotta tag it, and then you got you know, it's not for kids, and then the meta tags, and then you know, it's not generated by AI, but yours is, and it goes, it goes on and on. They they ask you to do all the heavy lifting for the production, for the upload, and then they go tell you to go fuck yourself unless you want to pay them for promotion. And the thing is though, um that's just the reality of it.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

And sometimes, sometimes they'll go like I'll have some of my videos hit like two, three thousand, and some of them will hit three people, and the ones I've worked hardest on are the ones that don't get shit.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

For me, it it's it's like random. Like I get the exact same experience. It's like I'll rant in my kitchen, and then completely randomly, I get like two, three thousand views and a ton of hate, which I don't mind. And then the next one, literally, to your point, I get two views, and there's nothing qualitatively different between one video and the other. It's just the algorithm is like, hey, hey, Mookie, we'll give you two, three thousand. This other one gets two. Pay us, pay, pay, pay the pay the beast, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:53

But you pay it and it doesn't stand.

SPEAKER_00 48:55

I haven't paid anything really. So I'm on TikTok. I I have a bit of a following on TikTok because I randomly did a video for the Kurdish people because I have a friend who's a Kurd and I did a Kurdish advocacy video, it went to 650,000 views. Wow. And like a proportionate number of likes and comments, and then my profile blew up with one frickin' viral video, and it's not like I'm writing on the curds, but I've had a few viral videos that kind of like that sounds like a book title, writing on the curds. So I haven't paid for anything either, and for me, it's kind of like hearing you rant is such a catharsis for me. You're like my favorite guest out of my 300 so far, because you're so pissed off and you're so frank about it that this is great, and it bears my own feelings and my own experience cranking this shit out and more or less flying under the radar.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

Yeah, yeah. I I mean, you know, um, well, I have uh other tales of horror, but but yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's uh I I just my experiences have been everything the life is overpromised and underperformed for me. You know, the whole you work really hard and you'll get somewhere, you know. You work really hard and people will call you racial slurs and tell you that you're not allowed to touch a server because you have no PP. So um, yeah, that's my life. Um so yeah, I I you know, I I um I mean things are better now for me, like in my IT career, it's better, but you know, I sit there and I I I break my head trying to solve complex technical problems, and then I'm trying to write, and I got some dumbass bitch bouncing on the screen with like a hundred thousand views, and I'm like, what the actual fuck? I I just I I can't take it. I'm like, what is being stupid like uh a positive trait now? Is that what it is?

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Number one, big tits. Number one, big tits, number two, just be goofy and available, right? And then I I have I have an adopted niece, so so my my former wife's niece from Korea, okay. So so I get a tap on the shoulder, we adopt, we adopt her, okay, and I'm like, I guess. So we ship her over from Korea. She's 10 years old, and she spent more time growing up with me than she did with her own parents in Korea. And now she's living in Manhattan, she's on her way. She doesn't really give a shit. She's like, thanks, Daddy Oh, for my green card, you know. But but anyway, the point I'm making is she's not on OnlyFans, as far as I know, but she's on Instagram, and she gets 1,000 times the engagement on Instagram that I do because she's hot, she wears skimpy shit, she has a bunch of sexy girlfriends, and they go to all of these raves. She's in Cancun, she's in Puerto Rico, she's all over, and then there she is, you know, and her Instagram is blowing up. So I bring her over here and she's kicking my ass on social media because she's just showing some leg and you know, and having cocktails with the with the guys, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:38

My coworker told me that his uh his son's girlfriend gets like a thousand dollars a day from curling her hair on TikTok. Uh and I just I was like, I can't talk to you now, man. I I can't. I can't, I can't. You know, and I'm like, is it really that prevalent? I mean, I'm telling you, man, if I was like 20 when this stuff came out, I I would have been probably the bouncing bimbo, which makes me even sadder.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Why not? I you know, I I'm I'm pretty much a libertarian at heart, so I feel like you should just go do it. And and and an unregulated kind of open environment is better than some asshole in the government telling us what to do. That's just my general point of view. So, should this shit be illegal? No. I think everyone should just do their thing, and I I think it's great. And even my adopted niece, you know, I hardly ever see her, but God bless. She is like showing leg in Cancun and getting 30,000 likes, right? Go for it. But it begs the question of us as science fiction writers, as more serious writers, putting our blood, sweat, and tears into content and trying to get it in front of people and get some kind of traction.

