The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Hosted by writer and ranter Mookie Spitz, the SFFF is where science fiction & fantasy creators, fans, and technologists transform imagination into reality. Each episode explores how writers, filmmakers, and world-builders bring their universes to life, with personal stories about turning wild ideas into finished projects that connect, inspire, and thrill. From indie authors to visionary engineers, Mookie uncovers the creative engines powering the future of sci-fi & fantasy storytelling!
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory
Al Hagan Infuses His Post-Apocalyptic Vision with Military Precision
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Mookie welcomes Al Hagan onto the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory floor, a writer whose complex heroes and driving prose comes from his dedication to duty and service.
Instead of MFA programs or writing circles, Al rose through the ranks of the United States Marine Corps, followed by decades in oil, intelligence-adjacent work, and real-world exposure to how systems break, and how people react when they do. That background bleeds directly into his fiction, especially his post-apocalyptic Hexen series that taps into his deep knowledge about logistics, weapons, human behavior under pressure, and the ugly reality of survival when the rules vanish.
When Al writes about EMP strikes, pandemic-scale death, or armed conflict, the fragile infrastructure and dissolution of order become visceral. He blends lived experience with careful research to hurl us into his worlds, fueling his stories with the grit and credibility most sci-fi never achieves.
Al and Mookie dig into:
- How Hagan’s Marine and intelligence background shaped his obsession with realism
- Why most military fiction gets technical details wrong—and why readers notice and disengage
- The origin of the Hexen universe, where 90% of humanity is wiped out and the grid goes dark
- Writing strong, ruthless characters who earn survival instead of coasting on plot devices
- The balance between research and storytelling—how one accurate detail can elevate an entire scene
- And his latest release, Crescent City Shootout, which drops readers into a half-flooded, post-collapse New Orleans where empire-building meets violent resistance
The Guest
Al Hagan served four years in the Marine Corps, completed college, and worked for a major oil company. Bored with that, he next spent a number of years in the intelligence community, mainly running counternarcotics operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has recently retired from IT Project Management in the private sector and lives on a wooded property in Texas.
Hello and welcome to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory. I'm your host, Mookie Spitz, and on the floor today, I've got Al Hagan. Welcome aboard, sir. Thanks, sir. We met through the Sci-Fi Anthology of 2026 put together by SA Gibson. You got a copy too. If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll wave in the copy with this weird kind of forbidden planet landscape. The anthology has been coming out for several years, put together by S.A. Gibson. I had Steve on the podcast a few months ago. We talked about setting it up. He's a sci-fi writer in his own right. And every year he assembles talent in the field and showcases it through the anthology. How'd you get hooked up with Mr. Gibson?
SPEAKER_00I'm a member of the uh Facebook group there and saw it come up. And I've said, hey, you know what? I've got a little story. Pretty much done. Let me finish that off and send it in. And uh Amber, um, ooh, what's her last name? Amber Hell Editing. Yes, editing. Um, she said it was tight, had one good suggestion, uh, which I really liked. Just switch a couple of things around and they went with it.
SPEAKER_03I liked her. She had a few suggestions just to tidy mine up, too. She cut out she cut out uh a nice little vignette I had that I could tell you about. You get a kick out of it with this uh with this uh importer fraud idea. But she felt that that belongs in a novel, and already my story was kind of long, so I said, okay, but I thought it was very professionally done. And Steve, Steve's the scholar and a gentleman, and has been doing it for years, so it's uh fun to fun to participate. And that's how I I got you. So I I replied all to the thread of the Steve, thank you, and I took advantage of his good graces to uh invite the writers. So I've got a few of you, and uh it's great to meet you through that networking opportunity.
SPEAKER_00Pretty cool. Uh actually, the uh you've got a wide variety of stories. I admit I haven't read them all. I like to read one story and let it sit for a while rather than just slam, you know, four or five short stories together. It's kind of a pretty savor it, like fine wine, you know. So I haven't read them all, but uh it's a good mix, a wide variety of styles and and different uh of course, science fiction is uh is a very broad field.
SPEAKER_03I liked yours, which is the apocalypse is weird. We can talk about that. I liked your uh protagonist, Tommy, this this tough, tough chick lit living in Texas post super pandemic. So you got the Hexen virus wiped out 90% of humanity, which is really the foundation for your Hexen series, right? About you got five books now?
SPEAKER_00That five books. Uh the fifth one comes out April 3rd.
SPEAKER_03April 3rd this year?
SPEAKER_00Yes, in the world.
SPEAKER_03Well, this is this is a launch, a launch party for you, Al. There you go.
SPEAKER_01That'll work.
SPEAKER_03Great. Uh, we've obviously gone through the COVID pandemic, and you know, different people had different reactions to that, both in terms of what was real, what was it, how the government did and didn't respond, and it left a bad taste uh in everyone's mouth one way or another. So did you start going with the Hexen series after that, or were you already cooking with this idea of I was I was on it already.
SPEAKER_00The first uh I I went back and looked, and November of 2018 was my first draft on the first book. So a year and what a couple of months before anybody had ever heard of COVID. And once COVID came through, I think I threw in some things that were more uh that we experienced with COVID. Like, for example, I say, yeah, yeah, they were wearing the old useless COVID masks.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's uh get a little shoddy and kind of fun and modeling reference, right? But your your your contagion is was way more deadly. I mean, people are still arguing about the mortality rate and how that impacted, and there were different target populations too for COVID, you know, like young people were pretty much immune. Uh, if you're middle-aged, if you were heavy set, you were higher risk. How we handled that pandemic is still being argued about. We clearly messed it up, yeah. Uh, but yours is uh is a is a rough one. COVID, by any estimate, maybe like two percent, you know, one, but yours is ninety percent. That's that's pretty bad.
SPEAKER_00And I did that for a reason. But if you look at just the regular avian flu that uh comes out and is transmitted to humans chiefly in Asia and Turkey and and uh China and various other uh the mortality rate that is 60 percent as is. But the most they've infected has been about three or four hundred people. But uh so it wouldn't take a whole lot to jack that up in a biolab to a to a deadlier uh uh higher mortality rate. The problem is transmission, it's not that infectious.
SPEAKER_03That's the thing, right, with these bugs. So you got super lethal ones that aren't very good at jumping human to human.
