The Getting Lit Podcast
Casual yet stimulating talks about books and media.
The Getting Lit Podcast
Gods Fare No Better feat. J David Osborne
J David Osborne joins us once more, this time to talk about his new psychedelic cyberpunk epic novel, Gods Fare No Better.
We talked about spirituality, cyberpunk, science fiction, and the impact of various media on JDO's work, as well as book marketing strategies, industry challenges, and the importance of creativity and playfulness in literature and art.
Buy Gods Fare No Better here:
https://ronintrash.bigcartel.com/product/gods-fare-no-better
or here:
https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Fare-Better-David-Osborne-ebook/dp/B0F2GXQGRZ?ref_=ast_author_mpb
And the discussion continues over on Patreon where we talk about one of the novel's main influences, Cyberpunk 2077. To listen, go to https://www.patreon.com/GettingLit
You know, he's really shameless, an intellectual argument. He's absolutely without character, a moral foundation, or even intellectual substance.
SPEAKER_04:back to the Getting Lit Podcast. The last episode we talked about Medea, the first girl bus from ancient Greek history. And this week we're continuing JDO month here at the Getting Lit Podcast. You've listened to like probably over 12 hours of JDO in the past month because I did my I put together all of the Gene Wolfe episodes that we did in couple of years ago, and he was on for the Legacy of Cain episode. And now he is on to promote his new book and just generally, you know, shoot the shit with us. Yes, it's called God's Fair No Better. And both Fressa and I have read it and loved it. And yeah, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about influences. And yeah, welcome back, JDO. It's been one episode since you've been on. Happy to
SPEAKER_03:be back. Too long, if you ask me. JDO, third mic on the Getting Lit podcast. Yeah, no shit, right? Between this and Rare Candy, I'm going on Rare Candy like three times, too. But it's fun. That's what podcasts are supposed to be. They're supposed to be chill hangs. I mean, what else am I going to do? Hang out with my son? I
SPEAKER_04:saw your picture with your son and how he wrecked the remote control car. That is so sad. Did you get it fixed?
SPEAKER_03:No. It's a lesson. It was a lesson. So I told him. That's kind of how parenting works. You tell him. He's like, Dad, can I put the Mario Kart car in the water? I said, no, buddy. It's going to break. And he's like, I want to do it. And I was like, all right. but you understand that it's going to break. Right. And he's like, I don't think it's going to. And I'm like, all right. And it goes, and this dies halfway through the puddle. And he's like, it broke. Yeah. Yeah, it did.
SPEAKER_04:Well, sorry. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I was like, can we get another one? I was like, no, that was
SPEAKER_04:it. Well, I, I, I tend to think that probably the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because like, um, I don't know. Well, like reading this, it feels like that same attitude that your son had, like goes into the book. It's like, I'm going to do this. Like, yeah. And the story might break, but I'm going to do it anyway. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, it doesn't break though. So
SPEAKER_03:yeah. Nobody likes this kind of thing, but it's what I want to do. We'll try. Yeah. There's a lot of Mario carts and puddles in this one.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I did want to talk about the like, the process and the road to this book, because obviously I've actually, I actually reviewed the first book that you did many, many moons ago, which was, it was, what was it called? Dying World? Dying World, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, he's got it. There it is. Frest has got it. I think I have a hard copy somewhere of it. Yeah. But and so what you've done is like you wrote a series of short ones set in this world, which is like Cyclone City, a kind of cyberpunk. How would you describe it? Like cyberpunk kind of blended with spiritual elements and basically everything you're interested in. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:it's just the place where I can write about whatever I want to.
SPEAKER_04:yeah
SPEAKER_03:so it's a cyclone city supposed to be it's basically supposed to be oklahoma city yeah right it's in the middle of the country it's a city that for whatever reason didn't get bombed in the apocalypse and so it becomes a sort of hub uh by default because it's kind of the only one there and what grows up is uh kind of native oklahoman culture right and uh mixed with like this kind of weird Akira thing because I had the Yakuza move in. Don't really know how the logistics of that worked out, how Japanese people were like, we're going to go take over Oklahoma City. But, you know, who gives a shit? And then, yeah, magic is also real.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, amazing. And so what was interesting about this, like reading the first one, like I don't actually remember if– The magical elements of it were in the original. Was that sort of added in later and you folded in as the tale grew and the telling, so to speak? 100%,
SPEAKER_03:right. So my first plan was to do 10 of these little slim novellas, which looking back on it, not the best idea. Why? Just before we
SPEAKER_04:get into that, why is that not the best idea?
SPEAKER_03:Sure. Because you can't come out with a slim novella in a series, especially 10 of them, and maintain an interested readership. So what I saw was a massive fall off from Dying World to War in Heaven, right? And it makes total sense. There's this gap of time between the two. They're an interconnected story. And people's reception to War in Heaven was positive, but... At the same time, it was kind of like, I think I need to go back and reread the first one. So I started thinking, like I was thinking about The Green Mile, how The Green Mile came out in those like seven slim novellas first. But those don't exist anymore. Like if you've ever seen The Green Mile on the shelf, it's a full novel. And what happened... Thank you for having me. I just did what other people do in private, where I slowly wrote a book over three years, but I released the first two drafts of those books online. So what happened was, because things got so fantastical in the third one, I went back and rewrote pretty much the whole first book is... a rewrite. And then the second book survived for the most part. I just moved things around to, to make it a little bit better. Uh, and then you have this bigger, like 50 or 60,000 word neon hell weirdo. Uh, I don't even know how to describe that part of the book, but I had psychedelic psychedelic, right. But I just had to make sure that it all made sense going all the way through. Cause I couldn't just copy and paste the first two books and then, do Neon Hell. I realized it wasn't going to work.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, well, that's the thing that's great about it, too, is like in that process, you know, I feel like sometimes one of your strengths is obviously at the sentence level, amazing writer, and you do think about structure a lot, I think, in this one at least. And what I liked about it was how, you know, how free and sort of easy it was with like all of these disparate elements, but it's, and it makes sense, but it also doesn't like adhere to this sort of nerdish, like every piece must fit. Like, um, although I could foresee people like doing subreddits on this book and like being, what does this mean? I can see them doing that, but like, it's not that like the book invites that necessarily because it's not, it's not, it's telling you, it's not telling you to, um, It's not good. I'm sure you've got lots of lore in your head, but it's not a lore-focused sort of story is basically what I'm getting at there. Sure.
SPEAKER_03:And I've always liked writing books like that. I went back because every year or so, I'll check in on the Goodreads for my earlier book. There's one that I want to read to you really quickly. I can find it really fast. Listeners, just stick with me. Is it your first book? Yeah, it's from By the Time, right? So By the Time was this book about a Siberian gulag. And the essential plot of it is that they want to escape, but they need to bring someone with them to eat when they run out of food on the Siberian tundra. But that's relegated to the very back portion of the book. Most of it's just these kind of vignettes that... are strange and, you know, but there was this one and it's from a baby. We just got done talking about how non non-binary is not real. This person, Rachel only has three reviews, but her review is I've been camped reading every review for this book, trying to find an examination of the ending and have found very little that illuminates what that was all about. Yeah. Yeah. which makes them appear unimportant, requiring the reader to move on quickly to the more weighty, realistic parts, which make up a significantly higher percentage of the book. And the ending felt as if the author suddenly remembered the genre he was going for, which was jarring in an otherwise interesting novella grounded in that weighty, depressing real. So like this person is like combing the internet to try to figure out what this thing means. And it's, When I was younger, so I wrote that book when I was 23 and was doing a lot of drugs. But I developed this kind of style where I thought it was kind of cool to never explain anything and to talk to the reader as though they already knew what I was talking about. And what's cool about getting older is that I became obsessed with things like it was a lot of it was going on rare candy and talking about like Crichton books and shit and being like this fucking rules. Like how do I get closer to that? And so with every book, I'm going to try to get a little bit more propulsive with like the plot and, and kind of go in that direction. But there's always that element of my writing where I know what it means. And it's fun to me that you don't, and that I'm just going to talk about it. Like we both know. And that's, that's why this was before I'd read Gene Wolfe. Right. So when I found Gene Wolfe, I was like, Oh, it's my favorite author. Yeah. Like he gets it. He does the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. He knew when he was writing that shit that people were going to be like, what the fuck does that mean? He never, he mentions a word and then never mentions it again. And so it's just, it's a game. It's, it's, it's fun. And I think this book has less of that than my earlier. It's, it's, I don't think there's anything overly, overly, obtuse or obscure about it. Maybe the tornado stuff doesn't make sense, but I really wanted to make sure that this one had that fun propulsive plot, but also I can't help myself. Like,
SPEAKER_04:yeah,
SPEAKER_03:I love it out there.
SPEAKER_04:I love that tornado stuff. Like the legends, which I'm assuming is like Oklahoma and like, folklore myths sort of stuff, um, that really kind of localizes it, even though it's sort of like a, um, you know, megalopolis sort of, uh, hyper-capitalist, the world has come to this place. I just love, uh, that element of it. And I love when people do that too, when they kind of localize their worlds, whether it's a sort of science fictional world, or even just, uh, you know, if it's a village or something like that, like, um, in the particular is the universal sort of thing. Like I just love that. And I just love that image. And I know you love it too. Cause it seems like you're obsessed with it of the Tomahawk, like kind of diverting the, the, the, the hurricanes or not the hurricanes. What are they called? Tornadoes.
SPEAKER_03:Tornadoes. Yeah. When I was a high school teacher, I, you know, we'd have a bad weather day and I'd go in and the Kyle work, Angie kids would be like, uh, I'd be like, oh, yeah, that was scary last night. There was a tornado coming, and they're like, we took care of it. Because they do that. Like, Kiowas go out, and they throw a tomahawk in the ground. It splits the tornado, and it misses them, right? It's a magical practice that I 100% believe is real for reasons that I could talk about for maybe an hour. But I think that's an important thing about this, about– This book as well, and my writing style in general, is that I am a firm believer in magic and the occult as being an actual real thing. And I think that weather is a part of that. Living where I live and talking to as many people as I do, I've talked to a few meteorologists, and did you know that they still don't really know why a tornado forms? Really? Like the top meteor, like if you, you can look this up, they can explain it through, through like, like what's actually happening physically. But when I say, okay, but what forms it, right? Like what, what kicks it off? What kicks, they're like, oh, we
SPEAKER_01:don't fucking know.
SPEAKER_03:So
SPEAKER_01:it's like the big bang kind of thing where it's like, they can explain everything that happened after it, but like why it happened, there's still no idea.
SPEAKER_03:They don't know. They can see predictors, right? They can see cloud formations kind of starting to turn into a hook. And I'll say, okay, great. So what causes that hook? They're like, I don't know. How can they not know that? Right? Yeah. Well, you just said that about the big banks. You guys haven't figured this shit out yet, that it's all just a constant loop, right?
SPEAKER_01:I can understand why they don't know it, but it's annoying that they present it as the experts that you can't question when they don't know the answers to these questions.
UNKNOWN:Hmm.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people are like that though. Yeah. Honestly,
SPEAKER_03:like a lot of the vaccine people too, they can tell you every mechanism for how. Shout out Claire. Yeah. Say the, say the MRNA vaccine works. And it's like, but what about like, just what about like the underlying like principle of the whole thing? And they're like, we don't know. There was one guy who knew and he's dead now. And, uh, we've just kind of taken the technology and run with it. But, uh, no, I, um, I actively practice sigil magic and different kind of prayers and curses and things like that. Because it's just... Nobody recently... But you can do a really cool... You can do this thing called war water, which is pretty cool, where people are talking shit about you. You can write their name on a piece of paper, run a rusty spike through it, put it in a Ziploc bag full of water, put a bunch of pepper and nasty shit into it, lock it up and put it in your freezer and they'll never talk shit about you again. Wow. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I'm very into animism and, uh, uh, different religions and things like that. And so there's a lot of, uh, when I'm writing, I think that's when it all comes out specifically because writing itself is a magical act. So like I become like a, I stopped being J.D.O. the retard and become J.D.O. the wizard when I'm writing. Like, oh, all of a sudden, it's like being on an acid trip where everything makes sense while you're tripping. Like, that's what writing is for me. I'm like, oh, no, I get it. I understand. And then when I'm done, I'm like, I don't know what I was, I don't know what that meant.
