 Welcome to Church of the Chair where we celebrate all the things we do while seated. I'm your host, E, here with my guest, Chad Lutsky, and we're doing something different today. We are doing a live collab starting with a brainstorming session this morning. We should be going for about an hour, roughly. It might last longer. I don't know how long this is going to last, but you guys are going to be able to witness the inception of the idea all the way, hopefully, to publication. The tentative plan right now, me and Chad talked about this yesterday, is we'll do all the brainstorming, get everything set up before we start writing, and then we will write it live also. When I write my sections, I'll be live on my channel. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do that all the time, but that's the game plan right now. Sometimes I wake up three o'clock in the morning and I just want to start writing. I guess I can just go ahead and click live. How are you doing, Chad? I'm doing alright, man. I'm tired, just like you are. I just woke up, so if I'm not the bubbly personality you're expecting, I apologize. I was telling Chad yesterday I get up between five and seven every day, and my alarm clock is set for six. Sometimes I wake up before it, sometimes I turn it off and sleep in a little bit. But this morning I wake up and it's daylight, and it's already eight o'clock. I'm like, well, shit, because I set my alarm from Monday through Friday so I can sleep in if I can on the weekends. And of course, today being the day I have something to do, I forgot to set it for Saturday or Sunday, no, Sunday. See, I don't even know what day it is. I forgot to set it for Sunday, and I woke up at eight. I'm like, I'm surprised I woke up in time at all because I took a gummy last night. But anyways, so yeah, that's the gist of everything. Where do you want to start, Chad? Just that, I guess as a, just preface it by saying, yeah, we haven't really talked. The only thing that we've talked about is the plans that we think we want for when the book is done, as far as publisher or whatever. And then this is not horror that we were going to do something that's more along the lines of Gretlett or Southern Goth or I guess something like that. And it'll still have teeth. It just won't be horror. Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, we haven't really, we haven't thrown out any ideas. All that's reserved for here to so that people can be kind of a fly on the wall. We get, we were talking yesterday how, I've gotten so many questions about, you know, how do you collaborate? How is the, you know, and the process is actually different with each person that you collaborate with. But people are really fascinated by how it works. And so, yeah, thought it'd be cool to open the door and let people come in and see. You worked with Tim Meyer, Mayor, is it? Okay. Tim Meyer and John Bowden. Have you worked with anybody else yet? Yeah. Terry M West, we wrote our novel together. Yeah. I sort of worked with Bob Ford. We have something on the way, way back burner that we had been doing. But the early, it is really not even that early. I've been up for two hours. So, so I should, I should, but I'm not, I'm not a coffee drinker. So, I'll be fine once I get to the bottom of the cup. But yeah, I mean, I had some some, I guess you'd call failed or whatever. Collaborations with some authors. Yeah. It's just like it, and I'm still super tight with all of them. It's just that for one reason or another, you know, like probably the one that I'm closest with the most is Hunter Shay dude ghosted me. We were, we were writing something. And then if I ever bring it up, he's just like, Oh yeah. I'm going to say this. I love Hunter. Love him to death. Love his work. Love him. But I cannot imagine a collaboration with Chad Lutzky and Hunter Shay is completely polar opposite styles. Like he is all about, you know, the, and this is not, this is not, he's a good writer too. Don't get me wrong. He is all about the balls to the walls for action, you know, monsters and all that stuff. And then you got Chad over here with his, you know, slice of life stories and everything. It actually, it probably make for an amazing collaboration. But I don't think it would be like you, you, you both would have to write each chapter if you get what I'm saying. Like, you know, you wouldn't be able to go back and forth with chapters. You'd have to layer each other because you're good at one thing. He's good in another. Well, he's good at the same stuff you are, but he, I guess what's the best way to put that he uses more words. I guess to, to get, to get points across. Whereas yours is, you know, you can explain like an entire scene in a sentence or two. And he might be able to also, but what I'm saying is the styles are completely fucking different. Yeah. His, if you think of like, if you hand somebody a creature from Hunter Shay and you say this is a big football. It's like, yeah, it is, but it's so much more than that. That's underselling it. You're absolutely right. And that's definitely, definitely not what I was getting at. I know you know, but I'm just not forming the words right now because I love his stuff. I love his writing and he can get really fucking deep. So that's not even what I'm talking about. It's literally just the style like the cadence of the words would be so different to have, to have you and him on the same. And with us, I find it funny that it was actually a misconception that kind of turned you off. It might not have been the only thing, but it was a misconception that all I wrote was horror. Because the only thing he had read from me at that point in time was everything is horrible now, which is like a Bentley little book. I've been reading way too much Bentley little. It was a little cosmic horror thing. And that's like the probably the worst possible example of my stuff that you could possibly pick up. And by now I'm sure, you know, Chad agrees. But I'm always I've always been character first theme second. And then the next thing I worry about is just pacing, you know, is there enough interesting shit happening. And I just let this story become whatever the hell it is. And that's how all the pin names really got started because I would write literally any genre. I would see something and I'd be like, I can do that better, or at least as well. So let me try this. To bash hunter for a second on our collaboration. You know, we had we had a couple chats, you know, stream yard chats and stuff and we're spitballing ideas and we had started our alien abduction novel that we were writing. I had just written or I just read communion by Whitley Stryver terrifying book that I hadn't ever read before. And so we were playing kind of in Hunters ballpark. And I get a message from James Newman. Love James's stuff, especially Midnight Rain. It's just one of the best coming of age books. I get a message from him. He's like, Hey, do you want to write a book together? You know, it was like, freaking James Newman. And I said, I would love to, but I'm writing something with Hunter. So Hunter starts ghosting me soon after that with our project. I get back with James. I was like, Hey, man, I'm ready if you are. He's like, sorry, dude, I'm writing with Ronald Kelly. Dude. Oh, Hunter, Hunter, Hunter owes you for that one. He owes you like a case. I know you don't, you don't drink anymore. He owes you a case like Arizona sweet. I have collabed with TC Parker. I've collabed with Darren Kapoff and I've collabed with the very, very little known book pig with Craig Saunders. I don't know what happened to Craig. Craig kind of fell off the face of the earth for me. So I took the book down because I couldn't send them royalties because I don't know what happened to him. The first person I collabed with is Lee Thompson. And that didn't even come out because he just, once again, he just disappeared. I'm really, really worried about Lee because no one's talked to him, not even Brian Keen. And I know he was battling with some demons and I'm, I worry about him least like once a week, but we have a short story called white crosses that is