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
Sam Robb Brings A Sense of Murder to Selene Press
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Sam Robb steps into The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory to talk with Mookie about his new fantasy novel A Sense of Murder, the launch of Selene Press as the fantasy extension of Cannon Publishing, and how he somehow managed to bounce between Raconteur Press, pulp anthologies, military sci-fi circles, fantasy storytelling, political campaigning, and indie author chaos without losing his sanity.
Mookie is eager to hear about the rise of Sam's “Alpha Mercs” writing crew, convention culture, collaborating with illustrator Cedar Sanderson, and why the best science fiction and fantasy still lives or dies on character rather than lore dumps and endless maps of imaginary kingdoms.
The conversation also veers into his libertarian background — including Sam's surreal 2020 run for president as a Libertarian candidate — and how ideas about freedom, authority, government power, and individual responsibility quietly shape his fiction without turning it into preachy propaganda. They chatter about the changing landscape of modern sci-fi and fantasy, why entertainment comes first, how indie creators are building communities outside the corporate machine, and why readers are starving for stories that trust them to think for themselves.
From there they can't help but get inside sports: “pantsing” versus outlining, building believable characters, surviving the grind of indie publishing, balancing creativity with self-promotion, and the strange reality that modern authors are expected to be writers, marketers, convention hustlers, podcasters, and fan-magnets all at once. Toss in riffs on Star Trek, Andy Weir, pulp fiction storytelling, the daily grind, politics, and the joy of making weird stuff with your friends, and you get one of the most wide-ranging and unexpectedly thoughtful episodes you'll likely hear in a while.
The Guest
Sam Robb grew up in Pittsburgh preferring books to football — a choice that, in hindsight, explains a lot. He attended Carnegie Mellon on a Navy ROTC scholarship, married the most amazing woman in the world, and promptly shipped out to the Pacific Fleet. After helping decommission the USS WABASH, he returned to Pittsburgh, decided people were overrated, and retreated into software development. Then he ran for President as a Libertarian. He describes this period as "instructive."
These days, Sam channels his restless curiosity into SF/F, prowling Pittsburgh's back alleys with a camera and an overactive imagination. His flash fiction collection One October Night, his urban fantasy novel Sigils, and his dark fantasy novel A Sense of Murder prove that graffiti, old buildings, and questionable life choices make excellent creative fuel.
He lives with his wife, three daughters, and several quadrupeds who remain unimpressed by his publishing credits.
Find him at samrobbwrites.com.
Hello and welcome to the science fiction and fantasy factory. I'm your host, Mookie Spitz. And in the factory today, we've got none other than Sam Robb, a guy from Pittsburgh. Good to join us this afternoon. Thanks so much for making time.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having me on, Mookie. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00You're a little more than that. You've got a new book coming out with Celine Press, A Sense of Murder, which I understand it is the fantasy flagship for Celine, I think. You're one of the early books, extension of Canon Press, John Holmes, John Holmes and his crew. So that's exciting. You're you're you're kind of paving the way into fantasy for this ostensibly military sci-fi outfit. How did that come together? How did you jump ship? Because you're a recontour press. So there's a little incestuous stuff going on in Texas in Pittsburgh. Can you give us a little backstory for the science fiction nerds out there? They want to know.
SPEAKER_02So I start I started writing uh back in 2018, 2019, and uh did a couple of short stories with uh with different anthologies, and then got uh into a podcast uh called The Writer Dojo, and uh that's Larry Korea, Steve Diamond hosted that, and they talked a lot about the craft of writing and what it what goes into that. And I and one of uh one of the things that they they always used to harp on is that uh the key to being a writer is to put your butt in the seat, put your hands on the keyboard, and and just write. So uh I decided that I was going to do that, and I fell in with a bunch of reprobates uh that uh also were listening to the podcast and interested in that. And we called ourselves uh the Alpha Mercs, we're word mercenaries, and uh we started critiquing each other's stuff and getting to you know, helping each other to improve. Uh about the same time, uh a press started up, uh Rackantor Press out of Texas. They were doing a lot of pulpy anthologies, kind of like old school style stuff with uh uh you know, uh Pit Up Noir was was their one of their first books that I was in, and uh you know, Weird West sort of stuff. And uh did some work with them, and a couple of our guys in the Mercs kind of drifted over and started working with them and helping them with the press. And then uh uh a few years later, a few years down the road, uh my wife and I got pulled in. She's an editor and I'm a writer. Uh, they pulled me in actually to help with uh PR and marketing because I've got a little bit of experience with that. Um, but in the meantime, while all that's going on, uh I'm in the Alpha Mercs, we're being word mercenaries, and we got asked to write stories for a Car Wars anthology uh with Steve Jackson. Uh, we've got another anthology with uh Annals of the Autark Empire coming out. Uh, that's another project that people came and approached us and said, Hey, would you guys like to help us with this? And John Holmes had a a uh novella contest, and I had something that I'd written that was a little longer than a short story, and I threw it his way and said, Hey, here you here you go for your novella contest. Um he liked it, turned around, said, This is great. Why don't you give me a book? So that's how I ended up writing with Rackantour and the Alfenbergs and Canon and any when you're a word mercenary, you go wherever they uh wherever they want you.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's a mixture of appetite, aptitude, and circumstance, sounds like so, right, guys.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And then uh you got a nurturing community. I had John on a couple weeks ago, and uh he really embellished that sense of fraternity where you guys are fist pumping and coaching each other and supporting. And that that's really nice to hear.
