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In this yarn, Indie author Kyle McLindsey and Daniel pull back the curtain on how taste gets manufactured, how attention gets priced, and why so many “hot” reads feel the same.
If you care about indie publishing, authentic storytelling, and writing that resists the consensus, this is a conversation to sit with. Listen, share it with a friend who reads slowly, and tell us in a review where you draw your own line between voice and virality. Then subscribe because the algorithm told you to...
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Transcription
Daniel Firth Griffith: 0:00
Hello. Welcome to the podcast. This episode is a break from our normal production of the God is Red series with my dear friend and brother Taylor Keene. And it is a conversation that uh I shared with a dear friend of mine, a fellow indie author and fantasy and literature lover, uh Kyle McLindy. He writes under the name KW McLindsey. His book, The Autumn Guard, The Breaking of Winter, is so worth your time. I encourage you, if this episode means anything to you or you’re interested in diving more efficiently into the world of indie and self-published books and all of their magnanity. Start there. The Autumn Guard, I highly recommend it. Uh in this episode, uh Kyle and I discuss everything from modern authorship to the bastardry of storytelling to different books that him and I have found as great inspirations into our own work, the struggles of trying to be an honest, you know, Seanchaí or storyteller in the modern era of commercialized and conglomerate infused publishing, how we move forward, how do stories be told in a day where Instagram followers mean more than the quality of the authorship or the story or the telling and what that looks forward, and what that means as we look forward into this new world of ours, uh both positively and negatively. And so all of this in this episode with my dear friend, Kyle McLindsey.
Kyle McLindsey: 2:21
Yeah, I I used to actually go down there a decent amount when I was a kid, but it’s been a long time. But yeah, roughly.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 2:28
Roughly I get the get the vibes. I was reading uh you you were born in Columbus. How long did you live in Columbus?
Kyle McLindsey: 2:34
Yeah. Oh, super short. I was uh I was adopted as a as a baby. So uh my family moved to Cadillac, Michigan very soon after I was adopted, and then we moved to the UP for a little while, so the backpack woods, and then briefly went back to Ohio just before college, and uh after college, I kind of moved around a lot of places, lived a couple big cities, Austin, Atlanta for a couple years, and then moved back after COVID because it just was like living in a massive city during that kind of catastrophe was like way too much. So I was like, I’m I’m going where it’s a little more chill.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 3:17
Yeah, yeah, we live like I said, we live like an hour away from anything, and it’s pretty well true. Like the nearest gas station is about an hour away. So during COVID, it was the opposite for us. We have this, we have all sorts of lodging on the property here, and uh I think we had, I think at one point for at least a month or two, we had about 20 or 25 people just living with us who just like ran away from the cities and we just lived communally for a while. It was awesome. I mean, like COVID is COVID and it was a lot of pain for a lot of people, but for us in the middle of nowhere, yeah, people flocked out and it was cool. We got to got to live like that.
Kyle McLindsey: 3:54
Yeah. Yeah. That’s um sort of reminds me of the um Have you ever seen My Dinner with Andre before? No, seen that film? You might like it. It’s uh there is uh it’s the entire film is one giant conversation between two actor playwrights, and they’re just discussing philosophy, life, art, and it’s all they do. It’s just one long, beautiful conversation. And there’s a part where he talks about one of the characters talks about a I forget the name of it, but it was it’s a commune that’s in Scotland, and he’s talking about kind of cities and how cities have become sort of a prison in his mind, and that people have become their own prison guards, and that not everyone can go and live in a commune or in like a situation like you’re talking about, but sometimes you need those spaces to escape to to revitalize, regenerate your energy, and go back into the fray, as it will. So it reminds me of that a little bit.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 5:04
Yeah, I think that’s also true for like because I know we share the passion of writing and telling stories, and I think it’s totally necessary for that. I know a lot of people who really struggle to put words on page in like a busy city center. Um, I think some people struggle there, but I don’t know many of those people. Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 5:24
Not personally. Yeah, it’s like no, it’s it’s I don’t think I would be writing, certainly not in the way I would be writing. If I was raised in a city, I was raised very rural. So that is a constant callback to to what to what my heart wants to say. Yeah. Um, like you said, if somebody wants to lives in the city, loves it, amazing. I’m I’m with you. I I can’t really stomach it too long. I mean, our city here is about as big as I really want, which is not, you know, it’s a it’s a small town vibes, but it’s a city, but it’s a Michigan city. It’s not Detroit, it’s not anything like that. But I mean, living in Atlanta and Austin has their own cool like perks, but it I just need escape eventually.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 6:12
Yeah. Well, yeah, there’s historically in the many indigenous communities today, there’s always that role of that. I mean, like in our culture would be like a teller, a storyteller, a bard, a sonic or something. But like you have that shaman, that elder, um, a kind of universal language that they’re always aside, like they need a little bit more quiet, they need a little bit more space, they need a little bit more freedom of thought and and of mind and of heart. Yeah. It’s just very hard. Um, like I was in a conversation yesterday with a fella all about mythology and writing, and and they made the con they made a conversation around the idea that like to really tell the right tale, to really be a writer in the true sense, um, you have to be non-consensus. You can’t write within the consensus. Like you can’t be a part of the hive mind of modern day machines and write your way out of it. Like to some degree, you kind of have to escape that a little bit, just whatever that might mean for you and the story and such. Um, for instance, like a lot of science fiction writers, like they they know so much about science and they know so much about physics, and they know so much about space or whatever. But they also have to stand above the science or separate from the science and see a new view into it. So you have to be like a product of the consensus, but of a heart and mind that is non-consensus. And I think that that is most easily achieved, at least for me, by being away from the consensus, like the physical space of just being in a rural community.
Kyle McLindsey: 7:42
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yep, seeing the world slightly off kilter from what it should be. Um, yeah, which is super, super important. Uh in I don’t know about how you feel about creation or creating of art, but I was just, I looked at my wife the other day and I said, you know, creating creating art is kind of a torment, you know, it’s not meant to like make it this giant, like, you know, self, self-flagellating thing, but it it is it is so wonderful and so awful to do something, put it out there and just like expose yourself or everyone. Uh it’s like, oh why do we do this? Why do we keep doing this? But we do, yeah. And and it’s great, but but it is like you have to get out of your own brain. And in order to do that, much like you’re saying, I think it’s just like you have to tilt yourself away from yourself. Yeah. And that comes with those communities and those things. So you can just say, I just gotta tell my brain just enough that this is not quite what I’m seeing, what quite what I’m looking at. I’m not the person I’m seeing. Just enough to get out of your ego, let your ego, just kind of let it go.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 8:56
You know, yeah. That’s a really that’s a really good point. It does, it does, it does separate, you know, in a world of like social media and such, I feel like a lot of people think that they’re artists or creators or something. And it and it might be true, and I think we live in a particular era that art and creation of that art, maybe we might not agree on the medium, but it it definitely is flourishing. Um and yet at the same time, like the true artist, at least as I see it, and I get this from your words, but like the true artist is tormented, it is a tormented soul. Um because it’s true, like I don’t know how I wonder how your writing process goes, but um I love writing and I hate writing. But like every ounce of me, I tell my wife all the time, if I didn’t write, I would pop. I don’t know what that means, but yeah, and I but I hate it and I love it, and I hate it and I love it.