fucking amazing. But I'm not going to, I can't do anything with it because I don't have his permission to. Yeah. And pig was, it's funny because me and Craig were both better outside of the horror genre, but we're both horror fans. So we came together to do like this small town, almost zombie possession story. It wasn't really zombies. It was just, it was actually the local drug dealer was poisoning people and those, and the drugs were, were changing people's minds and making them. So it's kind of like a feral, like, what is it? 28 weeks later kind of deal. It's not really a zombie. Like you can kill them normally, but, and they all shared a hive mind because of the chemicals. It was a very wild book. It was also super short is like 45,000 words. And we probably should have fleshed it out more. Neither one of us was happy with it after publication. And so it wasn't that huge. Yeah. Hello, everybody, by the way, we were just talking away rambling on. Yeah, that one was my first long form collaboration. And we literally just went back and forth chapter to chapter. I'd write, well, you know, that denotes exactly what you think it does. But this year, the first, my first one was with Lee, Lee Thompson, then Craig. And then I met Darren and TC around the same time. And I wrote both of those, both of our first collabs together at the same time. So I was writing Wicked. No, I take that back. We had written Wicked Rex of the West. And then I was writing We Are Legend and Maiden at the same time, which was, which was actually good because anytime it kind of sunk up, synced, it kind of synced up well. So I would write, you know, something for We Are Legend, send it to Darren. And then he'd take about a couple of days or two a week. And then during that time while I was waiting, I could work with TC because TC was much faster. And then, you know, it just seemed, it seemed perfect. But my point is Chad is absolutely right. Every single collab I have done has been done different because sometimes we will, you know, layer like me and TC layer. We didn't really just hand off a character to each other. Whereas with Darren and our first collab, I believe we just passed our characters. No, we didn't pass our characters back. We stuck to what characters, you know, we had been writing already. And then for the Wicked Rex of the West, what we did was I did all of the, the blending is what we called it, where you go in to make sure if anything sounds like it's a different author, you know, clean it up and then Darren did the next book. And TC did the entirety of Maiden because she's just a better writer than me, period, hands down. Her vocabulary is better. Her sentence structure, all that stuff. I don't know how the fuck she does it. She writes like Peter Straub, but it reads like Stephen King. And that's no shitting on Peter Straub, but I've always found King easier to read than Straub. But yet she uses the same vocabulary as Straub would. While maintaining amazing character development, amazing plotting, pacing, all that stuff, she's just absolutely fantastic. And at this point, I have no idea where she is either. It's like, it's like I'm murdering my collaborators because this is a third one in a row that has disappeared. The only one I'm still in contact with is Darren. But anyway, I'm sure she's alive and well somewhere. Just everybody's got stuff going on right now. So getting to... I was on mute. Oh, you were on mute? Yeah, I started talking and I realized I was on mute. Oh, what were you going to say? I was just going to say, yeah, some people collaborate like you said you do with TC, where you have like a rough drafter and then you had like a reviser, where somebody writes, you know, the entire book, and then you go in there and you add your voice and you change things. That's kind of how wormwood was with Tim, because we had two different voices. So he would like write a chapter or two and I would go and do everything from completely rewrite it to essentially delete it, especially when he tried to get supernatural on me with the book a couple of times. And I had to reel it in. But yeah, that was completely different. Whereas with Bowden, while his prose is more poetic than I am, we have a lot of similarities big time and we can mock each other really well. So it's just passing it back and forth is no problem. It feels seamless by the time we're done. I remember when I was working with Lee, when I sent him my first pages, the short story that you guys will never see probably, but I sent him my first pages and he goes, dude, you write just like me. Like I got to go pick up some of your other stuff. I'm like, no, you know, it's nothing like this. What I'm doing is I'm mimicking you because he has a very unique style. It's very close to yours. It's short, it's punchy, it's to the point. It's like basically that's where I learned with working with Lee Thompson is where I learned the style for south of here. I just completely stole his style and then I morphed it into my own because he's nowhere near as dirty as mine. Yeah, it has a werewolf on it, Hailey. Yes, which we're not doing anything supernatural here, but I figured I'd have my wolf blood going on. And Joe said, it's like I'm murdering my collaborators. Great poor Chad. Watch your back, Chad. If Chad just suddenly disappears, there's going to be a lot of very upset people. Not that nobody was upset when the other people disappeared, but they're really going to come after me because Chad is a darling in the community. I say that in the best possible way. People love you, man. You want to shoot me your ideas first? Yeah, I had a couple of questions too. Yeah. Are you writing this under Edward Lorne? I can if you want me to. Well, you had mentioned about working with some publishers and I'm just wondering in the future that's going to... Let me tell you what's happened recently because of the bullshit in the end. I don't want to go too... You know what's going on with me. You know with the... Anyways, the contract is null and void. I can do whatever I want with it. I would have to sign another one which wouldn't be retroactive. So anything that I do before that next contract, I can still put Lorne on. That's why Lorne is available to up for sale now. That's why... Anyways, but retroactively. Now, the only issue is if I were to sign again, I might have to take these videos down. But if we cut them all together or whatever and I send them to you and you upload them to your channel, there's nothing I can do about that because there was a clause in that contract that states that it's only things underneath my control. That's why Horvabel was able to keep up the short story they narrated for me on their channel. That's why the audiobooks were left alone because I share the rights with the narrator. Most of them are royalty shares. So all those are still up and also I'm under contract with Audible. So the contract with my financiers does not override existing contracts. But all those things would have to go away eventually, things that are contracted. Now, if it was something up on your channel, then 100% we wouldn't have to do anything with it. It could just sit there, kind of like storage. So that's an option. They gave me an entire year last time to prepare and get everything ready so we wouldn't even be in a big rush if we had to do that. So if you want to do Lorne, that's fine. But in the future, we may not be able to use the Lorne name. Or if we do more than one book, kind of thing. That's up to you then, whatever you want to do. I'm more concerned about, let's say the book is published. And then something happens again where they're like, you got to take all your Lorne stuff. Well, now you're attached at the hip with me on a book. Well, that's fine because we would be under contract. If we sold the book and we could even write up our own contract. We have a five book deal to work with each other kind of deal. And that would supersede the deal with these guys. So I would still be able to... The main thing is that the betting of boys doesn't exist. That's the main thing that they're worried about. And because I cannot take it