April 3, 2025 • 18 mins
In this episode, we sit down with author Michael Anthony to discuss his powerful journey from military service to storytelling. Michael shares his experiences as a combat veteran, the challenges of reintegrating into civilian life, and how writing became both a form of therapy and a career. We dive into his books, the emotional truths behind his memoirs, and his advice for aspiring writers.
Website: MichaelAnthonyAuthor.com
Instagram: @m_ichaelanthonyauthor
Buy Michael's books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Michael-Anthony/author/B002KL5YCG?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Robin and I'm Chris together. We're the Gen X couple
(00:23):
Hey guys take one. Hello everyone
Today we have a very special guest with us
famous award-winning author Michael Anthony and he's also one of Chris's brothers, his youngest brother
Michael, welcome
Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me
(00:43):
Would you like to give everybody a brief introduction about yourself? Sure. My name is Michael Anthony
A writer. I've written three
books so far my first two were memoirs and my third book was a graphic memoir, which is a
Memoir and graphic novel form
Give her explaining that for me. And what were the names of those books?
My first book was called mass casualties. My second book was called civilized and my third book is called just another me eating dirtbag
(01:11):
Okay, and then I you know when mass casualties there was a dedication on the first page to a CR and
And I think we're just gonna say that was for me Christian Rumein and we'll leave it at that. Sorry, Jama
I'm sure that's what it was. Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. That makes sense
(01:31):
So do you want to tell us a little bit about each of your books?
Sure. Yeah, I'm my first book that was published as mass casualties. It was published
That when I was 23 just back from the war on Iraq
It was about my deployment to Iraq and all the experiences that that that didn't take good in bad
my second book is
civilianized by young veterans memoir and that's about coming home from the war and those varying experiences of
(01:59):
dealing with the mental and emotional aspects of returning from war and all your bodies and
Those are experienced you had and then my third book just another me eating dirtbag is about
trying to turn my
vegan girlfriend back into a meat eater not only from remember but
Me and my oldest son Zane we dropped you off when you were going to the war
(02:23):
At Hanskermair Force Base. We dropped you off that first morning. I
Do remember that. Yeah, we went to Hanskermair Force Base and we were stuck there for a couple of days
Yeah, and then we got
Sent to Wisconsin for four months and then we got sent to Iraq and how long were you in Iraq for?
12 months. What was your job there?
(02:43):
I was an operating room technician
So basically if you think about when you watch on a TV show or movie and a doctor yells out scalpel and a hand
Loaches across and hands in that scalpel. That's what I did. I was that hand that handed the doctor instruments
Interesting, I don't even know if I knew that about you Michael. It's interesting
So, alright, so you're in Iraq for 12 months
(03:05):
what
What was it that made you want to put this into a book?
So I've always been writing ever since I was younger. I think I wrote my first
Books and movies when I was in seventh grade and eighth grade and when we were all overseas in Iraq
There's just too many crazy stories that were happening. Just just absolutely crazy stories that were happening
(03:27):
I'm most of them not appropriate for this podcast right here
But there's just so many crazy stories happening and we all talked about how this is this should be a movie
This should be a TV show. It's so crazy. This is our experience of war was so different than anyone
Anything else we had seemed depicted on a movie or TV show
So we'd always talked about that during the deployment and then we came home and I was
(03:51):
out with someone in the car and they told me about the story they had read about this
Soldier the story in the newspaper
They had read about the soldier and all these different things that he'd experienced in Iraq and what a hero
This guy was and that turns out that I knew the guy that was this art newspaper articles about and I had served with them
And the guy wasn't a hero so at that point hearing about all the you know how this guy had returned from the war and was
(04:16):
giving it his own narrative that wasn't true and
All was joking around about writing the book and telling the true stories
Once I knew that this guy was telling the fake stories
I was like all right
Let me just write the true stories and get those out there and put that out there. Okay
Have you heard from that guy?
since
That specific guy. No, no, not that specific
(04:40):
So it looked like you had a question and I just want to point out that you you got your degrees in writing too English and then a
Masters, yep
I've got a bachelor's degree in creative writing and a master's of fine arts and creative writing as well
And now when you were writing that first book
Did you have any like
Periods where you had like running writing writing these blocks or was that did you get it all out with one full swoop?
