Writing, Publishing & Authorship : 7-23-25

In this session, we discuss fiction and nonfiction, how to humanize technical ideas through characterization, as well as marketing and branding.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm going to run through a couple of things up above in the
Nest couple announcements as always, the last recording of
this space is available on podcast platforms.
Also the week or weekly monthly article on for writers, the
writers workshop on sub stack isup there.

(00:20):
If you are not subscribed to my sub Stack, you can and get that
article dropped into your inbox once a month, no cost.
Additionally, we've got the Film3 space tomorrow we're going to
be making some announcements over there.
If you are interested in the developments in the Film 3 space

(00:41):
here on Twitter. Welcome to hang out over there.
Final announcement is my short film Animated AI Animated
shorts. Anunnaki has been picked up for
distribution by Filmsy. If you have a Roku device, you
can watch it on your television by the Roku OS or set-top box

(01:04):
and get films Y and then search for Anunnaki and it'll come up,
It'll surface. The instructions are right there
in the images of the tweet. Some of the stuff I'm doing
currently I'm working on an article for, well, it's, it's
more of an essay. It'll come out in September.

(01:26):
Trying to pound that out 'cause it's, it's kind of, it keeps
growing as our writing does, it continues to extend into
unforeseen places. I've got 1A reader on it
currently who's been giving me feedback, very familiar with the
topic, thankfully, and able to be incredibly insightful.

(01:46):
You know, that is the ideal I, Ithink to get good feedback.
It's such a preliminary stage. And I mean, some of this stuff
is just notes. It's not even legitimate prose
yet, or editorial copy, however you'd like to phrase it.
Really just kind of thinking onto the page and putting notes

(02:08):
there and getting ideas back again, Not all of it is like
that. It's currently maybe about 4500
words. I think it'll probably get over
5. It might get closer to six.
We'll see. There's two other readers.
I want to check it out before itactually goes up on KDP, but

(02:33):
that's one project. And then I am making great
progress laying out the paperback for release this
autumn. I think the target for that is
November, so we'll see. I'm ahead of my projected
schedule, which always feels good.
It is a lot of layout as it turns out.

(02:53):
So basically trying to pound through that because it is just
one of the larger works I've done and heavily pictorial.
So that's basically the gist on everything I've got going on
currently. Tamer, hello, welcome to the

(03:14):
space. We haven't met you before, but
maybe tell us a little bit aboutyourself, what you write, what
you're working on, anything along those lines as it relates
to writing, publishing, and authorship.
Thank you for the space. My name is Tamer Salami and my
speciality is Strategic Management.

(03:36):
OK. And I was writing a book called
Strategic Democracy, developed this concept on how to manage
the United States, how to lead and manage the United States.
The book ended up being a coupleof 1000 pages.
I've been working on it for sometime.

(03:57):
Yeah, that's a absolute doorstopof a book.
And then I said to myself, you know, and I have several
colleagues because right now I teach and discussing it with
colleagues and stuff like that. And what I do at the university
is one of the things I do is I supervise doctoral

(04:19):
dissertations. So my writing is very technical.
Sure. And so the 3000 something pages
are technical at the same time, like some of the data,
especially economic data and stuff like that, first you have
to validate it and then it keepschanging.

(04:42):
So by the time I'm done, let us say with Chapter 5, I reach
Chapter 9, I have to go back andchange it in Chapter 5.
And then I said this, this looksvery complex.
Why don't I like do a series of books?
But first I will introduce how to look at things.

(05:04):
So I developed a concept called the CARTS paradigm, which stands
for CARTS, stands for Knowledge and Action, for Results over
Time and Society. And I said, OK, that'll be the
first book of the series. The second book is Vital
SuccessFactors and then Strategic Democracy, probably

(05:27):
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I don't know yet how I'm going
to break it down, but I have those three done.
And then I said to myself, you know, let's make it a little
bit, a little bit a little bit more fun.
Why don't I introduce a character and use axioms?
So I rewrote it again with characters, and that's why I

(05:51):
joined the space. I saw written writer's block.
And then when I clicked on Heidi's profile, she's writing
about Cowboys and I'm using the cowboy character in the in the
book. I have other characters also
like a goat herder, cat herder and scorpion snake and spider

(06:16):
scientist. So, and they all have different
traits and attributes that relate to the different
discussions that are taking place.
Anyway, as I'm finishing the first book, I want it to be very
simple. So instead of using, you know,
things like strategic posture and diagnostics and

(06:37):
epistemological, I'm just takingout all the big words to make it
easy to read. So I get people that will review
it for me. And I am at like there were 84
reviews. 84 people reviewed yourbook.

