{"id":148,"date":"2024-05-25T18:16:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T01:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martinraynelson.com\/?p=148"},"modified":"2024-05-25T18:16:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T01:16:30","slug":"podcast-with-rodger-nichols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martinraynelson.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/25\/podcast-with-rodger-nichols\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast with Rodger Nichols"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Great pleasure to speak with a fellow Oregonian and book lover, Rodger Nichols, on his podcast,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@footydad\" title=\"\"> Cover to Cover Book Beat<\/a>. We discussed the many iterations the novel went through, the struggles to find character voices, the writing process especially around a series and the pros and cons of planning versus writing strictly from inspiration, and just general information on my debut novel, <a href=\"https:\/\/books2read.com\/CotDH\" title=\"\">Children of the Dying Hearth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Martin Nelson   Children of the Dying Hearth\" width=\"1032\" height=\"581\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7vPGTme9RjQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript via YouTube:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Music]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:18 [Music]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:23 welcome to cover to cover book beat I&#8217;m your host Roger Nichols one of the real joys of interviewing authors is getting<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:30 on the ground floor with a first novel from an author who delivers the goods right out of the box that&#8217;s just what&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:36 happening here what&#8217;s more Our Guest today is a native Oregonian like myself who has certainly paid his dues having<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:42 served in the trenches at a high school history and Latin teacher for the past 5 years down at St Mary School in Medford<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:48 he earned his ba in history with a focus on Pagan and Christian interactions in late Antiquity from the University of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>0:54 Portland and he masters with a focus on Royal Saints in high medieval Scandinavia from pom University where he<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:01 was also a teaching assistant writing coach and a Blog editor for the history Department he&#8217;s a bit of a poly math as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:08 well he speak Spanish Italian and Latin played Semi-Pro soccer in Romania Spain<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:13 Portugal and Germany coaches an all girl soccer team has taken up Brazilian jiujitsu is an avid video gamer his<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:21 academic memberships include the American historical Academy American classical league and the hagiography<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:26 society he&#8217;s also a First Rate writer who first novel it&#8217;s a page touring fantasy called Children of the dying<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:33 heart we&#8217;re very pleased to welcome Martin Nelson thanks for being thanks for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:39 having me I&#8217;m happy to be here well you have so many interests were you always going to be a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:44 writer uh I always wanted to create ever since I was a little kid uh you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:50 mentioned at one point in that uh glowing review of me that uh as a Avid<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1:57 video gamer um ever since I was three four years old I&#8217;d watch my older brother play video games and I&#8217;d make up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:03 stories in my head to little side quests or I end up drawing little maps on sketchbooks of uh Fantastical little<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:11 quests and Adventures that sort of thing and so I always had that uh real creative kind of fantasy<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:18 Drive hidden in me somewhere um and it was actually when I was in Germany<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:24 playing soccer that I ended up Penning uh Children of the dying Hearth um I was over there playing twice a day basically<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:31 training twice a day and I had so much time on my hands in between that I&#8217;d either be watching uh German television<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:38 to try and brush up on my German which is sadly kind of lapsed into uh the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:44 words I shouldn&#8217;t say um and just kind of back into that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:50 fantasy world um and so I started having the kind of core of the series idea because it&#8217;s it&#8217;s actually the first<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:56 book in a series of six um so the first one is published it&#8217;s all out there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:01 Children of the dying Hearth you can find it uh on my own website martinr nelson.com you can find it on Amazon um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:08 all online retailers but the second one is in the editing phase right now and the third one&#8217;s about halfway written<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:15 for manuscript um yeah you know this it&#8217;s a technically your first novel but it sure<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:22 doesn&#8217;t read like the first novel it reads like a writer who&#8217;s already found his voice and I want to mention that it looks like you want an honorable mention<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:28 in the elron hubard future writers contest a shorter story it turned in yeah uh which actually that one uh it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:34 called the the Journal of of Dr Rudy J glean um and it was a bit of a a science<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:41 fiction um not quite dystopian but it was a set in the near future um and I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:47 originally planned that for being a longer story but I had kind of the the Nugget of the idea kind of Popp<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3:54 into my head of basically what if ethical scenario and I just kind of started writing about it and expanding<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:02 on that a little bit and uh it was also after a pretty healthy Lovecraft binge<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:08 because I&#8217;d always heard before i&#8217; read Lovecraft of what a great Gothic horror<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:13 suspense writer he is so I read one of those big Barnes &amp; Nobles collection that has like everything but maybe some<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:20 letters so there&#8217;s a bit of his voice in that short story um which when you