540 | Jack MacTavish | Author of ROYAL DIAMONDS

We dig into Royal Diamonds, the real mechanics of self-publishing, and what it takes to build a writing career from scratch.

Jack's a retired Army colonel who treats writing like discipline — wide reading (Clancy, Griffin, Cussler, Carr, Taylor), professional editing, repeatable process. Then we open the hood on indie publishing as a business: LLCs, cover design, Amazon, marketing. Writing the book is one part. The rest is operations.

The story: Jake Steed, former Marine with an Oxford PhD, chasing a family piracy legend across the Caribbean. A British royal hunting a blood diamond. Enemies everywhere. Pure action-adventure — with an audiobook narrated by Tucker Smith on the way.

Building a second career or planning life after the uniform? This one's for you.

Transcript

The Podcast Returns After Hiatus

SPEAKER_00 0:00

54 and 300. 54 and 30 on the 54 of the 30th.

unknown 0:09

54.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hey, welcome back to the Protectors Podcast. And we are back. We are back. It's been a it's been a little hiatus. It's been about seven, eight months now, but we're back. This is the second episode, and I have indie author Jack McTavish. What's going on, Jack? How you doing? Hey, how's it going, man? Good, good to talk to you. Good to good to finally be on here. I know it's great. You know, the great thing is social media.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yeah.

unknown 0:46

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

The connections you make through it.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah, love it. It's it's funny. I I when I I mean I was we were just talking a minute ago, but I'd never been on social media prior to starting to write about four or five years ago. And it's been a it's been an interesting journey. It really, it really has. Um, never been on Facebook, uh, never, you know, Instagram was like, you know, something that my kids had, but I actually enjoy it. I really do. And and the connections that I've made through it have been uh have been really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

You can get a lot out of it if you can get your feet into like the positive metrics and you get away from all the mumbo jumbo of the world out there, yeah. Getting motivated. And especially when it comes to the indie world. Yeah. Now, today we're going to be talking about your book, Royal Diamonds. And that's the thing, is we're going to be talking about being an indie writer. And God knows I have a ton of indie writer friends out there. Yeah. The first one that always pops my mind is Eric Bishop. Because he he did like guerrilla marketing. He had everybody taking pictures of his book everywhere across the world. And he got a pretty big following and a pretty solid following. Not necessarily like, you know, multi-million like followers on social media and stuff, but he has a lot of people following his books.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

And that's that's kind of the footprint I look at when I when I talk to indie writers. So this must have been a hell of a journey for you to jump into this market.