(06:58):
No, no, I mean their feedback had 84 critiques.
Yes, yes, and not bad. Yeah.
This is only the cards book. It's 100 pages.
I'm trying to keep 100 pages or less per copy to make it easy to
read, so people can read it overa weekend and or a day.

(07:23):
And now I'm down to 32. Now for the past week, I've been
stuck from 34. So in one week I corrected too.
So when I saw the title yesterday, it said writer's
block. I said, oh, and then my friend
was there, Honey Badger. So I said to myself, oh, you

(07:48):
know, I really need to listen towhat those folks are saying
because I'm really having a block.
I keep rephrasing it, but it doesn't sound good.
At the same time, I'm accompanying the book with
application. So basically the somebody can go
to the application, it's on my website and enter a name of an

(08:13):
issue, an undertaking, then givea brief description and then it
will give you a run of the cards.
The only problem is it has limitations and I state the
limitations on the website. Sure, no system is complete,
right? Yes, yes.
And it's like, I mean, there's so many issues, but at least

(08:36):
it's a good start. And depending on how the system
is operating, sometimes it produces better, but you'll
still need to extensively edit it and validity and do the
validity reliability of whatevercomes out.
Sure. So that's why I was like, really
interested. I said, you know, I've never
really sat with a group of authors.

(08:59):
All the people I know that publish published textbooks.
Sure. Yeah.
And that is very much the writer's block.
Space is very fiction oriented, which might help you to a
degree. I'm probably the one person in
there doing more non fiction material, or let me put it this
way, doing as much non fiction material as fiction material as

(09:22):
it turns out. But that's not to say that I'm
particularly versed in what you're doing, which is Popular
Science. I do think that the angle that
you're coming at it is correct. I think that basically when you
are trying to tackle really technical material and trying to

(09:44):
make it palatable for a a broad audience and not just an
academic audience, characterizing that stuff is
going to help. You know, some of the my
favorite things that have brokendown technical perspectives
through a characterized lens would be like Girdle, Escher,
Bach, The Age of spiritual Machines.

(10:06):
I think those are very good texts to at at least maybe take
a look at if you haven't, in thesense of Kurzweil.
Basically from the beginning of the book to the end of the book
of Spiritual Machines. It goes from very typical,

(10:27):
almost textbook like reporting of history as we understand it.
And then it becomes more and more progressively A dialogue
between him and a character thathe creates as he speculates
about the future of, of technology and AI and and

(10:48):
biohacking to a degree, if you if that's the right phrase as it
moves well. What's your name again?
It's. The Age of Spiritual Machines by
Ray Kurzweil and then the other one is Girdle Escher Bach by
Douglas Hofstetter. And that one, it's also about

(11:12):
AI, but it is going through a lot of the philosophical
perspective on AI and the science that had been done up to
that point, which was the mid late 70s.
And what he does is before the technical segment of a chapter,

(11:33):
he has a prologue for each chapter where he basically
introduces the concepts, the thetechnical and scientific
concepts of the following chapter through allegory using a
handful of characters basically in dialogue.
And you know, I'm not saying that those are good models for

(11:55):
you, but you might see how they do some of that stuff where
it's, it's one again, GEB, Gerdel, Escherbach is very
allegorical and then almost likefables in a sense.
And then the other one, the morerecent one, Age of Spiritual

(12:17):
Machines really is, you know, that he's having a conversation
with himself essentially throughthis character as he speculates
on technology emerging over the next 100 years, basically.
And at that point, I think it came out in 98 or 99.
Some of his predictions have been fairly accurate over time.

