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Brenton: Hello and welcome to the Brenton Peck Podcast where we share people's stories and the values that shaped them. Today's guest is David Mark Brown, author, storyteller, and explorer of what he calls the invisible real. It's great to have you on.

David: Yeah, thank you Brenton for having me.

Brenton: Yeah. So, I have to ask, what is the invisible reel?

David: The invisible real sort of the best terminology I've come up with and I'm not actually I don't think I there's probably no way I made that up. Um but just between the stuff I've read and and come across for describing uh reality outside of the material.

Um, so I'm about as far over on the other end of the spectrum, I guess, as you can be from like a materialist who just doesn't acknowledge a spiritual realm at all. Um, I think that the spiritual realm is actually pretty significant, very real. And the stuff done there affects the stuff in the, you know, I guess what we would call the material world and stuff we do in the material world affects the stuff that happens in in the spiritual world. So rather than calling it the spirit realm, you know, I I just started calling it the invisible real.

Brenton: It's more catchy.

David: Yeah, it felt more catchy and maybe easier maybe to not trigger. Like if you call something heaven, well then that, you know, that's loaded with all kinds of um baggage for people depending on, you know, where they're coming from and and their perspectives and worldviews. And if you call something the spirit world or the spirit realm, that has a whole other set of baggage and and ideas that go along with it.

And so just as a as an author and a storyteller, it felt cleaner to just kind of come up with something that wouldn't trigger people.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: So, the invisible reel, I felt like, well, that's descriptive of what I'm talking about and hopefully will be somewhat intuitive, but without triggering certain, you know, camps or tribes of people. So.

Brenton: Yeah, there's I've read a number of authors that work with kind of that realm. Frank Peretti comes to mind. Um, but again, a lot of that more, like you put it, triggering language that can be very off-putting to people that I don't think necessarily has to be there.

David: Yeah. Well, and you know, and that's as someone, you know, trying to write stories and tell stories. I mean, language, right? Language is the the medium that, you know, I play in. And so, just trying to come up with ways that communicate well.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Is a is a constant hobby and activity and thing to to toy around with.

Brenton: Yeah. So, a little bit on your background. How did you get into writing?

David: Oh, yeah. I mean, writing certainly started young. Um, and I I'm not sure why. I mean, I've always felt more comfortable expressing myself in written word than spoken word. I mean, I don't have any problem with speaking in front of people or whatever, but my thoughts don't come out as clearly I find when articulated verbally as as written.

So, I mean, I think even as a little kid, I the story that my mom told me and repeated because she thought it was funny. so that I remember from the earliest was the story I wrote I don't know second grade maybe and turned into a teacher but it was entitled the human bean like I spelled it like a legume cuz I I was I'm still a terrible speller. So, I was trying to write a story about a human being, but it ended up being like a person, bean, legume combo, I guess, in the title, the human being bean. So, she thought that was funny. But anyway, yeah, that's something I've been doing for as long as I can remember.

Brenton: Nice. I I want to get better at writing because I feel like my speaking isn't always the sharpest. My mind runs simultaneously faster and slower than my mouth and I trip over a lot of my words. Um, but I find I'm a little OCD when it comes to writing. I never could journal because I would mess something up and tear out the page and restart 20 times.

David: Yeah, not a problem I've experienced, but I I get it. Yeah.

Brenton: When did you start writing more fiction?

David: Um, so yeah, writing stories, you know, and telling stories all throughout elementary, high school. Um, for a while it was a lot of poetry. Um, and I guess, you know, in university years managed to carve out enough space to take a handful of creative writing courses uh, just while I was getting my major. Um, so that was always something that, you know, in the end I I took maybe 18 credits or something just of uh poetry and fiction writing and um and then uh going to work with Christian Fellowship right after graduation kind of led to the lifestyle that you know perpetuated what I was doing in college because you know I was working with college students.

So staying up late, you not necessarily getting up that early. So even those early staff years on university, um that was my first foray into trying to write non-fiction. So I wrote and published one book with Inner Varsity Press. Um that was my attempt at the time. Um oh now I'm going to forget her name. The purity culture was in full swing.

Brenton: Yep.

David: Uh Elizabeth, I don't remember. This is sad. Sign I'm getting old. Um but I think I Kissed Dating Goodbye was also maybe had just been written possibly. Um uh and before that, you know, was all of the the purity. Uh it was just all the rage. And so my kind of response to that was one of like, well, what about for all the rest of us, you know, like who this just doesn't work, you know, like I refuse to believe that like, well, if I'm not if I don't somehow have the ability to conform to this ideal, then I'm just evil, right?

Like because the other end of the spectrum is like, well, I I guess if I can't stay pure, I'm just a bad person. Um, and you know, having been a university student and then having worked with university students, I mean, it was I wasn't the only one feeling kind of this, you know, burden um that came along with trying to find God and pursue God and be Christlike, but at the same time know that like there's some stuff in me that's not always super Christlike. And beyond that, like why was I told for so many years that my body is such a bad thing?

And so just kind of trying to cope with all of that. My my response was um now oh Tainted Love was what we ended up calling it. So that was yeah my first published book was non-fiction. It was a relationship book that was a response against purity culture saying, "Hey, you know, tainted love, like that's a human thing and like God's a forgiving God, so you'll be all right."

Brenton: Yeah. I saw another book that piqued my interest. I can't remember the name of it, but talking about the martial artist and his journey.

David: Yeah. Empty Hand Revolution. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, that was another um mostly non-fiction. Um you know, we changed uh some of the times and places and people's names. Yeah. To protect the guilty and the innocent.

Um yeah, that was a fun one. uh that was kind of was written essentially as a gift and fundraiser um for Cosmo Zimik local dojo uh instructor and a guy who just has a pretty interesting life and um I was taking both of my kids there at the time and just as I was like kind of listening to him encourage the kids and share you know with parts of his story of you know his protecting you as a small child trying to protect his mother, you know, when um because he's from a tribal area that has, you know, felt that they were never part of India, but India felt differently.

Uh and so troops would routinely be sent in to kind of quell u the natives and and let them know that they needed to be properly subject to the Indian government. Um and at times that, you know, would involve violence toward the locals. And so the story he gave about just kind of standing up to a a soldier, you know, who was trying to knock his mother to the ground um and just learning from like the behavior of his older brothers and and through that experience like well what did it mean, you know, to be a defender of people? What did it mean to be like a champion or like a hero or, you know, a warrior?

And so that was kind of the terminology that for a while, you know, he went off the rails into all this, you know, violent behavior that was that's what most of the world recognizes it means to be a warrior and a trainer of warriors and then eventually looped back around to, you know, like this is not what it's like to be a true warrior at all, but to care for people, you know, to respect people, to honor people. um you know to be strong when you need to be strong but um to also be able to be humble and to be respectful and kind and loving and you know to lift people up and and find you know people that need to be lifted up and so that you know he…

Like I said it's it's been circuitous route for him but that was just a super fun book to write uh went to India with him you know uh traveled around in his region in his neck of the woods at times being escorted. Uh, you know, we we had a fun like black suburban uh urban escort from the hotel to the airport to get out. That was like a total movie moment, you know, where like the city had been shut down because there was an Indian uh ambassador or some secretary of something that was coming into the the same city that we were in currently just to sort of assert their power.

And so, but everything there is run by the tribal group that's in power. So, they were like, "Oh, so you think you're going to come and exert your power?" So, they, you know, instilled martial law and told everyone to stay home. And you know there were armed people on the every street corner and we're like well we need to get to the airport. He's like no problem. You know like my brother knows all these people so make a couple of calls like these two black suburbans pull up in front of the hotel like you get in that one you get in that one you know and we're just like zipping around uh through town to the airport. No traffic out nobody in the way. So I was like okay this is this is an interesting moment.

But uh a lot of moments like that just kind of taking in you know the world that he grew up in and yeah and just kind of sharing getting to write a book about that perspective you know and his share his journey and then just kind of give him the book you know every now and then he'll send me a message and be like hey can you you know order another so many copies and and then I just you know give them to him so that he can sell them as the fundraiser or whatever for, you know, as he travels or promotes the dojo and. So, that's been a fun thing.

Brenton: Yeah, I'm I need to get it and read it. I've been very curious, but.

David: It's an amazing story.

Brenton: Yeah, there's there's a lot of parallels as you were talking. The phrase that comes to mind is better to be a warrior in a farm than a farmer in a war. And that's a common motif. You think like gladiator movies or a lot of these things, they don't want to go back to war. They'd rather be the farmer, but they have the capacity.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: Um, but I'm curious how some of those experiences, because those were two of your non-fiction books. Did that have a big impact on your desire to write fiction books?

David: Yeah, I mean I fiction I think is always the is a more natural medium for me. Um the non-fiction um just pops up from time to time and I'm fine with doing it. Um but again like I almost like speech I don't feel like my brain is always organizing the content in a way that is intuitive for other people. And so it's it's a much more difficult process for me to write non-fiction. You know, the process of going from me through an editor and back to me and through, you know, the editor, you know, is uh more laborious because there's just so many things that they're like, "Okay, I don't know why you're going in this pattern to try to describe this or why are you talking about this before you've talked about that?"

Um, and yeah, so that's just something I've kind of come to recognize about my own processing where storytelling feels more intuitive, I guess, you know, to reveal, you know, because when you're revealing a character, I mean, unless you happen to be starting with the moment they're born, which I'm sure some books do. I haven't, you know, I haven't experimented with that. um you know, you're not it's not linear. You know, you're starting at a spot and you know, jumping into the story and then, you know, you can fill things in as you go.

And you know, that that to me is easier to kind of sus out, you know, of like, well, this is a perfect moment to have this backstory, you know, come in here. And so that I think is more natural to me. Um, but you know, if your fiction isn't driven by real life experiences and with real people and real relationships, you know, then it's obviously you're going to have a hard time connecting um through the fictional stories with your readers.

So, for sure my, you know, my experiences uh and a lot of the, you know, non-fiction that's come out of those experiences, right? It all goes into flavoring the fiction for sure.

Brenton: Yeah, I've tried my hand at writing a few times and I find I get a little stuck mostly. I am very big on context and it's almost like I get stuck in the world building because I need enough context enough surrounding it to build what I'm trying to convey because I don't like if you're writing an autobiography or something. It's it's a lot of factual or um retelling of history. It's not the same need to set the entire context and surroundings.

Brenton: Whereas like I'm wanting to write a fantasy series and in storytelling there's so much symbology and certain ways of saying things that are almost like a standard depending on what time period you're writing in where it's just this is if you're within this trope I guess for lack of a better word if you're within this trope there's a lot of baked in context that you can build on top of so it's how do I write appropriately for the genre that I'm in making use of the tropes without just being a plain trope. It's given me a lot of trouble focusing through that.

David: Well, if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like kind of the difference between trying to write Middle Earth and trying to write the story of Bilbo Baggins. You know, like when you're writing the story of Bilbo Baggins, well, you're going to have to explain some of Middle Earth, but you're not writing a extensive history of Middle Earth.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know, you're writing the story of one hobbit, you know, that lived at one point in one time.

Brenton: Yep.

David: And so for an autobiography or whatever, Yeah. you know, I guess the the rules and restrictions are like straightforward. like I'm writing, you know, about this person and, you know, it might involve me having to explain a little bit about his, you know, tribal background and, you know, the world that he came out of and the world that he went into, but for the most part, you're sticking with this one person.

David: And so, um, generally, right, I think most of fiction, it's it ultimately comes down to the same thing. you you just have to invent the character, which we all know is just going to be an amalgam of all the other people you've met in your life, you know, that you're just you're picking the appropriate pieces from this person and that person and this person and and trying to form like a a fictional individual, but you know, there is no such thing really, you know, I mean, there it's just if you build the character well anyway and they're believable, they're they're just going to be, you know, a combination in in that, you know, that maybe doesn't exist in real life, but um all the different pieces are all just coming from real people and you're just blending them together in maybe a little bit of a unique way.

Brenton: I like that. I the series I'm working on the other challenge I have is I can kind of get what the character is in my mind but I know I want a character journey um character transformation. So then it's like, okay, how do I map the character transformation across the timeline in the right way so I know where I'm at in both.

David: Right. And giving characters permission to change.

Brenton: Yes.

David: Even if it surprises us, I think can be hard as an author. Um, so especially I think if we want to create a very likable character that remains very likable and so um that I think for me an easy cheat on this is I just I write about jerks a lot um and then it's really easy you know for that character to grow and you know to get you know or even just to like maybe they're always a jerk, but to have a reader get to a point to where they understand why this person's a jerk and you know begin to root for a jerk. Um, and you know to show progress even you know.

David: And I'm trying to remember now who this I recently read this idea. Oh, I think it was a book by The Expectation Gap, I think is what it's called, by Cus. Cus is his last name. I'm pretty sure that this is where I'm drawing this from. Um, but just the idea that we as people, we don't really change that much, you know, and the spiritual life. If we have this idea that, you know, we're going to be one total kind of person and then we're going to like meet Jesus and be a different person.

Um, which I do think is a a religious idea, you know, that like I'm going to have this conversion moment and I'm going to be a different person. Um, I think he spends some time in his book though trying to focus on the fact that like, you know, Paul, for example, was still Paul.

