(upbeat music) - Welcome to Dyson Mind, a podcast hosted by Brad Brown and Jason Kaufman to explore the intersection of life, games, science, music, philosophy, and creativity through interviews with leading creatives. All are welcome in this space. (upbeat music) - I don't wanna speak for you, but this has probably been one of the busiest June's that I've had in quite a while. And it feels like it's been one of the busier, busier June's for you. So together outside of Dyson Mind, it feels like we've constantly been shuffling between things you've had going on and things that I've had going on. And so today we are doing some of our normal prep recording for our episode that we're gonna be talking about here shortly with our special returning guest. But it feels like we haven't chatted about, in the Dyson Mind sphere, the dim verse, as we can call it. - Oh God. (laughing) - As we shall not call it. (laughing) - No, you're right though. You are definitely right. - It feels like we haven't done it. We haven't talked about it in a while. And there's just been, there's been a lot going on. - We, so I mean, this episode, is you are all listening to this, dear audience. - If you are listening on the day it drops. - If you're listening on the day it drops, it's the first day of July. Otherwise everyone else is listening after that. So obviously we're recording this, right, before it rolls over to the release date. No, it's true. I mean, Brad, you and I talk, we talk all the time, but we haven't really talked Dyson Mind in a while. And now that's not obvious from our episodes, but in terms of our recording schedule, I would go so far as to say this has been one of the busiest May and June stretches. I think I've had, I think both of us have had in a long time. I mean, I've just, it's, yes, this is, I've said this to you already. I was, I've said this to a few people. I remember as spring semester, like the end of it was on the horizon like, oh, okay, there is going to come a summer. I remember saying to my wife that, okay, you know what, I know it's going to be busier this summer a bit, but it'll just be glorious to not have meetings. And if I had just stopped and listened, I would have heard the cosmos laughing at me in the distance much like that. Yes, that's exactly right. So yeah, this has been busy. I worked at an organization where it sounds humorous, but I would literally have, you know, nine to 12 hour meetings scheduled in eight hour day. And that was because people would over and double schedule meetings. I remember you said that. You know, as you know, I just, I got back last week from a short family excursion to South Central U.S. to the Smoky Mountain area. It's always, and you know this better than anyone. I currently, or I've ever known, it is always good to refocus and to get out in the nature. And there is nothing, nothing to me that refocuses me or reminds me of just how, I don't want this to sound, I don't want this to sound to minimize it, but just how minuscule and how, you know, yeah. Yeah, how minuscule we are when you look at, when you look at yourself, just in the grand scheme of things and you look up in the sky at night, or when you look upon yourself and you're, you know, when I sit and I look out and I see these mountains, you know. And then you think back, I agree completely. And I know where you're going, right? You're out there in a place like that. And you think back to, oh man, I thank God for the break, I was scrambling. And why was I worried about any of this stuff? None of that stuff back home at work ultimately matters much at all. Why am I stressing? And like you said, like, I'm not that important. None of these decisions are that important. And if I find myself stopping and saying, no, no, no, that's not true. Yeah, it is true. That's just ego and anxiety. And that's why we need to sometimes get out there into nature and just decompress and recalibrate and remind ourselves sometimes forcefully, we're just not that important. And it's okay to say, you know, nope, not today. - No, and we stopped and we took it to our mammoth cave and it just reminded me of, you know, and you see it with nature and everything else, especially down in those caves, those things were going to happen. Nature's gonna move whether we like it or not. - Well, what's the line? Nature will find a way. - Yeah. I took a second for me to figure out that you were intentionally creating a bed. - That's my best Jeff Goldblum that I can western. - Yes, it took me a second. But I think I told you, maybe it wasn't last night, it was the night before, but I came back refreshed. I had, you know, refresh in some areas. - Yeah, still, you know, there are things that I am, I had purposely kind of said, okay, I'm gonna really focus on this when I get back. There's some writing, obviously that, you know, I started working on, I am full bore on. You know, from an RPG perspective, you have some gravel that as this drops is in progress. For you, when you get back, you already have it on the calendar for us to boldly go back to where no man has gone before. - Bully returned to where we left off a month ago. - Yes, there it is. And, you know, there's some material that I had been waiting to pick up. - Yeah. - Until after I got back, 'cause I didn't want things waiting for me and sitting here untouched. - Yep. - But that being said, you know, we were talking about even reading materials and books. - Yep. - And, you know, one of our, one of our, you know, earlier guests. - Just a lovely person. - Yes. reached out to us because-- - He's got another book that has come out. - Yes. - And, you know, I mean, we always, we always enjoy and appreciate hearing from past guests. And, especially, you know, when they want to come back to the show. And Brad is trying very hard to get his automatic Zoom stuff to work where it gives you all the weird stuff on screen. And Brad's now reached a point in his life where even Zoom is ignoring him. "I turned it on." - Yeah, it's like you're married to it. I digress. So yeah, we had the very good fortune of having a previous guest come back to talk about his latest book. And when we had him on the first time, he was recently off of a previous book. And it's interesting because he writes YA, right, I think it's fair to say, neither of us are avid YA readers. And, in fact, I mean, right, we're both, shall we say, floating around 50. There was no such thing as YA literature when we were YA, right? This is very much a thing, contemporary-- - Well, I think you could, you could, you know-- - There were books, but there was-- - There was Judy Bloom, YA, at that point. - Well, they, you know, it was a little old. But Christopher Pike, right, stuff like that. But still, this wasn't a massive, dedicated market in the same way that had its own section in the bookstore, like just the other day, actually around the time of our interview with our guest. And we'll stop being subtle in a moment. I'd run this by my daughters just 'cause I'm like, "Hey, you know, I'm talking to the guy who wrote this. "Would you be interested in reading it?" And we got into a discussion where they were explaining, "Okay, well, YA is kind of changing now, "and there's a new category." And like, they were walking me through, like, here are kind of the target markets now in the modern bookstore around age. And it's really interesting. Okay, that also said then. So we've got the lovely individual of James Sutter back on Dyson Mind. So glad to have him back. He not only writes YA, but he writes what we call queer LGBTQA oriented YA. So it's not just like a love story that's really typical. It's interesting and it's dynamic and it can be edgy. And James is always good for just really creative ideas. Like as Hianil hear this, as he walked us through the concept for this new book, this most recent book, he's telling us about it and I'm thinking, "Well, I mean, you've got like A, B and C, "how did he ever like see the connections between them?" But the result is, of course, he crafts these really neat, really endearing stories. James L. Sutter is a co-creator of the Pathfinder and Starfinder role