July 19, 2025 • 61 mins
What if the most powerful man in Roman history fought a war history never recorded? In this thrilling episode of Off The Shelf Books, host Denise Turney sits down with author Lluew Grey to discuss his bold and breathtaking novel, To End The Night: Julius Caesar’s Secret War.
Grey pulls back the curtain on a shadow conflict—one waged in whispers, betrayal, and political espionage—revealing a Caesar far more complex than textbooks portray. From fierce female operatives to ancient secrets with modern echoes, Grey’s story is part historical thriller, part philosophical exploration of power, sacrifice, and truth.
Join us as we dive deep into the research, character building, and the daring imagination behind this riveting reimagining of Rome’s most legendary leader. If you love historical fiction and fantasy with high stakes, rich storytelling, and a touch of conspiracy—this episode is not to be missed!
🔗 Listen now and grab your copy of To End The Night at https://www.lluewgreyauthor.com/
Grey pulls back the curtain on a shadow conflict—one waged in whispers, betrayal, and political espionage—revealing a Caesar far more complex than textbooks portray. From fierce female operatives to ancient secrets with modern echoes, Grey’s story is part historical thriller, part philosophical exploration of power, sacrifice, and truth.
Join us as we dive deep into the research, character building, and the daring imagination behind this riveting reimagining of Rome’s most legendary leader. If you love historical fiction and fantasy with high stakes, rich storytelling, and a touch of conspiracy—this episode is not to be missed!
🔗 Listen now and grab your copy of To End The Night at https://www.lluewgreyauthor.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the winning literary show Off the Shelf
Books Talk Radio Live with host Denise Turney, author of
the books Long Walk Up, Porsche, Love, More Over Me,
Spiral Love Has Many Faces, and Rosette Us Great Hope.
Turn up your dial and get ready for a blast
of feature author interviews, four one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready, let's go it all.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome to Office
Shelf Books. I always have to thank olier listeners who
have been with those show high away eighteen years, and
for those of it's your first time tuning in an
office show, I say welcome, welcome, welcome, and we're so
happy to have you here with us this morning. Kicking
(00:51):
out today's show is a quote by Isabelle Lafecchi, your
passion is waiting for your courage to catch I love
that quote. Your passion is waiting for your courage to
catch up. Welcome you, guys. We are more than f
way through July. It is Saturday, July nineteenth. Already. If
(01:12):
there's something you want to do, I encourage you to
get to it. I normally will start off next talking
about one of my books. But instead of doing that,
because I want to get right into the interview today,
I encourage you to visit me online and you can
read free excerpts from any of my books. I just
came out also with two middle school coloring books. If
(01:35):
you have any young folks in your life, I know
how much I used to love the color when I
was a kid, especially on a rainy day. Is cloudy
here in the southeastern part of the United States. But
my website you r L is chistel www dot c
h I s t e l l dot com. You
(01:56):
can read free excerpts a lot. There's a lot that
you can check out. My blog is there, etc. Again
it's chistel cchis te l l dot com. I hope
you book market and go back again and again and
grab a book while you're over there. And now let
(02:16):
us go and meet our very special office shelf guest.
And this morning's guest is lou Gray lou Is, and I
hope I'm saying his name right, and if not, I
hope he corrects me. Lou is a writer, photographer, sound engineer,
and he is a reader. And this morning I got
him and said I gotta go out and get a
new novel to read. Not only do I write, but
(02:38):
I love to read novels myself. And he served in
the Navy for twenty years. He has also worked as
an educator, and Lou is the author of the books
To End the Night, Julius Caesar's Secret War, and the
Ballad of Jason. He and his wife lived with their
dogs and chickens on planet Earth. I encourage you to
(03:01):
visit Lou online at Lou Gray author dot com and
that's spelled l as A like l l U E
W g R E y a U t h o
R dot com, Lou Gray author dot com. We are
just honored to have Lou Gray join us on Off
(03:21):
the Chef Books this morning. Welcome, Welcome to Off the
Cheff Lou.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Thank you, Denise. I appreciate that glowing introduction. That was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
We look forward to what you said. I always learned
something for every guest. Every guest I learned something. I'm
sure our listeners do too, which is why they keep
coming back. So the first few questions I'm going to
ask you, I ask every guest to give our listeners
a little backstory on the authors before we start talking
about their books. So to kick off today's show, Louke,
can you tell off the chef listeners where you grew
(03:56):
up in what life was like for you growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I grew up in New York, and most people hear
that and they think about a city. But I grew
up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and
life was pretty slow, you know. I mean, get up
in the morning, bring the cows in, start the milking chores,
go to school, come home, and time for evening chores.
(04:22):
So then summertime was usually spent out in the hayfields.
And that was most of my life growing up until
I was starting to get old enough to leave home.
Then I decided I wanted to be a rich and
famous actors, so I tried my hand at Hollywood for
(04:44):
a while and ended up joining the military after a
couple of years of Hollywood not wanting me, and the
rest is history.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Here I am are you so? Do you have siblings
or were you an only child growing up?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
I have.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I was the youngest for sixteen years, and then I
have a sister that came.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Along when I was interesting interesting, And then I.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Have a sister that's like six years older than me
a brother that's five years older and a brother that's
one year older, who, like most siblings that are that
close in age, we hated each other growing up and
now he's my best friend, so you know.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Oh wow. So when you were doing acting, though, did
you ever do like commercials? You said you did it
for a few years. You must have had some success,
even if it was wasn't as much as you would
have liked.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
To keep yourself. I did some stage work. I did
some commercials, nothing big, nothing national. I did some extra work,
you know, some sitcoms and things, but you know, just
walk by the window while they're looking out or whatever
kind of stuff. Nothing, nothing earth shattering.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well congratulations on that, though not everybody can say that.
To to to whatever steps you took, you did get
some some bites for you for your now. When you
were a kid, lou, what did you dream of being?
What did you want to become when you were a kid?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Uh, it depends on how old a kid. You know.
As I got older, I wanted to be that rich
and famous actor. But when I was a little kid,
I wanted nothing more than to be a farmer.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh interesting, interesting, Who or what inspired your love for
writing books.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Oh, that that's the hardest question.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I just I grew up reading. I was reading Tolkien
by the time I was in like first grade. My mom,
uh you know, we didn't have a TV in the
house growing up. It was all, you know, reading books,
and so you know, I had plenty of older siblings
and I always felt dumb if I couldn't keep up
with them. So I was reading very early. And it's
been reading my whole life. And I've written stories my
(07:05):
whole life, just never thought about publishing them until we're
trying to decide what I was going to do with
the rest of my life because I was medically discharged
from the military and I couldn't continue teaching because my health.
And my wife was like, why don't you start publishing
some of the stuff you write? So I picked a
(07:26):
book that I had written probably ten years before that,
which was The To End the Night, Julius Caesar's Secret War,
and I sent it to an editor which I used
cup and quill editing. Linda there was very nice, and
she sent it to one of her employees, Andy, and
(07:48):
Andy was working with an editor with such an amazing experience,
and Andy Malinsky, he's actually moved out on his own.
Now he's got his own editing business that he's starting.
So it's I highly recommend cup and Quil editing, but
I also highly recommend Andy. He's the guy that I
(08:09):
always use and he's beyond dash editing dot GitHub dot io,
and yeah, he's available to use as an editor. But yeah,
I had written that book forever before that, and then
my wife was like, just get it out there. So
I went through a little bit of editing process with Andy,
(08:30):
who tried to make me turn this little novella into
a much bigger book. But I was like, no, I'm
done writing it. I just want to get it out there,
and we did, and then I wrote my second book
after that, and I'm part way through my third and
I love it.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Look at you now going to as we dig a
little deeper into to end the night before we talk
about your second novel. Have you seen history repeat itself?
And I've heard people say it does, even when we
want to say we humans are humans, we swear that
(09:05):
we won't let something happen again. And then have you
seen that in your research work, just in just in
just your travels, just everyday life, in your encounters. Have
you seen that history tends to repeat it that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, yep, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Can you share an instance when you think that as
humans weep, we keep doing something over and over again.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, obviously we're talking about Julius Caesar's secret War to
end the night. Uh So, I mean, in this case,
we've got Julius Caesar who went from he took a
democracy basically into a dictatorship. And we see that again
(09:53):
and again throughout history. There's tons of times where democracy
are relatively free, people are taken and it beyond just
taking it something from a democracy into a dictatorship, which
is what Caesar's you know, real history. Caesar's goals were.
(10:17):
It was very much a cult of personality. He was
loved by the common man and hated by the rich
people because because he was loved so much by the
common man, so it was very much a cult. You know,
his soldiers loved him. He was seen as a soldier's soldier.
He led from the front. He would you know, he
wasn't just a general standing ground giving orders. He would
(10:39):
put himself in the thick of it. He was seen
as kind of a badass, and he definitely had his
cult of personality. And I mean not to draw any
conclusions to orange people or anything, but you know, that's
happening today. It happened with Hitler, it happened with Mussolini,
(11:00):
happened with all kinds of you know, and you flavor
it a little bit differently depending on who the dictator
is and what the situation was, but the basics of
it are basically the same, you know. I mean, history
repeats just has a little bit different. It's like bell
Bottom's coming back. You know, they don't look exactly the
(11:23):
same as they did in the sixties, but you know,
they came back for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah. So, now, how much time did you spend researching
the actual Julius Thieves his history before you started writing
To End the Night?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I actually started writing it before I started researching too
much I knew, and it was written over a very
long period of time while I was in the military,
and you know, just when I got to it, i'd
write some here and there. But I mean, I knew
most people know at least the Shakespeare version of his
story and that kind of stuff, and I wanted to
(12:06):
I actually had the idea for the vampires that are
in the book first, and I wanted to find something
to do with them, and giving Julius Caesar a motivation
beyond self aggrandizement seemed like a decent place to do that.
