This is not dude, expect to be on your night time sat down.
It's time to stray from the to take because you'll find no be sur side
coreast. All right, welcome back, He and Devious Junior Adventures and Friends
to another side quest the episodes. Between the episodes, I am MK Gibson
and I'm here with a wonderful panel of Misty Massey, Robert Bevan, Steve
Weverell, and our good friend Sandy Butcher's newcomer to our old friendly community.
How's everybody doing? Everbody for good Christmas? Good New Year's Gabie, I'm
so full of meat. Well wait a minute, I mean the podcast,
the Dutch oliball, So keep them keeping talking. Tell me more about how
you're full of meat, Steve. I need to hear this, not in
the sexy way, Gibbe. It's Christmas. Oh no no, if you
talk slow and right, you can go to wait till February for that meat
revelation. Oh my season, the season of romance. This is just a
season of mass consumption. Okay, I thought you meant you needed a month
before you passed the amount of meat that you took it. Oh yeah,
that is I feel like I'm in the end of Akira right now, except
it's all ham. I eat my body waiting turkey. So I know,
I know what you're saying. I'm putting a ham in the oven later today
code for sex. Is it bad that the eve away I still want to
have. We're having ham and black eyed peas and greens because that's how you
do it around here. Yeah. I guess there were some vegetables in there
somewhere. That's not important. No, they never are. No, what
about you, Bevy, what you dine on this fine holiday season? Pretty
much the same ham, turkey, and I have vegetables mixed in with different
cast rolls, which I quite like. That's not just, you know,
something I do out of obligation. I do like the art of choke cast
rolls and whatnot. That sounds horrible to me, but I think it was.
I think it was. During our Yule Blob podcast we talked about like,
because my favorite meal of the season is the traditional Thanksgiving meal. I
went turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and all that stuff. Well,
and our family tradition, Christmas is just Thanksgiving part two. So my mom
when she fed us made so much that it took me four days after Christmas
to finish it. So I had Thanksgiving again, five days of Thanksgiving meals
and it was everything I wanted it to be. And I could eat some
more right now, but we're out. So my family lives on the South
Carolina coast, so our Christmas Eve tradition is seafood. So we had shrimp
and scallops and oysters and and onion rings that my brother in law does and
they're phenomenal, and y'all are just missing out because those onion rings are worth
wait in a year for Wow. My dad brought over a turkey fryar Thanksgiving,
so we had we had fried turkey and that was good. But the
thing about it is it takes like three gallons of cooking oil. And I
used to do those. Yeah, that's kind of expensive, so it does
you don't want to not cook three or four turkeys. He just siphoning from
your neighbor's car. What about you, Sandy, What's what are some Dutch
holiday traditions? What do you got going there? Well, we've got the
Oli bulow, which I posted on Facebook earlier, but the rough translation would
be oily balls and that takes this conversation to a whole different level. Fucking
lit up what you said. I know you started like I'm full of meat,
and I was like, keep talking, because dude, what I've got
to tell you filled with oily bulls. That's really and that's the rest of
the podcast sor it. We normally start these things kind of lais a fair
with not much clue where we're going to go. But now that you said
dutchy oily bulls for Christmas, I think we can just that she speaks the
entire country of the Netherlands. That like, because what you're doing is the
traditions. Are you supposed to start as you mean? Go on? So
why not just chuggle out of oily bulls? Right? I mean when you
got to juggle your bulls and then the air and catch with your mouth first.
All right, you're speaking the southern girl's language. That's just not a
hush puppy. You're having hush puppies. I think it's like donuts with raisins
would be the nearest, but it doesn't quite cut it. There is no
equivalent anywhere. But what we have. I don't know, man, I
don't know how this is This is a weird coincidence because I was talking to
a Sicilian friend of mine and they have some kind of bulls shaped treat for
New Year as well. So I don't know if this is maybe I'm just
missing out as America and England missed something. Is everybody else eating balls in
the world right now? We watch a giant ball? Yeah that's true.
Yeah, we didn't even have that in England. We're really missing out on
the balls. We put balls on our trees, I guess, but we
don't make on my tree Aaron Genie or something apparently Sicilian general ball shaped treat.
So there you go. Don't let anyone tell you I'm not a cultural
man. We do. We do sausage balls for Christmas morning. I like
sausage balls. Everybody's got their balls. Everybody loves balls. In one way,
we can all come together over this. I feel included. It's not
just all world, all right, all right? So Sandy, what are
you doing here? Tell us about yourself? Uh, what are you doing
here? What are you doing here? Also it's funny, it's like,
hell, did you come from myself? I told her ahead of the time.
She can't swear, But the rest of us are going to so honestly,
please, do you play any bets on timers? Did you have any?
No? We just was like Bevin let it off with fuck you,
and it was just that was the clue. So so we're all writer types.
And I met Sandy in a Facebook group like and was it January twenty
twenty two? So it's been with two years now. If you tell me
it was ten years ago, I believe you too, man, it was
actually two years almost like now. It was like January twenty twenty two is
when like that thing? Sorry, when we met, we started hanging out.
So, uh, you know Laura's rs tell us attle bit about yourself
about me, Well, basically, I'm I'm the little I'm your sidekick.
