February 21, 2025 • 21 mins
Our host Darriel Roy interviews Greg Boden, the author of Stormbringer, The Predator's Stone
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for watching.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
This show is all about giving you insights and showcasing
brands that help you to live your best life and
give you confidence.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
As always, I want to.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Kick start your morning with some motivational advice to help
you to feel inspired and energize to start your day today.
I want to talk about the importance of understanding that
our ungrateful heart will never attract blessings.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We live in a society.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Where we are taught to go after more, more things,
more money, more success, more everything. Due to this, it's
easy to get caught up in this lack mentality and
feel like what we have is never enough, or that
we need that one extra material thing in order for
us to be happy. But the reality is until we
become grateful for the things that we do have, we
(00:44):
cannot attract more blessings into our life. In fact, when
we are ungrateful, we often block blessings from coming into
our lives because of our constant focus on lack. The
moment that we begin to realize that we have more
than enough and that everything else on top of that
is just a bonus, is the mo ho we open
the floodgates. Of abundance by filling our hearts with gratitude.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Make your mission to stay to.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Focus on how much you already have, and begin to
count your blessings. As Oprah Winfrey quotes, be thankful for
what you have. You'll end up having more. If you
concentrate on what you don't have, you will never ever
have enough. Next up on the show, we have American
author Greg Boden.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Greg is the author of the action packed fantasy.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Thriller book Stormbringer The Predator Stone.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Greg, thank you so much for being on the show today.
How are you doing.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I'm doing great. It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's good to finally have you and talk about your
amazing book, Stormbringer The Predator's Stone. And before we get
into it, let's talk about your passion and when it began.
I know that it started in college. You were doing
a college contest. Tell us about that and how your
passion got ignited.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So, I was taking a creative writing course in college,
and it was one of those things where I needed
the elective credits. It wasn't because I was particularly interested
in writing.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Right away.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
The instructor had us write a short fictional story so
that he could measure our our abilities right from the beginning,
or lack of right, and so he had us write
this fictional story. I wrote the story and it was
called Lady in the Market, and I turned it in
(02:23):
and a few days later I get it back and
at the top of the paper there was no grade,
there was no score. All it said was come see
me after class. And in fact it in fact, it
was written in red ink. Oh yeah, And I think,
no matter which country you come from, read ink on
(02:45):
the top of your paper is not a good sign.
So you know, I was nervous, but I was ready
to defend my work. So I met with him and
he said, have you ever had formal training in writing?
And I said no, And he said, okay, because you
(03:05):
might want to consider writing as a career. Oh wow,
He said that might be you have a knack for
and so it might be something that you could do.
And he said, would you be interested if I entered
your story in a contest that they were having. It
was called the Young Writers of the Central Valley, which
is where we live in California. And of course I'm
(03:26):
not going to pass up on something like that, so
I said, yeah, you know, knock yourself out. So he
turned in my story, he submitted it, and I ended
up taking first place in the fiction category, and it
was later published in a trade magazine called the San
Joaquin Review. And so that, of course for me, that
(03:50):
was like, okay, that's it. You got to start getting
into writing, and I started focusing a lot on my
writing because, in fact, I'd like to think that if
it wasn't for that opportunity from that teacher, I don't
even know if I'd be sitting here talking to you
right now.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Amazing. That's the great thing about.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Great teachers, right, They help us to find out.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
What our passion is. So I love that. For you,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And you describe yourself as a dreamer and a believer
in all things, make believe.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Tell us about your creativity.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
What kind of inspires that to make these dream worlds
and alternate universes?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Right? Right?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So I've always been drawn to monsters and magic. If
I had to put a label on it, I would
say fantasy.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Don't know about Canada, but in America those people are
affectionately referred to as nerds. So that's always been me.
You know, I played dungeons and dragons. When I was
a kid, watched every movie that I could that had
wizards and barbarians and all these types of things. But
I was never in to reading as a kid for fun.
(05:02):
It wasn't until I got into high school that everything changed.
