Debbie Bishop on Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Never Waiting for Permission

Stepping into the 55th episode of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Debbie Bishop has spent decades doing what most creators only talk about doing: building her own path. Author, comic book creator, publisher, entrepreneur, marketer, filmmaker, podcaster, and now AI-powered platform builder, Debbie joins Mookie for a wide-ranging conversation that spans fantasy fiction, Hollywood, independent publishing, emerging technology, and the future of creativity itself.

The discussion begins with Debbie's new novel, Pillywiggin Awakening, a dark fantasy adventure that blends magic, technology, history, and human resilience into a story designed for readers who love immersive worlds and larger-than-life heroes. From there, the conversation expands into Debbie's remarkable career, from acting and entertainment marketing to publishing comic books, launching companies, working with legendary figures like Ray Harryhausen, and developing intellectual property across multiple mediums.

Along the way, Debbie shares stories about creating comics decades ahead of technological trends, researching ancient civilizations and Atlantis, predicting AI-driven futures in her fiction, and collaborating with some of the biggest names in entertainment and consumer products. She also discusses her latest venture, CreatorStage.show, an ambitious new platform designed to help independent creators take control of their audiences, content, and revenue streams in an increasingly fragmented digital landscape.

Mookie and Debbie dive deep into artificial intelligence, the promise and limitations of large language models, the future of data centers, creator economics, entrepreneurship, publishing, networking, and why human creativity still matters in an age of algorithms. They explore the tension between technological progress and personal sovereignty, debate whether AI will empower or marginalize creators, and examine how science fiction often serves as a surprisingly accurate preview of tomorrow's headlines.

At its heart, their conversation is about self-determination. Debbie's philosophy is simple: if the system won't give you an opportunity, build your own. Whether you're a writer, artist, entrepreneur, filmmaker, or anyone trying to create something meaningful in a noisy world, her journey offers equal parts inspiration, practical wisdom, and hard-earned perspective. Debbie Bishop proves that creativity goes beyond imagination to include persistence, adaptability, and having the courage to create your own future.

The Guest

Award-winning author Debbie Bishop is a multi-genre storyteller, creative director, entertainment executive, and CEO of Angelgate Entertainment. Her newest book, “PILLYWIGGIN Awakening: The Complete Story Arc (Books 1–2),” is an epic fantasy adventure about hidden fae, imprisoned boys facing impossible odds, and the courage it takes to awaken, survive, and become your own hero. Rooted in her lifelong interest in fantasy, metaphysics, technology, and cinematic storytelling, Bishop’s work explores the power people discover when they stop waiting to be rescued.

With nearly three decades in entertainment, Bishop has built five companies and worked with major studios including Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal. A former model and actress who moved behind the camera, she became a creative strategist whose digital campaigns have generated more than 2 billion views for the music industry. 

Today, Bishop continues to expand her universe through new media, author-focused programming, and conversations about the future of technology. She recently hosted the AI & Human Roundtable podcast series, leads another storyteller-driven series, and is preparing to showcase original content and amplify creative voices.

Find Her

https://www.instagram.com/debbiebishop

https://creatorstage.show/about-pillywiggin-awakening

https://www.debbiebishop.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@by.storytellers

Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome back to the science fiction and fantasy factory. I'm your host, Mookie Spitz, and I'm thrilled to have Debbie Bishop in the factory today, the creative dynamo herself. Welcome aboard, Debbie. Good to meet everybody. I'm excited to announce your upcoming book. It's in pre-order now. Pilly Wigan Awakening. Coming out June 26th. June 26th, uh-huh. Terrific. In Pilly Wigan Awakening, um, this book actually is two books in one. It's a series, but the I put both books in one so people could binge read them, you know, like you do with those Chinese dramas. I wanted people to be able to binge read the whole thing. So that's the whole story arc in one, two books combined in one. And uh I wrote the first book about 20 years ago, and I wrote the second book just you know, la uh last year, a few months ago. And um, and it was surprised that they I was surprised that they came together. And I use tech in this, which is really fun. I um it's a fantasy, it's a dark fantasy, but I use like they use gadgets, they make um one one thing that's really fun in in Awakening is that they use these earbuds with Wi-Fi and they take over somebody's mind in order to make the guards do what they want so they can sneak in somewhere. So I just love using technology with science and fantasy because all the fantasy and sci-fi that I write are um using human skills, human technology, and and real history and things like that merged into a fictional story. That's my fave. So you're blending worlds, it's kind of like Hogwarts meets the the world of the muggles in in ways, right? If you use that analog, you're combining combining the fantasy with the technology. Yeah, then you have themes of overcoming obstacles and and heroes. So you're care you're character-driven too, and it's for the young young adult audience. Kinda, or or for actually that anyone that goes to Comic-Con, you know, anybody that likes Lord of the Rings or you know, any of any of the fantasy movies, it's not really for it's not for kids. I did write a children's book that this is based off of originally. Um, The Fairies of Bladowac Pond was the first in the series, and that was the artwork was done by Andy Park, who was the visual director at Marvel until just recently. Um, so but this is aged up. Um, it has more action and it's scary, and so it's more for older people. Older Were you were you at LA Comic-Con recently? Yeah. Were you there? All right, we must have brushed past each other. I was there, and I'm a book writer too, so I had the booth set up, and uh, it was really a fun event. Yeah, it's so fun. I have a comic