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
James Stuart Kinsey: Crime Scenes to Fantasy Kingdoms
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What happens when thirty-two years of walking into crime scenes collides with a lifelong love of Tolkien, Zelazny, and Edgar Rice Burroughs? You get James Stuart Kinsey — retired forensics investigator, Navy submariner, and the world-builder behind the Gifts of Olmith fantasy series.
In this 58th episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, host Mookie Spitz sits down with Kinsey to unpack the sprawling world he's spent years constructing: a heroic-fantasy setting populated by humans, elves, and dwarves, anchored by his debut novel Strand of Hope and expanding through companion short fiction like The Emperor's Bath. They trace Kinsey's literary DNA back to a small Texas town with a population of 100, a childhood spent devouring Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter novels, and the fateful day a high school teacher handed him a copy of The Hobbit — the book that cracked his imagination wide open.
But the real heart of the conversation is what Kinsey brings to fantasy that most world-builders can't: three decades on the front lines of crime scene investigation. He and Mookie dig into how confronting the darkest corners of human behavior — and choosing to see even the worst offenders as people who made bad choices — shaped the moral complexity, empathy, and psychological depth in his characters. It's a conversation about how fiction becomes a container for hard-won truths, why fantasy functions as an escape valve for people who've seen too much, and why "the mighty fall and are replaced" isn't just a plot beat but a worldview.
Along the way: the influence of Michael Moorcock and Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber on multiverse storytelling, the self-publishing calculus for authors who don't want to wait, the case for human-authored fiction in an AI-saturated market, and why Kinsey's real audience is seven grandkids who'll someday say "my granddad wrote this."
Join James and Mookie for a heartfelt conversation about world-building, mortality, memory, and why the best fantasy is built on things that actually happened.
The Guest
James Stuart Kinsey writes muscular fantasy with a heart. His heroic tales of courage, sacrifice, and hope leave room for wit, warmth, and quieter moments of wonder. Drawing on a lifetime of real-world experience in military service and criminal investigation, Kinsey grounds his stories in human struggle, moral consequence, and hard-won truth, even when the tone turns lighter or more reflective. Influenced by the classic traditions of heroic fantasy, his work blends visceral action with emotional depth, valuing honor over nihilism and meaning over empty spectacle. Whether epic or intimate, Kinsey crafts fantasy meant to entertain, resonate, and linger with the reader.
HIs Work
https://www.bloodandlightmedia.com/
Hello and welcome to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Factory. I'm your host, Mookie Spitz, and I'm thrilled to have James Stewart Kinsey in the factory with us today.
SPEAKER_04Welcome, James. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01You're giving the world the gifts of all myth. Is that the proper pronunciation? All myth.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, gifts of old myth, O-L-M-I-T-H. I uh very creatively renamed the world from old myth. So that's that's where that name came from.
SPEAKER_01I was wondering about that. So reading your stuff, you are a world builder, exquisite detail. You've got races and magic and the full pantheon of fantastic fantasy elements in there, which we can go into. You've even got a map on your website. We'll put links in the description below to access your website. Uh, you've got books in the works, and I think you're ready to release your vision to the world.
SPEAKER_04I'm trying. Uh, I I put a lot of work in on world building, but I wanted to avoid the uh world-building disease where you just continue and continue and never write. So I built a large world. Uh, there's only three races: humans, elves, and dwarves. Uh, but uh the first book, Strand of Hope, takes place in maybe a thirtieth of the whole world inside one mountain range. Uh the Strand of Hope is a book uh about the dwarves, who in my world are called the Drungar. Uh, then the second book will be with the elves, who in my world are Ellen Boole, and then the third book is on the humans. So I'm trying to do the world building for the reader in three books.
SPEAKER_01And you've you've got the short story that you've shared to The Emperor's Bath, which I found equally entertaining. It's got a different style, it goes with a faster clip, and uh you're less you're less expositional and more into just the the action of it, probably because you don't you you don't have that expansive uh palette, you're getting to it, and I found that entertaining as well.
SPEAKER_04Right. It's uh on my website, I I try and put a short story every month on there, a new short story. It's kind of a back building for the world. In the first uh book, Strand of Hope, the term Emperor's Bath is used by one of the characters. And I believe it's something along the lines, such a pleasant name for for a site of tip treachery. So it's just a short story, but it kind of explains where the big bad came from, end of the story, which will be the Imperium in my world.
SPEAKER_01So I'm not gonna give out any spoilers, but uh the mighty fall and our replace. And I find your writing interesting, especially in juxtaposition to your professional career, which I which I think is worthy of getting into a little bit, seeing as it might even influence some of your exposition. Can you share with us uh your many years as a crime scene forensics expert?
SPEAKER_04Well, I uh I was in the Navy for I did four years in the submarine service in the Navy, and I got out and I needed something to do. Uh and I I had a a hint there was a job at the local police department that I was at. And I'd worked at the front desk for way too long and found out that's the most boring job in existence. Uh and I knew some of the uh crime scening people, and they you know, we talked over the years, and uh they thought I should try out for it, and it turned out I had a pretty good knack for it. So I did that for uh 32 and a half years. Uh I'm retired now, but when I retired I literally spent half my life walking in out of crime scenes, and in that process I saw a lot of really bad things happen to a lot of people. Uh then I but I also saw a lot of people do really good things. And I I try in my books uh it's kind of stuck between heroic fantasy and epic fantasy. There's magic, but it's not it's not Tolkien-ish. Uh but most of my protagonists are imperfect people or elves or dwarves, uh, who go up against it pretty much impossible odds and do their best because it's the right thing to do. So uh, you know, unfortunately some of them don't make it. That's the way life is.
SPEAKER_01I dare say you must have seen some things over 32 years walking into situations that most people would conscientiously avoid, let alone likely never see, hopefully.
SPEAKER_04Yes, I yeah. There's uh I think there's some things that we were not designed to ever witness, but sadly we do. And it can be it can be very uh detrimental to the mental and physical health of people in the field, be it crime scene people, uh law enforcement, emergency medical people, things like that. Um and you have to well you don't have to, but uh uh there's a defensive wall that goes up and it kind of you can kind of become apathetic. Um you know, when I got off work, I would read fantasy as an escape. I'd uh one of my sons and I would go to all the bad horror movies. Just so we usually so we can laugh at how bad they were. Occasionally we'd see some good ones. Uh but I we would see monster movies and all those the slasher movies I didn't like because there's actually people like that out there.