I was in my freshman year and I started to
go to our library and I would I would sit
in the library because it was warm and it was
a good place to wait for my friend.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and the.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Library came up to me one day and she said,
I noticed that you you don't ever read when you're
in the library. And I said, well, it's cold outside
and this is a great place to sit. It's comfortable.
And she said, you know, you're not going to leave
the library today until you take a book with you.
And you know, I'm looking around thinking does she say
(05:42):
this to everyone?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Is this a thing? And she said, what are you
interested in?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
And so, you know, being a fourteen year old boy,
I was extremely My communication was extremely limited, but I
mumbled something about monsters and magic and she disappears and
she comes back with the Hobbit, but by JR. Talkien
and you know, this is way back before the movies
(06:07):
came out. So I didn't really know anything about it,
and she says, take this home, read the first chapter,
and if you don't like it, you can come back
and I'll never bother yet you again, and you can
use my you can use my library. And so I
take it home and I read three chapters and I
am completely hooked. Yeah, yeah, In fact, The Hobbit has
(06:31):
become my all time favorite book. And so from that
moment on, I started reading everything every genre I could,
but I mainly stuck with fantasy, and you know, it
just felt great to be able to escape from the
pressures of the world and read about someone else's someone
(06:51):
else's pressures, you know, especially I had to do with
dragons and things like that, and so just wrote real
quickly in order to come up with the things that
I do. A lot of times I'll put myself into
the scene before the scene has ever created. And so,
for example, there's a scene in the beginning of the
book where Cinder gets on a Viking long ship and
(07:15):
she crosses the Atlantic Ocean with her friends to get
to Iceland. And I thought to myself, you know, I
put myself in the scene. If I was on this
boat with my friends, what would be the craziest thing
that could happen, And of course there has to be
a sea serpent that attacks the ship, and so that
(07:36):
was the That's how I create the scene. But so
I start with something big and then I start mentally
going through all the details. What does the weather look like?
Is it overcast? Is it sunny? If you look over
the ship and you look into the water, would you
see bubbles coming up, letting you know that there's something
down there? And so the ideas start flowing in, and yeah,
(08:00):
I grab the best one.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And fast forward. Let's talk about your book, Stormbringer the
Predator Stone. Tell us about the synopsis of the book
and some of the characters.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
So I love mythology, and Norse mythology has always been
my favorite.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
One day I came.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Across a picture of igercill igracil is the world tree,
and it has nine the branches hold up nine realms,
and right away I was just fascinated with this, and
I read the inscription or the description at the bottom,
and it said that at the bottom of this massive
(08:38):
tree that spans the universe, there's a snake that sits
at the roots of the tree and it chews away
at the roots, and the prophecy was that over thousands
of years, this snake would eventually chew through all the
roots and the tree would fall over and it would
(08:59):
be the end of the world. And I was fascinated
by this, but I thought, what if what if someone
came along that had the ability to cut down this
tree much faster, like days or weeks? And what if
there was someone from our world, you know, where we
(09:22):
live on Earth, who has been prophesied hundreds and hundreds
of years ago to stop this person from cutting down
the world tree. And so that's basically the story. Odin
is the supreme god of all gods. You have to
have you have to have Odin if you're going to
have a story about Norse mythology. And he knows about
(09:45):
this prophecy, he knows about Sinner, but he's very arrogant,
he's very self centered. He can't imagine that this twelve
year old girl from America could make a difference in
his world, and so he's against it from the very beginning.
In fact, he names her the storm bringer because in
(10:09):
Old Norse literature, stormbringer is a title given to someone
who brings nothing but bad luck. And right away when
she arrives there in Iceland, she brings terrible luck to
their plans, and so she names her Stormbringer, which is
where the book comes from. So he sends out a
(10:30):
group of young girls that are her age, and they're
specifically trained to run missions for him. And it made
me think of Jedi from the Jedi from Star Wars,
highly trained, laser focused. And these predators go and pull
(10:51):
her right out of her school cafeteria in Richmond, Virginia,
and they put her on this boat and take her
off to Iceland, and she meets of course other characters there.
