Grand System Vending w/Ryan Maxwell

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Welcome everyone to In Other Worlds, the Lit RPG Gamelit and Fantasy Podcast. I am your host, Jess, and today we are sitting down with Ryan Maxwell. Ryan, how are you?

I'm doing really well. How are you doing?

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you. So you are currently the author of Grand System Vending, which has three books out. And I think I heard that there's plans for it to be a six-book series.

That is the plan. Yes.

Why don't you give us a give us a little bit of an overview on what

The Vending Machine Apocalypse Premise

the series is about?

Sure. Uh main idea behind the series was that um a new system comes to Earth. Earth is integrated into the uh Intergalactic Federation of Planets, the IFP. And uh because of that, they have to implant a mana core, because obviously Earth is a pretty uh mana-dead zone. So they've implemented that. And because of that, now when a certain amount of ambient mana is all in one place, monsters spawn. So um now monsters are spawning all over the world. Uh people are not prepared for this because we lived in a pretty peaceful society. So to help out, the aliens notice that everybody loves everybody on earth loves vending machines. We have them literally everywhere. I can't I can't go anywhere without seeing some kind of vending machine. Uh so exactly. So they took all the vending machines on Earth and turned them into miniaturized unmanned storefronts where you can buy all of your survival gear that you need. You kill monsters, monsters drop monster cores, and monster cores are the new currency for those vending machines. So it requires you to be a part of the system to actually uh obtain your rewards and actually be able to survive. So then a group of friends is now banding together to try to make a place where people can come that's safe uh from this, what they're calling the apocalypse uh that happened during that time. Just a pretty big broad word for our whole world was turned upside down and billions of people died all in one day.

So I mean it's not a wrong, it's not a wrong description.

Right? Feels pretty apocalyptic. So they have to try to survive on these things, and there's a lot of new challenges that they're put up against in in finding out and dealing with people and dealing with monsters, dealing with dungeons, and other things that come up throughout the whole series that just make it

Dream Origins And Writing Process

super fun.

And so I think I heard in another interview that you did that you got the idea for the vending machines in a dream.

Did yes. I I woke up one morning and I was like, well, that was weird. Uh, but vending machines are are interesting, so I wonder where my brain was uh for that time. But yes, I I woke up one morning and I just wrote down a bunch of my ideas onto a paper. It's what I or onto my phone is where I keep everything um because I can't just keep paper and pen on me at all times. So and then what I usually do for my process is I allow myself three hours to do story planning to see if it's gonna be something that's viable, if I can get anything out of it that makes sense, if it's funny, if it's serious, if it's whatever the case is. So uh I spent that time on it and I was like, I I think this is something. I think I could do something with this. So that's where I uh and then I just went on from there to to start out on the first one. That was when I was a pantser uh more than I am now. Um so I I really just pants book one, uh completely pants book one. Had no idea where I was gonna end the series, where I was even gonna end the book when I first started. Um I was like, I want to get this out and I want to write it down. And then, you know, time obviously went on, spent more time in it, figured out where the story was going, and that's what we are now.

And so having pants book one, I'm assuming you kind of switched over to being a plotter with books two and three.

Yeah, I I adopted more of a hybrid approach for those two. Um I still allow myself the freedom and creativity to just go and do so that I don't have everything kind of like it doesn't feel scripted or what have you. I want things to feel more natural and realistic and and how they react to things. But I I at least come up with here's where the book starts, here's where the book ends, here's a couple major points that we need to hit, and here's what the big struggle is. Then how I get there can kind of go back and forth on where it's at during the process to do, but at least gives me something to work off of.

Yeah. Do you ever find yourself uh like riding yourself into a corner that you have a hard time getting out of?

100%. I have absolutely done that before. Um, where I'm like, huh, they're all gonna die here. So we're gonna wipe that chapter out and uh we'll go do something different. So yes, that definitely has happened. I I like to call it I've tokened myself uh a couple of times because Tolkien was notorious for riding himself into a corner where it just kind of faded to black, and then they were like, We all survived. So, but we're like, Well, how do we survive? They go, Don't ask questions, it's not important. All is important is we survived.

Yeah, everyone's doing something over here, and they're like, Look over here.

Yep.

Making Sudden Violence Feel Real

Exactly.