(12:41):
And you know how accurate he will continue to be.
I think is is still a a topic ofconversation in general.
It does get referenced even evennow, even though that book is
over 25 years old, people still look at him and his writing.
As you know, Landmark works in the conversation at large, I

(13:05):
would say. So those two would be ones I
would recommend to you in the sense of just seeing how, I
mean, Gerdel, Escher, Bach won aPulitzer Prize, and Age of
Spiritual Machines was, you know, a very, very popular book
for what it is. And the time that it came out,

(13:26):
what awards it might have won, I'd have to look up.
But both of them I consider to be good books and examples that
are akin to what it sounds like you were trying to do.
I just added them to the cart. Thank you.
Hey, no problem. Yeah, see the system works.
I like them. I, I also have a video on my

(13:52):
YouTube that kind of breaks downGirdle Escher Bach because it is
a big book. Now, I'm not saying you need
that topic broken down to you. You might only end up reading
the prologue chapters where he'sdoing the allegorical material
to basically lean on the exampleof, of, you know, his style
there and not so much the content of his message.

(14:14):
And that might not be interesting or valuable to you
in any sense, but that side might be.
And, and again, in the Kurzweil stuff, maybe you're not
interested in the, you know, hisprophecy at the time.
And, and you would really kind of look towards maybe the

(14:36):
second-half of the book where heis in dialogue with the
character that he creates there to, to kind of speculate and and
go back and forth about that stuff That might be useful to
you. Yeah, thank you.
I'll order them and look at them.
And if you link me the link to your YouTube video, I will watch

(14:57):
it also. I'll I'll also link you the link
to the web page. And please try the app.
Sure. It's developed based on ChatGPT
4 point O and through Play Lab. Gotcha.

(15:18):
Yeah, very cool. And it's been really, you'll be
surprised, like you spend about two minutes and you get about
two to three pages. And then it breaks down to you
with the knowledge, the action, the timing, the results in
society. It also looks at whether the

(15:41):
environment is turbulent or stable and what to do in each
case and what kind of preparation and prospects you
need now. Now, of course, all this will
have to be validated, and I say that they are because it's based
on LMS and prompt engineering. Can I use your?

(16:08):
What do you call it? The top thing?
Jumbotron. Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead, share it up there. Yeah, feel free.
I want to share with you something that I've been doing
an experiment with my son who's doing.
He studies IT, yeah. And you might put it in the
comments too if you want. OK, so basically this is testing

(16:31):
over 2 years. Let me see how to put it in the
comments also. Yeah, whatever you like.
Copy links. Yeah, I don't really speak very
much or post so much. I'd listen a lot.
Yeah. Actually, I mean, I I won't go

(16:52):
over it right now, but it shouldbe in the Jumbotron in a minute.
Yeah, it's already there. I see it.
I got it pulled up on my computer.
And basically over 2 years I asked the same 3 questions.
Good. And they have still errors the
second year, which is this year 25.

(17:13):
They, the four of them provided more material, yet it wasn't
comprehensive enough. And the third question was about
how to improve. And they all provided generic,
you know, boilerplate kind of improvement taken from either
marketing or motivational research.

(17:37):
Yet you can trace the origins ofit quite easy.
But The thing is, the more data we have doesn't mean more
accurate. We're going to be #1 there's a
whole list at the end of. First, there's slide 3, I
believe is. Advantages and disadvantages?

(17:58):
Yes, and then the other one is critical success factor.
So like in my area I find a lot of errors.
Now I have friends that write programs all day long and they
love all this technology. In my area I find a lot of

(18:19):
errors. Actually the first year copilot
referenced my website. Oh nice.
And in my website it says the father of strategic management
is H Eager Ansoff but they couldn't tell who the father of
strategic management is yet. It was in plain day site and
they referenced the page so you know the second year it was

(18:43):
corrected. But this is this is like to be
careful when using the LLMS withthe results.
Now with fiction, it's different, but when it comes to
things that have to do with potential causing harm, it's
very dangerous to pursue it by saying, oh, that's what they it

(19:07):
provided me, especially if you ask it to give you judgements or
things like that. So this is the kind of writing I
write, like what I just posted and put in the nest and I'll,
I'll text you the web domain. I don't want to put it yet.

