Aaron Cowan - Sage Dynamics - Bridging Military, Law Enforcement, and Firearms Instruction

Send us a text

Join us for an enlightening session with Aaron Cowan from Sage Dynamics, as he shares his remarkable transition from the military to law enforcement, and finally to the world of firearms instruction. methods, enhancing self-defense shooting techniques for his students.

Discover the challenges and triumphs Aaron faces in revolutionizing advanced firearms training. Our conversation sheds light on the Red Dot Sight (RDS) instructor class he teaches, detailing the initial resistance from law enforcement students and the gradual acceptance as technology evolves. Aaron shares invaluable insights into the potential liabilities associated with inconsistent red dot adoption across departments and the impact of advancing optics on training methods. We emphasize the significance of foundational skills over complex maneuvers, backed by real-world feedback on the reliability of various firearm optics.

In a shift to personal reflection,  Aaron shares his journey into the world of writing, detailing his experiences with self-publishing and his passion for the Rushing Winter book series. Learn about the creative process behind his writing, the challenges of the publishing industry, and the thematic intricacies that make his series unique.

Find out more about Big Tex Ordnance at bigtexordnance.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I would explain him and they're like we're getting
these for our SWAT team and I'mlike that's not who needs it.
I mean, yeah, swat guy is cool,but SWAT guy, your handgun is a
secondary weapon.
Unless you're the shield dude,the guys who get in gunfights
are on patrol.
They're the ones that need thistechnology first.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome to the BTO podcast.
I'm your host, Ike, we have co-host Tara and then, making his
debut, Beto Debut appearancefirst time.
Yeah.
First time on the BTO Podcast,so welcome aboard.
Thanks for having me.
He's doing ATF compliance nowhere at the warehouse side of
things at the Big Tech Store,Moving on up, moving on up, and
a couple podcast appearances too, probably in his future, but

(00:40):
anyways, I hope so.
Our guest today is Aaron Cowan,sage Dynamics.
So I think you've been on acouple of times, so I think
people kind of already know kindof your background and whatnot.
But just for those that mightbe tuned in for the first time,
if you want to just give us alittle quick background on who
Aaron is and how, you got here.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, I run Sage Dynamics.
I'm the lead instructor.
I've got a couple of adjunctsthat work with me, but it's
pretty much, if you're taking aSage Dynamics class, it's me.
My background military, I wasin the Army infantry, went in in
99, pre-911.
Got out in 06.
And then private security for alittle while, contracting into
law enforcement.

(01:19):
Got out of law enforcement,started Sage Dynamics as kind of
like a weekend job when I wasstill on the job and my goal was
like, hey, I'll do my 20 yearsas a cop and then retire and
have something established tokind of move into.
But then I just kind of got fedup with the job Not the actual
work.
I got fed up with the politicsof it and I decided I'm like,

(01:41):
well, you know, I'm makingpretty decent money on the side
teaching, so I wonder if I couldjust do this full time.
And it's actually a funnyconversation.
Me and Will Petty were on thephone.
I'm walking into Kroger and I'mtelling him like, hey, man, I
think I'm going to quit, I thinkI'm going to resign and teach
full time.
And I remember Will Will wasstill full time at the time and
he's like do you think you canmake a?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
living.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
This dude's got like Porsches and fast cars.
Not long after me he wentfull-time teaching and just blew
up.
He's got like three.
Like his business sense is waybetter than mine because I'm
doing okay but he's doing realwell.
A whole other level.
But it's just interesting tosee like how quickly.
Because it was scary, yeah, Ibet.

(02:23):
But what I did is I looked atthe calendar and I'm like let me
schedule a bunch of classes sixmonths from now and if they
fill, I have to quit, Because Ican't take like a bunch of
vacation time to teach all theseclasses.
I can't, and they weren't likeon my days off or anything like
that.
So about two months after thatthey were all full and I'm like

(02:46):
I got four months to quit.
So when that four months, whenit came, instead of quitting
cause I didn't have enough timeto retire, oh, but I and and
working in the, I worked for thefederal government at the time,
so I had all this sick leave.
I'm just going to use that.
Yeah, so I started using mysick leave and the policy where

(03:07):
I worked was if it was more thanthree days in a row, you had to
have a doctor's note.
Oh, yeah, Unless you wereself-medicating, like if you had
a cold, yeah, so I just had afour and a half month cold.
I love that.
I love that it was hilariousbecause I had, but the only bad
part about it is I had to callin every day oh, yeah, yeah, I'm
not making it, I can't make it,I can't make it yeah, still
feeling, and some people arelike, man, this messed up.
I'm like, no, it's not, that'smy time.

(03:28):
Yeah Right, I paid for it.
Yeah, I had a bunch of vacationtime too, and a half months,
and I called in one morning andI'm like, hey, I'm not going to

(03:48):
make it in today.
I'm not feeling well.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah Day 165.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, and my supervisor he's like you don't
sound sick.
And I'm like you don't soundlike a doctor.
Mark me down.
So he's like no, seriously,there's people who work here now
who have no idea who you are.
Right, uh, your desk is empty.
Like no, you're not here.
Um, what are you doing?
And I was like can you tell mehow much sick sick time I have

(04:12):
left?
And he's like you got 24 hoursof sick leave left or something
like that.
And I'm like you can keep it,I'll be in.
There are guys it's funnybecause I still I still keep in
touch with a couple guys Iworked with there.
There are guys that work therenow that talk shit about me and
I they didn't work there when Idid I'm like how do who?

(04:32):
Well, they find out you used towork here.
And then they run their mouthsand I'm like are they what?
Like, who does that?
What kind of?
That's a weird hobby.
Um, I guess what, what?
Like I started doing very Ihate the term tactical because I
feel like it's just overused.
So I was I was really focusedon realism based training.

(04:55):
So I did a lot of focus on UTM,force, on force and taking the
square range and trying to makeit more realistic.
And that's very difficult.
But what really helped me was Igot in on the concept of,
because I'm kind of cerebralwhen it comes to, like, the
focus in a self-finishedshooting.
I want to focus on internal asmuch as external.
So I wanted to know about, likestress.

(05:17):
What does stress do to people?
What you know?
How does the sympatheticnervous system work?
How does it affect it?
How can we replicate on therange?
How can we safely induce stressin a training environment?
And you really can't, you know,on a square range, because the
more realistic you try to get,the unsafer the class becomes.
So you can have people dopushups, not the same thing.
Shot timer is probably the bestthing you got, as long as you

(05:40):
don't ever use it.
But I put a lot of focus onthree-dimensional shooting,
tactical anatomy, knowing whereto put the bullets, why and how
long it takes to incapacitatesomeone, and that kind of got
people's attention to start with.
But then I started looking atred dots on handguns and I
realized like as soon as I sawit I was like well, it already
makes sense, I use them on myrifles and I understand why

(06:00):
they're advantageous on a rifleand people were still kind of
like I don't know.
You know, it seems like a fador it's going to break or it's
fragile.
And in the early days they were.
You had the RMR, you had DeltaPoint and you had the Dr Optic.
And really that means you justhad the RMR, because Delta Point
, great optic, but the batteryconnections were trash and it

(06:22):
was fragile.
So anyway, I'm looking at thered dot.
I'm like, well, that's how thebody physiologically wants to
fight, it wants to threaten onwhat is threatening it or wants
to focus on what is threateningit.
So that made a lot of sense tome.
So I was like, well, I'mjumping feet first in this
handgun red dot thing and that'spretty much what I'm known for.

