May 17, 2025 • 65 mins
Get ready for an unforgettable Off The Shel Books conversation as we welcome the extraordinary author Gerald Everett Jones, whose talents span the worlds of literature, film, and radio.
A respected author, screenwriter, book reviewer, and radio host, Gerald brings decades of creative experience and literary achievement to the table. He’s a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Women’s National Book Association, and serves on the board of the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC). As a Film Independent Fellow, Gerald also brings a cinematic eye to everything he writes.
In this episode, Gerald opens up about his journey through the creative arts, from crafting compelling fiction like the Evan Wycliff mystery series and Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner, to his nonfiction work How to Lie With Charts—a must-read in today’s world of information overload. We’ll also explore his deeply personal collaboration with his father, Searching for Jonah, and his passion for elevating the work of other writers through reviews and broadcast.
Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or just love a great story, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Tune in and be inspired by one of Southern California’s most dynamic literary voices.
Hit play now and step onto Off The Shelf with Gerald Everett Jones—your next favorite author.
A respected author, screenwriter, book reviewer, and radio host, Gerald brings decades of creative experience and literary achievement to the table. He’s a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Women’s National Book Association, and serves on the board of the Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC). As a Film Independent Fellow, Gerald also brings a cinematic eye to everything he writes.
In this episode, Gerald opens up about his journey through the creative arts, from crafting compelling fiction like the Evan Wycliff mystery series and Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner, to his nonfiction work How to Lie With Charts—a must-read in today’s world of information overload. We’ll also explore his deeply personal collaboration with his father, Searching for Jonah, and his passion for elevating the work of other writers through reviews and broadcast.
Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or just love a great story, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. Tune in and be inspired by one of Southern California’s most dynamic literary voices.
Hit play now and step onto Off The Shelf with Gerald Everett Jones—your next favorite author.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 for one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready and let's gouzy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So he kind of walked me through it. And ever since,
ever since, have been doing Off the Shelf. And for
those of you who have been with us since the beginning, truly,
truly thank you, and I know you've been blessed with
the many guests we've had on New York Times best
selling authors, Essence best selling authors, authors from all over
(00:50):
the world, people who own businesses who've written books have
been on Off the Chef. And we have another awesome
author on deck for you today. But as I been
i'm doing for about the last two years, I want
to start with a quote, a thought. It's something for
you to chew on this Saturday, and this quote is
from Michael Jordan. You must expect great things of yourself
(01:14):
before you can do them. You must expect great things
of yourself before you can do them. And again I
want to welcome you to our Saturday. Our Saturday made
a seventeenth show here, and before we introduce you to
the day's guests, I just want to ask you, how
(01:35):
did of a mystery sleuth? Are you? I love mysteries.
I watched the mystery last night before went to bed.
I love a mystery. I always want to figure out
who did it and why, why did they do it was?
What was the motive behind what they did? And how
to and see how they It gets unraveled and people
(01:57):
discover what really truly happened.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
If you value.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Mystery and you also value relationship because a there's an
awesome soul mae relationship in this story and a complicated
father's son relationship and something I really see.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
But there's these five guys.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
They meet in college in Pennsylvania. One goes on to
play in the NFL once on his way to the Olympics.
He's a middle distance runner. They're all doing very going
to do very well. They are friends for life.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
These five guys meet in college, but one of them
is involved in a murder. So that's the mystery there.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
If you love mystery and relationships are very important to get.
I would encourage you to get a copy of Love
Pour Over Me. It's an ebook audiobook paperback just Love
for Over Me by Denise Tourney and let me know
how you enjoy Love Pour Over Me. And now let
(03:01):
us go and meet our very special Authice Shelf guests,
and this morning's guest is Gerald Everett Jones. Gerald is
a member of the Dramatist Guild and Women's National Book Association.
He is also a board member of the Independent Writers
of Southern California and a Film Independent Fellow Very Creative.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Gerald holds a.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Bachelor of Arts with honors from the College of Letters,
Wesleyan University.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
In addition to being a book.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Author, Gerald is also a book reviewer, radio hosts, and screenwriter.
His book reviews have appeared on k r LA a
M in Los Angeles and have been syndicated by Splash
magazines worldwide. Gerald is also the author of several books,
including the Evan Ycliffe book series, How I Lie With Charts,
(03:56):
Harry Harambey's Kenyan Sundowner, Clifford Spiral, and Searching for Jonah
Clusing Hebrew and Assyrian History, a book that he co
wrote with Don Jones. Please please check Gerald out online
at geralde itt Jones dot com and it's spelled g
e r A l d e b e r e
(04:20):
t t j o n e s dot com. And
one more time g e r A l d e
v b is and Barry e r e t t
j O n s dot com. We are just honored
and please to have deryld Jones join us on Off
the Shelf this morning. Welcome to Off the Chef, Gerald, Denise.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Thank you for that kind introduction. It's a delight to
be with you on this Saturday.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Oh oh, and it's a pleasure to have you here
with us. I always learned something from every guest who
comes on Off the Shelf, even after all these years.
Always every guest says something that gives me, like an
I a moment. So far our listeners here Gerald, to
kick it off this morning, would you please tell Off
the Shelf listeners where you grew up and what life
(05:09):
was like for you growing up?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Well, you know it's been I was a post World
War two baby. My dad had just gotten out of
the Navy. He had been in the Pacific on an
LST which was finally remembered as a large slow target.
They carried troops and takes to the Pacific Theater. And
(05:38):
my mother was at the time, she was learning stenography,
and she thought she was going to have a career
with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but then she got
shall we say, sidetracked. So yeah, I've been on the
earth a while. And when I had my podcast radio show,
(06:04):
get published radio dot com. When I had that show,
which is somewhat on hiatus, now I have a new one,
thinking about thinking that's another story, but the host would
often introduce me, here's our host, Gerald Effett Jones, the
author who has the answers because he's already made all
the mistakes himself. And that's certainly been true. I have
(06:29):
been involved in what might be called self publishing and
is now indie publishing since the very early days of
print on demand, even before ingram And and Amazon were
doing that, and then also in the early days of ebooks,
and up until that time, which was probably what twenty
(06:53):
years ago something like that, I had my career, had
been a professional writer, and I had written business and
technical books, and I had an agent, and I worked
for mainstream publishers, and I worked for kind editors and
not so kind editors. I understood the project. I turned
(07:16):
to writing fiction about fifteen years ago, and my agent said, well,
have a nice life, kid. So this is how I
learned to have my own imprint, laboratory, books and media.
But to address your key question had to do with
(07:37):
where I grew up. I was born in Kansas City,
the Paris of the Midwest, and I grew up in Independence,
Harry Triumman's hometown. And then because my dad was in
the petroleum business, in the engineering end of things, chemical engineer,
we got transferred all over the place to various off
(08:00):
offices and refineries throughout the US. So I lived in Baltimore,
I lived in Connecticut, went to school in Connecticut, moved
back to Chicago, then got married, moved to Detroit, ended
up here in La on the left coast. I'm in
Santa Monica, just six blocks from the Pacific Ocean. But
(08:21):
I will say, perhaps fodder for conversation I had right
before COVID, I returned with my wife from Kenya. We
lived for two years in Kenya, just next to the
other ocean, the Indian Ocean, and that was an amazing experience.
(08:42):
And I say, we moved back from Kenya because life
got interesting there and what do you know, things got
so much more interesting here.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So that's wow.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
That is the state. I look at life with Kenyan
eyes now. And if you you know, I would go,
I would hike to buy my vegetables every morning at
the market. And one of the things that the first,
one of the first things Kenyons would share and they're
just letting off steam. It was almost like a motto
(09:15):
or it's like, oh, corruptions the mother of Kenya. Okay,
So it's all out in the open. You know, if
the cop stops you, you better have some cash, you know,
if you need a document, Yes, it has a rubber stamp,
and there's a fee for the stamp. But there's also this,
you know, something goes in the pocket of the fellow. Yeah,
the stamp. So you just it's out in the open.
(09:38):
It's it's just all there. And yet you know, you
come here and then our media experience and our social
media experience and our interaction with each other, it's just
so much more layered in terms of communication. And yeah,
I mean it's like when people refer to the Post
(10:00):
news era or the post truth era. Wow, you know
it's bewildering. I didn't really mean to get.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Off on that, but no, no, no, no, no, yes, yes,
oh yeah, I would love to live abroad for a while.
People say it's very it just changes you, just not
just to visit, but to actually live.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I know, I lived in Hawaii for a while, which
that was very I just recommend it, I really do.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
As a kid, what did what did you what did
your dream of being? What did you want to be
when you grew up when you were a kid.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
That is a that is a significant part of my
story because my dad being chemical engineer, very much scientific mind,
and that interesting or complex part of it is that
also he was an extremely devout Southern Baptist, Southern Sunday
(10:58):
school teacher, uh deacon of the church, from a very
devout family. My mother is from a Christian family, but
not as she didn't wear on her sleeve as much.
But Dad would often have these debates with the people
in the church about you know, did God create the
(11:19):
earth in seven day or the world in seven days?
And so he would say, well, could it possibly be
seven eras, I mean, can you go that far? So,
I mean he had a scientific mindset, but then he
also had this very solid fate and he wanted me
to be a research scientist. And I was very bright
(11:41):
in school. I got top grades. I wasn't a grind,
if you will. In some ways school wasn't quite enough,
let's say. But as I got into my early teens,
it seemed to me like writers got more girls.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Really.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
I mean, I just like there was this whole world
of literature, and it's like it was like it was
outside the this Christian separatist walk if you will. Uh,
you know, it permitted some dancing and going to movies
that you know. I had a one of the old
(12:28):
relatives that was on actually think he was on my
dad's side. His first name was Israel, and we visited
him on his farm and he had and they warned me.
They said, well, uncle Israel has a rule you never
drink anything out of a bottle. And they said, what
what so to pop No, no, no no, because if
(12:49):
you get in the habit of tipping up the bottle,
then you'll be a drunkard for the rest of your life.
So that's how conservative it was.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
And in high school I kind of broke away and
and I was I was a bit of an ugly
duckling for a while, if you will. But then we
moved to Baltimore, which was interesting because it was DC adjacent,
you know, that whole government thing. And I broke out
(13:20):
of my shell. I became president of the senior class.
I was popular, I dated, I was you know. And
then I went went to this little ivy college, Wesleyan University,
which is a wonderful think tank, if you will, would
probably be considered, you know, progressive in today's world. But
(13:42):
I studied with some famous authors. I studied with er
Atty Kazinski, who wrote A Painted Bird and being there
and it was among my But then I also studied acting,
and that was where my father was really furious with me.
You know. I didn't raise my to be a you know,
Q word, and we really had a tussle over that.
(14:07):
And I thought I was going to go and I
did think that I was going to go into acting professionally.
I auditioned at Juilliard. I I actually have auditioned for
John Houseman, of all people, who said, what what makes
you think he'll be an actor? You know, it's not
the most pleasant experience, and I took that question seriously.
