How Writers Actually Improve Their Craft: Author Matthew Bockholt

追加: 2026-05-04

[00:00:02]All right, thank you so much for coming on Nonsense Free Kristen. I always start these interviews the same way. Who are you and what do you do?

[00:00:10]Well, my name is Matthew Bakholt and I'm an author first. I really enjoy writing.

[00:00:15]I always have my whole life. Something I mostly did as a hobby as a lot of authors start out. Professionally I did IT for a long time. I worked in the video game industry. I worked in marketing and different things like that and then an opportunity came along to go full-time writer, so that's what I'm doing now.

[00:00:33]Outstanding. Now, that's a really interesting group of ingredients and I think maybe that's part of why you've been able to be successful. So, we've got IT, we've got game development, we've got marketing. So, these are tech-heavy, process-heavy, results-oriented industries. So, how would you say that those careers shape the way you approached writing and then getting your work out there?

[00:00:58]That's a great question. You know, I've never really considered that. I think one of the things that I've noticed that a lot of indie authors struggle with is writing technique.

[00:01:08]Like, a lot of people are really good at telling a good story but not writing good prose, that kind of stuff.

[00:01:15]And maybe my professional background, like you said, it's very results-oriented. I came at it, once I started writing full-time, no longer as a hobby, I realized that I needed to get good at it first. And so, I went to a lot of conferences, watched a lot of videos, of course, you know, you read books, you see all the stuff around how you're supposed to write, but then I actually put it into practice. So, as I was writing my novel, I also would take time to practice specific writing techniques on the side so that I was improving my craft at the same time.

[00:01:46]And I think that that goes a long way to improve the overall quality of the story when you put it out there. Now, I like that you mentioned prose because kind of in the modern landscape that gets thrown to the wayside. Now, most of the authors that I work with are genre authors, they're not literary authors. So, in terms of refining one's prose because so much of it is subjective, so much of it, you know, is relative, you know, if it's old for instance, like I read a book by Saul Stein which was wonderful and very informative, but, you know, he came up in the 1940s. It's just a different world. So, in terms of refining your prose, getting better at your prose, what did you find was most instructive, most helpful to the execution as you were learning to write?

[00:02:29]Yeah, big part of that is, of course, finding your voice. You know, a lot of people talk about author voice and that's a real thing. Everyone has their own style. And I agree, you know, I just recently read Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray. You go read something like that from the late 1800s and the prose is vastly different from what you're going to approach today.

[00:02:48]I read that and I kind of feel like, man, I wish I could write like this and I wish people would read it if I did, but people just wouldn't accept that from a modern author and there's there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it does mean that you have to find what works for you and a lot of times I don't think that really comes out if you just spend time writing more. I think you really need to analyze. So, one thing that I do specifically is I run a weekly writing prompt group and as part of that prompt it's very limited in word count and so, we keep it small, something that you can do in an hour, 300 words or less kind of thing. And then we also include challenges with it, things like don't use be verbs or don't use adverbs or don't use the word the or would, should or could. You know, all these kinds of challenges that we oftentimes just lean on, they're just major crutches for amateur writers and the more you work with improving your micro, it bleeds into your macro. And so, when you get really good at knowing how to avoid those things, not that they're bad, but just that they're they're a crutch. We just overuse them all the time and you can really see it. Once you start to work on it, you pick up a novel and you start reading and you can see all the wases and weres and bees and you know, all that stuff just really jumps out at you and you're like, man, this it's not about necessarily like lowering word count, it's really just about being more precise in your language, right? And so, you're not wasting the reader's time and you're not wasting your time as a writer as well. And I feel like honing that kind of craft aspect of writing also kind of brings out your voice because everyone approaches it in a different way, how they deal with those things because there's no one right way to write prose. Absolutely and probably very genre-dependent and I'm very interested in your ideas about genre because a lot of the advice that I actually personally give is you need to be in a really tight box, that cover needs to say immediately what genre this is and who it's for because, you know, we've got the thumbnail size and we've got the attention spans of a gnat. So, I've been contributing to that idea that genre is the cage in which you must operate in order to get your voice out, but you have said that genre started as a way to help readers find books similar to the one that they like, basically how to put it on a shelf, but now the industry demands that genres dictate what authors write because they're thinking about marketing, they're thinking about the specific tropes and that's, okay, write according to the trope. So, when did that flip happen and what do you think was like the driving force behind it?

[00:05:17]That's a great question. When did that flip happen, man? I don't know if I could nail a specific time period or anything like that, but something did happen along the way and maybe the flip happened with marketing departments at publishing houses. Maybe that's when it really happened because, like you said, there are expectations within a genre.

