Finally Friday with John & Melissa

Hey, here we are.

Here we're live.

Hello everybody, how are you?

Good to have you here finally Friday.

Welcome YouTube and TikTok, you're on. Welcome Instagram who's coming in about now. And, um, look, we've got some, um, new and new friends, newer and newer friends here today. And, uh, a great shout out to Gina, um, who I have the privilege of working with. She's my literary agent, and Gina is going to take some time to tell you about who she is in just a minute. And, uh, she's just— she is a friend, and I don't say that lightly. Um, she is, and a mentor. Uh, you know, I'm 63 and I still prepared to learn, and, and I'm so grateful to have someone who, um, is smarter than me. I never wanted to get to a stage in life where I was the smartest person in the room. I think that'd be really sad. And, uh, she is, and she's been a great encouragement.

Yes, and a great friend to writers is how I would describe Gina.

And I think she's the sort of person that if you're prepared to give your best, she'll get the best out of you. And so, um, you know, I'm really encouraged for everyone to have a chance to, to meet her and, and So who else you see sitting here? The guy who's got great ink is Russell.

Russell Walters.

And so Russell did— there's something about authenticity and audacity that I love, and Russell strikes me as having both. He just saw Finally Friday and said, oh look, this fella does book reviews. I think it was book reviews. And so I might— I did a book, and I'm telling you, it's awesome.

It's really great.

So I'm going to get him to give us his website before the end. Infographics on the Unexplained. And it is like groovy. I mean, it's everything I've ever wanted to know about Loch Ness, Yowies.

It's all in the Mediterranean Basin, and it's all the weird occurrences and weird sightings. It's really cool.

It's kind of really awesome. So it's fantastic, and he'll explain some of that. So hey, welcome both of you to Finally Friday.

Thanks, John. Thanks, Melissa.

Good for having you here.

So I think we wanted to kick off with a question for Gina. Okay, we have tons of writers who watch the show, so they'll be wanting to pick your brain. My question is, what makes you stop reading a manuscript in the first 10 pages? What makes you just put it down?

Oh, wow. Um, that is a really good question that comes up a lot because we actually, we do a First 10 Pages Boot Camp where we teach people how to not have that happen to you. Um, I think Story— if you're writing, I'm assuming we're gonna talk about writing fiction, because it's a little bit different. Writing fiction, if you start out with just 10 pages of exposition, and we're, you know, we're not getting any plot development, you know, you can— all backstory, front-loading the backstory into the pages. You know, that can be really difficult. So, you know, you need, you need to grab your reader, especially now where people have less patience, less tolerance. They want to get— something exciting happening. So you need to create some level of tension. And tension doesn't have to be agitation. It just— there has to be some— something pulling us, you know, pulling us through into those 10 pages.

Interesting.

Um, you know, I, I like to see in the opening 10 pages, I want to see, you know, plot development, character development. I want to engage with the characters. That doesn't mean— engagement doesn't mean that I have to like them. They can be unlikable people. Um, but I need to, like, I need to be interested in what they're doing and where they're going, you know. So I need— so engage me with the characters. So I'll stop reading if I feel like the characters feel stereotype. People need to feel— I love characters, especially who are 3-dimensional and often a little gray, you know, morally, you know, they don't necessarily need to be white hat, black hat.

Like life.

Like life, like, exactly. I want characters who are complex, And so that's, that's going to grab your editor or your agent is our characters who are, you know, like real, real life. The dialogue has to be credible and realistic. Not only, you know, people often say, well, this is exactly how people talk. Well, is it that how— is that how that person would speak?

Yeah, that's good.

Because characters are going to speak different. John speaks differently than Melissa. You know, the dialogue has to feel credible for the characters. So examine the character. Where are they coming from? socioeconomic background, you know, where are they from regionally? Where, what, you know, what was their education? You know, all these things are gonna influence how that character speaks. And the characters are, you should be able to close your eyes, listen to a piece of dialogue, you know, fairly far into the book and be like, I know exactly what character that is just from how they're speaking. Sure. You know, so all these things are really, really important. Setting, you know, if setting is important, like John's got a bar in his stories, you know, it's just a great setting. Immerse me in the setting. I want to feel that setting. I want to feel, you know, that, that it needs to come across. It needs to feel like an essence, a presence in the story. So those are things that are important or that don't work, and then you're going to walk away.

So I probably jumped in with a question too soon because I didn't give you a chance to introduce yourself. So,

so

I'm sorry about that. I just, I know you and you're awesome.

That's right.

This is Gina and she's awesome. So can you give us a prelude then on, on On who you are, how you started, and what drives you with what you do.

So, um, I'm the founder of Talbot Notch Literary Services, and we are currently a 6-member literary agency. We're headquartered in Milford, Connecticut, which nobody has ever heard of, but everybody somehow has been here or lived here. Like, I meet people— everybody in publishing is like, yeah, I lived in Milford. Um, I don't know, we're on the train station to New York. Um, I've been doing this forever though. I've been an author and a freelance writer. In fact, I put myself through college Writing. Wow! So yeah, I didn't have rich parents. Yes. No, I didn't. I didn't have. I didn't have anybody giving me any anything for college. So so I wrote for like women's magazines, like True Confessions and Modern Romance.

Awesome.

