The Peter Benchley Timeline: The Book of Quint

Episode 109 was with Ryan Dacko and we discussed the wildly popular Jaws Obsession Podcast and his quest to write The Book of Quint. It has been written, it was self-published and then was picked up by a small but visionary publisher. He found an agent with his passion for this story and now the rest will soon be history. Ryan Dacko GETS SHIT DONE. Hang out with us for an update on The Book of Quint and all things JAWS!

Subscribe to all things, listen and order here: https://linktr.ee/bookofquint

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Threepeat non conformist. Oh, Ipromise to be different. I promised to
be unique. I promise not threepeatthings other people say. Welcome back to

(00:36):
Positive Blatherings. My name is ScottFitzgerald, and I'm super super excited about
this episode because we are revisiting aconversation that happened a year and some change
ago. One of the last episodesthat we did that I did as the
Positive Blatherings podcast was with my friendhere, Ryan Docco, and he is

(00:58):
the author of the Book of Quint, among other things. This guy does
it all. But here's the book, the Book of Quint, just recently
published internationally. Yes to, Ihave to say, amazing, acclaim it's
been received. It's how fast didit sell out? Like overnight? Yeah?

(01:19):
Within well it was released in wellfree. Before we get started,
I'm going to present you with oneof the last ones that I know.
There's this is the selled out firstfirst edition, first printing of that's the
actual one that's released by Amberly Publishingovernight. Look at that and yeah,
this one is yourself published. Yeah, that was the one that you printed.

(01:42):
It was the limited edition three hundredthat went out and that was released
November fifteenth in England and Europe aswell as Australia, and then it was
North American Rights were or North Americanrelease was January twenty third, and by
five seven am it was sold outwith all the vendors. So all that's

(02:04):
left now are secondary vendors trying toget the awesome the rest of the ones
from England over to the United States. The demand was so overwhelming and I'm
very grateful, but the demand wasso massive with Jaws fans. As we
know, Jaws is the greatest movieof all time, and the demand for

(02:27):
superseded. It broke the predictive algorithmsthat the publishing world has. These publishing
world are supposed to know. Theykind of go okay, debut author one
hundred and thirty nine thousand words,it's only going to sell this, and
they have all these factors they weigh. They blew it up. We blew
it up. And currently it isnow the first printing has been sold out
effectively, but it is still youcan still find it. You can still

(02:51):
find it. I saw one listedon eBay for one hundred and five dollars.
I don't think you need to gothat far, but they have them
over in England. It's going totake two or three weeks. I see
secondary vendors on Amazon because Amazon stockhas been depleted. So Amazon is using
secondary vendors from England to sell what'sleft of the first first edition first printing,
and there is going to be asecond printing. So I was informed

(03:12):
about that. I just don't haveany dates, but very exciting because we
do know that there is a lot. I'm trying to draw parallels. I'm
trying to draw. I always tryto. I try to get data.
That's my whole thing is I triedto take data and I tried to use
that in order to establish where we'regoing, where we are, that kind
of stuff, and what I'm tryingto I'm drawing parallels to the other little

(03:37):
book that could out of England calledHarry Potter in the nineties and nineties ninety
seven had a limited edition. Ithad five hundred hardcovers were printed and several
thousand paperbacks sold out. That wasit, and now they had to scramble
and find a second printing. Alsobroke their mentality back then, was that

(03:59):
all this you know, first timeauthor, is it going to catch on?
And all that kind of stuff,and so we're seeing that same thing
here, only that now computer systemsare supposed to tell them, hey,
in pre sale you have been youknow, your your bestseller ranking on Amazon
UK was we debuted at number twentytwo on the horror thriller paperbacks in Amazon
UK out of all books all horrorthrillers, twenty two, twenty two.

(04:24):
It's impressive. Yeah, right there. I have screenshots with it. I
was like Stephen King and the Shiningand there's American Psycho with Brett Easton Ellison,
there's the Book of Quint. NowI'm not saying that that's as you
know, for those to still bein the top twenty five, you know,
you're in good company. Yeah,you're in a good company. But
the twenty three thirty years, itwould be nice to still be there in

(04:45):
twenty three years to the book Quinnstill there, right, absolutely. Yeah.
So that's the thing is though,those those things and that I was
trying to raise the alarm with myagent as well with the publisher as well
as the distribute in North America thatwe were looking at numbers coming in that
showed that there was a significant demandin the pre sale and that there was
something happening. This was special.I said, there's the book of Quinn.

(05:08):
There's something special happening here, justlike people didn't predict with Jaws,
and whether it's the cinema or eventhe book fifty years ago. And that's
what this is really celebrating. I'mcelebrating this with you right now. Is
that fifty years ago, in nineteenseventy four, right in February, was
Peter Benchley published Jaws okay, andand that was sold out immediately of its
first printing, and I had togo to second printing. That was in

(05:30):
hardcover, and then it went topaperback, and that's when it went to
eight million sales by nineteen seventy five. And you've been saying this since episode
twenty of The Jaws Obsession. ThePeter Benchley timeline. Yes, the Peter
Benchley timeline. So what remind remindthe blathering listeners what the Peter Benchley timeline
is? Okay? So my theory, my whole theory has been with this
is that in order to get ato ultimately celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws

(05:57):
and to aush sure Jaws into anotherfifty years, I felt that a prequel
movie would be able to establish thecontext which draws out the subtext in the
performances of Jaws and actually works asa good addendum to the original movie to
make your enjoyment of the original moviemore but also to inspire you to rewatch

(06:18):
Jaws for the next fifty years ifthere was a quality prequel done. And
to do that I tried. Ideveloped what my theory was the Peter Benchley
timeline. If I could stay aheadof that timeline, if I could write
that, and if I could getthe manuscript done, and I knew that
Peter Benchley published in nineteen seventy four, in February nineteen seventy four, and

(06:39):
then after and then the Universal obviouslyalready optioned it before it went into publication,
so then it would be enough timefor Universal to make the movie by
and release it in nineteen seventy fivetwenty twenty five. So this was always
about trying to get to twenty twentyfive. So for that, I started
this project back in August of twentytwenty so we're three and a half years

(07:00):
in, and that's what the PeterBenchley timeline is. So this is like
a little bit of a celebration wasnot only do you have to have the
book written, we also and I'mvery very grateful that Wendy Benchley, Peter
Benchley's widow and the E Benchley IPLLCgave us permission to publish back in May
of twenty twenty two, and that'swhen we went in with the original three
hundred hardcovers. And then this wholelast year since I talked to you.

(07:25):
Wow, what a difference a yearmakes. Oh, it's insane, right,
because we're here with an international publication. We found a publisher, I
signed with an agent, and we'renow in development book to screen, so
those mechanisms are already in works.We're right there, and now we were
able to meet the Peter Benchley timelinewith an internationally published book for the prequel

(07:46):
of Jaws in fifty years later.And going back a year, December of
twenty twenty two was when we waswhen we did that last episode. Yes,
and I remember specifically saying, andI don't remember if this made it
to the podcast itself or if thiswas off off Mike, but I said,

(08:09):
if there's anyone who's going to pullthis off, it's going to be
you. It's going to be youbecause I and I say this all the
time. So a little bit alittle background about me, where I am,
where i am personally right now,I am in what I'm calling a
creative dead zone. I'm in thedarkness. And as a creative I know

(08:31):
that you know what that is.It's the I referred to him as the
Doldrums as well, using more ofa nautical term. But but that for
me, it's it's like I Iknow that I have some creation, that
its something I want to create,and I can't do it just there's something
stopping me. Whether it's my ownI don't know, it's something within me

(08:56):
that's stopping me from doing that.Right. And then I look look at
this, Look at this stuff thatI haven't from it, newspaper, there's
there's magazines from England that he broughthere. He's got the new release,
the original. I mean, ifthere is anyone who gets shit done that

(09:16):
you as a person, as acreative person, I don't care if you
like Jaws or not, which Idon't understand why you wouldn't, but anyway,
you have to look to this guyand be like, this is a
guy that knows how to set goals. He knows how to achieve the goals,
but he it's it's just, it'sso much more than that, because

(09:37):
you come from a place of love, yes, from this story, and
and it doesn't have anything to dowith the desire for fame or accolades or
any of that kind of thing.It's because you love Jaws. I mean,
going back, Jaws Obsession podcast.I'll reiterate it. I said,
who your sister, Tiffany said,you gotta listen. You're a Jaws fan.
You got to listen to this podcast. My brother does Jaws Obsession.

