UK mentor, life-coach, and hypnotist David Watson had me on his podcast at the end of February where we spoke for over an hour on topics ranging from my book, Children of the Dying Hearth, to my twisting and turning career path, to problems in the modern world. You can watch or listen on YouTube, Rumble, Spotify, Podbean, or Apple Podcasts. Be sure to check out the rest of David’s work on his website.
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Transcript via YouTube:
Hello welcome back to the David Watson podcast today I spoke with Martin the
0:06 author of children of the dying Her Fantasy novel that’s going to be
0:13 part of six book series double
0:18 Trilogy has some amazing epic characters and one of the things Martin and I got
0:25 into very heavily which I really enjoyed was the buildup and the journey of the
0:31 characters and how it can reflect real life which is what all good writing does
0:37 and I really hope you enjoy it thank you hello welcome to the David Watson
0:44 podcast thank you very much for joining me how are you I’m good how are you I’m very well
0:51 I’m very well and uh as I said just briefly before we started I am looking forward to this because I’ve discovered
0:56 a word of something that I have no idea what it is is but before we get into my
1:02 curiosity uh explain to people the
1:08 book yeah so um Martin R Nelson uh for
1:13 those who didn’t maybe read the title of the podcast and just clicked and started listening right away uh the title of the book is Children of the dying Hearth um
1:22 and it’s uh a high fantasy multi-perspective novel it’s the first in the series uh
1:30 set to be six books and as all those qualifiers
1:38 uh essentially boil down to there’s a lot to build up in this book so going
1:43 into each character in detail may take more time than we have um but at the core of it is this idea that regardless
1:51 of who you are of what stage of life you’re in whether you’re a uh a young teenage boy setting out in the world and
1:58 want to be a pirate that’s one of the main characters a middle-aged uh ruler that’s another one
2:06 um or over 500y old elf um at the core of every one of these characters is
2:13 a a struggle to maintain or perhaps desire to be near where you’re
2:19 comfortable it’s this childlike aspect that you want to be where you feel at home you want to be where it’s safe
2:27 and ultimately they won’t ever grow um if they stay
2:33 there and it’s this it’s the imagery of a child at A Dying Hearth the dying fire
2:40 that it’s what they know it’s what they’re comfortable with but at the end of the day they need to go out into the cold cold world and
2:47 experience what’s out there and push themselves and for each of these characters that’s different um for one
2:54 character it may be the opposite of another um but at the end of the day
2:59 it’s it’s it’s about them getting out where they’re uncomfortable where it’s
3:04 uh totally out of their comfort zone and in order for them to really grow
3:11 into the person that they want to be or that they need to be more importantly for the story I guess um they need to
3:17 get out there so that’s in in a nutshell that’s kind of what the the book is about that internal struggle between
3:23 some very different characters one of the thing I was going to ask you about this I’ve I’ve made a
3:29 little note on my sheet of paper and it it’s so the press release
3:35 that was sent to me one of the things that come through and sorry if you can hear paper rattling about it’s my notes
3:40 say one of your book’s messages seems to be about the human desire to stay where you are comfortable but you believe
3:47 there should be a need to get out of that Comfort Zone in order to really grow as individuals and then the next
3:52 bit is tell us about that but the thing I I wanted to know about is and i’ I’ve
3:59 got got to try and articulate this doesn’t sound clumsy so it comes across as clumsy I do apologize but it’s
4:06 like sometimes when we write books or write we we’re telling a story through
4:11 characters but we’re really hoping you’re going to listen to the lesson so that it won’t so that it’ll impact you
4:18 and you will do something about your own life so why do you care about
4:23 that um part of the reason I care is because I’m a teacher um and I see this
4:29 every day with my students that especially in the last couple years which has been a little depressing if
4:35 I’m being honest of the idea of students especially but I see it with adults too
4:42 of they have a dream or a vision or a goal and they end up just wasting their time
4:50 on the couch and I mean don’t get me wrong watching Netflix or playing video games on the couch it can be inspiring
4:56 um at the end day I mean at the end of the day you have
5:02 to for me put pen to paper and write the book um for someone else it could be you
5:09 know I want to lose some weight I want to get in shape Whatever It Is Well at some point you need to stop watching YouTube videos about what exercises to
5:16 do and actually go and do it um and so I think part of that comes from me just
5:21 being a teacher and just observing not just my own students but also other adults
5:27 just kind of complain about their lives and it’s it’s a a a mindset of well what are you going
5:34 to do about it um which I think there’s a growing movement in the world now of
5:40 that um growing popularity of different figures David gogin is one that huge get off your butt go do
5:48 something quit complaining um I’m not as brutal as David goggin especially not towards the reader um towards some of
5:53 the characters that might have some brutality um but it’s I really do hope
5:59 and this is also the reason why I classify this book as as new adult rather than young adult yeah I’ve seen
6:04 that yeah it’s because the new adult is more geared towards that late teen 16 17
6:11 18 at the earliest um stages of life because I really do want the reader to
6:17 get that Nuance um I I would love if it’s just escapism um if they get that from there and that it’s I went on an
6:24 adventure I you know read about some romance and some political Intrigue that was interesting but I don’t want them to
6:31 put the book down necessarily and be likeall right Blank Slate let’s move on to the
6:36 next thing it would be uh I would feel very honored if readers read it and they
6:43 really started thinking about themselves and kind of said like you know maybe I should step out from under
6:50 my parents yeah um oaces so to speak um Fay one of the
6:57 the characters is a late teen half elf half human and she’s that’s very much
7:02 her kind of struggle and her her Hearth is her mom basically rules her life and
7:09 she’s she wants Independence and I think anyone
7:14 um I think everyone at some point in their life goes through that sort of stage with their parents of like let me
7:20 be an adult um and I think on the parent side it’s
7:27 it’s equally difficult to look at your kid and say you are an adult and I’m
7:33 going to let you fail succeed whatever it is but it’s the I have no control over your life
7:40 anymore um think both sides are very different yeah it is very hard isn’t it when when you’re a parent and also when
7:47 you observe your parents because as a parent you you desperately don’t want your children to and I I don’t have kids
7:55 you know I I of my own but I see it around me and stuff where people that they’re desperate for their children not
8:01 to fail not because they don’t see the lesson in failing they don’t want them to feel the pain that they felt or the
8:07 perceive pain that they think they remember so so it comes from a really good place but children haven’t
8:13 experienced that yet so they don’t understand why the parent is trying to do something good for them they don’t
8:19 see it as that they see as interference and then yeah the other thing I and I noticed this in myself and
8:25 I had to observe this especially towards you know like father
8:31 where there was a point in my life not that many years ago was in like my 40s
8:36 my mid-40s and I realized that all of these things that I thought were my dad’s faults were like oh no he he he
8:45 was just struggling with his own thing but he happened to have three kids it turn turns out that’s what
8:51 that’s what life is there’s a couple people in the field
8:57 of Psy psychology who have talked about that like you you really become adult an adult when uh you experience the death
9:05 of your parents and that’s can be a figurative death where it’s like oh you’re a human like you screw up just as
9:11 much as me this is weird and then you realize their fallibility and it opens
9:16 up this whole kind of Realm of like the I think some people in that field
9:22 there’s kind of a God complex that the the kids bestow upon the parents that you can’t mess up there’s and then when
9:29 they they recognize that it becomes a an a world shatter yeah well mine came
9:35 because me and my dad have never been close so when we don’t speak you know and I was kind of I think I was in a bit
9:40 of an angry place if you like and then I suddenly realized I was having my own problems and I was just like Christ I’m