said<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:27 I I found my voice perhaps already uh in Children of the dying Hearth in this first book um first of all thank<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:34 you but second of all that&#8217;s I think it&#8217;s it&#8217;s from so many different iterations of it um so many different<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:41 drafts of going through and and finding each character&#8217;s voice because it is a a multi-perspective novel so whether it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:49 the 13-year-old pirate or the 500y old elf they they have different ways of speaking different ways of thinking<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:55 about the world and really kind of compartment analyzing that self uh that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:02 that part as I&#8217;m writing it is one of the enjoyable processes but is it can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:07 also be one of the frustrating ones when I go back and edit I&#8217;m like this reads much more as a a Damian chapter rather than a Kell chapter or a fay chapter so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:15 I&#8217;ve read and reread and edited and re-edited so many times that it&#8217;s it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:21 definitely not a first draft I I I have yeah there&#8217;s difference between first<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:26 graph and first published by a long way um and yeah wellow that that was that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:32 was just amazing and so interesting I lost my PR thought here for a second oh this this is something I do would like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:37 to ask people who are planning on Multi book sagas do you know the ending right<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:43 now in your head last scene last book the final scene of the last<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:50 book there&#8217;s a a vague image of it I know the core events of everything of all six books I know them the main bits<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:58 and um one of the things that I like to do is I didn&#8217;t actually publish this I sat on it as a completed draft or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:05 completed work for the most part for about seven years um and it was one of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:10 those things of getting a really busy one with teaching and coaching and traveling and all these things so having<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:15 the dedicated time to sit down and continue writing was was tough but now I&#8217;m um in a much more kind of stable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:22 environment to to write and so um I think it was two summers ago I just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:27 cranked out the second book as a ref draft um and then over the last year I&#8217;ve been editing it and I&#8217;ve finally<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:33 given it to someone else to like take a look at this um mark it up do everything you can to it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:39 um and the reason I bring that up is because I have the main um elements of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:47 every book there I know the main kind of character Arc of of what&#8217;s GNA happen<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>6:55 each six but in terms of the Nuance not at all that&#8217;s one of those things that I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:00 think that would also take away of from the creativity of it because there&#8217;s so many times in especially right in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:06 second and the third book where I&#8217;m thinking this would be such a neat idea but it feels kind of random if it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:12 not hinted at or alluded to in some way um and so when I finished that second<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:18 book as a rough draft I was like I should put something in the first draft in the first book Children of the dying<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:23 Hearth before I actually publish it and so I dropped a couple little Easter eggs in the first one that will lead into<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:28 things in the second one and the same&#8217;s true now for the second going into the third yeah that that&#8217;s that&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:35 fascinating one thing that really stands out to me and I read a lot of books interview a lot of authors is the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:41 multitude of themes that you&#8217;re able to weave into this you&#8217;ve got a quest a hero&#8217;s journey multiple Coming of Age<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:47 Tales a pirate sag a desert treack political Intrigue High fantasy ancient prophecies and a hint of romance in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:54 there so by way I look at it you&#8217;re only missing the Western and the police procedural which she&#8217;ll probably have by<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:00 book three well you could make a case there&#8217;s a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:06 little bit of the police procedural there um no it&#8217;s and that&#8217;s that&#8217;s one<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:12 of the my biggest issues actually is when I&#8217;m trying to kind of market and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:17 sell the book until I met with my publicist Brian finebloom and he really helped me kind of like no what is it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:24 about and the thing that I always went back to is is the the heart of the story<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:30 is that everybody regardless of who you&#8217;re at whether you&#8217;re the middle-aged politician or the coming of age pirate<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:36 or the mixed race person in the city who&#8217;s trying to find their voice and and not be seen for your identity as what&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:44 skin surface that sort of thing um regardless of who you are the the heart<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:50 of it is we have a childlike tendency to stay where we&#8217;re comfortable which is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:55 where the part of the title comes from um however in order to truly grow you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:01 have to get out into that discomfort you have to get out of your comfort zone and go where sometimes you need to know you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:08 need to you you&#8217;re aware that that is where I need to be other times it&#8217;s more of just the driving force of your life<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:14 puts you there and it&#8217;s the decision of do I sink back into that comfort zone<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:19 into the the dying Hearth that crumbling house that there may be a smoldering wreckage of a fire still going or do I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:27 go