(06:45):
And now, if you go back to theearly days, there's a bunch of
OG guys that came through myforce on force classes and when
I was still being able, when Iwas still able to do those as
often, um, I was teaching a lotof citizen response to active
shooter and single officerresponse to active shooter.
Um, and that was like one ofthe one of the last big things I
did in law enforcement was wasco-authoring a single officer
program.

(07:05):
That had great success.
It got adopted a lot of otherplaces.
But now I want to say I'm onautopilot but I'm not trying to
come up with.
Okay, what can I do now?
Like I'm just going to try tokeep improving my core classes,
because I'm constantly trying toimprove my curriculum, but I
don't think there's going to beany significant change in

(07:26):
technology that's coming um,where I'm going to have to be
like let me see if I can adjustsomething or if I can tweak
something, if I can teachsomething.
I see some guys teaching likemagnified optic, like, uh, lpvo
classes, and I'm like, not, it'snot my lane, you know.
Like I can teach it, but I'mnot going to do a whole class
about that.
Right, if you show up with arifle class and you have one, I

(07:48):
will talk to you one-on-oneabout your particulars.
Um, I'm not going to do a wholeclass on it.
And there's some stuff that Ijust don't want to teach.
You know, I'm I'm a qual I'm,I'm a twice qualified police
sniper instructor Not going toteach it.
I love shooting long range, verytherapeutic.
It drives me insane to have toteach it.

(08:11):
It is so boring.
Yeah, because it's just math.
It's so much math and I've beenrunning for math my whole life.
Yeah, same.
So you know, I worked for anagency and I got voluntold into
being.
I was on the SWAT team and Igot voluntold into being a
sniper and then they sent me tothese sniper schools and then

(08:32):
sniper instructor schools and Iwas like I got to get off this,
I can't.
This is so terribly boring, notyour thing.
Well, and as a police sniperyou're pretty much just the
camera guy.
You're like let me look closerat what's happening, and you
just collect Intel the wholetime.
You're not going to get toshoot anybody.
I mean, you do, I didn't, uh,but some people every now and

(08:52):
then do, um, but you're mainlyjust like yeah, he's still got
the knife, he's still in thebathroom.
I can still kind of see him.
I hope I don't have to shoothim because it's through a
window, through another window,down a hallway into a bathroom.
So that part was enough, thereal world aspect of it.
It was enough for me to be likeI don't want anything to do

(09:12):
with this, because I tried to bea sniper when I was in the Army
.
And they're like and I'm like,well, why not?
They're like well, we havethese Bradleys and they have
that 25 millimeter gun on top.
We, they have that 25millimeter gun on top.
We don't need you out thereplaying around in the mud with a
308.
Like, we can just shoot themwith this.
And that thing's got FLIR andit's got tow missiles, so we
don't really need snipers here.

(09:33):
I'm like but they're in thearms room, just give me one.
And yeah, they wouldn't send me.
Even when there was a localsniper course taken, they were
like we're not, we're notsending you.
And then, like 9-11 happenedand they rolled into like dmr
programs and at first there waslike, uh, like every unit kind
of stood up their own dmrprogram and I wouldn't even send

(09:54):
me to that.
They're like yeah, we don't dothat here, we're gonna go with
war at bradley's.
And then, um, iraq happened andthey went to war with bradley's
and they were like this is aterrible idea, everyone is light
infantry now, um, but so that'sthe long version.

(10:14):
I guess where we brought me now.
Now I'm teaching.
You know, I teach about twoclasses a month, which doesn't
sound like a lot, but that'sabout 10 days on the road.
Yeah, um, and I'm not slowingdown anytime soon.
I'll probably do it for aboutanother 10 years and I've always
been a firm believer in the daythat I wake up where I hate
what I have to do, that day Ineed to stop doing it.

(10:34):
Yeah, because this is not anindustry where you get to phone
in your job.
No, at least you shouldn't.
Right, some people have and do.
But when I show up on the rangelike I'm at work and I need to
even though I've taught thisclass, like I've been teaching
the class I just taught overyour range, I've taught.
I've been teaching that classfor 10 years now.
Wow, yeah, like I started to.

(10:56):
And I started teaching thatclass in the dark ages.
Yeah, I was going to say 10years ago.
Was it kind of it snuck up onme?
Yeah, I'm like I'm getting old.
So I've been teaching thatclass for 10 years.
I've had I think the last timeI checked it the number's higher
now because I haven't checkedin a while, but I'd had 1500
students through it andconservative estimate, that's

(11:19):
150,000 officers underneath thathundred or 1500 students.
So, figure, an average, about100 officers per instructor and
I've updated the curriculum andkept track with things and
things like that.
But it's like, even though nowthere's not going to be much
change, like I'll introduce somenew statistics but the

(11:42):
curriculum is pretty sound.
But even though I know it, Ican't just show up and just put
it on autopilot.
So what kind of changes?

Speaker 2 (11:50):
has there been over the 10 years in your curriculum?

Speaker 1 (11:53):
So this was RDS instructor, right?
Yeah, the RDS instructor class,but it applies just basically
the concept of shooting with ared dot on a handgun.
The big thing that changed wasthe technology.
The technology got better.
So when I started teaching theclass, most of the students did
not want to be there.
Their department sent them.
So they're Pouty face the wholetime.

(12:13):
Face the whole time Wins lunch.
Yeah, I'm like I was a cop.
I know what's going on, so Iwould explain him and they're
like we're getting these for ourSWAT team and I'm like that's
not who needs it.
I mean, yeah, swat guy is cool,but SWAT guy, your handgun is a
secondary weapon, unless you'rethe shield dude.
Uh, if you're using that, theguys who get in gunfights are on

(12:34):
patrol.
They're the ones that need thistechnology first.
They're the ones that don'tshoot well, because y'all don't
do anything to make them shootbetter.
It's it's it's a functionalproblem.
So, with the curriculumadjustment, what I've added is
one the technology has improved,but also the mentality has
improved.
So I used to have to like, getinto I actually got into an

(12:57):
almost argument with one of thelead instructors for DHS ice,
cause D DHS ice brought me in in2017 to do all of their
instructors and the whole roomwas mostly their, their ERO and
their SWAT type guys or sort.
I think they call it SRT orsort, I can't remember and then
ERO is like a SWAT light.
Uh, and then I had HSIinstructors or not instructors,

(13:20):
um, investigators.
Uh and that was their wholefirearms training unit there at
Fort Benning.
And those guys were all specialforces, former special forces,
former SWAT or current SWAT withDHS ice.
So their mentality was this isfor the cool kids.
And I'm like nah bro, this isfor everybody, right.
And this is something that wesee currently, with departments

(13:41):
either mandating or authorizing.
And my belief is, I can't thinkof any other piece of technology
in law enforcement where it'sLike when I was a cop, like I
had to carry a taser, had tocarry a baton I did.
I was supposed to carry OC, Ididn't.
So I get written up for thatpretty regularly.
Gun handcuffs, this is yourstuff.
But with red dots and handguns,some departments have been like

(14:04):
well, if you want to.
And I'm like why is thatallowed?
Because I think about it from aliability standpoint.
It doesn't make any sense,because if I'm a defense
attorney, if you have a red dotbut these other officers don't,
I can paint that a certain way.
You can paint it pretty muchany way you want.
Yeah, if everybody else has ared dot and you chose not to use
one, I could paint that adifferent kind of way.