Absolutely. I got paid like a couple of cents per word, so I could sit down in the evening and type out like you know a story and send it off, and then you'd get you'd get a check, and. Those checks, and it was really interesting because the contract for your work was printed in microscopic print on the back. So if you signed the contract to cash the check, that was it. That was what you thought. Wow. That was your contract. And you had to tell them, yes, this was real, but everybody knew they weren't real stories. You know, so they were fiction. They were fiction. There was nothing true about any of it, but it paid the bills and it got, you know, it paid the rent at the end of the week. They never edited me. They changed the names because they were real stories, so they don't want to, like, out anybody. Right. So they would change all the names. But that was, you know, that's how I got through school. But then, you know, as I got into, you know, writing full-length fiction, I had a writer's group in my living room, and we'd meet every Saturday. I just put a sign up at a used bookstore. I'm like, show up, let's talk. Over the course of about a year, everybody who was in my living room got a publishing contract from a significant publisher. So when they got the offers, they'd be like, what do I, what do I do? So after about 6 months of negotiating their contracts and reading their contracts, you know, somebody who was there who was a significant author for, for Bantam Love Swept hit me in the head with a bagel because I fed everybody breakfast and said, you're— You're just— threw it across the table. She said, you are doing a job. Like, this is a job what you're doing, telling people where to send their work and editing their work and negotiating. That's a job, woman. And so I was like, is it really? Geez. So that's sort of— that was sort of the beginning of it all, was like this dawn, this awakening. Like, I'm actually doing— I'm actually doing a job that people—

Isn't that funny? Like, you stumbled upon it. You stumbled upon your passion, your thing.

I didn't.

Yeah, I did. Way into a career.

And I wasn't an editor, which is weird. Everybody— most everybody comes into this from having been an editor, you know, and then, and then And they either an editor or a lawyer, but the editors are the better ones. So yeah, and I was like one of those weirdos who came into it from, you know, a critique group in my living room. But—

That's great.

I always enjoy— I mean, I really, I liked the books. I liked the people. I liked the work. And, you know, and that just, it kind of grew from there. I met people that I sold books to, and they came on as agents like Paula You know, ended up you know she you know became I just offered her a job. She she's like sure yeah you know so the people who who came in here generally I've know I've met them through either they worked for me as an assistant or you know so we just kind of grew organically from there. But I really it's because I really I like books. I mean my right now I'm I'm like an omnivore. I I will will work with just about any kind of work. So it could be like. a junior high, you know, like silly story, you know, sort of, you know, I did one about middle grade zombie, you know, who was very, who was, you know, kind of like the loser of the group. Or I might do like a really serious exploration of, you know, the war in Iraq or something that we had, you know, because we had everything, all the whole, the full range, you know, because I'm an omnivore. Yeah. Just, just books in general. So it, you know, that's, it's hard to say what I wouldn't look at because, you know, like Russell's book, definitely. Oh my God, I love that sort of stuff. You know, like that's, that, that's definitely something that, that I would get excited about. So, you know, there's, there's a, I mean, there's, there's that sort of energy I love. I just love going to the bookstore. I love looking at stuff. It doesn't matter what kind of book it is. It's the same thing with television. Like I find on TV, Michael's flicking through the channels and I'm like, The History of Salt. Yeah, let's watch the History of Salt.

History of Salt is a good one. I love that one. We watched that one. I wanted to, um, jump off a question. Yeah, just watching your arc, and we've been stalking Russell online, you talked about going from a passion and a place into something you like. And just a little bit that we've read about you, Russell, and please feel free to fill us in, is like from architecture to painting a helmet. Like, bro, from, from architecture to unexplained infographics, I mean, it's not a swing that most people would put, or, you know, it's a little bit like Gina and bagels in the, you know, all of a sudden she's now— so fill us in, man, like, what's your story?

Yeah, uh, my interests are just all over the place, I guess. Um, started out with architecture and then got pretty into art after that.

So what led you to Infographics of the Unexplained?

Um, just, um, just an interest in it, really. Um, I had what I'd call a UFO experience a few years ago.

Oh, really?

I never really thought about it, uh, before that.

Really?

But I grew up like reading comics and, uh, watching Star Trek and stuff like that, so it wasn't— it's not too far out of my range, I don't think.

Where was the experience? Can I ask? Can I find out?

It was right outside my front door here.

Well, where are you? Is it okay for me to ask where you live? Like

Austin.

In Austin? Yeah, really?

And, um, but the, uh, I think the, the most, uh, interesting part about it is when it happened, it was, uh, this was 2 weeks before all that drone stuff started. And, um, this was like, this is probably like, um, the middle of the week, like a Wednesday or something. Um, saw this thing, and then the very next Monday is when all that drone stuff was all over the news.

Huh.

Wow.

Yeah.

So is that what sparked you to have an interest in the, the unexplained, or did you— have you always had an interest in the other?

I've always had a little interest in it, but I never really, um, considered it, uh, real, and I still don't. But

I had some, I had some very interesting experiences when I was in Australia. I mean, uh, yeah, because I'm Indigenous man, so we're on our country, our, you know, our heritage, our country, our manu, we call it. And I mean, seeing spirit beings, I mean, 12-foot beings, monsters, I mean, voices talking out of whirlwinds. And it was an everyday occurrence. It's like the veil was just thin out there. And I'd talk with a lot of my family about ancestors and what would happen and how they would operate. And like, literally one day I went out hunting and I needed to find some food. And, uh, you know, it's a story for a beverage and a cigar, but I'm just telling you, it was, uh— and I got— we need to have a beverage and a cigar. I've got stories about portal and time travel and stuff that would ruin my credibility. Um, I mean, all I know is I was there and it happened. It's like, I got no idea. I can't explain this stuff. It's just weird. But, um, I, I get it, man. So that's interesting. So that really shook you and inspired you to write this?

Yeah, and, um, just not getting, uh, any answers about what it was that I saw, um, that was kind of frustrating. So I just kind of dove into this and made an art project out of it.