[00:05:34]When someone goes to the romance section of a bookstore and they grab a novel and the cover looks like all the other covers, they have an expectation of what's going to be in that book and if it's not there, they're going to be disappointed. So, that's a very real thing you have to deal with, but where did that come from is the question, right? So, once upon a time there weren't 10 billion books in the world, there were, you know, maybe 10,000. And so, when someone came into a store and said, I like this one, what's something similar to that? And so, then you get books together on shelves that are similar. And I think genre used to serve the customer and now it demands something of the author. And so, it has flipped, right? And so, I think that's unhealthy for the industry as a whole.

[00:06:15]Cuz when you really think about it, what are the major classics of a genre, the really defining books of a genre are ones that didn't fit into another genre.

[00:06:24]Right? And so, they had to create their own. You look at those really big successful authors and their books and they just didn't fit on any other shelf at the time that they came out, but now they have their own shelf full of copycats. And that's I say copycats, it sounds like a bad thing, but what it means is that a new audience was found, a new niche was found and people are trying to serve that and there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think that it's unhealthy for the industry to only try to serve the genres because then we're not we don't know what genres we're missing. You know, what what new product is wanted that we don't even know is wanted because people are too busy trying to fit their book onto that shelf next to that other really popular book hoping that it'll sell as well rather than saying, what can I make that hasn't been made before?

[00:07:11]Um that maybe has parts of romance and parts of sci-fi and parts of fantasy and parts of mystery. And now we have a new conglomeration of some new thing and it's exactly what 10 billion people wanted, but we didn't know it.

[00:07:25]>> Right. And I've encountered that a lot, like with clients and then there's people who ask me to do like a beta reader something, they're like, look, maybe you could help me pick a lane.

[00:07:32]It's really important, tell me which lane I need to be in because my book crosses three or four genres and that's not terribly unusual, especially when we're dealing in sci-fi, fantasy, that kind of world, it does cross a lot of lanes. So, what do you think an author in that situation should do?

[00:07:50]Well, this is where I think traditional publishing fails because they don't know how to handle that kind of book always. Sometimes they do and sometimes it works out, but I think more often than not it doesn't because they are trying to fit something onto a shelf. They are trying to target a specific market that they already know and know how to reach. But what would I tell that author? I don't know. I it's tough because you want to say just write what you want to write, right? Write what you love and make it yours and I 100% agree with that because the reality is that there's only one guaranteed audience for your book and that's you, the author. So, if you don't love what you're writing, then maybe no one else will either. But if you do love what you're writing, I think it comes through and I think it finds its audience. Like it's a 10 billion people on the planet, almost we're getting there, right? Give it a few more years. No matter what you're writing, there is going to be an audience for it. The trouble is finding that audience and the internet luckily does make that a lot easier than it used to be, but still very difficult. I'm not trying to, you know, add this. It's a challenge. But I think maybe one of the main things I would say is come up with comps that make people go, wow, that sounds different. The ones that I use for my book Bloom is I say it's Twilight if Orson Scott Card wrote it.

[00:09:03]You know, and so I tell that one and they just kind of go like, what? Wait, that sounds really weird. Like, yeah, it is. It's very different. It doesn't fit on any of the shelves in the bookstore or it maybe it fits on multiple shelves in the bookstore is probably a better way of looking at it, but I don't know. I think that's a good one actually because just about everybody has heard of Twilight. Even if they hadn't read it, they've heard of the movies, they've heard of the thing, but your audience is the one who knows what Orson Scott Card wrote and they have an opinion. Maybe they read it a long time ago, they know that author's name. So, that narrows it just on its own. So, if you say Ender's Game, you know, somebody's like, oh, okay, but they don't necessarily know the author's name. So, it's I think it's that's a good way to do it, to narrow your audience cuz if you say it's kind of like Twilight, but not, then that doesn't really narrow it.

[00:09:49]But it sounds like a million other books.

[00:09:51]>> Yeah. If you narrow it down with Orson Scott Card, it's like I think that actually is a brilliant positioning. And this lack of kind of options because even though we have a thriving indie author community, we have several small publishers who are helping indie writers have a little more structure, but they're really imitating trad pub.

[00:10:10]There's really no third option. So, with your background in IT and marketing, you've made a third option with Fablevine, which is very interesting to look at. So, could you tell us what that is and how it came about and what it does?

[00:10:26]Yeah, I mean, on the surface right now, if you go to fablevine.com, it's just my author website where you can buy my books. And it's the only place you can buy my books. And it's only on ePub right now.