SPEAKER_01The the monsters I'm cool with because they're not real, are painfully real, and you actually beat me to the punch because I was wondering, given given all these years and all the crimes you've literally witnessed and had to figure out that fantasy is uh is a great way to escape. And becoming a fantasy writer and a world builder, as you've already displayed, I can see you getting away from it all. You know, science fiction and fantasy a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. We want to we want to leave our problems behind, and we're reminded of them here and there through the narrative because that gives it its emotional power, but but it's designed to be escapist.
SPEAKER_04Yes, it is, and uh yeah, I've kind of inferred to it before in my I like to put in my writing uh that there is bad stuff, obviously, because there's bad guys in my world, but uh good people can make good differences, and good people aren't well, nobody's a perfect person, but whether you're a dwarf or an elf or a human, uh there are good folks among them, and they will kind of lift the tide to rise to raise all ships, basically, you know.
SPEAKER_01How did you land in this kind of a world? I mean, as a fantasy writer, you've obviously got pretty much limitless options. Are you a a diehard Tolkien fan? Did that appeal to you the most? Does it come naturally to you to to dovetail off some of that middle-earth-ish ethos?
SPEAKER_04I think it does. Uh when when when I grew up in north north north central Texas, uh the population of my town was 100. So small town, and I was the only kid my age, probably between two and four years either side. So my imagination provided most of my entertainment. Uh, and then I started reading, and I I started out reading the old Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan series. And for a young kid, it was great, you know. So I read all of those, and then I discovered uh John Carter of Mars, you know, which is also Edgar Roseburroughs. And uh one one of his uh phrases he used continually through that, John Carter would say, I still live, regardless of how bad the situation was. That's a real a real good thing to to hang on to. And then uh and I think I was a sophomore in high school, and I'll throw her name out there. Her name is Mrs. Sandra Jones, and she was my English teacher. Uh and she we had the you know creative writing section of English class, and I wrote out a story about some you know caveman group, and one was born that was different than the others, and he was you know, really basic stuff. But uh, you know, she gave me a good grade, and the next day in class, she walked to my desk and handed me a copy of The Hobbit. And I'd never really read fantasy until then, and that that really changed uh my mind opened up. So I went from there to uh let's see, uh, everything from Pierce Anthony and I shipped it into science fiction with Asimov and Bradbury. All his short stories are wonderful. Uh Robert E. Howard, you know, I discovered Conan and all that. Uh then uh Michael Moorcock with the Ulrich series, and then uh a great series of Princes of Amber with uh Roger Salazny.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that I have to interrupt you because that's one of my personal favorites, too. Well, you have good taste, and the multiverse backdrop really stuck with me. So my my own science fiction novel is a is is a multiverse take, it just stuck in there, and I I loved just the whole mechanism of going universe to universe, and that mix of science fiction and fantasy was uh so fresh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and it's uh you know, I I'm not really sure where the whole multiverse thing started. Uh Moorcock did some with his eternal champions, uh, but Zelazny is a heavy hitter in the origin, I think, of the multiverse. So, and then now you've got the Mookie multiverse.
SPEAKER_01There you go. Um I'm doing all the different things. Spoiler alert, I I just loved how random becomes the king at the end. Yep. I was I was rooting for him all along, kind of the Loki of the series.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that uh another guy, the Benedict, who was one of my favorites, too.
SPEAKER_01He was kind of the foil to random in ways. He brought a sense of class and chivalry, whereas random was just the the Loki of the nine. But great, great stuff. I see some of that in in your work, reading reading the strand. Uh, on on the surface, it's Tolkien-esque, in the sense that you've got the dwarves and the elves and the humans, and then you've got you know the the Olamyth world, which is uh a little bit like you know Tolkien's Tolkien's layout. But where you differ is in some of the dimensionality and maybe some of the influences that you've cited too. Not one for one, but you you get into more psychological depth, I feel, and then you've got your own different style to it. How did how did that evolve? Did that come naturally to you, or did you did you put this through your creative crucible? Some writers agonized for years, sometimes decades, to find their voice, and yours seems to come off very naturally, which is great. That's what you want a voice to come across as. How did yours come about?
SPEAKER_04Well, I've always uh, as far back as I remember, I've been very observational uh of nature and people. Um one of my first memories of just actually observing things was uh the house I grew up in had peach trees around it. And uh it was great you got there and grabbed a peach tree rock peach rod off the tree and eat it. But uh one day I was out there and uh there's a spider called a cotton spider. It's a little black, fuzzy spider with white dots. They're they're not poisonous, but they're jumping spiders. And I saw one uh hunting a honey bee that was getting nectar out of the peach stem. And it was uh it would peek up over the edge edge of the peach and then move over a little bit, peek up another side, and and just basically hunt it back and forth. Very intelligent. And it didn't end up waiting for its moment and running up and grabbing the backside of the honey bee. And then it was a tug of war. The honey bee got away. But it was it was interesting watching uh something in nature hunt. You know, they they were probably not aware I was there, even though I was a foot away. But I started, you know, watching nature and how things were, and then as I got a little bit older, I started noticing how people are and how they behaved. Um and you know, I was very young and I I remember thinking people don't act human. Yeah, very inhumane, I guess. So uh, you know, that that forward off, I went into the military, met all kinds of people. Mo I mean most of them are great people. Uh and then when I went into law enforcement and I started seeing a lot of the darker side, man, uh that was an eye-opener. Uh along the way I I started really realizing that there's not beside decisions being made that turn bad or or good um you know, I've I've taken DNA swab DNA swabs from literal serial killers' mouths and hands and fingernails. Uh and but I I kind of took it on myself to treat them as a human being. I could not approve of what they'd done in any way. But I know if I had made certain decisions in my life, I could be on the other end of that DNA swab. Um I mean there's there's there's no saying it's okay to murder someone or to you know rob a bank or anything like that. But I I I tried to treat them all as as human beings who'd screwed up. And I found in speaking to them that way that they were a lot more cooperative. Um so but all that you know, I'm I'm no psychologist or psychoanalyst, but I observe how people act in in certain situations, both you know dire and and great, and then uh it's just kind of all stuck with me. So when I'm writing my characters, I try and think of, okay, this person's in this situation, you can make this choice, you can run away, or you can stand up for your loyalties and your duty to try and do the right thing. And I just kind of let that guide where it goes. I uh I often start to think, okay, maybe I'm put too much into this, you know, characterization of their psyche and you know their inner thoughts, that kind of stuff. But that's basically the start of that.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think that's gold for a writer. You're displaying qualities that really make a narrative resonate emotionally. You've got empathy, so you could see two sides, three sides, you could look into somebody's head and heart, determine that we're all victims of our own circumstance. So that gives you, on the one hand, the objectivity you need, so you're not judging them, you're just describing them in a situation, often an arduous situation. And then it enables you as a writer to get in even deeper because you're not being judgmental, you're just trying to reveal what's going on, and that is great for a narrative because you're not imposing your will on your characters, you're just letting them loose. And I think that makes for great, great drama.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I try. I mean, you know, as a writer, sometimes the characters take off on their own. Uh and that's kind of a weird feeling. Um I generally the the term getting into the flow, uh, you just kind of get into the subject and uh your well, one, your perception of time is gone. Uh as it it just flows out. I think time travel has been invented. Because I'll I'll jump forward five hours and not realize it's past. Uh but it's you know, when you when you can put empathy in it and put some characters that are I know the greatest books I've read that characters are believable. You know, I can see this person in actually existence. It's not a cardboard cutout. So I'll try and put that put that into the character.