Brenton: Yeah

David: Like he had a significant lifealtering moment, but he was still a loud, opinionated, you know, Roman citizen. Uh, I mean, he was still essentially the same person that, you know, he just he flipped, you know, the motivations behind what he was doing or, you know, someone like Peter um, you know, still brash, right? act before you think, you know, his encounter with Jesus didn't change him into suddenly being this thoughtful, you know, pre-planned individual.

Um, and that the, you know, the goal of our life shouldn't be to like become someone else, you know, whether we're uh highly spiritual or not, you know, it shouldn't be like, oh, I've been this person, I need to become a different person. I'm still going to be me.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, so ideally maybe I can, you know, I can be a little better version of me, you know, or what, however people like to phrase or express that. Um, and so that's, you know, when we're thinking of character arc, right? Like it's not that I need to make my character become a totally different character, but you know, how do they grow in a sense to where they're still essentially themselves, but they maybe have become smarter. They've maybe become a little more patient, you know, or they've maybe become, you know, a little more skilled in this area, a little wiser, you know, a little less likely to, you know, um, be prejudice or, you know, to make a certain assumption that they got fooled on a couple of times, but they don't do anymore.

And so, yeah, character growth, I think, can be as simple as just, you know, someone gets burned once and they're not going to make that mistake again. You know, that that's character growth.

Brenton: The end result to me, what comes to mind is almost like a little more dynamic. Like still all the same stuff, but you can apply it a little more in different situations now. You start out kind of almost like it's you have your personality but it's very shallow applies in one situation and by the end your personality is still the same but it's deeper and you can apply it more broadly.

David: Yeah. Yeah. It's enriched deeper. Yeah. Fits across more circumstances. Yeah. I like that. broad more broad.

Brenton: One thing I've read on a couple of your um substacks, you really like bridging gaps. Um what brought you to that?

David: Um yeah, there's been something innate in me from I guess as early as I was able to process this type of thing. of not that I'm I'm not by any means a peacemaker in the sense of like um I can't exist with conflict because I I I very much can live within a world of conflict um but of trying to integrate things that don't that at least people comment commonly insist don't fit together.

Um, very early in my, you know, my my Christian journey, I I recognized that something like the division, for instance, between religion and science made no sense to me whatsoever. Like, it took me a long time to even wrap my head around why this was a contentious thing for people.

Um, so in some senses it's my ability to like integrate disperate things sometimes makes it difficult for me to understand why those things are considered disperate by most people. Um, so I mean my sort of cheeky online uh handle on some social media sites, any of them that I've been on for very long. Um, because this was the one I was using for a long time, is the redneck granola.

I just looked this up the other day and like there's now somebody calling himself the granola redneck, which I thought was kind of offensive. Um he's been doing more he's got more Google juice right now than I do. So he's been you know overtaking some of my uh top 10 listings on Google.

But um yeah, the redneck granola was something I guess I've been using for I don't know 20 years. Um just as growing up in Texas and then going to university in Montana, you know, and I kind of joked with people when I got to school in Missoula, but it wasn't really a joke. like I didn't know what recycling was when I, you know, I dropped out of, you know, growing up on a ranch, um, being a, you know, an actual cowboy, uh, in Texas to school in the middle of the forest, um, in Missoula, which is, you know, it's a granola area.

Um, you know, when I was there, it was known as the Berkeley of the Rockies. And so, like, you know, one of the amusing vignettes, I suppose, I was changing my oil on my car, you know, because you grow up in rural Texas, you change the oil of your own vehicle. So, I mean, I didn't know any different. I'd never been to a Jiffy Lube. I didn't know those things existed. And so, I was in the parking lot of the university changing my oil. Uh, and I just dumped the oil down the drain in the parking lot because I mean we just dumped it on the ground, you know, and you you' spread it on the road, you know, so it' keep the dirt down. I I didn't understand that there was anything that could be considered controversial about this.

Um, and a couple of girls walking by started, you know, upgrading me and yelling at me for destroying the environment. So I had to kind of go look up like, okay, why is this bad? like I had no comprehension of that being a bad thing at all. Uh yeah, and like I I just recycling wasn't a thing in Texas in the early 80s. And so I I didn't know what that meant.

Um but yeah, those my years in Missoula um converted me to an extent. So then I started kind of integrating the things that I enjoyed and still appreciate about my redneck, you know, upbringing with my granola conversion, you know, cuz again, in my mind, it's like, why could these things not live together, you know, like I could be someone who's a manual laborer and that works outside and believes in, you know, kind of the purity of hard work, you know, kind of cleansing you. and um and at the same time be someone that is enlightened to know that I shouldn't dump my motor oil down the storm drain, you know, like uh and that, you know, certain things should be recycled instead of thrown into the back of the truck and allow them to blow out onto the road.

Uh so yeah, that that was kind of the first example I guess I can think of. But you know since then just having lived in urban contexts, having lived in rural contexts, you know, having lived you know among liberals and conservatives and um always just trying to find the convergence and overlap and places where people can come to agreement or at least come to the table.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, um, reading recently, um, a book by Jonathan Roush, I think that's how you would say his name, writer for, uh, The Atlantic and a lot of different publications. Um, he's a materialist. And so, that one has been a challenge for me. It's like, oh man, like where's the overlap, you know? And yet, you know, one of the books he's written recently is about kind of the necessity of Christianity, um in America for the survival of democracy.

Uh even though he, you know, he's like: “I don't believe in God. You know, I certainly don't believe in that Jesus was God”. Um and so that has been an interesting read, but I find myself kind of setting it down sometimes and just like, wow, like this is an outrageously different perspective on the world than the one that I have. um that is leaving me struggling with like okay how do I find the overlap here you know how do I integrate these things but uh it's a fun mental challenge.

Brenton: Yeah I I always like trying to find ways things can come together too um talking on like the need to understand Christianity even if you don't believe it to uphold democracy it's like you don't have to believe it but you have to understand the US was founded on those principles. So you need to understand those to understand what the founders were thinking like you don't have to agree with it but at some level you can bridge that gap by saying I at least have to understand it.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And and it's really interesting. I mean, and he describes the, you know, central message of Christianity, I think, better than a lot of preachers that I've heard. Um, and, you know, he's like I said, I mean, he's a materialist uh that doesn't believe in any of this. And yet like I he parts of I mean he understands quite clearly and expresses very elegantly in other areas you know I think he's still it's like ah come on like how can you how could you believe this how can you believe the only way you can taste and touch and like you know I'd love to have a conversation with him you know just about you've never had some experience that you couldn't explain you know beyond like the stuff you can put in your hand, you know, like that's that's the limit. Like there can't be anything else. That that's just a that's a hard place for me to stay in.

Brenton: That's there was some fun philosophy. I forget who, but um exploring a lot of that and it's like it's more likely that we're in a virtual reality than we are in an actual world that you know I may be the only actual real person, “real”, everyone else is a part of the simulation or you may be and I may be just a figment of the simulation but to say only what you can interact with it's like how do you bridge that gap? How do you answer some of those questions?

David: Yeah. Well, I mean, The Matrix, of course, like blew my mind when the the movie was first uh out that I was doing campus ministry at the time. And I think like one of the students was like, "Oh my gosh, I saw this movie." And so then, you know, I went with him to see the movie and then I was like, "Ah." So, then I grabbed like five other students and we went to see the movie again. It was just like one of those moments that uh cinematically it was just like, okay, I got to go down this rabbit hole a little further.

Brenton: Yep. I love mind benders like that.

David: Yeah, the simulation

Brenton: There's I mean you can say there's similar aspects um of the invisible real that come to mind. Even just thinking like Harry Potter where it's like they keep their world so carefully concealed. You'd never know there's wizards walking among you. But…

David: Yeah, and how many of us are muggles.

Brenton: Yes.

David: You know, in the real world and what defines us as a muggle, you know, what's going on in the space around me right now that I don't have any ability to see whatsoever.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Yeah. realizing you're a muggle or suspecting that you're a muggle, you know, is an interesting place to be.

Brenton: Yeah, I have to I have to say my favorite reading has always been more towards epic fantasy. Um, so some of my favorite series were like The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind or The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. I've had a lot of fun with epic fantasy. I think for me it allows me to think more abstractly. I don't always like being stuck in a box. I want to think outside the box and approach things, but I like that they still walk you through values and moral systems. So, I've always kind of been drawn to those.

Um, your the stories you're writing take another avenue. you like a lot of apocalypse. Um, and you said some of the jerks. So, what has inspired some of your stories and which has been your favorite?

David: Um, well, so along those lines, I guess, um, Cormarmac McCarthy I think is brilliant. um you know something like the road uh would be considered in that I I guess both sense of the of the word possibly apocalyptic in the you know the sense of revealing you know what it would mean in this kind of the biblical I guess definition of an apocalypse and then also kind of obviously the end of a world apocalyptic apocalypse both.

Um, and so yeah, I mean I enjoy playing around with that kind of concept too where you might be revealing in the apocalyptic sense of like here's a revelation. Um, and but putting that in a in a drastically different world. I mean, that's the I mean, the fun thing about the genre, apocalyptic, uh, the modern genre, the fictional genre, not the biblical genre.

Um, is again, like you know, you're drawn to epic fantasy. I think I'm drawn to the whatifs. Um, and so it's, you know, not too big of a stretch to go, you know, a hundred years down the road or some in some cases 15 or 20 years down the road, you know, and just be like, what if this?

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, and it's as simple as, you know, sometimes a nuclear holocaust or sometimes, you know, an EMT, you know, or climate disaster or, you know, a plague that releases some kind of zombie virus into the world, right? I mean, all those things are I'm a fantasy. I'm a I'm a, you know, a a fan of all the different apocalyptic possible endings, you know, because it's fun just to speculate about that and then it just is it's a total cheater, you know, it's like a total cheat code and to like instantly just throwing characters into these extreme situations, right?

And that's a again I think a part of what's really fun about fiction is that you know we just we want to imag.. how would I respond you know if the world came to an end you know or if you know zombies you know this or that or like so I mean it's it's one thing you know to be like well how would I respond in an quite realistic scenario but like it's you know more uh I think interesting and enthralling for a lot of us if we just make that scenario a little more outlandish.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um but then are able to deal with the the same issues. Um you know, one of my favorite characters. Um and this is actually kind of a little bit of an alternate history series, a little bit of weird western series, but there's a character just known as the reefer ranger. Um I mean he has a name but like broadly like you know within the folklore of the world that he exists in he becomes known as the reefer ranger um for a variety of reasons but uh he's he's a jerk. Again I like writing jerks.

Um he's a Texas to begin and he begins his story as a Texas Ranger. Um but he's very black and white. Uh, and you know, he's a Texas Ranger very early on. And so it's like his life, you know, is in takes place in that world where Texas has just sort of become a thing. You know, the Mexican Revolution, you know, is still in recent uh, you know, knowledge. Um and he's put in a position to you know and this is where it becomes quite relevant right to defend the border.

Um and so this is another one of those places where I'm drawn to you know borders in general. um you know where two different things uh we draw a line and we say at this line this thing becomes another thing but we have now these two places kind of colliding in this on this spot that we just decided is now of order.

Um and so for him there's that tension. He's and I mean he's a racist jerk, right? He sees a lot of the problems that are spilling over into his new precious homeland, uh, being a result of Mexicans and spilling over from Mexico. Um, you know, his experience of marijuana is it's something that comes across from Mexico. Um, you know, it's dirty just like the dirty Mexicans that are bringing it, but he's got a very black and white definition of the world.

Um, and there's some of the stories like he's the he's a hero and like like you know I like to for readers to wrestle around with like so you know you all of a sudden you find yourself rooting for this guy and then you back up and you're like no he's a racist jerk. I can't like this guy. But at the same time like he's a badass. You know like he does some things that you're like oh wow cool. Like and you're rooting for him. Oh no no no he's a racial jerk. He's a racist jerk. you can't um

Brenton: Just that tension and back and forth.

David: Yeah. And so playing around with that, but of course, you know, over time being able to play with his character and then have him get to a place where he begins to understand like, you know, I I pit him in a story with a Mexican character um who challenges him to change the way he views, you know, like with any prejudice and you know, like, okay, not all Mexicans are the same.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so then he has to start like you know but ultimately right he doesn't become a person that lives like he he still is a judgmental person.

Brenton: Yep.

David: Um he still has a very strong you know uh driving you know he's never going to go become a chaos character like that's just not his thing. Um, but also he at the same time is forced to enter a world with more gray.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so that's, you know, and so that's what's fun to do as a storyteller, like, okay, I'm going to take this person who's very black and white and I'm going to mess around with him, you know, I'm going to break his world a little bit and just kind of see how he responds. And sometimes it surprises me, you know, like I I don't always know, you know, how he's going to respond. Characters can grow in that way sometimes, too. And it's it's fun.

Brenton: Well, and when you put them in extreme circumstances, which any apocalyptic type of thing would do, your responses can vary even outside of what your normal character would do. You may have a set of values, morals, ethic. you always respond this way, then you're put in a certain situation. All of a sudden, you do something completely opposite.