(10:00):
I'm like, come on, howthe hell can anybody do a Jaws podcast?
Still going strong, by the way, Still going, still going strong,
by the way, seventy five comingup soon, that's right. And
yet you still have a full timejob, you still have a family to
take care of, and granted youhave a wife that is one hundred percent
supportive of you, which is supersuper important. We all know that for

(10:24):
every powerful man, there's an evenmore powerful woman behind him. Absolute.
But in light of everything that's happenedin the in the year since the book
came out and all of that,what was the darkest point in that year.
What was the darkest point for youand and how did you see your
way out into the light. Itwould have been, Oh, I would

(10:48):
have to say it was about Januaryafter we recorded and uh, and it
was in January, the parts betweenJanuary January and then. So I have
to say that the publishing world isvery, very difficult to go into the
millions of authors out there, andthere's a lot less agents. You have

(11:09):
to have the agents, and thenthere's a lot less publishing companies. So
there's publishing companies, agents authors,right, So you have this whole,
this hierarchy that you have to getthrough. And I knew that there's something
special in this book because it's not. I have to always preface this that
there's there's Why is Jaws the greatestmovie ever made? Why is everybody that

(11:31):
you talk to that either has seenJosh say oh, yeah, I love
that movie. Why is that?Because Jaws has all these different elements.
We could talk about those elements lateron, but the simple fact is is
that I worked hard to try tomake sure that this novel contained those different
elements horror movie, action, adventure, drama, and yet still have a
human connection and that's what this noveldoes. Same thing with the cinema version

(11:56):
of Jows okay, and I knewthat was there, so I left with
you. It started on January first, it was have to get an agent.
So now you have to suck itup. You have to start querying
agents. You have to start writingletters. Hello, introduction. My name
is Ryan Docko. I wrote thisnovel, prequel of Jaws. I have
permission to publish from Benchley Family,and and you send it out. You

(12:20):
start, you go to either publishermarketplace or you find you find lists of
agents and you start sending them outto the different agents. And then now
come the rejection letters. I'm notright for this or you know, just
rejecting letters. I have so manyrejection letters I could well paper my office
back home. I had and Ihad one I got you, and then
you get a response from one andthen it was a very big agency and

(12:45):
the lead person she said, Ican't release this without you have to take
fifty thousand words out. And Iwas like fifty thousand words. I was
like, excuse me. I waslike, I was respect to your seniority,
I respect your opinion, but it'sa quarter of the book. Yeah,
I go, I go, couldyou can you read the book and
let me know where she goes?Why I didn't read the book. It's
just that thrillers don't sell at onehundred thirty nine thousand words. Ah,
And I said, well, it'snot really a thriller. It's hard because

(13:09):
when you tell when you go into talk to someone about Jaws, some
people see it as a horror movie. Yeah, some people don't see it
as horror movie. They see itas an action, seafaring and adventure movie,
right, And so it's hard topigeonhole that movie. And with this
novel, I was just like,well, it's not really a thriller.
It's not a Patterson novel. It'snot you know, I understand. Yeah,
it's a one hundred thirty nine thousandwords and I know I'm a first
time novelist, but could you readthe book? And then I figured out

(13:31):
that a lot of people in polishingdon't like to read. They don't read
the book. Well, it's justlike you said before. They're all about
the algorithms. They plug in thethings that they know for that equation and
say, all right, so itmeets this, it meets that it meets
this all right, we'll do it. Yeah, and you've blown that out
of the water. Well, that'sthe thing is that I was trying.
So that was one of the darkerpoints, was you have to go through

(13:54):
it's this cycle. Is is nodifferent from anyone trying to get through medical
school. It's no different from someonetrying to qualify as a high voltage lineman.
Takes six years, twelve thousand hours. This is not any different from
all these different whoever's the people thatare listening to the professionals that are listening
out there. You have to walkthrough a better coals and it's a series

(14:18):
of a better coals. And onceyou get to that end of one,
and this was just to get tothe agent, that's a dark time because
you're just going, wow, thismight I might have to self published.
And now that's the thing is thatthere's this in the publishing world. There's
these clashing of minds and heads wheresome authors they have to pay their mortgage

(14:39):
and they've worked a year and ahalf two years on a book, so
they have to sell the book.And if they're telling and if their agent
is saying, the publisher is notreally taking any new titles, but oh,
they'll give you the option and thenthey're going to release it a year
from now on their Spring catalog oftwenty twenty five. They're going, well,
that's not good, so they haveto go self published. But then
the brick and mortar stores are like, we don't want to talk to you

(15:00):
if you're only going to self publishthrough Amazon, because that's going to chisel
on our business. So we're notgoing to put your books in our store.
You're not going to be able tocome to this book event because you're
self published through Amazon. You haveto be published through it. So there's
this h it literally is. SoI was sitting there, going no,
if we're going to be on this, Peter eventually timeline, it has to
be traditionally published, which means Ihave to get this agent. So it
was push, push, push,and that's where eventually there was an unboxing

(15:24):
video by Sean O'Rourke and on YouTube, and he did the same reaction as
you. He was just this bookis unbelievable, and he made he put
me in contact with my agent,Bill Pettt, which I signed in February
twenty third, twenty twenty three.I signed with an agent, so he's
a book to screen agent. Hewasn't really a literary agent, so we

(15:45):
had to then work backwards. Heusually takes books and development for screen.
So what I was doing at thesame time on developing the book for screen,
I still am not published. Itwas only self published through the three
hundred novels, so I had toget find a publisher and that led to
the Probably the darkest part was thesummer of twenty twenty three because we were
getting turned down by every publisher inthe United States. Everyone, there's just

(16:07):
no one wanted to take a chanceon it. No one wanted to take
a flyer on it. It's alot of work, you know, it's
just a lot of work. Iguess it's a lot of work to handle
a novel this size. It's notit's not it's And then then they're the
you know, you have to theebook, the marketing, the audiobook,
all this these things have to happenout. So you have to find someone
who's passionate about the project. Andat that point I was just sitting there,

(16:32):
just keep doing episodes of the Jawsobsession, just keep doing that,
and that's where we finally were ableto break out of that from the fateful
Robert Shaw hometown of west Houghton,England in July of twenty twenty three.
That's when it was literally it was, it literally was Robert Shaw that pulled

(16:55):
me out of the creative dol drums. If if you're gonna say there's a
dead zone, then I know thereare because you reach these peaks, you're
like, great, you got anagent. Back to the bottom. Now
you got to go back to thenext medicals. You know, great,
you got a publisher. Now,now you got to get it distributed.
Go back to the next medicals.Start walking and you get tougher feet as
you keep going on. So weall go through these and it's cycles.

(17:17):
It's just it just happens. AndI'm just grateful that I have a career
where I didn't have to worry aboutbills being paid, because if it was
worried about this novel, if Ihad to worry about this novel being published
and selling, boy oh boy,I'd probably have gray hair. Well.
That's like probably one of the mainreasons why people don't ever follow their dream

(17:38):
of being an author or whatever itis, whatever kind of creation it is,
is that they've got life to dealwith. Yes, how are you
going to do this? Which youknow, because when you do that kind
of creative endeavor, you really havegot to put everything that you have into
it. Yeah, and some peoplejust they just can't do that. Well
they can't, they can, Andthat's a I guess I left for I

(17:59):
didn't do anything creative creatively for fifteenyears. I kind of stopped writing.
I did everything I said, Okay, I got married, with family,
and I just focused online work powerlines, power lines and try to become
the best alignment I could be forfifteen years until I finally just said,
you know, I think I'm goingto write this novel. And I just
said, okay, I'll go backinto it. So the inspiration was it

(18:21):
just built, but I had toalmost It's kind of it's it's you have
to step away and then you haveto almost gather your thoughts. That's why
I say that if you watch someof the best directors or the best their
best work or the best writers,they once they reach a level where they're
famous or where they have a career, when it's their career, then the
real real pressure gets on and theirwere kind of subsides or they sell out

(18:45):
or whatever whatever they're the fan basego. So it's not like their old
stuff, you know, it's notlike the stuff they did before, right,
And that's why is that because theywere hungry and then they then they
got this. So you have toconstantly keep yourself in that hunger stage.
That's my theory. That's why I'mnot going to quit line work. Everyone's
like, oh, you're probably probablygoing to quit. No way, no
way. That kid that keeps mesharp out there and you're driving up here.