down permanently from Amazon, it'll always be there at least as a placeholder. Then that's what they're concerned about because I can't wipe it from the internet. I can't take it off Goodreads. I can't take down reviews of it, that kind of thing. But since that contract is null avoid because they technically were in breach of it. I was three weeks out from a payday and they had to cancel the contract because none of those things went forward and they didn't want to pay me because those things weren't going to happen. I am still, however, in good standing with them because I talked to them about all this stuff and it was the same thing. You can do whatever you want. You're out of contract. We hope that you choose not to do anything else like the betting of boys, which is funny because I think, no, no, I was about to say, I think personally that South of here is worse as far as offending people because there's a good point to betting of boys, whereas South of here is just, you know, we're all bad and trying nothing to be. It's that final line, that thing. Or we can all be, you know, bad people can be good people, good people can be bad people, all that shit. But anyways, so I wouldn't worry about it. If you want me, I can always, I can always boot up a new pen name. I got a whole list of them over here. I can throw together. But that is something to worry about also if we go to publishers and those publishers like we don't want to be attached to Lorne because that's happened in the past. I completely missed out on a random Penguin deal because of Lorne. So that has happened. I'm just trying to make you aware of everything that could be a you're going to have, you're going to have a lot of people you don't even realize don't like me say they're not going to read the book. That's another thing if Lorne's name is attached to it. So it's up to you. I know you personally don't care about that kind of shit. But do you have a book that I'm sorry, do you have a pen name that you plan on building another one? Yeah, I don't have to tell you off. Well, so no, not that I can use with you. Oh, okay. I do because I don't know if I'm going to be making the new pen names public or not. I have two of them coming up. One of them is more recent. The most recent one is about a month ago. So things are on the uptick with projects because Hollywood shut down publishers are finally opening up again. And they realize that people are going to be reading during this time. Raw Dead, Raw Dead and Uncle E. No, we're not doing that. It'll be a completely different face. It'll be completely different everything. And I've hired models in the in the past for the back covers of my books. So I happen to publisher has killing your darlings except it's literally killing actual. Hey, stop it. I'm not killing anybody. Craig Saunders is fine. I'm sure. And so is Lee Thompson. I would hope. And I know TC Parker is alive and well. Well, I mean, I'll let you make the call. I just want I want to do what we can to make the book as successful as it can be. Oh, 100%. Now we can use Lauren, man. I have no problem using Lauren. But like I said, keep keep in mind that there are going to be people who refuse to even like beta read or read the book that you know that I know you know because you think them in the back of your books that are not going to want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. But then again, we are doing these things live. So I mean, they're going to know anyways, even though I've changed the name of the channel and everything. But I would go over possible and be a pickle breath. No, who are you? Charles Dickens. Anyways, but I don't want to go over possible pin names that I have because if we don't use any of those and I won't be able to use them live. So that's something we'll definitely talk about in the text messages or emails or whatever. Well, do you see a I mean, do you see a benefit? Like what what is the pro from not using Lauren? Well, there at the end, Lauren, Lauren's selling again. Oddly enough, before I went away, I was selling maybe 20, 30 books. And that's that's even with South again with new releases. So I'm like 20, 30 books a month. And now that I'm back, I'm selling anywhere between 40 and 50. I don't know why I'm not doing it. I did one video saying they were back up and now people are just, you know, people are buying. So the the cons to using Lauren would be like, like I said, the there are going to be a lot of people in the communities you run in that are not going to read the book or not going to want to blurb it or not want to read it to blurb it, that kind of thing. As some of them might even shock you, but it's because they're decent people who just, you know, happened to bump into me at the wrong time in my life kind of deal. The other. I don't I don't really other see any other cons other than the fact that, like I said, we would have to sign a contract for a certain amount of books together so that there was a contract that superseded the whatever contract I'm going to sign in the future. Now, is anything going to happen with that after the strike is over? I hope so. But I have no guarantee if those projects are, you know, going to be viable to begin with. So do I have other outlets? Yes, I do. Are they going to ask for the same thing? I honestly don't know because the last people that I worked with sprung it on me last minute there. They were just going through. They did a background check on me, of course, because they were going to be investing in me. And then with with the background check, their person found all the Lauren votes, because I made them aware of the name and all the other names. I tell any person that I'm in business with about all of the names so that if anything comes out, you know, they're not surprised, that kind of thing. And then NDAs are signed and all that good shit. But they sprung it on me. They're like, what is the betting of boys about? And I explained it to him and I was like, it's it's not shitty stuff. Is it? Like, you know, they actually thought it was erotic. They didn't bother reading it. They still haven't read it. And I was like, no, it's not. And they're like, well, it sounds that way. I was like, I got a bloody bed sheet ghost on the front of the cover. How does it sound like that? Never forget this conversation. Like, yeah, we're going to have to do something about that. Can you take that down? Like, we'll pay you. I'm like, I can take it down, but it's still going to show up, you know, as far as in search results and everything. I can't wipe the Internet of this thing. Like, yeah, that's going to this is going to be a problem. I'm like, okay. So they paid me an absurd amount of money just to kill Lauren. And so, yeah. But anyways, I get to keep the money because they're in breach of contract. That's a good thing. Yeah, me. But the strike not happened. I would have been in even better position. Anyways, so that's the only thing I have right off the bat would be that people would come out of the woodwork. But I told you this last time also that there are people who are not going to want to read this. Well, I'm not as worried about the community community as they used to be the horror community, which is what we're most affiliated with even though it's were adjacent to that. It'd be 100% people from that community. We wouldn't have to worry about that as far as success for the book. I realize over the years that the horror community that we're affiliated with is much smaller than they think they are. I know. I told Todd Keasling this a while back and I was like, I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but it's not as important as you think it is. It's not a... It isn't. My case in point, my buddy, Pat Havana, which I have talked to you about who used to write horror, he makes nearly mid six figures on his, excuse me, self-published stuff. Nobody knows who he is. And he barely has a social media presence. He's not affiliated with any of the people that we are who seem like big rock stars in the small scope of things. And it's like... He's a really good example. And I've got other friends too who are