So I started kind of writing, and then I was like, man,
(12:26):
I need to figure out a lot more. So I
bought I bought a couple of his biographies, books that
Julius Caesar actually wrote about his own life, and then
I was like, well, that's all just from his point
of view. So I dove in and I got some
books by Cicero and other people that were contemporary to
him at the time that they wrote about the same situation,
(12:48):
and that led me down a rabbit hole into more
and more books. And then I got, you know, textbooks,
and I looked in the index of the textbooks to
find out where they got their information, and I got
the books that the textbooks referenced. I ended up getting
over one hundred books on the Roman Civil War and
(13:09):
Julius Caesar in that timeframe, and did a lot of
research in the long run, but in the short term,
I just kind of dove into it and said, let's
see what happens.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Interesting. Yeah, when you start going into a novel, then
you're like, Okay, I got to make sure this is accurate,
because there are readers who know every little thing about
what you're writing about, and especially historical fiction, and they'll say, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not what happened, or no, it's not the right whatever,
that didn't happen during that time period. So the research
(13:41):
is important. Now, where you started writing this book long
before you thought, oh, you know what, I'm going to
start writing and publishing novels you started before? Then, Where
did you get the idea for the book to end
the night? What inspired you to even write it?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
H I've always kind of loved like vampire stuff, and
I think at the time that I started writing this,
and this is how long ago it was, was when
oh goodness, what's it called vampire movie? The vampires and
(14:20):
the werewolves are fighting. That could be a whole bunch
of different movies, right, But why am I having Anyway,
there was a vampire movie series that was out that
was really popular, and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I started trying to think of it too, and I
can't either, So I guess we're in the same boat.
But yeah, I think I can imagine which one you're
talking about. But the name is not coming to me either,
So that's what inspired it.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The main vampire lady was a death dealer and she
was out fighting the werewolves and gosh, I can't my
brain is not working anyway. That that's just what had
like vampires and stuff on my mind because it was
really popular at the time, and I'd always kind of
liked different you know, I read Bramstokers Dracula and stuff
(15:09):
when I was in high school, and I wanted to
do like a completely different take on vampires. I didn't
want them to be this was before those movies came out,
but I didn't want them to be the you know,
the sparkling, pretty Twilight vampires or any of the other
(15:31):
romantic I wanted them to be ugly and you know,
scary and all of that stuff. So I started coming
up with an entire history of if vampires were real,
how might they have come into being? And you know,
what might they be, Like why would they have these
(15:54):
weaknesses that vampires have, the running water, the uh garlic
that you know, all of these things, and so I
started building up all of that and then I was like, well,
if I'm going to write some stories about this, which
at the time was just writing them for myself. I
(16:14):
got to find a place to put them. So do
I want to do like their own world, not on Earth,
or do I want to do it on a fictional
version of Earth? Or And then I decided, you know what,
I'm going to do it as like historical fiction because
I also really like history. I read a lot of
historical fiction, and I just kind of picked Julius Caesar
(16:37):
as a place to write the first story in this
vampires are real world, and I don't know, I just
kind of went from there. I didn't have a real
impetus or anything that really made me pick Caesar. I
don't even remember what it was, but somewhere I decided
(16:57):
that that was where I wanted to start with these
vampire So it was all really about finding a place
for the vampires in the beginning, and going to historical
fiction was kind of just an offshoot to that.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Okay, can you give off the shelf listeners an overview
up to end the Night?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Sure? It starts off when Julius Caesar the day before,
actually Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, which, if you know
the history, the Rubicon is a stream. It's they call
it a river, but it's not. If you look at it,
you could kind of step across it. It's small, but
it's a river in Italy that at the time was
(17:40):
the boundary between the provinces and Rome itself, and if
a general were to bring his army across that border
into Rome itself, it was instantly seen as insurrection against
the law. Generals had to disband their armies before they
(18:00):
could come into Rome proper, Rome the country, not the
not the city as we know it today. And so
it starts off there the day before he crosses the
Rubicon with his armies and kicks off his civil war,
and it goes all the way up until the end
of his life, which you know, the IDEs of March
(18:22):
he gets stabbed by the Senate. If you didn't know that,
I'm sorry spoilers, but yeah, and it's the whole story
of his civil war that he started. And instead of
being a whatever his real motivations were, you can He's
(18:44):
got his own biographies and everything out that you can read.
H I just kind of switched his motivations to he
started the civil war to fight the vampire overward over
lords of Rome. And yeah, so it's it's very short.
With that timeframe and that subject matter, it could have been,
(19:07):
you know, a four hundred plus page novel, but it's
only in eighty seven page novella. It's very short.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But yeah, where is this story fully or in part? Well?
What would be impart? At most? How much of it
is based on real life events? What you say?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Everything except the vampires. I did a lot of research.
Everything I included in here is true. I had some
readers call me out and be like, there's no way
that Julius Caesar invented the three hundred and sixty five
day calendar, and blah blah blah blah, No he did.
I mean, he may not have invented it himself, but
he implemented it regardless of you know, who he used
(19:52):
and whatever that was him and a lot of other
things in here that people are like, there's one point
where in Julius Caesar's life where he was a general
and he got wounded and he couldn't lead his army
out onto the battleground. So he actually had a body
double go out and his armor and everything to lead
(20:13):
the people because his soldiers were used to seeing him
leading and he didn't want them to be disheartened and
lose because they didn't have their heart in it. So
he actually gave a body double his armor and sent
them out. And there's a lot of things like that
that different readers have sent me messages saying, oh, this
(20:36):
felt really good and was a lot of fun until
you got to this and that's just took me out
of it because it's so far fetched. But no, it's real.
It's it's actual history. You can google it and find
out it's all.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So yeah, yeah, and that's interesting when you said that readers.
I've had a reader say that to me once I
was all into the story. He said, this one scene
happened and that just couldn't believe it. And then once
something becomes implausible or just the readers like no, no,
that would never happen. That you could lose the reader
(21:09):
even if the even if what you're writing about is
actually factual, they just if they don't believe it. Now,
for auth the Sheelf listeners who aren't familiar at all
with Julius Caesar, they don't they like who is that?
Can you describe the character, what his family grounded personality is?
(21:30):
He like that he's like a main character can you
describe him for people who don't have a don't even
know who he is.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
The real Julius Caesar or the one in my book,
because like they're basically the same, but obviously there would
be some minor difference.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Isn't there. Yeah, the one in your book.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Okay, so did Julius Caesar in my book just like
the one in real life. He grew up in a
wealthy family and he was raised from the time that
he was basically an infant to you know, become a
(22:09):
general and increase his family's name and all this kind
of stuff. And he had a lot of relatives that
had political power. His individual branch of the family didn't
at the time have much, but there was very much
the thing in Rome to you know, the families, the clans,
(22:33):
the Julie that's where Julius gets the is the clan Julii,
all the different clans. They vied for power. Kind of
it was a democracy, they had the Senate, they had,
but it was very much different clans pretty much vying
(22:55):
forward like the most power and the most control and whatever.
So he was kind of raised in that environment and
the best path for to do that was become a soldier,
become a general, bring glory to Rome, come back, and
you could get the consulship, and you could get all
(23:16):
this power and all this glory and raise your family's
name and all that kind of stuff. So his life
basically went the same way it did in history, except
when he was very young he was introduced to the
real power in Rome, and the real power was the vampires,
(23:38):
the shadowy enclave of string pullers that the common people
of Rome had no real idea of exactly what was
going on. But it was kind of an un an
open secret, if you would, that there were these shadowy,
(24:01):
evil creatures in Rome that did whatever, but the extent
of their power and everything was not really known. So
Julius was introduced to the vampires, and they were using
him as a tool to help manipulate the politics of
(24:22):
Rome and all of that. And finally he just had
enough and wanted to rebel against the vampire overlords and
changed the way things went. So he was a very
prideful man that was raised in this kind of, you know,
(24:42):
seek glory kind of thing, and he spent most of
his life trying to raise up his family and seek
glory and do all these wonderful what was considered wonderful things,
and so he went along with what the vampires said
because he knew that that would get him what he wanted,
until finally he couldn't, he couldn't stomach it anymore. And
(25:06):
that's where the book goes.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's just a little science fiction.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Say that again, Is this the book?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Would you say a mildly science fiction or not?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I wouldn't say science fiction because that kind of implies
a futuristic or a science y kind of thing. But
fantastic definitely, kind of a fantasy, unreal, gothic horror maybe
aspect to historical fiction. So it is historical fiction, but
(25:43):
it's the the fiction parts are much more fantastical than
a lot of historical fiction.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Who are these vampires? Are they like real tall?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Big?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Are they creatures? They like humans? Who are they? Can
you describe the vampires for our listeners?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Well? In the book you never get a real In
this book, you never get a real sense. And I
kind of did that on purpose, where I wanted this
book to be a teaser of where people are like, Oh,
I want to know more about these vampires, so I
don't I don't want to give away too much. But
(26:23):
they are at first glance very human. If you see
them out and about in the daytime wearing a cloak
or whatever, they might look like a frail human or
a skinny human or whatever. But if you uncover that
(26:45):
there they are shriveled. They are scary. They're unnaturally fast
and strong, and their senses are elevated. They can they
can see better than everyone else, they can hear better
than everyone else, they can move faster than everyone else.
They're stronger than everyone else. But all of that has
come at a price to their bodies. So their visage
(27:14):
is not appealing. They're not meant to be these beautiful,
charming Transylvanian royalty. They're very much selfish, evil creatures, and
their visage reflects that.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
What is life like for our listeners again to imagine it,
What is life like living in Rome during the time
the story takes place.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Well, that very very different life for different people, much
like in America today. You know, what is life like
in America? Well, for who you know, for the one percent,
life is pretty good. For the you know, bottom forty
percent or so, life is pretty not good. I mean,
(28:11):
it's what you make of it. As far as your
day to day happiness goes. But you know, and Rome
was very much the same way at the time that
the upper crust lived a very good life. If you
were a citizen of Rome were there was a lot
of great benefits to being a citizen of Rome. And
or if you were just someone that happened to live
(28:34):
in the area that Rome claimed but weren't a citizen,
life was much less wonderful than that. And if you
were a slave then beause they did have slaves and
they you know, talk about the gladiators and that kind
of stuff, and that was one way to win freedom.
As a slave. You'd be thrown into vadiator pits and
(28:55):
if you won enough fights and we're the champion for
long enough, then you could be granted your freedom, and
you know, things like that. So life in Rome at
the time we're talking about, you know, he died and
(29:16):
I'm having a brain fart now it's been long enough
since I did the research. He died somewhere around forty VC.
So you know, if you can imagine, if you're Christian
and you think about what life was like at Jesus time,
that's you know, the average, that's that's kind of what
(29:37):
life would have been like, you know, as far as
technology and comfort and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I want to know what's happening now for me pulling
the story into it is I want to know what
happens with Julius Caesars and his vampires and if he
I don't want you to give away, but if he
knew when he interacted with him just what they were.
Did he just think they had power? He didn't really
know what they were, what they could do. He just
(30:06):
was he wanted He thought they could give him leverage,
and but he it was more than what he thought.