SPEAKER_00If your characters are writing your book for you, then the drama is emergent.
SPEAKER_01And it's your job as a writer, and I mean rhetorical, you just kind of set it up. So you've created the character, you've created the world, but then by setting them loose, the drama happens naturally, and it's not just the conscious laying out or planning, and that's how life is. Best movies, the best theater, they have that spontaneity, they've got a structure, they're not just a chaotic mess of, and then this happens and this happens. It's actually quite the opposite. Because if you stay true to the character and the world that you've built and you set them loose, then they have an objective. They're trying to get something or get away from something or get away with something, and there's natural obstacles to them doing that. And then when you put the characters with their obstacles and they're working through it, and they take on a life of their own, then it's gonna come across to the reader as very immersion and organic, too. And readers, I think, are receptive to that. That's what they like, that's why we read that's storytelling, it's not A, then B, then C, and your characters are just robotic cutouts propelling the narrative further. They are the narrative, right?
SPEAKER_04And then uh, you know, I can't I can't dismiss Grand Grandfather Tolkien because uh he wrote such you know great and deep worlds and characters. The the OG. The OG, yeah. But uh, yeah, so there's there's definitely influence there. I mean, I think I think there were dwarfs around long before he wrote, but I think he coined the term dwarves, if I'm correct.
SPEAKER_01For a plural, yeah, they're more than one.
SPEAKER_04Right. So I I I have to give it a dwarfish. But uh yeah, I can't I can't deny his influence. Um and so many great writers that you know when you especially when you're you're young and you're you have your imagination pretty much as uh the soul of your entertainment. And in my day, you know, if sunrise came up, if it was summertime, you were out the door. And you didn't come back in until you had to. And the the I mean the world was there to explore. So it's uh imagination is a is a wonderful tool to survive.
SPEAKER_01How did you do the flip, you know, when you're when you're a kid, you're out there in the summertime, dusk to dawn or Dawn to dusk, and you've been out there your whole career, whether you're investigating crime scenes or you're in the Navy. Now you're hunkering down. It's it's hard to write a book. Everyone's got it on their bucket list. I'm gonna write that novel. You've actually done it and you've really gone into overdrive as a writer. So you've got your website. I noticed there's several nonfiction books that you have in your pipeline, also. That apparently you're for release in 2027. So you got your whole your whole your whole launch list going on. So you are you are now dedicating yourself as a writer, and that's quite a shifting of gears just in terms of of the lived experience and muscle memory. And to your point, you sit on your ass for four or five hours and time zooms by. How are you how are you pulling this off? How'd you do the flipper flipperoo?
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, I've always as many authors are, and many writers are, I've always been a bit of an introvert. Uh yeah, I lived in my imagination a lot. Uh my I have several friends that ask me, how do you come up with this stuff? And I say, I I spend a lot of time, I spend too much time by myself. You know. Um but the interesting thing about your the majority of your crime scene investigators are forensic investigators. Um you're kind of on the outside of law enforcement. Because we're most law enforcement the police officers, you know, they're out you know, running down the bad guys, you know, chasing people in traffic. Uh you know, they're they're the the physical force of law enforcement. While the crime scene people, you know, they come in after it's over when it's kind of calmed down, and you kind of have to focus inward. So uh my introvertism uh I mean kind of kind of went with the job. I'm better when I can focus solely on one thing. Uh yeah, I could I could work a triple homicide my sleep. But going to I've got a couple book signings coming up. Going to a book signing is gonna be something for me to adjust to. I love people, but sometimes I'd rather there's big people in my head.
SPEAKER_01I can very much relate. I think I put myself in the extroverted introvert category. I love talking one-on-one. These podcasts bring me a tremendous amount of joy meeting writers like yourself, meeting business people, and I have some fluidity, so I'm never tongue-tied or shy. I just love leaping into this. But uh, but put me in a room full of people or have me, you know, spend hours trying to market my material, then it's a different skill set, it's a different aspect of character, and I feel much less in my comfort zone. So I think we're all wired one way or another.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and the uh the uh on in my professional side or before I retired, I would sometimes have to speak speak to people. Yeah, I've uh in my career I t I trained uh 35 other investigators, because it's 32 and a half years, but I also had to uh put on training classes for officers. Um most departments uh there's some certificates that have to had to be maintained and part of its crime scene and all kinds of different things. Um But I could kind of shift uh and then when I would have to go to court, it was about thirty years of having a defense attorney trying to ruin my life and you know, prove I was an idiot on the stand. Uh so a lot of the one-on-one that I had was very adversarial. Um so I mean one thing in that I could take criticism on my writing er any time because I'm my skin is about uh a hundred millimeters thick. But uh on the but just and that but that's on I'd speak to people about something I'd done for thirty years. The writing thing has been in the back of my mind and I've piddled around with it. But when I retired uh I told my wife I've seen too many people retire and just wither away. This is I am now a full-time writer. Uh between on I take off Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Tuesday through Friday, I write at least five hours a day. And I've I've set up this is a this is my office, and this is my office time. So uh I've decided I'm all in. Yeah, I went out and bought a hundred ISBN numbers. I've got a uh from After the World of Omouth, and I'm I'm sh I'm shooting big, I realize this. After the world of Omouth, I've got ideas for at least 20 more books spinning off of this. And then I'm writing short stories. I've always wanted to be a writer. Uh you know, from reading reading of the Tarzan books, I was so into reading uh that I'm living a lifelong dream. Uh uh funny story if you've got time for it. When I was reading the Tarzan novels by Edgar Os Burrows, uh it's summertime, and my father ran a freight warehouse, and my mother was his secretary. And uh I would often go up there and just hang around the office and I would read. And uh I was read I was reading one of the Tarzan books and I looked up, and my father and my mother and one of the co-workers were staring at me, and I said, you know what? And they said, You just yelled out, run Jane, run. So I was I was very, very much into my reading.