David: Two things that conflict with each other.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You would normally do this and that and that and that, but they're meeting and now you you got to choose. And so, how how is the character going to choose? And like you were saying, that's fun, I think, for readers because that gives us an opportunity to like put that put that on and try it out and like, oh, okay.

So, like, you know, if there was an outbreak of some deadly retrovirus and like I was left with the decision to like shoot people in order to prevent it from spreading or to just let it spread, would I shoot people, you know, or would I find another way, you know, but you know, like

Brenton: I mean, we walk through a real life of that with covid. Do we lock everyone down? Do we take personal freedoms? Do we allow that? Like how do we respond?

David: Yeah. What do we do? How far are we willing to go? You know, what who are we ultimately, you know, trying to protect and Yeah. You we have to figure out who we are and ask those questions and

Brenton: Play with that tension.

David: Yeah. And just I think the important thing for me has been to understand you know my motivation but then also to understand other people's motivations. Um, and so if I can understand that this person isn't coming from a a completely different opinion as me, from a place of contentiousness or hostility, but they're coming from that place of as much conviction as I'm coming from mine.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Well, then I can sit down and say like, okay, like explain to me, you know, that your your convictions are are different from mine. But, you know, to be able to understand the motivation that and that's, you know, that's the thing where I feel like in the society we live in now, right? this becomes kind of my um I don't know if burden is the right word, but I I've had to I think accept over the last few years that my inclinations qualify me as a prophet.

And that's again that's a dumb it sounds dumb to me still and there's a part of me that's like semantically like I got to come up with a different word for this because it's another one of those trigger words.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know but like thinking about what you know prophets have been throughout the history of humanity. You know, my understanding, my definition is that there are people who are to call people back to the better versions of themselves, you know. So, like if within a cultural uh group, you know, people are straying away from what made that culture what it was. A prophet would be the person that would say, "Look, guys, this isn't us. like we're going down the wrong path here that is ultimately going to lead us to a dark place, you know.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: So, the light's over here and the darkness is over there and you guys are, you know, barreling headlong into the darkness. So, you know, having to admit to myself like, okay, this this is me. This is what I'm trying to do in my fiction. This is what I'm trying to do in my relationships. It's constantly been, you know, and that was, I think, the reason why I was always trying to like figure out how to fit disperate things together and, you know, it's to understand where people are coming from and where they're going, but then at the same time to be like, are you sure? Like, this isn't this doesn't seem smart to me, you know, like this is not a a solid idea. Um, and so where we're at, I feel like in America currently is one of those places, you know, where it's like this this is seems like a bad path to be going down.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And not at all where we were going at one point. Um but if we are to get to a healthier place um you know how do how do we reawaken um things like spiritual integrity and pluralism at the same time. you know, and allow for, you know, freedom of religious expression and not just freedom of my form of religious expression but not yours. Um and all the kinds of you know uh symptoms that I feel like are plaguing the sort of hyperindividualized weird um morphing process that we've undergone.

We've applied some heat recently and so like metamorphosis has happened you know if you're in the world of geology I suppose um and and it's you know we've become something a bit different than we were before the heat was applied uh but yeah I'm not necessarily sure I like it but we are so now what do we do.

Brenton: Hindsight's 2020, but foresight'sYeah, might as well be blind. I I like playing with the tension of cultures. Um, you can delve a lot into the way a person thinks based on the culture that they're within. And I don't just mean culture, like a racial culture, like that applies to any group. You have a work culture, you have a church culture, you have a country culture, you have a family culture. And so if you can kind of delve into the amalgam of what are the cultures that person's in, you can learn a lot about a person.

And you look at Asian cultures compared to US or even Mexican cultures or Hispanic cultures, they are much more I forget the name for it back when I took cultural psych and anthropology, but they are much more um about the family, about the whatever their group is being part of that And the US is much more individualistic.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: Um but it's interesting. I've seen a lot of people from those cultures have more individual personality because they're being respectful of other people and interacting with that culture. And it's this conundrum in my mind where a lot of Americans think if I'm respectful of other people then I'm not being respectful of myself. And you get in that tension where it's sometimes like rules can be freeing, which isn't what you would think. It's that conundrum. How do you bridge that gap? Well, if there's more rules, I have inherently less freedom to do different things. But I like playing with some of the cultural tensions.

David: Yeah. Yeah. Mixing and matching and putting them together in ways that bring out tension. And Yeah. I mean, I think there's some of that tension you're talking about in our society in North America. At this point I feel like is, you know, we're um a liberal society. Um, and by that I, you know, I I think it's liberal and conservative have become a like not super helpful. Um because it's basically just I've started calling the two camps liberal liberal and conservative liberal. You know, just to clarify like we're all liberals, you know, like in the United States, we're all liberals. We just have different ideas about how to accomplish liberalism.

Um but then going back to like what you were talking about, so there's the value of the community and the value of the individual. And so part of liberalism, right, is dealing with this balance of like, so how much am I going to go into the rights and freedoms of the individual? How much does that take away from, you know, the rights of the group or the community?

And overall, right, we've decided since the founding of this country and ever since that we're going to be more on the side of the individual. Those individual freedoms and rights are kind of what defines a liberal um belief system, you know, nation, and that's that's what we are. Um but there's just some that have a conservative way of being liberal and some that have a liberal way of being liberal. Um, but like now it's almost we've gone so far it feels like we're looping, you know, that like these things aren't on a straight line spectrum that they're on a circle somehow.

Brenton: Yep.

David: And so it's we've it's confusing to me that you know you get so liberal that it's almost well it becomes illiberal you know and so there's an identity crisis of um you know this idea that my rights are going to this place that's so far to the extreme that it infringes on everyone else's rights And so then we're no longer liberal. We're only liberal for me and illiberal for everyone else. Like, you know, it comes to this totally unsustainable uh sort of ludicrous reality.

Brenton: Yeah. It's it's a brain tease to think about. It's simultaneously like the further and I hate the terms. I'm not saying left and right as like Republican Democrat just as a line segment. It's like the further you get apart from each other. You have this dynamic. The more left you go, the further you are from the person going right, but at the same time somehow it's looped back in on itself and you're getting closer and closer.

David: Yeah. Yeah, I I'm not a political scientist and I've tried to like study the little uh the loop theory or whatever and I you know it's beyond me still. I haven't spent enough time in in that land. But yeah, we're we're in a crisis state for sure.

Brenton: Yeah. there. Going back to some of the writing, like you really like delving into apocalypse. There was a fantasy series that kind of did post-apocalyptic. Um I believe it was something Shinara. Um but there's a bunch of different books there. So it takes the premise of like hundreds of years ago there was the industrial evolution, all the science that goes away and now you're back to magic and everybody's rebuilding kind of up that.

So it's almost like you're set in Middle Earth like Lord of the Rings or something, but there was an industrial past and there's interesting tensions cuz now you have there's magic users, but there's also science users that appear to be magic users. And I enjoyed some of that tension and dynamic because there's still then war and strife following some of the apocalypse that I think there's interesting crossovers between the apocalypse and the fantasy genres. Both can push a person's character into extreme places.

David: Sure. That's another one of those things that I I I've never understood to be opposing to each other. Magic and science. I'm like, so why do we have to choose? That doesn't make any sense to me. Um, so but you know, that's another thing we can yeah, play around with in fantasy and and science fiction. I mean, I I tend to go down the science fiction path a little bit more than the the epic fantasy path. Um, but all the same concepts.

You know, you go far enough into the future, right? you know, you you're dealing with these societies that like it really just depends on whether they want to label it science or label it magic, but you know, to me it's it's all coming from the same source.

Brenton: Yep. So, what comes to my mind is Star Trek. Um, it doesn't matter what you're looking at. You go far enough back in history, I'm sure guns would look completely like magic back when you only had slings.

David: right?

Brenton: You know, you look at Star Trek, I'm sure someone appearing from a transporter looks completely like magic, but

David: Right

Brenton: you go far enough down, I don't see the difference between science and magic. I don't see like science is just studying and explaining things. You're getting to the how it works. So I don't understand how science is at odds with anything with religion. I've never understood that. You know, science you explore and the whole purpose is to try and disprove so that you get closer and closer to explaining something.

The one difference I see in science and say religion is science has no morals. It's just it is what it is

David: Right

Brenton: Um you get closer and closer to explaining something more accurately, but you're never quite there.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And if if they right stay in their lane, right, you know, then science doesn't try to tell you what to think about it. They're just telling you this is, you know, the perception of what's happening.

Brenton: Yep. Um they can tell you tell you this is what's going to happen if you do this. This is what's going to happen if you do this. It's not going to tell you morally you should do this or you should do this. Just what will happen if you do in each case.

David: Now, if you do this and it goes into someone's chest and they die, then like, you know, it's the realm of something else to say maybe that's a bad thing or

Brenton: Yes.

David: You know, Yeah. But I mean, if you know, I pray for something to happen and it happens, you know, I don't understand why there's a lot of people that don't aren't okay with calling that magic, you know? I mean, that's pretty magical to me, you know, like if I, you know, you know, the stories of Jesus multiplying bread and fish, like that's magic.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, but at the same time, I'm sure that there's like also some scientific explanation for how that magic happened.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Uh maybe I wouldn't be able to duplicate it. Um but, you know, maybe I could. Uh, and so

Brenton: There's there's something that comes to mind. Um, when I was a kid, I got my mom an archaeological study Bible. And so you think of the story of Jericho and it's like it's kind of magical that you can march around a city and the walls just fall.

David: Then you all scream and you blow some trumpets and like was there some scientific, you know, resonance that caused the maybe it's still magical.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know, like that that's why can there not be those two things that coexist?

Brenton: Yep. You you delve into it and there was um I forget the terms for it, but it's stacking resonances that just amplify each other

David: Right

Brenton: Um wave amplification of sound and there's a complete scientific explanation, but it doesn't matter even if you have the explanation. And like it's still pretty magical that hey I can walk around something blow some trumpets and the walls just

David: Yeah. Or another fun one from like kind of the same general territory in scripture, the um story. Oh, now I'm going to forget. Was this uh did this come after the fleece? Um the story of when they surround, you know, first uh they has to separate his troops by seeing which ones drink water from like dogs from the water and which you know which ones drink like, you know, scoop it up to their face. And then um then they have their jars with the torches in them and they all sneak around the camp and line up and then scream and break their jars and it's like this uh you know as a result the Philistine camp is thrown into so much disarray that they all start attacking each other and freaking out and they you know they feel like everybody like is in the camp and the voices echo or I'm I've been it's been a while since I've gone back and read the story, but you know, the last time I was reading it, it just struck me as like so this isn't I guess technically what we would call uh magic, but it's still just like without a single sword blow, you know?

Like it's just this like hey why don't we do this and use jars and like you know scream and you know and have torches and uh it'll work fine right like you know being able to do something that it you know

Brenton: sounds completely absurd

David: Succeeds despite being completely absurd. Um, I think that was Gideon that I think that was a story that came after Gideon's fleece and then led the Anyway, like totally bizarre, totally like who, you know, like coming up with this idea like let's do this um can be yeah that crossover between magic, science, faith, you know,

Um but the point was that God said do this and however that idea was picked up on someone was like okay I think this is what God wants us to do even though it seems stupid and did it and it worked and yeah so yeah that's all stuff that can be played around with you know in in fiction and and storytelling thing.

David: I mean, that's in the latest the project I'm working on now. This is where stuff kind of bridges into that realm of like what makes someone, you know, in the old days we would say crazy, you know, in the new days we say mentally divergent. Um and and what just makes them attuned to something that the rest of us aren't.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so who's to say that the kid that sees what the rest of us would say, oh that's just your imagination? Like so that's the sort of central tenant of this project is like well what makes imagination what makes us tempted to think it's not real right that expression oh it's just your imagination it's intended to say what we're trying to convey is like that's not real and yet imagination just because I imagine something doesn't mean it's not real.

Brenton: Yep.

David: Right? Like I can imagine something quite real, you know? Like I could close my eyes right now and imagine your face and imagine your beard and like just because I'm imagining it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And so the imagination is a tool that we utilize all the time to help us navigate reality.

Brenton: Yep.

David: And so I just became really curious about like why are we always trying to dismiss things as just your imagination, you know, like if someone claims they hear something that other people don't hear, it's not real. You know, someone sees something that other people don't see. Not real. Um it's your imagination. And yet like well my imagination is a gift I think I believe.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: From the God who created me. And so like if I imagine something, what's to say that that's not real? Maybe more real.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Than you know what I'm looking at, you know, or hearing or you know I have these five senses, that most of us accept commonly as you know I guess there are the five senses of the material realm. But um I'm more and more coming of the belief that I have a lot of other senses.

Brenton: Yep.

David: Than just those five. Um and I don't even know how to use most of them.

Brenton: I don't think any of us do.

David: But it's a fun it's a fun ride, you know, like I I've read some things to where it's like, okay, this person I genuinely think has use of another sense that I don't. And that's kind of cool, you know, and in a lot of ways I'm starting to, you know, believe or understand that prayer is an ability to use other senses. um and beyond the five that can you know sense the material realm.

So yeah, this project I'm working on now just deals with a kid that most people would call divergent, you know, mentally divergent on, you know, I I don't use the term terminology in the book anywhere of autism, but I mean I think most people would recognize him probably as being autistic in some way or another.