(14:28):
I answered him for about ten minutes. I can see
eyes rolling, but I never needs need less to say.
I didn't get in. But so I get back to Chicago,
where my parents were living at the time, so that
they had relocated again, and it was pretty clear that
and i'd actually i'd had about of tuberculosis of all things.
(14:51):
And my draft number was six. This is Vietnam era.
And I reported to the draft board and they said, oh,
you didn't have TV. I had let but I mean,
you know, I didn't know whether I was going or not.
And then, uh, you know, you get to the last
station at the draft board and here's the fellow, the
only fellow with the uniform in the place, and he's
got a file fold, your file folder in front of him.
(15:13):
And there's two lines at the desk. One's a yellow
line and one's a white line. So the yellow line
leads leads out of the building, and the white line
leads to the cafeteria. And after you have a meal,
you're going on the bus to basic training. And so
he just he didn't you even look at me, and
just yellow line. So you know, I didn't go to Vietnam,
(15:36):
many of my friends did.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
I mean that. Then I had my other war, which
was going door to door asking for a job in
advertising copywriting, because I thought, okay, well if I can't
be an actor, maybe at least I can, you know,
work in film. And so my my very first job
was at an industrial film studio in Chicago, and I wrote.
I wrote ads for Meadow gold yogurt, I wrote books
(16:04):
for railroad cold trains, print printing press equipment. Uh it was.
It was quite an education.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Uh yeah, and I bet you some of those marketing
writing might benefit you today. Who before we talk about
your novels, I wanted to ask you who or what
inspired your love for writing fiction.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Well, you know, I think one of my closest friends
in the professional world was an industrial film director that
I had met in my rounds when I was going
door to door asking for a job. And this fellow
(16:51):
was he just was a colleague. He just was a
very fluid mind and and storytelling what was really at
the heart of you know. I would just we would
have we'd have lunch or dinner and I would just
listened to him speak and he would just he just
his fluid mind would just hop from subject to subject,
(17:13):
and it was like I never had the urge to say,
please get to the point. I just want. I just
wanted to know where this was going, and you know
I will. And I've often confessed this on the air.
Is that you know, when I wrote business and technical books,
(17:35):
which is, I got involved in computer graphics as a producer,
and that's how I learned computers, and that's how I
learned to write books about computers and it and stuff. Anyhow,
when I wrote those books and I had an editor
and a publisher, I had to submit an outline first,
an outline and a sample chapter, and I had to
(17:57):
stick to that outline. I had to write two chapters.
And if I didn't stick the outline or write two
chapters a week, I got my hands slapped by the guy.
And it was a guy. It was always a guy
back then. And so the discipline of writing to an outline,
of getting of, as my editor said, getting my butt
in a chair every day, that was normal for me.
(18:22):
But as I got into fiction, now, you know, cranking
forward many years now, I had always written screenplays. By screenplays,
those those flew around LA like planes over the airport
that were not permitted to land. So I got a
couple of awards, but no movies. What I learned to do,
or what I came to do when I was writing
(18:43):
fiction was I began to delight from writing from a
blank page. I had no oline, and especially in my
Preacher Evan Wickliffe mystery series. I got four books in
that series, now kind of writing the fifth one. He's
an amateur sleuth. He's like an agnostic menace. I won't
(19:05):
let's say he's troubled. I don't agnostics wrong because you know,
he's not saying there's no God. He's just saying, you know,
where are you? But people come to him with problems
in the small Missouri town again going back to my roots,
small Missouri farm town. People come to him with problems
nobody else wants to solve. I mean, you know, he's
(19:27):
he's a he's a counselor he's somebody who can bring
your troubles to So here's this cold case, is this crime,
this troubled thing, and somebody needs to work through this
ball of snakes whatever it is. And one of the
things that I discovered about my writing process is if
I write from a blank page, I don't know where
(19:49):
it's going. And if I can surprise myself, if I
can pick the choice that's seem unlikely or that might
not make sense, but then I have to try to
make it fit. I'll delight myself when it finally does,
(20:10):
and presumably I'll delight the reader as well. And what
informs it. Going back to what I was saying about
being an actor, Yes, you could say I failed as
an actor. I mean I was on the stage a bit,
you know, in and out of college, but learning to
(20:31):
play all those roles, learning learning, learning that I could
be the bad guy as much as the hero. I mean,
it's much more interesting to play a villain than it
is to play hero most of the time. And the
example I often use is Joaquin Phoenix. Okay, Joaquin Phoenix
(20:53):
is a vegan an animal activist. I've never met him,
but I I've heard that he's just simply really mild mannered,
relatively introverted person to meet. Well, look at the Joker,
you know, this crazy, mad serial killer. Well Joking found
(21:17):
that person in himself. He had to go deep within
and say what part of my psyche would do that?
And really believe it, really, really be motivated by it,
and that one of the things that I often think
(21:37):
is that you know, actors as much as anybody, maybe
more than anybody, understand that anybody's capable of anything. And
so in history, when we judge people who you know,
conducted war crimes or turned their friends in or you know,
did these horrible things, it's like, oh, I'd never do that,
(22:02):
or you know, I'm I'm a good person, or you know,
I'm I'm I'm moral, I'm righteous, whatever, think again, you know.
And and so that's that's part of what informs it.
Because when I was an actor, I realized, you know what,
(22:23):
you kind of have to wait for those parts to
come to you. You know, if you if you really
long to play a character who you know does whatever.
You know, I want to play a research scientist. Okay
I never was one, but I want to be a
brilliant mathematician in the movie. You've got to wait for
that script to come along or you finally, you finally
(22:44):
have to happen to on a role quite quite by chance.
That that that you think, that's one aspect of your personality. Well,
if you're a writer, you get to play all the
roles you have to play all the roles, and so
another another mantra, another lesson about writing from a blank
(23:06):
page is that you put those characters on a stage.
You clothe them, you you give them some some traits
and some motivations, and then they just go where they
want to go, you know, because these are aspects of it.
It's like what they tell you about dreams. You know,
you dream about something somebody that's really an aspect of you,
(23:30):
and that will often be a revelation. And he said, no,
I'd never do that. So so yes, that's how I
surprise myself and hopefully hopefully and those books have won award,
so okay, somebody else must think.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
So, yes, introduce us to Evan Whycliffe.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
You talked a little bit about him, but can you
tell us what his personality is like, and what's his
family like and what drives Evan?
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Well, you know, you've had something of a memoir from me,
and that really is the you know, Evan is not
the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree I
have him.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
I had relatives from Farmtown in Missouri, Missouri, if you're
a local, and we my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, would
often take us me and my brothers to the farm
on the weekends so my parents could breathe and relax
and you know, fishing, hunting, you know, petting the sheep,
(24:38):
riding the horse, all those things. We were city boys,
but you know, it was it was really a fascinating
childhood from that standpoint. And I have Evan growing up
as a farm boy in Appleton City, which is where
some of my relatives are from in southeastern Missouri, and
(25:01):
he and and he's being raised in a devout family
and he thinks he's going to go into the ministry,
believes he's been called. And so he goes to Harvard
Divinity School, and which is something of a ecumenical uh
well that they say Unitarian, but I mean it's a
(25:23):
it's a very broad based the seminary. And you know,
he learns, he learns enough of Christian history to realize that,
you know, the Church, the Church has sponsored wars, and
it's had inquisitions and tortured people, and you know, it's like,
what what am I getting into here? You know? And
(25:47):
you read some of the travels of the Catholic Church
today and liberation theology and in in South America, which
the current Pope is very much uh familiar with and
you realize, well, this is this is this is this
is strife and and and strife and strife. So he
(26:08):
actually drops out of Harvard Divinity and so well, maybe
maybe astronomy, astrophysics, maybe maybe the maybe science will hold
some answers for me, provide some comfort for me. And
so he goes, you know, he goes m I T
in astrophysics and along the way he meets up with
(26:34):
really brilliant woman who happens to have a Jewish background,
and she's she's an engineer, and she goes to work
while uh he's pursuing astrophysics and graduate school. She goes
to work for aerospace company, gets posted over to the
(26:58):
Middle East and you know, lo and behold that they've
gotten engaged before she left, and she's, you know, I'll
be back, and she's killed in a missile attack in Lebanon.
So here he is heartbroken. He realizes science is like, Okay,
there's all these theories, but you know it's not there's nothing.
(27:19):
There's nothing hard and fast here. Yeah, okay, we can
build it out at a bomb we can't, but we
can't necessarily explain exactly how the you know universe produced this,
And so he moves back to southern Missouri and he
doesn't have a job, so and his mother's passed away.
(27:40):
Since then, that's that's been difficult. His father needs caregiving.
But the one thing, there's two things he finds to do.
Number One, he can be a guest preacher, so he
is he sometimes is preaching at the local Baptist church.
And the other thing that he's found to do that
(28:02):
makes a little more money is he's a data driller.
You know, he's certainly learned computers and laptops and phones
and stuff. And so he works for the local Ford
dealer as a skip tracer. He runs down you know,
he's trying to find people who've skipped on their loans
(28:22):
and so he's pretty good at that. And he really
doesn't have to burn a lot of shoe leather because
he can do most of it from a computer screen,
which amazes the dealer. So here he is, and this
is the world he's thrown into, and in the very
first book in the series, he hasn't been there very long,
doing these things and trying to get by and his
(28:46):
childhood friend he's on his way to actually join up
with a group of hunters. He's not much of a hunter.
He's really not really too happy about that anymore, but
he feels as though they've asked him along, and so he'll,
you know, he might make a good conversation companion. And
(29:07):
he's kind of kind of misses them. So he's traping,
trapesing through a cornfield on the way to where he's
going to meet these hunters in them in the woods,
and he runs across the body of his best friend,
his child.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Oh and you know.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
The guy's got a hole in his chest and it
looks like he's done himself in. And Evan thinks to himself,
I just and it's like, what you say, you know,
how did it happen? Why did it happen? Evan's thinking
to himself, you know, Bob just wasn't this that kind
of person. That wasn't somebody who was moody and depressed
(29:44):
and troubled. And he never came to me with his problems.
He was always he was always a joyful playmate. And
he and he loved his dog and he you know,
he had a dear wife, now I understand, and and
he was happily married, and you know, how how is
it possible that this could have happened? And so that
that's the trigger for the first book.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh and is this Preacher finds a corpse?
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Preacher finds a corpse?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yes, I was going to ask you for but this
is you're telling me?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Then?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
How this? Oh my god? How interesting? Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
He goes out hunting with some friends and he finds
one of his other friends, Bob.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
How long was Bob? Had he recently been shot? When?
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Yeah, it was it was that morning. It was it
was a fresh corpse. And so you know, uh, one
of the people in town that Evan has met at
the local cafe which I renamed the come on in
the place where he has his pancakes in the morning.
You know, he he's met the local sheriff, who's a
(30:53):
very troubled, overweight African American American fellow who you know,
there there aren't there aren't many of his of his
church fellows in that community, let's put it that way.
