Catherine Cruzan Dons a Crown of Fire to Expand Her Elfkind Universe

In this lively and surprisingly candid 45th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie Spitz sits down with fantasy author Catherine Cruzan for a deep dive into storytelling, publishing, creativity, and the realities of trying to build an audience in 2026. What starts as a conversation about conventions like WonderCon quickly turns into a masterclass on what separates compelling fiction from genre sludge.

Catherine opens up about being an introvert forced into the uncomfortable role of marketer, publicist, and salesperson. She discusses her Elfkind trilogy, the recently released Winter Forest, and the upcoming fourth book, Crown of Fire. More importantly, she explains why character always comes first, why worldbuilding often gets abused, and why readers crave emotional investment more than endless lore dumps.

The conversation ranges across the giants who shaped her imagination: J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Raymond E. Feist, Terry Brooks, and Guillermo del Toro. Catherine shares mentorship moments that kept her from quitting, including advice to stop comparing herself to giants and simply tell her own story.

Mookie and Catherine also get brutally honest about modern publishing: the myth of being “saved” by a traditional publisher, the rise of platform-first book deals, the need for writers to build their own communities, and how millions of books including many if not most from non-human authors now flood the market every year. If you think writing the book is the hard part, think again. That may be where the real work starts.

They also tackle AI head-on. as Catherine draws a hard line: use tools if helpful, but don’t outsource your soul. She talks through her meticulous editing process for ensuring genuine dialogue, honest character voice, compelling pacing, and proven structure, making clear that authentic fiction comes from lived experience, emotional nuance, and relentless revision, not prompt shortcuts.

Catherine Cruzan brings intelligence, humility, and real craft talk to the table. Mookie brings the extraverted-introvert hand-wringing energy. Together they deliver a conversation about why stories matter, why hope matters, and why creators need to keep going even when silenced by a crowded and over-saturated media landscape. 

The Guest

Catherine Cruzan grew up in Bloomington, MN, but Southern California has been her home for many years. After graduating from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, she has worked as an engineer for a number of aerospace companies in the Los Angeles area.

Catherine’s interest in books began as a child with a voracious appetite for reading. She fondly recalls piling onto her parent’s bed with her two brothers while her mother read the Chronicles of Narnia, Treasure Island or Black Beauty. She moved on to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as a teenager, and Fantasy stories remain her favorite to this day.

Her writing career started with poetry and short stories published in the school newspaper. As an adult, she writes character driven Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction. Her writing education includes Long Beach City College and the UCLA Writers Program.

Her Books & Socials

Website: www.CatherineCruzan.com 

IG: @Catherine.Cruzan

Good Reads:  Catherine Cruzan (Author of Elfkind) | Goodreads 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the science fiction and fantasy factory. I'm your host, Pookie Spitz, and I'm thrilled to have Catherine Cruzan in the factory with us today. Welcome, Catherine.

SPEAKER_04 0:16

Hi, Bookie. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

It was wonderful to run into you at WonderCon.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

What is it now? A couple weeks ago?

SPEAKER_05 0:29

It feels like a couple years ago in dog years.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Those uh festivals and conferences are super fun and they're also super exhausting. I can imagine setting up. I was at LA Comic-Con, Pasadena Comic-Con. I went to the LA Festival of Books just last week. And like you, I'm an author too, so I was peddling, so I know what it's like to be on the other end where you need to set it up and display and talk to a thousand people and keep pitching your books. But it is a unique and fun experience. Do you like doing these in-person conversational book pitches? Talk to real people about your books?

SPEAKER_04 1:13

You know, I'm I'm a very shy person, so it it takes a lot of energy that uh I have to like work hard to muster. But I love meeting people. I love you know just the one-on-one talking to people. So if you come to my table, I'll talk to you all day if you want. But uh, you know, it's it's also you know, hard for somebody who's not used to having to, you know, I'm I'd I'd live in my pajamas in a dark cave, you know, indefinitely if I was able to and just do nothing but write. But, you know, as as you know, we writers find ourselves in this position to have to be marketers and publicists and everything else. And uh it's not our comfort zone typically.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Well, more more power to you for overcoming that that hurdle. As a self-published author, you make great points that you need to market yourself, and it doesn't come naturally to natural introverts. And I'll make a confession, even though I do these podcasts and I'm gonna come across as the bald bubbly guy. I think I fall into the category of extroverted introvert. So if I have one-on-one and I have touch points with people, I love to talk and dive in deep. But I'm like you, if I had my way, I would be in my skivys, in my uh Mookie cave creating content and even doing my POV videos, which is also comes across as kind of showy and even exhibitionist, but it's me, myself, and I. So I personally completely relate to this challenge that many writers face that you gotta go out there and talk about your books and sell them. But you did a pretty good job because you you got you got yourself on on my podcast.

unknown 2:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So welcome. From one introvert to another, I will go easy on you.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Relax, it's all okay. This is an introvert safe zone.

SPEAKER_03 3:09

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Let's let's make the most of it. I I really enjoy your books. You've got elf kind, uh elfkind.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

Elfkind, like humankind, humankind.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I pronounced your name correctly, but not your book. So it's it's not elf kind like German, it's elf kind. Yeah, think of it like humankind, elfkind, elf kind is a humankind, and you create the entire elf universe. I'll I'll pass the mic to you to let our listeners and viewers know all about it. But just this backdrop is first in a trilogy, and you've completed the trilogy, and and presumably more to come.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Already working on the fourth book, yeah. But I do have the first trilogy completed.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Great. And in the notes below, folks, both on YouTube and Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening, I'll have links so you can pick Catherine's stuff up. But without further ado, tell us that like you did me at WonderCon for your elf kind universe.

SPEAKER_04 4:19

Well, I, you know, like most writers who uh end up on this path, um, I I wanted to start writing the stories that I want to read. And I've I've been a long time uh fan of, you know, fantasy. Um, I have a huge love for reading and I just I grew up reading. I grew up my mom read to us when we were children, so it's it's always been about having my nose in a book, um, which you know aligns nicely with my introvert personality. So if I could disappear somewhere with my nose in a book or writing a story that I would like to read, um, you know, that's where I have spent most of my time, even as an adult. Um, and it's been really exciting because, you know, seeing the Tolkien universe brought to life by Peter Jackson, and um, you know, I'm a huge fan of like Raymond Feist and Tad Williams, and um, you know, it just it's you know, seeing some of those um, you know, authors in the fantasy realm, you know, cross media start doing graphic novels and things like that, it starts to play into my love for anime because I did um I do also spend a lot of time playing Dungeons and Dragons and and watching anime and everything else. So um just you know, giant nerds. So um, you know, the stories that I started with with short stories, you know, kind of skip around between science fiction and fantasy and horror. Um, I even had a friend uh, you know, tell me a story about something that happened to her. And I was like, oh my god, let me please make a story out of that. Um so one of them is even based on a real experience that a friend of mine had. Um and then and then came the novels, right? So um, you know, it's I I would I would live in the world of Tolkien if I could. I would probably be in La Florien right now if I had my truth.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I could see little little little pointy ears behind your headset.