SPEAKER_00When you combine both factors, yeah, and what I wanted to do, uh I did not only the uh 90% death, but the uh and this is a war. I never come out and say it so much. It's it's obviously a war because I'm taking the viewpoint of the people who are on the scene, but there's also EMP weapons that are set off that shut down all the electronics, all your car, phone, internet, uh, and that's in your short story, too.
SPEAKER_03So they're dealing with your short story, it was kind of like a teaser of that world, right?
SPEAKER_00It is, it is, and I wanted to isolate people, I wanted to break them up from whatever group they were in, family, church, biker gang, whatever they were, and then see how they worked from there.
SPEAKER_03There's a lot of cross currents, like everything from you know, Walking Dead, Mad Max in the in the vernacular, and I'm not comparing your stuff to theirs, I'm just saying that that theme of post-apocalyptic breakdown of society and technology and survival of the fittest and sometimes the least fit, right? For ironic touch. But uh, you're you're in that genre for sure. Personally, I I like your prose because it's very direct. You you you don't mess around. And I like, for example, the character of Tommy in the short story. I thought that she was great. I was rooting for her. Um, I saw her and felt her when I'm when I was reading it. And uh, she's heroic in that aspect. And I'm assuming that's a theme that recurs throughout your writing, which is people are up against the wall. You're gonna have people who crack, and you have people who step up to it. And sometimes the people who step up to it are the least likely, at least in your own mind, an estimation, to be able to handle it.
SPEAKER_00And and that's one of the great things to explore about that. Like in the in the full books, uh, and I mentioned Daniela briefly, um, she starts off in the first book as an 18-year-old, literally high school girl, and has to learn how to defend herself and grew up poor and doesn't want to remain poor. She wants to build an empire. And you got to figure if 90% of the people are gone, that means 90% of everything is out there waiting for you to take it or take it over. And so she she's a good character, but she's a little ruthless too.
SPEAKER_03Well, you need that, right? That kind of moral ambiguity makes characters interesting, and it also makes the situations that you put them in as an author more interesting because you don't quite know what to expect, what aspect of the personality is gonna pop out at you. And I like when the when the plot unfolds based on what the characters are dealing with. It's not like you're following like this outline, you throw them into there, and then they gotta just deal with it, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
SPEAKER_00And one thing that I like to do is to, and I did this with the short story, is to show what the characters are thinking because uh a lot of stories come up with one-dimensional characters, but I'm telling you what they're thinking in a lot of cases, and and I I think that adds a lot of depth to it, rather than you to uh from their actions just try kind of figure out well, I would be feeling like this. Well, yeah, okay, but maybe they're a psychopath and they don't feel that way.
SPEAKER_03There's almost two extremes. You got writers who almost write like it's a screenplay, and you got absolutely no idea what's going on, and the characters aren't even important, it's all about the world that got built and the plot that gets shoved down the reader's throat. So characters tend to be like cutouts, you know, two-dimensional cliche. And then you got other writers who go nuts, which is you get 10 pages of what they had for breakfast and you know how they feel about it. That's why I like your I like your prose because you have a nice balance, which is you know, you're you're on point for what's unfolding, it's organic. You don't give too much backstory because you don't need it, you give just enough to set the story, and then you have that emotional depth to the characters in terms of the conflicts, their feelings about stuff, and she's put into a circumstance where she needs to do something that makes her very uncomfortable, and she actually goes about doing it, and then she has regrets about it, but then she realizes that she's stepped up in ways, and that that's gonna help her and her people survive.
SPEAKER_00And and that's part of the ruthlessness there. You uh you may have to do some things in in that sort of situation. If there's no law enforcement, if there's you know, you just can't allow people to come in and and take everything, you've got to fight back.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, and you know, the genre crosses over. You got horror, you got fantasy. Uh, the vampire books, especially the original good ones, are cool this way, too, because it's really essentially the fear of the stranger. When you're in survival mode, like in a post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic kind of world like that, other humans at first are gonna be your enemy because you're competing for limited resources. And it's like that dark forest stuff where you know you kill first because you're gonna get killed if you don't go. Yeah, and it's a tough, tough setup, but it also taps into our innate human fear of the other, and this idea that we're all competing, it is kind of a dog-eat dog world, and we all need to struggle each and every day just to get through it in our own way. And there's a catharsis when they read this kind of genre, especially this kind of crossover with science fiction, post-apocalyptic stuff, so it's relatable, and then it's got its own built-in drama, right? Which is survival on the one hand, and second, how do you how do you stay human while you do that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's why um I mean, I don't want to s have a guy see a beautiful sunset and burst into tears. I'm not going that far. But on the other hand, uh, well, like in one of my newer books, I uh have a guy that that uh gets into a fight with the bad guys and he throws a guy off a roof, and then later on he's being interrogated by someone and a good guy, he's safe at this point, but he's being interrogated by an authority, and he thinks, oh, you know, I was in the situation, it was me, and you were here feeding your face nice and nice and safe. But then he thinks about man, I just threw a guy off a roof. You know, it kind of hits him in the face at that point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that dimensionality is great, right? Because you got the tension of just surviving and it's problem solving. So you gotta use your head and you gotta figure it out, but then you got the brutality of it, the compromise, the moral ambiguity, that adds depth, and you know, good writers like you bring that out instead of just dismiss it as irrelevant or overdo it to your point where they had a tear in their eye and uh you know a knife in the guy's back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, sad but true, you know.
SPEAKER_03Uh sorry, but yeah, we we gotta we gotta do what what we gotta do. What what got you into writing? Because your pedigree is a marine, and then oil did it some intelligence work, and then sounds to me like you you're restless, you just want to do new stuff, and then here you are at least part-time sitting on your ass writing stories. So, how how did that happen? What got you in as a writer and as somebody who really wanted to be immersed in storytelling and then mastering this craft?
SPEAKER_00I've always read a lot, and science fiction was one of the early things, all the you know, all the Asimov, all the authors, Andre Norton was a big uh influence there. And I always wanted to write, but it just work got in the way and everything. So I it wasn't really until I retired that I had really had the time to do it. And uh just started writing, started uh looking for open calls, submitted short stories, wrote books.