So he's having trouble keeping his job, and he just
wants he just wants things to kind of, you know,
stay on an even keel. And so you know, uh,
(31:18):
Sheriff Chef Chad otis is more about you know this,
if it looks like suicide, if it walks like suicide,
if it smells like a suicide. You know, come on, Evan.
You know I'm not going to pry into this, okay,
And so it falls to Evan too, you know, to
drill into what the motivations might be. And you know this,
(31:40):
this isn't a spoiler because you know that he finds
the corpse on the first page. So this idea of
and one of the as an author, one of the
things that is kind of wonderful about writing about amateur
sleuths is that I don't know police procedure or I
(32:00):
never studied criminology, Okay, and neither did Evan. He's got
a logical mind. He's got you know, he knows how
to use that you know, online tools, and you know,
and so do I. So we're we're on the same
path if you were Will and I you know, I'm
(32:21):
I won't say I'm an I don't noticed uh. From
the standpoint of of religion, I still I still feel
as though I've got a core of of I draw
a distinction between belief and faith. I mean, you know,
if you're among people who say, if you don't believe X,
Y and Z, you're not one of us. That's really
(32:43):
those kind of really might not be my peeps. I
can certainly sympathize with where they're coming from, but the
idea of the idea of I see somebody in this
on the street and they kind of smile and give
me a look, and I go, hi, sister. You know,
(33:05):
you know, it's just faith is not something you can explain.
I mean, I think it's something you shouldn't necessarily try
to explain because that's why it's faith. So otherwise it's
like facts, and you know, we both know that finding
(33:26):
facts is getting you know, I've seen some stuff in
my Facebook feed, which I still believe it or not,
you know, look at and somehow I got plugged into
an ancient archaeology feed, and you know, you wouldn't believe
the faked up pictures, you know, the fake imagery. You know, here,
(33:54):
here's some bunch of people and it shows them digging
out a human skull that is fifteen foot high, and
I mean it's it's just like God, look at that,
and it's it's so real.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
And yet you know, you have a hunch that's not not.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
And you know, and now I'm seeing all these posts
about the stuff that's deep underneath the pyramids, all these
the structures that that somehow by sonar I guess it
is or whatever they have found, and it may or
may not be true. But there's just you know, I'm
not plugged into those research databases. Is enough to know,
(34:40):
And there's so much of that kind of stuff out there.
Which rabbit do you want to chase?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
This is true? This is true? So I, for Preacher
finds a corpse? What period is this story set in?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
And why did you choose this specific time period Preacher
finds a Corpse?
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Well, it would be contemporary in that there's four books
and they are somewhat chronological. You don't you don't have
to read them in sequence. At least I try to
give you enough backstory on it. Let's say, if I'm
reintroducing a character, I'll find some I hope subtle way
of working who they are and what they do into it.
(35:25):
So Evan does mature. I'd say the span of the
books might be might be ten years. I think now
by the time we get to the new one, it'll
be it'll definitely be present day because we've got some
stuff going on. That's that's very much in the headlines,
(35:50):
if you will. The one right before this was is
Preacher stalls the Second Coming, which actually I learned that
there really was a CIA plot back in the nineteen
sixties to fake the second Coming of Christ, so that
(36:11):
I mean, this is back. You know. The other way
of destroying this was to destroy Castro, to bring him down.
The other way to do that was the exploding cigar.
So both of these ideas were about the same credibility.
But they were going to they were going to park
a submarine off the coast of Cubans, shoot off all
this weaponry, and then have some you know, voice in
a bullhorn tell the faithful of Castro that that Fidel
(36:36):
was the Antichrist and he had to be overthrown it.
The plot never was used as far as anybody knows,
it was. It did come out in testimony before Congress,
the Frank Church Committee, but you know, it's just one
of those kind of dumb ideas that got stuck in
a file drawer. But there is a conspiracy theory these
(36:57):
days called Blue Beam project Bluebeam, which accuses NASA of
working on advanced technology for a like a virtual reality
global return of Christ, and that's becoming more and more
(37:18):
technically feasible. I do feel as though that also is fantasy,
because I would submit that Christ returned almost immediately after
he was here. It's called the Holy Spirit. You know,
you don't know it's here, you just you missed it,
But it's there, you mind. It not a mystery to
(37:42):
anybody who knows it. So I don't really you know,
it's like thief in the night. That's the true part,
you know, coming in the clouds. No, no, no, that's
that's what the that was like to distract the other
people who you know, don't know anyhow, Preacher stalls. The
Second Coming is about a like a Jim Jones character.
(38:07):
It's like embarrassing to use the name, but you know,
an unscrupulous evangelist who lures people to his farm, especially
homeless folks and hungry people who who are you know,
they're not only looking for some hope, they're also looking
for a meal. And the thing is, once you get
(38:29):
into the farm and sign the papers and give away
your possessions and whatever, you ain't getting out. And so
this becomes in effect a religious concentration. Camp and that
that's a fictional story. At least my version of it
(38:50):
is it has happened in other places of the world
that actually relatively recently, but that's what that book is about.
So yeah, yes, because a lot of that had to
do with misinformation, fake information. You know, they're they're, you know,
(39:10):
when they finally find out about this guy, they're digging
bodies out of the ground, and you know, it's it's
kind of like these news images you see from Gaza
where you know, you see all these white body bags
on the ground and you know, so then then then
there's these rumors that you know, after the camera shuts off,
(39:31):
that that that that the people who are in the
body bags just you know, on zip them and get
out and this has just been completely fake news. Well
that's kind of what's going on in the in the
book here, is that that this pastor, actually this unscrupulous
pastor is claiming that it never happened. It just never happened.
(39:52):
It's all been It's like, uh, it's like the holocausts,
what people say about the Holocaust never happened. So yes,
it's very current from that standpoint. The series is very
much in the news. If you will.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
And so that's the four third or fourth, And so
when we go back to you the first the Preacher
finds the corpse that's Evans. First time, he's starting to
do some investigative tech detective work because the sheriff just
wants it to kind of quietly go away. What's happening
at the start of book two in a series? Preacher
(40:30):
fakes a miracle? And is it connected or each of
these books connected? So he finds this corpse, who's this
friend Bob? Does it still show up? And Preacher fakes
a miracle? Ors each book kind of a standalone book?
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Well, they're definitely not standalone, but you could read them standalone.
As I say, because I'm I'm and that's true of
a lot of fiction series. You don't necessarily really have
to be a fan of the series to jump in.
And Preacher Fakes a Miracle is the second one in
(41:09):
the series. Yes, there are characters and plot threads that continue,
and in Preacher Finds a Corpse, one of the unscrupulous
characters is a local investment banker and the idea of
land grab and corruption and you know, being involved with
(41:34):
government officials who are some what on the take. That's
all part of that story. And as much as as
much dirt as Evan finds, there's always more to it.
Is kind of a bottomless hole. In Preacher fakes a
(41:54):
miracle at the local children's home, which is being run
by a Catholic charity. There are young women who are
get placed outplaced into jobs, into menial jobs like seamstress
(42:16):
or hotel attendant whatever. And there is in the Lake
of the Ozarks there there is now a rather thriving
casino culture, and so some of these women end up
going to work as housekeepers at the casino. And Evan
(42:38):
finds that some of these women simply disappear. Some of
them seem to have been abused, but you know, they
the court system seems to shove them over into mental
health facilities, not into not necessarily into isn't because they
(43:00):
haven't necessarily done anything wrong, but you know, maybe they're
being stoked up on haldall or thorozine or something to
keep him quiet. So teen abduction is very much a
part of the second book, So it's a it's a
(43:21):
bit grittier from that standpoint. And yet it turns out
that one of the young people and that Evan meets
in this metal facility is a young man who has
schizophrenia and leaves. He he hears voices, and this kid's
(43:43):
been completely written off. And it turns out he's actually
the son of this unscrupulous banker who really doesn't want
anybody to know that that that's his child. M hm,
you know, doesn't understand him. You know, he just parked
him over here. You take care of him. I've got
(44:03):
things to do. And so Evan's about the only person
on earth who thinks that these voices might be telling
this child something, because I mean, I wrote I wrote
a book. I co wrote a book with Rebecca Shaper
called The Light in His Soul Lessons from My Brother Schizophrenia.
(44:27):
And I had a step son who was also schizophrenic,
so I'm very familiar with this area. And Rebecca believes that,
I mean, her brother came back to the family after
he was missing for twenty years, and she took care
(44:47):
of him. She got him on public assistance, she got
him on the right medications, she got him set up
with an apartment, and he maintained I mean, you know,
he never was you know, just another you know, member
of the community. But he maintained he did well, and
when he finally died, he didn't die. He didn't die
(45:10):
by suicide as many troubled people do. He simply died
of lung cancer because he was a chainsmoker. And so
after he died, she was certain that he was her
spirit guide or is her spirit guid you know, she
believes that he shows up to her when she sees hummingbirds.
And you know, Rebecca's not Rebecca's a very grounded person.
(45:36):
So I mean, this is not the ratings of somebody
who's off the edge. And you know, she's she's very
much of a healer herself and one of the people
that I hold dear. And that was a book that
just kind of happened that that that floated in like
a hummingbird, as you will. That is one of the
(45:57):
things I do. I do coach other authors, and I
I do play their editor, because especially in the world
of self publishing, if you're indie publishing, if you will,
in the self publisher, you have to learn how to
become an indie publisher. You have to learn how to
act like a publisher. And that is as a very
(46:18):
specific profession. And if if as a self published author.
You don't hire someone who is an editor who's had
experience like me, You're never going to have the experience
that I had dealing with those clowns at the publishers.
You know, I had these guys that would redline my
(46:40):
manuscripts and yell at me and say, you know, you
miss that deadline and you know, but I mean that
was a learning experience. Now I try not to abuse
my people. You know, I can respect, I can respect
where they're coming from. I try to be more of
a diplomat with and often it's often it's just done
(47:02):
right cheerleading, like yeah, why did you why didn't turn
in that next chapter? So well, yeah, and my dog
got sick, you know.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
So before we go, I do want to talk about
some before some other things that you you've done, like
your travels and you're not doing. But before we do,
I wanted to close out the the Evan Ycliffe series.
Can you tell us, uh, how many years have passed
between preacher faights a miracle where he's seeing these women
(47:35):
who've been sent off and this this child is schizophrenia.
His father in the financial industry is it's shady. How
many years between that? What happens to Evan and that story, Uh,
before you the launch of Preacher Raises, the day.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
Preacher Raises are Dead and then and then the one
after that is as I said, Preacher Sowd a second coming.