[00:10:37]So, you can only get the ebook at the moment. But, it's also a concept which I've been pitching around to lots of editors and other writers. So, hopefully it'll go somewhere. At this point, it's still in the concept phase.

[00:10:49]But, my idea is to create a third option.

[00:10:52]Cuz the way I see it, the traditional publishing has its place, right? And they're doing their thing. And then you have one other option, which is Amazon kind of side of things where it's just I describe the two as like one is a drip and one is a waterfall.

[00:11:07]Right? Publishers can only publish so much, and so they're very careful, they're very selective, they're concentrating their drops into something they believe in. And then Amazon is the waterfall where it's just this constant deluge of just product. And it's it's hard to break into one side, and it's hard to get noticed on the other side.

[00:11:24]And there's just no good middle ground.

[00:11:27]And so, my idea for Fablevine is to create a middle ground where the author is the gatekeeper themselves. Where the author can basically pay an upfront monthly cost to put their book on the shelf.

[00:11:40]And then they get 100% of the return of that book. Rather than a publisher who's going to keep a large chunk, or Amazon who's going to keep a smaller chunk, but still considerate amount. This gives authors a chance to say, I believe enough in my work to assume some risk the way traditional publishing does, right? And I believe in it enough that I think that it will make X amount of money per month because it's of a good enough quality. And so, that's the concept there. Like I said, it's still being worked on. But, that's that's my hope is to produce a third option. Not to overcome the other two, but to produce a third option for the indie publisher who is maybe hopefully above and beyond the normal. Right. And that's actually becoming more common because Amazon is the big dog in town. Nobody's going to take them down, but it's also very overwhelming, especially in even from the buyer perspective because how many per day are coming out there? So, a site like Fablevine, it's self-selecting, and I think that the model of the author paying upfront in a monthly fee is a good selector because people hate gatekeepers and fine, fair enough. But, we can agree that there needs to be some kind of gate. You know, on one hand we hate being kept out for no reason, on the other hand we hate that AI slop or foreign scammers are allowed to come in and it's just like why is everybody welcome when they shouldn't be? So, having that upfront fee keeps the selection smaller, which makes it less overwhelming for the buyer.

[00:13:05]Have you looked around a site called CurioS at all?

[00:13:09]I haven't even heard of it.

[00:13:10]>> I hadn't either. I heard about them at Author Nation, and they're similar. So, they have, you know, the the upfront fee from the author, and they only just added physical products. They sold ebooks up until now and audiobooks. It was all digital. Now they're letting you do physical products. And what I noticed is it's much smaller and it's cleaner, and I want to hear your feedback on this. They allow the author, if they get a spam review or even a bad review, they are able to remove reviews from their book. How do you feel about that? Do you think that's a good thing or is it does it draw into question the value of the site?

[00:13:46]Yeah, do I think it's a good thing?

[00:13:48]Potentially. The problem with tools is that they can be abused, right? And so, an author could just go in there and say, "I'm just going to remove all the one-star reviews." So, this is an interesting thing cuz this happened to me recently on my website, Fablevine.

[00:14:00]Because it's my website, every review that gets submitted, I actually have to approve. And someone did submit a one-star review. And I'll admit, you have that temptation to be like, "I'm just not going to let it through." But, no, I did. I had Yeah, I approved it.

[00:14:13]There wasn't anything mean or nasty in it, so I was like, "All right, it's a fair, honest opinion. I'm not going to hide that." And so, as a tool, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, especially in today's cancel culture kind of thing. People review the person rather than the product quite often. And so, having some sort of redress of that kind of grievance would be nice.

[00:14:34]Putting it totally in the hands of the author is questionable.

[00:14:38]I would want to make sure that I would maybe just make it very plain on the site, you know, if it were me developing it, I'd probably say, "On this author, it will tell you how many you reviews they've rejected." Right? And it may not tell you what star or whatever it was, but you can see what percentage of reviews does this author reject.

[00:14:54]Right? So, at least you know, some kind of visibility to the audience to know would be nice. I think that's So, like if you see, "Oh, they've only got four reviews and they're all five stars."

[00:15:03]But, then you see that they've rejected like 37 reviews. It's like pretty much know what happened there.