(05:05):
And it just like came out of you. Yeah, my first book was based on my
Journal journals that I had for my racks
So when it came time to putting into a book is already written and everything that I'd written in the journals was never intended to be a
Book so it had that free flowing feel to it
So that way when it was time for me to turn into a book it was already pretty much written
I just had to choose what to leave in what to leave out, you know
(05:27):
We're starting where to end it
Sorry, and I I know you're you are like me a big reader
Did that help in the writing process?
From up getting remembering other stories other people told
Yeah, I think I think every writer in every writing program lets you know that she to be a writer
(05:48):
You got to be a reader as well too often. I'll meet a lot of writers that want to be writers
But they don't read books, you know, and it's tough to be a writer and you don't know what what good writing looks like
So I mean I have to read a lot of books good books bad books to really kind of get a feel for it when I was in Iraq
I think I was reading about a book a week
(06:09):
Just because you had nothing else to do at that point and
Then so my favorite book is just another meat eating dirtbag
And I love how the the pictures go along with the story
Because that picture of you is exactly you in this book exactly 100% and
(06:30):
Another thing that I love about this book was the recipes. I love how
every other chapter would have like a recipe for
vegan or veterinarian recipe and I've actually yeah
Vegetarian vegetarian and I actually have done the vegan cookie one chocolate chip cookie vegan and that's that's my favorite one
(06:52):
Thank you. Yeah, that was that was a fun book to do. I've initially written a prose version of that book and
I've been reading a lot of graphic novels and I just really saw it as a graphic
Memoir and I had written a prose version. I had prose version ready to go
I already had some agents and publishers interested in the prose version, but I just wanted to take a chance and try something new so I
(07:16):
Took a couple years re-edited it and then turned into a graphic
Memoir form and it worked out came out really well and the recipes and at the end of the chapters
There's recipes or cut off pages from notebooks and stuff like that that just shows
part of the notes from my my girlfriend at the time of that she was taking of
Veganism and vegetarianism is just a way for us to tie the chapters together and kind of cross over to the different parts of the book. I
(07:44):
Know your girlfriend who's now your wife. Yes, so I know how it ends and I won't give anybody any spoilers, but
I wanted to ask you so alright, so you write a book
What do you do? Where do you?
Do you go find an agent you go sell to a publisher? What's the process like?
(08:05):
Yeah, so once you write a book, there's a couple avenues to go especially in today's
Day and age where everything's online so you can go through you can
Well once you write a book you should first thing you should do is put it aside for a couple weeks and then edit it edit edit
But then once you decide that you want to publish it
There's a couple options nowadays
You can do a lot of direct publishing online to publish directly to Amazon and stuff like that, but if you want to go with the traditional route
(08:31):
You look for an agent and then the agent will pitch it on your behalf to publishers
Or there's more of the indie route where you can pitch it yourself to publishers and
Just cut out the middleman agent there as well too
So so once you have the book you have to decide what you want to do with itself publish it go through indie publishing
Contact the publishers directly or get an agent and go for the bigger to mid-sized even decent size any publishers that way
(08:56):
So for myself, I've gone
Through some I've had three agents in the past the first two agents didn't work out too well for me
And now I've got my third agent who got me my third book deal, but my first two book deals
I got without agents. I just got agents after I got the book deals
But the first two ones I got without any
(09:19):
Agents or anything like that and I just kind of got lucky on getting those ones out there
Interesting. I always wondered how that worked
Did you find it easier to write your second and third books after you had already had one book under your belt?
I think the second and third ones were a lot harder to write because if they were after I had gone through school
(09:41):
Okay for bachelors degree and my masters and I knew that I had to I
Had gotten more training in writing so I knew what it took to be a better writer
So that way it's harder to write when you're trying to write something better. Where's the first book?
I was just trying to write something true
And when you're trying to write something true, that's very easy because you just have to tell the truth
but when you're trying to
(10:02):
Tell the truth and make it good writing. That's a lot harder and then after I've gone went to school for all those degrees
I knew you know that there's a higher
Standards to reach out for so that way that's why they were a lot harder to write
Do you have any are you in the process of writing a little more books? Can you talk about that?