(14:24):
So it just opens you up toliability.
So as the technology improved,certain things become.
I didn't have to talk as muchabout different types of slide
applications like milling versusfactory OEM versus like Duik
rear sight mount plates.
The optics got better.
Because it used to be like, hey, which optics should we get?

(14:46):
I'd be like the RMR, like justget RMRs because there's nothing
else.
And now it's you got RMR, rmrHD, rcr.
You've got the MPS, you've gotthe Acro P2, you've got HoloSuns
509, you've got the 508, you'vegot the.
You've got the EPS, you've gotthe EPS.
All of those are good optics.
So then it just comes down towhat flag do you want to fly?

(15:06):
Yeah, they all have pros andcons or whatever.
But like I think some peopleget frustrated with me because
they're like, what's yourfavorite optic?
I was like, bro, I don't haveone, just give me the gun.
Like I'll make it work.
Now my carry gun is an RMR HDConceal carry makes a lot of
sense.
My teaching guns it could bean—because when I teach LE I'll
try to teach with what thestudents are using.

(15:28):
So if it's a department like Itaught a class last year where
everyone carried a 360 or theycarried a 320 with an acro.
So I just brought a 320 with anacro.
I don't want to teach withfancy guns because cops don't
use them.
So if they're teaching with aGlock, I try to use a Glock, sig
, so on and so forth.
So I've got acros, I've gotMPSs, I've got aim points.
It doesn't matter, I don't usea Delta point cause they break

(15:53):
easily.
Um, don't care for the SROcause it's kind of fragile.
Great optic, but it's fragile.
Um, and then statistics.
I'm starting to get morefeedback from real world uses of
red dots in uses of force.
So before it was a lot theorybased, like I had a bunch of
force on force data, but itnever was shooting data.

(16:13):
And I think a lot of peopledon't realize law enforcement
only shoots about a thousandpeople a year in this country,
which is a lot, butstatistically it's not because
they hold people at gunpointmillions of times.
So if and I've had someofficers who've come through the
class hey, my chief wantsshooting data, okay, we'll put

(16:33):
RMRs on your guns or whateveroptic you like and eventually
you'll get some.
I don't know what you want fromme, man.
Yeah, and it's weird becausesome technologies they don't do
that.
Like I had a department out inCalifornia that I would teach
with and they adopted those boloshots and I'm like what kind of
data did you get on those?
They gave us a brochure video.

(16:56):
Did it work?
If the guy he's like, let meput it to you this way, the bolo
shot works in any situationwhere you wouldn't need it
anyway.
The guy's standing with hishands at his sides.
It's going to work, standingstill.
You know, the big thing is theactual, the statistical
information, the backgroundinformation, science remains the

(17:17):
same.
I'm constantly going back tomake sure the neurology I teach
is the same or it's current andcorrect, because I'm not a
neurologist.
Yeah, so the danger in teachingoutside of your lane in that
regard is trying to teachsomething that that you may
understand it, but you don'thave the knowledge, the basis,
to create with it.
So I can only tell people whatI've learned and then I have to

(17:39):
keep going back to make sureit's still correct, right, right
, because sometimes they makenew discoveries with new, new
ways and and it's all academicanyway.
But as a cop I appreciated morewhen someone taught me why this
happens versus just this isgoing to happen to you.
Like I remember the first timeI learned about um use for
stress.
They just told me all thesymptoms Okay, so breathing can

(18:01):
be affected, vision, hearing,memory, movement perception Okay
, why?
Well, cause it's stressful.
Okay, roger, that what'shappening?
Um, and the instructor didn'treally have.
He's like it's not in the book.
So I keep track of stuffpublished by, like Joseph Ledoux

(18:24):
, david Engelman.
They're both neurologists.
Engelman is not really lawenforcement focused, but his
stuff is super interesting.
He's written some really coolbooks on capability of
neurological processing in thebrain and how effective it can
be.
He wrote a book called Livewirethat if you want to know about
like the potential evolution ofhuman psychology, like that's a
great.
It's a very interesting book toread because he goes into all

(18:47):
these case studies about theseatypical situations where people
have expanded their abilities,and it's not even like
metaphysical stuff.
They had one example where theybuilt this apparatus with a
neural link that gave the guy360 degree vision, wow, and it
messed him up for like a day.
But then, like he's like Idon't ever want to take this off
His brain was like, okay, moredata, we'll figure it out.

(19:07):
So he just started seeing 360degrees.
That's crazy, that's wild.
And then Joseph Ledoux all hisresearch is pretty much
fear-based neurology.
So he studies cops, fighterpilots, soldiers, crab fishermen
, rock climbers, anybody whodoes dangerous shit for fun or
money.
So that helps with theclassroom portion.

(19:29):
And then on the range, I'velooked for and this is how I
teach overall most likely toleast likely skills.
Can you end up in a situationwhere you have to shoot on your
back support hand only under acar?
Yes.
Is it more likely that you'regoing to shoot from the holster?
Two hands, three arts.
So you've got to startsomewhere Right and I'd rather

(19:51):
build my foundation with theskills that are most likely to
be used, yeah, and then work myway towards the cool guy, combat
role, tactical stuff.
You got to get there eventually, I guess.
But with two days on the range,you put something in, you got
to take something out.
So over the years I've tweakeda little bit of what the
emphasis was.
So if you've taken like my RedDot instructor class like, say,

(20:20):
you took it three or four yearsago if you come back through it
today it's going to be mostlythe same, but there are going to
be some slight differences onthe range.
So yeah, I guess that's thelong form on that.
All right.
What about your white paper?
How's that going?
So I still update it, but it'sgotten to the point now where
I'm just updating it annually.
So I'll have an update comingin June or in January.
And, honestly, what I found islike I think a lot of people
they're mainly focused thesedays on the testing data they

(20:42):
want to know what optics aregoing, are handling my testing
and what I get from my studentsis real world feedback.
So I'll tell my graduates, myalumni, when they finish the
instructor class hey, if youhave a line of duty optic
failure, tell me what the opticis and what happened to it and
I'll add it to my information.

(21:03):
So when these guys go throughthis class, they get now six
years of data on optic failuresin the line of duty.
So you get an idea of whatoptics are going down, frequency
breakages and stuff like that,and some of it's really
surprising.
So, like the Delta point proand the SRO have the highest
frequency of breakages.

