September 11, 2023 • 40 mins
If you are thinking about a creative career but the fear of leaving your current industry and “starting again” is holding you back, then this episode is a must listen.
I had the opportunity to speak with J.V. Hilliard, about his epic career journey pivot; from political lobbyist to published fantasy author.
And, his story doesn’t end there; with new books, an Augmented Reality game and a graphic novel on the horizon, this is a good news story that will inspire you to take the leap and follow your creative dreams.
Happy listening!
xo Abi
P.S. For more information about this episode and our guest, head to: www.crispcomms.co/podcast-episodes/ultimate-career-pivot-political-lobbyist-to-fantasy-author
Creativity: Uncovered is lovingly edited by the team at Crisp Communications.
Creativity: Uncovered is a registered Australian Trade Mark.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to Creativity (00:02):
Uncovered.
My name is Abi Gatling and I'm on a journey
to uncover how everyday people find inspiration,
get inventive and open their imagination.
Basically, I wanna find out how people come up
with creative solutions and then how they use them
(00:24):
at home, work, play and everything in between.
And my goal for this podcast is that by the end of it,
you'll be armed with a whole suite of tried
and tested ways to someone creativity
the next time that you need it.
Now, my guest today is someone who has made
(00:45):
such an epic pivot in their career,
moving from being a political lobbyist
to becoming a hugely successful fantasy writer.
So today, I'd like you to join me in welcoming
all the way from the US, JV Hilliard, welcome.
- Thank you very much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be on the show.
(01:06):
(laughing)
- I know it was like quite late for you where you are,
so I really appreciate you tuning in.
- It's all right.
- So now, JV, you have one of the coolest
kind of career journeys that I have heard.
Because now you seem to be like living the creative dream
(01:27):
and what I really love about your story
is kind of that it's almost like a tale of yin and yang.
I mean, from being a lobbyist to being a fantasy writer,
I can imagine that your life is hugely,
hugely different now, is that right?
- Yeah, I mean, I think that's the best way to put it.
(01:50):
It's like left brain, right brain.
And, you know, I, as you mentioned,
I was a DC lobbyist for about 20 years.
I focused primarily on defense lobbying
and technology lobbying.
So during that time, I was working on really,
what I would describe as very real things,
providing for the common defense
and promoting the general welfare
(02:11):
and all the kind of stuff that you hear,
dealing with in particular the Pentagon
and the legislature and the White House
for real everyday stuff.
And then, you know, the gate swings open with COVID
and DC shut down for almost 18 months.
And so it was an opportunity,
the silver lining in the COVID experience for me
(02:32):
was we were all stuck at home
and I had always wanted to write a book.
And this was a way for me to kick something off
of my bucket list.
And then, like you described, it became a career, right?
It's something now that, you know,
I've pivoted to in my everyday life.
And for me, I don't wanna look back.
This is just so much fun.
(02:53):
It's stress free in many respects
and I enjoy doing shows like this, you know,
conventions, book signings.
I even go to book clubs and talk to people at libraries.
You know, it's just, it's a great time
and it's all about make believe
and it's the opposite of the realism.
It's now escapism and entertainment.
And for me, it's just been a lot of fun transitioning
(03:17):
into this and I'm glad it's become successful
because, you know, it takes a while for authors
to get that way so that you could be self-sustaining.
And, you know, I'm fortunate in the sense
that I've had a pretty successful career
and I'm able to bridge some of that
to the point where my books are becoming
as relevant as they are within the space.
(03:38):
So, you know, I'm happy, I'm fortunate
and I don't wanna look back.
- That's so cool.
I mean, and that's so great that, you know,
you sort of touched on it, that it is hard,
it is hard for authors to make it.
Like you've gotta have a certain amount of
commerciality, I suppose,
to be able to break into the wider audience sphere.
(04:02):
How did you do that?
Because from not having written anything
to writing a book and then it being so successful,
being made into, do you say three or four book series,
how did that happen?
- Well, in part, I'm an entrepreneur at heart
and I've owned several businesses in the past,
(04:23):
some of them much more successful than others.
But ultimately, you know, for me,
I looked at my writing and my readership
as an entrepreneurial endeavor.
And what I mean by that is I know many authors
look at it from the art side and this is my art
and I'm going to put it out in the ether
and hopefully people like it.
(04:44):
And if they don't, that's fine.
It's something that I wanna do
and I needed to get it out of me and share it with people.
And there's nothing wrong with that at all.
In fact, I respect that.
To some degree, that's exactly what this is all about, right?
It's sharing a good story that entertains somebody.
My part, the other part of my brain
that's more strategic, looked at it and said,
(05:06):
"Well, look, if you're gonna do this,
"commit to doing a series,
"commit to getting to that third or fourth book
"where you can start making money at this,
"build a following, market it as best you can."
And so therefore I've treated it like any of my other
entrepreneurial endeavors, just like a business.
So I'm out there marketing myself.
(05:27):
I'm doing shows like this.
I'm doing, like tomorrow I'm gonna be
in Raleigh, North Carolina for GalaxyCon,
which is a big convention.
My third book is launched tomorrow.
So, and I've got a couple of speaking engagements
at the convention and they have about 30,000 people
come to those.
Conversely, if you rewind till this past Sunday,
(05:47):
I was at a local bookshop and I had three people, right?
And it's just, it's a contact sport.
Like you literally have to be in contact
with people to sell stuff.
And so even though I had an hour slot at a used bookstore
and I sold three books, I still went, right?
And I did my social media around it.
I did preliminary stuff around it.
(06:07):
And I sent out invitations to my newsletter folks
that I knew they were in the area.
And yeah, but it was a nice summer day here.
And you know, you're just on a Sunday coming out to,
if this was like November, maybe here,
and it was a wintery, then yeah,
I'll go to the bookstore and see the guy.
But everybody was out at the park
(06:28):
doing whatever, enjoying their summertime.
And it just wasn't the right fit, but tomorrow is different.
You know, I go into a weekend,
we're gonna be running into 30,000 people.
And it's just that general contact.
And I think authors too have a tendency to be introverted.
And if you can't tell in the first five minutes
of this interview, I'm anything but introverted.
So for me, I'll stop people
(06:50):
that aren't even looking at my table
and I'll ask them questions, I'll try to get them engaged.
And it's the salesmanship of that.
I think that, you know, I kind of bring to this,
which also helps to advance the sales of the books.
But to your point, you have to have the good,
I mean, the product has to be good, right?
So people have to like the story.
You know, and so it was a matter of writing a strong story
(07:11):
and coupling that with the right kind of marketing effort
and, you know, finding the right publishing folks
that are working with me
and the marketing folks that are working with me
to make it all worthwhile.
- Yeah, wow.
So well, I mean, congrats on the third book.
That's exciting.
(laughs)
Yeah, and that's an interesting approach to it
because, you know, some people lead with their creativity
and other people lead with saying,
(07:34):
you know, if I'm gonna be creative,
it's gotta be purposeful.
And, you know, the way you sort of approach it,
be like, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it really well.
(laughs)
So I don't have to go back to being a lobbyist, basically.
(laughs)
- Right, yeah.
I mean, lobbyist stuff is, it's a tough business.
It's, you have to have a thick skin.
(07:54):
People don't like you.
It's zero-sum game.
It's us versus them all the time.
And I'll give you one example of,
so during my former day job,
if I were to be on a show like this,
I would have prepped for it for two days.
Literally, I would have known everything about my opponent.
They would have known everything about me.
(08:14):
The host of the show would have come at me
with some sort of point counterpoint
or some gotcha moment,
trying to get me to say something
that I shouldn't say on the air.
When I did my first interview like this,
it was on a podcast,
and the host asked me the question,
so what season of the year do you like writing in the most?
(08:34):
And it was, at that point, the light bulb went on,
and it was like, wait a minute.
Are you trying to help me?
Like, what's going on here?
I wasn't used to it.
I was waiting for the gotcha moment,
and it never came, and he was like,
"No, no, I wanna try to advance what you're doing here.
I want this, you know, this is great."
And, you know, so when that hit,
you know, you just, the momentum started,
(08:58):
and I was like, wait a minute.
This is fun and entertaining and zero pressure,
and this is just gonna be great.
So, and at that point, you know,
about a third of the way through COVID,
I was like, all right, well, let's go.
I mean, I'm all the way in, and that's what I did,
and so it's been a lot of fun.