Why He Started Writing

Building Royal Diamonds From Influences

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, it it it really it really is. I mean, um there's you know, there's there's it so uh kind of talk about the story, you know. So why did you start writing? So I went through a pretty bad midlife divorce and wrote a uh yeah, wrote a first novel and it's absolute trash. It was kind of a picture of how the world I wish it was, um, but it wasn't. Um and that that will forever sit in the dustbin of history um forever because it's crap. Um, but uh after that I said, you know, I could probably, I've always been a huge reader of love Tom Clancy, love Webb Griffin, and uh, you know, all those guys. And I had started to read some Jack Carr stuff, and I was like, well, you know, if Jack Carr can do this, I can do it. So yeah, I start writing two chapters in. I'm like, man, I'm gonna need an editor to help me with this because I want to do it right, right? You know, retired army colonel, I'm going to do it right. Um I want to get the right tools or tool set around me. So I, you know, I hired an editor to help me out uh with it and kind of helped guide me. And it's it was like getting another graduate degree. But I remember really early on watching an early podcast. It was yeah, it was podcasts that uh Jack Carr did with Brad Taylor, and they were sitting at a voucher con somewhere talking about writing, and they were both like, well, you know, one's like, well, I'm a SEAL, you know, and the other's, you know, I'm a retired Delta Force commander. Um what do you mean we can't write a book? You know, and I kind of took the same approach. Um, it's interesting, you know, Royal Diamonds is is really the fourth complete novel that I've written. Um, and I was going, you know, I was going through the first, I'd I'd written the first book, which is junk, and then I wrote two um more military espionage books. And at that time, you you know, when you when you look at the indie market and the the traditionally published market in general, what I was hearing was that there was getting to be some fatigue on those kind of books. Like, yeah, people, you know, people were tired of the war, it's been going on forever. Um, let's get something different. And my and my editor that I was working with at the time said, hey man, you think you could write an action adventure novel? I'm like, what do you mean an action adventure novel? I mean, that's kind of what I'm writing now. But he's like, no, no, no, make it like more uh um, you know, more action, you know, a little more over the top, that kind of thing. And so I started thinking about it a little bit, and then I just put pen to paper on an outline and started outlining some ideas. And, you know, what what do I really like? You know, why I live in the south, you know, so it's gonna be it's gonna be based in the south, and I love the Caribbean, so it's gonna be based in the Caribbean, and what I love airplanes, you know, so it's gonna be some airplanes in it, and pirate history is gonna be a little piece of it, and it just blossomed from there. So there it is, Royal Diamonds.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Royal Diamonds. So, you know, when I first think of whenever I interview anybody on a protector, so much of it's like thrillers, military thrillers, police thrillers, that stuff. So now that you said action adventure, now what kind what kind of like if I'm watching a movie, what kind of movie am I watching that this would relate to? Oh man, this is a little bit okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So that's a great question. Uh there's a there's a little Indiana Jones in it. Um there's a um there's a little there's a little crime in it. There's some crime. Um there is uh and there's a there's there's some bond mixed in. There's definitely some bond mixed in. And if you're in in you know, if you're a reader, and you know, I I grew up reading Webb Griffin novels and and Clive Custler novels, there's a lot of that influence in there as well. I mean, if if you look at my characters and their relationships with each other and their relationships with uh money and status in the community and those sort of things, there's a whole lot of that that I just adored uh reading Webb Griffin over the years. I mean, I've gosh, I mean, I've read the core series probably 10 or 15 times. Uh I was just talking to uh my friend Jack Stewart, who actually blurred my book. Um, and he he just finished writing direct to action, carrying on the the Griffin uh legacy. And uh and he was talking too about how much he had done kind of the same thing. He had read read those books, you know, time after time. And uh I I love them. I probably go through one of the series at least every other year.

Genre Variety And Indie Business Mindset

SPEAKER_00 6:30

I like you know the police ones, the green bray ones, uh the web griffin ones, I love them, man. They're they're great books. Yep. So man, thriller books, action books, it just you know, you and I were talking before about like the fatigue. I don't think there's a fatigue. I the thing is like so. Right now I'm I'm I'm listening to a Mark Rainy book. Yeah, and as soon as I'm done with that one, I'll jump on to the next one. Yeah, I mean that there's no to me, it's like you need more books because yeah, when you've been reading or listening to Audible for so long, it's like you need the next thing because you read them so quick. Yeah, so I don't know if there's ever going to be a fatigue. Now, people do like look at different genres, and I I get into it now when I watch different TV shows and stuff like that. Like I like different things, not everything has to be military, not everything has to be police, has procedural. It's like I like variety, yeah. And I'd like the idea of you know, when you have these main publishing houses and when you have these these main authors, you're thinking like a book every six months, a book every eight to nine months, but it's it's on a cycle. But when you're an indie author, you kind of have your own thing. Yeah, you're your own boss. You you're technically your own business.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Oh, I'm absolutely yeah, I'm absolutely my own business. And that's how I that's how I run it. I mean, I run it through an LLC. And um I, you know, was working all afternoon today setting up payment methods for uh for a thing that I'm gonna do, you know, in the next week or so, and you know, setting up my own website. And that's that's been the thing. Again, I I said earlier, you know, it was like getting another graduate degree. Um, how do I set up an LLC? What are the legal things for this? What are the tax implications? You know, how do I set up the payments for things? How do I how do I work the square thing? How do I set up things on Amazon? How do I, you know, how do I write things off if I happen to write something off with my account? Yeah, all of those things. How do you do social media? How do you do marketing? And it's just it's been an incredible journey. And I mean, it I I've loved it. So I mean, if you're an indie writer, treat it like a business and and get after it. It's not all just all about writing the book. Um, but uh, it's it's been a blast.

