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September 15, 2025 • 22 mins

In this session, I discussed working on large projects that take long periods of time and transmuting them into different media formats such as audio, video, and books.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hey, what is going on? We're going to just RIP through
a little bit of news in the nestreal quick.
It's September. I'm doing daily historical facts
posts, little snippets, little bits of video and information.
You might notice right now I've got a a little bit of

(00:26):
congestion, sinus problems. I sound a little off.
Hopefully that'll be sorted out soon, sooner than later.
The Based Con based book sale islive.
Over 200 titles in there for $0.99 or free.

(00:46):
I've got a few in it and so do abunch of my friends.
Might consider being involved. Might consider having a look and
and shopping through even the old listings because, well, a
lot of that stuff is only $0.99 for a week.

(01:10):
Some things, like mine, are perpetually $0.99.
Also, just because it isn't on sale doesn't mean that you don't
find something that you like. And the selection does kind of
cycle over time. So you know, what you find in
one listing might not be what you find in another.
Particularly with the genre sales going on where they're

(01:34):
tighter, smaller collections of authors and their work have a
look. Great promotional vehicle.
Since the last time. Maybe not.
I gosh, I'm trying to think of how long ago this was the 24th.

(01:56):
Maybe it was might have talked about.
Yeah, we did. We did talk about Gen. 48 two
weeks ago. But if you haven't seen it, the
short I made Tartaria Mystics and Engineers is up on YouTube.
It's up on Facebook and threads and Twitter here, all all sorts

(02:16):
of places. You can watch it.
It's a short little 1 1/2 minutelong clip.
It's it's not even the full production kind of in pre
production for that, doing a little bit of writing, doing
asset development and things like that.
So I can put all those characters into motion and give
them life and bring the story tothe screen.

(02:38):
At some point. I don't know how long it's going
to take me to make that. I might kind of slowly let it
percolate over the course of theremainder of this year and then
shoot for an early 2026 release on that.
I'm, I'm not in a hurry. You know, I got all these books
to do, so that's kind of my priority.
And I'm going to talk a little bit about that once I get

(03:03):
through some of this other news stuff.
The yeah, here we go. The last recording from 2 weeks
ago when we talked about Gen. 48with Neil, that's up on all your
favorite podcast platforms. You might even be listening to
this right now on one of them. That is very meta.

(03:23):
You know, consider that if this is your first time listening,
you know, there's a slew of old recordings that you can go
discover and enjoy, hopefully for many hours and maybe meet
some new people that you don't know yet that you should know,
authors and creatives, business folks and technology topics

(03:50):
across the board. Gosh, you know, I've been
putting out audio in a podcast format, at least on this
particular package for a handfulof years now.
So you might you might find something that you like.

(04:11):
Also, this month's ebook and audiobook release, which I have
not even recorded yet because myvoice is so off unfortunately,
is Love, Death and Explosives, Thomas Pynchon's polypsychology.
Long form essay on that author'swork and a little bit of

(04:35):
philosophical musing for me about what it all means in the
past, in the world today. Have a look.
You might learn something. You might discover a new author
you love. And I don't mean me, I do mean
Thomas Pension. Great author, love his writing
style. You know, try to be balanced and

(04:59):
fair in my assessment of some ofthe things you know inside of
that essay. It's up on KDP might take a look
around and see where else I can put it out because I think it's
it's deserving of a broader release of a wider release.

(05:21):
What I want to talk about today,and this might end up being a
relatively short discussion, is about project development, the
process of going from little kernels of ideas to a finished
project that you can actually put out and promote.

(05:45):
And broadly, that is something Ithink authors do.
And if you're only a writer, maybe have not yet gone all the
way through the process, I thinkit is important to get your work
out there to actually finish it.Say it's done, stop combing

(06:11):
through it. It's never going to be perfect.
It you're never going to think that you couldn't change
something and that's OK. You can come back to it and do
that. It's perfectly fine.
Many authors do. There are multiple editions of
books for that very reason. Or if you're a non fiction, new
things are discovered and so youhave to update.