(21:25):
While it's still in the holster, is that rolling over and
crushing it in a fight?
Yeah, so sometimes it's likebody weight on top of body
weight on top of holster andsometimes it's just the officer
is suddenly knocked down, yeah,lands on his holster, and I
don't think safar is going to belike oh yeah, we'll do
something about that.
Um, because it's a good optic,but it is more fragile than some

(21:47):
of the others because there'spros and cons.
Um, like, you got the newhollow sun, the 507 comp, yeah,
and I just recently had a guyemail me from a department in
Illinois and he had a 507 compon duty and he had somebody hit
him with a door.
Yeah.
Because people just be hittingcops.
Yeah Right, so this guy hitshim with and it wasn't like an

(22:08):
interior door or anything likethat, it was like a municipal,
like heavy steel door, likeknocked him down.
Yeah.
And it just cracked it, yeah, soit was still usable, but kind
of interesting situation likethat.
And then Vortex, because itseems like a lot of people they
gravitate towards the biggestwindow possible.
Yeah, which makes sense becauseit gives you a greater

(22:30):
opportunity to get your dot.
And the biggest problem thatpeople have, especially people
on drained, is acquisition.
Um, and if you're not going totake the time to take a class or
take the time to seek out, okay, what do I need to do to get
the dot every time?
Um, then you're just going tokeep having that problem.
So if you get a bigger window,but of of the bigger window

(22:50):
optics that are out there, thevortex XL is the only one that's
like super, super sturdy, likeI personally have have.
It's gone through my testing andpassive flying colors so far.
I'm still evaluating it, butI'm, I'm, I think I'm 3,500
rounds into one and that's adrop test every 500 rounds.
Oh, wow, it's fine, that's alot of drops.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of drops,yeah, yeah, I shouldn't have

(23:12):
done that.
Going back on it, I should havedone a drop test every thousand
rounds.
Yeah, I think that's a littlebit more.
And some people are like that'snot realistic.
I'm not going to drop my gun.
I'm like well, yeah, you are.
Yeah, but also it's to simulatestuff like that.
Exactly no-transcript, uh, butI'll have.

(23:59):
There's been optics that havepassed mil spec testing that
I've just completely destroyed.
So sometimes it's just chaos,it's just got to hit just right.
But I've seen a directcorrelation between what optics
fail my testing and what opticsfail more frequently in the
field Interesting.
So for me that's validation.
Yeah, I was going to say that'slike, but you know, people want

(24:20):
perfect.
There's no such thing.
So there's that frequency biasor there's that sample size of
one, and I try to tell peoplethat.
So I'll be like well, thisoptic has battery issues.
I'm like how many cases?
Well, I know one guy, yeah,that has battery issues.
I'm like how many cases?
Well, I know one guy yeah, thendon't buy it, there's plenty of
other good ones out there.
You got to see, like, becauseespecially in gun culture, we're

(24:43):
very negative focused.
Oh yes, so if a gun breaks,nobody ever follows up.
So, like, the 509 had thatstriker issue.
They were mem and then theyreplaced them later.
So the original release of thefive not even the 509 mrd like
we're talking about the originaliron sight only 509 had a
striker issue.
This was 20, 2017, 2016, 2017,something like that.

(25:07):
So a while ago, long enough ago, like 10 years, yeah, uh,
almost 10 years they fixed itwithin like six months.
But people still bring that upand I'm like, did you circle
back?
We're past that now.
Um, so I I find that that's.
You know, that can be kind ofaggravating.

(25:28):
But like on the on the testingaspect side of it, like nowadays
with teaching the red dotinstructor class, the majority
of the students come to me ready, their departments are sure
what they're doing, they've gottheir budget allocated and
usually it comes down to some ofthe instructors are kind of
taken aback with some of thepresentations for liability.
So I'm talking about like, okay,are you going to be compliant
with your state.
Does your state have a policy?

(25:49):
Will your state ever have apolicy as far as law enforcement
standards?
And then it's the issues of howmany hours are you going to
provide for transition?
How many rounds are you goingto provide for transition?
Because I recommend 16 hoursand a thousand rounds per
officer.
Most agencies are not going todo that.
I had one guy.
He's like hey, my agency gaveme four hours.
What should I do?
I was like rub a lamp, try andget 12 more.

(26:14):
If you've ever been around likelike end user cop classes, four
hours is more like two.
Yeah, cause there's lunch andthen there's waiting for people
to come back from lunch afterlunch was over and then there's
10 minute breaks that turn into35 minute breaks.
So you got about two hours.
If you got four, if you get 16,you're going to get 10, 12
hours a good range time out ofthat.
Um, but I'm like it canpotentially open you up for

(26:36):
liability.
So I was like if you approachyour risk averse administration
from a liability standpoint,you're more likely to get what
you need.
If you approach it from we justwant to shoot more, that's
usually not going to work.
You say, hey, this agency overhere does 16 hours.
We don't.
If we have a shooting and it'snot great that could be used
against us and that usuallyhelps push things in the right
direction.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
So you just taught RDS instructor there at the
range.
What else do you have?
Are you done for the year or doyou have any else?

Speaker 1 (27:01):
This was my last class for this year, but that
doesn't mean anything becauseI'm immediately, two weeks from
now, teaching in January.
Yeah, I have a low lighthandgun coming up in Georgia.
Oh, nice, down, well, about twohours South of Atlanta.
Speaking of that, how are youlike in Tennessee?
Oh, I love it.
Yeah, I'm so glad we left.
Oh, you spent like 10 years inAtlanta.
I was in Atlanta for about 14.

(27:28):
Oh, wow, yeah, so, um, I, I, Imoved to Atlanta when I got out
of the army because I, I wasstationed in Georgia and I
looked at the map and I'm likethat'll work, cause I didn't
want to go home.
I didn't want to go back toCalifornia because I don't like
it there.
So I moved to Atlanta andAtlanta used to be great.
And then when I went into lawenforcement I left when I worked
for the department of defense,left for a couple of years but
then I transferred to adifferent agency and I came back

(27:50):
and then I met my wife.
We bought a house and theproperty value went up.
The crime rate went up with it.
Oh no, yeah.
And after about the third timethey tried to steal the car.
Steal my car, um, out of mydriveway.
Was that the charger and theother hellcat, yeah, try to
steal it.
They tried to steal it threetimes out of the driveway and
once, once from airport parking,really the actual parking

(28:13):
garage, not like the distance,like the connor parking garage,
not like the distance like theconical parking I was in, like
your, five minutes from yourplane parking.
Oh damn, the more priceyparking yeah, the expensive one.
They almost got it too.
They broke the window out.
They'd rip the dash.
The guy knew what he was doing.
Yeah, but what saved me is Ijust recently gone and got
service done and they put somenew anti-theft patch in it.

(28:33):
Nice.
So it locked the car up, whichsucks, cause if you've ever had
to try to tow a vehicle out of aparking garage cause I couldn't
drive it, yeah, I couldn't turnit on, I couldn't do anything
and I knew it had happened.
Cause I'm like do you getalerts on your?
Well, no, the alert never wentoff.
But I hit my location and mycar was like can't find it.
And I'm like not again my car.
So when I get out of the I andI remember I, you know, I get

(28:55):
off the plane, get my bags, I goto the parking garage, I walk
around, my car looks fine.
I'm like, oh, thank god it'sstill here.
And then I go to open thedrivers that, but it won't
unlock and I'm like that's weird.
And then my window's gone, likegone, there was no glass.
Oh, like it's just.
I'm like where did the wholeass window did?
Did this guy vacuum?
Like what the heck?
Well, it was tinted, so heprobably just pulled the whole

(29:16):
thing oh yeah, yeah.
I'll film over it.
And at that point my wife was,she was tired of the career
she'd been in for 12, 14 yearsat that point and she's like,
well, I want a career change.
And I'm like, well, here's howmuch money we're going to have.

(29:40):
I want as many acres aspossible.
And you just got to figure outcause I don't need, I just need
to be near an airport.
It was like, try to find aproperty within an hour of the
airport.
Um, and that's how we ended upwhere we're at, cause she found
she kept finding like sevenacres here, six acres here, all
closer to Nashville, but they dolong acres.