Everybody knows that's bullshit. See this fires because you taught me how to do
it, all right, all right, okay, I'll take that. I'll
take credit for that. Now. I am a Dutch author, an illustrator,
and I've been writing for a couple of years now. I've been drawing
for even longer. But yeah, given I met over a Facebook group for
authors. Then we discovered we both play a game called Destiny, and we
just became friends over that and ever since, he dragged me into stuff like
Technomancer, and he dragged me into stuff like well, woman, just start
writing your own books and finished him for once, please and see you had
already wrote, You had already written like the Singularity and like, and that's
what one of the we got together about. That was, like, you
wrote this cyberpunk Grimore style book with that, you illustrated yourself and put out
a hardback and it was one of those like you like, and you were
already in indie publishing. You just were like railing about it. So I
did. Yeah, I mean yeah, I wasn't indie publishing, and I
had worked on a couple of anthologies before, and I wrote a lot of
short stories, and through those short stories, I started to work on my
own short story collection, which ended up being The Singularian. So that was
a huge hardcover book. You can see a couple of them standing here next
to me, and they're like anywhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred
short stories, but they're all connected. So it's I kind of created this
whole universe through short stories and illustrations. So that's pretty much where I think
my story, like my adventure as an author started because that was where I
finally started to take myself from my job seriously on this. And after that,
yeah, I mean a lot of things happened, and I wrote a
couple more manuscripts, I found a literary agent, and I'm still going on
that adventure. So it's it's a never ending story, I think, at
least I hope. Oh no, it's over. We're done. This is
it? Good talking. That's what you get for wasting our time. You
ran out of times. We're out of time, juice, because you're because
I was telling everybody like she's one of my technical go to people when I'm
this is my entrance, and then she shows up on like you know,
like a like a two forty p camera in the background you can't see anything
and it's all very ramshackled. Well, how badly your background is lagging on
my screen? It cannot compute with the fire and moving background. And it's
dude, I got this little man with a hammer and a chisel hanging out
the stuff in a stone slab because there is no chipset in this laptop.
Nothing, And I'll switch to snow is any better? No, it's nothing.
Better, okay, just making me cold. For those listening without the
aid of YouTube, you too can see ghippies lagging animations and send these nineteen
nineties webcam on a channel, so please do check that out on a CRT.
I asked my husband to to use the electric bicycle to charge the battery
while my laptop is going so power here. The faster man faster just invented
electricity here, So bear with me. We've played enough like games. And
I don't mean to pick on Bob, but it's like one of like we'll
be getting ready to do a D and D game and like something happens,
like, Bob, how many tabs do you open? Have open? He's
like, none of your business. It's just so I'm so glad you can't
see it right now. Ballpark for me. You don't give me an exact
count, but ballpark over twenty, there, over ten. It's not getting
to this. I don't think he even has anything on those tabs. I
think they're all just Google Google yah. As a question, every one of
them is necessary. How much poor does a man need? Well, that's
what Bevan is going to die trying to find out. Okay, his life
I guess it's like the old mister l commercial for the tittier o pot.
How much poor does a man need? Free? Oh well, so your
main I guess universe you operate in. You've just been exploring via the medium
of short stories, which I guess isn't a usual route into indie publishing.
Most people kind of, I guess, do what Misty and Gibbian Bevin have
done. Whereas you start a novel, you build from there just novel novel,
novel, novel, but you've gone for something a little bit more or
a little bit less obvious. I guess, yeah, yeah, And you
know, and that was a good thing as much as it was a bad
thing because it was backwards. People often don't understand what to do with it.
Especially publishers don't know what to do with it. So I was like,
well, I may have shut myself in the foot, but you know
what, I made it work. So I'm yeah, I guess Ultimately,
you got to write what you want to write in order for your you know,
vision to be there and it not being published a friendly I always thought
that was kind of the cool thing about indie publishing. What's funny is that
short stories were actually, once upon a time were the way to break in.
When I first started writing. You wrote short stories and you submitted them
to magazines, which were these paper like books, but they were soft on
the outside, and you paid money for them right now, But but that
was what you did. You you wrote short stories and you submitted them,
and you started selling the magazines, and then after you had a few dozen
short stories published, publishers would pay more attention to your novel length work.
And that has of course gone away with with the uh, with the Internet
and the way that we consume writing nowadays. So so I can understand why
your publisher would have looked at your short stories and said, I don't know
what to do with this, because they're probably all younger than me too.
And it wasn't necessarily just the fact that it was short stories. It was
also illustrated, and the illustrations were part of the story as much as the
actual story, Like there were clues and riddles and puzzles hidden inside these illustrations,
and it was like part interactive reading, part normal reading. It was
everything that I love most, like I love looking at you know, I
mean, give destiny to lower cards. Of course, of course you know,
like, you find a weapon inside this game, and this weapon has
its own little backstory and they tell you that a a in an entry that's
like three hundred words long, and then the picture of the weapon, and
I thought, okay, that format is really really freaking cool. And there's
like, I don't know, you walk around in this world and you stumble
upon a weird secret and it leads you down a rabbit hole. And I
wanted all that. So that was really the way I, you know,
how I start. Okay, so what do I like in this world of
stories and writing? And I gathered that all together and that's turn out to
be the SINGULARI. And so I cannot explain to you what it is exactly
because it's so many different things. And and right now I think that is
a good thing, because yeah, it's it's something that I have never seen
before in the market. But again it shoots me in the food as well,
because how the hell do I market this? I don't know. I
do find that pretty intriguing. I mean I always joke on the podcast we
play like a Dungeons and Dragons and I'd never played an rbag before I came
on the podcast. It is why it's so great that shows give me people
people like to see me fail. That's the secret. No, you're actually
really good at it, and it's you're actually really and it's disgusting how good
you are at it with not having any baggage behind it. So I'm just
kind of jealous. So, but something I used to do is all my
nerd friends who did play these games, who I never admit to knowing in
real life, I would dig through their games and their best areas and stuff,
and they're just the background law. I just enjoy kind of ingesting that
stuff and getting a I guess, a picture of the world building that isn't
necessarily one narrative kind of experience. You're not wrong. I have plenty of
like ARPG books from like back in the day. I've never played the games.