SPEAKER_01You gotta have the qualities to uh to bring that out. And kudos to you. I I feel in a similar boat too. I've always had the writer bug, I've tackled it at various points. I've always been a writer professionally in one capacity or another in marketing, communications, communication strategy, all that. I still do that to keep the lights on, in addition to podcasting and writing. But this later life itch that we're finally able to scratch is just so hugely satisfying. And what I found, and maybe you could relate to this too, is that the itch has been there for decades, and circumstance has forced us to marginalize it and muzzle it, and now it's coming back with a vengeance. So when you say you have 20 books that you've already outlined, that's not overly ambitious. I have at least as many, and I've had other writers of like mine where people might say, Wow, you know, I sat there and I stared at my keyboard for four hours today. I've got writers blocked, and guys like us, gals like us, uh just call bullshit on that, which is like there's just so much we want to get out there, it's like we just five hours a day, if we could, we'd put ten. And it's not a matter of having anything in our way except exhaustion.
SPEAKER_04That's true.
SPEAKER_01That that's a blessed that's a blessed place to be, right?
SPEAKER_04It it truly is. And when you're you're writing, well, I mean you're you're creating. Uh, and when you're you're writing this story that uh you had plotted out, uh and then you're you're you're pushing your way through it, and then an idea pops in your head, say, okay, that could lead to an entirely different story or a short story or a background or something, and you stow that away, and then another few, you know, gray cells are locked into that. Um but I mean, there's if I wrote 24 hours a day, I couldn't write enough. It's it can be overwhelming if you look at the broad expense of it.
SPEAKER_01But you know, try and focus in on the that part and this is zero bullshit, folks. So if you're a writer and you're struggling with a writer's block, then uh you know give yourself a little bit of time and a little bit of suppressed momentum, and then uh you'll you'll pop out of it. I had Jay Kenton Pierce on too, uh, another Sam Rob buddy, and uh he's got his he's got a sequel coming out, just came out to his Sword of Damocles, and he he expresses the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's he's got he's got some really good stuff, he really does.
SPEAKER_01He's really good, and he he paces and he's all into it, and he can't stop writing either. Uh, the only limitation here is just you know passing out on your keyboard, right? And and that again is just uh just a blessing. It's a great place to be where you can't shut the hell up, and you really enjoy your writing, which is another hurdle, I think, that especially younger writers try to get over. It's not about perfectionism, it's not about getting this sentence, this paragraph, this chapter, this book exactly right. It's having so much built up inside you that you can't wait to get it on the page. And you need to keep moving because to your point, your brain is still cooking. And then you got spin-offs, you got this character doing that. Next thing you know, you've got that plot ricocheting with this idea, and there's just too much. You gotta rein it in, you gotta domesticate your own passion to the point where you could at least get it down on paper.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I've got uh my son-in-law, um, he's he designed, not trying to point in my book, but he designed my my cover. He's a graphic artist, but he also is a woodworker. He builds cabinets and things like that. And he made a point to me once that uh uh you know his graphic design is all on the computer, uh but he has he uses the woodworking going from kind of digital uh to non-digital. Uh and so I started blacksmithing uh to kind of to kind of get away from the digital to get my brain a chance to calm down. Um nothing big. I wish I could make swords and stuff, but I can't do that. Well, you know, garden hooks and hinges and things like that. Uh but uh it kind of helped me uh with the uh riding the dwarves because there's a lot of forge work mentioned and and all that. So just you know, whatever wherever your areas are of relaxation or work, you can pull stuff from that for your riding to get over that that you know riders block thing. The world's full of examples that you can use.
SPEAKER_01And even just the change of pace, because again, like sitting on your ass for five continuous hours huddled over a keyboard, that's a certain kind of lived experience, and then going forging forging steel is another. Billy Billy Gibbons from Z Z Top. He noodles around with hot rods. That's like their hobby. Him, him and and Dusty would uh be in the garage all day long, and then they'd go into the studio and start laying down some licks, and he describes exactly the same thing, which is you know the hot strings over to the hot steel and back again. That's kind of fresh. It keeps it mixed up and and going, right? One compliments the other. It's really good stuff. So you mentioned a book signing. So where are you where are you signing? What are you doing? How do you know Sam Rob, uh, the folks at Recontour Press. Sam Rob's just published with Canon. He's got his fantasy book that just came out, Sense of Murder. It's getting good reviews. I had Sam on and we had a blast chatting. He's a really fun guy, very engaging.
