December 16, 2025 • 31 mins
In this uncannily prescient novel eerily relevant to our contemporary political moment, Undercity unfolds across 16 interconnected vignettes, as Schulz charts the lives of two dozen characters desperately trying to survive and retain their humanity in a civil order that has tumbled into totalitarianism. Building on the world Schulz created in his highly successful book Metropolis, Undercity collects the voices of brave survivors, of those who’ve refused to submit to the indignities of eugenical persecution, the horror of gas chambers, and relentless warfare in rural provinces. Some of these stories demonstrate the moral disaster of eugenics, while others tell of courage and love and that indomitable magic of the human spirit that refuses to be silenced in the face of unspeakable crimes. This sweeping tale is a warning to us, as well, that what we might think is unimaginable needs only apathy and inattention to arise.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Maybe it's just a radio thing. Variety, give people a variety,
and that's what we do on aero dot net a
r r oe dot net. It's not just a podcast
with rock stars and movie stars. Oh, it's about lifestyle
and beyond. It's variety a r r o e dot Net.
Enjoy the exploration, dude. I got to tell you something.
(00:22):
I love Under City in so many different reasons and ways.
And the reason why is because this is what I
call a universal age book. In other words, so many
people from every age group are they're going to pick
it up, they're going to take something from it, and
they're going to talk about it. And when you can
do that, that that right there, that's the magic in
the creative soul.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you. I I did.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I did like this book, having a lot of different
voices and a lot of different points of views. So
I'm just reading this morning with with my girlfriend a
couple of sections from Aros in the Howls.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So I just, uh, I don't know, I just I
like it like that.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I liked the idea you can't actually you can just
dive in and read the vignettes because they're not tied
to the plot of the book.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So it's not an easy way to read the book.
But thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well, it's because you give me everything that I want
as a reader. And I man, I'll tell you because
I am so connected to like all different age groups.
You can sit there, you place the book in front
of them and they're going, this is amazing. And I
sit there and I go, I've got to ask, MANI
if this is about an escape? Is this about a
world that they would like to explore themselves because of
(01:32):
what's going on with our VR goggles nowadays? And it's
like you're in the right place at the right time
with this storyline.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It seems, so, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
The thing is is that when I wrote Metropolis, which
is scrotsy companion it is, I didn't I wrote it
a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I wrote some of it.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And then when I actually wrote it through twenty nineteen,
our world hadn't quite drifted in this direction and understated
the same sort of thing. I had to be true
to that world, even though it has clear and obvious
references to ours.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, now is that kind of weird being a visionary
like that? Or do you see it as just now
I'm just storytelling. I'm fine, But yet, like you, you know,
like you said and when you when you wrote the
other one Metropolis, I mean, it was like it hadn't
been taking place yet.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah. Well, I am very connected to what's going on
in the world, and I guess that when I'm sort
of done with this book and I'm thinking about it
has references to our world. It has references also to
let's say, uh, Germany in the forties, so with the
(02:39):
desolations that we have in this book being sort of
reference from the war in the Soviet Union in the forties.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So it's just I don't know it.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It does drift back and forth in my mind about
making these references. But also the book has to have
other things too as well, right, so it can just
be well, my publisher, my publishers is reading and she said,
well is it is it all? No? No, no, no,
well it doesn't have a happy end, shees, but don't
tell me, don't tell me.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I go, well, don't tell me.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So And yet one of my big attractions to it
is the fact that it has so many vignettes to it,
because it's it's one of those things where it's like
I can read about each one, and then and then
when it's time for bed, you go to bed tomorrow
we pick up another vignette. And I mean it just
when you have a lot of characters like this, I
don't get lost. What I do is I feel community.
Did you feel a community while you were putting together?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah? I think that, even though it's pretty obvious that
first of all, that the vignettes all take place in
the past ye as to the narratives book, but also
at different times, but they all are connected in a
maybe maybe not so obvious a way, certainly they are.
(03:52):
The Only one I think is an outlayer is Iroson Owl,
because again it's the novel sessions of a novel within
the novel, and only seven chaps. We don't really know
the whole book, and so where that ends in Herison
is not necessarily where Freilie Vilpik's novel ends. We don't
know how it is.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, how did you put focus on the continuity on
something like that, because you know how as writers we
can go on a tangent. Is that something that you
depend on your editor to keep you in line on?
Do you know, just get it out, as they always
tell me, get it out. We'll worry about that later on.
Just get it out.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah. I had no editing in this book. I did
my editor. Let's he just lets me. He lets me
do what I want. He loves my writing. I'll tell you, okay,
I'll tell you what the tricky thing was. Book is done,
all the all the vignettes are written. Now where do
they go to? Where do they sit? That was not
so obvious. Let's say, Marco in one chapter muses on
(04:46):
where Mirace is from Race's mother, and so I thought, okay, okay, okay,
I'm going to put her vignette right after that chapter.
Others were just not not obvious, and so I have
to say in somebody's there sort of arbitrary And did
you get did you seen the version of the book
with the with the orphan? Yes in there? Yes, okay,
(05:07):
So the orphan is tricky to play too, but I
always thought the orphan had to be there.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I will tell you a story about the about the orphan.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I wrote that probably about almost two years ago, and
I wrote about five or six pages of it and
didn't like it, hated it, thought it wasn't doing it right.
You know, the sort of comparison to a concentration camp train,
and I thought it was failing it, so I stopped
and then and then about a year later, I decided, okay,
(05:37):
let me have another look at it. What I'm gonna
do is I'm going to delete everything below the title
and start over. I read it. It was thirteen pages,
not five or six. And here's a weird thing. It
was all really great, almost perfect. It hardly changed a
single word. But I have literally no memory of writing
a single word of that.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You were I loved it moments like that because you
were called to the page to write it. You weren't
the one that had to do the storyline. That was
somebody else. That's that's from an area that one day
you'll meet.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, I think now. My theory as to why that
is is that I read, I wrote forward all the
way those thirteen pages, stopped and never read. I never
read back a single one event. So that's why that's
why I don't remember it, because I never reread it.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I never read. Anybody just literally.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Wrote forward, sent for I sent and stopped because I
thought it wasn't working, and then never looked at it
until a year later.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So it is does that qualify as stream thinking then,
I mean, if you've got enough confidence and courage to
do that and not go back.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I think most of my most of the Metropolis
and under City were written like that. I just I
didn't really, I'll try you. The only place I had
to do editing and I knew I was rented was
in the on that underground river with Marco and his
uh and his companions. I I that was it was
too much of it, and so I just and all
I did editing there is just went through and cut
everything I could and to keep but keep the nerve. Otherwise,
(06:58):
the rest of the book, the Gypsy things, RAS's story
of Pireade story and Marco's couple two stories were pretty
I didn't hardly edit anything though, they just wrote it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
It was I liked it. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
These books actually aren't complicated, but they were really easy
to write, and I think they're pretty easy to read too,
Was it you conn?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Was it easy to tap into their personalities and once
you were in there, Because I know sometimes when I'm
writing then it takes me a little bit to shake
off that that particular scene or person so I can
get back to being a real self or I want
to sit there and start acting out that book in
front of everybody else.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, you see, the thing is that by having Marco,
guys Pire, Pirenee and Mira's walking together and Engine dialogue,
they were developing for me their characters that then were
pretty easy for me to evoke in their integral vignettes.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
See, that's a part of writing that I wish that
readers could pick up on, is that how it's built
like a song. In fact, I was going to ask
you about that when when it came to laying out
each one of the vignettes, was it like building an album?