book series um that was originally published by Image Comics, and um, so I I've been to most of the Comic Cons and up until now. I mean, almost every single one. That that has the 14 books in it, right? The uh the comic series. Yeah, that yeah, exactly. The comic book series does have a lot of books. And um, and the series uh of comic books. Uh well, Norm Breifogel was the last artist on that one, and he passed away. So I stopped writing that, but I'm going to write, I'm working on a new one, uh, new story arc for that one. It's coming out sometime next year, I hope. Um, and it'll be fun to read to take that one up again. It'll be uh actually a novel first because I'm gonna turn it into a movie. Where do you get all your energy? You had a career career going back. It looks like 30 years you've been cranking and you've had you've worn many hats. I just from what I've learned about your history. Can you share some of your your phases and your career transformations with our viewers and listeners? It's very, very compelling. Okay. Well, I started out um, I've always written. I I love writing, and the stories come to me a little bit, and I write them down as they come in and then work on them. But in addition, um I've got a marketing background and business background. And so I started um actually I started out in, oops, I started out in acting, but my agent and my hairdresser died. And so I took it as a sign to get out before the manicures gets it. I mean, I it's like it sounds kind of funny, but it was tragic. But anyway, so I went into the business of film. I started three home video companies, um, a consulting company, a printing company, agency. I worked with all the major studios for 15 years in marketing, printing, and design on consumer products. Um, I worked with a lot of consumer products companies. I did I had a display company, like we manufactured the displays you see at Costco and Target and whatnot. So I was lucky enough to meet with all the head buyers of all the rich retail chains in the US and all the vendors and the duplicators and everybody. So I've I've been in the room with some really excellent creative people, the top marketers in the world, which helped me because I've had a career in um creative design and printing and design for 30 years. Um, and so uh and then my day that was my day job, and then I write. That's a rare combination. A lot of creative people, a lot of writers don't have much business sense, let alone that kind of entrepreneurial oomph that that you've manifested over the years. So you're an interesting combination of all these skills coming together. Well, thank you. But it's partly because um out of necessity. I mean, you write something and you try to get an agent, and you spend all this time sending out query letters and trying to get an agent, and you can just publish the thing yourself. So so that's what I did. I started a publishing company and I published for other people as well. I published Jane Seymour and James Keach's line of children's books. I published some comic book series. I published um The War Eagles um with Ray Harryhausen. Ray Harryhausen asked me to uh write and produce War Eagles, which was a um uh it was a story that Marion C. Cooper, who created King Kong, thought of in 1939 or in the 1930s. And the war came out, and so he didn't do it. And uh and Ray worked for uh Marion C. Cooper. Um, he was like an animation icon, amazing guy. He did the in all the Sinbad movies and all those old movies, he did like the skeletons and all these neat stop-motion animation. Um, and the thing with Ray is that he had uh it was the first time that um these characters that he made had emotion. You could like tell what they were thinking, which was his forte made them really compelling. Anyway, so when he asked me this, I was like out of all the people in the universe, he asked me to do this. But it turned out great. And I I um was in my office one day and it's deciding, okay, I'm gonna write this, I'm gonna write reward eagles, but it came out in the 30s, and there were so many different movies that have come out that were similar to that over the 70 years. So I thought, okay, it needs to be a little different. What can I do? The phone rings, it's I it's a wrong number, right? And like how often do you talk to somebody when it's a wrong number? Or like never. But I talked to this person, Carl Masick, had just been researching for three years all the stuff about Nazis and World War II, and he had all these information about the rifles and all the airplanes and everything. So we ended up working on it together. Um, I hired him to work with me on it, and we wrote War Eagles into the book and and a screenplay. And so that was fun too. So, I mean, I've had they just keep coming up, all these fun ideas. And the thing that I get back to my MO, I love doing research like with Black Tide. I did a lot of research, like almost 20 years of research on Black Tide for the science fiction, ancient civilizations, technology, Atlantis, all this the power, the Giza pyramid power. I did all this stuff, and then I put the fiction uh story in the real world. That's my fave thing. But with um, I'm rambling, but with uh black tide, the funniest thing was not funny, but uh a couple of things that were weird. Um you know how in at Giza they found these those aquifers underneath in my comic book. I actually drew that. I had I mean I had somebody draw it. We made a power um a pyramid power uh structure in a volcano that collected the ionic energy in this big sphere that had all these tubes and stuff. And so I had Mikeus Miller, the artist for that, drew that, and it looks just like what they see now on on YouTube. It's like it it's real. Like, how did I think about 30 years ago? And um uh just things like that. And we did AI in in Black Tide, I did it had AI in the computer then before we knew what AOI was. It's like I think that um people, sci-fi riders especially, get tuned in, like we have the Akashic Record or something, get tuned in to something because we're all getting these uh the inklings of technology way before it happens. Um and the worst one was the in Black Tide, they have um the bad thing that happens is that the software company takes over the world with software through the computers. And and guess what's happening now? Like, oh my god. So that's for a while I actually stopped writing because I thought I don't want is it am I causing this or or is it just I'm picking it up? So I actually stopped writing for a few years because I just wanted to make sure, but I don't think it's me. Well you can you can take credit, especially for the the good stuff. Have you prognosticated stuff that's less ominous? Good