As the story goes on, can you introduce us to
some of the other major and minor characters who have
moved the story forward.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
There are vampires. There's one vampire in particular that he
begins to recognize that maybe doesn't have the same motivations,
isn't isn't exactly the same as the rest. So there's
there's kind of that going on in there. There's obviously
some of his friends like Brutus and and things like
(30:47):
that that are in the story that helped drive it forward.
There's Cicero is in the story. He's a he's not
a big character, but he's a big influence on Caesar
at the time, and he was in real life a
big influence on Caesar, and Cleopatra is a huge one.
Cleopatra plays a pretty big role.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Okay, what have readers before we start talking about the
Ballad of Jason, what have readers been saying about to
end the night?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Du youa Caesar's Secret War.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I've got a lot of really positive feedback. Like I said,
I've gotten comments mixed in with the positive feedback, like oh,
you know, this brought me out of it because it
didn't seem real too, things that actually were historically real,
but they were mixed in with I mean, I've gotten
nothing but glowing comments all of my reviews everything. Maybe
(31:49):
people that don't like it just aren't putting stuff in
there because they don't want to be mean, But I mean,
I think the lowest review I've gotten is like a
three star review, but then the write up that went
with that. I was so happy with that write up
that I really didn't care how many stars they clicked on.
It's been it's been a really positive experience with both books.
(32:10):
With the feedback I've received has been wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Okay, introduce us to the Ballot of Jay. Please give
us an overview of this novel.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
So the Ballad of Jase I went completely different. I
stepped away from reality. And my brother had gotten me
into reading these books that are called lit RPG, which
is literary role playing game, and it's kind of like
if you the main character was a character in like
(32:45):
a computer role playing game where you have to do
these quests and level up and that kind of stuff.
And the books are written kind of from that perspective,
and I was having a lot of fun reading them.
They're not you know, it's it's the way Marvel movies
are a lot of fun, but they're not cinema with
a capital C. You know. That's kind of the way
(33:07):
the lit RPG books are. They're a lot of fun,
but you know, you wouldn't call them, you know, culturally important.
So I was having a lot of fun with that,
and I decided I wanted to write something that was
just fun to write that I didn't have to do
a lot of research, I didn't have to really get
(33:29):
crazy with, you know. So I decided to write one
of these lit RPG books. And with pretty much everything
I do, I always come up with a character first,
and I get to know that character in my head
and really understand him and who he is and what
he's like and what his motivations are and all that
kind of stuff, and then I build a book around
(33:52):
that character. So I came up with Jason Howard, who
is a studio musician in LA and he's got Masters
in stringed Instruments from the Boston Conservatory, so he's a
he's a very well trained, classically trained musician, and he's
(34:17):
a studio musician in LA. And he's also got his
own band, which is what did I call it in
the book? I think I called it Punks of the
Round Table, and it's basically they take medieval instruments like
the hurdy gurdy and they play punk rock in the
bars of Los Angeles. That's that's his band. But Jase
(34:43):
doesn't have a lot of really close friends. He has
a lot of people he knows and he gets along with,
and he's kind of popular, but he doesn't really have
like people he's close to, except for his best friend
TJ and her husband, which happens to be his cousin,
and so he hangs out with him every now and then.
(35:05):
So he's walking home from their house after a gaming session.
They're playing Dungeons and Dragons and he gets hit on
the back of the head or something and wakes up
in a fantasy world and he's no longer himself. He's
now a halfling, and there's magic and all that kind
(35:26):
of stuff. And so the whole thing is the rest
of the book is him coming to grips with you know,
he's not in Kansas anymore, so to speak, he's not
in la anymore, and learning to navigate this magical world.
And it's very much about the character more than anything else,
(35:47):
and his growth and his journey and found family and
growing into you know, this world and who he is
and embracing different aspects of himself. And it's it's the
feedback I've gotten for it is that it's genuinely funny,
which is what I was going for. It's definitely not
(36:07):
a serious book. It makes fun of itself, but it's
got it serious moments, and it's got its heartfelt things
and all of that. But it's the it's meant to be,
uh in general, a very cozy book and a very
warm book and a funny book. And the feedback I've gotten.
(36:27):
Is that it really hit the mark on that Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Now it's day. Is he what happens to him and
his magical he gets hitting the head? Is magical? Realm?
Does it? Does? He does?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
He?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Does? He go in and out of this magical back
to what quote unquote reality or does at the end
of the book he come out of the magical and
somehow it's changed his life. And I'm thinking of a movie.
The actor's name he did comedy is not coming to me.
But he did something. There was something he did, and
(37:04):
he entered this He had this super power to make
everything go the way he wanted it to go. But
it did not have the effects on his real life.
It had effects that he could not stop, Adam Sandler,
It had effects that he couldn't stop or control. And
some he regretted, is that some of what happens in
(37:26):
the Ballot of Jays. Does he stay in this magical land?
Does he come out? Does it affect his real life?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
His real life as far as we know in that book,
unless I write a sequel and come up with something else,
But as far as we know, he is permanently in
this new world. And you know, for the rest of
the time, he does not come out of the New World.
He is actually there. He's in the New World, and
(37:59):
he just has adventure. And you know, in in his
real life, he didn't have didn't have a bad relationship
with his parents or anything, but it wasn't particularly affectionate
and loving, and you know, it wasn't wasn't cruel or anything.
He never you know, his parents did love him, but
(38:19):
it was just you know, distant, So he he never
really had a lot of great h interpersonal like deep
interpersonal connections. And throughout the ballot of Jase, with his
adventures learning to wield magic and different things like that,
(38:40):
he it's kind of a found family and soul searching
kind of thing, but it's framed in a little bit
of ludicrous, you know, fantasy world. He's he's learning magic
and he's a classically trained musician, and so what's he do.
(39:00):
He summons an electrical guitar that doesn't need electricity because
you know, hey, it's a magic world and he.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Can do that.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
And so it's it doesn't try to be Tolkien or
you know, anything that's remotely serious, except for when it
is kind of serious.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
So, now, how old is Jase and what audience is
the book written.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
For Jase is twenty six at the time that he
goes into the New World, So you know, he he's
old enough that he got his master's degree and then
moved back to la and became a studio musician and
kind of established himself in that industry, and you know,
was making headways in the local band scene with his
(39:50):
with his weird punk rock band. And yeah, so he's
old enough for all that, but still a pretty young man,
you know, still, you know, still a lot of life
to look forward to, a lot of lessons to learn
kind of thing. And what was the rest of the question.
I'm sorry I got babbling?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And what's the audience? So who would be a great
audience for the Ballad of Jake's Who would you say?
These people who like these type of books would love
this story.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
If you're into lit RPG, if you know what that is,
and you're in it, and I.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Don't you tell us what is that? What exactly I've
never heard of that before? Exactly what is it?
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It's literary role playing game lit RPG. And it's exactly
what I said before, where it's written kind of from
the perspective, So in the book, let me, let me
actually open up. I have it in front of me.
As as it goes in there are things like, uh,
(40:55):
let's see, the arrow looked translucent as it flew and
when it hit the bison, it hit with an impact
of a truck. The bison almost fell over as it
knocked several feet. As it was knocked several feet to
the side. Boop, you have learned a new skill. Stealth
shot arrow undetectable by target until struck, deals double weapon damage. Additionally,
(41:16):
deals bleeding damage every second for five seconds. Three minute
cool down can only be used from stealth. So it
kind of it has that regular like fantasy novel, but
then it's also interjected with things that you would see
in a game, and like if you were playing an
(41:39):
online or a you know, a role playing game on
your computer, different things where you would learn skills and
you level up and you get more powerful, and that
kind of you have to have to do quests. So
it's it's definitely meant to be fun, not serious. And
I love let RPG books in general, but I have
(42:01):
a hard time with a lot of them because they
have like so much of the game stuff and not
enough for the story, so I kind of call mine
lit RPG light. In fact, the the full title is
The Ballad of Jase, not your Mother's lit RPG. I'm
saying it's it's a little bit different, so it's a
(42:22):
it's you know, it's even with the title. I'm just
trying to be funny. I'm trying to be tongue in cheek.
I'm trying not to take myself seriously, not even take
the genre seriously. And there's a lot of wonderful books
like mine that don't take the genre seriously and are
fun and funny and I love them, but the audience
would be you know, my There is some mild swearing
(42:45):
potty mouth in the book, but it's not you know, uh,
it's the exception, not the rules. There's there's not a
whole bunch of it. But it is a modern day
young man studio music in La thrust into a fantasy world.
So every now and then he'll say like holy shit,
or you know, something to that effect, and it's sorry
(43:07):
if you don't allow swearing on your podcast. I should
have asked that. No, you go ahead, So, you know,
but that's that's about the worst. And there, you know,
there's some fantasy violence and stuff. But my one of
my best friends, his daughter's in second grade and she
(43:30):
reads a little bit every night before she goes to bed,
and she loves it. And she absolutely loves the book
and she has a good time with it. She reads,
she reads it aloud to her mom. But I also
my editor, Andy Malensky, he gave it to his sixteen
(43:51):
year old son who absolutely loved it. And my editor
enjoys it. And my mom, who is seventy eight, yeah,
seventy eight, she loves it. And you know, she's she's
not afraid to tell me when she doesn't like something.
And you know, my brother, who was written for really
enjoyed it. Who's god, he's got to be pushing sixty
(44:14):
now coming up close. So I mean, it's really there's
no distinct target audience. It's very lighthearted, it's very fun.
It's got a lot of pop culture references, a lot
of songs. It actually has. I have a soundtrack on
Spotify that's I think it's called like the Ballad of Jason,
(44:39):
not your Mother's soundtrack. It's my soundtrack that I put
up on Spotify that's got all of the music that's
listed in the book. It's very you know, it's very
much about Jase, and the feel of it is very
much his personality, where he's kind of a witty, fun
guy that loves pop culture and loves music. And the
(45:00):
book is really that's that's the book is. If you
like you know, if you go to comic CON's and
you like pop culture, if you know, if you think
it would be fun to go to Comic Con International
in San Diego, you're probably gonna love this book.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Okay, Now, Lo, you've written historical fiction and with this
little RPG or type of fantasy, which is your favorite
story for them? Uh? And why do you think that
it would attract you to that that genre?
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Uh? You know, I don't have a favorite genre. I
love everything from Uh, I don't know if you know
who uh gosh, the Horonomous Bosh books that's now a
TV show and I think a couple of TV shows
(45:55):
now and that kind of stuff. But it's like a
modern day La detective books. I love that. I love
science fiction. I love science fantasy like Star Wars with
the Space Magic. I love fantasy books. I love lit RPG.
I absolutely love historical fiction. Probably a third of the
books in my house are historical fiction. I love comic books.