[00:15:08]>> right? And you're like, "Oh, okay, I see what's going on here." Yeah. Yeah, but if it's the other way around, if they've got like 5,000 reviews and it's a 4.5 average and they've rejected 10, those were probably just really nasty, mean reviews or whatever, you know. There has to be something there. And I I think it's interesting cuz I was looking at the spreadsheet you provided. So, you are planning to replace the five-star review system, which is helpful for normal e-com sites, but not so much for books. And this is element-based, so you're having them rate things like technique, style, premise, execution, and conclusion of whether that's positive or negative. And that kind of brings to mind StoryGraph, which is a Goodreads alternative, and that's how their recommendation machine works.

[00:15:49]Instead of recommending, "Okay, here's just a simple genre or here's a bestseller." They're like, "Okay, well, you really like books with these particular elements in them. Here are some with that." And that's kind of helping indies get discovered. And so, the rating system on the merits of the book, I think it is really positive as well. What kind of made you want to do that?

[00:16:06]So, two things. First of all, I think the five-star system is just really weird. I don't know why we keep going with it. It doesn't work well. I really like Steam's recommend or not recommend system. If you're a gamer and are familiar with Steam, you'll know what that is. If not, what it is is that on a game, people who have actually bought the product can either recommend it or not recommend it. There's no in between, there's no five-star rating. And so, it really divides the people who leave reviews as the people who actually really liked it or really didn't like it, and not all the in between people who just might casually throw on a five-star because they enjoyed it and then they move on, or a one-star because they didn't like this one character and then they move on kind of thing. It's You kind of have to pick a side. And I think the review system, that sort of system works a lot better cuz only the people who really like it or really hate it involve themselves.

[00:16:53]And then on the other side that you mentioned where it's individualized, like you're rating not do I recommend just the book yes or no, you can do that, but then also I forget the categories. It's been a while since I read that, but it's like concept, execution, and then how well does it pull everything together at the end, right? And so, you're not just getting That kind of also competes against the cancel review cuz some cancelers are going to go in there and just hit the thumbs down and then, you know, is the plot good or not? Oh, I don't know. Is this good or not? Is this product good or not? And so, it also lets people know what this author is good at. And maybe it lets the author as well know what they need to improve on. And so, if I have a book out there and people are really rating up the concept and they're loving the execution, but they don't like the ending, they don't like how I pulled it all together at the end, then maybe that means I need to fix, you know, I need to consider that.

[00:17:46]Yeah, the Stephen King blow everything up at the end method. If only we had the rating system in the '70s.

[00:17:52]>> [laughter] >> Awesome changes there.

[00:17:56]So, [snorts] as you're looking at this platform, you're doing your own books and writing, and you're writing YA, which is that serves its own challenges. So, what is the best way for an author cuz because you it's the hardest thing in the world to get enough books and then also get enough readers at the same time. So, how do you go about making yourself visible?

[00:18:15]And then what can other authors do as well?

[00:18:19]You know, I don't really go about making myself visible, and that's intentional at the moment. I'm actually when I first started writing this and pitching it to publishers and getting feedback from agents and editors and stuff, I realized at one point it was never going to go traditional publish.

[00:18:33]And so, then I had to start rethinking of how I was going to indie publish, right? And I decided that I wasn't going to publish at all until the series was done. So, I was just going to keep pitching and hoping on the traditional side until I finish the full four-book series that I'm writing.

[00:18:46]And once I had the full thing done, if I hadn't gotten picked up by then, then I'd do a quick release. Book one, book two, book three, book four like month apart. Which is was I should say was.

[00:18:57]Things are always changing in the industry, but that was for quite a while a big recommend for indie publishers is do a quick release of your series once it's finished so that people can immediately pick up the next one and also know that it's done and not have to worry about is this ever going to be finished? Am I going to pick up a dead series and love it halfway through, but never get to finish kind of thing.

[00:19:17]>> [clears throat] [laughter] >> So, that was my plan. And then, obviously the plan changed cuz the first two books are published and the second two are still in development. So, what I decided to do instead, in the gaming industry, there's a concept Shoot, it's been too long now. I've forgotten the exact technical term for it. But, it's basically like a silent release.

[00:19:37]Sometimes developers will just release a game in like a single market somewhere like Canada or something and not do any marketing, not do any, you know, just throw it out there and see how it does.

[00:19:47]People trickle in and give responses and you can fix your game and mold it around the responses before doing a bigger release kind of thing.