The ride's been great, and you're right,
(09:18):
I don't wanna go back.
(laughing)
- Oh, I mean, that's so cool.
I love that sort of juxtaposition of, you know,
your previous interviews,
and time now when you're in the creative space.
I really think creativity is such a connector,
and it can be such a positive thing.
(09:38):
I've certainly experienced that through even just this podcast.
You get someone on to talk about creativity,
their whole face lights up,
and you can't get them to stop talking with them.
(laughing)
- Sorry, I'll limit my responses.
I'm used to that anyway, so okay.
(laughing)
No, this isn't a gotcha moment, don't you worry.
(09:59):
(laughing)
So let's take a little step back, because the type of writing
that you do is epic, dark fantasy, right?
I mean, I'm not hugely familiar in that space.
Tell me what is that?
- Sure, so like many literature genres,
(10:24):
there's plenty that fit into fantasy adventure.
And the standard fantasy adventure thing
is kind of like Conan the Barbarian.
That in my world would be called sword and sorcery, right?
Epic fantasy is much more like Lord of the Rings.
And what that is, it's typically longer novels
with a series behind them.
And then behind that, you've got an entire world built out.
(10:48):
It's just not a one shot where you're coming in
and I'm gonna learn about this story and then it ends.
You've got a political system
and on top of that political system,
you have an economic system
and then you've got a history of the realm.
So if you look at what Lord of the Rings had done,
and you put yourself in the shoes of either Frodo or Bilbo,
the story of what had happened was really
(11:10):
a thousand years before with Sauron, right?
And Galadriel and all the stuff that,
like the prequel stuff was already there.
And so that's the kind of thing that we write.
We write things that have a history
and we write things that have a future
and you're living in a snapshot of that period.
And typically there's something epic about it, right?
(11:31):
So you either have massive amounts of struggle
between political machinery or in the case of Lord of the Rings,
you have the return of this ultimate evil.
And the dark stuff comes in,
it's more, my writing style is more like
Lord of the Rings meets Dracula, right?
Like I incorporate the Gothic into it.
(11:54):
My monsters are all unique.
Even though I borrow inspiration from some,
what I would describe as standard myths
of like the Nordic traditions
or Native American traditions or some Asian traditions,
for the most part, they're recognizable,
but I've got the skin around them
(12:15):
that makes them unique in my world.
But people can identify with them
as part of that.
And so you see the scary side of this.
And so it's a mix between what I would describe
as Tolkien and that Gothic
in the hopes of bringing some of that horror
into my epic fantasy.
And so maybe it's closer to Lord of the Rings
(12:35):
than it, or excuse me,
more closer to like Game of Thrones
than it is Lord of the Rings,
but epic fantasy is,
you can cut both ways on that one.
Yeah, wow.
I love that there are genres
and then subgenres and subgenres.
You can get more and more niche.
And there's an audience for that.
(12:56):
You wouldn't know it.
Like I didn't know there was a difference
between a young adult reader and a new reader
and a new reader to an adult reader.
Like YA is someone 13 to 17.
A new reader is someone that's 17 to 20.
You know, and then you've got adult readings at 21 and up.
And so you're targeting, it's even age,
it's crazy, but it's true.
And so folks target a niche that they want to write to.
(13:21):
And this was one that I've always wanted to write to.
So has it been a real learning journey for you
to find out about these genres
and the age groups and all that sort of stuff?
Has that been a learning journey for you as well?
It has.
One of the reasons that I chose to go
the traditional publishing route
was because as a business person,
(13:41):
there's an old saying in betting,
which is if you don't know the horse,
you don't make the bet.
And I didn't know the publishing market at all.
And for me to step into a marketplace
and try to start a new business in my head,
think of that, that's what I was trying to do here.
I saw this as a business with me being the brand
and my books being the product.
(14:02):
You know, I knew if I was coming into this market,
I needed someone next to me that knew what they were doing.
And so I didn't want to be an indie author.
I wanted to be traditionally published.
So I had a, you know, even though that meant
I was taking less royalties,
but I had a partner that knew what she was doing.
And in this case, Dragon Moon Press became that for me.
And I learned more about the industry,
which has allowed me to then make the right kind
(14:24):
of business decisions on where I go
and what I do and how I promote.
And typically it's alongside of her.
Now, some things, you know, I might want to do
that she doesn't want to do.
And that's okay too.
And then that comes out of my own pocket.
But then I get all the, the victor to the victor
goes to spoils or I lose my money, right?
Depending on what dice I'm rolling that day.
But, you know, it has been a tremendous learning experience.
(14:46):
And it's drinking from a fire hose really.
This industry is one that's been around for ages.
And they, some of them are, you know,
these traditional publishing houses
are steeped in their traditions.
And it's really hard to break them from that.
And I just have one that is a little bit more agile.
And, you know, what I would describe
as a niche publishing house that focuses on my genre
(15:07):
that understands my marketplace really well.
And, you know, I fell into it.
And same thing with my editors.
You know, I got the right editors to be part of this
that understand the genre, know what my readers expect,
my beta readers know what my readers expect
because they read my stuff all the time.
And so, you know, writing is really a team sport.
It's just not me sitting in a coffee shop somewhere writing.
(15:28):
It's really a group of people
that are helping me hone my product
to make it the best it can be
to the benefit of not only the reader
but also to the business side of things.
Yeah, I love that.
Writing is a team sport.
And it's true, though.
It's, I think like with any endeavor,
you know, you can focus on the things that you're good at
(15:50):
and outsource to people who know more than you.
That's something how my business works, you know.
I work with people who are busy every day
focusing on their professional services.
Leave the marketing to me.
I'm doing this day in, day out.
So, I mean, I guess that makes sense in writing as well.
(16:11):
Oh, well said.
You know, in my previous business,
it was the same way people hired me
because they didn't know how to navigate
the government marketplace.
You know, and the same thing would hold true
if you're not going to walk into court without a lawyer
or you're not going to front of, you know, in the U.S.,
the Internal Revenue Service without an accountant, right?
So, you just find someone that, you know,
(16:32):
knows what they're doing.
In this case, I needed a publishing team,
an editorial team, and a team of folks that really had a
a domain expertise that was around fantasy adventure,
sci-fi, dystopian stuff that you read, like Hunger Games and
that, because a lot of that stuff is translatable.
Like, if you're a fan of Star Wars,
(16:53):
you're likely also a fan of Lord of the Rings or,
you know, same thing holds, you know, there's just a number
that you're just open-minded to that type of thing.
And you might not be a romance reader or the romance reader.
So, I'm not going to go to a romance publisher and ask them
to help me publish my fantasy book.
You know, so I found some of it was in my very narrow lane,
and she helped me to grow it.
(17:15):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, unless you want to go further down the Game of Thrones route,
a bit more sexy times.
That's crazy.
I mean, it's interesting to me that you sort of have
started with a passion for writing and fantasy,
(17:36):
but then really quickly focused on the business side of things,
which I think is a really smart move because, you know,
you obviously have an end goal in mind and you want to get there
as quick as possible.
But how do you, how do you switch back between that business side
and the creative side and getting back into the writing?
Yeah, I think that someone like me, I used the term left brain,
(18:02):
right brain before.
You know, I am to some degree mentally ambidextrous
when it comes to that.
I really enjoy the writing, the creativity side.
And in part that comes from, you know, 20 years of playing
Dungeons and Dragons and being a creative,
I was a dungeon master for many of our group's, you know,
campaigns as part of that playtime.
(18:25):
And, you know, we still haven't stopped the same group
that I played with in high school and in college.
We still get together on Sunday nights, six to 10,
regardless of our wives or husbands,
we put that stuff aside and, you know, and still play.
And that fuels the creative side.
And for a while it, it, it, it's, it's sated that for me.
(18:46):
I didn't, I didn't need that because I was getting that as an outlet.
And then COVID happened and, you know,
that really provided me with the opportunity to say,
all right, well now I've got my days free.
It's just not Sunday six to 10.
How do I take this creative side and put it on steroids
and really kind of rev it up and throw some rocket fuel on it?
Right. And that's what I did.
And then once you have that product
(19:08):
and you think you have a good book, you, you have to market it.
Because if you look at Amazon, for example,
Amazon has tens of thousands of new books each month.
You know, and if you're not out there marketing
like everybody else is, you're just going to get lost in a,
in the tsunami of, of new work that's coming out.