making a great living, self-publishing, zombie fiction, post-apoc, all this kind of stuff, and nobody knows who they are. Right. No, absolutely. Not a percent. It happens all the time. Six figures on self-published, isn't that rare? It is rare. It's hard. But there's more people doing it than you would think. I would say it's more than one percent, which is what most people think. There's quite a few people, especially the ones who were around Amanda Hawking and Hugh Howie and J.A. Conrath, all the original, like I call them the 99 cent group from Amazon's early days, they would put their book up for 99 cents, and people at that point in time had not even considered being able to buy a book for a dollar. Not after 2000. That was ridiculous. So they would constantly... Yeah, Amanda Hawking started off as an indie author, just throwing stuff, literally unedited content up on Amazon. And same with Blake Crouch. Blake Crouch started off the same way. He started off with J.A. Conrath took him under his wing after he had a horrible experience with a bigger publisher. But anyways, the... I completely lost my train of thought there. Where were we going with that? We're talking about the horror community being lost and all. So here's when my eyes opened up. So I brought up a certain big name author that neither one of us have a good opinion of, to one of the people that I've been working with. He's a director. He's done some major projects. And he literally asked me who. And I said, he's kind of like... I can't say anymore, but to me, this person was a significant deal, at least in the community, and I thought it was wider. I didn't think of who you were talking about. Exactly. Who do I not like? But it's not that we don't like him as we don't have a high opinion. But what I'm getting at is, I mentioned that and we were on a conference call and I said, this person, I brought it up because of some other thing that, anyways, it doesn't matter what happened. His name came up. And the one person who's now a good friend of mine, at the time, just an associate, but a real good friend of mine said who. And I explained, and it's like, never heard of him. And then there was a woman laughing off, that wasn't even a part of the conversation. And my friend, Esther, was like, I heard of him. The last time I heard of him was like the 90s. So it was like, I didn't even know he was still doing anything. And I'm not sure that's what happened. But I think what you're going to see on Todd Keasling is you'd be surprised at the people you think are major names in this industry. Don't get anywhere near the, I guess, accolades that you think they might or the, you know, not these, outside of the community, nobody's even heard of them. And I thought that was interesting. This is true. This is absolutely true. Yes. And that's another reason why I don't even go in for awards. It's kind of like putting the cart before the horse, but another thing is I don't know if you know this about me. I don't participate in awards at all whatsoever, no matter what name it is. I don't agree with it, but I am willing to do it with you. If we were to ever win anything, it would be 100% you accepting and all that stuff. So I don't, I don't do that. I'm just letting you know. Just letting you know up front. Hey, Brad. Hello everybody, by the way. What are you talking about, Hailey? Hey, I like Hailey. I'll go Queen, Brad. Yeah. Derek. Derek in here. Oh, I see it. Yeah, you left it with Joe said that's right. All right. Yes. Yeah. Now, can you think of a creative way to collaborate so we can have writing streams where both of us are writing the same book at the same time? Yes. We would use StreamYard. We might have to like go have these on StreamYard premium or whatever because I think we only get so much time to actually be live. I think it's 20 hours and then after that we have to start paying now. It didn't use to be like that. But I had to do it when we were doing NaNoWriMo and since you were a guest so I wasn't worried about that. But if you want to do it that way what we would do is we would do it on here on StreamYard. We would share our screen and we would use Google Docs. So if we both want to work on something at the same time, we would go to the same Google Doc and that's how we would do it. You'll have a different color cursor than I would and we could hop back and forth in real time. I'm more concerned about do you have a creative ideas for the actual writing process where we're able to write at the same time? I've never written like that before. The only thing I would say is the way that King and Strav did it or at least the way they described doing it. Literally King would be down writing and Strav would tap him on the shoulder or something like literally tag in and be like I have something for this and then he would jump in and he would write and then it would still go back and forth. But as far as both of us writing at the same time we could go live on both of our channels at the same time or we could do StreamYard and we can both share our screens. I believe that's free no matter how long we go. I don't know but you should be able to share your screen over on your end and I can share my screen so if we both wanted to write at the same time we would be able to share if I'm understanding what you're asking correctly. No I'm sorry okay. That's fine. What I mean is like how are we gonna write the same book at the same time? I'm not talking about even if we weren't using the internet even if we were just sitting at home writing our own thing. Usually it's like I need this thing to go by and then I'm like okay here I'm passing it back and now you do your thing but if we're writing different scenes at the exact same time can you think of a creative way that we like whether I know that some people are like I'll take this character you take this and then obviously you'd have to have some sort of outline which I I'm not against using but I normally which I don't like doing it when I'm writing my own stuff but I can see the benefit of collaborating with an outline. Yeah. If it's if it's something like that otherwise it would have to be just be okay now it's my turn to write this thing. I just wondered if you had an idea. I think going that route it would be interesting but we would 100% with that idea we would 100% have the outline we would have to know what our point was for that chapter and if we're both writing that chapter and then we could literally just shuffle them together like you know whatever points or whatever we could we could do it that way like we could go over you know live how to you know which line should stay who said what better that kind of thing we could always do that it would be kind of cool competition to to see you know who who is more capable that I think that'd be fun or it I don't know that's a that's a good one I never even considered writing a book like that well how about we do this how about we formulate our ideas and then to where we're like okay this is the book we're gonna write by that time we might have the beginnings by default an outline that we could usually structure into an actual outline and then be like okay I'm gonna write this opening scene you write the scene where dude goes to whatever and then we'll see how they I mean things will have to be revised you know that's pretty much how I did it with with TC and it to go back to what I was saying earlier I I didn't write the whole thing in TC came back we we shared you know we we wrote you know I'll write a chapter we just we just did not limit ourselves to not writing each other's characters I guess is the way so we wrote just as much as each other in the book and then she went back and overhauled the entire thing from the ground up so it was a collaborative process to write the book but it was her process to clean everything up and get it you know and I'm pretty sure she rewrote whole whole chapters and it was all a matter of this is like any rough draft it was all a matter of getting the ideas out on the page so that we could then make the cohesive story out of those ideas and most of it ended up staying anyways but