9:47 having my own problems and he and I was I’m twice his age when he had me and I’m
9:53 still having problems so maybe you know his life was quite difficult and I’ve just never really understood
10:01 that yeah um it’s I mean really internalizing that that experience of
10:07 the other I mean it’s it’s the real it’s the true essence of empathy then and is a real real eye opener because I was
10:13 having a real difficult time in my life and for some reason I thought about my dad and suddenly thought well actually
10:18 maybe he didn’t have the resources to deal with the things that were going on in his life and maybe he’s not such a
10:24 bad person we just don’t connect and that that’s it’s just that simple and not that
10:30 personal yeah yeah it recognizing uh their own Humanity I
10:37 think is is a big stepping stone for any uh child which again the child can be 40
10:42 years old it’s I’m not saying there’s any sort of infant infantalism or like you’re a kid who hasn’t grown up but
10:49 there’s a a real um and that’s again what what the book
10:54 is is referring to with with the children aspect is we’re all children in some way yeah uh
10:59 we’re all new to stuff I think it’s it’s funny um so I I recently started uh this last
11:06 year uh jiujitsu and as a 35y old 34 year old I’ll be 35 in a month
11:14 um being totally new at something where some 16-year-old is just kicking your butt is a very humbling experience um
11:23 but at the same time there’s I was uh just rolling with a guy last night at Jiu-Jitsu and it was the first time he
11:29 had ever done something and now I’ve done it for about a year so I get a little bit more comfortable with it and he was just struggling with it and I
11:37 asked him like well how many times have you done it he’s goes well this is like the fifth time we’ve gone through it so5
11:42 like well why do you expect good like we’re all children in some aspect of
11:48 whatever we’re new at and um so that’s really kind of the the underlying basis
11:55 of that there’s Parts within the book where the the title is actually somewhat referenced um in relation to uh other
12:03 things but the main takeaway from that title is that each of the characters really are children just as everyone is
12:10 and it’s accepting that and realizing I need to grow up I need to push forward
12:16 into this uncomfortable Zone and whatever happens happens but
12:21 it’s that push forward is what will help me ultimately even if it might hurt at
12:27 first um that that’s what needs to do you find that because there’s a lot of depth to the
12:34 characters in in the book and the and it comes from a is fantasy the right world
12:41 the right word is that is it uh for the genre yeah yeah
12:47 yeah do you find that because they’re characters do you find it much easier to
12:55 explore things you wouldn’t want to talk about from your own point of view as if you were talking about yourself you know
13:02 I’ll put it in this person and then I’ll completely just go to town on it and say no it’s nothing to do with me just it’s
13:08 just just you know popped in my head yeah a thousand per. that’s uh it’s one of those things
13:15 of I mean there’s there’s so many novels out right now that are um they’re
13:21 they’re fiction yeah but they’re they’re telling the story um from a a black
13:27 writer or a la or Latino writer or some um different
13:32 ethnicity about the struggle of growing up in some City or some Town um as a
13:39 minority right as a straight white male writing about the struggles of a Puerto
13:47 Rican immigrant in a heavy Cuban population part of Miami I’m sure a lot
13:53 of readers would go what the hell experience do you have in this yeah yeah um and I
13:59 think the joy of writing fantasy especially with these fantasy races like
14:05 elves and dwarves Etc is you can kind of boil that
14:12 um that identity down to the human element rather than keep it as the the
14:18 Puerto Rican immigrant or the Cuban immigrant or the um the Chinese immigrant in La who goes
14:25 to a school district where there’s e the only Chinese kid right um those are all fascinating stories but
14:34 the the joy I think of fantasy is you can boil that experience down to a character that then every single
14:40 minority can actually relate to which is so f for instance is is my example of um
14:47 she’s half elf half human and she gets targeted for for that um she gets called
14:53 derogatory names for it there’s um she has her own Ambitions and she’s very
14:58 very worried about will this be allowed because I’m this kind of mixed race
15:04 individual and I mean that is in a way the core
15:12 struggle of a lot of these fiction books coming out of um different authors
15:17 talking about like I said the Puerto Rican immigrant the Cuban immigrant Etc so
15:24 it’s really enjoyable with fantasy because I can just kind of ignore the
15:30 the surface level race or ethnicity and say let’s actually deal with the human
15:36 side of it and it’s you feel isolated you feel alone you don’t feel like anyone really understands you or sees
15:42 you for what you can do and who you are as a person they see you as just the
15:48 image that they’ve cast upon you um
15:53 which again straight white male I’m sure there’s many people who say what
15:59 experience do I have with this um and uh oddly enough I do have some um I mean
16:07 you’ve traveled all over Europe doing various things so you can’t tell me you never run into problems so I live in
16:12 England yeah and and my I’m my mom’s an Irish immigrant right in the height of
16:17 the troubles who married a British soldier oh yeah you know what I mean so people say oh you don’t know about racism really you should have tried
16:24 being from an Irish family in England when the IRA were blowing up the UK okay
16:29 when your dad’s sure you gotes too the the Irish what is she doing marrying a a
16:34 Brit and then and go home to Ireland don’t tell anyone what your dad does
16:41 yeah yeah yeah um with me it was it was an odd bit with uh with soccer actually
16:47 because uh I was trying out for various teams I used to play semi-professional um soccer in in Europe I traveled all
16:54 around um visited Romania and Spain and Portugal with with different teams I
16:59 ended up Spain was a lot of fun because I got trains with Valencia and their coaches fantastic training rounds which
17:06 is totally eye opening as an American from small town Oregon right nice part
17:12 of Spain as well Valencia yeah oh yeah yeah we were there during a music festival too which was again 19 as a
17:18 music festival I’m like I’m supposed to be here for soccer but you were living a dream yeah um yeah I really want this to
17:26 succeed um ended up in Germany and was playing in uh lower divisions and uh I I
17:31 got the just the blunt reply one time when me and a couple other guys were trying out for a team and one of them
17:37 got a call back which some of the other guys were like that seems weird
17:43 um because him and I were playing in the same position and he was why why did he
17:50 get picked like I don’t know I wasn’t good enough and that’s my kind of mindset towards it and one of the Germans actually said no it’s because
17:57 he’s black and I was like huh like what do you mean and he saidthe coaches feel that he has therefore more potential to
18:04 grow like oh all right and I mean I I could have very easily just said like
18:10 there’s discrimination I’m done you know I want to talk to the coaches throw a huge fit and instead I basically said I
18:17 need to be that much better I just I need to make sure there’s no room for any sort of well what what aspect do
18:24 they have that’s not quite so um nuanced or Surface level whatever you want to
18:31 call it and I upped my training regimen after
18:37 that unfortunately some stuff happened back home which meant that I had to kind of end that uh that dream of playing
18:42 soccer um but it it really having that that mental shift one the the idea
18:50 of being discriminated against because of race was a yeah as a white person
18:55 it’s you don’t see necessarily the the blunt value of especially in America um or the the blunt kind of not I think one
19:03 of the problems that people have in America and it’s difficult to say this without sounding
19:09 disrespectful they’re quite insul and don’t really understand that the rest of
19:15 the world has quite a lot of prejudice in it for lots of different reasons and that if you go to Europe which is
19:22 predominantly white you’ll be amazed how many white people hate other white
19:27 people and they have a thousand one reasons why they don’t like white people from that country and and this idea that
19:34 white people only hate people who aren’t white no and the same as if anyone knows
19:39 anybody from the continent of Africa they’ll be surprised how many Africans hate each other from different countries
19:45 yeah and if you go to Eastern Europe former Yugoslavia countries they
19:51 fiercely hate each other you know and they’re all white and it’s like why do you hate that person because we were Civ
19:58 war with them 20 years ago or 30 years ago and if you go to certain parts of Spain someone Independence and and they