Kyle McLindsey: 9:55
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. The the duality, the duality of it all. And my process is just like it’s finding a way to whisper to yourself to get yourself to come out of a out of your shell in a way. Like, it’s just being like finding that comfort enough that you’re just like, this is for me, this is what I want, this is what I think the world should be like in a way, in a way. And I’m just gonna talk to myself. It’s just like self-soothing. You’re just talking to yourself and explaining to yourself and explain and maybe delighting yourself. And then eventually you kind of have to look at it and say, okay, I like this generally. Now, how can I make this have a wider view? You know, to a to a degree, I do like, I am not to your say with social media, it’s algorithmically driven. It’s it’s it’s meant to be mass marketed, so it’s as vague as possible. Make everything as vague and quite often, in my opinion, insincere as possible, just so you can get the uh see, you can all see yourself in this. I don’t like that. I actually think we should be kind of being not like saying some can’t come in, but if you can’t like, if you don’t like it, it’s okay. You don’t have to. I want to talk to the people this there’s that like fire inside that like sparks. I want I want that person to look at my art. Everyone else is welcome to look at it, but I’m writing and I’m whatever I’m doing for that person, because that person feels what I’ve been feeling and will see me. Because I think art is a way for artists to be seen. It’s like the in another way you can’t describe with work or words and you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean words like in a normal setting, in a normal day-to-day conversation. It’s like I could tell everyone my opinions, I could tell everyone my thoughts, but I can’t show them in the same way writing will show them.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 12:02
Yeah, or at least not as effectively. Like tales, stories, you know, regardless if it’s an oral story or a written story. I think there’s something peculiar about it to the human experience. Yeah. You’re right in that. How do you feel about um I think about this all the time, uh, especially as an indie author that to a degree looked at the commercial publishing market and said, goodbye, um, screw you, go play your own flute, you know, that kind of thing. Um we just we have a weird relationship with market and economics because um, you know, I know a lot of painters, like in my work, I’ve been able to work with a lot of artists from a paint-on-canvas medium space. And and don’t get me wrong, they they try to sell some prints and things, and but that doesn’t factor into in any way how they do their art. In any way. You know, they might go to the weekend art show and try to make a couple hundred dollars on some prints, but like they’re not going to change their art in any way to be able to sell more prints at the weekend art show. But I know a lot of authors that write a story and then completely change the essence of that story to be consensus so that the consensus wants to buy it so that they sell half a million copies or a million copies, or maybe for an indie author, you know, 100,000 copies, or you know, as indie authors like you and I, we look at other indie authors and they’re so successful. But the ones that are really successful are also just consensus writing consensus. And that’s not a totally blanket statement. Like I have some people that I look up to that are indie authors that have a great sell rate of their books and a great readership that supports them that are not consensus. But generally speaking, in my opinion, three-quarters, two-thirds, maybe more of the authors that are making it, I guess indie or otherwise traditional. Um, they have to be like flirting with non-consensus just enough that it’s unique, but it’s still just consensus. How do how do you like I don’t know, how do you see that? How do you manage that? How do you keep your your art pure so that when the conversation between you and the reader happens, there’s magic and there’s light while like still maintaining that which makes you an author yourself, like a creator, like an artist?
Kyle McLindsey: 14:25
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s like it is odd to go into an average bookstore nowadays and see the 17 same books and and go like, okay, I could read the back of most of these, and they’re about like the same arc and the same style. And I mean, it’s just it’s just the market not playing nice with art. And they don’t art and money, they have to work together sometimes, and sometimes more often than not, they are dire enemies from like uh as you said, like sort of a soul, like who they are in essence. And it I’m sure most indie authors feel exactly as you’re as you’re saying, and I certainly do, which like it’s this frustration of being there’s this validation that you feel like you need, I need to do this because the only way I can be validated is through money. Money will validate my art. And who’s going to give me the money? These these comp bigger companies who will then tell you exactly what they need. They’re you mean they’re the floor manager of your art. You’re not, you’re just the I don’t know, you’re just sort of just a drunk rambling and just hoping something will entertain. And then they’ll say, that’s it, that that thing you just said, do that. And because it’s what that guy over there said, and that guy is getting up quite a bit of money for it. And then and it’s it’s it is this rejection that I have to carry, and everyone has to carry. Who does it’s just be okay with it, you know, and it’s a burden, it sucks quite often to, as you say, see other people who’ve um who’ve given up what I saw them trying to say. And I really thought that was interesting, and then switch it around, make it something that’s more pleasing to a few people, and in in the process lose actu their actual voice, what they actually felt. It’s uh it’s sort of like a child like this the beginning, especially when you’re I think people’s beginning books or works of art are actually some of the most fascinating things, even though everyone hates on them. I think they’re they’re the most interesting because they’re the the most untainted by expectation. And so I see so many people will put out uh their first books and then you know never put them out for anyone else to see, and I think that’s a shame. I mean, you don’t have to, but I’m like, that’s you in so many ways. So many ways that you’ll never quite get again. Um and it’s just like how kids will have like that. Like if you think about I trained as an actor early on, it was like um my teacher would explain how children could scream, just absolutely scream, and their voices what they won’t go hoarse. Yeah, like kids could scream and scream and cry, and we lose that. You know, maybe I’m not a huge like muscle nerd or anything like that, what’s going on there, but as society tamps you down, you begin to lose that ability. And you have to relearn as an actor when you’re using your voice, how do I stand on stage for two hours? Or how am I on a set for 10 hours? And how do I speak and be clear and keep my voice healthy? And it’s like it’s like that. We just tamp that down. And I just think that the only way is through rebellion, and art I think is just a natural way to be rebellious, in in in not even just like a and not in a violent way necessarily, but or like just it’s just a way of challenging what is there. And I think one of the most rebellious things you can do is when the man, use the old lingo, the man says, don’t put your stuff out. Put this out. I need this. I like some of what’s going on here, but put this out. It’s just say, maybe I’ll do that, maybe I won’t, but I’m putting what I want out as well, at least as well.
unknown: 18:41
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 18:41
Because that is a micro form of rebellion, in my view. And I just think we need to live in that world because right, it’s the consensus murdering us. Yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 18:52
Yeah, I think there’s also a little bit of um, I’m gonna use a very simple word, but like divinity to it. Some people call it the muse, right? I mean, like I wrote a book last year, or I guess it came out this year, but um that a lot of people have problems with. It’s just it’s written in a very mythological way. Uh the sentence structure is mythological. Um, it’s much more like Shakespeare, where the verbs are at the end of the sentences. It’s just it’s not English in the common way. Uh the way I like to talk about it is if you’re listening to the audiobook, you can’t listen to it, you know, at two times the speed. Like it it requires a slow pace. Like mythology and the way the story is structured, is structured like mythology in the truly ancient original ways. And so it’s not a modern book. And yet, to some degree, it is a modern book, and people you know struggle with that. And I wrote it in that way because that’s how I feel how it was given to me. And I think authors and artists, uh, another big word that I’ll use simply, like a conduit. I think a lot of the times we’re the conduit of these stories being told. Like when you sit down and you write, you create it, it’s true, but at the same time, it’s also strangely been given to you. Um, and every time I’ve ever investigated the publishing of a book, uh, a couple years ago, I spent about nine months getting an agent and going through the publishing query process. And my God, it was like the most depressing time. Um I put on weight. I actually gained weight, which is something that’s not I have a lot of health problems, and my diet has been managed for about 16, 17 years now, like down to like a T, in order for me to die, I guess. And so like for me to put on weight is a very strange thing. Um, for about 15 years now, straight, I’ve just had a very streamlined body that is required for my health. And the point being, like, I put on weight, I was depressed, I was anxious. Uh, the agent kept saying, like, you know, if we were to just to take out, it was a nonfiction book and uh that merge science and story. And, you know, she was like, Man, a lot of these publishers are coming back. That if we just took out the story, they would publish it. Just the science, science, science. One publisher reached back out that I got to see the conversation from, and and they said, uh, this book has the ability to do great things, whatever. Um, we love it. Brilliantly written. Arguments are through thorough and and good. Uh, but nobody wants to listen to story, they just want to be told what to do. And it’s true. That’s that’s what they want. And uh, and I was like, Well, I’m not taking the story out. Like the story is how the science unfolds. Like, science without story, in my opinion, is like life without blood. It’s just it doesn’t make any sense. Um, and so obviously we didn’t we didn’t go about that. Um, but it was because that was given to me in that way, and so I give it to you in that way. And there’s something I don’t want to say holy or sacred about it, but it’s not not holy, and it’s not not sacred. I met this one person one time back in 2022. I wrote a book that I don’t know, I bet I’ve sold 50 copies of it its entire life, just like nobody really cared for it. And I never talk about it because it’s to the author, like to myself, to the person who wrote it, it’s like an embarrassment to some degree, you know. But it’s God, is it true? Like I pick it back up and I’m just like, that was me. You know, like it, like you’re saying, it’s like it wasn’t economically viable, but it’s exactly what I was thinking at the time, and I still think it’s even truer today. And uh, I was teaching this course one time, and uh, this student um was really quiet the whole time, and for I think it was like a seven-day course, and just day after day after day, she was very distant and very reserved. And I, as the educator, was trying my best. Uh, I thought maybe she was just uncomfortable in group settings, or maybe she just had an outer shell that she didn’t let people in, or whatever. I was trying to think about how to help her through this course, and I never could succeed. I never she was just quiet in in the back of the group the entire time. And that and that’s fine, you know. And uh, well, anyways, after the course, she comes up to me and she’s kind of like shaking, you can tell she’s nervous, and she reaches down into her backpack and she pulls out that book, the book that I never talk about, the book that’s a complete failure. And it is dog eared and sticky noted, and it’s just torn to living the crap. I mean, the thing is just torn to put put pieces. And uh, and she goes, I never leave home without it. This book saved my life, and I’ve read it like 10 times or something like that. And I just started crying. I was like, nobody likes this book, you know, nobody wants to buy this book. No, no publisher or agent ever saw value in this book, but like it saved your life. That’s good. I mean, it’s really hard for me to make a living, you know, saving your life in this way, but like, God, what a living to to participate in something like that. And so, anyways, the metric of art, and I’m all getting to here, is the metric of art has transitioned, I think, in the modern way, the consensus way, to just being what sells. And I get why we live in an economic world, I get that. And yet at the same time, it also feels like art doesn’t want to be there. And so, like, there’s that paradox of that tension.