That it's it's it's several years. I mean, the entire
span of the series is about ten years. And Preacher
Raises the Dead. What happens is that's that's the very
that's a very specific time because that's at the beginning
of COVID. And at the beginning of COVID, Marcus Thurston,
(48:16):
who's the old uh pastor of the Baptist church in
Appleton City. Fictional name. Uh he is he is Evans Mentor. Uh,
He's he's a He's an African American with a heritage
from Jamaica, but with a rather mysterious background. Uh. And
(48:42):
you know, also like chett Otis, they're the two most
prominent black people in town. Is like there, you know
where they're They're still not it's not a really diverse community, Okay,
and yet Marcus Thurston very dearly loved pastor. But the
thing is that he wants to retire and he tells Evan,
(49:03):
you know, there's this outbreak and you know there's going
to be a trying time, and you know it's time
for me to just you know, close the door of
the parsonage and you know, and you've been guest preacher
and you're you know, the people know you and whatever,
You're gonna have to step up now. Evan never dreamed
to be a pastor of this church. It's a lot
(49:24):
of work, and especially during COVID. You know you're gonna
see you're going to stand by death beds, You're going
to preside over funerals, You're going to officiate at weddings
over zoom. Okay, So that preacher raises the dead is
all about that. Because he's Evan's become married h a
(49:48):
to a very you know, he's kind I won't say
that he's really recovered from Naomi, uh, but you know
he's he recognizes that, you know, he doesn't he shouldn't
just necessarily dwell in that relationship, even though in some
ways she's still very alive for him. But he he
(50:11):
marries actually it's the sister of the woman who got abducted.
It's in the second book and so but it's an
unlikely marriage. But the thing that's interesting is she just
throws herself into being a church lady. I mean, she
wants she just really wants to do the job, and
it ends up being more pressure on her than Evan
(50:35):
could have ever imagined. I mean, it's a lot of
pressure on him, but he knows what's involved. She stepped
into it somewhat blindly, and so this is causing a
lot of trouble. And she's very good at what she's doing,
but she's just plain working too hard, and so Preacher
raises the dead is you know, to dodge the spoiler
(50:59):
a bit is She ends up hospitalized and the title
refers to the fact that of he's that he's really
praying that she'll wake back up, so that this really
strikes to the core of what does he believe? I mean,
(51:19):
does he does he believe prayer is going to do
any good? And you know, he's kind of come thought
that you know you have what you want even before
you ask it. The purpose of prayer to convince yourself
that you that you have it. I mean, how how
could God be with what will ever be withholding what
(51:40):
it is that you need? You know? And yet how
can this horrible thing have happened because we were trying
so hard to do things right. So you know what
I mean, it's the old, old old question. And you'd
say this in every one of the books, it's why
do bad things having good people? And you know that
was that was the.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
There have been some very famous evangelists who preached endlessly
on that theme. So so yeah, it was about about
about ten years, i'd say. And then and then the
new one I'm calling preacher faces the music and ends
up ends up going to Nashville where my where my
brother lives. My brother and his wife are dozens at
(52:27):
the at the Country Music Hall of Fame. So I
got to know a lot about I mean, I always
I won't say country music was my prime favorite genre,
but I certainly you know, certainly you know Willie Nelson
and and and uh, Alison Krause, and I mean, you know,
(52:51):
I'm I'm not unfamiliar with especial specially Roy Orbison, you
know there. You know, there's a lot of these. I
guess you'd call them all these, but it's definitely part
of mine. And actually in the books, I mean Evan
a Roy Orbison fan.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Okay, So and.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
He gets into there's a YouTube of Black and White Knights,
which is Orbison's amazing concert at the Ambassador Hotel, and
he has on stage all of these other celebrities who
just think he's God. And one of the ironies of
it is the co lead guitar with him is Springsteen.
(53:42):
And yet this is a version of Springsteen that people
just don't remember. He was in a silk suit, string tie,
Tony Lama boots, his hair, his hair all meticulously come
This guy looked like a Las Vegas high roller.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Okay, this is.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
The Dunum suit. Yeah, this is before the curly hair.
It's before his voice dropped a knock dove okay. So
and yet on the guitar, oh my god, there was
just nobody, nobody better and well Orbison's probably better.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Okay, Oh my, So you you incorporate all these into
your stories. Then you started out the way you started.
You said you did the door to door looking for
a job. As we wrap up start to wrap up
today's show, you did nonfiction writing at the start. So
I wanted to ask you two closing questions, which number one,
(54:42):
which is easier for you? Have you found to sell
and generate income from fiction? Or nonfiction, And why do
you think this is well?
Speaker 4 (54:52):
Nonfiction certainly, And the fact is just simply that when
I work as a professional writer, and not just as
a writer of of nonfiction books, I mean I have
a book, How to Lie with Charts, which has been
taught at Georgetown an Empire state as a textbook, and
it's about visual it's about graphic design, it's about what
(55:14):
you'd call data visualization, and it's something of a classic text.
And I wrote that years ago. But I worked in
computer graphics, designing business presentations basically what would be called
PowerPoint today, and so I know that world quite well.
And I also know how charts and graphs can be
(55:36):
deliberately made misleaning or accidentally made misleaning. So that's what
that book is about. But I will say that as
a professional writer, I have made more money as a
supporter of large scale business proposals on teams or say
(56:00):
government contracts. Okay, so I have worked in aerospace, I've
worked in healthcare it I've worked in government staffing, and
I did quite a bit of work for USA before
it disappeared. And that is it's very stimulated from the
standpoint that you know and it's been very especially through
(56:25):
the COVID period. Even before that, those teams worked very
much on Zoom and then you know, now they're Microsoft
teams and it's very collegial. I mean, you know, you
might have twenty or thirty people on that team, and
depending upon what the topic is of the day, there
(56:46):
might be only half a dozen. But you know you've
got these you've got these subject areas and subject matters
that you are working in because these proposals are very complex,
like thick as a telephone book, and the federal acquisitions
regulations are extremely complex, and so this is kind of
like being a CPA in understanding the IRS code. You know,
(57:09):
you can't just walk into that world and say, well,
you know, i'm a writer, I'll help you. So that's
why you quote unquote get paid the big bucks in
that world. But the problem is, especially in recent times,
that world has frozen over because and that's not the
government contracts will go away, and these are multile sometimes
(57:33):
multi billion dollar contracts. The problem with with that, with
that profession as a proposal writer, editor manager, is that
you could be working for a fortune five hundred aerospace company.
They're working on a contract that they either already hold
(57:53):
that need that they need to recompete for or they're
working against their biggest competitor. But they've been working on
thisticular contract for over the last two or three years
at least, and they've got or I got a team
of thirty to one hundred people assigned and supporting it.
So they're spending some major money on putting this together.
The problem is that these days, they don't know who
(58:18):
their point of contact is. They don't know who the
person inside of the government. Yes, they know the acquisitions officer,
or they know the person who's the manager of this
particular IT department or whatever, and they know that person,
and they know that agency, and they know that mission,
and they know they know in some ways they know
(58:38):
what those agencies want before they know what they want.
And that's the That's a mark of a good proposal
is that we're thinking ahead. We're trying to do your
thinking for you, and you know, we're not telling you
what to do, but you know, we're trying to convince
you this would be a good idea because you need
to think beyond next week. You know, you need to
think you know, ten years from now, especially, you know
(58:59):
I mean you talk about defense systems for example. So
but again, you may have those close ties. These are
your colleagues, These are the people in the government that
are your customers, your client and guess what you try
to get them on the phone. Oh, they don't work
here anymore. Yeah, And so I don't know how that
(59:20):
situation resolves itself. You know, I think the philosophy is,
let's just break it and see how it grows back,
because I mean, it would grow back, but you know,
maybe on a smaller scale or whatever. But I mean
one well, I mean I did a presentation to the
Association of Proposal Management Professionals is how to get past
(59:44):
the new be evaluator. And my point was, these are
going to be inexperienced people. They're not going to know
the federal acquisition regulations. They're not necessarily going to know
anything about the subject you're writing to. They're going to
have a checklist. Yeah did they answer this? Did they
answer this? Now you get to the second or third
(01:00:04):
round of evaluation, then yeah, you might get a scientist
looking at your stuff. But it's a very fast, it's
a fascinating world because actually, Denise, I I end up
learning so much about about various subject areas that I mean,
I can, I can. You know, none of my books
(01:00:26):
hold anything like what you'd call secrets, because actually I'm
not I'm not authorized to work in the secret world,
so you know, don't worry. But but it does. I mean,
especially things like large scale computer systems, large scale enterprise
(01:00:48):
computer systems like the government has, like you know, data
collection systems, and surveillance, surveillance and espionage and cybercrime. I mean,
this is stuff that I areas that I not only
work read about, but it's areas that I've worked, I
worked in, so that gives a kind of authenticity, I
(01:01:10):
hope to some of the things that I write about. Well,
for example, I mean, preacher stalls as I can coming,
you know, the scientist who stumbles into Evan's little trailer
because he's moved out of the house, living like a hermit,
the fellow. The fellow stumbles into his trailer. Is this
this this this physicist who's warning about this project Bluebeam
(01:01:34):
and and virtual reality, And you know, he says, you know, Evan,
you can't believe anything you see anymore. And you know,
and in some ways not even what you see. I
won't say not even what you see on the street,
although that day is coming to.
Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
We're all so have so enjoy having you on here today.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Joe, We've had the privilege to our listeners having Gerald Everett.
Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Jones on this off the shelf this morning.
Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Please tell off the chef listeners where they can get
a copy of your books.
Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
Well, I'm on Amazon, and I'm also on Barnes and Noble,
Cobo all those other book distributors worldwide, Gerald Everett Jones
dot com. As you mentioned, it would be a great
place to go and find out about my entire book list,
all fourteen novels and some five nonfiction. The Searching for
(01:02:33):
Jonah that I co wrote with my Well, it's my
father's book and I wrote I edited it for him
right before he passed away. And it's a fascinating book
about the real you know, the archaeology and the ancient
history of the Book of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Oh my goodness, so we have again just what a
pleasure and so much just a wealth of experience in
your own life, and then it always finds its way
into our writings of our experiences. Do uh so thank
you for all you share, and then for those who
want to know more Gerald, He's what we explored on
(01:03:15):
today's show was the White Evan Wycliffe book series.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Then again, as.
Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
He said, how to Lie with Charts, Harry Harambas, Kenyan Sundowner,
Clifford Spirals, Searching for Jonah, which Gerald just mentioned clues
and Hebrew in a Syian History.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
This was a book that he co wrote with his father.
Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Don Jones, and what a blessing to get that book.
That book out as well, and we didn't have time
to explore those those other books here on the on
the show today. But thank you so much, Gerald for
being here with us. Just such a creative screenwriter, book reviewer,
radio host. He's just done so so many things and
(01:03:58):
it's worked with pe we were quite accomplished. So it's
a pleasure to have you in here and now again
I encourage you to visit Gerald online at Gerald Everett
Jones dot.
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Com, g E R A L D E V E
R E T T J O N E S dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Please go and support him and that Evan Wycliff book
series sounds so interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
So he's working on a new book in the series.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
You can keep up with all of his recent books
and if you came in midstream. After the show finishes streaming,
uh and it's released, you can listen to it as
many times as you like, and it's something.
Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Even if you've read a book in.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
A series, listening to the author talk about the story
might give you some insight into even some motivations behind
the character Evan Wycliffe, who sounds like such an interesting character.
So thank you again for being here with us on
Off the Shelf. Gerald. When the show finishes streaming, I
will send you a link to the show. And as
(01:04:58):
I always t you are listeners, You are awesome, you
are incredible. Please go out and create a fabulous day
for yourself. See you back here next Saturday on Off
the Shelf. Tell book lovers everywhere tune in to Off
the Shelf Books.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
You don't want to miss it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Thank you, thank you,
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 for one one on book festivals,
(00:21):
writing conferences, and so much more. Ready and let's gouzy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So he kind of walked me through it. And ever since,
ever since, have been doing Off the Shelf. And for
those of you who have been with us since the beginning, truly,
truly thank you, and I know you've been blessed with
the many guests we've had on New York Times best
selling authors, Essence best selling authors, authors from all over
(00:50):
the world, people who own businesses who've written books have
been on Off the Chef. And we have another awesome
author on deck for you today. But as I been
i'm doing for about the last two years, I want
to start with a quote, a thought. It's something for
you to chew on this Saturday, and this quote is
from Michael Jordan. You must expect great things of yourself
(01:14):
before you can do them. You must expect great things
of yourself before you can do them. And again I
want to welcome you to our Saturday. Our Saturday made
a seventeenth show here, and before we introduce you to
the day's guests, I just want to ask you, how
(01:35):
did of a mystery sleuth? Are you? I love mysteries.
I watched the mystery last night before went to bed.
I love a mystery. I always want to figure out
who did it and why, why did they do it was?
What was the motive behind what they did? And how
to and see how they It gets unraveled and people
(01:57):
discover what really truly happened.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
If you value.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Mystery and you also value relationship because a there's an
awesome soul mae relationship in this story and a complicated
father's son relationship and something I really see.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
But there's these five guys.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
They meet in college in Pennsylvania. One goes on to
play in the NFL once on his way to the Olympics.
He's a middle distance runner. They're all doing very going
to do very well. They are friends for life.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
These five guys meet in college, but one of them
is involved in a murder. So that's the mystery there.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
If you love mystery and relationships are very important to get.
I would encourage you to get a copy of Love
Pour Over Me. It's an ebook audiobook paperback just Love
for Over Me by Denise Tourney and let me know
how you enjoy Love Pour Over Me. And now let
(03:01):
us go and meet our very special Authice Shelf guests,
and this morning's guest is Gerald Everett Jones. Gerald is
a member of the Dramatist Guild and Women's National Book Association.
He is also a board member of the Independent Writers
of Southern California and a Film Independent Fellow Very Creative.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Gerald holds a.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Bachelor of Arts with honors from the College of Letters,
Wesleyan University.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
In addition to being a book.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Author, Gerald is also a book reviewer, radio hosts, and screenwriter.
His book reviews have appeared on k r LA a
M in Los Angeles and have been syndicated by Splash
magazines worldwide. Gerald is also the author of several books,
including the Evan Ycliffe book series, How I Lie With Charts,
(03:56):
Harry Harambey's Kenyan Sundowner, Clifford Spiral, and Searching for Jonah
Clusing Hebrew and Assyrian History, a book that he co
wrote with Don Jones. Please please check Gerald out online
at geralde itt Jones dot com and it's spelled g
e r A l d e b e r e
(04:20):
t t j o n e s dot com. And
one more time g e r A l d e
v b is and Barry e r e t t
j O n s dot com. We are just honored
and please to have deryld Jones join us on Off
the Shelf this morning. Welcome to Off the Chef, Gerald, Denise.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Thank you for that kind introduction. It's a delight to
be with you on this Saturday.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Oh oh, and it's a pleasure to have you here
with us. I always learned something from every guest who
comes on Off the Shelf, even after all these years.
Always every guest says something that gives me, like an
I a moment. So far our listeners here Gerald, to
kick it off this morning, would you please tell Off
the Shelf listeners where you grew up and what life
(05:09):
was like for you growing up?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Well, you know it's been I was a post World
War two baby. My dad had just gotten out of
the Navy. He had been in the Pacific on an
LST which was finally remembered as a large slow target.
They carried troops and takes to the Pacific Theater. And
(05:38):
my mother was at the time, she was learning stenography,
and she thought she was going to have a career
with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but then she got
shall we say, sidetracked. So yeah, I've been on the
earth a while. And when I had my podcast radio show,
(06:04):
get published radio dot com. When I had that show,
which is somewhat on hiatus, now I have a new one,
thinking about thinking that's another story, but the host would
often introduce me, here's our host, Gerald Effett Jones, the
author who has the answers because he's already made all
the mistakes himself. And that's certainly been true. I have
(06:29):
been involved in what might be called self publishing and
is now indie publishing since the very early days of
print on demand, even before ingram And and Amazon were
doing that, and then also in the early days of ebooks,
and up until that time, which was probably what twenty
(06:53):
years ago something like that, I had my career, had
been a professional writer, and I had written business and
technical books, and I had an agent, and I worked
for mainstream publishers, and I worked for kind editors and
not so kind editors. I understood the project. I turned
(07:16):
to writing fiction about fifteen years ago, and my agent said, well,
have a nice life, kid. So this is how I
learned to have my own imprint, laboratory, books and media.
But to address your key question had to do with
(07:37):
where I grew up. I was born in Kansas City,
the Paris of the Midwest, and I grew up in Independence,
Harry Triumman's hometown. And then because my dad was in
the petroleum business, in the engineering end of things, chemical engineer,
we got transferred all over the place to various off
(08:00):
offices and refineries throughout the US. So I lived in Baltimore,
I lived in Connecticut, went to school in Connecticut, moved
back to Chicago, then got married, moved to Detroit, ended
up here in La on the left coast. I'm in
Santa Monica, just six blocks from the Pacific Ocean. But
(08:21):
I will say, perhaps fodder for conversation I had right
before COVID, I returned with my wife from Kenya. We
lived for two years in Kenya, just next to the
other ocean, the Indian Ocean, and that was an amazing experience.
(08:42):
And I say, we moved back from Kenya because life
got interesting there and what do you know, things got
so much more interesting here.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So that's wow.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
That is the state. I look at life with Kenyan
eyes now. And if you you know, I would go,
I would hike to buy my vegetables every morning at
the market. And one of the things that the first,
one of the first things Kenyons would share and they're
just letting off steam. It was almost like a motto
(09:15):
or it's like, oh, corruptions the mother of Kenya. Okay,
So it's all out in the open. You know, if
the cop stops you, you better have some cash, you know,
if you need a document, Yes, it has a rubber stamp,
and there's a fee for the stamp. But there's also this,
you know, something goes in the pocket of the fellow. Yeah,
the stamp. So you just it's out in the open.
(09:38):
It's it's just all there. And yet you know, you
come here and then our media experience and our social
media experience and our interaction with each other, it's just
so much more layered in terms of communication. And yeah,
I mean it's like when people refer to the Post
(10:00):
news era or the post truth era. Wow, you know
it's bewildering. I didn't really mean to get.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Off on that, but no, no, no, no, no, yes, yes,
oh yeah, I would love to live abroad for a while.
People say it's very it just changes you, just not
just to visit, but to actually live.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I know, I lived in Hawaii for a while, which
that was very I just recommend it, I really do.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
As a kid, what did what did you what did
your dream of being? What did you want to be
when you grew up when you were a kid.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
That is a that is a significant part of my
story because my dad being chemical engineer, very much scientific mind,
and that interesting or complex part of it is that
also he was an extremely devout Southern Baptist, Southern Sunday
(10:58):
school teacher, uh deacon of the church, from a very
devout family. My mother is from a Christian family, but
not as she didn't wear on her sleeve as much.
But Dad would often have these debates with the people
in the church about you know, did God create the
(11:19):
earth in seven day or the world in seven days?
And so he would say, well, could it possibly be
seven eras, I mean, can you go that far? So,
I mean he had a scientific mindset, but then he
also had this very solid fate and he wanted me
to be a research scientist. And I was very bright
(11:41):
in school. I got top grades. I wasn't a grind,
if you will. In some ways school wasn't quite enough,
let's say. But as I got into my early teens,
it seemed to me like writers got more girls.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Really.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
I mean, I just like there was this whole world
of literature, and it's like it was like it was
outside the this Christian separatist walk if you will. Uh,
you know, it permitted some dancing and going to movies
that you know. I had a one of the old
(12:28):
relatives that was on actually think he was on my
dad's side. His first name was Israel, and we visited
him on his farm and he had and they warned me.
They said, well, uncle Israel has a rule you never
drink anything out of a bottle. And they said, what
what so to pop No, no, no no, because if
(12:49):
you get in the habit of tipping up the bottle,
then you'll be a drunkard for the rest of your life.
So that's how conservative it was.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
And in high school I kind of broke away and
and I was I was a bit of an ugly
duckling for a while, if you will. But then we
moved to Baltimore, which was interesting because it was DC adjacent,
you know, that whole government thing. And I broke out
(13:20):
of my shell. I became president of the senior class.
I was popular, I dated, I was you know. And
then I went went to this little ivy college, Wesleyan University,
which is a wonderful think tank, if you will, would
probably be considered, you know, progressive in today's world. But
(13:42):
I studied with some famous authors. I studied with er
Atty Kazinski, who wrote A Painted Bird and being there
and it was among my But then I also studied acting,
and that was where my father was really furious with me.
You know. I didn't raise my to be a you know,
Q word, and we really had a tussle over that.
(14:07):
And I thought I was going to go and I
did think that I was going to go into acting professionally.
I auditioned at Juilliard. I I actually have auditioned for
John Houseman, of all people, who said, what what makes
you think he'll be an actor? You know, it's not
the most pleasant experience, and I took that question seriously.
(14:28):
I answered him for about ten minutes. I can see
eyes rolling, but I never needs need less to say.
I didn't get in. But so I get back to Chicago,
where my parents were living at the time, so that
they had relocated again, and it was pretty clear that
and i'd actually i'd had about of tuberculosis of all things.
(14:51):
And my draft number was six. This is Vietnam era.
And I reported to the draft board and they said, oh,
you didn't have TV. I had let but I mean,
you know, I didn't know whether I was going or not.
And then, uh, you know, you get to the last
station at the draft board and here's the fellow, the
only fellow with the uniform in the place, and he's
got a file fold, your file folder in front of him.
(15:13):
And there's two lines at the desk. One's a yellow
line and one's a white line. So the yellow line
leads leads out of the building, and the white line
leads to the cafeteria. And after you have a meal,
you're going on the bus to basic training. And so
he just he didn't you even look at me, and
just yellow line. So you know, I didn't go to Vietnam,
(15:36):
many of my friends did.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
I mean that. Then I had my other war, which
was going door to door asking for a job in
advertising copywriting, because I thought, okay, well if I can't
be an actor, maybe at least I can, you know,
work in film. And so my my very first job
was at an industrial film studio in Chicago, and I wrote.