off into the snow today and get uncomfortable and cold because out there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:32 is my actual kind of Destiny um and so regardless of who the character is and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:38 they have many differences as you mentioned um each one of them has that internal journey and it&#8217;s not so much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:45 the they&#8217;re not all the heroes Quest go slay the dragon um it&#8217;s a much more<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:51 internalized Journey for some of them which is also why I place this book as kind of a a new adult fiction rather<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>9:57 than young adult because it it has more Nuance I feel than some of the young adults uh fiction where it&#8217;s it&#8217;s much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:06 more just right on the nose here&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about here&#8217;s the the obvious got to go slay the dragon um the dragon in some<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:13 people&#8217;s cases in the book may be the relationship between a parent and them<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:18 of in order to get out from under the kind of oaces of their parents um or parent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:26 singular they need to tell their parent I&#8217;m an adult I need you need to treat me as an adult whether<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:31 you like it or not and if that means me leaving the house I&#8217;m gone um there&#8217;s a Allied theme a quote that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:39 runs through the book maybe if I do this you&#8217;ll all change and that feels like magical<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:46 thinking to us because that&#8217;s kind of the definition of magical thinking but that has different resonance in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:51 universe where magic works yeah so and again that&#8217;s kind of all of us are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>10:58 guilty of saying if I just do this this will happen so yeah and that um you&#8217;re<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:03 you&#8217;re getting at one of the one of the main characters is Warf he&#8217;s a middle-aged uh not quite middle-aged I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:08 won&#8217;t say that he&#8217;s in his mid-30s um I don&#8217;t want to say that because I&#8217;m in my mid-30s and I don&#8217;t want to be middle-aged yet um he&#8217;s mid late 30s um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:17 he&#8217;s been pirating all his life and he had a a runin with an<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:23 individual that just really ruined his worldview it shattered everything that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:29 he knew as a pirate who says if I want this I&#8217;m going to go take it I&#8217;m going to go with the strongest Captain that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:34 will bring me the greatest riches and I&#8217;m going to live the life of me me me<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:40 and there&#8217;s an individual that he meets that just wrecks his psyche and she says<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:48 maybe if I do this you&#8217;ll all change and does a certain action that I don&#8217;t want to ruin the the climax or the the big plot point<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:56 there um but it it it&#8217;s especially as a teacher it&#8217;s amazing how I mean out of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:02 the mouth of babes right it&#8217;s the idea that sometimes the greatest wisdom as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:09 simple as it can kind of sound in that dreamy magical sort of way it can sometimes be as simple as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:16 that of a an action sometimes very drastic can just change someone&#8217;s world<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:22 view totally so that they do a 180 on who they are and it&#8217;s part of what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:28 happened with him that actually gets him um introduced in a way to cat who&#8217;s the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:33 younger pirate who he takes under his wing yeah kind of teaches them the ropes of the ship yeah and I I should tell<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:40 people if if you know I almost suggest this even for slightly younger than you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:45 are because a lot of our yours these days are involved with a lot more stuff exposed to a lot more than certainly I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:52 was in my childhood but there&#8217;s a lot of characters to identify with in this from<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:58 whatever age level you are I find that fascinating as well one of the reasons it read so well is there&#8217;s an immense<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:04 amount of World building behind the scenes on this you can just feel that um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:09 one of the examples is H Simon the ice Weaver was able to create giant spikes of ice and you sum up his story in four<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:17 sentences and that but those four sentences resonate with about the half a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:22 book behind it so yeah I love that I love that yeah there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:27 there&#8217;s a lot that&#8217;s not included in the book that I have written and it&#8217;s it&#8217;s one of those things where I I really<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:34 don&#8217;t want surface level fantasy um it&#8217;s and I&#8217;m with a with a masters in history<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:43 I my wife she thankfully enjoys this that when we&#8217;re watching a movie I just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:48 pick out plot holes left and right and she&#8217;s like yeah why didn&#8217;t they do that like I don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:53 know and as now a a writer I I really<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>13:59 don&#8217;t want that that to happen with mine um I want there to be good explanations for why didn&#8217;t they do this why didn&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:06 they do that um and Simon&#8217;s one of my favorite characters the Pirates in general I just enjoy writing so much I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:13 think there&#8217;s a a good catharsist to it but um actually going back to what you said before of there&#8217;s kind of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:19 identifying yourself in several different characters um that is my goal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:25 because I don&#8217;t want this to be a strictly like I said adult or new adult<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:30 even I want someone who is middle-aged who is maybe wondering like all right I&#8217;ve accomplished my career goals what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:37 