20:04 hate each other you know and well you’d know from Germany Germany can be you
20:10 know I’ve got friends who live in M Munich the Bavarian area and uh they might not be so fond of other parts of
20:15 Germany and you know there’s a lot of rivalry yeah there’s a I actually have a
20:21 funny uh story about that from my time in grad school I went to forom University uh for my masters in history
20:28 uh in New York and uh I was at a a gathering we shall say of other grad
20:34 students and um one of them was a speech pathologist and she was making the case
20:40 that um standardized tests in English are racist because uh English is a
20:47 language geared towards uh white people and um she she also made a case about
20:57 uh she she made this claim that white people don’t have to struggle with teachers mispronouncing like kids names
21:05 and I looked at her I was like you’ve never met anyone from Poland have you yeah exactly yeah like good luck
21:13 pronouncing a Polish name if you don’t speak Polish Greek um or Greek or Yugoslavian a lot of the Eastern
21:20 countries have uh I I was in Romania for a bit and it took me a little little time to get some of the yeah yeah the pH
21:27 differences with just the basic English alphab yeah well because they have a
21:32 different alphabet don’t they they um the Greeks have their own alphabet the the
21:38 former the former USSR countries had their own alphabet it’s uh we’re ftic I
21:45 think they have 31 letters we have 26
21:51 um so when I was in Romania they used the okay alphabet yeah there there
21:57 wasn’t much different other than the C with a little squiggly bit on it I mean
22:03 it’s same as like German with the umls over the the U or the O like there’s little differences but it’s not a
22:08 totally different thing um but polish has that like L with the cross through
22:14 it that every time I see that I have to look up how to pronounce it um so it’s it’s a is these
22:21 misconceptions that people have you know yeah and and it’s funny because there’s
22:26 something you you talk about that in in the book about the Prejudice that you have in the world of fantasy and it was
22:33 only I thought about that when I was going through the notes and I was just like do you know what and this going to sound really dumb
22:40 right but I suddenly like realized and joined all the docs because every sci-fi
22:46 every fantasy I’ve ever read I suddenly realized how much racism is in them mean
22:52 it’s like elves or hate dores dwarves or hate you know them you mean but I’ve never joined the dots and saw the the
22:58 connection between oh oh yeah this is mirroring human life isn’t it oh yeah right oh well done David you you’re 49
23:03 you’ve just figured that out today well done yeah it’s it’s I mean going back to
23:09 tolking he’s the oldest example right of of the dwarves hate the elves and everything um there’s a little less of
23:14 that in mind um there’s some distrust between the different races um so it’s
23:19 less overt than than other fantasies will be but it’s it is I mean it reflects human nature of of course like
23:27 our side is the best we have the best stuff and your side which is different than ours how do we see that you why do
23:33 you even like that we don’t get it and then their side says we have our thing it’s the best and we don’t get your
23:39 thing um and I’ve tried to temper that a little bit um more towards the kind of
23:47 distrust side rather than the open animosity of elves don’t like dwars um
23:53 so for instance one of the two of the the leaders uh they’re called pentar in in the book uh the five leaders of the
23:59 Crux which is the city at the center of the world that joins all four continents um one’s an elf and one’s a dwarf and uh
24:08 because the dwarf theena is she’s actually away for this whole book um she
24:14 makes an appearance she is one of the narrators actually in the second book which I’m currently editing um and working through uh there’s no real
24:22 animosity between them um it it’s very much a I want to do what’s best for my
24:27 people people but I don’t like hate you or anything it’s I’m going to do what’s
24:32 best for for my side you do what’s best for yours we me at some compromise and that’s kind of it um which
24:41 uh I don’t think is a bad way to kind of live life if you want to preserve
24:49 separate cultures um you have to have some
24:56 uh some survival Instinct towards your culture if you want to preserve of like
25:01 I want to do what’s best for for we’re just talking about Romanian Yugoslavian right if Romanian culture wants to stay
25:09 Romanian they need to have some sort of uh push towards keeping it around and
25:15 not having it it’s simp self-preservation if I want to live the
25:20 life my grandparents lived it’s self-preservation and and it’s it’s not
25:26 always I mean we live in a troubl world right now I mean politically lots of
25:32 people are upset and again and it’s it’s difficult to
25:38 cover it because it’s very complex but when I look at it generally and when I
25:43 say it comes from a place of fear I’m not trying to Bel it because I suffer from the same problem but mostly it’s
25:49 because I’m being told I have to respect a person entering my country but they don’t have to I don’t feel they have to
25:55 respect me now where how right orong that is is is open for debate I’m just being honest about how it makes me feel
26:03 do you know and that’s where like I said as somebody who I have dual nationality I’m both BR I have British passport and
26:09 an Irish passport and you know and my dad is British my mom is English Irish sorry and so I’m aware of of two
26:18 countries that are at each other’s throat I you know and and still a lot of
26:24 animosity between between them in certain parts of of the countries but I
26:30 can’t split who I am to take a side if I wanted to and that’s where things become
26:37 complicated for for every person in every genre in every book in every nationality you know fiction and reality
26:45 is you know like you said one of your characters is is half elf half forgot
26:51 was he she was half elf human half human yeah it’s just like right well what do you want me to do split myself in the
26:57 middle and who gets to have which part yeah and it’s I mean in terms of the
27:02 real world consequence I I don’t think they there needs to be an issue with it
27:08 um this is one of the things that um I I’ve actually got into with with my students a bit um so I teach history uh
27:15 and Latin at the high school level and um one of my classes is an ethics class
27:21 because but it started out as actually a history of torture yeah but it was a a neat vehicle to actually expl the
27:27 history of Ethics um throughout the world um
27:33 and I think the one of one of the things that we we get to is the the concept of
27:39 the kind of American dream where it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from you can kind of make it here
27:46 right you can fulfill whatever part of your identity that you want to build up and be who you want to be and that’s a
27:54 very uh Multicultural uh accepting ideal and I think it’s great
28:01 but it needs to have the underlying uh kind of rule that which is is almost
28:09 more of a Libertarian side of things of you do your thing and I’ll do my thing
28:14 and we don’t interfere with each other yeah um and I I think that um with with
28:21 a place that has a a a fairly well-known history like England right I mean going
28:27 through grad school for medieval history it seemed like nine out of 10 of the medievalists were British historians um
28:34 there there is a rich history there I mean there’s also Rich history in America that is native focused
28:42 and I don’t see why Native American culture can’t coexist next to kind of
28:48 more modern Western American culture of New York City with um with tribal
28:56 leaders tribal councils Etc um on their traditional lands
29:03 um it but it needs to come from a place of kind of Live and Let Live which to me
29:10 was was the core of that American dream of like you do your thing and I’ll do mine as long as we’re not harming anyone
29:15 like let’s just well I think that’s probably where the problem with I think
29:22 is the problem or the most obstructive part of the r of the
29:27 internet is pre internet we were much more Community Based and Community
29:34 focused and National issues and Global issues were not something you could get
29:39 a feed on 247 or have an opinion on that you could share like we couldn’t do this
29:46 you and I would not know the other guy existed and yeah and the bonus of where
29:51 we are today is you and I can have a conversation the downside of where we are today is you and I can hate for me
29:57 from the other side of the world about a country we don’t even live in have an opinion about it and I don’t
30:04 think we’re old enough as as a community globally to understand how to handle
30:10 that you know I think I don’t even think we’ve got out of the diapers and the nappies yet you know we’re still breastfeeding we really don’t know how
30:17 how to navigate it and and what that navigation should mean or look like because we haven’t even taken First