SPEAKER_05 6:31

I have them covered with my headset right now, but yeah, they're they're pointed.

SPEAKER_04 6:36

Um, you know, I had the Weta studio do elf ears on me at San Diego Comic Con one year, and there are all kinds of pictures of like, ooh, we could have an elf. Um, you know, so that's uh definitely where I love to be. So um, but I also wanted to, you know, tell a story from uh a modern voice. Um I I tend to try to pull back on the scaffolding, and instead of the purple prose and and the very big um, you know, descriptive passages, what matters to me is is the characters. I want the scaffolding to sort of fall away for the reader and just be able to follow these characters around. Um you know, when I read Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams, I I just wanted to follow those characters around all day. And those were the kind of characters that I wanted to build and write. And um, you know, with a with a modern voice and um, you know, where some of the female protagonists can have a larger voice and a larger role in in the various goings-on of the plot points and such. So um, you know, it's and yet love to write myself a good battle scene. Um, the the newest book that just came out, there's a two-chapter battle scene in there. Um it took a full two chapters to kind of play all of that out because there were a lot of plot points that I was bringing together from the first two books as well, sort of tying it up in a really nice bow for the for the trilogy. Um and so it's really about um ensuring that you know what what they are, you know, how they speak is engaging and natural. Um, you know, the things that pull me quickly out of the story when I'm reading, you know, is a natural dialogue or on-the-nose dialogue where they're like, I am going to tell you what's happening right now by having a conversation that tells you what's happening right now. Um, I really wanted it to be that sort of natural flow that, you know, just pulls you into the story and whips you along. And if you can read my book in a day or two, um, I'm thrilled. It's I want them to be an easy lead.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Well, you claim to be introverted, but you've tapped into many of the trends and best practices that I personally think work for a wide audience and exemplify best practices for what constitutes great writing. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror too, they sometimes succumb, I would say often succumb to a lot of the opposite of what you do, which is world building instead of character. And then when they do have the characters, oftentimes two-dimensional little cutouts who fulfill the role of moving the plot forward or describing things actually engage. Too often they do exactly what you describe. They communicate unnaturally because they're just a prop, they're just a vehicle to build the world better or move the story along in case you haven't been paying attention. And we see this in film all the time, too. It drives me nuts when one character is literally telling another character what that character is feeling, thinking, and doing is about to do. Sometimes they talk while they're doing it, and after the scene unfolds, they decompress and tell each other about it.

SPEAKER_04 10:03

We just don't human beings don't communicate that way. It's they're losing the beauty of subtext, they're losing the beauty of nuance, um, of understanding you know, body language is important, even in the written word. And, you know, if you're missing that, you're missing 80% of communication. And I I don't want to tell you something. I want you to feel it. I want you to be in it and surrounded by it. So, you know, there's a lot of world building that's required if you want um your characters to also feel natural, right? You need that rich world building. But please don't expect me to spend two pages describing the folds of the drape, of the fabric, of the curtain to you. It's you know, there are some acclaimed, wonderful, amazing authors out there who can do amazing things, you know, with these descriptions, but that's not how I write because I want the characters to take you away. And so, you know, it's up it's about building the landscape. I have um, you know, my own tropes for establishing the magic system and how magic works in my world. Um, it's important to me to have an elven society that is familiar but distinct and different, and um, you know, has its own personality as well. So you don't feel like you're you know reading a modern token, but it feels natural and comfortable because you know it it's reflective of the things that I love about those authors that have have shaped me as a writer.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

That exemplifies a lot of confidence in your work because frankly, when I see people overdoing it with the world building and with the dialogue, they they lack the confidence in their own storytelling skills most often. And they also lack confidence in their reader, they're dumbing down their reader, they're they're assuming that the reader is A, not paying attention, so they have to keep reminding them of everything. B, they're not gonna get it. So there's almost no sub subtext because subtext is demanding, and you're assuming that they're paying attention, they understand the story, and here's what's really missing they're putting their heart and soul into the narrative. So just like you were describing the dragon tale that was your favorite, you can't wait to dive back in, you're vested in the characters, you're living the story alongside them, and most significantly, you're living the story within them and through them. You feel their challenges, you you're hyped with the aspiration of their goals, and you're a part of the story so you can't wait to keep turning the pages because you're in it to win it. Yeah, and authors, whether they want to or not, create the opposite circumstance, which is you're you're providing all that scaffolding and all that reinforcement, and you're making all these tacit assumptions about how dumb and inattentive they are, that it sucks the life out of a narrative. And it's very frustrating for someone who is more discerning and who really wants their engagement with the narrative to be participatory.

SPEAKER_04 13:19

Yeah. I I want all of that to fall away so that you're in that place where you're just again following those characters around what's gonna happen next. And and hopefully there's enough, you know, mystery and and nuance and everything else that you know makes you want to find out. And and maybe it didn't happen the way you thought it would, and maybe there are some surprises. That's you know, that's what I'm hoping to do. Um, you know, some of my favorite compliments um from readers have been things like, oh my god, you made me start crying in the middle of work at a lunch break, and and my boss came in and I was sobbing. And um, you know, it's fantastic. You know, the fact that you care about what just happened there enough that you're crying. Um, it tells me that I've written something that you have connected to, and that's what that's what's important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Tell us about the fundamental theme. So I've I've noticed, and to your point, you know, you adopt tropes around systems of magic, but you know, people need relatability, but you have your own spin. You also have your own spin of what would be considered the hero's journey.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Like the young elf, she's she's protected, she's got a good life, and then not so much. So can you can you share some of these essential themes that are recurring throughout your books and also relate them maybe to your own emotional catharsis? Is there something that you're tapping into? Because you create good characters who are relatable, and I'm assuming that they were quite relatable for you, their creator.