[00:19:55]I have no intention of molding my book, so I that's not the reason why I'm doing the more silent release. I'm doing the more silent release because it isn't finished because I am still planning on doing the bigger marketing push once the series is finished and then at that point also deciding if I want to put it on Amazon or not or if maybe by then Fablevine is fully up and running the way I'd like it to be. But in any case, I do talk about it. I talked about it online, talk about it on the socials of course, that's always a good idea. I go to conferences, I do presentations, I teach for Apex. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Dave Farland has a writers group that has professionals come in and talk to the writers regularly and I do presentations for them quite often. And so when I'm doing those things, I do tell people about my book. I do push it around. I do let people know it's out there. But yeah, as far as like marketing and the bigger picture stuff, I haven't gotten into that yet and I don't plan to for probably at least a year and which is when I expect the series to be finished, so. Outstanding. Now you mentioned Apex and part of your thing as you do your teaching, as you do your conferences, you kind of have a crusade to kill rules of writing as a friend.

[00:21:01]Yes. And that's one thing that really discourages a lot of writers. Oh, you're breaking the rules and sometimes it's the rule that they just made up in their head. You're not allowed to use the word that or some nonsense. And you want to replace it with writing techniques. So what's the difference and why does that distinction matter? You know, there's a really big difference between those two words. It's funny cuz we're writers, we like words, we use them for all kinds of fun reasons. We like metaphors, but then we also get really pedantic as well. And so the reality is that words do have meaning and they do have value according to that meaning. And I think using the word rules is not only incorrect, it's actually damaging because what happens is a rule is a something that if you don't follow, you don't get in or you're kicked out or whatever it is, right? If you take sports for example, if you're not following the rules on the basketball court, you don't get to play basketball.

[00:21:52]Not only that, but rules are actually really simple. Everyone can follow the rules. Like you can be the worst basketball player and be following all the rules, right? You can be the best basketball player and following all the rules. So rules aren't determining whether or not you're good or bad at basketball.

[00:22:06]What determines whether you're good or bad at basketball is your technique. How good are you at dribbling? How good are you at shots? How good are you at passing? How good are you at the overall strategy of the game? And so when you take it out of the concept of rules, these are the things you must do and into the technique side of these are ways you can improve your craft. What it does is it changes the mindset from you have to do it this way to if you learn how to do it this way, your book will be better. And not only that, but techniques require practice. Rules don't.

[00:22:39]And I think that's the big disservice.

[00:22:41]We talked about this earlier where I think practicing, you know, your prose, practicing dealing with different situations, practicing with good dialogue, practicing with setups and payoffs, that will improve your overall craft. If you're not practicing those things, if you just sit down and write, again, back to the basketball analogy, if I want to become a professional basketball player, I say, "Okay, I'm going to go out and do a pickup game of basketball every for an hour every day and in a couple years, I'll be able to be in the NBA, right?" Does anyone think that's how that works? Of course not, that's silly, right? No one that's not how that works and it's not how it works for books either. You can't just sit down and write your book for an hour every day and then publish it and be like, "Hey, it's just as good as Brandon Sanderson's or whatever else." It's It's not how it works. You have to improve your craft specifically. You have to learn the techniques and actually work on them.

[00:23:31]If there was one piece of writing advice I could retire, it was just write. It doesn't matter what you write, just write every day. And it's like if this is how you just want to spend your time, If it's a hobby, yeah, that's great.

[00:23:43]>> but if you actually want to if you want people to give you money for this, then no, just sitting down and writing is not going to do it actually. So what if other than that, obviously, if you could permanently retire one piece of writing advice or one writing rule that's repeated constantly, what would it be?

[00:24:02]Man, I probably would come back to the genre thing. Write to your Write to your genre expectations. I'm like, "Ah, kill the genre expectations." No, I Again, I understand why those exist and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with following them, but I Bloom is me writing in a genre I'm not very familiar with, quite frankly. Which isn't to say I'm completely unfamiliar with it. I did read the Twilight series.

[00:24:22]I've have read other teen romance kind of books and also some paranormal ones similar to Twilight, but I didn't go into it saying, "I'm going to follow these genre expectations." I kind of went into it saying, "Hang all the expectations. I'm going to try something new because that's already been done before a million times." And I've had really good responses. I mean, I do have the one one star review, so it and that's just here's one piece of advice that every writer does need to have, which is don't do this if you don't have thick skin because the reality is that no one's book is for everyone. There are going to be people who hate your book.

[00:24:59]No matter how many people love it, there will be people who hate it, too.

[00:25:02]So this brings me to my next question because YA has been getting a lot of press lately and not for great reasons.

[00:25:08]For one, it's almost entirely female dominated now. Authors like Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine are long, long retired and gone. And disturbingly, it seems to be written towards adult women versus actual teens and younger teens especially. And it's just a problem. Now yours is unique not only because it is actually targeted at a young adult, at a teen audience, but it's also specifically for both male and female readers. You wrote it for your own kids who are 17 and 15, I think you said.

