Episode 108 - Interview With J.D. Goland (Blood and Silver)

Hello all, we have another great interview with J.D. Golan.

 #podcast #history #westvirginia #library #booktube #booktok #bookstagram #interview 

Make sure to check out our social medias, and if you share with us that you've listened and rated our podcast, we will put your name in for a drawing for one of our Reading Room Ruffian shirts! Wooo, merch!

Check out our Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/readingroomruffianspodcast/?ref=share

Join our Goodreads Group
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1210499-reading-room-ruffians

Check out our personal Goodreads
Ariel:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/108053352-ariel-rebstock
Zac:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12288041-zac
Mallory:
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/78163096-mallory

Feel free to email or message us on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, or through our email.
Tiktok/Instagram: @wvjcolibrary
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WVJCoLibrary
Email: readingroomruffians@gmail.com

Transcript

0:00

[Music] Welcome back to another episode of the Reading Room Reference, your favorite library podcast. Mallory here, and according to my orange dream cycle BFF aerial, I am a snuggly little bug. She's so cute. Well, we are joined by our Supreme River Lord Carla. We are recording at our library in Jackson County, West Virginia. Yay. I'm sorry I was kind of hard. No one's favorite Dung Beetle Zach is joining us from Seattle, Washington. I'm pretty sure of the only reason some people listen to this show. Thanks very much. Hello, my fan. We need a survey. Who's got the most fans? I know it's Mallory, but the link... No, it's not. No, it's not. No, definitely somebody told Mama that I was the favorite once. This was like last year. Once upon a time. Once upon a time, it counts. Okay. I claim that victory. You do it. Today we have local author J.D. Golland, who goes by Justin, just so we're all aware. J.D. though is a nice pin name. We are going to be discussing his book Blood and Silver, and so welcome. Here is your time to shamelessly plug yourself. Hello, I'll be a Vax fan too, just so that way he has another one. There you go. He needs that. He needs that. I'll be a universal fan. Does that work better? Yes. There we go. Spread the love around, right? I guess. I can't, you know, there are those ones that invited me. I can't turn on them too, so... But, yes, hi. I'm J.D. Golland. I'm Justin to everybody who knows me. On Facebook and TikTok, I'm J.D. Golland, fantasy author. How y'all doing tonight? Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's Monday. Yeah, it's felt like Thursday all day today. So, where can they pick up your books? I have them online, basically Amazon, Barnes and Noble, books a million anywhere online. I've been working with Barnes and Noble's, and I think they're going to put me on the shelves there soon, but that's the work in progress. That's cool. I know the Morkentown Barnes and Noble invited me out there. They're really excited about some of the work I've been doing online with their sales, and they want to have me for an event real soon. I'm just working on getting the stuff together to get out there. It's a busy time with both my kids going to college this year. It's really busy, and everything's been kind of put on a backburner until things are caught up. It's really exciting, yeah. Absolutely. So, how'd you come up with this idea for this storyline? I've actually been sitting on this idea for about 15 years. I kind of let's watch movies and shows, and I get ideas together that wouldn't it be great if somebody, we did this route, or that route with a different movie. And eventually, I started compiling this idea of two friends who leave their home for the first time, but I didn't want it to be just another fantasy book that everybody's read a hundred times, especially with the way things have changed in the market now. I wanted it to be more to what we're used to, where we're known. Like, the one behind it all, the ones controlling the bad ones. I wanted it to be something different. And I started with a really strong outline of exactly which chapter I wanted to go, and how far everything wanted to, you know, how every critique wanted to work. But the one thing I've learned with writing is sometimes, while you're writing, you get different ideas. How to tweak the idea just a little bit different. And that's kind of what happened with Gluttonstone. It started off just two friends. I had them, you know, meet a couple people on the process. One who has become supremely popular and that's a rose, that seems to be everybody's favorite character. Mine included, I'm guilty of it. But, you know, what I started with and what it turned into is a totally different process. But I love how organically it's changed and it's shifted into something that has become a whole universe in itself. I'm currently getting ready to drop book three. I know I have to get the library, a copy of