I wrote ads for Meadow gold yogurt, I wrote books
(16:04):
for railroad cold trains, print printing press equipment. Uh it was.
It was quite an education.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Uh yeah, and I bet you some of those marketing
writing might benefit you today. Who before we talk about
your novels, I wanted to ask you who or what
inspired your love for writing fiction.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Well, you know, I think one of my closest friends
in the professional world was an industrial film director that
I had met in my rounds when I was going
door to door asking for a job. And this fellow
(16:51):
was he just was a colleague. He just was a
very fluid mind and and storytelling what was really at
the heart of you know. I would just we would
have we'd have lunch or dinner and I would just
listened to him speak and he would just he just
his fluid mind would just hop from subject to subject,
(17:13):
and it was like I never had the urge to say,
please get to the point. I just want. I just
wanted to know where this was going, and you know
I will. And I've often confessed this on the air.
Is that you know, when I wrote business and technical books,
(17:35):
which is, I got involved in computer graphics as a producer,
and that's how I learned computers, and that's how I
learned to write books about computers and it and stuff. Anyhow,
when I wrote those books and I had an editor
and a publisher, I had to submit an outline first,
an outline and a sample chapter, and I had to
(17:57):
stick to that outline. I had to write two chapters.
And if I didn't stick the outline or write two
chapters a week, I got my hands slapped by the guy.
And it was a guy. It was always a guy
back then. And so the discipline of writing to an outline,
of getting of, as my editor said, getting my butt
in a chair every day, that was normal for me.
(18:22):
But as I got into fiction, now, you know, cranking
forward many years now, I had always written screenplays. By screenplays,
those those flew around LA like planes over the airport
that were not permitted to land. So I got a
couple of awards, but no movies. What I learned to do,
or what I came to do when I was writing
(18:43):
fiction was I began to delight from writing from a
blank page. I had no oline, and especially in my
Preacher Evan Wickliffe mystery series. I got four books in
that series, now kind of writing the fifth one. He's
an amateur sleuth. He's like an agnostic menace. I won't
(19:05):
let's say he's troubled. I don't agnostics wrong because you know,
he's not saying there's no God. He's just saying, you know,
where are you? But people come to him with problems
in the small Missouri town again going back to my roots,
small Missouri farm town. People come to him with problems
nobody else wants to solve. I mean, you know, he's
(19:27):
he's a he's a counselor he's somebody who can bring
your troubles to So here's this cold case, is this crime,
this troubled thing, and somebody needs to work through this
ball of snakes whatever it is. And one of the
things that I discovered about my writing process is if
I write from a blank page, I don't know where
(19:49):
it's going. And if I can surprise myself, if I
can pick the choice that's seem unlikely or that might
not make sense, but then I have to try to
make it fit. I'll delight myself when it finally does,
(20:10):
and presumably I'll delight the reader as well. And what
informs it. Going back to what I was saying about
being an actor, Yes, you could say I failed as
an actor. I mean I was on the stage a bit,
you know, in and out of college, but learning to
(20:31):
play all those roles, learning learning, learning that I could
be the bad guy as much as the hero. I mean,
it's much more interesting to play a villain than it
is to play hero most of the time. And the
example I often use is Joaquin Phoenix. Okay, Joaquin Phoenix
(20:53):
is a vegan an animal activist. I've never met him,
but I I've heard that he's just simply really mild mannered,
relatively introverted person to meet. Well, look at the Joker,
you know, this crazy, mad serial killer. Well Joking found
(21:17):
that person in himself. He had to go deep within
and say what part of my psyche would do that?
And really believe it, really, really be motivated by it,
and that one of the things that I often think
(21:37):
is that you know, actors as much as anybody, maybe
more than anybody, understand that anybody's capable of anything. And
so in history, when we judge people who you know,
conducted war crimes or turned their friends in or you know,
did these horrible things, it's like, oh, I'd never do that,
(22:02):
or you know, I'm I'm a good person, or you know,
I'm I'm I'm moral, I'm righteous, whatever, think again, you know.
And and so that's that's part of what informs it.
Because when I was an actor, I realized, you know what,
(22:23):
you kind of have to wait for those parts to
come to you. You know, if you if you really
long to play a character who you know does whatever.
You know, I want to play a research scientist. Okay
I never was one, but I want to be a
brilliant mathematician in the movie. You've got to wait for
that script to come along or you finally, you finally
(22:44):
have to happen to on a role quite quite by chance.
That that that you think, that's one aspect of your personality. Well,
if you're a writer, you get to play all the
roles you have to play all the roles, and so
another another mantra, another lesson about writing from a blank
(23:06):
page is that you put those characters on a stage.
You clothe them, you you give them some some traits
and some motivations, and then they just go where they
want to go, you know, because these are aspects of it.
It's like what they tell you about dreams. You know,
you dream about something somebody that's really an aspect of you,
(23:30):
and that will often be a revelation. And he said, no,
I'd never do that. So so yes, that's how I
surprise myself and hopefully hopefully and those books have won award,
so okay, somebody else must think.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
So, yes, introduce us to Evan Whycliffe.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
You talked a little bit about him, but can you
tell us what his personality is like, and what's his
family like and what drives Evan?
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Well, you know, you've had something of a memoir from me,
and that really is the you know, Evan is not
the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree I
have him.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
I had relatives from Farmtown in Missouri, Missouri, if you're
a local, and we my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, would
often take us me and my brothers to the farm
on the weekends so my parents could breathe and relax
and you know, fishing, hunting, you know, petting the sheep,
(24:38):
riding the horse, all those things. We were city boys,
but you know, it was it was really a fascinating
childhood from that standpoint. And I have Evan growing up
as a farm boy in Appleton City, which is where
some of my relatives are from in southeastern Missouri, and
(25:01):
he and and he's being raised in a devout family
and he thinks he's going to go into the ministry,
believes he's been called. And so he goes to Harvard
Divinity School, and which is something of a ecumenical uh
well that they say Unitarian, but I mean it's a
(25:23):
it's a very broad based the seminary. And you know,
he learns, he learns enough of Christian history to realize that,
you know, the Church, the Church has sponsored wars, and
it's had inquisitions and tortured people, and you know, it's like,
what what am I getting into here? You know? And
(25:47):
you read some of the travels of the Catholic Church
today and liberation theology and in in South America, which
the current Pope is very much uh familiar with and
you realize, well, this is this is this is this
is strife and and and strife and strife. So he
(26:08):
actually drops out of Harvard Divinity and so well, maybe
maybe astronomy, astrophysics, maybe maybe the maybe science will hold
some answers for me, provide some comfort for me. And
so he goes, you know, he goes m I T
in astrophysics and along the way he meets up with
(26:34):
really brilliant woman who happens to have a Jewish background,
and she's she's an engineer, and she goes to work
while uh he's pursuing astrophysics and graduate school. She goes
to work for aerospace company, gets posted over to the
(26:58):
Middle East and you know, lo and behold that they've
gotten engaged before she left, and she's, you know, I'll
be back, and she's killed in a missile attack in Lebanon.
So here he is heartbroken. He realizes science is like, Okay,
there's all these theories, but you know it's not there's nothing.
(27:19):
There's nothing hard and fast here. Yeah, okay, we can
build it out at a bomb we can't, but we
can't necessarily explain exactly how the you know universe produced this,
And so he moves back to southern Missouri and he
doesn't have a job, so and his mother's passed away.
(27:40):
Since then, that's that's been difficult. His father needs caregiving.
But the one thing, there's two things he finds to do.
Number One, he can be a guest preacher, so he
is he sometimes is preaching at the local Baptist church.
And the other thing that he's found to do that
(28:02):
makes a little more money is he's a data driller.
You know, he's certainly learned computers and laptops and phones
and stuff. And so he works for the local Ford
dealer as a skip tracer. He runs down you know,
he's trying to find people who've skipped on their loans
(28:22):
and so he's pretty good at that. And he really
doesn't have to burn a lot of shoe leather because
he can do most of it from a computer screen,
which amazes the dealer. So here he is, and this
is the world he's thrown into, and in the very
first book in the series, he hasn't been there very long,
doing these things and trying to get by and his
(28:46):
childhood friend he's on his way to actually join up
with a group of hunters. He's not much of a hunter.
He's really not really too happy about that anymore, but
he feels as though they've asked him along, and so he'll,
you know, he might make a good conversation companion. And
(29:07):
he's kind of kind of misses them. So he's traping,
trapesing through a cornfield on the way to where he's
going to meet these hunters in them in the woods,
and he runs across the body of his best friend,
his child.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Oh and you know.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
The guy's got a hole in his chest and it
looks like he's done himself in. And Evan thinks to himself,
I just and it's like, what you say, you know,
how did it happen? Why did it happen? Evan's thinking
to himself, you know, Bob just wasn't this that kind
of person. That wasn't somebody who was moody and depressed
(29:44):
and troubled. And he never came to me with his problems.
He was always he was always a joyful playmate. And
he and he loved his dog and he you know,
he had a dear wife, now I understand, and and
he was happily married, and you know, how how is
it possible that this could have happened? And so that
that's the trigger for the first book.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Oh and is this Preacher finds a corpse?
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Preacher finds a corpse?
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yes, I was going to ask you for but this
is you're telling me?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Then?
Speaker 3 (30:14):
How this? Oh my god? How interesting? Uh.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
He goes out hunting with some friends and he finds
one of his other friends, Bob.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
How long was Bob? Had he recently been shot? When?
Speaker 4 (30:29):
Yeah, it was it was that morning. It was it
was a fresh corpse. And so you know, uh, one
of the people in town that Evan has met at
the local cafe which I renamed the come on in
the place where he has his pancakes in the morning.
You know, he he's met the local sheriff, who's a
(30:53):
very troubled, overweight African American American fellow who you know,
there there aren't there aren't many of his of his
church fellows in that community, let's put it that way.
So he's having trouble keeping his job, and he just
wants he just wants things to kind of, you know,
stay on an even keel. And so you know, uh,
(31:18):
Sheriff Chef Chad otis is more about you know this,
if it looks like suicide, if it walks like suicide,
if it smells like a suicide. You know, come on, Evan.
You know I'm not going to pry into this, okay,
And so it falls to Evan too, you know, to
drill into what the motivations might be. And you know this,
(31:40):
this isn't a spoiler because you know that he finds
the corpse on the first page. So this idea of
and one of the as an author, one of the
things that is kind of wonderful about writing about amateur
sleuths is that I don't know police procedure or I
(32:00):
never studied criminology, Okay, and neither did Evan. He's got
a logical mind. He's got you know, he knows how
to use that you know, online tools, and you know,
and so do I. So we're we're on the same
path if you were Will and I you know, I'm
(32:21):
I won't say I'm an I don't noticed uh. From
the standpoint of of religion, I still I still feel
as though I've got a core of of I draw
a distinction between belief and faith. I mean, you know,
if you're among people who say, if you don't believe X,
Y and Z, you're not one of us. That's really
(32:43):
those kind of really might not be my peeps. I
can certainly sympathize with where they're coming from, but the
idea of the idea of I see somebody in this
on the street and they kind of smile and give
me a look, and I go, hi, sister. You know,
(33:05):
you know, it's just faith is not something you can explain.