(10:23):
I'm in the process of writing a couple of books right now. I'm writing fiction books
and I find fiction books a lot harder to write than
Memoir books because memoirs you just have to write what happened and
The characters are already there the stories already there
You just have to choose where to start it where to end it what to leave in what to leave out
But for fiction books you have to cover it all you have to cover the
(10:45):
The story the scenes the plot the characters you got to make it all up
Which is a lot harder to do so there's one story I've been working on which is a science fiction one
Which I've been working on for about 20 years
I first started writing it when I was in high school and I just haven't been able to I
Guess get to the skill point that I want to be able to tell the story and then I'm working on another series of stories
(11:08):
Based off of when my father our father passed away
He bequeathed me his writings and there was there's one story he was working on about a detective
Which which was his story?
but I'm taking that story and I want to turn that into a
Children's version of it where I take that child and put him into a that detective and put him into a child's narrow
(11:29):
So almost like a hairy the spy but for children's thing
So this this detective will be a children's detective and what he investigates is he's a friendship detective
so he invested he's a
You know middle school everybody investigates
Differences that friends have in school or like he helps someone find a new best friend if they need if their best friend moved away
(11:54):
He's a detective that helps you find the perfect best friend
Well, there's an agreement if there's a disagreement between friends
He helps solve that disagreement or find out what's happening there and for this for this one too
The reason he became the quote-unquote friendship detective is in the middle of the night his two best friends
Their parents just moved away and he didn't get any real closure with why his best friends moved away
(12:16):
And his and their parents moved away in the middle of the night and that's related to a larger story that he ends up
Discovering there's stuff that going on in town with one of these businesses or companies and that's why his two best friends moved away
But as the friendship detective he's helping solve these smaller
Cases and he ends up solving this bigger case that affects the town
(12:39):
I
Absolutely love it, and I can't wait to read it even though I know it's based
For it's a kid's book or it's gonna be kids book. I love it. I also had no idea the grandpa was a writer. Yeah, I actually
I actually read that the detective story he was a writer
He gave it to me to read so it runs in the family. How much did he write? Did he just write short stories?
(13:00):
No, that I'm sorry. I need to protect the story was long. I had no idea. He was a writer
Yeah, yeah, when I remember when I was younger he tried to write a book on the
He wanted to write a book on the potato famine
And I think he wanted to write something the Irish potato famine
And I think he wanted to write a novel of it and that I think he wanted to be somewhat similar to like Angelus ashes by
(13:22):
McCormick, I think his name is whatever his name is and just talk about that time period
You know and just nostalgic for that time period and what led to the potato famine and the effects of it
But a novel based on that stuff, but then in later years once I published my book my first book
Like I said, it wasn't the best written book, you know, I just trying to write the truth not get it out there
But I suppose when you you get a book published and it's just you're so young
(13:46):
It kind of gives people that inspiration like if this dude can do it
I can do it too, you know, so at that point he started writing again and
Just did some other stuff, you know, I had no idea I love that you have to follow through with that. That's amazing
Chris you just looked at me like you had something to say
Oh, and so all your books I've actually seen your mass casualties in a bookstore and
(14:11):
But are they all like in bookstores or just on Amazon?
Yeah, I mean they're in bookstores. I mean at this point
I'm not sure which books are in, you know, which bookstores, you know, because bookstores are
Going the way of old nowadays. But yeah, they're all available online and stuff like that
They've all been traditionally published. So they've all gone the traditional route of getting in bookstores and
(14:32):
Being available online
We're gonna post links to all your books and your website on
So that way if anybody wants to buy your books they can buy them
One other thing I wanted to ask and I know like right up to mass casualties came out
You were doing a ton of book signings. Do you have anything like that coming up? Do you still do book signings?
(14:54):
I do less book signings
Nowadays just because they don't have the same power that they used to have back
10 15 years ago when my first book came out because there's just less bookstores now and people are more online than they are out in the
Out in the real world. So nowadays they just don't do as many book signings as they used to do
I think I remember a story from years ago where it was
(15:16):
I don't know some famous politician did a book signing and there was 400 people there which for an author would be humongous
But for a big time politician to get wasted time for 400 people. It's not even kind of worth it
You know so so a lot of a lot of authors will still try to do them
And I I've done one most recently a couple of them last year, but they're just they're just getting
(15:38):
Sometimes it's just craft fairs. You're doing stuff like that and it's just you got to do it
But nowadays it's a lot more powerful. Just keep doing stuff online wider reach getting out there. I mean nothing
Nothing is as valuable as meeting someone face to face, but just online you just have so much
wider reach that you can do out there
I've seen you on Instagram. I know around Christmas time you have promoted another author and I think I thought that was really nice
(16:03):
Where are you online? So you have a website? It's Michael Anthony dot com
My website is Michael Anthony author comm. I think I'm on X. I don't know for all moving off
I just want to blue sky or something like that
Instagram stuff like that
I don't want to Instagram. Do you do tick tock? Don't do tick tock now
All right, I'll link your Instagram in our show notes too so that way people can find you there. Yeah, thank you
(16:27):
Thank you. I know I can do a lot better with promotion, but right now. I'm just working on
Improving my writing and becoming a better writer. They say the best
Promotion for authors is just doing that next book and that next book and that next book, you know
That's the mix grows the audience, you know improves your writing
Yeah, that makes sense
Did you have any other questions? No, I think that's it for me. Yeah, that was a lot of what do you have to add Michael anything?