playing games. From 2004 to 2017, he worked for Paizo Publishing, starting out as an editor on Dungeon Magazine, going on to do foundational work for Pathfinder and eventually becoming the creative director in charge of launching Starfinder, as well as the executive editor of the Pathfinder Tales novel line for Paizo and Tor before leaving to write full-time. James is also the author of the young adult romance novels, Dark Hearts and The Ghost of Us, as well as the fantasy novels, Death's Heretic, a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel and the Redemption Engine, which won the 2015 Scribe Award for Best Original Speculative Novel. His short stories have appeared in such venues as Nightmare, the magazine of fantasy and science fiction, beneath ceaseless skies, escape pod and the number one Amazon bestseller machine of death. In addition, he's written comic books, essays and venues like Clark World and Lightspeed queers destroy science fiction, a wealth of tabletop gaming material and video games. When not writing, James has performed with musical acts ranging from metalcore to musical theater. He lives in Seattle. (upbeat music) - As you heard, just before we started here, we have James back on with us and we are so happy. - We are. - For you to join us again. - Welcome back. - Yes, welcome back. - Thanks for having me back. - And we have you back because you have something new coming out or has come out. And we'd love to talk about it. What is new? What is new out for purchase these days that has your name on it? - So my new book is another queer young adult romance novel. This one is called The Ghost of Us and it's basically 10 things I hate about you meets ghost. So it stars a teenage ghost hunter who is a social outcast trying to find a way to get famous finding a ghost 'cause she figures that's her only chance at a decent life. And she finds The Ghost, the ghost of this upperclassman who died the previous year, which should be great. But his condition is that if she wants him to help her prove ghosts are real, she has to draw his little sister out of her shell. She's become a depressed recluse since her older brother died. And so he's like, take my little sister to prom and I will give you all the evidence you need. If not, no dates, no ghost. - You were not kidding about that description of ghosts plus 10 things I hate about you. - Wow. - Right? And so she's got, you know, there's sort of this whole supernatural fake dating thing where she's trying to woo this girl with the ghost of the girl's older brother kind of whispering in her ear. And then of course things get very complicated because she starts to actually fall for this girl. And then it's thinking like, oh, but it's all built on a lie. And also, so The Ghost, his whole mission on earth, the reason he's still here is his unfinished business is making sure his sister is happy. So as his sister gets happier, he starts to fade. And so our main character, Kara, has to kind of decide, well, if I keep dating this girl who I really like, I'm gonna lose my only shot at finding fame through ghost hunting. But if I stop, they're both gonna hate me. What do I do? - Okay, I gotta ask, 'cause when we had you last time, you had your other book had come out. Was this already, was the, I'm gonna, I keep using this pun saying I don't like it. Was the sausage already being made as you were talking to us last time? - Yes, and I'm so glad that it was because something they don't necessarily tell you when you're first getting published as a novelist, but that I try to tell everybody is, once you write your first book, like as soon as you hear that book is gonna sell, or even before that book sells, write another one. Because when that book does sell, like I was about, I was, you know, halfway through writing The Ghost of Us when Dark Arts sold, and then I finished it right before Dark Arts came out, which is great because you spend so much time trying to promote your new book. I feel bad for all the authors who are trying to, you know, promote the book that just came out, but you're also trying to write and do edits and stuff on the book that comes out next. And if you're going into a book every year, which is pretty common, that's a breakneck pace, where you're always trying to sell something and write the next thing at the same time. And sometimes, you know, even more than that. And so I was very lucky that I had the book mostly handled by the time Dark Arts came out. So I could just kind of focus on promoting Dark Arts and also just, you know, trying to fit in any sort of life bumps that, you know, come up. It can be grueling. So yeah, get as much work done as you can in that year. Also, frankly, you're never gonna feel better as an author than in that year or two years between when you get the book deal and when the book comes out. Because, you know, being an author is great, but in that first year, you can imagine anything. You know, it's like the dream is coming true, but it hasn't actually come true yet. So it's all Christmas Eve, no Christmas morning, where you're just excited to see like, you're gonna unwrap those presents. And, you know, some books do get huge and change your life and go on the bestseller lists. Most books don't. And so, you know, there can be a real crash. I've heard a lot of authors talk about sort of the second book blues, where, you know, A, maybe your first book didn't get you on the Today show, you know, and so you're having to deal with the reality of being a normal mid-list author. And then also, you know, your first book might have taken you 10 years to write, you know, and then suddenly you're trying to write the next one in a year in between working on the previous book. It's like the same thing in music all the time, where you hear the sophomore slump, where that second album, it's like, well, the first album had every good song that person has ever written in their entire life. And the next one has the songs they wrote on the tour bus, you know. And so, like, I'm really happy with how the ghost of us came out. And, but I get it. I understand how much of a bumpy road that can be. A second book, same publisher as the first, yes. And that's because I signed a two-book deal. Oh, OK, OK, so that negates. I was going to ask how that was the second time around. But, OK, so now I'm now the book that I'm writing is going to be. So the way these things normally work is you get however many books you've got on your contract. Sometimes they'll just buy one. Sometimes it'll be a two-book deal, three-book deal. And then when you finish that, most publishers will put in an option clause. And that option clause says, hey, for whatever your next book is, you have to let us look at it first. And we get 30 days, 60 days, whatever, to make you an offer. And you can still reject that offer. You can say, no, actually, we're going to go shop this around. But it's at least gives them a chance to try and, you know, not not compete with everybody else. So that's where I'll be next is taking my next book to the publisher and saying, hey, what do you think? And then we'll just see what happens. So have you had a little bit of breathing time now? Have you? Oh, you know, I took it. I took some breathing time after. After Dark Arts came out, like sort of I I kind of took the fall off. I said, I took the fall off. It was like half vacation, half nervous breakdown, but like everybody, like I feel like a lot of folks, a lot of authors I talked to early in the pandemic really kind of like just fell apart and couldn't write anything. I powered right through the pandemic and was writing all the time. And I feel like last year it finally caught up with me. And there was just I was having a hell of a time writing. But fortunately in 2024, I was able to get back on the horse. And now I'm really writing away. I'm about two thirds of the way done drafting a new novel. And I'm really happy with it. So hopefully I'm back on that that book, a year schedule, but nothing's ever a given. I don't know. I know very few authors. I know a lot of very successful authors and at least half of them are convinced that