And now do you find yourself going, yeah, I think
I could do the album thing.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's actually it's actually pretty easy. I done
certain things writing, at least for these books, were pretty simple.
It's just again, as I said, it is the structure
that was complicated, and I think I undervalued it in
my head in what order these things were going to go.
I think I thought it would be obvious, But yeah,
(08:34):
it ends up being obvious.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, one of the things that you do, and you've
brought up Marco a couple of times here, is the
fact that maybe it's because I've been a journal writer
since July of nineteen ninety four. But I was so
attracted to that in the way that I'm going, wait
a second way, who whoa whoa whohoa. Moni seems to
be the type of person that knows what journaling is
because he's identifying something that only somebody who writes journals
could relate with.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, although I never do a journal, Really, how did
you nail it? Dan?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I read a lot okay rights novels.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
It's so so this structure to the book, for instance,
really came to me, uh beating Roberta Bolania is the
Savage Detectives, where he has one narrative sort of beginning
of the book, a young guy and then and then
the whole middle of the book is all different voices
telling it, telling the story, and and then and then
the kid comes in at the end again in the
(09:26):
last chapters. So I so I thought, well, that's a
good structure for this. Also there is remember there are
Sherman Anderson's Weinsburg, Ohio and uh, various books like that
with multiple narratives. So I had I had the literary
these of my literary add of scenes for this. So
I knew how I knew it could work. The voices
are so different for me that they weren't really hard
(09:49):
to differentiate.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I really did find that way.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And I like the poetics of the gypsy she was
releasing to write.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
She was sort of.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Inspired to away by uh, Paul Klelo with a sort
of a it's a lot of I think in the
gypsy sort of magic realism. And yeah, it's just this
book has a lot of different influences and so I
was able to bring them all in to write this book.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
A lot of interest I have.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So then the gypsy character, do you find yourself being
that's the one that you pull from this story and
kind of adopt into your own personal life, because I mean,
I mean, as it was, without the editor and stuff
like that, you were kind of wandering around like like
a gypsy. You knew what you were doing. Just to
let you do it.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, I just, uh, I don't know, it's you know,
reading ends up being my editor. I mean, my publisher,
Gary Groth a super brilliant guy. He does read a lot.
He's a extreamly well read guy. But he trusts me
as a writer. And he told me once that he
doesn't buy an author's books to edit. He buys them
(10:55):
because of how the person writes, so he he likes,
he likes, right, He said, you're a great writer, and
so he trusts me, and then I'm able to just
do my own thing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But I do I do know how to edit.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I do know you know what to leave in, what
to leave out right, and so I don't know. It's
just it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yes, this book was. It was.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It's complicated, but it was fairly easy to write, and
the characters all have their own place. Gypsy is different.
The soldier I liked writing him. He was pretty hopeless, right,
so I like writing him. And the policeman and is
operating a moral cloud.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So that was the tone of that one. They're all
kind of different in that sense.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I would love to see how many people are going
to identify with Flora, only because I mean, Flora does
not like to live in the dark. But yet Florida
has that side to her that we're going that's kind
of a rebel, that's kind of a dark side. I'm
being drawn into into a character here than that. You
either want to be or you go, I know, someone
like Flora.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, Floraville. Uh, it was okay, this is actually kind
of interesting too. So it's again, I don't have any
memory of writing her her story. But as I said,
I have no memory of writing that that her journal,
but or diary.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But when I when I finished it, just for a reference,
I went and.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Read, uh are you there?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
God is me and Margaret, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It turns out that her character was her character. Margaret
was the same age as for of Ail, thirteen years old,
and so my language, my style of that writing was
almost identical. And I never I never read, of course,
to that little book before, but I read an afternoon.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It was pretty pretty easy to read.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
But it was interesting to see that that it was
that I thought I did it right.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I thought I did.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I thought I thought it. I thought her journal, I mean,
her diary sounds like a thirteen year old girl.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Please do not move. There's more with Monty Scholes coming
up next. The name of the book under City. We
are back with author Monty Sholes. Well, how did it
make you feel knowing that you you know, we're talking
about journal writers, we're talking about diary writers. Do you
feel like you were invading their personal space? Or it's like, ah,
I'm here with you, I'm gonna walk with you. You're
(13:09):
not alone. When it comes to these these outlets.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well, I think it's that, as I said, there are
several books that have multiple narrators, Yeah, multiple stories. Even
Steinbeck's Pastors of Heaven is a novel told with multiple voices,
So it wasn't so, I mean, that's the group I
think I really identified with, and that I don't really
think about journal but but I guess I think because yes,
we do have journals, right, So so Flora Veil's is
(13:34):
a diary. Mark is I think the chapters of Marketers
journal entry, blah blah blah. So they're sort of like that.
I don't know. They're all kind of different, right, They're
all they're all really different.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Well, a couple of things that you've mastered in one
of them is the fact that no time do I
feel like that the characters are showcased by a passing thought.
In other words, it's part of the story. It's part
of the growing storyline, which as a reader, I'm going, god, dang,
this just fits together like a classic, you know, a puzzle.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah, And the other thing is interesting I saw after
the book was the references to Metropolis, but since since
Metropolis was published first, that meant it's sort of any
references or cut in stone, you know, how to spell
someone's name when something happened and had to add to dovetail.
But say, remember Flora Vale's story dovetails with Julian's visit
(14:28):
to the Hippodrome right at the end of Metropolis. So
so there these stories do do connect here and there
tangentially marco of courses in Metropolis.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I don't know, it's just it just kind of
all fit together. I have to say.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't take very many notes. I just write it forward.
I took notes sort of names of things and foods
and cars and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But otherwise I don't have a I didn't have an outline.