SPEAKER_03Good good for you. I mean, that that's a bold move. It's it's time intensive and it's it's hard. I mean, every everyone's got writing a book on their bucket list. All right, I'm gonna write that book. Uh when I when I get a chance, I'm gonna write that book. But who actually does it? And then when you do try to do it, it's tough. How did you get over those early hoops? Like anytime you're learning something new, you can't help but suck. Uh, did you have some support? Did you share your content with anybody? Did you get uh a professional opinion, or what'd you do?
SPEAKER_00The well, let me say it's a lot easier now that you have the internet and all that. Uh years ago, before, well, let's say in the 90s, the internet was just coming up, not everybody had a web page. It was difficult to almost impossible back, I felt like back at that time to get a story into anyone. Uh it's very discouraging back then. So uh a couple of attempts then, and and it was just no, I'm gonna focus on work.
SPEAKER_03You had the bug early, sounds like you wanted to do this for you. It's not just like, hey, I'm retired, I'm gonna write a book.
SPEAKER_00No, no, this this has been a long time thing, really.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00But then once I had the time, uh I I actually wrote one of the books and well, probably the first two generally, uh speaking. They're they're kind of one long book. One of them takes place four hours, starts four hours after the la first one ends. But I did that and then I thought I I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So that's when I started writing short stories, looking for calls, and it's it's actually difficult to get feedback on stories then, but it was just hey, let's submit short stories, let's find all the open calls we can, let's submit shorts. Uh so I was writing horror and crime and uh science fiction, some true military adventures, just uh a lot of different genres, just kind of almost shotgunning them out to see what worked and what so it so it was really probably the wrong way to go around it, or the long way around anyway, but find out what works, find out what isn't, doesn't. And I started getting uh a little feedback here and there, and then got some stories submitted and printed and feels good, right? Bounced my head against the door until I broke it open, basically. The Marine Corps way to do it.
SPEAKER_03I got uh my my oldest son is in Camp Le June, he's in our so he's uh he joined the Marine a couple years ago. We went to his boot camp graduated on Paris Island, so that was cool. I wrote his uh drill instructor a thank you note because he did stuff that I didn't succeed at, which is kind of whip whip his ass into shape.
SPEAKER_00What does your son do? He's an armorer. Yeah, armor, okay, as in tanks or uh AA or basic munitions like rifles, grenade launcher.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay. Uh for a for a unit. He's uh armor station at uh Pendleton. So I'm proud of him. I have I'm I'm glad that the Corps can do what I couldn't. And uh now we're at war pretty much, so there's obviously parental concern that he gets his ass deployed, which uh he's in a backfill unit, at least he tells me. So he goes, Pops, if I get deployed, you're fucked too. So I don't know, we'll we'll see. But uh that's got its own complexity, and you know, we can we could chit-chat about that even you're uh you're a former Marine and you've been part of uh defending the country. Do you have any, you know, just off the cuff, do you have attitude about or uh opinions about the current conflict, America's role in the world, how things have changed since you were in the corps?
SPEAKER_00When I was in, I was in under the Carter administration and also under Reagan, um under Carter, we didn't have any budget to do anything, basically. And that ramped up considerably under Reagan. And when Reagan pushed for things like his 600-ship navy, I think it helped to uh bring the Soviet Union down. It did. I mean the Soviet Union simply couldn't spend as much as we could uh credit than they did.
SPEAKER_03And Reagan, frankly, just was a strategic genius when it came. I mean, he rolled in intercontinental ballistic missiles, right? Intermediate range missiles into Germany at the height of the tensions. He's master poker player. So I just think the the cold war the Cold War ending had a lot to do with with Reagan. You could you could be on the fence with some of his stuff, but regarding global policy and strategy, I think he he he really did it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, I mean, the it could have been a timing issue because the Soviet Union was had some serious cracks in its foundation for a long time, but that that's when it occurred on his watch. So he can take credit for it.
SPEAKER_03Gorbachev was the right guy on the other side, too. I mean, it could have gone on for years, maybe even decades more. The only problem is that they just went back to where they came from with uh with Putin. So I think that's uh that's ironic and sad that they had an opportunity to step up to westernize. Why we got Apple iPhone factories in China and not in Moscow or St. Petersburg is too bad, too bad for the world and too bad for them, too.
SPEAKER_00Very uh interesting times we live in, which is a Chinese curse, of course. May you live in interesting times.
SPEAKER_03Let's hope that we learn some of our lessons for engagement elsewhere and that the outcome is favorable not only to the US but to the world. So let's see. Let's see what happens.
SPEAKER_00Well, absolutely. I mean, as far as Iran goes, uh they're trying to build nuclear weapons, they're shouting death to America. At some point, you might want to pay attention to them.
SPEAKER_03They also have control over 20% of the world's oil. So, regardless what do you think about Trump, I think nabbing Maduro and Venezuela, they've got 300 billion barrels of rough crude below the surface, and the Strait of Hormuz basically can throttle 20% of the world. So if you want control and you want to stake America's claim, then uh control the oil. To me, it's it's kind of a no-brainer. And if it can work, then it works. It's just uh risky when you escalate like it's going on now. So let's see what happens.
SPEAKER_00It may be riskier not to. No, I'm not disagreeing with you.
SPEAKER_03Well we'll we'll see how it how it shakes out.