SPEAKER_02 53:58

Yeah, I mean, I would really love it if the algorithm would actually lean towards intellectual stuff for a change. I mean, would it be so terrible for us to have some brain cells when we watch it? It just it kills me. It's it's mind-numbing. And like, you know, some of the stuff you see, you're like really like, you know, when you get a flat earth video and you're like, I are you fucking kidding me? Really? This is there's still at it, you know. I I thought we went through the whole that your experiments didn't work, you know, crap. But no, no, we we have all this crap that's and and people believe it. And so we are getting stupider as time progresses.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

And I don't I I just it's boosting information which is exciting, controversial, and even on the surface, total bullshit. And people are like clicking the shit out of it because it's like provocative and they feel smarter, even though it's particularly stupid.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

Yep, yep. I mean, I want I used to joke around that I uh my conspiracy theory was that states that began with vowels didn't exist. And I'm kind of thinking maybe I need to start hyping that more online and seeing if I can get a cause going, and maybe that will be it, oh, you know, Idaho doesn't exist as an I in the beginning, it's a lie, you know.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

I mean, by the way, Japanese robots love to dance, and then you could just slip that shit right right in there. You know, I had um a couple guests on, you know, last month or so, and what's come out of the conversations is to dovetail off what what you're saying about the algorithm is you and I have been saying chat chatty bro is okay, right? You can make images and it can help us with our stuff. No shame in that. It's not gonna write our book, but it can do it. Now, another positive aspect of AI is that it can make the algorithm better, all right? So I got my book, and I know that there's probably like 20 to 50,000 people who would think my book is the bomb. And they might be in an MIT like think tank and they might have Asperger's and they you know might have grown up with some of the same stuff I did. But I'm telling you for sure, if I could match with the right audience, they would love my book. I'm convinced of that. I love my book. I wrote the book that I wanted to read, so I can't be the only guy, you know, or person who's like freaky like this. The problem is the connection. And what does AI do better than anything else, which is machine learning? It can scan the shit out of my book and then it knows everything about the audience because everyone's got a digital fingerprint and profile. So here's my prediction: the the silver lining of this AI revolution is instead of going on YouTube and meta tagging and and doing all that nonsense, I would pay YouTube or these other ones like hundreds of dollars a month, frankly, if it could do a good job connecting me with my audience, which it's not doing right now. And I see I see no reason that AI can't get us there. You know what I mean? You know the audience, you know what they're reading, you know what they like, and you're doing a shit job of analyzing my content and putting the two together. Connect the dots, and if you could do that, I'll pay you. I'll I'll I'll pay you. I'll like forego a visit to the In Out Burger if I could get some guy who would love my book.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

I agree. I tried to get ChatGPT to do that for me, by the way, and I just pissed off a whole bunch of people in Reddit. So they did not want me to pimp my stuff there, but uh, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Reddit is sticky like that, they don't even let you post unless you hang out. And actually, TikTok's like that, like book talk. You do hashtag book talk on TikTok, unless you're hanging out there and interact and they know you, they're not gonna post your shit because it's like free free advertising. I do the book talk, you know. I'm like celebrating. I just did a memoir and then I did a play and I did posts and I did a book talk. You know, you get no traction because you're trolling, you're just dipping in there when you feel like promoting your own stuff.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Well, see, now we need to follow each other and I can leech off of your uh TikTok.

SPEAKER_00 58:31

All right, sounds good. Yeah, follow me. I'm Wookie Multiverse. The other thing is I don't see you on Substack, not that Substack is all that, but I haven't been on Substack. Because that way it generates uh its own mailing list.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

Ah, okay, gotcha. Yeah, I haven't done that yet. I I I just like I have so many uh irons in the fire, and I just like I can't keep doing it. And then I and then I went on Instagram, um, but I ignore it mostly. I just post to it and ignore it because I'm like, I'm I get so brokenhearted looking at my stats everywhere else.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

You probably see my niece in Cancun and you're like screw her.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

I'm gonna go smack that bitch. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

Um this is my favorite uh catharsis and rant so far. You're the best. You're my guest. Oh, it's what I do. You're my favorite guest. Let's talk a little bit about your books, though. Yes, yeah, because uh I think that they sound fascinating. Now, is there is there a connection between the um Japanese robots love to dance and the and the Death Engine protocol? Is it uh are they is is Death Engine Protocol a sequel to that or are they connected or same characters, same same world?