So you've got a few things creative on, like you're, you're a painter, skateboards. Why a helmet or a skateboard over a canvas? Like, creatively, what does that do for you?

Um, I just Got into motorcycles when I was like in college, and, uh, so painting helmets and stuff was kind of fun for me. Yeah, I try to skateboard every morning before work.

We are great.

We— and I think that's one of the things we love about some of the people we're meeting is creativity isn't, isn't limited. It's like a passion to make something out of nothing or to take something and transform it. And, um,

we've spent a lot of time— even before I started painting, it was very important to us to have our space, uh, sort of reflect our personality. So we would spend time decorating the house, or, you know, I was constantly rearranging things. And, and for a guy who doesn't like change, you know, that was— But I think we do, as humans and as creatives, we— it's important For us to be exactly

the same every day,

to have our space, or like even our motorcycle helmet sort of needs to reflect our personality.

Captain Neurodiversity. I'm okay, I don't have to eat more than one thing. That's okay. Scrambled eggs and toast, latching out with a bit of butter. That's it.

Yeah, that's great.

And this thing Unbelievable.

So Russ, do you, um, like, do you paint and do things professionally? Is that, is that how you sort of support yourself and have your income?

I work as a, uh, I'm the facilities manager for an events company. I mostly do like any kind of work, um, and we run like the kitchen and the cafeteria at the State Capitol and the Bob Bullock Museum down here in Austin.

Oh wow, that's really cool.

Is that a motorcycle hanging from your ceiling? Yeah, it's that. Oh my— okay, all right.

Old Kawasaki from the '80s.

Okay, I had one of those. I love that bike. I had that and I had an old Suzuki 250. Oh nice. Gina, with what you do, like, you're a very creative person. Like, I, I— not only by what you read, but I watch how you've interacted with me And, um, you know, your ability to reflect on someone else's work and give creative input, I think that is a really unique gift. So what, what fuels your personal creativity?

Oh, um, I have no actual, like, artistic talents. I, I mean, honestly, um, so I think it's probably— well, I, I, I write. I mean, I I wrote, but like, like painting and things like that, can't do it. Can't do it at all. Can't draw worth a bean. And I think probably like outdoor work, working in the yard, working in the garden, working in, you know, that sort of thing, I think is probably where I enjoy, you know, the most is that sort of just really getting out. I like, and they've done all kinds of studies that show that You know, getting your hands dirty, getting your feet in the dirt is actually super healthy for you. Yeah, it is. You know, you're exposing yourself to all of those, all of the, the, the, you know, microbiome of, of, of the soil is actually super healthy. So I think that's probably, you know, and I also really, I think that we all need to get out into like the green space to, to clear our heads, to, to just be able to function. So I think just kind of being outdoors and things like that is where I you know, where I feel I'm creative. But I think I, I do get an awful lot of gratification through exploring other people's work and kind of immersing myself into their worlds and sort of looking to see, like, how, how can we make this more, even more engaging? How do we make— how do we expand this so it's even more accessible to the average reader who's coming into this? Yeah. into this world, or how do we make this information more shareable and more— so I think that, that really, really helps because I haven't, um, I haven't done a lot of my own, like, original writing. I mean, I wrote a book. Paula had me write a book many years ago, uh, not many, but a while ago, about being a single mom with a house full of boys because we had my boys and then we had, like, all of these kids that just showed up and lived with us because they had, like, no place else to go, you know. So—

I'd like to read that book.

That house.

Our house. It was, it was that house. So, you know, but for me, the creativity can be like just getting out there and growing beans or growing and growing eggplants. Or—

but you've got to be, you've got to be creative. I'm sorry to disagree with you, but I am. I like— you've— I, I've watched how you've engaged with me around my creative process. There's no way that you could not be creative and be able to look at someone else's work And spark creativity. Like, I, I look at how you've responded to my manuscripts, and it's, it's, it's not only insightful, but it's creative. It's like, you need to try this, this, and this. Now, you can be a bit bossy, but, you know, that's okay.

That's true.

But I love that in you. It's like, no, no, no, you've got to try this, you've got to do it this way, because this is going to make this better. And you've got to have that— I don't know, that you've got a different sort of creativity. The ability to—

It is coming at it from a different angle. Like, it's almost, it's almost like, honestly, it's almost like analyzing, like doing a psychological analyzing the work and the characters and what compels them. And so, I mean, yeah, I shouldn't say that I'm not creative. I have, as far as like, you know, the— I have kids who are very artistic. I've had kids where they've had, you know, you know, fiber arts hanging in the Art center and things like that. And I never had— I don't know where they got that from because it wasn't from me. But, you know, so, but I think when it comes to like, yes, definitely other people's work, it's, it's kind of like analyzing because I want to engage with it. I want it to, to feel as completely credible and immersive as I possibly can make it. So I think it's, it's like an analysis sort of thing. It's a straight— it's It's a strange process.

I see a thread running, and this is going to sound very girly, so go with me here, guys.

Okay. All right.

I see you as a nurturer because, okay, you had all these kids that you were raising, some that weren't, and you grow the plants. That takes a lot of nurturing.

None of which we've got. We've got none of those skills whatsoever.

And you're able to nurture someone's creative process or their manuscript. You, like, help them with their little baby and see it grow. Or try and kill them.

That's

true. Sorry, I'm sorry about that. Paula says I'm everybody's mom, so maybe— I

don't know. I think that's a creative bent.

Very much so, and a very good one.

Yeah.