I never do that, you see to me, I'm too
lazy to do that, and I just I So what
I do is I just I just right forward.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
But I did. I was aware of how these things were.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So for example, and the Policeman where Mercy of Housman,
you know in the second chapter, they're just they're arresting people,
you know, just like Ice now they're just arresting them
and we take them away, and we never I realized
after I wrote it, we never say why those those
Peta people were arrested. And I think that we just
don't know, and it's not really important, but it's frightening nonetheless,
And so I was. I was very aware when I
(15:35):
started to just rab these people, take them out with
with not even really know why. I thought the reference
is very similar, but it was like it was in
Nazi Germany too, So I understand where these things can go.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Oh yeah, because it just happened here in Charlotte four
hundred people, and please tell me why you took these
four hundred people. I don't know. We'll get back to you.
I mean that maybe that's one of the reasons why
I'm so hooked on this. It's like, oh my god,
he's got he's he had a vision. He's speaking about
what's going on right now. But at the same time,
it's from a different world.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Right because the same thing happened in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
People are rested or in this case, like in my book,
they're taken away and they're shot, or I guess in
some cases there's mentioned to its summer gats. Some are
just sent away so so and we don't really know
why they're wrestling. Some of those people, like those two
young women the music teachers, why would they be arrested?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Is that the reason why V asked the question can
we not remake this world? Because I mean that right
there is a powerful statement. And as the author, I mean,
how did that fall out of you into this storyline?
And did you have to sit back and go, oh, crap,
Now I got to live up to this.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Well, so she was.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
She's a friend of mine who read Metropolis and loved
under City, the under City part the best, and so
for about a year or so after Metropolis, she said,
you have to write under City.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
You have to write under City.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
So I did, and I wrote her epigraph and so
when or her dedication? And then I thought, after the
first one was there to to V who who required
requested the story? And I thought, I thought, uh, because
she and I have talked doctor forth about the how
to be optimistic? And so that's when I wrote that
(17:22):
line we not remake the world? I just thought, uh.
I thought, that's that's the question, can we? And I
and I think when when you when you see the
disposition of Germany and Japan after World War Two. The
answer was, yes, we can remake the world. We can.
And so that's that. So the book has that sense
of optimism, as as as we hear in the very
(17:45):
in Marco's epilogue.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Right, how things changed?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Right, the fault, the faulty false science of spiriosis was dismissed.
People were let out of the inner city into sunlight
and blue skies for the first time in their lives.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
In the world was on.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But we have, Buddy says, but we have to keep
an eye out, right, we have to pay attention.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And yet then now with with with you explaining the
storyline the way that you are, and I'm hearing your pitch,
volume and tone. All of a sudden, now this book
cover comes into play. Now I understand the vibrant appeal
to it and and and what's going on because it's
you know, so many times we hold a book but
we don't get the cover.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, well, okay, so I I don't know, I don't
know why.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I I don't know why. I look for it from
Hieronymous Bosh.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It's from his triptych called The Gardener of Earthly Delights
and that the cover is from third triptic called Hell,
and so I just thought it was a perfect idea
for the cover. I wasn't really sure, but I showed
it to the owner in Kaylua and a couple of
other people. Everybody loved it. And it's such a massive ideas.
(18:55):
You know, there's little vignettes and I mean all those
little pictures of whatever. I thought. I couldn't conceive of
a better cover than that.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, there's no there's absolutely no confusion in that book cover.
I I call it, you know, control chaos. In other words,
we look at them, we go, oh yeah, I mean
it's it's like, I mean, it just it flows, just
the cover itself, which then leads me to opening the book,
and then the journey begins.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah yeah, and then and and in the published book,
which you'd see actually on the PD if you flip
to the back. If you see the back of the
back cover is the first triptych uh and it's it's
sunlight and people are running around, not a weird character
is having a good time. And that was in the painting.
That one was actually called the Garden of Earth of Delights,
(19:38):
and so I think I think they provide a good
parallel to each other to give an idea what this
book is about.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Wow, well, one thing that it is about. And and
you've you've mastered the art of what I call hid
and speak. I mean when you really break it all down.
I mean what I felt is that don't stay silent,
always be an activator, right.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
And I think I think that's why I like Marco
is a as a character, because you see he changes,
he learns, he grows. Whereas the perfect man Charles Kingston
Osborne says near the end that when as could he
kill somebody's senses, I'm not premitted to kill people, and
and and he says, he says there are other solutions.
(20:19):
I think Marco at the end was discovering there are
other solutions, and there need to be other solutions other
than just mass violence. So I think there's that sense
of optimism in the book that we can make changes,
we can grow that line from terminator to no faith.
But what we make I think is I think is
applicable in this So.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Now, did did you impersonate the voices as you were writing?
Because so many times when I'm sitting here now I'm
trying to put together a particular chapter or even just
a storyline. It's like I can hear their voices in
my head. Now the question is how do I put
it on paper in order for it to match.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, they have to have their own verbal tics, their
own little aforistic opinions about things.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
So, as I said, I think the gypsy.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Is very uh poetic.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Marco Is has his style. Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Let's see, Pyrenee sounds very arrogant and dangerous. But at
the same time, uh, I think Mira sounds very wistful.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The uh.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
The cleric is very forceful in his in his uh uh,
in his theology. The physician is very pragmatic. The soldiers,
the soldier seems hopeless, right, it seems Ivaner you know
he said was hopeless.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
He knows he knows as hopeless.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Memory In identifying his rank at the end, he says
a cannon fodder because he understands what it is. And
another hand, I think Flora Vale is optimistic as a child,
but in her little introduction she she's still bitter about
about what happened. Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And you know, it's so funny when you describe it
like that. It's like every one of these people could
be standing in line right now at the self checkout
at Walmart, because I mean maybe, until you know someone's story,
they're just people wanting to check out, get to know
their story.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So that's the idea I wanted.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I wanted to tell who they are in this in
the context.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Of this uh this world right this this republic that
we know now the republic is when I first writing Metropolis,
I stopped the book in two thousand and three because
they couldn't figure out how Julian was able to study
the Greeks and Romans in a fictional republic and where's
this taking place.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Once I realized that the.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Republic is a part of the world we would know
is France, and the provinces would be Germany and the
Eastern Europe, it all kind of made sense.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So so, and also.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
There's that reference to all these other there's other provinces
of these other uh what I say, uh, people of
a cultural different cultural distinctions. It became easier and easier
to write this, to figure out the characters and how
they're going to talk.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I love the fact that that you bring up that
you know everything in two thousand and three because so
many times you meet people that would love to be
an author, or they've got the skills to be a storyteller,
and they think it can be done inside ten days,
and you just you roll your eyes, and it's stories
like this where I'm going. This is the proof all
I need. You've got to hang in there, don't let
(23:20):
go of the story. It'll come back.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah. I also think that there's no substitute for reading.