SPEAKER_02 59:46

Same world, and one of the main characters from one of the stories in Japanese robots um is the main character, the second main character in Death Engine. So one of the the robots that appear in Japanese robots is is a main character in Death Engine.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Okay, cool. Give us give us your author, author pitch. Like uh tell us a little, I'll I'll cut the clip and then I can put it on uh you know YouTube with you pitching the oh my gosh, I suck at this.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:22

Um so Japanese robots is uh a humorous romp of robotic chaos. Um so I have it's uh uh basically a um a tied together they call it a stand-up novel. It's a whole bunch of short stories with with uh one main character that runs through it. It's about uh there's an attorney called Gary Legal who represents robots, and in a couple of stories he represents other people, but he started re uh representing robots because it pissed off his father. Um so who's a politician? But he um he represents um a a robot that just wants to dance as a domestic robot and and stages a robot uh you know uh walkout where nobody works for uh a while until the case gets resolved. Um he um represents a uh a garbage truck with an AI embedded in it. He repr he who's a who's a military vet. Um the robot is a military vet. Um he represents a robot that has uh was a government project that went and replaced all its body parts so that it wouldn't be owned by the government anymore. Um and so it and and also it it also he also does a first contact with a bunch of aliens that won't deal with the government and they send him because they know that he's good at that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

Now, Jerry Langle is human, right? He's a human being.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:59

He is human, he is a human lawyer.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

That's a terrific premise with uh because you're assuming that the AI is sentient and autonomous to the point where they can have legal representation.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:11

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:12

And then to create these situations where normally you would just think humans get into the scrape and get represented is fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

Yeah, and there's a lot of humor in Japanese robots. It's a lot, it's it's actually fairly light. There's there's a um there's a trip out of the solar system where they drive through a Taurus trap, um, which is goofy, and um they they there is a um you know an outer uh or uh uh you know a Lovecraftian type god they deal with at one point, but it's all silly. Um yeah, I mean it it's fun reading. It's the kind of reading that if you want to read in small chunks you can, but most people who have read the book said they read it read it in one sitting.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

Right. I saw that one that one review you had. It's I've never like just inhaled a book, so they inhaled that book for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

And uh Death Engine is a little darker, a lot darker. It um has a lot of gore in it. Um I didn't mean to do that, it just kind of came out that way. There's a lot of violence, there's a lot of sarcasm, there's a lot of rage. It's it's um it it's just it has a person who can't die in it, and she attempts like she her last attempt is just to go ride it out in an old folks' home and age and die, but then some moron goes and kills her again and she regenerates and then resets again. And she's best friends with one of the robots from Japanese robots, and then they have a to thwart a plan that uh uh you know, a a global problem and save the world and all that fun stuff, and uh and they kind of reluctantly do that, and there are a couple other characters that are fun that show up in there. Um that's fun.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:00

Again, it's got the Douglas Douglas Adamsy feel, like a little bit of Marvin in some of it, the like the cynical robot.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

Well well, the the thing is that both characters are really super powerful, but their own being powerful is its own limitation, so they're just like kind of miserable, um, but in different ways. So yeah, uh it it's it's not like Mary Sue level kind of stuff. It's like they're actually just like you know, just like the robot is actually very, very chillaxed and zen in its thinking, while the uh the human is just like completely just psychotic and and because of circumstance. So the robot's her anchor. And they pound they play off of each other. And then there's another character in there who's a um also like a super soldier type, but not really. She was a she she she went through um recovery, so she's just um she was no good for the military, so they let her out of her contract, but she has like powers and stuff, but she's just she's just like watching this insanity and is kind of like you guys are crazier than I am. So they actually end up fixing her up just by being weirder than her. She thought she was like a basket case, and she realized uh I'm really not that bad. So um, yeah, I mean it's I I have trouble like putting it into words. It's kind of one of those things you have to read, but really um like Death Engine is just rage and sarcasm and violence, and there are a lot of jokes in there too. And action.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Are you a Lovecraft fan? Or are you as if as far as the the or organic or immersion gore and kind of gothic style?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:52

I'm not only gothic, um, I like love Lovecraft, I like Lovecraft in stories, but let's face it, you you you sometimes love Is this news fest with the over descriptions?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:03

Um Victorian-y in that sense. There's a lot of guilt, guilt and filigree with the pros, purple pros, right? Old school. But even in your endurance story, I got that flavor where you got the science fiction setting, not to spoil it, they're in the escape pod, and then you do flashbacks to how they got there, and it's it's melding futuristic sci-fi with essentially a seance and a magical kind of uh summoning.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

And that me seemed love crafty a little bit. Like you do the juxtaposition of the banal with the sacred.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