At the beginning of this story, the the main characters are a couple of friends who are commuting to work, and they are just driving down the highway when the big monolith uh appears and they hear the booming and the instructions, and then they're just like, Oh, and by the way, there might be monsters, and then there are monsters. There is no like space in between that. There's no time to prepare. It's uh it's just like the oh, there might be monsters, and then there are. And so so many people die in the beginning of the book.

Yes. It's one of those, it's one of those things that you really have to, I really had to find a nice balance for what would happen if we were suddenly turned into a place that had things that didn't follow our laws, that weren't a part of our our our you know, code of ethics and how we operate as human beings. You know, I'm sitting in a time now where the police what would happen if the police couldn't get to you? So I have to put these things into or I try to put these things in perspective of if if something just suddenly started attacking people with weapons, a lot of people are gonna die because we are not prepared for those kind of things as a regular part of our day.

So well, and I imagine even even for the some of the people that have guns, their first instinct may not be to just shoot. Like you're most likely just gonna freeze for a second, at least for some people.

Probably a lot of people. It's again, we I've told people this before when I've read some things in other people's writings. I I don't remember exactly who it was off the top of my head because it wasn't uh it wasn't one of the big big names or people that I've read recently. But there are times where there's just like all of a sudden this guy just has balls of steel and he's out there murdering people. And I'm like, that's not really how it would work because we live in a peaceful society right now. Violence, you know, you hear about violence, but in reality, with what 300 million plus people in this nation and and there's a couple incidences of violence every every day or every week, it's very small percentage of people who experience that violence ever in their lives. So to suddenly be thrown into a place where all you have is violence. The only way you survive is by fighting back. It's it's something that would take normal people a bit of adjustment to get used to, uh, because it's just not something we do every day, just you know, stab something or or shoot it or cut its head off or whatever the case is. And that's a lot of people get squeamish when they see those things, not something we're used to. So you definitely need to take that into account when when considering how fast someone gets over violence.

Yeah, especially physically in person like that. You know, we we see it on TV a lot and we see it in in shows and movies, but it's totally different when it's like up close and personal and right in front of you.

And the other thing to remember as well is that is that fighting is physical. Um and I'm not in very great shape anymore. I mean, I'm working on it, we're getting back there. But if if I had to swing a sword for 20 minutes, I'd probably just be like, you can kill me now.

Just lay down.

Yeah, I just swinging this thing around with all of my might to hack pieces of somebody's body off, and I'm just like, uh, it's you could just kill me. I don't need this. So you it's it's that's a it's a big exertion as well on on the people. So taking into account some of those things is is always fun to think about. It's a nice, uh, nice way to know that you're like I, you know, if you point it out to somebody, they're like, oh, that was an interesting detail. So and I I mean a lot of people do that, take that into account, but it's it's something that I I hadn't considered fully until I had really started getting into the nitty-gritty of this writing.

Yeah. One of the things that I noticed about your series is you a lot of people when an event like this happens and you know, a half of the people or a majority of the people on the planet die, you never really see the aftermath of that. Like you don't see the bodies in the street, and they don't describe like the smells and the sights and coyotes and wolves and and birds, but you you did that, and you made it very real.

Yeah. I yeah, that was I definitely went back and forth upon doing that, but I was like, you know what? You kind of get a taste for that in some of these newer series like uh The Walking Dead, where there's you know, obviously bodies all all the places and they show some of those things. They don't they don't put much focus on it because but they kind of have it there in the background. And when I thought about that, I was like, I don't see many people just talking about what's actually happening there and describing what it would really be like and getting through those problems. And I wanted to make it as as realistic as possible in the sense that it it doesn't take you out of this immersive experience. I don't want you to lose the the the idea that you really are right here with with the characters going through and driving through downtown Dallas trying to see if there's any survivors you can help out, or or going on a food run because you've got to go raid a grocery store or a gas station, or in one case I I sent them to the mattress store because people needed a place to sleep and they didn't have anywhere to lay down except the floor because this was mostly an office building. So, you know, it's it's it's a big deal for all these realistic things that that you you encounter when you're sitting down and thinking step by step about how do I make this as believable as possible.

Yeah, and most people just kind of gloss over that. They just they get to the action and the adventuring, and that's pretty much it.