do I do now um it&#8217;s like well you&#8217;re in your comfort zone now yeah so if you want to change something you have to get<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:44 out of that um there&#8217;s I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s any uh kind of great mystery than<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:51 why tolken had Bilbo gone in his Adventure when he was 55 it&#8217;s it&#8217;s one of those things of it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>14:58 the adventure Venture isn&#8217;t just for the young it&#8217;s for everyone and so identifying yourself I identify myself<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:04 with every single character funny enough um but it&#8217;s that that is really the goal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:10 um for whoever the reader is let me ask a procedural question because I have this vision of the serial killer task<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:19 force in the room with the giant white board with the cards and the strings going all over the place is that the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:25 kind of things going on in your background uh yes but it&#8217;s all digital thankfully uh or not thankfully because<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:33 sometimes I would love to take um I use scrier to write which has a fantastic uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:39 platform to basically drop those sort of connections and you can do different pin<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:45 notes and whatnot um I would love to have that on a wall and be able to track<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:51 things and and do all that but um I don&#8217;t have the space for that and that&#8217;s I also don&#8217;t want to open my garage and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>15:58 have my neighbor like what is that insane person doing in there with of serial killer they tracking like no it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:04 for my book he&#8217;s he&#8217;s putting that tin hat on his head again we should be careful yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:10 yeah um so yeah I I have um a lot of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:15 notes and a lot of kind of digital sticky notes yeah I I got to throw<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:21 another bone your way I love the fact that that the heart of the place is Crux<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:27 yeah which is a which is got multiple levels of meaning there because it&#8217;s the source of the problem of corruption but<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:34 it&#8217;s also the center of the Kingdom if you will if you want to call it that of the of the world as it is um and also<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:42 you know c means cross as well so there&#8217;s maybe a hint of religious significance in that as well and I know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:47 that you&#8217;re got interest in that direction yeah um all my educational background is more or less in the study<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:54 of Christianity and Catholicism um and really just relig religion um throughout<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:00 the Middle Ages so there is a heavy heavy influence and aspects of religion<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:06 will play a more important role as the series progresses in this first one Children of the dying Hearth it really<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:12 is much more the um kind of the paving stone for everything it&#8217;s it&#8217;s meant to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:19 build up more Intrigue in the world rather than just bash you over the head with um here&#8217;s all the religious<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:26 background of every single character it&#8217;s like that I get people really do love the sil melion but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a great<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:33 way to to introduce readers to a series by saying here&#8217;s the full cosmological<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:38 background of every character every race every I had all planned out but I know most readers won&#8217;t really want to see<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:45 much of that right away um I I&#8217;m actually I&#8217;m very happy with how parts<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:52 of the second book are really shaping up because they when with your mention of of Simon the ice Weaver<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>17:59 um there&#8217;s other aspects of that that will come up um with another a new<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:04 narrating character theena who&#8217;s a female dwarf she&#8217;s one of the rulers and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:10 um she&#8217;s she has a I love her her story arc but there&#8217;s a couple things that I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:17 was able to incorporate because one of them is as a medievalist I&#8217;ve taken a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:22 lot of influence from my medieval studies and put it in in my own way um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:27 one of the uh things that I actually teach in my Vikings class is we we read<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:33 What&#8217;s called the Rula which is a foundational text for the Norse about where the classes came from the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:39 different class system within Norse society and I made my own document of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:46 that I created a full poem for it with all the different house families and the creation of why certain families are<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:53 farmers certain families are miners certain families etc etc um and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:59 writing that out fully and then in the second book just having little hints to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:04 it and Illusions it to me makes it much more engaging and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:11 a richer story overall really excited about that you&#8217;ve written a story Bible for your for your<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:18 whole concept is what you&#8217;ve got yeah when the people do that for the showrunners for various Ser they have a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:24 Bible that has all the all the real important stuff about it so that different writers can write in that Universe yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:30 um how long has this book this one been out I&#8217;m not I haven&#8217;t checked the publication date on it so this one&#8217;s now<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:36 been out uh for two years I believe okay it came out um I want to say December 21<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:43 it came out right in the middle of all the fun and games yeah yeah during during the time when people<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:49 are really