You have to differentiate yourself.
(19:28):
And part of that is the sweat, the sweat equity, right?
That's the elbow grease that you put into it.
And so it's, it's doing these calls at crazy hours at night and,
or, you know, you know, getting on the road and, and, and,
or, you know, going to, you know,
a used bookstore and only selling three books.
Each book means that you got a new reader
and you're capturing something, you know,
a new email address that you can reach out to for the next one.
(19:50):
And you just have to build your base like you would any kind of startup business.
And so, you know, maybe it's because that was easy for me to fall back on.
I understood those protocols and rubrics and all that kind of stuff as a business owner.
But the creative side was like, wait a minute, this is so much fun.
This is not me marketing my services in DC.
This is really me marketing me and this cool story that I wrote.
(20:12):
And that's, I think that's, that's been a lot of fun for me.
And an experience I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade in.
I mean, this has really, it's been great.
Yeah.
I, yeah, I think that's it.
Like if you do something and you're proud of your work,
you want to get it out there, it makes perfect sense to me that you're doing that.
But then again, I am a marketer.
It's definitely going into my business.
(20:36):
See, there it is.
No, but.
You get it.
Hey, do you need a client?
I'm looking for a marketer.
He's got my Australian market a little bit.
Oh, you will talk after.
I will talk after.
I think that's interesting that you mentioned Dungeons and Dragons.
Again, it's not something I'm hugely familiar with.
But from what I understand, that a huge part of it is storytelling and creating a whole new world.
(21:04):
It's, it seems, now you've said that it kind of really makes sense that you've kind of gone down
this track now because you've been doing it since high school, you said.
Yeah.
For me, you're right about Dungeons and Dragons.
For those that have never been engaged in role playing games or, you know,
cosplay games or live action role plays, you know, those are groups of people that are
(21:29):
suffering from group delusions, right?
Like, so I as Dungeon Master, you know, just imagine yourself sitting around a campfire
and I'm telling you a horror story.
Like, it's a verbal communication of a story and sometimes it's with body language,
sometimes it's with tone.
Those same kind of things are baked into your writing, right?
When you sit down, you open my first book and you flip to the prologue and you start reading it,
(21:55):
there's a tone in there that's set as part of that.
And part of, and I think a lot of that comes from my experience as a Dungeon Master and/or a player
in the game where I'm sitting there creating a story and for the next three or four or five hours,
you're playing along with it, right?
And it becomes like real life past experience.
Maybe it's a funny story.
I mean, I joke around with my wife about it.
(22:15):
Like, we'll be at like a Christmas party with our friends and all the D&D folks are sitting
in the corner talking about stuff that never really happened in real life,
but how great it was at laughing at stories and everybody else is standing there saying,
"What are you guys, what's going on?"
Like, but it's a story that you all lived.
And so it's kind of been game tested, you know?
And so taking the best of the game stuff that we did and putting it into a story,
(22:42):
smoothing it out, you know, it's easy for it to be liked, I think, because it's
sort of been battle tested.
People have been through it and you've seen what people have liked and you saw what they
didn't like.
So you throw out the bad stuff and you keep the good stuff, including characters that you've made,
plots that you've had, villains that you've created, monsters that just came out of nowhere,
and you get these arch villains and you're like, "Oh, this would make a really, really good story."
(23:05):
And so that's really where it came from.
Yeah, stories and shared experiences are such great connectors.
And it seems like your books have really hit a chord with people.
Would you say there's a crossover between people who play D&D and people who read your books?
(23:29):
Oh, without a doubt.
That's the first thing I hear when I'm around the public, whether I'm giving a speech somewhere
or I'm selling books and stuff like that.
Those that have read it can say that when I'm reading your battle scenes, I feel like I'm playing
the game.
Or there's definitely a role playing aspect.
(23:53):
I can tell, I was going to guess that you play D&D because I feel it when I read your stuff
and/or the characters that are part of it too.
So there are some traditional tropes you can get away with, like elves, like Tolkien used
elves, D&D uses elves.
So they're ubiquitous.
So I'm allowed to use my own kind of elf.
I'm just not allowed to use the term Middle Earth or Faerun or Forgotten Rounds because
(24:15):
they belong to someone else.
So mine is the Realm of Warminster.
And I just introduce these twists on tropish characters that make sense.
And you take them through a hero's journey or you take them through another kind of plot
that you want to.
I've been able to use that and mix those things together in a way where I think my readership,
(24:37):
especially those that have played role playing games.
And I'm not talking about just role playing games like D&D.
I'm talking about you could be playing a video game these days.
There are all sorts of video RPGs out there.
Or there's an entire genre of lit RPG, literature RPGs, where they're writing stories about how
(24:57):
they played a game on a video game.
And it's just crazy.
But I'm telling you, it's just a lot of fun.
And I'm glad people do that.
I had someone come up to me at the last convention I was at and said,
"Your books are like D&D on crack."
And I was like, "That's pretty cool, I think."
Wow.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(25:17):
But I'll tell you, it's the most flattering stuff when people come up and say that to you.
Or they bring you some fan art or they send you something in an email that kind of,
it really, like something that touched them or motivated them.
And you're looking at this portrait that they've drawn that looks exactly like the character you
described and said, "Man, we've never met.
(25:40):
You read my stuff and you came up with that."
And that's like a police sketch artist of exactly what that character looks like.
And you just, you feel you're humbled by it in that sense.
It energizes me to write more and more stuff because I know that I'm having the effect of
entertaining people. Some entertained so much that they're taking time out of their schedules to do
(26:03):
that for me and to seek me out at a convention or a book signing.
And I don't know how you couldn't be humbled if someone did that.
I mean, and that kind of gives me the energy to do the next and the next and the next.
Yeah.
Wow. That is a very cool experience.
I actually was watching a webinar the other day and it was talking about video trends and
things like that.
And it was an interesting part in it where they talked about the levels of fandom and,
(26:27):
you know, the different levels of engagement.
And when people start taking your work and inserting a little bit of themselves into it
through creating fan art, writing their own mini stories based on it, extrapolating on a character,
that's a really high level of fandom.
(26:48):
It's such an achievement that people are doing that based on your books.
That's so humbling, I can imagine.
Yeah. I try to put as much of that online as I can. I use it in my social media.
People can find their fan art on my website.
You know, I try to honor that because it does, it makes you feel good that you affected someone
(27:12):
with your story so much that they went out of their way to create something else off of it.
I've even had people ask me if they can write fan fiction on it and I keep telling them,
"Let me finish the first series before you start on fan fiction."
It just doesn't work that way.
You don't know how it's going to end.
So how are you going to write fan fiction on it?
(27:32):
But it's really kind of humbling.
Or when someone comes up and says, "Please don't kill this character."
Or, "This is my favorite character and you're just stunned that they've taken a minor character
that I've used as comic relief or one of the bad guys, henchmen and they love him."
And they're excited about it.
And for me, like I said, I try to honor that.
(27:54):
And people, I even had one guy at the last convention I was at make a baseball card of me.
He has literally, I've seen collectors of cards and they keep them in their big folios and plastic.
And if he likes a book, he takes the author's official photo, turns it into a baseball card,
(28:15):
and then he brings it for you to sign and he sticks it in his book and he keeps it.
Like he collects the photo.
You want to talk about humbling?
I was like, "Oh, that's a really cool idea."
Having no idea that it was coming up for me to sign one.
I thought he was just showing me the, "Hey, look what I've got."
And he's like, "No, no, can you sign this?"
You know, you're just like, "Holy cow."
And it's just so much fun.
And that's what I mean.
It's like that entertainment piece.
You just, you can't beat that.
(28:36):
It just, you're so glad when you can entertain somebody.
That's cool.
I just, while you're saying this, I'm just thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is so many miles away from DC."
Isn't it?
Yeah.
It's just crazy.
Like you, that would never have an,
everybody in DC would talk about your, behind your back.
Right?
Yeah.
And here it's like, you know, and they're looking for weaknesses where here it's like,
(28:57):
"How can I help you?"
Or, "I want you to come on my show and promote you."
Or, "Can I get you to sign this for my son or daughter?"
It's like, it was just miles away from it, like you said.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You switched voodoo dolls for baseball cards.
Well said.
I'm going to use that and not give you credit down the road, by the way.
(29:18):
Clearly 100% for me.
Yes.
You record a box pop later, so you can say it again.
But yeah.