30:24 Steps in it and you know if I could go back just 24 years back to 2000 and I
30:31 was living in a house I I I didn’t really know anything about America other
30:36 than what was on MTV and I I thought it was everything was pretty cool about
30:41 that and I think one of the things that’s changed it’s changed dramatically
30:48 is people are trying to dissect history as if history did something
30:53 wrong instead of no history is just a recording of history is recording the
30:59 reality at that time it and no matter what your opinion about it is 200 years
31:05 later or 500 years later no no one actually cares because it was 500 years
31:11 ago and that it it’s that simple and regardless of what your opinion is we
31:19 there doesn’t seem to be any learning gone like you you shouldn’t be getting angry about the way a community was
31:26 treated 500 years ago and I mean yeah it’s a slight set digression but I was
31:33 doing something the other day on a radio show called a pointless fact and I was talking about
31:38 how pork pig is not is the animal and pork is the meat and uh cow is the
31:47 animal and beef is the meat and that’s to do with the fact that when we got invaded by the Normans in 1066 they were
31:54 French and because they all spoke French and the Anglo-Saxons all spoke an
31:59 English that nobody would understand today to be fair they didn’t actually cross over with each other because poor
32:06 people the commoners didn’t eat pork and didn’t eat beef and that’s why chicken is still
32:11 chicken that’s why fish is fish and there was another you know and there’s all these weird things because it’s
32:18 actually the class system so whenever it appears to be that whenever the animal
32:23 is called different to the meat it’s because rich people ate it and poor people didn’t and because the French
32:28 ruled the UK or what became the UK and the Anglo-Saxons were taken over and you
32:35 know and that’s hence the reason we were fighting with the French for so many years because it was weirdly the French fighting the French but from England
32:42 yeah you know and it’s just like that’s that’s history that that’s how it worked yeah yeah there’s with the
32:50 internet age because it’s to me it’s really uh blown up the Dunning Krueger
32:55 effect of people people really feel like I’m an expert in this and despite
33:02 and they’re so insular with their own experiences all they do is they read about it from one perspective or another
33:10 and it it becomes especially when when it comes to people versus people interaction um or people people
33:16 interaction um it’s we’re taught to fear a group of
33:23 people or hate a group of people it’s like why have you ever met when of them yeah and if you have do you feel like
33:30 that is a accurate depiction of the totality of them um and it’s I kind of
33:39 have this this this mindset of the the the person
33:45 I don’t have this mindset I have this image of the the kind of person in your hometown who’s they have an opinion on
33:52 everything but they’ve lived in the same house they grew up in and they worked in
33:57 the same town they haven’t gone anywhere and it’s I’m not trying to belittle or demean anyone who hasn’t gone out and
34:03 traveled the world but I think a a healthy spoonful of humility is needed
34:10 in the area of I mean International politics like you said it it it used to
34:16 be in the age of paper and radio of oh the Germans have invaded Poland like oh
34:21 they have oh I guess we hate the Germans um yeah which then gives everyone an opinion on
34:27 it um at the same time it does I think that there’s uh everything’s a two-sided
34:34 sword um it has allowed for greater information especially with the whole citizen journalist movement of everyone
34:41 is a journalist when they take out their phone they record something and they say the media is telling us one thing but
34:48 this video clearly shows that’s not true um that’s been a game and that yeah that
34:56 is I mean for for all the the harm that media has done there’s or technology you could say has done there’s there is like
35:03 the double-edged sword there’s a give and take that this really has helped balance things which I think there’s a
35:08 growing movement now um the one of the stories that I’m always fond of is the
35:14 the story during World War I when the the Germans and the uh the Allies got of
35:19 their trenches during Christmas they play a soccer a football
35:25 and it it’s the idea that like we’re we’re all kind of brothers and sisters on this planet
35:32 yeah like why are we trying to kill each other um it’s also stories like that
35:38 also sorry I didn’t mean to cut you off you’re good you’re good stories like that always lead me with hope because in
35:45 the darkest literally in that case the darkest trenches they were like if there’s one day that we’re not
35:51 going to do this it has to be Christmas day yeah and and they got out shared cigarettes Shar dead food had a game of
35:57 football yeah at soccer sorry America
36:03 yeah um and and and it’s just like There’s Hope
36:08 in yeah it’s I think though the the
36:14 courage to do that to stand up to your superiors your officers and say I’m not
36:19 going to go shoot at that trench I mean I imagine the balls on those guys that first stood up out of the trench and
36:25 said I know everyone who’s gotten up before had their head blown off I’m going to get up
36:32 and and I mean it could have been an officer waving a a little flag saying we want to just parlay and talk and say hey
36:38 you want to have a game of footy that
36:44 that’s the superiors to say like no that’s your enemy kill them that that comes from a place of G out of where
36:51 you’re comfortable um and to do that stand up the courage to stand up from
36:58 that trench the first person who did it and just say look yeah just just literally in this case hold fire let’s
37:05 just take a time out Christmas Day do you want to S you know do you want a piece of cake it’s just and and I
37:13 remember reading some stories about it because they used to teach us this in history in England at school when I was at school I don’t think they do it
37:20 anymore could be wrong but that some of them exchanged photos of their wives or girlfriends back home do do what I mean
37:26 there was there was this weird like I suppose making it human it’s like hey
37:32 you know with with the same guys were the same people but it’s interesting you
37:37 said about the citizen Journal journalism because it made me think about I think that’s probably one of the
37:43 problems we’re having with the media is the very Foundation structure of the media has always been we will tell you
37:50 what’s happening and people turn up with their phones like that’s not what happened and they’re like no we’re telling you it did like no no there’s 20
37:57 people here who filmed it themselves and they don’t seem to have adjusted to we have to tell the truth
38:04 yet yeah and that’s um I think this is one of the scary things uh about AI is
38:11 it’s becoming so Advanced that they can fabricate things on the flip side though
38:17 is if the kind of CI citizen journalist movement keeps up and they say well your
38:23 image is clearly doctor yeah um these five phone recordings aren’t um
38:31 that’s when it there there’s there’s a battle going on for truth it sounds
38:37 very it’s I tell you though because like like bringing it back to to the books as well and and and the whole genre of
38:45 sci-fi fantasy it’s always always
38:52 is some some group who are just trying to get to the the truth and let everyone
38:58 else know what the truth is you know it’s always like you know what it’s the little guys versus the big guys you know
39:04 it’s it’s the working classes versus the rich it’s you know it’s always them versus US versus them but there’s always
39:10 this Justice For Truth at the heart of it all or if it’s not truth it’s
39:22 it’s there’s the idea that even if if your life is tough and you struggle you
39:28 want it to be fair you don’t want the system to be rigged against you um which is I think something that a lot of
39:34 people there’s a heavy push now towards uh the kind of far-left movement there’s a romanz of Marxism for I see it in my
39:42 high school kids and I ask them usually I’m like well have you read The Communist Manifesto and they go no it’s like well
39:49 then I mean than a Bible hasn’t read the Bible like you’re professing a faith and
39:55 a belief that you don’t don’t know anything about um but there’s this there’s this movement towards that I
40:01 feel like because there’s there is a lot of um underhandedness in our society
40:08 that isn’t necessarily indicative of the system being a problem but certain
40:14 people have climbed to the top of that system the kind of crony capitalism the
40:20 corporate structure whatever you want to call it where companies buy out competitors I think of Amazon years ago
40:26 bought out diapers.com um or they didn’t buy them out they they
40:31 uh I don’t want to be sued for liel they uh they marked all their
40:38 diapers on Amazon down so where they’re losing money off of them because they want to drive diapers.com out of