SPEAKER_00It's you know, that's interesting though. You have a lot of people that shriek about oh my god, this is a war for oil, or that is a war for oil, or or this or that or the other. Well you know why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Because of oil. Because they wanted to take over Malaysia, the the Dutch oil fields in Malaysia, and thought if they slapped us hard enough we would not interfere with them.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. I mean oil is money, money is power. Is the world a safer place if you're more or less powerful? Especially if you're a democracy and the and the opposite side here is a theocratic medieval government hellbent hellbent on destroying our allies in democracy. So I don't know you figure it out right we shall see. We shall see but um but speaking of all that uh you know your your writing taps into the gut of what a lot of people are scared of which is when the grid goes down and the population's decimated how how does it feel to like live in this world when you're writing uh you know a book is hard to do you're spending tens hundreds of hours living in that world is it kind of a catharsis for you do you relate to your characters and that becomes an emotional release do you see people you've known people you have wanna know in your characters when you bring it to life I have very distinct which I'm not going to reveal but I have very distinct people that are most of my characters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah but you model right yeah you can't help that and I write a lot of strong women let me put it that way yeah like Tommy from the short story like Tommy for example uh a lot of people they have a male character and and a one dimensional male character and then the females are just um suddenly they're being intimate with this one dimensional male character with no with no le I mean seriously some of these books uh and that that's one thing it's like when people buy this stuff I can write better stuff than this you know that's that's part of the impetus um but so it's fun I I I was talking to a friend of mine who who's read the books and I said yeah this guy was a really fun character to write because he plays off this other character so well and and the friend of mine said yeah when when she did this I knew what the next line was going to be and sure enough there it was you know because I had written the character enough and convinced him that this character was here was this character he knew what the character was going to do in that situation. So you know that's cool to build somebody like I mean you're building somebody you're imagining somebody and and you may base it on someone but you're someone has never been in this situation. So you're pushing them or you're you're building in some new characteristics of them which is really kind of weird. It's like hey I've hallucinated some people let me tell you about their lives.
SPEAKER_03Yeah and guess what this hallucination and this house of mirrors character do you see yourself in it like you know what I mean like say rhetorically both the writer but also people that you've known and then you share what you've written with them as as a character lots of times they don't know what to do what to say it's a good way to uh you know either alienate people or uh or get them excited that you care enough to to bring them to life in this kind of crazy fictional way.
SPEAKER_00As a matter of fact in my spout thriller which is at the Pentagon right now to go through review to make sure I'm not revealing anything um I actually name some people I I asked them uh one guy actually works the ships that go through the Strait of Hormuz he's in maritime security uh he's a Brit was uh in the British Navy and does the maritime security through Suez and Hormuz and that whole thing and I uh I I asked his permission and name him by name or or I will when the book comes out in the acknowledgement or in the book. I mean I'm using his real name in the book.
SPEAKER_03Yeah so you know and it's it's good writing based on knowing what the hell you're talking about. So whether it's a character or a circumstance that that that helps right you didn't just Google that shit and you're not just you know lifting a character from some other story that you might have liked but it's your own lived experience and your own relationships people will roast you if you get things wrong that's uh yeah that's uh if you're gonna talk about weapons or you're gonna talk about whatever aircraft cars there are experts out there and they will be all over you even the personalities that fuel the narrative right like be in that circumstance know those people then you're a little bit informed and you just make the shit up which a lot of science fiction writers do yeah um I'm a researcher I I talk to people I I research I just find somebody I'll go out on Instagram and find somebody hey you've been to this city tell me about it what's the humidity like you know what does it feel like I mean I know what the humidity is but if you get up in the mountains what's it like you know that that's badass that's really cool I I kind of and my publisher is kind of like nobody's gonna remember if it rained that day and I'm like but I want to know you know what if what if they're on a rooftop running across a rooftop and it's rained and they slip so it's cool to be vested that way and reach out to the real world to reinforce your fiction. The other thing that I found is when I go down rabbit holes I think of shit that I never would have thought of before. If I'm just writing out of my ass then it's a one-dimensional quick experience and then moving on. And if I dive in deeper and I do the research I either talk to people I look stuff up I analyze it I let it sit then I think at angles I wouldn't have thought before so if you even if like the weather is unexpected or if there's a tool or a technology or there's a historical anomaly then you integrate that in your own writing and your own story in ways that you never anticipated and then that gets you thinking out of the box. Because as writers and I'm sure you feel this sometimes too you kind of paint yourself in you got the story going on and you're working on it. And if you get input from the outside and you get some surprises sometimes you can surprise even yourself like a plot yeah that's a great point really because as you're researching you find out things.
SPEAKER_00Um I was researching a uh a slum in Venezuela in Caracas called Pitare and it's it's I I almost want to go there but not really uh because it is dangerous and and uh you know even for residents but you you do you find out things that if you're doing a little research you find out things and you're like oh this would be really cool to throw in here and gives it more realism for somebody that does know something about that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah totally totally I use um the AI bot a little bit sometimes to dive in deeper and aggregate a lot of content so I use it a little bit like a super Google. So you know I kind of get to it pull stuff together. I don't use it for the writing and I think that that's not only a cheap shot but it defeats the purpose. Like I got to sweat sweat it out. You know what I mean? It's gotta come from me. And I'm almost too selfish to use AI for my writing I don't get away from me I'm gonna do this. But I do do it for some research especially for the scientific stuff I might be talking about some of the historical stuff you know to get some context and get some meat to it.
SPEAKER_00Do you use any of that stuff for research for fact checking for even like editing for your for your work no um actually canon publishing that I'm I'm going through has a an editor or editors that will go through um the only kind of editing I use is just whatever spell check is in Word. But as far as AI I want to stay so far away from that that uh when you when you google something I think the first answer you get is pretty much AI generated. But they're they offer the links to it. And so I will follow the links out because I don't trust AI enough. Like you're you said the historical stuff uh I'm I'm gonna check the link uh rather than just assume they've done it right but as far as going to uh I don't know what is there chat GPT and I don't even know the names of the other side I just don't really want there to be any chance Amazon for example asks and when you put something on Amazon is any of this AI check AI to generate it so the checkbox you gotta click yeah and so I'm like no you know I boldly say no too because it's true.
SPEAKER_03You know I might look shit up but all every word everything I typed in the book is my own ass sitting there sweating it out. And to me that's the joy of it too which is uh the story comes through me and part of the catharsis that my character is going through the shit that they got to go through to get what they want or not is my own self projected into that. So I'm I'm kind of living through them and being it and that's beautiful that that makes writing a very immersive albeit solitary kind of pursuit but it's very satisfying it's like meditation.
SPEAKER_00It's like a lot of people do yoga and stand on their head and you know uh do do do stuff to calm their ass down and writing does that for me I can see that because you're so focused in a world your your head's down your this is happening and this is happening and yeah the whole world kind of disappears and you know it's very immersive that's why a lot of people can't do it.