Yeah, and that's water and food and clothes, you know, clothes wear out, shoes wear out, and and people need to sleep and then you encounter the then you have to also take into account the things like scarcity. That was a big thing that I had to come up against in this where I got to the end of end of book one, and I had a thousand people at the at the building, at the at the guild building. A lot. So you know, you know how much food a thousand people eat. They've got to try to figure out something to go through these things. Um, and and you know, you can buy food from the vending machines, but everybody has to have cores to buy their food from the vending machines, and not everybody's gonna go out and be a fighter or or defender in the streets. Meet people who are inside caring for the children, they need people inside cooking and cleaning and and uh repairing the the uh equipment that keeps the building running. Research and development is a big part of something I put in there too that they needed to do because now the power grid fails. So yeah, but you you need to think about all those things. There's this huge encompassing of things. When I sit down and think about it now, I don't know why my head didn't explode sometimes, but I feel like there were a couple of times where I was like, I'm done, I can't handle this, it's too much. But you always get back to it because it is fun and it's it's enjoyable, it's cathartic too. Writing is a big catharsis uh for me at least. It allows me to let some of the things out that I can't normally express, I guess. I mean, I've got a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders to be the guy who's taking care of everybody, so it's hard sometimes to uh express some of those emotions that you have over certain things.

Yeah, yeah. It's a good way to get the internal thoughts out and make them external thoughts without saying them.

It is. Yeah, I I had uh during the process of writing the the first three books, I lost I lost three people that I really cared about. Um I lost a friend from work uh who I'd been friends with for quite a long time. I lost a uh my father-in-law passed away, and I had another friend who was in our D group for years, just a sweet, wonderful woman who uh passed away as well in a car accident while I was writing these. And I each time that happened, I got to put something in there, at least somewhere that said that was like my goodbye to those people. Uh to two of to one of them or no, two of them I had characters put in after my father-in-law, I just had a dedication to them because I didn't know exactly where to put them in the book at that point. Um, but yeah, it's it's also really again, it's really cathartic to get to do something like that. Like I got a chance to say goodbye through words and to say something, you know, while I cried on my keyboard uh about what I was putting into them. So it's it's it's really a great thing for me, and I love that I get to do it now. Not full-time, obviously. I'm working there. Well, hopefully, hopefully we'll get to the full time someday. Someday. Uh, but just getting to do it at all, at least is is it's like an escape for me. It's something to get rid of some of those pent-up feelings and emotions.

Yeah.

From LitRPG Superfan To Author

And so you have been a lit RPG reader for a very long time, uh, longer than most people that I know, actually. But what made you decide to finally start writing in the lit RPG genre versus just continuing to read it?

Um, I fell in love with the genre first. So that was a big part of why I wanted to write specifically in this genre. It's like I'm I'm even like right now, I'm pretty much exclusively reading lit RPG books. Like if somebody offers me another book, I'm like, is it lit RPG? Eh, we put it on the pile and we'll see if I get to it. Uh unless it's unless it's like, oh, Tolkien wrote another book. You know, I'd go read that, but he's dead. So that's probably not gonna happen.

Probably. It probably won't happen.

You know, find some of those secret notes somewhere. I don't know, they publish another partial book or something. I mean, I would love that because Tolkien is like one of my heroes. So uh, but I think the thing that really got me going was actually Alaron Kong was one of the people who really got me pushed into the series. Because again, I started a long time ago. It's like 10 years ago when I really started into Lit RPG, maybe even a little longer than that, I don't remember exactly, but I know that that Alaron was still publishing his book, like his series. I got into it like when he published book three, I think. So 2016 is when I got in, 2015. Now I've I've I've been writing since I was in like junior high or high school. Um never wrote anything this voluminous, but I did uh but I did write some things in in high school. I wrote a I guess you'd call it a novella. It was like 42,000 words or something in high school uh that I found that it was terrible, but I found it. And uh um so I just was like, I'm gonna try. And I try with the first series first. Um something that's it is actually up on my royal road, if anybody cares to see how transformative my writing has been. It's called Dragon Riders. Um it was just not good enough. It was not, it was not good enough. Um, but I had some very strong, influential people that I've come to know from being such a big part of the of the genre. People knew my name because I was just always there asking questions, uh, putting up things that I read that I thought were good, giving feedback on what's up on somebody's question about a book. So Jez was the first one who I sent the book to him. And I was like, hey, you know, is this something that you you guys might be interested in publishing? And he said, and he read it and he read the first few chapters and he came back and he goes, The story's great, man. I really love the idea behind the story, where you're going with it. Unfortunately, you're just not there yet with the writing. And he sat down with me for like an hour and a half and just talked about some of the things that that make good writing. And that's where I went from there to as soon as I did that, I was like, okay, I'm really frustrated with this one with the Dragon Rider series, and I'm pretty sure if I try to do this, I will go completely insane fixing it. Um, so I was like, I'm just gonna start over. That was it was like a day or two later when I had that dream about vending machines, and I was like, I wonder if that's a thing. And then it just all went downhill from there.