SPEAKER_04Well, I met uh as as new riders do, you try and go to the writers' conventions and and learn things. Um, I think I met Sam at one of the local conventions in in the Dallas area. Can't remember which one it was. I mean, what we didn't go out and be drinking buddies. I I met him, super nice guy. Um I mean, I'd I'd go out with him, sure. He'd be a blast to talk to. And then uh the Rackantur guys uh were there as well. But uh, you know, I was kind of the the new kid on the block hanging out, you know, just kind of watching the the experts. Uh and I uh I met a couple guys that were actually uh uh retired law enforcement. Uh here's the uh what's that book? Fires at Forge uh by RJ Hansen. Yeah, he was one of the officers there. And uh met him and I they invited me over to sit with him. I felt like I was the uh leaving the kids table to go sit with the adults. Uh they were super nice. And uh, you know, small world. I I worked in two departments, two police departments. And uh it's uh it turns out he knows uh somebody I think took actually took my place when I left that department. So it's it's pretty wow, it's a small world, isn't it? But just uh you know, uh Sam Robb. I'd read some of his stuff. I'd uh you know, talked to him and um as creatives do, he was very helpful. He's happy to talk about you know, this is what I do and give me some advice and things like that. Everybody writes a little bit different and uses a little bit different techniques and things. But uh that's that's one of the things I really enjoyed about uh with meeting the other authors is that most of them are are happy to to give you a hint or give you a suggestion or listen to your woes or whatever. It's uh that's a really enjoyable part of it.
SPEAKER_01Some groups of writers are more inclusive than others. It depends. It's like people are people, right? So you stir some jealousy or it might feel crowded, and you'd assume that writers would naturally be collaborative, but once again, some folks might consider it a zero-sum game or mutually exclusive, like my book gets published, so yours can't, or the other way around. You'd also maybe assume that a publisher or an editor or an agent would be conciliatory, depending on the writer and depending on the group of writers, they'll be very friendly and inclusive. And I think that that's very healthy because who can relate to you better than another writer who's sitting there doing that five hours toiling in front of a keyboard? I mean, you got to be a little bit crazy to do this at all, especially these days.
SPEAKER_04This is true. There's a special kind of madness there. Yes, but once once that spigot opens, you can't you can't shove it back in. It's it's on flow, you know.
SPEAKER_01And you'll do it with or without a group of like-minded souls, but it's always good to have that group of like-minded souls, especially if um that kind of networking opportunity gets your ass published formally and gets that kind of validation as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's uh yeah, I think I used the term with you before we started recording about the rising tides lifts all ships. I I thoroughly believe that because with all the AI junk that's flowing into the market, I think it will backlash. And people start realizing this, okay, this person has really lived uh something he's about is writing about. And uh, I mean AI is great for you know spell checking and things like that, but it's it doesn't have the human heart and soul. Uh so I think author to author, human authors, we have less to worry about between ourselves than you know the the you know slop that's flowing into the the publishing industry.
SPEAKER_01I agree completely. I mean some writers feel directly threatened, and I sometimes wonder if that sense of threat should precipitate a self-evaluation, which is if your writing potentially comes across as undifferentiated from AI slop, then ask yourself if you're really writing from your human heart or if you're just trying to do mad libs. Subject, yeah, verb, object. I've spoken to some writers too, where you know, well, I just tell stories. Well, it's great to tell stories, and it's completely legit, and that's what you our readers want is stories to be told. But is it coming from here? Is it coming from some of your lived experience, or are you just making this shit up and thinking what would be interesting for a reader to potentially see? This goes back to what you were saying with your your lived experience, hanging out, sharing oxygen with serial killers. You've looked into the depth of evil, or at the very least, some big mistakes that have happened societally and personally, that's gotta have an impact on you. And and when you're writing the characters, it's gonna come out, and then people can recognize that we're all flawed, and that's where the good stuff comes from.
SPEAKER_04Right. And I I do hope that comes through, uh, you know, in my writing. I'm you know, when I in the I would I would love for you know to sell a million books, and I would I would love my writing to be at least support itself, but I really truly honestly uh write my books so uh my kids and grandkids can say, hey, my dad or my granddad wrote this cool story once. You know, just I I have no illusions that I'm gonna be this rich, you know, Stephen King kind of guy. Uh but I want the stories that I write, uh I try and write, okay, if I'd read this when I was a kid, I would have really enjoyed it. And uh Yeah, I've got I've got seven grandkids and I would love them all to say, well, they call me G. They said G wrote this cool book. You know, that would just be great.
SPEAKER_01That that sounds very sweet and warm and empathetic. I'll I'll conversely fess up that the only person I'm really looking to satisfy is myself. Now, I I think it's entertaining, the stuff I write, especially my my science fiction book, I think is the blast. I think it's got a select audience. But at the end of the day, I wanted to write the science fiction fantasy book that I wanted to read. Like, what would be the perfect book? It's got a frenetic pace, it crosses genres, it has the world's biggest loser as its protagonist, getting into crazy shit, and to bring it all together with some hard science fiction and some philosophical stuff. And I went for it. So that's deeply satisfying to me, and I would hope other people would like it and it would resonate with them, but I figure if I like it, there's gotta be some people out there who like it too.
SPEAKER_04I guarantee that, sir.
SPEAKER_01Usually the case if you got a minimum. Level of confidence. I submitted a treatment to Sam Robb, and all he really wrote back was, Well, your grammar is good. You know how to punctuate. I was like, all right, great.
SPEAKER_04You're better than me in that, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess that's 90% if you can do that. So, you know, go out there and conquer. And I think this hits home something that a lot of writers, especially younger writers, get lost amid, which is all of this pressure. I need a developmental editor, and I need to pay five grand for a cover. And I need to send this thing through my chatty bro to make sure that the syntax is correct. You know, I mean, get out of here. Why why are you doing this?
SPEAKER_00Is that really gonna help?
SPEAKER_04Those those things are nice, you know, if you can afford $5,000 cover.
SPEAKER_01You know, those tools are useful in a $5,000 cover. Maybe it'll be more effective than one that your niece put together. I don't know, maybe that's the case.
SPEAKER_04But the the point of a book is the story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And uh, you know, if you look if you look at stories that are written, you know, hundred, hundred and fifty years ago, the grammar's completely different. But the story's there. And the story will always carry through. That's uh you know, I it may have even been Tolkien, you know, Grandpa Tolkien. Uh I think he wrote an essay about yeah. He wrote he wrote I think he wrote an essay about the uh about story and how it's you know basically story has been with us since the beginning and we'll uh you know continue on as long as we're people because that's how we learn. It used to be just orally across the campfire and then you know people started writing it down and then the Gutenberg press came around. Um and that, you know, with you know computers and you know, I can sit down at my desk and write up a story on my computer and you know, print it out on my printer or send it into a printer. Um the the f uh methods of getting the story to the people has changed drastically. But the story is still the most important part. You can have a fantastic cover. You know, the uh you know, Frank Frazetta's the back in the Conan days, great covers. They drew they drew your attention.