And so the basic idea of the story is to
get back to California, which is where the World Tree's
roots are located under the earth, and stop the tree
(11:14):
from being cut to him.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Very interesting and exciting.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You know, the main character Cinder had, you know, quite
an unfortunate life, being abandoned at birth. How do you
think those hardships has Nater victorious in this book and
her determination?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Right?
Speaker 4 (11:31):
So I work full time as a school counselor. Oh okay,
and I had a student several years ago on my caseload,
and she lived she was homeless. She in fact, she
lived in an old car that didn't run anymore. She
lived in an old car with her mother. Really sad situation. However,
(11:55):
she was super smart. She could She had really bad attendance,
but she could show up one day of the week
or two days and she could take a test and
her scores were off the chart. And I got to
know her because she was always getting into trouble and
I got to know her, and the more I got
to know her, the more I realized that she really
(12:15):
wanted to be a good person. She wanted to do
what was right, but she was always trying to do
the right thing in the wrong way. And she was
in several fights and in fact, I think she was
in four fights in one semester. Anyways, I wanted to
base my character off of her, and so Cinder is
(12:37):
based off of this, this person that I knew, this
one of my students, and.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Sinder is she's a foster child.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
She's never known her parents, you know, no money in
her life, and she is like this student that I have.
Her impulsivity is always getting her in trouble, but down deep,
she wants to do the right thing. And I think
that it's this her ability to never give up and
(13:07):
to want to prove to the world that she's a
better person than what the world sees. That it helps
her overcome all of the obstacles that she fades and
it faces.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And I think that's the message I wanted to send out.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
No matter who you are, no matter what background you
come from, no matter what weaknesses you have, there's good
in you, and if you stick with it, you can
do great things.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And of course we have protagonists in the book, but
we also have some villains. So tell us about some
of the villains that you created in this book, right.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So one of the things this is a five book
planned series, and I wanted to do something different. And
so when you say villain or antagonist, I set it
up so that the reader thinks it's one person, and
then in book two you think it's a different person.
And so throughout the books it's hard to tell who
(14:06):
the villain is. There's always bad guys throughout these books.
But Odin, right from the beginning, appears to be one
of the antagonists because he's just so arrogant and all
he cares about is himself, you know. And then you've
got valkyries, which are shield maidens chosen by Odin, and
(14:31):
they their job is to when a war is over,
they go down and they take the spirits from the
men and women the warriors that have fought valiantly, and
they take them up to Valhalla, which is the Norse
version of heaven or the afterlife. And you never know
if this valkyrie in the story is good or bad.
(14:55):
In fact, Tristan and you know, I can mention him later,
but Tristan also appears to be a little sketchy and
and he might have, you know, something up his sleeve.
All terior motives. It's all all safe for right now.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And if you could turn this into a movie, who
would you get to play these characters, including Cinder?
Speaker 4 (15:17):
I would probably, I mean, if you know, of course,
if I had my way, I would get, you know,
someone like Chris Hamsworth to nice to play Odin. You know,
I know he was four in the movies, but it
would be great. I love his acting style and I
think he would be great as someone like Odin.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
For Sinder.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
You know, I'm not well versed on some of the
younger actresses and actors that are out there. I don't
know if you've heard of Eric Tremblay. She's actually from Canada. Yeah,
she was in the Bye Bye Man. She was in Extinction,
she was in Before I Fall. And if if the
listeners or viewers ever have a chance to look her
(15:59):
up Eric Tremblay, she just has the look of sender,
the red hair and the pale skiin and you know,
very Nordic looking, as if she's from Icelandia. She's and
she's a great actor too, so, but she's almost sixteen
years old now. So if we're going to do this,
we gotta we gotta get it going.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, you know what, I do a lot of red carpets,
So if I meet her, I'm definitely going to tell
her about this. Okay, I'm going to connect you to
We're gonna manifest this for you.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Nice please do.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And on Amazon you have so many amazing reviews of
people loving your book. How does it feel to see
that you have such a great response.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
To this, this book that you've treated.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's been surreal because when I
first wrote the book, and the book is actually twelve
years old, oh wow, I wrote I wrote the book,
and I had this fear that no one would like it.