SPEAKER_02It works really well. We're we really are a community, and um people some people think like, oh my goodness, if if I'm if I'm encouraging people to read Sam's stuff, then they might not buy my stuff. Uh the honest truth of the matter is it takes me, uh I'm slow, it takes me about uh you know uh six months, nine months to write a book if I'm doing nothing else. Um, and in that time, you could read, even if you're just like, oh yeah, I read a book a week, right? Uh you need 20 authors, 30 authors to keep your your cue full, right? I want more authors out there to keep you reading so that when my next book comes around, you're like, yes, I'm ready for this.
SPEAKER_00That that's the paradox of publishing. On the one hand, there's a tsunami of content, just everyone's overloaded with it, but at the same time, you've got a group of readers, they read voraciously. Yeah, and to your point, it's not a zero-sum game, it's not mutually exclusive between writers. Like if they read my book, they're not going to read your book. You've got readers who are consuming a lot of books, and there's room for all writers with talent and with dedication. It's just getting it done and getting it out there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, you had uh uh Pierce on last week or the week before. Jane Kenton Pierce. Yeah, he is a he is a fantastic, absolute knock dead dead writer. Uh I'm required to say that because one, I'm his friend, two, uh back to our press publishism, but he really is. He's a fantastic writer.
SPEAKER_00I love talking to him. He lives this stuff, and he does their super nerds into these worlds that we've created. I I felt I was a kindred soul with with Jay Kenton because he could just go on and on about his construct, and it was so moving. And at the end of the podcast, he actually told me, Hey, Mookie, it's like the 20 minutes where I just went off on my world, just cut that. That's like the best part of the pod to let him just go for it. So uh, I think you need that kind of emergency.
SPEAKER_02You do, and and honestly, right? I'll I will sit down and I will read a bunch of Pierce's stuff, and it's you know, Tales of the Long Night, it's science fiction, it's it's really great stuff. And then I'll it's like eating steak all the time. Eventually, you're like, I just can I have a pizza and I'll switch over to fantasy for a little bit and I'll read some fantasy, and then maybe I'll do some nonfiction, and then I'm like, you know what would really hit the spot? It's some some good science fiction. I'm back at Pierce.
SPEAKER_00So I'm with you. I actually took the approach to my novel writing, which is poly genre morphed up mashup of everything from you know William Gibson to Douglas Adams to documentary realism to absurdist comedy. I just threw it in the blender because I have the same manic energy. I figure, let's just have one book do it all.
SPEAKER_01Oh my goodness. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00I'm with you in spirit, and and you've you've flipped to fantasy and you've taken Mr. Holmes and Canon Press with their new sideline into fantasy. Can you tell us a little bit about how a sense of murder came to came to be? And it's also your foray into longer, longer stuff, right? You were an anthology contributor for years and anthology contributor, yeah. Deep led into a bigger novel writing, this being this being another one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, this is uh I I did have one uh novel in urban fantasy with uh Rackantor uh last year. And but this is uh honestly, Sense of Murder is uh is a little more complicated. Um, it's a little more grown up, right? I guess you could say. Um it's pulp plus it is, it really is. Um and it's start it all started with a lot of things that I write will start with a snippet or a sentence or something that uh percolates through my brain. And I've I jotted down. I've got a huge file. I keep all these ideas and I write them down, and uh I'll come back to them sometimes. And this one in particular um was the uh just the idea of uh the two kind of central characters, uh Prospero, who is a uh Magus of the Empire, and uh Kellen, who's kind of a Wild West outrider lawman sort, um mashing them together in kind of a magical buddy cop story. And uh I knew I knew that the two of them liked each other, I knew that the two of them worked together, but I didn't know how they met. So I kind of went back and I'm like, okay, I'll write that story, you know, and uh it turned out to be longer than your usual short story, so there's no place to put it uh until John Holmes did his uh, you know, hey, we're looking for novellas, we're looking for, you know, 10 to 15,000 word stories. I'm like, hey, got this, here you go. It was something that I kind of wrote for myself and uh mentioned the alpha mercs earlier, they helped me tremendously in polishing up and getting it, getting it off to him. And uh like I said, he he he enjoyed where I took the story. And uh part of you know, you ask where these ideas come from, um, I'm very much a pantser. So uh a lot of times I have the idea of like I'm I've got this big rock and this big rock and this big rock. And when I start filling in the the details in between, um a lot of things pop out and surprise me. So there are some things in Prospero's character and in Kellen's character and their backgrounds that I absolutely had zero idea were there until I, you know, dropped them on the page, and then I said, Oh, people are gonna think I planned that, and it's absolutely wrong, but I'm running with it.
SPEAKER_00That's you know, that's when you know you're on to something as a writer, is when action just emerges as a consequence of throwing your characters into a mix. And oh yeah, when you're surprised as a writer, you can be assured that your reader's gonna be pleasantly surprised too. It's not some planned construct, you don't just map it out and then fill in the blanks, kind of do the heavy lifting, you just let it play out, and I think that emergent drama is what makes for great storytelling.
SPEAKER_03Oh, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00In general, I think you capture it that way and you share that enthusiasm. So I think the readers have a lot to look forward to. John was even telling me that uh he was at a conference and you know he set up his booth and he's got his military sci-fi, and he saw the hubbub going on with the fantasy, the fantasy piece over there, and he's like, I need to get me a piece of that action now, too. And you entered with this idea, yeah, that was perfect for him to to kind of launch, launch an extension of the of that of that approach. That's cool. That's flex.
SPEAKER_02That's actually really kind of strange too, because uh one of I think one of Cannon's best series and one of the their best-selling series, most popular, is uh Fay Wars. Which I mean it's fantasy, but it's more military fantasy.