I know writers. I know so many writers who just say, no,
I don't have time to read. I'm writing all the time. Wow,
I don't even know what that writing is going to be. Like,
I read a lot, and I read in both commercial
and literary fiction, back and forth.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I read, as I said, I was reading ROBERTA.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Blanio, reading Paul Bowles, and of course Faulkner and Fitzgerald
those people also.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I also read Twilight, Fifty Days of Gray.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I read John Seford, I teach, John Grisham and Stephen King.
I read all these people because all of them sort of.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Funnel into how I write.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
And I'm suspicious read widely anyhow, because it just it
really limits what you can do as a writer.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, then you would totally understand what Mark Twain was
saying in his autobiography when he says what needs to
happen is is that the authors need to locate their
own writing accent, let them be the writer that they are,
and quit trying to shape them.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Right. That's actually a good point, because I do find
every writer ultimately finds his or her voice.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yep, mine was. I was first inspired to write by
my dad wanted me to read.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Passages, passages from Steinbeck and mostly from Thomas Wolfe Thomas
wolf and so I started writing my first novel, I was.
I was doing a very Tom Wolfie in impression, which
did not suit me, and I couldn't quite find my
voice until I read Carson En Cullers The Member of
the Wedding. And that's when I realized I could have poetic,
lyrical language but in a more straightforward narrative. And then
(24:53):
I could start throwing in elements from other writers like
Cormick McCarthy was very influential on me, and other jokes
in different ways. So and then again we're reading Paul
Coelo and and and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I I was
able to learn how to use magic realism. And so
the book is really, uh.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It's a miss.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
It's a mismash of all the writers I've been reading,
and and they come in, uh, the those set pieces
with uh in that hotel and near the end when
they set up those all that has to be choreographed
and the choreography of those violent things influenced by say,
the crime writer John Sandford. These set these set pieces
(25:37):
so at all. And I guess you know, Jack read
your novels too, set pieces. I learned how to do that,
and so I can put him in a novel that
has influences by Paul Corelo and with magic realism and
all of that. This book. That's why I saying, So
everybody thinking finds some of the vignettes that will really
a build them, they'll really like it.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The voice and the ideas.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Not just a novel. But to me, I'm seeing a
binge watch here. But then the question is how how
do we set up the storyline? Do we go and
and do you know, like eight to ten different episodes
that are describing the characters, and then all of a sudden,
you know, we we bring the characters together and make
it happen.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah, And I think I think, you know, if
this were uh, if this were let's stay one of
those streaming miniseries some of the uh and it's just
entered Understanding, not Metropolis, then I think they have their
own episode and the writer, the viewer, the viewer is
going to.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
See how they would coalesces later on.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Again, remember we dip back and forth to Marco Marcos
is the is the present time narrative narration in the book,
and so the others are drifting off. And it took
me a while to realize that I was setting all
the vignettes in the past. So we know something, for example,
about some of the characters that they won't know. For example,
we know the fate of some of them before they
(26:57):
do so, and the reader will know or the reader
or the reader of Metropolis, for example, would have known
what happens to some of these people, which I think
is good, but I don't know, it's just uh. I
like the idea that these things all take place in
the past at different times. Well.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
See, I believe in that because being a third degree
black belt in martial arts, one of the things that
they trained us to do was you've got to be
able to understand your past to being your present. And
that's what I feel in this. It's like, Okay, I'm
going to understand Marco Moore by understanding what happened before
this is going on, so that we can grow the
story forward.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Absolutely, that's a very good point because even he well
we can, we can be assured that. I think my
idea is is Marco is that put Marco put this
whole book together, and remember he's also doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
What what for him or for us going to be
in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
You know when he's looking back to this, because he
says in his applog years past to an often too
many account, so he's had a he had he as well,
has had a perspective. I think that's why he's chosen
what he did, Like like in Metropolis Julians, Julian wrote
Metropolis eight years after the fact. I think I think
(28:07):
it's I think Flora Vale's part was written many many
years after her the events of her story. So it's
just I don't know, it's it's it's a complicated book,
but it's pretty easy to follow.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The purpose of the narration.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Why I chose what I chose?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
How did you keep the continuity alive in the way
of knowing where you were on the calendar, because I
remember my second book. I mean I got lost on
the on the time period and when somebody finally come
and said this isn't going to work, you missed out
on something. Dude, There's no feasible way that this could
happen in this storyline because somewhere in here you forgot
about a date.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, that's called proof reading for me. You know, take
a look and master them. Because I was just thinking.
I was just thinking, as we're talking here, I thought, no,
wait a second, Flora Vale. Flora Vale tells how many
years after the fact. I think she said eighteen years
or something, but of been eighteen But I realized, so,
(29:02):
how does it fit with Marco putting this together? I realized, Well,
Marco doesn't say how long after all these events he's writing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
This that saves me?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That saves me? Okay, he doesn't say, we just know
that it has to be outside of Flora Vale's narrative.
Her story has to be has to be past that.
So it but yeah, I mean you have to check,
and I checked. So that's how it works.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I think, Wow, where can people go to find out
more about what you're doing and growing with as well
as let's find out more about Metropolis as well, because
there's always a new reader somewhere and I want to
get to them all.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Have you seen the website for under City or Metropolis? Yes? Yeah,
So Metropolis is interesting because it has sort of a
slide show of sorts of the story.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I don't want people to go to the end, and
you can see it.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Under City, though, has all it has all the characters,
a little backstory from all from my all exits of
my book. So that's a good place to go. It's
it's pretty easy to it's pretty pretty easy to get
a feel for both of those books by going to
Metropolis the book dot com and then under City the
book dot com. You can see the characters, the names
of foods, names of cars, names of institutions and everything,
(30:18):
and pictures of the characters. How we how we sort
of envision what they really look like.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
God, your spot on when it comes to where people are,
because when you have the website that's attached to the
storyline like that, that to me is a ticket to ride,
just like the Beatles saying about you know, because you're
always looking for that one thing that's going to lead
you to the next part of of a of a
particular book.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's what I want to do.
My web designers who always tell me that those websites
are too big. They're too bigger. You know, I like them.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I like them, I like I don't like websites.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I only have two pages on it, right, So, so
you learn a lot about these characters. You learn about
the story and the ideas in in in parts of
my the websites, you know, it's the stories about talking
about love and talking about out uh war, and and
and in this one and for under City, eugenics and society,
and you just read about it, so you can kind
(31:08):
of make the lifts out of them. When I go
to a book tour, I think I'm gonnain eve gonna
call up the website.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It's easier then, you know, flipping through the book. She'll
be right there.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Man, dude, You've got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
This is a very good interview. I appreciated a lot
because you know the book that's very important.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Excellent you provided the book, so I can't. I need
to thank you a billion times and to give me
that opportunity to step into the storyline, because then this
way we can talk about it and I can hear
it in your voice. That is so important to me.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Thank you and the reader and people can they can
bind the book too off the website should they choose,
So that's kind of good too. Thank you, Chill.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
You'll be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I appreciate you too.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Okay, take them care
Maybe it's just a radio thing. Variety, give people a variety,
and that's what we do on aero dot net a
r r oe dot net. It's not just a podcast
with rock stars and movie stars. Oh, it's about lifestyle
and beyond. It's variety a r r o e dot Net.