(19:28):
Yeah, it's fine. In public but before I'm done, I
don't like to like put stuff. Yeah, it is what it is.
You know, don't, don't sweat it.Yeah, that's not complete, but
I'll text it to you. I mean, I'll react to you.
Yeah, no problem. So you basically like publish
mixed fiction and non fiction? Well, I wouldn't say I I publish

(19:53):
mixed fiction and non fiction. I would say I have works that
are fiction and I have works that are non fiction.
So my first book was sort of a journalistic, photojournalistic
piece on the Columbian Exposition.
If you're familiar with the 1893World's Fair in Chicago.

(20:15):
I do a similar thing with national parks.
And then I've done one book. Well, I've done two books on
marketing and then over the lasthandful of years I've started to
get more into fiction writing, like short story material and
starting to kind of build out that side of things, which is

(20:36):
again, you know, very different than non fiction.
But at the same time, hopefully if your non fiction is good,
you're telling stories over there and it sounds like that's
something that you're concerned with.
It's kind of mixed. I'm I'm only you like applying
the cowboy to just give it a taste of something else other

(20:58):
than this is knowledge, this is results, this is the action.
So, so I give examples from the livelihood of a cowboy, grit of
a guy or cowboy also, you know, like sometimes they give the
Cowboys a bad name, but they forget about their pioneering

(21:21):
stuff and their persistence and tenacity and all these
characteristics are very helpfulin a turbulent environment.
Yeah, absolutely. So you wrote about Mark, you
wrote about marketing? Yeah.
What's your like specialty business is it?

(21:43):
So I have worked in content marketing.
I would say that's my specialty,content marketing promotions
like brand promotions, things like that over the years.
And on the content marketing side, I would say, you know,
very much multimedia branding and putting your message

(22:11):
thoroughly and continuously between multimedia.
That would be more or less the the trajectory for my career and
that side of things. And it's, you know, worked with
a bunch of different companies all over the map, you know?
Healthcare. Technology, you name it.

(22:32):
I've probably worked something related at some point, you know,
food and beverage, nightlife, entertainment, you know,
whatever. Yeah, if you're interested, I
have, like I said, I have those books.
One of them is a personal branding content marketing book.
The other is small business content marketing.

(22:53):
So it might be something you're interested in.
I'm looking it up, sure. I mean I can link it to you.
I don't have my computer linked to my phone.
I don't like to link them. I'll tell you about this why
later. I don't want to, but really nice

(23:14):
meeting you. You know, it's, I'm glad you put
these things together. Yeah.
You know, one of the things thatI think there's a market for,
and I was thinking of doing it. For example, I'm very good with
editing. I mean, I edit impeccably
whatever is written because reading dissertations requires

(23:38):
developing these kinds of things.
I was the library reader about 30 years ago for from roughly
1987 to like 9495 library reader.
What you do is you basically read the dissertations and
report back to the committee andthe student regarding the
methodology. So you have to really be very

(24:02):
meticulous. So I had bad experiences with a
couple of publishing companies. OK.
How long have you been working on this material?
Just out of curiosity because I mean it is extensive.
The material I started in 93. OK, Yeah.
But I was, I was actually using it for business in the beginning

(24:23):
when I was when I had a real job, I was using these
approaches and things for businesses.
So I never published them, you know, And then about maybe 10
years, 15 years ago, I started saying, OK, you know, if we
apply some of the solutions of the models we develop in

(24:43):
business, we can solve a lot of societal problems at lower cost
at the faster pace. And that's when I started
thinking about writing it. And then I started writing it,
and over the years, it just became gigantic.
And I have different versions ofit.

(25:05):
That's what you're saying. You know, so it's kind of like,
sometimes I get overwhelmed. It's like paralysis by analysis
and overload combined. That happens with all writers,
regardless of what you're doing.You know, so I got stuck like at

(25:26):
least like there is only one like almost a page or a page,
let us say. And 32 and 31 actually one, one
I have to rewrite totally and 31I have to tweak, but they're not
coming out correct. And for almost a week I've only

(25:50):
progressed in terms of two. Like that's very low rate of
progress. Hey, I'm a slow writer and in
fact if I get 50 words a day on some stuff then I'm happy. 200
words a day is probably an average day.
Occasionally I get up to 1000 words.
That's why I always say like, doI have a novel in me?