their next book will be their last because you just get so used to the disaster in publishing that everybody's skittish all the time. Yeah, with the ghost of us. Was there something that compelled you? I guess this is actually a question for either the books or any of the three so far. Like, was there something especially that compelled you? You know, the story, the characters, was it just like this sounds neat? I think it would sell. I want to write about this or was there something more? Well, Dark Hearts was definitely the book before this. My first queer young adult contemporary romance was called Dark Hearts. And it's all about falling in love with the boy who stole your chance to be a rock star. And so it's sort of a friends to enemies, to friends, to lovers kind of story. And that one was really, you know, it wasn't based factually on my own life. Like I was never, you know, the one breath away from being a pop star. But it was based on my life to a large extent because I had also been a teenage musician and it had that feeling of having missed my shot. You know, it'd be like, you're, you're really good when you're 15, 16, 17. And then suddenly you hit 20 and you haven't signed to a major label. And you're suddenly like, Oh, Oh, I guess I'm not the prodigy. I thought I was, you know, and so it drew a lot on that experience and that experience of being an underage musician in Seattle, you know, it was set in my own town. And it was also very much based on my own experience of coming out and sort of realizing that I was bisexual. The main character goes through a very similar process. There's certainly scenes that are basically just torn right from my diary. You know, we're lots of little details. So that one, that one was largely from my life. And I remember the exact minute when I figured out that I wanted to write this book is I was reading a Wikipedia entry on Stuart Sutcliffe, who was the original basis for the Beatles. And he, you know, played with them through their, you know, their early years and then quit kind of right before they got huge. And I remember reading that and thinking, what would it feel like to quit a band? Oh, my God, right before they become the Beatles. And so that was sort of the genesis for the book. And then because I'd been thinking about, I'd been reading a lot of young adult romance, I then immediately thought, Oh, my God. And then what if they fell in love, you know? And so that was kind of the whole book just sort of laid itself out. So that was super easy in comparison. I mean, because you've never been a young woman who then died. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I haven't. So yeah, so this book was tougher because I didn't like this one. I really just sat down and was like, well, what? I kind of had this idea that like ghost hunting would be fun. And I wanted to write something that was set like in the suburbs of Seattle, where I grew up, you know, not exactly where I grew up, but with that sort of DNA. Um, and, you know, I thought like a fake dating thing could be cool. Like sort of a Cyrano de Berger act, like 10 things I hate about you kind of thing. But I really didn't know what it was I wanted to do. And then one day I kind of got a brainstorm and sat down and just wrote a monologue from the perspective of a teenage dude who had died just about how much it sucks being dead, like how much, you know, being 18 already sucks. Here's how much it sucks when you're dead. Um, and it was kind of funny and like a little bit too honest, you know, and all these different things. And I really like, I loved that vibe, but I wasn't sure what to do with it because I didn't, I didn't actually want to write a story, like from the perspective of the dead guy. And I started, that's when sort of like the, the sibling, like, I originally thought I was going to be a love triangle between like the ghost hunter, the ghost and the living sibling. Um, and that was actually how the first draft was written. And my editor came back and was like, I love this book, but the love triangle triangle does not work. I'm not believing the like that the ghost hunter is falling for the disembodied ghost who like she can't even see or touch or whatever. And we kind of went back and forth and I tried to make it work for a while and realized, you know what, like she is totally right. This is not that story. And so then I rewrote it, uh, to have it just be sort of a friendship between the main character and the ghost and everything worked much better. So sometimes sometimes the book really changes in editing. Like you, you don't know, but, but yeah, that was it. That was a tougher book to sort of nail down. Uh, but in the end, it's sort of. It still did kind of what I loved about dark arts as well. Like I really like writing books where the main character is a teenager who starts out kind of jaded and grumpy and like, not the greatest person. And by the end of the book, uh, has become better and you really love them. You know, and so that's, that's, I'm realizing that's my genre. It is a growth journey. Yeah. Yeah. I like stories where people, where people become better, you know, like that. Okay. So, so I can just just real quick. Yeah, go go real. Cause I'm known for the sidebar just because I mentioned, mentioned music. Are you, have you had time over since we've last talked to do any music or a little bit? Um, you know, it's funny. I've got a new like solo EP, uh, that's been sitting on my hard drive, just waiting to be released. And it's one of those like it's done. It's mastered and I just have to convince myself to like to just be okay with pushing the button and sending it live. Um, but so probably I'll, I probably won't release that until after the book hub hub dies down. But I, I like putting that stuff up on bandcamp just so people can hear. Hey, I was going to ask, I wasn't going to ask you live, but I was going to ask you. But since you gave it away, I was going to say, okay, bandcamp. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You put it under your name out on bandcamp or? Yeah, I got my, my solo project is just called, Oh no, it's James. Um, yeah. And yeah, I just put everything up for free. It's just fun side project stuff. Um, but actually what I have been doing is in the fall, I started learning to play the drums because I've always been, you know, a guitarist, a bassist, a singer. Um, but I love what drummers do, especially playing in metal as I have for so many years, like the drummer is half the band and heavy metal. And so, uh, my roommates got a drum set off of Craigslist for free. Uh, and I started learning how to play it, not realizing until they got it home, that it's a child's kit. It's a junior size. So I've been learning to play these, just like these brutal, heavy metal blast beats on like, uh, Keith Child's Kit. Yeah. And it's great. Does it look like it in one of the little kid cars that you know, it doesn't, it's not that bad. Like it was big enough that you didn't immediately realize looking at it, that it's sort of, you know, three quarters size, but then when you see a regular drum set, you go, uh, we're just free and if you're in a, if you're in a flatter and apartment or something like that, it probably works out better. Yeah, yeah, it works great. Um, it's great to learn on. And so I started taking lessons and I've, I've really loved it. Like it's been super good for my mental health. Uh, I find that there's nothing that calms me down, like sitting down and just spending half an hour trying to learn. And the joy of learning something I brand new instrument like that is every time I spend 20 minutes I feel myself leveling up, like it's a buddy rich method, or are you doing the, uh, I don't think, I think it's just the, uh, you know, sort of American heavy metal like Fortnoy method. Yeah, but um, for, for those who are listening, which is all of you, I'm sorry, you couldn't see Brad, Brad Flaming, I'm like a fish out of water. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I just, you know, mean fascinating sometime next time, next time we have you on, which we will, uh, I have to be a discussion. Yeah, it has to be because I'm just fascinated by how, by your, I'd be curious as to your production method and all of that. Oh, well, I mean, it's all just on a laptop, you know, that's the joy of, uh, of the technology these days is can do anything. Um, I wish I were a better sound engineer. That is one of those things where when people say if you could wake up tomorrow and have, you know, a skill just magically, like the matrix, like downloaded into your brain, it would be like sound production and engineering because I just, I would love to be able to translate the songs that I write into the sounds that I want. Cause I can, I feel like I'm a pretty good songwriter, an okay player and a terrible engineer. And that just, that's fine right up until you have to make the CD. So I'm a, I'm a sound chaser. I've been sitting upstairs on my guitar and on a, on a boss katana right now with different, with different pedals, just trying to find the right sounds. And so I'm in, I'm in one of those rabbit holes, trying to find the right sounds. And yeah, you know, being up in, up in Seattle, you know, the, the, there's, there's a whole school of sound that came out of there in the 90s, independent of the whole alternative area. Yeah, so sorry. I went, I sidetracked from the book, but, you know, I will, I actually can maybe bring this back around to writing and whatnot because one thing that I've learned from music and from doing recording projects is that kind of all art is found art. And what I mean by that is I find when I write a song in my head and I know how I want it to sound, and then I sit down at the computer and try to create that, I'm almost always frustrated. But if I just sit down at the computer and say like, I'm just going to mess around and see what cool sounds I can find, I can build something out of those cool sounds that sounds amazing to me because I had no preconceptions about what it needed to be. Like I can just delight in the sound that I found rather than trying to replicate what was in my head. And so trying to take that kind of, kind of into everything of just like work with what's there, you know, and I think that can work for writing as well. You know, just like write the thing that sparks you even when, I mean, I was a science fiction fantasy guy for 15 years in it from the tabletop industry. Nobody was looking for me to go into young adult queer contemporary romance, right? There's no magic, there's no saving the world. But that was just what kind of popped out one day and I ran with it. And I think this business, you know, if you're going to be a writer, everything, we were talking about this before the show, but like every book is a lottery ticket anyway. There's no guarantees, there's no like if you do this, you will succeed. So you might as well just do whatever you enjoy and just see what happens. Yeah, I was going to two pieces with that one. I think you hit it because you just talked a minute ago about writing that monologue. You know, you took that monologue and that kind of became your vehicle. That was exactly right. And it ended up not even in the book in the end. Like it was one of those things where it was like it was the first chapter of the book, then I wrote the book and then cut off that first chapter. And sometimes that's what you need. Sometimes you have to write your way into a project. Jason, I have one question and then I'll back off because I've interrupted you twice. I'm overdue. The one thing I was going to ask is just from your own kind of like metrics perspective and all that, you know, when you're looking at success and all that, do you kind of monitor like Goodreads or Amazon or, you know, how do you kind of, where do you kind of look? I mean, ultimately success in publishing is however you want to measure it. Like there's, you know, creative satisfaction, there's money, there's numbers of, you know, copies. Like, you know, I could say, you know, you always want more sales, right? Like I always want the book to sell more copies than it does. But I've gotten some tremendous fan letters from Dark Arts. Like I've been really amazed actually at the volume of letters I've gotten from people who felt really seen, especially a lot of young by dudes who went, oh my God, like this book helped me. This book was like, this is exactly the position I was in or this gave me the confidence to ask my crush out or one person said me a letter that said he read it because the guy he was crushing on made him like used it as like a test essentially. It was like, I don't normally read books, but like I did it to impress this guy and you know, I really loved it. That's awesome. Like somebody out there is doing the Lord's work, you know, please, please, if you are, you know, young and hot, please make everybody all your Tinder dates, read my book first like that. I really appreciate it. But no, I mean, that's been great. Like having it translated into other languages has been really cool. I'm actually going to do a signing in the Netherlands in August. Good for you. Which I've never been to mainland Europe before. So my Dutch publisher is setting that up so that there's, there's all these metrics, but at the same time, I have a bunch of friends who are New York Times bestsellers. So if I wanted to measure myself against them, yeah, I am a failure, you know, so and certainly, you know, financially, I, I make less than almost everybody I know in Seattle because we're in tech hub, right? Like, you know, it's not, it's not super lucrative to be a full-time author, especially now at the beginning, and you're sort of investing in yourself. Like it's almost like starting when I first quit my job to write full-time, I was talking with my wife and we said, well, think of it kind of like a restaurant, like very few restaurants make money in the first five years because you got to get established. And that's sort of how I approach writing, but I recognize that that's a privilege that a lot of people don't have. Like, I had some money saved up. I could make this work. But I, I think for most people, keeping your day job is a real good idea. So if I may, just to kind of swing back in. I didn't even talk about reviews. Sorry. Oh, no, we're coming back. Okay, cool. Yeah, but if I just, I might come back to the ghost of us because I, in terms of the actual writing. So, so I've got, you know, I've got two daughters. I've got two adolescent daughters, one's, one's soon to ship off to college. Brad is in the same, same position. You've got the one daughter. And like, I talk, both of mine are in veterinary readers. We talk a lot about books. I always try to take an interest in what they're reading, even though what they read and what I read are light years apart and interest. They, they, right. But you know, you want to, you want to be interested. And occasionally I have recommended books or things have come up in school. And they've asked me about them. And you're like the obligatory thing. And it's like, but that actually sounds kind of cool. What do you think, dad? Have you read it? And one of the things that I know that we've talked about is when men, granted, there aren't a lot of examples of this, but when men have written women, right? That's the big thing. I think more, again, through the lens of two young women, that typically fails much more often than it succeeds. So I'm just, I'm just from the practice, the art, the mindset of your writing, I'm curious, how was that for you to write in a, like, having a female protagonist? Well, we'll see. I mean, so I have my theory that said, I'm sure people will call or have already called me on. Oh, look, here's, you know, here's this dude writing, you know, lesbians, what a, you know, what a jerk. I, the way I feel about it is I think that it's sort of behooves us to try and write from a wide variety of perspectives. Like, I don't want to write just my own character all the time. That said, in this one, I felt like one of the things that I could do to make it a little bit easier is keep a lot of the other details of her life similar to my experience. Like the main character, you know, Cara, who's