40:45 business and it’s like that can we at least have a fair competition because I
40:50 mean it’s you don’t want to enter a game of soccer and the ref says by the way you’re going to lose I don’t care what
40:56 you do it just it defeats the soul of the player of the game so and I think
41:01 there’s a big feeling of that amongst a large swath of the western population like I yeah that that’s still a big
41:08 problem in the UK with Rich supermarkets where they’ll they’ll lose money on
41:13 something so that someone else can’t compete with them and you just you know like say there’s just no where and and
41:22 then announce you know billion pound profits and you’re just like come on you you’ve just put a 100 Independents out
41:28 of business just just so you can make a few more a few more dollars a few more
41:33 pounds whatever and you just like and like you say this isn’t fair and you
41:40 don’t even know one of these 100 Independents it didn’t matter to you it was just a number on an accounting sheet
41:47 and you were like look we lost one and a half% of sales to how how do we get them
41:53 back oh we’ll put 100 Independents out of business and ruin ruin 100 households
41:59 across 100 towns in the country it’s like yeah so that you you can have a
42:04 bigger Mansion it’s just like you already own 100 acres on a private island what what’s what actually more do
42:11 you need from Life yeah what do you what do you need more of um which uh makes me
42:17 think of um got the Oil Barons in the US uh cuz there was uh I keep blanking on
42:25 his name I brought this up to a friend the other day as well he uh oh the Morgan JP Morgan yeah um it’s I mean for
42:33 all the the cronyism that the Oil Barons did in America um there the a couple of
42:39 them got to a point where they said I’m so rich I I don’t know what to do with
42:45 this and so they started giving back to the people they started making museums they started I mean the the Morgan
42:51 museum is one of my favorite museums in New York because it’s it’s his old house that’s now just a massive Library they
42:57 had a a toling exhibit when I was there um last and it it’s just a gorgeous kind
43:03 of smaller Museum in New York but it it’s indicative of that kind of there
43:09 there’s a lot of I mean we can we can sit here and and talk about the the terribleness of of billionaires and we
43:16 wouldn’t be the first to do it at the same time there’s a number of them who have kind of got to that point what do I
43:22 do with this yeah what is the point of this um original guys that you were talking about that philanthropy that
43:29 came there’s if you look a lot of the old cities and towns in in Great Britain
43:34 there’s this philanthropy from hundreds of years ago where they were like oh hang on a second yeah I don’t need this
43:41 what I what I do need to do is set up a children’s home and Dr bernardos was a guy that set up a children’s home and became a a national charry and but
43:48 there’s all these like you say museums Parts you know hospitals and everything
43:54 yeah and and the funny thing is is back then they didn’t do it as a tax right off they were just like no do you know
44:00 what I actually have too much money I’m going to give it back to somebody and do something good with it and it it would
44:05 be nice if we got back to a place where that’s a thing where not oh how much can I write my taxes off if I do this it’s
44:13 just like do you know what I don’t need I have a billion I don’t need the other hundred billion but maybe you know I’ll
44:19 do something with it yeah yeah it it would be nice um and
44:25 I think in order for that to happen there needs to be a bit of a kind of cultural push towards
44:33 um kind of immortalizing the self in the eyes of the people yeah um as as a so I
44:42 I like I said I teach medieval history but I also teach Latin and we get a fair amount of Roman history with that and
44:47 the Romans were F fantastic with this of of putting State you could fascist if
44:55 you want of saying like what I do is for the glory of Rome and so having that kind of cultural push of like yeah I’ve
45:02 got millions billions of dollars whatever it is but I want people to remember my name because I I was it
45:10 Augustus uh found the city of brck and he turned it into marble right there’s that whole thing he turn the Forum into
45:16 marble so people remember him because all the buildings are a lot nicer because of him um if the hospitals got
45:21 fixed up because a Billionaire’s got too much money that that sort of cultural push um I think is is where that will
45:30 happen um of wanting to kind of immortalize yourself um yeah
45:37 but there’s a s there’s a nice in that like do it for the you know the glory of Rome that there and it would have to be
45:44 monitored if you like but there’s a nice sort of sentiment sentim sentimentality to the nationalizing you
45:52 know like I’ll be nationally proud of my country you know like you know um you know America you know mean the
45:59 land of the free the land of opportunity and like that the sentiment behind it
46:05 was one of its sort of driving forces that made everybody feel like
46:11 they could have an opportunity just by getting off the boat if I can get off the boat yeah and I and I can do this I
46:17 have an opportunity I have a chance and I think it’s yeah that hope versus
46:23 hopelessness that was was the difference you know whether it is always true or
46:29 that you know that’s you know the reality of life is two people see reality differently and both are
46:36 true yeah um yeah it’s there if there’s a a
46:44 cultural shift towards towards hope that’d be really nice yeah because I
46:50 especially with I mean my students I I see it all the time of just kind of a uh almost why bother sort of mentality
47:00 um again getting back to somewhat the book of just
47:05 saying why do I want anything difficult I’d rather it be easy and it’s it’s such
47:10 a toxic mentality yeah that’s being cultivated um which um I mean it’s and
47:20 there there’s a give and take with this because you have uh certain things out there you want to have a a programs in
47:27 place to help the needy and help the poor at the same time there needs to be some struggle in your life for you to
47:33 kind of push forward um there’s the the kind of apathy or depression um that I
47:40 see a lot of uh one of my really good friends is born and raised in in horz Mexico which is one of the roughest
47:48 parts of the world um the gang violence there is is very extreme he got out when he was about 11 12 and he moved here um
47:56 and him and I have talked about the same sort of topic before of like this hopelessness depression and we both kind
48:02 of settled on the idea that it really is a first world problem Oh massively a
48:08 first world problem when when you’re concerned about where you going to eat where you going to sleep are you gonna get shot are you gonna you know what’s
48:16 your goal is so focused in your mind of like this is what I need to survive and I’m gonna go get it or else I die yeah
48:23 mean that’s a terrifying place to be in um but it’s at the same time it can also
48:29 be an extremely invigorating place to be as odd as that kind of sounds but it is
48:34 that that that’s the point that your your purpose becomes incredibly simple
48:40 it’s you know what am I going to do for the next 12 hours that gets me to the
48:45 point that I can get to sleep tonight to wake up about tomorrow you’re not worrying about whether or not you’re
48:51 going to afford that new car in six months from now you you know you’re not worrying about whether or not you’re
48:58 going to make vacation next year and if you don’t what will your friends think of it that you couldn’t afford to go on
49:04 holiday yeah mean you’re like yeah right okay yeah what am I doing in the next
49:10 hour that gets me to lunchtime and you so in that moment
49:16 yeah you know I wouldn’t want it happened to me the other day
49:21 because um my wife and I are looking for another car we we have one car and since I go to work she works at home and we’re
49:28 uh expecting in early April our first child and thank you and um so we’re
49:36 shopping around for a second car so that way she has something to to go around with and I was sitting there just getting frustrated with the different
49:42 APR rates and which sort of thing to look at and I’m and getting frustrated with it and
49:48 I’m like what am I frustrated with buying a new car like what a privileged titled
49:56 position I have um and it’s having that bit of self-reflection is is really nice
50:03 which again which I mean back to Children of the dying Hearth it’s that’s why I also classify it as new adult it’s
50:10 I do want the reader to have some self-reflection afterwards of of saying like which of these characters am I um
50:18 and at some point you will be all of them I think um uh Kell who’s a an Elvin
50:25 over 500 years old right he’s you may think of an elf as very learned and and
50:32 uh knowledgeable about the world but because he’s young for his race he only
50:39 knows his homeland and so once he when he actually Ventures out of that he’s very much just like testador the kid