SPEAKER_04:I love that metaphor. It's such a great, like, because it's sort of hard to, unless you're a writer, it's sort of hard to kind of you need to experience that to understand how good that analogy is because it is like wizardry. I often use like alchemy as a, as a metaphor, like, and I just love how you can just take something as like basically marks on a page or digital sort of thing and like transmit thoughts that are kind of like, and like feelings and experiences that aren't necessarily always your own. Like, it's this weird thing where, like, you own it, but you kind of don't at the same time. And then you transmit this out into the world and people are experiencing it. It's like this form of, like, psychic kind of messaging or whatever. And people don't, like, privilege that enough when they're talking about, like, books and writing and literature and stuff like that. How it's like this spiritual, psychic kind of, like, act, basically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's magic. A hundred percent, because I can tell you what I did yesterday and I can tell you what I, I can tell you what I did a year ago. If you said, Hey, do you remember that time that we were, you know, on a hike in the Wichita's and we saw this, I can call that memory up. But when I opened the book and read a page, I can't remember it. Like I can't remember sitting down to write that thing, you know, like I, it's, I guess I suppose if I give it some thought, I can tell you where it came from, right? I was watching this movie or I was watching that movie and it came out that way. But the actual writing of it, you're in a different space. The same way it's kind of– besides a handful, right? Like I'm sure you guys both dabbled with psychedelics. But like besides a handful of extremely profound moments, you can't like pinpoint like, oh, yeah, on my third trip– I thought this, and then I thought this, and then I thought this like, no, no. You just remember like when you see the weapon of the apocalypse and when you meet the elves, right? Like, I guess that's my DMT. Like I, I remember the whole thing for that. Cause that was, that was
SPEAKER_01:fucking crazy. I met Shiva on an acid trip. And like, I'm convinced it was Shiva because I didn't know anything about Hinduism or who that was. I thought it was Ganesh because that was the only one I'd heard of. But then like through reading different things and I'm like, yep, that exactly tracks with the experience I had. And it was like in like a full ego death, like acid trip kind of moment. So I feel like I squandered it really. I should have asked her or him more like questions or something. I was just like, no, no, no,
SPEAKER_03:no. You didn't squander it at all. Like that was the whole point. was that you saw that, right? And there are so many instances of this happening that it can't not be real. Like you can't see Shiva without knowing what Shiva is. And then later on finding out, it's kind of like what pilled me on telepathy was not, I'm sorry, not telepathy, but like reincarnation, right? So there are these kids who were born and they know all these facts about the person they were before. Right. And they get it right, right, right, right, right. That's not convincing to me because there can be coaching. Right. But there was one story that I heard about and it was a kid. And in his past life, he had been a world war two fighter pilot or whatever. And he's naming all this stuff. He's getting all this shit. Right. But then there's one detail that he's wrong about. Right. I can't remember what the detail is, but he's, they're like, Oh, well he got them all. Right. But he got this one thing wrong.
UNKNOWN:Right.
SPEAKER_03:20 years later, like a letter surfaces, right? And that letter that surface that's been lost to time for 20 years confirms that that kid wasn't wrong. He was right. Wow. That's what got me, right? Because there was no way for him to be coached. It was something that nobody knew that everybody thought that he was wrong about that. He was actually right about. So for us to your, your Shiva experience to me is, is where the proof is when somebody who has no idea what they're looking at is like looking through a book and they're like oh fuck that's what i saw that's why it's true right because you who would have coached you on that
SPEAKER_04:yeah
SPEAKER_03:like whether it's
SPEAKER_04:that yeah and whether it's actually shiva or something that some like guy in ancient india or something saw and then Cold Shiva. You know what I mean? Sure. The
SPEAKER_01:human understanding of whatever these things actually is is going to be completely inaccurate, but there's some level of accuracy to it. People have these experiences over time. People have experiences of Christ or the Madonna or whomever. I do think those are real entities of some form and maybe they are human consciousness projected into a whatever, some kind of ethereal realm or something like, you know what I mean? There's heaps and heaps of theories of it. And I think they're probably like 2% correct. And then the most educated person can probably only explain like 2% of that 2%. Um, So, it's like, yeah, you can't really, like, figure out what to do with these or what they, like, literally mean or anything. But, like, to say that, like, because it's not all completely mapped out, it's false is retarded. Like, there's something going on there for sure. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:it is. Because what you said is really smart. Because, like, if it's 2% of 2%, it doesn't matter because it happened. And it only has to happen once for it to be real. Like, you only have to see a ghost one time to be like, oh, okay, well, yeah, ghosts are real then. I guess. That's why trying to replicate shit like this in a lab, because intention matters too, right? Like I was reading one of Russell Targ's books on ESP and there was this fascinating point where they took somebody who believed in ESP, a scientist and a scientist who did not believe in ESP and had them run the same experiments. And the guy who believed it was getting results. And the guy who did not believe it was not getting results, right? It's that, You know, is it a particle or a wave type of thing? Depends on the on the viewer. But yeah, the shit only has to be real once for it to be real forever.
SPEAKER_04:I think there was some experiment as well around ESP that was around people being looked at. You know when you know you're being looked at and you can't actually see even in your peripheral vision? Like, you know, if I'm just fucking around with my partner or whatever and I'm looking at him and he'll be aware that I am, even though his back's turned to me and there's no reflections, there's nothing like that. Yep. I think there is a kind of low level. Everyone has sort of a low level kind of telepathic ability. Um, and they try to like hand wave that away by like saying, you know, shit like, um, micro movements and like just stuff that's like even more like ridiculous yeah esoteric yeah like yeah just like oh yeah your your eye blinking like moves this like current in the air adjusting pressure that you're like pro what's that word precipitate deception like yeah
SPEAKER_03:like it's like some dragon ball z shit it's like oh blade of grass yeah they
SPEAKER_04:use they love using occam's razor except for things like this you know like yeah whereas it's clearly true
SPEAKER_01:they'll if they like will immediately discount like any kind of like black better turn supernatural explanation but then the most flimsiest materialist explanation, they're like, well, if it's plausible, so therefore it disproves the supernatural explanation. It's like, yeah, it's plausible, but you didn't prove it, so why do I have to be made to feel like the idiot into crazy woo-woo shit when your explanation is just as retarded just because you watch like the fucking Neil deGrasse Tyson TV series. You know, all this stuff about physics. Yeah. Right. Right. Like alien
SPEAKER_03:shit too. Just real quick with alien shit. It's like, to me, this is all just common sense, but like, do you really think that regular, uh, wakes up every day, eats the same breakfast, goes to work, eats the same dinner, fucks his wife, uh, plays with his kids, goes to sleep. That guy would decide to destroy his life to tell people that he was abducted by aliens. Maybe, I guess, maybe. But nobody has ever talked about being abducted by aliens, and it just went great for them. They make no money. Sometimes they get released from their jobs, or they become a pariah. But they stick with it. They're like, but no, it's a real, it really happened to me. And to me, it's all about incentives with people. This is how I view politics. It's how I view the supernatural, whatever. Like it's why I don't believe in Bigfoot because there's always an incentive to say that you found Bigfoot, right? There's no incentive like Whitley Strieber, right? To say that like an alien fucked your butt and to have everybody think you're, you're weird, right? Whitley Strieber is a bad example because he has a career, right? but a lot of these people don't. So
SPEAKER_04:yeah, the, the, that's, that's, that's a really interesting point. And one that I thought about a lot, um, because it's like, that's a sort of evidence as well. Like the, the incentives and like, why would this person do this? Like, is this person completely deluded? No, they're otherwise a normal person. They're not like crazy or whatever. Why would they kind of, go out on a limb to do this to be to appear crazy or whatever and it's the same thing like like with uh the argument from like the gospels and stuff like that that i've heard a lot about like a lot of apologists christian apologists say and i think this is true that like um the disciples basically were willing to go to their deaths um because all of them All of them were martyred. So like willing to go to their deaths and saying that they saw Jesus Christ rise from the dead. So like, Why would someone do that? Like if it was all just like this fake conspiracy or whatever, and it didn't happen, like you would at least get, I mean, you would at least get half people like, just be like, all right, nah, that didn't happen. And it was all made up. And so the fact that every single one of them was like martyred and like this historical evidence for the majority of them, that that's what actually happened to them. Um, like, You know, that is... They didn't have a concept of fame. Yeah. And that is evidence in itself. And, like, the atheistic kind of materialist person doesn't take that as evidence. But that is evidence of conviction. That is evidence that they believe what they say. And, obviously, that's not evidence that, like, Jesus rose from the dead. But it's evidence that those people saw that and believed that that's what happened.
SPEAKER_03:Saw and believed something. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I'm with you 100%. Like, that's why I believe that that... actually happened. So that's what I wanted to ask. Yeah. That's sorry. Continue. No, no, no, no. I was just gonna say people, people, people don't, people don't, die for a goof right yeah like if i'm like trying to scare my kid and i'm like oh so an alien and then somebody's like you sure you did click clack like i'm gonna shoot you in the head i'll be like i was just fucking playing around dude like as a matter of fact i'm such a pussy like i might have actually seen it and if they were gonna kill me i'd be like i'm just playing like no it's not real so like these motherfuckers saw some real shit
SPEAKER_04:yeah so that's what i wanted to ask you about in this book as well like so Obviously, you said before that you believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation is sort of a kind of plot point in this book as well. So, clearly it exists in this world. And you would probably also consider yourself a kind of Christian. How do you square those things, do you think?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, esoteric Christian, esoteric
SPEAKER_03:Christian, I want to say, and you guys can, or whoever's listening can fact check me on this, but I feel like the anti reincarnation crowd is relatively recent. in Christianity. I wish I had facts and data to back that up, but I want to say I read that somewhere that like, this was like a reason, like a medieval church kind of thing where they, they got to a point where they're like, no, that's not fucking real. Like you have, but like the idea of an eternal soul, I don't see how that like, if, okay. If you're thinking about like eternal punishment or eternal salvation, like, I could see how that could be a problem. Like you die and your soul goes one place or the other. But I, I don't really see like an issue. Like we obviously like what Jesus did that was unique was he went back into the same body, the dead body, which we don't tend to do. Although some people have been dead for a very long time and come back rare cases, but it does happen. Um, I, I, I would have to work more– because this is kind of like a– I've been listening to– I'm going on this podcast soon, The Threshold Saints, right? Which is very like Buddhist and Hindu and talks about like the– what do they call it? The Samsara, right? The Samsara wheel. And I'm kind of like a hippie 1960s Alan Watts type dude who doesn't believe that these– apparently disparate beliefs can't be reconciled. Like I do think there's a way to, because I just, it, if you're being born to work through your karma, right. And you're always trying to get better. I don't necessarily think that a kind of final salvation or damnation has to play into that at all. Because Christian beliefs, Buddhism, occult, whatever, my number one belief, which was in the book, right, is in Vedanta, right? And so I definitely do believe that this idea of Vedanta, that you have a God who's all powerful, can do anything at once, would get very bored with that. Like, okay, I can make whatever, but who gives a shit? So what better way to have fun than and play than to create a bunch of beings that you get to inhabit each one of them. Because on an eternal timeline, people would say, well, what about people who get murdered by serial killers? On a long enough timeline, you'd get bored enough to be like, I'll try it out. See what happens, right? So Vedanta, to me, is this really interesting idea that they're actually like right now we're different people because that's how we're experiencing things, but we're really not like I, at one point, whoever this guy is, me will be both mats at some point. Uh, or, I mean, that's too linear in terms of like how time works, right? Cause it's, it's God can experience everything all at once, but we're all God looking at his creation, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's like that recent, the white Lotus season where they, he explains it like, you know, you're like, life is like a drop of water, like splashing out of the, like one big pool of water. And then like each individual life is just like a drop. And then that, the, like that arc of it dropping, going through the air is its life. And then it returns back to the one percent, which, yeah, that's basically Mike. Like I'm a Christian, like, but you know, like I'm interested in esoteric stuff too. And I, basically think that all of these religions are just different interpretations of the same kind of set of data. And they're probably none of them correct to the, you know, like what I said before, 2%, but they're all like stuck around for so long because they're getting at something. And then people have mystical experiences that does confirm aspects of it, you know, influenced by their cultures or whatever. So, yeah, I think that totally makes sense that, you know, life is just like god stepping into the realm of time and individuating small parts of him and then experiencing the world and then returning back to the source to like and then those
SPEAKER_03:parts being redone right because wouldn't like like if you threw the dice out you'd be like this is really interesting so i've given this guy let's say i was like a step warrior fucking warrior 1500 years ago or whatever. They're like, okay, cool. I really wish you were. I do hanging off a horse, fucking shooting a long bow. That should be so tight. Um, but like, let's see where this guy goes through his, however many 20 lives, 30 lives, whatever. Like it all makes sense to me from a perspective of play, which is really the only thing that makes sense at the end of it. Random doesn't make sense. Like, We're all here and we have these feelings. Like I'm a very simple person and I don't understand, like I understand like getting hungry or horny or whatever, but why would we even be having the conversation that we're having right now? If there wasn't something to it, it makes no sense from an evolutionary biology standpoint, right? The functions that religions serve are, Uh, can be explained that way in the Sam Harris way, but why people would be interested in them at all. Like when there's nothing riding on it for me to care one way or the other, I could live the rest of my life. Never think about this shit again. And I'd be good. I'd watch action movies and chill, but I do think about it. Why?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's a good question. By the way, how's your Sam Harris? Can you do Sam Harris as well? Sam Harris? No.
SPEAKER_03:Actually, I don't know if I know what Sam Harris sounds like.
SPEAKER_04:He just does, like, really, like, calm. Yeah. Does he sound like this? No, kind of like... uh, I'm Sam Harris and I'm like, just let that sort
SPEAKER_01:of like, like trying to be like measured looking at when you see your experiences, you're just consciousness. Uh, yeah, no, I think we're just too Australian to get around. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think my mother didn't invent the golden girls.