Um, and he experiences people's dissonance between what they are and what they wish they were in the form of almost like a mental static. And so being around other people is painful for him. Um, except he begins to discover that there's a town drunk that he doesn't mind being around because he's drunk most of the time. So there's very little static there.

Um, and so he he starts to find certain individuals that he can tolerate being around more than others. And then, you know, the the whole stick of the story is that he eventually meets this one kind of traveling hobo, this homeless guy that's kind of a castoff from a work camp that was there on the border wall. Um, that doesn't have any static, no static at all. And so this kid is just like automatically right drawn in.

And in addition to the static, like the kid is beginning to understand like he sees these things that he calls the builders um that he learns has kind of been in the family. you know, his grandfather saw these things in Vietnam and it eventually drove him crazy. Um, but they were destroyers. They were not builders.

Um, and and so I play around some essentially with the idea that these are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. You know, they're the four angels of the four points of the compass. Um, but it all really just depends on what you're feeding into them as to what you're seeing out of them. And so the kid doesn't have any understanding of war.

You know, he has grown up in a peaceful setting and to him they're builders. Um, but to people that have come out of tremendous violence and destruction, um, the same things that we're building are tearing everything down. And so wrestling around again with like so are they just taking orders from us?

Like I mean if we were to understand these things as angels, do angels, you know, humans seem to have some sort of autonomy and assignment that angels don't? Um you know are humans given creativity in a way that some other beings aren't? You know when I read Genesis I read that the thing that makes us us is creativity. You know the image of God that was placed in us right was the ability to share in this kind of creative endeavor with the creator. You know like we're supposed to be partnering.

We're supposed to be taking you know that's how I understand the role that we were given. We're to be these creative partners. And yet, what are these other beings then? If you know, if we have a worldview that believes in other sorts of divine entities that aren't people, um what differentiates us from them?

And so, you know, I enjoy playing around with this idea that, well, perhaps they're just taking orders from us. And if our thoughts are nothing but chaos, well, they become chaotic. If our thoughts are ordered and constructive and extending creation, uh then perhaps that's they become tools of creation.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, that empower us and our purpose. And you know, this is admittently, you know, I'm I'm taking things that I feel like are a little easier to know and understand from uh you know, my uh religious cultural upbringing and then applying, you know, fictional speculation.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And to just like, okay, you know, I believe that there there are these beings and they're represented in different ways throughout scripture. sometimes really gnarly, right? Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, you know, not not super cool, right? You know, death and destruction and uh infirmity and disease and but are they essentially still just the same beings just sent on a different purpose? How do I reconcile all of that? So yeah, that's, you know, I've been enjoying recently playing with that.

Brenton: That's a fun way to play around. I think Frank Peretti plays on that a little bit. Um, where the angels only have as much power as the people praying. If nobody's praying, they don't have the power to protect you. Um, it's not quite to the same level where it's like one being. Is it acting right like as an angel or acting as a demon?

David: My prayers will give you violence versus my prayers will give you love and and creation. Creation or destruction.

Brenton: Yeah. But I I enjoyed I haven't read those since I was a kid.

David: Yeah, I did read some of Peretti's stuff, but yeah, that was in like the late 80s. Um, so yeah, I haven't read any of that since then. The Thief in the Night. Is that or am I in the wrong series?

Brenton: I don't know. The ones I remember were This Present Darkness.

David: Oh, this Present Darkness.

Brenton: Yeah. Piercing the Darkness. The Oath.

David: Yeah. the switchblade and whatever. I think that was not Peretti. The cross and the switchblade. Those I think were actually before Pretty. I'm going to forget the name of the author. But yeah, that I very much grew up Yeah. steeped in that that world. That was kind of my my conversion moment. Um was traumatic for me. Uh what was the there's I think actually yeah so the it's a crossing the switch. Am I thinking of the name of that movie series?

There was a movie um and I was probably like six. I have no idea why my parents thought this would be a good idea for me. The Thief in the Night. Yeah, I think that's the name of the movie. But it's the classic like um Oh, uh along the lines of the Left Behind series and all that stuff.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um now I'm I'm forgetting the theological dispensationalism. Yeah. All this kind of very common in recent history dispensationalist take on on the end times. But yeah, the movie was all, you know, guillotines and the beast and 666 and everyone getting, you know, like the opening scene is that classic scene of, you know, everyone being like all the good people being raptured, you know, and cars like driving off the road because no one was driving them anymore. And like the electric razor in the sink, you know, because the person that was using it to shave got raptured. And, you know, I saw that movie and I as was like a six-year-old. I was like, I don't want to be left behind. Oh, please, God.

And then like three weeks later or a month later, the funniest like this is hilarious story, but um of course Sunday morning getting ready for church. And in my parents' bedroom had a walk-in like had a you know it was a master suite, so it had like a bathroom attached to it and a walk walk-in closet attached to it. Um, and for whatever reason, my dad had he had gone into the bathroom and started shaving. And I don't know why he didn't turn the razor off. He has an electric razor. Left it sitting on the counter on and went into the closet to get something.

And so this is after I've been, you know, totally traumatized by this movie. And I just I bop in to ask some question. And I get into the bathroom and the razor is like sitting there on just and I'm like, "Oh god, no." You know, like my dad's been raptured and I've been left behind. Like I start screaming and like he comes back in from the other, you know, the the closet comes back around into the bathroom and like bumps into me as I'm trying to run out. I'm screaming and crying and he's like, "What in God's name?"

You know, and like like he's still there. I'm like huh huh huh, you know, I just ran off. But like I that was like one of my my early memories of the immediate aftermath of my conversion story. Still just this panic that I'm going to be left behind. I'm not good enough.

So, I don't know. Maybe not the best uh execution for uh trying to maybe wasn't the best like evangelistic idea there. um to terrify people into the kingdom by making them think they're going to be left behind. But yeah, that's the era that I come out of.

Brenton: Yep. I I don't think I ever watched that one, but I do remember reading both the adult series and the children's series of Left Behind cuz there I mean we didn't read a lot of secular stuff. Mom was pretty strict about what we were allowed to read, but yeah, the Left Behind series, I remember many a time having different thoughts or scares like that.

David: I read the first couple. I think I was old enough by that time to be like, "Yeah, these are entertaining stories, but like this is not how I think it's going to go down."

Brenton: Yeah

David: I was already starting to ferment or f for ferment forment um some of my own thoughts about that.

Brenton: So there was another series that took a very weird turn for me. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was. Um but it took the approach that angels were real and they did have relations with humans. And that's how we ended with the Nephilim. And what the Nephilim really were were the giants. So Goliath was a descendant of one of the giants.

David: Mhm. Um which I think is a pretty commonly Yeah. held understanding.

Brenton: But it took another thing where it's we've we're it took the approach that the rapture isn't going to happen as we think of it like in the left behind sense that prophecy is always told as something that's happened but something that's going to happen again. It's kind of like a circle that kind of fulfills. Um, and so it talks about like Nero Caesar, um, if you look at the Hebraic numbering came out to 666 and different concepts like that. And it blended a lot of this stuff in a really interesting way. And I've always wanted to go back and see if I can figure out what that series was and reread it, but it was written in a more fantasy sense.

David: Yeah. No, I'm not familiar with that specific series, but some of those concepts. Yeah, for sure.

Brenton: Yeah. So, going back to some of the stuff you're writing or have written, um, do you have many different series just playing through your mind of things that you want to write or is it all kind of condensed into a singular world that you focus on as you write?

David: Um, well, I have a bad habit of trying to fit a whole bunch of stuff into one world. I think maybe I've broken myself with that habit now. But that for a long while was my temptation and I'd have a new story idea and I'd be like, "Oh, how can I fit this in the same world as this other thing?" Like, I'll just put it back in time a little bit or I'll, you know, move it to this this other planet or whatever and it'll be fine. Um, but I think I'm hopefully I'm getting out of that.

Sometimes the story I think just needs to be its own thing. Um, I know commercially there's that temptation to like, oh, I can make this all connected. Um, then I'll have a head start on trying to sell more copies of it. But yeah, I think there's I mean I've been sort of on the on the bench for a while. Um you know, I've been working on one project actively and with a a few others on a on the back burner.

Um, but typically, and over the next few years, maybe I'll I'll get back into this um pattern where I would have at least two or three different worlds uh sort of on the on the stove at least, you know, to where there'd be one that I'm working on as far as like actively writing a rough draft and then maybe another one that's cooling on the window sill a little bit.

And then another one that is just uh you know in the sort of mixing the pot mode where occasionally an idea will come to me and I'll make some notes or I'll look something up and write some things down, put some stuff in my kind of like file folder um and let those brew long enough to where

Brenton: Kind of the mixing pot of ideas.

David: Yeah. And if it feels if at some point stuff starts boiling over where I'm like, "Okay, this I just got to start this next." Um, and then I'll, you know, kind of actively start writing on it and I'll put the other one on the sill for a little while to cool and then, you know, take turns coming back to it and then doing a rewrite there and while actively working on and that's going to how I like to be able to do it. That way it's it stays interesting for me. You know, one might be dystopian and one might be, you know, space opera or, you know, space marines or, you know, so I can kind of jump back and forth.

Um, recently it's been getting more back to that boiling over point with just multiple ideas, you know, because I I I haven't done a ton of writing for the last four or five years. And so, yeah, I mean, now there's I just I have so many ideas that I want to write next. Um, it's going to it's an active competition between them to to kind of the one project I'm on now I'm

I'm entering it's been cooling a little bit and I'm entering into kind of this third, fourth, fifth rewrite phase um to where I don't know within the next few months it could potentially be ready to go. And so I have started like actively um having trials, you know, for the others like convince me which of you should be next. Um but yeah, there's nobody has been declared the winner yet.

Brenton: How do you test them out against each other?

David: They just have to make their pitch, you know, which which one can uh appeal to me the most. I think the finalist right now would be a an artificial intelligence near future world. Um, and then that one, you know, where the the AI, it's basically a story about like would be reflecting on an AI is really only who teaches it.

And so the idea would be like, are we okay with the people that are training our ais right now? like ah it's like this doesn't seem great to me, you know, like an AI is really only going to be like what it learns and who's teaching it what to learn. So should we maybe be more concerned about who's training the AIs?

Um so it's that kind of idea, you know, of like an AI that um is sort of intentionally by its creator made to go to be set free. um and to learn, but he thinks he's given it parameters to keep it safe and yet allow it to grow in a you know what he is hoping is an ideal way.

Um, that one's competing closely with a kind of a quantum computing near future science fiction story where the main character decides to mix mycilial networks with quantum computing. So, that one's going to require a lot more research for me because those are both areas that I don't have enough knowledge on to make something at all feasible. But I'm interested.

And so how could like a natural um biological network um by chance enhance and maybe correct some of the failings in our current, you know, attempts at quantum computing. And in that one, I think there's actually going to be the birth of like a fungal sentient race of beings that are like fungus but aware. Um, that one might be geared toward maybe even a younger adult audience. I'm not sure.

But then the third competitor would be a post-apocalyptic. Well, so the the some of the characters would be in the post-apocalypse and some of them would be in the pre-apocalypse and both would be young adults. Um but have found through kind of some kind of quantum entanglement uh a thin space that allows the communication a limited very limited communication back and forth from the future to the past and the past to the future.

And I think the form the communication is going to take is Pokemon cards just because that's where my kids my you know my oldest son is like totally into the TCG right now. Pokemon game. Um, so I'm toying around with the idea of like a kid in the future finding this bombed out remains of like a essentially a wealthy mansion where a guy had his, you know, little uh climate sealed chamber with some wine bottles and his Pokemon card collection and everything.

So, the kid finds these cards and he's super fascinated with them, but um starts making his own and adding things into them. And then these kids in the past start finding these hidden weird Easter egg Pokemon cards that are like not anything like anything else. And they think it's coming from Pokemon. But, you know, in the end, they're going to find out that like these kids in the future are making them.

And then, you know, I'll have the crazy uncle or whatever from the future that's been studying climate trends and, you know, it's like, oh, we need to like send back like these key moments when things went wrong, you know, and and climate disaster like encode them into the cards and help them find these coordinates and change this thing. So, it'll be that kind of deal maybe where the kids in the past are able to like change small things that then, you know, make big uh repercussions in the future. Yeah, those three are all competing right now.

Brenton: Nice. I have to say the first two stood out the strongest to me. Um I'm a programmer, so AI kind of jumps out at me as fun.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: But then I have to say the second one might be the “fungus” one to use a bad button.

David: Yeah. Yeah. It's I'm curious about it. I've just I've been reading another one of the books that I'm reading through haven't quite finished is uh called I think the the title of it is The Mother Tree.

Um but it's that you know study of uh mycelial networks and just sort of like what science is just now learning in a lot of ways that like so many different species of widely different you know plants are actually networked to each other you know under the ground through the soil through these fungal connections you know and they're sharing different resources and you know nutrients and stuff back and forth with each other in ways that we like you know 50 years ago were completely clueless about.