Kyle McLindsey: 23:52
Wow, yeah, no, that’s that’s a that’s an amazing moment where you’re like, She saw your soul and your soul gave back, you know? And it’s like No, that’s where that’s worth it. I don’t I it’s like, yeah, we very few of us can have moments where people really tell us something like that. And because odds are if you’ve been around being an artist, an artist long enough, you probably did touch someone like that. That it really hit, and quite often people don’t tell you, or you know, uh they don’t have that the courage she had um to say that. But it’s it’s so there and it’s so vital. And the market is soulless when it comes to that sort of thing. Like I I um super pleased to hear that you wrote that in that specific kind of Shakespearean mythological way. It’s like the Similarlion sounds like, you know, if you read the Similarillion, it’s it’s read like the Bible. Yeah. And a lot of people will tell me, and this is this is me, this is me. I mean, if everyone has a hard time reading, but they’ll say it’s hard to read. And I don’t agree, but that’s just who I am. I’m raised going, but the Bible reads in such a way that’s so mysterious, even though it’s telling me so many things, you know, and and the Small Rillians the same, it’s like it’s hidden. This language is this cloud around these myths that allow it to echo through eternity. It allows it to stay in this spot that doesn’t date it nearly as much. And it’s it’s almost like the equivalent of like brick walls. I mean, we all love brick walls and they always feel both archaic and new. And I love that. I mean, my my book is certainly uh some reviews said it doesn’t go probably, it doesn’t go as far as that, but it is written with a lot more archaic language to some degree. There are words I love actually hearing this when people go, I had to look up several words in your book because I didn’t know what they mean. I’m like, God, you learned something. You learned something. Um because there is this like fast food of art. I actually am kind of disturbed about people to your point about keeping it not yet, read it as it is, don’t don’t speed it up, take your time. This whole like people suddenly are reading hundred books a month books a month. And I’m and I’m like, you can’t possibly have read a hundred books or listened to. You have engaged with it to some degree, but there’s no way you really understood it. Yeah. And the consumerism of that makes it so even more the market says you make it cleaner, make it crisper, make it shorter, or make it easier to understand. It’s like nothing good on this planet, or maybe in the universe, is done well with speed. And writers, I feel like are are feeling that a lot. We’re all suddenly told to be a Stephen King level or Brandon Sanderson level of s of writers, you know, get done to six chapters a day or whatever, you know. And it’s like there’s nothing wrong with taking your time. Yeah. I do think this is a sacred space for for art. I think what you’re saying, what you said about it being holy and sacred, it is. It is a space that we cannot, as humans, share as easily with the animal kingdom as other things. And it is very unique to us in the way we do it. Other animals do create art and do show those sort of sensibilities, but it’s like how we do it is very unique to us, and that’s sacred. And even more down to who we are as individuals, it’s very sacred. And I think that sacredness is what really should make us slow down. Like what you’re witnessing is a falling star every moment you read someone’s book or engage with someone’s art because they’re not around forever. Right. And so you really should take a moment and look at the thing because it will not be there forever.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 28:00
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 28:01
And you odds of you living in that period with you could have even read it are just zero. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 28:07
Yeah, that’s really that’s really good points. Um I I think uh yeah, I have so many thoughts. I’ll try to say them simply, but I mean, number one, I think a lot of people and you can see this, I think it comes with people like I think a lot of okay, I think a lot of writers today read a bunch of books and they say to themselves, I could write these better. And then they just pretend to write them better. And I’m not saying that that that’s a bad thing. But it’s a weird thing because what you do get then is a bunch of writers thinking that writing those books better is writing, and you get a lot of immature authorship. And what I mean by immature immature authorship, I picked up a book very recently, and uh and this is the traditionally published and everything through and through. And the entire first page, I looked at my wife. Let me read you the first five sentences, and every sentence in the into the book, the first five sentences of the book contained a simile, which by the way, I abhor. I abhor. It’s like the only way to write beautifully is through simile, and that’s not true at all. I can provide ten different authors that are beautiful in their writing that don’t even write similes at all. So number one, way too many similes. Number two, all of the similes um contradicted each other. You know, so for like the book began and it was like uh the waves of the ocean were like ghosts. Okay, so like ghosts are ethereal. Generally you can’t see ghosts and they float. Are you saying the waves of the ocean, a tangible body of water, it uh float and and and they’re ethereal? So you’re saying the waves are ethereal. So that’s that’s really weird, but let’s go with it. Right? And then it was like, and and they and the waves ran over the ocean like a skittering fox. I was like, well ghosts don’t skitter by definition. Like this this is this is not like you didn’t actually think this through. This is just beautiful to you because and the reader is so untrained in the language of art, or really the art of language both ways, that they read this and they go, Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s not beautiful, it’s immature. It’s similes that contradic or contradict with each other. Um Tony Morrison is an author that I I have enjoyed her her works, and I think she does similes the best. Every simile she’s ever used, any book I’ve ever read, is exactly the clarifying force that the simile is is there to do or there to provide. So she might say something that’s a little bit complex, and then the simile, so comma like or as though or though, or something like this, clarifies it. You know, it’s like this complex thing. And then the one I remember is it goes, comma, like an underground buzzing of bees. And it’s like, oh yeah, yeah, I got it. Like that fear you were trying to get, that angst that like picking up your feet on hot lava kind of field the sentence was trying to get at, comma, like an underground hive of buzzing bees or whatever, or an underground humming of bees. Yes, yes, I’ve been in a field where there was underground humming, and I was like, get out, get out. You know, it was clarifying. So, number one, I think the more authors move quickly, like Sanderson’s similes, I think are atrocious, right? Because it’s just, it’s, it’s just, it’s there to make it a little bit less boring. I think I’m not the greatest Sanderson fan. Yeah. Um, you know, the you you lose maturity in the writing. Um you lose, I think, the micro decisions. I once heard uh was it Mary Oliver? Somebody like Mary Oliver. Maybe it was um oh her name will come to me, uh a similar figure like Mary Oliver, but she wrote more essay and short stories. It’ll come to me. But she wrote a book on writing too, and she was saying how true authorship, mature authorship is just a collection of microdecisions. And a lot of readers, I don’t think, see this. If you’re reading your 10 books a you know a month or 100 books a month or 200 books a year or something like that, you’re just you’re not participating in the micro decisions. Like, why that word as opposed to that word, or why did the story go this way, or why was that not given? Like these are all micro decisions that the author made that are the beauty and the telling aspect of the book. Um, like even language. Um, like a lot of people think books are pretty written when they are purpley and you know poetic and simile-filled, obviously. Um, but I think an interesting study has always been if you provide a reader with an English tale, that is to say it’s written in the English language that relies on predominantly Germanic words, because all English is based upon both the Latin A and the Germanic, Germanic words, they will perceive it to be well written. Really well written. And if you if you write it in that same tale with basically Latinate words, they’ll perceive it to be not well written. So, like for instance, Tolkien, J.R. Tolkien, um, he wrote basically in Germanic. Most of his words are Germanic. So for instance, you know, he would say the doom of civilization was quick and coming. Well, doom is just a Germanic word for fate. It’s not like the doom we would use today, but the the Latin A would say fate, the Germanic would say doom, and so if you put the sentence, you know, the doom of civilization was quick and coming, as opposed to the fate of civilization was quick and coming. Like I just took an amazingly mature sentence because of that one Germanic word, and by replacing it with the Latin A, it completely reduced it down to just an information, you know, deliverance mechanism, that sentence, which sometimes is what you need. I don’t know. I think all of these thoughts are interesting as as you drift into the art being sacred side.