SPEAKER_04:So like, that's the,
SPEAKER_03:I went through a phase where I went through my like atheist phase, like right into college. I had this really cool, like Irish, uh, philosophy professor at UTEP. And he was like, uh, he'd worked with Daniel Dennett on whatever being gay or whatever. And he, he turned me on to Dennett. So I got the, and the Dennett thing is really interesting, right? Because he wrote this whole book about the difference between, or about this idea of qualia, which is something that had like freaked me out. Like since high school, I remember walking home from school one day and I was that same buddy that I mentioned, I was talking to, I was like, all right, bro. So like, You see that as blue, right? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, I see it as blue too. But how do I know if I were to get transferred into your head that it would be the same blue that we're both seeing? And he was like, what? I don't know. Not tracking. So then it's-
SPEAKER_04:Is that a sort of like breakfast? How would you feel if you didn't have breakfast kind of question? Have you heard about
SPEAKER_03:that? Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Sorry. Continue. But like, so that, because it was something that I had thought of before, and I was also like, I grew up in speaking in tongues type churches and shit. And so, you know, you're a kid and you're like, that shit was fucking corny as fuck. Now that I think back on it, I'm like, they were definitely- locked in to something like you don't do that kind of retarded shit unless like that kind of shit. Anyway. when I found this book that I got into Richard Dawkins, uh, Christopher Hitchens, who is the goat of those guys? He's the only one who's a good writer. He is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, he was, he was the best.
SPEAKER_01:And I was the only one that was funny.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Like early YouTube, like listening to him, like rip into Islam. I was like, yeah, fucking savages. Uh, cause nine 11 had just had, you know, like, um, um, And then, and then then it, and I got kind of into it, but what's really interesting is that nobody, nobody convinced me otherwise. Right. Like nobody argued me out of that. Life just happened and something would happen and I would feel something like I would see a ghost or I would have this, you know, not even psychedelic, just an experience. And I'd be like, I don't think this shit is right. Like there's some, and I think life is the best argument. Yeah. I think, I think a lot of atheists like your Bill Mars and your people like that, I think they're being stubborn. Yeah. I think they, I think they shoebox a lot of stuff away and they're like, we're just not going to talk about that time when that happened, when the truth of reality was revealed to me in a dream or whatever. Like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to smoke weed, drink whiskey. I'm cool. I hate that guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I've never seen the appeal in him. Even when I went through an atheist phase, he just didn't seem interesting at all. I
SPEAKER_04:think the, um, the whole atheist thing with, yeah, like you said, Christopher Hitchens was the best because he was the only one who had kind of like a wit about him. And he was the only one who kind of like, had a kind of, um, was well read outside of like science crap. Like, you know, like he had read the great, the classics and was sort of like, uh, um, more educated in, in those sort of softer disciplines, which actually are the hardest, I would say like, um, because these people who were like, you know, 150 IQ, like doing neuroscience or, um, you know, uh, building social media, uh, empires and stuff like that. I feel like they just don't understand stories. And so this is not what they're there for. This is why you get, uh, these reviews of like people, whenever someone like that or someone sort of trained in those disciplines or whatever engages with something, it's usually science fiction or like that, those sorts of disciplines, because obviously it's, it involves science. They don't appreciate it. Maybe you're finding this JDO with your stuff. They don't appreciate it as art. They appreciate it as information and, You know, was the information conveyed to me in a, um, efficient manner? You know, it's just like, right. That's not art. Right. Art isn't about efficiency. Like it's not about information. It's about like these, you know, higher and they are higher. I don't care. Like I'm, I'm using hierarchical language, um, like these higher kind of, uh, themes and ideas than just the, the merely numerical or material, you know?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. And you find that a lot with, um, so science fiction to me seems to be broken down. Like in the sixties, military sci-fi was really big, which is just another type of autism. Right. But then, so you have like the Robert Hein lines and then you had the Philip K. Dix and what's interesting, but oversimplifying of course. Right. But like the Hein lines kind of took over sci-fi and it was like, what, we'll talk about some cool tech, which to me is like total snooze. I do like Hein line. I'm not giving him credit because like, you know, the cat who walks through walls or stranger in a strange land do have that sixties psychedelic. You couldn't escape it. It was more
SPEAKER_04:hippie than he's given credit for. Like he's actually
SPEAKER_03:more like sort of psychedelic. Yeah. But
SPEAKER_04:yes,
SPEAKER_03:continue. Yeah. Yeah. But then, uh, you know, what really amazed me when I got back into sci-fi was finding people like Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe. And I was like, Oh shit. Or Michael Moorcock. Right. I got into some Moorcock. Hmm.
UNKNOWN:Uh,
SPEAKER_03:And I went back to Portland. Yeah. I was like, Hey, is that, is that voucher still good? Like, are we still good for that? But no, there is like, I think, I think when you look at like, who's that mathematician who discovered like a formula that proved God existed as a French guy. And then he like became a recluse and nobody heard. Yeah. No, no, this is a recent guy. This was like, this was like a guy who died in like the eighties or the nineties, but like they, they have all of his like writings and they get more and more esoteric. And when you're watching this documentary, you know, you go through this process where he's a very, obviously very analytical person, very brilliant, like off the charts, brilliant. And his calculations lead him to the conclusion that God is real. And, and so I think that like, when it comes to fictions, like science fiction, um, there's people who are at like step one where they're really good at math. And then there are people who were born with the autism that gets you to step 57 or whatever that like all the mystical shit is real. And sometimes like when it comes to a guy like me who sucks dick at math, like I just skipped all the way up there, which is, um, Also, I think what Gene Wolfe did, he was obviously a very intelligent person. He understood languages and he invented the Pringles can and all this kind of stuff. But you can just jump over all that other shit and realize that science fiction is meant to be like a psychedelic incubator for sea changes in culture, basically. Right. And you can skip all the. like the Shixin Liu. I haven't read any of that. Cause it seems like it's that kind of thing. I might be wrong. Have you guys read like the three body problem? No, but I've heard,
SPEAKER_04:I've heard, um, Zach's, uh, podcast episode on it, which is amazing. Like he did, like, I think he did a few of them, but he, did he like it? He did, but he went over it and like, it does sound pretty insane, but like, it does sound very autistically mathematical Chinese,
SPEAKER_03:which you would expect. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Different, different strokes for different folks, I guess. But, um, And I haven't read it, so I can't really comment that much. But no, I like– I guess I kind of lost the plot there.
SPEAKER_04:You like the more psychedelic stuff. I like the weird shit. Yeah, that's definitely in this book. Like, you know, you have sentient– uh, mold and, you know, yarn. We have to talk about yarn because that was one of the things that I, I really responded to. And I had lots of questions about it when I read it, um, because I just loved the idea of it. Um, and yeah, so it's like sort of like a, um, technology, but also sort of different to the other technology, um, in the book. Uh, how would you describe it?
SPEAKER_03:So a big theme of the book is that, um, There is not one god, there are multiple gods. And similarly, there's not one technology, there's competing technologies. Love this. This is like Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but, like, good.
SPEAKER_04:That should have been my blurb.
SPEAKER_03:There we go, there we go. In the book, there's a big world serpent that's swallowing its tail, and all that really represents is that one day it's going to kind of swallow... the world and rebuild reality. And so what's going on in the timeframe of this book is a kind of musical chairs for these competing gods and technologies to have dominance when everything gets restarted. It's like whoever, whoever's in the seat when it stops, like that's, what's real. And so with technology there, this world has the kind of standard cybernetic implants, right? Like the kind of first gen type thing, which I show characters that are kind of gross and rotting and shit because they just put a bunch of stuff in their body.
SPEAKER_01:But at some
SPEAKER_03:point, the early adopters, right? And then there's this, so the rhizome, because I believe that the mushroom is sacred and has its own, like I think that it's an alien intelligence that has its own ideas about how Humanity should work through some mechanism deep in the lore, right? Like the rhizome became a competitive technology to the internet, right? Through kind of mycelial connections. But it also became a competitor in technology. And how it does that is that you essentially inject different types of rhizomatic material into your body and it grows the kind of thing that you want it to grow. But what's important is that it's a technology that has a mind of its own. So it's not a device that has a function that you can, it's not a gun that can, it can turn into a gun. But importantly, it's called yarn because I read Tyson Yonkaporta's Sand Talk, which talks about Aboriginal Australian wisdom and stuff like that. And he calls all of his books yarns. Where, which I love, like he's not giving you an essay. It's a yarn. It's a conversation. And sometimes that yarn comes to a point and sometimes it doesn't while at the same time still doing so. Right. Like you kind of got the, it's the idea of getting the point from the conversation, not from the thesis statement. Yeah. Right. Like it's in the listening in the interacting that you, you kind of get it. So yarn in this case is a conversational technology. that is working on a lot of different levels. Sometimes it heals people. Sometimes people get shot and they die, and then other times they get shot and the yarn heals them, right? And what's important is that it's not a technology that's godlike in determining who lives and dies, but the idea is that there's been a conversation that's been happening between the technology and the host for a while that leads to certain outcomes, right? Right. Yeah. Like you could have a gun, your hand turned into a gun or you could have your head set on fire for no reason. Right. Like, I love
SPEAKER_04:it. Yeah. It's like a chaos agent in some ways. Yeah. It's like you never know when. you know, conversations will go off the rails kind of thing. Like, and I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. That's how I structured the whole book too. The whole book is supposed to feel like a yarn that like goes off the rails at certain points. It very definitively goes off the rails for like 40 or 50 pages. That's all intentional. It's supposed to be this, this thing that feels alive because there are blind alleys and red herrings and, uh, random, uh, instances that don't matter to the plot. So I'm kind of simultaneously obsessed with, with plot, but also this organic living feeling of how I think a novel actually should be. And if I find the balance one day, it's going to be the best fucking book ever.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. I love, I love that. Um, you know, even though in the book you literally say Australia is gay, you like, uh, fold in some like Australian, um, concepts there you might i don't know if you know this or not but like in australian journalism every story is called a yarn as well so like oh i didn't know that um you know if you know when i used to be a tabloid journalist um they'd be like oh that was a good yarn it like made the top of the of the list or whatever in terms of readability or whatever um so people say that as and it's fairly common well is it common now i don't think so matt like people don't say it as much as they used to but like maybe
SPEAKER_01:not as much it sort of depends where you are but it's not like a having a using weird slang to say yeah i was having a yarn with this bloke you know whatever like it's it doesn't yeah it doesn't strike me it's like oh that's like an archaic kind of term yeah no
SPEAKER_04:it's great and i love that i've always loved yarn as a analogy too, is this like unspooling thread of, of, of stuff as well. And that's definitely in the book where you feel like, especially when, um, you know, the main kind of, I guess we would call him a villain, like his unspooling kind of evil and just keeps getting bigger and more disgusting and grotesque. And, um, that's great. I love that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. That's, I mean, that's basically the whole, the whole book and like whether or not that, that, string or yarn or whatever ever gets rolled back up is inconsequential because it should look like a plate of spaghetti noodles by the end of it you know and then in the end scene where well i don't i mean i do want people to buy it but it it cut it i was really focused on making sure that it had a real ending that that took me maybe the longest of one any one part of the book and But
SPEAKER_04:why was it? Sorry to interject, but why was that? Were you sort of in, I know you were envisioning it as like a 10 book series originally, but were you kind of in the mode of like, I want this to be like a ongoing kind of guts, like berserk kind of thing. Like what was the.
SPEAKER_03:I think that the heart, to be honest with you, it's because I have a real hard time with endings. Do you? Because, because I don't care about them. Right. Like when I read a book, the ending is off. in the least important part. Like, I don't think of the endings when I think of books. I just think of like, okay, that's where it stopped. And I realized at a certain point, hey, motherfucker, a lot of people will get very mad at you if the book does not end. I mean, what we talked about earlier with the first book, right? You know, like, what is the ending? What does that mean? I was like, I don't know. I mean, I do know, but I wasn't concerned with making that like actually work. No, the, the continuation aspect of God's fair, no better is that now they're all a team. Right. And so my goal, if this book sells, okay, is to have each book be that they go on different missions together. Right. It's, it's a mission impossible type thing. Cause you have all the characters there. They all have their own kind of skills and can send them off on. I have the second book all in, my head like ready to go. I just have to pass like a certain threshold where I'm like, okay, this is worth it. Um, but no, like endings have just never been my strong suit. So I went through, um, I think eight revisions on the ending just to make sure. Cause like the early, you might've been one of the earlier ones. Cause you did mention this. It was like, or maybe you didn't, maybe somebody else did, but it was like, the ending was very, um, like unsatisfying. Like somebody, somebody hit me back. No, I like the
SPEAKER_04:ending. I like the end. Okay. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. They were like, I was, I was ready for this big kaiju battle and it just kind of didn't happen. And I was like, fucking bet. So I went and wrote like four pages of a kaiju battle. Like I remember the kaiju battle. So I must've read that version. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it was earlier, but yeah, no, I had, I'd had it much more. The ending was much more truncated because I, I was kind of done. I was like, well, the story's over now. Right. And people are like, no, there's a, there's a last battle that's supposed to happen. And I was like, is it?