Enjoy the exploration, dude. I got to tell you something.
(00:22):
I love Under City in so many different reasons and ways.
And the reason why is because this is what I
call a universal age book. In other words, so many
people from every age group are they're going to pick
it up, they're going to take something from it, and
they're going to talk about it. And when you can
do that, that that right there, that's the magic in
the creative soul.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you. I I did.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I did like this book, having a lot of different
voices and a lot of different points of views. So
I'm just reading this morning with with my girlfriend a
couple of sections from Aros in the Howls.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So I just, uh, I don't know, I just I
like it like that.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I liked the idea you can't actually you can just
dive in and read the vignettes because they're not tied
to the plot of the book.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So it's not an easy way to read the book.
But thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Well, it's because you give me everything that I want
as a reader. And I man, I'll tell you because
I am so connected to like all different age groups.
You can sit there, you place the book in front
of them and they're going, this is amazing. And I
sit there and I go, I've got to ask, MANI
if this is about an escape? Is this about a
world that they would like to explore themselves because of
(01:32):
what's going on with our VR goggles nowadays? And it's
like you're in the right place at the right time
with this storyline.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
It seems, so, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
The thing is is that when I wrote Metropolis, which
is scrotsy companion it is, I didn't I wrote it
a long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I wrote some of it.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And then when I actually wrote it through twenty nineteen,
our world hadn't quite drifted in this direction and understated
the same sort of thing. I had to be true
to that world, even though it has clear and obvious
references to ours.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, now is that kind of weird being a visionary
like that? Or do you see it as just now
I'm just storytelling. I'm fine, But yet, like you, you know,
like you said and when you when you wrote the
other one Metropolis, I mean, it was like it hadn't
been taking place yet.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah. Well, I am very connected to what's going on
in the world, and I guess that when I'm sort
of done with this book and I'm thinking about it
has references to our world. It has references also to
let's say, uh, Germany in the forties, so with the
(02:39):
desolations that we have in this book being sort of
reference from the war in the Soviet Union in the forties.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
So it's just I don't know it.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It does drift back and forth in my mind about
making these references. But also the book has to have
other things too as well, right, so it can just
be well, my publisher, my publishers is reading and she said,
well is it is it all? No? No, no, no,
well it doesn't have a happy end, shees, but don't
tell me, don't tell me.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I go, well, don't tell me.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
So And yet one of my big attractions to it
is the fact that it has so many vignettes to it,
because it's it's one of those things where it's like
I can read about each one, and then and then
when it's time for bed, you go to bed tomorrow
we pick up another vignette. And I mean it just
when you have a lot of characters like this, I
don't get lost. What I do is I feel community.
Did you feel a community while you were putting together?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah? I think that, even though it's pretty obvious that
first of all, that the vignettes all take place in
the past ye as to the narratives book, but also
at different times, but they all are connected in a
maybe maybe not so obvious a way, certainly they are.
(03:52):
The Only one I think is an outlayer is Iroson Owl,
because again it's the novel sessions of a novel within
the novel, and only seven chaps. We don't really know
the whole book, and so where that ends in Herison
is not necessarily where Freilie Vilpik's novel ends. We don't
know how it is.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, how did you put focus on the continuity on
something like that, because you know how as writers we
can go on a tangent. Is that something that you
depend on your editor to keep you in line on?
Do you know, just get it out, as they always
tell me, get it out. We'll worry about that later on.
Just get it out.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah. I had no editing in this book. I did
my editor. Let's he just lets me. He lets me
do what I want. He loves my writing. I'll tell you, okay,
I'll tell you what the tricky thing was. Book is done,
all the all the vignettes are written. Now where do
they go to? Where do they sit? That was not
so obvious. Let's say, Marco in one chapter muses on
(04:46):
where Mirace is from Race's mother, and so I thought, okay, okay, okay,
I'm going to put her vignette right after that chapter.
Others were just not not obvious, and so I have
to say in somebody's there sort of arbitrary And did
you get did you seen the version of the book
with the with the orphan? Yes in there? Yes, okay,
(05:07):
So the orphan is tricky to play too, but I
always thought the orphan had to be there.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
I will tell you a story about the about the orphan.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I wrote that probably about almost two years ago, and
I wrote about five or six pages of it and
didn't like it, hated it, thought it wasn't doing it right.
You know, the sort of comparison to a concentration camp train,
and I thought it was failing it, so I stopped
and then and then about a year later, I decided, okay,
(05:37):
let me have another look at it. What I'm gonna
do is I'm going to delete everything below the title
and start over. I read it. It was thirteen pages,
not five or six. And here's a weird thing. It
was all really great, almost perfect. It hardly changed a
single word. But I have literally no memory of writing
a single word of that.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
You were I loved it moments like that because you
were called to the page to write it. You weren't
the one that had to do the storyline. That was
somebody else. That's that's from an area that one day
you'll meet.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, I think now. My theory as to why that
is is that I read, I wrote forward all the
way those thirteen pages, stopped and never read. I never
read back a single one event. So that's why that's
why I don't remember it, because I never reread it.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I never read. Anybody just literally.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Wrote forward, sent for I sent and stopped because I
thought it wasn't working, and then never looked at it
until a year later.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So it is does that qualify as stream thinking then,
I mean, if you've got enough confidence and courage to
do that and not go back.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, I think most of my most of the Metropolis
and under City were written like that. I just I
didn't really, I'll try you. The only place I had
to do editing and I knew I was rented was
in the on that underground river with Marco and his
uh and his companions. I I that was it was
too much of it, and so I just and all
I did editing there is just went through and cut
everything I could and to keep but keep the nerve. Otherwise,
(06:58):
the rest of the book, the Gypsy things, RAS's story
of Pireade story and Marco's couple two stories were pretty
I didn't hardly edit anything though, they just wrote it.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
It was I liked it. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
These books actually aren't complicated, but they were really easy
to write, and I think they're pretty easy to read too,
Was it you conn?