unknown: 33:50
Yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 33:51
Not a like a marketable media.
Kyle McLindsey: 33:54
No, it’s it’s you know, and I’m there’s I do believe there’s always room for something that is quippy and quick and you know, just a good time, but I don’t believe we should be a s consistent diet of it.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 34:12
Yeah, um like the only thing that publishers want.
Kyle McLindsey: 34:16
Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s it’s so hard. It’s the same with all art too, honestly. I think I’m I’m watching right, uh, I started yesterday as a a I believe it’s Finnish or Swedish film from when the Soviet Union was uh around and they partnered together with uh Moscow films, and it is just the tale of one of their uh you know Norse epics or the Swedish, whichever, whichever one of those countries it was. And you’re looking at this, and I say, This is a ballsy film. Like this is crazy and so wonderful. It’s just delightful to watch. And there’s such a hollowness in the modern film of, like you said, it’s just sort of all right, test it and let’s get it down to a laboratory science of what people like, and then we’ll give it to them to sip on, and if they spit it out, we’ll go, okay, we’ll redo the whole dang thing. And and there’s nothing organic about that. And I think an organic style of of living within art is is beautiful. It’s I don’t I don’t like the way we even set up bookstores because it’s always here are the things others like. It’s presenting it to you as if this is your diet. There it is, it’s right there. I much prefer a situation where it’s it’s more along the lines of either you have to hunt, you know, you’re like this old dusty bookshop, and you don’t, nothing looks particularly like standing out. And you yourself have to kind of do some of the work to figure out what’s going on in here. Well, where where’s where’s the sci-fi? Where’s the fantasy? Where’s and then you just pull out one at a time and you look at it like kind of, okay, it’s I like the cover, or maybe it’s just a pretty, you know, prettily bound book, and I go through it. And then it’s either that or almost like the art museum, and you just wander through these hallways of just constant art. And there’s going to be one, if you’re really trying, there’s going to be one that stops you. Yeah. And you’re going to stare at it.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 36:18
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 36:18
And you’re just going to wonder, what about you is talking to me. And then we all have those moments, uh, I think all the time. It’s just learning to remember how to respond and to commune with it. Uh, and I think that’s a uh almost a lost art in itself, just because we are just so fast, everything’s so fast, everything’s so brutally fast. And it’s it’s it’s violent. It’s a violent switch of narrative, it’s a violent switch of your how your brain is trying to communicate with the things around it and to you. So yeah, I I think it’s something that a lot of us are seeing and a lot of us are rebelling against, which is why. Back to that for a sec, is why I think we do need to at some point say, yeah, I’m giving you this much and no further. I’m not going to sell out. Because why why am I here? Yeah. To sell out everything that is sacred to the point of you being so depressed. It’s incredible, you’re it’s debilitatingly depressing to be a, as opposed to a bard, you’re a slave. I mean, it really is. You’re trapped. You know? You could be this guy, just I’m feeling the inspiration. I’m I’m having it out, and maybe it’s not the best, but you it was yours and you tried it, and then you could tweak it as you go, but organically, and you can feel it out, and you can and engage with more, and slowly you understand more how your voice sounds, like you’re saying, mature, you know, maturation of your voice. And the it’s just so mind-numbing. Everything’s a drug at this point, and it’s just to say to you, just there you go, there’s the next book, there you go. It doesn’t challenge, and that leads back into education and all these things that we just shove to the side uh in lieu of money, yeah. Uh to just continue to to live the lives that are just unsustainable, just in my opinion, gross. I just can’t, I can’t stomach most of it. But yeah.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 38:21
Many people, you probably know this, but many people do not know this. But when you walk into a bookstore like Barnes Noble, you know, the independent old dusty bookshelf, bookstores, you know, with ancient bookshelves, like that’s not what I’m talking about. But like if you walk into a Barnes Noble or something like it, when you first walk in, every book that they’re displaying to you in that front area has been paid for by the publisher to be there. Like Barnes and Noble is not making the decision on what’s in the front. They are getting paid by the publishers to market certain books at the front. And so when you see people, you know, on Instagram or BookTalk or all these other places, and they’re like, have you guys read this book? It’s blowing up. And it’s like, well, no, no, no, it’s not blowing up. The publishers put TNT behind it with millions and millions of dollars to booksellers so that when you walk into a bookseller, or if you walk into book bookstagram or whatever, everybody is showing you this book because they’ve been paid to show you this book. Now, not every bookstogrammer is, you know, a part of Penguin Random Houses or Hatchet or McMillian’s Pocket, you know, but like a lot of them are. Like a lot of a surprising number. Or like even if you go to Barnes and Noble and you’re walking through the aisles and you’re doing that hunting, like you’re saying, the books that are facing out with their full covers displayed to you, that’s a paid location on a bookshelf. The publisher paid the bookseller to put it facing out. So again, the books it’s real estate. Yeah, it’s real estate. It’s just like a grocery store, you know, or an NCAP unit at a Walmart or Target. Like all of these manufacturers, these distributors, these wholesalers, these, you know, bookshop sellers, the publishing houses, all of them operate on the same threshold of I will pay to place my book or my product or whatever it is on the exact side of this shelf that’s going to get the most eyes, the most whatever. And so again, even the stories that feel like, wow, everybody’s really jiving with them, like everybody is really reading, it’s not true. It literally is not true. It is a thought been paid to place into your brain for you to think that it’s true. Right. And so when you pick up an indie book, like to some degree, in my honest opinion, when you pick up an indie book, you are interacting with a story in the truest sense. Like it’s not been paid uh to make you think in a certain way. Um, it doesn’t have like like you brought up Brandon Sanderson earlier and Stephen King. Brandon Sanderson’s team is 60. So between Brandon Sanderson writing a book and the reader seeing the book, 64 people touch that book. Now, not artistically. I’m talking like they touch the words. 64 people edit that book. So when you read it, I’m not saying Brandon Sanderson doesn’t write. What I’m saying is the thing that you’re reading is 64 hands removed from Brandon Sanderson’s original typing. And in addition to that, Stephen King. Yeah. Stephen King wrote a book on writing. I think it’s just called On Writing, and in it, he says word for word, um, something to the regard of um one day posterity will put my editor on the book’s cover instead of my name or something like this. Like, and he shows an original draft in his book on writing, he shows the original draft of a book and then he shows the edited draft. I don’t want to exaggerate, but like 30, 40% of it is different. Damn. Which is, by the way, fine. I’m not saving e either Rainis Anderson or Stephen King is bad, but it’s just you can’t take that same um like if the reader reads a Stephen King book and then turns around and reads your book, Kyle, they they can’t weigh it on the same scales. It just that the that’s it’s like comparing AI art with actual art, right? I mean, just AI was able to do something in a matter of a moment that it would take CGI or like an illustrator in some cartoon months to create. Uh months. You can’t weigh these things identically, but we still are. Like AI and art is starting to be debated and discussed. Large publishing and indie publishing, there it’s not being discussed in that same way. I think it should be.
