Episode Spotlight: Michael Leonard on Pilgrims, Aliens, and a Journey from Tech to Fiction
This week on The Writing Coach Podcast, I’m thrilled to welcome my client, Michael Leonard, to discuss his debut novel, Pilgrims. Michael’s transition from a career in international business and tech to becoming a speculative fiction author is as fascinating as his book. Our conversation dives deep into the creative process, the challenges of publishing, and the philosophical questions that inspired his work.
Pilgrims is no ordinary first-contact story. This science fiction novel takes readers on a journey that blends interstellar drama with profound metaphysical exploration. When aliens arrive on Earth with religion in tow, humanity is forced to confront faith, identity, and the meaning of existence. Michael’s unique take avoids the shallow tropes often seen in the genre, offering a thoughtful and original narrative that leaves readers thinking long after the last page.
In this episode, Michael and I explore:
- The emotional rollercoaster of launching a book and how to embrace the marathon of being an author.
- The genesis of Pilgrims and how a childhood thought experiment evolved into a high-concept novel.
- The art of world-building with philosophical depth, including how Michael tackled big questions without losing his narrative’s authenticity.
- Why flawed characters create compelling stories—and how Michael ensured his protagonist was relatable despite his imperfections.
- The immersive full-cast audiobook production of Pilgrims, featuring sound effects, music, and narration by Jeff Hayes of Dungeon Crawler Carl fame.
- And much more!
Michael also reflects on the pivotal role of mentorship (spoiler alert: he gives me a lot of credit, which I humbly accept!) and shares actionable advice for aspiring authors, including the importance of investing in your craft and embracing the long game of a writing career.
Whether you’re a science fiction fan, a writer looking for inspiration, or someone fascinated by the intersection of faith and storytelling, this episode is for you.
The Writing Coach Episode #212 Show Notes
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The Writing Coach Episode #212 Transcript
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Today on the podcast, I have author, Michael Leonard. Michael, welcome to the show.
It’s good to be with you. Kevin,
It’s the day after book launch day for Pilgrims. How are you feeling? Did you book launch hangover? Or are you still riding high? Or how you feeling about having the book out in the world?
I think I’m hungover. Honestly, I was pretty hot, flying pretty high yesterday. There’s so many details to attend to, like partly letting your different groups know, and that includes like groups on social media, but also just like friends and family. Like, hey, my books, that book you know that I’ve been writing, it’s finally live, you can actually go and purchase it. So there’s so many things to attend to. Stuff starts coming in. Someone says I left a review, and you’re refreshing Amazon to see if it’s actually showing up there. So that’s, that’s a pretty high. And then I woke up this morning a little bit, coming down from that high, being like, Oh no, it’s out there. Now what? It’s a marathon, as you know. So you know, it was fun that for them firing that starting on and leaving the gate. But now I have 26 miles ahead of me, and that’s kind of a daunting thing to think of, but I’m a I’m a happy warrior all think, all things considered, and I’m learning a ton as I go through this process. So it’s, it’s been, it’s been great.
It’s a really important thing to keep in mind that books are not like Hollywood. In Hollywood, if you don’t have a hit opening weekend your movie’s done, like, it’s a bomb if it wasn’t a hit from day one. Whereas with books, like, Yeah, it’s fun to have a book launch and, you know, watch the book go up the Amazon charts or whatnot. But ultimately, books are a long tail product, and you know, you’re gonna be marketing this thing for the next year. And so as kind of, like, exciting and monumental as the launch feels you’re right, it is just the beginning of a much longer journey. But knowing you and having worked with you, I think you’re really going to enjoy the journey. I mean, that’s why I was instantly like, got to get Mike on the podcast, because for like, years, I was like, I can’t wait to hear Mike talk about this book with people on podcasts.
Yeah, I’ve had the pleasure of doing one prior to this, and I’ve got a bunch more scheduled. And you can even see from some of the reviews of my book, my book opens a lot of it’s fertile ground for questions in different topics. It raises whether you agree with it, disagree with it, whether you just think, Oh, I would have gone in a different direction, and I’m as you know, you and I have known each other for over three years now, and I am not allergic to the idea of talking endlessly about my stuff and the different topics that has gone on. So I’m excited to start this off, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity now to be on the illustrious Kevin Johns Podcast. I’m excited. Well,
I know your background is MIT, kind of business and tech stuff. When did becoming an author become part of your vision for your life? Yeah,
I’m kind of one of those strange liberal arts kids that got siphoned into all the other career tracks except that, but always kind of kept that fire burning inside. So an undergrad, I studied history. A lot of people who study history don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, and that included me. And so I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I went to work in a law firm. I took all the prep tests. I did quite well, actually, but I once I worked in a law firm, I’m like, Nope, that’s not for me. So I went to work for a client who was doing business in China, just it’s 2009 the US economy has kind of racked everyone is looking at China saying, maybe this is the future. And I just wanted the adventure, so I called up one of our clients at the law firm and said, You know, I’m not gonna be a lawyer. So do you need me to help? I kind of know your business already, and that set me on that course of basically doing international deals and all that stuff that did turn into going to MIT for Business School and then doing a startup out of MIT, which is a great launchpad for a startup, because there’s so many venture capitalists and technical people, and they really make it easy, so that that’s the direction I went in.
But the whole time, this desire to kind of express the creativity and bring it out from between your ears into the world lingered in college. I actually wrote a screenplay, so like this. I was not alien to the world of creative output, but in 2020 the pandemic happened. It turned our startup that was going up at a very healthy clip. It got very sick and died during that period. And and I was talking to a mentor, and he was, you know, I was telling my life ambitions, and one of them was to take this story that had been in my head and bring it into the world. I actually was going to hire a ghost writer and just have them do it. That was my initial plan, because I just wanted to see it realized. And I thought, There’s no way I can be the writer. And his advice was, you know, it’s a global pandemic. You have Microsoft Word on your computer. The only reason you’re not doing this is because of some mental block, and you should just accept that and stop, you know, telling people you want to be a writer. And so that was a kick in the butt. I needed to start writing, and then ultimately, to reach out to you, Kevin, to help me on this journey so I could really figure out what you had to do to become a writer. And so that’s how it all began. So it’s always been there, but I’m a pretty big pivot from the business world into the writing world.
How wonderful is it that you had a mentor who believed in you and gave you that advice? I mean, I think you’re going look back and say that changed the entire trajectory of your life.