(16:51):
Did we miss anything? No, I mean, thank you. No, thank you guys for having me
You know anyone out there who wants to be a writer, you know, just keep at it. Sometimes it can take a long time
I've been writing since I was in
Writing books and movies since I was in the seventh grade and I I've had a lot of success so far and I'm just
Continuing to have more success for the writing and have great hope for that
(17:12):
But I mean you just can't give up on chasing those dreams. That's great advice. That's perfect actually
And then I'm just gonna mention so Michael's interview is gonna go out and then my other brother Keith
Has his interview and podcast out and we're gonna have a little contest to see between the two of them
(17:32):
Who can get the most downloads and views?
So if you want Michael to win you better tell all your friends and if you want Keith to win
Tell all your friends for Keith to listen to that podcast
I don't think that's fair because we recorded Keith's episode months ago back when we were in San Diego
And I know we just got around to publishing it a couple weeks ago
But we didn't say that at the end of Keith's episode. Maybe we'll give Keith a handicap of plus five
(17:57):
Maybe okay before we go to if you heard marshmallow in the background. Sorry. I could hear her barking the whole time
we have her in another room and
You can I don't know if the microphone is picking her up or not, but she's around she's here in spirit
And I think that's all we have. Thank you so much Michael. He came to our house
(18:19):
Which was easier for us. So thank you. We didn't have to do this over zoom or anything. So thank you for joining us
Go check out his books. We're gonna link them in the show notes and
I don't even know what we have coming up next week, but I'm sure it's something awesome and
Until next time see you later alligator in a wild crocodile
Hi, I'm Robin and I'm Chris together. We're the Gen X couple
(00:23):
Hey guys take one. Hello everyone
Today we have a very special guest with us
famous award-winning author Michael Anthony and he's also one of Chris's brothers, his youngest brother
Michael, welcome
Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me
(00:43):
Would you like to give everybody a brief introduction about yourself? Sure. My name is Michael Anthony
A writer. I've written three
books so far my first two were memoirs and my third book was a graphic memoir, which is a
Memoir and graphic novel form
Give her explaining that for me. And what were the names of those books?
My first book was called mass casualties. My second book was called civilized and my third book is called just another me eating dirtbag
(01:11):
Okay, and then I you know when mass casualties there was a dedication on the first page to a CR and
And I think we're just gonna say that was for me Christian Rumein and we'll leave it at that. Sorry, Jama
I'm sure that's what it was. Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. That makes sense
(01:31):
So do you want to tell us a little bit about each of your books?
Sure. Yeah, I'm my first book that was published as mass casualties. It was published
That when I was 23 just back from the war on Iraq
It was about my deployment to Iraq and all the experiences that that that didn't take good in bad
my second book is
civilianized by young veterans memoir and that's about coming home from the war and those varying experiences of
(01:59):
dealing with the mental and emotional aspects of returning from war and all your bodies and
Those are experienced you had and then my third book just another me eating dirtbag is about
trying to turn my
vegan girlfriend back into a meat eater not only from remember but
Me and my oldest son Zane we dropped you off when you were going to the war
(02:23):
At Hanskermair Force Base. We dropped you off that first morning. I
Do remember that. Yeah, we went to Hanskermair Force Base and we were stuck there for a couple of days
Yeah, and then we got
Sent to Wisconsin for four months and then we got sent to Iraq and how long were you in Iraq for?
12 months. What was your job there?