Yeah, I love how open this community is to helping each other out, and no one really tries to gatekeep anything, and everyone's like, Yeah, sure, I'll help you out. Like, I'll read it, I'll give you my advice and my my opinions, and it's just fantastic.

It really is. It's it's like nothing I've ever seen in any kind of uh genre community before. But in this group, because most of the people came from some kind of indie publishing, or even even most of the big name publishers, I say publishers, they're not like the big traditional one, but they are, I mean legitimate publishers. But there's genre-specific publishers who are uh are still of that same mindset because I think a lot of them are owned by people who were indie authors at some point. And indie authors are are always we're we're happy for whatever help they got, so they're happy to pass the help back on to the next person. And I have been honored to get to um continue that legacy of when someone comes to me with questions about writing and how they do it, I make sure I take the time to sit down and talk to them and show them, you know, this is what I did and I found success with. Uh, I had a strategy for this. Uh, you know, some things, sometimes things change, like railroads a little bit different than when I first started publishing. So I when somebody asks, I'm like, I'm gonna give you every piece of information that I have on this because somebody did it for me. You know, Jez, Aleron, James Hunter. I've talked to James Hunter so many times about writing as well. It's they're just such amazing people that you get to talk to some on occasion. And um, they gave me advice that was really helpful. So I just hope I'm doing the same for the next person.

I love that. I love how nice everyone is.

Me too.

What The Vending Machines Can Sell

So in in the book, uh, everyone gets things through vending machines. That is the main source of market, I guess. Um is there anything that can't be purchased in vending machines?

No. If the so the deal is, the the deal that I always tell people is if if you could if it's ever been a thing on Earth, it's in the vending machine. And even some things that weren't on Earth from other places that were really, really popular, um, got some things that were put in there. You'll see if if you read close if you pay close attention to some of the uh descriptions that I give when somebody gets an item, uh they there's some there's some backstory in there for the reason that item was created in a certain way and things like that.

Um loincloth.

Yes, like the loincloth. That's my favorite one. Oh my god, I laughed so hard when I wrote that. I was like, I can't believe I'm doing this.

It was good. It was good.

It was. But yeah, but I've told everybody, yes, if it existed on Earth, you can buy it from the vending machine. The only question is how expensive is it and can you can you afford it?

What about stuff like livestock or things like that?

No, you you could buy so live things is definitely a little bit more complicated. Um, but I I've I'm still gonna stick to my guns and say you could buy those things if they were items. Because there's you you you can't put live things in your storage. You can't I have I have officially made that can and things will die if you put them in there. But the vending machine is different. So um, yeah, you should still be able to do that because you could buy cattle. If you could buy cattle now, you could be up, you'd have to be able to buy cattle from there. So I'm gonna stick to my guns and say yes. So they don't actually store the items in the can. It's it's a magical transportation spell that happens when you open it. That's why there's the big puff of smoke, and then something's there automatically. So wherever that's that cow comes from is somewhere, and then it's magically transported there. Maybe maybe somebody on another planet has uh cow magic, and that's what they do is they create cows uh out of nothing so that people can have food uh or fling them over castles if you're British or no French. French did that. The French do them over the castles. Um whatever the case is.

My and my punny uh weird brain immediately went to like Magician.

Yes. That would absolutely have to be what they were called.

Magician. Um so I have read in other or I I've seen in other interviews where you talk about the magic comes from different chakra points in the

Chakra Magic, Alignment, And Healing

system. Where did that idea come from? How did you come up with using chakras as the focal points for the magic?