she did have to rewrite whole sections because either I was slack in that day or she wasn't on her she wasn't firing on all cylinders whatever however you want to do this I'm down for and the most unique way possible is I I'm down for that so however you want to try it man I am open for anything and none of this stuff is concrete so we can change in any you know any state in the game we can we can flip and do it a different way if it's not working or if we find that another way is working better so on and so forth yeah a lot of our ideas a lot of the really good ideas won't come until we're there you know or might have to back up and go I got something that's going to take this in a whole different direction that just happened with novel I wrote with John Bowden and it was gorgeous how it happened and it turned and otherwise potentially boring book into you know one of the best things I've ever been okay so I will I have so we're talking like southern got grit lit stuff here's the idea I only brought one idea to the table same you can you know mind this cannibalize this whatever pick parts that you're attracted to teen lives with a family that's been forced to raise him the family deals math heroin whatever what have you an event happens that's the last straw for this teen so he ups and leaves taking as many of their drugs as he can would be intent to sell them along the way in order to fund this fresh start obviously there after him there again they don't really they report put into a position where they I don't know maybe his parents died or whatever and they just fell into the laps of these people that care less almost almost like a Harry Potter deal you know where his parents that his new guardians don't want to yeah yeah that's the only I'm not trying to say it sounds like Harry Potter but if that's the closest comparison I have he meets all sorts of people along the way yes I realize this sounds like a cross between skullface boy and three smile my hell dude this is literally you're gonna get a trip I don't know what my idea was I'm just about to probably really like now that that's the first idea then I have an idea that could go along with it and take it into stay the same everything that I said but the kid could join a modern traveling like county fair slash carnival which I know you probably get a a boner right now yeah but and that's where the real story begins and not an old school like freak show type thing just a regular county fair potential for lots of shady characters with great backstories and the whole time this kid is trying to keep secret that this family is after him and that he's still holding these drugs as some kind of desperate plan B and then maybe even meeting someone in his town at the at the fair while it's there is the catalyst for him being like I've had it I'm taking off I'm gonna go out with these guys he could meet a girl he could meet a a guy that he somehow responding with or whatever but that's my idea okay I like it and I already say yes but I'm gonna tell you my idea beforehand because it's the similarities are crazy and I even brought this up to you way back when we were gonna collab with the idea that I had called goodbye road what would happen is there's this dying father who's terminal and he wants to go on the road to visit all of his people before he dies but his son doesn't know anything about this his son is a strange son decides to go with him which is the road trip thing so we were both on the same page with the road trip I love road trips stuff how much it sounds like skull face boy I would love to do a road trip thing with you but anyways he would go but he's on the run and he makes it seem like he's on the run that he wants to go with his dad just because he loves his dad he could care less he's really on the run because he stole someone's drugs and that's the that's the funny part that's what I was gonna tell you along the way they ended up bonding but it's been a story I've been wanting to write almost as long as like the trailer park pedo story you know that's just something that's been in my head for a while South of here came about but I don't know if goodbye road will ever get written so I figured I'd throw that one on the table but that was my only thing but I'm down with yours do like a Palisades park Alan Burner is one of my favorite novels of all time so I am down with the Coney Park idea so we would have right off the bat we would have the instigating effect of the family and stealing the drugs and running off a road trip section and then ends up at a Coney Island type fair and then ends up bonding with someone there and the people there and we even end up there at the end we could have the entire theme park help him in the end from the drug dealers I think that would be awesome almost like turning the entire place into a fun house so that you know things are jumping out at these guys anyways I already got ideas pouring out of my head as soon as you mentioned that I was like I see whole scenes in my head and yeah so I'm down with yours we don't have to talk about that anymore I love that idea I especially want to break the family yeah so I'm down I love it that's already over and done with and I was going to write everything down but then I realized that I don't have to do it in real time I can just go back and watch the replay of the video you just timestamp like whatever we're at right now I'm going to start about 35 minutes and you know go from there well the only reason I was going to use Haley the only reason I was going to use the dad was because it would be the other side of the it would be the drama side to the action side so you have the drug dealers coming after the kid and I was thinking about using mob or something like that but you have the drug dealers coming after the kid and the father thinking that the boy the whole book was just going to be to tug at heartstrings but I really love the idea of course you knew I would of the whole amusement park thing just because I love the characters that we can that we'll be able to do do you want to do this in the past I think it would be more fun to do it before like the invention of cell phones yeah man I'm not a big fan of the cell phone in literature I am well educated on 80s and 90s if we go any farther back you're going to have to carry us because I know you're only 10 years older than me but if you go any farther back it's about the 20s and the 40s but that's about the only thing I would have to do mad research I mean maybe 80s would be good yeah and I don't you know I don't know how these things work I know that we have a carnival that comes well we've got a couple that come around here in town different locations but we have one in particular that it's one city over that it's the county fair and they show up for like a week or something and then you got your four age so the whole place smells like tractor pulls and pigs and um so you know and it never occurred to me that this is just a tour for them you know that they're on to someplace else and not every single place smells like tractors and pigs that's yeah you know you have a wide variety of things with any traveling show I did a lot of research for the big project that I was working on I think I told you about that one but anyways and I'm still technically working on it so traveling shows are pretty much my thing right now like that's what I have the most but do you want to do a traveling show or do you want to do something like a boardwalk it doesn't matter to me I'm hyped either way but do you want to do a traveling show or do you want to do someplace that's you know I like the traveling thing because I like the idea of constantly being on the run yeah and setting up tearing down setting up tearing down and just kind of like this um because that's where they live if it's stationary then they all have their own homes in their apartments and stuff so I like the idea of being kind of nomads everybody is a nomad I had one idea that kind of got cut from the process because it didn't make any sense and I decided to use a train instead but it was pretty much just a caravan of semi trucks