(02:43):
I was an operating room technician
So basically if you think about when you watch on a TV show or movie and a doctor yells out scalpel and a hand
Loaches across and hands in that scalpel. That's what I did. I was that hand that handed the doctor instruments
Interesting, I don't even know if I knew that about you Michael. It's interesting
So, alright, so you're in Iraq for 12 months
(03:05):
what
What was it that made you want to put this into a book?
So I've always been writing ever since I was younger. I think I wrote my first
Books and movies when I was in seventh grade and eighth grade and when we were all overseas in Iraq
There's just too many crazy stories that were happening. Just just absolutely crazy stories that were happening
(03:27):
I'm most of them not appropriate for this podcast right here
But there's just so many crazy stories happening and we all talked about how this is this should be a movie
This should be a TV show. It's so crazy. This is our experience of war was so different than anyone
Anything else we had seemed depicted on a movie or TV show
So we'd always talked about that during the deployment and then we came home and I was
(03:51):
out with someone in the car and they told me about the story they had read about this
Soldier the story in the newspaper
They had read about the soldier and all these different things that he'd experienced in Iraq and what a hero
This guy was and that turns out that I knew the guy that was this art newspaper articles about and I had served with them
And the guy wasn't a hero so at that point hearing about all the you know how this guy had returned from the war and was
(04:16):
giving it his own narrative that wasn't true and
All was joking around about writing the book and telling the true stories
Once I knew that this guy was telling the fake stories
I was like all right
Let me just write the true stories and get those out there and put that out there. Okay
Have you heard from that guy?
since
That specific guy. No, no, not that specific
(04:40):
So it looked like you had a question and I just want to point out that you you got your degrees in writing too English and then a
Masters, yep
I've got a bachelor's degree in creative writing and a master's of fine arts and creative writing as well
And now when you were writing that first book
Did you have any like
Periods where you had like running writing writing these blocks or was that did you get it all out with one full swoop?
(05:05):
And it just like came out of you. Yeah, my first book was based on my
Journal journals that I had for my racks
So when it came time to putting into a book is already written and everything that I'd written in the journals was never intended to be a
Book so it had that free flowing feel to it
So that way when it was time for me to turn into a book it was already pretty much written
I just had to choose what to leave in what to leave out, you know
(05:27):
We're starting where to end it
Sorry, and I I know you're you are like me a big reader
Did that help in the writing process?
From up getting remembering other stories other people told
Yeah, I think I think every writer in every writing program lets you know that she to be a writer
(05:48):
You got to be a reader as well too often. I'll meet a lot of writers that want to be writers
But they don't read books, you know, and it's tough to be a writer and you don't know what what good writing looks like
So I mean I have to read a lot of books good books bad books to really kind of get a feel for it when I was in Iraq
I think I was reading about a book a week
(06:09):
Just because you had nothing else to do at that point and
Then so my favorite book is just another meat eating dirtbag
And I love how the the pictures go along with the story
Because that picture of you is exactly you in this book exactly 100% and
(06:30):
Another thing that I love about this book was the recipes. I love how
every other chapter would have like a recipe for
vegan or veterinarian recipe and I've actually yeah
Vegetarian vegetarian and I actually have done the vegan cookie one chocolate chip cookie vegan and that's that's my favorite one
(06:52):
Thank you. Yeah, that was that was a fun book to do. I've initially written a prose version of that book and
I've been reading a lot of graphic novels and I just really saw it as a graphic
Memoir and I had written a prose version. I had prose version ready to go
I already had some agents and publishers interested in the prose version, but I just wanted to take a chance and try something new so I
(07:16):
Took a couple years re-edited it and then turned into a graphic
Memoir form and it worked out came out really well and the recipes and at the end of the chapters
There's recipes or cut off pages from notebooks and stuff like that that just shows
part of the notes from my my girlfriend at the time of that she was taking of
Veganism and vegetarianism is just a way for us to tie the chapters together and kind of cross over to the different parts of the book. I
(07:44):
Know your girlfriend who's now your wife. Yes, so I know how it ends and I won't give anybody any spoilers, but
I wanted to ask you so alright, so you write a book
What do you do? Where do you?
Do you go find an agent you go sell to a publisher? What's the process like?