SPEAKER_00It's kind of like you know, it's a little bit different, I think, um, or different enough that you know someone who's looking for the Hobbit is not going to trip on that kind of a crossover, but it's uh it doesn't have that more traditional fantasy flair that would be a magnet for this ginormous potential audience, yep. And and having an opportunity to go through that. And and to your point, you like exploring different kinds of stuff. I was especially drawn to your October story with Cedar Sanderson, uh, the illustrator. Yeah, uh, and I thought that was really interesting. I had Rick Cutler on the pod just a couple weeks ago, too. And uh he's put out uh he's put out the the man with the gun series, the Oster Guard. I thought that that was fascinating with the prose, with the illustrations, and you you mentioned how you worked with Cedar too and the intro to that. Can you tell us a little bit about that creative process? Because that blending of media to me is fascinating. And I think Cedar's role is interesting because she's popping up in in your gang's books in ways that I think are are adding a lot of zing.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Um Cedar is an uh unbelievably talented uh illustrator. She's a she's a fantastic writer, too. I mean, she's one of those people that she she just hits on all cylinders, right, as a as a creative. Um but she a couple of years ago was doing uh Inktober, where you take some some two-word prompts throughout the month of October and you drew do a drawing based off of them. And uh I was looking for uh an opportunity to kind of force myself to write and think every day and and try and do do different things, and uh had been doing some writing prompts, and I said, Oh, Cedar, would you mind if I wrote a story to go with whatever picture you come up with? Um, and that's where we that's what we did. She would uh we both knew what the words were at the start of the day. So she's thinking about her picture, I'm thinking about the words, and doing things like looking them up, etymology, you know, trying to get this grasp of what these two words mean, and uh trying to figure out okay, where is she going to go with this? And sometimes I hit it and I had a good story that matched it. And sometimes uh she turned up something, and I'm like, I have no idea where she got this. And oh my goodness, now I have to write a story that matches it at nine o'clock at night. Get out a thousand words before midnight, so I could put push it out. That was my commitment to myself. I'd do it before midnight. Um, and I ended up writing there's uh one story that was slice of life, there's some traditional fantasy, there's some very uh Lovecraftian horror, um, you know, some science fiction vignettes, uh, one that was based, if you've ever heard of uh the SCP Foundation, it's it didn't mention it specifically, but it was an homage to the to the the work that that website has done. Um it just uh uh did a ton of stuff. And at the end of it, uh I'm like, man, this is yo, this is a lot. I said, would would you be willing to maybe put this together in a book? And Cedar was like, I was abs we were all already on the same page thinking the same thing. So uh so we did uh the illustration on the opening page, and then the two-word prompt is the title, and then the the story that follows. And uh some of it of all the stuff I've written, some of my favorite stories are still the ones out of that.
SPEAKER_00I was drawn to it too, it's very, very creative. And I I think the synergy between you two brought out some of the best. Her her illustrations are super cool, and then you take it to the next level, and I love the diversity of it, which was engendered really by the input of her art, uh a really productive and fun collaboration. Tell it, tell us a little bit about your process now that we're we're digging in there. In this case, you had the input of these illustrations, and then you were off to the races with each. When you're putting something together like uh The Sense of Murder, and you've got the story with Prospero, and these ideas are floating in your head, and you you're a self-proclaimed, uh, self-described prancer. How does it how does it gel and how does that vibe with your your software engineer? Is that right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm a software developer by day.
SPEAKER_00You've got lines of code and then you you transpose to lines of text. How does it all gel in your head and come out?
SPEAKER_02Oh man. Um, I wish I could tell you simply because I would love to know how to make it all make it all work, push a button and make it happen. Um when I the first thing that I that I found that I need to do is I need to sit sit down and uh write, like I said, button chair, hands-on keyboard, just get going. Um if I can force myself to sit down and say, okay, I'm going to write a hundred words, uh, I will definitely get a thousand out. That's kind of the way the way it works. Once you turn the faucet on, things start flowing. Um I find that it helps a lot if I know the night before. Uh, I will think about okay, what's good, what am I going to write the next day? What's coming up? Um, that gives me a chance to sleep on it. Uh, the next day I have the chance to kind of re-go over in my mind what did I write the previous couple of days, where what's leading up to this, and think about where I'm going and how I want the this next scene to go. And sometimes it'll be one scene, sometimes it'll be two. Um, you know, occasionally I'll have I'll I'll have a really good day, and you know, a lot of a lot of the creative juices are flowing, and I'll I'll get out a chapter or so. Um, but for the most part, I find myself thinking less in terms of situations. Uh the situations are things that I throw at the characters, um, but the characters themselves, uh, by the time I'm writing the writing the story, I already have an idea of who, you know, when I was writing A Sense of Murder, I know who Kellen is, I know what motivates him, uh I know what he's afraid of. Uh Prospero, I know what secrets he has and what's you know what his background's like. Um they the two of them end up working with a a third character who's a uh seer, uh young lady by the name of Nyssa. And I I know her background. So I I kind of know why they don't initially trust each other and why those bonds would form. And I look look at it a little bit as like, okay, these are three friends of mine, and I need to make them like each other. So how do I make them like each other? And the answer, of course, as usual, is flaming demon zombies, uh, or something like that, as one does. Um, trauma bonding, yes, it brings people together.
SPEAKER_00So it sounds like they're your friends, your buddies. And then when you map it out, you do a little bit of planning, at least the night before, to let it kind of germinate in your head. And then when you finally get butt in chair, hand on keyboard, Mike Morton, another uh Canon guy I had on, he shared that acronym with me, and I thought that was great. He went through a whole boot camp of writing breast practices. He was he was terrific, and uh butt in chair, hand on keyboard by bi hawk. Yes, what's was the mantra? So you you you get it, you get it going, and then it's an opportunity for your characters in you to hang out. Sounds like so very character-driven, which is very refreshing. Uh uh a counter theme is world-building obsession, especially for sci-fi, especially for fantasy writers, where a lot of that time isn't spent fist pumping your characters, it's spent uh coloring the drapes and uh describing the Hobbit breakfast. That yeah, that doesn't really make for compelling storytelling. I mean, it's great to embellish, but the heart of storytelling is the passion that we feel with the characters going through what they go through.