SPEAKER_03You know they got that bucket list of writing the book they sit on their app for five minutes and they're like oh this this shit's hard you get the dopamine going so are you a Texas native I grew up mainly in Galveston which is an island a beach resort uh but uh my father did uh was an engineer and would do projects here and there so we kind of moved around a little bit we're up down the Gulf Coast Florida he was he was from Florida but uh spent twenty oh spent thirty something years in Texas now at this point yeah the the Hagen family there's Al Hagen uh the ball player there's the Al Hagen yes no relationship columnist and writer so so you could fly cover you know why don't you recognize my name totally you know and if they you do shit that you know they don't like you just say it's the other guy I'm a fan of Texas I grew up in Chicago and I'm I'm my parents were emigres from Hungary by way of Venezuela actually and I'm an I'm an anchor baby technically I was conceived down in Caracas Venezuela in 19 1963 I gave give away my youthful good looks but uh and then my my my mom was pregnant and I just barely made it I got dropped in in Chicago with their second emigration uh and I lived in LA where I'm at right now but also New York and I've been a big fan of Texas for years to me it it's like so iconically and foundationally American in so many ways and I've I've been to Texas and it's a trip everything really is bigger in Texas and in my short story that's actually in the anthology I got this hustler who makes this machine that could jump universes that's the premise and uh they end up building it in outside of Amarillo I create a town called Big Slick near the Pantex nuclear factory which is people don't know that all of our nuclear warheads are manufactured and serviced in one location due northeast of Amarillo Texas by only 22 clicks it's all right there. And this is public domain it's not like you know you need to kill me after hearing this it's uh yeah it's Pantex so right near Pantex I created this kind of mythical uh Texas town Big Slick and in next to Big Slick is is the lab in this abandoned ranch. And uh that was the seed story for my novel which I finished uh last this summer last summer and uh and the sequel is going to take place almost entirely in Texas. So maybe I'll hit the thing let me know Texas lore because uh you know just traditions and culture and language and dialogue.
SPEAKER_00So I I love talking to people from Texas and I always threaten them this with this follow-up that as I'm finishing the sequel I'm gonna I'm gonna need some insights give me a call yeah you know let me know um and also your action is all in Texas right so the Hexton series mainly it starts off in Texas too right goes to New Orleans uh it's it starts off in um Houston I the Houston area actually uh but my character lives in east Texas which is east of Dallas yeah and he has to make his way but yeah they're in Midland and then this latest one is in New Orleans uh some of them they go up to Kansas City but but local area and one thing let me throw this in about Texas culture there is a uh as you might imagine there's a strong Hispanic influence and so my character Daniela is is uh actually Colombian ancestry but uh her parents immigrated to the US and so that allows me to bring in a lot of the Hispanic um like I mentioned Santa Muerte which is a saint that Mexican Catholics believe some Mexican Catholics believe in although the Vatican is very definitely no no this is not a saint but uh they do things a little differently.
SPEAKER_03That's in your short story too your your short story is like a little sampler of your Hexon series.
SPEAKER_00It is it is uh too you know I like to bring in different culture things there. So in New Orleans of course and I used to live in New Orleans too at one point I bring in the Mardi Gras and the the uh some things about the Cajuns and the Creoles and that sort of thing. So it's fun to if you don't know it already do the research and bring in some of the local lore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah rich in local lore I I was on uh you know getting on eBay collecting like a whole mini library of Texas lore Carson County and then the ghost stories of Texas and all this kind of quirky stuff because it's so rich and that kind of eccentric one thing I've I've discovered is tech Texans love the eccentric like things that are a little bit different right and and everyone can kind of do do their own quirky Texan thing in their own Texan kind of way that that's true.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_03We uh and what immediately comes to mind if you've ever heard of the art car parade it's in Houston they take cars and do anything to put astroturf on them cover them with little peek too dolls or something you know whatever yeah we do a lot of quirky things the Cadillacs buried up in the panhandle with the fence iconic locations all over Texas that are really kind of weird and and landmarky and then you got the 72 ounce steak eating contest out of the big steak house and I got my character that's a real thing. It's a real thing I had my character there Johnny is uh does the contest and that's one thing that that Ann Helt the editor of the anthology she cut that out too I got a whole section of Johnny speed eating and she's like that that's good for a novel and I'm like all right yeah but you but but she kept the steak in there the 70 pound steak like it begins with the scene and if you notice my story it's like the sections are more or less about the same length and the steak eating just kind of kind of stops and I'm like I I I understood you gotta like keep the word count low but for that for that sequel we're going nuts we have a hot sauce we have a hot sauce eating contest and my main character like picks up the he's he's uh he's a a northern hustler so he like copies everybody so he's got the big cowboy hat snakeskin boots and he starts talking in a fake you know you know panhandle draw so even in my short story I got a lot of Texasisms in there already and I I just want to keep blowing that up because I'm a big fan so I'll hit you up for accuracy. Sure. How come you got such strong women though uh in in like Tommy and your other ones did you how is your mom was your mom a tough a tough Texan or what what inspires you for strong women characters which to your point within this genre don't always shine yeah um well you know that's kind of part of it because it seems to me they are such minor secondary characters in a lot of literature uh especially the post-apocalyptic post my view from reading the post apocalyptic is it's generally hey here's this big fairly cardboard character male and oh yeah there's some females over there yeah which uh I d I just don't like that and with uh Daniela for example especially being a Latina they're kind of strong willed if you've ever had experience with I I went to school with them uh uh worked with them uh uh you know you I you you uh I kind of don't want to mess with them a lot so uh you know that's it uh it's I hate to say I hate to use this term but I'll use it an underutilized asset.
SPEAKER_00Yeah okay I don't I don't want the the females in my characters to be just window dressing or whatever. You know they have a voice they have a a determination to what I think one thing is I've always enjoyed female singers. I prefer females like Anna Nancy Wilson and Hart for example over you know a male singer even if they're singing the same thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah I like female singers too yeah I've I've gotten into like in my in my youth here I've gotten into uh used to be the classic rock and blues kind of stuff I'm a huge top fan talking about talking about Houston and all that that whole scene I love XMEX sound is great uh but as I got older too I mean how many times can you hear uh Lagrange so I've gotten into the death metal kind of Scandinavian orchestral stuff and the reason I bring the reason I bring it up aside from the dopamine booster of having the Metallica guitars and the booming drums and all that is a lot of them have female singers sometimes like oh yeah some of soprano singers like Nightwish and uh within temptation amaranth and so you got that heavy masculine testosterone oozing power in the rhythm driving that tune and then you got like this soprano like taking you up to heaven and yeah like hot and sour it's bringing in yin and yang in a way that just sometimes takes me there. I love that stuff.