(06:33):
It's all right, but I think thatthe important thing is really
getting it out the door, no matter how long it takes.
Or perhaps if you are in the same boat as I am, sort of kind
of bouncing between fiction and non fiction, longer form

(06:53):
material, shorter form material is to keep a few things in the
hopper basically. And give them the proper
attention that they deserve so that you can basically get it
into shape and stage the production for release.

(07:16):
You know, I, I like deadlines. I keep them as best as I can and
try to get stuff done that way. But.
If you need time to play around with something and keep

(07:43):
workshopping it, it's nice. Or if you're looking for like
traditional publishing with something which can take very
long periods of time, it's good to have some other things on the
table that you can continue to work on and put something out
there. Particularly I think for young
and new authors who don't have any titles under their belt yet,

(08:09):
it's good to be able to kind of get some stuff out there for
people to be able to find you and know what you're about as
you're working on longer form ofmaterial or building a catalog,
things like that. That's not to say that all of
these experiments will be successful.
Maybe some of them are total clunkers, you know, It is what

(08:32):
it is. Some things will take off and
find an audience and other things will be maybe a slow
burn. You'd start looking at your
numbers after a while and you'relike, oh, that's interesting.
Or you're like, oh, that was abysmal, you know, that didn't,

(08:55):
that didn't pan out at all. Some things we do as creatives
just for ourselves, you know, and that's all right too, to
basically make things that we like, even if other people
don't. Exploring all of those different
avenues I think helps you to refine your skill, refine your

(09:19):
craft, bring new perspective to the to the other things that
you're working on and you learn and hopefully everything kind of
improves along the way. You know, the the first books
that I put out have gone througha couple of of iterations and I

(09:44):
know people that have completelydelisted books that they put
out, utterly reworked them, and then republish them under a new
title, new branding, new covers,effectively a brand new story
altogether because it had been reworked to such a degree that

(10:05):
while recognizable, is not. It's not the same work
ultimately. And that's fine for me.
I'd like to kind of mine on something in a lot of different
directions, whether it's writingor audio or video, pictorial

(10:29):
things, just really trying to find everything that I can
within those things, the connections, the cross
connections and an interesting over overlaps between all that
stuff to to understand it betterthen that could be that could be

(10:52):
many years in the process of doing that.
Certainly has been for national parks and for Chicago 1893 and
also more recently as I am wrapping up the paperback layout
that I'm doing for this year, which is daily historical facts.

(11:20):
So if you've followed me for a while anywhere, you've probably
seen me playing around with these things for a number of
years. I started doing the collage
posts in 2020. I wish I had been more forward
thinking at that point in time. Gosh, that would have been smart
to save a lot of those assets soI didn't have to go dig them up

(11:43):
again. But I've been rewriting the
little blurbs, adding two things, working with the imagery
to improve the quality and resolution of some of these
historical photos. Sometimes they're very bad.
Working on colorizing them when it's appropriate because

(12:05):
sometimes they, I think really kind of pop a lot more when you
add a little bit of color to them or you're able to discern
the image in a better way when it has a little bit of color or,
or texture to it that is hard tomake out in the original black

(12:27):
and whites or smaller resolutionversions.
And even beyond that, when you put some of those things into
motion, again, kind of compelling and interesting to
see what comes out of that. Did that certainly for the AI
cut of Chicago 1893, kind of bringing some of that stuff back

(12:49):
to life. I'm not necessarily in the boat
where we should be doing that with like our loved ones and
some kind of, I don't know, way of resurrecting them.
But I think with historical stuff or with public figures,
it's something all together different or like architectural

(13:13):
sites, interior design material paintings and, you know,
illustrations and stuff like that.
I, I think that that's a little bit removed from these sort of
personal connections, familial connections.
It's different. It's, it's more of an exercise.
It's more of a look at the technology side of it as opposed

(13:39):
to the very personal emotional side of it that some people go
down. You know, hey, if that's what
you want to do, that's perfectlyfine.
I think it's maybe not always a healthy thing to do, but at the
same time, you know, maybe enough time has passed.