SPEAKER_04 14:54

Yeah, it's um I I have like really strong ties to you know spirituality and um and just nature, and you know, I grew up in Minnesota in the deep woods, so you know, I spent a lot of time in the woods and and such. And so the the magic system that I created is definitely naturally based. Um, but you'll see notes um to things like auras and um you know, sort of metaphysical um natural energies and such, which is you know where you would expect magic to come from if it really, if we really did, you know, tap into and have the ability to tap into those energies and and use them in ways that you know it's just it's just one step further from what I think a lot of us already experience. Um, you know, with regards to the characters, um, you know, it's it's every book has a a sort of um pitting of human versus Elvin so that I can touch on some of the things that uh strike me with regards to like how you know like how our human relationships go. Um you've always, you know, you're always facing some kind of push and pull and tension, and and you know, we're in this amazing melting pot, and our uh you know, environment is, you know, has even over the last 10 years changed significantly in how we interact with each other. And in some ways we've made great strides in how we you know bridge the difference between races and religions and and men and women and and you know, and in other ways we've stepped back, you know, significantly in a lot of ways. And so there's always this tension in person. You know, I'm a woman who you know has spent you know 30 years working in a male-dominated industry, and you know, that shapes who I am as a human being. Um you know, having really strong friendships with men and being very comfortable being surrounded by men all the time, but there are also underlying you know things that we face as women in these environments, um, you know, as as many people know that you know that are a struggle. And so many of us do that, you know, quietly, silently. Um, you know, especially for someone like myself, you know, having entered the um you know, the industry that I'm in at a very young age, um, you know, many years ago, I was you know that person with their shoulder against the glassy, like pushing, pushing, pushing. And and um, and so you see a lot of that in my character building as well. They're they're not where they could be or they should be, and it's going to take a lot of effort to make the strides that they need to make in order to effect change, the change that they need to see in their in their kingdom and their society. Um, you know, and there's also so you know, there's the human versus elven element, um, you know, how they feel about each other. There's the um you know, just the the push and pull between uh the races there. And um, and I bring in a dorvish uh society as well. So um, you know, again, doing things very differently, but also, you know, speaking to things that were affecting the writers at the time who created, you know, these elements, right? Um, you know, things like the Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien's um Hobbin and Lord of the Rings, you know, definitely touch on the political nature of you know what they were experiencing in their days, and we're certainly seeing evolution of those politics, you know, in today's time. So I'd like to think that there's been a little bit of evolution in how I'm writing these societies and how you know the different people are uh playing against each other. And then you have the different uh you know uh human uh kingdoms as well, you know, different priorities. Um you know, so it's and then of course you see the D ⁇ D love to sneak in there as well. So I have you know, I have a savvy thief, you know, trying to escape the grips of the thieves guild um because he wants to affect his own fate and um you know have you know some ability to be autonomous and and and shape his life. Um so he enters a bargain with you know a dark sorcerer. Um all he needs to do is trade an elf, um, you know, and he'll get that stone of power that he needs to be able to um shape the life that he wants, and everything goes wrong from there. Nothing goes right, right? It's it's that comedy of errors that is not so funny when you're finding yourself tied to a tree surrounded by a pack of wolves wearing nothing but your your your wits and and a rope that's got you tied fast. Um you know, kind of the fun things that that I uh stick my characters into. They're not um, you know, I I there are dark elements that present themselves because there's darkness in the world that we're all working through. Um, but I'd like to think that there's always also that um, you know, we're but we can rise above. Where's that hope? And where am I drawing that hope from? And who who am I connecting with who's going to help bolster that hope that I'd like to build for myself?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Very cinematic and and very visual and very inquit and almost instinctive in this tension between dualities. Yeah, uh, I could see much of this in uh in a in a big screen kind of adaptation. Do you what do you think of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, especially the elves, Hugo Weaving as the as L Rond and the whole the whole cast of characters?

SPEAKER_04 21:00

Yeah, I mean I struggle to find faults, um to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

That that's the that's the biggest praise I think I've ever heard. Quote, I've struggled to find faults. That that's that's terrific.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

You know, I I was even accepting of some of the changes that he made. Um, you know, it I understood why he he did some things differently. Why, you know, d you know, why Arwen was there at the river crossing for for Frodo. You know, it's it's not written that way in the book, but um I I was okay with him doing that because he was bringing a character forward um for cinematic purposes and um you know tying her into plot points to make her presence there even you know necessary, right? Um, you know, uh notes and notations that Tolkien had um, you know, that were brought forth and actually given you know life on the screen. And you know, we as modern Modern writers, you know, we we can't help but be affected, you know, by the movies and and television and everything else that that we watch. Um I I extremely love what the the Prime series has done because you've got a lot of Tolkien fans who have created the Rings of Power series, and so they they have brought to bear, you know, what every Tolkien fan is like, yes, this is exactly you know how it is in the notes. And if you read the Silmarillion, you know, you're going to see this information and you're bringing it to bear exactly how it plays out, and it and it's it's cinematically, you know, gorgeous to look at. You they they're bringing in the most amazing uh actors to to bring these characters to light. And so that I I I do I struggle to find fault with it. I I love it, I love every minute of it. Just it it also helps, you know, bring the love of fantasy to a whole new audience and new generations who who may not connect to reading books, you know, and so how you know, like now that there are movies and television series, you know, reflective of these amazing works of art, you are able to hit broader audiences who are like, well, maybe now I'm gonna pick up a book and start reading, because you know, there's a lot of um, you know, books that have not been brought to life, you know. Um, and you're only going to discover them on the page.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Absolutely. A novel is not a play, is not a movie. And we've seen many very talented creative people blow it over and over again when it came to Lord of the Rings. Ralph Bakshi, the noted animator, gave it a whirl, and that didn't quite work out. And the first Harry Potter movie talking about fantasy, where J.K. Rowling pretty much in the contract had to have rights on the movie itself calling shots. And as a writer, you have different contingencies than as a director and producer. And you make a great point that an adaptation cannot stay literal to the text because you would have, for starters, a 40-hour-long movie. And and to the other great point you made, you might have to move stuff around for the make of for the sake of dramatic tension of what's demanded of a film. And Chris Columbus got more creative license as as the movies became increasingly popular, and JK Rowling got a chance. Okay, you guys, you guys got this.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

I'll take a step back now.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Yeah, and Peter Jackson is an excellent storyteller.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

I think James Cameron is quite excellent too, because they understand that they're making a movie and they're not retelling a book, and they stay true to the medium in which they are the aficionado. And uh the studio needs to trust their talent. And in cases like where Cameron is a terrific success, I think the first Avatar movie was quite exceptional, and and Peter Jackson's trilogy, which by the way, we're all shot pretty much at the same time, right? The same same energy, same timeline, yeah. The same the same deal, uh, really, really worked. And to your great point, if they do it right, if they don't blow it, because we've seen our favorite books get wrecked over and over again, then the audience is electrified. Like my favorite character in the Jackson adaptation is a super minor character, but just visually, my jaw literally dropped. The gatekeeper of Mordor. I don't even remember, I don't, it's like such a minor character, but his look was so menacing, and and I was put into that world. It was so visceral and believable.

SPEAKER_04 26:05

Yeah, just the gates themselves, right? When you see that if you're like, well, you just kind of ripped that out of my head and made it even better.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah, even that's it, even better. I thought the gates of Mornor were much smaller, they were they were obviously corrugated and maybe like bloody and rusty, okay. But Peter Jackson made that whole that whole world of Sauron so epic in scale that it exceeded your own imagination, yeah. And then it's winning. And as a reader, you want to do that for your for your reading, you know what I mean? You want the book because you're coming into a novel like yours, having that oove already. They've they've probably read Lord of the Rings, they've probably been familiar with the oove that you're drawing from, and you need to take it to it to another level. Did you feel some pressure that way? Because you're operating in a in a universe that's established, has its own nomenclature and tropes.

unknown 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Was that tough for you to stake your own claim and give it a fresh crousant whirl?