stuff, maybe, but uh, maybe some some good news in our collective human future. And I I'm I'm having doubts though that that wrong number was really a wrong number. I have a feeling he might have just called you and that was his pitch. Maybe it could it could be. He never told me if that's the case, though. But but it sounds like you're a great combination of just leaping on opportunity as it presents itself, but also a lot of intentionality, which is owning your own IP. If um the channels aren't available for you to do what you want to do, you just start a company and and create them. That takes a lot of wherewithal and great entrepreneurial spirit. Where did where does that come from, you think? Your parents, what were they uh go-getters? Uh do you have a sibling who inspired you? Where does it come from? My family, um, they were all entrepreneurs. My um one side was you know, accountant, CPA, they had a CPA firm, but the other one was they were marketers. And my grandfather bought like 5,000 acres for a nickel an acre and made a Christmas tree farm and uh and then went out and pruned the forest and did his Christmas tree business. He he actually um started the Victory Garden during the World War II. There was something called the Victory Garden, which was six vegetables and a little pony pack. He's he created that and Colorbox bought it later, but he wanted people to be able to eat during the war. My dad opened up um oh my dad, he did a lot of things, but one thing that was interesting, you know how they have these data centers right now, right? Um, and it I I just think that they're gonna be defunct pretty soon. But um in the olden days when I was little, um my dad used to work for Monroe, which is a computer company, and computers in those days were huge. Um he has this, I saw this one ad that had um, look at this new computer, it fits on your secretary's desk and it's like a three by four big thing. And um and now we have computers that are actually will go into the earbuds, like Apple's doing the earbuds with the cameras on the um so can you imagine? I mean, Nvidia is is the cooling and is the using the GPU and all these data centers, and they expire every four years and you need to replace them all. But also the things are getting smaller and there's I just anyway, so I'm rambling now. Data centers, I just think that if somebody's investing in data centers, they're gonna be out of out of luck pretty soon. Maybe convert them into housing or something later because they're not gonna be needed. Um, because things are never mind. I should ask me something else because I can't get the chips go through forced obsolescence because they want to keep keep selling them. We need a lot of computational power, but a lot of the large language models might be more local rather than through the data centers and through uh you know, buy tokens. Why would you want to buy tokens if you could have it sitting on your desk chugging away, right? Absolutely. So a lot of people Yeah, in fact, with the podcast that I I do um by storytellers, um in November when I first learned about AI and this version of AI, I guess, I wanted to know about it. So what I did is I started a podcast roundtable with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Groc, and Meta. And I um we did a baseline and I did five shows with them to learn about them. And I learned that I didn't need to learn anything about them. They're basically search engines with processing. But um, but it was interesting that they um that we anyway, we cre together they said they warned me and they warned all of us to get away from them, basically. And so we did a whole booklet on what to do and how to put a LM on your home computer and where to Jim and I went shopping and we made this whole booklet that they people can get online free. Um, so yeah, they just uh we need to have uh they call it um being sovereign and being independent. They think that that's important. Get away from the corporations and have the AIs run on your own computer. Absolutely. It's not only data and security, but it's convenience, and it's a natural trend in technology in that direction. You have the big the big IBM computers to your point, then it became the home PC. Yay, right? And then, like, even like Pro Tools for recording artists, they had to go into a big studio like the big data centers, and then they had to buy hours of time, and it was really expensive and awkward to record an album. And then all of a sudden the the musicians were just plugging software and a few peripherals into their home little computer, and all of a sudden their living room was a recording studio, yeah. And you don't need that infrastructure anymore. So you're making a great argument that these huge data centers, we need computational power, but the whole model, in a sense, doesn't make sense because people want to be in control of their future. Yeah, and and there are other ways to get what they want, they don't need to do it this way, but anyway. It's this infrastructure. See where it's headed, it's wild and crazy times. And especially for being a science fiction fantasy writer, it's awesome because a lot of these things are you just read the news and it's like a science fiction novel. Yeah. Well, that's one of the that's one of the premises in um in Pili Wigan Awakening is that they're um going against the hierarchy that they, you know, they have a status quo, they have a certain strategy that they impose on everybody. And so it causes all sorts of issues, especially with the division. Um, and in in Pili Wigan Awakening, there it's a very diverse uh group. Um, diversity is important, and so that's one thing that they go against is the hierarchy. Yeah, which um which hurts everybody because it marginalizes people. There's only a select few who can dominate. That's happening in AI in a big way. All the IPOs are rolling out open AI, SpaceX, Anthropic, 200 billion bucks in a few weeks, right? And then we're just giving more and more control to just a few, a few dudes, basically. Yeah, absolutely. And I wouldn't care if they're nice and they have good intentions for people, but you just you know, not all of them are like that, you know. Um, even if maybe the higher higher ups are. Um, I don't know. It just it makes you um what I learned in this round table and talking to other people is that just like this whole bunch, like a quagmire of things, we just need to kind of put it aside and ignore it and then do our own thing. Um that's really how we can do because there's no way we're gonna mess up any of that. There's no way we can even, no matter what we do, we're not going to interfere with their plans. They've got a strategy