Well, that was pretty easy. It's it's uh it's definitely an old trope. It's something that a lot of people have done over the years in many different places. It's it's especially um prominent in cultivation things, especially Eastern style cultivation. Um, if if you've ever done any studying of like uh Chinese, ancient Chinese arts for healing and things, they believed that the chakra was a place for uh everything that controlled your body. And so when because of that, it meant that the uh that different parts of you kind of represented a different element uh of the world. The lungs would be wind, um, the the crotch was usually fire for some reason. There's a lot of those that they had those uh that the each one of the different parts of the body represented different things for those things. Uh like dark dark magic came from the stomach because of the the digestion things that happened there and so on and so forth. Um so I just kind of stole from some of those ideas um and and just kind of reused them here because it just kind of made sense to say that you would focus on a different type of magic by doing a different type of thing. Uh that's why not everybody can master those uh every every bit of the elements in some of those older boujia style um stories and movies and things. You can't master them all because you've got you're usually born with some kind of affinity. I took out the affinity of this one because I didn't feel like that fit. And that was one more thing that would have been a nightmare to keep up with of who had affinities for what. I mean I was already I was already having to keep up with um the alignments because I made the stupid decision at the very beginning to make things dark and or light aligned. And I had to be like, wait, is that what what was his class to get? Oh nope, he can't heal him, but that's not okay. Um So yeah, I made that dumb decision the very beginning, and then I was like, Well, no going back now.

I thought that added a really neat layer to everything.

It did. The only problem with it was um the editing, making sure that I I didn't have light healers healing dark aligned people until they got to a certain level. Because we do we do discuss that later, how once you hit a certain threshold of uh ability in that you are um you're able to heal regardless of alignment. Uh if you chose a healing style class, that is. I mean like a warlock would probably not be able to heal light aligned people ever, but a cleric growing up uh with with their focus being on healing spells, uh, would be able to heal a l a dark aligned person once they reach a certain threshold.

That makes sense.

It's like a mastery uh uh bonus for mastery.

Yeah. In book one, the main focus uh once you get through the very beginning of the book is like this big world event, like a big world dungeon that they have to try to get to in the Grand Canyon.

Yes.

Before all of the vending machines just go kaput and everyone's gone. Which would suck. On the way to the Grand Canyon, they stop in several towns and they help some, they don't help some, but they send a lot of people back to their main base, which they eventually turn into a guild, uh, to go join their guild. How many people can that base realistically hold? Like are they gonna have to eventually move?

I talk a little bit about this in some of the later uh some of the the the the other books, two and three as well. But there is the the because they've chosen for the building to be their guild building, they're designated as such, they are able to upgrade it. So they they Get a certain number of points per day from everyone in the building that would be based on their uh mindset of how they feel at that time. The happier people are, the more guild points you get uh uh each time you go through. And then eventually you accumulate enough points to buy additional uh things that you can add on to there. Like they upgraded the whole security room in one set, uh, they added some new doors in in another set, like the rolling down the roll-down metal doors. Um so they it's it's they will have to probably do something at some point. Um, but for now, the option to expand the building is still available and they would be able to do that for quite a while. Eventually, there would be a point where it would have to spill out. It would be probably decades in the in the future when people are uh, or at least a decade in the future, when people are back into the whole procreating things and and uh and you know continuing the species and repopulating the planet or whatever that the case is, you know, would eventually probably have to branch off into some other groups. Um I haven't decided exactly how that would work yet, because I don't think that's actually gonna get I don't think I'm actually gonna get to that specifically in this series. Uh 10 years is a long time. And these first three books were one year. So yeah. So I don't I don't know how how long it would take me to get through ten years. So um, but yeah, eventually there would come a point where that would have to happen. They would have to split up or move on to another place, or they might even be able to like build another building nearby that would be an extension or an add-on. Um they have they're they're always finding new professionals that they can uh have to help do the things. I don't want to say use because the people are really getting the protection out of it, so it's not used.

Yeah.

Um, but they they're finding these professionals who are helping with a lot of these things, and eventually they'd probably build another building or or just acquire another building and say, This is ours now, and and there would be some kind of rule the system would allow them to say, Oh, you've hit capacity at your building, you know, we'll let you annex this other building as a part as well.

Yeah, it's because it's they sent so many people back to their base that it was already pretty full.

No, it was not pretty full before.

Oh, wasn't?