Agents, Rejection, And Choosing Self-Publish

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So we you know, I wanted the that's one thing I really want to touch on. Is like, so everybody can put the pen to paper, they could, you know, type up a book, they got it good. Cool, it's edited, it's ready to go. Yep. Where do you go from there? What was your first step after you had everything ready to go? The book is edited, you're ready, your final draft, and now you're like, huh?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Well, um, yeah, I've I've done so many things kind of concurrently. I mean, again, kind of going back to the uh car tailor interview. I I never planned to fail at this. Um when I when I first finished Royal Diamonds, probably about a year or so ago, um, you know, I'd I'd been going to Thriller Fest, which is a conference for writers, and there's indie writers as well as big five published guys there, and um making connections and making friends and and those sort of things. And um working with, you know, working with a well-known good editor. Um, we you know, you get it back and you think it's in shape and you think it's ready to go, and you set you, then you start going through trying to find an agent. And that is a hard business. And you know, this the first couple of times that you get kicked in the gut by an agent that says, I don't think matter of fact, I got an email tonight, I don't know even why it popped up, but there's a pretty well-known agent who was like, I don't think this is right for the market. Um, and you're like, Well, you know, it's your baby, it's your book. You've been working on this thing in nights and weekends for the last, you know, year. And uh somebody's like, Yeah, I don't think this is really what I want to publish, or nobody wants to publish this, and like, or good book, you know, but it's just not quite right for the market right now. And like, ah man, that sucks. And yeah, I kind of went through about 60 iterations of that. And I said, you know what? And I talk my brother's a businessman. I mean, he is on a plane every Monday morning and comes back on Friday and works all around the country. And um he's like, dude, he's like, just self-publish it, create it as your own business, you'll be successful. I was like, all right. So then I just I I talked to a couple of other writers about it. And some guys were like, hey, no, hold out, you know, you've got a good product. Um, and others were go ahead and go for it. So so I did. And I'm and I don't regret that at all. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

No, I I had a uh like kind of a quasi-publisher, the first my first iteration of my book, but this last book I self-published. Yeah, you know, it's it to me, it's just I get it out there, and my book was a little bit different because it was about military transition and you know, kind of help people get jobs. So I didn't have any profit margins. It was just kind of like, hey, you know what? Let me see what I could do. But when you're looking at a book and you want to make something of it, you're looking at your next pivot into a different career. You kind of have to look, you know, hey, you know what, this might have to go somewhere. I really want to put the energy and making an LLC in a business and putting my time into it because people understand that you know when you put together a book like this, it's hundreds of hours, if not thousands of hours, yeah, before you get that book out there. Yeah, and you know, when you have 30 plus years and you're a colonel and you know you have a big thing, that's a lot of money. Yeah, yeah. So it is committing.

Cover Art, Costs, And Building A Team

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah, it's it's it's definitely a commitment. You know, I um you know hiring the right people to to help you with it. My my artist, uh Corey Club that did the cover design, you know, he was a recommendation from another writer. And the guy's amazing. The same the same week that he delivered my cover to me, his he had a cover that was like all up and down Times Square. I mean, so he's you know, I've gotten nothing but like positive feedback on it. And that's you know, that's that's kind of what I've what I wanted, and I felt like it was worth the investment. And you know, it you know, the say the fans, but you know, the followers that are out there on social media, um, I think they appreciate that and they appreciate the effort. And you know, again, I I treat it like a job, and it's a job that I happen to love and passionate about. Um so um I'll do it as long as I absolutely can. If it's it's funny, I've got another book written um that's kind of going through the editing process now, and I've got a follow-up to that's not a follow-up to Royal Diamonds. I have a follow-up to Royal Diamonds, about 30% of the initial manuscript done. And I've got another follow-up to the book that's going to come out in uh November. It's called Tales from the Caribbean. Um, I've got that one partially outlined and partially started, so that'll probably come out sometime in 27.