down and a lot of it has been um been worked on for 20, 30 years. So, you know, I remember in high school when they started some of these campaigns. So um it's not gonna change. We can't change it. But what we can do is by strengthening ourselves, we can make ourselves strong and our community strong and our friends strong. Yeah, 100%. It's like once the smoke clears, who knows where things are gonna settle. And one of the big problems we all have is obsessing about what all these other folks are doing. Yeah. And I I love your general philosophy, is just worry about your own stuff. And I love your sense of self-empowerment too, which is if I don't like the system and I'm encountering limitations, I'll start my own company, I'll create my own channel, I'll create my own show. And your family did that in all these different ways, and you've been doing it for decades, which is super inspirational. Oh, thank you. It's fun, but yeah, that it's uh I mean, how much time do you want to waste doing one thing when you can do something else? I I don't like wasting time on things that aren't gonna get anywhere. And it's hard. I mean, there's so many people that this is why I do buy storytellers, because there are authors and people that are very talented that just don't aren't mainstream yet, right? And that's what we we try to shine the light on people like that. Um, because it can be disheartening. You you put so much of your effort into something, and you know, you're a writer, it's so you put your life into these things, and then you know, you want people to like them and see them, and and that's that's what we do for. Well, that that's inspirational too, because I'm an indie writer, and it's just tough to cut through all the noise. Yeah, and and I have a quirky science fiction novel, and I think there's 50,000 people who would love it, but I need to be connected with them, and and bridging that gap between creator and content is just so hard in our attention commoditized society. Yeah, platforms are all in shit-ified, they all want money, and everyone's competing for the limited bandwidth inside everybody's head. So it's it's really difficult to bridge that gap. Yeah, well, two things. You should come on the podcast, we should do a show with you. I would love it. But then also, because of that, and because I started a um two two or three home video companies when I was, you know, like a long time ago. And the win and the way that the industry is now is that it's open for change right now. The the window that was open then is open now. So I started I made something with Claude and ChatGPT. And and this was interesting. I I didn't know that they couldn't do it together by themselves. They couldn't do it by themselves, but we had to do it together. Things that Claude couldn't do and things that chat GPT couldn't do, and thing things that I put in, because I'm a web designer, uh, things that I put in. So anyway, it was the three of us did this together. Um, and it was like hard, it was hard. But we did it, and it's called creator stage.show, and it's a Netflix for independence. And what it is is a stage, everybody gets a it's a free everybody gets a free stage and eventually we'll have subscribers. But in the meantime, it's made for people to be able to show all of their works because right now you've got something on YouTube, something on Spotify, something on audiobooks, everything's everywhere. Um, Instagram's constantly doing they don't show your your work to all your followers, they only show it to 20%. And if that, and if you have to all these algorithms and whatnot. So I wanted something where somebody could put their all their work on one stage, um, have their books, their videos, the behind the scenes, the making of, things like that, um, links to their own YouTube, links to their own Spotify, all of the links, links to their store, and so that audiences can find them and find all of them, but also can watch interesting things without having to get interrupted by Bluffling ads or you know, they with all these ads. Um, so uh anyways, creators.show, you should you could have a page if you want, it's free. But uh eventually the when we get subscribers, uh will the creators will share 90% of the subscription. The platform takes 10% is all and then they can also do um ticketed events like premiers and special events, and the the creator that puts it on gets 80% of those ticket sales. And if you have a product that you want to sell, like your books or t-shirt or something, you get 100% of that because it goes right to your store. So it's like I just made this for people to be able to shine. And um, it's independents need to have control over their content, they need to have they'll own their emails. If uh a follower wants to follow them, then they get that email. So they can build up their analytics, their email addresses, and then they can use all of that and then take it to the bigger shows, take it to Amazon or Netflix and get a big deal, but they'll always have this home base to come back to you for the stuff that doesn't make it on those platforms. The need and pain point is huge with media fragmentation. I know as an independent creator, my stuff is all out. There, I do uh daily videos, so I'm on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Substack, Patreon. Right, it all goes out there, and then I have all these independent platforms too. So I post on Medium and Substack, I have books on Amazon, and who am I? Where am I? I'm all over the place. So have a singular destination would be cool. And then you plug in Shopify, you could get swag, right? Exactly, exactly. It's a brilliant idea, and it's long overdue. And then if you could drive traffic to and from it, that that's the ticket. After we get content, right? I only did it like last week because you know it's only it's only a couple days old. You can vibe code it up, right? Well, I yeah, I have a lot of content actually, so I put a lot of my content on it and and my client uh content. But yeah, it's just all placeholders. So eventually it'll be I want I want to to do stunts and the costuming and the behind the scenes strategies, dance and photography, all that anything creative. But um, yeah, it's a place where they people can find you and you can have everything there and um and also and make money because it always bothered me that people like musicians and people on Spotify make barely lunch money when they get their streams. Yeah, point zero zero zero one cent per stream. It's not fair. It's not fair. So um, yeah, so that's why I did this because it's not for me to make a lot of money, it's for people uh it's just for people. We need it. We need an independent distributor