I just love the books because I love the art, I love the
grimlaw. I like like these like like like this, even some of those
Werewolf like the I played a few Werewolf games, but I loved those books,
those those rule books because the art school, the history school, the
history of the werewolves and the vampires and all that stuff. It's like those
are really neat and very well done, and I applaud people with that kind
of like mind. I'm just kind of stuck into them, I think.
But when I read Sandy Singularity and when we became friends, like I,
my review was, this is art. It's a it's a it's not a
like three act structure story. It is these this this, these short stories
that she said, stitched together that tell a story overall. But it's all
in these lower cards in the grimoire style, but with the art added to
it. It's the entire book is an art piece. And I see what
you're saying. It's hard to market the art piece. But when you eventually
like broke them down and put out like four paperbacks for e books, finally,
remember when you were sitting around the computer like agonizing over that together,
like just just fucking do it already. Four hours. There was a book
back in the late eighties called Treasure. I don't remember who wrote it,
but it was. It was a story about a young woman who was searching
for this this golden horse, and she had to follow all these clues.
And the idea was that you were supposed to follow the clues that she found
and you could actually find a real golden horse statue. It was really made
of gold, and it was worth a lot of money, and it was
hidden somewhere in the continental United States. So I think that's where you messed
up. See, you needed to have a really valuable prize of humanity that
we're pawning here. So you know who cares about that jewels or something in
a box? Hide them in a forest, and the don't with a middle
finger. That's all it is, like, you know, you wasted your
time, Go get a life. Here's a stiger now exactly of my cat's
asshole that she's always showing me anyway, So well I'll dig for that.
Yeah. I guess you said like it's difficult to market to publishers, but
maybe that's because publishers are just fucking boring. I mean, this sounds pretty
intriguing to me. I'd check it out based on that description alone. So
and everybody knows that I make great decisions. So that's my endorsement listeners.
Well, it's one of those things like case Sandy actually is like, all
right, do you want to talk about the Hugo thing or how do you
want to present this without without kissing off dutch landy against yourself. Mistakes were
made. Mistakes were made. Yes, yeah, well, I mean like
a week ago, a bit more than a week ago, I got an
email from a guy who had read my books and he apparently had rallied a
couple of other people, and he said, well, but we want to
nominate your book for Hugo Award because this is the most amazing stuff that I've
read. And it's great, it's fantastic, so original, and you know,
you got the illustrations and you got a story that is just more than
just it was like putting a lot of better or something in it was yeah,
yeah, it was. He was giving it all, and you know,
I got really enthusiastic about that. So I said to people, I
got nominated for Hugo Awards, but I wasn't barely too soon and making that
official statement because nominations aren't officially open yet. But I mean, it's it's
happening regardless, you know, regardless of everything else. It's happening because there
is this group of people who are now seriously putting in my name, with
my work, you know, into the Eugo nominations. So that's that's freaking
awesome. Yeah, that's that's the thing with the Hugos. You want to
have a following that is really pushing you. Because my my first novel was
actually included on the long list for the Campbell. The long list is very
long. I'll take any list are I'll be on any list, and i
will sell to any streaming service. Right now, I'm a dirty whore.
Well flylist, I'm on a blacklist? Does that count? But the Campbell
is for new writers and so that's you know, that's why it got on
and and it was nice. But I didn't know at the time that I
really needed to be gathering people to it and getting people to to to talk
about it more online. I didn't understand how these things work because it's been
a minute. So so I'm glad to hear that there are people rallying around
your book already, because that's only going to help. Yeah, yeah,
and that's pretty much you know what I'm currently campaigning as well, And like
I've had a couple of interviews here in the Netherlands, uh, you know,
with with these book groups and Facebook groups and YouTube channels and everything.
Because if you look at the statistics, and that's that's really just looking at
numbers. You need anywhere between like fifty or sixty supporting nominations to even get
anywhere, Like I'm currently at twenty five percent of that, so I don't
know, maybe fifteen sixteen supporters. I mean, I'm it's happening, but
I mean I do if I can get forty more. But you know,
yeah, I feel exactly what you're saying, Like, if you don't know
this, you get this email from someone saying, well, we want to
nominate you, and you're like, yes, it's so fantastic, and that
then nothing happens. So yeah, I was happy that I was sort of
informed, albeit not entirely correctly informed. Okay, So I would say the
sort of informed like when Sandy was going through this and I was talking with
her, we were going to blah blah blah, and then some blowback from
some other people who remain nameless, are like, you can't do this and
how dare you kind of know your place? And that was there's some assholes
out there within within their community, the Dutch community, so uh, they
were like shitting on her, uh, you know, feeling good about herself
kind of thing, you know, and that's like, man, this business
is already kind of Shitty's one of the reasons I like when you all I
met, you all every supportive and not destructive, and that's one thing I
like about the group. And that's why I wanted to have Sandy on,
which just because more support. I mean, whether this gets nomination is not,
it doesn't really matter. It's just like lift people up, man,
you know, like we're all at various stages of our writing careers and it's
but what we all love to do, and I want to see more of
that happen. That's why I spread the love a little bit, you know.
Samy's been a good friend of mine for the last two years. Like,
if I can help, just hey, here's some more. Here's some
more of the people. If you like her books, go on kind Unlimited
and at least check some of these out or pay for them if you want
to too, so, you know, great, definitely definitely pay for listeners.