(46:15):
I love I just love reading. I love imagination. I
love fiction, I like I like nonfiction. I've read quite
a bit of nonfiction, but I just love imagination, anything
that takes imagination, where you're telling a story and you're
coming up with and I've I even love reading books
(46:36):
where I don't generally like the way the author writes,
but I love the way they think, the things they
come up with. The you know, I can forgive a
lot of what I would consider bad writing for me,
because I think one person's bad writing is another person's
best book they ever read. But things that I would
(46:59):
consider bad writing I still absolutely love and enjoy because
I love the concepts and the ideas and the world
that this author came up with. So it's it's hard
for me to pick a favorite anything. The book that
I'm writing right now is a modern I guess you
(47:20):
would call it like a modern fantasy or a contemporary
fantasy or something. It's a guy living in Oregon on
the coast that finds out magic is real and he's
got to he's got the potential to use magic, and
he's got to learn it real quick because the big
bad is coming to take over the world kind of
(47:41):
thing and he's got to you know. So that's that's
what I'm writing right now. I've also got some ideas
written down in things for science fiction books that take place,
you know, in space and that kind of stuff, and
so I want to be kind of a John skall
(48:06):
Ze type of author. If I had to pick an
author that, like a John skaz writes, he's got some
books that are series, the Old Man's War series, it's
a science fiction series. But then he's got just tons
of books that are standalone and he's got you know,
and that's what I want to do. I don't want
(48:27):
people to be I don't want to be.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
I don't want to be the author that has the
big giant epic series that everybody's getting mad that the
next book didn't come out quick enough or whatever. You know.
I want to be the author that nobody knows what
I'm going to write next. You know, what's that genre
going to be? Is it going to be a series,
is it going to be a standalone book? Is it?
Because I want to write things that I enjoy and
(48:55):
I don't want to be tied down to you know,
even if I do books in a sea, I want
them to be more like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where you
can pick up any book in that series and you're fine.
You don't go like, oh, dang it, this is the
fourth book and now I got to read the earlier
ones to figure out what every book can be standalone
on its own, you know what I mean. And yeah,
(49:18):
that's that's my goal. That's what I want to do.
And that's you know, I can't afford because anybody that
tries to put out a book, it's very expensive. You
can put out a book for for next to nothing.
You could write it in Microsoft Word and use the
tools that Amazon has to you know, get it out
there and online or Ingram Spark, but if you want
(49:41):
to get it professionally edited, it costs per word. And
if you want to get cover art or if you
want to make you know, it gets very expensive. And
and I decided when I when my wife convinced me
to start putting out my books, I decided I wanted
mine to be as professional as possible because I read
(50:01):
a lot of free books, and I listened to a
lot of free books on Audible and so I've come
across so many books that I absolutely loved it, but
there'd be spots where like it says the the like
you know, the author wrote it and didn't hire an editor,
(50:23):
And if you try to self edit a book, you're
going to miss so much because you wrote it and
your mind just knows what you intended and you just
miss a lot.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Yeah, And so a lot of the free books that
I've read on Kindle and listened to on Audible and stuff,
there's there's things that take you out because of the
lack of editing, or if you're reading it and it's
you know, words are spelled wrong, or there's missing punctuation,
or things that just kind of you know, your mind
(50:57):
kind of doesn't really see the punctuation until bill it
changes the meaning of a sentence because it's not punctuated right,
and then it kind of takes you out of the
book for a minute while you figure out, Okay, what
were they really trying to say? And those are the
things that I didn't want in my books. I was like,
you know, I don't care if anybody likes my writing
or not. Well, I mean I do care, obviously. I
want people to like it, but I mean, it's not
(51:18):
going to make or break me my pride. If someone
doesn't enjoy what I wrote, hopefully someone else will. What
would just break me as a person is comments like
you know, you spelled this wrong, or this grammar's wrong,
or this is you know, stupid things that I didn't
want people to be taken out of my story because
(51:41):
of things that could be fixed. Yeah, I went the
route of where a lot of authors can't. And I'm
not knocking the authors that don't do this, the authors
that just put it out for free because that's all
they can do. More power to you. You are awesome
and you are brave. But it's kind of the cowardice
that drives me to go the exp route because I
(52:02):
don't want that. I can't take that, the the hate
that would come from those mistakes, you know, like crush,
crust my soul, me myself. So I can only afford
to put out at most like one book a year
because I do you know what, I want to have
it as professional as possible, and I want to hire
(52:25):
an artist to do the cover, and I you know,
all these things, and yeah, I want to I want
to support real artists doing real art and that kind
of stuff. So it's I don't even know why I
started this tirade.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
But no, you know what, I agree with you. You
can do it for free, and but I always think
about my brand and how I would be remembered. And
I'm with you. You want to be as professional as you can.
Even if somebody doesn't like this story, they can look
until you put some effort into it. From the cover
(53:00):
it on, they can tell that you put some effort
into it. Now, talking about the cover, as we come
down to the last few minutes in today show, I
love the cover of Julius Caesar. Look for those who
are interested and maybe creating their own novel when they're listening. Now,
who did you talked about your editor? Who designed the
book cover? What was it like finding the designer and
(53:22):
working to create the book cover?
Speaker 3 (53:25):
So for two end the night. If you look in
the back cover and if you look inside, it says
Anicio Press, I don't really have as Press isn't. I
don't want to say they're not a real publisher, but
their whole thing is they take the the self out
(53:45):
of self publishing. So what I did for that book
in particular is I hired Anso Press to do all
the formatting of the book to you know, get it
professionally formatted, and to get the cover done and all
that kind of stuff. So I hired Cup and Quill,
who Andy Mullens, you know, Linda from Cup and Quill
(54:07):
handed my manuscript off to Andy Malinsky And now I
don't ever want anyone else to to edit my stuff again,
because I enjoyed working with him so well. But then
when it was all done, Linda said, hey, I know
this guy that does this thing called an eco press.
He can help you get your book out there. And
I didn't know the first thing about you know, formatting
(54:28):
the book and cover design and all that kind of stuff.
So I just went with that and it was a
great experience. And but again it's it's not free, it's expensive.
So I would recommend any authors out there that if
you if you have the means to, you know, I
would absolutely use an eco press or another kind of
(54:51):
lightweight publishing company, or you know, if you can, if
you can navigate the whole traditional publishing world and you
actually want to get your book in front of as
many readers as possible, I would love to go traditional publishing,
because I just don't have the advertising power to tell
people about my book at the rate that i'd want
(55:12):
or traditional publishers can do that. But yeah, that's that's
the story of the cover and everything is Anisio Press
actually has people that work for them, and they came
up with the cover and all that with my second book.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
I'll go ahead, I.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
Was gonna say, with my second book, I actually reached
out to an artist that I kind of liked their stuff,
and that artist I had used her in the past
for other things that I've done, and but she was busy,
so she said, oh, my friend could probably do that
(55:50):
for you too. So I contacted that artist and actually
got her to do a custom cover and everything. And
I'm much happier actually with the Ballad of Jason's cover,
just because I was able to reach out and support
an artists directly.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Okay, where can that?
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Made me really happy with that?
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Where can off the shelf listeners get copies of your books.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Anywhere books are sold. So they're on Amazon, They're on
Barnes Andoble dot com. They're available if you go to
my website and click on the links there. You can
get them direct from ingram spark at a little bit
cheaper than you can other places because I put them
as a discount if you buy them direct, just a
(56:42):
couple bucks off. And you can go into just about
any bookstore in the world that's able to order books
and tell them you want my book, and you know
spell my funny spelled name, Lou Gray, which is l
l U E W Gray g r e y, and yeah,
(57:05):
they can get it. It's available through Ingram's Park, which
means just about any bookstore in the world can order it.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
And are you on any social media in case any
Lizarsteners wanted to keep up with you on social media?
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Absolutely, I'm Lou Gray author on Facebook. I think I'm
just Lou Gray on Instagram. I'm Lou Gray author on
Blue Sky. I think there's some others that I don't
check nearly as often. I'm really bad at doing social
media these days, and I do try to answer if
(57:41):
people contact me and stuff, and I will absolutely love
to engage with my audience, but everything's so depressing in
the news these days, and when I log onto social
media and I see like, oh, this person in the
government is espousing genocide and whatever, I'm just like I
(58:03):
don't want to read this, so I must let much
less engaged with social media than I used to be,
just because it's depressing. But yeah, I do check it periodically,
and I absolutely if someone wants to get a hold
of me on social media, you can also email me
(58:25):
at lou dot Gray at gmail dot com and I'll
answer that, okay. And my website is Lou Gray author
dot com, which is all of my social media and
links to buying the books and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
Oh my goodness, well, thank you, thank you, thank you
for taking time out of your Saturday and your day
to be here with us and our listener.
Speaker 3 (58:45):
Can I throw one more thing out there?
Speaker 2 (58:46):
I almost so absolutely if.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
You use itchio at all, Lou Gray Author. At itchio,
you can actually get free copies of my books. You
can download pdf copies of my books for free, and
for the immediate future, I intend every book I write
to go up there for free as well, so you
can buy them and support me that way. Or if
(59:10):
you just want a PDF copy without the cover and
without all the crazy, uh you know, cool things like that,
you can actually get it for free. And there's a
link on my itchio to my coffee page. You can
go on there and buy me a coffee, you know,
if you want to support me that way, if you
want to read the book and then decide whether or
(59:30):
not you want to support me. So sorry, I'm taking
up so much your time.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
No, no, no, we've actually oh, you've been a pleasure.
We have had again the pleasure of interviewing Lou Gray here.
He's the author of the books to End the Night,
Julius Caesar's Secret War, and a Ballad of Jason, which
we spoke about today on today's show. If you came
in midstream, no Werries wants the shelf in the streaming
(59:54):
and it's up YouTube, iTunes, spreaker is so many different locations.
You can go back and listen to it in a
entirety as many times as you like. And you can
also share it with people who love just books in general,
historical fiction, which again the Julius Caesar at tend Tonight,
and also fantasy. And we learned today about a new
(01:00:19):
I've learned anyway about a new writing form of that
I hadn't heard about, this literary role plane uh lit
r p R p G. So you can learn about
that too. If as you want to explore it for
the first time, or if you already are aware and
you wanna you wanta dig into a little bit more.
The Ballad of Jason might be something that you truly,
(01:00:39):
truly will love. If that's something that you do like,
We have enjoyed having Lou Gray here on us. His
website again is Lou Gray author dot com, l l
U E W G R E y A U T
h O R dot com, Lou Gray author dot com.