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well,
SPEAKER_03:okay.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, and you do something towards the end that like most people, I think most writers would just be like, uh, I don't know about this, but I like, I just love how ballsy it is. And I just love, um, I don't digression. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The huge digression. And it's so funny, too. But it all makes sense. Like, it's all rewarding in the end. So, like... And also, people would say not to do that at the very end of the book. But I actually think that is the time to do that sort of thing. Because at that point, everyone's invested. So, they're not going to throw away the book, all right? So, they've only got, like, I don't know how many pages before the end it is. 70 or something like that, yeah. So, they're like... they will slog through it. Like, so it's, you've, you've trapped them. And I just love how, like, um, how can't see that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no early on. That was like my biggest, like, that was my biggest thing. I was like, I wanted to do this and I was really scared and nervous about it. Um, and at first it actually didn't work. And this is where reader feedback is huge. Right. Because they were like, I got this piece of feedback that said, um, They love the digression. It's, it's great. The issue that they had with it was that in an earlier draft, I ended on like a cliffhanger, like before the boss battle starts, I had like the good guys and the bad guys line up, get ready to fight. And then there was this digression. Right. And the solve for it, which is really fun is that I had them fight and And I had the good guys get their asses kicked, right? Like everybody gets beat up. Everybody's either like maybe dead or knocked out or whatever. And the bad guy has won. And then I do the digression. And it was just bringing that to a stopping point, allowed the digression to happen, which I thought was kind of cool. Like that was interesting. I was like, okay, cool. So you can take that advice into any chapter. It's like, bring it to a, like people don't, don't like cliffhangers where the cliffhanger is that something's about to happen. But first a word from our sponsors type shit. It's like some, you have to bring something to a kind of end with a hint that more is coming and then you can digress. But I mentioned the fresh. So what did you think of the, the digression? Are
SPEAKER_01:you talking about when it's like, um, the Hannah chick? Is that what you mean by the digression? Yeah. Those, those are probably some of my, favorite parts of the book because yeah I didn't really understand what the context was what you but I liked and that's like it's also really dark like that she's I won't give away anything but like that she's like sociopathic and stuff and I guess it sort of does get to what you were talking about earlier with the sort of concept of Vedanta or whatever yeah I like those parts a lot that was really fun see and so
SPEAKER_03:far everybody has said that which makes me so happy yeah Because of anything else in the book, that was the one where I was like, I might cut this shit. Like, this might not be it. That makes
SPEAKER_04:it like, I know that your sort of intentions with this is to, like, just have fun and, like, make it a fun reading experience. You have fun as well. And I know that you've said, and I believe this as well, that... If you're having fun when you're writing, the reader's going to have fun too. Like, and that's very evident in this book. But at the same time, this makes it like... really novelistic. I feel like, and I feel like we've talked about this maybe in the Gene Wolfe episodes, like that, like really leaning into, I guess what you would call the affordances of the novel, like that the novel doesn't actually need to be a slim volume of like propulsive action. And that's it like that. And they have a place. I love those sorts of novels, you know, Crichton's the master at that. But yeah, Like, I just love how you've got that element and you can also do these things like this idea of, um, kind of Bactinian idea, I guess, of like multi-vocality where you like, we've got these different characters, but also different registers and different voices and like putting that all in like a big kind of magnum opus. Um, is great, but it's also fun at the same time. Like, I feel like a lot of people forget that they forget about fun when they're leaning into the novelistic form, you know? Um, I do. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. No, I know that a hundred percent. I think that the really cool thing about the technology of the novel, which is like one of the earliest technologies that we have, um, I, I, I tweeted about this, and Twitter probably wasn't the space for it, but I read this great book by a guy called Danny Nemu. Sounds like a character from your book, actually. Right? He's like a swan
SPEAKER_04:man or something.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Nemu does sound like a swan. But he's a Daime priest. So Daime, I think, is ayahuasca. It's like a South American, like they all drink ayahuasca together. But he has a lot of great appearances on RuneSoup. And he wrote this book called NeuroApocalypse. It's a great big book, lots of footnotes. And in NeuroApocalypse, he writes very exclusively about Genesis and Exodus, right? And he's very interested in the way that since ancient Hebrew did not have vowels– you could substitute vowels to get different meanings. And his question is, why do we go with one instead of the other? For example, like in the beginning guy created the word, uh, could the vowels could be rearranged to mean, uh, uh, in the head, God was created weird.
SPEAKER_01:It's kind of like quantum even that it allows, like maybe it is both, uh, Or even multiple, more than. Is that his point? So, therefore, Jews, like, they deserve to rule the world.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you move the letters around. I submit, yeah. No, that's 100% his point because he makes this fascinating argument at a certain point in the book where the reason why the Bible is so successful is because it is the book that most directly mimics the human brain. It's full of contradictions, all these things that like the Dawkins and the Hitchens types would be like, well, there's contradictions in it, so it's not real. That's actually what makes it feel more real to people who read it, because sometimes you are wrathful and sometimes you are benevolent and sometimes you're this way. And sometimes like you have these Rashomon things. type, uh, four books of the Bible where it's all from a different perspective. And if you look at the details, they can be a little bit different, but the overarching picture is the same. But I became, uh, obsessed because one of my favorite books is infinite jest, which became at the class. Yeah. It became D class. I did like, like that book, but I love that book. It's one of my favorite books. Um, and it really does feel like you're inside of a brain, um, When you read it, all the best books really do. Even if you're reading something a little bit trashier, like a politic book or whatever, you're in a brain.
SPEAKER_02:It's
SPEAKER_03:an autistic brain, but it's still a brain. And so video games don't do that. You can't go off on tangents or yarns or what have you. Like there's, there's no part of you that feels like when you're playing like cyberpunk games, For example, like, oh, I'm really in this kind of like weird, organic, esoteric, shifty space, right? No, it has to be hard coded in there or else the video game wouldn't work. But novels can do that. Songs too, I think. Longer songs. Like longer, like Mars Volta type songs or whatever. I think they can do that. Movies can kind of do it, but the novel can do it. And what's fun about the novel is that The emotion that you're feeling is based upon whatever register it's written in. So if it's written in a Beavis and Butthead fun style, you can go on a psychedelic journey of, you know, kaleidoscopic multifaceted voice and character and all this, and you can do it while laughing about penises at the same time. It's truly still, I think, our best technology. I think the novel is our best technology. It hasn't
SPEAKER_04:been topped. It's definitely for, yeah, best technology for dick jokes, definitely.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And your novel actually made me laugh, which rarely happens at all, even in funny novels. Like, like I read like McDonald's book and I thought that was funny, but I don't actually remember like laughing out loud during it. I think the funniest part in your novel was just that bit where he's battling like samurai guy. And then the guy's like, Oh, you murdered my brother. He's like, yeah, I don't remember. He's like, you know what he says? Like, uh, your shield is gay. And she's like, my shield is gay? That's all you have to
SPEAKER_03:say? That came from a real life story. You want to hear the real life story of that? I went to a house party once and I got really drunk, surprising no one. But it was kind of like, it was like my buddy's house. So I was kind of like, I can do whatever the fuck I want. Nobody's going to kick me out. And I was talking to this girl and she was trying to holler at your boy. And she was cute. Like, I mean, nothing wrong with her, but I was in goblin mode. Like I was on demon time. So I was like, nah. So I was just being a dick. Like I'd make no excuses for my behavior. It was awful. But there was like a kind of a white knight guy there who you knew, like he kind of wanted to fuck her. Like he, like this was, this was like, he wanted to marry this girl someday. And who was this like skinny, like just fucking wasted waste of space who she was for some reason interested in me instead of him. It's because I'm handsome. But anyway, like I was sitting on the porch and I had just like rejected her in some very cruel and unnecessary way. And he came out and he like gave me, he like read me the riot act. He was like, listen, buddy, you don't talk to people. Bucko. Listen here, buckle. I'm trying to fuck her. But he gave me this whole spiel and like, I'm sitting like I'm on this porch, Oklahoma hot night. Like a big thing that we do is we have like full sofas and like lazy boys on porches. Right. So I'm like in a lazy boy and he talks to me for like five minutes, but, and he's wearing, I guess it wasn't a hot night cause he had a peacoat on. Maybe it was the winter. Anyhow, He had a peacoat on. Yeah. He was wearing, he was wearing a peacoat through this whole thing. Right. And so he's, he's reading me that he's actually got his finger in my face too. He's like, you do this and you don't do that. And like, he finishes this whole thing. And I'm like, I got my beer and I'm like, your peacoat is gay. He's like, my peacoat is gay. That's all you got to say to me. Like, So I just took that and just transported it into the book.
SPEAKER_01:And it was my buddy's house. I guarantee his peat coat was gay.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. It was. It was. And he was, like, he started ripping it off like the Hulk. Like, he was ready to fight me. But it was my buddy's house. So, like, three guys intercepted him and, like, ejected him. And I walked around like the cock of the walk for the rest of the night. Like, I do whatever the fuck I want. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_04:So, yeah. How cold was it, though? Why was he wearing a peat coat? Just because it was outside. Man,
SPEAKER_03:it was probably like, I mean, people here, if it gets down into the, I'm going to use Fahrenheit, into the 60s or the 50s. No, it sounds super
SPEAKER_04:hot.
SPEAKER_01:I know what you mean. It's like here, there's like in Queensland, people joke, it's like once it gets to 24 degrees Celsius, like we start putting beanies and jumpers on and stuff. And like my fiance is from like the state, bit more southern so she's a little bit more cold resistant she's like what it's not even cold at all and i'm like we'll jump it up oh yeah when
SPEAKER_04:when people from his state which is basically like florida and it's where i grew up um down to my state which is much further south like for the first time they're always wearing like scarves and gloves and i'm like motherfucker it's not that cold you don't need
SPEAKER_01:fucking gloves it is freezing it's not
SPEAKER_04:the antarctic
SPEAKER_01:you literally have the antarctic winds blowing straight across the ocean i mean that's true But,
SPEAKER_03:you know,
SPEAKER_01:they dissipate
SPEAKER_03:a little bit. Well, it's kind of like there's a lot of people who've moved here from California, which Oklahoma can get very hot. But when I mentioned that I talked to a bunch of meteorologists, it's because people come from all over the globe to study meteorology in Oklahoma. Because if you can get a semi-accurate forecast in Oklahoma, then you're good to go. wherever else you want it. Cause the weather is so fucking chaotic. Like we will literally. Exactly. Yeah. Why is
SPEAKER_04:that? Is it, is it, is it cause it's flat? Like, and so it's hard. I think it's cause it's,
SPEAKER_03:I
SPEAKER_04:think
SPEAKER_03:it's cause it's
SPEAKER_04:a huge
SPEAKER_03:Indian burial ground. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I think that is. Okay. Yeah. Sam Harris answer, but no, no, no, it's a, it's, it's basically like, you'll have a, you'll like, you'll wake up in the morning and it'll be like, freezing cold, like you'll have frost on your windshield. And then a few hours later, it'll be hot as balls. And then it'll storm, and a tornado will come through, and rain will come through. And then it's kind of nice. And then it gets freezing-ass cold again. It's actually very similar to Melbourne. You should come visit. You'd love it. Yeah, I'd probably fit right in. Like, yeah, this is great. I do want to visit Melbourne one day. I want to go to Australia. My wife has gotten really into Lord of the Rings. So there's a New Zealand tour there. in the works. It's not very far. It's only,
SPEAKER_04:it's only like a four hour flight from my city. So you might as well do both. If you go on. Yeah. You can come stay with us for free. Come on. Let's go. We've got a spare room. I do podcast in this room though. So like, you know, you might be, that's your bed right there.
SPEAKER_03:I'm going to be in bed with my wife and Matt's going to be like, just saying some wild shit. Like, so, I mean, let's talk about the Jews. Let's, I want to be like, no, no, baby, he's cool. He's cool. No, I love
SPEAKER_04:Jews. I love Jews. They're the hot, they're the hottest, like Israeli Jew men. So hot.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, women too, man. I mean, oh yeah, they're very, they're very, like all the, all the Persian, like that region of the globe has the most hotties per capita than any other race. Hands down. There's, there's nobody else. People are like Scandinavian. They all look like fucking ghosts, man. Like they're tall.
SPEAKER_04:They're tall.
SPEAKER_03:That's what the dude's acting for him.
SPEAKER_04:What are those aliens called? The Scandinavian ones? The Nordics? Yeah. Are they called Nordics? They're called Nordics, yeah. Okay, I thought they were called something else, like named after a star or something. Oh, maybe, maybe.
SPEAKER_03:I do know that there's a whole class of aliens called the Nordics.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and they're benevolent, aren't they? I think they are. I mean, they're wide, so... Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:they have, like, space socialism or something.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, they have space
SPEAKER_01:social democracy. They leave
SPEAKER_04:all
SPEAKER_03:their flying
SPEAKER_04:saucers unlocked at night. They've got a real big problem of, like, importing too many greys, though. So, like, a lot of far-right parties are being elected because, like, the centrists won't, like, deal with immigration.