SPEAKER_02And when you think about it, right? Uh you know, you mentioned Tolkien. His stories are very I mean, in terms of plot, very simple. You think you think of this oh, we have to take the magical MacGuffin across the world, and we're going to face difficulties, and people are trying to kill us. You boil it down to the to that. It's the characters. Um you know, there's not a whole lot of world building in Samwise Gamge, but everybody loves Sam because of who he is. And same, you know, same thing for everybody, uh, you know, when they see uh, you know, in the movies, particularly, right, because you could bring this right to life, when you see Boromir deciding to turn around and defend the you know Pippin and Mary and you know give his life to as like a restitution for his his momentary lapse with with Frodo, that sort of thing just like it grabs you and it's that's not the world building. You could you could write that scene, you could write that in a thousand different books, a thousand different ways in a thousand different worlds. It's the characters themselves that that make the story and and really propel it. I think some people times sometimes people forget that that the the fancy worlds are are nice, but it's the characters. And the only I will say though that there are uh some people, uh, for example, uh Tim Akers is uh is one. He did a story for uh an anthology I edited uh called uh uh Pin Up Noir High Class Muscle. And uh great, great title. Uh fantastic title, and uh read his story and pretty much everything I've read from him. I'm like, okay, this is unbelievably intricate world building and fantastic characters, and a plot that like sucks me in and just makes me Tim. If you're watching this, I want you to know I love you, but I also just hate you just a little bit because I envy you. Oh my goodness. No, I would be great, I would be thrilled for him. He is a fantastic author, man.
SPEAKER_00He really is. Right. And another counterexample, which really isn't, is Andy Weir that everyone's talking about now. You got the movie, you got Hail Mary, and on the surface, it's similar. You got Grace, who is solving an endless series of problems with his endless know-how and abilities, and at the same time, he's kind of a geek and he's kind of awkward, so he's endearing. But when you look through all of that hard science fiction, implicitly, it's a guy struggling to survive and connecting with another kindred soul. So it's a buddy, it's a buddy story with a bunch of obstacles thrown them. It's kind of MacGyvery, but it's still really centered on character. So if you want a book to work, and if you want to write a book that works, it's it's the humanity that drives it, it's not the gizmos and the gadgets and the light speed travel and the artificial gravity and all the bullshit that usually gets gets thrown at us with the genre. How did you how'd you get into it? You you've got an interesting background, and I do want to dwell for a second on 2020 when you ran for president as a libertarian. Now, I wanna I want to punctuate that by saying this is a non-political podcast. But the one thing you and Mr. Pierce had in common was that libertarian kind of thread, which translates into certain values, and you're both excellent writers in that you're not leading with the ideology, you're not leading with politics, you have a value system which flows through your characters and their situations, which isn't driving home a point, but you do have a point of view, and I find that interesting, and your background's interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into pop politics for that blip? What that was like, and then and then if there's any impact on your writing, on on communicating with people.
SPEAKER_02Um so that that was that was uh we'll say an instructive period of time. Um uh got involved honestly. Uh I and this sounds like I'm making a joke, but it's the truth. I was left unsupervised. Um my wife and and my girls went down to Florida to visit family, and I I stayed home because I had to work. And I also had to fill out some uh uh paperwork, excuse me, for uh for my daughter for you know uh uh to apply for college, um, you know, the federal student student loan paperwork. And uh I I I was going through it, I'm like, this is horrible. I bet I bet you it's easier to register to run for president.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or it's easier just to pay. That's what I almost did with mindset. I was like, this is a nightmare. Here, here, just take the credit card.
SPEAKER_02You wish you could you wish you could. You could just go get get through with it, but there are certain things that she had to have at least filed that paperwork. So I was doing it and I I went to the FEC site and I said, This really is a lot easier. So uh that evening I went ahead and filed as a as a uh presidential candidate, thinking, oh well, this is this is cool. I I have certain you know, certain things that I that uh I believe and certain things that I would like to see talked about. Maybe if I do this, I can be a, you know, people will say, ha ha, you're running for president. And I can say, well, yes, but here's you know, here's something, uh, I have a chance to talk about whatever it is that that was important to me. Um and over the course of a couple of uh couple of weeks uh after that, I got in touch with some some people from the Libertarian Party. Um, I put some thought into it because I'm like, hey, if I'm gonna do this, I'm going to be serious about it. I'll at least make make an effort to talk about it because I want people to understand my values. So I techie guy whipped up a website. Here's my platform, here's A to Z, all the different things, you know, uh talking, you know, taxation and and law enforcement and everything. And uh that forced me to think a little bit about where I stand on some things. And uh had uh got a call from Dan Fishman at the Libertarian Uh National Committee asking me, you know, hey, are you serious about this? What's answer some questions? And before I knew it, I was I was talking to my wife. I'm like, I think I want to be serious about this. Not because I'm I'm like, hey, you know, I'm I I could make it make a difference in the world, I'm going to be president, um, but because I saw a chance to champion some of my values within the Libertarian Party. Um and uh went went ahead uh went ahead with that, started going to conventions, getting to know people, and ultimately, as most of you know, because I was not on the ballot for 2020, I did not get the libertarian nomination. But I was able to be the first person uh at the Libertarian uh national convention in 2020 to uh nominate our eventual eventual running mate or running not my running mate, uh candidate. There we go. My the candidate for 2020, which was uh Joe Jorgensen. Um and uh Joe did win. She she ended up uh running and uh asked me if I would be her uh campaign coordinator for the state of Pennsylvania. So I got involved with Pennsylvania, got involved with the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party, was the uh Western uh vice chair in the uh Pennsylvania Libertarian Party for a couple of years. Uh we had a we had one year where I think we had over, I know it was definitely over 200, I want to say even more, uh libertarians elected throughout the Commonwealth. Um so very I mean, I I feel like I managed to do some do some good and get some stuff, some stuff going. Um, but it it also takes a a toll on you. Um I was my wife at one point, uh, after I got out, after I was writing, um she said, You and do you enjoy this more? I said, Yeah, I you know I do. It's a it's a lot less, there's a lot less pressure. I feel a lot I feel a lot better about it. And she said, Well, you you are swearing a lot less. And I'm like, Yeah, yeah. Um, so that that tells you something about about politics. And this the the really shocking thing is uh you know, internal libertarian politics, uh, it was honestly was the uh it was bad, right? You've got competing factions and they they want this and they want that, and you're gonna push back, and there's all sorts of you know, parliamentary procedure this and and you know campaign trick that and whatnot. And uh at one point I had a chance to talk to uh uh Justin Hamash, who for a time was a libertarian, uh representative in the house of that House of Representatives, and uh I said, is have you you know is it better in the other parties? And he's like, No, no, it's worse. It all the stuff that you're dealing with, you magnify it, it's worse everywhere else. So uh I can say that I can tell you that if you're interested in a liber in a in a political party, the libertarians honestly are the ones that get along best, apparently.