(26:13):
I don't know. It'd take an incredibly long
time for me to put together a novel.
It's commendable when people do,in my opinion, anytime put
together a novel with 100,000 words for me, You know, a lot of
the stuff that I've done has been pictorial non fiction.
My fiction stuff is considerablyshorter in, in the sense that

(26:42):
just the amount of deliberation and research that I put into
fiction makes it take a long time.
So I, I, I'm not, you know, I haven't quite hit the 30 year
mark on stuff. I do get it out the door a
little faster than that. But at the same time, I mean, I

(27:03):
put out that branding book in 2021, I think.
And I had started kind of the kernel of the idea had started
in say maybe 2016 or 2017. And I had one idea and then
scrapped that idea almost completely and had to rework it

(27:27):
around a new framework of the 10steps thing.
And that helped a lot. But I, I didn't necessarily
scrap everything that I had. It just forced me to go back
through and, you know, break things and break things apart
and compartmentalize them in this new fashion.
So I mean, it is what it is. I, I wouldn't sweat about that

(27:48):
as long as you get it done right.
That's. The goal, you know, as long as
you have the time and everythingelse is going well, yeah, it's
all good. This is this is like if you like
marketing, there is a topic thathas been ignored and
misrepresented. When I was doing my master's in

(28:11):
England, one of the courses we took was industrial marketing.
And now this has been reduce into things like B to B,
relationship management, sales and share management, marketing
communications, strategic marketing, international
businesses. For sure, because the marketing

(28:33):
side of things has leaned over into the sales side of things as
opposed to more of the promotionside of things.
And in industry, you know, when we let's say like if we're
looking at maybe these more classical definitions of
industry versus commerce, industry is far away from an on

(28:56):
the ground sort of events drivenor consumer driven things.
So then it does get lumped into B to B and it does kind of
follow more along the sales thing as opposed to the
promotions thing. And then you see sales engineers
getting popular, so. Yeah.
You see this has been really forgotten and it's like the

(29:19):
biggest kind of business which is selling a factory, it's done
all the time. It's just that they kind of it
kind of disappeared from the business literature and it was
substituted by the stuff I earlier mentioned.
And this is something people aremissing because this is very

(29:44):
fundamental to doing business. And I did a lot of work in that.
I was just mentioning it to you because if you like marketing,
that's an area that needs to be cultivated more as we move into
a more technological age, because at some point people
would want to buy factories or parts of factories or

(30:07):
businesses. That's already starting to
develop new and novel technologies, but the approaches
for it have been kind of convoluted nowadays.
So that might be a nice area to look into.
Yeah, but you need to get like the old textbooks, the new

(30:29):
textbooks, some of them are really messed up.
Well, you know everything. Here's the here's the thing I
find is that the adage publish or perish has perhaps gone too
far. And you're in academia.
You're familiar. Yeah, yeah.

(30:50):
You know, there is, there is another option like the option I
take is like I do research because you have the other
option and that is supervising research because I don't like to
publish anything that does not contribute.
So I have very few actual academic publications, but I
have a lot of dissertation supervision so it's an easy way

(31:15):
to pump out the seven page article and get it peer reviewed
and published. It's not that hard.
Plus there are so many avenues. Of course some journals are
better than others. Where?
Are you a professor at? I teach at Alliant

(31:36):
International, I'm in San Diego,OK and I'm part time in both of
them and I teach at SouthwesternCollege.
OK, cool. Yeah, I'm not particularly
familiar with any of the programs out there, but you
know, that doesn't matter. I mean, my profile is online, it

(31:56):
shows all these things. No, no, I mean, I believe you.
That's not the issue. I just don't have anything to
add about those schools. And I guess would be the more
articulate way of phrasing it. Yeah, yeah.
Alliant is like one of the top schools in psychology.
And Southwestern is a Community College, about 30,000 students

(32:23):
in San Diego. That's pretty large, actually.
Yeah, yeah. For a Community College, it's a,
well, I mean, it's a city. It's a big community.
Yeah. You know, it's, it's really,
both of them are quite nice and they are, they are about like

(32:47):
one of them is in Scripps Ranch,the other one is in Chula Vista.
So they are about half an hour, 40 minutes away from each other.
And San Diego is quite a desirable destination area.
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Can't, can't be unhappy about being over there.