Yeah, this is a big building. It's actually a replacement. It's a it is a big building. It is a and that's like a 900 to a thousand unit building that's there. It's it's huge. It's like 40 something stories tall and it's got all kinds of things in it. So it's uh it's a it's a pretty cool place that when they first started out was definitely not full, but is getting full now that they've sent all these people back for sure.

So you don't really go much into like gods and deities. Uh you do kind of talk about it a little bit because of the warlock class, they have to have a patron. Are these gods and deities and patrons are they actual gods and deities, or is it someone who has just from somewhere in the universe leveled up so much that they just become godlike?

It's it's definitely the latter. Um, but at the same time, there is a point where these beings that have been for an unknowable amount of time, they've just existed. When we, you know, we're we're here in this universe that we say is is X number of millions of years old or whatever, billions of years old or whatever it is. But there are galaxies beyond ours that have been here longer than we have. And it just kind of was one of those things for me to think that if some if something had existed that long and got to a point where, like we talked about how the the patron, uh Tom's patron, Azrak, is um very long-lived, millennia long-lived. So in the times of of millenniums, the the the fact that the millennia are passing uh for this person has given them all this time to figure out how to uh up their power. So those that they they they call them gods, they do call them that because they they rarely uh meddle in in mortal affairs because they've reached a point now where they will live forever. They're immortal, they've got enough power that their body can just regenerate on its own. Um, and they have the ability to to wipe out galaxies in with a thought because of the amount of power they've been able to uh obtain over their extremely long lifespans. So they're not truly gods. They were mortal at one point, they would have been, but over a period of long, long, long suffering, they managed to gain enough power to kind of I don't know, shovel off the mortal coil as it would be, I guess.

So is that something that the people on Earth that have survived can eventually attain, or are we limited by our normal human lifespans?

No, you is possible for you to attain those. Uh in fact, it's been it's I think I very, very briefly, maybe one line somewhere in there mentioned that that humans live longer now that they have these classes. Uh so it's it's basically like doubled uh a human's lifespan. Now you can live for about 200 years instead of about a instead of a hundred years or whatever the case is. Um, you know, obviously people will die sooner than that. But so it gives you more time to learn those things. So we do have the opportunity. It you just kind of have to end up being almost single-mindedly focused on how to get more power to really get to that stage in that point. Um, Azrach was a warlock at one point, and he became oh he became a patron. So it is definitely possible for that to happen.

That's why he's so uppity.

It is why he's so uppity. He's like, I don't have time.

I've done it. Why can't you?

Well, so he he comes to love Tom, though. That's one of the best things about it. Is like Tom is different. Like most of the most of the warlocks that he's dealt with are like sacrifices, dark magic. I hate these people. I went evil because my mommy didn't love me or whatever the case was. And so he deals with a lot of these people who are just like, it's all about me, I don't care. All I want is power. And it's it's a refreshing thing to meet somebody like Tom who's like, all I want to do is protect these people, you know. I just want us to live. That's all I want.

Yeah. You can kind of tell in book one that he likes him. You can tell.

He does. He's really starting to like him at that point, anyways, and the and the people that he's with, because they're not again. You if you're used to just popping into a world where somebody's demanding something of you all the time, and then you pop into this world where everybody's cutting up and making jokes while you're around there, and you can and and he's the kind of guy who loves to make those cut up and jokes as well, then it was just kind of like a perfect fit for them to be together.

Yeah, yeah, they make a good team.

I agree.

Audiobook Casting And Big Emotions

Uh audiobook. Steve Campbell is the narrator.

Oh, yes.

So he does a f he is one of my top narrators. Uh, absolutely love everything that he does. How did you end up pairing up with Steve Campbell?

Um, I asked for him. But I guess really the bottom line. There you go. That's that's to cut out all the crap, but to go back, I guess to go back and add a bunch of crap. Um, it's so when when we got to the process, they they say we want you to start looking at people who you think would be good for your book. So you really do have to sit down and think about what you wrote, the tone you wrote it in, the type of voices you expect to or you heard in your head to to come up. Because regardless of people whether people say I I I imagined what this character sounded like or not, we all have. We all imagined while we were writing it what they sounded like. Well, I had to go through and do a lot of listening to audio samples from different places. The good news, or the good thing for me was that I we had narrowed it down to two companies. I would I would love to have done had Soundbooth Theater look into it as well. Um wasn't in the timelines, which is fine. Um, but my I I asked for I asked for three people. I said, these are the three people I want, and here's the order that I would take them in, if if that means anything to you. And uh Steve Steve was my number one pick.