SPEAKER_01:And their taxes are just crazy.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. So stupid. I never, like, Preston, do you have any questions or anything you want to talk about the book itself or...?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, oh yeah, I did sort of, cause with the world serpent thing, like I thought that was really cool. And like the way it was debated, whether it was like real or not, but I guess it got me thinking, um, you know, like, isn't like the, that kind of Ouroboros, like the snake eating its own tail, that's kind of like an alchemical symbol. Right. And isn't it kind of like, like the closed system, like, you know, like to hermetically seal something in. So I don't really know where I'm going. It's not really a question. That's just kind of what it got me thinking when I was like reading the book that that world was this like hermetically sealed in little system where yeah like magic and stuff is possible
SPEAKER_03:i like that a lot i like that a lot i wish i could say that that was my intention but i'm going to say it is from now on and steal it to the next i'm stealing that uh but no i um i if you want to know the real reason i picked it it's because of the world serpent and god of war i thought that was really cool uh yeah But no, I mean, it totally makes sense, right? Because like the whole idea is that this thing is a representation of a coming apocalypse, right? Which is like, it's not the end of everything. It's the rebirth of everything. So like when I was thinking about it, I initially picked it for that reason, right? Because I saw it in God of War. But as I thought more about it, I was like, this is actually kind of cool. Like if you just constantly had a harbinger, like a real harbinger, though it is debated like a real harbinger of the apocalypse, like right there in the sky that you couldn't deny was there. Um, but it is this, man, that's a fucking cool interpretation. It's like, yeah, like it's, it's like the borders of the book itself, basically. Right. Like that's, that's what contains the whole world.
SPEAKER_04:But, um, Well, do you know with apocalypse, you know, the word in Greek is actually, it's actually not about destruction or anything like that. It actually means like revealing something. So like that's what a cleansing fire like does. It reveals what reality actually is. Yeah. I like that. Once all of the kind of, uh, you know, fake, all the idols are smashed. All of like society is destroyed. Like, um, what's left is what's revealed as what the truth is. And I love that, that, you know, the book kind of in that kind of higher level kind of plays into that. So you could definitely use that for the next one. Scooch there for the next book.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. My next, my next book is actually like my, my thought process. Well, actually two thoughts. First one, isn't it fun to, that somebody like me, who's just trying to do something cool, like, isn't it weird that whenever guys like me do this kind of thing, we do touch on things completely accidentally? Again, that goes back to our, like, how is telepathy and reincarnation real? It's not through this kind of scholarly, like, Gurdjieff, you know, studying the text type thing. It's just... opening yourself up when you're writing. And this is the thing that continuously comes out over and over and over again through no effort or fault of our own. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that the second book that I really, man, I might just write it because it's cool. I want to like really focus on like J-horror, right? Like if this was like my Takashi Miiki one, I want to go into like Pulse and Cure and The Ring and The Grudge. And so I thought it'd be cool if like the team splits up and goes across, they go Indiana Jones globe hopping to different parts of the world to trap and collect different curses and grudges with the idea that they're going to put all those curses and grudges on a rocket ship and send it up to the world circuit to kill it. They figured out that's how you kill the thing. So like the first third of the book is this like Indiana Jones temple run, like finding different cultures, curses and how those have developed in this world. And then the second half, act of the book is like alien where they're on a ship and the curses like break out and people are getting killed by different like japanese ghosts and then the third is they land on the world serpent let all the curses out and they fight like snake people on the on the world like that'd be kind of cool right yeah like so that's that's like my broad idea of the second one but you people have to go buy it so yeah because if they if they don't buy it i'm I will never return.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you got to update your store to have the option for Australians to buy it. Cause I tried to buy it through your store. I ended up buying it on Amazon. So there's always that too.
SPEAKER_03:And I complained about like how fucked up that distribution has been. Like I went with book vault because they make a very attractive product, right? Like the book looks good. Yeah. But the issue is what they did was they, They only print out of the U S and the UK. And so what I wanted to do was to put book vault as my direct shipper. So you guys wouldn't necessarily be able to get it that way, but to have like a slightly lesser quality, create not create space that I'm showing my age. That's what KDP was back in the day, but to have like a KDP version of, But what they did was they populated an Amazon page for me. And so now I'm having a hell of a time talking to an Indian guy on like the Amazon help page, trying to explain to him what happened. It's like, this page was populated without my permission. It's only shipping to the U S and the UK, or like if it's Australia, it's like 80 bucks or some dumb bullshit. Um, When every other book that I put out, if you put it out through KDP, they'll print it natively wherever the book is actually sold. So that's what I'm going through right now. It's every day when I get home from work because of the time difference because Book Vault is in the UK and Amazon is Amazon. I get home from work and I open my email and they're like, we do not understand your request. I just want Australian people to be able to I
SPEAKER_04:can probably find a printer here for you if you want to do that. Yeah, let's do it. We can see if we can organize that somehow. I got the files right here. I do live in the publishing city, so I could probably find one. Actually, there is a printer just across from me, across the laneway, that I could just see if they do books, but I'm not sure. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:it's just one of those kind of random problems that you can't plan for. You can't plan that Book Vault is going to make an Amazon page for you. Wait,
SPEAKER_01:so what does that mean? So they're going to send the copies they print in the UK or US to Amazon to then ship to me? Is that how it's going to work? Okay. Right.
SPEAKER_04:Because Amazon will print... I think they'll print here and then send it to you. I think that's the way it works. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01:that's how Amazon print-on-demand is. But I wasn't sure with this one because I knew you'd gone through a different place to get them printed up.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and the whole idea was that I wanted to do direct sales, and I really was impressed. I ordered a pre-copy or whatever, and I was like, oh, this is legitimately better than Amazon. But I still wanted that option. Currently, hopefully one day book vault sets up a printer in Australia or Canada or wherever. Cause like even Canadians have to do like the same thing and they're right there. Like somebody could order the book in Lansing, Michigan and get it for a normal price. But then if you're 40 miles up in, what is that? Saskatchewan, whatever the fuck it is. Like now you can't get it unless you pay 50 bucks, which is stupid. Like that, that doesn't make sense, but that's kind of, that's just like in the weeds type stuff.
SPEAKER_04:No, I want to get into that stuff. Cause I find it interesting and I'm, you know, I haven't announced anything yet, but I'm, I'm going through a, I'm doing a special kind of publishing thing soon. That and all of this stuff I will need to, get across because I know nothing about any of this stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Um,
SPEAKER_04:but yeah,
SPEAKER_03:well, that's interesting. Yeah. And it's going to be fucking good. Like you're such a fucking good writer, dude. Thank you. Yeah. And so you have good taste. You, you like, you like, you like this book. So, um, but, uh, yeah, no. And the marketing shit is crazy too. So, um, I'm having some success with Facebook ads, which is really interesting because now my Facebook homepage is my Broken River page, which has no friends. So I'm being introduced
SPEAKER_01:to my friends.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's like it's like Facebook is trying to figure out who I am. So I'm getting the most base like normie slop of all time. And it's really interesting and it makes you realize how curated your feeds are in other places. It's like, Oh, this is, Oh, it's like how, how many red balls can you fit into a tube? Like this is, this is the brain rot that random people are watching all the time. Um, but I've found like people, my cost per click is really good. It's actually, um, it's pretty low. I get about 7 cents per click. Um, The click through rate is pretty good. So that's at about about like 10%, which is huge. Like that's huge, right? Like 10% is like off the charts. And then the purchase from those clicks is another 10%. So overall, like it's a low number, but I'm finding people. which is interesting. Like they're not Twitter friends. They're not Instagram friends. They're just random people who are finding the book, which is my goal. Um, I wanted with this book to, there's a, there's like a marketing strategy. That's like spray and pray where you just like try to find as many people as possible and get them to buy it through whatever means necessary. But I actively don't want that to be the case. So the paperback costs$30, which is expensive for a paperback. But these are chunky boys, so it's worth it. It's chunky, but that's there on purpose. I don't want people to buy the book unless it's worth$30 to them. Because I've been in this space for a long time now, 15 years, and there is no benefit to... random normies finding your book. They'll hate it. They'll give you a bad review. They'll tell nobody about it. You got their money. Sure. That's fine. But that's not what we're like. I get money elsewhere now. Like writing books is no longer this idea of a path to financial solvency, which is funny that it ever was. But I, If you think about luxury items, like Nikes, like nobody, like people who love Nikes will pay$300 for a pair of shoes and they don't care. And somehow that idea has never entered our realm of the arts where it's like, this is an active barrier. Like I want to find people who will enjoy this shit. Not because my feelings will get hurt if they don't like it, but it just, from a business perspective, how does that make any sense? Like, Like, why would you want it to, like, if you price your shit low and you're making like three bucks a book off of it, 500 people buy it, 450 of them hate it, what have you really made? Like, you've made$1,000 for nobody to... be in your corner. It just doesn't make sense to
SPEAKER_04:me. And you know what's funny about that as well is that it is kind of like an almost an opposite of the sunk cost fallacy where if you pay$30 for something, you're kind of like incentivized to be a little bit more, like enjoy it a little bit more. Does that make sense? You know, like it does rather than like, if you paid like a dollar for like some shitty ebook, like you, like the, the investment in it is so low that like, therefore your engagement with it is so low. And therefore you're not as kind of thoughtful in like, you know, trashing or, or praising it, you know, whereas if you spend more money on it, you like, it gives you pause to think more about like what I've bought and how do I feel about it? You know? A
SPEAKER_03:hundred percent. I'm trying to see if I have, if I can see this book, I paid 80 bucks for a book the other day. Cause I wanted to read, like I really wanted it, you know, I was like, oh fuck, it's a bunch of money, but I want it. It was a catafalque is the name of the book. And, uh, I read it. I read the whole fucking thing because I paid that much money for it. I'm like, there's no goddamn way that I just spent 80 bucks on a book and I'm not going to read it. And I didn't like it, but that's neither here nor there. Right. Uh, The point is, is just that like, there has to be some, I want people who are on my level who are reading this book. They have to be kind of like, this is not casual reading and it would be foolish to market it as casual reading. Like, why would you want somebody who likes a Crichton who I love or Patterson who I have no beef with to pick this book up for a dollar and And then give their thoughts about it. It makes no sense. Like I want to cultivate people who are down. So the idea is to get the marketing as good as possible, like cool cover, adequate description of what's going on, nice blurbs. And then it costs 30 bucks. And there are some people who it, it could take them a month or a year, but they're just like, I don't want to, I don't want to spend that. I don't want to spend it.$10 is too much for an e-book. But then they do, and it's like, yeah, you broke. You broke.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I remember even with my zine, I had this philosophy of like, you know what? I've got my own photocopier printer. This stuff's super cheap. I'll buy the cheapest paper, and then I can– put it out for like a super low price. And then theoretically I'll sell more copies because, and I may, and I even like made my own website where I made the postage calculator actually like accurately put, figure out the cheapest way to send everything. And it did all this work for it. And then it was like, I realized eventually that it was retarded. And like when I'd see other people just like using big cartel and like just$20 postage and said, and then when, and so, and then I went up my prices, I actually just like sold more and like, not like crazy amount more, but I'm like, I was making like a dollar off a sale there. And now like I'm making like five or whatever. And like, yeah, you sell a few more and it's just like, yeah, it's like this, you can't do this like mathematical thing of like that. It's unless you are actually like, yeah, selling a Michael Crichton book or something where there is a market of a million people who buy it. If it's just like a niche thing, you're better off selling, charging more because people will pay those prices. And there's also that thing of like, if something is too cheap, it seems like, Oh, they mustn't have like faith in their own product. You don't
SPEAKER_04:believe in
SPEAKER_01:it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Right. There's that, there's that. And there's this whole thing where it's just like, I, I'm self-aware enough to know that this is not Jurassic park. Right. Like I know what it's probably going to sell. So my thing going into it was that I'm going to make$10 off of every book sold because financially that's the only way this makes sense. Like I literally, I can't spend three years writing a book that is not made for a wide audience and then sell it so that I get three bucks a book. That makes no sense. Even if I sell a thousand copies, I make$3,000 kind of bullshit is that. So I basically priced it where I was like, I'm getting 10 per book. Like it's 30 bucks after all the fees and stripe processing and whatever. I make about 10 bucks. I make about 10 bucks on Amazon too. It's, it's,
SPEAKER_01:yeah, I read it for like 52 Australian on Amazon. When I did the calculation, like it was 45 Australian was 30 us dollars. So I was like, Oh, it's, wouldn't have been like, probably would have cost more actually to get it through your site or whatever. So, so like, yeah, it's, it's whatever that is a pricey book, but you know, I think it's worth it. And like, it's not that crazy. Like, you know what I mean? Like,
SPEAKER_03:and it's, it's just, it's, it's its own thing, right? Like all the other books can cost 15 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever, you know, this one costs 30. Yeah. If you don't want it, don't buy it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It's fine. It's almost like, you know, um, the other day I went to this sort of, uh, they, they hide, they do, they hire out the big exhibition building from like the 19th century or whatever. And they put heaps of stalls of like design, local designers and shit like that. It's all Australian made stuff. So because it's all Australian made, it's all really fucking expensive because, you know, you can't make it in China and then, um, you know, sell it here for basically nothing. Um, so, but like, you know, I bought a tea towel, like a, an Italian tea towel for my Italian mother, um, you know, with tomatoes, you know, Pomodoro like sort of thing for her birthday. And it costs so much money. I want to know that number. No, I'll tell you not, not, not on the recording, but like, but yeah, I bought it because one, because I wanted to support that stall because I really liked what she was doing and, you know, um, and two, I wanted to give my mother a unique kind of gift. Like, so I was happy. Yeah. Yeah. I was happy to spend that money on lit. Yeah. Like on a bespoke product. Um, and that's the way I think a lot of people, if, especially if you don't write like a, or romanticy or something like that. I think that's the angle that you have to take. And I think that's, if you, if you don't like you ain't going to make it because like, um, if you're not writing that stuff, pretty much you have to be in the mainstream publishing industry to be writing that stuff anyway. Um, yeah, you should treat it like a bespoke, uh, artisanal kind of item.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. And I have so many friends who, um, they're just fucking stuck in this, in this rut. Right. Like where a lot of my friends, unsurprisingly, right. Similarly, I wouldn't call God's like a difficult book, but weird, like I'm categorizable sort of, yeah. Yeah. Uncategorizable weird shit. And it's like, I got to a point where I became obsessed with plot and character and, you know, and I was reading all these books and I was like, okay, I'm going to take the principles from these books that I can use and use them. But I have to also come to terms with, this is not what I write. And it's a tough thing. I think for writers to come to terms with, because writers want their cake and to eat it too, where I write whatever weird shit I want. And I have the marketability and mass appeal of a Crichton or a Patterson or somebody like that. I came to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm not them. I'm not them. And some writers get to that point and they get bitter. They say, I'm not right. Then it's because people are fucking stupid and they just spend their whole time being mad and not making any money. The smarter way to look at that is to be like, Oh, I'm not like them. So I can charge more because my audience is smaller. Right? Like why not? Why not? I know that the audience for this book, like the ceiling for this to me is about 10,000, right? Which when you compare it to the millions of copies that other books sell is like very small. But 10,000 at 10 bucks a book is$100,000. And I think that that's doable, right? I think it's work. I think it's a business. It's not a spray and pray where I can just put the book out. I work on this every day. My goal is to find three readers a day who I've never met. So I go on to the Facebook ad and I look at the analytics and I see who's buying it. And every time I see a new data point, I'm adjusting the marketing just a little bit to be like, okay, so people who like this are more likely to... But over enough time, when you've really dialed down and found your fans, when we're talking a year from now, the book is going to be very successful. It's like, how did you do that? It's like, well, I found the people who love it and who talk about it. Like, how many people have I told to go watch John Wick? A hundred? Because I fucking love John Wick, right? Yeah. Like, how many people have I told to go watch? I don't know. Not very many, because I didn't like that movie. But the age of mass media and mass marketing is over. That's done. That's done. So there's riches and niches.