(33:08):
I started teaching roughly in 1983.
And when I was teaching, I was working for Ansoff at this
company. He's the guy that invented
strategic management. I was a student and I worked for
him for about 11 years. And that's, and I taught from
roughly 83 to 94, so roughly 12 years.

(33:32):
And then I went into industry till roughly 2019, just a little
bit before COVID. And then I decided to go back to
teaching. So it's been quite an experience
comparing the books that I was using previously, which I can't

(33:53):
find now they're out of publication.
Even the updates of those books are terrible.
So I have to use articles in my asymmetric classes.
Like if it's a class on management, I can use a standard
textbook, but if I teach a classon strategic management, I have

(34:14):
to find articles and put them together for the class because
the books are way out of whack. For example, you know part of
strategic management is strategic planning.
There is about 40 ways that theylist as strategic planning,
agile strategic planning, entrepreneurial strategic

(34:36):
planning, and you have a whole list.
So what do you choose? And you can't teach all of them
in one course, maybe two years. So that's the kind of asymmetry
we have in some of the disciplines.
Nice. Yeah.

(34:57):
I would say that that's a fairpoint in the sense that
industrial organizational psychology, it sounds like in
the lens that you were talking about, it has not necessarily

(35:17):
stayed close to its roots or enough to its roots.
Yeah, there is a problem called replication crisis because in
order for us to progress when wetest theory or hypothesis, we
need to be able to replicate thetesting.
And a lot of the testing hasn't been replicated.

(35:39):
It was what you mentioned earlier, publish or perish.
So a lot of people use shortcutsand these shortcuts harm
knowledge. And this replication crisis is
very problematic because right now we're increasing it.
When LLMS are collecting or these different systems are

(36:03):
collecting data from websites that hasn't been vetted, it's in
the thing that I put in the Jumbotron, the four pages and
the critical SuccessFactors. The one of them is the
replication crisis. Jaji, if you want to hop up,
I'll send you a mic. We're hanging out.

(36:23):
We got maybe 15 minutes left fortoday.
Yeah, I, I feel like this was good, you know, just to be able
to get to catch up with you and meet you in a general sense.
Hi there. I I just got here, so I'll just
listen for right now and then I'll say something in a little.

(36:45):
Bit don't sweat it. You know, you've got, you've got
a little bit to say something ifif you've if you would like.
Thanks. Yeah.
So we tamer, correct. That's how I'm that's how you
yeah, he had showed up at our space on Tuesday yesterday, but

(37:12):
he rose his hand a little bit late and we didn't necessarily
know him. So I told him, hey, come and
hang out here. This is a little bit slower
paced, more casual spot to be able to talk about whatever and
and actually meet somebody new. You know, this is the low key
space comparatively. Yesterday was pretty, what's the

(37:36):
word? It was driving, you know, it
had, it had momentum in terms ofthe the conversation and stuff.
So yeah, he's just been kind of laying out what he's been
working on and I was giving him some examples in regards to

(37:58):
putting technical material through the lens of
characterization. Gave him a couple examples about
that. And again, you know, it's tough
when you're doing stuff that is arguably, you know, academic and
and dry material that is scientific, you know, to put it

(38:22):
bluntly, to make it to connect it with a broad audience.
That's great. Pop side books do that more than
than others. Did we lose you, Georgie?
Oh, we did lose her. She'll be back.

(38:43):
But yeah, that's, you know, justa recap some of that.
Yeah. It's OK Connections, they come
and go, you know, in a general sense.
Again, this space is every otherWednesday.
It's super casual. It is not thematic in any way.

(39:04):
Basically, we kind of just go over whatever comes up.
You know, it's not really meant to be specific.
And again, this is a recorded space.
All of these are available on your favorite podcast platforms,

(39:25):
whatever that might be. So if you wanted to go back and
see what some of the other discussions were, that's an
option for you. As well as the workshop sessions
from the writer's block, which are really, I would say more
specifically targeting publishing and authorship than

(39:46):
the thematic side of writing, which we do.
You know more more so of that material on a weekly basis.
It looks like we we got Joji back.
Are you live? Do we have?
You sorry about that? They're paving the road outside
our house and I have a autistic son and normally he's picked up

(40:08):
at the door and they called me and they he's perfectly capable
of walking back from the corner,but they were afraid to let him
off to the corner. So I had to run out.
I lost the Wi-Fi, I lost the connection.
So how is everybody's writing going?