Listen, we were all here on time. Pay for hours. You
can get hers on kind Unlimited, so all right. Yeah. Also,
the thing about the Hugos is that the only people who can nominate and vote
are people who have paid for a membership to World con World. Yeah,
World Con. So you know, you do need to make sure that the
people that are supporting you understand that that that they can support you all they
want, but they somebody's got to cough up the money. Oh yeah and
do that. Well, there's all yeah, yes, yeah. The paywall
is a big thing because how at least again this is here in the Netherlands,
as soon as you start explaining to people that they have put this behind
a paywall and that they need to pay at least the supporting membership, and
they have to do it even before the thirty first of January. You know,
they need to spend forty five pounds to nominate your work and then hope
that it gets through so they can vote for you. It's it's a whole
thing. It's quite a thing to explain, and so far a lot of
people they were like, well, you know your work is worth it,
so shut up and take my money. And I'm like, okay, well,
thank you. You know it's it's I'm super appreciative of that. But
I cannot expect everybody to just go into this blind. Like I if I
could give everybody free books, if as soon as they bought a tick,
I would I really would, and I will give everybody ebooks and I will
whatever, I will give you everything that I can to make up for that
money. But in the end, I cannot force people to do this.
So I just hope for this kind of support that you know showing me,
and you guys are also just showing me by you know, letting me talk
about this stuff here. But it's it's pretty much all you can do.
It's it's it's very exciting and it's very scary. One thing you did well
was like when you like, there's that one thing you're telling some people like
you gave you your spiel and says, hey, I'll give you free ebooks
and you don't even have to vote for mine. You know. It's like
it take it to world kind. I'll give you free e books, but
you don't even have to vote for mine if you like it great, you
know. So there's that level of transparency that I think like resonates with some
folks that like if they have like the like the fifty whatever dollars to like
laying around cool, but like, hey, I understand like times are tough.
So yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Now she expected me to
vote and so she strong armed me into buying a fuck ticket and I did
it. Did you buy two? No? Because I haven't got my yet.
Where's my free ship? Where's my free shit? You have on my
ship already? What more than you want? It's the principle, are you
going to go to World Con? No? I want to, but it's
in Scotland. I would love to go, but it's one of those like
no, I just bought the supporting member thing. No. I would love
to do that, but that's an entire family planning thing, like I can't
tell my wife deuces, I'm going to Scotland. Oh no, no,
no, no, no, that would be like, no, we're taking
everybody, said, like three people flying to Scotland, Like we're looking at
a multiple thousand dollars investment to get all of us from like the East Coast
to Scotland and all that's nomination. Come on, see we could fly over,
then we can hang out at Steve's for a while. Scotland and England.
That's just I guess stone throw away actually from American standards. They probably
are for American standards. It is like when I drove to the A and
ECN, like that was seven hours from Maryland to North Carolina. So yeah,
how far a drive is it? Whereabouts in Scotland? Is it?
Is it Glasgow? This year? In Glasgow? Yeah? And what time
of year summer? August? Oh, August, sorry August and Glasico might
be fucking bearable. I guess I was in Edinburgh in October and that was
kind of cold, and it's always golden. I mean, it doesn't matter
what. I have a cultural right to rag on Glasgow a bit. That's
when Colby first founded. It's all villages and then they built a steel works
factory that basically look like more Door and they're like, we can't get anyone
to work in this ship hole. Let's bust a load of people down from
Glasgow. So I guess like people from Glasgow for where's there's the one place
that's better than where we are and came here. But I guess I could
go back to vote at World con or shown my support. But yeah,
that is like an eight hour drive, which is again in America, I
guess, is nothing. But do you take a train? Do you drive?
Do you ride a horse? You'd get a dragon? And how do
you get there? Do you get a train? Train? It'd be a
lot longer, wouldn't it. That's the thing about the trains, Yet they're
not. Sometimes it is quicker to drive. The last time I was there,
I took a train from leeds Harrogate up to Scotland and I went to
a h Edinburgh that way, but it was all We were on a smoking
train. I'm sure that's outlawed now. So ah man, even in Glasgow,
unbelievable, even the Scots have went down on that. Okay, oh
it just it breaks my mind. Oh there you go. Then plan by
everybody come to my house and we'll get a horse and garage up to Glasgow
with just a little bit of hypothermia and very little interference from bandits. I
imagine. I guess we're too slow. Yeah, they're not gonna They're not
gonna rub somebody when I was a cap what are they gonna take? Dignity?
And we put the game in front of the cart and then you can
now because we get to make it that cheaply and sexily. No, I
saw that dance like like keep for the reason that dance keep you drunkenly?
Did on Bevin that one? A and d con keeps coming up my feed
for whatever reason. You just grinding all for whatever reason. Give me how
I pleasure myself is my business, sir, And you don't get into shine
for this. Can't full the algorithm, my friend. It knows what you
want. It knows what I like. Speaking of likes, what is it
that you all want out of twenty twenty four. We're all here, we
got our careers ahead of us, or just personal thing. Well, come
twenty twenty four in Glasgow. Obviously we all want Standy to dominate that with
fire and vengeance. I think let's get out of the way. I told
her. Soon she gets there to talk as much shit about all the authors
that like shit on her on the way up. So like, just just
use it as a platform. Just be an real asshole. I would,
Sandy. I'd love to tell you you've been the most culturally significant thing in
Glasgow since But I don't know how to finish that sentence sins and well,
we'll make it a user poll, like put something in the in the comments
or something like sins what. Well, let's see both of that. That
comment's probably gonna get me a little bit stabbed anyway, So that's fine.