(19:06):
There's a snow out there. Wehad a big storm two weeks ago.
But I'm like watching the power lines. I'm like, oh, and
I wonder if there's any trees onthe wares in here. And I'm like
patrolling the wire for them out therewhile I'm driving it. And because that's
my mindset, don't look at thewires behind this building, please, what
do you do? They're like fourfoot off the ground. It was like
foxes jumping over them. And that'sthat's the thing. I come out there
and I go, I go,oh, that should be taken care of,
that could be fixed, all thatkind of So you look at that

(19:29):
kind of stuff and you just gookay. So but that's where it pulls
me away from all this the publishingworld, and it pulls me away from
the book stuff, and it keepsme involved. So that makes me.
I believe that makes me a betterwriter when I come back to it.
Yeah, because I have this otherside. And that's where I think that
people who feel that they don't wantto take the risk or they don't have

(19:51):
they don't there. You don't.You're not designed to do it full time
as an artist. I mean,if you I'm reading a biography on Da
Vinci and this guy he did everythingand anything, but he never really completed
anything. He was just always kindof doing stuff and he leaving projects half
finished. Just a genius of aguy. But that's what made him so
great is that he was always likefascinated with human anatomy. Okay, I'm

(20:11):
gonna be fascinated with okay, uh, weapons of war and he's gonna design
a different catapult or something, andit's just like that. It was like
wow, It's just that was thatwas his thing, that was his brand,
and that's what everyone's Everyone has thatin them, I believe, is
that you have that in you tobe a creative person. It's just that
we've always been so drilled in thatyou have to do it as a career,

(20:34):
and that is what's the hardest part, is that when you look at
it like it's a career, you'regonna hit these valleys and then you're gonna
have panics, You're gonna go oh, there's gonna be dry spells, and
everything that we've been designed to acceptnowadays has been whether you're a musician or
you're a filmmaker, everything is likeyour your your the revenue. Look at

(20:55):
the strikes that we're going on.Everything is just coming down, coming down,
coming down. It's like you're whereyou're gonna like if you're paid for
a piece of work or a performance, it's less and less to live on,
and so it's getting harder and harderand harder. So that's why I
was one of the best decisions Imade was to walk away and establish myself

(21:15):
in a field and then come backand stronger than ever. It's it's gosh.
They they talk about like the KungFu movies or or even like a
even Star Wars between Empire and Jedi. Luke goes away, finishes his training
comes back stronger than ever. Thisis this is not new. This is
this is done in all the storyof journey, the hero's journey. And

(21:38):
that's what that's what I'm saying isthat if you do reach a level of
uh in in of creativity where yourcreat creative level is down, it's not
it's it's okay to walk away andthen pick up something new, and then
that will spur it later on.It might be one week, it might
be one month, it might beone year, but you're gonna come back
stronger than ever. That's that's reallycomforting because I just started playing guitar again.

(22:02):
I used to play guitar in mytwenties, played in bands and stuff,
but you know, and haven't playedpretty much since we started having kids.
Two thousand and three was when myson was born. He's twenty now,
wow. And so I started playingguitar and I'm like, he's a
musician. He plays trombone, playssome jazz bands and stuff, and we
go to the gigs and I'm like, oh man, I forgot how fun

(22:22):
that was. So I was like, I'm just gonna play guitar again.
So I took my old stratocaster juststill in good shape. Took it to
a guy to get it fixed up. Shout out to Andy Babuquet. Andy's
fab gear and he's like, whatwas the last time you worked on this?
Just hadn't worked done on this guitar. He's like, it's been a
while, twenty five years or so, but I'm starting over. I'm going

(22:45):
back to the rudiments. I'm goingback to learning the scales and learning the
arpeggios and all this kind of stuff. Because so that that idea. It's
funny that you say, you know, walk away from something and then come
back to it. It's exactly whatI've just done. Like then you're you're
on that same way. So I'mthe I'm on the Ryan Doco timeline.

(23:06):
That's right, that's what we shouldall be. We should all be on
the rite. Well, thank youvery much. That's what you're doing there.
And that's great that you have aspecial bond with your son like that,
because that's going to feed into hisprogression in life. And he's going
to see that because he's going torun into these roadblocks we all do,
and he's going to see how you'rehandling it. I mean, it could

(23:27):
be something as simple as a rubicscube, you know, I mean, just
try to solve a rubiscue. Ican't. I can only go like I
think, minute thirty is my fastesttime, you know, and I can
it's hold on, let's go back. You can solve one in a minute
thirty. Yeah, it's that's slowthough, Yeah, okay, yeah,
the world records like six seconds.So someone gives you a Rubis cube that's

(23:48):
completely fouled up, and you couldjust go, yeah, it takes me
about a minute thirty. Yeah,but see, but see, but see
there was one time, there wasa time when when I was sitting there,
I was like, I want tobe able to solve rubiscue. How
do you do it? Okay,it's a series of algorithms, and you
just learn those algorithms and then youjust say, okay, you start with
one layer up, up, up, and then you just fill out that
and you work your way up andit's just a series of algorithms that you
have to memorize. Now I'm notI don't have the capacity to memorize the

(24:11):
sixty algorithms to get sub one minute. And if you want to get sub
thirty seconds, you have to memorizeone hundred algorithms. Wow. So it's
like me, It's like, okay, So I was able to do it,
and that's but that right there,it exercises another part of the brain.
So then that taught me a lotthat Rubik's Cube taught me so much
about, from from novel writing toplaying billiards pool. I tried my hand

(24:37):
at being a semi pro pool player. When was this I didn't hear about
this one. Oh yeah, wedidn't talk about that. Yeah. I
love I love pool. And that'swhere the on the Joss Northeast Nine Ball
Tour. There are some great poolplayers in the Northeast and I since two
thousand and seven, I follow aworld of professional pool and very closely.

(25:00):
And I have a good friend who'sone of the best players in the world,
Jason Shaw. He's an acquaintance ofmine, I should say, because
he's always busy. But I've watchedhim play at the Turning Stone many years.
He's won that I think nine timesand he's going for ten. But
pool is the same way like aRubik's Cube, you have nine balls,
you're playing nine balls, so it'sa succession pool. It's the same thing

(25:22):
a Color of Money, and MartyScorsese did The Color of Money, and
he describes at the beginning the rulesof nine ball. You have to sink
in numerical order one through nine,and if you make nine off the break,
you win. So there's a littlebit of luck involved. And so
I got into that and to thepoint where I had professional coaches and I

(25:44):
was going on, I would play. I came to Rochester to play in
a tournament. I played at theTurning Stone Casino on Mike Zuglin's JOSS or
Northeast nine Ball Tour. But whatI never the amount of hours that you
have to commit to be a professional. You have to fout. You have
to ten thhoul hours to be aprofessional in anything. So you're competing with
guys that play eight hours a daypractice. They have professional coaches, and

(26:07):
if you're coming from a full timejob, you're never going to get to
that level. But you can atleast you can at least be up in
the air with them on that levelfor a brief second before they clabor you
and send you to the road.And during that you watch their process,
and the process is the same thingas Rubikskip is the same thing as writing
a novel. There's a pattern toit all. There's a pattern. There's

(26:29):
a correct way to run these nineballs out in the correct pattern, or
you can run them out, butyou might have a little you might run
into another and you might do itthe wrong way. So everything has a
pattern, and that if you findout that proper, that correct way of
doing it, you'll be able toachieve anything. And that's what I said,
is that is that if you're stuckin on painting, or if you're