SPEAKER_00Well, everything is everything is relative. I just think the libertarians have a unique opportunity in this culture where we're so ultra polarized between left and right, and at the same time, there's the moderate middle with the Venn diagram coming together, and they all want lower taxes, ideally less government and more common sense. And essentially, I think the core of the libertarian platform when you eliminate all of these factions and nuances is exactly that. Yeah, and uh uh I would hope they could or should do better. I'm I'm buddies, or at least was buddies with uh with Nick Gillespie, who is the editor at large at Read. Do you know Nick's awesome? Yeah, Nick Gillespie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've met I've talked to him a couple times. He probably doesn't remember me, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we used to fit fist pump because I worked with an advocacy organization, Ideas Beyond Borders. He's on the board of directors of that office our paths crossed. And uh, I think he just had Neil Gorsuch on his podcast, so he's doing pretty well for himself. But I was always you know, elbowing that this is the libertarian moment, and uh I think he's he's aware of some of the the conflicts and the different ideology and marketing and and just getting getting change to happen without it being thoroughly corrupted from the inside out. It's it's very very challenging. But let's go back to the the writing because that same sense of independence, creativity, if you will, too, don't tread on me is definitely the centerpiece of Pierce's writing, your buddy. Yeah, really at the core, it's the the space frontier is uh is an essential theme of his universe, and the constant battle between the man, the G, the the government, the agency, the corporation, and and the rogue settler, the the colonist, people who just want to be left alone. Yes. How how does that filter into some of your your writing and your creativity?
SPEAKER_02Um it's interesting because it's always there. I mean, it's my viewpoint, it's the way that I come at things. Um, so for example, uh in a sense of murder, uh Kellen is a very independent individual because he's essentially a circuit judge in a uh uh outland area that's being rebuilt. And uh, you know, he's responsible for keeping keeping the peace and keeping order, but he's just one man. So he can't really force people to do things. He finds himself having to convince people to do things. Um so and to me, right, as a as a libertarian, that's kind of my ideal. So there's a little there's definitely a little bit of me in in Kellen, but I I think Pierce would probably agree with me on this, as someone who is uh you know, in that that third corner, if you will, of politics, uh, you know, with freedom versus you know individual responsibility versus group or freedom versus versus government or whatever. Um because we're not generally surrounded by people who believe the same thing as we do, you have to get familiar with all the arguments that are coming at you from the from the left, from the right, um, from the authoritarian camp, from the you know, various other sides. Um and you can you learn to see what the appeal is because that's how you learn how to argue against them. So, for example, in in uh sense of murder, uh while Kellen is very independent, he also he has a talent for seeing the truth, he can see people's auras, and uh uh he hides that, not just because it gives him an advantage, but because uh the the empire that he is, you know, he serves a king, the king is has sworn fealty to the empire. Um he's in a place where if the empire finds out that he has this talent, it's incredibly valuable. They would they would sweep him away in a heartbeat, and that would leave all his people basically dealing with all the you know all this stuff that he's done his his best to help build up um would be taken away from him. So uh, but on the other hand, when when you start getting into it and you realize uh, for example, what's what's happening in the book is they they find that there's a demon that's been murdering children. Uh that's very early on in the book. That's the inciting incident that that brings them together. And what's laid out is that yes, that's why the Empire does these things, because while Kellen is an honorable man and a good man, someone with his talent who wanted to use it to manipulate people and to coerce people could very easily uh you know rule or topple governments or worlds. So he's it's not it's not that they want to necessarily be authoritarian, but for the safety of people, they they need to deal with these potential threats. Um, if you think of it like, okay, what would you do if Superman was real and he was if he was a jerk, right? Same sort of thing. How do you deal with this? Um so I I tr I think and I try I I tried very hard, and I think I presented a couple of different viewpoints of you know, freedom versus responsibility versus government versus individual duty, um, to try and give the idea that that none of this really, you know, in the real world, you know, none of this really shakes out in a in a very nice manner. It's all a mess, and a lot of it is uh trying to get people to to understand uh you know just how do you re interact with other people. That's not just in the real world, that's my characters as well.