and trailers and in those trailers there were bunks and of course air conditioning and whatnot they would set the reefer unit for not freezing you know just cool enough to where they'd be comfortable in the back of the trucks and then like grates over the top they could cover up if it's raining for air circulation I had a bunch of ideas like that so if you do something like that and because it was like one trailer was just for the bunking and then all the rest of the trucks in the fleet and it wasn't a big big thing but uh and all the rest of them were you know the equipment and everything you know they have a flat bed for the rides and whatnot um but yeah that's dude that's all I've been researching is traveling shows like carnivals, circuses, all that that's all I've been researching for the past three years so that really we're already a step ahead of the game there with that kind of thing and on top of that there are thousands of videos online from every single decade time frame of people either documenting their experience living with a traveling show or just interviewing people that work at these traveling shows so there is a wealth of knowledge online and on top of that I got a whole stack of books that are carnival and circus themed most of them nonfiction so yeah dude you need to read um freezer burn by joel instill I ordered it and I'm going to get to it but I got a broad street bastard broad street bastard will take you I know a day it's short but yeah freezer burn um that must be where some of this idea came from I just read freezer burn this year and uh I mean it's not copying anything of it but there is a somebody that attaches themselves to a traveling carnival like that but it's got a lot more humor than I would want to do but yeah it's a great it's a great book and also um shoot what was I going to say and I'm already in love with this idea I'm throwing that out there I love it because it reminds me of my favorite while you're thinking um chat it reminds me of one of my favorite books it reminds me of twilight eyes by Dean Coombs never read that one it's it's not really he's not on the run from anything but he is definitely about an outsider coming into a you know a carnival uh this guy's named slim McKenzie and he can see uh he can see goblins but to everyone else it's pretty much like what they live where uh you know you put the sunglasses on and you can see but in his version they're actual like medieval like not medieval they never existed but um actual like goblins from folklore kind of deal fantasy and only he can see them uh and then he ends up meeting a girl who can so anyways but the best part of the book is just them being at the carnival and him working day to day that's the best part of the book just the smells and everything that Coombs evokes is in his top tier carnival story the only one I like more is geek love but anyways I haven't read I don't think I've read any fiction other than priest of burn and then of course the amazing carnival HBO yeah there's a lot of cool stuff in there I haven't watched the second season yet I'm trying to save it knowing that you know I will never get another season of it that first season is absolutely iconic to me that that's an amazing show and I started watching it after I had my big project idea and it really helped because I knew what I'm glad I watched it normally I'd be normally I'd be like oh god they have basically the same fucking idea as me but it was able I was able to watch that and be like okay while it is the same idea there are different themes there are everything and mine happens from 1920 all the way up to 2020 so it's a hundred year saga whereas theirs is only during the dust bowl and the depression so but I was able to take the stuff that they did and make sure that I didn't do any of that but yeah carnival is amazing I just haven't watched the second season I wanted I knew it's early but I want to throw a title out there because I have a tentative title for a I'm like 30 some thousand words into a western that's like a cult when to go western thing that I was started years ago and it has a tentative title and I love the title so much but I it doesn't fit it it fits it okay but it fits it this way it fits this idea way better and that's planet caravan but like the black Sabbath song yeah but like the black Sabbath song I like that I don't mind that at all at least tentatively we can throw that on there it's like I said it's much more fitting for this um you know this guy's world now is wrapped up in just this you know traveling thing that's his whole world this is how my brain works I'm just throwing it out there what if we call it planets caravan and the guy who runs it is planet maybe he's like the size of a planet like he's a big round dude calls him planet yeah we can write that down yeah let's let's think about that planets and that way we won't fuck with Sabbath at all like their copyright it doesn't matter you can't copyright a song title you can't copyright a song title I didn't know that I can I can write a song called stare at heaven and put it on Spotify and get paid for it oh my god and there's a thing that can be done it is but I mean you just kind of like who it's a dumb decision on your part because you know if I wanted to write a a book that it's called you know catcher on the right it's like my book's not going to be found so it's just a dumb idea you're it's bad marketing so you want to come up with your own thing so but yeah I've got you know the same people waters a song and yeah I that's how I found out about that that you can't you can't copyright book title title I had no fucking clue I had no fucking clue I had an editor I trust you more than I trust them there's a reason why that they're no longer an editor but I had an editor tell me that song titles were litigious or however you pronounce it where you can get sued over them if you put them in the book so I figured that yeah I need I need to look that up see if that was even true I just took that shit whole cloth I probably should have researched that but anyways and we got in a big back and forth about using song lyrics I was like I have the approval of the person who broke the song and they were still they work for the publisher and they were still like add we don't have the approval I was like I can send it to you it's like we don't want the legalities of having to keep up with that and it was it's a if you don't know who he is I think you dig um it's g o m m John Gom he plays a percussive guitar and the song is called passion flower something like that but anyways it's he's amazing check him out same same with you guys check him out when you have time some people are trying to tell me recently that you could have like a very tiny percentage of lyric in there under the fair use act yeah because I sorry I keep I keep talking over you say what you have to say and I'll make my point a couple of my books um I have gotten permission from a few of my favorite bands the cues in DRI let me use lyrics for cannibal creator and for uh slow burn on Riverside at the beginning of the book uh I got full permission and then for broad street bastard there's a song a black flag song called bastard in love that I really wanted to use at the beginning I thought I'll reach out to uh Greg Greg get in the guitars but I know also Greg first of all still owes Henry Rowan's and frickin Keith Morrison all those guys from black that have been in black flag at one point still owes them royalties and I know he's very stingy with the whole black flag bars logo as a matter of fact I made a t-shirt that you can still get on one of the sites red bubble or t-public one of the two I think it's got the black flag bars and it's got the because there's a gazillion parodies out there of I know you're probably not familiar with the band but at least oh yeah I am black flag yeah I grew up listening to them the misfits all of them kind yeah well the the bars you know they're just you can get a parody of any you know you get a Justin Bieber shirt that has like the bars and then it in the right like font it just I've seen stuff like that yeah well