50:45 he’s traveling with who’s 16 and there’s a moment where they’re on a ship where they actually kind of look at each other
50:51 and Tesla’s like you’re how old and you don’t know this it’s like well I’ve never left
50:56 right and so that in a way kind of speaks to that that figure I talked about before the guy who’s never left
51:02 his hometown who’s worked at the same Mill for 50 years and maybe 60 years old
51:08 but he knows all about what’s going on in uh the Ry region with immigration
51:13 policy and it’s like you you don’t have a clue yeah um K’s a little bit more
51:19 self than those individuals I met but it it’s it’s an interesting point though isn’t it because if if elves a real
51:25 thing and like that literally they’re a young adult at 500 years old yeah we we
51:31 when you think about it in reflection there would be an elf that has spent 1500 years in his own town and never
51:39 left yeah like dude this it’s 1,500 years how did you not once just well I
51:45 was worried about whether I’d get the rent paid you around for 1,500 years
51:50 what was there to worry about and but it would be the one you know 500 years there would be like oh do
51:59 you know what I’m going to venture out and be clueless because they’ve never done anything for but they take those
52:05 years for granted just like we do yeah absolutely and it’s it’s all relative which one that was one of the my
52:11 favorite things about writing that character is really kind of tooling around with that idea of yeah he’s 500
52:19 600 years old but in relation to his race I mean
52:25 lul who’s the the pentar from the West he’s an elf and he’s over 5,000 years
52:31 old and so he’s very much a Elder in the community um 500 though it’s like he’s
52:38 14 yeah and it’s they only can leave the city in in the book once they hit 200 at
52:45 that point they become Rangers and they go out into the West it’s basically kind of a um I stole some of from different
52:52 Native traditions of kind of a spirit journey of you’re you’re going out and you have to survive on your own like
52:59 you’re you’ve come of age you are now a man right and cultures used to do that at 12 13 14 years old um I think we
53:07 could benefit from that today uh that’s a different conversation um but for for
53:13 him he’s in his teens essentially and it’s it’s a fun idea to mess with of
53:20 yeah he’s 500 600 years old but he hasn’t got a clue what’s going on in the rest of the world
53:25 um just as the the teenager you run into coming home from school he may know exactly all the Trends on Tik Tok he may
53:32 know exactly who won the Arsenal Chelsea game he may know exactly who all the players are who were on the bench who
53:38 didn’t get subbed in but does he have any idea what’s going on in West Africa or southeast
53:44 Asia or Indonesia not not a clue no no not a lot
53:51 um just going back to something which is what you and I spoke about before we
53:57 started recording the explain to me what that word is that I can’t pronounce that I
54:02 only learn today uh there’s there’s actually there’s two pronunciations for it which
54:09 is equally then frustrating um so some people call it the hagiographical society or hegor graphical with a hard G
54:16 um I say hagiographical um mainly because I don’t have a heavy Greek background
54:22 essentially uh so on on my resume that’s what you’re reading from it catch all
54:27 that uh I was a member of the he geographical society which my academic
54:33 background my undergrad background uh is in Pagan and Christian syncretism in uh Early Middle
54:41 Ages late Antiquity range so how paganism influenced Christianity um and then my masters is a
54:50 little bit more specific uh and that’s on specifically St Duke lar in Denmark
54:57 and why the Royal necropolis in the 12th century was moved from rosilda
55:02 to uh Ring’s death after he was assassinated and basically concepts of
55:08 sanctity in the high Middle Ages the he geographical Society is just more or
55:15 less the the Historical Society associated with the study of saints so
55:21 everything with the Greek hagios has to do generally with Saints when you’re
55:27 when you’re uh dealing in a Christian context the kind of exception there is the Hagia Sophia and Istanbul right um
55:35 actually sorry that’s not the exception I mistranslate because Sophia’s wisdom hagya is just Saint so it’s the Greek
55:40 word for Saint essentially yeah um so that that’s all that is my academic background is in more or less Catholic
55:48 history um I myself am not Catholic um but I’ve gone to Catholic school since I
55:54 was in uh sixth grade so all through Middle School uh High School undergrad
56:01 and then graduate school I was at some sort of Catholic institution studying the history of the Catholic Church um
56:08 it’s a fascinating history yeah well my my whole interest in it came from I my mother’s
56:15 non-denominational Protestant um and I was raised in a
56:21 non-denominational household for the most part and so I’ve always been interested and fascinated with
56:29 Christianity the the church specifically to me is a study in human
56:35 institutions and their Tendencies um yeah excuse me so it it it’s almost like
56:45 cultural or historical anthropology that I enjoy of like why why do we make these
56:51 figures out of people that are very flawed um yeah yeah the two St Olaf or St Olaf sorry not two of them two King
56:58 olafs the but St Olaf in Norway is a brutal dude I mean he dismembers people
57:04 cuts off hands when they disobey and it’s like why is this guy a saint um yeah and so studying like how
57:12 the institution of Catholicism and the church actively changed itself to
57:18 incorporate different uh cultures on its periphery so it could expand um is kind
57:26 of the core of that interest for me could it is it is interesting is it because there’s lots of myth and Legend
57:33 around Catholic Church some of it no doubt is rooted in truth some of it is
57:41 just Dan Brown um and the films that followed was you know but again those
57:47 myths I think the thing that’s hard for people to understand is that if if it was possible to trace back
57:53 myths and legends you would find the root of the truth but again is that
57:59 going back to something we said earlier is we’re looking at it from today’s eyes and not from the eyes of somebody 2,000
58:05 years ago so yeah a story told 2,000 years ago probably doesn’t mean how
58:13 we’ve interpreted it today oh yeah yeah um and all the
58:18 stories that come up through those 2,000 years associated with it um and that’s one of the things too with studying the
58:25 Catholic church is all the apocryphal gospels that come up um those gospels that they shered and they said we don’t
58:31 want these in our Canon and you read them and you say oh I understand why because it it clearly makes the point
58:38 that you don’t need a priesthood yeah um which the Catholic Church doesn’t really
58:45 want no to have I read somewhere I don’t I read somewhere and I don’t know how
58:51 true this is so please correct me if I’ve gone off on the tangent that agnostic Christians and Christians and
58:58 uh Jewish all at that at one point in time lived alongside each other perfectly fine and it was only as
59:04 Christianity was growing and agnostics didn’t believe I think agnostics
59:10 believed anybody could be everybody was a child of God sort of thing and the
59:15 Roman Christians if you like were like well there can only be one son of God and Constantine was like yeah well I’m
59:21 the emperor so that must be me so this is the this is the road we’re going to go down you know probably simplified
59:28 that um quick little note just on on the terminology there uh it would be the
59:34 Gnostic Christians which is different than the agnostic yeah agnostic is the basically not knowing it’s literally
59:41 what it means of there could be a god there could not the the gnostics were absolutely of the mindset that yeah we
59:47 are all basically imbued with the spirit of divinity that’s what a soul is yeah
59:53 so the idea that you need someone to guide you um or to to bless you I should say you
1:00:00 don’t need that a guide sure a teacher absolutely So within those early Gnostic uh Traditions which it’s unfortunate
1:00:07 because most of what we have is written by pists these people that hated the gnostics and they wrote everything bad
1:00:13 about them yeah um so with that you have to kind of read it and read in between the lines of like what do the gnostics
1:00:19 actually believe and I think the easiest way is actually read the Gnostic Gospels
1:00:25 so um uh and I encourage everyone to do
1:00:31 they’re now readily available these are the Dead Sea Scrolls essentially the go because it a heavy point about this
1:00:39 of like you don’t need this um because is that the gospel of St Thomas also
1:00:45 yeah yeah so the Gospel of Thomas is is probably my favorite because it makes
1:00:50 this point so kind of uh enigmatically but clearly at the same time it’s it’s kind of odd um but
1:00:57 that’s also the nature of gnosticism the the concept though of of