SPEAKER_04:Narrow casting, sort of. Yeah. A long, thin tale.
SPEAKER_03:I don't want to find people who are just kind of casually interested because it kind of looks like a cartoon. I don't care. Do you like Takashi Miike? Do you like Grant Morrison's Invisibles? Do you like weird esoteric shit? Are you a semi-adventurous reader? If that checks your boxes, then buy the book. If not, please don't. I don't need
SPEAKER_04:it. I love that. That's an amazing marketing strategy. Please don't buy this book if you're not that.
SPEAKER_03:If you're not down, then what are we doing?
SPEAKER_02:What are we doing? You're
SPEAKER_03:wasting your time. I'm wasting my time. I wrote this book for selfish reasons, of course, but also to entertain. And I don't want to try to entertain you if I'm not your thing. If you like Anthony Jezelnik and I'm more of like a Tom Green, then don't come to the show. It's different
SPEAKER_04:shit. Who is your Jeselnik to your Tom Green, do you think? What
SPEAKER_03:do you
SPEAKER_04:mean? In terms of writers. If you were Tom Green, who is your Jeselnik?
SPEAKER_03:I like that you immediately zeroed in that I was the Tom Green. You know it's true. Oh, man. Who is the Jeselnik? I don't know,
SPEAKER_04:man. Yeah. Who does? Or it's kind of hard now because you kind of write different things now, but like maybe previous who writes similar things. Bradley. Like
SPEAKER_03:my... No, no, he's a fucking loser. Jezelnik's at least good. Yeah, that's true. I think what's difficult about that is that I think they're both funny. Yeah, in different ways, yeah. But yeah, no, if you wanted to know who... I mean, all of my beefs, my literary beefs are personal, right? So it's like people who I know are one way, but present as another way. And
SPEAKER_04:it's just because I know them. You know what's funny about that as well is that pretty much from what I can gather, everyone that you've beefed with has been not very good either, right? Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:it's always been a part of it for me. And it's there. There's a small circle. Very
SPEAKER_04:good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So there's like a small circle of I'm actually really glad that you pointed that out because there's a lot of people who I also came up with who I think are very good, who I've done nothing but support. And so on a certain level, like my. Barring one person who Kelby went after a couple episodes ago, he is a good writer. He does have a speech impediment, but he's also a very good writer. Barring that guy, most of what drove me insane about the writing world was the elevation of talentless people to these... Man... I'm getting wound up. I can feel it. But like, but you just, when you're in it that long, you, you, you get this, um, kind of crushing realization that the quality of the books do not matter. Like Sean Cosby is a good example. Um, I've done multiple rants against this guy, but you know, his book was, um, is he related to Bill Cosby? He's not, he's black though, isn't he? He is black. And that's why
SPEAKER_02:he's famous. I would like to talk to you.
SPEAKER_03:So like that was kind of like, like that was kind of my big break. So the Sean Cosby story is really funny because he started kind of making himself present in the crime fiction community on Facebook. He was an inserter. Yeah, he was. Yeah. he was this like a, he was a dog shit writer. Like, and there were a bunch of them. He wasn't alone. He was one of many. Um, and you know, me and my friends would kind of like share his posts and be like, LOL, like look at this, like absolute dog shit. Um, and there was a point in time because he was friendly enough where I actually hit him up and I was like, Hey Sean, dude, like if you want to like make this good, I can help you. I was like doing my little side hustle as a, you know, book editor or whatever. And then what happened was Sean was in the right place at the right time. And he met the right editor, a guy named Josh Wetzler, who was like a big agent in the book world. Right. Like very powerful agent. And this guy took Sean's books, gave them to editors, said, do whatever you have to do. Like, just fix this thing because this is our guy. And the books came out. They sold very well. And, you know, like Obama put one of his books on like the best. This is the best book I read all year. Like type shit. And which is all fine. That's all fine. Get your bag. I don't give a fuck. what bothered me was that Sean unfortunately took that as a sign that his writing was actually good. Like he got the wrong message from that. A more self-aware person would be like, okay, I'm being pushed by this machine into being in this kind of position. I'll take the money. I'll take the fame. I'll be good. Like whatever. But Sean like started lecturing people about how to write and, That's that very wrong with me because I was like, motherfucker, you write your first drafts in crayon. Like you are not, you're not a great writer. And then I kept it to myself. I kept it to myself. And then COVID hit and I expressed some opinion that was wrong about whatever he hopped in. black lion king is his uh twitter name to show you what kind of retard we're dealing with and i just went like nuclear because what was so funny to me and what was so upsetting was that like so many people who i really had respect for who had made fun of him with me all hopped on his dick as soon as like the fame came and i didn't i was like no this guy's really bad Like he's not good. Like even the highly edited versions of these books are still not great. They literally found a black guy. It's like that Dave Chappelle skit where, you know, he's talking about how Monica Lewinsky was ugly. And he talked about how like Bill Clinton would open the Oval Office door and be like, oh, you get in that kind of thing. Like there were so few malleable black authors that they could make their kind of flagship guy that they just picked this dude and just completely AstroTurf did. It's all, it's all fake. Um, And yeah,
SPEAKER_04:people, people didn't like that. And then that sort of, I'm sure that happens. That doesn't just happen with black guys. That happens with like so many writers that they're just, I've seen
SPEAKER_03:it. They're rich or they have
SPEAKER_04:connections. And they're like, they're pushed. And like, it's basically their writing is pretty bad and it's sort of saved by really good editors. And when I say saved, like you said, it's sort of like a, it's like a triage. Like it's not, you know, they've been, they've there, the wounds of the writing has been, have been stitched up, but like, it's not like they're going to run like a quarter mile or anything like that. It's just sort of like, um, and there's so much of this and this is why a lot of mainstream publishing is really, really bad because it's not, they're not selecting, they're not selecting for like already really good writing. They're selecting for other, um, kind of elements and then basically massaging it into something that's like vaguely publishable but even then sometimes it's not like you're just like dumbfounded that you're like this was published by penguin like you know like yeah The problem is, though, like, I'm picking up what you're putting down. The problem is, though, that a lot of people, and obviously I do not include you in this group because you're, like, one of the best writers of the 21st century, I believe. Oh, wow. Thank you. But, like... a lot of people who do go down this line are really mediocre as well. So it's sort of like, it's sort of like, it's sort of like a cope for like, why haven't I got my like, so I think like, you know, the more woke people are kind of right to point that out. Cause a lot of times these complaints do come from people who really aren't that good. Like,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. Like the anonymous Twitter. Yeah. like anime Abby guy is complaining about that. And as you know, it's just some like loser troglodyte or whatever.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And I did want to talk about that as well with, with you, David, because what you're doing is not that right. So you got your face, you got your name out there. Like you're not an anonymous, anonymous right wing guy. I don't think you're actually that right wing either, but like some would
SPEAKER_03:argue. I'm really not. I'm
SPEAKER_04:really not. Like you're just not that. like mainstream kind of view, not a cucked kind of white guy, but also your fiction isn't just like all about being an, uh, an incel and being like trotted on by the, you know, black HR lady sort of thing. It's not, it's sort of like,
SPEAKER_03:like Mike Ma or whatever, like a Mike Ma. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like, I did like Mike Ma's first book, by the way, I thought his first book was really good. His second one was trash,
SPEAKER_04:but like, yeah. Yeah. But like, And that is the direction that it needs to go. Like, if you want to be a countervailing force to all of this, like, you know, woke nonsense that's sort of being pushed in publishing and literature and stuff like that. Like, I see a lot of, and I'm not naming names here, but, like, I see a lot of, you know, more right-wing kind of literary output. And it's just not good. No, no. our guys in, in, in scare quotes, as they might say. But the problem is that like, even just conceptualizing it like that is, um, committing you to a certain position rather than the art. It's like accepting their framework. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So, yeah. Give me two seconds. I'm going to piss. Oh, I really need to as well. I'm glad I have an answer for this.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Here's the thing. What you were talking about is, again, it's the conception of the novel as a whole, right? So the novel in its most ideal form is it does reflect the human brain, but not one specific human brain. That's the problem. So when you believe that the novel is supposed to accurately reflect your own internal experience, you get alt-lit. Right. Like when Welbeck writes, one of my favorite books is the map and the territory. Right. And he's bouncing in that book between different modes better than, I don't think he's topped that novel yet personally, but like in that one, he's, he's inhabiting different modes to the point where like, he's in the book, but he's, he's dead. He's like the subject of a murder investigation. Like he's been chopped up and all this kind of shit. Like, that to me is the perfect metaphorical idea of what a novel is supposed to be. Like you're supposed to see yourself as separate from the book, right? To the point that you can be dissected. And what a lot of these people, the step that they don't make is that they just think that the novel was supposed to be a projection of them. And it's not that. Like an ejaculation or something. Right. Like an ejaculation or like, um, um, When you're writing, literally every hour that I sit down to write, we talked about this earlier, but like I turn like I'm not me anymore. Right. Like what I am is kind of like a conduit for the things that I've been thinking about and obsessing over into this kind of pure stream that is then translated into writing. But I don't sit down and think like, what point do I want to get across to people? How do I want them to think? And so, um, all lit, even though some of them fall more on the right spectrum than the left, whatever, it's all of, we're talking about a different spectrum where it's like self-absorbed, narcissistic, navel gazing, self-reflection versus exterior oriented, creative projection. Okay. And so like, that can take the form of any political ideology that you want to. There's no difference between like the cat people, girl, whoever that was, I forget her name now. And somebody like Mike Ma, who are just their whole goal with what they're doing is to, uh, though I do think that Ma is actually technically a very good writer. Um, their whole goal is to, is to project their navel gazing onto you. Uh, put it this way. It's, it's, it's forcing something on somebody versus playing with them. Right. And so how would you, how would you engage in an interaction? If I wanted to sell you something, it's a very one way type of thing. I want to sell you on this book. I'm going to come that much at that much different than if I'm like, I wrote a book and I want to play with you. This again, this is the Joe Rogan thing. Jordan Peters. Like I thought that shit was brilliant, but he brings up this concept of play. And I do think that the, the idea of play can't be ignored in art in general. And I realized that everything that I vibe with has an element of play to it. I feel like they're poking me and being like, come with me. Like it could be a painting.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_03:if I feel like it's, if it's Obama's face and it says hope, that's not play. Like, how do you play with that? That's a directive. But if you see something a little bit weirder, right? Like, I also feel that way about most, like, modern art, like the style type stuff where it's just, you know, different colors or whatever. Like, that's also imperative. It's so removed from any reference point that it's supposed to be prescriptive for how you think about it. But, like... But then you can see that picture of the... This is very common in America, maybe not in Australia, but there's a painting of a pig that's jumping off of a pier into a lake. That's fun to me. So all of a sudden, now we're playing. I'm like, oh, what's that pig up to? What's that pig thinking about? What's his deal?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I saw Anna Krivalova tweet where she was quote-tweeting something. It was like a... like made out of like China, but it was like a mace, you know, like the weapon, a mace. And she was like, art now is just like juxtaposition. It's like lost storytelling. And like, I know I didn't study art or anything, so I never really thought about it in those terms, but I was like, wow, that really like clicked for why I don't fuck with a lot of like modern art stuff. There is no storytelling in it. It is just this, like, what if this was made out of, what if a tough thing was actually made out of a fragile material? Yeah. Right. It's directive,
SPEAKER_03:right? It's Banksy. It's Banksy stuff. It's, it's stuff that's supposed to make you think a certain way rather than playing with you. And I think that, you know, Sini mentioned earlier, like in the book that there's, you know, there's, there's some stuff where you don't necessarily know what to think about it. It's because I don't know. I don't want you to think any, like, maybe that's it. Like when I go through it, I'm playing. Like when I was writing the book, I was playing and I don't want anybody to think any one thing. I'm just thinking about how fun this particular
SPEAKER_01:idea is.