Yeah, twenty twenty four not getting stabbed. What do you want out of
twenty twenty four, missy? To finish all these damn projects that are sitting
on my computer not finished yet, and the publishers, my publishers look at
me with a really bad side eye and go, you know you got the
projects to finish. I want to finish thousand that I want to I want
to sell more books. I just I want this. I want this to
be worth it financially. It's worth it emotionally, but I want it to
be worth it financially. Hell yeah, Bob, the same answer. Also,
Well, I also want to sell more books. And now that I've
had this conversation today, I kind of want the Hugo. I'm owed for
Space Puppies Chuck nominated. I no reason that Bevan can't be nominated too.
I wrote that specifically for Hugo, which has not been handed to me yet.
Yeah, you wrote the worst book everything, but you read it with
purpose and laser focus. And I think they should at least acknowledge that with
some kind of special award, the Police Doug do This Again Award or something.
The Academy Awards has the Razzies like the Night Before for like you know,
So what's that? What's that in literature? Like when you start doing
that for Andy, like our version of the nineties. Yeah, yeah,
I mean if the people are the Hugoes like just and said and now silence
from the crowd please, and then just symbolically emilated a copy of Space Buppies
without saying anything. I think that would be appropriate, that'd be justified.
What do you want to what do you want? Twenty twenty four Steve?
Oh, geez, Well, I ain't gonna say sell more books, because
that's not happening. Luckily, I have a normal person job, so I
don't have to worry about selling books. Uh So, I guess I'll carry
on reading some more. Yeah, I just I'll focus on actually writing a
book. As people who listen to the Adventure Radio every Wednesday, sometimes not,
but every Wednesday on our YouTube channel, I am working on a celebrity
meatburger, a science fiction tale that is apparently so accurate. I have to
keep on rewriting it because the world keeps coming more ridiculous. I expect that
in twenty twenty four Slash five we'll see, Okay, Sandy aside from the
Hugos, What do you want out of twenty twenty four. Man, I
kind of told myself that I want my agent in manuscript to find a publisher
this year. So that's going to be out in submission pretty soon, and
I hope that I'm going to get a bite on it. So that's yeah,
And so that happens, and my years. Good. You went from
one hundred and fifty thousand words down to ninety eight thousand. Is that accurate?
Thank you for reminding me. I'm still leading. Thank you. Yeah,
I mean yeah, yeah, it was a big manuscript, and like
the moment we thought we were done, my agent said, well, but
you got to cut it down to like ninety four ninety five, and I
was like, well, and yeah, I dude, it hurts so badly,
but I did it, and it's, you know what, I'm I'm
kind okay with what came out. I mean, sure, I'm missing a
lot of I'm missing a lot of my characters, but it's it turned out
all right, and it's it's not very Stockholm syndrome. Like, it's okay,
I don't believe that someone who's been in a car accident so well,
you know, I only lost my foot, you know, yeah, except
my my leg was also still attached to that food. So I lost a
lot more than just a foot man. Yeah, no, I mean I
got it done and did it hurt? Yes, it did, And but
it's I am completely behind what I what I'm going to submit right now,
so I you know, it would be dumb if I said, well,
actually it's a very shitty book. Now, I'm not gonna it's good.
It's good as it is, and I'm glad I got it done. It's
it's I don't know, feeling of accomplishment in there. I managed to do
it, and then that's I'm fine with that. I's glad to hear it.
That sound tough, actually it is. Yeah, but we'll leave you
to your pain. Gibby, What do you want for twenty twenty four?
I think I repeating the wheel there, you know. Obviously, I want
to finish the book I'm working on, like I'm I'm dabbling right now in
that whole gamelet like progressive fantasy like genre kind of thing. But I'm doing
my little spin on it, and I want to like crank that out.
And because I'm halfway through and I would like to, you know, I
want to take I want to like, just kill Matt Denneman, you know,
just take all his take. I just want to eat his lunch.
No, he's fucking amazing. We all know it. He's like and the
worst part is he's such a good guy that it hurts, like if it's
got to get because when he goes out that in the nights, he's buying
drinks for everybody, and he's such a social dude, and he's like just
down to earth. He sits with fans and plays games like could you just
be an asshole? Please? Like that would that would make me a whole
lot happier. But no, so like I want to finish that, and
I've got I have a lot of open projects. Sandy's heard me bitch about
this stuff plenty plenty of times. I have so many open projects and like
and I need to, Like, there's obviously the one that makes money,
the Villain's books. Don't wait two years write the sequel like I did last
time. So I've got to crank out that in twenty twenty four. And
I also want to go back to my Techno my answer well and finish out
that series. But I've got two books left in that. But like I've
been like that series has been so bittersweet for me because like I love it,
but I know this is going to be the end. And I've got
two books left, so basically gonna sit down and write books six and seven
back to back because I know that, like this is how the story ends.
And it's like and I'm having the hardest time hitting like scene one,
and I'm like, I don't know. I've got all these notes of things
I want to do, but I'm having the raging writer's block when it comes
to just sitting down and getting the shit done. So I just went over
to my writer's block and just crank out whole bunch of projects. And I
want, actually, I want to start working on short stories, not i'd
say not short storts, but more like novella's, you know, like just
bite size fun stories that I could put out like a collection thereof, you
know, like just I'm gonna try and new things nice cool and play more
D and D with these idiots. So, yeah, I know what you're
saying about Matt Dinnerman. I like to think that Bevid and I have a
reputation for drinking at cons, but every time I've seen Matt Dinnerman think,
oh shit, here we go. But maybe you know, if you do
decide to kill Matt Dinnerman, you might you might save other lives. Oh
no, I think, yeah, people would know I would save lives.