Kyle McLindsey: 42:27
Yeah. No, it’s true. I uh it’s a manufactured consensus. And even the, I mean, even the the New York Times bestselling list. It’s if you have millions of dollars, you can get on it. And it’s not because you’re pub like trying to push to individuals. You buy your own book.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 42:42
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 42:42
Buy your own book up, shove it in a warehouse. That’s how most politicians do it. They don’t they’re not bestsellers. Nobody’s looking at the new XYZ. Did you know?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 42:50
I uh I I know somebody who uh did this and uh and it worked. And so I can tell you that it worked. But uh they were a they were uh a professional speaker and they get paid $25,000 per event. Like that’s their starting fee to speak. And uh and what they did was that there was an event that wanted them to speak, and they put their book on the stage, you know, and it was like a book event, but it was just like an event they would have given if they didn’t write the book. But they put the book on stage and then they told the events team, uh, instead of paying them $25,000, um, to basically buy $25,000 worth of the books and give it to the people who went. So like nobody was out of money, and all people just got the books. So, like, yeah, books were purchased, I get it, but they just didn’t get paid $25,000. They did that, they did that twice, and they were an instant New York Times bestselling author. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, that’s that’s that’s wonderful. I’m not saying that’s evil or immoral. Like, do that, like, don’t get paid and give your book out instead. That’s fine. But that doesn’t make you a best-selling author.
Kyle McLindsey: 43:55
You handed the book for free. Exactly. As you said, it’s it’s not, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem if it wasn’t that everyone else was also held to that standard. Exactly. I mean, it’s like, because no, I can’t compete with that. I mean, uh, I don’t know. It’s like I sure if I was, I truly believe all of us know, or we either could be, are, or know someone who, if they had half the resources that are pushed into these other books, they would be phenomenal. They’d be well in a way amazing. And there’s that unfortunate connotation that if you haven’t been there, if you haven’t gotten there through these massive resources, even though you’re trying your best, you’re doing everything you could possibly do with what you have time for. And you’re if you don’t make it, then you’re just not good enough. Yeah, it’s not good enough, it’s not true, it’s not real. Uh, people don’t like you, people think you’re ugly. Not kidding. But they, you know, it’s like oh, that’s that’s a that’s a massive lie. And it’s it’s again feeds back into that consensus, that fake consensus that we’re being told about what is valuable in society and what is not. Yeah. When even at the moment it feels like society doesn’t even really know what to value. It doesn’t know what the options are, it just has a bunch of things that are pushed in front of them and said, that’s the thing, there you go, have it. And they don’t really have enough room to make their own decisions about it.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 45:30
Yeah. Yeah. And even the books that seem more non-consensus are are like e even in the modern mind, with these humans that don’t know themselves and are reading these stories at two times a speed and just garbling it up and you know, all of the we talked about, even the books that are still in that space that feel non-consensus still have amazing problems in being actually non-consensus. Like this rebellion that you’re talking about, like uh Blood over Brighthaven is what I’m thinking about. Just absolute, I don’t know, if you have you read or seen the Blood Over Bright Haven. I haven’t read that, no. All over Book Talk. I mean, when I say it’s all over, like it is the number one book that I find that like if you are a modern reader that like reads a lot of the new stuff, like everybody has read Blood Over Brighthaven and it’s by an author named uh I’m so sorry, R. F. Quang and ML Wong are two authors that write very similar books with the same nationality. And I can never get them right. But Blood Over Brighthaven is one of those two authors. Brilliant writers, by the way. I mean, like they they really have a pretty good craft, um and they’re very successful. That’s true. But so like Blood Over Brighthaven is a it’s a it’s a uh to some degree, it’s an argument against colonialism and uh racial genocide and such. And it’s basically a white against and you know, let’s say a red or indigenous conflict. I mean, that’s basically what it is. The indigenous population is being killed for the white people to do their magic, is basically the premise of the book. And the book’s solution in the end is um this one white person blows up the world, and all of the indigenous people, the natives, run out of this little idea of the world. Like they they escape it and they just go live out their days. And it’s like everybody is reading it, like, oh, what a critique of colonialism and imperialism and genocide, and like, yeah, these are all wonderful things. But like the one white person blowing up the world so that all the natives can then just go back to their Paleolithic lives in the past as if that’s what they wanted anyway. Like, this doesn’t make any sense. Like, this was this this that doesn’t make sense, or another one, the Psalm of the Wild build uh is another one that people love, as like this critique against, you know, like basically trying to be a little bit more non-consensus. I’m just bringing up these books, they’re positioned as non-consensus books, but it’s this story of a man and a robot, and the robot has a solar panel, then that’s how it gets all of its energy from the sun off the solar panel. And how it gets a solar panel is never really discussed. And the fact that it took the man to engineer and basically pillage the earth for its resources to create that solar panel, that’s never discussed. So, like it’s pretty shallow. But the robot’s looking at the man, and and the man is kind of sad, depressed. I mean, that’s kind of the climax of the story. And the robot looks at the man and he says, Your problem is just because you need too much. And that’s like the wow, humanity needs, we need to need to need less. Like, we need to be less consumptive or something. And that’s like the the ha of the non-consensus end of the book. And it’s just like, yeah, if men were robots, we would need less. Yes. But we’re not robots. So can you write something that’s interesting? Like, this is so stupid. This is so stupid. So even the the consensus has the complete inability to write the non-consensus or write from the perspective of this non-consensus. That is what is key. So even the books that appear to be non-consensus, while still being held within the consensus, are just the appearance of the non-consensus, but don’t actually have answers. Right? Yeah. It absolutely doesn’t have answers.