[00:25:42]At the time, it's 18 and almost 18 and 16 now, so.

[00:25:47]Yeah.

[00:25:48]No, they just keep growing. So what does it take especially when dealing with a YA audience where you do have to water down some things? How do you write that fiction so it doesn't condescend to boys or bore them or feel too girly?

[00:26:03]Man, I don't know if I agree that you have to water down things. I think you have to be careful of certain subjects. Water down? I think kids are smarter than we give them credit for.

[00:26:12]So when I first started writing Bloom is actually several years ago, I would have to think back. My daughter was probably 12 and my son 10 when I began writing them. So I was writing for very young young adults, right? You know, I think back to Ender's Game and there's a reason why I use Orson Scott Card because his books are very accessible to a young audience even though they handle very mature subject matter. You know, you think of Ender's Game and you have these very intelligent children, right?

[00:26:41]And as a child when I read that, I enjoyed it and I thought, "Yeah, kids are smart." Obviously, these are super smart children, but I think just in general, kids are smarter than we give them credit for.

[00:26:53]Not only that, but they're curious. They want to know more about the world. And so I think it's okay to approach youth as if they're intelligent, as if they're hungry to know more, as if they're explorers, adventurers.

[00:27:05]You know, there's a I don't want to I don't want to rag on anyone here, but there's something with the prequel series of Star Wars that happened which the original trilogy of Star Wars didn't have and that was Jar Jar Binks.

[00:27:18]And the reason that George gave for putting Jar Jar Binks in there is because he said, "It's for kids. I want kids to be able to approach this material." And I the correct response is Star Wars was for kids, too. Kids didn't run around wanting to be Jar Jar Binks.

[00:27:30]They run around wanting to be Han Solo.

[00:27:32]They run around wanting to be Luke Skywalker or even Obi-Wan, you know, this cool old man who can swing a lightsaber, right? And use the force.

[00:27:39]Kids want to be adults. They want to go on adventures. They want to do hard things.

[00:27:46]And so when you appeal to that side of them, I think that they grab onto it and they love it. They want more of it.

[00:27:53]I think you're right and you're right to push back against the watering of trad pub and up. The first one was sex, couldn't have sex on the page and really it was frowned upon at least in the early years to even mention that the protagonist had been sexually active.

[00:28:11]Now Christopher Pike was the first one at least as far as I know in the mid-90s to be like, "No, I'm going to mention that some of them are not virgins." And some parents didn't like that. But the other one was death. In in the mid-90s especially, we had all these slasher things, but the way death was handled was different. You know, to sit with the mourning was not something that was done and to kind of have the very adult handling of death. Yours, Bloom starts out with death front and center. It opens at a funeral. So is that a deliberate statement or is that just what the story demanded?

[00:28:47]So this might come back to using writing to your strengths as a person.

[00:28:52]I'm extremely familiar with death.

[00:28:54]Um even from a very young age, I was surrounded with death of family and friends. Even young family, I had a cousin who died of leukemia at eight. I was 10 at the time. She was a very good friend of mine, so that was I wouldn't say traumatizing. I would say an experience. It was a learning experience that death is real and impactful and I continue on throughout my life being very familiar with death. It's not something I bring it up a lot because it Death in our culture is a bit taboo to even really talk about. I've lost three children Um in in infancy. And so that's something that again, it's even just bring it up, you're careful who you bring it up with and who you talk to about it because kind of immediately puts people on the back foot and uncomfortable.

[00:29:38]Even though throughout the vast majority of history, you look at the infant mortality rate and it's 30, 40% normal, right? Before modern medicine. And so there was a time when infant death was just like, oh yeah, me, too. It was just normal. And now it's very strange and unusual, and especially in first-world societies. And so my children also have siblings younger than them who they're familiar with death, too. And so again, I was writing to them. And so I didn't want to shy around this topic, and I think that it's also death is extremely valuable to a character arc. Not just experiencing it in others, but experiencing it themselves. Now, that sounds weird, probably. But right up front in my prologue of Bloom, at the very end, the main character tells you that he dies, that he's going to die in this book.

[00:30:29]Right? And that is fulfilled at the end of the book. And so death is a major part of this, and it continues to be a major part of it as the series goes on, and I it's always tempting to take the easy way out, like a lot of times comics is very famous for being like, oh, and he died, and then he returned, right? And then some help Palpatine came back.