perspective I'm writing from, I'm like, yes, she is, you know, she is female, I am male. That said, she is also like, a grumpy, like teenage social outcast from outside of Seattle, like in the suburbs who wants to be famous. And Owen is bisexual. And like, with the exception of gender, that was me, right? So like, yeah, we have a different experience based on gender, but also like a lot of our formative experiences were the same. And so it's going to be a lot easier to write in that character's voice. And I think I think it's worthwhile to try and push yourself out of that. Now that said, like, you know, there are the farther a field you go from your own experience, the more research you have to do, the more you should get people to backstop you. Like, I definitely had a number of my like, queer female friends read the book and tell me like, hey, is this working? And there were places where they're like, okay, this, this does sound like to male. Or at least one case, it was like, this is kind of male, but it's really funny. So I don't know, like, but, but I think you need to do the research, and also recognize when maybe you don't want to tackle something like there are, there are certainly stories that I would not try to write, because I just feel like I'm not going to be able to do it very well. But in this case, you know, if I can write from the perspective of gods and dragons and, you know, demons and whatever, when I was writing science fiction and fantasy, like, I think I can maybe pull off writing a girl from the same background as me. If I can't do that, I need to, you know, work a lot harder. But that said, maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. Folks will have to read the book to see if I pulled it off. That's great. Let's come back to review this. I know you brought it up. Oh, yeah. Speaking of men writing women, let's talk about reviews. But okay. So, you know, as an author, as an increasingly accomplished author in this new genre of yours, new issue on reviewers, um, like, how do you take reviews? How do you, how, how do they if at all factor? You know, so everybody, everybody who's been at this for a while will tell you, don't read your reviews. And you absolutely will anyway. And it'll wreck you. And then eventually you learn, no, really don't read the reviews. It's not like, I'll read the trade reviews when they come out, like publishers weekly or school library journal or book list. But I really try not to read stuff like good reads or Amazon reviews. Just because it's, the human mind is wired in such a way, at least for me and a lot of people I know where you'll gloss over the 99 compliments and remember the one thing somebody nit-picked. And so like, it's really hard to get boosted up by reviews and it's really easy to be brought down. And ultimately, the book's already out there. You can't change it now. So I think there can be something to be learned. Um, so one that one thing I actually proposed to a writer friend of mine was, and I haven't done this yet, but instituting what I was calling just the day of pain, where like you take one day, a couple months after the book is out and just read through all the reviews, take notes, see if there is legitimately something that like you're getting wrong and people are disliking that you maybe want to use to inform your future writing, and then just never look again. But like concentrate it all in one, one big lump sum of suffering. And then end the day with a large binge of alcohol or something. Yeah, exactly. Do whatever you need to do. Um, because I think there can be things that are useful to learn if you, especially if, uh, there's something that your audience cares about that you don't care about or that you don't know about. For instance, a thing that surprised me a lot with dark hearts was there was for a while there was like 10% of the Goodreads reviews were like, I love this book so much. It was amazing, but there's a Harry Potter reference in it. And I just cannot abide people making Harry Potter references because among the target demographic, which is, I mean, it is a queer teen romance. And among queer teens, like JK Rowling sucks. But like, and I knew that like I agree with that, but I didn't realize that it had reached the point where even mentioning Jake, any sort of Harry Potter thing in passing is sort of triggering for people. And I didn't realize that. But that's an issue where we are as a society, not of your book. Sure. No, it is. But the point is like, I was still losing a star in all those reviews. And like that aggregate rating does matter to people, does matter to the algorithm, certainly when it's recommending you. And we're in a very weird place where with art where, and I don't know any artist or author who doesn't hate this, but the fact that your book gets sort of broken down to stars, right, like three out of five or whatever, it really doesn't work. Because the truth is that you can have an amazing book that works for one person and doesn't work for the other person. That doesn't mean that it's a two and a half star book. It means that it's amazing for some people and terrible for others. And it's why like the Rotten Tomatoes effect, I think really pushes you towards sort of bland, inoffensive, but also unprovoking narratives. And then you also end up in these weird, tied in these weird knots, where you know, people will say that there are people who just reserved five stars for like this author literally gave me a kidney. Like I've seen reviews, including in my work, where they just glow about how this book made them cry and laugh and they loved it so much. Three and a half stars rounded up to four. And I'm like, what is this? Is this like only the Bible gets five stars? Like, what is your metric, right? Like, but you just people have their own metrics. And it's only a problem because everything else that people buy on Amazon, I don't know about you. But if I look at, you know, if I'm buying light bulbs and it has less than four stars, I'm like, well, these are clearly trash, you know, which is which is a thing we're all trained to do, but it does not translate to books because because but I don't know, you might not be fair about this James. Some light bulbs work great for some people. Exactly. That's that's a huge that you bring up like a that is a that's like an open door topic because there almost should be I'd I'd open I'd welcome a debate about a different reporting or rating system for for media, you know, books, reading, music, all that versus commodity items. Yeah, it's also just but it comes down to the individuals, right? Like, even when I pull my friends just sitting around, it's that question of if you liked a book, does five stars mean I enjoyed this book? It did everything I, you know, want out of a book, which was an enjoyable experience? Or does five stars mean it was the greatest book I've ever read and I'm going to read an excerpt at my wedding? You know, like, because those are different, those are both reasonable scales. The problem is that you're mixing those scales and like you end up with people not understanding what the number means. And then some of the wealth to that point, like just as a measure of meaningfully quantifying anything. I mean, they're they're so they're so useless. It's so but you're right. We would buy by them. But what is it? Amazon, maybe eBay, like I've been on some of these where there's actually explicit instruction. If you click on a four or lower, it warns you, hey, it was there's something wrong with this? This is right, damaging it and and and it's like, okay, so if you're not giving a five, right? I mean, it doesn't differentiate. Right. Right. Same with like Uber drivers, right? Like, you know, your Uber person, you know, if they don't get five stars, they're getting in trouble, you know, and unfortunately the same is kind of true of authors, but people don't realize it because they're thinking about their experience, not you're clicking three and a half star, you're cooking three stars. Do you realize that your author may lose a kidney, please? Yeah, seriously, seriously, we're at the same