Kyle McLindsey: 49:06
Yeah, and while at the same time definitely projecting that it’s has the answers. Which is the problem. It doesn’t. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Where it’s it’s well, that becomes, you know, it’s just like a my favorite stories are the ones that do make me have to think very hard about it. And maybe that’s a little more like, well, logically, the good guy and this happens, so that should be like that, and everything’s fine. But I really do crave things that are complex, at least from a certain perspective. I don’t mean the book has to be complex in a real, but like there’s simplicity that can be uh say this again, more like complex ideas can be told very simply. And I think I mean that’s really where what inspired my book in the sense of the books that inspired my book. Things like um Water Ship Down or The Wind in the Willows and uh books along those those lines is that there’s just this there’s this simplicity to kind of complex things and that’s even more almost like softened by having animals. You know, I love I love reading about the animals because I could remove myself going back to the beginning of our conversation. It takes you just a little bit out of being a human, even though these are human stories, these are not about animals, these are about humans, but they are animals that are the the voices of the humans and their perspectives. And watching them deal with, like uh, I mean, Kenneth Graham, who wrote Wind in the Willows, was a had a miserable life. I mean, his family, I think his wife died, his son committed suicide, and he might have lost a couple other children as well. And this is a man writing about a very simple story. It has a real no main plot. It’s a bunch of animals kind of engaging with the world around them on different levels of joy and fear and and discouragement and and wonder. And it’s absolutely this this man who’s who’s living in the country in England in a pre-industrial age, but the industrial age is creeping up, and he’s watching the green pastures and the the world, the simple world that Tolkien spoke about in the in when he was talking about the Hobbit, you know, uh and or the Shire. And he’s watching it disappear. And he’s seeing London’s black soot taking over everything. And it’s just about the story of the animals having a boat trip down the river. Yeah. But you know, and you can see it and you can feel it. It’s a deeply spiritual book. That’s why it’s it is one of my favorites, just because how spiritual he describes spiritually he describes nature and how he I know exactly how he feels about it. And I can relate because I feel deeply, deeply in the way he feels about what I’m witnessing, how we’re all witnessing these things. And so when I when I wrote my book, I was just very like, I need I want this to be a spiritual moment. I want us to look at things a little off to the side and say, like, okay, let like what would the seasons be like if they were let you know something to be worshipped by animals specifically, not by humans, by animals. And how do they feel about that as animals? And and then, I mean, my first books, it’s it’s a lot. I think it’s a pretty simple one. It’s my first one, so it’s a little bit more me trying to grow, yeah, kind of mature in my own way. And the second one is is I’m finding, especially living in the world we live in now, it’s me really dealing with a loss of innocence, a loss of of that kind of simplicity view. I think the first book is about me grieving the world where I thought things were simple and cleaner and you know more full of answers. And now I know they’re not. And there’s a there’s a deep grief knowing that there aren’t really standards to be upheld by these giant systems, and there aren’t really safe places in the most like what what what I thought were, and that the things like I love, like even like the winter, the w winters I grew up in Michigan, which I I dearly loved. I’m a winter guy, I like cold weather. So it’s like I see those, and I can picture them in my head, and I know they’re going away, and I know I’ll never see them again. The climate that I grew up is gone, and that that is psychological damage. Yeah. And I just really wanted to have a moment, especially in the first book, where I just, even though it, you know, a lot of people are like, why are you being so why are you going into the lore? Why are you going so archaic with this? You know, you could just skip this part. Um, I was like, no, this is why I wrote it. I want you to feel how I felt when I saw the moon over the snow. Just a little glimpse of that through, not through like the literal translation of what I was saying, but through kind of this fantasy. Yeah. Yeah, the feels.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 54:33
Um, that’s another thing. Not that this whole conversation has to be indie versus traditional, but I have very rarely found a traditionally published book in the modern era. Um, you know, there’s obviously good traditionally published books in the past that we’ve brought up, but in the modern era, these new books coming out, they just lack the feels. Um, you know, like I was reading uh a space opera recently, it’s like a science fiction in space, and and there’s like I was just alone in the spaceship for like, I don’t know, like 20 years or something. And uh and and the author was just like, yeah, he was lonely. And it’s like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, like, where’s the feels? Because I’ll be honest with you, I sit here, you know, we’re all sit on the front porch of our house or in a tree somewhere, you know, a mile distant, and one minute into quietness, and I got the feels. One minute of not being with other people and the humming of electricity and everything else, I got the feels. I’m feeling all the feelings, you know. I got memories coming back to me and fears walking in, and I got uh regrets and grief and joys and happinesses and moments that were amazing that I didn’t savor enough. Like all of these things are flowing. But in modern books, you just have, well, he was stuck in space, he was lonely. We’re like, we don’t, like as authors, we just we’re not practiced in the exploration of feelings and feels. And I think as men, especially, um, our culture is so good at distancing men. Yeah, distancing men from their feelings and that empathy and everything else. And you you’re I think I think there’s a couple good women authors today that do that so well. But I don’t know many male authors that are really writing, writing and taking the time for the feels, like what you’re saying, the moon over the crest of snow, like that’s a feel. Like it’s an image, but that’s the feel, that’s feeling the feelings. And and I think if if we we could cultivate a storytelling aroma that maintain that feel, that feeling, that deep rich feeling. Um I think the I think the books in question would immediately escalate into a new realm, whatever that realm might be. They wouldn’t be where they’re at. Yeah. Um in terms of their potency and power for ameliorating and maybe even saving the human species.
Kyle McLindsey: 57:04
Yeah. Yeah. It’s uh kind of to what you’re saying about similes, it’s very much uh vibes. Is I think the curse of the modern day is vibes. We we aren’t really told how to create an ambiance. If you were to put one in your room, for example, like I mean, you can see mine, I can see yours. There’s a certain thing you’re going for, right? I’m a certain thing I’m going for. And it took time to figure out what that is, and do I like it, and all that sort of thing. And what it’s but it’s like it’s just part of the house. It’s a little part of the house. It’s there’s the rest of it, there’s the rest of the the substance. And I feel quite often when I’m reading that the author has no idea what they’re doing with story, they’re just trying to create a vibe. It’s an Instagram picture. Can we get that up really quickly? And then just aha, see, there you go. You knew all you need to know. I did a little simile, the fox skittered skitterly, and uh we’re good.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 58:04
The fox skittered like a ghost over the waves that were ethereal.
Kyle McLindsey: 58:07
Yes, yes, as you as the foxes do. Yeah, I’ve seen them many times. But yeah, I know it’s just that. It’s just and then others read it, like you said, like who are just new to this, and they go, that must be what we do. Yeah, as you skitter. Yeah. So I have to skitter the skitter in over here, and then you do it, but it’s like, but you said it’s like this is getting dumber.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 58:26
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 58:26
This is getting dumber, and it’s not actually completing its function. Yeah. The task isn’t done. And I think that, yeah, that’s that is that’s so true. It’s so true. We we are losing how to communicate effectively in that way. And uh, that’s also a reason why I have struggled. I I’ve started probably 10 books this year from more modern authors, kind of like because you have, like you said, trying to get it, but I’ve basically in the same boat. I just there’s something lost in what’s gripping me in the sentences.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 59:05
Yeah.
Kyle McLindsey: 59:05
I was reading um, oh shoot, what was I reading? It’s one of those big fantasy books, you know, those thousand, thousand-page, more modern ones. Yeah, I can’t do it. And I was just, no, I was just like, there’s nothing pulling me along. I don’t know what’s going on, what what what’s gonna get me the rest of this way. I’ve probably got three chapters in. I said it’s just not gonna do it right now.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 59:26
So yeah, I’ve I’ve recently um I I disc I cannot pronounce his last name. Um, Adrian Chaikovsky. I’m Polish. I’m half Polish. I should be able to say something like this, but I don’t know. Adrian Shaikowski. He’s a uh science fiction and uh a little bit of fantasy author. I’ve really enjoyed his stuff. It’s it’s he’s one modern author still putting out books um that are really interesting. They’re they’re I d I read uh Children of Time, which is basically uh Um it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s a space book. I mean, whatever, but there’s this planet in some other solar system that uh then some human scientist seeds with the what’s called a nanovirus, and it basically just like pisses the nanovirus all over the atmosphere. And the nanovirus has the ability to speed up evolution or allow so like evolution I’m getting a little bit too much into the details. Evolution requires reproduction and and and what what I mean is just like the the like microevolution, not any sort of this macro, but like microevolution requires gestation and and then reproduction. The nanovirus does is it speeds that up. So in one generation, you can have a full mutation, right? So, like for instance, pigs, like we used to raise pigs here at the farm, and domestic pigs have very short snouts, but when a fig pig is released into the wild, within a couple generations it snout elongates because it uses it more, and as it uses it, it develops and it strengthens and it mutates and it grows. So like gestation and reproduction and the speed in which that can happen is a speed in which a species can go through microevolutions. Um, whatever that means. Well, anyways, a nanovirus allows that mutation to happen simultaneously. So like the pig snout grows in one generation. And uh and it’s really cool because it uh it’s like the the the seeding of the nanovirus in this book, it goes to spiders and spiders only. And so the whole book basically is the evolution of spiders into human humans, you know, um, or into human like it’s almost like George Well Orwell’s Animal Farm. It’s like a it’s it’s like a critique of something utilizing animals. Yeah. So the spiders, they like they like uh they colonize the ant colonies because the ants are better at doing these needless tasks and they’re not smart, you know, because they don’t have the nanovirus. And it it’s it’s it’s humans, human story of like civilized evolution is basically what it is. And it’s really interesting the way it goes into it. And I mean, it’s just it’s a really interesting space opera because there’s also humans in spaceships outside of the earth kind of kind of watching the whole thing and doing their own thing. And and uh, I mean, it questions the idea of everything from like colonization to like the ideas of evolution, and um, is evolution really a positive means to an end? Is evolution real? Like all of this stuff, and it’s a it’s a really interesting book. It was written maybe five years ago. Um, but that was that was an interesting one. The the the language is mature, it’s not yeah, it’s not purple-y in any way, like it’s it’s in and I mean uh a little bit more like Tolkien. Like when when you read Tolkien, in my opinion, like Lord of the Rings, half the sentences are not there to do anything but be beautiful, in my opinion. Like they they move the story forward, but they’re also beautiful. This Adrian guy, um, his language is a little bit more simple than that, but still very mature. It’s very good. But other than that, I have not really found many modern authors like you’re saying that didn’t just feel like they just typed it out really quick, and editor then simplified it, and then it went out to market.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:03:08
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think one of my favorites and she just came out with uh Pyrene NC. You ever read that one? I I have not. I’ve Susanna Clark.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:03:19
I’ve read like the first two chapters maybe three or four times, but I’ve never actually in it in no negative way. It just every time I start it, something comes up and I move on. But Susanna Clark, is that her name?