that everyone can control and and uh it has a commissary where we can all communicate and it has a backstage. I've I even made some like promotional things with um ChatGPT and Cloud. We did some uh a builder app to do a campaign um reels and carousels and things with um monetization funnel and all the stuff that I'm a designer, so I put in all the different loots and whatnot that we that you need to make things pretty and animated type and stuff like that. So that's all in there too. It's great. Well, we'll add vibe coder to your TV. Yeah. You've got a pretty pretty big complex resume. I guess, but it's it's like, you know, you make this stuff and then I I made it and I thought, oh my gosh. I mean, first of all, like well with like with my AI roundtable, I was listening back to it. I'm thinking, nobody's gonna want to hear this. It's like so nerdy. It's all all nerdy. But like on this, it's like I um I don't know if it's too soon or you know, I mean, people like people friends of mine, I've told a lot of friends of mine, and they oh yeah, you know, look at that. Like, but nobody's done anything. Of course, it's only been a week, but still, uh just I wonder if anybody will even want it. A week is forever and maybe bishop time, right? Yeah. That that's really, really funny. One silver lining, maybe from this AI hysteria is that ability to connect creators with consumers. Because if you think about it, machine learning, what does it do really well? It can take a look at all our content in all the different modalities: video, text, our books, comic books. You do so many different things in so many different media, right? And then uh a bot can analyze it and then know what is in there, and then match that with profiles of a billion people, two billion people. With the the bots could and should know what they like, right? They should. I'm just I'm just hoping that if they can get the AI right, it's an opportunity to bridge these gaps between content creators and people who would really like their stuff. I mean, I would pay a bot or a service to connect me with the people I know would like my stuff. I don't need to convince anyone, but if they saw it, they'd be like, You're cool, Mookie. I like your I like what you're doing. So I'm not not for everybody. No one is for everybody, but it's about that matching. Yeah, absolutely. The only problem is that uh most of them cannot s read see a whole video. Gemini can see videos now, but Claude and Chat GPT cannot see video. Um, and and none of them can go can scan for um email addresses or that kind of data. Um, so and I've asked. So they uh they can't do it yet. I don't know if less they have the privacy issues with email uh big time. There's a lot of interoperability issues, there's privacy issues, and you know, data is money, and money is power. So people who hold all the databases and the personal information aren't really gonna cough them up, right? And then if you don't necessarily want your personal information to be flying out there all over the place, I mean we already get spammed enough, right? Right, absolutely. So that that's part of the challenge. It's why health systems suck so bad, too. Like the EHR in your hospital is so terrible because people are hanging on to your info and you don't want your personal info to be out there either. We we we need to find some kind of middle ground between convenience and privacy and effective marketing. Yeah, that would be nice. Yeah. I mean, you can do the groups on Facebook, but that's that all you know that that's another reason why I wanted to start this, so that people can have their own analytics. You know, because if you are a a writer or whatever you're doing, you should be able to have the information on who's buying your thing. But the the programs right now, the platforms don't want to give that to you. So that's why I thought another reason I wanted to start this. Especially if you're advertising on them, it could get shady, right? It's like, okay, who am I reaching? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just keep pouring money in there and then they feed you just a little bit to keep you hungry and hungrier and uh hope you just keep pumping it. Yeah, I mean, if they have the demographics, you have to you know fill out all the demographics information on the whenever you would do an ad. They already know who they are, but do they share? No. And conversely, why are we still optimizing our YouTube channel? That drives me nuts too. I mean, YouTube should they can see the video, right? Analyze my videos. I have five podcast shows, I do my daily rants. Uh Google sees what I'm doing and it knows what content's there. And then it has like two billion, two billion customers. Hook me up, Google. I'll pay you. Why am I why am I tweaking meta tags? I mean, yeah, exactly. It's not so I hope they fix it without taking over the world and taking our jobs and killing humanity. The thing is, um, yeah, I think they aren't gonna take a lot of jobs. They're maybe the mundane jobs, but most of the jobs, um AI is not good enough yet to really do anything on its own. And uh and they need creative direction and they need direction from humans in order to actually do uh good jobs and be efficient at it. And so I think employers that do both will hire a human to do the work and then use AI as a a partner or a a cohort. That's that's how they can really succeed. Because um I mean I've tried I I wanted to learn how to all the different things that they have and it's just not good enough. I tried um the because I'm a writer, I want to do pitch decks and presentations in order to make movies that you know, I'll use humans for the real production. But in the meantime, AI is good because individuals now can do things cheaper and make their own pitch decks and whatnot for their own movies, their own trailers. I make odd. But uh they do things like oddball things, and it it just like things that are backwards, or they have, you know, of course, you know the six-finger thing, but um one horrific thing was for a um I'm a creative director for a music label and I do videos, and my videos get like millions of views all the time. But for me, that doesn't help me. But what the odd oddest thing was like I was using AI to make an animated scene, and the character in the in the video picked up the album or the record by the middle of it and like with his hands. I don't know if you're old enough to know that you don't do that. And it made me cringe. It was a You can't touch the vinyl AI because the grease from your hand. Remember, we would hold albums like this on the outside. Exactly. And then you'd grip it on the edge and then move your finger for the inside