(26:49):
stuck in an artistic endeavor, thatif you go to something such as that's
completely outlandish. I went to theworld of professional pool. I'm not a
professional, believe me. And beforeI get challenged out there, I'm not
really any higher than that. Itwas just something that interests you, and
that that's what you were going todo, Yes, to walk away,

(27:10):
to walk away. So I havemy own I have two pool tables at
my house. I practice every daybecause it lets me form where where you're
and there's a there's books written onthe inner game of tennis. Is one
book where it talks about what thesesuperior athletes do. And I watch Jason
Shaw do this is that you Theythey they practice so much, they do

(27:32):
something so much that they're not thinkingabout it. They're not thinking how they're
going to make that shot. Theyknow. I'm not looking at the roof
excus thinking how am I going tosolve this? I know how it's going
to git solved. I just knowthat I have to look at the pattern
and then I go, Okay,now it's time to do this outgram.
Now it's time to switch to this. But you don't think about it.
You just do it because you've doneit a thousand times, so you just
do it. And that's where that'swhere the great elite athletes, whether it's

(27:56):
tennis players, that's what the innergame of tennis talks about. Is that
there's two voices. There's one voiceone and voice two. Voice one is
you stub your toe? You go, Ryan, why'd you do that?
That's voice one? All right,that's your conscious voice. But then there's
a subconscious voice. All right.When you ride a bike, do you
actually sit there and say don't falloff? Go like this? When you

(28:17):
breathe, do you actually sit there? Okay, time to breathe out,
time to breathe in. That's yoursubconscious voice, and you have to tap
into that subconscious voice, and howdo you do that? Repetition, repetition,
repetition. So I learned that bywatching these elite pool players and how
they're able to navigate some of themost intense stress. When you're down there

(28:37):
and there's one hundred people watching youand you have an important shot, your
senses are heightened. You're shaking,but you have to be steady, so
you have to shake, but youcan't shake, so you're shaking inside.
You have to really be steady,and then you find out really what you're
made of. And that's what camedown, and that let me into thinking

(29:00):
I can write this novel and Ican put myself in front of the world
because I was able to achieve thatlevel for a brief moment, not as
a career, but I was ableto. At one point, I was
sitting there with a I was against. I was playing a pool player from
Boston, and I was at theTurning Stone Casino. There's eighteen tables and
I sat back and we're tied.It's like eight eight in a race to

(29:22):
ten or race to eleven. AndI look around and there's Johnny Archer five
three, time a US Open champion. There's Jason Shaw, there's Rodney Morris,
all these great pool players, andI go, who am I trying
a kid? But hey, you'rehere right now. Isn't that awesome?
And that's where I said that willI can have the confidence to be a

(29:45):
novelist even if I didn't write anything, If I could get to that level,
even if it's for a moment,wouldn't that be beautiful? And that
was the genesis of how I wasable to tackle this. So my advice
to you is play that guitar,play it like you mean it, and
and even if you never get tothe level of the great guitars, you're
going to be able to find somethingabout yourself that you're going to actually go

(30:07):
look at the progression. And Ialways use progression. Everyone is so bent
on one one day, like whyit's not working now. It's not working
now, it's not working now.If you can take it at one year
at a time and one year increments, if you're better off than you are
this year than you were at thistime last year, you're actually progressing and

(30:32):
that's not bad. Now you mightnot be where you want to be,
but aren't you better off. Soif you make improvements, then you're notice
next year you're going to be like, wow, remember that. And so
that's why I always this conversation,if everyone watches the prior episode from a
year ago, look at where wewere. We just had one book,
and now look at where we are. We're bringing thirty three five star reviews

(30:52):
on Amazon. On Amazon, we'rebringing a soul downs Wei. But it's
him. Oh, it's we it'swee. We're all in this gather.
We all know that. How howdo you or I don't know if you
do. Do you have any instanceswhere you're you you've got a lot of
self doubt, like and and howdo you overcome that? Because you don't

(31:15):
come across to me like a guywho is bothered or you know, has
a problem with any kind of selfdoubt. You're so confident and you're like,
oh, yeah, I could dothis, I'll do it, and
you do. So what happens whenwhen your your voice number one in there
says Ryan, the hell you doing? Yeah? Happened this last week?
Every every there's not a day thatgoes by that you don't think that you

(31:40):
you're you're behind. I feel thatI'm behind every day that I'm not doing
enough. Now, now, wouldyou, and and this is probably not
fair to ask you, but totry to compare yourself to other people,
but to the average person, wouldyou say that you are maybe harder on
yourself and the average person probably is. I mean, I think if you

(32:04):
hold yourself to a certain standard thatI think most people don't even consider.
I'm telling you that you set yourgoals and you watch the higher performers,
whatever field you're in or other fields. If you watch the higher performers,
they never settle there. Even ifthey come in second or third in a
tournament or there's they're still going overthemselves. Why did they do that wrong?

(32:29):
Where most people will be like,wow, I got to this.
You never sit and rest. I'mtelling you, I was reading this novel.
I'm gonna be honest. Let's let'sjust be right honest. I'm reading
this novel. I find another spellingerr in it. And this is the
one that sold out, And thiswent through editors, this went through the

(32:49):
publication system. I found a spellingerror and I was so mad at myself.
And here it is. It justit literally, this was like the
day after it sold out of thefirst printing, and I was so angry
at myself that there was that thatthat error got through. And but that
wasn't just that it was it wasa culmination. It was a culmination of

(33:12):
I was so upset that there weren'tenough books for people, and I was
trying to sound that alarm and Isaid, did I not make myself clear
enough? Did I not work hardenough? Why is there not enough books
for people? Why did Walmart cancelall those orders? I was so I
took that upon myself so heavy,and I think I touched on this in
the next episode of The Jaws Obsession. But there isn't a day that goes

(33:34):
by that I don't feel that I'vedone enough. And that's I think where
it has to be. You haveto constantly humble yourself to life, and
I'm constantly trying to do that.I don't consider myself a great novelist or
a writer. I just consider myselfa guy that's trying his best one hundred
percent. And I'm using examples thatcame before us as models, the Hemingways,

(33:58):
the Jack London's them trying to I'mtrying to live up to their standards.
And I'll never meet that. You'llnever meet it. You'll know.
And that's what I'm realizing now.You'll never have a novel with no spelling.
Spelling ares one hundred and thirty ninethousand words. It's impossible. You
can go through all the editors youwant it will still be there. And
that's okay, But in my mindit's not okay. So the next one,

(34:21):
you're gonna work harder, Ryan,and you're gonna do it differently.
You're gonna do it. And that'swhat And that's so there is every day
there's self doubt, and that's whatkeeps you on the edge. That's what's
going to keep you performing to thebest of your abilities. And then even
when you do succeed and then youget that painting out there or whoever,
if you get that comic book finished, or if you get that music composed
and you go to Spotify, it'snice to sit back, but those it's

(34:44):
about ninety it's about three to fourpercent of the times that you actually sit
back and go, wow, that'skind of cool. I was just gonna
ask you that, I'm like,you know, with with this, you're
holding yourself to this level. Howcan you ever sit back and really go,
this is pretty freaking cool man,Yeah, because because really you're going,
oh, there's a spelling err ornot in you know, there weren't

(35:05):
enough books, and I told themthere weren't, you know, And so
so you could drive yourself crazy bynot ever enjoying the success or recognizing the
success for what it is, ratherthan beating yourself up over a little tiny
mistake that only you care about,right in theory, in theory, right,
and that's it. I guess that'sthe I guess that's what I'm trying

(35:27):
to cope with. Yeah, becauseI can't bring myself to do that,
and I won't because it's just oneof those I don't know, it's it's
it's uh, boy, I'm tired. I should have seen last week there
was no sleep. I think Ihad over over six sixty phone calls.
We talked about that last time,that you you sleep like three four hours

(35:47):
a night, Yeah, something likethat, which three four hours still at
work night, so it's it's threefour hours. I didn't get it.
I get it around in the inthe mornings, you know, and this
would be about the time I getup and get back to it. And
uh so the thing is is thatthe it's the it's not the sleep that
it makes you tired. It's thethe the exertion on the mind, the