I made my own and it says jack flag and the flags are the overlook carpet and he had that taken down and I know it was him because when the public contacted me they told me who who reported it and took it down and I thought okay so this guy's probably not going to let me use his lyrics but I'm going to ask anyway so I reached out to SST records that he owns and then I reached out to um the black flag website which is essentially him with other people that are have never been affiliated with black flag and then I joined and then someone told me I joined this group SST fan club group or whatever so I go in there there's people in there from Ron Reyes the second singer for black flag he's in there constantly you know talking and stuff other members fans and so I asked them is there any way do you guys know how to get a holy grail again this is this is all I want you know I want some permission to use and that's when a lot of people are telling me about the fair use and I almost did it and I thought I ain't scared of Greg again but I got scared and your copy you'll find does not have the lyrics in there because I didn't want to deal with well you did the right thing because fair use is denoted by the copyright holder um they what fair use means is there is they have to pick out certain pieces it's the same with videos uh movies uh books uh songs all that stuff fair use is created what you can use is created by the copyright holder so to use that you would have to have knowledge of what that thing is and if you happen to pick the wrong line which is a I mean that's like winning the lottery if you happen to pick the right line then you're okay but if not you can get sued for using it or you can have a at least at the very least get you with a cease and desist and have it pulled down so unfortunately I gotta run oh you're fine Viking yeah uh the uh um this all these will stay up so if you want to you can catch this at any point in time I know you showed up late but uh yeah have a good day man we're we're about to go anyways I can't do longer than an hour because I got game night tonight um is there okay so we got alright we got our idea we probably have our uh our title um yeah this is a very good session we talked more about you know just the collaboration process then uh then the actual story but that'll be that definitely be enough for next time we can just jump into it next time um can you are you able to already tell whether this would be better suited first or third person what I was wondering was I've long wanted to do it probably be better as a third but I really want to say first because it's such a personal story just as one person um but I would also like to see bits and pieces of the now let's let's go first because what I'm I don't want to take the risk of redoing something I've done in my big project uh and that's third person almost omniscient so I have everybody's points of view point of views in there at some point in time um it's been a long time since I wrote first person though it's gonna take me a while to get back into maybe not maybe not maybe this character starts speaking to me right off the bat um I mean I'm fine with either way I have I have a hard time writing longer stuff in first person yeah that that's what I was gonna mention it's so much easier and not just a pad it with other characters but it's so much easier just to jump into another character's head for a little while um also I think you can I don't know why and this is this is not true guys anybody out there listening for advice is not true it feels like you can get more descriptive with third person then you can with first person I don't know why but it's like in third person I I'm always I'm always more descriptive than I am with first person with first person I am all in that character's head and that character's not walking around thinking about what the bushes look like kind of shit you know he's just walking past the bushes you know he doesn't care if they're you know bug and villa or whatever the hell they are he doesn't give a shit or they don't give a shit um so that's the only thing it'd probably be best for this if we did a close first person narrative and we just told this one person's story and then the other characters bleed over into the narrative um then jumping into their heads um I really feel like yeah I think I'm one first person okay what do you think about if you've written in present tense before oh yeah uh I wrote uh south here in present tense but I've written a lot of stuff in present tense so uh um yeah present tense is fine um I have no problem with that uh I have no preference but I do enjoy the urgency of that oh yeah um makes sure of a fast read and more like that I'm being told a story kind of feel yeah also the the publishers that we're aiming at um at least off the jump prefer that also because they're more they're more either lit thick or crime um and crime is always better in first person present tense at least for me I feel that way um it's like you said it's the immediacy it's the urgency you know it also gets rid of the absolutely I also have no problem getting rid of was in a first in a third person but I have a problem getting rid of was in the first person that I hope I said that right but anyways um and in present tense you don't have to worry about that at all and it seems like you don't you don't even have to replace it with you know is it's just it it feels more natural to me to get rid of that it's not really a filler word sometimes it's important but uh but yeah it's things like that um that I enjoy that you can really move along with present tense where it seems like past tense and of course past perfect just slows and bogs it the fuck down so anyways that's my two cents well that was productive and um let me know when you are ready to I don't know if we need to do maybe do uh at least a rough outline I mean you had started talking about one I didn't I can do this this is a book that I can sit down and write right now by myself so I will definitely if you want to go over ideas I have I'm literally bursting at the seams with ideas so if you want to do a stream tomorrow or the next day or whatever uh sometimes soon hopefully because the yeah I got a whole thing running in my head like a fucking movie and I can't slow that down so as soon as I get done here I'm gonna jot things down while I'm waiting for my gummy to kick in because I'm gonna take a nap before game night tonight uh anyways I'm gonna write down all these ideas so maybe the next episode we don't start right away we just go over like a rough outline and then you can accept and you know get rid of any ideas that I have and you know same with you know your stuff we can blend and all that so if you want to be thinking you know do the head work uh until next time do you have any idea when you want to do this next when you're available to do it next I'm very flexible I mean I'm working I counted I am I am writing 13 different books Welcome to my world some of again some of the one of them I'm not going to finish um it's just too it's too dark I'm never gonna do it too dark yeah it's too dark put it this way I don't I don't believe in trigger warnings I think they I think that they're counterproductive for someone who needs them and I've read articles on the science behind them and how anyway trigger trigger um how trigger uh warnings in of themselves are triggering when they didn't need to be and this is one book that I would I would actually have trigger warnings because it deals a lot with things that bum somebody out but could cause relapse it's it deals a lot with bulimia anorexia self harm things like that I don't I don't want I don't want my book to like yeah so I'm just not doing it but anyway yeah you know I'm pro them because I put them in my own stuff but um that's I mean that it's it's literally just a personal preference so I have no problem with you not you know not wanting them or not you know that doesn't bother me at all um because they're there for the people who want them not necessarily need them but the people who want them they're there for you if you want