SPEAKER_00Okay let me hit you up with the band then it's called the warning uh they are three Latina sisters three sisters from Mexico and uh they are blowing up pretty pretty good right now um I've been a fan for eleven years now. And the oldest one is twenty six to give you an idea of how young they are still. But um yeah, uh and they are the sweetest people. I've met 'em four times at shows. Uh just super nice. But uh they take a classic rock, and then they may go off into grunge or punk or heavy metal or yeah, whatever. Their their original uh viral was a cover of Inner Sandman, Metallica's Inner Sandman. They were 14, 12, and nine years old when they did it. It's got 27 million views.
SPEAKER_03I mean I can go check it out.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like totally up my alley. Absolutely. Metallica put them on their um their Facebook page when they did that cover, and then they invited them to remake it. You know, Metallica came out with their Blacklist album, which was the anniversary of the black album, and they said they asked them, can you remake Inner Sandman? Awesome. So check them out.
SPEAKER_03Up my alley. That that just talk about like dopamine booster. To me, that that's that's awesome. You got that sexy, sultry kind of vibe. With strong will, too, to your point.
SPEAKER_00We know that there's there's some ass kicking behind that that's oh, and also uh actually what I listened to quite a bit when when I was writing the uh first books in the series there, they have an album called Queen of the Murder Scene, which is a concept album about a girl who is rejected and becomes stalker and then murders the guy, and then she's fighting her evil side for the rest of the album. So it's it's a and you can imagine there's a lot of it's very angsty, very, very bloody and angsty, and uh that that's anyway.
SPEAKER_03That sounds badass. I'll I'll definitely check them out. Do you listen to music, by the way, while you're writing? Uh there's like the the there's two types of writers who need like total silence and isolation, and if like a pigeon farts on the block over, they're gonna freak out. And you got other writers who need like external stimulation, sometimes the same song over and over again to get in the zone. What kind of writer are you?
SPEAKER_00Uh I'm the music type. And that's uh yeah, for one reason my wife is still working and she works from home uh because she's working with oil companies that are still in that are in Houston, although we're up here. And so it's kind of a thing where I don't want to hear her talk in meetings, and because I have an office and it's upstairs, but we have a huge window that overlooks down into the living room. So I can still hear hear her talk even though she's on the other side of the house. And it's just easier. Put the headphones on. If anybody comes down the driveway, we've got alarms that go off, so I can pull off the headphones and and go check them out. But uh yeah, music like that, like Queen of the Murder scene, was like, oh yes, we're getting into a gun battle here, we're fighting. You know, we're she's doing a mag dump through the wall because she knows there are people on the other side.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I used to be like that. I used to write uh this was going back at least 10-15 years, where I always had the music going, and oftentimes I'd listen to the same tune over and over and over again. Got me into that, and now I prefer just being isolated and silent, like 100% immersion. But you know, it goes, it comes and goes, whatever, whatever gets you there, right? So speak speak speaking of immersion and isolation, the opposite of that is having people read your shit. So how do you how do you get the word out? Like what you you got a publisher, it sounds like you got an editor, so you got a team, you got professional backup that way. Do you do any kind of ads? Do you uh how do you get noticed? How do you get sales? How do you um get get the hexen out there and your other stuff?
SPEAKER_00We I have not um I'm kind of on the fence about ads, uh especially Facebook ads. But um we do a lot of posting in various groups. There are a lot of groups on Facebook. There are probably north of a hundred different groups about writing. Some of them just say promote your book.
SPEAKER_03I got blasted by that stuff, and then I I go in there and I'll say, like, you want to be on a podcast? And usually the admin will not let not let it even appear.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_03Well, um like all these other people are posting. Look at that. Yeah, you know, the raw opportunism, and then I'm I'm mild mannered, and I'm not even trying to sell my book, I'm just saying come on my podcast, and they're like, Yeah, you would think they would jump at that. Yeah, I would think so, right?
SPEAKER_00Try the uh military thriller book club, Steve Leper. He's a real good guy. Um, and I can email that to you if you need, but that'd be great. But yeah, I mean I do that. I do the groups and in Canon Publishing also does the groups, and the authors with Canon, we help each other out. Uh a lot of them are ex-military or retired or whatever. And we crosspost each other, help each other out on that. We do uh conventions. Uh I'm going to be at LibertyCon this year. And also they're in Houston, there's the Tex ND Book Fair. Um, so do that, set up tables. Um I do a substack which draws in some.
SPEAKER_03I saw that. I connected with you there too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and uh I do, I don't know if you look through what uh what I do, but I I do some book excerpts and some uh what's coming up, but I also do a lot of analysis like like the war in in Iran.
SPEAKER_03I feel some of your stuff, that's why I was like trying to poke you live. Get your attitudes on that.
SPEAKER_00So that's cool.
SPEAKER_03And you got a pretty big subscriber base, not bad. You know, just even organically building up, that's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm working on it. I'm getting there. It's been I've had the subject for about a year, so that's probably not bad. That's very good. But um, I'm trying to find out what appeals because I do some things on weapons and I do some things on surveillance. Like, did you know if you are in a room that has Wi-Fi and someone can get close enough to pick up the Wi-Fi signal, they can determine how many people are in the room and what position they're in, and things like that.
SPEAKER_03That's that's wild, wild, wild stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great technology, but I look at that, I look at World Affairs, China's uh Ghost Cities and Belt and Road Initiative, um at the time the CIE stole the submarine, the time the CIE stole a Soviet spacecraft. True stories, all this is true. Um, we had we had drones in 1960 with nuclear weapons. Drones aren't exactly a new thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, kind of like a V1 rocket with a nuke on it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it was uh kind of like a remote-controlled helicopter, radar-controlled helicopter. If you can imagine trying to control a drone through radar, that that's kind of mind-boggling.