thing, like, you know, this makes me think of a perennial topic amongst my science fiction fantasy friends is like people who don't want to read the first book in a trilogy until the last one comes out because they have been burned, you know, in the past, not realizing that if you wait, that third book is less likely to come out because the series, like the publisher might ask the series before you ever get there. So like, if you want to read something, honestly, if there's a book you know you want to read for the love of God pre-order, like, get it as soon as possible because it makes a huge difference. Yeah. People don't realize the way the book trade works. So I'll tell you a weird thing that I didn't realize is like, so the way that like Barnes and Noble decides how many books, copies of a book they're going to put in their stores, it's not like they just take 10 copies of every book that's published, like somebody makes a decision about which books will be carried in those stores. And one of the big pieces of information is pre-orders. And so if you get, you know, even 50 pre-orders of your book on Barnes and Noble.com, then Barnes and Noble is going to be much more likely to be like, oh, well, we should have a copy of this in every store, right? And like, 50 is not that many. That's like, so, you know, every time I have a book come out, I send that email to, you know, not just my readers, but also friends and family being like, hey, pre-orders makes a huge difference. They determine print runs. They also determine whether or not you hit if you're a big big timer, like they determine whether or not you hit a bestseller list because bestseller lists count how many books did you sell that week? And every pre-order gets counted as a first week sale. So everybody who pre-orders over the course of that entire year beforehand counts as buying it day one. And so a lot of people are on the New York Times bestseller list for exactly one day, you know, one week and they fall off it because that was just all those pre-orders. So there's a lot of, there are a lot of little things that can make a big difference. But like reviews, you know, honestly, if you like a book, please review it everywhere. Like on Amazon on Goodreads, all those things because having the number of reviews be high and having the star review be higher matters to the algorithm, whether or not it's going to get recommended to people. And it does matter to people who are just browsing, you know. If you, a lot of people, if you see a book that has three reviews on Amazon, you think, oh, well, nobody's heard of this. And unless you're into really underground indie stuff, you're probably going to pass. So more is better. That's actually, that's actually, no, and that's great. That's great advice, especially nowadays, when you go on an Amazon and you're finding a lot of people in effect, air quotes, self publishing. Well, truly publishing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, ebook, ebook on Amazon. And those get, those get, and I'm not knocking on, it's just those are getting filtered in and are intermingling and mixing in with just regular published books. Sure. I mean, there's effectively no difference these days. It's really shifting. The advent of AI is going to really flood all that. I know Amazon's having trouble with that. But honestly, you know, word of mouth is still the most important thing for any book. Like nobody really, like, you can market, and obviously, if you have a huge marketing budget, you can make a book a bestseller. Like a lot of best sellers are kind of tapped with the magic wand before they ever come out. Right. But beyond that, I think a lot of publishers, like all publishers don't know how to make a bestseller every time, or else they would, you know? So word of mouth is still the number one way. So yeah, even those publishers that I dare say know how to air quote, game the system, don't know how to game the system every time. Otherwise, you would again see that every time. Yeah, you can do there are things that a publisher can do by putting a bunch of money behind a book in order to really sort of grease the wheels. But they can't, they still can't guarantee success. Right. But more importantly, there are things that they can do. If they don't do the things to grease the wheels, it is that much harder for a book to be a success. And so there's a lot of publishing is kind of just throwing books out there and hoping that they hit. And you know, a lot of people, especially with social media going the way it has, you know, sort of falling apart. There's a lot of folks were just saying, you know, find the right tick tocker, you know, find the right influencer or booktuber, you know, and it can be the weirdest, wildest thing, like a friend of mine had his book got mentioned in a Twitch stream from a Polish gamer, who was just, you know, while he was streaming, he was talking about my friend's book, and he became a bestseller in Poland, like overnight, just because of that one mentioned. So like, now that we know the secret to success, you know, but you can't, there's no way to find you can't get access to that, you know, without paying a whole bunch of money for it. It's just whoever stumbles across your book. Jason, when you go overseas, we're going to have you go on a mission. When you go in Poland over winter, no one told me I could have done something. I know you could have done something. James, thanks so much for joining us. These are the conversations where we've kind of we kind of hit so many different topics. And we want to have you back on again, and as you work on your, and then whether you're working on or finished or published your third book, let us know how you're doing. Maybe come on as you release your first gold album. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, no, man, I still love writing music, but I am so far past thinking it's ever going to go anywhere. I'm just happy if somebody checks it out. What about a brief soundtrack for each of the new books? So actually, so this is lovely. I was able to, so audiobooks, like both of my books have audiobooks. And I love audiobooks, and they always have like intro and outro music, like a little bit of a jingle. Yeah, right, right. And so, when we sold Dark Arts, I asked the Macmillan audio team, like, where do you get those? And they, oh, we just buy it from a service that comprises stuff. And I said, well, can I do mine? And they went, uh, yeah, sure. So I got to do the intro music for Dark Arts. And then I got to do it again to the ghost of us for you. So yeah, when you hear those, uh, a little jingle underneath the, you know, I audible, you know, random house audio presents the ghost of us, like the music that's playing underneath that is made your music. That is exceptionally cool. It was really fun. And I realized actually after that, where I was like, because I kind of just built those things relatively quickly. You know, they're just, they don't have words there, you know, a minute long. And then I was thinking about it later, and I went, you know, this is probably the widest reach any single song I've ever done is has gotten to date, you know, so many people listening to these audiobooks. So that's really fun. I really enjoyed doing it. That's really cool. Well, I'm always looking because I do some, some very lame jamming here. So as you get your drum drumming up to beat, I don't know if you ever heard of the beat buddy by singular. No, go look, go look up singular sound and beat buddy. It's just a little drum drum pedal. If you ever, if you ever want to pass along some free drum beats, we could do some virtual jamming. Yeah, yeah. Well, first I'll need to actually be a consistent in my tempo. I need to be, I need to be consistent in my fretboards. So that's fine. James, thanks so much. We will definitely have you on again. We love having you on and talking about anything music, books. We have, but we didn't even get to talk about gaming or anything this week. So that's okay. Yeah, we'll have to get into it next time. Yeah, we will. And congratulations huge number two and upcoming three. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Fantastic as always to have James. He's, he's our, has we just validated a three time guest of ours. And originally when we, when we had him on, we just, we did not, and James, I think we've mentioned this before. Little did we know how prolific he was as a writer, what caught our attention originally was his involvement. Yeah, and his involvement with star finder pathfinder. Yeah, and his pioneer and being a pioneer in that area. And look at what he's doing now and just how creative it is. He is in his music as well. Well, I just, I mean, so much respect, truly so much respect for taking such a change of direction professionally. Thank you, James, for spending time with us again. We'd love to have you on as you're working on your next novel, but fascinating follow him. We'll have all of his information, obviously, out on Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, or X. I guess we should just go with X now. I guess Twitter is, is finally going to pass away as a term. But, um, you know, obviously as you read, if you, if you pick up the book, you know, much like, you know, leave a review. Yeah, you should pick any of our, you should leave a review on Amazon. You should leave a review on your podcast, Aphrodite, some mind while you're there. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, James, thanks. Thanks so much. You know, if you, if you pick it up at, um, your local bookstore, also, you can also leave a review out on Amazon as well. And speaking of local bookstores, let's go to, let's go to our virtual local bookstore, Audubon Korg. So, um, boy, it has been a while, yep. Since we've been to our, um, VLBS virtual local bookstore. Very nice. Um, and, um, the big thing is I've been waiting for the so on. I know Jim, we've, Jim Johnson, I've talked about this in the past, um, of Mojaveas and Star Trek Adventures. Yes. I, I almost reached his point where I don't even think we have to introduce him that way anymore. I'm just pretending that we still get new listeners and it's a good point. Yeah, good point. Um, so this, this past week, or actually, I should say two weeks ago, um, Kazim announced the release of the Penn Dragon core book, um, and I had been anxiously awaiting that. So, um, place my order for that. But dragon who writes who would have done it? Exactly. With a pen. Right. The pen. No, that's, um, I picked up the, the, um, the starter starter kit a while back. Um, I had never gotten into any of the prior versions, but I had picked up, um, I can older version, an older starter kit PDF. And it was always fascinating to me because it was, and especially paladin, just because there's, I have an affinity a bit for, um, like Charlemagne era, French. Okay. Middle age era history, because that's where my, especially on my limit, the maternal side of my family, that's my family history. Nate, um, genealogy and so on. So I'm just, it's, it's interesting. It's, is it, you know, are there dragons and stuff? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's, it's fantasy, but there's something historical about it and you start as a knight. And so the same. We, you and I, you and I go through this exercise almost regularly of, you know, as we acquire new materials, what materials do we keep? What materials move on? Um, what games do we play? What games do we read? Um, what games have we played remain? Um, you know, Pendragon, paladin are, are in that set where I really would like us. I hope someday we might play, um, like for example, the second edition of fantasy age. Yes. But again, um, I just don't see that occurring. No, it's, it's time is a fine. I'd be sorry. It's like we were talking about earlier. It's way, way down in the list. We have, yeah, if we are going to do the next time we do something high fantasy, it's going to be, it's going to be fantasy age two. Yeah, without question. That's just because, um, that's what we've committed to, because we know the age mechanic. Yep. Um, well, the people at green run are great and they put out great products. And, and again, be, and we love the mechanic in being able to move between modern age, fantasy age, we can even plead dragon age or the expanse or, you know, right, right. We can move between these different genres with that mechanic so easily. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so between that and Star Trek adventures, um, and you know, my still unabashed love for traveler. Well, you were just telling me you did recently pick up or at least ordered a traveler book. Yes, I did order. Um, the Pendragon, I had ordered and then, um, pre-ordered from Mongoose. Um, aliens, a charted space, the volume four. Um, that's the one that, um, and then the deep in the dark, which is another, um, section of charted space that, um, a resource guide for that. Those are the resource guides for charted space and the, in effect, the aliens of charted space, it's, it's like the D and D version of the monster manual. Yeah. Um, and, and, and as usual, you've posted it before, Mongoose material, Mongoose's materials always top notch. Yeah. Yeah. Um, devil. You know, I love their, I love their stuff and I am seriously, one of the reasons I have to reorganize my bookshelf is, um, my, my traveler shelf is, is, is the shelf is literally starting to warp a little bit. So I have to move. So those are, you know, that's what's in waiting and, and right now from a reading perspective, um, I think I told you it's literally, you know, I, I am awaiting to see what occurs next month, August. Yep. And between what's, what's that, and some of the stuff that I have been reading, which I will wait for a future episode to discuss. Excellent. Um, it's been busy, but from your perspective, you have been doing, we've already, we've talked about what you've been writing. Yeah. And now in the next couple of weeks, you have some people that are doing some writing really in effect for you. Um, in a sense. Yeah. In a sense. And you, you're going to be having some, uh, get virtual, get-togethers for those. Yes. Thank you for, thank you for accepting one of those invitations. Slowly. I accept it. I accepted both of them. Oh, okay. Good. Thank you. Excellent. Slowly, those are populating. Yep. Um, but what else is going on with you? Well, so to demystify this, I think it is now this is already old news by the time this episode drops, but not as a recording. So, you know, uh, Aaron and I, right. Uh, Dr. Aaron Peterson, one of our regular guests, we'll have him on, uh, when he's not so much in transit. Uh, but, uh, we signed a contract for another book this time and edited anthology, uh, of leadership, uh, in Star Trek, which is pretty cool. And like you said, um, yeah, we've got all kinds of, all kinds of people on the author team who are going to be writing. And hopefully by this point are writing, um, a really, really interesting range of chapters. Uh, I mean, across fields, across disciplines. Um, I mean, just everything from, from scientists to attorney to television production. I mean, it's all in there, which is cool. But yeah, it's, it's required a fair amount of up front work. And of course, next month I have to write my chapter. So, so that's, that's, that's happening after, um, as we record this, I have just literally just two days before returned from a family trip. And then, uh, in about two and a half weeks heading out for another trip. And then when I get back from that, yeah, I'll have to sit down and write. But in terms of reading, um, boy, game wise, there hasn't, there's so much on, on like that we keep talking about. There's so much on my interest list. But in terms of actual reading, there hasn't been much, although, uh, this morning, I was telling you this off air this morning, uh, over coffee, I sat down and I read the, uh, starter adventure, the example adventure in the Star Trek adventures. Second edition quick start guide, just to get a sense of feel for, um, how to roles, if you will. Um, and that was, that was fun. That was a very relaxing way to start the day. Um, otherwise, I mean, there's other stuff adjacent like, um, at some point, we're