(30:01):
So it's like I have five acresbut I have a neighbor like right
here, yeah, you can see thehouse.
I'm going to be making a lot ofnoise Like I don't, I don't want
to get into that.
So it's a little bit furtherout.
We're.
We're 60 miles from Nashville,but it's like an hour and 20
minute drive because of countryroads.
But I don't mind that at all.
So now I live in a holler and a22 acres.

(30:23):
I got a big hill.
I got two neighbors on my roadthat live there full time, a
couple of hunting cabins.
I know the guy who owns most ofthe land around me.
So I have 22 acres but I haveaccess to more.
Yeah, because he's a prettycool dude Built my own range.
My wife's got her barn, herhorse, her pasture.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Oh, that's nice, we're good to go.
That's awesome.
You say you're doing about twoclasses a month, kind of
traveling all over, or do youlike gravitate to one?

Speaker 1 (30:49):
I can't really do local.
Like there's a couple of placesaround me in Nashville and I
have a range at the house, butI'm not going to teach on it.
Yeah, yeah, bringing everybodyout to your house.
Well, not only that, but like,if you go for the legal side of
things, yeah, in Tennessee, forme to shoot on private property,
there's really no rules.
Like it's private property aslong as I'm not violating a

(31:10):
noise ordinance.
It's usually civil, so you canstill shoot, it's not criminal,
you just get a noise ticket.
But I live in agriculturalzoned area and I now have
established range.
But if I wanted to actually usethe range for classes, if I was
going to be within the law, Ihave to have a noise abatement
and ADA accessible and like Ihave to have, like like an
environmental impact study doneon my burn, like it's not

(31:39):
terrible, terrible, but it's,it's going to.
It would cost me a significantamount of money.
And I'm also like I don't evenhave anywhere for anybody to
park.
There's the range, and thenthere's my house.
Like I guess I could just havethem park in the pasture.
It just feels a little too lowrent for me to even try that.
So I still, I travel um anyclasses within like three or
four hours.
I'll drive everything else.
I fly.
I flew a lot this year becausemost of my classes were outside

(32:00):
of my, my driving circle.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, that's one thing If it's less than six
hours.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
If it's, yeah, less than six hours, I'll drive it
Anything else you're going toburn that much time in the
airport, exactly, especially now, like when I live in Atlanta, I
could get a direct flightanywhere.
Yeah, because Atlanta, when youdie, you have a layover in
Atlanta.
Like it's just insane.
So now, being in Nashville, Ifly from Nashville to Atlanta
and then Atlanta to wherever.
So, yeah, so it adds more time,though.

(32:27):
So you figure, drive to theairport, that's an hour, but you
got to get there two hoursearly and then I fly, have an
hour, hour and a half, two hour,maybe three hour layover, and
then I fly and then I get to aplace.
I have to wait for my luggage,wait for my guns, go get a
rental car.
By then time you burn five, sixhours easily.
Oh, absolutely.
So, if I can drive, I prefer to,and there's some classes that

(32:48):
are a little bit further out,but I like the drive to them,
like I'll teach in Michigan, butI like the drive.
Oh, really, cause there's asection of Indiana, Um, that's
just desolate and it's got, forsome reason it's got.
It's got about a 22 mile median, um, like concrete median, oh,
wow.
And you know what that means.
Unless the cops in front of meor behind me he ain't going to

(33:09):
get me, yeah, and I've alwaysbeen a big car guy, so I'll
violate the law a little bit.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Just a little bit.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
Just a little bit on drives like that Only double the
speed limit.
Well, you know, I matured.
I don't drive with night visionanymore.
I'm on, do that.
I used to have two IR fronts ona car and I would, and I would,
um, I only I only really did itwhen I was coming back from
this place.
I used to teach up in Ohio,coming through Cincinnati, cross

(33:38):
the Ohio river, and then it wasjust like it's common Kentucky
and there really isn't anythingand it's a nice windy road, late
at night, there's not reallyany traffic.
So I'd IR up, 15s down, ohthat's awesome and I'd just be
going.
But you know I stopped doingthat.
What are you driving now?

(33:59):
I got a Cadillac CT5, the V, ohyeah, yeah, the Hellcat wasn't,
it's great in a straight line,you know, I staged one, some of
it.
I got it up to just over 800horsepower.
I had a lot of fun with it.
But even knowing, you know,growing up, driving like I can
make that car corner but itdoesn't want to.
Yeah, you know.

(34:19):
So like, when I went and tookit I did a, I did an autocross
circuit with it and they got madat me because I was breaking
traction on the turns andthey're like you can't do that
and I'm like I have to,otherwise I'm going to slow down
and all these Miatas are goingto pass.
Can't have that.
Yeah, I can't be past.
I can't have a bunch of littleMiatas zipping by me.

(34:40):
So I wanted something MarvelDrive.
So I have about half thehorsepower that I used to and
I've always had something.
But the Hellcat was the firstfast car that I ever bought.
Every car before that I'd builtand I miss that, but I don't
have time for it, yeah.
And now with modern cars,there's only so much you could
do.
And I'm not a JDM guy Like Iappreciate JDM stuff, but I'm

(35:00):
not going to laptop my car.
I'm not going to get in thereand do all that stuff.
I don't even know how.
Um, so I you know I can'treally wrench on modern stuff as
much as you can with the olderstuff.
So I I'd looked at four doorsedans and I wanted an alpha,
because Jeremy Clarkson saysyou're not a real petrol head,
you've owned an Alfa Romeo.
So I'm like I'm going to get analpha and the high end one is

(35:20):
the Quattro Feligo, which islike one of the fastest four
doordoor sedans out there.
Can't find them Really.
When I went and looked, theclosest one was in Denver.
Jeez, it had to be black.
If I was willing to get a redor a white one, it would have
been a little bit closer, butI'm like, I'm not messing with
that.
So a friend of mine was likehave you checked out the new

(35:40):
Cadillac Vs?
And I'm like no, I looked, no,um, I looked at the black wing,
but that's like 100 grand.
So I'm like twin turbo v6, I'lltry it.
Um, all will drive though.
So it's a nice light, fast car,good features, got good
amenities.
The wife doesn't hate it.

(36:01):
Um, like she's hated.
She hated the hellcat.
Yeah, she said it was fun todrive because she, I'd let her
drive it.
You know, I don't care, just ifyou wreck it, don't come home.
Yeah, easy, um.
But she hated the big cop doors.
Oh yeah, it's like when youopen the door it's like a 90
degrees yeah because it's copchassis and I had a.
I had a um a 300 before that.

(36:22):
So it was same car, basicallyjust different, slightly
different.
But it was same same car,basically Just different,
slightly different.
But it was the same chassis,same body, same everything,
almost same everything.
Before that, when we met, I justhad a truck because I was in
between cars at that point.
This is the blue one, right?
Yeah, yeah, that blue F-150.
Yeah, and then I live inAtlanta.
That truck got rear-ended Guyrear-ended me, didn't total it,

(36:47):
but so I got another f-150.
And then I one day I'm like whydo I have a truck?
I don't need a truck, right?
So I got a car, I got a truck.
I use the truck for work, fordriving to the range and stuff
like that.
But I was like I don't need atruck.
So I got rid of the truck and Igot a.
Got the explorer st, so I hadan su, a car, which made sense
for city Aaron, yeah.