What about, what about you, Russ? What drives your creativity? Because you paint, you've got great ink, you've got a great motorcycle just hanging randomly from the roof. Your artwork is— you did the artwork in this, didn't you?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's fantastic. The artwork is fantastic. So what fuels your creativity?

Uh, all kinds of things, just whatever inspires me.

What, like, give us an example.

Um, well, lately I've been kind of into history stuff. That's kind of what inspired that book.

Do you like graphic novels, stuff like that?

Like, I do, uh, read a lot lately, but I did a lot when I was like in high school and stuff.

Really?

Read a lot. Yeah.

We were just watching a documentary on Frank Miller, you know, the guy who did 300 and Batman Begins. I mean, um,

genius.

His artwork is genius. And what was interesting, because it, it actually spoke to me about something that Melissa was working through and Gina really challenged me on, um, early on, was it was the absence of things that is more important than the things themselves. Like We put so many— like authors, we are verbose, we are very somewhat narcissistic and self-indulgent.

And like the sound of your own sentences.

Love the sound of our own sentences. We put our own stories, and what Hemingway said, you've got to kill the darlings, you know. And, and Gina talked to me at one stage about sparseness in noir, and I realized that it wasn't what I had on the page, it's what I didn't have on the page that made a difference. And I watched this documentary on Frank Miller, and he talked about how his art got to a pace in its evolution where it was the absence of color and the absence of drawing that, that really made it. And, and I look at some of what you've done here and how you've illustrated things, and it's, it's very detailed, but it's, it's actually, it's actually sparse as well. It's like it's not overdone.

Oh, thank you.

And I, I think that's— I don't know, maybe I'm just on a rant here.

No, I do. I think simplicity is important. And like, one of the nicest critiques I ever got from an artist who I really respect, Jonathan Throsby, he said about one of my sketches, he said, I love what you're putting in, but I also love what you're leaving out.

Yeah.

And I, I think that's really important.

What about you, Gina, with art, with writers? What have you found?

As far as I think that what you hit it on the nail on the head when you said they tend to put too much in, they tend to be verbose. They do. That's one of the things that always, I'm always cutting back. We're always cutting. And it's not just because right now publishers are telling us that we need to cut back because word counts are, they're dropping maximum word counts on books because of production costs. But it's more just because In order to, you know, keep the reader engaged, you need to keep the story moving. So when people get— they do get self-indulgent and they wander off and they, they, they want to, they want to explore something in the story. I'm like, where are we going with this? Like, how is this advancing the plot? Um, and, and that's where you, you— That's really good. Sometimes they end up, you know, they, they really, really want to tell us all about this Chippendale chair or whatever, you know, that's this in the room, you know, because that was really important for them.

It's a chair. You sit on it. That's it.

That's it. I mean, I had an author once I— that I had to sit on to get her to finish her second book. The first one was a bestseller and it was her debut, and the sophomore book is always hard when the first one's very successful. And she'd gone to— and, and I hope she's not tuned in— and she'd gone to the Smithsonian to research a bird, and she wouldn't move, she wouldn't write anymore until she knew exactly what sound this bird made that lived on this shore in this river in, in Russia. And, and I was like, we really have a deadline. It doesn't—

doesn't—

We watched a movie about that, didn't we? That movie with that guy on that island up north.

Oh, what was that called? I don't know.

It was about this— it was so funny about a writer and a bird, this extinct bird. It was exactly that story. That's funny.

They go down rabbit holes. So my writers will go down rabbit holes and they'll start— and I'm like, you can do the research, but understand, like, it's not ending up on the page. It will inform the page, but it's not ending up on the page. Okay. So let Let your research inform the writing. But you have, I mean, you have to move the plot. You know, just the year, the decades and the ages when, when lush, you know, wonderful writing and just, you know, it takes 10, the first 10 pages in some of these old novels were barely getting us into the, you know, the room with the character. That's gone. That's, those, those days are gone, you know. So I mean, you can still write beautifully, you know, literary work, you still write beautifully, you still have a great voice. But you have to move that plot along, you have to engage the reader and Tell us a story, you know.

How much do you think, um, like streaming— so like, I know like Netflix now and Prime, they make their, uh, movies so that people can be on their cell phones while they're watching a movie. And you've even got a recap halfway through where you can hit it and it'll give you a summary because you got distracted. How much do you think that short-form videos, that whole distracted mentality, is changing publishing or writing? Or art in general?

I, well, it's, I think it's got to have an impact. And I mean, I've got a bunch of grandchildren, a lot of grandchildren. And, you know, so it was just—

And some you borrow from the kids in the street.

Yes. And we noticed that, they've noticed that children who, little kids, if they're exposed to certain types of cartoons where things move very, very quick and move from scene to scene to scene to scene, those children don't learn to have patience. Their You know, and they can't get off the screen. And I think the same thing— I think they've known— people who produce videos, people who produce cartoons, they've noticed that they can make it addictive. And I think in social media, they, they know the formula to make it addictive. TikTok, or, you know, all, um, you know, or Reels— they know the length of the, of the, the video before you have to move to another one. And that— it does— it, it ultimately affects the The ability to engage deeply and do the deep work. There's a terrific book, a terrific business and career book called Deep Work. And I think it teaches a lesson. You have to disconnect from all of that because it really will affect— college professors are telling us that their children— their children— their students are no children anymore, they're in college— can't read a chapter. Wow. They can't read a single chapter. They have the assignment, you know, is go home and read this 20-page chapter for tomorrow, and they don't have the— they'll come in and complain that they don't have the ability to engage with that much material. So, I think that definitely it's unfortunate. And does that impact the pace? I think it impacts the pacing of books. The length of the book is more production value. Absolutely. I think we're just production costs. The bigger the book, the more it costs, the higher the, the, the COVID price has to be. Either that or you have to sell like a billion copies. Um, so when they do, you know, when they do a P&L, it's a lot cheaper to produce that, that smaller book than that. So I used to, you know, I used to sell 135,000-word books. Now people want— then they're selling me 90 for the same genres. Um, and I think that the costs and cover price, that definitely had a big impact on what we see as length, but We have to train the children. We just— I just went to People of Publishing in New York. I sat in on a middle grade roundtable where we talked about, well, how do we engage people? Because we're losing them at that point. That genre is suffering wildly. We're losing that 8 to 12-year-old reader. And they're like, so what are the tricks that we can do to bring them in? Well, you notice that with the big series, the Harry Potters and all these other series that have done, they start out with the books being much shorter. And they grow longer as the series goes along. You're training the children. Of course, they're aging up as they're reading, um, although a lot of these kids will binge the series in a couple of months. But they're— you're training the children to, to accept longer and longer, to be more patient with the story development, to, to, to be able to sit down and engage for longer and longer periods. And I think it's really important that we, that we do that. So that multitasking— and I'm, I'm guilty of it. Sometimes I'll sit in front of the TV. We all are. And I'll have something going on. But honestly, the way to be creative, the way to do the deep work is to disengage and to only focus on one thing at a time. And, you know, so quit multitasking. It's not good for

you. What about you, Russell? What are your thoughts around this topic?

Yeah, I have the same problem. I think I try to multitask a little too much when I'm

Do you— I know you're a graphic designer, but not all of your art is on the computer. And so do you find yourself— do you know when you need to take a break from the computer and just—

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah. Okay.

So talk about that. Talk about, talk about that. How do you know? What are the signs that you've got to graduate from one to another, move out from behind the screens?

Uh, mostly just sitting in one spot for too long or something. Uh, like Gina was talking about having to go out in the garden once in in a while. Yeah, I need to go into the garage once in a while. Or, you know,

AI has really impacted graphic artists. Um, what, what, what are your thoughts around AI and art overall, art in your specific area? Um, what are your thoughts on that?

Uh, I'm not a fan of AI, but, um, I do use it to, um, to copy like fonts and stuff like that. Little things like that make it a lot easier. Like in the book, I wanted to do a different font on every page.

Yeah.

And I don't think I would have been able to do that without AI because I'd have to download it and then put it through 2 different programs

to get it there. So have you found AI has inhibited your creative process or enhanced it?

I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know.

Do you, do you think that it's a threat to being a digital artist? Or what do you— what's your— in what way?

Um, I feel like it, uh, maybe the people are using it as more of a crutch than they should.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I was reading something the other day about this creative team, and their in-house rules were in any of the initial meetings with a client No one is allowed to access any AI whatsoever. And once we come to a stage where we've got our agreement when it comes to scaling, like reproducing this, like what you did, take this font and do something, they said that's when we allow AI to come in.

Yeah, all the problem solving and decision making happens at the human level.

At the human level.

Yeah.

And when they need to do something like create a font or whatever, then they can take it to the computer.

What about publishing, Gina? Because it's a big brouhaha, isn't it?

Big kerfuffle.

It's a nightmare. Um, I think it's probably the biggest threat that we're facing right now because agencies are seeing— publishers and agencies both are being inundated with AI-created manuscripts.

Yeah.

And you've probably— you're probably aware of a couple of big controversies recently where significant books were pulled because there was an allegation which seemed supported by the tests that the book was AI written. So, um, yeah, we're seeing some, some big, some big problems. We also, um, you know, we have issues with AI replacing narrators. I, I love my narrators, our— the narrators that we have for our stories. Are people who make their living doing it. Some of them are, you know, well-trained, well-respected actors. And of course, their voices can be reproduced by, you know, using AI. And that's being offered now, um, free of charge from, you know, uh, yes, online, um, like, you know, Audible. If you want to go down and, you know, download your own book, they, they'll narrate it for free. And they have like 150 voices you can pick, whatever number that you can choose from to narrate. So it's definitely starting to impinge on the livelihoods of any creative because they're being replaced. Singers, we've seen videos where they have AI created their personalities. They are stars and they don't exist in real life. Yeah. You know, and so it's definitely an issue. We worry about, you know, we worry about the opportunity for new writers coming up. In the next 5 or 10 years if we don't curb it now. And a number of countries have put in strict laws and regulations to protect the livelihoods of artists and authors, you know, by restricting the use of AI. But it's becoming cleverer and cleverer. You know, it used to be super easy to sit down and pick out a manuscript. I could look online. I'd know within pages, you know, if something had been created by AI. And but it's, you know, they teach themselves and they stole the property of millions of books and illegally used them to train the AI. And that, which is, you know, now we have the Anthropic lawsuit and we have another one coming up as well. You know, there'll be more, there'll be more, because that's what they did. And they knew what they were doing. They knew that they were stealing works, they were pirating works and using them without author's permission to train AI. Yeah. So now they can sit down and say, let's write a book, have, you know, write it, write a 100,000-word horror novel in the vein of Stephen King, or write, you know, write this, write a whatever. And the machines can do it because it's been— they've been trained, they've digested enough of the material of the writers to know how they can reproduce something that would sound like that. And when people bring me something— I've asked people to be honest with me, and I'll ask them, like, did you use it? You can use it for editing, you can use it to copy edit, like, tell me where I made a grammar error. Okay, fine. You know, grammarly is fine. Um, but, you know, tell me if you're using it for drafting. Tell me if you've used it to create your script or whatever. I need to know that because I— we won't accept it. And then we're talking, we're in discussion right now about adding it to our agency contract.