two and three. I'm a little behind on that. But I left off with book three. And as I ended it, what I had in the outline was far from where I'm at. But it's also a lot of people have struck with it. And a lot of people message me daily, wanting updates on the next book. So how many do you think it's going to be in the series? Do you have any idea yet? I do. It's going to be five when I'm done. The whole plan has always been five. I don't want to have be one of the ones that's making book 26, book 27. Because a lot of people I find don't like something that drags on forever. So I started off with a five book plan. And even with it changing, it's still the five book plan. And so far, I've coined the first three, the resurgence of Ebon. That's the world that I finally came to the point where I had to name the world because it's such an adventure. So I've called it Ebon. And the first three are the resurgence of Ebon. And the last two are going to be the Great War. Oh, wow. It's the last to get pretty intense because there's some pretty powerful characters. Yeah. And with the second one, you get to introduce a guiding talent who I created. It was supposed to be a one or two chapter character. And apparently, he is everybody's favorite villain now, even though everybody despises him. And it's, I don't understand how that works, but they love him and hate him all at the same time. And he's become a major player in the later novels. And with the fourth and fifth, it's going to be a bigger, climatic finish. I've got a Great War planned out. Really cool. Yeah. So did you base your characters on people you know or they just entirely made up? Well, that's actually an interesting question. Because initially, it was just, I know Adelaun. I wanted him to be, you know, the assertive leader with, you know, trouble with the decisions. And I had Clariss who was, you know, the strong woman who was anxiety behind. When I created these characters, they were not supposed to be based off anybody. But as I continued writing them, I found out like each part of the characters I created want to be in a piece of me. You know, Clariss has their anxiety. And that's one thing I've always dealt with is, you know, anxiety, stress, and everything like that. And then like later on, you meet Rose and Jake. Rose is a great character who's very spunky. She's very wild. You never know what she's going to say next. And that's something that I'm very, very well at. Anybody who knows you can tell you that you never know what I'm going to say next. So eventually, like it wound up being pieces of me that was in there, but it was never intended. That's pretty cool, though. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was my 300th round of editing that I did through this that I finally started to piece together that, hey, that's a little bit of a mean. And oh, wow, that's something I would do too. And it just kind of sunk in that, you know, when we write characters, we always draw from things, but sometimes we're just not aware of what we're drawing from. Yeah. So does it hard to keep that separated when you're writing about a specific character and how they react to something? Or do you have them pretty solid in your head? Initially, what's the first, I'd say, 15 chapters. It was really hard to switch dynamics because I think by the end of the first book, I was managing close to 21 different characters all with their own individualism. At first, it was really hard, but as I continued on, I got to the point where it was just natural to me. Like if I'm writing a chapter or a paragraph with rows, like it automatically kicks into me. By the time I finished the third one, like it got to the point where I'm just reading these things, even in real life, as the characters in my mind, because that's all I've been thinking about. Like I spend hours writing these characters. So it became a natural thought to me, like, okay, this is rows, or this is jakes, or this is a larg. Like it just became a natural thing. Because they are very different. There are very different personalities with strings and weaknesses. I just didn't know if it was hard to switch back and forth all the time. Yeah, that's one thing. I've been getting a lot of reviews on TikToks and one of the things that they love about it is how every character, it's not like, okay, this one's kind of like this one, or I can see the similarities. They all rave how it's all so specific and so individualized. And the visuals is what another thing that they love. Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely see them. I'm not an AI person. I'm very much anti AI, but I used an image generator before I started writing. And I spent about a month and a half on the same generator. I would create a very specific crest with four different logos on it. And I would write the most overwhelming the descriptions that everybody hates where you finally skip like three pages. I started with and then I would take a line here and I would take a line there. And I would keep minimizing the paragraphs until the picture that I have changed to the point where I couldn't recognize it anymore. So I would be able to sit down and say, okay, this is how much detail I need to do when I'm describing the homes of Haven or Abelon or one of the characters or the castles and Kingsford. I knew exactly how much description I needed to create that image for you and others to be able to visualize it without beating people with it. Yeah. Yeah, because you can't, there can't be too many details. There are some authors who really go into details of the point where you're just tired of reading about the flowers in the field. That's such a fine line because you didn't go have to agree if you get like two lines about what the character looks like, you can't really envision that character the way that author intended it or the way the author sees. But if you have to read 16 pages about the way his hair falls, you're not going to read that one either. Yeah, very true. Very true. Before we go too much further, can we get like the elevator pitch for the listeners, if they haven't read the book about what it's about and sort of I just realized we haven't even gone through that yet, so that's fine. Yeah, the elevator pitch is something I've been working on. So it's actually I'm really confident with this one. So what it is is you have Abelon and Clarisse who face the traumatic event at the age of 14, what they saw at that age change them forever and accept them that their dreams were to join the King's Army. As soon as they leave Haven for the first time, they discover the world is a lot darker than they expected and the deeper they go, the darker it becomes. Once they finally achieve their dreams and are sitting on the King's Army, they quickly realize that those dreams were more of nightmares and that everybody they're supposed to trust is not people they should be looking up to. I mean, yeah, pretty much covers. Yeah. Yeah, covers are pretty well, I think. The blur, the book, the blurb is definitely something that as you guys will agree is what can make or break you when people are reading on Amazon. You know, we read a blurb. How it either sounds interesting or it doesn't. That's true. It's you could take I'll use Akatar because it's one of the most famous ones out there. If you give a quick nothing blurb about it, nobody's going to read it. Right. But if you can manage your words just the right way, you'll have everybody excited and jumping for it. When people go and look at mine because I've gotten the comments back myself that people are hooked just from reading the blurbs and that's been a six month process just to get the right phrasing down. It's important. Yeah, it really makes makes you choose. What do you want to get forward? Yeah, the two most important things for an author to focus on is the cover because that's everybody says don't judge about a book by the cover, but everybody also knows that's your first thing that you're going to do. Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, every time. If you have an ugly cover on it, nobody's going to look at it. But if you have an appealing cover like with Blood and Silver, I have Adelon with his Damascus Steel sword on Golden Silver. I have Rose on the third one, which is Bronze and Silver. I have Clarice and it will keep going on down the line for each of the five. I make sure to put it, you know, with something that reflects their element like Adelon's was complete darkness because you don't I want I don't want people to understand what he is before they see it. I want them to be invested before they find out his secrets. Yeah, that makes sense. By I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut your off. That makes sense. Yeah. But when I did Rose's cover on Golden Silver, by that point, you have a good understanding of where she's at. So that allowed me to illustrate the cover a lot more and put more into it, which really catches a lot of people's attention too. Can you talk a little bit about the way you came up with the magic in this one? Because it's a little different than other magic that we've read. The magic ties down a lot to growing up reading comic books. Similar how to the X-Men had their own individual styles. I wanted that same type of feature. I didn't want everybody just to be super overpowered. Like nobody likes reading a fight when you know that person can't lose because they have all these things. So I wanted to create something that was specific and unique to each character. With Avalon, I wanted his strength to be the leader of the found family that he reflects everything that tries to come at him. So it wound up turning to his ability would be to repel the magic that was coming at them. With Rose, it was more, you know, she's a fiery character, but she's also smooth like water. So I gave her more an elemental style. Clarice started off as just being a healer, but with her anxiety and the stress that she goes through between what you guys have read and blood and silver and what starts off in gold and silver, she becomes more of what D&D fans would call an enchantress. She is one of those overpowered characters. However, her