(37:08):
Then, like a year later, wemoved to Tennessee and I'm like
I need a truck, yep, so, but Iwas smart.
What I did right before we leftAtlanta is I got rid of the
Hellcat and I took the Hellcatto a dealership and I'm like I
need a truck.
And the guy's like, are youtrading that in?
I'm like, yeah, he's like howmuch you own.
I was like nothing, it's paidfor.
Do you want, like a nice truck?

(37:31):
I was like I want heated seatsand a V8, a four-wheel drive,
four doors, that's it.
So he's trying to give me likeKing Ranch's, yeah, and like,
cause, I'm going to get an F-150.
Cause, if I don't, God knowswhat'll happen to me.
My dad will come back from thedead and punish me.
I'm sure he was rolling overhis grave when I get rid of the
truck, because I'd always had anF-150.

(37:52):
So he's like trying to upsellme Platinum Edition.
I was like, dude, four-wheeldrive, heated seats, v8, four
doors, that's it.
Black.
That's a super easy list.
So they ended up having to cutme a check and give me the whole
truck.
Nice, which is pretty nice,because I was like the truck is
just going to be for truck stuff.
Yeah, it's an actual truck.
I mean because the last F-150 Ihad was like the Lariat Nice,

(38:15):
yeah, I had a 2017 Lariat and ithad the leather seats and the
moonroof and, like all theconnectivity, it had a heated
and cooled seat oh, fancy, now Ihave heated seats and I don't
have the heated steering wheeloh, dude, the heated steering
wheel.
But the Cadillac has all that,oh yeah, so now I just have a
truck truck.
But it's funny like right beforewe moved I ended up living in

(38:37):
Tennessee and I had a truck andan SUV.
I'm like, well, this doesn'tmake any sense either.
My wife, she's always driven atwo-door roadster.
She's got a 370Z, which makesno sense.
So now she's got a horse andshe's got a bunch of chickens
and she's like I'm taking thetruck.
I'm like, well, is your car notgoing to work for what you have
to do?
And we paid her car off a longtime ago just to get rid of that

(38:59):
bill.
But now she's like, do I need atruck?
I'm like, no, we have one truck.
I was like, just don't put hayin your car or the Cadillac and
we'll be fine.
The truck is for truck stuff.
Got a Kubota, you know, to makehandle farm type of stuff, and
she drives that thing more thanI do Pretty awesome.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Did you keep any of your older cars?
You said you built a lot ofyour first cars.
Did you keep any of them.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
No, I took this advice from my grandfather when
I was a kid, because he wouldalways get a new truck like
every year and I never couldfigure it out and he never owed
any money on them either, andI'm like.
So when I was old enough tounderstand, he explained he's
like it'll hurt you the firstcouple of times you do it, but

(39:48):
you get a truck, you overpay onit.
You can try to pay it off asquickly as you can.
Vehicles are always going todepreciate.
They're always going todepreciate Like it doesn't
matter what it is he's like, andthe more miles you put on it,
the more likely.
And this is back when autowarranties weren't really a
thing.
Yeah.
So what he would do is he wouldtake a truck to about 30 to
40,000 miles and flip it soevery time and the quicker he
flipped it, the less he'd haveto pay on the next truck, the

(40:09):
less he'd have to pay on thenext truck and eventually like
so now when I flip it cause I dothe same thing Now I'll try to
flip a vehicle about 30, 35,000miles and I'll end up it'll be
paid off, cause I did.
I took his advice.
I started paying more than Ineeded to so I could pay those
vehicles off quick.
So almost every time I go inthe vehicle's already paid for.
Um, so, like with the Cadillac,I traded in the Explorer on

(40:30):
that and I ended up.
I think it.
It turned it.
It the wash was I had to get apayment plan or I had to get on
payments for, like, I want tosay like 8,200 bucks which over
the period of a year, throwingyour beer money yeah, it's not,
it's it, it's a lot, but youthink about a four-year,
four-year financing on $800.

(40:51):
Payments are nothing yeah, yeahbut I'm still throwing like two,
three times what the payment isat it.
So my plan, depending on how itworks out, is to flip the v for
the black wing before they stopmaking it, because now the only
v8s that are still made are GMand Ford and I'm not going to
buy a Mustang.
I wear my hat the correct way.

(41:12):
Have a Mustang and I think theHellcat's bad in two corners.
I've never been much of aMustang guy.
My dad was.
He liked Mustangs.
I never could get in.
I just don't like two-door cars.
I think that's what it is.
Yeah, I like four-door carsbecause it can be fast and you
can put some stuff in the backseat, even though to date I

(41:35):
don't think anybody's ridden inthe back of my car.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
You still writing, yeah that's what I wanted to
talk about, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Matty got excited about those books.
I'm writing a lot.
So I I'm writing a lot, so Istarted writing.
I mean, I've been writing mywhole life and then I actually
started trying to write booksand that was my goal was to just
be an author.
You know, I wanted to like getlife experience that would help
me with that, and then justwrite.

(42:01):
I was like how hard could it be?
Because I feel like people keeptelling me my writing is pretty
good, like in high school andstuff like that, and I'm like,
well, this should be my job,send it.
There's like this process, this,this ceremony you have to go
through in order to even causeyou can't, you can't just
approach a publisher.
You need an agent, and an agentyou have to know how to write a

(42:23):
query letter, cause you can'tjust call up an agent and be
like, hey, can I send you liketwo or three paragraphs of my
stuff?
Do you have a query letter?
What is a query, right?
And I was going through this.
There was a time where I wassending like 30, 40 query
letters a month and it's likeit's almost like writing a cover
sheet.
I'm like you want me to writethe fanfic for my job, for my

(42:47):
resume, like what?
So you have to write a queryletter that basically explains
what it is, what your characteris, and like a blurb about what
it is.
And and most of the guys arepretty cool They'll at least hit
you back and be like hey,thanks for sending this, but no,
we're not interested, unlessyou're like Jack Carr, like
where you have a higher degreeof pedigree, cause a dude with a
background like him is going tobe more appealing to a

(43:08):
publisher.
Yeah, like me.
I'm like hey, I just graduatedhigh school.
Or I'm like hey, I've been inthe army for three years, like
my rank.
And they're like what's yourrank?
I'm like E.
They're like E.
No, uh, were you a seal?
Cause we give them book deals,but no, so, um, you don't have
hair gel.
So, no, I don't have hair in myhead for 25 years, um, which

(43:31):
has gone well and poorly,depending on where I'm at in my
life.
Uh, so I tried the query letterthing and I never really gave up
on it.
Um, until I gave up on it, like, I did it for a long time, many
, many years.
But I realized one of the Ithink one of the smartest things
I realized is like some bookswere too big for me to tackle,
some, some concepts were toodifficult for me to write.
Because, as a reader, I readthe way I do it, as I alternate

(43:54):
fiction, nonfiction, fiction,nonfiction, fiction, nonfiction
Like I've been following LeeChild, um, jack Reacher, um, uh,
uh.
Robert Krauss writes the JoePike and the and the uh, elvis
Cole novels too, but theircharacters aged, and sometimes
you would read and I technicallyI'm like, well, that's not how

(44:15):
that works, that gun doesn't dothis or this thing doesn't do
that.
So I wanted to have more lifeexperience and also technical
experience, or just not rightoutside my lane.
The cool thing about writingsci-fi you can make shit up.
Yeah, thank God for the blahdevice that we can do this right
.
But even with sci-fi I try tokeep it hard sci-fi.
So I started writing when Iseriously started approaching

(44:38):
like the concept of writingthrillers.
I wrote the book Rushing Winterand you can, that's like my
freshman work, like that's thefirst book I ever tried to get
published.
But I have stacks of stuff Iwrote in high school and even
back to middle school andsometimes I'll go through it and
be like any gems in here.
So I borrowed characters fromstuff I wrote in high school.