SPEAKER_03:It's
SPEAKER_01:even like Dostoevsky. You feel like it's super heady, dense stuff, but you feel like he's playing with you and he's figuring out the ideas as he goes. And there's possibly many different interpretations of what he's getting at. And it's this long kind of thing that feels like it's playful.
SPEAKER_03:It has to be. It has to be. And so when you get to this, like, let's call it like the right wing art or whatever, as soon as there's a, like when Welbeck rants about women, it's still juxtaposed with like this obsession with women. Right. Like none of his character was, some of his characters are incels, but it's really complex. Yeah. And it's really unexpected. Yeah,
SPEAKER_04:it's playful. He still kind of likes women, even when he's being misogynistic.
SPEAKER_03:Like in Serotonin, when he talks about his girl... This to me was... It's not my favorite book of his, or in general. But there's a passage in there where he's talking about his Asian girlfriend. And he just randomly mentions that she fucks dogs. And... You're just like, what do I make of that? It's playful. Like you could tell he lobbed that shit into your arena and now you just got to deal with it. What do I, what do I make of that? Like, does he, cause even the tone of the narrator isn't virulent and pissed and misogynistic. It's just like, and then she started fucking dogs and she's like, what do I even do with this? And that's a great place to be in literature. Yeah. What am I supposed to make of this? Have you guys read The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Yeah. Such a fantastic book. It's so good. And it's full of that kind of shit. Where you're like, that book feels like it's playing with you from beginning to end. And you're just kind of like, I'm having so much fun reading every single page of this book that I don't actually care. Like, you shouldn't care how it ends.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. And importantly, it was written under a context and, like, about the context of, like, communism and its, shall we say, antagonism to creative play. So, like, it's part of the book is about that, but it's also, it was sort of written in that, around that context.
SPEAKER_01:Is that the one, it's Milan Kundera? Is that the author? Yeah, that's right. Correct. I have heard of it.
SPEAKER_04:It's a good book. It's actually one of my favorite books. But very good definition of kitsch in there, like that he kind of elaborates on. But,
SPEAKER_03:yeah, you're totally right. Another one of my favorites in that same vein, one of my favorite books of all time, top five. Have you guys read The End of the Affair by Graham Greene? I have not, no. I'll have to read it. Oh, my God. Have you read Graham Greene
SPEAKER_01:in general? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have some of his books, but I haven't read them.
SPEAKER_03:The Power and the Glory is another really good one. But The End of the Affair is one of my favorite fucking books. And it does this... No book captures heartache and loss and despair like The End of the Affair. And... but it also still has that kind of, cause it's set during world war two and there's all this other kind of stuff going on with it. And it just, it, it keeps jumping and that, that the playful element of that book or the unbearable lightness of being or mapping the territory or whatever, that playfulness puts you in a space where when those authors decide to hit you with some shit, you're open, you're open. Like, your guard is not up. A polemic is necessarily going to put you on guard. Like, that's where we're at constantly when we're on Twitter or reading some biased news source, whether it's right or left wing. Like, we know they're trying to sell us some shit. When somebody comes to your door and says, hello, sir, I'm here with FAG Solar, right? And I'm trying to sell you this. You're immediately on guard. It's
SPEAKER_01:like when someone gives you a book and you can tell they're trying to like convince you of their worldview. So they give you like, whatever, whatever. I can't think of an example, but like white,
SPEAKER_03:white fragility,
SPEAKER_01:any of those
SPEAKER_03:books,
SPEAKER_01:like, and you're like, well, I fucking said I'd read it. So I guess I'll read it. But the whole time you just hate reading it and like looking for the flaws in it. Like, whereas if, right. If you didn't, if you, if you didn't suspect them of having some like, political view they're trying to thing on. It was just like whatever book you might be more open to it. If it just was, yeah. If it was just,
SPEAKER_03:if it was just in the context of like a fun time that you were having.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It's like, I think, I think when, when like art gets to like a rhetorical level where it's like trying to convince you of something outside of the work itself, um, there are, there are times when, um, they can go so hard on that that it becomes kind of, like, sublime and, like, ridiculous. I can't think
SPEAKER_01:of any examples off the top of my head. I read Sean Penn's book, that one. It was, like, Bob Honey, Just Do... something or whatever it's called it's had some stupid title just it was like three dollars in the store and i'm like this book looks dog shit i'm gonna read it it's like 105 pages or something and i actually kind of found it fun yeah it even like breaks like there's a bit where it keeps referring to president trump as like the landlord or something but then it like forgets that it was using this like metaphor and then it just like literally has like a letter like directed to the president within the book and it was just like this retarded spy thing about this guy and then have all these like Then she pooed on the floor or something like just nonsense. It was so bad. I enjoyed
SPEAKER_03:it. There, there are two books that come to mind, right? One of them is actually the fountainhead, which I know is like very popular in our sphere, but I don't love, like, I don't love it, but I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun reading that book. Like I had a good time. Like I would never in a million years call that a bad book. And it has all the digressions. And then when you get to the end of it, you have this whole feeling of like, Oh, go fuck some shit up. Like I can do whatever the fuck I want. Um, the other one, which is in a different register is, uh, uh, called, it was the book that Norman Reedus wrote with Frank bill, who Frank, uh, Frank Bill's another guy who I know. He's actually a cool dude. He's like a Southern crime writer. And Norman Reedus is an actor. He's the guy in Death Stranding, right? And Walking Dead. Walking Dead, all that kind of stuff. And Dark Saints. And you start reading the book, and there are these insane digressions. You'll be a few pages into the book, and there's a full-page paragraph where a guy's fixing his lawnmower. And it goes into detail about how you fix a lawnmower. And I'm like, I'm on board,
SPEAKER_04:bro. Men love that shit. Like, that's a real male-coded thing, actually. Yeah. Whereas the stuff towards women is usually about everyone's thoughts and feelings.
SPEAKER_02:I
SPEAKER_04:remember, I think it was you I was talking to, David, when we were talking about... some romanticy book it might have been matt actually as well oh yeah it's straight away it was like talking about feelings like literally the first sentence like and you're just like
SPEAKER_03:that's all women books like if you look up like these best-selling books books that have sold like seven million copies like the the the seven husbands of evelyn woe or whatever i i look at the at the review page on Amazon. Just like get an idea immediately. Like the first page of that book, 7 million copies sold is like, I'm sitting at the job interview and I feel inadequate because the interviewer is so hot and I'm not that hot. All
SPEAKER_04:right. Yeah. Cool. Cool. I love it. Whereas a more male coded thing would just be like straight in. A guy is doing something. Whereas like this bitch is literally just sitting there like, Like
SPEAKER_03:if you started off a book and a guy was building a birdhouse and you were describing how it was and like the smell of the sawdust coming up and all this kind of stuff, I'd be like, all right. Where were we going? Let's go.
SPEAKER_01:Probably the perfect like crossing of those worlds is like the American psycho, like business card thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Isn't
SPEAKER_03:that why that book is so successful, right? Like it's, it's both of those things in one. Because it was written by a gay
SPEAKER_04:man. So like, right. That's the female.
SPEAKER_03:He's a day Walker. Yeah. Yeah. He moves between worlds. Yeah, no, no. I mean, it's books. Guys, I have like a really bullish feeling about books and nothing that's going on in the current zeitgeist supports this, but I really do feel like books are coming back.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, no, I agree. In a major way. Yeah. just anecdotally, like so many people have like, cause they know I do a books podcast. They may not listen to it, but so many people have like reached out to me and be like, have, have been like, I need to get it back into reading. And like, not just like, I want to get back into reading. I need to get back into reading because like, I feel like a lot of people are just sort of, um, Scrolling's not doing it for them anymore. So they're just like...
SPEAKER_03:Do you guys not feel that? Like when you go on Twitter, you're just like, what is this? I used to spend hours on that app. And now I open it for like 10 minutes a day. And I look and I'm immediately like, you should be mad because a black kid killed a white kid. I'm like, nope. Don't care. Like I am moving on from that shit. Like it just, it just doesn't do it for me anymore. But like getting into a long, even if it's a podcast again, I've mentioned it 15 times now, but I listened to that whole three hour Jordan Peterson, Joe Rook. Cause it was a conversation that I was enjoying listening to. Right. And it's not easily chunkable into like, And I'm
SPEAKER_04:just amazed that people still, there are some people who still need those little highlights and that's what they respond to and talk about all day. And I'm just like... I'm not, I feel like in my circle and everything that like my own sort of mentality at the moment is like, I want to like dedicate to myself to like long form stuff. I don't want like bite size, anything like,
SPEAKER_03:no, no, no, no. Cause that's meaning. That's what, that's, that's what meaning is in life is dedicating yourself to a long form project. Uh, what was that? What was that thing that there was that janitor in New York? He was schizophrenic. the temple of the third heaven was his art project. And so there was this janitor guy and he, he died. And when they went to his apartment, he had made this beautiful made out of tinfoil, like city. It kind of looked like a anchor watt or something like that, but made out of tinfoil. And it's like that guy had meaning because he spent half of his day doing a job that, created results. Something was dirty and now it's clean. And then he went home and he translated his schizo thoughts into a tinfoil city. That's the extreme example of what everybody should be doing. Like I spend this much time at work deriving meaning from it because I'm changing reality through that job. And then when I get home, I'm, I'm not writing something to, uh, you know, appease an audience or, um, to make money, LOL. Like let's, let's, let's all forget about that. But instead you're doing a cool creative thing. Exactly. Yeah. It's a perfect life.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. It's great. Like, and that's, and that's probably the way it used to be for like thousands and thousands of years before there was this like kind of idea that you could, um, make. I, I'm kind of, sort of against making it creative stuff, your job. I am 100% against it, yeah. Because I'm kind of like everyone I've seen who does it. Like there are exceptions, but most of those exceptions are people who started doing it like last century. But I think this century, it's going to be all of the great artists are definitely going to have day jobs. Of course,
SPEAKER_03:yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Because I don't, I just don't think, I think a day job is good for an artist. It's definitely good for a writer. There's so much like, even if you don't, you know, I'm assuming you're not going to write novels about selling fences, but I'm sure that like day-to-day stuff and like people you encounter and things like that are going to be much more fruitful for you going forward. Oh yeah. Just like sitting with yourself as a writer and, Like, you know what I mean? Like you get
SPEAKER_03:so much, of course, so much life
SPEAKER_04:living and experience that you can bring
SPEAKER_03:to, to your work. Let me tell you, sorry. So like writing is about, it's all translation. It's not transcription. A lot of people think that it's like, Oh, this thing happened to me. I got to write about it. I got to make sure all the details are right. But what it really is, is that you experience things that give you a feeling and then you in your creative space, you try to recreate that in a different way through people with deer heads or hand cannons or whatever. But I was, I was on a call. I go out to this house and I can immediately see that the fence is fucked up. Like the shit is falling down. Pickets are missing, whatever. I ring the doorbell. The guy invites me inside and, And as soon as I step in, the whole place is dark. There's no lights on in this house. Middle of the day, it smells rank with cigarette smoke. I'm like, oh, this is rough. And the guy himself, very nice guy, but he's nearing the end of his journey here. Uh, he's got like lesions on his skin and, and strange things growing from his face. And he, uh, he goes, let me get them. Let me take you out of here and show you the fence. And so he takes me out back and we're discussing like the technical details, like, Oh, we're going to cut that post there. We'll put steel posts in there. We'll put new pickets in like, this is all going to look great. Yada, yada, yada. And, uh, he goes, this post, Backyard, which, by the way, has a swimming pool with about three inches of standing green water and a bunch of overgrown plants. Like it's it looks, you know, apocalyptic in its own way. Right. It's something that's been neglected. He goes, this backyard used to look really nice. But then, you know, my wife died. My mother died. I got cancer. I had to have surgery. Uh, my son left to go join the Navy. Yeah. And I'm, I'm sitting like, I'm going on appointments to places where it's like, Oh, cool. Yeah. We'll fix your gate like this. We're good. And then all of a sudden here's this guy who's like very clearly, like completely alone. And he wants somebody to talk to. So he's extending this appointment out and out and out. And I tell him, well, I'll tell you what, we're going to make your fence look great. Um, Just let me measure everything. I'll come in. I'll talk to you. Yada, yada, yada. And so I measure the fence. I go back in again, dark. But there's like, now there's one light over the kitchen table. And this guy who just got done with cancer surgery is smoking a cigarette in there. And he goes, do you smoke? And I say, no. He's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. You want to see something cool? I say, sure. So he takes me into his garage. He has this old Model T in the garage. And he, you know, wistfully says, you know, this won a lot of competitions. This was a really good car. And I'm just, as he's talking, I'm becoming overwhelmed with this, like, feeling of like, this guy had a life, you know, like, and his life is coming to an end. And so we're back at the table and I'm giving him all like the, you know, the salesman, Bullshit. Letting him know about warranties and things like that. And he's smoking another cigarette. And he goes... He's like, I used to have energy like you. I used to be up and about doing things. And one day I woke up and I was like this. And I said, oh, well, that's... And he goes, life's what happens while you're busy making plans. And so I'm just like... I gotta get the fuck out of here. Like, this is, this is like too fucking intense, you know? Um, like this guy is like being my friend and you know, like he just, he literally needs somebody to talk to. Like he's got nobody left. His house is dark. And all of a sudden I start picturing like, He told me that he bought the house 30 years ago. And I'm like, well, 30 years ago, like his kid would have been like my son's age. And my son's running around the house right now and being a dick and annoying us and being loud and whatever. But like one day, like my wife could be dead. My mother could be dead. My son could be out doing a job and I could be like a lonely guy with nothing else there. So I left. It affected me profoundly. Like I was like, I drove in silence for like 30 minutes after talking to this guy. Cause I'd just been hit with this reality that like, we're all going to fucking die. And everything that we're doing right now is one day is not going to be there. And that's not the real sad part about it. Because if you, if you get hit by a meteor and die, you don't get to exist. The idea that everything could be gone and you have to keep living. just for a few years more, just inching toward, like he told me at one point, he's like, yeah, this, I want to leave this house for my son. And this fence might be the last nice thing that I can do for him. Like, God damn, you're hitting me with all this. I'm trying to sell fences, baby. Like, what are you doing? And so like, I left all that. And I was like, so as a writer, you internalize that, but you're not going to rewrite that scene. When I left, I had a profound feeling. And that feeling was that shit does end. I was very, and I'm sure hospice workers experience this all the time, but like people have entire lives that not only end, but sometimes end before they do. And then the idea is how do you translate that? How do you turn that into a parable or a plot point or whatever? And on the surface, it could seem like you're kind of a vulture preying on people's pain to put it into a book. But I think that one of the best things about being a writer is that you can sit down and you can write a scene about people's butt cheeks getting chopped off and try to find a that feeling again. Right. And, and, and amalgamize and, and, and translate it into this kind of cartoonish format to where people read the butt cheek chopping scene and they're like, damn, we're all going to die. And