So tell me, you mentioned games before.
Your book is actually being made into a game of some sort.
Is that right?
That's right.
I licensed the intellectual property of my first four novels to an augmented reality,
(29:43):
virtual reality video game company called Meldiverse.
And in late 2024, the augmented reality game will come out.
And in late 2025, the VR version of it will come out.
And for those of you who have played Pokemon Go on your phones, you know what AR is, right?
So instead of catching a Pokemon, you're going to be able to use your phone to capture rewards
(30:05):
in a game where you're creating your own avatar and slaying the dragon.
But there's going to be real life rewards as well as leveling up rewards in the game.
So your character will level up and gain experience and hit points and powers and all
that kind of stuff.
But as part of the dragon's treasure or whatever it might be, you're also going to be able to
earn real world points, which is a buy one, get one at Starbucks or a buy one, get one at your local
(30:31):
deli or whatever it might be, whoever's sponsoring those things in there.
And so they've partnered with the company that owns Pokemon Go called Niantic to kind of create
the skeleton of this and then Meldiverse is coming in and wrapping around, you know, putting the
meat on the bone.
And my storyboarding is helping them kind of navigate the plot lines and things like that.
(30:55):
Stay, you know, within the confines of the realm, but understanding that they're obviously going
to have to make it different because, you know, the representations of the characters are going
to be different.
They're going to be live as opposed to in your imagination and things like that too.
And, you know, sometime in 2024, I might also have a graphic novel series that's beginning.
We're in the first stage, early stages of that adaptation.
(31:17):
So we'll see where that goes to.
But I get that a lot is like, oh, your books should be a comic.
They're so rich.
They're so graphic that you need to turn this into a comic book and, you know, low and behold,
you know, I'm halfway down that road.
So not there yet.
I don't have a publisher for it, but I've got a team and I'm putting around for it.
And it's excited about getting that done.
Wow.
(31:38):
I can't believe all the different avenues you can go down with this and how you can
translate your book into so many different formats.
It's unbelievable.
It's just a whole new world I've never even thought about.
Yeah.
You know, the question you get a lot is, you know, is it ever going to be made a movie or is it going
to be a Netflix series or whatever it might be?
(31:59):
And that's what you hear a lot.
You never hear is your book going to be turned into a video game, you know, or I'm going to see
this in my local comic bookstore.
And, you know, you just take the opportunities as they come to you.
And, you know, if that helps it one day to, you know, to sell more in it, again, it's it's it's
a I'm honored that someone would see my books as a strong enough to support a video game audience.
(32:24):
And that, you know, the kind of, you know, battles and challenges in the in the novel that they read
translate well into the same kind of thing for for gamers.
And, you know, it makes sense when you think about it.
So, yeah, of course, I've got to take advantage of that if I can.
And then my my art finds another medium, in this case, maybe two.
(32:45):
So we'll see where that goes down the road.
But I'm excited just to be part of it.
And I'm honored that someone would think my stuff's worthy of that.
Yeah, I think like your writing is so rich, the vocabulary is so interesting.
I must be very typical of fantasy writing, but surely translating into other mediums.
(33:08):
That's kind of a hard process to make sure that you're still capturing the essence of it all
when you're stripping out like 90 percent of the words.
Yeah, it's tough, right?
Like you're going from a very imaginative playground to one that is visual,
whether it is in a comic book, like you said, where you're taking what might be an entire chapter
(33:30):
and putting it into a couple of pages, all graphically done.
And it's that illustration that carries the story as opposed to the words.
And, you know, you mentioned way in the beginning of this interview that, you know,
when you don't know what you do, you find someone that does and you bring them on as
part of your team, you sub that out.
Well, that's exactly what's going on here.
(33:50):
I couldn't ever put together a graphic novel.
I wouldn't even know where to begin for that.
But I've got people that can and, you know, they're going to partner on this to make that happen.
Or the same thing with the video game.
You know, I'm not a technologist.
I can't do augmented reality, but they know their realm.
And so I'll be there to assist.
But I'm also self-aware enough to know when I need to get out of my own way.
(34:14):
Like, I'm not going to tell them how to make their own game or make their own graphic novel.
They know their industry.
I don't.
So I'll stay here and just call me when you need me.
And as long as it's not outside of reason that you want to change some things,
I'm usually pretty easygoing when it comes to that and realizing you're just adapting it.
And it's not the same, but it doesn't have to be.
(34:35):
It just has to be something that's, again, entertaining.
Someone, you know, wanted to see it and, oh, this is what Ritter looks like or this is what
Adeline looks like, or at least from my eyes, what they should look like.
And then they, you know, and that helps to inform the reader.
Yeah.
I can only imagine that you're describing, you're describing your characters and the
(34:56):
environment and all this way.
And then when someone else comes up with an interpretation of it, a visual interpretation,
it could be jarring or it could enhance what you already had in your brain.
Like I know when I've read books and then I've watched the movie, the first part,
you're like, oh, that's not what they look like.
(35:16):
But then you really quickly adapt to it and you're like, yeah, of course,
I bet that's what they look like.
Yeah, right.
And I, look, you don't ever want me drawing anything.
It's bad.
It's like stick figure bad.
So for me, I appreciate their art form.
And I think they appreciate mine.
And so if I could help them, like, and they'll just, it's basically like an interview.
(35:37):
They sit down and say, well, tell me about this character and what does he or she look like?
And, you know, and you give them the parameters of it and they come back with like profiles
and costumes and what their weapons look like and what they may look like in different stages
of their life.
And I didn't even know that was a thing.
And meanwhile, there's like five pages of iterations of what these characters will look
(35:57):
like during the course of the story.
And you're like, oh, that's pretty good.
I never thought of it that way.
Because in your head, like your characters don't age or there's just something about them
that they're always going to be the same person.
And really in the end, you know, they've already taken that into account in this new form.
And you're like, wow, that's really good.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
And, you know, you just have to respect their talent and get out of their way.
(36:19):
Like I'm not, I don't have the ego to stand there and wave my finger at them and say,
that's not what I wanted.
You know, no, if you're close, you're good.
And do you think what they're coming up with is shaping how you're going to progress with your
next books?
Oh, sure.
You know, it gives you thought.
Like by way of example, when I did the first storyboard for the video game,
(36:44):
you realize the limitations of it.
Like in the book, there are no limits.
You know, I'm creating this sweeping realm and it's just me writing and it doesn't really
happen anywhere.
It's all happening imaginatively and you can, everybody creates it differently in their head.
That's why I think that when people go see movies after they've read the book,
they always say the book was better.
(37:04):
Well, of course it was because it was exactly the way you pictured it in your head.
Right.
And in the movie, it's an interpretation of someone else's eyes and their optics on things
and it's limiting.
You know, there are no words to accompany it.
So they have to, they inject music and intention and, you know, and all sorts of other things
to get you to, you know, to emote in that way where you're now you're feeling a connection
(37:28):
with those characters.
But it's never as good as the book because the book is exactly how you conjured in your head.
And they're doing that from scratch using my interpretations to put together a game
or a graphic novel.
And so you have to coach them as best you can.
But like I said, as long as you get in the ballpark, you know, that's going to be good
(37:49):
enough for me.
I don't want to tell them what they need because they know what those limitations are.
And, you know, so I'd be more, I'm a willing collaborative when it comes to those kind of
things and I try to stay out of their way.
Yeah, that's cool.
It sounds like you've got such an exciting future and a whole bunch of things lined up.
(38:10):
So thank you for sharing a little bit of that with me today.
It's been my pleasure and thank you very much for having me on.
I enjoyed, I mean, look, I do a number of these things and you, some of the stuff we talked
about tonight I haven't talked about before.
So you asked some very cool questions and I appreciate that.
Oh, no.
(38:32):
Look, it was such, it's such a good news story.
I love when people just find an in and follow their passions.
And so I really appreciate you sharing it with me and my listeners today.
And I also want to thank you, thank everyone who has tuned in to Creativity (38:44):
Uncovered today
because I really hope that JV story has inspired you to sort of chase your dreams and because
they don't have to remain just a fantasy.
Oh, little pun there.
That's too pretty tonight.
That's really good.
I can't help myself.
(39:05):
I got, I got to end the recording before that.
So thanks everyone.
And as always, I really hope for this episode,
I'll see you some new creativity the next time that you need it.
[Music]
(39:45):
If you've made it this far, a huge thank you for your support and tuning into today's episode.