(45:01):
Oh really, it's like stupidlittle short stories, yeah.
But I'm like, all right, yeah,I'm going to put that up here,
I'm going to, I'm going to flushthat out.
So I started with Rushing Winterand I'd finished it, but I
didn't know how to publish it.
So I'm I'm hitting queryletters and I'm trying to figure
out how much it would be toself-publish.
Self-publish and didn't existat the time, cause I think I

(45:22):
finished that book in, I want tosay, like 2006 or 2007.
Oh, wow, and it just kind ofsat around because I didn't know
what to do with it.
Yeah, so I'm trying to get apublisher, but I got to get an
agent.
No agent wants to represent mebecause I'm not, I'm not
interesting enough.
Um, cause God knows that theyeven read what you send them.
They probably look is thisperson marketable?

(45:43):
Yeah, and that's a thing.
It ain't like it, you know,whatever.
So it's, it's a hard industryto break into.
So once Amazon started doingself-publishing, I'm like game
on, let me do that.
The most glaring problem withself-publishing is you are your
own editor and if you read mybooks, you're going to find

(46:04):
grammatical and punctuationerrors Cause I've read it so
many times.
I'm text blind, exactly sopeople are like, oh, you need to
get this professionally edited.
I'm like, do you have any ideahow much that costs?
No, I'm sure they deserve it,they earn it.
But, like my most recent book,it would have been like,
depending on which editor I wentthrough, it could have been

(46:25):
anywhere between $8,000 and$10,000.
Holy, could have been anywherebetween eight and $10,000 just
to edit the book.
And people are always like, hey, why aren't you, why don't you
have audio books, bro?
That's about four grand or moreand they're like read it
yourself.
I'm like, no, not, not a goodidea.
So I wrote rushing winter.
I created that character and myplan was always to have an

(46:47):
ending Right, you know.
So I'm, I'm, I just finished.
I finished book eight earlierthis year.
It'll be out in January, oh,nice.
So I published my third bookfrom the Carson Gray series
Exodus series that publishedearlier this year, and then
there'll be a new Rushing bookin January.
And then eventually, I want tosay by next January there'll be
book nine, but I don't know.

(47:09):
Will that be the I?
I want to say by next Januarythere'll be book nine.
But I don't know.
I wanted to finish rushingwinter before I started writing
the sci-fi, right, but it was inmy head and I'm like I gotta, I
gotta get some of it out.
I don't want to forget any ofthese ideas I have, yeah, so I
started, let me just write achapter.
And then I I just wrote a wholebook and I neglected my

(47:29):
previous book.
So there was a usually for awhile there I was publishing a
Russian winter book everyJanuary and then I took a
two-year break because I waslike, let me go off on a
three-book tangent on sci-fi.
So I've been hitting the sci-fiwriting pretty hard but I've
managed to finish book eight andthen I'll start working on book
nine as soon as I finish whatI'm working on right now.

(47:50):
So I'm constantly writing.
I write, at least you know I'llwrite four to six pages a day.
Oh well, sometimes more Like onthe road, like I'll get back
from class, I'll teach.
We get done at like four orfive o'clock.
Get back to the hotel, eatdinner.
And then I will write until twoin.
I mean, it's either that orwatch TV.
Yeah, yeah, at least.
What else are you going to do?
So I sometimes I can bang out16 pages, do you?

Speaker 2 (48:11):
kind of do it like whenever you like you get like
the inspiration or whatever, ordo you just like sit down Like
I'm going to right now?
It's already up there, yeah, Ihave to get it out.
You're just trying to get itout.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah.
So if you looked at my like myfiles, there's like six or seven
incomplete chapters and everynow and then I'm like, let me,
let me see if I can put thesetwo together, cause I'm trying
to tell a story, but I'm alsotrying to tell a story that
can't happen like that, yeah,cause life didn't work that way.
Sometimes things take time.
But I also don't believe in acharacter that never dies, a
character that lives forever, acharacter that lives forever, a

(48:47):
character that never ages.
So I'm a huge jack reacher fan,but chronologically dude's about
68, 69 right now, but in thebooks he's still cock diesel
early 40s.
Yeah, um, uh, elvis cole thefirst elvis cole books he's a
vietnam vet.
He's still out there doing highspeed thriller detective,

(49:08):
private detective shit and he'sprobably in his and don't get me
wrong, dudes in their 60s canstill be.
But when you think of an actionstar, you usually think of guys
that are like late 40s or late30s, early 40s, that kind of so
sometimes it's like I don't knowif a guy in his late 60s who's
basically a hermit and a nomadis going to be able to maintain

(49:31):
that kind of bulk do you takethe same approach, like with
your um instructor classes, likehow you were saying, through
the years you refine them,fine-tune them, the way you
think about your curriculum andstuff.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Do you take the same approach with your writing or is
it more of just a natural likeI write?

Speaker 1 (49:48):
top of mind.
Okay, so I will.
I what I'll do is when I likeI'm like starting on this book
like rushing winter.
I always knew how the story wasgoing to end, because all good
stories should have an ending.
I knew how rushing story wasgoing to end and I knew things
that needed to happen to himalong the way to develop him as
a character.
And then everything else iswhat would be interesting,

(50:11):
because the as a reader, if thecharacter is having a problem
that I personally could walkaway from, I don't want to read
the book anymore.
Right.
Like you've got to.
But you also can't give themsituations that are repetitive
or they make it seem like thecharacter has plot armor.
Like your main charactershouldn't be everything proof,
he shouldn't be in.

(50:32):
Like with female characters.
They call them Mary Sues.
For some reason there's nosimilar term for the male
characters that are the same way.
But Mary Sue is like a femalecharacter that never gets hurt,
she always knows, she's alwaysthe smartest person in the room
and you know some readers arescared of strong female
characters, so some Mary Suecharacters actually aren't Mary
Sue characters, whatever.
But there's no version of thatfor a male character.

(50:53):
Like there's no derogatory termfor like Superman.
They're waiting for you to comeup with one.
Yeah, I guess I got nothing onthat and now I'm going to think
about it.
Yeah, so I'm looking to create,even if the character is
grounded in reality, like thestory may not be, but you still

(51:15):
want people to make decisionsthat they realistically make.
So you try to put them insituations and like, just
because I personally wouldn't dosomething as an author, my
character might, and there'slike some interesting meta
universe stuff you can get intothat.
You know, sometimes I'll godown a rabbit hole and I was
reading all these posts fromNeil Gaiman and Neil Gaiman's
like if you're telling a story,that's a comedy.