anxiety does cripple her continuously through the story because if everybody knows, anxiety doesn't go away. So no matter how confident she is, I still create situations throughout the entire story where mental health affects all of them. It's something I wanted to keep in there that all of that is not something, oh, just because I'm with these people, I'm all better. I still wanted those issues to be on there. Right. I thought the way you use the Jo's things too with their different colors is pretty cool. Yeah, that was cool. The stone, that's one of the things that organically started as a great idea, but I wound up shifting it a little bit more in golden silver. And with bronze and silver, it turned a whole different direction. And I love the idea with the gems and the colors. And I will specify the colors do mean things that you will discover along the way. I kind of figured that. Yeah, especially the bronze bronze. That's also where the title ties in that bronze is such a more powerful metal in this world. So with something like bronze, it makes them extremely stronger and more capable, which comes white and hand when you meet some of the how should I put more violent characters like Talon. Talon to really bring in this character and why he's everybody's favorite. He's basically job three from Game of Thrones on steroids. My gosh. Yeah, he's he's sadistic. He's horrible. But an unlike Joffrey or even Umbridge from Harry Potter, like two of the worst characters, each of them had their own abish ambitions. Joffrey needed to begin Umbridge protecting the ministry of magic and all that. Talon just does it for the life. Right. He is. He's a true psychopath. Yeah. Yeah. He is truly a psychopath who there are some dark chapters that took me a few days not only to write it, but to recover from it. Yeah. Because of his type of actions, but it really does fit his character so well that, you know, it's just something that we go through as authors, you know, even writing it. I know a lot of people love, you know, this story destroyed me or this story did this. Yeah, writing is the same way. Yeah. When we write these chapters, there are times when we just have to like step up and just walk away. You know, I don't think I've ever thought of it from the authors perspective like that before. Yeah. With golden sober, there is a loss. I will warn that right now. It is a, I will not say who, of course, it is horrific. It is horrible and the way that it happens will definitely affect the characters. It affects every single one of them because of how it happens and who it happens to. But when I wrote it, I had to take a week off because it was really harsh on me to get it through. There were some parts where I had tears as I was writing it just because of how emotional that scene was. Now which one is it? The golden bronze. This is the golden silver. Oh, it's so it's the next one. Yes. One thing you'll, I need to part out for everybody now while blood and silver really gets you set up into the story. I don't want anybody to be certainly attached to characters and think that they won't die because I'm here to tell you anybody can and quite a few people will. Oh, lovely. There's a couple of my like pretty well. I like the, it's just the book specifically the way it was published. I like the fact that the font is larger and it's like spaced out. Yeah. It makes it much easier to read. That's one thing. When we do the formatting, it takes forever. When we get, what happens is we set it up with the company. They tell us okay, we're ready now. I tell them to send me a copy. And we want to, that process itself can take about a month or a month and a half just to make sure that when I'm handing you guys this copy, it's exactly what I'm happy with. That's good. That's good. I mean, give you time to think about it and correct anything that you didn't like the way they did it. Yeah. Exactly. One of the biggest problems I have and I started this more with gold and silver as I was a little bit more formative with the chapter titles and that wound up being, I liked it where it was center page, but where I formatted it and where the book put it, it didn't always mesh up right. So that wound up takes multiple times to get that one right. Yeah. I hear the formatting can be. Yeah. It can be an issue. We've had other authors to mention that too. Formatting is one of the worst parts, but there is no pain like editing. Yeah, that was going to be one of my questions. What was the biggest obstacle to overcome? So was it writing, editing, or publishing? And it kind of sounds like formatting. Editing is the worst because I sent it off the arcs. After first we edited it, of course, ourself, we made it and changed it. We go through, we read the entire book five or six more times looking for punctuation errors or spelling errors. After about 10 reads, then we send it off to the arcs who give us their, you know, their fine points and then we go through and reread again for another 15, 20 times. Yeah. And I think by the time I got done with all three of those, I must have read them all about 700 times. You have a memorize by then. I wouldn't have read to the top point. I know what it's meant to say. Definitely one of those things. I'm currently working on a standalone project just because I wanted, you know, the length of three of them breeze a little bit more. But the standalone project, I'm trying to process of reading or editing per chapter. So I go back as after I've written a chapter and just keep reading that a few times and I'm hoping by the time I'm all done with that, I just have to reread it once and I'll be good to go. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. For you, I hope so too. Do you have any other like project book ideas like that in the works or are you just want to get this one finished first? I have a folder with over 250 different ideas. I've come up with some of them, our garbage. The one I'm actually currently working on has TikToks at a blaze. Everybody is like going nuts and waiting for it because the titles call Dreamweers. Yeah. And what it is is behind the entire world, there is one person born a century who watches over all the dreams. And this 35-year-old loser woman who got fired from her job, her apartments and shambles, she winds up stumbling into this age-old war about the Dreamweers to find out that some of the people in the world want to control that Dreamweaver so they can indeed control the world. And she winds up stumbling into the battle and finding out she was the Dreamweaver. And it is such a deep story. I'm writing this one a little bit different than what I did blood and silver. This one's coming in a first person, but I'm also writing it with the chapters with thoughts from the character range. There's one where she's going out on this date and the chapter title is called Dinner in the Good Stuff. That's a fantastic title. Yeah, I love that. That's great. When I, it's an urban fantasy and this is where like I said, I mix things again. It's an urban fantasy with a bit of an epic fantasy because part of this story is going to take place in the dream realm itself where there's a whole different set of rules and everything is different in that realm. But on the other side, they're in the middle of a city talking down cabbys and stuff like that, having dinners and restaurants like an urban fantasy would. But like I said, my own little touch, I'm kind of throwing it all together and adding a little bit of a TV magic, I guess I'll say because everybody loves the great chase themes. Like you see in movies where they're jumping over the car and hiding from these people. Yeah. Well, I decided to put that into a book and run a chapter just with that kind of TV magic. And like I said, I love thinking outside of the box and bringing it in a whole different direction. Yeah. What's kind of cool it is. Yeah. So how far have you got along on this one? Is it like close to being done? I'm about 75 pages in and I'm thinking it's going to be about 320 when I'm done. So you're just getting started on this one. Yeah. Yeah. I just started introducing the idea of what is going on. Now the first few chapters had, you know, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But to the main character, it really didn't make any sense. And she, as she puts it, just going down the rabbit hole. Yeah. Surprise. Yeah. But one of my favorite things to do and something I have fried in my cell phone is my deception. So everything that you see, even at this point with whatever novel, don't trust what you see with me because there's a good chance it's not what you think. So there's that's good to know. Things going on behind behind the lines, so to speak. Exactly. And with it being first person compared to third Omni, which is how I wrote the silver series, you don't get to see, okay, this character's plotting how to do this or this character has this in mind. You don't get that same in-depth idea that everything's going around. All you see is a furled, you know, eyebrows scrunching or you see him stepping to the side, like looking down. Doesn't mean anything or could mean everything. Right. That's intriguing. Yeah. It's one thing I really do pride myself on and one thing every reviewer and every reader has said, as they've gotten to the novels, they don't expect anything. Nowhere near what, well, actually the best example from Blood and Silver is how Meredith was involved during the King's Test, which that's an early, early spoiler, which I don't have a problem giving out because of how prominent that character is. But I don't think anybody saw that one coming from Suzy Q Homemaker at home who was having fun not wanting to talk about it. Yeah. Some of their powers surprised me. That's what I love. Yeah. Everybody turns a page and you're like, wait, what's this happened? Huh. Now you have to turn the next page. That's the whole point of writing, isn't it? Yeah. Keep him turning his pages. Yeah. I got a lot more confident with my further novels like with Blood and Silver. There was a lot of anxiety. I don't think it translated well because everybody loves it. But with the second one, a lot of