So we want to thank you for being here with
(01:00:59):
us on Off the Shelf. Please come back here next Saturday.
We will have another awesome author and guests here for you.
Tell everybody tune in too, Off the Shelf. People who
love all things story, all things story. We've had movie
producers on that's just another story for him. So all
(01:01:19):
thing story, Off the Shelf books, And as I always
tell you, you are awesome, You really really are. You
are amazing. Go out and create a fabulous day for yourself.
See you back here next Saturday. Lou If shoot you
an email when the show finishes streaming. Thank you, thank you,
thank you. Bye for now.
You're listening to the winning literary show Off the Shelf
Books Talk Radio Live with host Denise Turney, author of
the books Long Walk Up, Porsche, Love, More Over Me,
Spiral Love Has Many Faces, and Rosette Us Great Hope.
Turn up your dial and get ready for a blast
of feature author interviews, four one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready, let's go it all.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome to Office
Shelf Books. I always have to thank olier listeners who
have been with those show high away eighteen years, and
for those of it's your first time tuning in an
office show, I say welcome, welcome, welcome, and we're so
happy to have you here with us this morning. Kicking
(00:51):
out today's show is a quote by Isabelle Lafecchi, your
passion is waiting for your courage to catch I love
that quote. Your passion is waiting for your courage to
catch up. Welcome you, guys. We are more than f
way through July. It is Saturday, July nineteenth. Already. If
(01:12):
there's something you want to do, I encourage you to
get to it. I normally will start off next talking
about one of my books. But instead of doing that,
because I want to get right into the interview today,
I encourage you to visit me online and you can
read free excerpts from any of my books. I just
came out also with two middle school coloring books. If
(01:35):
you have any young folks in your life, I know
how much I used to love the color when I
was a kid, especially on a rainy day. Is cloudy
here in the southeastern part of the United States. But
my website you r L is chistel www dot c
h I s t e l l dot com. You
(01:56):
can read free excerpts a lot. There's a lot that
you can check out. My blog is there, etc. Again
it's chistel cchis te l l dot com. I hope
you book market and go back again and again and
grab a book while you're over there. And now let
(02:16):
us go and meet our very special office shelf guest.
And this morning's guest is lou Gray lou Is, and I
hope I'm saying his name right, and if not, I
hope he corrects me. Lou is a writer, photographer, sound engineer,
and he is a reader. And this morning I got
him and said I gotta go out and get a
new novel to read. Not only do I write, but
(02:38):
I love to read novels myself. And he served in
the Navy for twenty years. He has also worked as
an educator, and Lou is the author of the books
To End the Night, Julius Caesar's Secret War, and the
Ballad of Jason. He and his wife lived with their
dogs and chickens on planet Earth. I encourage you to
(03:01):
visit Lou online at Lou Gray author dot com and
that's spelled l as A like l l U E
W g R E y a U t h o
R dot com, Lou Gray author dot com. We are
just honored to have Lou Gray join us on Off
(03:21):
the Chef Books this morning. Welcome, Welcome to Off the
Cheff Lou.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Thank you, Denise. I appreciate that glowing introduction. That was amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
We look forward to what you said. I always learned
something for every guest. Every guest I learned something. I'm
sure our listeners do too, which is why they keep
coming back. So the first few questions I'm going to
ask you, I ask every guest to give our listeners
a little backstory on the authors before we start talking
about their books. So to kick off today's show, Louke,
can you tell off the chef listeners where you grew
(03:56):
up in what life was like for you growing up.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I grew up in New York, and most people hear
that and they think about a city. But I grew
up on a dairy farm in upstate New York and
life was pretty slow, you know. I mean, get up
in the morning, bring the cows in, start the milking chores,
go to school, come home, and time for evening chores.
(04:22):
So then summertime was usually spent out in the hayfields.
And that was most of my life growing up until
I was starting to get old enough to leave home.
Then I decided I wanted to be a rich and
famous actors, so I tried my hand at Hollywood for
(04:44):
a while and ended up joining the military after a
couple of years of Hollywood not wanting me, and the
rest is history.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Here I am are you so? Do you have siblings
or were you an only child growing up?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
I have.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I was the youngest for sixteen years, and then I
have a sister that came.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Along when I was interesting interesting, And then I.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Have a sister that's like six years older than me
a brother that's five years older and a brother that's
one year older, who, like most siblings that are that
close in age, we hated each other growing up and
now he's my best friend, so you know.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Oh wow. So when you were doing acting, though, did
you ever do like commercials? You said you did it
for a few years. You must have had some success,
even if it was wasn't as much as you would
have liked.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
To keep yourself. I did some stage work. I did
some commercials, nothing big, nothing national. I did some extra work,
you know, some sitcoms and things, but you know, just
walk by the window while they're looking out or whatever
kind of stuff. Nothing, nothing earth shattering.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Well congratulations on that, though not everybody can say that.
To to to whatever steps you took, you did get
some some bites for you for your now. When you
were a kid, lou, what did you dream of being?
What did you want to become when you were a kid?
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Uh, it depends on how old a kid. You know.
As I got older, I wanted to be that rich
and famous actor. But when I was a little kid,
I wanted nothing more than to be a farmer.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh interesting, interesting, Who or what inspired your love for
writing books.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Oh, that that's the hardest question.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I just I grew up reading. I was reading Tolkien
by the time I was in like first grade. My mom,
uh you know, we didn't have a TV in the
house growing up. It was all, you know, reading books,
and so you know, I had plenty of older siblings
and I always felt dumb if I couldn't keep up
with them. So I was reading very early. And it's
been reading my whole life. And I've written stories my
(07:05):
whole life, just never thought about publishing them until we're
trying to decide what I was going to do with
the rest of my life because I was medically discharged
from the military and I couldn't continue teaching because my health.
And my wife was like, why don't you start publishing
some of the stuff you write? So I picked a
(07:26):
book that I had written probably ten years before that,
which was The To End the Night, Julius Caesar's Secret War,
and I sent it to an editor which I used
cup and quill editing. Linda there was very nice, and
she sent it to one of her employees, Andy, and
(07:48):
Andy was working with an editor with such an amazing experience,
and Andy Malinsky, he's actually moved out on his own.
Now he's got his own editing business that he's starting.
So it's I highly recommend cup and Quil editing, but
I also highly recommend Andy. He's the guy that I
(08:09):
always use and he's beyond dash editing dot GitHub dot io,
and yeah, he's available to use as an editor. But yeah,
I had written that book forever before that, and then
my wife was like, just get it out there. So
I went through a little bit of editing process with Andy,
(08:30):
who tried to make me turn this little novella into
a much bigger book. But I was like, no, I'm
done writing it. I just want to get it out there,
and we did, and then I wrote my second book
after that, and I'm part way through my third and
I love it.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Look at you now going to as we dig a
little deeper into to end the night before we talk
about your second novel. Have you seen history repeat itself?
And I've heard people say it does, even when we
want to say we humans are humans, we swear that
(09:05):
we won't let something happen again. And then have you
seen that in your research work, just in just in
just your travels, just everyday life, in your encounters. Have
you seen that history tends to repeat it that? Oh?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, yep, for sure.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Can you share an instance when you think that as
humans weep, we keep doing something over and over again.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, obviously we're talking about Julius Caesar's secret War to
end the night. Uh So, I mean, in this case,
we've got Julius Caesar who went from he took a
democracy basically into a dictatorship. And we see that again
(09:53):
and again throughout history. There's tons of times where democracy
are relatively free, people are taken and it beyond just
taking it something from a democracy into a dictatorship, which
is what Caesar's you know, real history. Caesar's goals were.
(10:17):
It was very much a cult of personality. He was
loved by the common man and hated by the rich
people because because he was loved so much by the
common man, so it was very much a cult. You know,
his soldiers loved him. He was seen as a soldier's soldier.
He led from the front. He would you know, he
wasn't just a general standing ground giving orders. He would
(10:39):
put himself in the thick of it. He was seen
as kind of a badass, and he definitely had his
cult of personality. And I mean not to draw any
conclusions to orange people or anything, but you know, that's
happening today. It happened with Hitler, it happened with Mussolini,
(11:00):
happened with all kinds of you know, and you flavor
it a little bit differently depending on who the dictator
is and what the situation was, but the basics of
it are basically the same, you know. I mean, history
repeats just has a little bit different. It's like bell
Bottom's coming back. You know, they don't look exactly the
(11:23):
same as they did in the sixties, but you know,
they came back for a while.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Yeah. So, now, how much time did you spend researching
the actual Julius Thieves his history before you started writing
To End the Night?
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I actually started writing it before I started researching too
much I knew, and it was written over a very
long period of time while I was in the military,
and you know, just when I got to it, i'd
write some here and there. But I mean, I knew
most people know at least the Shakespeare version of his
story and that kind of stuff, and I wanted to
(12:06):
I actually had the idea for the vampires that are
in the book first, and I wanted to find something
to do with them, and giving Julius Caesar a motivation
beyond self aggrandizement seemed like a decent place to do that.
So I started kind of writing, and then I was like, man,
(12:26):
I need to figure out a lot more. So I
bought I bought a couple of his biographies, books that
Julius Caesar actually wrote about his own life, and then
I was like, well, that's all just from his point
of view. So I dove in and I got some
books by Cicero and other people that were contemporary to
him at the time that they wrote about the same situation,
(12:48):
and that led me down a rabbit hole into more
and more books. And then I got, you know, textbooks,
and I looked in the index of the textbooks to
find out where they got their information, and I got
the books that the textbooks referenced. I ended up getting
over one hundred books on the Roman Civil War and
(13:09):
Julius Caesar in that timeframe, and did a lot of
research in the long run, but in the short term,
I just kind of dove into it and said, let's
see what happens.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Interesting. Yeah, when you start going into a novel, then
you're like, Okay, I got to make sure this is accurate,
because there are readers who know every little thing about
what you're writing about, and especially historical fiction, and they'll say, no, no, no, no, no,
that's not what happened, or no, it's not the right whatever,
that didn't happen during that time period. So the research
(13:41):
is important. Now, where you started writing this book long
before you thought, oh, you know what, I'm going to
start writing and publishing novels you started before? Then, Where
did you get the idea for the book to end
the night? What inspired you to even write it?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
H I've always kind of loved like vampire stuff, and
I think at the time that I started writing this,
and this is how long ago it was, was when
oh goodness, what's it called vampire movie? The vampires and
(14:20):
the werewolves are fighting. That could be a whole bunch
of different movies, right, But why am I having Anyway,
there was a vampire movie series that was out that
was really popular, and.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I started trying to think of it too, and I
can't either, So I guess we're in the same boat.