[00:30:47]Anyway, I was going to ask about that, because that's very common and not just in comic book movies or Star Wars. Every time Well, not every time, but many times, if it appears in movies, in books, especially those targeted at young adults or like the popcorn crowd, if there's a death, it's like reversed, or it's softened, or used as a cliffhanger and then walked back. What do you think that pattern says about us as the audience, or about the people making those stories?

[00:31:15]I think we just don't respect it. I think, for instance, in the Bible, God says, "Fear me."

[00:31:20]But when he says that, what he really means is respect me. Think about me.

[00:31:22]Keep me in your mind. Always be aware that I'm here watching. And I think that we need to have as a society kind of a fear of death in that same sense. We should be aware of it. And not be afraid of it in the sense of, oh no, I'm going to I might die. You know, it's not good to be obsessed with the worry, but just to be aware of the reality. And I think that it it's healthy to again introduce that to young people. To be like, look, death is real, and you are going to die someday.

[00:31:49]And you may you may, hopefully, get to choose your demise. You may get to choose how that happens, and you may have to make a choice to say, I'm going to die for something I believe in at some point. And that that's okay to do.

[00:32:04]And that that can be noble and beautiful.

[00:32:07]Definitely. What's a book or a movie that you feel like handles death really well? What did they get right?

[00:32:15]You know, my favorite movie, and it's I don't say that lightly, right? It's always difficult to pick a favorite anything.

[00:32:22]But my favorite movie is Meet Joe Black.

[00:32:25]And it's been out for a long time. I highly recommend it. I'm not spoiling anything when I say this, cuz this is a setup. Meet Joe Black is about death, the person, the character death.

[00:32:35]And it's very deep and moving, and the way it handles death in that movie is the same way I wanted to handle it in my stories, as not this thing to be afraid of, but this thing that that is just a reality. Not to look forward to, not to be afraid of, but to just accept, and then move on knowing that it's coming.

[00:32:53]And how do you want that to look in your life, whether it's today or tomorrow or 10 years or 30 years or 40 years from now? What are you doing in your life that will leave an impact on people around you, that will be meaningful when you're no longer around?

[00:33:07]That's an excellent point. So, Meet Joe Black. Sorry, we're getting really deep and dark here.

[00:33:12]>> No, I mean, it's it's good, cuz a lot of people when people write, they want to write something important, and nobody is like, oh, I'm just doing this for funsies, cuz a lot of times writing is very difficult, which is why there are a lot of writers who get very angry at people who use AI to draft their books, even if they do a lot of editing, they're like, look, why do it at all?

[00:33:32]They just get really frustrated with it, because this is hard, and you're trying to say important things. You know, on on my corner Twitter, people are very fond of Lord of the Rings and all the Tolkien stuff. It's not my cup of tea, the books, anyway. But they like it because it says something important about these values and about the nature of humanity and the soul and having hope and those big things. And I like to tell people, my least favorite movie, even though it was, you know, won a bunch of awards and people like it, is Seven. Because what Seven had to say was to me horrible. And yeah, it was important and it made an impact, but it's like I would never want what Seven had to say to be true about all of us. I'm unfamiliar with the movie, so I'm not sure what you mean.

[00:34:16]>> So, Seven is a Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman movie that came out in, I think, the late '90s or maybe early 2000s, where there's a serial killer and he's killing people who he deems to be guilty of one of the seven deadly sins. And at the end, it's the famous, you know, what's in the box, and Brad Pitt's wife has been murdered, and so he is the final angel of death to the murderer.

[00:34:38]And, you know, it's like, well, humans are bad, basically, is what they're saying. This is what we are. And there's no getting away from it. I'm like, no, that's wrong. That's so inherently wrong. And I've never watched it again after I saw that [laughter] awful movie.

[00:34:50]And I think another Brad Pitt movie, Meet Joe Black, was And I only saw that once as well, but just because it made me sob, and I hate But that had the opposite message, and it was much more positive.

[00:35:03]Yeah, that ending is just so perfect and beautiful. I love it.

[00:35:06]And even I'm going to say The Crucible.

[00:35:08]So, I saw the film of The Crucible with Daniel Day-Lewis before I >> And >> Right. You can you can just say something serious, but I don't know if it's the fear of being recorded all the time, which is valid, because everywhere they go, they are. But there's just such a lack of sincerity and a terror of it, of being caught saying something that's not snarky and ironic. And I don't know if books are the answer to help with that, but I kind of like to think that art really informs our behavior. It really does.

[00:38:19]So, hopefully that can have a little change as as we go along.

[00:38:24]So, Bloom, I had it down that the first 11 chapters are on Royal Road. Is that still accurate? Yeah, so all 11 are on Royal Road. I am posting them as well on X, just in my own uh I forget what they call them. The long form >> Articles, yeah, I think. Yeah, articles.