Kyle McLindsey: 1:03:31
Susanna Clark, yeah. She wrote uh Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norl is her magnum opus, and she actually does suffer from I forget the dis uh uh the affliction she has, but it she’s tired all the time. So she does take a very long time to write just because she can’t keep at it all day, like some some people can. And uh I think she’s a good example because un you know, unfortunately, due to a disability, but it it is like clear to me that she took her time writing this, and it’s stuff like there are definitely people out there who are doing some things, but they are not not the ones making the uh the big the big bucks or getting invited on those YouTube shows or whatever.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:04:16
Jeff Jeff Vandemere, have you ever read any of his work? I don’t believe so. He’s he’s one of my favorite modern authors, too. His books, the way I can only describe his books, you have to be in the right mind to read them. Um and their and their story structure is unparalleled. Uh it’s very unique. And so you can’t be expecting a like a linear story. I mean, it’s it’s it’s weird. But like you’ll read an entire book of like an alien rabbit species at war with alligators and humans, okay? And at the end of the book, you will call me and you will say, Daniel, were the rabbits even real? But the whole book is about the rabbits. Like his writing is like it at one point, like his writing is at one moment visceral, and at the other moment, it’s like, but is there something else going on here that like isn’t even material? Like it has no carnal form to it. It’s really cool. It’s like a really cool, like conscious, subconscious, but all the way like in that streamline in the middle. Like it’s it’s it’s it’s a he’s a cool writer.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:05:28
Um if that’s the case, his covers are brilliant because I’m looking at them right now. I’m like, this is psychedelic as hell. I like this. If it’s like what you’re talking about, I’m like, that’s perfect. That’s exactly the vibes I’m getting off this uh book cover. There you go.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:05:42
Yeah, like, yeah, no, it’s it is. I mean, it’s you they’re all really interesting. Um, he has some some books are great, some books are good. Um and so anyway, but but notice though, this Adrian guy, the Piranesse, uh Susan Clark, Susanna Clark, um, Jeff Vandemere, some other authors that I really like, like Stephen Graham Jones, uh, a good friend of mine, Manda Scott,’s written like 30 different books. Um, all of in in in she’s, you know, all of these authors are still publishing. But the difference between them and many others that are more modern and seen today as good books, more popular books, is they were publishing previous to social media. Like that’s it, if if I read a modern author, they have to have been published before social media. Because as somebody who has queried a novel, gone all the way to a big five publisher, and then had the big five publisher tell me that I don’t have enough Instagram followers for them to buy the book. Um, why don’t we just unquery this book? I’ll go buy some Instagram followers and then I’ll re-quiry it and you’ll buy it. And then they kicked me out. Um, they were not in interested in my snarky comment. Um, you have to have had success previous to the like celebritization of art, this the social media celebritization of art in order to have like that voice yet. Like they had a voice before a voice was commoditized, although there was a commodity around their voice back then. I think social media, I think personal brands, I think all of these other things have just bastardized the crap out of this. And so, like Jeff Vandermeer, Stephen Graham Jones, Manda Scott. Um, I don’t necessarily know about Susanna Clark, but to me she fits within that same mold. Um, because I I I couldn’t tell you anything else about her. Like she doesn’t have that like like I can tell you exactly what Brandon Sanderson looks like. You know what I’m trying to say? Yeah, like that’s a problem, it’s a percentage to some degree.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:07:39
There’s a mystique, yeah. Yeah, no, totally. I I’ve I’ve commented to my wife a couple times that said, Where’s the mystique? Why can’t authors be those weirdos who are hiding away and nobody knows what they look like, and they’re just like doing whatever they want in their basement. You know, that’s I do think it’s like that was a stereotype, we don’t need to do that exact same thing again, but there’s something lost in in the oh, I’ve I think even modern books are doing that a lot too, where it’s just like the author’s name are bigger than the actual title. I know who wrote it faster than I know what the book is. Yeah. And I also dis dislike that because I really want to not see the author. I want to see them, but different. Yeah. You know, I don’t want to see their face like you’re saying, or oh yeah, that they did that. I don’t care. I want to read a book. Yeah. And if it was written by them, amazing. But I want to kind of I don’t want to see the people behind the camera. I want to see what it’s showing me. Yeah. And then I can judge it and I can judge them based on what I feel about. Yeah.
unknown: 1:08:40
100%.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:08:41
Yeah. Jeff Fanomere, this just I just remember this. One of the reasons I like his writing is at times he could use similes, but the majority of the books that I’ve read of his, he provides similes, but without the comma like or as though. So it’ll just be like uh, you know, uh great fear walked through their ranks, period. An underground humming of bees at their feet. So the simile is a part of the story. And it’s really confusing because it’s like, wait, wait, is there actually bees or is is this just like a simile that you just took out the like or as though? And I love that because what it forces, I think, the author to do is he can only use similes that make the idea more clear. Because by doing it this way, it makes it only less clear. So the similes have to be more clear than the regular simile because we already denuded the clarity by taking out the like or as though. And then it just becomes living, and you’re like, wait, are the rabbits real? Are the bees real? Are the alligators real? Right. Is man right and his character is like one of the characters’ name is Man Boy Slim, you know? And like, what the heck? Okay, is Man Boy Slim, you know? Like it’s just cool, it’s just it’s different. It’s yeah, yeah. It’s uh totally no, yeah. But he wrote before social media, period. End of story.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:09:58
Yes, yes. Yeah, we’re uh we’re a little cursed with it at this point. Yeah, I don’t know how you feel. You you’re doing I think a very good job posting on your social media. You have interesting things and stuff. I despise doing this. I do too. I hate it. Yeah. To I know there’s like, and I’ve taken quite a bit of a break while working on this next book because it was too distracting. I couldn’t do multiple things at once. I was just like, every day it was like, what do I do? How do I do it? Oh, and I just couldn’t. It was it was it was taking my soul away. Yeah. Um in almost in a very real way, because it was just suddenly I’m like hyper focused. And what do I think people feel about it? I didn’t do that well. Or uh, you know, other people would say, no, I I think it’s fine. I’m like, I don’t believe you because I am dying. Yeah, I’m dying here, and I just want to focus on the art. I think that is another reason I just I just don’t really find the mainstream publishing that interesting because I know more so than way more so they used to be, because with people back, you know, like you’re talking before social media, the authors did not have to go be a dancing monkey nearly as much. You had your little tours, you did your little things, you talks, that’s all fine. Because you’re actually engaging with physical people. I think that’s cool. I like that. I like talking to different people who who may or may not be interested in my book and just kind of getting to know people. But but now it’s like, okay, we’re buying your book, we’re taking 99% of the profits, you’re getting whatever, and you’re also required to be posting all the time about it. Our marketing team is doing less than it used to, and we’re taking the same percentage. Yeah. And I think that’s just a giant grift. Yeah. And I it’s it’s just not useful for an artist, I don’t think, most of the time. You have to do it sometimes. You gotta do it sometimes. It’s the world we live in. Uh, but I just I like this next book, or well, the first one and the next one. Once I when I’m finished with it, my plan is to do a lot more, like I just go any place I can to just talk to people. It’s slow, it’s not social media, it’s not all that. I just yeah, it just brings me such joy to be able to like introduce myself and and talk to physical humans about my physical art, yeah, as opposed to my theoretical human with a theoretical art, you know?