I had this fear that the publisher, you know, published
(17:00):
wouldn't want it. And my wife finally threatened me and said,
if you don't send us out, you are sleeping on
the couch.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
That's a good wife, it's a good rfead.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
So I sent it out to a few places and
I got a response back, and then the reviews started
coming in and they were positive. And you know, not
everything is going to be positive. I know that there's
going to be people that don't care for the book,
and that's fine, and I think that's the message. That's
the advice I would give to people that are looking
to write or to do anything, actually is you'll never
(17:38):
know if you could have done it. I don't want
to get to the end of my life and be
sitting on my front porch and sit there and wonder
what would have happened if I had done something with
my books. I want to be able to say that
I tried something, and even if it doesn't work and
it isn't successful, at least I tried.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I think that's fantastic advice.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
You know, sometimes people sometimes it's their own self that
hold us back, right, It's not anyone else, it's our
own fears and as soon as we let that go,
we're able to really flourish and you know, bring our
gifts to the world. So I love what you said.
You know, I created my platform to inspire to uplift.
I know you talked about it a little bit. But
you know, for anyone that really has that fear, they're creative,
(18:23):
maybe they have a great idea, or maybe they're just
feeling low, they're not going through a good period in
their life, and you know they're fearful. What would you
say to inspire them? Because I feel like, you know,
you're someone who really walks the walk and really put
his ideas out there for the world to see, right.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
I would say to get the idea onto paper. If
you just keep it up in your head, it's never
going to get realized, and then start sharing it with
the people that you're close to. You know, this could
go for a book, it could go for a new business,
It could even be a relationship that you were wanting
to start. You know, talk to people, see what they
(19:04):
think about it. But in the end, I would highly
suggest to not listen to the naysayers because there's going
to be people out there. In fact, I remember when
I first came up with this idea. I had some
friends that were that said, oh no, this idea has
been done before, or you know, it's only aimed at
(19:27):
a niche group of people, you know, And I had
to ignore that and I had to just to go
for it. I'm sure you had to do the same
thing with your show. Yeah, there might have people that
said this isn't a good idea. I would say, give
it a shot and see what happens, and in the end,
if it doesn't work, try something else, because you're going
(19:48):
to get rejection slips. I got rejection slips. Stephen King
got rejection slips. I have a picture of Stephen King
and JK Rowling close by because I look at them
sometimes when I feel discouraged and I say, hey, they
got turned down. I think Stephen King got turned down
thirty five times before they took his first book. Thirty
(20:10):
five people turned down Stephen King. That's amazing to me,
and so just ignore them and go for it.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I think that's a great idea. You know, I interview
successful people for a living. You know, everyone from SYLVESTERI
st Alone, There's so many people. James Franco, just to
name a few, and you know, they all said the
same thing as that they all went through so much
rejection before they ever encountered any success.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So it's just part of the process, right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
You just have to put yourself out there and rejection
is part of the process. But if you're passionate, you're
going to do it anyways, right. So yeah, and Greg,
for all fur viewers that want to read Stormbringer, where
can they do so and purchase your book?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So you can?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
I mean, the easiest way would would be to go
to Amazon. You can, you can log in to the
Internet and you can basically go to any of your
favorite bookstores and you can get it sent to you
a physical copy. Most people go through Amazon, and you
can also get the digital copy if you prefer to
(21:15):
read it that way. And I do want to give
a one shameless plug.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
Book two is called Throne Runner nice and.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
That comes out in the fall this year.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
We're going to link that information for your book so
our viewers can purchase it. Greg, thank you so much
for being on the show today. Congratulations on an amazing book,
and we're so excited to see the next book that
comes out.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Thank you, thank you. This has been great Dear
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Russia is available on Roku, Amazon fire Tv, iHeartRadio, and
Apple Podcasts.
Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for watching.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
This show is all about giving you insights and showcasing
brands that help you to live your best life and
give you confidence.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
As always, I want to.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Kick start your morning with some motivational advice to help
you to feel inspired and energize to start your day today.
I want to talk about the importance of understanding that
our ungrateful heart will never attract blessings.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We live in a society.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Where we are taught to go after more, more things,
more money, more success, more everything. Due to this, it's
easy to get caught up in this lack mentality and
feel like what we have is never enough, or that
we need that one extra material thing in order for
us to be happy. But the reality is until we
become grateful for the things that we do have, we
(00:44):
cannot attract more blessings into our life. In fact, when
we are ungrateful, we often block blessings from coming into
our lives because of our constant focus on lack. The
moment that we begin to realize that we have more
than enough and that everything else on top of that
is just a bonus, is the mo ho we open
the floodgates. Of abundance by filling our hearts with gratitude.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Make your mission to stay to.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Focus on how much you already have, and begin to
count your blessings. As Oprah Winfrey quotes, be thankful for
what you have. You'll end up having more. If you
concentrate on what you don't have, you will never ever
have enough. Next up on the show, we have American
author Greg Boden.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Greg is the author of the action packed fantasy.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Thriller book Stormbringer The Predator Stone.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Greg, thank you so much for being on the show today.
How are you doing.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
I'm doing great. It's good to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's good to finally have you and talk about your
amazing book, Stormbringer The Predator's Stone. And before we get
into it, let's talk about your passion and when it began.
I know that it started in college. You were doing
a college contest. Tell us about that and how your
passion got ignited.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Right.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So, I was taking a creative writing course in college,
and it was one of those things where I needed
the elective credits. It wasn't because I was particularly interested
in writing.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Right away.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
The instructor had us write a short fictional story so
that he could measure our our abilities right from the beginning,
or lack of right, and so he had us write
this fictional story. I wrote the story and it was
called Lady in the Market, and I turned it in
(02:23):
and a few days later I get it back and
at the top of the paper there was no grade,
there was no score. All it said was come see
me after class. And in fact it in fact, it
was written in red ink. Oh yeah, And I think,
no matter which country you come from, read ink on
(02:45):
the top of your paper is not a good sign.
So you know, I was nervous, but I was ready
to defend my work. So I met with him and
he said, have you ever had formal training in writing?
And I said no, And he said, okay, because you
(03:05):
might want to consider writing as a career. Oh wow,
He said that might be you have a knack for
and so it might be something that you could do.
And he said, would you be interested if I entered
your story in a contest that they were having. It
was called the Young Writers of the Central Valley, which
is where we live in California. And of course I'm
(03:26):
not going to pass up on something like that, so
I said, yeah, you know, knock yourself out. So he
turned in my story, he submitted it, and I ended
up taking first place in the fiction category, and it
was later published in a trade magazine called the San
Joaquin Review. And so that, of course for me, that
(03:50):
was like, okay, that's it. You got to start getting
into writing, and I started focusing a lot on my
writing because, in fact, I'd like to think that if
it wasn't for that opportunity from that teacher, I don't
even know if I'd be sitting here talking to you
right now.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Amazing. That's the great thing about.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Great teachers, right, They help us to find out.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
What our passion is. So I love that. For you,
that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And you describe yourself as a dreamer and a believer
in all things, make believe.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Tell us about your creativity.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
What kind of inspires that to make these dream worlds
and alternate universes?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Right? Right?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So I've always been drawn to monsters and magic. If
I had to put a label on it, I would
say fantasy.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Don't know about Canada, but in America those people are
affectionately referred to as nerds. So that's always been me.
You know, I played dungeons and dragons. When I was
a kid, watched every movie that I could that had
wizards and barbarians and all these types of things. But
I was never in to reading as a kid for fun.
(05:02):
It wasn't until I got into high school that everything changed.
I was in my freshman year and I started to
go to our library and I would I would sit
in the library because it was warm and it was
a good place to wait for my friend.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, and the.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Library came up to me one day and she said,
I noticed that you you don't ever read when you're
in the library. And I said, well, it's cold outside
and this is a great place to sit. It's comfortable.