But yeah, I think I can imagine which one you're
talking about. But the name is not coming to me either,
So that's what inspired it.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
The main vampire lady was a death dealer and she
was out fighting the werewolves and gosh, I can't my
brain is not working anyway. That that's just what had
like vampires and stuff on my mind because it was
really popular at the time, and I'd always kind of
liked different you know, I read Bramstokers Dracula and stuff
(15:09):
when I was in high school, and I wanted to
do like a completely different take on vampires. I didn't
want them to be this was before those movies came out,
but I didn't want them to be the you know,
the sparkling, pretty Twilight vampires or any of the other
(15:31):
romantic I wanted them to be ugly and you know,
scary and all of that stuff. So I started coming
up with an entire history of if vampires were real,
how might they have come into being? And you know,
what might they be, Like why would they have these
(15:54):
weaknesses that vampires have, the running water, the uh garlic
that you know, all of these things, and so I
started building up all of that and then I was like, well,
if I'm going to write some stories about this, which
at the time was just writing them for myself. I
(16:14):
got to find a place to put them. So do
I want to do like their own world, not on Earth,
or do I want to do it on a fictional
version of Earth? Or And then I decided, you know what,
I'm going to do it as like historical fiction because
I also really like history. I read a lot of
historical fiction, and I just kind of picked Julius Caesar
(16:37):
as a place to write the first story in this
vampires are real world, and I don't know, I just
kind of went from there. I didn't have a real
impetus or anything that really made me pick Caesar. I
don't even remember what it was, but somewhere I decided
(16:57):
that that was where I wanted to start with these
vampire So it was all really about finding a place
for the vampires in the beginning, and going to historical
fiction was kind of just an offshoot to that.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Okay, can you give off the shelf listeners an overview
up to end the Night?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Sure? It starts off when Julius Caesar the day before,
actually Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, which, if you know
the history, the Rubicon is a stream. It's they call
it a river, but it's not. If you look at it,
you could kind of step across it. It's small, but
it's a river in Italy that at the time was
(17:40):
the boundary between the provinces and Rome itself, and if
a general were to bring his army across that border
into Rome itself, it was instantly seen as insurrection against
the law. Generals had to disband their armies before they
(18:00):
could come into Rome proper, Rome the country, not the
not the city as we know it today. And so
it starts off there the day before he crosses the
Rubicon with his armies and kicks off his civil war,
and it goes all the way up until the end
of his life, which you know, the IDEs of March
(18:22):
he gets stabbed by the Senate. If you didn't know that,
I'm sorry spoilers, but yeah, and it's the whole story
of his civil war that he started. And instead of
being a whatever his real motivations were, you can He's
(18:44):
got his own biographies and everything out that you can read.
H I just kind of switched his motivations to he
started the civil war to fight the vampire overward over
lords of Rome. And yeah, so it's it's very short.
With that timeframe and that subject matter, it could have been,
(19:07):
you know, a four hundred plus page novel, but it's
only in eighty seven page novella. It's very short.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
But yeah, where is this story fully or in part? Well?
What would be impart? At most? How much of it
is based on real life events? What you say?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Everything except the vampires. I did a lot of research.
Everything I included in here is true. I had some
readers call me out and be like, there's no way
that Julius Caesar invented the three hundred and sixty five
day calendar, and blah blah blah blah, No he did.
I mean, he may not have invented it himself, but
he implemented it regardless of you know, who he used
(19:52):
and whatever that was him and a lot of other
things in here that people are like, there's one point
where in Julius Caesar's life where he was a general
and he got wounded and he couldn't lead his army
out onto the battleground. So he actually had a body
double go out and his armor and everything to lead
(20:13):
the people because his soldiers were used to seeing him
leading and he didn't want them to be disheartened and
lose because they didn't have their heart in it. So
he actually gave a body double his armor and sent
them out. And there's a lot of things like that
that different readers have sent me messages saying, oh, this
(20:36):
felt really good and was a lot of fun until
you got to this and that's just took me out
of it because it's so far fetched. But no, it's real.
It's it's actual history. You can google it and find
out it's all.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So yeah, yeah, and that's interesting when you said that readers.
I've had a reader say that to me once I
was all into the story. He said, this one scene
happened and that just couldn't believe it. And then once
something becomes implausible or just the readers like no, no,
that would never happen. That you could lose the reader
(21:09):
even if the even if what you're writing about is
actually factual, they just if they don't believe it. Now,
for auth the Sheelf listeners who aren't familiar at all
with Julius Caesar, they don't they like who is that?
Can you describe the character, what his family grounded personality is?
(21:30):
He like that he's like a main character can you
describe him for people who don't have a don't even
know who he is.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
The real Julius Caesar or the one in my book,
because like they're basically the same, but obviously there would
be some minor difference.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Isn't there. Yeah, the one in your book.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Okay, so did Julius Caesar in my book just like
the one in real life. He grew up in a
wealthy family and he was raised from the time that
he was basically an infant to you know, become a
(22:09):
general and increase his family's name and all this kind
of stuff. And he had a lot of relatives that
had political power. His individual branch of the family didn't
at the time have much, but there was very much
the thing in Rome to you know, the families, the clans,
(22:33):
the Julie that's where Julius gets the is the clan Julii,
all the different clans. They vied for power. Kind of
it was a democracy, they had the Senate, they had,
but it was very much different clans pretty much vying
(22:55):
forward like the most power and the most control and whatever.
So he was kind of raised in that environment and
the best path for to do that was become a soldier,
become a general, bring glory to Rome, come back, and
you could get the consulship, and you could get all
(23:16):
this power and all this glory and raise your family's
name and all that kind of stuff. So his life
basically went the same way it did in history, except
when he was very young he was introduced to the
real power in Rome, and the real power was the vampires,
(23:38):
the shadowy enclave of string pullers that the common people
of Rome had no real idea of exactly what was
going on. But it was kind of an un an
open secret, if you would, that there were these shadowy,
(24:01):
evil creatures in Rome that did whatever, but the extent
of their power and everything was not really known. So
Julius was introduced to the vampires, and they were using
him as a tool to help manipulate the politics of
(24:22):
Rome and all of that. And finally he just had
enough and wanted to rebel against the vampire overlords and
changed the way things went. So he was a very
prideful man that was raised in this kind of, you know,
(24:42):
seek glory kind of thing, and he spent most of
his life trying to raise up his family and seek
glory and do all these wonderful what was considered wonderful things,
and so he went along with what the vampires said
because he knew that that would get him what he wanted,
until finally he couldn't, he couldn't stomach it anymore. And
(25:06):
that's where the book goes.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It's just a little science fiction.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Say that again, Is this the book?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Would you say a mildly science fiction or not?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
I wouldn't say science fiction because that kind of implies
a futuristic or a science y kind of thing. But
fantastic definitely, kind of a fantasy, unreal, gothic horror maybe
aspect to historical fiction. So it is historical fiction, but
(25:43):
it's the the fiction parts are much more fantastical than
a lot of historical fiction.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Who are these vampires? Are they like real tall?
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Big?
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Are they creatures? They like humans? Who are they? Can
you describe the vampires for our listeners?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Well? In the book you never get a real In
this book, you never get a real sense. And I
kind of did that on purpose, where I wanted this
book to be a teaser of where people are like, Oh,
I want to know more about these vampires, so I
don't I don't want to give away too much. But
(26:23):
they are at first glance very human. If you see
them out and about in the daytime wearing a cloak
or whatever, they might look like a frail human or
a skinny human or whatever. But if you uncover that
(26:45):
there they are shriveled. They are scary. They're unnaturally fast
and strong, and their senses are elevated. They can they
can see better than everyone else, they can hear better
than everyone else, they can move faster than everyone else.
They're stronger than everyone else. But all of that has
come at a price to their bodies. So their visage
(27:14):
is not appealing. They're not meant to be these beautiful,
charming Transylvanian royalty. They're very much selfish, evil creatures, and
their visage reflects that.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
What is life like for our listeners again to imagine it,
What is life like living in Rome during the time
the story takes place.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Well, that very very different life for different people, much
like in America today. You know, what is life like
in America? Well, for who you know, for the one percent,
life is pretty good. For the you know, bottom forty
percent or so, life is pretty not good. I mean,
(28:11):
it's what you make of it. As far as your
day to day happiness goes. But you know, and Rome
was very much the same way at the time that
the upper crust lived a very good life. If you
were a citizen of Rome were there was a lot
of great benefits to being a citizen of Rome. And
or if you were just someone that happened to live
(28:34):
in the area that Rome claimed but weren't a citizen,
life was much less wonderful than that. And if you
were a slave then beause they did have slaves and
they you know, talk about the gladiators and that kind
of stuff, and that was one way to win freedom.
As a slave. You'd be thrown into vadiator pits and
(28:55):
if you won enough fights and we're the champion for
long enough, then you could be granted your freedom, and
you know, things like that. So life in Rome at
the time we're talking about, you know, he died and
(29:16):
I'm having a brain fart now it's been long enough
since I did the research. He died somewhere around forty VC.
So you know, if you can imagine, if you're Christian
and you think about what life was like at Jesus time,
that's you know, the average, that's that's kind of what
(29:37):
life would have been like, you know, as far as
technology and comfort and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
I want to know what's happening now for me pulling
the story into it is I want to know what
happens with Julius Caesars and his vampires and if he
I don't want you to give away, but if he
knew when he interacted with him just what they were.
Did he just think they had power? He didn't really
know what they were, what they could do. He just
(30:06):
was he wanted He thought they could give him leverage,
and but he it was more than what he thought.
As the story goes on, can you introduce us to
some of the other major and minor characters who have
moved the story forward.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
There are vampires. There's one vampire in particular that he
begins to recognize that maybe doesn't have the same motivations,
isn't isn't exactly the same as the rest. So there's
there's kind of that going on in there. There's obviously
some of his friends like Brutus and and things like
(30:47):
that that are in the story that helped drive it forward.
There's Cicero is in the story. He's a he's not
a big character, but he's a big influence on Caesar
at the time, and he was in real life a
big influence on Caesar, and Cleopatra is a huge one.
Cleopatra plays a pretty big role.
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Okay, what have readers before we start talking about the
Ballad of Jason, what have readers been saying about to
end the night?
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Du youa Caesar's Secret War.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I've got a lot of really positive feedback. Like I said,
I've gotten comments mixed in with the positive feedback, like oh,
you know, this brought me out of it because it
didn't seem real too, things that actually were historically real,
but they were mixed in with I mean, I've gotten
nothing but glowing comments all of my reviews everything. Maybe
(31:49):
people that don't like it just aren't putting stuff in
there because they don't want to be mean, But I mean,
I think the lowest review I've gotten is like a
three star review, but then the write up that went
with that. I was so happy with that write up
that I really didn't care how many stars they clicked on.