(40:29):
Today I was working on notes andfeedback on an essay I'll put
out in September. So that's, I can't say I did a
lot of writing, but I was basically kind of rolling
through the material that I haveand trying to tighten things up
and, and make adjustments. I guess I would say I'm

(40:52):
probably, let's say I'm, let's say you know, liberally I'm 75%
of the way there on it. That sounds great.
What about you? What were you working on?
What I haven't actually had a chance to write in two days
because I've been I asked that question on Twitter about

(41:15):
whether men read and what they read, and I got what's now 18
pages of recommendations. I've been trying to organize it
into something I could put online as a recommended reading
list, but it's kind of daunting because there's so much and I
had to write an introduction foranthology.
So I did. I got those things.
Well, I got the introduction done, which I'm grateful, and

(41:37):
I've gotten some of the organizing of this list done,
but I really need to put it aside and actually work on my
book tonight. What are you working on book
wise right now? I'm working on a Regency fantasy
romance called The Heirs of Reykjavik or Lady Cordelia's
Dilemma. That's a mouthful.

(41:57):
Come on. That's what the old old names
you're. Going to make us say that whole
thing the whole time, every single.
Time No, it was called the Heirsof Reykjavik most of the time,
but it's, you know, it's old fashioned style title.
Yeah, that's good. But it takes place in the same
background as my books of unexpected enlightenment.
So there's, you know, the same magical setup, the same odd

(42:21):
social setup where there's no Christianity.
So everybody worship the Greek gods, but they're people who
previously worship Christians before they forgot them.
So that the whole orders of the Greek gods are a little odd and
I have to kind of slip, I, I forget to put them the into the

(42:41):
background, you know, so I have to go back through occasionally
and, and go, wait, they don't have that.
I have to use a Greek God working on that.
I, I'm getting close to being done with it and I'm really
eager to get to the second book before I leave for Scotland,
which is one of the second booksinvolved with, but you know,
it's, it's coming along. It's it's frustrating, but it's

(43:04):
fun. Now you're prolific.
Just yeah. For additional context, Jaji has
been in the writing and publishing industry for I don't
want to date you a while. You know, she's, she's

(43:26):
experienced. She's been around the block a
couple of times. And that's why we appreciate her
insight. Also, Yeah, if you want Jaji, if
you're familiar and if you tweeted it out, I don't know if
you did. She's got a a new article up
today on cover design, which, Yeah.

(43:47):
I. Did useful, Yeah.
Do you know how to share it intothe nest?
I'll try. I fit a lot of trouble every
time I try it. I think I'll try to see if I can
figure it out. I bet you.
But it's I, I. It was a guest post for Hans
Schantz over at the Base Book Sale.

(44:09):
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. And also I think I noticed
you're starting to put together a, A list for your sale.
Are you doing an open call or are you just curating that all
on your own? No, it it is a invitation only
sale. Damn but.
We're taking, we're taking, I mean, anybody, anybody

(44:32):
recommends to me, I go and contact them.
But because we were trying to get books of a particular type,
we, we didn't want to put an open sale because if it's open,
we have to make a judgment call about whether it fits and, and
neither Hans or I felt qualifiedto do that.
So what we're doing instead is if somebody says, Hey, conclude

(44:53):
me, you know, I have a good bookfor this.
Or if they say, Hey, this guy's books are really good, then
we're we're talking to them. But the subject is, is books for
male readers. And just so it's all adventure
stuff. And you know, just the kind of
thing that a guy would enjoy reading, not that us ladies
don't also enjoy these books, but just kind of trying to put

(45:13):
more of the adventure books all together and in one fun sale.
So that's what working. When does that start?
July 30th. OK, so next week.
Yeah, we're hoping to kind of tie in with, there's been a lot
of excitement, particularly hereon on Twitter about this in the
last six months with people getting upset or being at the