Creativity (39:50):
Uncovered has been lovingly recorded on the land of the Kabi Kabi people
and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.
This podcast has been produced by my amazing team here at Crisp Communications
and the music you just heard was composed by James Gatling.
(40:11):
If you liked this episode, please do share it around.
And help us on our mission to unlock more creativity in this world.
You can also hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any new episode releases.
(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to Creativity (00:02):
Uncovered.
My name is Abi Gatling and I'm on a journey
to uncover how everyday people find inspiration,
get inventive and open their imagination.
Basically, I wanna find out how people come up
with creative solutions and then how they use them
(00:24):
at home, work, play and everything in between.
And my goal for this podcast is that by the end of it,
you'll be armed with a whole suite of tried
and tested ways to someone creativity
the next time that you need it.
Now, my guest today is someone who has made
(00:45):
such an epic pivot in their career,
moving from being a political lobbyist
to becoming a hugely successful fantasy writer.
So today, I'd like you to join me in welcoming
all the way from the US, JV Hilliard, welcome.
- Thank you very much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be on the show.
(01:06):
(laughing)
- I know it was like quite late for you where you are,
so I really appreciate you tuning in.
- It's all right.
- So now, JV, you have one of the coolest
kind of career journeys that I have heard.
Because now you seem to be like living the creative dream
(01:27):
and what I really love about your story
is kind of that it's almost like a tale of yin and yang.
I mean, from being a lobbyist to being a fantasy writer,
I can imagine that your life is hugely,
hugely different now, is that right?
- Yeah, I mean, I think that's the best way to put it.
(01:50):
It's like left brain, right brain.
And, you know, I, as you mentioned,
I was a DC lobbyist for about 20 years.
I focused primarily on defense lobbying
and technology lobbying.
So during that time, I was working on really,
what I would describe as very real things,
providing for the common defense
and promoting the general welfare
(02:11):
and all the kind of stuff that you hear,
dealing with in particular the Pentagon
and the legislature and the White House
for real everyday stuff.
And then, you know, the gate swings open with COVID
and DC shut down for almost 18 months.
And so it was an opportunity,
the silver lining in the COVID experience for me
(02:32):
was we were all stuck at home
and I had always wanted to write a book.
And this was a way for me to kick something off
of my bucket list.
And then, like you described, it became a career, right?
It's something now that, you know,
I've pivoted to in my everyday life.
And for me, I don't wanna look back.
This is just so much fun.
(02:53):
It's stress free in many respects
and I enjoy doing shows like this, you know,
conventions, book signings.
I even go to book clubs and talk to people at libraries.
You know, it's just, it's a great time
and it's all about make believe
and it's the opposite of the realism.
It's now escapism and entertainment.
And for me, it's just been a lot of fun transitioning
(03:17):
into this and I'm glad it's become successful
because, you know, it takes a while for authors
to get that way so that you could be self-sustaining.
And, you know, I'm fortunate in the sense
that I've had a pretty successful career
and I'm able to bridge some of that
to the point where my books are becoming
as relevant as they are within the space.
(03:38):
So, you know, I'm happy, I'm fortunate
and I don't wanna look back.
- That's so cool.
I mean, and that's so great that, you know,
you sort of touched on it, that it is hard,
it is hard for authors to make it.
Like you've gotta have a certain amount of
commerciality, I suppose,
to be able to break into the wider audience sphere.
(04:02):
How did you do that?
Because from not having written anything
to writing a book and then it being so successful,
being made into, do you say three or four book series,
how did that happen?
- Well, in part, I'm an entrepreneur at heart
and I've owned several businesses in the past,
(04:23):
some of them much more successful than others.
But ultimately, you know, for me,
I looked at my writing and my readership
as an entrepreneurial endeavor.
And what I mean by that is I know many authors
look at it from the art side and this is my art
and I'm going to put it out in the ether
and hopefully people like it.
(04:44):
And if they don't, that's fine.
It's something that I wanna do
and I needed to get it out of me and share it with people.
And there's nothing wrong with that at all.
In fact, I respect that.
To some degree, that's exactly what this is all about, right?
It's sharing a good story that entertains somebody.
My part, the other part of my brain
that's more strategic, looked at it and said,
(05:06):
"Well, look, if you're gonna do this,
"commit to doing a series,
"commit to getting to that third or fourth book
"where you can start making money at this,
"build a following, market it as best you can."
And so therefore I've treated it like any of my other
entrepreneurial endeavors, just like a business.
So I'm out there marketing myself.
(05:27):
I'm doing shows like this.
I'm doing, like tomorrow I'm gonna be
in Raleigh, North Carolina for GalaxyCon,
which is a big convention.
My third book is launched tomorrow.
So, and I've got a couple of speaking engagements
at the convention and they have about 30,000 people
come to those.
Conversely, if you rewind till this past Sunday,
(05:47):
I was at a local bookshop and I had three people, right?
And it's just, it's a contact sport.
Like you literally have to be in contact
with people to sell stuff.
And so even though I had an hour slot at a used bookstore
and I sold three books, I still went, right?
And I did my social media around it.
I did preliminary stuff around it.
(06:07):
And I sent out invitations to my newsletter folks
that I knew they were in the area.
And yeah, but it was a nice summer day here.
And you know, you're just on a Sunday coming out to,
if this was like November, maybe here,
and it was a wintery, then yeah,
I'll go to the bookstore and see the guy.
But everybody was out at the park
(06:28):
doing whatever, enjoying their summertime.
And it just wasn't the right fit, but tomorrow is different.
You know, I go into a weekend,
we're gonna be running into 30,000 people.
And it's just that general contact.
And I think authors too have a tendency to be introverted.
And if you can't tell in the first five minutes
of this interview, I'm anything but introverted.
So for me, I'll stop people
(06:50):
that aren't even looking at my table
and I'll ask them questions, I'll try to get them engaged.
And it's the salesmanship of that.
I think that, you know, I kind of bring to this,
which also helps to advance the sales of the books.
But to your point, you have to have the good,
I mean, the product has to be good, right?
So people have to like the story.
You know, and so it was a matter of writing a strong story
(07:11):
and coupling that with the right kind of marketing effort
and, you know, finding the right publishing folks
that are working with me
and the marketing folks that are working with me
to make it all worthwhile.
- Yeah, wow.
So well, I mean, congrats on the third book.
That's exciting.
(laughs)
Yeah, and that's an interesting approach to it
because, you know, some people lead with their creativity
and other people lead with saying,
(07:34):
you know, if I'm gonna be creative,
it's gotta be purposeful.
And, you know, the way you sort of approach it,
be like, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it really well.
(laughs)
So I don't have to go back to being a lobbyist, basically.
(laughs)
- Right, yeah.
I mean, lobbyist stuff is, it's a tough business.
It's, you have to have a thick skin.
(07:54):
People don't like you.
It's zero-sum game.
It's us versus them all the time.
And I'll give you one example of,
so during my former day job,
if I were to be on a show like this,
I would have prepped for it for two days.
Literally, I would have known everything about my opponent.
They would have known everything about me.
(08:14):
The host of the show would have come at me
with some sort of point counterpoint
or some gotcha moment,
trying to get me to say something
that I shouldn't say on the air.
When I did my first interview like this,
it was on a podcast,
and the host asked me the question,
so what season of the year do you like writing in the most?
(08:34):
And it was, at that point, the light bulb went on,
and it was like, wait a minute.
Are you trying to help me?
Like, what's going on here?
I wasn't used to it.
I was waiting for the gotcha moment,
and it never came, and he was like,
"No, no, I wanna try to advance what you're doing here.
I want this, you know, this is great."
And, you know, so when that hit,
you know, you just, the momentum started,
(08:58):
and I was like, wait a minute.
This is fun and entertaining and zero pressure,
and this is just gonna be great.
So, and at that point, you know,
about a third of the way through COVID,
I was like, all right, well, let's go.
I mean, I'm all the way in, and that's what I did,
and so it's been a lot of fun.
The ride's been great, and you're right,
(09:18):
I don't wanna go back.
(laughing)
- Oh, I mean, that's so cool.
I love that sort of juxtaposition of, you know,
your previous interviews,
and time now when you're in the creative space.
I really think creativity is such a connector,
and it can be such a positive thing.
(09:38):
I've certainly experienced that through even just this podcast.