(36:08):
stress. The stress is what itis. And uh and I was I
remember I finished this novel not knowingif I was gonna permission to publish.
That's true, That's true. Youhad you were just like, let's write
it and see it and if theysay no, then it's just for me.
Yeah, it's saying to myself andfriends, you know. And uh

(36:29):
and so if you read the novel, you're reading that there's a lot of
that. It goes like fear offailure and all that. That's that's pretty
much it right there. So Iwonder, I wonder if it's worth having
you do the elevator pitch for theBook of Quint. Sure, Like,
how how did you? I knowyou you wrote your query letters? Yeah,

(36:50):
you know, I'm teen query letters, But you know, sitting down,
let's say you sit down with uh, who's the guy. It's Dan
x Xatak's kid, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, Deansannack Dean Zannik.
Yeah, so you said you gota meeting with Zanik and would be
nice and and uh and he says, all right, mister Jaws guy,

(37:12):
tell me you know what do yougot? First of all, I very
much respect mister Zanik and uh andhe did he did say that this was
one of the better, one ofthe best Jaws projects he's ever seen.
There you go. But yes,So what I what I did was I
would uh be basically sit down.And you start off by saying, fifty
years ago Peter Benchley published the novelof Jows and that was made into Jaws

(37:36):
in nineteen seventy five. Fiftieth anniversariescoming up, so you always preface it
with and I never I never walkaround without them right here, Okay,
I never walk around without the novelof Jows because that's where it started,
right And and but we're we're wehave to uh say that the Book of
quinn Is is from the movie canonand not necessarily correct book Kevin, but

(38:00):
as a guide, as a guide, this is where it started. One
guy to typewriter, one book,okay, and then that went on.
Everything's added, the Indianapolis stuff wasadded, right, and a lot of
the characters changed, obviously Hooper,all that kind of stuff changed. Yep.
Okay, and then but that iswhere it's out of respect for the
material, and that's where I alwaysstarted off. The pitch was give you

(38:22):
what happened, and now there here'sthe prequel to Jaws. This is to
show the life of Quint from nineteenforty five to nineteen sixty eight, in
the years prior to the events ofJaws and the from surviving the sinking of
the Indianapolis to coming to Amity andthe rise of the nautical legend Orca.

(38:43):
And here's this is what with Thisis the story that I have that we
that I wrote, and it's permissionto publish by Benchley IPLLC. That was
a very that was a huge moment. That was huge. That was huge.
When they gave me permission to publish, it was like, okay,
a life sense to do it.There it is, Yes, here it
is. And then from once youget that, now it is I consider

(39:07):
it canon. Once you get permissionto publish, there you go. And
now so now it opens up worldto an expanded Jaws universe. And by
expanding Jaws universe, you now inspirepeople to go rewatch Jaws. So should
Universal Studios option this book? Theyhave Jaws going to turn fifty in twenty
twenty five. What better way?Oh yeah, right to usher in a

(39:30):
fifty fifty year birthday party for oneof their greatest movies, if not their
greatest movie in their catalog, Jaws. Now you have you gone through the
story of the Book of Quinn within this elevator pitch? I know you
start off with the benchley, timelineand stuff. But how because it's a
big book, there's a lot toit. Is there the three books inside

(39:52):
the book? Right? It's threepart much? Yeah, it's like three
parts acts. It's over, it'sfour hundred pages long, three xah,
but it's h act can be itsown movie, right right? Right?
So that was the That was theidea was like, what you know,
is this going to be one movie? Is it going to be three?
You know? A trilogy? Isit? But that's where you can play
with it. Yeah, you cando if you want to do a series

(40:13):
exactly, which I think would begreat, which would be really great,
which would be really great. Istill think to see it and give it
the cinematic treatment of Spielberg and JohnWilliams would be wow. Oh sure,
but they would have to leave partsout and that's the thing. It's like,
there's there's a catch twenty two toeverything though, right, yeah,
so that Hey, that's for themto decide. But the thing is that
it's here and that's that's where.That's where it is, and it's hard

(40:36):
to you you have to. Thepitch deck was very important. The pitch
deck is an assemblage of files imagesand that is pretty much it was a
I created that with at the guidanceof my agent, Bill Pettitt, which
is about twenty five slides, PowerPointor a PDF which describes what the Book

(40:58):
of Quinn film would look like andincluding including budget, budgetary, it doesn't
go or it doesn't go that far, demographics, anything like that. This
is just to get in the door. Just the story. Yeah, this
is just to get the wheels moving. And use those AI images yah.
Yeah, now those have been addedto it. Yeah, those are unbelievable
things. Do I have your permissionto use some of them? We're on

(41:21):
screen, Yeah, yeah, we'llshow some of those. Well, yeah,
filters through. When I first sawthose, when you were posting those,
I was dying, right, especiallybecause it and the technology just came
out. It was like great,we were doing a countdown to the Book
of Quint coming out in November fifteenth. So I did a thirty one days
to the Book of Quint and Iwas playing around with one of the uh

(41:42):
with one that this was actually thatI have to say that there were It
wasn't just myself, it was multipleartists were throwing in their two cents from
around the country. John Tedter downin Alabama, we had a Sean O'Rourke,
and there was a few others thatwere pitching in, and there was
some great imagery was coming out andI was going to exactly look at this,
this is that literally it looks likethe cinematic version of what the movie

(42:08):
would look like. It's unbelievable thattechnology just came out at that time.
So we were able to do thirtyone images, thirty one slides that take
you right to d day for theBook of Quint, and it really caught
on, especially with the higher ups. So I can't really tell you what's
the strike was going on at thetime, right, So the strike was

(42:30):
not settled, so the meetings thatwe lost momentum on the meetings and all
that. But the simple fact isnow they're really paying attention because they were
watching this rollout to see what happens. They're everybody's paying attention, everybody's seeing
what's going on. And those AIimages were were just they just bring you
right into They just paint a vividpicture of what a possible movie would look

(42:54):
like. And boy, that technologydidn't exist, not even two months prior.
So everything seems to be working out. That's why I said everything seems
to be working out like this bookhas just been every little step of the
way, it's just like, ohno, no, no, it works
out. Well, no, no, it works out when So when I
first learned about it, because Icaught onto the Jaws obsession before you reached

(43:19):
episode twenty, so I was waitingalong with everyone else to find out what's
going on. And you you hintedat Actually, I don't know if you
actually told me or not. Idon't know if we started talking yet at
that point. I don't think.I don't think, we don't think.
So oh and shout out to JohnTeddor. I've got some of the some
of his stickers on my door outthere right, love those Amity Island stickers

(43:40):
and everything. Check out what's hisuh he's on quint Shark and Check ever
at at sea dot com. Yeah, yeah, that's the name of his
shock great stuff over there, Sharkand Check. Actually, through following you
on on Instagram, I've I've seena lot of very cool people that are
in in the group with you,you know that are that are really incredible

(44:00):
Jaws enthusiasts. The guy that's theorc of Build guy, that's him,
that's John Tenner. Is there anotherone though, that's him, that's a
the Orca rebuilt. No, there'sanother guy, ohms Workshop. Yeah,
he does his own sk How isJohn John's rebuilding the or And there's another
guy that's building models of the model. Yeahs Workshop. He's a really talented

(44:22):
guy. He's out of England.Yeah, but think about think about where
you started with the podcast. Andnow here's here's something that's important about about
Ryan that I've figured out. I'msure everybody else does too. You don't
do anything just half asked. Youdon't do anything without a long term goal,

(44:44):
a long term plan. You youthink things through and you say this
is what this is what I wantto do, and then you map out
like this is this is goals oneoh one. I mean for everyone that
has a goal that they want toachieve. Just look at how Ryan has
done this. He decided he wasgoing to write this book and the end

(45:07):
goal of you know, the movieand the whole thing. What's the best
way to get this out there?Do a podcast? Yeah, start with
that, and and podcasting obviously,as we know, I mean, we're
on a podcast for right now.But there are I have the saying in
the studio, I said, podcastsare like babies because everybody can make one,

(45:28):
but maybe not everybody should, rightright you, I'm glad you did
because it's a great podcast and there'sand there's a lot of people that you've
met online who were following the podcastand that has helped you grow this thing
to be. So I mean,yes, you've got you know, the