SPEAKER_01But uh best ever. Iconic. Absolutely iconic. That was the best.
SPEAKER_04I've got a uh a Molly Hatchett cover on my speaker that's got a Frank Frazetta picture on it.
SPEAKER_03Right. I remember that.
SPEAKER_04But if you if you have a the cover that's you know not that great, but the story is still there. If you if the word gets out about the story, then people will still read the story. Um and then with the ebooks and everything like that uh I don't think well, I'm probably wrong, but I don't think the cover makes that much difference on that because it's you know tiny. But the word word of mouth gets out about this is a really cool story that I think you should read. It's the story is the important part. And I've gone on way too long about that. I apologize.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it's it's it's completely on point. And sometimes the shitty cover will create its own kind of style, right? If the if the story is so good that it becomes iconic, then the aesthetic retroactively retools what's considered awesome. This happens all the time, and fashion oscillates back and forth between often between extremes, from minimal to maximal, from art art nouveau to uh postmodern bullshit. It's always in flux. So if you're if you're chasing a trend and if you're trying to appease rules that you picked up in a workshop, or don't use adverbs or follow this rule or that, again, it could prove helpful for for the basics. But if you got the basics down and you feel it here, let it loose and and make it happen and satisfy yourself first and foremost.
SPEAKER_04And uh who was it? Uh I think they just won some big award. A guy wrote a book, I think it was all one sentence.
SPEAKER_01He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he's Hungarian.
SPEAKER_04So, hey, I guess there are no real limits there.
SPEAKER_01There are no real rules, and I call bullshit on that. Yeah. And that that's a whole other layer of pretentious horseshit where ideas mapped on top of ideas. Where where's the story in that? I don't know. Who am I to judge?
SPEAKER_04But I hope I hope he finds one person that actually likes this stuff. Because I hope that for I hope they're for you and me as well.
SPEAKER_01Apparently, the Nobel fucking prize committee found it enjoyable enough to give him the award. So there you go.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, awards are awards are temporary and fleeting. I'm not bitter either. It's all right.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of getting stuff out there, though, um, you mentioned a book signing, and you've got you've got stuff in the works. So you got strand in the works, you're giving your novellas out or your short stories for free on your website, and you're clearly at least beginning to develop a marketing strategy. Now, this is a whole separate topic. Now, we've just spent at least 10 minutes talking about we just do our own thing and we please ourselves and our grandkids, and now it's only natural to transition to, well, what are we really trying to do to build an audience?
SPEAKER_04Right. Well, I was uh uh I another thing of talking to other authors who are willing to help. I spoke uh to a friend uh by the name of Jalen Fisk, and she writes uh short stories, science fiction well, actually the cross-genre short stories, and she told me that uh there was a couple places in the Dallas area, which is where I live. Uh one is called Madness Uh Games and Comics, and it's in Plano, Texas. And if you're in this area and you you like fantasy or something like that, you know that place. And there's another place that's in Plano. I've got that on July 11th, uh uh, which is a Saturday. The Saturday after that, I'll be in Denton, which is uh another city right here, uh, at a place called D20 Tavern. And it's a uh craft and uh craft beer and wine uh tavern, but they uh they cater to people playing board games. They've just got massive amounts of seats and tables and board games you can pull out, and they also have uh rooms that Dungeons and Dragons players can rent out. So they've they've both been very gracious saying, well, you can have a book signing here.
SPEAKER_01They would love your shit, James. I think they would love your stuff, really, because it fits uh attitude, especially the DND people.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And then uh put giving you some giving you some credit here, I I just joined Substack to to kind of check it out and uh read what other authors were saying, and you invited me to your podcast, and I was wow, uh it's a big step for me. So uh I'm I'm I'm hoping in some way it benefits you. It's already benefited me because I've already told a couple of people I'm gonna be on a podcast.
SPEAKER_01I get a lively guest with great point of view, new content, new perspectives, you know, and hopefully I can help you get the word out a little bit in terms of your writing and and your your aspirations in terms of just connecting with people.
SPEAKER_04Well, that is greatly appreciated, sir.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, I appreciate you and your time and and going out there and selling your books, setting up a little table and getting those little stands and putting the books out. There's really nothing like it. I I've done several of these cons and conferences like Pasadena, LA Comic-Con. I did the LA Festival of Books too recently. You know, it's a group of writers that I was hanging with, and then we shared a booth, and it's just great. There's nothing like pitching your stuff in person to people who are curious. They'll pick it up, they'll look at it, they'll flip through it, you tell them the story, you kind of adjust the story based on what you think they might be more into because there's a million ways to tell your story, right? Do you focus on your protagonist, Brune? How do you pronounce him? Brune? Brun.
SPEAKER_04Brun, yeah. Brun.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So you say, well, Brun, you know, he's got this, or you focus on uh the bad guy. And it's fun to kind of work your pitch. And when they actually buy based on holding your book, hanging out with you, you've made a connection, and it's the ultimate affirmation that they like you, they like what they heard, they actually give you some green and walk with your book. Now, whether or not they read it, whether or not they like it, doesn't matter, it's beyond your control. But in that little slice of life, that window when you shared space and you were able to uh tell your story in person to a real human, that's a great, great experience.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm I am looking forward to it. I'm a bit I'm a bit you know hesitant, but I'm sure I mean I was hesitant about coming on your podcast because I've done a bunch of podcasts.
SPEAKER_00You're doing you're doing great.
SPEAKER_04But I mean, it's been a great experience. You're uh like I said, I'm used to used to years and years of a defense attorney getting in my face telling me I'm an idiot. You haven't been that way. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01No, it's my my goal to do the opposite. And uh if I can give you one little tidbit, uh practice what's usually called the elevator speech or the little pitch. Like, how can you how can you describe your content in under 20 seconds in a way that could draw people in? You don't have time to go through the whole story, it's gotta be something that gets them going. And then what is your book similar to that would attract their attention? So in Hollywood, they'll usually pitch a movie like this is Jaws Meets Raiders of the Lost Ark in Nakatomi Plaza of Die Hard. Now, what the hell does that mean? I don't know, but those are three really popular movies, and then instantly the recipient of that information creates some kind of visual of familiar content blended together that'll get them excited. So it's familiar, but at the same time it's new, and then you you got it going on.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'll have to I'll have to work on that. My my book signing is coming up on the 11th, so have to narrow that down. Just the uh the marketing thing. It well, my book goes live on Amazon uh on July 1st. Ebook and paperback. Uh yeah, I'm gonna work on the audiobook.