SPEAKER_03Some nuclear accidents that people don't know anything about, you know. Oh, yeah in North Carolina. You got nukes sitting at the bottom of the ocean right now. You got I think you got about a j dozen of them, some big ones just kind of rusting down there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the the one that gets me is the one that fell into the field, and was that the one in North Carolina? Where was that? And apparently it went down so deep they just can't dig down deeply enough to get it. That that's kind of mind-blowing right there.
SPEAKER_03Crazy, right? And then just they had a little like five dollar fuse, you know what I mean? If it yeah, that was like uh the only thing that kept it from blowing it from blowing, and that was uh that was an early hydrogen bomb, I think. So you're talking about uh, you know, some some 10, 50 times Hiroshima in North Carolina. Fairly fairly serious stuff. Yeah, so there's a lot people don't know. People get all wrapped up in conspiracy theories and they're just you know pulling straws when just a little bit of homework and a little bit of research, oftentimes from authoritative and maybe even like less browse sources, you the truth is stranger than the fiction. 99% of the time, if you just did a little homework and uh stopped getting caught up in flat earth bullshit and just uh and read something.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and that's what I'm trying to do is to put stuff out there that's like, hey, this is really cool stuff, and every bit of it is true.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's a fun page. But your problem seems a little bit like my problem. I think my problem is worse. I do I do all sorts of stuff, and then I just settled on this mooky multiverse kind of brand where I'm I'm all over the place. But the thing about branding is you know you do one thing and you do it well, and then people know you by that. But if you're a science fiction writer doing post-apocalyptic stuff, and then here's military history and middle east strategy, people get confused and they're like, What is this guy offering? What's his brand? Now, if you're like a Joe Rogan, you could do MMA, and the next day you have a physicist, and the next day you have Adam Corolla, and it's no big deal. But you you kind of need a reputation like that prior to you doing it. You can't really establish a brand, or it's a hard to establish a brand by just doing everything all the time and doing it like you feel like. I I'm guilty and I just don't give a shit. I'm just gonna keep I'm just gonna keep hurling my shit out there, whatever's on my mind. But to your point, if you do want a brand and if you do want to grow a following, you just kind of have you need a frame of reference for people to wrap their head around who the hell you are.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think this has been kind of uh uh again throwing things against the wall and see what sticks. Like an experiment, right? Kind of kind of see what what the most reads are because uh SubSec does do that for you. You can see who's open to who's read it, and uh maybe focus in a little more at that point. It's still early yet.
SPEAKER_03I suck at that too. I'm just being honest. I think what you're doing is the smart way to do it. I do it the dumb, dumb way. Like I I'm on TikTok, I did a a post advocating for the Kurdish people in the Middle East. Okay, because um, I you know I got a friend who's Kurdish, so I just grabbed my camera and you know, I do like daily videos on TikTok, Instagram. So I did one just saying, let's pay attention to Kurdish people, they're up against the wall, they've been our ally in the Middle East. It's got like 650,000 views. It went ape shit viral. It's me, my bald head in my kitchen. Now, if I'd be smart, I would have just created a Kurdish channel, right? I'm the Kurdish representative. And but I don't think that way. I'm just kind of like I woke up that morning and that's what I wanted to post, and then the next morning I'm talking about science fiction or politics or whatever. So I think you need to be focused and you need to kind of look at it like a goal, like I'm gonna build community. And if you don't do that, then you're all over the place. There's benefits to just like letting it loose, but uh trying to find some kind of compromise is probably the way to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of what your goal is. Do you want to get your opinion out there or do you want to build, do you want to build that brand? Do you do you want to be that one-dimensional or maybe that's a bad term, but do you do you want to be that focused individual on the Kurds or or whatever?
SPEAKER_03So Al Al Hagen could be, depending on how it shakes out, like the you know, kind of military strategist op-ed guy on Substack. Maybe that's it. Yeah, maybe Al Hagen is the quirky kind of uh you know military accident guy. I don't know, but uh, but I think you're on the right path, and I'm I'm fucking that up. And I I just don't care. I'm like, I just I just keep talking to people on the podcast, keep blasting. If you look at my feed too, even my podcast, I got five podcast shows. I do politics, I do writing, I do sci-fi fantasy, uh what else do I do? Like relationships and like self-help, and and everyone's getting blasted by all this stuff. And I'm like, all right.
SPEAKER_00You're kind of like your uh Johnny Fizzuli. Is that right?
SPEAKER_03Johnny, you're you're there's no accident that uh he he sucks at it too.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm at the frenetic pace where you're going here doing this, doing that, doing that.
SPEAKER_03I think that's why that character worked for me, because I took my I took all my worst qualities and I dialed it up a few notches, and that's the character.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah, yeah, I can see that already.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that's fun. I'm having a good time at the end of the day. If I can't like, you know, post three or four times on TikTok with my opinion and do at least one podcast and blast Substack, uh, you know, and then do like 10 tweets, then the day is incomplete.
SPEAKER_00Hey, everybody is entitled to your opinion, whatever gets them through.
SPEAKER_03That's that's cool. You're awesome, Al. It's it's a real pleasure talking to you. I wish you the best with the book. Uh, is there like a pre-sale? Can we put the link in the description for that? You want to tell you a little bit about the next book because it's uh I promised people a launch party and we didn't really cover off on the cool.