But then like, man, these are like half the Facebook groups would just
come at me. So I know. I'm not saying you'd survive the backlash.
I'm saying I would, and that would be okay. Dick, well
yeah, more D and D certainly. I guess twenty twenty four, what
if people have got to look forward to and authors and dragons quests were competence
still going strong, so follow that. I think we're going to be starting
a new side game, exciting things, but I can't really tell you too
much. Well, I can tell you it's going to be awesome and great
and if you miss it, you'll want to die, So look forward to
them twenty twenty four. But other than that, I don't think I have
any plans other than kind of like, if you like Adventure Brodio, that
will probably still happen. If you like the main game, Quest for Confidence,
please do keep on track and along with that, But we are going
to be doing some new shit, so keep burn an ear out for that
too, or an I if you're on our YouTube channel, well both,
I guess you can listen and watch on YouTube. That's the thing you can
do now, just listening things now like you can experience with us with eyeballs
and ears as well. We're working on we should we should probably do is
like have like an auto thing that just auto generate these show notes or read
it in a it's a page, you know, if you just want to
read this transcript battle Yeah, shit, you're free, you know. Oh,
actually, speaking of sensory experiences, holding your hand, Authors and Dragons
comic books, we eventually got issue free out to everybody. Look forward to
issue four in twenty twenty four. I will say that with an unreasonable amount
of confidence, but yeah, it's definitely going to happen. No problems,
no issues with that issue for authors and Dragon's Comic Book twenty twenty four,
definitely going to happen. Very cool. I'm looking back, like, what
are your pros and cars of twenty twenty three, any anything stand out?
Speaking of which, it took us a lot longer than we photo is going
to get everybody's copy of issue free out to everybody in twenty twenty three.
That experience pretty much spanned the entirety of the year, I think, so
apologies to anybody who didn't get that on time, which is all of you,
but thanks for backing anyway, and I hope you're satisfied with the finish
product, if not the timeframe in which it was delivered. So that's my
conference twenty twenty three. Anybody, what about you, mister any pros and
cords. I was, yeah, I was sad that I didn't get to
go to Authors and Dragons Con out of New Yorkland, because oh thank you,
I really would have liked to be there. It just it just wasn't
gonna work out for me this year. And uh, and of course we
don't know when the next Authors and Dragons Con might happen, and so you
know, it was very bittersweet to have to miss it. But but I
I do hope that we have another one somewhere down the line, because the
ones I have been to have been an absolute ball and uh, and I
want to do it again and see everybody. So that was that was kind
of a downside. But but on the upside, you know, I did
get to go to some other events and see some awesome people, and I
got to meet Rebecca Ronhorse, who writes some books I'm really crazy about,
and so that was really fun. So but there were up and downs.
That's awesome, man, Bob, what you got? Cons people are still
failing to buy my books. That's not good. If I can that,
there's a big con with the whole Amazon kerfuffle with your books. Yeah,
but I mean that. Yeah, it didn't last too long. But yeah,
that was not a fun time. A systemic attack on people buying your
books. Yeah, yeah, they weren't buying them anyway. Amazon, Fuck
you. And then Pros. On the way back from my parents house on
Christmas, was stopped at a BUCkies and I got a a Club Melt and
that was really good. I've never been to a Bucky. I don't know
what a Club milt is. I would have changed my con from twenty twenty
three to Bevan's Cup plus story. I gotta say, which is the saddest
figure you've ever said to me? I got to retroactively make that my con.
Thank you, Sandy, Pros and cons at twenty twenty three Techno Manser
illustrated version. I think that was a pro That was last year, that
wasn't it. So is that your big cons been wasting all that time to
get like how many how many euros for the page you got paid for that.
So whether that's a pro or con, I'll leave that up to you.
So tho, we collaborated, like she took one of my We took
one of my books, my first, my first book, and we did
an illustrated hardback edition and we ran an Indiegogo and you can buy it on
Amazon. Now. It's like it's it's but it's like a nice hardback thing,
but with illustrations, like there's an illustration per chapter, and we just
redid, reformatting, read everything to cover and it was it was a lot
of fun. We had a lot of backers and it was pretty cool and
it was I s I'm again, I'm just picking on macause he's not here.
I showed this to Dinniment at the con and then that motherfucker ran a
Kickstarter and did like half a million dollars on his when he did like an
illustration like dungeon Crawler, Carl, like you set up a bit, Yeah,
we want to love talking about that. Ah yeah yeah, So maybe
that was the con. I think I had real strong kill Matt Denimon vibes
from this episode. You know, it's one of those scenarios like actually it
was. It's all the time, but like as uh, you know,
we're all friends with him and like that. But like we were at the
con in Portland and I was talking to some other authors who were outside having
like a vape and a smoke and like that, and there was there was
a little bit of like, you know, why not me. They're looking
at Matt and Matt's success, you know, and then people have to realize
that Matt was writing ten years before Dungeon Carl Carl ever happened. Like he
was, he was doing work, he was building up to this. It
wasn't like his hits. It wasn't the first thing out of the gate.
So you know, it's you've got everybody's looking at someone else ahead of them,
like and I slit someone else's throat to be in their spot as well.
You know, it's but someone's also looking behind ju saying I want your
spot as well. So it's you know, that's why I'm saying, support
each other, don't tear each other down. Also, he's a base player
in a rock band and if you've ever been a bass player in a rock
band, you've done your time. You deserve any success you get. Yeah
yeah, like you're just standing there as a bass player in a rock band.
If I suddenly get successful overnight, don't put it down to the luck
I did my time being a bass player. I did my time in Pointsy.