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:12:22
Yeah, yeah, totally. Like this is dead. I’m out. Like, this is your your entire concept of what is good and what is not good is based upon not even capitalistic mores, if you will. Um, but it it’s it’s still wrong capitalism. Like it’s not even good capitalism. Like you guys are just really bad capitalists, let alone if capitalists were fine. Like anyway, so number one, Instagram and Instagram following is just ridiculous. Two, how authors, indie authors participate in Instagram, like you, I struggle with it. And I’m always trying to find a way to be on Instagram enough that I continually take another step towards being a financed author, you know? Like everybody’s always like, I know what my time is worth. And it’s like, no, you don’t. No author knows what their time is worth. We’re getting paid, you know, a thousand dollars a year to write these things. Like, that’s that’s insane. You make it that that that’s a little that’s ridiculous. And so like I think Instagram’s a fine tool, and we have to continually find ways to use it without you letting it like use us or however you want to say that. Yeah, I think that’s an I think that’s an important concept. Um yeah, and then the dancing monkey show. I mean, it’s just like I think it’s the same thing with Amazon reviews. Like, if I go to Amazon and I see a book that has a lot of reviews, I’m immediately not buying that book. Just because like if I go to that author’s website and they have a thousand reviews on their website, or like if I go to Story Graph or you know, maybe Goodreads, although not Goodreads anymore, it’s too easy. Um but like if I go to another medium and there’s a lot of people saying this is a great book and it has a lot of reviews, great, that’s amazing. But like if you go to Amazon and it has a lot of reviews, all that means is the people who suckle on the teeth of Jeff Bezos like love this book. Like that those are not my people. I don’t like what they think, generally speaking. Um, not that everybody has the opportunity to not use Amazon in all of their ways, and sometimes you have to. Totally. But like the people who suckle on Jeff Bezos’ teeth are not my people. Generally speaking, those are not my friends, yeah. Or at least the people that I would agree with. And so, again, as an indie author, you know, it’s like how, and I and I think this is just an ever, ever evolving and ever punishing question. It’s like, how do you, without a publishing house, even if they don’t have a great marketing team, just without a community supporting you, even if that community is ugly as hell, like Penguin Random House or something, do you know how much profit Penguin Random House and and their like pay parent company? It’s a marketing company in Germany. Do you know what their yearly profit is? I do not. 2023 is the last data that I’ve looked at. 1.3 billion dollars is their annual profit. Yeah. That’s just insane. And and and they’ll tell you that you know, publishing is dying and all this other. It’s like, come on, you guys are literally writing in in nonsense. Surplus in the billions. Well, anyways, so even if you don’t have that community, be it a bad community, a bastardized community, or a good community, like how do you move forward in such a way that the story that you wrote is actually being read? Because like writing the story is, let’s say, sacred, but like it’s only sacred in so far as it’s able to do what it’s supposed to do, which is be read, right? To be interacted with.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:15:55
Right, right, right. Yeah. Yep. That is uh, yep, like you said, we’re all trying to figure that one out. It it’s like a weird. I think with anything you look at like major shifts in the world or just the frustrations of the world, it’s like there’s a constant falling backwards and a constant going forwards. So I am grateful for the tools that we have because the tools we have allow me not to necessarily need to do what people used to do in the early 2000s and you know, previous, where it’s like if you’re an indie author, you’re going to like the park and you’re handing out cards. Right. You know what I mean? Nobody knows you’re maybe like packing up a truck full of books and you’re driving somewhere and you’re hoping to God you make a few sales and that they’ll remember you, and that the word of mouth that someone else will try to reach out to you, maybe find your number, maybe find your something to contact you with. And so it’s like that would have been that was like basically impossible to do anything. But I mean, with you, you have your podcast, we have print on demand, we have ways of advertising. It’s so it’s like this duality of like, this is amazing. Like the fact that you and I get to write books and have a little bit of a decision to be like, no, I want to have a purer voice because I feel like I can go out there and work harder and I’m just gonna take the risk, is like so new in a weird way. It’s but at the same time, those levers that are being pulled are not fair. Those levers, like you said, uh if you’re not sucking on Bezos’ teeth, then you’re not gonna get the same level of joy from these or reward. So it is it is a constant in my mind, uh, fight of like, well, things aren’t like way worse than they were, but they are not there yet. Yeah. And creativity is what we are unfortunately having to deal with more than others who can just use massive amount of resources or community, like you said. Uh, and it’s wonderful to find those though, even with like in with your friends. There’s so many of my friends. My wife did my cover, it’s beautiful. She does such a good job. I had a friend do the the trailer for the first book, and he just offered. I didn’t and he just wanted to. And it was just like amazing. 3D animated the whole thing. And those like little moments of finding that kind of they’re not huge resources. They have to, you know, they’ll take time, they’ll take a year to make because they don’t have 12 people doing them, or 60 or or whatever. But but those I think are just so valuable to find in their own little way. It’s like, oh man, this is here. I’m so lucky to be able to have someone else want to take my art and contribute with their art. And that is not not nearly as like the same, I feel like, on a corporate level, where it’s yeah, they’re doing art, art’s being made and stuff, but it’s it’s very like you know, manufactured conveyor belt style most of the time. Yeah. And yeah, that’s how I get through, I guess. It’s just like we’re getting somewhere.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:19:10
Yeah, it’s just slow.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:19:11
Yeah, I love that.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:19:12
I think it is true. It’s like when you remove the crutch or the scaffold that the traditional publishing um supplies. It’s like you actually have to depend upon friends and artists around you, and and I think that’s really cool. I think that’s a really, really special part. And I think the reader is I think the general readership is beginning to like when I first started publishing in 2019, I think my first book came out, Self, you know, Self-Indie Publishing, like it was not a cool thing to say I was an indie author. Like I hid it, you know, I created like a fake name, you know, for the publishing house. So that’s when people looked it up, you know, like it was not cool. It was uh, oh, look at you, you know, you idiot. You couldn’t, you know, even convince a publisher to you’re not a real author. And now I think it’s the opposite. Like, I think I think there’s a lot of people, I think there’s a growing demand for non-corporatized voices. And as that demand grows, like the supporting communities to the non-corporatized voices are also burgeoning. Like I know a ton of authors who are now working with indie authors. I know a ton of I’m sorry, artists that are working with indie authors, I know a ton of editors that only edit indie authors, you know, development editors and line editors and copy editors, and they’re just tired of working in these commercial, like, here’s a trope, you write the trope as if it’s AI and you get it out, and I have to edit it. Like they’re done with that. And so they’re moving into the indie space. And it’s just like you want a unique story told with a unique voice by a unique human that like is individualized in some sense. They know themselves, they’re experimenting with themselves, like all this, like that’s the indie author space. Like it’s really cool, and there’s a lot of hope. I completely agree with you. It’s a fine way to kind of tie up this conversation, but I I think the hope is daily growing, just daily growing.
Kyle McLindsey: 1:21:11
Yeah. And uh I think the only way that hope continues to grow is by those those those uh you mentioned those tiny choices. Yeah. So not even just your art, but in your in your professional life and whatever that means. But those tiny moments of rebellion says I’m I’m willing to go, I’m willing to maybe change just enough so I can, like you said, if no one reads my book, if it’s just for me, that’s fine. But if it’s it’s not meant to be a diary, then I want others to experience. So maybe I do have to reach out. Maybe I do have to kind of connect some way, some ways that at least allows them to not be too scared to engage. But then there’s that part where you have to say, No, this is my line, because this is me, this is what I feel, this is the muse within me, the bard, and I need to express it. And I have the tools to do it, and like you said, I think people will come around to it because the back it pendulum swings, and we’re just we’re just hoping to catch it as it goes by.
Daniel Firth Griffith: 1:22:09
Yep, yeah, I think so. I really think so.
Loved this conversation! Very engaging and a lot of new perspectives to explore. I learned a lot from both of you. Maybe you're already brewing something up, but just in case planting the seed: a class on self-publishing a book would be so great. Walking us through the step-by-step and actually how-to, especially if one wants to truly self-publish and not fall back on big distributors. I'm sure I would not be alone in embracing an offer like this.