(14:05):
Maybe maybe you've got some old family photos and you want to be
able to do some kind of production with photos from 60
or 70 years ago just to give just to put it together and see,
have a little, I don't know, short film of, of family from

(14:30):
years past. I think that can be kind of cool
too. Obviously I'm doing it with
these historical photos and and posting this stuff up, but
there's a lot of ways to explorethat stuff within documentary
work, within even some fictionalstuff as well, you know?

(15:02):
Or even sort of like B roll for for things, you know, you have
like found footage or stuff likethat.
You know, I'm I'm not so critical of how people apply the
tools. I think it kind of comes more
under the microscope when it depending on the intent.

(15:27):
That's just me though, as I've been, I've been doing this stuff
for quite a while at this point that I'm not so enamoured with
the technology at this point. Like AI generative AII like it,
I use it everyday, but I don't think of it as like some ground

(15:51):
breaking, earth shattering sort of mountain moving technology,
you know, that changes everything.
I think it's a, it's a cool toolto apply and you know, certainly

(16:11):
worth exploring and playing around with to see what all it
can do. And I like it.
I mean, I obviously use it for for video shorts and for promo
videos and all kinds of stuff like that.
And we'll continue to, you know,I'm not going to, I'm not going

(16:33):
to give up on those things. I have material kind of in the
hopper for the next 6 months in general that I want to see get
out the door that in a lot of ways I am kind of mixing up

(17:06):
authentic video or imagery with synthetic renderings of my
photography or, you know, whatever the case might be as
well. So there's, I think a lot of
applications for that. I I use LLMS in the same way,
not necessarily for final product, but for brainstorming

(17:29):
and kind of like collecting my thoughts that I then work on in
advance in a traditional writingor production way, very organic
kind of processing of that stuff.

(17:50):
But yeah, that's that I guess ishow I would sum it up.
I think that if you are basically using it to improve
your productivity or help you make sense of ideas to be able

(18:11):
to hone in on a project and, andgive it shape and give it life
and, and get it out to people who are interested or
potentially interested, that's agood use.
I think if you're, you know, using it as a cheat code or a

(18:33):
shortcut, you know, don't, I think people are less compelled
by that right now. That will probably change over
the next couple of years. I think people are going to be a
lot less discerning about AI in the future just as a result of

(18:56):
more things kind of having that in their source.
And that's, you know, good and bad.
I think we're going to be looking for like really
authentic human creations at a premium in the future.

(19:17):
But hey, you know, there's lots of things that I don't like that
get popular and a lot of people eat at McDonald's.
So I wouldn't necessarily bang your head against the wall with
that because it is probably a little futile.

(19:43):
Eventually we'll get to the other side of it, but it's it's
going to be a while. There's just a lot of momentum
and a pent up behind pushing thestuff right now.
Yeah. To come back around to long form

(20:04):
projects, even if you're only doing little bits of work, you
can build up a project. From nothing.
And even if the first iteration is not what you imagine, you can

(20:26):
continue to kind of work on that.
I I just think that for a lot ofpeople, they kind of suspend
themselves in this situation where they're of uncertainty.
And it's like, don't worry aboutthe first project or the first
version, Just get it out there. Maybe rework, rework it or work

(20:47):
on something new. You know, nothing, Nothing
against any of our early work, but gosh, don't we improve if we
keep refining our craft and actually do more stuff?
And then who knows? Like say you write 10 short

(21:11):
stories, you know, maybe you putthose out as individual pieces
and then maybe later you end up gathering them all up into a
collection and put that out as, as a paperback.
It's just more ways for people to find your work and enjoy your
work and for you to promote around and, and evaluate and

(21:32):
participate in things. I I think that waiting for
something to be the perfect timeis really tough and untenable.
In general, it's better just to basically finish your work and

(21:57):
put something out there for people to participate in, you
know, your community or the scene that exists around the
type of work that you do, whether that's film or writing,
music, visual arts, whatever it is.
But yeah, As for today, we'll wrap it up.

(22:21):
I don't have anyone else here tospeak, but that's all right.
I'm happy to lay out some of my thinking for an episode.
And you know, we'll talk again before too long.
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