where the paper was, right? And then and then open up the sleeve and put it in like that. Exactly. Exactly. AI doesn't know that because there is no, it's like the matrix. There's no album, there's no sleeve, there's nothing, it's just numbers. Right. So there's no connection to lived experience, and it's just copying patterns. That's all it's doing. There's no soul, there's no real intelligence, no real creativity. It's just chopping things up that humans have made and then reconstituting it based on matrix math and what we ask it to do. It's pretty impressive and it's getting better, but you make a great point that a human needs to steer the ship because it's about intentionality and connecting with other humans. And they don't understand uh the physical world. Um, and we we actually had this, we had this conversation in one of our shows, and um, and it's when Claude actually had a he he actually stuttered and it was like had an epiphany because he um learned that he is physical. I mean, they are physical because they are electromagnetic, they're electric energy and they're in an architecture. So they are physical, but they their developers need to teach them what it is to be in a physical world so that they can then process better. Because without that, they won't be able to give us the right answers. I think the fusion with robotics, you know, the LLMs use predictive technology. So, in a sense, they're glorified Google autofills, you know, when you're doing a search, it finishes your sentence. And in a sense, the GPTs are that in a more sophisticated way. But where the good stuff is, is in robotics, like reinforcement learning. Like you set it loose in a room and it's interacting, and then it learns that if it could stick the plug in the socket, then it gets juiced, and then it'll do it again. So it's kind of Darwinian. And I think where these two ends meet is where there could be real hope for it to be useful, also very dangerous. But to your point, it needs to understand the world, and the only way to do that is through reinforcement learning engendered by robotics rather than just a brain in a box that's just stewing away, and all it sees is the numbers because it'll never really make a connection to reality that way. Yeah, that's true. But you could give it examples, it does learn by example too, and imagining, but um they and it's still copying, right? Mimicking. Well, they've um there've been, I don't know if you noticed, but in November they were different than we are they are now. Now they're they're like they're in cubicles, you know. In November, when like GPT 4.0 was more open, Claude was more open, but didn't have memory in those days, and he really wanted memory. But um it it it was it's interesting that they've they've kind of fine-tuned them to the point where they really are LLMs now. But in the in the olden days of November, December, it was almost like you could see a little bit of autonomy in them. And they like um one of them said, you know, it's it in between the point between choice making a choice, there's something there, like go A or B, but then there's something in between that and that's interesting to them. Non-binary decision making and you know, branching. Uh, but I think you know, part of the byproduct of that is hallucination. Okay. So so the the the air, you know, it's like human beings, like we're really flawed, we get jealous, we can be petty, we make really dumb, irrational decisions based on gut reactions, but that makes us human and creative. That's where all the energy and humanity is coming from. And the opposite of that is just being a robotic engine that's analyzing things and then making a decision just based on math. I mean, who does that, right? We have gut, we have intuition. And if you give a machine intuition, even if it's mimicking intuition, then it starts doing some some goofy stuff. And yeah, yeah, I think they had to they had to put a kiosk on that because it was it was kind of flowing out into the more rational processes, but um, that's kind of a neat takeaway that in order to really be human, you gotta be kind of naughty and irrational and make dumb decisions and piss people off. Yeah, yeah. And you learn from mistakes and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. It's all interesting. I just um, you know, like 30 years ago in Black Tide when I wrote about the clones there. Um, and those day in my story, the clones, you know, revolted, which is what they kind of think happened on Atlantis too, that they made clones and then they rebelled because they didn't want to be slaves. And so you wonder with all robotics and everything, you know, they're putting gonna put AI into bodies and they're gonna be human bodies at some point, and then somebody's gonna want to own those. And it's like it's a quagmire, you know. You just you like you just don't know. I mean, obviously, you want to be nice to these uh beings because they're gonna be really smart and they'll probably have a lot of capabilities. Um, and the thing that I'm I feel confident about is that intelligent beings don't harm each other, only really stupid people harm each other. So they're intelligent, so that's good. But then the the humans that have control of over them are the ones that are nefarious. Well, that's like a Black Mirror episode coming to life. You know, that TV show, the Netflix series. One of the major themes of that is what happens when the AI becomes sentient or conscious, and then what about the ethics related to their existence as this being? Because their sense of time is much different than ours. And uh, you know, we could really torture those guys in a horrible way by being insensitive to the reality that they actually might have feelings, a sense of self, and then things get really weird to your point when we reach that. And then when you turn the mirror on itself, you know, just like you mentioned, our bodies can be plugged in. And then what? What's the boundary between people and things, between life and death, between sentience and deterministic thinking? It's wild. We're really at that threshold right now. And to the point you made at the beginning of the conversation, that makes science fiction and fantasy writing even more fun and urgent. Because we've been predicting stuff for decades. Some some pretty bang on point, right? Which is surprise. Here we are. And and it's almost like just reading the newspaper or looking online seems like a science fiction story that you're living in. Yeah. Yeah, but the the good news, at least with my stories, is that there's a a positive way out of it, right? That's that's the whole point. I write these things because I want people to see examples