1:01:02 the different groups living in relative peace you have to remember Jesus was a
1:01:09 Jew so he wasn’t setting up to start a new religion at all he was he’s like we’ve become married to the law rather
1:01:17 than um filled up with the spirit of it which is what he was then kind of
1:01:22 preaching one of my favorite Parables is when uh I think one of the Pharisees chastises him because it’s the Sabbath
1:01:28 and he’s walking in a field and he just kind of plucks a little piece of grain and the Pharisees says Ah you worked
1:01:33 it’s like like you stiff necked fool like what are you this isn’t working I’m
1:01:39 enjoying the countryside you you become too married to the letter of it that yeah I’m picking grain but that doesn’t
1:01:45 mean I’m working on the Sabbath um so Christianity really started as that
1:01:51 Reform movement um which is also why a lot of Jesus’s followers were considered
1:01:57 zealots they these are these guys who like we need to one overthrow of the Romans U but also like we need to kind
1:02:03 of fix the issues of our own institution um once Constantine gets involved it
1:02:10 becomes a little hazier and it becomes much more
1:02:16 uh aggressive towards each other which Constantine’s an interesting figure uh
1:02:23 because I’m very firmly of the mindset he was not uh
1:02:28 Christian in any way he was the Edict of Milan which he helped pass uh with his
1:02:35 fellow rulers basically says pray it’s pray to the whatever Supreme godhead
1:02:42 that’s the wording they use um you want it makes a note afterwards about if
1:02:47 lands were taken churches were taken from the Christians they need to be returned because that was wrong but in terms of saying Christianity is
1:02:53 legalized he’s saying every religion is legalized pray to whoever you want it doesn’t matter um he was a big proponent of the
1:03:02 mithraic cult which the uh the Army was
1:03:08 predominantly of the mithraic cult the no kind of question why is because uh
1:03:14 mithos was called the the unconquered son and so I mean it’s the same reason that soldiers today might get a uh a
1:03:21 cross tattoo or a Templar tattoo or some sort of thing of like I’m going and no one can kill me no one can harm me I’m
1:03:27 unbeatable you’re going to follow before myth Ross it was Mars right he prayed to that God that like
1:03:34 he’s going to protect me I’m Invincible um so and Constantine was also baptized
1:03:40 by uh one of the arens which the whole Council of NAA was B see the start of
1:03:46 the Catholic Church saying what do we actually believe is Jesus part of God is he the Son of God
1:03:53 what is it and the arens were saying he’s the son of God which makes him sort of a demig God and the Catholics were
1:03:59 saying No it’s it’s the Trinity the three in1 begotten not made all of that
1:04:05 and it was uh one of the euses and I always mix them up but it was the Aryan
1:04:11 one who ended up baptizing Constantine so in terms of like a good catholic christian there’s no real evidence for
1:04:17 that um but it it makes a lot of sense for the Catholics to write the story of
1:04:23 like yes the emperor s in on our Council and he blessed this it’s like well if he
1:04:28 once I mean he may have been there the but that doesn’t make him Catholic it
1:04:35 makes him interested in the politics of his Empire because he wants to make sure that these groups that are growing
1:04:41 exponentially aren’t killing each other I read that somewhere that actually his his main goal was he didn’t care what he
1:04:47 wanted was peace and whatever way we can get peace that’s what we’ll do yeah he
1:04:53 was uh he a fantastic politician he the reason we have the Christians have the
1:04:59 Sabbath on Sunday is because of him the reason it’s spelled the way it is is
1:05:04 because the The Original Latin was D Solis which is the day of the Sun as in the thing shining in the sky and the sun
1:05:11 was representative of mithos that cult that Army was a part of
1:05:17 so he basically made this day of the Sun a uh kind of weekly Roman Holiday which
1:05:26 then allowed the the growing Christian Movement to kind of move that slightly over just kind of move the post a bit
1:05:33 like yeah Saturday Sunday what’s the difference yeah um we all get a holiday then anyway might as well take that day
1:05:39 off um which is why the Jews still celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday it they’ve followed that old tradition and
1:05:46 they haven’t given that up and that’s the kind of reason why Christians follow Sunday it’s because it’s originally for
1:05:52 the god of the sun how much of this do you think influences the
1:05:57 writing all of it um yeah uh so the
1:06:03 world of tesseris which is the the fantasy world for children of the dying Hearth it’s influenced by especially
1:06:10 that that undergrad background in late Antiquity um yeah I really want to go for this this imagery of a crumbling
1:06:19 Empire or an Empire that has crumbled and we’re kind of living in the skeleton
1:06:24 of it um and it I really wanted to to bring about
1:06:30 that feel of do you know you’re in a collapsing civilization or do you know you’re kind
1:06:36 of not in the height of your own civilization um I don’t think a lot of people do
1:06:43 recognize that as it’s happening um there’s a lot of things coming out now of people saying like do you think the
1:06:48 Romans like knew they were yeah falling right
1:06:55 and uh people will reply to this of feels kind of like now so I don’t think they did um so the there there’s
1:07:03 different structures throughout the world that represent the kind of old Empire that used to rule all of tesseris
1:07:10 um and that’s very much modeled after Rome um but the main city the krux has a
1:07:16 lot of architecture that’s based off of that late Antiquity um imagery and it it has the
1:07:23 the feel that the old Empire is gone but we’re still living in its remains so
1:07:29 we’re kind of the inheritors of it and we’re we’re doing just as well there’s
1:07:35 there’s no big difference between us um the the idea of the the pentar um that’s
1:07:43 very similar to Constantine actually with the the tetrarchy the rule of four that when the empire was split up into
1:07:48 the four rulers um this is i’ I’ve changed it around a little bit because
1:07:54 in in Children of the dying Hearth it’s much more um instead of being displaced
1:08:00 at different palaces all throughout Europe the the five rulers are more representatives of their continents and
1:08:07 their homelands um so there’s four main continents and then there’s a pentarch from the city itself um but that is
1:08:15 definitely drawn from that historical background of what do you do with with a very large
1:08:22 city how do you run it what would be a kind of natural way to do it um
1:08:28 especially since the the city itself it’s where the four continents meet um
1:08:33 so it would likely be highly contested and uh it it was way before
1:08:40 the story um which there’s there’s other stories there’s which one of the really fun Parts about writing is these kind of
1:08:47 tangential stories of myth folklore all that sort of stuff coming up with the
1:08:53 different cosmology of it um and so the city was contested at one point and it went back and forth and eventually the
1:09:00 continents kind of agreed let’s share it as kind of this Hub and it grew more and
1:09:05 more out of that um and that that’s all drawn from from my own historical
1:09:12 background um studying Medieval Europe during the Middle Ages but also late
1:09:18 Antiquity that 200 to 800 depending on who you ask I like to put those ranges because that was won the first range I
1:09:24 saw when when late anti when I started studying late Antiquity um but also it
1:09:30 covers a little bit more than ranges of other people but so absolutely it
1:09:35 influences it so you you said there was six this is
1:09:40 one of six and you’re editing the second now
1:09:46 yeah does that mean you already know how number six
1:09:52 ends yes um and this is
1:10:00 uh I’ve actually I sat on this book for about eight years before I published it
1:10:06 um and part of that was just because life got in the way um it’s I started
1:10:12 writing it when I was in Germany and I was training a couple times a day um training with a team that I trained by
1:10:18 myself vice versa and is I have a ton of time so other than doing Rosetta Stone
1:10:25 and learning German it’s let’s write a bit let’s get into the fantasy world because I’ve always enjoyed creating um
1:10:32 kind of fantasy things whether it’s Maps or little stories whatever
1:10:39 um the the full
1:10:44 story is hashed out in its main points
1:10:49 um the nuances of each little character change character Journey Etc um that is
1:10:58 not and the reason I sat on this for a while is one because I wanted to finish it in terms of editing and I excuse me
1:11:05 get to a point where I’m happy with the content and the story The the character
1:11:10 arcs and development and everything but I also wanted to finish writing the second book um right in a rough draft
1:11:17 form because then it allowed me to basically look at the second book and kind of the nuances of what I needed to