[00:38:39]There you go. So, I'm I'm posting one every other day. I'm going to be posting chapter five, I think, today. Anyway, so we'll get there on X as well. Of course, it's not the best experience, because browsers aren't good for formatting. We have the paragraph breaks in between everything. I promise the actual ebook is formatted like an actual novel. You can read it. It's great. So, they can buy the first two books on Fable Vine, so they want the actual ebook. They're available right now. And how are you finding that? Cuz, okay, so I had a previous >> [laughter] >> writing coach on here, and he recommended giving your book away for free as much as possible to find, you know, as many readers who like your book. Like, how do you feel about that advice? Is that been true for you, or not so much? Give the book away for free entire in it like in its entirety? Yeah, like he was like, yeah, just send free copies to people, put it up online, you know, and to just get your name and get your work out there and build a fan base that way.

[00:39:31]I don't think there's a wrong way to do that. I'm not sure that I would necessarily do that myself. I do often do sales on it, where I put it down really cheap, where you have to put a code in kind of thing right now. But again, I'm not really doing a big marketing push at the moment. It's just as I feel like it here and there kind of thing. So, I don't know. Give it away for free feels wrong to me though on on a personal level.

[00:39:53]Cuz the reality is that people value things for what they put into it. If I give you my book for free, you you might appreciate it and say, "Hey, thanks."

[00:40:02]and then put it aside and never read it.

[00:40:04]If you paid $10 for it, you're going to read that thing.

[00:40:07]Right? You gave me something, you want something in return. And so, I'm not sure that's necessarily sound advice.

[00:40:13]Now, as far as giving it away free to influencers, people like you or other people with podcasts, reviewers, that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm all for that sort of thing because you're both getting something in return, right?

[00:40:23]They're getting something that they're giving their viewers that they want and you're getting the review, right? So, you're both getting something out of that. But if you're just giving it away for free, I don't know. That kind of to me feels like you're saying that it's not worth anything to you. So, I don't know. How it rubbed me too. Tim Grahl, by the way, the name has come to me. So, yeah, and you were saying that I was like, I would I would at least consider it. I would I would be very careful. I would I would at least consider it.

[00:40:47]Both sides of that. Absolutely. So, if people want to find you and interact with you, is there any other social media that you're actually like active on?

[00:40:54]Active on just X. Yeah.

[00:40:57]So, I I do a podcast called Plot Armor Online.

[00:41:01]And that's currently in hiatus status. I really want to get back to it and do the same sort of interview kind of stuff with authors and indie authors.

[00:41:09]And so, you can go look up past episodes of that. It's all over the place.

[00:41:14]And I I also would really like to get into doing like a live stream of writing where I'm just live streaming my writing prompt every week that I do. So, I'm probably going to do that at some point in the future, but I haven't started yet. Awesome. And are you still on the convention circuit? So, I know you've done Base Con in the past at Westercon.

[00:41:32]Are you still doing those? And if so, which one do you recommend for like writers to go to? Fun stuff. Sure.

[00:41:38]Yes.

[00:41:40]I'm very lucky to live in Utah. Utah has a lot of great conventions here because it's got a massive writing community.

[00:41:47]You know, we've got Brandon Sanderson's and we've got Yeah, just a lot of very big writers in the industry are here in Utah. And so, we have things like LTUE, which is Life, the Universe, and Everything, which happens every February in Provo, Utah. So, I do that every year. I present a panel there.

[00:42:02]We also have the Writers' Cantina, which is a much smaller, intentionally smaller convention. It's for writers only. It's much more intimate. Larry Correia often goes to that one. He's Yeah, he's big there. Steve Diamond, we've got like Dave Butler. And there's a lot of local ones that I do regularly because they're local and easy to get to. The Base Con I've only done once. I would be happy to go back again. That was a lot of fun. It was great. There are bigger ones that I haven't done yet, but I would be up for it. I'd be interested. Awesome. I did Westercon, which was cuz they were in Salt Lake one year. And so, it was here. So, I did that. That was fun. Yeah, that was the thing about COVID kind of broke everybody. And even though we're 6 years out, it's like, "Look, you can do things IRL." So, I do like to mention when people are doing things in person.

[00:42:46]I think that's a really good opportunity for writers if they can. So, that's all I have. Thank you so much for joining me today. And yeah, I can't wait to get a copy of your book. I'll send you one for free. How's that sound?

[00:42:58]>> I would love one. Thank you.

[00:43:00]All right. Yeah, thank you.