Welcome to Finally Friday with John and Melissa.

Keep it up. Your energy draws the crowd. We're letting people know, so get ready to welcome them. All fans in John A. King's fan club can now create a unique heart. Me together that represents this community. I don't want— hey, Jessica sent me a book, the lady I, I did a podcast with. She's gonna send me a book anyway. So she's written this book and, um, hey Jessica, if you're on TikTok, if you wanna hop on this, I'll send you a Zoom link and, uh, you can hop on and we can talk about your book. I think it'll be a great idea, don't you?

So hello, TikTok.

TikTok Nick, how you doing? Hey, yeah, Jessica, we might, we might set you up to come on sometime. How you going, Instagram? Good to have you here. X, YouTube, nice to have everyone along. My mate Nick's here from Man Church. Good to have you, mate, as always. Nick, we're gonna be up in— where are we gonna be?

Tennessee.

I think I'm going bear hunting in South Carolina this year, North Carolina this year, and then next year we're in Tennessee doing an event. So, so yeah. Hey, good to see you. Good to see you, TXR, Alvaro and Debbie, Firefighters, HE Mini on Instagram. So Finally Friday, we made it.

Yay!

And the aim of Finally Friday is just to have a chat. We want to answer any questions, talk to you about the creative process, talk to you about life. As many of you know, we're involved in the trauma space, recovery space, performance space, and we want to just give you some time to answer and ask some questions and talk about it. So creatively for us this week.

This week.

This week. We did the deck.

Okay, so we did do the deck.

So I think that was probably a marriage challenge as opposed to anything else.

But we, we had a new deck put on several months ago and we had to let it sit and cure and do the whole thing. And so now it's time to stain it and we have this Australian timber oil that we prefer to put on there. And so it's one coat, which is awesome.

Yeah, it was great.

So, John, yesterday in like 100+ heat was out there with this big sander that we rented, and he sanded the whole thing.

Got my Outback on.

And then last night after the sun went down a little bit, I went and did the hand sanding just around the little steps and stuff. My part was like hardly any on the sanding.

But you did fantastic.

Um, and then this morning we got up early Because the oil has to be applied before it gets 90 degrees outside. And so in Texas this time of year, um, you need to be up early if you want to be before 90. So at 8—

I'm trying to get you in the screen there on Instagram.

Oh, I know. Well, sorry, Instagram. Puddle up.

Um, I think we've got to change the orientation, but—

So at 7 o'clock this morning, we were staining the deck, and it was 84.

And it was.

It was 84 degrees.

And it was great.

It was, it was fine, and everything went fine, and we were done in plenty of time to eat breakfast and then go to work, which was awesome.

It was awesome.

Um, but that is why we're so tired right now, and we kind of look a little—

You look great.

Tired.

So if you can only see half of Mel on Instagram, I apologize for that because we're trying to work out this streaming video stuff and we're working on it.

Sorry, guys.

So yeah, so we did the deck and that was good and the dog has protested.

Oh, we had to lock the dog in, in the kennel, you know, and she's used to having the whole run of the backyard and, uh, she's part husky, so very dramatic about everything.

Bloody hell, like seriously. But, you know, first world problems for a bloody dog. So she had to stay in a kennel.

She has a good life.

So we're sitting in Mel's studio because we did the deck on my writing shed. So we're here. So I wanna talk a little bit about the writing process. And if you're a writer, I wanna encourage you to invite your friends, come on yourself on a Friday and talk about the writing process. I've written 32 nonfiction books and I've written 7 fiction books and we're in the process of working with Tolcatta Agency to get those traditionally published. And so part of the writing process is, and I don't have an MFA, a Master in Fine Arts, I am just a plotter, written poetry all my life, written all my life different things and I really wanted to give it a go at how to write fiction. And I think with like, Melissa is a self-taught artist. I think we'd call it self-taught writing. I don't know how else you do but teach yourself writing. And you've got to be a reader to write. I believe that's very strong, very strongly you've got to do that. And I think part of the challenge with writing is like, how do you write? How do you go from never having written a fiction book to writing a fiction book? Here's just a couple of thoughts for you. I'd love to hear your comments. If you've got any comments, please hop on and have a chat about that. I think what you've got to do is you have to read and then you just need to start. Yeah, you just have to start with writing and understand that the very first draft of everything you're gonna write, you're gonna write for you and that's just really to get the story out. But then how do you know if you're any good? Well, there's a couple of things that you can do to work that out. You can join a writer's group, you can have some trusted friends, probably not your grandma because she's just gonna love what you do, but then you get some honest feedback about the process. And the other thing I would encourage you to do is listen to audiobooks, they're a good way because audiobooks are presenting the written word in a different format and you can hear it as opposed to read it, and it's accessing a whole range of aspects and parts of your brain that are different, and it appeals, and you can hear how words should flow. And hearing how words should flow as opposed to reading— and you're reading with a prejudice, you're reading with your intonation, your voice inflection, and your reflections— whereas when you're hearing someone else read a fictional story, you're hearing it with all of their interpretations. And that actually helps you expand your internal monologue and dialogue on how to write and what writing would look like.