SPEAKER_04 27:23

I think it's why it took me so long to really get started and finish a full novel, because I was intimidated, you know, as as you express, right? And you know, when you see you know, a series of books uh, you know, uh do so much, do so many epic things, and you're like, oh, I'm I'm gonna, you know, give this a whirl and give it a try, um, it can be very intimidating. So um, you know, I w I was uh talking with Terry Brooks um after uh he was you know kind of supporting Christopher Paolini in one of his book signings, and he was kind of tucked off to the side. And I had talked to him a lot. He's he's a little bit of a mentor for me. And um we were you know just kind of talking about you know getting uh Eldokine's, you know, kind of started off the ground. I had just secured my first agent, I had, you know, we were um working on securing my my first publisher because Eldhine was originally published, you know, published in the the oldest way. And um, you know, we were having this conversation about a character, and um, you know, he he said, you know, like don't don't try to be comparing yourself to to what I'm doing or what Robert Jordan is doing, you know, don't be intimidated by that. Just go in and and tell your story, you know, climb into it. And um, you know, it it was you know some of the best advice that I had ever gotten. It was just, you know, just go be true to my characters. And um you know, by the time we finished talking, it was funny because the Christopher's line was kind of fading out, and I looked up, I I didn't even realize we were surrounded by like dozens of people who were just you know kind of listening and watching the conversation take place. So clearly he was he was telling me a lot of really great, wonderful things. Um, but it really boiled down to just let it be your voice. Let it be your voice. Um you know, uh Guillermo del Toro, um, who to me is is I think one of our our great uh storytellers. Um I I Steven have Hellboy, I'm a Hellboy fan. I have I have I have a stack of Hellboy comics um just over there. Um but uh you know it's uh Hans Labyrinth for me was a little earth shaking because it it it um you know it's that that dark story that draws you in um and really leads you down this amazing you know fantasy path and you get to the end and you you're just so you know taken by the characters and so drawn in that you feel like you've just expressed every bit of emotion you could ever muster in your lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Then you're smacked with human evil, yeah, which which just is kind of the coup de grace of that fantastic experience.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Yeah. But if you think about it, his experience in getting to where he's at, he he had a lot of people telling him no. He had a lot of people saying, No, you can't do that. Like, you know, what are you talking? People are gonna hate that. What are you talking about? Um, and so you know, getting to, you know, see him talk, you know, at conventions and things like that, you know. I was just getting ready to give up um writing at a point where I saw him and he was saying, you know, because I you had had so many rejection letters, so many rejections. And um he said, you know, stop listening to the nose and just keep going. Just let it be your voice, let it be your story, your thing, and don't let them shut you down. And I was like, okay, what am I doing? I this is what I want to be doing. I want to be writing. Um, you know, if if I could make a living as a writer, I would have quit my job a long time ago. Um, you know, and just been writing stories. So um how could I give it up, right? It's I've got too many voices in my head. If I don't let them out, they're just gonna take over it. I'm just gonna be a raving gonna take on the corner anyway. So um, you know, it's it's important to get to get those stories out in my voice. Just like your mother said, you know, it's he he kept me from quitting. Terry Brooks kept me from quitting. Um, you know, Tim Powers, you know, same thing. It's you know, getting access to some of these authors um as a part of the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society when when it existed um really made a difference for me because I got access and mentorship from some really amazing writers.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

And now you're sharing that on this podcast for a lot of young or aspirational writers. A lot of my viewers and listeners are indie authors, and they're like, hey Mookie, how how do I do it? Yeah, and you're conveying that mentorship in a way I think is very meaningful. If you're a writer, the one pattern that I see over and over again, it doesn't just happen. It's not like you're doing this and you're doing that regardless of your age, and you wake up one morning, you have your coffee or tea, and then bing, this light bulb goes up. I'm gonna be a writer. I've I've talked to about zero people and of zero who are working writers. And by working writers, it has zero to do with your income from writing or how many books you sell. It has to do with this inner burning flame that you just have to tell your story and you have to do it. And like you, immersed in books throughout their youth, they always felt a connection to storytelling, and they have this compulsion that overrides it overrides everything common sense, paying the rent, uh, this this reasonable expectation of return on investment. Because you pour hundreds of hours into something with no assurance that it'll take off. And you're making essential points, which is if the fire burns, then don't smother it. Just pour kerosene on it. And if it burns your house down because you can't pay the mortgage, then so be it. But uh, you know, stay responsible, but it's not about anything outside the joy and need of the writer to write. Yeah, that's pure and true and beautiful, and if you could get over the obstacles of expectation, especially if you're introverted. Notice part of the irony here, which is like you want to cuddle up in your jammies with a typewriter and just keep keep creating. But at the same time, especially when you started, you're you felt that you had to appease others, that you needed to be accepted from people who had no vested interest in your work to begin with, except to make money off you.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Yeah. I still remember the look on the face of my agent when I had one when I approached her, um, because she she was a like a dark fantasy type person who, you know, was very much like Cthulhu and um, you know, you know, that that sort of vent, if you will. And I approached her with a little card that said elf kind on it, and she looked at me like, oh god.

SPEAKER_05 34:53

I'm gonna hate you.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

And I hate you already. And um, you know, and then but then she uh she accepted my submission and um you know she she she was with a a a very prominent agency here in Southern California, so it was huge that she would even look at my submission, and then um she came back saying, I want to represent you. Like I hate like Tolkien and I hate the elves and all, and and you just made me love it. So like here we go. I'm now a fan of elves. Um you know, it it means that I did something right with regards to the voice and and the characters and such, because it certainly wasn't what she was looking for. But then, you know, you run into those same hurdles, like this is not what we're looking for right now, and it was it was safely right before the first of the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out, and so I was like, but you know, I know that they're making a Lord of the Rings movie right now. Like, how could you not want mainstream fantasy books right now? But you know, that's not what was hot at the time, it was dark urban fantasy. Um China Be A Bill was coming out with some really great stuff at that time, so I'm not going to knock that genre because I love it. Um it's just it made it really hard for those of us that were doing conventional, you know, high fantasy to, you know, kind of break through in terms of a voice, right? So it was just a rejection, rejection, rejection. Like every big publisher just said no thank you, right? So we ended up going with small press. So, you know, God bless small press. Um and I and I still walked away from it because um it turned out that I was still having to put in as much as I'm putting in now as an indie author, and yet I was only getting, you know, part of those royalties on the sales and things. And I just thought, well, if I'm gonna be working this hard still anyway, I'm just going to do it myself. Um, you know, so a lot of people may be listening going, You walked away from a publisher? What? Are you insane? Yeah, I wanted to keep my audio rights because that's where I was making, you know, most of my sales was in audio. Um we just we just released the audio. It came out just yesterday. Was it yesterday or the day before? Um, on Audible for The Winter Forest. And I have this amazing, amazing talented narrator.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Check the link below. I'll help you, I'll help you.

SPEAKER_04 37:21

I have this amazing talented narrator who has done all of my books, and we have this amazing working relationship. Um, and she just she just brings my stories to life. And like each time I bring her a new book, she's like, Oh my god, I'm so glad I get to be back in this world. Um, and she just she brings it to life in a way that, you know, because some of us like I spend two hours a day in traffic, you know, getting to and from work. So I do a lot of my book reading now audio with audio because that's the time that I have to spend and I can't not be reading. So I still consider it reading, but somebody is bringing it to life for me in a different way. And um, you know, we just started a contest to give away um you know copies of this audiobook for free. So um check my Instagram. Um if you want to ring below. But uh yeah, it's um you know really um you know, sort of bringing these things to life because it's your voice. It's you know, it's why it what brings us to reading in the first place, right? Like, you know, these characters, these stories. Um it connects us to, you know, some of the things that we're experiencing in our life and helps us, you know, work through that. Um it it helps transport us away from things that are happening in our real life. It's it's an escape like no other, right? It's you know, if I'm having a really hard day, it's I'm gonna go put on my headphones and listen listen to Jane Marsters like do some gym butcher and like go crawl into the Dresden world for a while. Like, you know, fun escapes where you know I don't have to, you know, deal with you know the day-to-day for at least a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

I I I think all of these are amazing points, just your lived experience of going through that trajectory is is illuminating, especially this idea that so many authors, especially authors who are just getting started, feel that they're not legit unless they find a legit publisher. That's number one. It's like this craving for external confidence.