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Was it easy to tap into their personalities and once
you were in there, Because I know sometimes when I'm
writing then it takes me a little bit to shake
off that that particular scene or person so I can
get back to being a real self or I want
to sit there and start acting out that book in
front of everybody else.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Well, you see, the thing is that by having Marco,
guys Pire, Pirenee and Mira's walking together and Engine dialogue,
they were developing for me their characters that then were
pretty easy for me to evoke in their integral vignettes.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
See, that's a part of writing that I wish that
readers could pick up on, is that how it's built
like a song. In fact, I was going to ask
you about that when when it came to laying out
each one of the vignettes, was it like building an album?
And now do you find yourself going, yeah, I think
I could do the album thing.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's actually it's actually pretty easy. I done
certain things writing, at least for these books, were pretty simple.
It's just again, as I said, it is the structure
that was complicated, and I think I undervalued it in
my head in what order these things were going to go.
I think I thought it would be obvious, But yeah,
(08:34):
it ends up being obvious.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, one of the things that you do, and you've
brought up Marco a couple of times here, is the
fact that maybe it's because I've been a journal writer
since July of nineteen ninety four. But I was so
attracted to that in the way that I'm going, wait
a second way, who whoa whoa whohoa. Moni seems to
be the type of person that knows what journaling is
because he's identifying something that only somebody who writes journals
could relate with.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yeah, although I never do a journal, Really, how did
you nail it? Dan?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
I read a lot okay rights novels.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
It's so so this structure to the book, for instance,
really came to me, uh beating Roberta Bolania is the
Savage Detectives, where he has one narrative sort of beginning
of the book, a young guy and then and then
the whole middle of the book is all different voices
telling it, telling the story, and and then and then
the kid comes in at the end again in the
(09:26):
last chapters. So I so I thought, well, that's a
good structure for this. Also there is remember there are
Sherman Anderson's Weinsburg, Ohio and uh, various books like that
with multiple narratives. So I had I had the literary
these of my literary add of scenes for this. So
I knew how I knew it could work. The voices
are so different for me that they weren't really hard
(09:49):
to differentiate.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
I really did find that way.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
And I like the poetics of the gypsy she was
releasing to write.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
She was sort of.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Inspired to away by uh, Paul Klelo with a sort
of a it's a lot of I think in the
gypsy sort of magic realism. And yeah, it's just this
book has a lot of different influences and so I
was able to bring them all in to write this book.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
A lot of interest I have.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So then the gypsy character, do you find yourself being
that's the one that you pull from this story and
kind of adopt into your own personal life, because I mean,
I mean, as it was, without the editor and stuff
like that, you were kind of wandering around like like
a gypsy. You knew what you were doing. Just to
let you do it.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, I just, uh, I don't know, it's you know,
reading ends up being my editor. I mean, my publisher,
Gary Groth a super brilliant guy. He does read a lot.
He's a extreamly well read guy. But he trusts me
as a writer. And he told me once that he
doesn't buy an author's books to edit. He buys them
(10:55):
because of how the person writes, so he he likes,
he likes, right, He said, you're a great writer, and
so he trusts me, and then I'm able to just
do my own thing.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
But I do I do know how to edit.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I do know you know what to leave in, what
to leave out right, and so I don't know. It's
just it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yes, this book was. It was.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It's complicated, but it was fairly easy to write, and
the characters all have their own place. Gypsy is different.
The soldier I liked writing him. He was pretty hopeless, right,
so I like writing him. And the policeman and is
operating a moral cloud.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So that was the tone of that one. They're all
kind of different in that sense.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I would love to see how many people are going
to identify with Flora, only because I mean, Flora does
not like to live in the dark. But yet Florida
has that side to her that we're going that's kind
of a rebel, that's kind of a dark side. I'm
being drawn into into a character here than that. You
either want to be or you go, I know, someone
like Flora.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, Floraville. Uh, it was okay, this is actually kind
of interesting too. So it's again, I don't have any
memory of writing her her story. But as I said,
I have no memory of writing that that her journal,
but or diary.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But when I when I finished it, just for a reference,
I went and.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Read, uh are you there?
Speaker 1 (12:18):
God is me and Margaret, oh yeah, oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
It turns out that her character was her character. Margaret
was the same age as for of Ail, thirteen years old,
and so my language, my style of that writing was
almost identical. And I never I never read, of course,
to that little book before, but I read an afternoon.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It was pretty pretty easy to read.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
But it was interesting to see that that it was
that I thought I did it right.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I thought I did.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
I thought I thought it. I thought her journal, I mean,
her diary sounds like a thirteen year old girl.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Please do not move. There's more with Monty Scholes coming
up next. The name of the book under City. We
are back with author Monty Sholes. Well, how did it
make you feel knowing that you you know, we're talking
about journal writers, we're talking about diary writers. Do you
feel like you were invading their personal space? Or it's like, ah,
I'm here with you, I'm gonna walk with you. You're
(13:09):
not alone. When it comes to these these outlets.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well, I think it's that, as I said, there are
several books that have multiple narrators, Yeah, multiple stories. Even
Steinbeck's Pastors of Heaven is a novel told with multiple voices,
So it wasn't so, I mean, that's the group I
think I really identified with, and that I don't really
think about journal but but I guess I think because yes,
we do have journals, right, So so Flora Veil's is
(13:34):
a diary. Mark is I think the chapters of Marketers
journal entry, blah blah blah. So they're sort of like that.
I don't know. They're all kind of different, right, They're
all they're all really different.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Well, a couple of things that you've mastered in one
of them is the fact that no time do I
feel like that the characters are showcased by a passing thought.
In other words, it's part of the story. It's part
of the growing storyline, which as a reader, I'm going, god, dang,
this just fits together like a classic, you know, a puzzle.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah, And the other thing is interesting I saw after
the book was the references to Metropolis, but since since
Metropolis was published first, that meant it's sort of any
references or cut in stone, you know, how to spell
someone's name when something happened and had to add to dovetail.
But say, remember Flora Vale's story dovetails with Julian's visit
(14:28):
to the Hippodrome right at the end of Metropolis. So
so there these stories do do connect here and there
tangentially marco of courses in Metropolis.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I don't know, it's just it just kind of
all fit together. I have to say.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I don't take very many notes. I just write it forward.
I took notes sort of names of things and foods
and cars and.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But otherwise I don't have a I didn't have an outline.
I never do that, you see to me, I'm too
lazy to do that, and I just I So what
I do is I just I just right forward.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
But I did. I was aware of how these things were.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So for example, and the Policeman where Mercy of Housman,
you know in the second chapter, they're just they're arresting people,
you know, just like Ice now they're just arresting them
and we take them away, and we never I realized
after I wrote it, we never say why those those
Peta people were arrested. And I think that we just
don't know, and it's not really important, but it's frightening nonetheless,
And so I was. I was very aware when I
(15:35):
started to just rab these people, take them out with
with not even really know why. I thought the reference
is very similar, but it was like it was in
Nazi Germany too, So I understand where these things can go.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Oh yeah, because it just happened here in Charlotte four
hundred people, and please tell me why you took these
four hundred people. I don't know. We'll get back to you.