So I find that really interesting and of course just the whole idea of connectedness and creation. Um, and again that idea of like something that would have seemed like magic 60, 70 years ago, you know, like there's no way that this mushroom and that tree or this tree and that tree or this plant and that whatever like are sharing nutrients with each other. That's, you know, hogwash. Um but now we're finding is a scientific explanation or we don't have an explanation but we you know we're we're deducing that like it's happening. We don't necessarily know how uh or why but it's happening.

And so like that's another one of those areas where you know fungus and then I mean quantum I mean mechanics and stuff like is another one of those areas that's like okay this is magic like are you joking with me like this is definitely magic. Um you know we we don't have any understanding of how this is working at all. Uh but it's pretty crazy.

Brenton: Yeah it two things come to mind. one, the movie Avatar, of course, like that's full of the networks. But then talking about like quantum being magic, it's been a law of science for forever. You can't travel faster than the speed of light. But you look at quantum entanglement and it's like instantaneous over any distance.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: You look at the speed of gravity travels faster than light you see effects.

David: Yeah

Brenton: It's just it's very interesting.

David: I mean, the Marvel universe right now is pretty much the like apex of my knowledge of quantum mechanics. So, I you know, my understanding is is pretty uh elementary. I can't go much further past like Ant-Man and Doctor Strange at the moment, but uh it is something that I find extremely interesting um and something really fun to to play in and play with.

Brenton: Well, an interesting thing just came to my mind. You were talking about is our imagination real? But then a fact of quantum physics, you look at like wave particle duality and it's like it's a wave. It doesn't exist at any one spot until it's observed and then it ceases to be a wave. Now it's just here. Like you have this wave particle duality. So then I'm thinking of like is anything around us. You go back to if a tree falls in the forest but it wasn't heard, was it real? You go back to then the imagination.

I'm imagining some sort of character that's like whatever they imagine then comes into reality because then they're linked in in some way quantumly that they're now observing something that wasn't there and so it just becomes real

David: Right. If I pray something into existence, isn't that like didn't I just imagine something into reality? You know, like I've I mean, I know people who have prayed people back to life who were dead. Like, how's that not magic? You know, like you're taking something that was not alive and reanimating it.

Like, I don't know the difference between prayer and imagination at the moment. like I I I don't know how to define those as separate entities. So, I guess I don't need to. I'm just going to I'm going to I'm a, you know, I'm a fiction author, so I don't have to understand these things.

Brenton: Just have fun with it.

David: But I can play around with like, well, what if these things were the same thing? You know, like, what would that do to you? What would that mean? What would that do to me? Um, yeah.

Brenton: That's a lot of fun. One of those I know you're working on possibly a game. Um, does that lead you toward writing more on one of them or make you want to do one on one but then write on the other?

David: Yeah, I mean the the fungal fictional universe has stemmed out of Yeah. the game concept that my youngest son and I have been working on for I think we decided seven years um seven or eight years. We've been toying around um with this game concept which has taken several different forms.

But yeah, the backstory that we've slowly kind of developed for it has been this fungal world. And so, yeah, that's, you know, that's a a motivator. That's uh a point on on that world's scoreboard, you know, for doing that one cuz it would be fun, you know, my son could be a little bit more involved in it. Um, as well, coming up with character names and concept names and ideas. I bounce things off of him some, too. you know,

Where if you're inventing not only like an entire fictional species, but one that like, you know, I'm having a hard time even imagining, you know, like, so you're fungal but sentient. Okay. You know, small, but we're thinking still not microscopic. So but small but like yeah figuring out like what do these speed you know how do they perceive the world um you know what's their orientation to the world even uh you know playing around with the idea right now that they are actually upside down to us and that the threshold between um air and ground is the spot where that perspective switches.

So if you're standing on the ground, you know, I would be standing on, you know, their head would be what I would consider be down and, you know, to them my head would be down. And so if they fall from a blade of grass, they're going to fall into oblivion, you know. So for them, up is going further into the dirt and down would be this chasm. You know, that to me is the world I live in.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so playing with stuff like that, just like, okay, let's build out this world. How do they move around? What do they move in? You know, what do they look like? Uh, so far we've just we've arrived that they're kind of like a combination between a nerd like the candy nerds, these little globular like things. Um, but have hands and fingers of some sort, dexterity. Um, but yeah, it's a it's been a bit of a weird process to like creating like this entirely sometimes hard to fathom fictional species.

Brenton: Since you were talking about Pokemon, what comes to mind is Ditto.

David: Yeah. Yeah. This little globular brrroh.

Brenton: I know you have a different style of writing than I had encountered before on serals. Um, how do you write in that format? Cuz I'm only familiar with you don't publish until you have a final finished product. Um, how did you come to serals and it, if I remember right, you had a business that you had started around that?

David: Yeah, serial fiction. um it's had its ups and downs. Um you know that and there's a bit of a moment going on for it now. I mean this hasn't been historically the only time we've done serial fiction. I think probably the most famous example would be something like uh Dickens.

Um you know and there were there was a a time like the Christmas Carol was released as serial fiction. um in the newspaper. And so we've had different media uh mediums in the past that have been a little bit more conducive to things to be released serially. Uh the Green Mile was released serially. Um there's been a few examples. Um and there have been different experiments over the last 15 years.

Um you know I mean Amazon had its own uh serial platform that has not succeeded and most of these experiments um haven't succeeded as well as I had kind of you know if you would have asked me like eight years ago I'd have been like oh yeah man this is going to blow up.

Um um the idea is just based on the way that we like to consume television, you know, and then television, right, is is the dominating media of our age. And yeah, it's sort of shifted a little bit to streaming uh content, but it's still essentially, you know, television uh and that kind of visual video content has been the transition from the media and the age of the book. And so we've entered now a new age.

And you know, I mean, this uh postman, right, the amusing ourselves to death, you know, was talking about this in the 80s and I mean, he was way ahead of his time. I think it took most of us 20 more years to really realize what was going on. Um, but yeah, we've we've switched to this kind of visual medium and the kind of comfortable version of storytelling that emerged as we practiced that expression was the serial.

Um, you know, we have seasons, we have shows that, you know, are released, um, a show at a time and a season at a time. Um, and and so it's it's really serial fiction is just based around uh, a lot of the aspects of how television, you know, the best television that we experience now, uh, series are are composed. And I find it really fun uh more so than writing like a series of you know 300 page long books.

Um, you know, I can engage in a a serial world where each uh story, each episodic story is uh, you know, maybe 10,000 words or something uh that the typical reader could read in 30 minutes or 40 minutes. kind of again that same span of attention, you know, to where in this particular episode uh you know, it's structured um similarly. You know, that might be dominated by one character's backstory and the next episode might go into a different character's backstory.

Or, you know, if it's um kind of a procedural style, you know, like CSI or something, right? Then you know you have an episode that's one case that's you know then kind of resolved and there's another case that opens and of course arcing through you know many episodes you would have uh you know the story arc of the main character's background you know that continually shows up or a romantic relationship that pops up in every episode.

And so whether you're writing something that would be more like Lost or you know some of these uh television shows that are um flashing all around um maybe not necessarily linear or you've got a procedural you know that's something more like CSI um you know or you've got one that's very much just a following you know a kind of linear story arc Um but you you know you you have to tune into each episode or you're going to miss a piece. Um you know the fiction same as television. It can take any of those different styles.

Um but yeah that's the you if you put six, seven, eight, ten, you know 10,000 word episodes together and you've got a season. So, some of it is just using different terminology. Instead of calling a book series, you're calling it a season. But mainly it's just you're structuring them uh shorter and and then using those kind of the story arcs uh that we've been perfecting in television, you know, of um having kind of a overarching arch for the entire series, an arch that might be within a season and then you know individual arches for each episode.

But the idea would be that there would need to be some sort of resolution uh at the end of an episode, even if it's a cliffhanger episode, like you're going to bring something to resolution, even if it's just that they discovered that the bad guy they just killed was working for another bad guy, you know, like they they'll be, you know, or they they unlocked the room that they were trying to get in just to find that it wasn't the room that they were actually, you the thing they were looking for wasn't there. Um

Brenton: Each thing is more of its own standalone while progressing the whole

David: Yeah. So, we're often like a chapter, you know, we wouldn't define as something that has some sort of resolution necessarily at the end of it.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um, sometimes it could be that they're just changing location to another location and we just make a chapter break. um where an end of an episode would be a little bit more intentional of like, okay, I've been intentionally trying to weave some sort of narrative arc here, you know, where there's a beginning and a middle and an end and I'm being intentional and mindful. Um and it, you know, it might be a um a teaser, you know, or a cliffhanger, but you know, I'm being very intentional about where I'm drawing the end of this episode. um as opposed to, you know, an eight-page chapter that's just kind of like, well, he went to bed, so I'll just start the next chapter in the morning, you know, or whatever.

Um, so a little bit of different mentality as far as the structure and then, you know, we were dabbling around with the idea that you could write these episodes and publish them before you're done with the series or the season even. And so you're, you know, getting reader feedback on like what should happen next and stuff like that, but that, you know, that's not implicit in serial fiction. You could finish the entire thing and then release it serially. You don't have to be, you know, writing it and releasing it as you go. Um, although I enjoy doing that sometimes, too.

Brenton: I think I would struggle doing that as an author. I I have personally like the bigger the book, the more I've enjoyed it. Like I want I want to completely immerse myself in it. And I would have a hard time I think with the episodic, it's like how do you keep everything consistent? How do you not have random episodes that just break something a little? Like I want internal cohesion. I think that's going to be one of my struggles when I go to write is I'm not going to want to publish any one book until I finished the series so that I can go back and make sure everything plays with each other.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: Which I know is also not super realistic.

David: It's hard. It's a give and take either way because I've definitely published a series and then I, you know, I get to publishing book five and I I go back and look at book one and I'm just like like if I were to publish this now it would be so much better, you know, and so there is that tension of like, well, sometimes you just got to publish and you just got to go, but at the same time like h man like I, you know, I would have done this different if I were doing it now.

Brenton: Yep. There's two things that come to mind. One is the phrase like perfection is the enemy of progress. At some point, you just got to go. And that goes to the parietal distribution. It's like every time you publish, you're that much more likely to publish more. And the expertise will get there, but you got to take that first step.

David: Yeah. Yeah. That's where I I do fall now. Like if someone's asking me for this advice, then I'm like, well, if you have a baby, don't start with the baby, you know? Like if you have something that you just really like find something else, you know, find a oneoff or come up with a different series and, you know, at least get in, you know, more practice before you decide to do the one big thing that you, you know, have been building toward for 20 years or whatever.

Because you definitely Yeah, that that would be more painful, you know, to get three, four books into that series and be like, "Okay, I gotta just start over.”

Brenton: My brainchild is ruined.

David: Yeah. Um, so yeah, maybe a compromise there would be like, "Well, you got to start somewhere, but just start with something that is maybe not that thing that you've been trying to envision for half your life."

Brenton: I'll have to take that advice because what I had started writing on has actually been something I've been toying with for I don't know in different forms like the final version I have kind of in my mind right now has only been around maybe two years but I've been playing around with this idea for maybe as much as 10 or 15 years in some different fashion.

David: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you're doing this at least and that I mean that that's experience, too.

Brenton: That was part of the idea of the show, too. Wasn't just I want to hear other people's stories, but also I'm very much of the opinion. reading and speaking to others are how you sharpen your ability to think, how I can test my ideas out or um learn to think mo more coherently or from different angles.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: So part of this is actually to sharpen myself as a speaker, as a thinker, as a writer in every fashion. So it was like, okay, put my let's get that first step that first episode out. I had the idea and within a month, it's from having the idea of doing the podcast to recording the first episode was just under a month.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: And or right at a month, I forget the exact dates. I think it was July 10th I had the idea for it and I forget when I

David: Yeah.

Brenton: recorded the first episode.

David: Yeah. I mean, it's evidence that we're never truly starting from ground zero, you know? Like, I don't believe in the blank page, you know? I mean, I And I mean, I know, yeah. Okay. Like, staring at a blank page might be harder than if there was something written there that you were picking up on. But I I don't know. To me that's not made sense, you know, because you're never starting from a blank page.

like you know our experiences, our conversations, you know the the things that we've written in the past, spoken in the past, stories that we've told and that been have been told to us, you know, I mean that's it's all and so in the in the sense that it's all there and we're just kind of plucking it out and putting it on the page.

David: And so maybe there's that sense of just like uh like you were saying, the apprehension of starting in the wrong place prevents us from starting. Um but yeah, I guess I like to like the page isn't blank. Um and so it doesn't really matter. I can just start throwing stuff onto it and uh then I can go back and decide later for this particular story where it needs to start you know but yeah the one story ends and you know another story has already begun.

It's just a matter and that's I mean that's why writing in series is a thing you know because even when we end one story like the moment we stop typing we know there's another story there that we've already started that we could tell if we want to or you know like cuz yeah there's it's never a a total a total ending.

Brenton: There's always infinite ways you can take stuff. You can add side stories for different characters. You can do what was the history before this? What happened after? Like you can take it in 20 different directions.

David: Yeah. I think series end just ultimately because at some point the author is just tired like I don't want to write this anymore so it's over. But

Brenton: I've been a little fascinated with some authors that decide before they start this is exactly how many books this series is going to be. Like Brandon Sanderson, I believe said the Stormlight Archive will be 10 books. And in my mind, it's like what if you get to the end and you haven't captured everything you wanted? Do you just write another? Or what if you get to book eight and it's like everything I had for this I've gotten down. Now how do I

David: Right

Brenton: fill out two books of fluff make my way through two more books.