I think my pros and cons would be like, like, they're both
like, obviously the work I did with Sandy is a big pro, but
also like I got adopted into the A and D crowd after the last con
this year. That might before shanghaid give yeah, well that much to be
less culturally insensitive, but let's go with that. Sure, I got abducted,
and then immediately after that they get canceled the next con. I'm like,
well fuck me. I'm like, I feel like the Albatross. I
just killed it, like I showed up as it's like it and then I
got all excited, I think, playing like I got to play it on
these authors I know I've been reading for years. This is great, And
I'm like, so you guys organized like not even a little bit, Oh
my god, So it is. That's been but that's that's actually kind of
a pro because it's been so much fun to just like fly out the seat
of your pants and make shit up. So how how was the peak behind
the curtain, Gibbie explained to our listeners exactly how. I mean, they've
probably got an idea. We do tell them constantly that we have no idea
what we're doing or any plans. But everybody who knows who the jeorser is
like and like that is the peak behind the curtain, Like that's what you're
staring right at the you are just staring at his wonder like, well,
I got you accepted and move on. So that's that's what it was like.
So it was organized chaos, so but in a fun way, you
know. And and you know, I've had a lot. Actually I tease
about twenty twenty three being bad, but it wasn't. It really wasn't.
You know. I met cool people, did cool things. I try to
forget the negative shit, you know, I try, you know, and
just you know, here I am. You know, it's twenty twenty four,
and just keep on going, you know. Yeah, And I think
again I'll put as my plus for twenty twenty three. Off and Dragons Cone
twenty three. That's our furthest I guess out of reach. We've tried to
do on the West coast in Portland, and yeah, it was nice to
see everybody turn up for that. You've got a few new faces because it's
a little bit closer to them. I'm more convenient and always a good time.
I think we could have a we could have a convention in the asshole
of hell and still have a good time. We were in Portland. Yeah,
sorry, Henus lizard, I know, I apologize. Also shout out
to that particular A and Dvian friend of ours because she let me, like
a lot of us, just ship books to her house and then brought them
from her house to the convention. And that is a massive That's why good
fans are and good people because they like so sweet and like what do you
want out of like payment? Like nothing, like here, take one of
the cops. Please take something you know, by God, you know you've
earned it. You. I will put out the caveat if you're one of
those people who says, hey, why don't you have a convention in my
state, We'll be like sure, Yeah, let me ship a ton of
books and equipment to your house and keep them there for free maps, Yes,
and go find us an appropriate hotel that has space. That's expectation.
Now, as soon as you put your head above the parapet with a suggestion,
you're to lead a now sunshine. Yeah, that's I learn when I
joined this group. If you speak up, you know you're now the new
project manager for this thing. Like, I still don't even know having I
don't even have log in for half the stuff they do with it, like
just make it Half'm like, I don't know how that's a password out there
somewhere. I'm sure I'm not going to find it. I'm going to keep
my mouth shut. Cod of twenty twenty three Rebel Moon. I know if
you saw that bucket a suck, but I didn't because y'all all said it
was terrible. So I set up. I'm not watching, and I've got
too many other things I want to see. I'm not wasting time. I'm
not on the kind of Zach Schneider hating Fang Club. He's done some stuff
that is kind of visually, I guess informed, the kind of story of
cinematic storytelling. Like not a lot of people like Watchmen. I quite like
Watchmen. I understand the point. It's very difficult to adapt that, and
maybe you shouldn't adapt it. I thought it was fun. Rauschaut was fun.
Yeah I didn't. I will say, is the Zack Schneider Justice League
much much better than the Weed and Justice League, even though it was very
kind of navel gazing and weighty and way too long for a single movie.
Probably would have worked better as a I guess a very expensive TV series.
But so I'm not seeing Rebel Moon because I'm one of those let's not let
sec Sneider have any successive thing. I'm not saying it because I've heard everyone
says it sucks. So it's not that it sucks. That's the problem is.
It's it's not unwatchable, it's immediately forgettable. Have you seen a Bug's
Life? Have you seen the Seven Samurai? Have have you seen them Minister
seven twice? You've seen this movie? Yeah? Well I don't. I
don't normally mind people repeating like popular themes. That's fine. If anyone out
there has read the first Brandon Firemester book is a pisstake of the Seventh Samurai,
and they even call themselves the better than average six. It's pretty obvious
what I'm doing there. You can have fun with these things, but when
tongue in cheek, this thing takes itself very seriously. Yeah, and when
you're not in on the joke, it hurts. I even think then,
like you want to do seven Samurai in space? Do it? I mean,
somebody could do that? Very cool? Yeah, one we saw it.
Yeah, I guess I'm not in a hurry to see this movie.
If it happens to come on the screen and I'm very drunk and I don't
want to stand up, I'll probably just watch it. But that's not a
good reason to watch a movie. There are better things I could be doing
my time. I could stand up, for example. We know that's That's
kind of the same reason I haven't bothered reading Fourth Wing, even though ninety
percent of the planet has read it. Everybody keep God Scar telling me this.
Yeah, it's just is it good? It keeps showing up in my
all the time. So I don't know. Because I read Pern, The
Dragon Writers of Pern. I read that already, and so I'm not interested
in this book because it sounds too much like the Dragon Writers of Pern,
And I could be fine with her writing her own dragon writer's story. But
when the similarities are sounding so close to something that I already know that,
well, I'm just not interested in reading your new and thrilling take. So
I am already going to start writing Dragon Writers with pems. It's going to
be very nineteen eighties. I don't know what his original book series about a
tool, but I already know what Lie is. It would be a lot
of fucking hairspray, and I will totally read that, Steve very tiny.