And she said, you know, you're not going to leave
the library today until you take a book with you.
And you know, I'm looking around thinking does she say
(05:42):
this to everyone?
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Is this a thing? And she said, what are you
interested in?
Speaker 4 (05:47):
And so, you know, being a fourteen year old boy,
I was extremely My communication was extremely limited, but I
mumbled something about monsters and magic and she disappears and
she comes back with the Hobbit, but by JR. Talkien
and you know, this is way back before the movies
(06:07):
came out. So I didn't really know anything about it,
and she says, take this home, read the first chapter,
and if you don't like it, you can come back
and I'll never bother yet you again, and you can
use my you can use my library. And so I
take it home and I read three chapters and I
am completely hooked. Yeah, yeah, In fact, The Hobbit has
(06:31):
become my all time favorite book. And so from that
moment on, I started reading everything every genre I could,
but I mainly stuck with fantasy, and you know, it
just felt great to be able to escape from the
pressures of the world and read about someone else's someone
(06:51):
else's pressures, you know, especially I had to do with
dragons and things like that, and so just wrote real
quickly in order to come up with the things that
I do. A lot of times I'll put myself into
the scene before the scene has ever created. And so,
for example, there's a scene in the beginning of the
book where Cinder gets on a Viking long ship and
(07:15):
she crosses the Atlantic Ocean with her friends to get
to Iceland. And I thought to myself, you know, I
put myself in the scene. If I was on this
boat with my friends, what would be the craziest thing
that could happen, And of course there has to be
a sea serpent that attacks the ship, and so that
(07:36):
was the That's how I create the scene. But so
I start with something big and then I start mentally
going through all the details. What does the weather look like?
Is it overcast? Is it sunny? If you look over
the ship and you look into the water, would you
see bubbles coming up, letting you know that there's something
down there? And so the ideas start flowing in, and yeah,
(08:00):
I grab the best one.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And fast forward. Let's talk about your book, Stormbringer the
Predator Stone. Tell us about the synopsis of the book
and some of the characters.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
So I love mythology, and Norse mythology has always been
my favorite.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
One day I came.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Across a picture of igercill igracil is the world tree,
and it has nine the branches hold up nine realms,
and right away I was just fascinated with this, and
I read the inscription or the description at the bottom,
and it said that at the bottom of this massive
(08:38):
tree that spans the universe, there's a snake that sits
at the roots of the tree and it chews away
at the roots, and the prophecy was that over thousands
of years, this snake would eventually chew through all the
roots and the tree would fall over and it would
(08:59):
be the end of the world. And I was fascinated
by this, but I thought, what if what if someone
came along that had the ability to cut down this
tree much faster, like days or weeks? And what if
there was someone from our world, you know, where we
(09:22):
live on Earth, who has been prophesied hundreds and hundreds
of years ago to stop this person from cutting down
the world tree. And so that's basically the story. Odin
is the supreme god of all gods. You have to
have you have to have Odin if you're going to
have a story about Norse mythology. And he knows about
(09:45):
this prophecy, he knows about Sinner, but he's very arrogant,
he's very self centered. He can't imagine that this twelve
year old girl from America could make a difference in
his world, and so he's against it from the very beginning.
In fact, he names her the storm bringer because in
(10:09):
Old Norse literature, stormbringer is a title given to someone
who brings nothing but bad luck. And right away when
she arrives there in Iceland, she brings terrible luck to
their plans, and so she names her Stormbringer, which is
where the book comes from. So he sends out a
(10:30):
group of young girls that are her age, and they're
specifically trained to run missions for him. And it made
me think of Jedi from the Jedi from Star Wars,
highly trained, laser focused. And these predators go and pull
(10:51):
her right out of her school cafeteria in Richmond, Virginia,
and they put her on this boat and take her
off to Iceland, and she meets of course other characters there.