You get someone on to talk about creativity,
their whole face lights up,
and you can't get them to stop talking with them.
(laughing)
- Sorry, I'll limit my responses.
I'm used to that anyway, so okay.
(laughing)
No, this isn't a gotcha moment, don't you worry.
(09:59):
(laughing)
So let's take a little step back, because the type of writing
that you do is epic, dark fantasy, right?
I mean, I'm not hugely familiar in that space.
Tell me what is that?
- Sure, so like many literature genres,
(10:24):
there's plenty that fit into fantasy adventure.
And the standard fantasy adventure thing
is kind of like Conan the Barbarian.
That in my world would be called sword and sorcery, right?
Epic fantasy is much more like Lord of the Rings.
And what that is, it's typically longer novels
with a series behind them.
And then behind that, you've got an entire world built out.
(10:48):
It's just not a one shot where you're coming in
and I'm gonna learn about this story and then it ends.
You've got a political system
and on top of that political system,
you have an economic system
and then you've got a history of the realm.
So if you look at what Lord of the Rings had done,
and you put yourself in the shoes of either Frodo or Bilbo,
the story of what had happened was really
(11:10):
a thousand years before with Sauron, right?
And Galadriel and all the stuff that,
like the prequel stuff was already there.
And so that's the kind of thing that we write.
We write things that have a history
and we write things that have a future
and you're living in a snapshot of that period.
And typically there's something epic about it, right?
(11:31):
So you either have massive amounts of struggle
between political machinery or in the case of Lord of the Rings,
you have the return of this ultimate evil.
And the dark stuff comes in,
it's more, my writing style is more like
Lord of the Rings meets Dracula, right?
Like I incorporate the Gothic into it.
(11:54):
My monsters are all unique.
Even though I borrow inspiration from some,
what I would describe as standard myths
of like the Nordic traditions
or Native American traditions or some Asian traditions,
for the most part, they're recognizable,
but I've got the skin around them
(12:15):
that makes them unique in my world.
But people can identify with them
as part of that.
And so you see the scary side of this.
And so it's a mix between what I would describe
as Tolkien and that Gothic
in the hopes of bringing some of that horror
into my epic fantasy.
And so maybe it's closer to Lord of the Rings
(12:35):
than it, or excuse me,
more closer to like Game of Thrones
than it is Lord of the Rings,
but epic fantasy is,
you can cut both ways on that one.
Yeah, wow.
I love that there are genres
and then subgenres and subgenres.
You can get more and more niche.
And there's an audience for that.
(12:56):
You wouldn't know it.
Like I didn't know there was a difference
between a young adult reader and a new reader
and a new reader to an adult reader.
Like YA is someone 13 to 17.
A new reader is someone that's 17 to 20.
You know, and then you've got adult readings at 21 and up.
And so you're targeting, it's even age,
it's crazy, but it's true.
And so folks target a niche that they want to write to.
(13:21):
And this was one that I've always wanted to write to.
So has it been a real learning journey for you
to find out about these genres
and the age groups and all that sort of stuff?
Has that been a learning journey for you as well?
It has.
One of the reasons that I chose to go
the traditional publishing route
was because as a business person,
(13:41):
there's an old saying in betting,
which is if you don't know the horse,
you don't make the bet.
And I didn't know the publishing market at all.
And for me to step into a marketplace
and try to start a new business in my head,
think of that, that's what I was trying to do here.
I saw this as a business with me being the brand
and my books being the product.
(14:02):
You know, I knew if I was coming into this market,
I needed someone next to me that knew what they were doing.
And so I didn't want to be an indie author.
I wanted to be traditionally published.
So I had a, you know, even though that meant
I was taking less royalties,
but I had a partner that knew what she was doing.
And in this case, Dragon Moon Press became that for me.
And I learned more about the industry,
which has allowed me to then make the right kind
(14:24):
of business decisions on where I go
and what I do and how I promote.
And typically it's alongside of her.
Now, some things, you know, I might want to do
that she doesn't want to do.
And that's okay too.
And then that comes out of my own pocket.
But then I get all the, the victor to the victor
goes to spoils or I lose my money, right?
Depending on what dice I'm rolling that day.
But, you know, it has been a tremendous learning experience.
(14:46):
And it's drinking from a fire hose really.
This industry is one that's been around for ages.
And they, some of them are, you know,
these traditional publishing houses
are steeped in their traditions.
And it's really hard to break them from that.
And I just have one that is a little bit more agile.
And, you know, what I would describe
as a niche publishing house that focuses on my genre
(15:07):
that understands my marketplace really well.
And, you know, I fell into it.
And same thing with my editors.
You know, I got the right editors to be part of this
that understand the genre, know what my readers expect,
my beta readers know what my readers expect
because they read my stuff all the time.
And so, you know, writing is really a team sport.
It's just not me sitting in a coffee shop somewhere writing.
(15:28):
It's really a group of people
that are helping me hone my product
to make it the best it can be
to the benefit of not only the reader
but also to the business side of things.
Yeah, I love that.
Writing is a team sport.
And it's true, though.
It's, I think like with any endeavor,
you know, you can focus on the things that you're good at
(15:50):
and outsource to people who know more than you.
That's something how my business works, you know.
I work with people who are busy every day
focusing on their professional services.
Leave the marketing to me.
I'm doing this day in, day out.
So, I mean, I guess that makes sense in writing as well.
(16:11):
Oh, well said.
You know, in my previous business,
it was the same way people hired me
because they didn't know how to navigate
the government marketplace.
You know, and the same thing would hold true
if you're not going to walk into court without a lawyer
or you're not going to front of, you know, in the U.S.,
the Internal Revenue Service without an accountant, right?
So, you just find someone that, you know,
(16:32):
knows what they're doing.
In this case, I needed a publishing team,
an editorial team, and a team of folks that really had a
a domain expertise that was around fantasy adventure,
sci-fi, dystopian stuff that you read, like Hunger Games and
that, because a lot of that stuff is translatable.
Like, if you're a fan of Star Wars,
(16:53):
you're likely also a fan of Lord of the Rings or,
you know, same thing holds, you know, there's just a number
that you're just open-minded to that type of thing.
And you might not be a romance reader or the romance reader.
So, I'm not going to go to a romance publisher and ask them
to help me publish my fantasy book.
You know, so I found some of it was in my very narrow lane,
and she helped me to grow it.
(17:15):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, unless you want to go further down the Game of Thrones route,
a bit more sexy times.
That's crazy.
I mean, it's interesting to me that you sort of have
started with a passion for writing and fantasy,
(17:36):
but then really quickly focused on the business side of things,
which I think is a really smart move because, you know,
you obviously have an end goal in mind and you want to get there
as quick as possible.
But how do you, how do you switch back between that business side
and the creative side and getting back into the writing?
Yeah, I think that someone like me, I used the term left brain,
(18:02):
right brain before.
You know, I am to some degree mentally ambidextrous
when it comes to that.
I really enjoy the writing, the creativity side.
And in part that comes from, you know, 20 years of playing
Dungeons and Dragons and being a creative,
I was a dungeon master for many of our group's, you know,
campaigns as part of that playtime.
(18:25):
And, you know, we still haven't stopped the same group
that I played with in high school and in college.
We still get together on Sunday nights, six to 10,
regardless of our wives or husbands,
we put that stuff aside and, you know, and still play.
And that fuels the creative side.
And for a while it, it, it, it's, it's sated that for me.
(18:46):
I didn't, I didn't need that because I was getting that as an outlet.
And then COVID happened and, you know,
that really provided me with the opportunity to say,
all right, well now I've got my days free.
It's just not Sunday six to 10.
How do I take this creative side and put it on steroids
and really kind of rev it up and throw some rocket fuel on it?
Right. And that's what I did.
And then once you have that product
(19:08):
and you think you have a good book, you, you have to market it.
Because if you look at Amazon, for example,
Amazon has tens of thousands of new books each month.
You know, and if you're not out there marketing
like everybody else is, you're just going to get lost in a,
in the tsunami of, of new work that's coming out.
You have to differentiate yourself.
(19:28):
And part of that is the sweat, the sweat equity, right?
That's the elbow grease that you put into it.
And so it's, it's doing these calls at crazy hours at night and,
or, you know, you know, getting on the road and, and, and,
or, you know, going to, you know,
a used bookstore and only selling three books.
Each book means that you got a new reader
and you're capturing something, you know,
a new email address that you can reach out to for the next one.