(51:37):
Your character doesn't knowthat and I'm like, oh, shit yeah
.
That makes a lot of sense yeah.
It's like if you're writing ahardball detective knowledge,
your character doesn't even knowwhat that is.
Yeah, because there's thatsuspension of reality a little
bit, that that doesn't exist intheir world.
So with like Rushing Winter,there's a little bit of sci-fi
that takes place in it, buteverything's grounded in

(51:59):
potential reality.
Moving into like writing sci-fi, you know like you're taking
your world can be so big, youmake shit up.
Yeah, you can have aliens andplanets, but I try to keep
things as realistic as possible.
But I'm still giving thecharacters very.
Even if the problem sees likesuper complicated, like from a
from a sci-fi perspective, it'sstill a problem that anybody

(52:20):
could have if you just changesome of the elements out, like
instead of like this geneticallyengineered whatever, it's just
like a guy named Doug, so it'sfun.
The mistake I made with RushingWinter is I didn't make his
world big enough, so I startedhim off seeing the world through
a straw, which was kind of myidea.

(52:40):
But I wrote the very first bookfrom his perspective only.
And this technique and I don'tknow if any other author has
done it I've never seen it inpublished books like stuff you'd
get at like a bookstore.
I know other authors who do it,but they don't have published
books, they're likeself-published or whatever.
I started the very second book.

(53:02):
I started writing first personfor my main character, but then
I'll write third person forsupporting characters, so now I
can give different perspectives,but you're really still only
following one character and Ithink that's I think you know
that's probably one of thethings that I hear the most back
from readers is like that's,that's cool to me.

(53:22):
Yeah, cause you're getting likefirst person view from rushing's
perspective, but then you getto see how other people see him.
Yeah, because the problem withfirst person writing is you
technically only get thatperson's perspective on
everything.
Yeah, so it makes it hard toflush out other characters.
Yeah, and I've had some, youknow, I've come up with some, I
think, some pretty coolcharacters through the Rushing
series and they, you know, youtry not to kill them, but

(53:47):
sometimes you try not to killthem, but sometimes you have to,
sometimes they got to die.
But I try not to kill acharacter just to give another
character development.
Try not to.
So I don't think I've evercreated a character of being
like I'm going to make peoplelike you, then I'm going to kill
you.
Now villains.
Sometimes they got to die.

(54:08):
Yeah, you know you don't want avillain that just keeps coming
back forever so you're workingon book nine.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
Is there gonna be a book 10, or is nine nine?
Is it nine?
I don't know why just justthree.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Three and three made sense.
So book nine was always the,always the, the end of the story
and every book, like, you'vealways had the two main villains
, you've had the school andyou've had the corporation, the
virtual corporation, and one ofthem was like defense contractor
doing their kind of shit, andthe other one is like this, like
, as you learn throughout thebooks, like it's it's way older
than anybody thought it was andthese guys have been around

(54:39):
forever.
So, like the most recent book,he, he finds out a lot about
where all that came from, um, um, and then he's trying to, but
like he doesn't want to do itanymore.
He's like I'm tired of livingthis life where I'm constantly
getting shot at having deal withthis nonsense.
I'm getting older because thebook never actually tells you
how old he is, and I did that onpurpose, but you kind of get a

(55:02):
sense.
Yeah.
You get a sense that like, okay,he's trying to, he's trying to
like live a quiet, peaceful lifeand the world won't leave him
alone.
So into book nine it's going towrap everything up for the most
part, Um, but I also write sameuniverse.
So if you pick up, likefortunate son takes place in the

(55:23):
24 hundreds.
If you pay attention, you'llcatch references to things that
happen in the Russian books.
Not things, but like places andconcepts and companies.
So the corporation in therushing series is called Virtua
and they still exist 2,400 yearslater, Nice.
So there's some other thingsthat I did pre-COVID.

(55:45):
The was it the?
I think it was the thirdrushing book where I had the
resolute virus, where theygenetically engineered that
virus to kill specific people,and then I released that book in
like 2018 and 2019.
Covid happened and I'm likethey're going to think I got
this.
Yeah, seriously, yeah.
So, like those book and likethe, there's nine books written

(56:08):
over a lot of years, but onlyabout five years takes place in
between the first and the lastbook about five years, Um,
whereas you know, I I compressedit too much, so I should have
made his world a lot bigger.
Yeah.
Um, I've been happy with thecharacters.
I've been happy with the flow,um, but I feel like it's kind of

(56:31):
time to like.
Nine books is a is a good run.
You can tell a good story innine books, and I write long
books, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
I was going to say like, yeah, they're, they're
usually what Six 700 pages.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Yeah, um, unfortunately.
But you know, I kind of figuredlike well, you know, clancy was
like hey, I'm going to writeuntil I'm done and you're going
to publish it and people aregoing to buy it and they did so.
That worked for him.
So some guys get away with it,but you'll see a lot of your
thriller writers.
Like James Patterson, he'sgoing to bang out.
Yeah, he's 300, 350 pages,maybe 375.

(57:00):
Robert Krauss, who writes ElvisCole bro, you're getting like
175, 250 pages, that's it.
Marco Cluse, really good sci-fiwriter.
They're tiny little books.
They're great books, but he's a.
We're going to one act thisthing.
Yeah.
We're going to.
It's going to be one act,because he's just jumping like

(57:23):
kind of giving you episodes.
And I think some writers havegone that way because they say,
like people's attention spansaren't the same.
Yeah, I'm just going to writeuntil I'm done.
Yeah, and I know now I'mlimited by how much I can get
into a paperback.
Yeah, that's what keeps me fromwriting 90 chapters, 85.
And I also know, like with therushing books, I always knew

(57:43):
there was going to be nine, so Idon't have to get everything
done in one book.
So I don't have to geteverything done in one book.
Yeah, and I use a differentwriting style in those books too
, which Cormac McCarthy has beendoing forever and nobody yelled
at him about it.
But he's Cormac McCarthy, I'mnot.
So I can't get away with someof the artistic license that
some authors do In sci-fi.
I use different fonts for, like, humans talk a certain way and

(58:07):
AI all have their own littlefont that they have, and some
people are like that's, whyhaven't people been doing?
That, doing that Right.
It makes so much sense.
You think about it from awriter's perspective.
That makes life so much easier.
So now I don't have toconstantly tell you who's
talking.
Yeah, um, I don't know why thatwasn't.
I guess back in the old printdays that would have been a pain
in the ass.
You're going to set the print,but since everything's digital

(58:28):
now, super easy.
Yeah, I'm like.
Well, here's and I just it'sannoying to write sometimes
because I'm constantly changingfonts and Word has never worked
right, but it's still the besttyping program for some reason.
So I just have to rememberwhich font goes to which and it
lets you, like, tell a certainsecret story sometimes, where
only the reader knows what'sgoing on, because they're able

(58:49):
to understand oh, that fontbelongs to.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Oh, there's some stuff going on.
Got to think a little bit whileyou're reading.
Yeah, keeps you engaged.
I do like books like that.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
A little bit of mystery, no matter what your
story is, is a good thing, andsometimes it's fun for the
reader to know something thatthe main character doesn't know.
Yeah, because that's howthriller movies work.
Yeah, most of them are based onlike uh, you guys remember 24?
oh yeah, there's other jackbauer, that show would aggravate
the shit out of me.
Yeah, jack didn't know so muchstuff that was going on.

(59:21):
Yeah, so they're always showingyou this behind the scenes
stuff and you're like jack, yougotta be careful going.
Um, so like being able to gofrom first person to third
person with the way that I write, I can do that.
Yeah, hey guys, brendan here.
Editor for the Big TextOrdnance podcast.
We're going to go ahead and endthis episode there for part one
.
We will see you next time forpart two of this episode with
Aaron Cowan.