Yeah, it did. And the mentor is not like, a lot older than me, so it’s really kind of more like a peer. So when I tell them about it, they get very embarrassed real quick. In a sense, it was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back. Like, it’s clearly, like, it wasn’t like a full 180 but yeah, that was a big pivot point. I just said, I mean, it was a pandemic. We were mostly locked up in our houses. And if you I mean, not, I’m not judging anyone, but what I would say in the mirror is like, if you can’t attempt to write a book now, you’re just never going to do it. And I’m always at war with the the grand ambitions that I have that I don’t do anything to achieve, like, like most people. So I was like, well, if I’m going to look myself in the mirror. I gotta try this. And that’s how it all started. So
It sounds like you’ve been carrying the story around in your head for some time before that, though, what was the original kind of seed of creativity that started you thinking about this story?
Yeah, so just some biographical background to kind of put in context. So I’m from Boston, Irish Catholic, although ethnically mixed. You know, that’s kind of the atmosphere. I’m born in the 80s, growing up in the 90s, church going family. So, you know, I grew up going to church on weekends. And for the people who’ve done that, there’s this thing called, like, Sunday school or CCD, essentially, it’s like religious class. So for like, an hour a week, either after church on Sunday or after school during the week, you have, like, religious stuff. And it’s not, I have a lot of criticisms of it in hindsight, because it seems to be a very good way to make people leave the religion overall. But I do remember one time, so you have to picture this at the 90s. And you know, you have cable television, the Discovery Channel, Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries, just all sorts of great things for a young person to imagine, such as myself, you know, poltergeists and aliens and all sorts of mysteries.
So that’s happening on one thing, one end, and then I’m going to CCD and they must have been talking about how the resurrection of Jesus, like, did happen. It’s not like a legend. It occurred. Like it’s the year 1997 because we’re essentially counting from that period, that event in time, like, that’s where the number 1994 or whatever comes from. And I was just thinking, like because I was certain that there are aliens, that they’re here, they’re watching us, and they’re abducting us. I mean, Robert Stack was very clear on that and unsolved mysteries. And I’m just like, you know, this is so silly. We have all these different religions in the world, all these people arguing, if the aliens could just come and let us know what happened. You know, 1994 years ago or whatnot, that did put this whole thing to bed. And, you know, humanity could just, you know, slap its hands together, dust itself off, and go into a future without any arguments.
So I had that thought as a child, and I don’t it’s always been in the back of my head, but there’s something like five or six years ago, like it just re-emerged, and I started thinking about that as an adult, and I’m like, oh, like, no matter what the alien said happened at that time, it would not go well. Like, no matter what direction they go in, like, I know a little bit more about the world and how humans are and including myself, but I’ve been around the block a bit to be like, Oh, that that would not go well. And you know what? That would actually be rife with drama. And I’ve never seen anyone attempt to address this in the science fiction or speculative fiction world, like, why not? It felt to me like a glaring absence in the canon.
And so I said, you know, I’d like to see that, and personally, I’d like to do it in a direction that’s not obvious, because I think you could approach this topic very shallowly and, like, skim off the surface and make it like a farce. Like, oh, there’s aliens and they’re Catholic how funny, like, you play the funny circus music and see what happens. But like, what if someone just kind of, like, played it straight and took the premise seriously and saw where that story took them? No one had even done the farce, let alone the series version. So that’s kind of how I decided I wanted to write this book. So when things went sideways and, you know, I wanted that mentor kind of pushed me in the direction of realizing this dream, I thought this would be a really fascinating story. It’s the book I would like to see exist. It doesn’t. So I guess it’s up to me to make it. It’s
I’m often telling my fantasy clients to take into account the metaphysical implications of magic and gods and ghosts, right? Because, like, this was something I tried to address in the page turners, a little bit, is just this idea that, like, if ghosts are real, then there’s a soul, right? And I feel like so often in ghost stories, that’s not addressed, right? Like, just like, Oh, it’s a ghost. Or, like I said, my fantasy clients will be like, “Oh, this guy’s a Minotaur, and this guy is a God.” And I’m like, what does that mean in the universe of your story? Okay, Gods are real. Are there? Lots of them. Are there not? What are their powers? But it’s interesting. What you’ve done is kind of said, if the metaphysical is real, or if like religion is real, how does that impact the technology? How does that impact the aliens? It’s almost like a reverse exploration of of the global implications of the metaphysical beam.
Yeah, like, I’ll give you a great example, because I had the same reaction, probably as a child, but definitely in hindsight as well. Like, I loved Ghostbusters, I loved the animated series that was, like, really big when I was a child. But also, you know, by some aunt or whatever, showed me the live action movie starring Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd from the 80s, which I didn’t get. I loved it. I mean, it’s one of the funniest and not age- appropriate shows like; it’s not good for a seven-year-old, in theory, but I loved it. And it’s like, the, it’s so kind of part of the humor is like, there, yeah, there’s ghosts. We’re not even really going to address it, like, we’ll even throw, if you remember, in the live action film from the 80s, there’s even when they go up the building to take on the big ghost, there’s a bunch of people praying, and there’s like a Jewish rabbi, like, like, nodding. I remember I asked my parents, like, what’s he doing? I don’t think I’d seen a rabbi of that kind at that point in my life. And so there’s like, religion there, but it’s like, not commented. It’s just like, “Yeah, we got ghosts. You know, it’s like, cool. We’re not going to think about it.” And there’s so much fun to be had with that, don’t get me wrong, but kind of what you’re talking about, I’ve gotten the chance to talk to a lot of other authors in this genre, some of them are best sellers in the traditional space, a lot of other independents. And there’s actually kind of a thirst for readers in this section.
It’s like fun to talk about these big jobs and kind of like, ignore them. And there’s a lot of historical reasons why sci fi did that kind of as a genre. We have to remember, like in the 20th century, there’s this great Chris oracio who wrote the son of your series. He’s like, he’s an amazing historian of the science fiction genre. And he’s like, he was talking about one of the other people that came bef ore him that was in and he’s like, this older man was telling him, you know, back in the 50s and the 60s, I could read everything like I could read everything that came out in science fiction. This was a niche genre. We all knew each other. The authors were all friends. There’s a particular editor, Campbell, who had a major impact on what we think of as sci fi. It was kind of like his ideas.
And so there’s historical reasons why, basically, the genre did not touch religion. It was pretty scornful of it. It didn’t want to talk about the metaphysical. It’s like, let’s just have some scientists dealing with material science sort of things, and let’s leave that over the side. But you know, that’s 70 years ago, the heyday of sci fi.
It’s the 21st century. I think a lot of people are kind of hungry for like, Okay, if you know, if in this fantasy world there is a pantheon of gods. What does that mean? Is there some crazy person going around and insisting there’s just one God? Or are people generally, like atheistic, and they think of Gods as just like giant humans, but otherwise, there’s no transcendent source of all being as is held in the Abrahamic faiths. And you don’t have to come out, from my point of view, to make it interesting, but it helps with your world building, if you have an answer to that, as opposed to just ignoring it.
And the final thing I’ll say on it is my kind of hope that the genre kind of takes it on, is you kind of have to look at the ancient Greeks for all intents and purposes. Ancient Greeks were atheists. I mean, they kind of, they had this Greek pantheon of Zeus and everything, but most intellectual Greeks did not think of them as real in any sense. They thought of them as, like, legends or myth, maybe to the same extent that we think, like, you know, Captain America or Iron Man or Superman are real and like that was not like in hindsight, that’s their writings pretty much say that at the time, Plato even says these are noble lies that didn’t stop Plato and Aristotle from asking the question, you know, what is the source of all being? Where could it be coming from? In an Aristotle, in Plato’s case, they basically came to some version of God. They called it the unmoved mover, mover. They thought it was this, like God that created everything, but just didn’t care. He didn’t really care what happened after. But like, they, they, they denounced atheism.
And I only point that out because everyone we’re such in, like, a post-Christian period, you know, after the year 33 AD, we forget that there were people who came before, and they generally just didn’t really believe in God. It was kind of like a legend or a myth that they thought about, but they were still asking these questions and coming to conclusions. So you should have a reason why your elves or your aliens either didn’t ask the same question that Aristotle did or did and came to another conclusion, and if they did come to the same conclusion, you don’t have to like that does not equal Christianity, but it has all these really interesting implications for the world you’re building. So start with the ancient Greeks and how they would have seen the world, and you’re going write a better version of whatever universe you’re creating. And I think a lot of readers are hungry for that, so I’m glad you pointed that out.
You already mentioned the idea that if this happened, it wouldn’t go well. And the book had a different working title, which was alluding to the argument that this is why God remains hidden. And it’s interesting, because I think it could also apply to aliens. This is why we haven’t had first contact. Tell me a little bit about that from both perspectives in terms of “the c ompassion of disguise. Yeah.
So the book is currently called Pilgrims. That is a Kevin Johns piece of advice.
A battle I won. (laughs)
One of the many. And he even said this. He even said, because I would argue with him, and he would say, you’ll come around, you’ll come around. Point for Kevin. I think there’s a vanishingly small number that I didn’t come around on, So Kevin, Kevin’s fingerprints are all over this book. The original title of the book was called the compassion of disguise because it there. There’s an argument for against, basically for atheism, that says, If God is all good, then he’ll want people to know Him. And since not all people know him, God can’t be all good; therefore, God does not exist. Now I’m not a great enough philosopher to really break all of that down and really do a lot of justice to it. Look, look for someone else on the internet who can do a better job. But essentially, it’s if there’s all these people who can’t see God, then, you know, that’s a good argument for him not being there. And my book is kind of a retort, in the sense that, are you so sure you really want to have clear evidence of this? Like, are you sure it would make everything better? Like, maybe it’s a mercy that this stuff is less clear. And I think you could absolutely apply that to aliens as well.
I actually get asked on to the extent that I’ve had podcasts, I get asked what I think about aliens in real life, like, what’s my opinion? And I have kind of a controversial take for a science fiction author, and I I’m increasingly of the belief that they don’t exist, like at all, and that’s largely derived from the Fermi paradox, which basically, because you kind of hear part of it, the universe is so big, there’s so many planets. Like, how could, how could there not be life somewhere? But there’s actually another factor.
It’s called time.
The universe is also pretty old, you know, like, if we went back a billion years, we could easily have life on earth and all sorts of, well, I can’t say Earth in particular, but certainly in the in the Milky Way, that’s more than conceivable. And like, Where would humanity be in the year 1 billion? Or, to make it more simple, the year million, or the year 100,000 even without faster than, like, travel, like with, basically, with the technology we have now, we could put a probe on every solar system in the Milky Way in about 100,000 to 250,000 years, which, in galactic terms, is like nothing. It’s like the blink of an eye.
So we kind of have to wonder why we’re not stumbling over all sorts of ancient alien stuff all the time, like in our universe, you know, derelict ships just floating around, even if they all died out, and we’re like the last one standing like this, we should be littered. Or alternatively, there should be flying aliens of all sorts, both biological and, you know, material just floating all over the place. And yet we the more we see, and we increasingly see more, we don’t find any evidence of that.
And so that’s kind of why I’m kind of pessimistic on the existence of aliens, although I’m much more open to aliens being interdimensional beings. So maybe that could just completely just flip over the cart.
One of my favorite explanations, is the zoo hypothesis, which is that, yeah, the galaxy is actually teaming of life, and the universe is it’s like Star Wars out there. It’s just for, for whatever reasons we want to. We want to let these human species grow in their natural habitat. We’ve kind of just, you know, every time they send a probe up, we capture that probe, and we just send bad data back to those Earthlings. So they think they’re seeing a big, empty universe, but they’re not. And the implication is that something horrible would happen if the tiger realized it was being held captive in a zoo, it might try to maul its zookeeper every feeding, you know, like, maybe we probably tricked the tiger into thinking that, yeah, like, you just live in a wacky habitat, but it’s life is normal. But if they were to know, like, maybe the zoo would just collapse, and maybe that’s true with us, and it wouldn’t, it would not go well.
I guess in both cases, both the God case and the alien case, I’m of the mind that it would, it would not go well. If we were to find out about this stuff, and I think another author, I think this would be a worse book. But some people probably won’t like my book, because when the aliens, you know, purport to be Catholic, uh, they think that’s happily ever after. Close the book, everything’s solved. That’s not my perspective. I think that makes for better drama.
T hat pessimism is that unique to your writing? When I think of Christian music or literature or film, I’m not very well versed in it, but my assumption is it’s like, oh, happily ever after. Everything’s great. We all love each other because of religion. Is that a misperception on my part, or is your book unique in its take on the pessimism of how humanity would react to this sort of experience>
Michael Leonard
I think that’s a great question. Am I a Christian sci fi writer? I mean, yes, in a sense that I’m Christian and I wrote sci fi the same way that, you know, Lord of the Rings is, is by that token, Christian fantasy, because Tolkien was an extremely devout and militant Catholic militant like not even a little, and he and he suffused all of Lord of the Rings with extreme Catholic imagery and a Catholic worldview.
I think what you’re reacting to is there’s kind of a specific brand of Christian trademarked, you know, capital C version that’s kind of specific to American evangelicalism. That kind of has a because I’m not a big knower of the canon, but it has a reputation as being a bit saccharine or schmaltzy, or kind of happy go lucky, or goody two shoes, my
My mind instantly goes like, Kirk Cameron, you know, cheese.
It’s interesting when I say I drew that evangelical proticism in American context, it’s very not typical of the Catholic view. It’s kind of a divergence.
The Catholic worldview is more Tolkien, where characters are talking about their doom the entire time, and, you know, this is our fate and we are and that’s really an esthetic difference. I’m not really putting that at the feet of the different doctrinal or theological implications of each religion. It’s just kind of like how those esthetics have developed over time.
There’s a reason Gothic cathedrals have gargoyles on the side. Like, there’s, there’s a there’s an element of kind of pessimism. It’s more a pessimism of the world in which we inhabit, versus the Heavenly Kingdom where we should be kind of aspiring towards. So there’s that pessimism.
And I don’t call myself a Christian sci fi writer. The stuff I’ve consumed is all the same stuff everyone else has consumed. I’ve, I can’t even say I’ve seen a lot of Kirk Cameron movies, or I know a particular Christian sci fi author. I’ve read, you know, Ender’s Game, and you know a rival, the short story whose name all that I’ve read, all that same stuff that everyone else, and just as a sci fi Reader, I’m sitting around saying the same thing as you Kevin, which is, there’s all these metaphor physical implications that kind of just get ignored so we can talk about the different space drives that different ships have.
And I love that stuff, but like, there’s the genre has so much of it now, I’d like to see some new aspects of these cool worlds we’re building being explored.
So, yeah, I think the pessimism also kind of comes from hard science fiction versus science fiction. You know, Star Trek they have the warp engine. They’re not floating around on the bridge of the enterprise because, you know, just anti-gravity. We’re not really good. We’re not really gonna explain how that works. It’s space, yet you’re it really has more of the esthetics of like a sailing ship. It’s not really accepting the fact that it’s in space, that that’s a detail we don’t really need to get into. It’s more like Odysseus floating around the Mediterranean, coming across cool different islands.
That’s great.
But I think there is kind of a push. You see it with The Expanse that, like, there’s a reason that became super popular books like The Martian. It’s like, space is really interesting without breaking the rules of space.
And so I kind of just like, well, you know, the Fermi Paradox exists, and we there aren’t a ton of aliens floating around. We kind of need an explanation for that, and I think I can still write cool alien stories within that limited context. Like, we don’t. We don’t have to be like, Yeah, you know, space doesn’t have gravity, so I guess we can’t write any cool stories there. Let’s just pretend it does. It’s like, no. We can tell cool stories where, you know, you either have magnet, magnetic boots engaged when you’re in the expanse, or you’re floating. And that’s kind of fun, too. I like that.
You’ve mentioned the vastness of space, and something I see with my clients at times is not taking advantage of the infinite budget we have as writers. Anything can happen. And so something I really appreciated about your book was the bigness of it, in terms of, we see the aliens coming five years away, we are in a space elevator that takes a couple hours to get to space. The ship is gigantic. Tell me a little bit about, you know, embracing that kind of big budget, you know, expanse of storytelling, but also the challenges of writing a story with things that big.
Yeah, there’s a famous presenter who also was pretty influential on me. He runs a channel on YouTube called Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, and I love his concept content. It’s mostly, I should say he got to start by talking about mega structures, basically things that within the laws of physics as we know them. It’s really just a matter of, like, brute force, I guess is one way to put it.
It’s like, you know, the ancients can build the pyramids because with enough muscle power and a little ingenuity, like, there’s enough rock to stack rocks so high that it’s still around, like four and a, you know, 5000 years later.
When Moses was around. And there’s a little bit of, I wouldn’t say, consensus, but there’s a lot of historians who do hold the fact that he probably existed, no comment on the biblical narrative, but there probably could have been a man. When Moses is alive in Egypt, the pyramids are almost a millennia old. That’s like, how old the pyramids are. It’s kind of mind-blowing.
So he really talked about these giant megastructures, and it really blew my mind, because his it’s not really a critique, but he said part of the reasons he started making content about these giant megastructures, such as a Dyson Sphere, O’Neill cylinder with giant space elevators like that is he, he’s he was tired of. He called it the planet chauvinism of sci-fi, because he’s like, you know, it doesn’t really make sense to drop all the way down a gravity well and be stuck on a planet when you’ve got this no gravity in space, and you can build whatever environment you want from scratch. And that’s like, conceivable from our own technological understanding right now. You really don’t even have to invent new technology to conceptualize that today.
And you’re right. That is kind of the infinite budget. And I think sometimes we’re a little bit too constrained by what we saw in the art we consumed. You know, I’d love the Star Wars, especially the original trilogy. I mean, I don’t have to explain to you where I think it got off the rails and some of its newer iterations, but in that original trilogy, like, That’s brilliant, the stuff they did there is brilliant, and it’s, it’s worth you can write a story that feels exactly the same, but I think 50 years on, after George Lucas made that it’s kind of incumbent upon you to know that that exists and not be completely constrained by it like this is the only way science fiction or fantasy looks like. It looks that way for a particular reason. But once you know those reasons, you can think of all the other interesting ways it could look.
So we should be very much informed by the stuff that came before us. But it’s really a good kind of breadcrumb to say, like, okay, these are the choices that were made in that context. But, you know, they could have gone left instead of right. What does left look like? Oh, like, we don’t always have to be on a planet. the Death Star, in some ways, is the most interesting thing in all of Star Wars, and it’s not a planet, it’s just as big as one.
Something a lot of my clients struggle with is they’re always really concerned about their character being super likable. In the opening chapters of the book, they’re always like, how do I make them likable? Likable? You never seemed all that concerned with that. We start the story with a main character who’s addicted to online prostitutes, who’s an alcoholic, who’s really struggling in his life and career. Why the willingness to embrace such a flawed character that follow his journey?
I mean, probably because, you know, I, I’ve inhabited the body of a flawed character for my entire existence. It’s what, it’s what I’m very familiar with. So that was a good starting point. The I think you helped me a lot make him more likable. Definitely, I knew I wanted his arc to be a positive one, fundamentally. But I think you have to, you know, a lot of the hero stories, you do require them to be, I mean, to really be redeemed, you have to be pretty bad. You know, the bad news comes before the good news. As I know someone, you know, they call it the Christian gospel, the good news, well, the bad news comes first. And so I definitely wanted to depict that. I also thought it was just more realistic. I think a lot of people are kind of listless and honestly, put in, like, a lot of people are judgmental of Austin’s choices, especially in the beginning of the book. I’m not particularly judgment. I mean, I’m judging as the author, because I know he’s making the wrong ones. Like, I have that, that vision. I know the whole story, so, dude, you should have gone left instead of right. Like, I know that, but I think his behavior is very plausible for like, your average person, maybe not you, dear listener, maybe. But like, certainly someone you know.
Like us broken flawed people. (Laughs)
Yeah, we can all relate, at least. And it’s been interesting to get feedback from people who definitely have never gone as far astray as Austin has even close. And I’m expecting them to throw the book away, but they actually really enjoy it, because I think it’s all about just making the bad choices they make seem plausible or reasonable, even if you wouldn’t have made the same choice, if there’s kind of like a good justification for why they went sideways, people will go with it. But I will say, from a writing perspective, it is all save the cat. It really is like they have to do that one thing early on that lets you know that they’re not the worst person in the entire world. I mean, maybe you can write that book. I think it takes more talent as an author to be able to pull it off. So, you know, God bless if that’s how you want to take things, I’m not talented enough to do that. So there is a chapter pretty early in my book that I think if I had made Austin make a different choice, Kevin, I think you know what I’m talking about with his mother, then I don’t think I could ever bring the readers back. So you got to have that save the cat. But don’t be afraid to make your character you’ve actually talked about. There’s a lot of ways to make them likable. Competence is one of them sympathy for their terrible situation. I think that’s more Austin, for sure.
Yeah. I mean, that’s what I say. The character doesn’t have to be likable. They just have to be empathetic. You just need to understand why they’re making the mistakes that they’re making, and feel sorry for them.
Yeah, and it’s, it’s nice because, because your budget is infinite, as you like to say, give them circumstances that are horrible enough that their bad choice seems somewhat, you know, relatable in some sense, and that that’s the thing you get to do as a writer, you you get to really abuse these imaginary people that you create, and not you know they make take advantage of that honestly. Don’t shy away from it like like it reflects poorly on you. That’s what people want to see.
When you started working on this book. AI wasn’t really around, or was in its infancy, and you have an AI character in the book. I’m curious now, like, three years later, where AI is everywhere, did that impact the book at all? Or do you feel like the book predicted this? What’s the relationship between today’s AI and the AI character in the story?
I think my, my AI character, is kind of a trope. So for science fiction, I don’t think I was really blazing any new grounds. It is interesting. Like one thing that does happen the story is, is a specific conflict in the Middle East, and it, you know, current events kind of caught up with my book, like I put pen, or I typed out these words in advance of certain conflicts that are occurring in the Middle East right now.
And so is it prescience? No, I think these kind of things were clearly sitting on a horizon, pretty obviously.
And listen, I don’t blame people for not being up. I mean, I had the benefit of being at MIT in 2018 and 2019 like, I get a I get a seat, I get a viewing perspective that a lot of people don’t have, not that you have to be at MIT to see it. But, you know, people have jobs. They’ve got kids, you know, like, they’ve got other stuff to do. They’re not really reflecting on where things are going to take them in the short term. But a lot of the stuff that I’m predicting is pretty foreseeable in some sense.
I haven’t got any feedback from people about the AI in particular, like, Oh, my God, this AI reads like, like, this is what Chatgpt would be like if it became a person and aliens made them. I haven’t got that feedback, but I just think people do. It’s what people don’t notice that, I think, is what’s interesting as a writer like people don’t get caught up in my AI and go, you know, that was really hard to believe. I wasn’t buying that depiction of an AI very well, which I think just goes to show that with all the AI that’s kind of happening around us right now, that it, you know, if it’s not tripping them up because they have examples of it, then it was more or less written correctly.
The other thing I’d say is that, as a science fiction author in particular, you know, every genre has its own kind of necessities, like, you know, you have an infinite budget break some new ground, but you do have some kind of constraints that you do have to live by if you want to be in the genre, if you’re a science if you’re a sci fi author, you do kind of have to be a futurist. To extent it’s kind of incumbent upon you.
There’s a there’s a quote who I forget to attribute, but they say the good sci fi author doesn’t predict the automobile. They predict the traffic jam. So you kind of just have to think about the implications of the things that are happening. And even if you just are projecting, like, three or five years down the road, like, really think about it.
I’ll tell you what’s a big blind spot for people right now because, like, they’re starting to notice. But this is something that was foreseeable, like, years ago. SpaceX is absolutely changing the math on getting to space, like, dramatically. So I remember doing model rockets as a kid, and this former NASA engineer, you know, you put the rockets together, you push a button, you shoot them up like they’re made out of cardboard and gunpowder, essentially. And it was like an after school activity that the town I lived in allowed paid $50 and you got to build a model rocket. And at the time, the Space Shuttle existed. So that’s like reusable spaceflight in theory, but really they’re throwing away 90% of the of the apparatus to get the space so it wasn’t reusable enough to make it cost effective. And he was basically like, you know, the only way we’re going to get to space is if now NASA’s budget is like 50x bigger, which, even as a little kid, I’m like, Well, if they’re, you know, presumably they’re fighting it hard enough to get whatever dollars they can. So, like, about 50 times seems unreasonable. Or we have to invent a way to basically collect the entire rocket as it lands, like, basically land that giant rocket that got the space shuttle up into space. And he’s, like, that’ll never happen. So, you know, we probably won’t get much further than the moon. You probably will live your whole life on earth.
And like I had asked my parents where they were when the moon landing happened, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, they they have vivid memories of that. And I was sad as a child that I would never be able to see something similar.
So when you can reuse a rocket, and that’s the one that he flies now the Falcon nine, it can reuse some of it, but the giant, giant thing that he’s building, if he can succeed in making that land, I tell people that I have not really interested in space tourism generally, but I think I would like to see where Neil Armstrong’s boots went in the moon. And I think, you know, it probably won’t be cheap, and if I’m fortunate enough to have the savings, I think in my 60s and 70s, there will definitely be journeys to look at those boot imprints, and it’ll be an arm and a leg. But I tell people, I’m going to do it.
My wife has already agreed, because she just doesn’t think this is going to happen. But again, us getting up to space, like low earth orbit, you know, we’re not talking warp drive. This is it’s going to be 2030, we’re going to be doing it, Kevin, and people will think it’s always happened, kind of like with chat GPT, it’s just like, it’s just a normal occurrence. This is the light the this is the world we’ve always lived in. But really, that’s not the case. This will be a big sea change, and it’s a countable number of years out, and I think that’s an important thing for sci fi authors. They are futurists, and so think a little bit hard about the future you’re predicting. Try to find the details, and if there are current trends now, like following their implications, because most people aren’t, and that’s how you can write surprising things for them that they go, Aha. This is interesting. And keep reading, because you took the time to do that, and they’re busy with their everyday lives.
There are a lot of obstacles standing in the way to space tourism, but I’m glad to hear you’ve already overcome the biggest one. You got your wife’s permission. You’re good to go.
Yeah, and it was, you know, the little trickery doesn’t hurt there, because, you know, yeah, I mean, it’s a 20, like 50 problem, as far as she’s concerned. And we’ve got, you know, diapers to change and kids to take care of. So that’s the trick, you know, it’s pre positioning.