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of complexity with these issues. Right now we're grappling with AI, prediction, betting, host of issues, and it's that dichotomy and that inherent conflict between regulation and freedom. And then if we all agree that there should be some kind of regulation, who's actually going to be doing the regulating and how, and to what extent? And that that's a core libertarian dilemma as well. And you bring up a terrific point, too. And one reason I like the libertarians so much is that they have a meta view of things, you've got fairly traditional left and right wedge issues, and they bundle up in sometimes ad hoc ways, but they tend to polarize in camps, they lose perspective, and it's not based on the issues, it's just rooting for your home team. And all common sense and debate is thrown out the window. And the the libertarians, the good libertarians, they they they hover above it and they slice and dice things based on issue to issue, and this notion that government is not something that you should take for granted one way or another.
SPEAKER_02You know what? That is, I think that is probably if you get get right down to it, that is probably one of the best encapsulations of not like the libertarian uh you know principles or whatever, but the libertarian, let's call it the libertarian ethos, right? Government is not something that you can just let happen. It has to be very deliberate every step of the way, and it doesn't necessarily that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be the same, even day-to-day, you know, or from subject to subject. So that's actually really good. Thank you. I'm gonna use that.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm feeling that I that's that hits me in the face so frequently. I I I tend to listen to a lot of news and punditry, so I'm writing and I'm taking all this stuff in sometimes simultaneously, and I hear this so often, it's ubiquitous, where someone will say, either on the left or on the right, oh, that's illegal, or that should be illegal, as if it's if it's Moses coming with the tablets not illegal based on who or what or how, and it's just so taken for granted. And and that to me is the core of the problem, which is just how do you define it? How do you create a taxonomy around it? And and it's frustrating, but within the context of the worlds you're creating, you've infused, you've infused this in a very personal conflict between your characters and the story. I I love that, and that that's a great driving force.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome too, in terms of, and that's always been a big, a big uh you know, kind of plus for me for science fiction and fantasy, uh, particularly modern science fiction and fantasy, is that you have the opportunity to kind of say, okay, we're gonna take a step back, or or we're gonna move forward 400 years, or we're gonna move to another planet, and we're gonna give you something that is kind of the same, but not really. And then we're going to let you see yourself reflected in this kind of fun house mirror, and uh maybe that'll make you think think a little bit differently, or you know, just think, period, about some of these issues that you're dealing with.
SPEAKER_00That's been the strength of science fiction going back to inception, that sense of of projection, relative safety, long time ago in a galaxy far far away. It's got it's got nothing to do with us, but they look like us, they talk like us, they break all the rules of physics, just like our science fiction writers do. Yes, yeah. And so it's safe, but it resembles our society enough so that we could draw parallels, and then it's up to us how deep we want to go. Do we just want to be entertained, or does entertainment for us constitute some critical thinking, analysis, and and comparison culturally and our ideology? And that that lends itself to a great reading experience, a great movie, if it works. If it works, yep. And uh, and one one point though I'd love to bring up with you has been this evolution and oscillation of these values in science fiction. So if you go back to Star Trek and the early the early shows, if you do delineate by party or ideology, they tend to be lefty. They tend to be more progressive, especially for that time. You had uh DEI going on on the Star. Enterprise. It was deliberate, where you had a multiracial, uh, you know, big gendered crew. And then you had a mission, which was to boldly go and yet not interfere, not meddle. They were the opposite of an imperial force. The prime directive of Star Trek is literally don't be an imperial asshole, right? Like if you find a planet, leave them alone. You can't meddle. And the enemies, the Klingons and the Romulans, were the ones kicking ass and taking names. And then you've had this change occur slowly, where science fiction being a reflective of our society hasn't just been progressive, kind of lefty, but it's also brought up a lot of the values that aren't opposite to that. It's not like Pierce is anti-humanist, it's quite the opposite. But it's a very different perspective about the role of government, as we're saying, our society, and how we want to, you know, create and experience the good life. There's a marked change in science fiction and fantasy. It's fragmenting, so you got all sorts of different writers doing all sorts of stuff. We love that. But um, I just find it refreshing that there isn't this monolithic point of view where again it becomes very ideological.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's uh I'm trying to I think it was Jim Butcher who said you your your story can't uh preach harder than it entertains.
SPEAKER_00Yes. That's a great line. See, now I thank you for a great line.
SPEAKER_02You can you can you can put something like that in your story, but it's still got to be a good story. You still you and the the old Star Trek or Star Trek uh you know next generation, right? Um some of those uh episodes are absolute classics because they're fantastic stories, and yes, they have some moral wrapped up in them. Um but they but they first and foremost, they entertained. And that entertainment was the was the the bait and the hook that you know the that planted that that idea in your head about but what if it what about could we and then you know there's that story sits there and it's the fertile ground where that that that seed grows. Um we had I think we hit we did for for a time lose that art um and the idea that you know stories, yes, stories are important, stories influence culture, but if you turn stories into nothing but something that influences culture, they no longer they're no longer stories and they no longer work the same way. Um one of the reasons why Rackantor Press, uh, in all honesty, goes back to uh the pulp era and uh you know when we put out our open calls, we point out, right, we say that the the very first primary requirement for whatever it is is your story must be entertaining. After that, we can everything else is negotiable. If we if it's a 3,000-word story and we edit rocks our socks off, we'll talk to you about it. Maybe we'll talk about how to make it a little longer. Um, if you if it's a longer story and it's really good, we'll find a place for it. But uh it's gotta be entertaining, first and foremost, because that's what stories are for.