1:11:23 have there and say you know what this would actually be really good to include back here and then I can add a couple
1:11:29 lines in rather than don’t oh crap uh would have been really nice if I
1:11:34 mentioned that in the first book because now this is just going to feel like a de X and well where did these guys come
1:11:39 from yeah yeah yeah which I I don’t want that to happen at all which is so the
1:11:45 second book is uh for the most part content-wise finished um I don’t think
1:11:51 I’ll be adding anything significant to to it um I’m having a couple people look
1:11:57 it over for editing um there’s already one thing that I need to fix with it
1:12:03 that I it’s kind of on the to-do list um but that I won’t uh I would like to have
1:12:09 it be out by the end of this year um and part of the reason for that is because
1:12:14 I’m halfway through the draft for the third book and so you’re really really
1:12:19 quite far ahead yeah um and so the it in a way is kind of designed as two trilogies um the
1:12:27 full thing is called the anals of tessian and you kind of find that out why in in the second book
1:12:33 um but the the core elements of those first
1:12:39 three are pretty much hashed out the the next three or I should say the Nuance
1:12:45 points of the first three are more or less hashed out um the next three it’s just the big bullet points of the
1:12:51 character needs to go from here to here to here here in terms of their development this is the main
1:12:59 uh kind of emotional or physical Journey that they need to go through and this is
1:13:05 where it ends this is kind of the point of the whole book this is the point of the second series that that’s all more
1:13:13 or less hashed out um but it’s those fine Nuance points that I haven’t got to that
1:13:19 because I haven’t written it yet yeah yeah yeah that’s good that’s so I’m going to finish up with a really random
1:13:26 question which is a question I just like to ask people um and it it will fit you
1:13:31 well because it it requires a lot of imagination so imagine a fantasy world
1:13:37 where you can time travel right you can go anywhere in history that you want to go where are
1:13:44 you going to go what car would you drive and what would you be listening to on
1:13:49 the radio h
1:13:56 the last part is the most difficult I think because I have such an Eclectic music taste um do you know that that’s
1:14:04 why one the reasons I include that because I have such an Eclectic taste in music I’d like to know what other people
1:14:10 are listening to yeah uh
1:14:15 so um my wife and I are somewhat old souls um so for her birthday actually I
1:14:23 a record player and so we’ve been getting some records here and there and and um I always thought you know I don’t
1:14:31 know what the difference is with the sound and then actually listening to the rec I’m like yeah there is something different about the sound it does sound a little better um and the last two
1:14:40 records we got um was uh Vivaldi The
1:14:45 Four Seasons yeah and uh My Chemical Romance Welcome to the Black
1:14:51 Parade that’s a so very very different very contrasting
1:14:57 um I think as a kind of child of the the 90s and early 2000s there’s a soft spot
1:15:03 in my heart for that that kind of punkish uh emo-ish yeah uh bit like
1:15:11 Blink 182 all that um so I’d have a really hard time with the music um with
1:15:20 where to go I would choose one of three locations I know that’s not really the thing you
1:15:26 were looking for you you can have as many options as you want it’s the conversation I like yeah uh one I would
1:15:34 I would really like to um i’
1:15:40 there’s a swath in the Middle Ages that would be fun to see be fun to visit um
1:15:48 that I would say 1300
1:15:54 um and I’m not so picky with place um England France or Italy would like be
1:16:01 the the areas Bohemia would also be really neat um but that 1300 area would
1:16:07 be really neat because it’s it’s the kind of height of the high Middle Ages
1:16:13 and the plague hasn’t hit yet yeah so I’m just safe enough that it’s I can see
1:16:18 all the wonders of the textile factories I can maybe avoid the Fullers and and they’re washing of cloth with cow urine
1:16:26 but maybe go see some some kind of the phasing out of kns
1:16:32 and and some sort of like really live the the Renaissance Fair
1:16:39 mentality there’s there’s that there’s also
1:16:44 um I think uh the height of the Roman Empire would
1:16:51 be a really really fun place to see um it wouldn’t
1:16:58 be very safe necessarily but uh just
1:17:03 from a historical background going to um that early 2nd Century Mid 2 Century
1:17:11 maybe uh Rome really see the the Coliseum at its
1:17:18 height um yeah yeah I’ve been to Rome a couple times and I love every time I go
1:17:25 um but seeing it in its element I think would be such a fun thing if I if I did
1:17:32 that I’d probably be driving a Fiat um just so I could go through the
1:17:39 streets um for the the the other one the the first one um not really sure what
1:17:45 I’d be driving uh F but the last the last location is a bit of an oddball um
1:17:53 um and that would be before the younger dras period about 12,000 years ago yeah
1:18:00 if I could go 15,000 years back um and see what civilization looked like
1:18:05 because there’s more and more things coming out now of of Humanity’s existence before the
1:18:13 last major ice age of the younger dras period um there’s is it I want say it’s Serbia
1:18:22 but if it’s not Bosnia will get upset with me um it’s one of the Eastern
1:18:27 European countries um there’s a pyramid that was found through uh basically
1:18:33 lidar scanning that it’s one of the largest might be the largest pyramid in the world that I think they dated at
1:18:40 37,000 years old [ __ ] and it’s it’s
1:18:45 going back then like 20,000 years like what did we actually look like and with
1:18:52 the uh Global catastrophe that happened that kind of right around the younger D
1:18:57 period um when you have these mass extinction events something happened that wiped out
1:19:03 a lot of humanity and civilization and um I think one of the fun conversations
1:19:08 with that is like why don’t we have um like
1:19:14 what why didn’t we have more survivors from that it’s like well the people that survived were the the hunter gatherers
1:19:20 the ones who knew how to survive on their own so those are the people that then built up civilization again yeah um
1:19:27 but if I was at that period I would like something a little more rugged um
1:19:34 probably go for some diesel truck or something that could really handle one of those can go off can go
1:19:41 off grid for a month yeah which I think if I was driving that at that time just for sheer shock value maybe some AC DC
1:19:49 yeah in the record in the CD player just yeah yeah High struck or
1:19:54 something yeah um yeah those those will be the three
1:20:00 times uh three three cars would then be that some diesel truck I’m sure um a
1:20:05 little Fiat and I had no idea for the the 1300s one
1:20:15 um you can just be a horse yeah yeah it could just be a a horse I I want to kind
1:20:21 of blend in I think with that so maybe a maybe a horse um having a little Walkman
1:20:27 there with uh with some Gregorian chant to fit in
1:20:33 wouldn’t be bad but I’d be getting enough of that anyway so um I think there there’s again that kind of fanasy
1:20:39 you show up at a Renaissance Fair in a Lamborghini and laring some some death metal or
1:20:48 something um that’s a fun image to to think about but at the same time i’ I’d probably
1:20:55 find myself on the uh tied to a pole with a bunch of wood underneath me pretty quick oh yeah definitely yeah
1:21:02 you’d be you’d be there for a burning so yeah that that that part wouldn’t be fun um I have to keep my
1:21:09 head down that’s this has been brilliant thank you so much so so much I’ve really
1:21:14 enjoyed it yeah i’ I’ve enjoyed too I’m happy to come back anytime and oh definitely yeah and once again yeah
1:21:21 Children of the dying hearth um it’s it’s up uh on all major online retailers
1:21:27 for ebook uh I believe just Amazon has it for the hard copy which is this uh here um you can also find that or any
1:21:35 information about me both uh academic and fiction related on my website martinr nelson.com
1:21:42 um I have uh one of my short stories is up there as well I want to be adding
1:21:48 some more of that um but I won an award for one of my science fiction short stories
1:21:54 um uh and that’s up there for free um but you can find the book on there um
1:22:00 and hope to be back on your podcast again oh definitely we can definitely do this we can definitely do this again I
1:22:07 really really appreciated it thank you all right well let me know and there you have it there is
1:22:14 Martin and as well as talking about many things we were talking about his new book one of six children of the dying
1:22:21 Hef and please do check him out do check out the book and I will make sure as always
1:22:29 the links are in the description and as always thank you for listening wherever
1:22:35 you are from wherever you believe please do take
1:22:40 care