I mean, I think it's something you shouldn't necessarily try
to explain because that's why it's faith. So otherwise it's
like facts, and you know, we both know that finding
(33:26):
facts is getting you know, I've seen some stuff in
my Facebook feed, which I still believe it or not,
you know, look at and somehow I got plugged into
an ancient archaeology feed, and you know, you wouldn't believe
the faked up pictures, you know, the fake imagery. You know, here,
(33:54):
here's some bunch of people and it shows them digging
out a human skull that is fifteen foot high, and
I mean it's it's just like God, look at that,
and it's it's so real.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
And yet you know, you have a hunch that's not not.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
And you know, and now I'm seeing all these posts
about the stuff that's deep underneath the pyramids, all these
the structures that that somehow by sonar I guess it
is or whatever they have found, and it may or
may not be true. But there's just you know, I'm
not plugged into those research databases. Is enough to know,
(34:40):
And there's so much of that kind of stuff out there.
Which rabbit do you want to chase?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
This is true? This is true? So I, for Preacher
finds a corpse? What period is this story set in?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
And why did you choose this specific time period Preacher
finds a Corpse?
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Well, it would be contemporary in that there's four books
and they are somewhat chronological. You don't you don't have
to read them in sequence. At least I try to
give you enough backstory on it. Let's say, if I'm
reintroducing a character, I'll find some I hope subtle way
of working who they are and what they do into it.
(35:25):
So Evan does mature. I'd say the span of the
books might be might be ten years. I think now
by the time we get to the new one, it'll
be it'll definitely be present day because we've got some
stuff going on. That's that's very much in the headlines,
(35:50):
if you will. The one right before this was is
Preacher stalls the Second Coming, which actually I learned that
there really was a CIA plot back in the nineteen
sixties to fake the second Coming of Christ, so that
(36:11):
I mean, this is back. You know. The other way
of destroying this was to destroy Castro, to bring him down.
The other way to do that was the exploding cigar.
So both of these ideas were about the same credibility.
But they were going to they were going to park
a submarine off the coast of Cubans, shoot off all
this weaponry, and then have some you know, voice in
a bullhorn tell the faithful of Castro that that Fidel
(36:36):
was the Antichrist and he had to be overthrown it.
The plot never was used as far as anybody knows,
it was. It did come out in testimony before Congress,
the Frank Church Committee, but you know, it's just one
of those kind of dumb ideas that got stuck in
a file drawer. But there is a conspiracy theory these
(36:57):
days called Blue Beam project Bluebeam, which accuses NASA of
working on advanced technology for a like a virtual reality
global return of Christ, and that's becoming more and more
(37:18):
technically feasible. I do feel as though that also is fantasy,
because I would submit that Christ returned almost immediately after
he was here. It's called the Holy Spirit. You know,
you don't know it's here, you just you missed it,
But it's there, you mind. It not a mystery to
(37:42):
anybody who knows it. So I don't really you know,
it's like thief in the night. That's the true part,
you know, coming in the clouds. No, no, no, that's
that's what the that was like to distract the other
people who you know, don't know anyhow, Preacher stalls. The
Second Coming is about a like a Jim Jones character.
(38:07):
It's like embarrassing to use the name, but you know,
an unscrupulous evangelist who lures people to his farm, especially
homeless folks and hungry people who who are you know,
they're not only looking for some hope, they're also looking
for a meal. And the thing is, once you get
(38:29):
into the farm and sign the papers and give away
your possessions and whatever, you ain't getting out. And so
this becomes in effect a religious concentration. Camp and that
that's a fictional story. At least my version of it
(38:50):
is it has happened in other places of the world
that actually relatively recently, but that's what that book is about.
So yeah, yes, because a lot of that had to
do with misinformation, fake information. You know, they're they're, you know,
(39:10):
when they finally find out about this guy, they're digging
bodies out of the ground, and you know, it's it's
kind of like these news images you see from Gaza
where you know, you see all these white body bags
on the ground and you know, so then then then
there's these rumors that you know, after the camera shuts off,
(39:31):
that that that that the people who are in the
body bags just you know, on zip them and get
out and this has just been completely fake news. Well
that's kind of what's going on in the in the
book here, is that that this pastor, actually this unscrupulous
pastor is claiming that it never happened. It just never happened.
(39:52):
It's all been It's like, uh, it's like the holocausts,
what people say about the Holocaust never happened. So yes,
it's very current from that standpoint. The series is very
much in the news. If you will.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
And so that's the four third or fourth, And so
when we go back to you the first the Preacher
finds the corpse that's Evans. First time, he's starting to
do some investigative tech detective work because the sheriff just
wants it to kind of quietly go away. What's happening
at the start of book two in a series? Preacher
(40:30):
fakes a miracle? And is it connected or each of
these books connected? So he finds this corpse, who's this
friend Bob? Does it still show up? And Preacher fakes
a miracle? Ors each book kind of a standalone book?
Speaker 4 (40:48):
Well, they're definitely not standalone, but you could read them standalone.
As I say, because I'm I'm and that's true of
a lot of fiction series. You don't necessarily really have
to be a fan of the series to jump in.
And Preacher Fakes a Miracle is the second one in
(41:09):
the series. Yes, there are characters and plot threads that continue,
and in Preacher Finds a Corpse, one of the unscrupulous
characters is a local investment banker and the idea of
land grab and corruption and you know, being involved with
(41:34):
government officials who are some what on the take. That's
all part of that story. And as much as as
much dirt as Evan finds, there's always more to it.
Is kind of a bottomless hole. In Preacher fakes a
(41:54):
miracle at the local children's home, which is being run
by a Catholic charity. There are young women who are
get placed outplaced into jobs, into menial jobs like seamstress
(42:16):
or hotel attendant whatever. And there is in the Lake
of the Ozarks there there is now a rather thriving
casino culture, and so some of these women end up
going to work as housekeepers at the casino. And Evan
(42:38):
finds that some of these women simply disappear. Some of
them seem to have been abused, but you know, they
the court system seems to shove them over into mental
health facilities, not into not necessarily into isn't because they
(43:00):
haven't necessarily done anything wrong, but you know, maybe they're
being stoked up on haldall or thorozine or something to
keep him quiet. So teen abduction is very much a
part of the second book, So it's a it's a
(43:21):
bit grittier from that standpoint. And yet it turns out
that one of the young people and that Evan meets
in this metal facility is a young man who has
schizophrenia and leaves. He he hears voices, and this kid's
(43:43):
been completely written off. And it turns out he's actually
the son of this unscrupulous banker who really doesn't want
anybody to know that that that's his child. M hm,
you know, doesn't understand him. You know, he just parked
him over here. You take care of him. I've got
(44:03):
things to do. And so Evan's about the only person
on earth who thinks that these voices might be telling
this child something, because I mean, I wrote I wrote
a book. I co wrote a book with Rebecca Shaper
called The Light in His Soul Lessons from My Brother Schizophrenia.
(44:27):
And I had a step son who was also schizophrenic,
so I'm very familiar with this area. And Rebecca believes that,
I mean, her brother came back to the family after
he was missing for twenty years, and she took care
(44:47):
of him. She got him on public assistance, she got
him on the right medications, she got him set up
with an apartment, and he maintained I mean, you know,
he never was you know, just another you know, member
of the community. But he maintained he did well, and
when he finally died, he didn't die. He didn't die
(45:10):
by suicide as many troubled people do. He simply died
of lung cancer because he was a chainsmoker. And so
after he died, she was certain that he was her
spirit guide or is her spirit guid you know, she
believes that he shows up to her when she sees hummingbirds.
And you know, Rebecca's not Rebecca's a very grounded person.
(45:36):
So I mean, this is not the ratings of somebody
who's off the edge. And you know, she's she's very
much of a healer herself and one of the people
that I hold dear. And that was a book that
just kind of happened that that that floated in like
a hummingbird, as you will. That is one of the
(45:57):
things I do. I do coach other authors, and I
I do play their editor, because especially in the world
of self publishing, if you're indie publishing, if you will,
in the self publisher, you have to learn how to
become an indie publisher. You have to learn how to
act like a publisher. And that is as a very
(46:18):
specific profession. And if if as a self published author.
You don't hire someone who is an editor who's had
experience like me, You're never going to have the experience
that I had dealing with those clowns at the publishers.
You know, I had these guys that would redline my
(46:40):
manuscripts and yell at me and say, you know, you
miss that deadline and you know, but I mean that
was a learning experience. Now I try not to abuse
my people. You know, I can respect, I can respect
where they're coming from. I try to be more of
a diplomat with and often it's often it's just done
(47:02):
right cheerleading, like yeah, why did you why didn't turn
in that next chapter? So well, yeah, and my dog
got sick, you know.
Speaker 3 (47:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
So before we go, I do want to talk about
some before some other things that you you've done, like
your travels and you're not doing. But before we do,
I wanted to close out the the Evan Ycliffe series.
Can you tell us, uh, how many years have passed
between preacher faights a miracle where he's seeing these women
(47:35):
who've been sent off and this this child is schizophrenia.
His father in the financial industry is it's shady. How
many years between that? What happens to Evan and that story, Uh,
before you the launch of Preacher Raises, the day.
Speaker 4 (47:54):
Preacher Raises are Dead and then and then the one
after that is as I said, Preacher Sowd a second coming.
That it's it's it's several years. I mean, the entire
span of the series is about ten years. And Preacher
Raises the Dead. What happens is that's that's the very
that's a very specific time because that's at the beginning
of COVID. And at the beginning of COVID, Marcus Thurston,
(48:16):
who's the old uh pastor of the Baptist church in
Appleton City. Fictional name. Uh he is he is Evans Mentor. Uh,
He's he's a He's an African American with a heritage
from Jamaica, but with a rather mysterious background. Uh. And
(48:42):
you know, also like chett Otis, they're the two most
prominent black people in town. Is like there, you know
where they're They're still not it's not a really diverse community, Okay,
and yet Marcus Thurston very dearly loved pastor. But the
thing is that he wants to retire and he tells Evan,
(49:03):
you know, there's this outbreak and you know there's going
to be a trying time, and you know it's time
for me to just you know, close the door of
the parsonage and you know, and you've been guest preacher
and you're you know, the people know you and whatever,
You're gonna have to step up now. Evan never dreamed
to be a pastor of this church. It's a lot
(49:24):
of work, and especially during COVID. You know you're gonna
see you're going to stand by death beds, You're going
to preside over funerals, You're going to officiate at weddings
over zoom. Okay, So that preacher raises the dead is
all about that. Because he's Evan's become married h a
(49:48):
to a very you know, he's kind I won't say
that he's really recovered from Naomi, uh, but you know
he's he recognizes that, you know, he doesn't he shouldn't
just necessarily dwell in that relationship, even though in some
ways she's still very alive for him. But he he
(50:11):
marries actually it's the sister of the woman who got abducted.