people couldn't tell that I was more present with that one more confident and more willing to push boundaries, which I do quite a bit. Yeah. I actually had the research, the trigger words because talent mostly, I blame him completely. But there's a lot of things that like I said, the boundaries get pushed. So I had to put trigger words in there. Apparently a lot of people call them appetizers. They want a little bit of this menu. Look at that. Oh, this has that. Give me five of those. Book talk is weird like that. My wife does the same thing. She likes books with trigger words. Like no whole trigger warning, haunting Adeline is one of her favorites in the current market. And that's one of those where it just kind of goes depending on your taste. If you have a sign that says, Hey, this will affect your mental health. My wife signs up. Yeah. I'm the opposite. I have a lot of things on both sides of the market. Yeah. I'm more like, Oh, I I hate that you put these, you know, type of scenes in there. I'm like, Okay, well, you can skip from this page from this page. Here's the clip notes. And then that way you don't have to worry about it. Right. And there was a couple like horrific scenes, but it wasn't to the point that I would have been like, Oh, I can't read this because it was important for the story. Right. Yeah. Golden silver really pushes that boundary a lot. There are some really triggerist scenes in there. However, without getting into too much detail, they really develop the characters of Clarissa and Ray quite a bit. Callin takes quite a fancy to her right from the I think it's like the third page. But which one Clarissa Ray. Clarissa Ray. I'll both of them. He takes a a fancy to both of them. Ray has a kind of hinkering for Ray too, which is something that does develop into a relationship. Clarissa and Ray are what I call in game because if they survive to the end, they will be together at the end just like just like Avalon and Rose are in game. If they make it to the end, they'll be together in the end. As I was starting it, those two dynamics just seem to make the most sense to me because Ray has her secret of past, which does get explained. And Clarissa has a lot of like I said, the anxiety, the mother hand type attitude later. And those two just kind of yin and yang for me. And I didn't, I wasn't sure if that's the way I was gonna take it. But as I toyed with the idea, it it just fit so well together. You can you can see a little hints of that. Yeah. And the first one. That's like I said, that's when I started toying with the idea because I know I wanted to show to a broader market. And I went to the things both my wife and kids have said is romance is something no matter how great the fantasy, you got to have at least a little bit of it or you lose a huge market. So that's why with Avalon and Rose, it is so latent to the book because I was just still toying with the idea of how I wanted to do it. Because the obvious one would have been, you know, Avalon and Clarissa together because they're childhood friends. And while that is a positive trope that gets used quite a bit, I also find it very boring. Yeah, you kind of expected that in the beginning. You expected it to be a couple. Exactly. Everybody expects it. It's the common sense one. And for me, common sense routes is the one thing I try to avoid. It's just like when you first meet Jake and Rose, you think they're a couple. Exactly. And then it's like, well, she learned with Avalon too. I have to say it. I don't like Rose. You have to be the only person I've. I'm fine. I'm fine with that. I did not like her like it all. I don't even know why it's just too much, too much. And I normally don't say that about female characters in that sense. Like, I just, I don't know. I didn't like her at all. It was very cringy. Like her specifically, like just how I don't know. It was just a lot. And I was like, first she was. She did turn down. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I like Jake. I never were off for me. I can definitely say Golden Sover will completely change your opinion on her. Well, I hope you're right. Because with everything that happened at the end of the book, which you all know exactly right. Yeah. That's pretty rough. Yeah. That's fell shocked her. Yeah. And then you have, you know, the mission that was before it. Yeah. That one was pretty traumatic for him. Yes. Those two things shock everybody. And as you start Golden Sover, the characters are still reeling from that. And a lot of things kick in the overdrive. It's that one, especially Jake with his, you know, with his village and everything that happened there. He's now watched that happen. Yeah. He's the one I like the best. Yeah. Which I agree. He's always been well for me in my choice of character. I try my best not to lay characters just because that usually means they're going to die immediately. I'm going to plead the fifth on all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We did. I'll plead for fifth in considering I know how things turn out. Yeah. Definitely. Just stay silent. So we