SPEAKER_01James, this is a launch party.
SPEAKER_04So come on down and enjoy the party. Well, I'm uh I mean it's my new career, so I hope I can make another 30 years doing it.
SPEAKER_01That's that's great. And then where else are you gonna pedal it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm gonna let people know, hey, I'm open for business.
SPEAKER_01I'll re-stack you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, it'd be great. But I've got uh y'all got I'm on I'm marketing on because I'm a newbie, I'm I'm doing Facebook. I've got a Facebook uh site under James Stuart Kinsey. Uh I have my website. I'm uh trying to get uh yeah, I've got a newsletter that goes out to anybody that wants one. And then they get the short story basically a month before it goes on my website. Um the one that's about to go on is called the Lumgren, which is a uh basically a magical item that's in the story. And the let me see. But there's a couple there's actually a few in the Dallas area uh writers cons. There's one called PCon, uh there's one called FinCon. Uh I think I'm gonna try and get a table at both of those. And then there's a a bigger one called SoonerCon. It's in Norman, Oklahoma. Uh that's that's probably bigger than I need to do right now. But uh I mean I'm all in. It's you know, go big or go home.
SPEAKER_01So that's terrific. And you you have a great advantage, frankly, from a marketing point of view. And that is you're very genre specific. So you're you're not Tolkien, but you're similar enough that if somebody loved Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, even Slameryland, they will love your stuff. And it it's it's an anchor point for you to sell. So it's the tip of the spear. So when you're doing any kind of marketing, and even when you set up your table, and that could even be part of your pitch. When when I was at LA Comic-Con and Pasadena, and even the LA Festival of Books, you gotta yell at people when they walk by, you gotta bring them. And one thing that we were yelling was, hey, do you like science fiction? Do you like fantasy? And there were several authors in our group. So this one, one of them, Greg Sorber, wrote his Mech Haven series, which is Brave Heart Meets Transformers. That's his pitch. So we were like, Hey, do you like science fiction? Like, yeah, well, what kind of science fiction do you like? And then we'd be like, Do you like robots, transformer, AI? You're like, oh yeah, that's actually my favorite. So send them over to Greg.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And then if they liked Ender's game, for example, then Ingrid had her books in another corner. So people buy from a vantage point of familiarity. And if you can excite them about what they already love, then it's just the easy reach for them to engage with your content. It's an anchor.
SPEAKER_04That's that's very good advice. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Don't be shy to consider yourself like JRR 2.0. Because I read the strand in your short story, The Emperor's Bath, and uh, I was bathing in that ethos. And again, you are you are qualitatively different, but you're enough like him to use that as a tip of the spear or a springboard for getting people to be excited about your books. They need that frame of really afraid to commit hubris here. No, don't don't hesitate at all. Don't don't feel like he was the man and you're you're it you're cowering in the shadows. People love that. People need that familiarity. In contrast, I have trouble selling and marketing my science fiction book because it's cross-genre. It's got science fiction, it's got even hard science fiction, it's got fantasy elements, but it's also got contemporary romance, even and zany Hunter S. Thompson style shenanigans. So it's a blend, and it often shifts gears page to page and even scene to scene. So it's not, it doesn't fit comfortably in a category, and that's hard for me to sell because people are like, what the fuck is this?
SPEAKER_04Well, Mookie, let me tell you, let me tell you a truth about life, okay? Real life doesn't exist in a single genre. Real life goes from uh from drama to dolderance to sadness to depression to happiness. Uh I mean, sometimes you need a good good story about a spaceship hurtling towards the sun out of control. And sometimes you need a story about uh an old man and his son sitting by the ocean fishing. And sometimes you need a story about you know a big sword fight on a glorious battlefield. Um life is not just one life would be really boring if it was that way.
SPEAKER_01Uh so and sometimes, if you're really bold, you have one book that has all of that in it. You have the old man in the sea, and then you have Braveheart, and then you have uh Lord of the Rings, and they're all kind of coexisting. So if you could pull it off, more power to you. But I I agree wholeheartedly, which is uh you know, bring in what you can and talk about what you know. And and then roll the dice, let it let it play out. But but I am trying to trying to give you encouragement that that from a marketing and communications point of view, you have your niche. So if you've got a bunch of people at that event playing D, they would just eat your book up because they feel that that's an a natural extension of the worlds that they love to create with every game.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm I'm going to use that as a buttress to build myself up and uh you know step out from behind the table.
SPEAKER_01I think I'm giving you sound counsel here.
SPEAKER_04I I think you are.
SPEAKER_01Remember that? It's the champagne of beers. Now what? Well, basically, what they're saying is that they're they're the classy beer, but you need a frame of reference, it's not orange juice or seltzer, you know, it's beer. You got the lane, be in it, but then make it a little different, make it a little special, and then you you you got it, you'll own them, they'll love you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of which, though, you you've got some nonfiction that you're working on too, and then talking about different genres, you've got the uh the old the olmyth world. Are you gonna are you thinking of branching off or even doing side projects from Olmouth that are that are a little bit different?
SPEAKER_04Uh in my grand scheme of things, you know, uh I've I've actually got kind of uh on a bucket list in this in the same world of Olmouth going way into the future, uh like from fantasy times to modern urban times. I'm actually uh I've got a book in my mind and basically an out outline of an old crime scene guy that just wants to retire.
SPEAKER_00Bing, bing, bing. You're leading the witness, you know where I was headed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this weird fantastic murder happens, and he can't let him retire until he fixes bingo, bingo, and it's got it's got a Zelazny-esque quality to it, right?