(45:49):
proofs in the pudding. You knowyour shit, Okay, you know what
you're doing. You have that loveand that appreciation of Jaws to help you
create this amazing story. And it'snot it's quality stuff. Like I said,
when I first read it, I'mlike I'm seeing Hemingway in here.
You know, That's what it wasspeaking to me in that way. So,

(46:10):
like I said, you do justhave this plan that I don't think
a lot of people really ever setout with such a long term goal of
so many factors, you know whatI mean? And you were thinking years
ahead, years ahead. I don'tknow anyone that does that. Well.
I had to, that's the Ihad to look at the competition. The

(46:34):
size of the competition fueled all that. And I'm going look at fifty years,
right, Every screenwriter, novelists probablythought they could write a prequel to
Jaws or a sequel to Jaws.They thought that. Eventually has told me
they were approached numerous times throughout theyears for prequels, sequel series, and
spinoffs. That's just creatives. Butlook at how many books are published every

(46:59):
year. Look at the publishing we'relooking like. There was so much competition.
And then you're talking about Jaws.You can't just show up and say,
hey, I wrote a book.I had to sell myself to the
fans. The fans of Jaws arethe only ones that were going to make
this work because Jaws is beloved bymany, many people. A lot of
people in Hollywood love this movie.Big names love this movie, and they're

(47:21):
very protective of it. Okay,and so they're not going to tolerate substandard
anything. So what I wanted todo was sell my I said, Okay,
if I'm going to do this,I have to take this to my
case to the fans, because thefans are the only ones that are going
to make enough noise. If westand together, it's like rallying. It's

(47:42):
the brave Heart running down, writingdown in front of the line, rallying
his troops. You have to rally. And that's what these fans have to
do. And we're so fractured todaybecause nobody wants to discuss with each other,
no one wants to talk. Everybody'sso fractured. Everybody has their own
plan going on, and the Jawsfan base was very fractured at the time.
The Jaws obsession was created to bringpeople under one tent and to talk

(48:06):
about why we love this movie somuch, but also to analyze that there's
details that we might have overlooked thatcan we go into this detail, can
we see just exactly what's happening here? And wouldn't that be interesting if we
knew the story into this detail.And by doing that, I was able
to prove to readers like yourself,Jaws fans like yourself, and your wife

(48:28):
Kelly, and they said, wow, give this guy a chance. Let's
take a flyer on this book.This guy is obviously talking. And that's
one of the things that I wasdoing with the Jaws Obsession, and I'm
still doing that. It's always beena world of kind of a negotiation tactic,
by building up the crowd, assemblingthe crowd, and by establishing that

(48:49):
you you're working hard at just discussingthe movie. What could this guy be
doing in his book, wouldn't there, Let's let's okay, I'll buy his
book. Let's well, let's getI'll sponsor his book on Indiegogo as you
did, and let's see what thisguy's going to talk about. And then
all of a sudden, now thatbook goes wild. The three hundred and
then that was able to rally enoughfans that in England a group of Jaws

(49:14):
fans were getting together at West Houghtonin July, in Robert Shaw's hometown to
discuss Jaws Obsession and the Book ofquint And I said, I'll come over
there. Hayden Wheeler was one ofthe He wrote to me, he said,
yeah, I'm going to organize this, and he goes would you mind,
And I said, absolutely not,I'll meet you over there. He
goes, you will I said,yeah, he goes. That's a pub
called the Robert Shaw Pub in WestHoughton. It's Upper Manchester, Greater Manchester

(49:37):
area and you go in there andit's called the Robert Shaw that has pictures
of Robert Shaw everywhere. So Igo there. I bring a dozen books
to donate to the libraries of theschools and the libraries in West Houghton,
and all these librarians were there andeverybody came out to and I did a

(49:59):
little bit of a speech about whoI met. There was Dave Bullen,
who was the sales manager at Amberleyand he came in just like with the
hardcover book and he said, thisis a great book. And I walked
into my CEO's office and I knowyou need a publisher, and I think
we can publish this, and Isaid, let's make this happen. So
it was right there. It wasright at the beginning of July to twenty
twenty three. I said, Ithink you saw their issue right here and

(50:22):
within five minutes of me walking throughthe door. That's amazing. Yeah,
but that wouldn't have been possible withoutthe Jaws obsession, right, because he
was listening to the Jaws Obsession andhe heard me talk about how it's really
having a tough time finding a publisher. Wouldn't be nice to have a UK
publisher. And that's what it wasalways about, was it was like a
soft negotiating I was always putting,floating it out there, hoping that people
would listen. People would listen,Hey, I can help out. Hey,

(50:44):
I know that. And it's notjust one person. Writing a book
or publishing a book is not justa one person deal. The author is
just such a it's a big part, but it's just a part. There's
all these other names after And forDave to hear that, he just said,
he turned the radio off, pickedup his phone, call the CEO,
and he just said, I'm comingto meet you tomorrow. Schedule the
meeting. And then that was whathappened. And that's how I was able

(51:07):
to get published by Amberley. Butif it wasn't for that podcast, that's
how that's how it worked. AndI think I was on episode what like
sixty three or sixty two at thetime, so I had to do sixty
two episodes over I started in Decemberof twenty twenty one, so I started
researching the novel in August of twentytwenty writing in October of twenty twenty one.

(51:27):
Started My first episode one of JawsObsession was December of twenty twenty one,
and then that took off from there. And what's amazing is is that
book would not have turned out likeit did without the Jaws Obsession because of
the people I met through the JawsObsession. People coming in giving me this
information, Oh I have this book. Oh you know. Like the next

(51:47):
episode is Brodie's Books. I'm goingto talk about every one of books that
are on Brody's desk when he's lookingat the Shark books, and there is
so much information on just those titlesand what their method, what their mindset
was when making Jaws. That's thebooks they had available. So you can
actually interpret why certain characters talk aboutrogue shark theory and all that stuff,
territoriality because these books are what theywere talking about. It's fascinating and by

(52:13):
doing that I was able to learnmore about the characters, or more about
the Amity Island or things like that. I met John Tender, who's my
technical advisor. He was the greatesthelp on the novel because he's rebuilding the
Orca. I can't write Quinn onthe Orca without knowing dimensions. I need
to know that that af deck isten feet six inches. I need to
know these different dimensions so I canactually visualize and write that in the novel.

(52:36):
Never would have met John without episodetwo of The Jaws Obsession, where
I was talking about the SDU fiveE strobe blight that Hooper puts on the
yellow barrel that I had in theCoastguard. That was our safety strobe light
that we would have on our searchvests. And that's the first episode that
I heard. Oh okay, allright, Yeah, I'm remembering it was
episode number two. And then Idon't know why that was the first one

(52:58):
because I was listening on Apple onmy phone and I can't ever get the
the the podcast app to work properly, Okay, So when I heard that,
I was like, I gotta goback. And then yeah, the
the research that that is in thisbook, and that's the the one review
that I read. And I can'tremember who it was. I think you

(53:19):
said. It was posted on Instagram. He specifically made a comment about the
research that it's it's so clear thatyou researched. To me, you know,
forget about quint and him as aas a character, but all of
the factual data that you have inhere regarding the USS Indianapolis and just just

(53:45):
the Navy at that time, thatwas that was pretty impressive. So you
you went I have to say that, really, if anybody doesn't matter what
you're going to do, whatever youwant to do, if you use Ryan
as as sort of a blueprint tohow to do things, he flushes it

(54:07):
out, He thinks it out completelyand really makes it makes it like a
like a university course, right,you know, like you're in college,
like, Okay, I'm going totake I'm going to take I'm going to
major in writing a book. Andso you do that. You go through
how many books did you read inpreparation to write this book? About fifteen?

(54:30):
Fifteen books? Fifteen book yeah,nine of them on the Indianapolis alone.
If I tried to read fifteen books, I'd be ninety by the time
I was done. I'm an audiobookguy, and I that's why I'm looking
forward to this audiobook even No,this is this is the only book that
I've read in the last couple ofyears because I am strictly an audiobook guy.