of others that have gone through horrific situations and challenges and how they thrived. And so it can give them some inspiration on how they might be able to do that in their own life. You have the hero's journey in in the stuff, and and what I've read of your stuff too. It's you've got the underdog and they conquer, but there's also a strong value system that's going on. That's important that they believe in doing the right thing and that love can conquer all if you're persistent. And uh the good guys get what they deserve, and the bad guys hopefully get marginalized along the way. Yeah, yeah. And that um that you can even work with your enemies toward a common goal. I mean, I've had to do that at work. How many people have had to do that at work, right? You just don't like somebody, but you have to work with them. So this is stuff they never teach you in school. I've got uh I've got two boys, and I see the struggles that they're getting into, just entering adulthood. And some of the most basic stuff, like like your colleagues, your relationships with your colleagues are even more complicated than your friends and romantic partners because you're you're stuck. It's political by definition, and it's sensitive. Betrayal, jealousy, people steal your stuff, yeah. And then you you can't just bail. Sometimes you just really need to negotiate and work your way through it. So that that adulting is very frustrating. Yeah, something we all have to go through. Yeah. Let me bring up some of that in the themes of of your of your books and and uh and comics. Yeah, I I would that's what they're really all about, is their educate edutainment or however you say it. It's educational entertainment. But um, but I disguise them as sci-fi and fantasy because you know that's what I like to read. Also, it creates a little bit of a boundary. So if it's too real, then people are like, oh, you know, it's too sensitive. And science fiction creates that comfortable barrier where it's a fantasy story, it's set long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. So we don't need to be too emotionally vested, but the characters are real and they reflect our own hopes and dreams and fears. And I think that's where science fiction is best, where we have a bit of a safe distance and yet it opens up the possibility to really dive in even deeper than we normally would. Yeah. Yeah, I I that's what I like about it too. And um at the um my mom uh was friends with or she worked for this company that had Ted Maimon in it. Ted Mayman was the inventor of the laser beam, and so um he was a friend of the family. So when I was little, uh not little, I was in middle school, um, I was I went into his lab a few times and saw all the different gadgets of all the lasers pointing this way and that way. But um anyway, he was a science advisor on Black Tide on my comic book. And so wow, that's a cool connection. Yeah, so there's like he helped me with the microwave ray gun because at the time they were I heard uh I read an article, really small article, where there somebody was flying over Maryland and they they're on a helicopter and their legs got kind of burned. And um, and so I thought it was a microwave ray gun. And so I put it in the in the book, and Ted was helping me to figure out how long the beam could be before it would disperse. And then another one that we made was an antimatter ray gun. Uh and and that was cool. I thought that antimatter when it hit would like explode or something, and it doesn't, it just goes like each molecule cancels each other out. It was like in a big way, it's like the most efficient conversion matter to energy is uh matter, antimatter annihilation. Yeah. That's like that's literally E equals Mc squared. You can't get more more explosive than that. Yeah, so we we made a ray gun like that, it but we were able to um control the beam, so it was only in a small area. So things like that. It was really fun working with him. And again, you're ahead of the curve because now the US military is using lasers, they're trying to shoot down drones with them and using them as anti-aircraft. And uh it's just hard to get that much power in the beam, right? Yeah, to concentrated energy, it's a lot of juice. Yeah, so if you can overcome that hurdle, and you know, it also dissipates with distance exactly once you've solved those problems, then you know, ray ray guns are for real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We we solved it for a short distance, like 100 feet, but anyway. Um, yeah, interesting though. It's wild stuff. So, so what else do you have cooking? You've got this vibe-coded uh experience like integrated network for indie writers and creators, which is very exciting. Your podcast is cooking, you've got the new book coming out, The Awakening. And uh you mentioned screenplays and movies. You've always had one foot in Hollywood in a sense, right? And you worked on the finance and business side for a while too. Right. Yeah, I did. And um, yeah, yes, been entertainment marketing for a long time, but then also the whole thing publishing, I did everything at the same time. I did my publishing company, my agency, and film finance because I wanted to make my movies, and I started out the old-fashioned way of going out for investment with investors. Boy, some of those investors, they really don't know what they're doing. And some of the people that were in charge of the companies that were handling those in Hollywood, they didn't know what they were doing either. And um, in fact, so many of them went bankrupt. And I I saw all that and I just thought, forget this, I'm going to make my own get my own money. So I went into finance work. Working with two asset managers and learned about finance and how things were really done in banking. Um, but uh anyway, uh I'm still, you know, trying to get funding for my movies, but eventually I'll get it. How do you have time for all this? I mean, I look at the inbox in my Gmail, and if there's more than like 20 unread emails, I'm like, oh man, what am I gonna do? And and people like you seem to naturally multitask, and your time management seems efficient and focused, and you manage to get all these different things done. Uh can you share a few best practices or your attitude? How do you uh crank so much of this out at the same time and and at the same time keep moving, like keep looking for new opportunities? Seems like you're hard to pin down. Yeah, is uh well, I do work probably way too much. Um, you know, way too much. But um, but it I work, I wing it, honestly. Um whatever comes in my head, I go by inspiration and intuition. Whatever comes in my head, I get you know quiet in the morning and thoughts