David: Yeah. I mean I don't know but um I don't you know I don't know if I would be able to plan thoroughly enough to pull that off. I I know some people definitely could. uh they would be able to sort of at least have a enough of a map in their mind to know like I know what these 10 books are going to be and like this is where it's going to end.

Brenton: I challenged myself to do that a bit with the series I was mentioning I want to write. It's like okay let's say I want to do 10 books. I want to make them I don't know 400,000 words like Sanderson did with his on average per book. So let me the only way I know to do this is let me first write at a very high level what's my beginning what's my end now let's add details in the middle of that to make each have that much whether it's adding more world building adding instead of having one main character you go the larger one like Robert Jordan did and you have more 10 to 20 main characters or that was the only way I could think to even approach that. And I know I know there's no one approach to anything, but that was the only way I could comprehend how could I do this if I wanted to do that.

David: Yeah, I'm a little too discovery writing based. That would be the planning would be uh painful for me.

I mean, I I guess I'm not a complete pantser in the sense, you know, flying by my pants. Um, that I won't have some idea, but I I am a little bit more toward that exploratory side of, you know, being what people would call a discovery based writer where I don't know, I never know everything. And some stories I know how I want it to end. I don't know how I'm going to get there. Some I have a sense of where I want to begin, but I'm not sure where I want to end. You know, some I just have a character that's very vivid to me. Um, and that's where it starts.

And, um, I do like another one of my heroes is Jos Weeden. Um, as far as a storyteller and uh I the things that I value and appreciate about his storytelling is the ability to kill characters and like you just I value anyway the knowing when to kill a character and being okay with killing a a main character. Um cuz you know I mean if you kill a tertiary character that nobody cares about that's not that doesn't deal that doesn't do anything you know.

Um and I I've definitely I mean the the reefer ranger was one that like almost broke my heart cuz like I was writing in the middle of a story and like he was just killed like in front of me. Like I I mean I wrote it really before I knew what I was writing. Like he just like you know he was on a be riding his horse and like just from a you know like the bullet goes through him and he falls off his horse and then hears the repercussions you know sound of the bullet like comes from far enough away that he's like I'm not even I don't even know who just killed me, you know?

And so like I kind of got up from the keyboard and was like, you know, what the bleep, you know, like I just killed my favorite character. Like I, you know, I I I couldn't I sat with it and like there was a part of me that was like, okay, I just killed my favorite character and I was like, no, I got to write my way out of this. Like can't do it. I couldn't do it. like not not now, not him.

David: And so, you know, I I wrote him I wrote him back to life that, you know, he he ultimately it was a close call, but you know, um but yeah, that's part of I guess discovery writing is like sometimes things just happen. Um, and I I value the ability to be like, "Okay, man, I've had some characters I really enjoyed, you know, building them and developing them, but I just, you know, like this is just the time when they got to go, uh, and just saying goodbye to them and knowing that I I, you know, I can come up with another one. It's fine." Um, but

Brenton: I I don't know that I could kill my main characters off. I think I'm way too early in learning to write. There's so much I have to have a general big picture and so I invest so much into every aspect. It's like I I wouldn't know where to where to start to build a new character. Like you said, the page isn't empty but or blank. But that's about how I would feel. It's completely starting from scratch. Like I wouldn't even know where to start.

David: Yeah. Well, it's like a funeral, you know? It's just it's not it's not comfortable. I mean, it's sad. I mean, I it'd be interesting to ask uh Weeden like Wash I think would probably be the most famous example for anyone that's a Firefly, you know, a brown coat fan. Um you know, the pilot beloved one of the main characters and he just kills him off and you know, you're just like what? You know, it's but done so well like where it just it takes you right up to the line to where you're like, I'm done with this and then like five minutes later, no, I'm not done with this, you know?

But like that that rage of like I can't believe this character is dead. Um, but yeah, it's that I value that fine line, you know, of being able to like number one create a character that a reader is going to care a lot about and then number two be willing to like kill them.

Brenton: I feel like in some ways that is easier in the serials than some of the long form deeper books. What comes to mind is back to the TV shows like you mentioned where it just becomes a necessity. this actor says, "Yeah, I'm not coming back next season." You're going to have to write your way out of it. But

David: Well, you know, like if you're, you know, read and you're writing The Hobbit or something like you can't kill Bilbo, like that destroys the story. Um, but you know, there can be important characters along the way, you know, that ones that you become really attached to.

Brenton: I think Tolken would also challenge that cuz he killed Gandalf off.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: Just to bring him back.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: But yeah, I had another angle that my mind was going with that and it's just gone. Oh, the serials. I was going back to like TV. It'd be like in my mind it would be like on house killing house off. Like how do you have the TV show House without House?

David: Yeah. No, you wouldn't kill him. But I mean a another TV show that I thought did this pretty well was 24. I mean it's an old one. Mhm. Um but they were ruthless you know like you like the main department of like the head guy you know I mean of course not um uh Jack uh not the main main guy but like his partner.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know, or like his supervisor, people that you thought were definitely in the show for a while, you know, and I mean, it's been so long since I've seen the show, but there was the like nerdy coder guy and there's the episode where like the I mean, the office like this contained sealed office like somehow like someone gasses them all out and they're all locked in and you're like watching like two of like your favorite I think it was Chloe and like trying to remember their names and like they just die, you know, uh gassed to death and and the whole time you're thinking, okay, like someone's going to bust it open. They're going to save them like at the last minute, right? Like Jack will thwart them like, you know, and

Brenton: it's the cliffhanger that never happens.

David: Good guys lose and Yeah. I mean, but you have to know in some stories that like that's possible.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know, or otherwise the whole time you're just like whatever. These guys are fine. They're not g they're main they're not, you know, but the moment you know that like anyone except Jack is fair game, like the it just it, you know, it dials the show up to a whole different level, you know, because every episode you're like, dude, like basically anyone but this one guy could die at any moment, you know, like sniper bullets to the brain or like, you know, poison gas.

Brenton: Yep. Um I mean NCIS had that happen. One of their um special agents just sniper took out on the rooftop and then all of a sudden oh by the way we're replacing now you have Ziva.

David: Yeah. I mean as a storyteller sometimes I feel like if you're not willing to do that and again it depends on what you're writing, right? Right. I mean, if you're writing a cozy mystery and you know, you want people to be relaxed the entire time.

Brenton: Start killing off all the characters.

David: You don't want them to be like, "Oh, God." But if you're writing a thriller, you know, like you have to be willing to, you know, prove to the reader like, "Oh, okay." Like literally like almost anything can happen. Um otherwise there's not the same thrill.

Brenton: Yeah. And so um I guess taking us back a little further, you had started a business around writing. Was that around serials?

David: Yeah. Yeah. So that the whole platform was was based on a collaborative platform where multiple authors are working in the same world generating content rapidly enough to be publishing it. serially and yet the reader is a like reading as if they're binging because there's five different authors creating content in this world at a pace fast enough to keep up with, you know, the reader being able to read more of it every night. Uh and and so that that was the idea.

Brenton: Have you thought of going back and continuing that at all?

David: May it rest in peace. Um, no, that that company's dead. And you know that that dream, uh, if someone else were to do it, I mean, I would I would I'd be on board with writing. I love that writing style, collaborative writing within a shared world. Um and there are challenges with it you know to the extent that it's like and that's you know we were building a platform that was trying to facilitate like so hey you wrote about this world you know

And so like one of the shared worlds I was in was a a far distant future kind of uh transhuman posthuman universe um with a lot of different planets and Um, you know, so I mean we spent countless nights, me and these four other guys just like pounding out like all the crazy world building, you know, and so I mean number one world building with other people I find way more fun than

Brenton: Yes.

David: world building by myself. And so we toss ideas out, you know, and a lot of it was around dark matter. um you know, and what would happen if we were able to harness, you know, these types of things and build essentially these uh worlds that were sort of scripted um scenarios, not entirely like the Matrix or whatever, but you know, like everything on the planet was to generate this one kind of dark matter that then was essentially a designer drug for this, you know, elevated species, you know, that was.

So, if there's a planet full of like a bunch of dinosaurs just like killing everyone, like then they would embibe the drug that would come from the planet. Primal Instinct was the name of that planet. um that you know that was just like this heartpounding adrenaline drug you know that was like uh formed from the very you know essence of the you know the people existing on this planet.

Brenton: It's like the world's overall pherommones.

David: Yeah, you know, they were building these worlds and engineering worlds and terraforming things very specifically. You know, some of them were built to kind of like repeat the same uh ecological disaster kind of like over and over and over. And out of that, you know, it would generate this this kind of gen designer drug for the people that were embibing it.

Um, you know, but then of course like systems start to break down. You know, the ancestral humans that were being kind of bred as chattle to fill these worlds would kind of like start to have these deja vu moments, you know, where they're like, wait, like this seems like this happened before.

Um, you know, but like we're just building this all out. And so it was like, okay, well, I'm going to write a space marine story about the people that come in basically to wipe out a planet when it goes awry, you know, because you're going to have at some point

Brenton: right

David: like something messes up. So you call in the extinction force, you know, to come in and like melt everything to the ground. And so like, okay, well, I'm going to write this series over here, you know, that's going to be more uh, you know, space opera or cerebral or whatever, you know, about this guy who's like an enforcer going around or, you know, I'm going to write about these people that are, you know, settlers on one of the original uh, you know, group sent to terraform this one planet um, for a private owner.

Um, and so some of the characters would overlap, you know, and and some would so we would ask permission like, okay, hey, I want to use this character that you built over here. Uh, and like but later, you know, or earlier in the timeline and so like if this happens, is that cool? So, you know, there's a lot of technicalities and kind of being able to create the platform and, you know, there's some challenges to collaborate with other authors.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: But I find it to be super fun.

Brenton: I far prefer collaborating. I feel that gets the creative juices flowing so much faster. It's very hard to sit and think alone and go I don't even know where. Like some of the best times I've taken my story forward has just been talking to different people, bouncing ideas off of it almost like I'm p pulling them into my world.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And that's how we typically would do it. you know, we just join a group and we ask them and they give us some feedback and you know, then they ask us and we give them some feedback and and then, you know, or you can take it a whole other level and be like, well, let's just all be writing in the same world. Um, instead of, you know, on our different totally different projects.

Brenton: I mean, the biggest example of like the same universe is probably Star Wars or Star Trek. Like there's so many different authors and spin-offs that are all in that same

David: Yeah, that's how we would kind of explain the concept to people. You know, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, right? You've got these different stories. Sometimes a character will overlap. You know, Guardians of the Galaxy, right? There's a whole bunch of different characters that come in and out of them, you know, as they're running around. um where you might have another one that's, you know, much more like um I'm trying to think of like a a Marvel movie that doesn't really have a ton of other characters crossing over into it, but um anyway,

Brenton: they found a way to blend them all at this point.

David: But yeah, just that's the concept. Yeah, you got you there's a huge uh world of intellectual property. Um but yeah, lots of lots of different people over the years have contributed to it.

Brenton: Most of your work is now on Substack, right?

David: Substack is my hub. That's my home. Um, a lot of it I have over the last five years maybe streamed there. Um, but I mean even just the stuff that I've kind of published episodically through my Substack is is maybe I don't know like a tenth of it. Um, a lot of it isn't really available anywhere right now. Uh, you know, with the kaibosh of the platform that we were doing stuff on.

Um, some of the detritus is still up and around the internet that I probably need to clean up a little bit better. And some stuff is on my Substack. Um, yeah, and some stuff is still on Amazon, I think. But yeah, my plan is to reorganize my substack, reorganize and kind of retool uh at least I don't know 60 or 70% of the stuff I've done.

There's some of it I'll probably just abandon, but there's two or three main universes where I'd like to get everything up to a level to where I'm happy with it based on my current talent level, skill level. uh and reream everything on Substack.

That's the plan. And kind of have that be my ongoing home to where if someone wanted to be a paid subscriber, they could download uh like an eub or, you know, an actual ebook, but for free, you could just stream it and just read it digitally. And then, of course, if you wanted a, you know, paperback, you could buy that. But

Brenton: what do you mean by streaming? I have a couple different things coming into my mind. Is that like um all the contents there, you pay monthly and so then you now have access to all of it like a Netflix streaming platform but for books or is it more kind of like a subscription where it's like even if I start let's say you have three people and they each start streaming a week apart. Do they have access to the same content or is each one delayed by like only a certain amount is released to them over time?

David: by streaming content. I guess when I'm talking about the written word, I'm just referring to it's like uh essentially web web- based and and so like if you uh if you download an ebook, right, that's typically it's a file and you know you're able to like download it and then read offline.

Brenton: Yep.

David: Um, and so that an ebook, uh, even though you might read an ebook that you don't technically own, but you've purchased the right to read that ebook. So, you know, uh, IP and rights and all this stuff gets into sometimes a weird place when you're dealing with digital files and you, you know, you can find out all of a sudden that your digital files are gone, that you didn't, you know, you didn't own those digital files. You just purchased the right to temporarily read those digital files.