(54:50):
Wow, So it was it wasno small feat for me to get
to open this book every day andread it. Now, granted, once
I started, I didn't want tos So that's helpful. Thank you good,
Yes, thank you for making ita good read. But man,
you know that that kind of andfor me, I'll admit this, I'm
kind of a lazy creative, okay, Like I want to create something that

(55:15):
comes from my gut that I canjust do. That's why I've never really
written anything long form, because youin order to write something that is going
to be of any worth, youreally have to do some kind of research.
That's why they always say write whatyou know, right, because if
you write what you know, youknow it better than anybody else you know,
and you can write it. Soyou had a history of being in

(55:37):
the Coastguard, Yes, so youhad that already had that knowledge which kind
of helped you. Yes, Butthe amount of research that you did and
everything, that's that's really testament toyour your work ethic. Really, it's
like, holy crap, you you'rebefore you even put pen to paper and
started writing for you were like fourteenmonths. That takes some patience and dedication

(56:02):
to say I'm going to write this, but you know what, I'm going
to be ready before I write it. I'll sit down and be like,
oh, I got this idea,all right. I'll be twelve pages in
and I'll write myself into a cornerand I'll be like crap, and then
that's it. No, that's it. It comes down to when I set
out to do this is I saidI was about about Back in the nineties

(56:23):
or two thousands. I watched ainterview with James O'Barr on the special DVD
Special Edition DVD of The Crow andJames O'Barr created The Crow comic Brandon Lee
The Crow, and his art wasvery intricate. His art was a very
specific type of art, and hewas saying how when he learned was learning

(56:46):
to illustrate when he was learning todraw. He said that most comic book
artists and then I used to dabblein comic book art back in high school.
Of course, after yeah, everybodywanted to be Todd mc farlane and
Jim Lee, you know. Butit's a but I can do a pretty
mean spider Man. But it's aBut the thing is is that, uh

(57:09):
he said, most artists today theylook at the comic book artists today and
they learned to draw from them.He goes, well, comic book art
is a derivative of reality, soit's a it's a kind of it's one
step from reality. So if youlearn to draw from comic book art of
today, then you're going to belearning from a copy of reality. That's

(57:30):
so you're going to be two stepsto remove from reality. So if you
learn from and then he said,what modern artists are there are actually four
generations deep into separation from reality.So he said, to get the anatomy
right, he would look at daVinci, Michaelangelo, and he looked at
these types of and he emulated thoseartists in doing and then did his comic

(57:51):
book illustrations off of those. Soif he said, you look at the
hands, the hands are very hardto illustrate. So that that struck with
me, that that everything is acopy of a copy. And if you
look at when I tackled, Isaid, I'm going to write a novel.
The first one of the first thingsI did was Moby Dick Herman Melville,

(58:13):
Old Man the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, go right into it and reread
these. Even though I read OldMan the Sea before in high school,
you when you read them at amore an older age, and when years
past and they take on a newmeaning. But what it is is is
that I said I always felt.I said, I want if I'm going

(58:35):
to write a novel, I wantto write something that can be considered literature,
that can be taken seriously into college. I wanted so much to write
like that, not some not apulp novel or not something. So I
did not want to do in thatstyle I wanted, So I went back.
I didn't read trust me, Idon't. I'm not really that heavy
of a reader. So I didnot read modern days stuff. I read

(59:01):
all the classics to brush up onthat. And then I said, I
owe the respect to the Indianapolis guys, not only the men who gave their
lives, but the survivors. Andthis has to be it has to be
emotionally being able to connect with that. So I read nine books alone on
the Indianapolis, and I really wantedto get into there and find these A

(59:25):
lot of that stuff you see aone review I read recently is a very
good review, but he was verydisturbed at the amount of gore and what
was going on. I tell ithappened. I toned a lot of it
down. Yeah, I can tell. That's just only the Last Day in
the Water is for eleven chapters.In the first eleven chapters or last Day

(59:45):
in the Water, they were therefor five days. There's horror stories that
I don't even want to mention thatI was reading about, and I was
like, oh man, that wouldbe that's too much. So I had
to tone it down. And stillsome readers are saying, Wow, that's
really effective. That's really heavy withthe gore, And it's true because all
this stuff happened. A lot ofthose things that I write about. I'm
not making that up. That's actuallyfrom first hand accounts that I that I

(01:00:07):
assembled together. You know what,And I think I mentioned this the last
time we spoke, but I thinkone of my favorite parts of the Indianapolis
part of this story is what you'vedone for McVeigh. Yeah for putting that
out there, because he was acaptain of the Indianapolis and was pretty much

(01:00:28):
the scapegoat for that disaster and itruined his life, ruined his life,
and it shouldn't happen. No,no, not at all. And I
don't feel his name is known.There was a movement by the crew,
and I don't know the names thatwell. As a young boy wrote a
term a paper in school back inthe nineties, and then that ended up

(01:00:51):
spurring the Congress of the United Statesto go to the Navy and basically say,
exonerate Captain McVeigh. This is afterhe took his life in nineteen sixty
eight, but it's still after that. There has been Nicholas Cage tried to
do a portrayal of him in Menof Courage, but it was that fell
flat because it didn't have the emotionalresonance that this novel has is I wanted

(01:01:17):
to And that's where chapter forty fouris. The heartbeat of that book is
the McVeigh chapter, in that thisis a real man and his soul was
never put at rest. And Ithink only by learning about what he went
through, only by learning about whatwe went through on a wide scale across

(01:01:40):
the world, will his soul finallybe able to be laid to rest.
And that's why to me this bookis that's the heartbeat of the book,
Yeah, Captain McVeigh, Yeah,Charles Butler McVay. The third it really
got to me and me being I'mthe World War two buff and I love

(01:02:00):
all that history, and actually theIndianapolis was not something that I was.
I knew about it, but itwasn't something that I had researched. And
after reading I looked at those documentariesthat you talked about and started reading a
lot of articles and things about that, and it spurred, you know,

(01:02:21):
just this thirst for me to learnmore. I hope it does that for
other people too, because thinking aboutthat generation of people that fought World War
Two, they're almost all gone,right, And just to think I saw
I'm a big fan of like Bandof Brothers and the Pacific and I just
saw Masters of the Year just cameout on the first two episodes, and

(01:02:45):
I think, I'm sure I'm notthe only one that does this, but
I put myself in the situation ofthose God, there were kids of those
kids, thinking about when I wastwenty, when I was nineteen, being
thrust in the middle of the WorldWar, and to think about what they

(01:03:07):
had to go through and how theyhad to just push on and deal with
it. And then when they cameback, you know, mental health science
was not anywhere near where it shouldhave been. So they they all had
so many problems that they could havefixed. They could have they could have
you know, fixed, but itjust wasn't the time. I don't know
the number specifically, I want tosay it's either six or eight of the

(01:03:28):
survivors committed suicide of the Indianapolis.A lot more that lost their families,
lost their jobs, drucoholics drank themselvesye to death, so maybe not commit
suicide, but life was over forthem as they knew it. There were
there weren't. There was not thehelp that there is today, the awareness,
and I think that even there couldbe more awareness even now that with

(01:03:51):
with with PTSD. I think wetalked about that in the last episode.
But the it's it's interesting that yousay that with the with the Indianapolis and
that they were they were just kidsin that I was able to put myself
even though I was in the Coastguard, I was on an icebreaker, and
I was able to I've been tothe North Pole, I've been near the
North Pole. I've been to Antarctica. I was crossed the bearing seat four

(01:04:12):
times. So I sailed on thisship around up and down the Pacific,
one end of the planet to theother, and and one and one of
the moments that really got to meit was off of Fiji that we were
doing scientific operations and we stopped theship and put the spotlights into the water
and there were the oceanic white tips. They were in flying through the beams

(01:04:33):
of light and they were tracking ourship. And that chapter two is I
saw that with my own two eyesin that area of the world, that
that that's what happens out there.And I just remember thinking, Wow,
whoever, if there it is.If I were to fall over right now,
it's done. There's no way youcould launch the rescue ship, or

(01:04:55):
there's no way you could turn theship around. You're gone. Those things
are you know, they're they're there. And that was I was able to
put myself in that. How wouldI have handled that at twenty years old,
at twenty one years old, thosetype of acts and what these men
went through. I don't think wecan talk about it enough because the future
generations, as we're looking at whatwars are going on now, everyone is

(01:05:18):
so expendable with drone warfare and allthis kind of stuff, and it's just
there we really have to cherish life. And that's where by respecting what these
men died for, I can guys, I guess telling this story you actually
can learn going forward to to respecttheir lives and what they and what that

(01:05:39):
what that means going forward, youknow, for what it's worth. The
younger generations, I noticed, Inoticed that Jaws was becoming a cartoon.
I have a seventeen year old sonand him and his friends. You know,
the Jaws is just kind of someold old movie with a cheesy shark,
right right, And Captain Quint wasbecoming Captain aheb in many ways.