don't. So do we don't. Absolutely. And it's something that you will see coming. In the second one, you get introduced to the idea of a soul still. Uh-huh. It is actually pure magic that is created by the actions of trying to sacrifice yourself for others. Yeah. Oh, no, that doesn't very well. I knew it. No, nobody, nobody dies. Okay. That's good. That's that part. Yeah. Oh my. Uh, actually gets to, um, enhance his ability is a little bit more. And the only reason I'm going into this is because of what he did with it. And that appeals to everybody. And I look forward to that one then. Yeah. Uh, during a fight, starting off because of Talon, Jake, something's a small dragon, something that he attempted earlier. This time, he actually summons it. Uh-huh. And as he does it, he gets the dragon is actually part of his, his soul stuff. The dragon is a lot of fun. He has the personality of Max from Tangled. Oh, I have a lot of fun with him. That's the horse, isn't it? Yeah. From Tangled. Which one is that? Well, he is this Mark mouth horse that, you know, does lots of playful banter. Yeah. And that is the dragon. He is a very important character. And I do count him as a character because of his interaction. Yeah. Yeah. Way too much one. That's so cool. I like forward to that one. Yeah. Golden silver really hit with a lot of people. And the way I always explained it is, like I said earlier, blood and silver really got you introduced to the characters. You knew who everybody was. And you knew some of where people stood. Yeah. Golden silver takes you right off into adventure and shows you you know nothing. And this story is darker and more adventurous than you thought. And bronze and silver immerses you with everything you thought you knew going so much deeper. Wow. Sounds pretty cool. Yeah. I will give to explain the resurgence of ebony. Uh-huh. The stones that everybody is quite familiar with. Yeah. Those are stones. Callum and Isabel made to change the world to make it easier for them to rule. Oh, they were created. They were created. Yes. That's interesting. Yeah. Slowly as those data discover that you slowly find out what those stones actually have done. And the only way I can really explain it without any spoilers is I spent 17 hours to make a map of ebony. Oh, wow. Uh-uh. Those D&D people who make those maps. Uh-huh. I has off to them because I did one map and it took me 17. Nope. I will not do that again. And why time I finished bronze and silver? I deleted my map. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I don't think I've ever deleted it after I spent that much time. I just saved somewhere. Well, it didn't serve a purpose anymore because of how everything changed. Oh, well. Like I said, I had initially started with a five book outline drilling each chapter where I wanted to start, how I wanted to end with each outline, what deception, where, what plot line. By the time I finished the second book, I deleted that too because none of the thing was on there. Was any good anymore? Yeah. It evolved. Yeah. That happened for sure. Yeah. Organic evolution is one of the things what I do is when I'm writing and I'm like, oh, wow. This is a pretty snazzy idea. I write two chapters with it. Now, I take a break and read the whole cart to where I'm at with those chapters. If I like how it sounds, I run. If I hate it, I delete it and it's never seen again. Well, I mean, you know, that's a good idea. Yeah. That's a good way to go. So I think we're going to go ahead and wrap up. This has been a fantastic discussion. Yes. That's so much fun. We're very glad. I know that you said you were nervous whenever we first got on here. So you did well. Yes. You did. I appreciate that. It's one of those things where I'm here promoting something about myself, repeating what all of these people have said currently on Amazon, Goodreads, ThriftBooks. It's a five-star across the board. That's great. I'm very happy for you. We were five-star. Amazing. Everybody ends with must read. And I'm like, wow, that's a lot to take because now I've got to tell people that and that sounds so not humble at all. You should be proud. Yeah. You're writing books. That's amazing, you know. And it's not something I plan on stopping anytime soon. I watch a movie like Brightburn, which James Gunn changed the Superman idea. I'm sitting here looking at that and I'm like, huh, I wonder if we did it this way. So now I got my idea down and I swear it in a folder. It's a good way to go. Yeah, it's a good way to keep on. Yeah, for good. It's fun to think outside the box, but it's even more fun to take that idea and run with it. See how far you can go. Absolutely. All right. Well, our next episode, we are going to do our first overview of Mickey 7. And then we will do our deep dive into it. That's our book club pick. And I don't know what we have after that. So probably another book chat or something. We'll figure it out. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. It's time for us to sign off, but before we go, only the best libraries have librarians who don't shush you.[Music][BLANK_AUDIO]