SPEAKER_04 39:35

It's a trail of tears because right now the only thing that these big publishing houses are interested in are real housewives with, you know, a three million base. That's that means instant sales. Um, you know, unfortunately, the creative editorial types who were making choices for books that they were going to publish are making different choices now, right? They're looking for you to come in with an established base. So your best path to that level of publishing is still through Indie Publishing and all of the the publicity that you need to build for yourself because you need a base if you have you know, say 90,000 Instagram followers, which I do not because I'm I've literally been on Instagram for five minutes because I've been working and and and writing instead. Um but it's it's time for me to you know sort of take this to the next level. Um but it it's about um you know building that network and connection with with art readers and um you know bloggers and and booksters and um Instaboos and and all of that. There's a huge I I'm just I just fell into this well in this huge community that I didn't even know existed. And they could have been there, you know, uh propping up my sanity this whole time, and I didn't even realize it because I was too busy writing the books, right? It's because that takes so much time.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

So myth number one, I'm gonna find a publisher and then I'm gonna be legit. Myth number two is after I write a book, I've done all the work, and I'm gonna pass it along to this mythical publisher, and they're gonna market me, and they're gonna get me in the New York Times, and they're gonna get me in Locust and Apex Magazine, and they're gonna organize my schedule for upcoming podcast appearances and interviews on CNN. So it would be nice, and of course, Netflix will soon be knocking on my door for optioning this into an incredible mini-series that I frankly saw in my head as I was writing this, so no big deal transposing that. And uh, and as part of that mythology, there's the feeling that I don't really need to create my own community and I don't need to do my own marketing because I'm a genius, and it's a it's an easy trap to fall into because as writers, we we do spend most of our time writing. That is our core competency. And and if you're writing, you enjoy this very introverted, whether you're introverted or not, it's an introverted kind of exercise to lock yourself in a room for 100, 200, a thousand hours working on a project. That's weird. Most people would think we're crazy. Yeah, there are all these forces that are hitting us from all these sides. And you you learned it, and I think you're applying it that to be a successful writer, especially in 2026, when to your point, put yourself in the shoes of a producer or an agent or a big publisher. They haven't they have the option of taking a risk with you or just going for the real housewives of Mars.

SPEAKER_03 43:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

And right off right off the shelf, they're they're already making money. And it's also a bandwidth issue. How many, how many clients can an agent have? How many books can be published that get meaningful bandwidth out there in this attention, starved, media-dominated tsunami of content environment. And so it's like Hunger Games in in reverse, you know, the odds are not in our favor. No. And uh you have to hustle, which is which is probably the biggest takeaway here is that your work actually just begins after you finished your book if you want your book to be read.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

That's right. That's right. Um, and you know, gone are the days of um, you know, that that path of um, you know, find like following that standard method. Of getting into a publisher and getting published because you know at at the time that that was the model, they were you know putting out a few hundred books a year. Now it I think we're up to what 2.6 million books a year? I mean the it's the it's super saturated, the the zone. So, you know, if you want to be read by anyone, how do you make your work stand out? Um, you know, there's so many different theories about the best way to do it, and um, you know, having actual content is um you know and valuable content, uh content that people will want to read. You know, make your work quality. Spend the time, you know, taking writers' classes and understanding, you know, the actual, you know, way to write quality work. Um, that's the first thing that you need. You can be the best marketer in the world, but if you're if your work isn't good, um, you know, you'll you'll get so far, but you're not going to get any farther because people are going to realize that this is not something that they're enjoying, right? So um, you know, it's it's really important to hone your skills as a writer and then hone your skills as a publicist and get it or often it's one extreme or another, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Um, we we talked about Silmarilin a little bit, like who's really read Silmarilyn? Well, if you're a Tolkien fan, you've read it, you're all into it, and you know the whole taxonomy. I read it as a teenager of the families, right? And you got all those details. You're in it to to win it. Uh the other extreme is that you're just into the marketing side rather than content. Uh, another big book is Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, and that's that's Joyce's Silmarillion after he wrote Ulysses, which is also incomprehensible to most. But the reason I go off on this tangent here is there's two brothers in Finnegan's Wake. There's Shem and Sean. And Shem is the writer, he creates, and all the wisdom and creativity comes from him. And Sean is the marketer, so he puts up the soapbox in the middle of the village and he's articulating, he gathers, he creates community while Shem is busy writing. Now, there's a complete archetypal disconnect between Shem and Sean because Shem gets it. He's a fountain connected with the muse, and Sean doesn't have the remotest inkling of a clue as to what Shem is trying to communicate. And it's this dichotomy between these two personality types. And internally, we struggle with this as well, which is if you're a natural writer, it's often hard to do this marketing stuff, build community. And if you're a natural social kind of person, you're you love contacting people and liking people so they like you, and and you reshare and restack and follow, and your whole day is on Reddit bullshitting, then that's natural to you. And it's very, very rare for someone to play rhythm and lead guitar competently. And for writers, I think this is the biggest recurring dilemma that I see to your point, which is I see people are geniuses at marketing, they come out of nowhere, and on Substack they have like 4,000 followers in two weeks, and everyone is liking their stuff, and their stuff sucks because they don't spend any time on it. They're they're all into networking and connecting. And then I see people of scintillating talent who are completely flying under the Ray Body. Nobody cares because they don't have that woo to just get people to even take a look. So I go off on this big tangent just because it's like it's instinctive, it's like part of the human dilemma that we have these conflicts. And as an indie author, if you're if you're a natural at writing, then it's gonna be tough to community build, and it's gonna be it's not gonna feel natural, but you have to do it. And then if you're a natural at marketing and you've got 30,000 people on TikTok because you're pumping nonsense memes and loving it, try to spend a little bit more time communicating something meaningful.

SPEAKER_04 48:36

Yeah, it's it's a hard dilemma. It it can get frustrating sometimes because you you see work getting promoted and you're like, my stuff is that good, my stuff is better than that.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Way better. We get jelly. We must feel it every day where you know, latest fantasy writer, and and you look at their stuff, and it's like, did you GPT this in five minutes?

SPEAKER_04 49:00

Oh, yeah, the AI dilemma as well. Um yeah, I I mean, and and that's starting to re-ret as well in the industry, right? Like, you know, are you using AI to you know do some of your writing or all of your writing?