Yeah.

That, you know, what uses of AI are acceptable or not. They've— they had cover artists, you know, like, you know, Russell. They, they, they, you know, an artist who would make his living painting. Now they— a lot of covers are being produced by AI. So that's This limiting the art department's, you know, opportunity for human, you know, human workers. Luckily, we when they when they've told us like a big a very large, you know, Big Five publisher had admitted they were using AI to create covers. The uproar was significant, and they they pulled back, and they were like, "Sorry, we didn't realize it was." You know, yeah, it was that big a deal. It really is that big a deal. We want we want to. support those of us who work in the arts or those of us who, who support the arts. We want to make sure that all artists, all creatives, you know, have an

opportunity.

Yeah, yeah.

And have an opportunity for a livelihood, you know. And we are so much in love with the creative process, John and I, that like we will talk sometimes for weeks about his characters and his books and, oh, what would so-and-so say? Or—

Yeah.

And So we love the process so much. I can't imagine. And Janine online said just now, she said, I could not turn over my writing capabilities to an AI. That's my voice. And like, we're so enamored with the process. I think it would take a lot of the joy out of it.

I think one, one, and we're in the tech industry, we have a, we run a tech company that funds our ability to pursue our creative arts. So we're in this big left turn for us, you know, at this stage in our life and full-time creatives where we're going. So we hedge, we're also aware of that. We're passionate about creative. I don't believe AI can write emotion. I got a friend that all he listens to is AI-created science fiction audiobooks.

Really?

Yeah. And he loves it because it's the same thing over and over again. So we're also aware that all of us as a generation are at the front end of AI. So it's a little bit like those people who didn't want motor cars because they were gonna, you know, they're too stinky and kill horses. So I think we've got a challenge and a privilege and an opportunity, and we have to do it carefully. So what we've done is we camp out AI around everything but our creative process. Like, we use it to spin up our websites, we use it to promote our products. So we're— we've embraced it very reservedly. Like, we, we literally have— it's like a camper. Like, we spun up something, Russell. I was showing, um, Gina, um, we came up with a syndication for a net— for a worldwide PR company for both Melissa's art and my writing, because I'm thinking I want to get out there. Gina's working herself in terms of getting my book to publishers. I want to reward her effort by having everything in place that I can. And so part of that was I needed 20 websites translated into different languages. And like you couldn't with your font, there's no way I couldn't have done it. I did the numbers on it this week. I saved $188,000 or 7.5 months worth of work. in, in, for the cost of $2,000 in a period of 2 weeks. And everything was done to promote the books that Gina is going to sell. She's going to sell them to an editor, I'm going to get a publisher, and it's going to come out. And I think as creatives, we're actually able to do that if you're prepared to be authentic and audacious and not hand over your soul to AI. And I think that becomes a real intrinsic Like, it becomes an issue of integrity. Do I use AI for editing and grammar? I am horribly dyslexic, and, um, I, I never, you know, I— it's been, it's been a, a game changer for me, for want of a better 1990s term.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but it's been because I feel in— I don't feel inhibited or embarrassed to submit my work to someone like Gina, uh, because I've been through it 4 million times to make sure that all the spelling's right. Because I'm incredibly insecure about it. And it's like, okay, I've done my best. I'm going to give my best. It allows me to put my best foot forward, but it could never take away the creative experience.

Yeah.

Um,

it's made you a better writer though, because you— it's, it's corrected you. So now you don't need the correction. You've—

you're like—

so it's like being in the classroom with a teacher who's teaching you, you know, grammar, punctuation. Absolutely. So it That served a purpose that helped you creatively. It not only did— it not only taught you those basics, but it also gave you more confidence because now you know you're doing it correctly. Yeah. So I don't think that there's a problem in using a computer program as a tutor, you know, like as a math tutor, as a language tutor to help you if you're— especially as adults, we don't have the time or opportunity to go to school anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is helping. This is going to help you. train you up so that you'll be a better writer. It's going to teach you, teach you something.

Yeah.

Um, but, you know, as far as like allowing it to, to be part of the process and, you know, plot the book or, you know, whatever, you know, that's, that's very, very problematic.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like, I like what Russell said, like, uh, he used AI to get the font because it would have taken him hours to do it. I, I think that's a great use of AI. AI can't create his

Right,

yeah, obviously. Yeah, a tool.

Yeah, it's a— it was a tool to help him be creative, to do what he needed to do to make that book this beautiful, interesting, visually interesting piece of art. So yeah, that's— that was— that's worth it.

So Russell, where can people get your book, mate?

Uh, it's on Amazon.

Amazon for Infographics of the Unexplained. So get yourself a copy.

Uh, it doesn't have your name on it though, Russell. It has

got notes and art by Space Giant.

And so

tell us your Instagram handle again. It's,

uh, it's, uh, @spacegiant.

@spacegiant.

I will put this in the Instagram chat for all you people sitting there.

Very cool, very cool, Russell. Really, honestly, that's exactly the kind of book that I really enjoy, and I think it's— and it's engaging for younger people too. I think, you know, that those graphics are— and it shows something and it puts them in a different perspective. It shows us something in a different light. So I think that's, that's really intriguing. I bet you this will, this will be something that the kids will enjoy, that you could get them interested. Oh, they will. And

a whole bunch of my X-gen mates love it as well. Like, I

was,

I was at a police gathering last night and I told them about this.

Oh, cool.