It's been it's been a really positive experience with both books.
(32:10):
With the feedback I've received has been wonderful.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Okay, introduce us to the Ballot of Jay. Please give
us an overview of this novel.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
So the Ballad of Jase I went completely different. I
stepped away from reality. And my brother had gotten me
into reading these books that are called lit RPG, which
is literary role playing game, and it's kind of like
if you the main character was a character in like
(32:45):
a computer role playing game where you have to do
these quests and level up and that kind of stuff.
And the books are written kind of from that perspective,
and I was having a lot of fun reading them.
They're not you know, it's it's the way Marvel movies
are a lot of fun, but they're not cinema with
a capital C. You know. That's kind of the way
(33:07):
the lit RPG books are. They're a lot of fun,
but you know, you wouldn't call them, you know, culturally important.
So I was having a lot of fun with that,
and I decided I wanted to write something that was
just fun to write that I didn't have to do
a lot of research, I didn't have to really get
(33:29):
crazy with, you know. So I decided to write one
of these lit RPG books. And with pretty much everything
I do, I always come up with a character first,
and I get to know that character in my head
and really understand him and who he is and what
he's like and what his motivations are and all that
kind of stuff, and then I build a book around
(33:52):
that character. So I came up with Jason Howard, who
is a studio musician in LA and he's got Masters
in stringed Instruments from the Boston Conservatory, so he's a
he's a very well trained, classically trained musician, and he's
(34:17):
a studio musician in LA. And he's also got his
own band, which is what did I call it in
the book? I think I called it Punks of the
Round Table, and it's basically they take medieval instruments like
the hurdy gurdy and they play punk rock in the
bars of Los Angeles. That's that's his band. But Jase
(34:43):
doesn't have a lot of really close friends. He has
a lot of people he knows and he gets along with,
and he's kind of popular, but he doesn't really have
like people he's close to, except for his best friend
TJ and her husband, which happens to be his cousin,
and so he hangs out with him every now and then.
(35:05):
So he's walking home from their house after a gaming session.
They're playing Dungeons and Dragons and he gets hit on
the back of the head or something and wakes up
in a fantasy world and he's no longer himself. He's
now a halfling, and there's magic and all that kind
(35:26):
of stuff. And so the whole thing is the rest
of the book is him coming to grips with you know,
he's not in Kansas anymore, so to speak, he's not
in la anymore, and learning to navigate this magical world.
And it's very much about the character more than anything else,
(35:47):
and his growth and his journey and found family and
growing into you know, this world and who he is
and embracing different aspects of himself. And it's it's the
feedback I've gotten for it is that it's genuinely funny,
which is what I was going for. It's definitely not
(36:07):
a serious book. It makes fun of itself, but it's
got it serious moments, and it's got its heartfelt things
and all of that. But it's the it's meant to be,
uh in general, a very cozy book and a very
warm book and a funny book. And the feedback I've gotten.
(36:27):
Is that it really hit the mark on that Okay.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Now it's day. Is he what happens to him and
his magical he gets hitting the head? Is magical? Realm?
Does it? Does? He does?
Speaker 1 (36:41):
He?
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Does? He go in and out of this magical back
to what quote unquote reality or does at the end
of the book he come out of the magical and
somehow it's changed his life. And I'm thinking of a movie.
The actor's name he did comedy is not coming to me.
But he did something. There was something he did, and
(37:04):
he entered this He had this super power to make
everything go the way he wanted it to go. But
it did not have the effects on his real life.
It had effects that he could not stop, Adam Sandler,
It had effects that he couldn't stop or control. And
some he regretted, is that some of what happens in
(37:26):
the Ballot of Jays. Does he stay in this magical land?
Does he come out? Does it affect his real life?
Speaker 3 (37:35):
His real life as far as we know in that book,
unless I write a sequel and come up with something else,
But as far as we know, he is permanently in
this new world. And you know, for the rest of
the time, he does not come out of the New World.
He is actually there. He's in the New World, and
(37:59):
he just has adventure. And you know, in in his
real life, he didn't have didn't have a bad relationship
with his parents or anything, but it wasn't particularly affectionate
and loving, and you know, it wasn't wasn't cruel or anything.
He never you know, his parents did love him, but
(38:19):
it was just you know, distant, So he he never
really had a lot of great h interpersonal like deep
interpersonal connections. And throughout the ballot of Jase, with his
adventures learning to wield magic and different things like that,
(38:40):
he it's kind of a found family and soul searching
kind of thing, but it's framed in a little bit
of ludicrous, you know, fantasy world. He's he's learning magic
and he's a classically trained musician, and so what's he do.
(39:00):
He summons an electrical guitar that doesn't need electricity because
you know, hey, it's a magic world and he.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Can do that.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
And so it's it doesn't try to be Tolkien or
you know, anything that's remotely serious, except for when it
is kind of serious.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
So, now, how old is Jase and what audience is
the book written.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
For Jase is twenty six at the time that he
goes into the New World, So you know, he he's
old enough that he got his master's degree and then
moved back to la and became a studio musician and
kind of established himself in that industry, and you know,
was making headways in the local band scene with his
(39:50):
with his weird punk rock band. And yeah, so he's
old enough for all that, but still a pretty young man,
you know, still, you know, still a lot of life
to look forward to, a lot of lessons to learn
kind of thing. And what was the rest of the question.
I'm sorry I got babbling?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And what's the audience? So who would be a great
audience for the Ballad of Jake's Who would you say?
These people who like these type of books would love
this story.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
If you're into lit RPG, if you know what that is,
and you're in it, and I.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Don't you tell us what is that? What exactly I've
never heard of that before? Exactly what is it?
Speaker 3 (40:32):
It's literary role playing game lit RPG. And it's exactly
what I said before, where it's written kind of from
the perspective, So in the book, let me, let me
actually open up. I have it in front of me.
As as it goes in there are things like, uh,
(40:55):
let's see, the arrow looked translucent as it flew and
when it hit the bison, it hit with an impact
of a truck. The bison almost fell over as it
knocked several feet. As it was knocked several feet to
the side. Boop, you have learned a new skill. Stealth
shot arrow undetectable by target until struck, deals double weapon damage. Additionally,
(41:16):
deals bleeding damage every second for five seconds. Three minute
cool down can only be used from stealth. So it
kind of it has that regular like fantasy novel, but
then it's also interjected with things that you would see
in a game, and like if you were playing an
(41:39):
online or a you know, a role playing game on
your computer, different things where you would learn skills and
you level up and you get more powerful, and that
kind of you have to have to do quests. So
it's it's definitely meant to be fun, not serious. And
I love let RPG books in general, but I have
(42:01):
a hard time with a lot of them because they
have like so much of the game stuff and not
enough for the story, so I kind of call mine
lit RPG light. In fact, the the full title is
The Ballad of Jase, not your Mother's lit RPG. I'm
saying it's it's a little bit different, so it's a
(42:22):
it's you know, it's even with the title. I'm just
trying to be funny. I'm trying to be tongue in cheek.
I'm trying not to take myself seriously, not even take
the genre seriously. And there's a lot of wonderful books
like mine that don't take the genre seriously and are
fun and funny and I love them, but the audience
would be you know, my There is some mild swearing
(42:45):
potty mouth in the book, but it's not you know, uh,
it's the exception, not the rules. There's there's not a
whole bunch of it. But it is a modern day
young man studio music in La thrust into a fantasy world.
So every now and then he'll say like holy shit,
or you know, something to that effect, and it's sorry
(43:07):
if you don't allow swearing on your podcast. I should
have asked that. No, you go ahead, So, you know,
but that's that's about the worst. And there, you know,
there's some fantasy violence and stuff. But my one of
my best friends, his daughter's in second grade and she
(43:30):
reads a little bit every night before she goes to bed,
and she loves it. And she absolutely loves the book
and she has a good time with it. She reads,
she reads it aloud to her mom. But I also
my editor, Andy Malensky, he gave it to his sixteen
(43:51):
year old son who absolutely loved it. And my editor
enjoys it. And my mom, who is seventy eight, yeah,
seventy eight, she loves it. And you know, she's she's
not afraid to tell me when she doesn't like something.
And you know, my brother, who was written for really
enjoyed it. Who's god, he's got to be pushing sixty
(44:14):
now coming up close. So I mean, it's really there's
no distinct target audience. It's very lighthearted, it's very fun.
It's got a lot of pop culture references, a lot
of songs. It actually has. I have a soundtrack on
Spotify that's I think it's called like the Ballad of Jason,
(44:39):
not your Mother's soundtrack. It's my soundtrack that I put
up on Spotify that's got all of the music that's
listed in the book. It's very you know, it's very
much about Jase, and the feel of it is very
much his personality, where he's kind of a witty, fun
guy that loves pop culture and loves music. And the
(45:00):
book is really that's that's the book is. If you
like you know, if you go to comic CON's and
you like pop culture, if you know, if you think
it would be fun to go to Comic Con International
in San Diego, you're probably gonna love this book.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Okay, Now, Lo, you've written historical fiction and with this
little RPG or type of fantasy, which is your favorite
story for them? Uh? And why do you think that
it would attract you to that that genre?
Speaker 3 (45:34):
Uh? You know, I don't have a favorite genre. I
love everything from Uh, I don't know if you know
who uh gosh, the Horonomous Bosh books that's now a
TV show and I think a couple of TV shows
(45:55):
now and that kind of stuff. But it's like a
modern day La detective books. I love that. I love
science fiction. I love science fantasy like Star Wars with
the Space Magic. I love fantasy books. I love lit RPG.
I absolutely love historical fiction. Probably a third of the
books in my house are historical fiction. I love comic books.