SPEAKER_00 49:16

I've been friends with writers or writers. And I know I know that they've been toiling for years with the idea of a book. And then now I'm I'm I'm cooking on this podcast, right? And they're like, hey Mookie, I just wrote my book. Do you want to you want to talk about my book? I'm like, of course, you're you're awesome. Let me let me go check it out. And they'll send me the PDF or the or the published book, and I'm like, hmm.

SPEAKER_05 49:43

Oh dear. Especially if it's a friend, right? It's like, well, you read my stuff and you're like, okay, what can I say?

SPEAKER_00 49:50

Gifts from the gods have descended on you with regard to uh, you know, just your your prose. So tell us a little bit about that. Um, reading your stuff, I see zero AI. I see you writing every word and and loving it.

SPEAKER_03 50:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

So so what's your attitude toward it, especially since writers like us who actually sit here and type every word are getting crowded out by about a billion AI books on Amazon churning every day?

SPEAKER_04 50:22

Yeah, it's and it's gonna be harder to spot them too. But I mean it just it comes down to um your writing style, what you're writing and why you're writing it. Like for me, it's it's a bit of an escape. Like I said, I'm writing the stories that I want to be reading. And um, you know, so I I have a lot of um actually Tad Williams said this and I I couldn't have a read more. I a lot of my writing process is sitting around daydreaming. So if you're like, what's Catherine doing? She's just sitting in a chair staring blankly at the wall. Um it it really is about, you know, sort of um, you know, devising those those scenes. You know, it's like creating a movie. It's it's it's scene by scene. How do you enter the scene and when you leave it, what has changed? Because if if something hasn't changed in the course of that scene, it's not a complete scene and it's not worthwhile and it has no bearing on your story, right? It's you know it what is changing about the plot, what is changing about the character, um, and and why is it important, why why does it belong? Um, and just understanding, you know, how each of those elements can vary impressively and properly and and beneficially affect your story, or take it if you're making bad choices and not focusing on the right things. So um, you know, there's a lot of discourse about you know, do you outline, do you not outline? Do you I loosely outline? Um uh I I deviate from my outlines all the time if the characters so dictate. Sometimes they run off with the plot and they say, no, no, no, this is the direction we're gonna go now. Um, but it it comes down to um you know having a real intimate relationship with those characters um that you are building and creating and really being able to immerse yourself in that world. And if you can't do that as a writer, your readers are certainly not going to get that from your work either. So um and and then the other thing that I do, which is kind of more the frosting, um I touched on this, it's very important to me, but it may not be as important to other writers. If it's tripping me up in any way, it's going to trip up my reader. And I don't want any scaffolding pulling someone out of the story. I want them to be able to read zipping through it so that they forget that they're reading and they're actually in the story. So um, like one of my favorite things um that I adhere to very strictly is if I am jiggering over a sentence or a couple of sentences, like more than three times, I delete the whole sentence. And it's usually better without it completely. It's there's no amount of words that I am married to um that can't be changed or removed um because something dictates with regards to making the story better. Um I've deleted whole chapters, it it hurts for a minute. Um you kind of walk away going, ooh, man, like how much time did I spend writing that chapter? It doesn't belong anymore. Um, but you can't be married to that because what you need to be married to is the overarching um, you know, character arc and and how those characters are interacting with each other and developing. And if you haven't developed your characters over the course of that story and they don't come out in a different place having learned some things, then you might want to rethink what you're writing.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

David Mammoth's on directing film is one of my favorite books for writers. It's called On Directing Film, and it's great. And the reason it's great, and the reason I bring it up, is because you're bringing up how all writing is based on the scene.

SPEAKER_04 54:12

Yeah. That I got in one of my screenwriting classes, right? It's you know, that scene is very important.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

A book, a novel, any story consists of these almost Lego pieces that have to be seamlessly interlocking to create the whole. And if each scene doesn't have discernible, clear, goal-driven characters and equally clear obstacles, there could be some mystery and ambiguity that fuels the subtext of the tension, but you need clarity and you need this oppositional force, and you need to discernibly see and be vested in this character getting from here to there. And then the scenes are arranged, whether whether the story's linear or not, doesn't matter chronologically. You go from A to B, B to C, C to D. And to your point, your characters sometimes might actually write these scenes for you, and scenes and whole chapters might drop out because it doesn't fit that trajectory, like telemetry. You're in aerospace, right? So a rocket either falls out of the sky or it goes successfully into orbit. And frankly, it boils down to the raw physics and engineering of it. You can't will a rocket to fly, and you can't bullshit your way into or out of a story simply rolling the dice and hoping that your ideas are all that. There needs to be this through line, and the through line is propelled emotionally to make it work. And going back to AI. Now, AI is machine learning intelligence, it has the IQ of maybe your cat, arguably less than that. People get deluded by how good it mimics us, but low IQ and almost zero creativity because it's using the pre-trained model to cobble together what humans have already done in a way that's probabilistically set up, like Google's autocomplete, to just finish your sentence, or in the case of some people, finish their book.

SPEAKER_04 56:22

Right. With the emotional complexity of a brick. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

As writers, this AI, not to AI. If you're really a writer, you're gonna sweat through this stuff. It's gonna come from your lived experience. You got a burning light in your heart that you need to be a storyteller, and you make end endless and untold sacrifices to get those words on the page, and you're living and breathing it. That's not being a prompt jockey. That's the opposite of being one.

SPEAKER_04 56:54

AI is gonna get in my way, right? It's I'm gonna spend as much time setting things up in a prompt as I'm gonna spend just you know creating the scene. You know, it's um a lot of um writers are starting to use it to help them with editing, line editing, things like that. I don't see a problem with that. I don't, I'm never going to do that because each pass that I make through a manuscript is my ability to also check continuity, make sure that I still like I'm not missing any critical components or ideas, things like that. I mean, it's so every even the line editing pass is is important for those reasons. So I'm not gonna let an AI do it because I I am still making my own decisions about you know the content during those those sweeps as well. Right. And I do I do a pass for dialogue where I'm looking for each voice to be consistently tied to each character so that you can tell who's who's speaking, and that that in and of itself establishes you know unique characterization for those characters. I do a pass for the line editing for typos, I always fail. Um Andrea Ms, who is my narrator for the audiobook, she and I are always finding like, oops, there's a typo I missed. Um, you know, um but uh you know it really comes down to um you know those important passes. If you let AI do that for you, you're missing critical opportunities to you know weave in additional important things to your storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