SPEAKER_04And going back to you, you're talking about your writing style. Zelazny in the Prince of Amber, you had fantasy, you had sci-fi, you had multi-genres. So you're not alone, sir. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, I I appreciate that support. I says based on your lived experiences and the enthusiasm that you bring to your writing, I don't think you could be contained in Olm. You know what I mean? I think I think it's a great the world, but I could see it branching off into all sorts of other other engagements, right? Other kinds of storytelling.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I um as uh a Christmas present for my wife, she retired two years after I did. And my office uh wall backs up directly to uh her the room where she wants to do her her hobbies. Um and shortly after it was around Christmas time and Through the wall, I was writing my fantasy stuff. Through the wall, I started hearing Hallmark Christmas movies. So I wrote a little novelette called Bridges Over Christmas Valley. And it it is actually on Amazon right now. But there's a uh an elf m elf maiden whose father and her run a Christmas uh farm, Christmas tree farm, and she has a friend from childhood who's a dwarf, and they're best friends, and he goes off to axe-making college and comes back four years later, but there's this strange guy, this really glamorous elf who's there who's kind of wooing her. And he comes back and he and there's also a grumpy gnome named Bob. Uh, and I I I I jammed so many of the uh the Hallmark tropes in there I could. And I I wrote it for my wife, and she told me to put it on Amazon, and I put it on there kind of just to test how the system worked. But it's it's a it's a cozy Christmas romanticy. Uh so if anybody's interested in that, it's out there.
SPEAKER_01Already on Amazon. That's what I'm talking about. That that's what you like too, which is uh keep writing and see what see what pops out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. No, that's that's my intent. Like I said, I'm I'm in.
SPEAKER_01A lot of the space operas and the cowboy bebop that's real popular. I I had Rick Cutler on Colt Ostergaard, A Man with a Gun, and you got horses and wild, wild west, and you've also got laser battles and spaceships and anti-matter themes and all this zany stuff. So uh this cross-pollination of science fiction with westerns, with fantasy, with romance, with horror. You see it in music all the time, too, where you've got a reggae, blues, metal band. They're just mixing it up, doing different songs. I think that's fresh. It's good to keep it, keep it in motion.
SPEAKER_04It is. Uh, there's uh an author who I met at a book con and he's given me some real good advice, and he gave me some some props. Uh his name is Skylar Ramirez, but he writes sci-fi, and it's it's all it's very fast-paced. Uh it's not it's not a slow read. There's great characters, there's lots of humor in it. It's just a good, fast, fun read. Uh but I'm not sure if my humor is quite up to his level, but at some point I'll I'm gonna write some kind of science fiction story as well. Uh I just I don't want to write, man. I really do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, well, go for it. Now, now's your time to shine, and uh, you got the enthusiasm, and it it really comes from here, and it comes from just the zeal, the raw energy that's dying to get out. And uh all else comes from that, I think.
SPEAKER_04You're right. I mean, there's no doubt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then are you going to remain self-published?
SPEAKER_04So strand is going up under your um I'm I I uh I formed an LLC for myself. It's called Blood and Light Media, uh to publish my own books. Um well, one thing, you know, because I'm sure I'll tick somebody off about something I write. Uh but on the on the legal aspect that might help me. Um but I'm right now I'm self-publishing because I I really don't want to wait to try and find a publisher to go through traditional publishing. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think I have time. I've got so much stuff in me that wants to come out.
SPEAKER_01I'm with you. I don't I don't want to go through the editorial process, I don't want to hustle too much, right? I just want to get it out there.
SPEAKER_04And from what I read, self-publishing is doing pretty well.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, and what I hear directly from publishers is even if we publish your ass, you're gonna have to do most of the marketing anyway.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and they take a bigger cut. So I want I want to be able to support my writing. This is this is my career, you know.
SPEAKER_01You're blessed also in the sense of not only having endless enthusiasm, but you don't need to pay the rent with your book sale. So obviously, everything that you can get from it is great off the top, but it's not holding you back and it's not putting too much additional pressure on you, which gives you a tremendous amount of freedom, too.
SPEAKER_04Right. And I uh yeah, I'm really blessed that I had 30 years in public service and I do have a pension. I'm not I'm not I'm not gonna short short that list that at all. Uh, because I don't have to worry about buying a loaf of bread. You know, we uh me and a couple of my buddies went to Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains, Texas a couple of weekends ago. And uh, you know, the guy who wrote Conan and many other stories that most people don't know about. But that guy wrote for a living, paid by the word, got like a penny a word. Uh he, you know. So the people who actually support themselves fully by writing, I have a hundred hundred percent respect for those people. Uh I'm I'm blessed that I don't have to worry about that part of it.
SPEAKER_01So that's that's tough, tough nut, right? I I still have financial fire under my ass, you know, and then their opportunity costs and being a podcasting writing maniac. So uh so some of that financial pressure actually motivates me a little bit, which is shit. You know, it's like this is it's actually costing me money to do this, so I better make it worthwhile. So we we each have our own motivating force.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, the money that that I spent, you know, getting my website, uh, you know, getting my books printed and all that kind of stuff. I just accept it as that's the dues I gotta pay. Because I want I want my grandkids to say, yeah, my gr my G wrote this book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good for you. And I just want Mookie Spitz to say, God damn, Mookie, that's a good book.
SPEAKER_04It'll be it'll be more than you saying that, sir. I guarantee.
SPEAKER_01I got Anna One here, so it's all it's all good. So, ladies and gentlemen, James Stewart Kinsey, check on Amazon. I'll put links in the description for them to pick up your first flagship novel, the first in the the Ulamith series.
SPEAKER_04Well, I would greatly appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01First gift of Olamith.
SPEAKER_04And if you happen to come by the uh signing, I'd be happy to meet you.
SPEAKER_01So great, great. I'll uh when is the signing?
SPEAKER_04Uh July 11th in Plano at Madness Games of Comics, and then July 18th at D20 Tavern in Denton. They're both from 12 to 6.
SPEAKER_01Great, good people out there who are local to you. So thanks so much, James. Keep doing what you're doing, and I'd love to catch up with you in six months or a year, see how you're how you're doing and how the the next installments are coming out.
SPEAKER_04Well, thanks, Bookie. I would I would like to do that too. I really would. It's been great talking to you.
SPEAKER_01This is super fun. So take care of yourself and keep cranking.
SPEAKER_04Okay, thanks, sir.
SPEAKER_01You're on a roll to making those grandkids proud. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_04I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01And oh, I always forget like, comment, share, everybody. Subscribe to the science fiction and fantasy factory with James Kinsey. Thank you.