The Royal Diamonds Story Hook

SPEAKER_00 13:19

So Royal Royal Diamonds coming out this month. So give us the back cover overview of this book. What's the selling point on this book?

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Yeah, it it it's a break. Okay. It's it's fun. Uh, if you like um, you know, if you like some bond, if you like uh Ted Bell, if you like some a little over-the-top um action, if you like um Clive, like early Clive Custler, like Raise the Titanic, those sort of things, um, you'll probably enjoy this. Um, it's uh um, you know, I have a I have a former Marine, not an officer, not an NCO, just a lower enlisted guy that uh has a passion for history, comes from a wealthy family in Charleston, but he decided he wanted to be a Marine. Uh my family, you know, I spent 36 years in the Army and Army Reserve. My dad, my youngest brother, my youngest nephews were all Marines. My middle brother is a paratrooper. Uh, my youngest uh, or my oldest nephew is getting away and uh a Navy officer. Um and, you know, so there was the service aspect of it. But so young guy, um, passion for treasure hunting, gets hurt on a mission. Marines say, you know what, we're gonna do you solid, we're gonna send you back to school. He's like, well, I've already got a bachelor's degree, I need a graduate degree. Goes to Oxford, gets a degree in history because that's what he absolutely loves. His family has a connection, the Steed family has a connection to piracy in Charleston. I mean, who doesn't if you're from Charleston? Um, and uh he decides, he's he he finds himself in academia and decides that this sucks. I don't want to do that. Um, let me get on my 38-foot sailboat and sail off to the Caribbean to chase down this old family legend. Concurrently, there is a uh a British royal, part of the British uh nobility, uh, who is chasing down a blood diamond that her late brother uh was trying to recover. And uh they're looking, she's looking for help. He's willing to help. He has a a uh he has a his best friend Mike Diaz is working uh in the Caribbean at the time, doing some odd jobs for himself and for uh you know, maybe an employer that has a lot of boats and does do shady shit around the world. Um shady stuff around the world. Beep that out. I'm sorry. I try not to drop words like that on things. But at any rate, they uh they go off on a grand adventure to recover this blood diamond, and of course, there's a bad guy that wants the blood diamond equally, if not as much more.

Series Future And New History Ideas

SPEAKER_00 15:56

And it's a good, it's a good tale. Now, are we talking like a an eventual series with like kind of like an underlying underlying bad guy that's gonna kind of pop up or a network?

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Well, this bad guy's not gonna pop up again. I'm not gonna I can't tell you why, but he ain't gonna pop up again. But there'll be other bad guys. Uh it's funny, I you know, I I love history. I you know, I'm definitely not an expert in it, but yeah. Um but but I love history, and as I'm looking at the sort of the next novel in the series, I was intrigued by the idea of uh stolen uh artwork by the Nazis from World War II. So uh there's probably gonna there's probably gonna be a need for somebody to go find something. I like it. Yeah.

Eight-Hour Flight Pick And Why

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Okay, so you know, my my interviews in the past used to be a little bit hit and miss when it comes to I shouldn't say hit and miss. Lengthwise, I used to go either like 30, 40 minutes or an hour talking about books and everybody's background, but I really like everybody to get out there and take a look at this Royal Diamonds book and to learn more about you. So I really want to get into one question I've been dying to ask since I've seen this meme is about who you would sit down on an eight-hour plane ride with to pick their brain. And the one I saw today had all these 80s action figures in it.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Well I came up with this. So you're on a plane, right? Yeah, and you're gonna be traversing from like JFK to like England. You got a ton of hours, and you can sit now next to one person out of this list, and I want you to pick that person and tell me why and what you would talk about. Fancy. So the first one is Indiana Jones. Okay. The second is Rambo, John J. Yeah. The third is John McClane. Okay, and the fourth is James Bond. Which one? Oh, the whole series of them. Okay. 19, like, like when did it start 50s? When when did they write the first book? Yeah, uh, they were written in the 50s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah. It would be Bond. Absolutely Bond, with without a shadow of a doubt. Um, it's funny. There's a um there there's a character, there's a Bond-like character in Royal Diamonds. Um I'll just, I mean, his name's Sir John. Um, and he had an interesting background. He's not a he's not a Bond guy, but he's nail doing things for the crown. Um and uh there's another character that he has a relationship with. It's probably going to be very familiar and just and very fun. Um and uh yeah, it's uh I think I think the readers will like that part of the book. Yeah, see he'll be a recurring character because he's just too damn good not to not to have back.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