(19:50):
And you just have to build your base like you would any kind of startup business.
And so, you know, maybe it's because that was easy for me to fall back on.
I understood those protocols and rubrics and all that kind of stuff as a business owner.
But the creative side was like, wait a minute, this is so much fun.
This is not me marketing my services in DC.
This is really me marketing me and this cool story that I wrote.
(20:12):
And that's, I think that's, that's been a lot of fun for me.
And an experience I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade in.
I mean, this has really, it's been great.
Yeah.
I, yeah, I think that's it.
Like if you do something and you're proud of your work,
you want to get it out there, it makes perfect sense to me that you're doing that.
But then again, I am a marketer.
It's definitely going into my business.
(20:36):
See, there it is.
No, but.
You get it.
Hey, do you need a client?
I'm looking for a marketer.
He's got my Australian market a little bit.
Oh, you will talk after.
I will talk after.
I think that's interesting that you mentioned Dungeons and Dragons.
Again, it's not something I'm hugely familiar with.
But from what I understand, that a huge part of it is storytelling and creating a whole new world.
(21:04):
It's, it seems, now you've said that it kind of really makes sense that you've kind of gone down
this track now because you've been doing it since high school, you said.
Yeah.
For me, you're right about Dungeons and Dragons.
For those that have never been engaged in role playing games or, you know,
cosplay games or live action role plays, you know, those are groups of people that are
(21:29):
suffering from group delusions, right?
Like, so I as Dungeon Master, you know, just imagine yourself sitting around a campfire
and I'm telling you a horror story.
Like, it's a verbal communication of a story and sometimes it's with body language,
sometimes it's with tone.
Those same kind of things are baked into your writing, right?
When you sit down, you open my first book and you flip to the prologue and you start reading it,
(21:55):
there's a tone in there that's set as part of that.
And part of, and I think a lot of that comes from my experience as a Dungeon Master and/or a player
in the game where I'm sitting there creating a story and for the next three or four or five hours,
you're playing along with it, right?
And it becomes like real life past experience.
Maybe it's a funny story.
I mean, I joke around with my wife about it.
(22:15):
Like, we'll be at like a Christmas party with our friends and all the D&D folks are sitting
in the corner talking about stuff that never really happened in real life,
but how great it was at laughing at stories and everybody else is standing there saying,
"What are you guys, what's going on?"
Like, but it's a story that you all lived.
And so it's kind of been game tested, you know?
And so taking the best of the game stuff that we did and putting it into a story,
(22:42):
smoothing it out, you know, it's easy for it to be liked, I think, because it's
sort of been battle tested.
People have been through it and you've seen what people have liked and you saw what they
didn't like.
So you throw out the bad stuff and you keep the good stuff, including characters that you've made,
plots that you've had, villains that you've created, monsters that just came out of nowhere,
and you get these arch villains and you're like, "Oh, this would make a really, really good story."
(23:05):
And so that's really where it came from.
Yeah, stories and shared experiences are such great connectors.
And it seems like your books have really hit a chord with people.
Would you say there's a crossover between people who play D&D and people who read your books?
(23:29):
Oh, without a doubt.
That's the first thing I hear when I'm around the public, whether I'm giving a speech somewhere
or I'm selling books and stuff like that.
Those that have read it can say that when I'm reading your battle scenes, I feel like I'm playing
the game.
Or there's definitely a role playing aspect.
(23:53):
I can tell, I was going to guess that you play D&D because I feel it when I read your stuff
and/or the characters that are part of it too.
So there are some traditional tropes you can get away with, like elves, like Tolkien used
elves, D&D uses elves.
So they're ubiquitous.
So I'm allowed to use my own kind of elf.
I'm just not allowed to use the term Middle Earth or Faerun or Forgotten Rounds because
(24:15):
they belong to someone else.
So mine is the Realm of Warminster.
And I just introduce these twists on tropish characters that make sense.
And you take them through a hero's journey or you take them through another kind of plot
that you want to.
I've been able to use that and mix those things together in a way where I think my readership,
(24:37):
especially those that have played role playing games.
And I'm not talking about just role playing games like D&D.
I'm talking about you could be playing a video game these days.
There are all sorts of video RPGs out there.
Or there's an entire genre of lit RPG, literature RPGs, where they're writing stories about how
(24:57):
they played a game on a video game.
And it's just crazy.
But I'm telling you, it's just a lot of fun.
And I'm glad people do that.
I had someone come up to me at the last convention I was at and said,
"Your books are like D&D on crack."
And I was like, "That's pretty cool, I think."
Wow.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(25:17):
But I'll tell you, it's the most flattering stuff when people come up and say that to you.
Or they bring you some fan art or they send you something in an email that kind of,
it really, like something that touched them or motivated them.
And you're looking at this portrait that they've drawn that looks exactly like the character you
described and said, "Man, we've never met.
(25:40):
You read my stuff and you came up with that."
And that's like a police sketch artist of exactly what that character looks like.
And you just, you feel you're humbled by it in that sense.
It energizes me to write more and more stuff because I know that I'm having the effect of
entertaining people. Some entertained so much that they're taking time out of their schedules to do
(26:03):
that for me and to seek me out at a convention or a book signing.
And I don't know how you couldn't be humbled if someone did that.
I mean, and that kind of gives me the energy to do the next and the next and the next.
Yeah.
Wow. That is a very cool experience.
I actually was watching a webinar the other day and it was talking about video trends and
things like that.
And it was an interesting part in it where they talked about the levels of fandom and,
(26:27):
you know, the different levels of engagement.
And when people start taking your work and inserting a little bit of themselves into it
through creating fan art, writing their own mini stories based on it, extrapolating on a character,
that's a really high level of fandom.
(26:48):
It's such an achievement that people are doing that based on your books.
That's so humbling, I can imagine.
Yeah. I try to put as much of that online as I can. I use it in my social media.
People can find their fan art on my website.
You know, I try to honor that because it does, it makes you feel good that you affected someone
(27:12):
with your story so much that they went out of their way to create something else off of it.
I've even had people ask me if they can write fan fiction on it and I keep telling them,
"Let me finish the first series before you start on fan fiction."
It just doesn't work that way.
You don't know how it's going to end.
So how are you going to write fan fiction on it?
(27:32):
But it's really kind of humbling.
Or when someone comes up and says, "Please don't kill this character."
Or, "This is my favorite character and you're just stunned that they've taken a minor character
that I've used as comic relief or one of the bad guys, henchmen and they love him."
And they're excited about it.
And for me, like I said, I try to honor that.
(27:54):
And people, I even had one guy at the last convention I was at make a baseball card of me.
He has literally, I've seen collectors of cards and they keep them in their big folios and plastic.
And if he likes a book, he takes the author's official photo, turns it into a baseball card,
(28:15):
and then he brings it for you to sign and he sticks it in his book and he keeps it.
Like he collects the photo.
You want to talk about humbling?
I was like, "Oh, that's a really cool idea."
Having no idea that it was coming up for me to sign one.
I thought he was just showing me the, "Hey, look what I've got."
And he's like, "No, no, can you sign this?"
You know, you're just like, "Holy cow."
And it's just so much fun.
And that's what I mean.
It's like that entertainment piece.
You just, you can't beat that.
(28:36):
It just, you're so glad when you can entertain somebody.
That's cool.
I just, while you're saying this, I'm just thinking, "Oh my gosh, this is so many miles away from DC."
Isn't it?
Yeah.
It's just crazy.
Like you, that would never have an,
everybody in DC would talk about your, behind your back.
Right?
Yeah.
And here it's like, you know, and they're looking for weaknesses where here it's like,
(28:57):
"How can I help you?"
Or, "I want you to come on my show and promote you."
Or, "Can I get you to sign this for my son or daughter?"
It's like, it was just miles away from it, like you said.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You switched voodoo dolls for baseball cards.
Well said.
I'm going to use that and not give you credit down the road, by the way.
(29:18):
Clearly 100% for me.
Yes.
You record a box pop later, so you can say it again.
But yeah.
So tell me, you mentioned games before.
Your book is actually being made into a game of some sort.
Is that right?
That's right.
I licensed the intellectual property of my first four novels to an augmented reality,
(29:43):
virtual reality video game company called Meldiverse.
And in late 2024, the augmented reality game will come out.
And in late 2025, the VR version of it will come out.