It's in the second book and so but it's an
unlikely marriage. But the thing that's interesting is she just
throws herself into being a church lady. I mean, she
wants she just really wants to do the job, and
it ends up being more pressure on her than Evan
(50:35):
could have ever imagined. I mean, it's a lot of
pressure on him, but he knows what's involved. She stepped
into it somewhat blindly, and so this is causing a
lot of trouble. And she's very good at what she's doing,
but she's just plain working too hard, and so Preacher
raises the dead is you know, to dodge the spoiler
(50:59):
a bit is She ends up hospitalized and the title
refers to the fact that of he's that he's really
praying that she'll wake back up, so that this really
strikes to the core of what does he believe? I mean,
(51:19):
does he does he believe prayer is going to do
any good? And you know, he's kind of come thought
that you know you have what you want even before
you ask it. The purpose of prayer to convince yourself
that you that you have it. I mean, how how
could God be with what will ever be withholding what
(51:40):
it is that you need? You know? And yet how
can this horrible thing have happened because we were trying
so hard to do things right. So you know what
I mean, it's the old, old old question. And you'd
say this in every one of the books, it's why
do bad things having good people? And you know that
was that was the.
Speaker 2 (52:05):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
There have been some very famous evangelists who preached endlessly
on that theme. So so yeah, it was about about
about ten years, i'd say. And then and then the
new one I'm calling preacher faces the music and ends
up ends up going to Nashville where my where my
brother lives. My brother and his wife are dozens at
(52:27):
the at the Country Music Hall of Fame. So I
got to know a lot about I mean, I always
I won't say country music was my prime favorite genre,
but I certainly you know, certainly you know Willie Nelson
and and and uh, Alison Krause, and I mean, you know,
(52:51):
I'm I'm not unfamiliar with especial specially Roy Orbison, you
know there. You know, there's a lot of these. I
guess you'd call them all these, but it's definitely part
of mine. And actually in the books, I mean Evan
a Roy Orbison fan.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Okay, So and.
Speaker 4 (53:15):
He gets into there's a YouTube of Black and White Knights,
which is Orbison's amazing concert at the Ambassador Hotel, and
he has on stage all of these other celebrities who
just think he's God. And one of the ironies of
it is the co lead guitar with him is Springsteen.
(53:42):
And yet this is a version of Springsteen that people
just don't remember. He was in a silk suit, string tie,
Tony Lama boots, his hair, his hair all meticulously come
This guy looked like a Las Vegas high roller.
Speaker 3 (53:58):
Okay, this is.
Speaker 4 (54:00):
The Dunum suit. Yeah, this is before the curly hair.
It's before his voice dropped a knock dove okay. So
and yet on the guitar, oh my god, there was
just nobody, nobody better and well Orbison's probably better.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Okay, Oh my, So you you incorporate all these into
your stories. Then you started out the way you started.
You said you did the door to door looking for
a job. As we wrap up start to wrap up
today's show, you did nonfiction writing at the start. So
I wanted to ask you two closing questions, which number one,
(54:42):
which is easier for you? Have you found to sell
and generate income from fiction? Or nonfiction, And why do
you think this is well?
Speaker 4 (54:52):
Nonfiction certainly, And the fact is just simply that when
I work as a professional writer, and not just as
a writer of of nonfiction books, I mean I have
a book, How to Lie with Charts, which has been
taught at Georgetown an Empire state as a textbook, and
it's about visual it's about graphic design, it's about what
(55:14):
you'd call data visualization, and it's something of a classic text.
And I wrote that years ago. But I worked in
computer graphics, designing business presentations basically what would be called
PowerPoint today, and so I know that world quite well.
And I also know how charts and graphs can be
(55:36):
deliberately made misleaning or accidentally made misleaning. So that's what
that book is about. But I will say that as
a professional writer, I have made more money as a
supporter of large scale business proposals on teams or say
(56:00):
government contracts. Okay, so I have worked in aerospace, I've
worked in healthcare it I've worked in government staffing, and
I did quite a bit of work for USA before
it disappeared. And that is it's very stimulated from the
standpoint that you know and it's been very especially through
(56:25):
the COVID period. Even before that, those teams worked very
much on Zoom and then you know, now they're Microsoft
teams and it's very collegial. I mean, you know, you
might have twenty or thirty people on that team, and
depending upon what the topic is of the day, there
(56:46):
might be only half a dozen. But you know you've
got these you've got these subject areas and subject matters
that you are working in because these proposals are very complex,
like thick as a telephone book, and the federal acquisitions
regulations are extremely complex, and so this is kind of
like being a CPA in understanding the IRS code. You know,
(57:09):
you can't just walk into that world and say, well,
you know, i'm a writer, I'll help you. So that's
why you quote unquote get paid the big bucks in
that world. But the problem is, especially in recent times,
that world has frozen over because and that's not the
government contracts will go away, and these are multile sometimes
(57:33):
multi billion dollar contracts. The problem with with that, with
that profession as a proposal writer, editor manager, is that
you could be working for a fortune five hundred aerospace company.
They're working on a contract that they either already hold
(57:53):
that need that they need to recompete for or they're
working against their biggest competitor. But they've been working on
thisticular contract for over the last two or three years
at least, and they've got or I got a team
of thirty to one hundred people assigned and supporting it.
So they're spending some major money on putting this together.
The problem is that these days, they don't know who
(58:18):
their point of contact is. They don't know who the
person inside of the government. Yes, they know the acquisitions officer,
or they know the person who's the manager of this
particular IT department or whatever, and they know that person,
and they know that agency, and they know that mission,
and they know they know in some ways they know
(58:38):
what those agencies want before they know what they want.
And that's the That's a mark of a good proposal
is that we're thinking ahead. We're trying to do your
thinking for you, and you know, we're not telling you
what to do, but you know, we're trying to convince
you this would be a good idea because you need
to think beyond next week. You know, you need to
think you know, ten years from now, especially, you know
(58:59):
I mean you talk about defense systems for example. So
but again, you may have those close ties. These are
your colleagues, These are the people in the government that
are your customers, your client and guess what you try
to get them on the phone. Oh, they don't work
here anymore. Yeah, And so I don't know how that
(59:20):
situation resolves itself. You know, I think the philosophy is,
let's just break it and see how it grows back,
because I mean, it would grow back, but you know,
maybe on a smaller scale or whatever. But I mean
one well, I mean I did a presentation to the
Association of Proposal Management Professionals is how to get past
(59:44):
the new be evaluator. And my point was, these are
going to be inexperienced people. They're not going to know
the federal acquisition regulations. They're not necessarily going to know
anything about the subject you're writing to. They're going to
have a checklist. Yeah did they answer this? Did they
answer this? Now you get to the second or third
(01:00:04):
round of evaluation, then yeah, you might get a scientist
looking at your stuff. But it's a very fast, it's
a fascinating world because actually, Denise, I I end up
learning so much about about various subject areas that I mean,
I can, I can. You know, none of my books
(01:00:26):
hold anything like what you'd call secrets, because actually I'm
not I'm not authorized to work in the secret world,
so you know, don't worry. But but it does. I mean,
especially things like large scale computer systems, large scale enterprise
(01:00:48):
computer systems like the government has, like you know, data
collection systems, and surveillance, surveillance and espionage and cybercrime. I mean,
this is stuff that I areas that I not only
work read about, but it's areas that I've worked, I
worked in, so that gives a kind of authenticity, I
(01:01:10):
hope to some of the things that I write about. Well,
for example, I mean, preacher stalls as I can coming,
you know, the scientist who stumbles into Evan's little trailer
because he's moved out of the house, living like a hermit,
the fellow. The fellow stumbles into his trailer. Is this
this this this physicist who's warning about this project Bluebeam
(01:01:34):
and and virtual reality, And you know, he says, you know, Evan,
you can't believe anything you see anymore. And you know,
and in some ways not even what you see. I
won't say not even what you see on the street,
although that day is coming to.
Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
We're all so have so enjoy having you on here today.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Joe, We've had the privilege to our listeners having Gerald Everett.
Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Jones on this off the shelf this morning.
Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Please tell off the chef listeners where they can get
a copy of your books.
Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
Well, I'm on Amazon, and I'm also on Barnes and Noble,
Cobo all those other book distributors worldwide, Gerald Everett Jones
dot com. As you mentioned, it would be a great
place to go and find out about my entire book list,
all fourteen novels and some five nonfiction. The Searching for
(01:02:33):
Jonah that I co wrote with my Well, it's my
father's book and I wrote I edited it for him
right before he passed away. And it's a fascinating book
about the real you know, the archaeology and the ancient
history of the Book of Jonah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Oh my goodness, so we have again just what a
pleasure and so much just a wealth of experience in
your own life, and then it always finds its way
into our writings of our experiences. Do uh so thank
you for all you share, and then for those who
want to know more Gerald, He's what we explored on
(01:03:15):
today's show was the White Evan Wycliffe book series.
Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
Then again, as.
Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
He said, how to Lie with Charts, Harry Harambas, Kenyan Sundowner,
Clifford Spirals, Searching for Jonah, which Gerald just mentioned clues
and Hebrew in a Syian History.
Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
This was a book that he co wrote with his father.
Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Don Jones, and what a blessing to get that book.
That book out as well, and we didn't have time
to explore those those other books here on the on
the show today. But thank you so much, Gerald for
being here with us. Just such a creative screenwriter, book reviewer,
radio host. He's just done so so many things and
(01:03:58):
it's worked with pe we were quite accomplished. So it's
a pleasure to have you in here and now again
I encourage you to visit Gerald online at Gerald Everett
Jones dot.
Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
Com, g E R A L D E V E
R E T T J O N E S dot com.
Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Please go and support him and that Evan Wycliff book
series sounds so interesting.
Speaker 3 (01:04:21):
So he's working on a new book in the series.
Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
You can keep up with all of his recent books
and if you came in midstream. After the show finishes streaming,
uh and it's released, you can listen to it as
many times as you like, and it's something.
Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Even if you've read a book in.
Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
A series, listening to the author talk about the story
might give you some insight into even some motivations behind
the character Evan Wycliffe, who sounds like such an interesting character.
So thank you again for being here with us on
Off the Shelf. Gerald. When the show finishes streaming, I
will send you a link to the show. And as
(01:04:58):
I always t you are listeners, You are awesome, you
are incredible. Please go out and create a fabulous day
for yourself. See you back here next Saturday on Off
the Shelf. Tell book lovers everywhere tune in to Off
the Shelf Books.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
You don't want to miss it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
Thank you, thank you,
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel