Cyber Thrillers, AI & the Future of Technology with Charles V. Breakfield & Rox Burkey

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What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show, powered by Believe Network, where we bring you real stories of building wealth, overcoming adversity, and leaving a legacy. I'm your host, CJ Moneyway, and today we have a powerhouse duo, although we're waiting on my girl Roxanne joining us. Authors Charles V. Brakefield and Roxanne Berkley, the creative mind behind the award-winning Enigma series. Hey, how you doing today, Charles, man?

CJ, it's a real pleasure to be here and chatting with you. Uh, thanks for inviting us. Apologies for the better half, uh, she is admittedly, uh, far more attractive than I am, but I tell a good story.

Ah, man, it's all good, man. I know, like you say, she's been busy coming back. She'll come on when she get here, man. So let me ask you, Charles, man, growing up in Austin, one of America's tech capitals, how did your environment influence your career in storytelling?

Well, yeah, it's true. I was born in Austin, Texas, but my dad was in the Air Force, so I'm an Air Force brat. We lived 2 years here, 2 years there. I mean, I didn't realize people didn't live out of a box till I was 13. We moved from base to base, country to country, and then he retired back in Austin. And so, and I don't know, I found my way up to Dallas on a, and that's a long story and I'm not going to, you know, go into it, but you find where you're going. And there's a lot of tech here in Dallas. Telecom is where I got my feet in concrete for 25 years. Doing telecom for and consulting for several Fortune 500 companies. And we got to play with some of the greatest technology. I mean, fiber optic technology to be able to hurl voice around the planet. I get to work on great stuff. We also got to work with security all the time because you can't do voice without it being secure. It's just not done. And so we got into heavy doses of security, and that's where a lot of the background story material for the Enigma series comes from.

So let me ask you, man, just off the record, you know, just prolong this conversation for a second. Security. You're talking about how you guys was able to, you know, dibble and dabble in some of the finest things in security or technology, like the fiber optics, you know. I know they use that, and where I'm from in Indiana, for like cable, like, or internet, you know, where you're supposed to get this high-speed internet and things of that nature. So how do that process go, man, when you researching and then figuring it out and these high security codes for, you know, like the, let's say the Capitol or somewhere where you need the pen pad or you need your thumb to press on the wall to get in, man. How unique is all of that, man?

It's, uh, fairly, fairly standard actually. Uh, if you need to get into a high secure area, they used to confiscate your phone, your PC, and anything looks like it might be a USB drive to be able to lift information out. They're kind of fussy about that way. Uh, having, uh, gone some places where they said, okay, Charles, deliver this code to this— I can't tell you who it is, it's a defense contractor. And I open up my laptop and these people freak out. He goes, if you open up that machine and you plug it into our network, we will take it and wipe it clean and hand it back to you. We're that serious. I said, okay, close it down. How do I deliver this to you? They go, well, we'll do a 3-step process. Give it to us on a USB drive, we'll put it on a clean machine in the neutral zone, sanitize it, check it out one more time, then it gets moved over, then we'll do a rigorous testing on it. I'm like, boy, you guys, you get your panties in a wad on, you know, really had fast and stuff because we are quite serious.

Yeah, yeah, you gotta do all that. That is quite serious. It ain't no joking though when it comes to that, on that nature. Let me ask you, Charles, man, How did you and Roxanne first decide to work together on the book, and when did you realize that this was going to be a long-term relationship?

Because we were in a consulting role at several tech companies, we choose an outbound position, and one of the things you had to do is, you know, I like to joke about how we were sent in to be able to fix stuff. We were parachuted in and held hostage until it was repaired. You had to get a report when you're done, and so we got pretty good at delivering the reports. And we were also tasked with training other technologists. So that, again, also lends itself to writing. So we found that we collaborate very well. And then one day she pops up, says, hey, Ira Bach wants to buy some stuff from us in tech manuals. We wrote a couple of books along the line. I got tired of it pretty quick. She, she said, okay, all right, I get it, you know, we did You don't want to do massive rewrites after rewrites after rewrites, because that's what tech manuals are all about. Couple months later, she shows up with this impish look like she always does, and she used the 4 most terrifying words in her vocabulary: "I have an idea." And she said, "Let's use the tech stuff that we know as background at the threats," you know, the the real-life threats, but let's do fiction. Fiction stays, you know, you write once and it's good for a long time. I said, well, I don't know. She goes, plus we get to kill people and not go to jail.