it so on and so forth but uh yeah I can't anyway I you've only wanted to read it you mother fucker yeah I'm not finishing it I just I'm not okay all right but anyway sorry it's already been taken out like no game and did one and he pretty much said the same thing that chat said in the introduction to that collection anyways go ahead the um the uh so yeah like 13 books or whatever but granted I'm not going in and out of these all day some of them I haven't touched for a year or so you know how that is you got all kinds of some of them I might not ever be able to get to I don't know I'm lately I've just been focusing on the I told you I was writing the cozy mystery mystery series which is going a lot smoother than I expected but other than that I mean I'm super flexible so okay um I already gave you my schedule and so I'm up for you know any kind I write every single day so I don't want to like I don't want to wait on it you know we're doing this now damn it I just didn't know if you wanted to do it tomorrow morning uh it doesn't matter to me one way or another um uh we can do it tomorrow we can do the next day but yes the sooner the better because yeah I can clean up my head I can do tomorrow okay right tomorrow same same that time same that channel yeah okay so tomorrow guys if you guys are uh Sean says yes hang on yes the collab we've been waiting for it a good morning to you dude Sean um it was going to happen a while ago but it was like a little bit of misconception a little bit of time and a little bit of uh how many projects going on because uh yeah it was and we actually wrote a chapter we wrote yeah we wrote like what 3000 words 3000 or 4000 words I don't even know where that is I don't even think I have it anymore it was actually it was a really good idea and once again it was your idea um that whole anyways I don't want to in case we tackle it again I don't want to give it away but um yeah this is this fucking awesome I'm uh I'm looking forward yeah I'll be here uh 5 p.m. that's 11 o'clock for you Hailey I'm looking at it right here we have yeah the two chapters how many words 2070 2070 I thought it was about 3000 but that's another one I had damn near the whole thing like in my head um I don't I don't remember it now but I remember writing it and having that that urgency that uh uh coming along um I was and then other stuff fell in my lap around the same time that you were like hey I got too much going on and I love that there was there was that misconception that you thought I was strictly a horror writer I love that that was one of it one of the things because I was I was also sitting there at that point in time I was like am I gonna am I gonna have to I do remember am I gonna have to mimic him or is it like that and then I found it was almost like we just end up writing like me I because it seemed like a little more long-winded than you normally were I think is what happened and at that point in time I was writing those more long-winded books so uh and then of course I go from that to south of here what the fuck ever right but I've I've done I've done south of here was an idea that you pitched when you were yeah that's why I dedicated the book to scared I do that I understand and it would been a completely different fucking beast man it would have been completely different it might not even worked out with both of us who knows because I I don't know but I'm I'm glad that I got to do it by myself and for nothing else the experience the actually the best part about writing south of here was getting out of my own head because I was in a really bad way at the time and like I said in either the intro the outro shells the one who typed up me because I couldn't sit at my desk so I was writing it all long hand before I got a new laptop and she ended typing up the whole thing she's done that for me twice so far and it anyways I'm gonna get mushy if I keep thinking about that but I was in a really bad place and it allowed me to get to express my own frustrations with life through a character who has nothing but frustrations but at the same time he's kind of not bothered by the whole thing he's just not bothered by life so through him I was able to not give a fuck at the time because I was able to get into his head and be like yo just be as rude and disgusting as you want to be because it's healthy to get that shit out of your head to get the frustrations it's almost like playing violent video games when you're in a bad mood you know you get to I have an anger problem as it is but I say this also I don't hurt people I hurt things so I'll break a toaster or some shit but I won't touch another human being that's the kind of anger I'm talking about but my dad was a very violent physically violent person not to me but he had those moments and I got a little bit of that in me so I'm always looking for a way out and that's the best part about writing for me is anytime I need that way out I don't have to go read I don't have to go watch a movie play a video game I can just play in my own head you know and that's that's another reason why I write so goddamn much is because I'm constantly needing that escape so it was like I don't know how you do it is like I don't have any other choice but to do it in fact my sister who has no filter whatsoever said I probably would have ended up being a serial killer if I hadn't found some kind of creative outlet and while I hated her for saying that for the longest time damn it it might have ended up true because my brain is not well y'all have read my work y'all know what I've done all the horrible things I had to think about that like hope for the wicked which is something you need to read that's the closest thing to south of here it's a hitman story but there's two books there's hope for the wicked and pennies for the dam and it's a hitman who only kills pedophiles I know it's an overdone concept but when I wrote it it wasn't nowadays it's everywhere but anyways the it it's more it's more landsdale than you might think and the funny part about it is I hadn't read any landsdale at that point in time it was very short choppy pitch black humor twists and turns just anyways but uh yeah I but anyways there's a I wrote that in the whole point of that before before we go the whole point of that was is I wanted to get this image I'm a very visual person and someone I was talking to at the time mentioned uh Tijuana donkey shows and I of course the very first thing that happened when they mentioned that was the visual image I spent three months with that just flashing randomly into my head as you can imagine that's fucking upsetting right to to constantly have that image in your head so I put it in the book and there's only one line in the book about what happens about what is going on in the moment and it involves a jar of Crisco branded Crisco um as you can imagine what the Crisco is used for um and everybody everybody who reads it swears up and down that that is the most grotesque detailed description of bestiality they've ever read it isn't there the line literally goes slathered in Crisco it thrust and was in that was it that's the entire line that's all it said just before someone rushes in to stop it and it's I find that amazing that you can say so little in especially in fiction you can say so little and say so much um people swear that that that scene that scene in it people I've even sworn that it's five six ten pages long it's like a page it's like a half a page if that the actual scene um but anyways yeah I'm just rambling at this point in time we got we got good stuff done Hayley's already eating her game snacks that's terrible um but okay so tomorrow uh 9 a.m. my time 10 p.m. years hopefully I get up at a decent time so my brain is like a sweet fog for the first 10 15 minutes we're talking anyways uh but you happy with today yeah yeah me too me too and I just talk to you damn much so anyways thanks everybody for joining us uh tomorrow you have plenty of shopping time left Hayley uh so tomorrow once again same bat time same bat channel but until then I'll hail the chair do do do oh you want to say bye I'm sorry okay awkward outro