Oh yay.

So and it just worked just so happened to work out that uh Geneva had a good relationship with Steve. So he was like, Yeah, uh let me let me take a look at it. And then when he read it, he was like, Yep, I'll do this. So it worked out really great to get that in there. And uh Steve and I have spent a lot of time together now.

I mean, he's a good person to spend time with. Yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah.

Do you find yourself writing things with him in mind as the narrator now? Like, or do you find yourself writing things in his voice in your head?

So Steve will never believe me that I believe me when I say this because he just doesn't, because he gives us a hard time. Same thing, he does the same thing with James. Uh no, I don't write things specifically for Steve. For starters, I I actually wrote all three books before I had Steve. So I didn't even know that was gonna happen because uh we we decided yeah, we decided before we went and just pushed all the books out that we I I we decided the best thing to do would be write all three and then just go in order of editing, uh dev editing, line editing, continuity editing, and then uh beta reading and then audio. So um we got those things in there and I I try not to write them in that way because now I have an established voice for the characters and the and the story itself as well. So going forward, you know, I might throw something you know fun in there occasionally. Um that's something that's like a I don't know, a tongue twister or something for Steve to do. Um but having been in there with him and watching how hard he works on these things as well, it really gave me a whole new appreciation for the amount of effort it takes to do what he's doing. And it is monumental. I love Steve too much to do that to him. So I'd I'd just like to I just like to let the the book speak for itself in its own voice, usually.

Were there any moments when you were re-listening to the book um that really uh surprised you or blew you away that he narrated?

Most all of all three books, I guess I could say. There there's obviously some of the really big uh emotional scenes that I've written into the the books because I didn't I didn't I didn't want to be a one-trick pony of um this is the guy who just makes fart jokes and dick shots all the time. So I was like, I need to, I need to, I don't want to be a one-trick pony. I want to be known as just that guy who's always cut nothing, what have you. So I wrote some scenes in there that were very raw for me, especially because again, like um in book three, it's book three now, there's a a scene with a ghost that uh is I basically took as the opportunity to say goodbye to a friend of mine, which is where I wrote that into it. Every person in that Discord had to stop what they were doing because we were all just just woo woo-hooing. Like Steve even said he sent it to uh like Ginger um over on TikTok. And she listened to it and I and then she sent him a message back, and I heard the message that she sent back, and she was just a mess from that whole thing. Because it's this it's this emotional moment of of you got this second chance to say goodbye to somebody that you lost.

Yeah.

Um and and helped them move on. And it was it was just so moving. Even Steve was like, Steve got to the end of it and he was like, Yeah, I I cried for like an hour when that thing was was being read out for for the live, and it's it's ruined me multiple times. And then I but in a good way. It's it's it's something that again, uh I wrote that as a as a goodbye to a friend of mine who I didn't get to say goodbye to. And so uh it was my it was my cathartic goodbye to that person, and I poured my heart into it. I and I I think it came out nice. Um Steve uses stronger words than that, but I'm my own worst critic, so we all are. Absolutely.

Six-Book Plan And Release Uncertainty

So this one's gonna have six books. So do you know how you want it to end?

I do know how I want it to end. I I can't say that yet because um I haven't fully revealed where that's coming from. You the book three, you started to get some some pictures of what happened with it. Book four um doesn't talk about it much. It does uh it does some other things happen in book four that's really cool. I've already I already have book four written.

So when will book four be out?

I don't know the answer to that. Um we're I haven't I don't have any I don't have any word from Legion yet, which is fine. It's a business decision on their part. They need to see how these books are gonna go. If they don't want to go with it, I'll figure out another way to do it. But I will get all six books out at some point. But I started to book five. Book five is really where it starts to snowball into this. Oh, this is what's been happening since book one that's been going on with some of these things. Uh and again, book book five is where you really start to see that. Oh, even even stuff back in book one was planned by this guy. So it's gonna be kind of cool to see what happens with some of those things. So I do know how I went at the end, but I can't talk a lot about it yet because again, I really haven't even fully revealed what's what's where that's coming from.