She's a consummate salesperson.

God, I bit down on that one. Yeah, so with the conveyor belt of technology that we see all the time, the different threats that come out of, hey, this is the great thing that, you know, 'Oh wow, we didn't realize it was also a vulnerability.' Yeah, we get to see that kind of stuff a little ahead of some people. It makes for great story material, and the threats are realistic. It's, you know, ransomware, being paid money laundering using the cryptocurrencies, identity theft, genetic engineering. We've explored almost all of those. With, of course, AI, which is one of my favorite ones, and the different books. And so each book's got a different threat. Each book's got a different flavor to it, but it's in the Brakefield-Burkey wheelhouse of how we write. And we spend a lot of time storysmithing and then charactersmithing to make sure that everything is believable and quite plausible in some cases. What's really spooky sometimes though is when We write about something and it comes true. Those are pretty gratifying, if not disappointing, because usually it's a, you know, hey, you're ruining my story. I need to get it, you know, could you just wait a little bit longer before you spring this on the public?

Yeah. So let me ask you, when you write a story like that, like you say, it comes back and it happens for real. Like, dude, you get nervous because people like, do you have inside information? You know what I'm saying? You guys putting this stuff out here like that? Where did you get this idea from? Or where did this come from? Have you ever ran across anything like that?

People.

I will, in full transparency, admit I've been visited by the FBI more than once.

Hmm.

They're most insistent. One, the one time that I got accosted by them, I was asked, okay, what do you know about this character? And I can't tell you his name because he's probably still in jail with any luck. They said, uh, he was apparently using all his— he was throwing all his money around, and I was trying to sell him real estate. And so we hung around for like 6 months before I realized I wasn't going to get a dime out of it. So I got a regular day job and these two guys show up, flash their badges and said, what do you know about this character? And I said, yeah, he cheated me. And, uh, oh, there it is. Okay, good, good. We know that he was doing drug money. He was laundering. He was using, selling drugs. And we think, we can't prove it, that he murdered his first wife and used the insurance money to start his drug business. And I went, wow. And I met his second wife and I thought, boy, she seems awful young. She's like the same age as his daughter. But I let it go. So, you know, things start falling in place. That's one of those times where you're like, yeah, I wish I had a head on my shoulders. I don't miss that guy a bit.

Yeah, but I know that had to be a little, little, like, mm, you know what I'm saying? You gotta have some answers. But let me ask you, Charles, man, what's the secret to co-authoring without creative burnout or conflict?

Well, we'll take an idea and then sort of push it around. Okay, look, we need the— we're going to do, uh, some of the stuff behind me is the Magnolia Bluff cozy mystery series, crime chronicle series that we participate in with 12 other authors. And we'll start off with an idea and we'll bounce it back and forth and we'll script out using spreadsheet about 10, 15 chapters. Okay, we should start like this. We want to fast-paced, you know, begin with, then throttle back, then fill in the gaps. We need this kind of character, and it's a roughout. And then we start doing chapters. You know, she might take one chapter, I'll take one, but we use our pending technology called Literary Ping Pong of batting the story back and forth to get the story, uh, StorySmithed and the characters polished. And it's a polishing back and forth effort that actually works for us fairly well. I mean, I've had some people we've talked to and they said, how in the world do you do that without, you know, strangling each other? I said, well, I mean, it's give and take.

It's discussion.

It's, you know, sitting down late afternoon with your favorite adult beverage and just, you know, chewing on the story, trying to figure out, all right, what should they do? And then sometimes, or a lot of times, the characters will pop up and say, I should be doing this another way. And we start listening to those characters and it takes us off sometimes into directions we would not have imagined. I don't think any scripting we have ever done of a story ever went from, you know, chapter 1 through chapter 60 exactly the way we postulated, because it just sometimes it just grows legs and takes off, and we're like catching up, you know, writing as fast as possible, trying to catch up too.

Let me ask you, uh, because when you said earlier that when she mentioned to you like, look, uh, we can do this and we can even kill people, and it seemed like that kind of got your attention, that, you know, said got your eyes open, like, wow. So with writing, especially co-writing, you know, because it's two different personalities, two different, you know, saying mindset. So are you the one or is she the one that likes to implement the killing parts and things of that nature as you were speaking about earlier? Or, you know, do you have love stories? Who's more into that? You know, how did that work?

Well, it's, uh, again, it's collaborative effort. Now I will tell you one thing, we have developed our writing technique to the point where there is almost no way for anybody other than us to know who wrote which chapter. Even our primary editor, my wife, stormed in one day, goes, who wrote this? Uh-huh. It has to read like there's a single voice, and that takes a lot of discipline, I'll be honest. And it's important because it's distracting from a reader, reader standpoint, like reading along, okay, this is Charles, Rock just stepped in, okay, yeah, okay, I'm done, you know, that can't happen. So when we're finished, looks and reads like a single author worked it soup to nuts.

I like that, man. So say like you work on chapter 1 and y'all know that you got an ending for chapter 1, do somebody start brainstorming chapter 2? How do that work process go? Because like you said, because it seems endless, see, when it's just flowing like that, like you don't know who wrote what chapter.

Well, it's an iterative process, uh, and sometimes it's okay, we'll write a chapter like This is out of sequence. Okay, push it back, push it forward in the story thread, and we'll write up to it and then bring it in. Sometimes it is not uncommon for me to wake up, go, ah, I know what I need to write today. And it's maybe not in sequence, but that's okay because it means that the manuscript is going to be fluid. It's going to have some interesting dynamics. And it's also an unexpected journey for the reader because we've got both male and female perspectives on stuff. More than once, you know, I've written something and she'll send through a note or call me and say, "Charles, no female on the planet would ever say that, okay?

Let me fix it." I get it, I get it. So you say sometimes I do have to turn from and let, you know, saying another mind take over that part. But I know what you mean as far as like you're into it, like say it may not fit here but it's going to fit somewhere. And then the way that y'all work together, man, to put it together, that's pretty cool. Let me ask you, see, man, let me ask you, John, what's the spark that led the Enigma, uh, factor? And how did it evolve into a 16-book series?

Well, actually, we got up to like book number 10 before somebody said Excuse me, monkey boy, where did this R group, your cyber champions of the Enigma series, where'd they come from? How'd they get to be so powerful? They're information brokers and they're talking to the Chinese, they're talking to the Russians, they're talking to the South American, everybody. How did they get that much power? And so we stopped and went, huh. So we built a historical fiction book that introduced what happened in World War II. And it begins with three, uh, three patriots, Polish patriots, that are watching their country being overrun by the Germans in 30 days. And so, uh, they take it upon themselves to hit back at the Germans, and they steal the Enigma machine. If you're not familiar with the Enigma machine, they used it in pairs in, uh, for all their communications between ambassadors and the home office. They used it in the field. The Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, the, uh, the Luftwaffe all had their flavor of it. So anything that was important got encrypted and sent to the other side where it was decrypted. That's what the Enigma machine was all about. It was real annoying for the Allies because they couldn't figure out what was going on. So we mixed some history and some, uh, some fiction in here. Because there really was an effort to be able to confiscate, steal the Enigma machine, but not let the Germans know it had been gathered. And so we have our three heroes, the original R Group members, who get it, make a copy of it, give the original to the Allies so they could break it in Bletchley Park. And that's where you, you'd hear the, the name Alan Turing and his people. That's the birth of the first computer. The Enigma machine is that focal point for encrypted technology. It's the baseline for everything that goes on in all of our technology, and that's what we got jazzed by, the use of that. And so the Ahrgroup has made a copy, and they learned how to use encryption and break other people's encryption, figuring out what they're doing, and they built an information dynasty called the Ahrgroup. And that's where they're the cyber good guys. They're the people you want on your side when, you know, the government says, "Can I help you, buddy?" And that's, uh, that, that's where the first 12 books go. And then the next 3, the Enigma Heirs, are the children, the 4th generation of the 3rd generation, our group, who have turned over the reins of cyber espionage and the good guys to the heirs. And that's the, uh, 3-book series, the, uh, with Tracer and, uh, Forest. And the newest one we just released, Enigma Jewels.

Speaking of Enigma Jewels, you combine historical artifacts with modern cyber threats. Where did that concept come from, and what message were you hoping readers would take away from that?