I mean that maybe that's one of the reasons why
I'm so hooked on this. It's like, oh my god,
he's got he's he had a vision. He's speaking about
what's going on right now. But at the same time,
it's from a different world.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Right because the same thing happened in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
People are rested or in this case, like in my book,
they're taken away and they're shot, or I guess in
some cases there's mentioned to its summer gats. Some are
just sent away so so and we don't really know
why they're wrestling. Some of those people, like those two
young women the music teachers, why would they be arrested?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Is that the reason why V asked the question can
we not remake this world? Because I mean that right
there is a powerful statement. And as the author, I mean,
how did that fall out of you into this storyline?
And did you have to sit back and go, oh, crap,
Now I got to live up to this.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Well, so she was.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
She's a friend of mine who read Metropolis and loved
under City, the under City part the best, and so
for about a year or so after Metropolis, she said,
you have to write under City.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
You have to write under City.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
So I did, and I wrote her epigraph and so
when or her dedication? And then I thought, after the
first one was there to to V who who required
requested the story? And I thought, I thought, uh, because
she and I have talked doctor forth about the how
to be optimistic? And so that's when I wrote that
(17:22):
line we not remake the world? I just thought, uh.
I thought, that's that's the question, can we? And I
and I think when when you when you see the
disposition of Germany and Japan after World War Two. The
answer was, yes, we can remake the world. We can.
And so that's that. So the book has that sense
of optimism, as as as we hear in the very
(17:45):
in Marco's epilogue.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Right, how things changed?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Right, the fault, the faulty false science of spiriosis was dismissed.
People were let out of the inner city into sunlight
and blue skies for the first time in their lives.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
In the world was on.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
But we have, Buddy says, but we have to keep
an eye out, right, we have to pay attention.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
And yet then now with with with you explaining the
storyline the way that you are, and I'm hearing your pitch,
volume and tone. All of a sudden, now this book
cover comes into play. Now I understand the vibrant appeal
to it and and and what's going on because it's
you know, so many times we hold a book but
we don't get the cover.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, well, okay, so I I don't know, I don't
know why.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
I I don't know why. I look for it from
Hieronymous Bosh.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It's from his triptych called The Gardener of Earthly Delights
and that the cover is from third triptic called Hell,
and so I just thought it was a perfect idea
for the cover. I wasn't really sure, but I showed
it to the owner in Kaylua and a couple of
other people. Everybody loved it. And it's such a massive ideas.
(18:55):
You know, there's little vignettes and I mean all those
little pictures of whatever. I thought. I couldn't conceive of
a better cover than that.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, there's no there's absolutely no confusion in that book cover.
I I call it, you know, control chaos. In other words,
we look at them, we go, oh yeah, I mean
it's it's like, I mean, it just it flows, just
the cover itself, which then leads me to opening the book,
and then the journey begins.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah yeah, and then and and in the published book,
which you'd see actually on the PD if you flip
to the back. If you see the back of the
back cover is the first triptych uh and it's it's
sunlight and people are running around, not a weird character
is having a good time. And that was in the painting.
That one was actually called the Garden of Earth of Delights,
(19:38):
and so I think I think they provide a good
parallel to each other to give an idea what this
book is about.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Wow, well, one thing that it is about. And and
you've you've mastered the art of what I call hid
and speak. I mean when you really break it all down.
I mean what I felt is that don't stay silent,
always be an activator, right.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
And I think I think that's why I like Marco
is a as a character, because you see he changes,
he learns, he grows. Whereas the perfect man Charles Kingston
Osborne says near the end that when as could he
kill somebody's senses, I'm not premitted to kill people, and
and and he says, he says there are other solutions.
(20:19):
I think Marco at the end was discovering there are
other solutions, and there need to be other solutions other
than just mass violence. So I think there's that sense
of optimism in the book that we can make changes,
we can grow that line from terminator to no faith.
But what we make I think is I think is
applicable in this So.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Now, did did you impersonate the voices as you were writing?
Because so many times when I'm sitting here now I'm
trying to put together a particular chapter or even just
a storyline. It's like I can hear their voices in
my head. Now the question is how do I put
it on paper in order for it to match.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, they have to have their own verbal tics, their
own little aforistic opinions about things.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
So, as I said, I think the gypsy.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Is very uh poetic.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Marco Is has his style. Uh.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Let's see, Pyrenee sounds very arrogant and dangerous. But at
the same time, uh, I think Mira sounds very wistful.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
The uh.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
The cleric is very forceful in his in his uh uh,
in his theology. The physician is very pragmatic. The soldiers,
the soldier seems hopeless, right, it seems Ivaner you know
he said was hopeless.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
He knows he knows as hopeless.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Memory In identifying his rank at the end, he says
a cannon fodder because he understands what it is. And
another hand, I think Flora Vale is optimistic as a child,
but in her little introduction she she's still bitter about
about what happened. Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And you know, it's so funny when you describe it
like that. It's like every one of these people could
be standing in line right now at the self checkout
at Walmart, because I mean maybe, until you know someone's story,
they're just people wanting to check out, get to know
their story.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
So that's the idea I wanted.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I wanted to tell who they are in this in
the context.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Of this uh this world right this this republic that
we know now the republic is when I first writing Metropolis,
I stopped the book in two thousand and three because
they couldn't figure out how Julian was able to study
the Greeks and Romans in a fictional republic and where's
this taking place.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Once I realized that the.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Republic is a part of the world we would know
is France, and the provinces would be Germany and the
Eastern Europe, it all kind of made sense.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So so, and also.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
There's that reference to all these other there's other provinces
of these other uh what I say, uh, people of
a cultural different cultural distinctions. It became easier and easier
to write this, to figure out the characters and how
they're going to talk.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
I love the fact that that you bring up that
you know everything in two thousand and three because so
many times you meet people that would love to be
an author, or they've got the skills to be a storyteller,
and they think it can be done inside ten days,
and you just you roll your eyes, and it's stories
like this where I'm going. This is the proof all
I need. You've got to hang in there, don't let
(23:20):
go of the story. It'll come back.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah. I also think that there's no substitute for reading.
I know writers. I know so many writers who just say, no,
I don't have time to read. I'm writing all the time. Wow,
I don't even know what that writing is going to be. Like,
I read a lot, and I read in both commercial
and literary fiction, back and forth.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I read, as I said, I was reading ROBERTA.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Blanio, reading Paul Bowles, and of course Faulkner and Fitzgerald
those people also.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
I also read Twilight, Fifty Days of Gray.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I read John Seford, I teach, John Grisham and Stephen King.