And they loved it. And I got an— I, I made a mind, uh, veteran ex-copper, like, he is a Bigfoot aficionado. And, uh, I told him about this, he goes, bro, I gotta meet Russell.

Great. And Gina, where can folks find you? And also, what, what sort of things are you— are you guys looking for manuscripts?

Oh my gosh. Um, well, our, our website, type it in. Don't, don't, don't, don't go to the search because we realize Type in www.talkatnotch.net. Type it in, go directly to it. We just found out we're working with Google and Bing because they— a company in— or a website in Turkey hijacked it. So if you searched for us and you clicked on a link through Google or Bing in the last couple of days, you would get taken to this website in Turkey. And it's not like it's— so, oh no, seriously. So you have to type it in exactly. So, but, but my, my associate Amy Collins here, who is also our webmaster, is working with them, and they should be able to resolve it quickly. But I was like, why bother? What's— I don't understand what is the purpose. But we're— we are— the 6 of us have a really wide range. So if you go on the website and go through the agent tabs, I'm a generalist, so I'm an omnivore. I'll eat anything. I just— I love it all. Um, but the rest of us tend to specialize. Uh, Paula's very much our mystery maven, you know, although she does some other things as well. Saba is our children's and young adult lit person. Again, she's reaching out. Amy specializes in speculative fiction. Nadia does history— historicals, I should say, historical fiction, women's fiction. And Tommy does literary fiction and some crime fiction. So, I mean, you just have to look at— go to the agent tabs, figure out who does what. There'll also be links there to tell you how to query each one of them. So,

so what should they have? What should people have prepared before, before coming to see you and bothering you, to be honest? Because what would you get, 1,000 manuscripts a month?

We get on average each of us— well, we get queries first. We only get manuscripts if we ask them for them. So most, most of us are getting somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 queries every— so that's each of us here. So yeah, the agency as a whole, we're seeing, you know, somewhere like You know something like thirty thousand to fifty thousand queries a year. So if you're writing fiction, it's your first book. Finish the book. We can't sell it until it's finished. So you know we also need to make sure you can finish a book. If you're writing nonfiction, even if it's your first book, other than memoir, you need a proposal. So look online, read you know what what a proposal entails. There's an art and craft to doing a book proposal, but you should. Don't query until you feel confident. Don't query on a first draft. If you've— you know, don't send anybody your first draft. That should go to your beta readers, your critique group, your mom, whoever it is.

Bullet bean.

Yes, exactly. So because you, you really want to— you have one chance to make the first impression, so you want to make sure that you're sending out something that's absolutely amazing. So, you know, that's— make sure you feel confident. Like, this is where I'm at, this is where I feel confident with this book. Um, and then, you know, but take classes, honest to gosh. Um, I see people every month or so in the classes that we teach online, and I, I just— they grow so— I can watch them visually grow from revision to revision as they're learning, you know, more about how to, how to tell their stories.

I didn't know you did classes online.

We do, we do. Well, we work with Writer's Digest, but we also work with a couple of other, um, organizations. Writer's Digest is the most. In fact, we're having a meeting with them when? Next week about taking out an entire new, like, just Talcott Notch branded craft series of craft classes. But we love doing these. I do see— I just, I see people, the ones who really dig in, really listen, really pay attention, I just see them blossom over the course of doing a couple of revisions.

I'll come. Okay.

Well, you've done that with me. You've basically done that class repeatedly.

Yeah, I know, but like, I'm a sucker for learning. What about you, Russell? What, um, what about learning for you? What's important as far as growing your own learning in the— in your—

As far as writing or—

Yeah, and art and everything. Like, how do you grow? Is— well, how do you push yourself to learn new things?

Um, just repetitive, just doing the same thing over and over until I, until I'm happy with it.

Till you get— I know, mate, like, uh, 70,000 drafts.

Yeah.

What did I read one writer say? The first draft is just for you. Never show anybody. Never show anyone your first draft. Heard another, heard another guy, um, Harlan Coben, said write 4 books and get them out of the way because by your 5th it'll be ready. And I, and I, you know, I thought, hoo-ha. But then when I look back, it's like the ones that Gina and I are working on now are book 4 and book 5 in terms of fictional books I've written. And

yeah,

um, I, I think I, I grew. And I think that's what I, you know, and I would encourage anyone who's a writer out there or an artist, because Mel's had some really good mentors, is you've got to put yourself in uncomfortable situations. with people who believe in you enough to be critical.

Yeah, that's good advice.

And you have to be. You know, we all think we're awesome, and some people can turn up with a draft too, and they are. Good luck to them, you know. But I think that's the very rarity. I'd be surprised if anyone just turned up with the second draft and it was any good, or the second painting they've ever done.

Right. It's hundreds and hundreds of— like, I was watching on Russ's Instagram, he's painting on this motorcycle gas tank, and you only get one go at that, really, unless you want to just rework the whole entire gas tank. You get one try, and leading up to that—

Yeah, but how many tries have you painted?

Thousands of paintings.

Other things, random crap.

Yeah,

to get to be comfortable to do that. Yeah.

And that's what, uh, a good friend of ours, Jonathan, told me. He was like, do 100 paintings. He's like, just do 100 paintings.

Yeah, and he did say that. He said, just stop, just do 100, knock them out, because— and don't think you look— that it's all going to be crap or whatever it is, but just—

he's like, don't worry about it, just do it. I love it.