You know the old adage, anybody who doesn't know their history is doomed.

Yeah.

It's important to understand where the information dynasties, the information technologies have come from, from those very primitive rudimentary days using a keypad and punching stuff in and your code books to be able to decipher it, to now where it's these huge processing plants that they call cell phones allow you to be able to do that in the palm of your hand. That's exactly where we've come to. But it's important to know where it came from. In Book 12, we actually use some cast-off technology to be able to help defeat the newest generation AI engines because it uses an older technology that has basically fallen to the wayside. If you remember the old digital pagers that they were using— yeah, okay, imagine using that as a weapon against somebody who doesn't know how to how it worked. See that? You see how funny that— how much fun this can be when you've got, uh, there's generations of technology that nobody remembers that I didn't know I've been trained on. That I said, well, I'm an engineer and thus such. They go, exactly what is that? I've been on calls where we had to explain to people you had to put floppy disks into a PC to be able to do anything. They go, huh, what? And you can always tell the old gray hairs, you know, we're all laughing at some of the old stuff that we do. And the young pups are like, I don't get it.

What is it for me? Yeah, uh, moving out of time, man. This sound real interesting, man. Like you say, you got a lot of things at your disposal to do a lot of things. Making a weapon out of a pager that we used to have on our hips all the time, that was pretty amazing, man. So let me ask you, Charles, man, your book explores AI, cyber espionage, as we was talking, and privacy. How do you balance the excitement of tech with the risk that it poses?

Well, there's always somebody that's, uh, an angle that you don't. In the cyber world of security, the bad guys are always ahead. They got nothing else to do, you know. They work in their jammies, you know, and, you know, they work around the clock. They launch programs and they come back 3 hours later, yeah, that didn't work. But all it takes is one mistake on the good guy's side, and I've seen that where it's like What do you mean you let this port open and you let them log in and they guessed the password and they escalated the privileges and now they own us? Really? You know, those are the things that my work was supposed to design to be able to help defeat before it became a problem. So privacy is the other side of that. Where do you draw that line? That is very much a value call. It's not objective, it's value positioning. And here's an example. There was a criminal organization that bought up these encrypted piece of encrypted cell phones, and they're releasing them to all of the criminal elements because you couldn't break the code. The encryption code was so powerful that the government, let's say, hey, wait a minute, you can't be using stuff like that. And so they have laws that says, okay, you can only use this much encryption. Because if we have to come down on a group of people that are running narcotics, human trafficking, importing, you know, fentanyl stuff, we want to listen in on the conversations, we want to bring them down. Well, their privacy no longer matters in the greater good of society. But it's a very interesting point, CJ, because like, wait a minute, what if I have a real need for it? A real need for absolute security encryption so that I can run my business. That's a tough sell to any security organization in the government. I'll just, I'll just be honest with you. You might have a valid reason, but there's always somebody looking over your shoulder saying, yeah, I could use that too for running narcotics. That's where the— okay, what side of the line does it fall? I don't have an answer for you, CJ. This episode is brought to you by CJ Moneyway Johnson Media.

Moneyway Media, where podcast ideas become platforms. Through the Moneyway Lab Masterclass, CJ shares real lessons from the lab for creators building their voices brick by brick. From powerful guest conversations, storytelling that inspires growth, CJ Moneyway Media is about one thing: building legacy through stories. Learn Learn more at CJMoneyway.com.

Music style, music store.

I get it, man, I get it, because a lot of things parallel with one another. Matter of fact, let me ask you this question, because like a lot of things that you see on TV— like I used to watch the House of Cards, right, the TV show, the House of Cards with Kevin Spacey. Watch this TV show called Scandal, and some of the things that I see in these TV shows, like, it's happening in real time. Like, did y'all take some of this stuff out of what they was doing and put it into real time? Let you say, like, what we doing, the book, you know, so like, say, I think we can use this, we may be able to use this, or whatever. So I see it, man, I, I see it. I'm with you on that one. Uh, But let me ask you this one, man. Let me ask you this. What parallel do you see between your fiction villains and real-world threats?