I read all these people because all of them sort of.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Funnel into how I write.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
And I'm suspicious read widely anyhow, because it just it
really limits what you can do as a writer.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well, then you would totally understand what Mark Twain was
saying in his autobiography when he says what needs to
happen is is that the authors need to locate their
own writing accent, let them be the writer that they are,
and quit trying to shape them.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Right. That's actually a good point, because I do find
every writer ultimately finds his or her voice.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yep, mine was. I was first inspired to write by
my dad wanted me to read.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Passages, passages from Steinbeck and mostly from Thomas Wolfe Thomas
wolf and so I started writing my first novel, I was.
I was doing a very Tom Wolfie in impression, which
did not suit me, and I couldn't quite find my
voice until I read Carson En Cullers The Member of
the Wedding. And that's when I realized I could have poetic,
lyrical language but in a more straightforward narrative. And then
(24:53):
I could start throwing in elements from other writers like
Cormick McCarthy was very influential on me, and other jokes
in different ways. So and then again we're reading Paul
Coelo and and and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I I was
able to learn how to use magic realism. And so
the book is really, uh.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
It's a miss.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
It's a mismash of all the writers I've been reading,
and and they come in, uh, the those set pieces
with uh in that hotel and near the end when
they set up those all that has to be choreographed
and the choreography of those violent things influenced by say,
the crime writer John Sandford. These set these set pieces
(25:37):
so at all. And I guess you know, Jack read
your novels too, set pieces. I learned how to do that,
and so I can put him in a novel that
has influences by Paul Corelo and with magic realism and
all of that. This book. That's why I saying, So
everybody thinking finds some of the vignettes that will really
a build them, they'll really like it.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
The voice and the ideas.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Not just a novel. But to me, I'm seeing a
binge watch here. But then the question is how how
do we set up the storyline? Do we go and
and do you know, like eight to ten different episodes
that are describing the characters, and then all of a sudden,
you know, we we bring the characters together and make
it happen.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Yeah, yeah, And I think I think, you know, if
this were uh, if this were let's stay one of
those streaming miniseries some of the uh and it's just
entered Understanding, not Metropolis, then I think they have their
own episode and the writer, the viewer, the viewer is
going to.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
See how they would coalesces later on.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Again, remember we dip back and forth to Marco Marcos
is the is the present time narrative narration in the book,
and so the others are drifting off. And it took
me a while to realize that I was setting all
the vignettes in the past. So we know something, for example,
about some of the characters that they won't know. For example,
we know the fate of some of them before they
(26:57):
do so, and the reader will know or the reader
or the reader of Metropolis, for example, would have known
what happens to some of these people, which I think
is good, but I don't know, it's just uh. I
like the idea that these things all take place in
the past at different times. Well.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
See, I believe in that because being a third degree
black belt in martial arts, one of the things that
they trained us to do was you've got to be
able to understand your past to being your present. And
that's what I feel in this. It's like, Okay, I'm
going to understand Marco Moore by understanding what happened before
this is going on, so that we can grow the
story forward.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Absolutely, that's a very good point because even he well
we can, we can be assured that. I think my
idea is is Marco is that put Marco put this
whole book together, and remember he's also doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
What what for him or for us going to be
in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
You know when he's looking back to this, because he
says in his applog years past to an often too
many account, so he's had a he had he as well,
has had a perspective. I think that's why he's chosen
what he did, Like like in Metropolis Julians, Julian wrote
Metropolis eight years after the fact. I think I think
(28:07):
it's I think Flora Vale's part was written many many
years after her the events of her story. So it's
just I don't know, it's it's it's a complicated book,
but it's pretty easy to follow.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
The purpose of the narration.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Why I chose what I chose?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
How did you keep the continuity alive in the way
of knowing where you were on the calendar, because I
remember my second book. I mean I got lost on
the on the time period and when somebody finally come
and said this isn't going to work, you missed out
on something. Dude, There's no feasible way that this could
happen in this storyline because somewhere in here you forgot
about a date.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yeah, that's called proof reading for me. You know, take
a look and master them. Because I was just thinking.
I was just thinking, as we're talking here, I thought, no,
wait a second, Flora Vale. Flora Vale tells how many
years after the fact. I think she said eighteen years
or something, but of been eighteen But I realized, so,
(29:02):
how does it fit with Marco putting this together? I realized, Well,
Marco doesn't say how long after all these events he's writing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
This that saves me?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
That saves me? Okay, he doesn't say, we just know
that it has to be outside of Flora Vale's narrative.
Her story has to be has to be past that.
So it but yeah, I mean you have to check,
and I checked. So that's how it works.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
I think, Wow, where can people go to find out
more about what you're doing and growing with as well
as let's find out more about Metropolis as well, because
there's always a new reader somewhere and I want to
get to them all.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Have you seen the website for under City or Metropolis? Yes? Yeah,
So Metropolis is interesting because it has sort of a
slide show of sorts of the story.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
I don't want people to go to the end, and
you can see it.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Under City, though, has all it has all the characters,
a little backstory from all from my all exits of
my book. So that's a good place to go. It's
it's pretty easy to it's pretty pretty easy to get
a feel for both of those books by going to
Metropolis the book dot com and then under City the
book dot com. You can see the characters, the names
of foods, names of cars, names of institutions and everything,
(30:18):
and pictures of the characters. How we how we sort
of envision what they really look like.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
God, your spot on when it comes to where people are,
because when you have the website that's attached to the
storyline like that, that to me is a ticket to ride,
just like the Beatles saying about you know, because you're
always looking for that one thing that's going to lead
you to the next part of of a of a
particular book.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, that's exactly it. And that's what I want to do.
My web designers who always tell me that those websites
are too big. They're too bigger. You know, I like them.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I like them, I like I don't like websites.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I only have two pages on it, right, So, so
you learn a lot about these characters. You learn about
the story and the ideas in in in parts of
my the websites, you know, it's the stories about talking
about love and talking about out uh war, and and
and in this one and for under City, eugenics and society,
and you just read about it, so you can kind
(31:08):
of make the lifts out of them. When I go
to a book tour, I think I'm gonnain eve gonna
call up the website.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It's easier then, you know, flipping through the book. She'll
be right there.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Man, dude, You've got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. The door is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
This is a very good interview. I appreciated a lot
because you know the book that's very important.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Excellent you provided the book, so I can't. I need
to thank you a billion times and to give me
that opportunity to step into the storyline, because then this
way we can talk about it and I can hear
it in your voice. That is so important to me.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Thank you and the reader and people can they can
bind the book too off the website should they choose,
So that's kind of good too. Thank you, Chill.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
You'll be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I appreciate you too.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Okay, take them care
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