I think ease of use, just like Jack White of the White Stripes says, is the scourge and enemy of the creative force. Well if you could just plug and play and prompt jockey it, just press a button and it all goes away. All the passion is removed from the creative and artistic process. And any artist worth their chops will tell you that uh that that grind and that hard work is what comes up and into and through it. Yeah, Anthony Bourdain made an amazing career out of a short story that he wrote that exemplified that the kitchen in a restaurant is like a submarine. It's hot, it's sweaty, it's dangerous, and it's one of the most awful places to work. And in that blood, sweat, and tears, amazing meals that produce so much pleasure in the dining room are engendered. And it's that dichotomy between just sweating it out and creating beauty is just a natural part of that process. And I think it applies very much to the written word too. It's it's it's joyful hell, and if you make it happen, then your readers can feel it. It it's translating all of that passion, and I love how you go over stuff over and over again, and you're your own editor, and then you just get rid of stuff. My debut science fiction book I wrote in three-line paragraphs obsessively, so it looks almost like lyric poetry and like tweets. I'm actually tweeting it backwards on X to just just because I can, because each paragraph is symmetric, they all look alike on the page. And I did that for my own OCD reasons because I felt just prose is so ad hoc. Like, why is one paragraph this size and the other smaller? It's so arbitrary. You're a scientist, you work in aerospace, like like coding is kind of interesting, and it also puts you in a box, and then you need to gamify your writing. And to the great point you just made, it forces you to rethink and recalibrate and rewrite to make it fit. So this accomplished two goals, things I never would have thought of. I'm I'm thinking of just to make it fit, syntax versus semantics. And the other one is it's I was a good proofreader, even though I'm really ADHD, as you can probably tell. My my book had has had very few typos, even the initial draft, because I had to keep rewriting sentences to get it to fit into the into the the zany formatting. So that's fun. You can gamify, live, live within your words instead of just pressing a button.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:26

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, AI is gonna there's no concept of subtext or nuance or anything like that in front of AMD, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Be be true to yourself, folks. You know, as a writer and as a reader, like be sensitive to being bamboozled by AI. And in ways, the audience is already starting to react. Open AI had that application called Sora, which launched to much fanfare, which enabled user-generated 10-second clips of dynamic AI content. So all of a sudden you're you're having a waltz with Beethoven or whatever, and it's your actual image. And there was backlash to it. It created a torrent of fake news and a flood of garbage in all the social channels and bad reputation management for open AI. So I think the public is already getting a little sick of this, and you can't spend a nanosecond on social media without these obviously AI-generated memes and descriptors. And a lot of people don't notice and don't care, but there's already a backlash to it.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:33

Yeah, yeah. It feels just insincere. It feels insincere. But I mean, use AI to your benefit, you know, with marketing and publicity where you can. Just you know, but let your creativity, let your creation, your work, your stories be yours.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

As I mentioned to other um guests too, I used AI for research.

unknown 1:02:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

So in my zany three-line paragraph novel, I've got I've got hard science. Uh, you know, everything from quantum mechanics to uh weird ideas in cosmology and and all sorts of speculative stuff, but also stuff grounded in in the mass of the Higgs boson that figures into my book. Go figure. So I wanted it to be true to the science because when you pull it out of your butt, it it doesn't work. And it also forced me to think through stuff in ways that I think added added to the book. So use the tools, but you know, use drink responsibly.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:33

Yeah, exactly. Well, make sure that you're double checking because you know it makes stuff up too, right? Sometimes AI hallucinates and just like just like we do. You want to make sure that it's giving you the correct science, the proper science. So, you know, it's and you can always cross-check all of that. Like if you're able to confirm you know everything that it that it's producing, then it's it is a really good source for them, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

Is the idea that science fiction and fantasy is a terrific genre for being able to express a lot of deeply personal stuff and also be reflective of the climate in which we exist, especially now with two steps forward, three steps back, with regard to just so many things that frustrate us. And to bring that to life on the page and to do it without it being ideological or political, but just deeply heartfelt is something that science fiction has done very well since it really started cranking out. All the way back to Jules Verne, H. G Wells, with the Martian invasion, even the invisible man has deep political subtext as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:56

Dark paper.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:57

And you and you brought that up, that brought that up earlier. So can you can you tell us a little bit more about how it's it's that release for you and how does that go into the audience that you're trying to to pull together? So so it's kind of two parts. One is is the the feeling that goes into your books, and the other is creating community, going on Instagram, finding your people.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:26

Yeah, um, that's a lot. It's um, you know, we go through so much, especially it feels like um in recent years we've been through so much as a country, as a global community. And um, you know, that wears on us as as human beings, you know, as feeling you know, creatures that have empathy and sympathy and understanding, um, and sometimes not understanding. And um, you know, it it's we have proven. through you know science fiction going all the way back to the grades, right? That they are able to reflect and mirror back to people, you know, things that you know, like messages that they will not accept if you just try to tell them about prejudice, if you just try to tell them about um you know enslavement or um you know uh genocide, things like that. It's you know you you can't get those messages across without you know directly speaking about them. But you can certainly reflect it back to a population in storytelling in a way that you're sneaking it past them sort of right because we do trust our readers to be very smart and intuitive and understanding. And it gives them a safe place to visit you know what they believe, what they think, um how they process the things that are happening um in today's society. I think it has done a lot to create empathy and allyship because so many groups really require their allies especially these days. And so I don't try to preach I don't try to um wag my finger at things but I carry my lived experiences into my writing there's no way around it. So there's a a lot of maybe subtextual um investigation with regards to the relationships and the interactions that characters have with each other you know sort of how different things are playing out. You know, in my world building there is politics. There has to be politics in order to have a complete worldscape. You know so even the way the maps are drawn and how the the different nations interact with each other and maybe how that politics plays out is definitely reflective of you know the world that we're living in. And so um maybe I'm investigating or exploring on a personal level you know through through this writing how some of that um how how I can even make peace with some of that or make decisions about how I want to see things play out you know based on um I I think I think the word I think it comes down to hope I think I think it comes down to not being overwhelmed to the point that you become frozen and unable to move forward. We we need like as Einstein said right it's you're on a bicycle if you don't keep pedaling you're gonna fall over so it's it's really important to keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

But how do you move forward in the face of some of the things that we're living through um it's gotta be through the community it's gotta be through our relationships with our fellow human beings and that allyship that that we need to provide to our struggling communities and that's that's going to play out in everything that I write that's a terrific mission statement almost building community let's say on Instagram you're beyond just another science fiction fantasy slash horror writer you're connecting with people who are like minded souls who are in a similar boat you are who want to share your catharsis. So the the challenge is to is to connect the dots right how how do you reach out in a way where that becomes transparent engaging and impactful how are you able to get your books out there and communicate that sensibility when people are well that's the question right the swipe swipe swipe I have a similar challenge um my science fiction novel is hard science it's Douglas Adams meets William Gibson with with with with uh all these other zany authors thrown in and I could describe it that way but thematically it's basically the Gen Zoomer gender wars brought to life you have a a Gen Z male who's a narcissistic loser opportunist exhibitionist extreme sports enthusiastic drug addicted freak and then you have his compliment who is a very hardworking focused creative conscientious female and it exemplifies some it's stereotypical but it exemplifies the gender rift which is now more acute than ever before and frankly women are doing better than men it's it's it's in pure research it's all there and women are paying for that I that that's the essential theme of my book even though it's a reality engine and uh space opera battles. So the challenge that I have is how do I get folks to get it and build up enthusiasm and ultimately succeed in communicating this very basic yet I think fundamental and important reality that we're living in right now because this younger generation is going to create the next world and if we don't fix the battle between men and women and power that's a bigger deal I think than the AI revolution frankly we have societal issues that we need to fix and we need to reconcile because it's not working out.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:41