Someone's gonna have earrings. There be some guy that dangly lightning bolt eering for
no reason. Yeah, oh yeah yeah. And pink and black. All
the female dragons have to wear pink and black. Absolutely just dragons with huge
eyeliner. Oh, this is gonna be great. Twenty twenty four Dragon Writers
with perms. I'm please tell me you're not joking, because I need you
to write, Oh, illustrated or what the amount of fantastic ideas I've had
on this podcast and immediately forgot because I am drunk. I'm not going to
guarantee this is one of the like Sandy is, We'll do that. If
you give her an idea for something, you will have a video illustration and
a drawing the next day, because we can start with dragon writers with perms
the calendar, because then everybody gets what they want like quicker, and then
you can start fleshing out the backstory. There's not going to be much of
a backstory. It says it all in the title. Really, how did
they become drag writers with firms like what was the great? When did the
gibie? And how did he become a dragon writer? Or how did he
get the perm? I mean there's two I'd like to think super advanced society
and after technology crashes they don't. They can find his old eighties cassettes and
that becomes their new bible. That's they modeled that. The idea they remember
is the eighties and how to write dragons? Yes, what does it mean
that everyone should wang chung tonight? I don't understand. But we're going to
spend the rest of this tense series novel finding out this entire zone that looks
like that black and white schedule to take on me Aha video like oh yeah,
great, well this is already written. I guess if you're a Hollywood
executive listened to this, and I know you are, you cheap, desperate
bastards. Leave this idea alone. It's mine. I'm the one who misheard
Misty. It's my idea. All I all I want is a line in
the in the acknowledgments that that I had some small part to do with this.
If my lawyers have anything to do with it, you'll get much less
than that, Misty. I should. Thanks to Misty mumbling into her microphone,
I can this brilliant idea original that is not what she said? Prove
it? Also, Sandy, where's your flat cat? Everyone else is wearing
one but you so uh hey, but I'm Dutch. Come on. We
tried to get Missy to have a bed for this podcast as well, but
Gibby wanted me to wear the fancy hat. I'll show the world the fancy
hat. I wear it the headphones. Do I need to wear a because
I can grab a hat? You now, you don't need to just make
the rest of us feel a bit more comfortable. I just my hair was
just a mess this morning. Oh fancy hat. Actually, now I feel
intimidated, so it's not made me feel comfortable. Everyone's got a nicer hat
to me now. My sister gave me mine for Christmas. Note, he
gave me half for Christmas. My mom gave me this one for Christmas.
So yeah, I stole this one from my son away. So I thought
you were gifted the top hat, but no, you know, I stole
this from my son. He got this first. I think it was his
birthday because he's just he's obsessed with weird hats. He's got a pilgrim hat
that he wears the school like he's twelve. They're weird. But like,
I keep trying this collection of hats outshine mind. So I've been stealing hiss
a confident hat choice. I appreciate that it is. He's got confidence and
no sense of style, but he's got confidence. Style happens after confidence.
Man, he looks like the art that art person, you know, like
the wad, like the glasses that are kind of yellow and the other art
prints behind them, and they dress all weird and you know nice. Yeah,
I'm that a lot. Yeah, I was aiming. It was aimed
at you on purpose. I'm trying to see if he like, did it
get across the Atlantic and mock you appropriately? So so Sandy, before we
sign off, because we've derailed pretty massively. Before we sign off, tell
us about your work previous and the work to come, just once more.
So my previous work is at this point. Also my biggest chunk of work
is the Singularian. There are four paperbacks. For those who are watching,
I cannot count four with my fingers. Four paperbacks, or they are four
time fully convention there are four paperbacks. Either that or there's two hardcovers because
the first two paperbacks go into the first hardcover and three and four go into
the second hardcover to make this even more complicated. But yeah, so those
are the part of the interactive, fully illustrated sci fi post apocalyptic novels that,
as you can tell, I don't know how to market because it's so
much. But we're we're following the end of humanity and we're trying to save
them through people who have become robots. And I'm really really making this into
a shorter pitch than I maybe should. But there you have it, well,
the end of you. Yeah, all right, So there's that in
the past, because that's a finished series right now, and I'm currently working
on a manuscript called Bonds of Blood and Silver, which is a super high
fantasy. It's got dragons, it's got Griffin's, it's got a lot of
drug addictions, sadly yet perms. Yes, lots of greased hair as well,
by the way, So it's it's very very epic, very hatless.
By the way, there's no hats in there. But yeah, I'm hoping
to get that into a publisher next year. So that that's what has been
cooking and what is currently cooking. That sounds exciting. Thank you. Do
you have a website? I absolutely do. It is actually very simple,
Sandy Butchers dot com. And for those who actually wanna want to take a
look at the whole Hugo nomination, it's just Sandy Butchers dot com. Slash
you go. So I try to make this easier everyone. Yeah, nice
and simple. You hear that list, there's nice and simple something we don't
know how to do. Yeah, it's way less convolue than anything we try
to do. Okay, well, yeah, if you're listening, please do
go check that out. I know why will be. I hope you will
too. And I guess happy New Year to everyone. Gippy, you want
to take us out, not really. You're doing a job, all right,
You're doing an excellent job. Okay, I'll continue taking as out.
Happy New Year to everyone. May your year not contain a mediocre sandwich experience
and that be the only good thing that happened to you. I guess and
Sandy, thank you very much for joining us. It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for having me, Thank you for having me. All Right,
everyone, let's get stuck into twenty twenty four. Goodbye, A happy New
Year, and Dragons brought to you under Creative Commons License, meaning you are
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