SPEAKER_00Um, well, the next one is uh this is a printout. Can we see this? Yeah, let me get it in the right way. There we go. Crescent City shootout. It is a continuation. This this one is actually six years after the apocalypse. So a lot of things have calmed down. They're um establishing their empire. They are uh the problem with with building an empire is that sooner or later you're gonna run into somebody else's empire. And what they're finding is that there is the crime boss of New Orleans is building a crime empire throughout the state, and it's starting to leak over into Texas, and they're slapping it down when it comes across the border. But Taylor, who is uh used to be a spoiled little brat rich girl from Dallas, uh until the apocalypse, and then that turned her attitude around 180 degrees. She's very law and order right now. She decides to go to New Orleans and cut the head off the snake. She's gonna take out the crime boss right at the top. And it sounds like a good idea until she's uh in the French quarter trying to shoot her way out. Uh so you've got uh a post-apocalyptic New Orleans half flooded because the pumps don't work because there's no electricity during Mardi Gras. And if you've ever been to a Mardi Gras, that's that should be enough said right there. Yeah, and uh Mardi Gras wild time in in New Orleans and throw throw in all these other factors, and she's she's trying to get back out. Um so anyway, I think it's uh it's a very good uh a lot of run and gun, but there's also uh don't want to say too much. There's there's a uh favored character, let me say, that comes back and she gets some unexpected help. But uh and then my spy thriller, just real quick about that, uh is I mentioned it's in Venezuela. I started writing this in at the end of July. It was just gonna be a simple, hey, these guys are gonna go into Venezuela, get a member of the opposition party out, smuggle him out. And so think about the timing here. I'm writing it in July, I'm writing it in August. What happens September 1st and 2nd? We start bombing drug boats, right? The drug smugglers. So, okay, let's write that into it. And it kind of went from there because then as they're trying to get out, then the revelation came up. Oh, well, they bombed the drug boat twice. So, okay, I've got to put something else in there. Oh, and there was a civilian painted aircraft in the in the area. So, okay, what what military aircraft has civilian paint color, the intelligence gathering area? So it kind of built on and built on. But uh anyway, that's in the Pentagon. Make sure I'm not revealing classified information.
SPEAKER_03Is that because you're a vet?
SPEAKER_00You you you wanted to because I had a clearance, because I had a T SSE.
SPEAKER_03Okay, that's what I'm figuring. So they're they're concerned just because you were on the inside and now you're publishing, and it's got it's got that kind of content.
SPEAKER_00It's it's it first off, it's a judgment call on your side. Like post-apocalyptic, I didn't reveal anything that would be potentially um, you know, anything. In the spy thriller books, their uncle is uh former CA and he or retired CIA, and he's got some stories about his time in Latin America, and and I did counter narcotics operations in Latin America.
SPEAKER_03So it's kind of like, well, we used to call this CTA in Chicago, which is Chicago Transit Authority, which is also covers I ass. So it's CTA, right? That's what you're doing, right?
SPEAKER_00Um, and I'm I'm kind of doing a Tom Clancy thing where I where I like describe a Hellfire missile, for example, exactly what's happening. Is the microprocessor's doing this, it's updating X number of times a second.
SPEAKER_03That's that's hard to read when you geek out like that. As long as it's within the context of the action, then it's compelling. Nobody wants to read a Wikipedia article about a Hellfire missile, but if you're getting into detail within the action, then you're on the edge of your seat because all this tech is coming in to kick someone's ass, get someone freed, you're vested, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, these guys on the boat have 12 seconds to live, type of thing, you know.
SPEAKER_03So it adds to the dramatic tension when you provide that detail.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna be interested in seeing what they say, but but I uh talk about research. I was going to Wikipedia and then I was going to the manufacturer's actual PDFs that are online for oh, what does this radar do? Yeah, but that's a synthetic apture radar, and it's got you know these specs. So, you know, we'll see.
SPEAKER_03I love that. You know, I did two things that really resonate for me. The one is I I'm a news junkie. You're probably a news junkie. And and when I'm writing, like when I was writing the book length version of the Fazuli story, that shit just came right in. And this was not just technology and military, but cultural stuff too. Like a lot was a lot was going on last year, right? Yeah, a lot of that got infused into the book. Like I'm working on a chapter, a part of it, I'm hearing it, and it's coming in, you know, for characters, for scenes, all that. And the other thing is this technical detail. So uh a W88, you know, warhead powers the transfinite reality engine. So I did the research, it's a black cylinder about six feet tall and about you know, two feet wide, it weighs 750 pounds, and you know, again, this is public domain, but just this idea that 500 kilotons sits there looking at you adds a little gravitas to your story and what you're talking about. And that scene I'm blowing up bigger, figuratively and literally, in the Texas part of the sequel, and I'm diving in even deeper, you know, how the thing works, yeah, and scientists tinkering and all that. So uh that that that that's fun as hell to do as a writer.
SPEAKER_00Great detail. Yeah, I love that. You know, it takes a lot of time, it may take a lot of time to research that. I mean, me reading a radar manual, I may say three things about it, you know, three sentences about it, but I think it's great detail to put in there.
SPEAKER_03Readers don't realize you can spend an entire afternoon, you can spend a day or two like diving in. Deep and it to your point it ends up being a sentence, a phrase, yeah, a paragraph. But you're you're you're vested, and your own lived experience is meshing up with that, and then it flows into your narrative in a way that just adds dimensionality to it. I think it's yeah, it's bad.
SPEAKER_00You casually throw something in. Yeah, this is uh Soviet MI-35, which is the export version of the MI-24. And here are the differences it's got the more horsepower engine.
SPEAKER_03And what that does is you know, one character can catch the other character faster or whatever. It's got implications for your story, and that's when it anchors and the two things come together. So you geek out, and then your readers geek out too. And that's that's part of the fun. Yeah, that's that's part of the fun. So wish you good luck with with the launch. Thanks, sir. I appreciate it. I appreciate your time. And then like, comment, and share, everybody. Mr. Al Hagan got the Hexon series new book launch. What is it, Crescent City Shootout? Is that the uh yes, I got that right? That's that's nice happening in New Orleans. I got my ass kicked in Orlando's by a girlfriend. She's mad at me. She comes out of the bathroom. I'm like, look, we're all a little bit, you know, and she wham! You know, and uh that's the one time I saw stars. I got hit hit. I didn't it wasn't domestic violence, and I think I deserved it. But whenever I think of New Orleans, I'm always remember Lynette coming out of that bathroom, and next thing I know, I see stars, and I'm so talk about strong women. I've known a few strong women too. Well, so you need to write that into a story now. Absolutely. That's that's a good point.
SPEAKER_00I don't think I've ever captured that moment, and it was it was pretty, pretty classic. I mean, you've been there, you can describe it very richly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. And I remember like it was yesterday, including that. You know, when you get hit, you've probably been hit. You you black out for that like tenth of a second. You you take it, yeah, and then the next thing you know, you kind of re regrain focus and consciousness, and it's like that. And I remember she was just standing there and she hit me so hard, she's like Oh yeah. She like hurt her hand.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it hurts when you hit someone in the face. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03It hurts your face when somebody hits you in the face.
SPEAKER_00Well, go for the soft parts if you're gonna hit someone.