What, what I found interesting is like these first 4 books I went through, I came up with the one that got Gina excited, which was great. I then stepped back one and I was able to redo it based upon— and, you know, you know, on top of working full-time, I was doing another 40 to 50 hours a week, um, on this thing that is my passion. So it wasn't— this wasn't a part-time gig for me. This is the only thing I want to spend the rest of my days doing. But what I found interesting, because Gina and I had a conversation this last week, yesterday I think it was, and she, she wants me to write some short stories. I've now been able to go back into books 1, 2, and 3 and pull out parts of those, and I've got kernels of 3 to 4 stories already ready to go. So I don't think anything you ever paint or anything you ever write or anything you ever sing ever gets wasted.

Nothing's wasted.

I think all that process that's necessary to, you know, create, I think it stays with you, and it gets to a point where it's like, ah, now I understand what this is Great.

Yep, it's a good process.

It is, it's— and it is a process. So Russell, first off to you, any, any final words to people? And then I'll throw to Gina. She's got a big dinner date coming up.

I do.

Anything with you, for you, mate?

Thanks for having me. It's good to meet y'all.

Oh, well, great. Of course. And people need to go to Amazon and get hold of your book.

Oh yeah, again, it's called Infographics of the Unexplained. Explained. So go look that up on Amazon.

What's your plans for it, mate? Are you wanting to do a bigger one, or what do you want to do?

I'm doing one that's more, uh, architectural based now. That's, um, it's gonna be more on like, um, old like fortresses and old tombs and things like that. And I'm gonna do a lot of, uh, isometric drawings and things like that for it.

Very cool.

You got to send me that one too, mate. I'm going to do a book review on this on my Brilliant to bollocks. And, you know, just first up, you get full brilliant, mate. Like, I'll give you that. Yeah,

yeah,

so very cool. What about for you, Jenna? Wrapping up for you, what would you encourage people with, and what do you— what would you like to offer people?

Yeah, I would say, you know, go follow John's experience. I mean, understand that it's going to take multiple books, multiple drafts. Let the draft sit. Write a draft, put it away, leave it sit for whatever—a month, six weeks—so you can come back to with fresh eyes. You can't edit something that you just literally just wrote, and also push yourself through a whole first draft. Okay, I know many, many people get—they get stuck on revising and revising the first fifty pages or whatever, and they never finish the book. Push through, even if it's you know, even if you have areas where you're just saying. Now I write a scene where Mary and John get into a, you know, that's fine. Just get it all on page, get a rough draft, then you've got something to work with. So always, always push through, get that first full draft and then revise. Don't get stuck on revising, rising the first couple of pages.

Yeah, I'd echo that. I know I was writing Till It's Done and I'd been working my butt off on that and I just had this crazy idea about this journalist who had cancer. and he wanted— his life was totally unredeemable. And it just started as this, and it turned into this like passionate love affair with his character. And that was what was surprising for me as an artist, is watching my agent go, no, I want that guy. And it's like, but this is— but this one. She goes, no, no, no, that one. Okay, I'll, I'll stomp this one and I'll get over here. But what was interesting is for the next 3 or 4 months, I read 20 noir novels, watched 30 noir movies because I hadn't any idea what I was doing. And by pushing into that, it allowed me to come back and make this better. And I think to be able to go creatively through that journey, nothing is wasted, everything's a possibility. But just as Gina said, is don't stop. Yeah, you just have to keep going. Do one, put it down, go again, come back to it later on, go again, go again. Until your feet get on the ground.

And don't self-pub it. Don't get— don't, don't say, I'm frustrated because no big publisher has bought the book, so I'm going to self-pub it right now, because that can be so destructive. You want readers to see your best work. Your best work is something that someone has edited and worked with you on. And frequently, you know, people, they tell me they get frustrated, so they throw it out there and they self-pub it immediately. And I'm like, that's not your best work. That's not, that's not going to win them over. So take your time, you know, like make sure that it's absolutely great. Don't get frustrated and say, look, I'm getting a lot of rejection, so I'm just going to skip to the end. Um, because even if you're going to do self-pub, lots of— we work with lots of indie authors, lots of people that self-pub their work, but they've worked with editors, they've worked with the critique group.

Yeah, good.

You know, they, they make sure that what they put out there is the best work that they possibly can. So don't just get frustrated, like If you're getting rejections, see, like a lot of rejections, a lot of rejections, see it as a sign that you still need to do some work. You need to dig in and you still need to work on there, um, you know, because it's, it's, it's not ready. It's not ready yet. And even if your goal is indie publishing, just make sure it's always the best work you can put out.

And Gina taught me this, like Till It's Done, a book I wrote, um, I had 17 beta readers all of Hood loved it. 6 drafts coming into 7 drafts, and she said no. She said, I think that— what she said was, I believe this, this, and this can be better. And it was like, okay. Then what I did is go and join a writer's group and spend the next 3 months, uh, twice a week reading chapters, sitting in a room of people who, you know, were not pro

Whatever.

It wasn't about dragon robots and stuff. And so, but, but that, those 3 to 6 months was the best for that book. And I, I am so grateful for someone taking the time to see what not only it could be, but who I could be. And I want to encourage everyone out there, be they a visual artist, be they a written artist, to try and find your tribe. Mm-hmm. Your people who are going to believe in you enough to speak, you know, life on your work, but be prepared to do it in a critical manner. And I, I think it's tremendous, you know. So thank you both.

Thank you guys for coming.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Thanks.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah.

Enjoy, enjoy dinner with, um, Michael.

Thank you.

You're my best. I look forward to meeting him sometime.

Thank you. We got to get him on camera sometime.

We should. We'll have to do that. We'll sneak And, uh, Russell, thank you, mate. Thank you, brother, for your book. Appreciate it. And, uh, you guys have been tremendous. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks so much.