(08:05):
Yeah, so once you write a book, there's a couple avenues to go especially in today's
Day and age where everything's online so you can go through you can
Well once you write a book you should first thing you should do is put it aside for a couple weeks and then edit it edit edit
But then once you decide that you want to publish it
There's a couple options nowadays
You can do a lot of direct publishing online to publish directly to Amazon and stuff like that, but if you want to go with the traditional route
(08:31):
You look for an agent and then the agent will pitch it on your behalf to publishers
Or there's more of the indie route where you can pitch it yourself to publishers and
Just cut out the middleman agent there as well too
So so once you have the book you have to decide what you want to do with itself publish it go through indie publishing
Contact the publishers directly or get an agent and go for the bigger to mid-sized even decent size any publishers that way
(08:56):
So for myself, I've gone
Through some I've had three agents in the past the first two agents didn't work out too well for me
And now I've got my third agent who got me my third book deal, but my first two book deals
I got without agents. I just got agents after I got the book deals
But the first two ones I got without any
(09:19):
Agents or anything like that and I just kind of got lucky on getting those ones out there
Interesting. I always wondered how that worked
Did you find it easier to write your second and third books after you had already had one book under your belt?
I think the second and third ones were a lot harder to write because if they were after I had gone through school
(09:41):
Okay for bachelors degree and my masters and I knew that I had to I
Had gotten more training in writing so I knew what it took to be a better writer
So that way it's harder to write when you're trying to write something better. Where's the first book?
I was just trying to write something true
And when you're trying to write something true, that's very easy because you just have to tell the truth
but when you're trying to
(10:02):
Tell the truth and make it good writing. That's a lot harder and then after I've gone went to school for all those degrees
I knew you know that there's a higher
Standards to reach out for so that way that's why they were a lot harder to write
Do you have any are you in the process of writing a little more books? Can you talk about that?
(10:23):
I'm in the process of writing a couple of books right now. I'm writing fiction books
and I find fiction books a lot harder to write than
Memoir books because memoirs you just have to write what happened and
The characters are already there the stories already there
You just have to choose where to start it where to end it what to leave in what to leave out
But for fiction books you have to cover it all you have to cover the
(10:45):
The story the scenes the plot the characters you got to make it all up
Which is a lot harder to do so there's one story I've been working on which is a science fiction one
Which I've been working on for about 20 years
I first started writing it when I was in high school and I just haven't been able to I
Guess get to the skill point that I want to be able to tell the story and then I'm working on another series of stories
(11:08):
Based off of when my father our father passed away
He bequeathed me his writings and there was there's one story he was working on about a detective
Which which was his story?
but I'm taking that story and I want to turn that into a
Children's version of it where I take that child and put him into a that detective and put him into a child's narrow
(11:29):
So almost like a hairy the spy but for children's thing
So this this detective will be a children's detective and what he investigates is he's a friendship detective
so he invested he's a
You know middle school everybody investigates
Differences that friends have in school or like he helps someone find a new best friend if they need if their best friend moved away
(11:54):
He's a detective that helps you find the perfect best friend
Well, there's an agreement if there's a disagreement between friends
He helps solve that disagreement or find out what's happening there and for this for this one too
The reason he became the quote-unquote friendship detective is in the middle of the night his two best friends
Their parents just moved away and he didn't get any real closure with why his best friends moved away
(12:16):
And his and their parents moved away in the middle of the night and that's related to a larger story that he ends up
Discovering there's stuff that going on in town with one of these businesses or companies and that's why his two best friends moved away
But as the friendship detective he's helping solve these smaller
Cases and he ends up solving this bigger case that affects the town
(12:39):
I
Absolutely love it, and I can't wait to read it even though I know it's based
For it's a kid's book or it's gonna be kids book. I love it. I also had no idea the grandpa was a writer. Yeah, I actually
I actually read that the detective story he was a writer
He gave it to me to read so it runs in the family. How much did he write? Did he just write short stories?
(13:00):
No, that I'm sorry. I need to protect the story was long. I had no idea. He was a writer
Yeah, yeah, when I remember when I was younger he tried to write a book on the
He wanted to write a book on the potato famine
And I think he wanted to write something the Irish potato famine
And I think he wanted to write a novel of it and that I think he wanted to be somewhat similar to like Angelus ashes by
(13:22):
McCormick, I think his name is whatever his name is and just talk about that time period
You know and just nostalgic for that time period and what led to the potato famine and the effects of it
But a novel based on that stuff, but then in later years once I published my book my first book
Like I said, it wasn't the best written book, you know, I just trying to write the truth not get it out there
But I suppose when you you get a book published and it's just you're so young
(13:46):
It kind of gives people that inspiration like if this dude can do it
I can do it too, you know, so at that point he started writing again and
Just did some other stuff, you know, I had no idea I love that you have to follow through with that. That's amazing
Chris you just looked at me like you had something to say
Oh, and so all your books I've actually seen your mass casualties in a bookstore and
(14:11):
But are they all like in bookstores or just on Amazon?