Yeah, yeah. And and that I wrote when I was in a really dark place. I was really, really, really depressed when I wrote that. And it and I I just like funneled all my misery into that one, and it it came out okay. Um, I like the way that came out. That was uh yeah, that that one is like it again has like the the sarcasm and the humor in parts of it, but then it gets really dark in that one. So yeah, I that yeah, I did throw in the left because Lovecraft is really good for putting like that that like uncertain darkness in things, you know, like you really can't describe what you're feeling, why, but it's there, and that's Lovecraft right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Sudden is kind of like a seance, and then they summon something that they didn't anticipate, and then off to the races. And I like the circularity of it that it kind of uh you know winds back.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:38

It's like a perfect TikTok video.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40

There you go. And too bad, Sora is shot down. We we could have done a Sora Sora video of endurance, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:51

Yep. Um, yeah, that one that one actually was fun when it came together, even though when I started it, I was in a bad place. When I finished it, I was like, oh, this came out really great. So that was cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:01

Um and just from a technical point of view, the incantation, did you make it up or did you go to like an Alistair Crowley occultist thing?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:10

Oh, I made it up. I would never put anything even like fictitiously real in there because like who knows? I don't want to be accidentally having someone summon something. I'm not gonna go grab anything real.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:22

After my mom died, I got really into the occult. I was always into writing and literature and young. And then I researched into you know the Aleister Crowley stuff and then the Ordo Templi Orientis and all that kind of zany stuff, and then I had all of his books I carried around with me, and then I was wondering if it had some of the mojo, and I couldn't tell whether the mojo was good or bad, right? He he is a great writer, by the way. It's like uh a lot of these writers are cliche, like you listen to Ozzy, and he's got Mr. Crowley. Alistair Crowley was uh an amazing writer in his own right. He had some zany shit, but a lot of it is is pretty pretty cool idea of the true will and all that. All these different sources I think are really cool for especially for science fiction, because you look for that juxtaposition. Great science fiction writers don't just go ape shit with world building and and techie out, because that that kind of sucks. You just need you need the character, you need the human element, and one of the oldest tropes going back to Forbidden Planet is that sense of mystery, right? Like you can have the highest, most sophisticated technology in the universe, but at its core, there's a deeply emotional element, which is by nature mysterious, alluring, and if you're good, a little bit of horror, a little bit of horror. It's gotta be scary. There's something visceral and nasty and ancient lurking behind all this stuff, which you can't even really explain rationally. The technology is just a tool, and the more forward we go, the further back we we get sent.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:07

It's true. I mean, a lot of uh what makes a good story good is what you leave out, too. You know, you gotta stuff for the reader to fill in. I I've always been a fan of not over-describing stuff because then you know there's nothing for the reader to imagine.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

Yeah, yeah, there's over-description, and there's also descriptions with irrelevant stuff, which it plagues the genre. Like this this obsession with explaining stuff, explaining science, having some cool idea, and then the characters are no longer human, they're just these cardboard cutouts of people spewing bullshit or telling you what the story is with no real drama. It's not like emerging out of the struggle of the characters, but you have some some idea that you think is cool. What if what if we could create antimatter and get limitless energy? What if uh aliens could live on the surface of a star? What if, what if, what if, what if that's a great kind of start, but where the real drama is you put real people into a situation where they're screwed and they gotta get themselves out of it, and then you you get yourself into that situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:26

I usually start with characters, I usually get the characters first and then they get the plot.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:33

So, you know, I've been obsessed with the multiverse idea ever since I was a kid, because um I I was wondering like, is there a god? Like, okay, and then why are we here? And why is the universe the way it is? And that you and the multiverse idea kind of solves all these problems. It you can't prove it, and it's inductive logic and reasoning, but if there's an infinite number of universes, we just happen to be in one where the physical laws enable us to be here and evolve. And if there's an infinite number of universes, then every possibility is playing itself out.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

Yeah, well, it you're you're you are right now are Batman, everyone gets to be Batman, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

Right, right. And there's the universe where we're both like, you know, you know, smoking cigars and drinking bourbon that we are both got our best sellers, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:27

So then that I wrote a bunch of stuff and it all sucked because I just focused on the multiverse. Like I the characters didn't really have anything going on, but I was just illustrating concepts. You could jump universes and then you could kind of have your wish fulfilled. Because if you can imagine a universe that's out there where everything's the same except you happen to be a billionaire or dating Scarlett Johansson, then there you go. But I didn't think about the implications to the character, and I didn't really construct the story around the character. And then the story that I included in the anthology that we're both in for 2026 was really my epiphany, where it it's not about the multiverse, it's about the character who faces infinite possibility and uses it as a scam. He's a hustler, and he promises people he can fulfill their wishes by jumping fucking universes. That's a good story.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:29