Um but streaming would be one level away from that to where you know you're uh essentially on the website on a device uh typically like a phone or a tablet or whatever.

Brenton: What comes to mind is essentially just a longer form of a blog.

David: Yeah. And so like you know you're if you're streaming content, right? If you're streaming video content, you have to have a connection to that content.

Brenton: Yep

David: um you're you know it's it buffers if that connection goes away. you're and so that yeah that's when I guess when I say streaming written content that's the same type of concept is that you know your uh Substack has a nice app uh it makes you know the reading environment is really clean and whether or not you're reading m you know like a magazine style article uh or journalistic content written by someone or in this case in my case fiction um you know you're you know scrolling uh typically uh and and if you lose internet connection you know you lose your wireless or you know phone reception or whatever you're using then you know temporarily you wouldn't be able to read it um

And so yeah streaming content um that's would be in my in my case I would have the streaming content available for free and so like you wouldn't have to subscribe to my Substack. At least this is how I'm planning on doing it. Um, you know, you could find me on Substack and and if you wanted to just sort of stream the content, it's free. If you wanted to be able to then pay, you know, three bucks or whatever a month, um, then you that that would give you access to like, okay, I would rather just have an eub so that I can read it, you know, or a mobi or uh, you know, whatever, just so I can read it on my Kindle or read it, you know

Brenton: yeah

David: this is my preferred method. I don't, you know, I don't want to just be scrolling on my phone. I, you know, I want to be able to open it up in my Kindle reading app or, you know, whatever.

Brenton: Are you going to do any print versions? Because I know some people when they read it, they can't stand electronics. They want that paper in hand.

David: I still read on paper mostly. Uh well, when I'm reading long form, like I prefer print books. Mh. And yeah. So, and and that's the great thing about the evolving industry, the way things are now, it's getting easier and easier uh to to sell print as an individual. Um, and so that would definitely is part of the plan as well.

Um, and currently I'm thinking I'm not interested anymore uh in rankings on Amazon. I I don't care, you know, and driving up my, you know, and playing that game and, you know, paying for advertising dollars and trying to do Amazon blitzes and trying to drive a certain number of people to the platform within a certain amount of hours in order to drive up the rankings and then draw the attention of other Amazon readers because I'm higher on the rankings. And um I really, you know, I I'm just going to sell books to people that know they want to buy my books.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so I can do that from my own website. People can easily just click from Substack over to my website. And you know, now it's not like it used to be where, you know, like enter all of your information and it takes like 30 minutes to sell something from your website and nobody wants to do it because they don't trust like, well, how my credit card information is going to get stolen or whatever, you know. Now I can set it up to where someone can click over and then put their finger to their phone and Apple Pay and it's done.

Brenton: Yep.

David: You know, or or however um if they're using Android, same thing. Um, so you know, technology has come to the far enough to the point now to where it's there's not really any reason for me to sell paper books off of Amazon um, and give Amazon most of the money. I can I can use a service that will drop ship the books if I want or send me the books and then I can send them on to the, you know, the reader. Um, but yeah,

Brenton: I know way back it used to be you had to publish because they handled a lot of the marketing, everything, but it seems more and more from the little bit that I know they don't even do the marketing for you anymore. It's you're just finding a publisher that maybe has like goes back and forth with the editor with you. Um, but more and more you're responsible for everything anyways.

David: So yeah, any publisher, small, medium or large, is they're the more platform that the content creator has going in the better.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know because the publishers are struggling and it's hard for them uh as well you know because again it's not like I go to Hton Mifflin to buy a book you know I go to Amazon you know like nobody goes to you know tour to you know or Harley Quinn you know like it just these publishers have tried right to launch kind of like their own storefronts um but But for the most part, right, I Google something and, you know, I go to thrift books or I go to Amazon or I, you know,

Brenton: Barnes & Noble or wherever

David: buy it online. And so, yeah, it's uh it's just the publishers are having a hard time getting eyeballs um too. So they they look for people that have a platform, you know, whether you're a famous politician or an entertainer, you know, YouTube content creator or or even just if you're a motivational speaker or, you know, a martial arts instructor or whatever. Like if you have an audience, you know, of even 5,000 people that know who you are and would be interested in reading something that you've written, then yeah, you can approach a publisher and they'll be like, "Oh, okay. Well, we can tell here that we could probably sell this many copies of a book based just on the audience you've already put together."

Um, but at the same time, if you already have an audience, then you don't need do you need the publisher? It just kind of depends on, you know,

Brenton: self-publish drop ship

David: or if you really are the kind of person that doesn't doesn't want to mess around with any of it on your taxes. It doesn't, you know, you don't want to have like uh your own website. You don't want to, you know, like you just don't want to deal with that, then yeah, I mean, a traditional publisher might totally still be the best path for you. But for a lot of people, I think they find that like, oh, okay, I can do a certain amount of this myself.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um, and since I pretty much have to go find the readers anyway, um, you know, most people find some sort of combination of being a hybrid uh, published indie author or, you know, fully independent or, you know, whatever.

Brenton: I would imagine doing some of the indie author or streaming kind of the style of writing you're enjoying would be very similar growing that as it would be to a podcast where maybe you're spreading your reach through kind of like the guests that you have come on like if you're sharing a world with a couple other authors now you're kind of cross-pollinating your audiences with each other.

David: Yeah, that was part of the thinking too when we were developing this again. It's like, well, it's easier for five people to find that kind of critical 10,000, you know, email list uh than it is for one, you know, for one writer to come up with an email list of 10,000 subscribers, like it's it's hard. I mean, that's that's a lot of subscribers.

Brenton: Yeah

David: You know, I have an email list that I've maintained for 10 years um pretty consistently and it's 2500 people now. Like I haven't put effort into growing it for five years. I put effort into maintaining it.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um and so I send something to that list every week. Uh, but like 10,000's a lot. And so, but like if one person can do 2500 then and you're joining in with four other people, well then you've got 10,000.

Brenton: Yep.

David: And now obviously you might end up sharing the revenues with those other four people too.

Brenton: Um, but it's a way to get started.

David: But yeah, you're at least you're it feels like more progress. You know, if your goal is to make a sustainable living wage as an author, you haven't gotten there necessarily faster, but if your goal is to be a successful author, you know, that's getting your content out in front of people who are reading it and you're getting paid for it, you definitely have gotten there faster.

Brenton: Yeah. So, and in some ways I still think you get to the other one faster, too, because you go back to the cross-pollination thing by being able to get out there in front of people faster if you're sharing the world. Yeah. You might have 2500 of your own. And even if you don't pull any of the other three people, they're at least aware of your name now.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: That cross-pollination can grow quickly.

David: Yeah. Yeah, you know, and product funnels and you know, a lot of the kind of common sales, it it all applies, you know, with and you know, the nice thing about books and electronic books and streaming content are they lend themselves well to this, you know, is you can have hyperlinks, you know, you can use QR codes, you can use, you know, giveaways, you can use uh I mean old Old tricks are still good tricks too, right?

You get to the end of the book and uh the first chapter of the next book is included in the end of the book, you know, right? I mean, that's something that has been happening in kind of the dime store paperbacks for, right, 30 years, you know, where

Brenton: Yep.

David: and you read that, oh, I'm going to go get this book, too. Um, so it's not, you know, a lot of it isn't necessarily new. Um, but you know, just having that plan and definitely doing it with other people sometimes makes it easier to stick to the plan and you know, you got people that are holding you accountable and you've got people with different skills than maybe that you do.

And so you can bring some of your skills and combine it with their skills and use it to put together a product funnel, you know, that's um makes sense, you know, that's bringing in, you know, for my future plans. I I I think kind of what I'm going to do is sell paperbacks only in pairs. And so I'll I'll have to come up with the final number.

But if I can sell someone two paperbacks for $15, instead of selling them one for 10 or whatever, um or even 16 $17, just be like, "Well, you you can't buy one." Like I don't sell one paperback. I sell them. I sell two. And so you can buy two

Brenton: and then give the one away to someone that you think would like it.

David: And that that's the thought behind it, you know, is to include, you know, a little QR bookmark or something with it and then just be like, you know, if you like it, pass the other one on to someone else. Um, and you know, then if they like it, they've got an easy way to access my Substack, uh, and find out more about me. and you know just trying to find ways that you can kind of you know find new people get them into your you know your world and you know and then with my Substack the main goal is just to make sure that I'm communicating with everyone every week.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And giving them you know my the content that I publish through my Substack weekly isn't even fiction. It's just me, you know, similar to like what we're doing here, you know, it's like, well, what if imagination, you know, and uh prayer were the same thing like, you know, or how do we deal with uh you know, whatever shill politicians in today's world like um but trying to be humorous and, you know, poking around at stuff in a way that, you know, I'm always again trying to bring uh factions together, you know.

So, you know, I I try to write in a way that they can be enjoyed by conservatives, liberals, urban, rural, you know, religious, non-religious, uh, you know, and I know I've got readers of all of these, uh, because they, you know, they'll send me responses and I chitchat with with some of them, you know, at least once a month or two, they'll, you know, send me, you know, like, "Ah, I thought this one was pretty funny, you know, but what about is um and so that's you know I try to maintain that with my substack but you know send content out every week every week at the same time just so that keep that list fresh um and you know if people aren't interacting with it over you know months and months then you know I can drop them off and um Substack helps me find a few like I get some signups every month that are people that are just finding me through Substack

And then I have, you know, a few other tools, online tools and stuff I'm using to kind of make sure that I'm on boarding at least the same amount of people that I'm losing. Um, you know, so the list is I'm maintaining for now. And you know, in the next year or two, if I'm able to really get into the kind of um commercial side, I guess business side of it again, then I I'll have to put some real effort into getting that list up to that that kind of 10,000 number is really if you can have if you've got 10,000 people on your list, if it's a solid list and you know, they're not just people that they're kind of phony emails or whatever.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: then that's enough. You know, that's uh you know, especially if I'm able to write and release, you know, four to six books a year, then 10,000 people, that's making that's making me a living. But yeah,

Brenton: are you planning to go back to that or

David: I would like to. I mean, I'm at that phase of life now to where my kids are, uh, you know, 17 and 14. So, you know, um, I got a few more years of wanting to make sure that I'm spending a decent amount of time with them. Um, but, you know, they're going to get bored of me. Um, you know, so the more they get toward the point where they're like, "Yeah, why don't you go do your own thing, Dad?" Um then you know that's probably the plan will be to take take that time and dump it back into writing.

And um so I've got a runway still for probably a few years before I'll be you know 30 35 hours a week riding or something like that. Um, but for now I I think I can maintain 10. And so that's enough for me to finish at least one or two books a year. And um, but yeah, as my kids age and, you know, move, you know, move into doing their own thing more, then I would like to get that back up to like maybe 30 hours a week.

Brenton: Nice. How many books total have you written? I know that's kind of a hard answer. Serial

David: I I don't know. Yeah. Uh somewhere between 20 and 30. Yeah. That are like finished projects. Um that have been published in some form or fashion at some point available now. Well, there's probably only like six. Um, but

Brenton: what has been the if you had to pick one thing that's been the most conducive to writing, what would you say that has been for you?

David: Oh, as far as just an activity or practice or

Brenton: anything, if it's having a specific time you write, if it's having a certain, I don't know, candle in your house, like a certain scent, like a wide world's open, just what has been most conducive to you for writing?

David: Um, walking is a major one for me. So, getting out of the house, walking around. I definitely I've built that into my schedule. Uh, at least five five or six days a week. You know, I walk at least a few miles. Um, cold, hot, whatever. Um the combination of just moving around and getting out and interacting with my environment, you know, no earbuds for me. Like I don't I don't listen to anything else when I walk, you know, that's to me that's time to engage with the world around me.

Yeah. I mean, I space out, you know, and I'm I'm thinking about stuff and, you know, I'm the kind of weird guy walking around the neighborhood talking to himself, you know, and so even if I'm not like audibly, I know my lips are moving. Um, I occasionally I catch a weird look from someone like if I'm crossing, you know, at a a light or something and we're both there and they're kind of like looking at me because I probably walked up to the, you know, like, you know, like so they're a little bit like, uh, this guy, I'm going to let him go first or, you know, I might cross the street in the other direction even though I wasn't planning on it. Um, so yeah, walking is definitely one of them.

David: And my favorite just pattern for writing is to I'm not a super early morning person, but like to to be able to get up, cook breakfast. uh when I do breakfast, even if I'm cooking it for other people, if my kids, you know, whatever, like I don't interact with my family when I'm cooking breakfast. That's podcast time. So that's when I have my headphones on. Um and so I start my day with cooking and like podcast content.

Um, and then I move into reading. And so I'll sit down and like paper, you know, read something and reflect and pray and just kind of like process then that my writing time. So, like I I found if I do that then by the time I sit down to write, I mean it might be anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30 or whatever, but like then like uh until one or two it's just condensed. It's, you know, I'm firing the whole time just um hit my word limit.

And I like to try to have a word limit. Um, so 3,000 words, like when I'm if I'm, you know, being able to hit it at least a couple times a week, then I'll be like, "Okay, I'm going to try to get to 3,000 every time I sit down," which isn't a ton. I mean, there there some people that would do a thousand, some people I know can do 10,000 in the amount that I would do 3,000. It's, you know, all over the spectrum, but yeah.