going to have to talk about the acolyte from Star Wars. Yeah, but we have to talk about the wrap up of discovery. We have to talk about the wrap up of discovery. We've got it. You know, honestly, season two, honestly, I'm just going to say this on air as it were. Um, yeah, I think we're going to need to dedicate an upcoming episode just to talk about, and I realize this is all sci-fi, but there's a lot that is happening or wrapping this spring and summer, right? Or, or is new. So, okay. So, so prodigy season two, which, which we haven't watched yet. We will write that drops today, I think on the first, right? Um, and I haven't, my, my thinking is to maybe watch one a day. We'll see. Um, need to talk about, right? We need to talk about the acolyte. Yes, we need to talk about Star Trek discovery ending, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's a bunch of stuff like that. I think we're just going to have to dedicate an episode to talking about that and talking about where that goes and what its implications are for play, et cetera. We should have, we should have a, a, a fan guest, not just have someone not even necessarily a regular or just someone who's maybe a, who's a fan who isn't necessarily involved in any of those shows. Um, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Something like it. I'm, that's just, I'm workshopping it on, on the recording, but, um, or a round table. Oh, round table would be good, or a round table. And we, we just compare notes and compare thoughts. Yeah. All right. Good idea. That would actually be a really good episode to have toward the end of July, because we're going to, we're going to be in the middle of, yeah, or, or realistically, given how long that will take to organize. I'm thinking probably before the fall starts. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Probably before the fall starts. Um, but, but at the end, before the, before the first Blake's fall, is that what you're saying? Right. But at that point, we will also know more in terms of timing regarding Star Trek lower decks regarding the, um, the next season, maybe of rings of power, like all of that stuff. Maybe they'll be a little stranger things too. I mean, who knows? But yeah, I will keep playing with this and, and we'll just not even bother to hang a curtain over the fourth wall anymore. Yeah, I don't, I think, I think I have burned that curtain a long time ago. But that said, as we close out, um, stay tuned because we do have another really, really cool episode coming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Coming this, this month yet, um, moving forward, uh, because of, of travel plans and summer plans, uh, we're going to take a little break. Don't worry. We're still going to have an episode. Um, and then as always more to come. Well, yeah, I think, I think we can give away. We have our, we have our unofficial, um, dice and mind meteorologist. Yeah. I think we've ever asked her to be our meteorologist, but by default. Yes. And that's going to be our, our obligatory, it seems summer rerun. Yeah. Because it was a wonderful discussion. It's one of our more popular episodes. Yeah. Yes. Um, and man, Katie, if you're listening, we're talking about you, um, which we really need to have her back. We do. She's been, she is, but we just, I just, I think I just messaged you. We, we, we've seen her. She's out on YouTube shorts. Um, she's shown up. Um, she was just doing some of the regional. She just did out. I noticed on X, she did some regional Emmy presentations. Nice. Um, if you, if you follow her on X, she does storm chasing. She was doing some storm chasing with her mother. Um, more recently. Very cool. She had a very cool, um, if you, I found this one interesting, just as a weather nerd. Um, a cool kale comparison chart. That was awesome. Yeah. You can, is it, is it triple sized? Is it fun co-pop sized? How, how big of the hailstone size is it? Oh, that, that reminds me, speaking of hail, if you haven't already. Yeah. At some point this week, tech star, dear friend, Eric, ask him about hail damage. Oh, no, I'm not going to say anything. Uh, just checks to him and ask him. It's from Sunday. It's okay. I'll text him tomorrow. It's a little late for Eric. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah. He's pretty geriatric. Yeah. Sorry, Eric, but he doesn't listen. He doesn't. Not, not really. Maybe if you put his name in this show note. Oh, maybe at the end of this show note, say Eric, we mentioned you. I think he would appreciate being directly associated with this much murder rate. I think you should put it in this show note and see if he'll actually listen to this part and see if it comes up. But Eric does listen and or lies that he listens. And either way, we appreciate that. Yeah, I guess it does. Yeah. At least we'll get one more download this week. Hey, before you go. Yeah. One more question. What does your shirt say? Oh, okay. So this is an audio podcast. Okay. Yes. So, um, a number of years ago, we, my family and I, this is one of the girls were little. We went to Boston to, in fact, I didn't have to pocket car while I was in Boston. We went to Boston to visit my wife's younger of two brothers who had recently moved out there. And then you know me. So like we wandered around Harvard. We wandered around MIT. This dates that I had just started teaching at the university at this point. And I was teaching the quant course. And so, of course, sorry, quantitative research course, quantitative method course. Sorry. Okay. And all of us know this terminology. Yeah. Questionable of I do. And so, we, we were there and my wife was like, Oh, that's a hilarious shirt. You should get that. And my girls thought it was great because I could wear it to class, which in fact, I haven't, I haven't had to teach it for a couple of years. I just redesigned the course and I'm teaching at this fall. So I'm going to, even though it's on zoom, I'm going to wear this in a sport code the first day. And I'm going to make sure that they can see it. The shirt says it's white on black. Life is hard. Sorry. No, it doesn't. It says math is hard. Math is hard. So is life. Get over it. What about the shirt that I was going to get you on my trip? That said, please stop calling me. That is not what it said. But we can't read that one over the podcast. Nope. Nope. Nope. We'll talk more in November. All right, everybody. You know what to do. As always, thank you so much. Let me have both of us for listening. Please, if you like us, rate us. We really mean that we have very, very few ratings. We're terrible at self-aggrandizement. We're terrible at it, but we really, really appreciate it when you all can leave us five stars and especially a comment on dice and mine. I kid you not. We're doing pretty well in the Netherlands. But no, we're in top 100 in the Netherlands. I know, which is just weird. Yeah. So, um, wait, before we go, and I mean this sincerely, um, I got a, no, no, no. I, um, let's... It's bad enough when he plans these. That's a good point. Maybe I shouldn't do this. If you have to ask the question, weren't we just talking about this? If you have to ask the question, the answer is no. So, if in, in Dutch, thank you is bedunked. So, for those that listen to us in the Netherlands, bedunked. I mean, we're to go with that. We're to go with that. I was actually just nearby Amsterdam, flying through. And I guess we're not going to be flying through this time, but it's a wonderful country. It is a gorgeous city. It's a beautiful airport. Thank you, all of you, maybe three of you, who are in the Netherlands. She is full. She is a beautiful airport. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful airport. Um, yeah. So, you know the deal, everybody. Please do leave dice in mind or review. Spread the word. Tell your friends. We're a little biased here, but we think we have had a run of just remarkable guests lately. I don't know why any of them have been gracious enough to waste time with us, but we are, uh, are delighted that they have and it continues. In the meantime, be well, stay well, we will see you in a couple of days. [Music]