getting uncomfortable exactly well I I guess I was going to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:56 ask you I I know you&#8217;re getting great reviews you&#8217;re get some festar reviews on Amazon publishes weekly speaks sideway have you um how are the kids at<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:04 school reacting um well that actually it kind of brings in another review which kirkus<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:10 had some uh they had a good review on it but they had some some fun language with it which was they mentioned uh there&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:15 some grotesquery and there&#8217;s one scene that they describe as ghoulish um and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:22 part of that is because I wanted this to be fairly accurate for the character<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:28 particularly the Pirates um and so when the students discovered that I had<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:34 written a book um they were interested in it and one of the things I actually checked with my Administration about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:39 before I even published it was there are scenes of violence there&#8217;s scenes of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:46 some adult interactions there&#8217;s nothing um salacious about it I&#8217;ll put it that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:53 way there&#8217;s nothing salacious there&#8217;s nothing gratuitous about it which I mean it&#8217;s the way describ this to someone<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:59 else was it&#8217;s not the next entry into the Saw movie franchise yeah it&#8217;s not just a bunch of torture porn um but at<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:06 the same time if you do any sort of honest Research into real pirates um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:13 Edward Teach uh Charles vain these are brutal individuals yeah very very brutal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:21 and so I wanted to pretty much have a honest depiction<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:26 of real world p Pates um and so part of that then meant including scenes that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:34 kirkus described as kind of grotesque um and when the students discovered it I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:39 was like uh oh this is possibly bad um should I have written under a pen name my Administration was like no it&#8217;s this<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:45 is your work go publish it it&#8217;s bless their hearts good for you um but when<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:51 they found it they actually loved it um I just had a a former student and um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>21:58 soccer player of mine reached out to me recently um because she&#8217;s I think a junior right now um at University and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:07 she was asking about the second book when&#8217;s that coming out and I was I can send you a little teaser of it if you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:13 want um but I can&#8217;t give you the full thing right now that that&#8217;ll be hopefully coming out at the end of the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:18 year but we got to see other plans coming up because actually uh my wife<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:23 and I are expecting our firstborn um at the end of this month start of next month they keep moving the day forward<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:29 so congratulations on that one you talk about changing your life yeah massive<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:35 changes just be prepared as I as a long-term parent and grandparent so yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:41 it&#8217;ll happen to you definitely out of my comfort zone so oh definitely especially<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:46 at 300 am yeah that that&#8217;ll come um I have to have to throw a a different<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>22:54 tack what was it like to play pro soccer over in Europe um so I do want to give a slight<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:00 clarification because I would say semipro I was in one of the lower divisions um uh in ger I ended up in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:07 Germany but I did an academy in Romania Spain and Portugal um and that was first<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:13 time I did the Academy I was 19 and then second time I was 21 and after that I got I ended up getting picked up by um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:21 or I kind of seen by a German Scout and he said coming over to Germany um and so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:27 I played for season over there with uh a lower division team which was I mean<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:32 neat he&#8217;s like you can live here rent free like R board&#8217;s more or less taken care of here&#8217;s a a car to drive around I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:39 mean it wasn&#8217;t any sort of Ferrari or anything it was a little uh VW Golf that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:45 you&#8217;re basically giving you a car to go drive around and and go to practice and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:50 everything which great um doing that as a a low low 20- yearold was a lot of fun<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:57 um it was also deeply inspiring because I had just finished my undergrad um and so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:05 living in Europe I&#8217;d been to Italy when I was uh 14 um with a school trip and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:13 that was amazing um I was not as appreciative as I probably should have been as a 14-year-old um after you see<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:20 the the 500th church you&#8217;re kind of like it&#8217;s another very large church I&#8217;m tired of walking you know it&#8217;s and very<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:28 privileged thing to do but at the same time um going back as an adult um much<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:33 deeper appreciation for it and being a just to kind of wander around Frankfurt or bad homberg where I was located um it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:41 was very inspiring um for definitely the medieval settings um that I I really<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:49 want to evoke throughout one part of the Crux but the Crux is a little bit more based off of um late Antiquity<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24:56 Rome it has much more that kind of Fallen Empire feel where you&#8217;re living<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:02 in a city that is on the decline but the people don&#8217;t necessarily know yeah yeah<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:08 and and again because we have a whole small slice of time we don&#8217;t see that that decline uh if it comes on gradually<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:16 enough um just thr Cur to me that uh is your background in