He called me off guard because I'm thinking like action-oriented, thriller, not thriller oriented, but you know, like the background of your character. I was thinking more like Indiana Jones, but hey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, you know, the the my main character, Jake Steed. I mean, he's wealthy. Um, he was a Marine, he's resourceful. Um, but he's a he's you know, he's he's not a he's not a superhero. I mean, he can handle a gun, he knows how to sell uh sail, not sew him. She'd probably sew too. Um but uh but he's but he's no superhero by any stretch of the imagination. He's you know he's a good looking guy that you know has an eagle globe and anchor tattoo and a PhD in history from Oxford, but you know, he's yeah, he's he's no Captain America.

Supporting Indie Authors And Going Wide

SPEAKER_00 19:37

I like it. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on the show and I appreciate your your decades of service, and I'm looking forward to reading the book. And I will my new thing is too is if if there's an indie publisher out there, I will absolutely purchase the book. So if you become on the podcast, I'll definitely purchase the book because hey, look, leave a review. Oh, absolutely. Because when you when indie authors come on, a lot of people don't realize you're not when you give a book out, that money is coming out of your pocket. And it's not like the profit margin is even there yet, because by the time you get that book to print, you're a lot of cash in the hole.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Oh, uh yeah, absolutely. Um it's funny. I'm I'm in in front of me, I've got a whiteboard with little check marks on it of all the people that I've sent books to as a thank you. But uh, but yeah, I mean this one's coming out in print. It's coming, it's gonna be on Amazon, um, uh BarnesNobles.com, Ingram Spark if you need to be, you know, if another company wants to get it from a distributor. Um Audible is going to be fantastic. Um, I had I've got a retired uh native Charlestonian, Tucker Smith, who narrated it for me. He's a retired Air Force uh JAG officer and judge, and uh he jumped on the project, jumped in with both feet, and just killed it. So I can't I can't wait to get the Audible book out there as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

So Jack, I appreciate you, man. I'm looking forward to having you back on. And you know what? I want to have you back on and get into your background. Sure. Because you do have you do have a 30, what's 36 year old? 30 36 years, yeah. Yeah, we definitely have to get into that. I'm sure we've come across the same people in our network and yeah, be great to have you back on a show.

Follow Along And Find Your Pivot

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Yeah, I'd I'd love it. I appreciate it. You know, if if if if you people hearing this would be interested, follow me on Instagram, um at at Jack McTavish Adventures. Um and uh man, I love this fort, love the uh people I get a chance to work with um in the writing world, and uh, and I really, really love the my like my veteran followers that I have out there and being able to kind of talk to them and and give them, you know, as I move into my I'm in 57, as I kind of move into that period of life, being able to always ask people the question, you know, well, what are you gonna do after you hang up the uniform? You know, what are you gonna what are you gonna do, man? And uh, you know, find something you're passionate about. And for me, it was writing. You know what?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

I'm glad you went there because that is actually the the path forward with the Protectors podcast, and probably people could probably tell my social media is more about you know when we do the the long form interviews, they're going to be more about like what is that next fabe? What what is that I'd love to talk about? What's that what's that pivot? What is what are can you do to be the better version? Because bro, 53 is a lot different than when I was 40. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

I've I'm headlong into grandfatherhood now. And I, you know, I'm not writing for myself, I'm writing for a legacy to leave, you know, James and Henry. And uh yeah, fantastic. I can't wait to do it. Love it. So thanks, man.