And so the basic idea of the story is to
get back to California, which is where the World Tree's
roots are located under the earth, and stop the tree
(11:14):
from being cut to him.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Very interesting and exciting.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
You know, the main character Cinder had, you know, quite
an unfortunate life, being abandoned at birth. How do you
think those hardships has Nater victorious in this book and
her determination?
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Right?
Speaker 4 (11:31):
So I work full time as a school counselor. Oh okay,
and I had a student several years ago on my caseload,
and she lived she was homeless. She in fact, she
lived in an old car that didn't run anymore. She
lived in an old car with her mother. Really sad situation. However,
(11:55):
she was super smart. She could She had really bad attendance,
but she could show up one day of the week
or two days and she could take a test and
her scores were off the chart. And I got to
know her because she was always getting into trouble and
I got to know her, and the more I got
to know her, the more I realized that she really
(12:15):
wanted to be a good person. She wanted to do
what was right, but she was always trying to do
the right thing in the wrong way. And she was
in several fights and in fact, I think she was
in four fights in one semester. Anyways, I wanted to
base my character off of her, and so Cinder is
(12:37):
based off of this, this person that I knew, this
one of my students, and.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Sinder is she's a foster child.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
She's never known her parents, you know, no money in
her life, and she is like this student that I have.
Her impulsivity is always getting her in trouble, but down deep,
she wants to do the right thing. And I think
that it's this her ability to never give up and
(13:07):
to want to prove to the world that she's a
better person than what the world sees. That it helps
her overcome all of the obstacles that she fades and
it faces.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
And I think that's the message I wanted to send out.
Speaker 4 (13:22):
No matter who you are, no matter what background you
come from, no matter what weaknesses you have, there's good
in you, and if you stick with it, you can
do great things.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And of course we have protagonists in the book, but
we also have some villains. So tell us about some
of the villains that you created in this book, right.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So one of the things this is a five book
planned series, and I wanted to do something different. And
so when you say villain or antagonist, I set it
up so that the reader thinks it's one person, and
then in book two you think it's a different person.
And so throughout the books it's hard to tell who
(14:06):
the villain is. There's always bad guys throughout these books.
But Odin, right from the beginning, appears to be one
of the antagonists because he's just so arrogant and all
he cares about is himself, you know. And then you've
got valkyries, which are shield maidens chosen by Odin, and
(14:31):
they their job is to when a war is over,
they go down and they take the spirits from the
men and women the warriors that have fought valiantly, and
they take them up to Valhalla, which is the Norse
version of heaven or the afterlife. And you never know
if this valkyrie in the story is good or bad.
(14:55):
In fact, Tristan and you know, I can mention him later,
but Tristan also appears to be a little sketchy and
and he might have, you know, something up his sleeve.
All terior motives. It's all all safe for right now.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
And if you could turn this into a movie, who
would you get to play these characters, including Cinder?
Speaker 4 (15:17):
I would probably, I mean, if you know, of course,
if I had my way, I would get, you know,
someone like Chris Hamsworth to nice to play Odin. You know,
I know he was four in the movies, but it
would be great. I love his acting style and I
think he would be great as someone like Odin.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
For Sinder.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
You know, I'm not well versed on some of the
younger actresses and actors that are out there. I don't
know if you've heard of Eric Tremblay. She's actually from Canada. Yeah,
she was in the Bye Bye Man. She was in Extinction,
she was in Before I Fall. And if if the
listeners or viewers ever have a chance to look her
(15:59):
up Eric Tremblay, she just has the look of sender,
the red hair and the pale skiin and you know,
very Nordic looking, as if she's from Icelandia. She's and
she's a great actor too, so, but she's almost sixteen
years old now. So if we're going to do this,
we gotta we gotta get it going.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Well, you know what, I do a lot of red carpets,
So if I meet her, I'm definitely going to tell
her about this. Okay, I'm going to connect you to
We're gonna manifest this for you.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Nice please do.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
And on Amazon you have so many amazing reviews of
people loving your book. How does it feel to see
that you have such a great response.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
To this, this book that you've treated.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's been surreal because when I
first wrote the book, and the book is actually twelve
years old, oh wow, I wrote I wrote the book,
and I had this fear that no one would like it.