We basically, we spend a lot of time researching the background material, the things that are going on, the human trafficking. And Enigma Force, probably really well— probably one of our best researched, uh, books because it actually tracked some of the, uh— and here's what you, you find the information, follow the money. If you follow the money, you can figure out what's going on. Now, what we were doing— what I was working backwards from— the cryptocurrency usages for these criminal organizations so they could launder their profits through a series of different locations called wallets. And that means that you have to have somebody set up an identity to be able to get a wallet, to be able to run money through it. And so that's where the identity farming concept comes into place. And so it starts making sense from a grisly standpoint of here's how it's done. And it looks like an MBA program only for evil. But it's quite fascinating. And we studied that. If you— and following the money, we were able to deduce, okay, uh, where's the money going? Well, it looks like all of the, uh, the cryptocurrency that's being used is being sent through to Southeast Asia to the, uh, these semi-fraudulent, semi-legitimate organizations building pharmaceuticals— legitimate pharmaceuticals, but they've got a nighttime business of selling it to the underground people and having it shipped to Mexico, and then from Mexico across through Texas and then up through to, you know, Chicago and parts thereof. And you see that in the crypto mining programs that are out there, and that's what they do. They track where the crypto is going. And so you can see where it's landing in the end and then who's using it, and then, then that effect. And so it stitched together pretty quickly right in front of your eyes. Rather terrifying because it's the way they do business.

So you follow the money, you're gonna find some things that you probably didn't want to see, make you scared. You know, I know it was this app one time, you open that app and have like a little skull head on there like Like you say earlier, you said something about do not open this. You know what I'm saying? Do not open this or it's gonna wipe everything. Like, yeah, let me close that super quick. So let me ask you, Charles, man, scaling a book series over a decade takes the same patience and vision as building a company. What brick-by-brick strategies helped you and Roxanne grow your audience?

Well, it's a combination of things.— not just the writing. Once you have it written, all right, let's get a nice cover. Don't let Charles do a cover for you.

I'll just tell you that right up front.

Get a design engineer that helped prepare the earlier efforts that— I can do this. No, no, no, you can't. And just sit over here and be quiet, Charles, because what you gave us was— well, we're going to fix it. We'll put it like that. Yeah. And then it's, you know, okay, then it's packaging and then it's marketing and then it's, you know, people want to, they want to know about the authors. So podcasts like yours is a great way to be able to introduce us. And if they like us and what we have to say, then perhaps they'll enjoy the book stories that we generate. And so it's not write the book and it's done. Okay. Where's my millions? No, no, that's not the way it works. You know, is it still relevant? That's the irony of it. Some of the old tricks that are still being used for identity theft, stealing the cryptocurrency is the one that's that, and AI being that, seeing those technologies used almost identical, but the old ways are just as vicious as the new stuff. And hammering people, taking their money, social engineering, those are probably the most brutal things because they prey on the one thing. Your sense of trust. And that's where you start seeing these emails saying, oh my God. And here's a perfect example. My daughter shows up in tears and says, I need money, Dad. I need $4,000 by the end of the week to be able to pay. And I can't tell you what or who. They have to, probably would have had to dart me with an elephant gun. They will get me to calm down. I finally squeezed out the information from her. Why? I'm not giving you money. If you're in trouble, we'll hold up here and I'll shoot everybody that comes up.

You know how Texans are.

And finally, it's like, it's the IRS. They called and said I need to give them $4,000 cash by Friday. And I went, I can't believe you fell for this gag. It's not true. The IRS doesn't call you and demand money by the weekend. They don't do that. It's an email— not even an email, it's a letter that comes in and says you owe us money, and if you want to talk about it, we'll talk about it. But We're not going to come and repossess your teeth. They don't do that, okay? I said, by the way, for the 23 years that you've been on this Best of All Possible Worlds, who do you think has been doing your income tax for you? Your mother, who's an accountant. Yeah, we had some very soulful, heartfelt conversations about what not to fall for after that.

Yeah, yeah, that was lesson learned. That was a teachable as we say, a teachable moment. There she is, there she is, Roxanne. I guess it's better late than never, you know what I'm saying? That's what we're about to do today.

Thank you very much.

Our bargain— don't tell her what I said, okay?

All right, that's our little secret. That's, that's our secret, Charles, man. That's our secret. Well, welcome to the show, Roxanne. So, um, let me ask you one question, Rock, since you came. Your move from California to Texas was a big personal and professional shift. How did that shape your approach to writing and business?