I couldn't agree more and and the you know everything that we're seeing is reflective of I think you know the poor and the each has struck on right it's I mean women have had to fight for everything that we've got. So we don't know how to take our foot off the gas. So we're just gonna keep going and striving and just pressing our shoulder to that ceiling. So now that that things have changed for our our young men in the world we don't know how to like I mean I don't know that we should have to take our foot off the gas and turn around and go back and and see how we can sort of scoop up. It's like listen we this is how we've had to subsist for eons. So it's confusing to us a a scenario where our young men struggle to find that within themselves. And it's heartbreaking to see right it's you know like how can we be allies then to the struggle that these young men are going through but yet at the same time be true to who we are and the struggle that we've had and where where we are where we'd like to be it's it's really rough. And and I think that our our trans community is going through some real severe backlash and um just you know it's like there it's these communities are the ones that suffer worst when we start to backslide in you know the realm of civil rights. And so how do we you know continue to help pull them up so that they don't get stabilized by this whole nonsense. It it's you know so it's we probably need to create that same allyship for these young men that just are struggling to find themselves, figure out who they are, you know, what they want to be um I I feel that if we don't have a really good goal um something to strive for something that our heart speaks to we find ourselves you know stuck in this situation where you know it's it's the whole like idle hands say great work for the devil kind of thing. It's you know what are you going to build in your mind if you are stuck in a place where you're not moving forward and you're not striving for anything. You're not trying to create something for yourself you know whether it be community or or job or creative enterprise like without that creative enterprise without that goal without that striving what do you become and I feel like some of our young men are starting to show us you know what you become in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:19

100% you just pitched my book in in its totality my book is called and I'm not pitching my book again on my podcast I'm just illustrating that you nailed it which is my book is Johnny Fizzuli and the transfinite reality engine. Johnny is a hustler Gen Z male who epitomize all the worst qualities of my people and me. And Penny Pitts is the conscientious Gen Z overachiever female. And Johnny ostensibly builds this fake reality engine to impress and compete with Penny in his own absurdist hustler kind of way and he hires a trans scientist to do it out of expedience. So in a cauldron of politics and culture and gender wars I throw it all into the mix and it blows up and I and I felt that that to me is these are the factors that resonate the most right now we're so blinded and distracted by war by nonsense these are we we gotta figure out the gender war. We gotta this trans problem is an is a national embarrassment and it sets us decades back in terms of personal freedom and and I'm so frustrated as a dude look I'm a white bald dude and I see that we're blowing ourselves up with this kind of anti anti anti-woke nonsense it it it what are we doing to these poor people that have already been through enough right and and I'm saying this as a woman like women have been like we have been through a lot come on like can we get a break um and that's why it's so so such a straight line for us to feel that empathy for the trans community as well because we haven't been through enough like I mean having to fight and scrape and scrap for every bit of of rights that they have to have that taken away and and for women for everything that we have strived to achieve you know in in recent decades to have it all like it's getting snapped up and taken away from us so quickly and like the new bills are trying to take away our voting rights at this point.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:48

Like they're if they want us to be second class citizens again. They want the trans community to be second class citizens again. And and and then we've got a community of young men who don't know how to find themselves and and and become you know genuine feeling human beings that you have some sense of purpose and goal and and an ability to strive for something good in their lives and we're failing them as well. It's we're failing so many people on so many levels right now. It's it's frightening to see it's it's gonna be interesting to see how we pick ourselves up.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

I think there's a lot of hope to be had especially with the recent Hungary election I'm I'm Hungarian and I congratulated my Hungarian relatives I reached out now I speak of AI I use it to translate my Hungarian is terrible it's on like a fifth grade level because I grew up with it I have Chatty bro chance like congratulations you know you finally got rid of uh Mr. Orbon but but there are hopeful signs and there's it's a pendulum that keeps swinging back and frankly the left has had its own excesses and ridiculous nonsense and it and it and it keeps oscillating radically back and forth. We just need a sense of reasonableness humanity empathy and fairness which is just lacking and and my book I try to just highlight what goes wrong when you don't have those qualities so my trans scientist she's up at the University of Hamilton I just changed some names you know from Madison to Hamilton you know nudge nudge and uh she gets doged right and she's gifted and she deals with prejudice and then the attitude at a very ostensibly liberal university flips because of the the current administration and she realizes that her best chance is with this Gen Z loser hustler because at least this guy will let her do her research to build a universe jumping machine that he doesn't think can ever work that he just wants to use to extort people's investment money. It's fun at the very least I bring up all of this that the mess we're into makes for great writing and you do something similar with personal growth with these uh with these kind of reconnoitred DD Lord of the rings Narnia worlds where they're it's kind of like 2.0 it's very contemporary and you're looking at it through the lens of a woman writing in 2023 24 25 26 right exactly pretty fun you get me I want our viewers and listeners to get your stuff like comment share subscribe everyone check out Catherine's work in the in the links below and uh good luck with your with your marketing miss introvert I find it challenging too just to pull it all together and and get attention and uh and doing it on your own is is hard too now that you've thrown off the shackles of this trad publishing myth in ways that they're they're you can get signed with the biggest publisher they won't necessarily do things for you and they expect you to do most of your marketing and this is not even new like I cited James Elroy the author of LA Confidential who is very talented I he's old school but I love that guy from the beginning he's at book signings book fairs the guy is almost seven feet tall and he's awkward and and weird and he's always out there peddling his books and I think we have to do that too whether electronically or one way or another we got to leave our writer's cave.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:53

Yep and we can't treat it like a speed bump either right like right now I'm I'm struggling with that I want to get this like winter forest marketing out of the way so I can get straight to work on Crown and Fire. And you know it's like you know because to me right now I'd rather just be 100% focused on Crown and fire. I've got a really great idea I've got it outlined. I really want to just go in and start writing but I do need to um you know get the word out about winter forest because it is a really great story. It's a great tie for the first three books. You know it's you know it's it's something that I don't want to let just fall by the wayside um and just let it you know kind of die on the vine either so thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:37

It sounds like you're still working you're working full time and you're commuting. That's two hours a day LA traffic woo oh my god are you in are you in Silicon Valley doing the uh Silicon Valley thing? Southern California good luck to you perhaps that's the biggest takeaway here folks if you're an aspiring writer if you're a writer who's struggling the struggle is real and we need to multitask we can't be wholly committed to just content or distribution and we need to somehow balance these often mutually contradictory very frustrating capabilities and demands on our resourcing and time just to be just to be heard I liken it to Horton hears a who you know that uh you know the who people we are here we are here we are here yeah just keep up there at the top of the clouds with your little who megaphone I am here I am here and sooner or later a Horton with those he's an elephant so you get the just the big ears he's able to hear coming from the little the little plant right or the little cotton ball like yeah that's how it feels that's how it feels and you did it at the conference like you got your little thing I am here I am here and you're doing this podcast and I'm podcasting and connecting with great authors like you so yeah it's a great platform it's a really great way to to get a voice out there. Absolutely so thank you so much Catherine wish you the best um I'd love to have you back on when you're when number four comes out we could talk about it some more get you more reach and and catch up with you. I had a wonderful time talking to you thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:25

I'm really glad that we met Luki this has been a real a real blast thank you so much thank you to be continued