(01:06:00):
I mean, uh, they thatwill drink to your legs and all these
things, right, the one liners, right, but but but the but
the and people seem to think thatit's just that one speech. It's much
worse than that one speech. Andand I said, if I could draw
context into from what that speech isderived from when he talks about the tiger

(01:06:20):
thirteen footer, uh and and whenyou actually see there was a thirteen foot
tiger shark bothering the men they allcalled Oscar. Oscar was what the code
word they gave to a Japanese Kamakaziplane, so they would call those oscars.
And here they called this tiger sharkoscar. So that was there.
That was their way of dealing withthis. They would they looked at it

(01:06:41):
like it was an attack plane,you know, that was coming around.
Oh, here comes Oscar. Sothat's in the book. And that's where
I wanted to draw on the realityof the situation in order to show future
generations that this is real, thisis this really happened. And uh and
I'm I'm happy that that people areseeing that that first, that first part
of the book is it does justthat it puts you right in the water

(01:07:05):
with those men, and it givesyou by the end of those eleven chapters,
you want to get out of thewater. And that's what I was
trying to I was just telling tosomeone that said they might think that the
water part is too long. It'slike, no, no, no,
it's like it to me, it'scrucial. I made it crucial wrote it
that way because I wanted you,as the reader to suffer with these men,

(01:07:29):
to just go, oh my,it just won't stop. It just
won't stop, and you cannot seethe end. You cannot see it.
I see the end. Have yougotten any response from veterans, from anyone
maybe connected to the Indianapolis or justveterans in general. I have to so.
I there's two things. Ed Rodrigueza good friend of mine. Now

(01:07:53):
he's just like you jumped on theearly campaign. I met him through the
Book Loves the Book of Quint LovesJaws. He is in the same town
as one of the last survivors ofthe USS Indianapolis, and he was able
to find that survivor's daughter and hewas able to bring the Book of Quint.

(01:08:14):
I sent him the Book of Quintwith an inscription, and he brought
that to the survivor's daughter who gaveit to him. So we were able
to get a Book of Quint tothe last surviving member of the Indianapolis,
which was such a good it wasa good feeling. And then recently,
so we recently did an episode,well not recently, it would be in

(01:08:36):
the summertime. It was we discoveredthat there was a specific sailor that came
back from the Indianapolis and he becamea shark hunter out of Florida, out
of tarp and Springs, Florida.His name was Robert Gauz ga u s
And this is episode I believe sixtyfour of the Jaws Obsession. Dan Carver

(01:08:58):
is a gentleman in England and AndyCurry as a shark scientist. They gave
me this book called the Sharks SilentKillers of the Sea. It's called It's
a certain book and in it isverbatim some passages that are right into Quint's
speech. This man had a friendbitten in half below the waist, reached

(01:09:20):
over to him one morning, heupended. He tells the whole story in
this book. Right. So we'dstumbled upon that this man, even though
Frank Mundus is the shark hunter thatwas inspired Peter Benchley to write Quint the
Indianapolis side, was this man,Robert Gauze, that no one knew about.
And he was that just a coincidenceor did that did that book inspire

(01:09:43):
the actual part of the that thatwas from Carl Gottlieb himself said that that
book was on set. Okay,yes, so they actually had this and
they were reading from this and that'swhat Robert Shaw would have drawn from in
order to craft the final version.And if you. Some people say it
was John Milliis and Carl Gottlieb Spielbergand there was all this mishmash and Robert

(01:10:05):
Shaw finally did the final thing.So this man, Robert Gauze came back
from the Indianapolis and was I wouldwould go out and he became a he
was a commercial fisherman, but hewould kill sharks in his spare time,
and there's pictures of him with asharks strung up. And he went on
to have a family and all that, and so we we just stumbled upon

(01:10:26):
this name that no one ever talkedabout in Jaw's lore. Robert Gauze the
actual inspiration for the Indianapolis side ofquint And recently, not only last week,
I get contacted by a Robert Gauzeand he says, I'm that's my
grandfather. He taught me how tohunt for fish and sponge off of tarp
And Springs, Florida. And hesays, thank you so much for bringing

(01:10:49):
this name in the spotlight on mygrandfather. And that was done through the
podcast, through the novel, allof this stuff. Right, So isn't
that that's kind of what we're talkingabout here, is we're we're extending the
we're extending the light into the future. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's
more amazing than I ever thought.Yeah, so we're coming up on at

(01:11:13):
the end of the the hour orso, okay hour and change. Yeah,
what's what's what's in the near futurefor you? What? What can
people expected? What? What doyou want people to do? Okay,
second printing of the book. It'sgoing to be big. It's going to
be wide. It's going to haveto be to meet the demand if everybody

(01:11:34):
wants to read the Book of Quinn. It is on e book, e
book on Kindle, Apple iBooks,and Google Books as well. If you
have a Kindle, you can readthe e book. The novel is going
to be the paperback is going tocome out with a second printing. I
don't normally get goosebumps for what otherpeople create, but I didn't make an
exception for you because I know you, I know who you are, and

(01:11:58):
this is I'm still just I'm lost. I'm at a loss for words for
all of this, because and andthe fact that you're not an asshole really
help us. Yeah, but that'sthat's what you're gonna do next. I
want to figure out what it's liketo be an asshole. I'm gonna do
all the research and no, I'mstill going to be out there looking for

(01:12:18):
trying to find the squirrel that blewthe transformer out there and then knocked out
power to the neighborhood. Trust me, that'll be me so uh so.
In the show notes, we'll haveall the links that you need for everything,
because there's a ton of them.But follow on Instagram, Book of
Quint on Instagram, Yes, Bookof Quint at Instagram, and at jawsob

(01:12:39):
dot com, job dot com formy that's my site. That will lead
you to all the links. Also, you'll see a link tree in the
at jawsob dot com that will leadyou to all the vendors. Whatever country
you're in, there's a link foryou you can find you. You'll find
access to the book once we getthe second printing because it's out of stock
in many places. Amen, it'sall right. Everything that has happened from

(01:13:00):
the start has happened in the rightway. Things like the universe. You
know the book The Alchemist right byPaolo Koelo. Okay, something he says
the universe conspires whatever it is thatyou dream, whatever it is that you
truly want, the universe conspires tomake it happen. And dude, the

(01:13:24):
universe is totally on your side.It's happening, right. Yeah, you
just have to You just kind ofgot to bat it around a little bit.
And well that's the thing, youknow. And I know that there's
probably gonna there's always these people.There's probably going to be someone that says,
oh, you know whatever, he'slucky or whatever whatever. But I'm
telling you, this guy is.He is work, he is dedication,

(01:13:46):
he is resolve, he is focus, and all of those things you need
to accomplish. I mean, yeah, talent helps. You've got the talent
too, so good for that,but all of the other things. If
you have, you can have tonsof talent and none of those other things.

(01:14:06):
And that talent is going to befor you and your family because nobody
else is going to get to enjoyit. But thankfully the rest of this
world gets to enjoy the Book ofquint and Jaws, Obsession podcast and everything
else that's going to come down thepike from Ryan Doco. Thank you so
much. I am so happy thatyou were here taking the time the show,
and I'm sure there's gonna be anotherconversation down the line. We're going

(01:14:30):
to do part three. We'll havewe'll have mister Cavilan here and we'll talk
about the movie. How about that, right? Thanks again, man, okay y