Something that’s really fun for me is I work on books with authors like yourself for a period of time, and then the book’s done, and they go away and they get it edited, or they do whatever things, and then finally it gets published and I get to see things like the cover art, or, in this case, some really cool artwork on your Amazon page. So tell me about a bit about both your cover but also these really interesting paintings that you have of some of the characters in the story.
I’d have to just go back a little on that. I I’m sure I’m not alone in this observation, but everyone from the grocery store checkout clerk to the lawyer to the construction worker to the cop, they’ve all got air pods in and they’re all listening to things all the time. And I mean, the numbers speak for themselves. Audiobook sales are the growing part of the publishing market podcasts. I mean, need I say more? I mean, whatever your views on them, their consumption is literally like a hockey stick just going straight up. Everyone’s listening to stuff all the time.
I actually wonder to myself, I look around, I go, how many people are listening to music versus someone talking in their ear, whether it’s an audio book or podcast. I’d love to do a poll one of these days, like an unofficial one, and just ask. I suspect it’s mostly people getting talked at and in all these native languages. You know, I’m in Boston. There’s a lot of different communities around here. They’re not all listening to English language content.
I say all that because when I made this book, you and I would talk about it like you have to write a book. It’s an old medium. It’s been around for a long time. Seemingly fewer people are even reading them. But that’s the precondition to doing this audio thing that I kind of always wanted in the end, because, like a lot of people, the majority of my content consumption is audio as opposed to reading. Sad to admit, if I taken a book, I’m more likely to have listened to it than have read it.
I knew from the beginning I wanted a top audio product. And if you Google it, like, if you’re an independent author doing it, it’s pretty much big red warning flags that say, “Don’t bother.” Like, this is silly, like you might feel gratified, but it’s not worth it. The expense of creating the production is probably not going to yield enough to justify it.
What I envisioned was actually more than just the typical hire a narrator and have them read my book. I kind of wanted something a little closer to an audio drama, so that’s where I’m starting out. All of a sudden, the budget to make that just goes even bigger. It’s even less likely that it’ll, it’ll pan out financially. But that was what I wanted.
I was researched very hard to find someone with a similar vision, and I found a guy named Jeff Hayes. Jeff Hayes, he’s the narrator of my audiobook, but he’s also an audiobook producer, and his basic contention is that the audio, like publishing, hasn’t figured out that audiobooks are their own medium. They’re not necessarily just a read book. Audiobooks are almost come from a reading aid for the blind background. It’s more like just read it, so they can have the book like a person with sight can and get out of the way.
But I think because we’re consuming so much more on head, you know, earphones, audio, orally, than we used to, we we can kind of get a little bit more adventurous with what we create. And so that’s been his perspective. And he actually did a book Dungeon Crawler Carl, which is in the lit RPG genre that has had such huge independent success, it was picked up by Penguin Random House and is selling like hotcakes. Oof my author friends showed me the Nielsen top 50 for sci fi books, and it’s, it’s right there at the top. And those books that for the for the listener, those don’t change, like it’s still Andy Weir’s Martian. It’s Three body problem, it’s Ender’s Game, it’s Dune. These books are always on that list. You’re you’re competing with the entire backlist of literature when you publish. But Dungeon Crawler Carl is now at the top of the list, and in large part that’s because of the the audiobook that Jeff Hayes put together.
Essentially, if I were to summarize it, it’s still an audiobook. It has original music, some, you know, well done sound effects, but it makes the whole experience a lot more immersive. So when I kind of, I’m not a lit RPG person, I learned about Dungeon Crawler Carl finding out about Jeff Hayes, but I was like, This is the man he needs to be make my audiobook.
So I essentially started just begging him, you know, because science fiction, specifically Catholic alien showing up on Earth was not exactly his wheelhouse prior to that, but, but long story short is that he, he liked the the audacity and originality of the novel, and he’s like, I want to take this on, you know? Like, yeah, I can make, I can make another lit RPG audiobook and sell a ton of them, because I have such a following at this point. But this is really appealing to me as an artist, and I want to do it.
So he did, and it’s my audiobook. It came out yesterday, along with the print and the ebook edition. It is a full cast. It is it does have original music. It has some sound effects. I love it. It’s almost worth it to me, just that this product was created that I get to consume, even if it doesn’t sell a lot.
Now I point all that out as background, because Jeff has a history of being successful in this space. He has his own following of people that will pretty much read whatever he narrates and puts out. And he, like a lot of business people, knows that it’s not just about creating a thing. You have to market the thing. And so he’s like, we need to create some conceptual artwork for this. This will help us in our social media pushes other things. Do you want to split the cost with me?
And I immediately said, of course, you know, and it’s not cheap. It’s, I mean, that’s all relative. It was something I could afford, but I could see other artists not being able to be in that position. And so it’s not just that he narrates auto books. He knows the other voice actors that would be great for the part, and he knows these other artists who are just great. And so he’s like, I know the perfect guy for this, and I’m very skeptical, because the way I would have approached it is googling conceptual artists, click, click, click, scrolling through websites, not really knowing who’s good or who’s reliable or who’s affordable. They could have quoted me a lot higher number I wouldn’t have known. And I feel like I would have spun my wheels forever to end up with the worst product. But they found a great guy, and when I saw the stuff coming back, you know, we had back and forth, as you do with the Creator, but I was like, Yes, this is it. This captures you may it might not been precisely what was in my mind’s eye, but it captures the essence of what I was going for. And so that’s been a really fun part, but, but really to all your listeners who are aspiring authors themselves, these kind of novel or, I should say, unique or different ways of promoting your book can pay huge dividends. So it’s worth thinking about.
Speaking of paying huge dividends, I think you mentioned to me you had significant pre-orders for the book. How did you go about promoting and getting all those pre-orders?
I have no perspective in terms of magnitudes, like, what’s a lot versus a little? I remember when I first went into this, I thought, like a normal author sold like a million copies, and best sellers sold like hundreds of millions. It was kind of nice to know that the bar is way, way lower than that. At the same time, it’s like, oh, I guess people really don’t read because, like, you know, some random cooking, not popular YouTube channel will have more downloads in one of their like, let lower quality videos that they put less time in than a great author sales will be, which is very humbling. It’s kind of a little bit shell shocking when you know it. I sold hundreds of pre orders. Actually, I came to learn that a lot of people don’t believe that, that you should do a pre-order if you’re an independent author. I have slightly mixed feelings on that I could, I could explain why, but I did do it, because I just that’s what Trad does. So I figured I’d just copy them, and there was a lack of awareness, like, certainly not a lot of people were aware that my book existed. I did create a mailing list with advanced readers, but it was not very big. I’m talking dozens of names. I did do an ad on a podcast, and I think that is where a lot of my pre-orders came from. Fascinating, yeah, it’s really hard to know and that, and I’m not a marketing genius, so I’m probably not the best. What you’ll find is, when you make sales, the first thing you want to know, it’s almost like in a video game, they tell you, like, which character bought your book and how. And it’s like, in real life, you just get, like, a number, and there’s a lot of like, guess work that goes to like, how that came to be there.