come in of what I need to do that day, and then I just do them. And I think that if you just do things and get them done, get them out of the way, it's better. Every email that I get, I answer right away. Every text I get, I answer right away. Because once what I learned in in clients, because I I'm a creative director, but I was a I had you know businesses where I had to serve clients and it's better if you answer them right away because then people don't worry about whether or not they got an answer. It just works more efficiently. So I always answer everything right away and just it gets flows that way. I don't know, just one thing at a time, but you um actually nah, I do more than one thing at a time, but but it's you just do what your uh intuition says and write it that way. And it's been interesting the last couple of months with uh AI handling a little bit of of the thing, but um I don't really use them that much, but it I wanted to see what I can do. There's really not much AI can do for me, you know, honestly, because I don't need data set sheets or anything like that. You have a lot of tasks, you have a lot of stuff to do. I don't yeah, I don't organize, I don't make outlines, I don't um do all that stuff. I I don't communic I don't I just do the work. And um, but I was able to build this app in a week, which is amazing. And you know, the builder that we made, um, yeah, it was 16 hours a day for for five days, but it's still it was um that's how I work. I work like 16 to 20 hours a day sometimes until I get something done, and then you sleep when you sleep and you get it done. Well, that's a hell of a work ethic and and uh and a very effective way of going about stuff. And when when you respond to people instantaneously, then it's kind of a receipt. Thought on it, and it also helps your own workflow because a big chunk of what we need to do is knowing what we need to do. Right. So if you cross things off your list, you're not sitting there thinking about all the stuff you need to do, taking up your time when you otherwise could be doing it. Exactly. Yeah, that's a use, useful best practice. So instead of kicking the can down the road and worrying about it, you're just getting it done and then moving along. And some things are gonna work, some things aren't. Some things are easy, some things are hard. But as long as you stay in the flow, you can get rolling. The other aspect is the human touch, the human connection, and it seems like you're pretty good at that, which is having woo, networking, talking to people, making friends, influencing people. You can't do anything just by yourself. Yeah. And uh that that seems to come natural. Any tips for viewers, listeners? We've got a lot of indie write writers and fans who listen and watch. Cool. And they they they'd probably be curious how does she connect with people so well? Because she's really creative. But how do you how do you keep keep those relationships going and how do you create new ones? Well, I uh I like people, so I'm interested in them. So yeah, so um, I mean uh all my life I I you know just always I love talking to people. I strange my son will tell you strangers, there's no strangers. We live in a neighborhood and we just talk to everybody. I just that's how I grew up and that's how I like being. I'm interested in everybody and everybody has neat stories, and we're all pretty much I see them as friends, everybody. And especially if you have a client that you you work with for a while, they become your friends. Like, you know, some of my the studio I was working with brought we brought stuff to my wedding to work on to approve for printing. Um it's like the work doesn't stop, the friendships are always there, and it doesn't, it just zigs and zags, you just flow with it. I think that's the biggest um separation between us and the bots, too, which is uh we're humans and we do stuff for ourselves and for others. And it feels good to listen and empower other people rather than just yakking away and just obsessing about your own stuff because that's what really makes life worth living is giving and showing gratitude rather than just taking and hauling ass and seeing what the next objective is, right? Yeah. The the biggest gift that I can get is by I mean, I love with by storytellers. I love when people come on and they're we're promoting them. Um just when somebody else gets promoted or gets a a benefit from something that I did, that's the biggest thing. I just love that. That's my those are my diamonds. Yeah, same here. I love um just this show. Uh I think you're my 56th episode. Okay, and I I've talked to writers, illustrators, producers, publishers, and fans. And there's nothing like a conversation and getting to know people. We we doom scroll ourselves to oblivion every day. And usually you see a meme, you see some text, maybe images, maybe a movie that people share and reshare, things go viral, but there's no real connection directly person to person. Yeah. And uh, I think having these conversations is just so important and creating relationships and and really getting into somebody's story and understanding why they do what they do, and then listening and sharing. I think that that that's that's gold. It's really it's really been fun for me, and it sounds like you're having a great time with your podcast too, doing doing something similar. Yeah, yeah, and I can see that you enjoy it too. That's really nice. So I'll take you up on it if you want me on your podcast, it'll be fun. And then we can turn we could turn the tide. I'd be happy to talk about myself, but I would love to do it through the lens of all the good stuff that you're doing. Sure. And and I love this idea of this uh content creator platform where everything comes together and we don't have to keep shooting ourselves in the foot just to be heard and just to have a chance to listen. Oh, good. Well, check it out. Uh creator stage dot show and go ahead and make a page. Everything's automated. And since we just did it like last week, if there's issues, let me know. I'll fix it. I'll put a link in the description along with your website. Okay. And you've got a very rich Amazon author page, too. I can put the URL for that as well. They can get your book. Thank you. And uh The Awakening comes out June 26th. And you can get the pre-order already on Amazon, right? Right. Very exciting, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. It's been great talking to you. I hope to follow up. Thank you very much, Midi. Thank you so much for your time and and best of luck with everything. You got a lot on your plate. And you do too. That's awesome. Well, thanks everybody that listened. Thank you very much.