Oh my gosh. It was a huge shift, and I had to get used to the different community that exists here in Texas as opposed to what was in California, the different focuses that individuals have, how they looked at life, how they looked at, you know, being a Texan is very different than being a Californian. So it was huge. Professionally, I was very lucky in that I actually at the time was able to transfer within the company. So I didn't have to start my work over again, which was very helpful for me, CJ.

Mm.

So Charles told me how he feels about writing and being with you over all these decades. Tell me, how do you really feel about working with Charles on a day-to-day basis when you're coming up with your great ideas about this Enigma series and things of that nature? Because he says that you're actually the head.

I'll tell you what I don't like is I don't like the decades that he's referring to, though it may be true.

Um, okay, but I did tell him, you know, at the beginning of the century— you hate it when I say that, so I left that out.

He is great to work with from a professional basis because he's a lot smarter than I am. You know, when we're in a room together, he's got all the technical know-how and he just seems to win that way. I do pretty good on the putting together, you know, the experiences of different people and how things interact that way. But if you want the geeky side of it, you got to go to him.

So let me ask you this one question. He said that when you guys started off with the Enigma series, before you started off, you had to sell him on something. What was the one thing that you sell him on for that light bulb to pop in his head and say, you know what, maybe I may be interested in this?

Yeah, so in fiction, unlike real life, when you don't like somebody in fiction, you kill them. Kill them off. And not go to jail.

That's exactly what he said.

That sealed the deal.

Yeah, and I told him, I say, I saw the light bulb when he told me. He was like, light bulb, like, um, I think I can get into this. That was pretty funny. And so, but we were about to— we on the down slope right here. Uh, got like— oh, that's okay. One more question, but I do have a quickfire round that I've been playing on the CJ Moneyway Show. I have 3 questions for you, uh, Rox, and I got 3 questions for you, Charles. I'm gonna ask you a question, you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. Do not be intimidated, you'll do it with flying colors. But before we get there, let me ask a question. When you think about your literary and professional legacy, what do you hope it will be?

I hope that a lot of our stories will resonate with people that are looking back on things and going, you know, I never thought about technology that way, or I never thought about how people interact and change and grow. Because one of the things we do in our series specifically is people aren't static. In the series, they actually grow and evolve and have friendships, relationships, children, you know, whatever the case may be. So we don't do the cookie-cutter kind of thing where somebody is the same personality from beginning to end in the stories that are subsequent. So I like that. I hope it resonates with people.

Mm-hmm.

What about you, Jal?

I'd have to agree with that sentiment. You know, that we're— I'd like to believe that, well, we've got the experience that they can profit from. Let me show you something. The children, you know, there's nothing more gratifying than to have somebody say, Dad, what do you think? I've never seen this before. Well, let's reason through this. That's, uh, you know, the one time I got a call from her on the side of the road. She goes, I got a flat tire, Dad. Okay, go change the tire. I've never done that, Dad.

Better call AAA. That's what we do at my household. Yeah, triple A. Hey, so let me ask, what's next for Brakefield and Berkeley? What's next for you guys?

Well, I think we've got some things that are planned. We're looking at the science fiction fantasy storyline that we're trying to, you know, launch off next year. We've always got something that's interesting. Okay, I've always got something interesting. I gotta sell her now. On some of the stuff. And, uh, so long as it has, you know, the chance of being able to kill people and not go to jail, she's usually pretty good about it.

So where can we find your books at? Where can we find you on social media? Where can we find Brakefield and Berkeley at?

We're pretty much everywhere. So certainly starting out on our website, enigmaseries.com, is the best place to begin. Then we're also available on YouTube. So if people are enjoying, you know, video shorts, because we have audible books available and we do little snippets of those and we create a lot of videos to showcase our voice of the series, Derek Scholes, YouTube @EnigmaSeries works as well. We're on X, Twitter. We are on Facebook. That way and Instagram that follows along. We haven't gotten into a lot of the other ones like Blue Sky and some of those yet because, you know, you have to spend your time where you think you can make the biggest impact. But everything that we add, we do add on to the series. If people want free downloads for fun stuff, that's the place to go get it. Find out where they want to see us and meet us and shake our hands because we do live events. Often. We're doing one next weekend and then another one the weekend after. What did I miss, Charles?

That's pretty good. I mean, as you said, you know, there's some of the sites we're not on, but, you know, Facebook, Meta, YouTube is really hitting it hard because the videos that we're getting into, it's really— and I sent you one earlier so you could see, you know, what we're kind of up to. It's like, okay, it's a great introduction. And then for people who said, like, I can't deal with the reading, We have an Audible format as well, and not by our voice. Derek Shoals is probably the quintessential voice actor because he has to deal with us and the character universe, which is no small feat. He tracks all that stuff with us also on spreadsheet. So that's the best place to be able to find us, latest information, the videos, the trailers, everything.

Well, I thank you guys for coming on and sharing this stuff with us today. So are you guys ready to get into the quickfire round?

Sure.

Uh, Rox, I think I will start with you first since you came a little bit late. Me and Charles been chopping it up, talking, and so I think I'm gonna start the 3 questions with you. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna be a gentleman, ladies first. So, okay, Rox, let me ask you, first book that made you want to be a writer?

Hobbit.

Hobbit. Okay, that sounds like one of them. I remember that, but they had a series of them books too, didn't they?

Well, yes, but Hobbit was kind of a standalone. Then they did Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien was the author.

Dream travel location for research? And not talking about the boat ride that you took this weekend either.

I really need to go to New Zealand and do a lot of research. I figure it'll take a month to get all the research done that I need to do.

Mm, New Zealand, good place. I just read something about it not too long ago. One word that best describes your co-author?

Relentless.

Mm, he said it too. He— that's one thing he said. He got on the football field and there was two guys and he ran right over them and kicked their butt. I think— and I told him, I said, that's probably how you do in these stories too, just straight at it, kicking butt out there. So Charles, you ready?

Yes, sir.

Okay, first tech gadget you ever fell in love with?

Ooh, I'd have to say it was a TRS-80, TRS-80, that used a 12-inch floppy drive to be able to boot up. And it's what I was using to automate my computer, our book distribution system. I started at 8 o'clock one morning when they first brought it in. And I didn't remember anything until somebody said, "Good night, Charles," and they closed the door.

On it all night, huh? All day, all day, all day, all day. Oh man, yeah, I would say that that was your favorite gadget that you fell in love with. And you were right, man, y'all sure has some good advantages, you know, with this tech stuff, man. Things that was coming out before anybody knew it. Coffee or tea while writing?

Coffee, definitely coffee.

Yeah, black or with sugar in it, man? Is it black coffee cream or just, just straight?

I don't put anything in the coffee. I want to be able to hold up the spoon when I put it in. I want strong coffee.

Can't drink no black coffee. If you could hack into any system legally— we ain't doing nothing illegal here, child— legally, which one would it be?

Oh, that's a great question because it's going to get me in trouble if I answer it the way that I think.

Don't get in trouble, man. Don't get in trouble, child.

I'd like to get into the FBI's systems and see all the stuff that we're not allowed to see.

Mm, then that'll make for some great stories down the line with this fourth generation that y'all got coming up. This fourth generation of characters, that'll make a great, uh, some great stories. So let me ask you, who wants to give us a closing remark, one last nugget that you would like to leave with the audience?

Rox, go ahead.

I think that your audience would really enjoy taking a taste of our series. And so I think for a last nugget, if anyone listening to you in the next, I don't know, 30 days wants a free audiobook, if they email us at authors@enigmaseries.com, we'll gift you one, no charge.

Authors at Enigma. Can you send me that? I'm sure we'll put that in my show notes. That would be a wonderful thing. Charles rocks. I appreciate you. I thank you for coming on, sharing your insights today. Of your world of high-tech intrigue and human-driven storytelling. Your journey shows that whether you're writing thrillers or building a business, it's all about combining passion, persistence, and partnership. For our listeners, if you can explore the Enigma Series and their other works at enigmabooksseries.com and connect with them on social media for behind-the-scenes insight and updates. They say you mainly and for sure can find them on YouTube. As always, thank you for tuning in to the CJ Moneyway Show, powered by Believe Network, where hustle meets legacy. Until the next time, keep building brick by brick, and remember, your story is still being written. Today we out of here with my man Charles Brakefield and Roxanne Berkeley. Until the next time, We outta here. Peace.

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