Yeah, I mean they're in bookstores. I mean at this point
I'm not sure which books are in, you know, which bookstores, you know, because bookstores are
Going the way of old nowadays. But yeah, they're all available online and stuff like that
They've all been traditionally published. So they've all gone the traditional route of getting in bookstores and
(14:32):
Being available online
We're gonna post links to all your books and your website on
So that way if anybody wants to buy your books they can buy them
One other thing I wanted to ask and I know like right up to mass casualties came out
You were doing a ton of book signings. Do you have anything like that coming up? Do you still do book signings?
(14:54):
I do less book signings
Nowadays just because they don't have the same power that they used to have back
10 15 years ago when my first book came out because there's just less bookstores now and people are more online than they are out in the
Out in the real world. So nowadays they just don't do as many book signings as they used to do
I think I remember a story from years ago where it was
(15:16):
I don't know some famous politician did a book signing and there was 400 people there which for an author would be humongous
But for a big time politician to get wasted time for 400 people. It's not even kind of worth it
You know so so a lot of a lot of authors will still try to do them
And I I've done one most recently a couple of them last year, but they're just they're just getting
(15:38):
Sometimes it's just craft fairs. You're doing stuff like that and it's just you got to do it
But nowadays it's a lot more powerful. Just keep doing stuff online wider reach getting out there. I mean nothing
Nothing is as valuable as meeting someone face to face, but just online you just have so much
wider reach that you can do out there
I've seen you on Instagram. I know around Christmas time you have promoted another author and I think I thought that was really nice
(16:03):
Where are you online? So you have a website? It's Michael Anthony dot com
My website is Michael Anthony author comm. I think I'm on X. I don't know for all moving off
I just want to blue sky or something like that
Instagram stuff like that
I don't want to Instagram. Do you do tick tock? Don't do tick tock now
All right, I'll link your Instagram in our show notes too so that way people can find you there. Yeah, thank you
(16:27):
Thank you. I know I can do a lot better with promotion, but right now. I'm just working on
Improving my writing and becoming a better writer. They say the best
Promotion for authors is just doing that next book and that next book and that next book, you know
That's the mix grows the audience, you know improves your writing
Yeah, that makes sense
Did you have any other questions? No, I think that's it for me. Yeah, that was a lot of what do you have to add Michael anything?
(16:51):
Did we miss anything? No, I mean, thank you. No, thank you guys for having me
You know anyone out there who wants to be a writer, you know, just keep at it. Sometimes it can take a long time
I've been writing since I was in
Writing books and movies since I was in the seventh grade and I I've had a lot of success so far and I'm just
Continuing to have more success for the writing and have great hope for that
(17:12):
But I mean you just can't give up on chasing those dreams. That's great advice. That's perfect actually
And then I'm just gonna mention so Michael's interview is gonna go out and then my other brother Keith
Has his interview and podcast out and we're gonna have a little contest to see between the two of them
(17:32):
Who can get the most downloads and views?
So if you want Michael to win you better tell all your friends and if you want Keith to win
Tell all your friends for Keith to listen to that podcast
I don't think that's fair because we recorded Keith's episode months ago back when we were in San Diego
And I know we just got around to publishing it a couple weeks ago
But we didn't say that at the end of Keith's episode. Maybe we'll give Keith a handicap of plus five
(17:57):
Maybe okay before we go to if you heard marshmallow in the background. Sorry. I could hear her barking the whole time
we have her in another room and
You can I don't know if the microphone is picking her up or not, but she's around she's here in spirit
And I think that's all we have. Thank you so much Michael. He came to our house
(18:19):
Which was easier for us. So thank you. We didn't have to do this over zoom or anything. So thank you for joining us
Go check out his books. We're gonna link them in the show notes and
I don't even know what we have coming up next week, but I'm sure it's something awesome and
Until next time see you later alligator in a wild crocodile
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