the soccer overseas<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:23 when you you&#8217;re and you&#8217;re coaching soccer here does are there different styles of coaching that you picked up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:29 there that you&#8217;re using yeah there well there&#8217;s um there&#8217;s more of an international uh especially when I was<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:37 over there there was kind of a not quite Universal uh but there was a movement in the international soccer community that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:43 was moving towards kind of a almost Universal style of play The Dutch had a little bit different um the Germans were<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:48 just dominating everything uh during that time um they won all the Euro under<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:54 20 under 18 like all the all the youth were winning they had just won the World<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:59 Cup so Germany was the PowerHouse and their style was more or less being adopted by everyone um the Spanish not<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:06 so much but it it I&#8217;m digressing the when I come back here it it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:11 interesting to see the American style of play which is adopting more European<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:18 Styles um I think part of that&#8217;s just because of success um different coaching<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:23 Styles I think this also gets the teaching um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:29 that the the more you experience the more you&#8217;re going to learn um and if you&#8217;re not learning from multiple<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:35 experiences then uh you need to change the view of yourself because we don&#8217;t know<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:41 everything right so every time I engage with a new coach I go into it even if I don&#8217;t like the coach what can I learn<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:48 from them yeah there was a a fantastic coach I worked with in there&#8217;s several I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>26:54 worked with in Southern California um I used to coach at at modern day high school it&#8217;s a very very big high school<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:00 um and got my start coaching there under Matty West who&#8217;s great guy but one of his JV coaches guy named Lawrence he<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:08 gave me some great advice and said every good coach is a thief and if you&#8217;re not stealing from<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:14 other coaches in terms of like what they&#8217;re doing and what&#8217;s working then you&#8217;re not g to be a good coach because<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:20 you&#8217;ll be set in your ways of this works from this is always going to work yeah whereas if you play against a good team<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:26 like what are they doing oh they&#8217;re doing that I need to do that yeah it&#8217;s very much adap or die within that best<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:33 practices kind of thing yeah yeah exactly well I should I should stir back to the book because you&#8217;re you&#8217;re so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:39 easy to go down these rabbit Trails because you got so many interests as all I have to talk a little bit about cat<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:45 one of my favorite characters in in the book because it&#8217;s a real surprise I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:50 don&#8217;t want to spoil the introduction of them but it caught me off guard I&#8217;ll say<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>27:56 that and the fact that he is a real great entry point to teach about the uh<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:04 the culture and what&#8217;s going on the pirate because it gets explained to him as he&#8217;s happening to him we feel that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:09 fight curiously and I have a feeling that was more fun for you to write than maybe some of the other parts the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:15 Pirates in general uh were just kind of fun they&#8217;re just it&#8217;s uh they&#8217;re hard to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:21 describe why it&#8217;s fun maybe it&#8217;s because of just catharsis um but there&#8217;s also I think a bit of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:28 just lost Adventure in writing about Pirates of straight up especially in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:34 digital age I mean people are worried about being tracked and and everything it&#8217;s like well you carry a track around<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:40 every day with you with your phone um so writing about characters who are totally<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:46 Lawless and all they want to do is go out and do their own thing and um pillage and plunder and we&#8217;ll take what<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>28:53 we want um there&#8217;s a direct line from that from one of the later Pirates later on when he singing a song um the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:00 followup line isn&#8217;t totally appropriate so I won&#8217;t say it but it&#8217;s it&#8217;s it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:05 really is a take what you can take what you want and you know live your best<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:10 life and it really is like your best life not thinking of anyone else which is why I really enjoy cat and his<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:17 relationship to Warf because it it provides a a kind of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:24 introduction to as independent as a are a kind of filial quality between those<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:30 on the ship where there&#8217;s this idea of like yeah if my buddy next to me dies I might get some more loot but at the same<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:36 time I got to make sure that you know if if I say his life he might save mine<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:42 there&#8217;s a yeah brothers and arms aspect as independent as they are um C though I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:48 think this is this is true with most fictional youth characters um is they as<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:56 much as they operate for their own Heroes Journey they<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:01 operate as the lens of the reader um I think of Harry Potter as a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:08 fantastic as a reader we don&#8217;t know anything about the magical world and neither does Harry so let&#8217;s find out through him um so he&#8217;s a vehicle for the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:15 reader as much as anything um I don&#8217;t know many people that are going to want to endure what cat endures um I don&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:22 know if