I’ve got to tell you, I like, two years ago, three ran dom days in the middle of the summer, I sold 150 copies of M School, and I still don’t know why. Just out of nowhere, 150 copies sold, split up over three days. I’m googling. I’m asking people I still have no idea, like, clearly, some influencer talked about it, or, I don’t know, a professor, like, assigned it in the class. I have no idea. But this is the frustration of, like, the Amazon monopoly, right? Because we don’t know who bought it. We don’t know why they bought it.
It’s I’m really getting I didn’t really have strong opinions about the Amazon monopoly till now, and you’re just like, it’s just such a black box. Yeah, it’s, it’s crazy. And in fact, that was my first presumption. I texted some of my friends who have done a little bit better financially. I’m like, Did you buy like, 100 copies? Like, I know you can afford it, but like, do you understand the box that comes in? Like, I buy a set of 10 for authors copies, and it’s like, heavy. I’ve got to carry it in. Like, I really recommend you don’t buy and they’re like, What are you talking about? Of course, I didn’t buy 100 copies of your book. You’re a good friend of mine.
But not that good. (Laughs)
So I think what happened is, I did find there’s a, I’ll just say what the podcast is. There’s a famous Catholic apologist named Jimmy Akin. He’s a very unique looking fella. He’s, he’s a Catholic apologist is someone who makes arguments for like, it comes from the Greek apologia, which means an argument for something. So he makes, you know, defenses of Catholicism and Christianity more broadly.
And he’s, he’s been doing it a long time. He’s got a big following. He’s got a cowboy hat and a beard. He kind of looks like, like, like a character from a fantasy novel dwarf, or like something like that. But yet, with the cowboy hat and so he’s, he’s, and he runs a podcast called Jimmy Aiken’s Mysterious World. It’s kind of like Unsolved Mysteries. I mean, it looks at things like the haunting in Amityville, like things like that. In fact, I think Kevin would actually like this is. Is Sasquatch real? The Loch Ness monster, you know, this UFO sighting or whatever?
It says it looks at it from the perspectives of faith and reason. Even if you had no religion in you, it would still be a good show, because he’s a very kind of like, he takes all this stuff very seriously and examines it. He’s actually a paranormal investigator himself.
I say all that because I think that’s probably where a lot of my readers go, right?
I mean, we’re talking about Catholic aliens arriving at Earth. These people are clearly interested in sci fi, speculative fiction, mysteries, and that, you know, I’m sure not all the listeners are Catholic, but probably some of them.
And my book was written for a general audience. It’s not for Catholics. In particular. Some of my biggest fans have no religion in them, and that’s perfectly by design. That’s actually where I want to be, but I know that I’m probably going to get a slightly more fair hearing from a new reader where I have no kind of following or platform so far, who’s Catholic. Maybe it’ll be like, give this guy a shot. You know, I’ll support him.
So anyways, I decided to do a mid-rolls. I sponsored it, and so I got a mid-roll ad read. And I think that’s where a lot of them are coming in because otherwise I have no explanation, but I think there’s probably more scope for authors. You have to have the budget for it.
So this is kind of tough, but Amazon ads like, talk to any author, they’re horrible, like they’re impossible to get good, not impossible. They’re extremely difficult to get good at, and even if you do, we’re talking percentages on percent. I think there’s a lot of opportunities and things that are explored less. I think they’re explored less because they take a little bit more budget. So I might, you know, waste some money and report back about what’s useful and what’s not, but I have the sneaking suspicion that your your readers, might be listening to certain podcasts, and different podcasts charge different amount of money for sponsorship. And so it might be worth thinking about.
Certainly, what I’ve spent for two months of a mid-roll ad read is my expenditure specifically, is doable for a small author. And you I did have one other marketing person I’m talking to, Kevin, they basically, I don’t know. I’d be interested in your perspective on this.
My goal with this book, other than to get this story into the world, get people engaging with it. You know, it’s very unique first contact story. I want people to like process that and tell me what was great about it and what was terrible about it, and add this to the pantheon of first contact stories.
The other part was to establish myself as an author, and so you kind of have to think of your first book, maybe even your first few books. This is very disparate. You know, this might be very like, not the most welcome news to a lot of authors, but you kind of have to think of them as just an investment in a business of building a readership, building people who want to follow you. So that’s kind of how I justify some marketing spend, that I’m probably not going to get the money back on the book, but I need to get people aware of it and engaging with it.
And so I try to think of it on a 10 year timeline, because I looked at it a 12 month timeline, I’m lighting money on fire like there’s just most likely, unless I have a breakout success, it goes viral or something. I’m probably not going to get the money back, but that’s kind of how I see it. And if other authors are up to the same game, they might want to think about this tactic.
You’re being very smart. I mean, what do we always say? Know who your audience is, go to where they are and let them know about the book, which is exactly what you’ve done with that process that podcast so good on you to know who to look for, and then to get your book in front of them.
I’ll keep trying things like that. And do you have any sort of kind of you mean, you’ve been following me, we’ve known each other for a while. You see that the book is launched. Any other big things that I should be paying attention to at this moment.
The experience. So publishing a book, you’re investing money. You invested in me as a coach, you invested in your podcast, or, sorry, your audio book covers everything, right? We spend a lot of money to get a book into the world, and because of that, we often measure success based on the money we make back, right? Book sales, these sorts of things.
But in my experience, yeah, money’s great, and book sales are great, but what publishing a book does is open new doorways of experience into your life.
And I think too often we take that for granted, and we’re like, “Oh yeah, you know, I did a talk at a sci fi convention, oh yeah, I met this person who really loved my book. Oh, they asked me to come, you know, to my classroom, that the high school I went to to do something, but the book, you know, didn’t make a ton of money.” And it’s like, you wouldn’t have had any of those experiences without the book.
We all have to feed our kids. We all have to put food on the table. Money Matters. This is a business. We can’t pretend it isn’t, but at the same time, really embrace the experiences that are going to come your way in the next year, or five years, or whatever, based on having done this work.
You took something that didn’t exist, you made it, you put it out into the world, and now your world is going to be different. You and I love chatting with you, but we haven’t talked probably in a year or something, right?
Yeah.
But yeah, the books out, and now we’re here right now. We’re talking now. I’m getting the pleasure of this experience. I hope you are as well. And so that’s why I would just, I really encourage all my clients to just think about be intelligent and come out as a business person. But creating art isn’t just about putting food on the table for most people, and I know it’s not for you, right?