I had this fear that the publisher, you know, published
(17:00):
wouldn't want it. And my wife finally threatened me and said,
if you don't send us out, you are sleeping on
the couch.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
That's a good wife, it's a good rfead.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
So I sent it out to a few places and
I got a response back, and then the reviews started
coming in and they were positive. And you know, not
everything is going to be positive. I know that there's
going to be people that don't care for the book,
and that's fine, and I think that's the message. That's
the advice I would give to people that are looking
to write or to do anything, actually is you'll never
(17:38):
know if you could have done it. I don't want
to get to the end of my life and be
sitting on my front porch and sit there and wonder
what would have happened if I had done something with
my books. I want to be able to say that
I tried something, and even if it doesn't work and
it isn't successful, at least I tried.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I think that's fantastic advice.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
You know, sometimes people sometimes it's their own self that
hold us back, right, It's not anyone else, it's our
own fears and as soon as we let that go,
we're able to really flourish and you know, bring our
gifts to the world. So I love what you said.
You know, I created my platform to inspire to uplift.
I know you talked about it a little bit. But
you know, for anyone that really has that fear, they're creative,
(18:23):
maybe they have a great idea, or maybe they're just
feeling low, they're not going through a good period in
their life, and you know they're fearful. What would you
say to inspire them? Because I feel like, you know,
you're someone who really walks the walk and really put
his ideas out there for the world to see, right.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
I would say to get the idea onto paper. If
you just keep it up in your head, it's never
going to get realized, and then start sharing it with
the people that you're close to. You know, this could
go for a book, it could go for a new business,
It could even be a relationship that you were wanting
to start. You know, talk to people, see what they
(19:04):
think about it. But in the end, I would highly
suggest to not listen to the naysayers because there's going
to be people out there. In fact, I remember when
I first came up with this idea. I had some
friends that were that said, oh no, this idea has
been done before, or you know, it's only aimed at
(19:27):
a niche group of people, you know, And I had
to ignore that and I had to just to go
for it. I'm sure you had to do the same
thing with your show. Yeah, there might have people that
said this isn't a good idea. I would say, give
it a shot and see what happens, and in the end,
if it doesn't work, try something else, because you're going
(19:48):
to get rejection slips. I got rejection slips. Stephen King
got rejection slips. I have a picture of Stephen King
and JK Rowling close by because I look at them
sometimes when I feel discouraged and I say, hey, they
got turned down. I think Stephen King got turned down
thirty five times before they took his first book. Thirty
(20:10):
five people turned down Stephen King. That's amazing to me,
and so just ignore them and go for it.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
I think that's a great idea. You know, I interview
successful people for a living. You know, everyone from SYLVESTERI
st Alone, There's so many people. James Franco, just to
name a few, and you know, they all said the
same thing as that they all went through so much
rejection before they ever encountered any success.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So it's just part of the process, right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
You just have to put yourself out there and rejection
is part of the process. But if you're passionate, you're
going to do it anyways, right. So yeah, and Greg,
for all fur viewers that want to read Stormbringer, where
can they do so and purchase your book?
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So you can?
Speaker 4 (20:54):
I mean, the easiest way would would be to go
to Amazon. You can, you can log in to the
Internet and you can basically go to any of your
favorite bookstores and you can get it sent to you
a physical copy. Most people go through Amazon, and you
can also get the digital copy if you prefer to
(21:15):
read it that way. And I do want to give
a one shameless plug.
Speaker 5 (21:21):
Book two is called Throne Runner nice and.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
That comes out in the fall this year.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Very nice.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
We're going to link that information for your book so
our viewers can purchase it. Greg, thank you so much
for being on the show today. Congratulations on an amazing book,
and we're so excited to see the next book that
comes out.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Thank you, thank you. This has been great Dear
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Russia is available on Roku, Amazon fire Tv, iHeartRadio, and
Apple Podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.