SPEAKER_01:it's like, if you tried to like write that scene, like literally it actually would read kind of fake, like in made up. Yeah. Like, so you have to like translate it to make it seem more real. And this is what I mean.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. This is what I mean about the analogy of like alchemy, because it's like, you know, it's one, it's one thing to, you know, just transcribe that scene, like you said, but it's another thing entirely to transmute, like some of the stuff you got, you experienced there into like a ridiculous stylized violence thing that, that it's, it's almost like, One of the things I love about this type of writing, and I try to do myself, is, like, on the surface, it's doing one thing, but it's also smuggling in something else, you know? I love the idea of, like, the writer is smuggler. Like, that, like, you know, you're just smuggling, like, sort of contraband in some ways. That, like, you're... you're doing something very clear and that works like on the surface, but there's also like something underneath that people aren't going to directly experience, but it's going to inform what they're getting out of it, you know? And I find that, yeah, I find that obviously in your writing, which is like, it's, this is a ridiculous kind of phantasmagorical kind of cyberpunk epic, but it has that, that sort of elements to it sometimes directly. Like I love the, um, the parable of the, is it a sparrow? I can't remember the bird. The parable of the sparrow. Yeah. That's such a great, I love that. And I love when people do that, when they put, they put like those, those sorts of elements into their, the work again, leading
SPEAKER_03:into the
SPEAKER_04:holistic form. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That's Cielo's whole character. She's the only character in the book. Although a lot of people who read it identify with Zuno, which is really funny. But with Cielo, that was like... I mean, some of my best writing, I think, is just that opening passage with Cielo where there's the rattlesnake in the den. And the rattlesnake's giving birth to babies. And you see it from the perspective of the rattlesnake. Um, because her whole thing is about motherhood and it's, it's really interesting because obviously I can't give birth. Right. But I've seen over the past four years, like I, I've watched my wife give, I watched my son being born, which is fucking crazy. Like that shit is wild. Like when you first see like the hair on the kid's head, like breaching the vagina, it's like wild. what the fuck is going on? Like that shit is great. And I think it fucked me up a little bit. I was very sleep deprived. Like he did not want to come out. It took 36 hours for him to be born. So I was like sleep deprived. They're like, you want to hold this mirror and watch your son be born? Like, yeah. Okay, cool. And then you see like, you see the afterbirth come out, all this kind of shit. But I became like, very fascinated by this concept of motherhood you know watching her be a mother and all this kind of stuff and like uh all of cielo's stuff obviously it's it's extremely overt is all about motherhood right um she fights a giant baby at one point like i'm i'm not exactly the most subtle writer when it comes to things like this but like The idea of having a kid and then hating the kid and wanting to kill the kid, but still loving it very deeply, it's all transmuted, which is a great word that I'm glad you said, through a giant baby fight. You can put all that into there. But she is my favorite character, and it's where most of the humanity of the book comes, because Kentaro is a retard who's just... kind of running around doing what like and he's he's like this he seems like the most like you actually he is yeah he is he's like this he's like this retard who's like gets the life beat out of him and he but he keeps winning for some reason yeah you know like he just he's because he's just good. Like he's dumb as fuck, but just good at one thing, which is killing in this case. And he just keeps succeeding. And then Zuno is like this. I wanted to kind of like tackle being an incel from a empathetic place. So like one person read it and they're like at the end of the book, when, when Zuno finally has friends, like they're like, I shed a tear because I was like, Oh, he finally, and I was like, that was not, I was just, writing that, you know, like that didn't hit, but yeah, the one that hit me the most was, uh, Cielo. And then Sasuke is just kind of like, he's like the, I liked turning like a super artistic brainy guy into like a jiggly puff character. Like I just thought that was funny. So that's just, that's just a long joke. That's the longest joke in the whole book. I'm looking forward to that in the next one. Like where, where Sasuke is going to be. What's going to happen? Yeah, because now he's just a pink, massive flesh that has lived 200,000 lives.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. We haven't really, like, gone through all the plot points, so, like, people are probably going to hear all this stuff and be like, that sounds crazy. But that's good, because you should go read it, because all of it, it's all a love apiece, and it all kind of, it's very entertaining.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's, like, addictive to read. Like, it's not it's like a lot going on, but it's like easy to read. And like, you keep wanting to go through it. Like, like you'd say, I get 500,000 pages. I've been through it in like a week or something. I cannot
SPEAKER_04:wait for the audio book. Glenn's hard at work on that.
SPEAKER_03:Glenn hit me up the other day. It's so funny because he sends me the recordings as he's doing them and there are parts where he cracks up and it's all the retarded parts that I thought was funny when I was writing them. Just hearing him...
SPEAKER_04:I want to see what he's going to do with the shot Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01:do want to see
SPEAKER_04:the
SPEAKER_01:shark. I can imagine what Cielo's voice is going to
SPEAKER_03:sound like. She's just an essay. Yeah. Another funny thing that Glenn does like a, like behind the scenes stuff is that like when he fucks up, uh, he calls himself a faggot, which is really funny. He'll be, he'll be like reading and be like, fuck a faggot. And then they'll like start, start reading again.
SPEAKER_04:Keep all that in actually. And then he'll be like, this is really experimental and
SPEAKER_03:very stream of consciousness. It's very meta. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's like those, brodenist books where it's like one sentence for the whole book they should like extend that to do the audio book where it's all in one reading
SPEAKER_03:yeah oh yeah wow that's a great idea this book would be 25 hours
SPEAKER_04:at this point wow well that's that's the other thing as well like we're talking about like that sort of writing that is um you know trying to trying to get at something um through the language and transmute it like all of that brodenist stuff i do think that I've talked about it before in previous episodes, so we don't need to rehash it. But I just think that the vehicle for what you want to do is actually... in things like this, like just genre fiction, just, just stop, stop writing like, you know, crappy puzzle books and just write genre fiction, non-realist fiction to get at that stuff that you want to get at. Like it's just,
SPEAKER_03:cause you will get at it. It comes at you. It comes at you whether you want it to or not. Like for me, if I set this up where I'm like, okay, I want to do a scene where I need to have Zuno, you know, be at the end of his rope. So he goes to like a suicide pod chamber or whatever you, as you're writing it, like one of those nights, again, 500 words a day, no excuses, whatever, like one of those nights, like you're going to be sitting there and writing and through no intention of your own, you're all of a sudden going to be writing something very profound. It's, it's like the writing process. And then the process of reading it are identical. And that writing process is like every day you're like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm, you know, trying to get at, but then something's going to sneak in where you're like, Oh, all of a sudden, like I'm writing about profound feelings of loss and loneliness and all this kind of shit. And I didn't mean to, you don't set out to do that. You set out to be like, Hey, he's got to get into the pod, be grossed out by it. almost die and then come back. Right. And then as you're writing it, you're like, Oh, this is, this is interesting, which I, I really do think that like a lot of the best novel, like whether it's David Foster Wallace or even like Elroy or whatever, like Elroy has some really profound moments in American tabloid and the cold 6,000 that you get to because he's like, Because the books are so big, right? Where it's like that night when he was scribbling on his pad that he has his assistants transcribe, he was cooking. And so you just got to show up and cook. Yeah. And then something's going to come out. It's quantity leading to quality rather than like opposed. You can't plan for quality. Like you have to give up the idea that like what you're going to sit down and write is quality.
SPEAKER_04:And also like, I feel like that's the, that's the appeal I think of the genre sort of mode is that, you have to keep it going. Right. Like, so, but while you're doing, if you sit down to write like a, I don't know, post-modernist puzzle fiction, broadness sort of thing. And you're like, I'm going to muse about this today. Anything that comes out is kind of going to be flat. But if you've got something behind you, like, I don't know, Zuno needs to kill the mushroom demon or whatever. Like, and that's the scene that you need to get to. Like, those same sort of like themes that you might've intended to sit down and write. If it was just like, you know, a similar kind of banal scene of like a guy somewhere on a street, like, that'll come out in a much more like, like I said, alchemical way and a way that's much more like striking and, um, entertaining than it would if you were just doing the thing in itself. Does that make sense? Like, like I feel like that's the appeal of, of like using these generic, um, formula, um, you know, style over substance stuff to get at that, that other stuff, you know, like not that that's the point, but it, it's almost like, uh, um, it'll always come out if you sort of like, uh, a good thinker and writer.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It's like those insights are always what literature is tilting towards, you know? Yes. Yeah. And then the, the trap is thinking that because it's tilting towards that, you have to move towards it. So again, writers should do acid or DMT or whatever, because you always realize through all these psychedelic trips that the way in is around and, Always. If you try to go straight in, you go to hell and you spend your time in hell. But if you just chill, if you just relax, like let it do what it wants to do, you find your way there. And it's usually through some dumb shit. Like you're looking at a Snickers bar and you're like, what if this was a train? And then you figure it all out. You're like, fuck, it is a train. Snickers bars are trains. And that's, I look at the top and
SPEAKER_04:feel like they kind of look like the veins on a cock, but, you know, that's just me.
SPEAKER_03:They do. They do. They do. Sini eats the Snickers bar
SPEAKER_01:in one bite. The king size. The king size.
SPEAKER_04:Gulp. Yeah, well, did we have anything else that we wanted to say about the book? It's pretty late for you, isn't it? JDO, do you need to go soon? No, I'm having fun. No, I'm good, man. Okay, cool, cool. But yeah, was there anything on the book portion? Because what we're going to do next, I think, is we're going to do for the Patreon a bit of a discussion about one of JDO's key influences for this one, which would be the Cyberpunk 2077 game. But Matt, did you have anything else that you wanted to bring to the table?
SPEAKER_01:No, just people should buy it. It's great. I endorse it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Yeah. And God's Fair, No Better, as well as a reference to Cormac McCarthy, isn't it? It is. Yeah. Which book was it? The Road? The Road. Yeah. Yeah. Where Men Can't Live,
SPEAKER_03:God's Fair, No Better.
SPEAKER_04:Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Go out and buy it. I think I was one of the first readers. I'm not sure if I was. You were the first. I was the first. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I'm good at reading. Yeah. I
SPEAKER_03:was like... this guy will get, he'll get it done. Cause you're thinking about that. When you talk to readers for your book, you're like, who's actually going to read this. And I was like, Matt's a, he's a kept man. He's got time. Yes,
SPEAKER_04:that's true. Yeah. So yeah, I would, I would, yeah, I would recommend it as well. We'll have links to the book, whatever David's preferred link is in the show notes. But you should go buy it if you're into, like, you know, cyberpunk, anime, fucking the shit about, like you said, the rhizomatic mycelial kind of mushroom stuff. Like, it's very trippy and psychedelic. A lot of influence from Takeshi Miike. If you like all of that stuff, there's even, like, body horror kind of crap in there that's really great. Yeah, so... I would video drone video drone. Yes. That's a good influence that, um, I don't know if you've ever explicitly stated that, but yeah, it is. I haven't, but I get it. Yeah. Um, yeah, go and get it. I think it's like one of your best books and, um, I, I really sort of recommend it. Um, so yeah, go and go and buy it. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for this episode and we'll see you on the other side to talk about cyberpunk 2077.