there&#8217;s many people who really want to run away from home and go join a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:28 a pirate ship um but at the same time there&#8217;s I think of people that have uh a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:35 life in a town that they&#8217;re not happy with um I feel like the classic story in in America is growing up in a small town<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:42 in the midwest they move out to LA to become an actor and I would say looking at the the last<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:52 couple years of of what happened in Hollywood what was revealed it&#8217;s Hollywood kind of functioned like a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:57 pirate ship of the captains in command really had their way with people and did whatever they wanted um unfortunately<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:04 yes yeah and so it the this is I think also the the Deep joy for me of writing<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:09 fantasy is writing a story about a actor actress<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:15 who moves to the valley and tries to make it big in Hollywood I lived in La for a bit but I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:21 don&#8217;t have a lot of experience with trying to do that so it would be tough um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:27 but writing from a historical perspective about a pirate who tries to do a similar sort of thing of go out<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:34 where it&#8217;s very dangerous and deal with predatory people that can then speak to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:40 the the actor actress who&#8217;s trying to make their way but they keep getting prayed on by an agent or producer or<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:46 director whatever it is um it&#8217;s a vastly different world but it&#8217;s the same Human Experience which is really why I like<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>31:54 writing fantasy is you can boil it down to The Human Experience rather than the kind of<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:00 situational experience of the real world well it takes an uh a writer&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:05 observational eye to to think of those connections like that so obviously it&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:11 the the force is strong with you young one um uh when you the the phrase that maybe if<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:19 I do this you&#8217;ll all change is isn&#8217;t that a bit of author&#8217;s hope in writing a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:24 book yeah there&#8217;s uh I think there&#8217;s I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:29 mean you could read dooi and still find Hope um it&#8217;s uh there&#8217;s there&#8217;s hope I<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:37 think in every book of whether it&#8217;s a warning hope or just a a hopeful message<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:42 in general um there is a and I think for for children of the dying hearth for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:48 this first one and honestly for the series going forward it&#8217;s the hope that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:53 people become more introspective um and they start to<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:02 realize their comfort zones where they&#8217;re at emotionally spiritually physically professionally whatever it is<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:10 and whatever of unhappiness they have in their life<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:15 um a lot of it comes down to perception um for much Cas I I take a<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:20 lot of influence from the stoics um I love Mark celius and senica and there&#8217;s<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:26 some of will be coming out as as more books progress but it&#8217;s the greatest enactor of change in<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:34 your life is you it&#8217;s not someone else so if you&#8217;re uncomfortable do something about it um if you&#8217;re too<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:42 comfortable you&#8217;re not going to grow and if you want to grow then do something about<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:47 it yeah so there is a hope there but it&#8217;s it&#8217;s for every reader again and this is why I label it as as new adult<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:55 um I feel like the emotional maturity will be more there for the 16 17 18 and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:00 up rather than the 12 13 um teaching a couple 12 13 year olds um I have an eth<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:06 grade Latin class that um the level of introspection isn&#8217;t<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:12 always that I I very distractable at that age I like hurting cast is there<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:20 anything we&#8217;ve not touched on you want to make sure that our listeners know about you the book the series um<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:27 I think we hit a lot of the high points um once again if people are are interested and I hope they are they can<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:33 check out my writing um not just for children of the dying Hearth but for everything they there&#8217;s a free download of the uh honorable mention<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:41 award-winning uh short story uh that I wrote that&#8217;s up on my website that website is martinraynelson.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:48 um there&#8217;s also my academic writing up there um so if anyone is more inclined<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>34:55 to see what I wrote academically about um late Antiquity or um Denmark and the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:01 high Middle Ages there&#8217;s a couple samples up there as well um yeah I just<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:07 hope people check out the book it&#8217;s on every major online retailer um for ebook I believe Amazon has the physical copy<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:15 and um I&#8217;m not totally sure about Barnes &amp; Noble but um yeah you can find on<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:20 Amazon it&#8217;s in hard copy hardback and um an ebook so perfect<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:27 thank you so much for your time been very generous with your time today I appreciate that our guest today Martin Nelson the book is Children of the dying<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:33 Hearth all the best and we will be back for for book two when that comes out yeah I&#8217;d love to be here thank you so<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:40 much thank you [Music]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:48 Roger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great pleasure to speak with a fellow Oregonian and book lover, Rodger Nichols, on his podcast, Cover to Cover Book Beat. 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