And then the evenings, and this has gotten all messed up with my kids being older now because they stay up late. Um, it used to be though that everyone else in the house was asleep. And so then, you know, from like 11:00 until midnight or 1:00 in the morning would be like my time to just, you know, sit on the couch and look at the ceiling or sit on the stoop and, you know, watch the street, you know, or wander around and again talk to myself. And that's the kind of time where stuff is brewing and coming together for the next day.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: And so that's being able to have that time is another one that's just makes night and day difference for me. Like if I have that time to just, you know, kind of like, you know, like what would this character do next? What's then, you know, by the time I hit the computer at, you know, the next morning at 9:30, you know, I'm firing on all cylinders and I already know exactly where I want to go and what I want to do.

If I don't get that time the night before, then it might be a little choppier. I'll just start writing because I, you know, I'm just, but, you know, it's going to be like I might go back and delete half of it and like stumble through before I'm like, "Okay, this is what's going to happen.

Brenton: You're kind of repeating in that time what you would have done in the evening.

David: Yeah. If I if I had that kind of like so I guess just processing space. Yeah. I'm a and because I think I'm a verbal processor that I think is why I end up talking to myself. Um it just helps me format uh what I want to do. And um so yeah, I can definitely if there's people in the room talking to myself is a little weirder. So it's easier if everyone else has gone to bed or I'm, you know, walking around the neighborhood or whatever.

Brenton: Yeah. I I have a hard time processing in my head. I either need to write it out, which then if I'm trying to write a story, it hasn't worked. Um, but I've found even just writing it out to like chat GPT, like just write some of my thoughts just to force myself to get it out. Not that I use anything it's doing. It's almost like having, okay, I'm just going to have a friend I can talk to for a minute, throw my ideas out there because it's the act of me. It's not even that I want to know what it says about it. It's like the act of forcing me to formulate it enough to put it forward.

David: It can understand what I'm saying.

Brenton: Yep. It's that process has helped me solidify my thoughts on things. And without that, the only way I found is actually talking to someone. Teri, my wife, has had me talk her ear off a number of times because I just need to process it out loud. I don't know where I'm going. Don't know what I'm doing, but I need to speak aloud until I figure it out.

David: I guess to that sense I am capable of being my own GPT, you know, because yeah, I just need to I can argue with myself and I do fairly frequently and I'll represent both. No, that's not right. That's stupid. Oh, well, maybe I do agree with that. Like I I can I can definitely like I only need myself to have a full-fledged debate. Um, so

Brenton: I think that's a skill a lot of people have to hone. Sometimes I can do that with myself. In software development, there's a concept of if you can't figure out a problem, they call it rubber ducking. And literally just put a rubber duck on your desk and force yourself to say aloud what your problem is and what steps you've taken or trying to take to get there. And it's just forcing yourself to speak aloud. But a lot of people don't know how to talk directly to themselves. So just put a rubber duck there and talk to it.

David: Yeah. No, I've had to hone this skill over the life of my marriage because my wife cannot argue for herself to save her life. And so and I mean I grew up in an argumentative family. I mean that's like our hobby, our pastime is, you know, arguing argument. Um, and so like and to be like to be such a verbal processor. And so it's like when we would have an argument, you know, like she was totally helpless would just be like she needs to go away and you know, then I'm just completely frustrated.

So early on I just learned like, okay, I am going to figure out her argument because I know where she stands. Like I know she doesn't agree with me, but like I will give her her argument and then I'll give her my argument and then I'll help her argue against my argument. And like I just became something that I I just knew how to do and for the sake of a healthy marriage, you know, it was like I know, you know, she just wants it to be quiet and then to come back later and so to an extent we have to do that, but at the same time like I need to have an argument, you know, like or I'm going to be totally miserable for the next 24 hours like

So here let me argue for both of us and that that became like an acceptable compromise, you know, once I became good enough at it, you know, to where I'd be like, "And is this not your argument?" She'd be like, "Yeah, that's exactly my argument." Uh, and so maybe, yeah, honing that skill has given me the ability to now just argue with myself.

Brenton: Strongmanning someone's position is really good anyways to be able to do.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And I totally value I value that. And for sure. in any of the content that I listen to or or you know read, like if it's non-fiction, I I don't I won't even pay attention to it. If it's someone who's disrespecting the other viewpoint,

Brenton: yeah

David: I'm out, you know. But if I can tell from the very beginning that they're trying to understand validly like the other person and why they think what they think and they're representing it to the best, you know, of their ability and strong manning instead of straw manning, then that I can I'll listen to I they could be on the total opposite end of, you know, of what I believe, but if they're trying to be respectful to what I believe, then I I'll totally listen to it.

But I mean, if somebody's just, you know, talking about how stupid these people are, like I'm out. Like it just Yeah.

Brenton: It's not interesting at that point.

David: Yeah. It feels harmful to me.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Honestly, like embibing it, I think, is is damaging. And I just, you know, I know like within, you know, evangelical circles typically it's more like, well, if the content's bad, right? Like I don't want to take it in. I'm fine with watching violent stuff, you know, destructible. Like, you know, like that stuff doesn't rub off on me as much as someone being disrespectful.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: It just it leaves me feeling gross. Um, you know, I mean, cut someone's head off, whatever. like, you know, it's not real to me. Like I can I can watch that and I don't feel like I have to go cut someone's head off.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: You know, but like if I listen to someone just vitriolically, you know, tearing down other people like that feels harder to walk away from without it like being on me, you know? And so I just especially, you know, um it became especially acute, right, with the I think the first Trump election of just like oh the divisions just kind of started to like appear. Fissures were growing, you know, and then the pandemic and like everything. is just like, oh man, like I had to just step away from anything that is just like from either side that's just like so poisonous.

Brenton: Yeah.

David: Um that was just making me like feel angry at everyone and bad about the world to where but I mean if you someone wants to talk about very serious issues and very sad things but like from an honest perspective you know that doesn't make me feel depressed. I mean, I can listen to a podcast about everyone being, you know, dying in, you know, Gaza and like it's terrible, you know, and sad, but like doesn't leave me feeling as hopeless as someone, you know, spraying, you know, anti one side or the other vitrial, you know, that's just like

Brenton: Yep. I I remember growing up um my mom grew up extremely conservative Christian um staunch 7-day creationist um but she took the time to teach us evolution cuz it's like you don't understand your own position if you can't understand the other side and you need to be able to talk both sides and there's no point in talking down to each other about either side And so I always enjoyed arguing.

I used to as a kid I would argue the side I didn't believe in just because you know most of the people around you are going to agree with you on most things. So I found it more interesting to let me just take the other side like then we can have more discussion.

David: Yeah.

Brenton: And at some point I stopped doing that because it seemed like it was just upsetting everybody. So it's but I I miss that a lot.

David: I still do that. Yeah. I'm inevitably the liberal in the conservative room and the conservative in the liberal room. I just can't help it.

Brenton: It's more fun.

David: Yeah. But yeah, we do the same thing with our kids like, you know, we'd pick them up after like an Aana or something, you know, at the local Baptist church and you know, they we oh, so what did you guys learn? And so they'd be like, oh, well, we studied Genesis and this and you know, seven days and like Yeah. It's like, well, what did you think about it? you know, well, that seemed a little like I'm like, well, some people believe that. Some people, you know, believe that it happened, you know, over, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of years, you know, and like so, um, yeah.

And so that's just my nature, I think, just to be like, you know, what you learn there is totally an acceptable thing for people to believe, and that's fine, but you don't have to believe it if you don't want to. like you know you might even go as far as to be like here's some things that I personally agree with and don't agree with but whatever you don't have to like believe what I believe either you know but yeah it's definitely yeah I think the worst thing the the last thing I want to do you know is to just have them be 18 and leave home and be like well I didn't even know the rest of this stuff was out here you know because then I I think it's highly likely they're going to feel betrayed and lied to and and how's that I mean going to be helpful?

Brenton: Yeah. So, I've always kind of took it as the approach a parent's job is to prepare them to be fully capable adults. Like you have to introduce appropriate amounts of the world to them as they're old enough such that then they can operate Yeah. fully.

David: Yeah. Exactly.

Brenton: But well, so if people wanted to follow your work, where would they do that? We mentioned Substack.

David: Yeah, Substack is my home. Uh, I don't even know if I could remember. It's like, is it Substack dot David Mark Brown, or is it David Mark Brown dot Substack? Uh, you know,

Brenton: I'll throw it in the description.

David: Yeah, but it's essentially David Mark if you look for David Mark Brown. Um I think you're going to find me. There used to be an astronaut. Um but he died long enough ago that he doesn't have much of a Google imprint anymore. So if you Google David Mark Brown at this point, I think eight of the top 10 responses are going to be me. Um, I haven't checked recently, but hope hopefully there's not another like, you know, granola redneck trying to steal my redneck granola.

Brenton: I didn't see any granola redneck. I think when I Googled you, the first two pages were all you, and then I think page three, I found a doctor.

David: Okay. And yeah, so David Mark Brown, but yeah, the you'll see other I'm sure other things that are are mostly dormant. Um, you know, David Mark Brown writes is my website. Uh, I'll bring that back eventually. Like I I think that's probably where I'll sell my print books and stuff from. Um, and I mean there's tons of old blog posts there, but like I haven't actively been doing anything there for probably eight or nine years. Um, yeah, the Substack is where I hang out. So, David Mark Brown at Substack, that's that's my and I plan on that being my my home uh for ever if it works out.

Brenton: Nice.

David: I've enjoyed Substack. I I you know, it's I like it. I think it's real readable. It's an easy way for me to get messages out to my my list. Um as well as, you know, I can stream content there and make stuff available there. And so I I mean I'm I haven't really been active on any other social media sites um since not doing the business anymore. Um and I you know it's not fulfilling for me. I don't it's not lifegiving for me to be on social media. And so I've just I've let it go. I've just cut it out since I'm not doing it for work anymore. I you know I don't enjoy it. And so I've just stopped. So, you know, I I don't if anyone tried to, you know, ping me on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, I probably just wouldn't even see it.

And I doubt that's going to change unless I, you know, as I try to reboot the the commercial end of stuff. If I decide that I need at least one other uh place to interact with people, I will. I mean, you can comment on Substack and I can comment back to people and so they've they've been gradually kind of adding a few little uh messaging abilities and stuff on there.

Brenton: Nice.

David: And so that's probably where I'll live. I mean, if someone commented or, you know, messaged me on Substack, I would see it. So 

Brenton: Cool. I I had one final thing I thought of when I was researching to prep for the episode. One of the things I came across is at one point you taught a writing class for like I believe it was 7 to 17 year olds. You offered it once or twice.

David: Yeah. That's actually how like there I'm caregiving for a gal now. I met her at the library uh through that. Yeah. I was providing like tutoring. Yeah. Kind of stuff briefly. Yeah, that was one thing I was doing for a spell.

Brenton: Have you thought of doing anything like that again?

David: I doubt it.

Brenton: Is that kind of fulfilled by like the writing group now that we do?

David: Yeah. Um I mean working with other authors and collaborative stuff. Absolutely. I mean, um, but I don't even really remember. I I I trying to remember how. Yeah. At one point that was just one thing that I launched. I had like I think four people paying me to it was for home mostly homeschooled kids and and their parents were looking for uh something to add to the curriculum.

And so I was like, well, you know, at one point there was a brief flirtation with like maybe I would build up my clientele this way and and you know, get 50 or 60 clients and and make this like a side hustle and um yeah, I don't even really remember what why I backed off of that, but yeah, I mean the entrepreneurial side of me, I'll start things and just like Eh, you know, tried it for a little. Yeah. Not going to do that anymore. And so, like, there's, you know, there's two or three dozen things like that that I've done at one point or another.

David: You know, I think my redneck granola.com right now, if someone were to go there, it's like the remnants of my web design business. So, for a while, you know, I was designing WordPress sites for people, uh, you know, and so some of those are still around. I'm still hosting some of them for people just because I'm like, yeah, whatever. You know, like I'll just leave it here. Um, but yeah, another one of those mini ventures that I did temporarily.

Brenton: Fun. I I had just come across it and it piqued my interest.

David: Yeah, I had totally forgotten about that one. I How did you even find it?

Brenton: I just Googled around and poked around.

David: Yeah. So, there's all these remnants. You know, the internet is forever. Uh, and I'm, you know, I'm not super detail oriented, so I forget to go take stuff down after I've given up on it.

Brenton: I I don't remember who said it, but someone told me, um, what are software developers skilled at? It's not writing code. It's efficient Googling.

David: Google foo. Yeah, that's important.

Brenton: That's going away a little bit with AI now. Just AI searches everything. But it used to be, you know.

David: Yeah, I guess in the old days. Yeah, it's having good Google foo was definitely a skill. So instead of spending like three hours on something, you could just, you know, three minutes in.

Brenton: Yep. But well, thanks for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure.

David: Yeah, a lot of fun. Thanks, Brenton.

Brenton: Yeah, I think we'll have plenty of more conversations aside from this. I enjoyed it.

David: Yeah, for sure.

Brenton: But well, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time