(45:35):
center of Firestorm. So we're hoping to kind of maybe
get a little bit of that excitement to get it spread
around because basically like I,I put out, I usually get like 5
answers on a tweet if I'm reallylucky.
And so I tweeted out men, what are you reading?
And I've gotten, I don't know, somewhere between 12 and 50

(45:56):
answers. I'm not exactly sure because. 12
and 50 is a pretty wide range. People at answer more than one,
so I got quite a few answers, but some of them are the same
people over and over again. I haven't actually counted out
how many people it was, but it was a lot of people responding
over several days with lists of stuff.
And, you know, they're almost all saying the same thing, which

(46:19):
is that they like reading, but they can't find anything in the
bookstore they want to read. So we're trying to find books
from people, indie people who are writing those kinds of books
that are like the ones they saidthey liked and be able to say,
hey, look, you know, readers, here's some authors, authors,
here's some readers and, you know, match them up.

(46:40):
So that's our, that's our. Goal and never the twain shall
meet. I believe would be the end of
the phrase in this. Case.
Hopefully they will. Meet.
Yeah. Ideally, yeah.
That's our hope. For sure.
Well, we're in the home stretch.We got a handful of minutes
left. If there are any final
questions, final thoughts, complaints, you know, this is

(47:06):
this is your opportunity. This is your chance.
Geez, don't everybody speak up at once.
Not even complaints. You know, I guess you have to
put them in the anonymous box, which means DM them to me.
Yeah. Well, that's cool.
This has been a good conversation.

(47:30):
Learned about Tomer and what he's working on.
And that's always good. I would say poke around in the
stuff in the nest if you haven'thad a chance.
As always, you know the recordings are up.
Articles abound on Substack. It sounds like Books for Men

(47:52):
coming up July 30th. Next week on the writer's block.
Let me pull up the notes just real quick.
We we do our planning session tomorrow afternoon, but I'm
pretty sure the topic is kind ofa continuation of what we did
this past week where we were talking about level design,

(48:14):
scaling bosses and villains. We're going to be talking about
building out the conflict. Tom or I see your hand raised.
Go ahead, Sir. You know, from yesterday and
today and what I heard yesterdayand today, it's like there's
several people with a lot of talents and I didn't have a good

(48:36):
experience with a couple of the publishing that I got from
online. So given that my background in
business, I started toying around with the idea of
connecting with people and to set up a publishing company
that's by writers. Because the people that I talked
to are not writers, they're salespeople, so they don't

(48:59):
really understand the dynamics of what goes through the writers
mind. All what they want to do is to
just sign a contract with you and trust them on what they
want. To do you talking about
publishers or lit agents? I don't know the exact term, but
it's like a full service one stop shop where somebody that's

(49:23):
writing doesn't have to go through the hassle of.
You're talking about somebody doing a vanity press for you
services. I don't know what yet, but.
Were they charging you or? Packagers maybe.
A friend of mine used to be a packager.
This was before Indy, but he would he would do that kind of
thing. Some of them offered that also.

(49:44):
And it was, it was an experiencebecause I think I went through
about 11 of them. And then I said, OK, I'm going
to learn all this stuff by myself because I got
contradictory statements about the same question from different
people. So and then I started leading
online and I read some of the horrors writers go through.

(50:07):
Writers do all the work and thenthey have to do more work to
publish their books, especially self-publishing.
Hello. Yeah, which basically it in
short means why didn't you just self publish in the 1st place?
At any rate, this has gone well and we do appreciate the time

(50:28):
everyone's taken to talk about their work and what they're
doing. Here's one last note to
consider. We are in the homestretch of the
July Grand Sumo Tournament. The action is heating up and you
can watch all of the day-to-day fights on NHK World.

(50:50):
That is also available to you onthe Internet or via your Roku
device. Just download the app NHK World.
You can watch every single day for 15 days.
Catch up on the days you missed the Grand Sumo tournament.
We got a brand new Yokozuna in there, Ono Sato.
He's not necessarily in in the lead, but he's up towards the

(51:12):
top and that's something we do like to see.
We like to see the fresh young talent, very contentious in the
upper ranks. An excellent tournament thus
far, but As for today, again I thank you.
It was good to meet you Tomer, and we will talk again before
too long.