And for those of you who have played Pokemon Go on your phones, you know what AR is, right?
So instead of catching a Pokemon, you're going to be able to use your phone to capture rewards
(30:05):
in a game where you're creating your own avatar and slaying the dragon.
But there's going to be real life rewards as well as leveling up rewards in the game.
So your character will level up and gain experience and hit points and powers and all
that kind of stuff.
But as part of the dragon's treasure or whatever it might be, you're also going to be able to
earn real world points, which is a buy one, get one at Starbucks or a buy one, get one at your local
(30:31):
deli or whatever it might be, whoever's sponsoring those things in there.
And so they've partnered with the company that owns Pokemon Go called Niantic to kind of create
the skeleton of this and then Meldiverse is coming in and wrapping around, you know, putting the
meat on the bone.
And my storyboarding is helping them kind of navigate the plot lines and things like that.
(30:55):
Stay, you know, within the confines of the realm, but understanding that they're obviously going
to have to make it different because, you know, the representations of the characters are going
to be different.
They're going to be live as opposed to in your imagination and things like that too.
And, you know, sometime in 2024, I might also have a graphic novel series that's beginning.
We're in the first stage, early stages of that adaptation.
(31:17):
So we'll see where that goes to.
But I get that a lot is like, oh, your books should be a comic.
They're so rich.
They're so graphic that you need to turn this into a comic book and, you know, low and behold,
you know, I'm halfway down that road.
So not there yet.
I don't have a publisher for it, but I've got a team and I'm putting around for it.
And it's excited about getting that done.
Wow.
(31:38):
I can't believe all the different avenues you can go down with this and how you can
translate your book into so many different formats.
It's unbelievable.
It's just a whole new world I've never even thought about.
Yeah.
You know, the question you get a lot is, you know, is it ever going to be made a movie or is it going
to be a Netflix series or whatever it might be?
(31:59):
And that's what you hear a lot.
You never hear is your book going to be turned into a video game, you know, or I'm going to see
this in my local comic bookstore.
And, you know, you just take the opportunities as they come to you.
And, you know, if that helps it one day to, you know, to sell more in it, again, it's it's it's
a I'm honored that someone would see my books as a strong enough to support a video game audience.
(32:24):
And that, you know, the kind of, you know, battles and challenges in the in the novel that they read
translate well into the same kind of thing for for gamers.
And, you know, it makes sense when you think about it.
So, yeah, of course, I've got to take advantage of that if I can.
And then my my art finds another medium, in this case, maybe two.
(32:45):
So we'll see where that goes down the road.
But I'm excited just to be part of it.
And I'm honored that someone would think my stuff's worthy of that.
Yeah, I think like your writing is so rich, the vocabulary is so interesting.
I must be very typical of fantasy writing, but surely translating into other mediums.
(33:08):
That's kind of a hard process to make sure that you're still capturing the essence of it all
when you're stripping out like 90 percent of the words.
Yeah, it's tough, right?
Like you're going from a very imaginative playground to one that is visual,
whether it is in a comic book, like you said, where you're taking what might be an entire chapter
(33:30):
and putting it into a couple of pages, all graphically done.
And it's that illustration that carries the story as opposed to the words.
And, you know, you mentioned way in the beginning of this interview that, you know,
when you don't know what you do, you find someone that does and you bring them on as
part of your team, you sub that out.
Well, that's exactly what's going on here.
(33:50):
I couldn't ever put together a graphic novel.
I wouldn't even know where to begin for that.
But I've got people that can and, you know, they're going to partner on this to make that happen.
Or the same thing with the video game.
You know, I'm not a technologist.
I can't do augmented reality, but they know their realm.
And so I'll be there to assist.
But I'm also self-aware enough to know when I need to get out of my own way.
(34:14):
Like, I'm not going to tell them how to make their own game or make their own graphic novel.
They know their industry.
I don't.
So I'll stay here and just call me when you need me.
And as long as it's not outside of reason that you want to change some things,
I'm usually pretty easygoing when it comes to that and realizing you're just adapting it.
And it's not the same, but it doesn't have to be.
(34:35):
It just has to be something that's, again, entertaining.
Someone, you know, wanted to see it and, oh, this is what Ritter looks like or this is what
Adeline looks like, or at least from my eyes, what they should look like.
And then they, you know, and that helps to inform the reader.
Yeah.
I can only imagine that you're describing, you're describing your characters and the
(34:56):
environment and all this way.
And then when someone else comes up with an interpretation of it, a visual interpretation,
it could be jarring or it could enhance what you already had in your brain.
Like I know when I've read books and then I've watched the movie, the first part,
you're like, oh, that's not what they look like.
(35:16):
But then you really quickly adapt to it and you're like, yeah, of course,
I bet that's what they look like.
Yeah, right.
And I, look, you don't ever want me drawing anything.
It's bad.
It's like stick figure bad.
So for me, I appreciate their art form.
And I think they appreciate mine.
And so if I could help them, like, and they'll just, it's basically like an interview.
(35:37):
They sit down and say, well, tell me about this character and what does he or she look like?
And, you know, and you give them the parameters of it and they come back with like profiles
and costumes and what their weapons look like and what they may look like in different stages
of their life.
And I didn't even know that was a thing.
And meanwhile, there's like five pages of iterations of what these characters will look
(35:57):
like during the course of the story.
And you're like, oh, that's pretty good.
I never thought of it that way.
Because in your head, like your characters don't age or there's just something about them
that they're always going to be the same person.
And really in the end, you know, they've already taken that into account in this new form.
And you're like, wow, that's really good.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
And, you know, you just have to respect their talent and get out of their way.
(36:19):
Like I'm not, I don't have the ego to stand there and wave my finger at them and say,
that's not what I wanted.
You know, no, if you're close, you're good.
And do you think what they're coming up with is shaping how you're going to progress with your
next books?
Oh, sure.
You know, it gives you thought.
Like by way of example, when I did the first storyboard for the video game,
(36:44):
you realize the limitations of it.
Like in the book, there are no limits.
You know, I'm creating this sweeping realm and it's just me writing and it doesn't really
happen anywhere.
It's all happening imaginatively and you can, everybody creates it differently in their head.
That's why I think that when people go see movies after they've read the book,
they always say the book was better.
(37:04):
Well, of course it was because it was exactly the way you pictured it in your head.
Right.
And in the movie, it's an interpretation of someone else's eyes and their optics on things
and it's limiting.
You know, there are no words to accompany it.
So they have to, they inject music and intention and, you know, and all sorts of other things
to get you to, you know, to emote in that way where you're now you're feeling a connection
(37:28):
with those characters.
But it's never as good as the book because the book is exactly how you conjured in your head.
And they're doing that from scratch using my interpretations to put together a game
or a graphic novel.
And so you have to coach them as best you can.
But like I said, as long as you get in the ballpark, you know, that's going to be good
(37:49):
enough for me.
I don't want to tell them what they need because they know what those limitations are.
And, you know, so I'd be more, I'm a willing collaborative when it comes to those kind of
things and I try to stay out of their way.
Yeah, that's cool.
It sounds like you've got such an exciting future and a whole bunch of things lined up.
(38:10):
So thank you for sharing a little bit of that with me today.
It's been my pleasure and thank you very much for having me on.
I enjoyed, I mean, look, I do a number of these things and you, some of the stuff we talked
about tonight I haven't talked about before.
So you asked some very cool questions and I appreciate that.
Oh, no.
(38:32):
Look, it was such, it's such a good news story.
I love when people just find an in and follow their passions.
And so I really appreciate you sharing it with me and my listeners today.
And I also want to thank you, thank everyone who has tuned in to Creativity (38:44):
Uncovered today
because I really hope that JV story has inspired you to sort of chase your dreams and because
they don't have to remain just a fantasy.
Oh, little pun there.
That's too pretty tonight.
That's really good.
I can't help myself.
(39:05):
I got, I got to end the recording before that.
So thanks everyone.
And as always, I really hope for this episode,
I'll see you some new creativity the next time that you need it.
[Music]
(39:45):
If you've made it this far, a huge thank you for your support and tuning into today's episode.
Creativity (39:50):
Uncovered has been lovingly recorded on the land of the Kabi Kabi people
and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.
This podcast has been produced by my amazing team here at Crisp Communications
and the music you just heard was composed by James Gatling.
(40:11):
If you liked this episode, please do share it around.
And help us on our mission to unlock more creativity in this world.
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