So when you’re calculating the return on investment, include your experiences with that, include getting to meet some person you never would have met, who you respect, or something because the book is out, or all the amazing experiences we’re one day into this adventure, who knows what cool adventures are going to come your way in the next year, because you put in the work to create this thing and put it out into the world.
So that would be my advice.
I appreciate that, Kevin, because that is partly the motive. But you can lose sight of that, like I would tell you, intellectually, that’s what I’m up to. But it’s so easy to lose sight of it as you’re cooking refresh on your Ingram Spark sales page, or the Amazon Kindle, the KDP, it’s so easy to forget that I mean, I’m living a totally different life now than I was when I met you already. I know authors. I didn’t have any author friends prior. Now I have a bunch. It’s, it’s so cool. Strangers are engaging with things that were just, you know, my own fever dreams at one point, and giving me great comments about them. And it’s, and, you know, you only do live once. And it’s, it’s a real pleasure to be able to spend it in this particular way, and we have to constantly remind ourselves of that.
Well, Mike, I can tell you, like you said, when you started working with me, you were pretty darn fresh as an author, and you were one of the authors I’ve worked with who listens, who processes and then implements, and then, as a result, makes monumental strides forward in your abilities, and you ended up with an incredible book. So I’m so proud not only that you got this book finished, but also the amazing journey you went on in becoming an author in the creation of it. So congratulations to you, like not just on publishing this book, but on really becoming an author and putting the work in to develop to develop the skill set necessary to write an incredible book.
Yeah, and I appreciate that, Kevin, that means a lot to me, but I would have it would have been a much bigger fool’s errand without your assistance and I tell people that all the time. They say, like, because they want to know, how did you write a book I know that you’ve commented on a lot of people’s picture is you just like, grab a bottle of Jack Daniels in a cheap motel in rural Maine and three four weeks later. So as long as you can get three or four weeks later and let your beard grow out, not shower, you’re going to come out with a manuscript. And it’s like, that is so just, I mean, if that’s true for Stephen King, it’s not true for the rest of us.
There’s so much to learn about this genre and figuring it out, and it’s a way more collaborative thing than I thinkthat whole kind of stereotype lends itself too. And I say to people, I say, you need to find a developmental editor and just learn the trade this is going to do you. I mean, I know a guy, he’s awesome, and you should hire him. But even if you don’t hire him, like find someone.
Because I never I would have given up on this a long time ago. I did not have the patience. They say you have to write 10 books or whatever. You have to write a bunch of manuscripts before you have one that can be taken seriously. And I think that’s because that’s someone who doesn’t have an editor, such as yourself, helping them from the outset and teaching them what to do. So it takes them seven full manuscripts to kind of figure it out at a base level, and that’s still they’re probably, when they look back on their authorship careers, say like that breakout success or the one that finally had me made it was my worst book, because you’re still learning it.
I couldn’t have done this without you. I put it in the acknowledgement section. I would have given up because I was not I did not have seven manuscripts in me to figure out how to do this, and I would never have figured it out on my own, and it was invaluable to the whole process.
And so I think the biggest problem with the writing world is that you’re only one man with so much time, and so you know you can’t spread the brilliance among even more people. I know you’re trying with classes and such. But the benefit that I got of to being able to directly talk with you.
I think someday you’re going to be having to say no to Hollywood celebrity clients who are demanding that Kevin Johns helps them with their their fiction book that they’ve been dying to write. And sorry I’m too busy, because I plan to be extolling your benefits deep into the future, such that you don’t have any free space available. So for any listeners out there who are on the fence, but they really are motivated to get it on the book, like you gotta reach out to Kevin. Take him seriously. He knows what he’s talking about, and it’s been invaluable for me.
Kevin Johns
You know how your other mentor was, like, embarrassed when you complimented him. I’m like, just keep going, Mike, I love this. I was just gonna let you keep going. Yeah, I’m gonna bathe in it.
He’s looking I mean, he’s funny, he’s charming, he’s got the best singing voice. Did you do you sing on your group calls? Because you should just sing your whole lessons. They’re perfect. Actually, I
I come from a punk rock background, though, so my singing voice is not quite as sweet as someone well. Mike, what is on the horizon? The book is out. What’s the next few months? Look for you in terms of promotion.
So the book is Pilgrms by M R Leonard. It’s out on a Kindle Unlimited. So you if you subscribe to that, you can get the book. It’s in paperback, hardcover and audiobook. That’s also an Audible exclusive. So if you’re subscribed to Audible, you could download that otherwise you can purchase it as a one off. So that’s Pilgrims.
So the current future is marketing, this. There’s writing. I also one other thing I say about you is it’s you gave me, like, a PhD in writing. It’s like, instead of going to school, I just, like, speed ran a PhD in creative writing, which was really cool. But there’s this whole other thing about being an author called, like, marketing. And Kevin knows a lot about that too.
The reality is, they’re almost two different skill sets, and I’m currently in the learn how to market skill set. So for the at least short term, short term, why? For the least next three to six months, that’s where I’m going to keep my head down and focus.
A lot of other authors are much better at multitasking than me. I’ve kind of learned my constraints. I kind of have to focus on one thing and the next thing, but the next step is, this is my first book. It’s not my last book. And Austin’s story as set up in the novel. I mean, without being much spoilers, there are Catholic aliens around Planet Earth at the end of my book. You know, like, there’s a lot, like, I haven’t explored every aspect of that story, even in particular with the protagonist, but all the other ramifications for the human species in the world that we know with that happening. So I plan this book to be part of a series, probably a trilogy, I won’t constrain myself, but probably a trilogy for this at least one character, and there’s a whole other set of books that I’m eager to write. My brand as an author is going to be something like Black Mirror, but with religion so high concept premises, what if this happened? But we’re going to take these metaphysical parts seriously and see where that leads us. And I have a bunch of books in the hopper that I can’t wait to get out into the world with that kind of angle towards them.
Mike, I’m thrilled to have you on the podcast. So excited to see the book out in the world. I ordered my hard copy yesterday, but I didn’t realize the audiobook was also ready to go. So right after this, I’m going audible and grabbing that audio book because you shared the first chapter, I think, with me, and it sounded exquisite, so I cannot wait to listen to the whole book.
I’d be super interested in your feedback when you get to because I know you’ve listened to a bunch, so to get your impressions on what you think this approach to it as well was that, by the way, that that chapter I shared was a rough draft. So now you can listen to the final copy.
Amazing, amazing. Well, go nurse that launch day hangover, relax a little bit. Don’t become too obsessed with refreshing those Amazon pages. Enjoy yourself, and thanks for being on the podcast.