SPEAKER_00And when the story is raw, naked, to your point, simple, it becomes automatically archetypal, and you don't get blinded by your own bullshit. So to this day, I think my very favorite movie of all time is Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's Masterpiece. The title, it's pulp fiction. If you look at the individual stories that make it up, and it's a non-linear narrative, and it's genius in terms of how it's told and the decisions he made, etc., etc. It's character-driven, da da da. But to your point, though, it's pulp fiction. You have a boxer who refuses to listen to the mob boss, doesn't go down in the fifth, and they're after him, right? You have a briefcase full of the ultimate MacGuffin, and they're really just trying to get it back. It's when you layer the individual stories, you have the mobster's wife who needs to be taken out on the town. Hilarity ensues. The simplicity of the telling is what makes it really strong, and it puts the onus on the writer, on the creator, in this case, the writer, creator, director, to focus on characters and to make it real in a dramatic sense that's compelling without all of the scaffolding and all the extras, and there's a purity to that, and if it works, it's beautiful. Yeah. And and it's a great lesson to learn. I think Hemingway said that if you write a story, you know it's a good story if you take all the best lines out of it and it's still a good read.
SPEAKER_02Oh man, that that's true. Although I as a writer, right, I do like those good lines, I really do.
SPEAKER_00I'm guilty as charge. I just I just lay it on. So sometimes more is more, and uh, and that might not be the best best practice, but it all depends on your approach and if you're true to yourself and and what you're trying to what you're trying to do. So, what does the future look like for for your writing? You're uh you're writing bigger stuff, you're branching into other genres, you have a new relationship with a new publisher, or you know, again, you're you're all buddies, but uh, how do you see your career evolving? And your role goes beyond just the writing. You do to your to to your point. I get press releases from you in my inbox from Sam Rob with all the latest new stuff, and uh finger promoting, you're doing PR. Uh and uh do you do any editorial? Do you work with the team for editorial stuff, or you're just more on very, very occasionally, very lately.
SPEAKER_02I mentioned I edited uh that one anthology. Um my wife is the copy editor, she is absolutely fantastic. She does she does a lot of stuff with Rack and Tour. They have a stable of very talented copy editors and very very talented uh structural editors. Um so yeah, for for the future, uh I'm gonna continue to work with Rack. Uh I really I love being able to help my fellow authors, um, and and I'm actually translating some of what I learned as a political candidate and a political manager into trying to help promote them. So uh you know that's fantastic.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna I was gonna tie all the threads together. You said you did it, you did it for me. So, you know, what goes into being a candidate for a political party, you know, I guess you know, it's all about messaging, it's all about behavioral change, it's all about getting people to to keep believing in what they're believing, but they believe in what you believe in with them. So don't swim against the screen, find your target audience, people who love to read, love the genre, but you gotta get in front of them. You need to build excitement and and work with them. John was talking about the the model too being 50-50, which is um he's got his network, they do covers, they promote, but then the onus is on the writer to self-promote and to get it out there and to show up at con at cons and put the pedal to the metal and have the metal to uh sell your books and and do that. Does that does that come naturally to you? Some writers are more more, I just need to write this thing, leave me alone. Other writers are more on the self-elsey side.
SPEAKER_02It's a shame. Um, it comes a little bit more naturally to me. I've had some practice because of the politics. Um, I've I'm also uh a teacher uh and a preacher. So I do, you know, I'm not a pastor, I don't lead a church, but I I do get up in front of people and preach. Uh so I've learned how to put my ideas together and express them and do it in a way to help people get my point. Um when you come when it comes to some authors, there are definitely some people who are like, yeah, I don't want, I just want to write the book and get it out there. And why do I need to talk to why do I need to talk to people at all? And the answer the answer to that is the same thing, the same answer that we would give to candidates in politics, right? You can hire you can hire a campaign manager, you can hire a finance manager, you can hire a fundraiser, you can hire someone to put your suits together for you. There's one job that cannot be hired out, and that is being you. You have to be, you're the only person that can be you. You need to go out there and meet the voters if you're if you're a candidate, or meet your fans if you're an author. They want to meet you, they want to talk to you, they want to understand what's in your head and why you wrote this, and and oh, do I are you going to and get a little hint of what's coming down the line? And they want to, they, they, they're fans, they're fanatics, they love what you're doing and they want to be a part of it. Uh you know, I don't think that I don't think that there ever was a time where you couldn't do that. I think just it's in the last couple of years, uh, the last couple of decades with the social media that it's become really apparent that this is what's happening, that you need to learn how to connect with your fans because that's what they they the story's awesome. What they want to do is hang out with you afterwards.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, hundred percent. I was over at the LA Times Festival of Books a few weeks ago, which is like 130,000 people all packed at the campus of uh University of Southern California, and they've got booths, and they're just rows and rows of authors and publishers and cartoonists and creatives, and everyone assembles. And the people descending were active and engaged readers, and to your exact point, they want to talk to the writers, and they'll face a new writer, an unknown writer. They're like, Tell me about your book, pitch me. Whereas you could go to some of the comic cons where everyone's very distracted with cosplay, and uh, and you know, it's very visual, and just old school novels and books and short stories are old hat for to a certain extent. It's harder to sell novels than what we do at the cons. But the LA Festival, it was like woo, and that was amazing, and and writers need to do that, and it's so refreshing, regardless of where you're at in your trajectory as a writer, whether you're just getting started, you have one book, you have 10 books, but to actually interact with people to pitch your ideas, to have them hold your book and talk to it, have them buy it, ideally have them read leave a review and follow up. We forget that sometimes because the the art of writing, the craft of it is so solitary by nature. It is.
SPEAKER_02What do you have there, Plato? A smoothie?
SPEAKER_00No, nothing, don't don't mind me. And uh Socrates just felt that writers were disingenuous and untrustworthy because you couldn't interact with them, you couldn't see them, you were just reading the map of their mind, and only a direct interaction was genuine between people. And I used to think that, oh, really, come on, but I've realized, especially with all the doom scrolling and the saturation of social media, and especially misinformation and the sludge that's out there, uh, just being one-on-one with people, talking to them and getting to know them is gold. And to your point, if you fall in love with a book, there's a person behind that book with a heart and soul and a yearning to connect.