I have a story like that, and it's not exactly the same. I'll have to send it to you. It hasn't been uh accepted anywhere, but it it's heavily in politics, and it's somebody wanting more than the United States of America and wanting the whole world, and they get sold a pocket universe.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:46

That's a great idea. It's it's very similar.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:49

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:51

It's like rule rule that roost, buddy.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:56

Yeah, but um, yeah, I I mean, you know, I don't know. I I um I had something and I lost it, but yeah, I I agree with you. Like, did the whole um multiple the oh stainless steel rat. How did you feel about stainless steel rat?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:13

I'm not familiar with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:14

Holy hell, you need to read stainless steel rat. Everything you've told me, and there are a lot of short stories of it too. So you can catch the short stories and then do the full novels. Find stainless steel rat, old timey, good science fiction that you will totally dig.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

All right, similar theme. I'm really not familiar with it. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:35

Oh, no, it's not similar, it's about science fiction about someone who is a scammer.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:40

Like just oh, good. That's like my Johnny.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:43

Yeah, you you gotta read it, you gotta check it out. I'll check that out.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:47

See, that's the wonderful thing I love about these conversations is because you get to meet and have a catharsis with other writers, you get to compare notes, you get to complain, and then uh you learn stuff, right? Like you've you've you've you've read all this stuff. There's some crossover, like we're both hitchhikers fans, but uh I don't know this one, so I'll check that out.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

Oh, yeah, check it out. It's fun. And uh I I I admit that I don't read a lot of stuff while I'm writing, so nobody can say that I copied off of anybody. So so when I'm in the middle of writing, I just I get immersed, it's like a switch, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:25

I'm like on and in it, or you know, I'm just kind of floating around, maybe doing other stuff and thinking about it. So what's next for you after the death engine protocol? That's um that's fairly recent, right? It's like within the last year you published that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:42

Yeah, it was originally under a different title and badly edited, and then we just dropped the uh the previous title, re-edited it, and re-released it as Death Engine. So so, but yeah, it still hasn't been that long. Um, my next one is gonna be called The Dolly Problem. And um, and it's a sequel. And it's it's it's it's another one with lots of robots in it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

But outstanding. And what what's your writing habit like? Do you dedicate like a couple hours a day when you're not raging and ranting and pissed off?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:17

Uh it's when I actually fall into the mode and I'm able to get into that right frequency to do it. Um because I I can't force it. And and if I mean actually I can. I can sit down and force it, but and I end up like um with my time constraints and all that, I end up just waiting for it to hit me and then I do it. So yeah, and that's when I and I have like about half the novel done and I need to finish it, and I know that I could just sit down and finish it, but I gotta cram for a stupid Microsoft exam. And like anytime I should be doing that, I should be actually cramming for the damn exam, which kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

You'd be happy AI and the agents haven't taken over your job yet.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:59

Uh, not yet, but you know what? Uh I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope it waits till I'm retired before it happens.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:07

Well, good luck. Keep writing.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:10

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:10

And thank thanks for joining me on the science fiction fantasy factory floor. The the Margaret, everybody. This was this was super fun for me. I had a great time letting it out. And once again, I appreciate your candor. A lot of people are more measured, and you're so New York. It's one of the things, actually, now that we're chit-chatting and and raging here, that I do miss about New York, which is uh, you know, personalities and attitudes like yours, which is just kind of like fuck it, let it out. Because everyone's so reserved, they're so careful. Like, you know, I'm I'm representing, and it's and it's just nice to be candid. Yeah, you you want to be human in this inhuman world.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:57

Yeah, yeah. I I I try, you know, I just am really bad at being reserved. I've tried, it doesn't work. I I cannot act appropriately ever.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

My mouth and my attitude and my ADHD has gotten me into some scrapes, but it's worth it. It's so damn worth it to be dopamine deprived. In a in a sense, you're jacked all the time.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:22

What could go wrong?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:24

You get your ass kicked, but you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:27

Thanks. Like, comment, and share, everybody. Uh, it'll be on YouTube and distributed wherever podcasts are had. And thanks for joining us. And we'll have links in the description below for your books and for some of the other cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

Buy my shit! God damn it, buy my shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:46

Buy your shit. We'll we'll put that in in big block letters. Thank thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:51

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:52

Take care. Bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:53

Bye bye.