(46:15):
I love I just love reading. I love imagination. I
love fiction, I like I like nonfiction. I've read quite
a bit of nonfiction, but I just love imagination, anything
that takes imagination, where you're telling a story and you're
coming up with and I've I even love reading books
(46:36):
where I don't generally like the way the author writes,
but I love the way they think, the things they
come up with. The you know, I can forgive a
lot of what I would consider bad writing for me,
because I think one person's bad writing is another person's
best book they ever read. But things that I would
(46:59):
consider bad writing I still absolutely love and enjoy because
I love the concepts and the ideas and the world
that this author came up with. So it's it's hard
for me to pick a favorite anything. The book that
I'm writing right now is a modern I guess you
(47:20):
would call it like a modern fantasy or a contemporary
fantasy or something. It's a guy living in Oregon on
the coast that finds out magic is real and he's
got to he's got the potential to use magic, and
he's got to learn it real quick because the big
bad is coming to take over the world kind of
(47:41):
thing and he's got to you know. So that's that's
what I'm writing right now. I've also got some ideas
written down in things for science fiction books that take place,
you know, in space and that kind of stuff, and
so I want to be kind of a John skall
(48:06):
Ze type of author. If I had to pick an
author that, like a John skaz writes, he's got some
books that are series, the Old Man's War series, it's
a science fiction series. But then he's got just tons
of books that are standalone and he's got you know,
and that's what I want to do. I don't want
(48:27):
people to be I don't want to be.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
I don't want to be the author that has the
big giant epic series that everybody's getting mad that the
next book didn't come out quick enough or whatever. You know.
I want to be the author that nobody knows what
I'm going to write next. You know, what's that genre
going to be? Is it going to be a series,
is it going to be a standalone book? Is it?
Because I want to write things that I enjoy and
(48:55):
I don't want to be tied down to you know,
even if I do books in a sea, I want
them to be more like Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where you
can pick up any book in that series and you're fine.
You don't go like, oh, dang it, this is the
fourth book and now I got to read the earlier
ones to figure out what every book can be standalone
on its own, you know what I mean. And yeah,
(49:18):
that's that's my goal. That's what I want to do.
And that's you know, I can't afford because anybody that
tries to put out a book, it's very expensive. You
can put out a book for for next to nothing.
You could write it in Microsoft Word and use the
tools that Amazon has to you know, get it out
there and online or Ingram Spark, but if you want
(49:41):
to get it professionally edited, it costs per word. And
if you want to get cover art or if you
want to make you know, it gets very expensive. And
and I decided when I when my wife convinced me
to start putting out my books, I decided I wanted
mine to be as professional as possible because I read
(50:01):
a lot of free books, and I listened to a
lot of free books on Audible and so I've come
across so many books that I absolutely loved it, but
there'd be spots where like it says the the like
you know, the author wrote it and didn't hire an editor,
(50:23):
And if you try to self edit a book, you're
going to miss so much because you wrote it and
your mind just knows what you intended and you just
miss a lot.
Speaker 1 (50:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
Yeah, And so a lot of the free books that
I've read on Kindle and listened to on Audible and stuff,
there's there's things that take you out because of the
lack of editing, or if you're reading it and it's
you know, words are spelled wrong, or there's missing punctuation,
or things that just kind of you know, your mind
(50:57):
kind of doesn't really see the punctuation until bill it
changes the meaning of a sentence because it's not punctuated right,
and then it kind of takes you out of the
book for a minute while you figure out, Okay, what
were they really trying to say? And those are the
things that I didn't want in my books. I was like,
you know, I don't care if anybody likes my writing
or not. Well, I mean I do care, obviously. I
want people to like it, but I mean, it's not
(51:18):
going to make or break me my pride. If someone
doesn't enjoy what I wrote, hopefully someone else will. What
would just break me as a person is comments like
you know, you spelled this wrong, or this grammar's wrong,
or this is you know, stupid things that I didn't
want people to be taken out of my story because
(51:41):
of things that could be fixed. Yeah, I went the
route of where a lot of authors can't. And I'm
not knocking the authors that don't do this, the authors
that just put it out for free because that's all
they can do. More power to you. You are awesome
and you are brave. But it's kind of the cowardice
that drives me to go the exp route because I
(52:02):
don't want that. I can't take that, the the hate
that would come from those mistakes, you know, like crush,
crust my soul, me myself. So I can only afford
to put out at most like one book a year
because I do you know what, I want to have
it as professional as possible, and I want to hire
(52:25):
an artist to do the cover, and I you know,
all these things, and yeah, I want to I want
to support real artists doing real art and that kind
of stuff. So it's I don't even know why I
started this tirade.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
But no, you know what, I agree with you. You
can do it for free, and but I always think
about my brand and how I would be remembered. And
I'm with you. You want to be as professional as you can.
Even if somebody doesn't like this story, they can look
until you put some effort into it. From the cover
(53:00):
it on, they can tell that you put some effort
into it. Now, talking about the cover, as we come
down to the last few minutes in today show, I
love the cover of Julius Caesar. Look for those who
are interested and maybe creating their own novel when they're listening. Now,
who did you talked about your editor? Who designed the
book cover? What was it like finding the designer and
(53:22):
working to create the book cover?
Speaker 3 (53:25):
So for two end the night. If you look in
the back cover and if you look inside, it says
Anicio Press, I don't really have as Press isn't. I
don't want to say they're not a real publisher, but
their whole thing is they take the the self out
(53:45):
of self publishing. So what I did for that book
in particular is I hired Anso Press to do all
the formatting of the book to you know, get it
professionally formatted, and to get the cover done and all
that kind of stuff. So I hired Cup and Quill,
who Andy Mullens, you know, Linda from Cup and Quill
(54:07):
handed my manuscript off to Andy Malinsky And now I
don't ever want anyone else to to edit my stuff again,
because I enjoyed working with him so well. But then
when it was all done, Linda said, hey, I know
this guy that does this thing called an eco press.
He can help you get your book out there. And
I didn't know the first thing about you know, formatting
(54:28):
the book and cover design and all that kind of stuff.
So I just went with that and it was a
great experience. And but again it's it's not free, it's expensive.
So I would recommend any authors out there that if
you if you have the means to, you know, I
would absolutely use an eco press or another kind of
(54:51):
lightweight publishing company, or you know, if you can, if
you can navigate the whole traditional publishing world and you
actually want to get your book in front of as
many readers as possible, I would love to go traditional publishing,
because I just don't have the advertising power to tell
people about my book at the rate that i'd want
(55:12):
or traditional publishers can do that. But yeah, that's that's
the story of the cover and everything is Anisio Press
actually has people that work for them, and they came
up with the cover and all that with my second book.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
I'll go ahead, I.
Speaker 3 (55:28):
Was gonna say, with my second book, I actually reached
out to an artist that I kind of liked their stuff,
and that artist I had used her in the past
for other things that I've done, and but she was busy,
so she said, oh, my friend could probably do that
(55:50):
for you too. So I contacted that artist and actually
got her to do a custom cover and everything. And
I'm much happier actually with the Ballad of Jason's cover,
just because I was able to reach out and support
an artists directly.
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Okay, where can that?
Speaker 3 (56:12):
Made me really happy with that?
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Where can off the shelf listeners get copies of your books.
Speaker 3 (56:20):
Anywhere books are sold. So they're on Amazon, They're on
Barnes Andoble dot com. They're available if you go to
my website and click on the links there. You can
get them direct from ingram spark at a little bit
cheaper than you can other places because I put them
as a discount if you buy them direct, just a
(56:42):
couple bucks off. And you can go into just about
any bookstore in the world that's able to order books
and tell them you want my book, and you know
spell my funny spelled name, Lou Gray, which is l
l U E W Gray g r e y, and yeah,
(57:05):
they can get it. It's available through Ingram's Park, which
means just about any bookstore in the world can order it.
Speaker 2 (57:12):
And are you on any social media in case any
Lizarsteners wanted to keep up with you on social media?
Speaker 3 (57:19):
Absolutely, I'm Lou Gray author on Facebook. I think I'm
just Lou Gray on Instagram. I'm Lou Gray author on
Blue Sky. I think there's some others that I don't
check nearly as often. I'm really bad at doing social
media these days, and I do try to answer if
(57:41):
people contact me and stuff, and I will absolutely love
to engage with my audience, but everything's so depressing in
the news these days, and when I log onto social
media and I see like, oh, this person in the
government is espousing genocide and whatever, I'm just like I
(58:03):
don't want to read this, so I must let much
less engaged with social media than I used to be,
just because it's depressing. But yeah, I do check it periodically,
and I absolutely if someone wants to get a hold
of me on social media, you can also email me
(58:25):
at lou dot Gray at gmail dot com and I'll
answer that, okay. And my website is Lou Gray author
dot com, which is all of my social media and
links to buying the books and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
Oh my goodness, well, thank you, thank you, thank you
for taking time out of your Saturday and your day
to be here with us and our listener.
Speaker 3 (58:45):
Can I throw one more thing out there?
Speaker 2 (58:46):
I almost so absolutely if.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
You use itchio at all, Lou Gray Author. At itchio,
you can actually get free copies of my books. You
can download pdf copies of my books for free, and
for the immediate future, I intend every book I write
to go up there for free as well, so you
can buy them and support me that way. Or if
(59:10):
you just want a PDF copy without the cover and
without all the crazy, uh you know, cool things like that,
you can actually get it for free. And there's a
link on my itchio to my coffee page. You can
go on there and buy me a coffee, you know,
if you want to support me that way, if you
want to read the book and then decide whether or
(59:30):
not you want to support me. So sorry, I'm taking
up so much your time.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
No, no, no, we've actually oh, you've been a pleasure.
We have had again the pleasure of interviewing Lou Gray here.
He's the author of the books to End the Night,
Julius Caesar's Secret War, and a Ballad of Jason, which
we spoke about today on today's show. If you came
in midstream, no Werries wants the shelf in the streaming
(59:54):
and it's up YouTube, iTunes, spreaker is so many different locations.
You can go back and listen to it in a
entirety as many times as you like. And you can
also share it with people who love just books in general,
historical fiction, which again the Julius Caesar at tend Tonight,
and also fantasy. And we learned today about a new
(01:00:19):
I've learned anyway about a new writing form of that
I hadn't heard about, this literary role plane uh lit
r p R p G. So you can learn about
that too. If as you want to explore it for
the first time, or if you already are aware and
you wanna you wanta dig into a little bit more.
The Ballad of Jason might be something that you truly,
(01:00:39):
truly will love. If that's something that you do like,
We have enjoyed having Lou Gray here on us. His
website again is Lou Gray author dot com, l l
U E W G R E y A U T
h O R dot com, Lou Gray author dot com.
So we want to thank you for being here with
(01:00:59):
us on Off the Shelf. Please come back here next Saturday.
We will have another awesome author and guests here for you.
Tell everybody tune in too, Off the Shelf. People who
love all things story, all things story. We've had movie
producers on that's just another story for him. So all
(01:01:19):
thing story, Off the Shelf books, And as I always
tell you, you are awesome, You really really are. You
are amazing. Go out and create a fabulous day for yourself.
See you back here next Saturday. Lou If shoot you
an email when the show finishes streaming. Thank you, thank you,
thank you. Bye for now.
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