SPEAKER_02And the flip side of that, which is straight up marketing, right? If you are a fascinating guy and you tell me that you wrote a fascinating book, I'll be like, Oh, I want to, I I want to continue on this listening to you. I want to hear more. I want I want to read that.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right. As opposed to just again, doom scrolling or shopping, and then you're drawn to a cover. The cover's good, you need a good cover and a little synopsis. But again, to your point, like what is a raving fan? They're they're making a connection, they see you as a flattering reflection of themselves. And if they have an opportunity to meet you and be enthralled, then more power to you and more power to them. And you build your base, and uh, you know, at the end of the day, why do we do what we do instead of selling crypto or uh or real estate? And most of us, all of us, pretty much, unless we have a granny who left us a few million dollars, are still working and doing that. So we have to ask ourselves, why? Why are we putting ourselves through this? What's your answer to that? Why do you do this?
SPEAKER_02I can't not. There are stories in my head, uh, and they they want to come out. Um, I will either years before I started I started writing, uh, I was blogging and you know, political blogging and talking about the news of the day and whatnot. And then uh I would be on my way into work and something would filter down into my head, and I would be thinking, there's a dentist in Pittsburgh that is dealing with a dragon who needs a new tooth or a tooth pulled. And once that's in there, I can't get it out. It's going to, it's it's just kind of sitting there taking up mental space, and for my own mental health, I need to at least get it out on paper. Um, and I I did that more times than I can I can think. And uh, you know, it honestly, though, most of us, you know, if if we say, well, you know, I just write, I just write to write, if that was the case, then you would write something in a journal and put it off to the side and nobody would ever read it. Um most of us write because we want to communicate with other people, we want to express an idea or something, even if it's as simple as wouldn't this be cool? Dude, wouldn't it be cool if um and and just these ideas that we have? We want to connect with other people. So kind of circling back to what you said previously, if that's what you want, then use it. Do it, talk to people, get to know people, meet with people, uh, let them get to know you because you've got some cool ideas, man.
SPEAKER_00That's that counterfactual, what if is the uh is the axiom of driving sci-fi fantasy for sure, and it's the connection that's the emotional driver of that. I've got a DJ friend, Howie Wallach. I've known him since childhood, great guy, and he's got uh a meme that he like a button that he wears, and it's on his Facebook profile there, and it says, Do what makes you happy. And you've got all these ideas popping out in these stories, and it makes you happy to get them out, and you're willing to endure the opportunity cost of not selling crypto, not selling real estate, and not doing an infinite variety of other things, except you know, butt in chair, hands on keyboard. You've got good days and bad days, but for you it's totally worth it because that idea needs to get out, and that's what makes you happy. And I find that very relatable, that I just feel good when I just release stuff, like let it there. If I'm ranting on TikTok, and I just write all sorts of stuff, and my branding probably sucks, which is why I chose this mookie multiverse to kind of house everything in. What is this guy doing? Because I'm I'm doing all sorts like politics, culture, art, science, screenplays, short stories, novels, but I just need to do it, and and it's so satisfying to do it, and I'm willing to incur opportunity costs too, just take a financial hit. I don't even care if you know a hundred people see it or a million or I make 10 bucks or nothing, it's just I need to let it out, and it's so satisfying. And if you can find that, then then it's go code.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And you know, honestly, when you when you think like that, right, there they're uh yeah, people in history that have done exactly you know what you're what you're talking about. Like I can't keep I can't just keep my doing one thing. I've got to be all over the place. And we look back on them, and they're people like Da Vinci, right? Yeah, they're pee they they are they are on fire, they create. I've got a friend David Badarina, um, he's a terrific writer, he is hilarious, he's done podcasts, he's he's got like award-winning AI-generated edited videos that he does. He, I mean, he's all over the place. Um, but uh he is having a blast doing it, and it's it's so much fun watching him do it, too.
SPEAKER_00It's a really good time to be that renaissance man, and whether you're really good, you know, you could be Da Vinci level or a moron, but as long as you're just gunning it, it's great. I get I get solicitation all the time, I'm sure you do too, from fraudsters and from vendors. So, you know, we you're your your content is perfect for Netflix, and I've got a deal signed here, and then I get tons of uh emails from all over the place for YouTube optimization. Like, you know, yes, you've got thousands of videos, and your sto sucks. I'm like, I I know I'm just too busy, too busy barfing this stuff out, but uh, but the two ends meet with just the joy of creation and the opportunity to connect with readers and to connect with fellow authors too. It's it's really joyful. So I want to thank you for sharing uh your time and your mind and your ideas and participating in in this exchange, which is just uh intrinsically rewarding. And hopefully our viewers and listeners feel the same way hearing us yak, and we embrace uh liking and commenting and subscribing and sharing and participating. So it's uh it's a it's a hell of a ride. And I look forward to uh to to diving into uh you know a sense of sense of murder. I tried to look for the sample, but it's just a pre-preview.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's still on pre-order.
SPEAKER_00It's on pre-order. So I want to May 17th, yeah. I want to dive in there and uh and look forward to just seeing your career evolve too. It's uh it's great to see another creative person going wild.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Thank you, Mookie. It's it's been a pleasure being on with you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and keep sending your press releases. I'm gonna hound you to see what other what other writers I could.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I will keep sending them to you. I will keep sending them to you.
SPEAKER_00I can interrogate on the show. Thanks so much, Sam. Keep doing what you're doing. You're you're awesome.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, sir. I got you.