Yeah, I like that.

So what about your process? You've used YouTube videos a lot. You've done some online courses.

I do, like, for process and technique, I'd love to watch YouTube videos and just see how other people are doing things. Like, putting paint down, or I watched the thing today where I have these really thin boards that we have that we bought, and I was trying to figure out how to use them because they're so thin. You can actually coat them with, um, linen and paint on them.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I found that out from a YouTube video today, so I wouldn't have known that otherwise. I don't know if I'll do it, but, um, so that is definitely one way. I think for me creatively this week, I was trying to think about the process of painting and like how I want to feel as I'm doing it, as I'm creating a painting. Um, because that is the sort of frequency that comes through when someone's looking at your painting. You want them to feel what you are feeling as you—

Yeah.

And so I just put up on my wall, uh, wonder, joy, and curiosity. That's how I want to feel every time I paint. And so, um, just the sense of wonder is like, um, being really thankful and grateful that I can observe the world and then try to relay my take on how I see the world. Um, and then joy, of course, and curiosity. And so curiosity was a big one for me this week because I was making some sketches in my sketchbook, like before bed one night.

And I— if you've got any questions on the creative process, B. Spencer, good to have you here. Hardy Oll, Melanie Wilson, please pop on and give us a question. We've got some questions that came through last week we're gonna answer.

Yeah, we would love to have questions.

We'd love to have a chat to you about it.

So I was making some little sketches in my sketchbook with my crayons. They are at least professional crayons, you know, for all the artists out there. But these were based on some photos that I took at our local botanic gardens. And then I asked myself the question, what if everything in this sketch that I made suddenly got fat? Like, what if it, it just all was more substantial? And so I made this sketch And the pot got fat and the flowers got fat. And I was like, what if everything didn't have to fit on the page? And so, just asking yourself questions like that as you're— I know as John's writing, he'll say, what would this character actually do in this situation?

Good. Interesting.

What would a man say in this conversation? Or what would the this woman say? How would she respond? So I think asking yourself questions all the time as you're doing whatever it is that you do.

And I think especially with fiction, you've got to— and I'm— there's 2 types of people who write fiction. You can write it as a plotter or a plotter. And a plotter sits down and writes out everything very meticulously, writes out all your characters, writes out the whole plot. And a plotter sort of plods along in the thing and sees how it unfolds. And I don't think either anything's perfect or right. I think there's a combination of both. And I think you can be a plotter, have an idea where the story is going to go and then plot along with it. But one thing I've learned is that it's very good to understand who your characters are, like what is their voice, what is their motivation, what is their driver. And you, you can spend a lot of time trying to work that stuff out, or you can work that stuff out as you go. And I think sometimes people use things as excuses as opposed to reasons. I like to jump into a story and start to write a story and then see as my characters develop, start to take notice of that. And I've been writing this story till it's done for quite some time now on military sexual trauma, PTSD, corruption in the VA, because a lot of my work has been with veterans and first responders. dealing with the corruption in the government and within the VA and even within the military institutions. And we've got a real passion for helping our fellow countrymen and survivors deal with some of that stuff. So I wrote Till It's Done. But it's been amazing to watch Till It's Done mature as a book. Amazing to watch the characters. And every time I go, I finish, think I've finished the draft, I end up going back again because I've learned more about my characters. And I know it sounds strange.

Yeah.

You learn more about these imaginary people, but these imaginary people become really close to you in a way because you spend a lot of time thinking with them, talking about them, talking with them. And I told that to my agent the other day. She asked me something and I said, well, you know, I've been talking to him about it. And she gave me— Gina gave me the funniest look. I thought that was kind of cool. But I do, I talk with these people. You spend a lot of time with them in your head. And when you're not with them, you're with them talking and thinking about how it should go. And I think with allowing your writing or your art, be it woodwork, carpentry, sculpture, painting, you've got to allow it to evolve. And I think But I've watched you evolve. I've watched your painting style evolve, and in a way, you're having a conversation with the canvas all the time.

I am, yeah. And my, like, whether it's animals or flowers or whatever it is I'm painting, I, I do have a conversation with those things. And when I feel like a painting hasn't gone well, um, it's typically because I feel like I didn't get on the canvas What was actually happening in my head. Yeah. So, you know, try again another day, obviously. But these characters are with us.

So TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, any questions you've got, any things you wanna ask about trauma recovery or artistic creativity, any things you wanna share, triumphs, trials from the weeks. Things you overcome, things you've got to overcome, and we can talk about those as well.

I have the questions from last week. So what is your inspiration for your stories?

Man, that's a good one.

Like, how do you come up with a story?

Um, that's very good. I think some of it's personal experience. And for me, a lot of my stories sit around injustice. Like, I watched all my, a lot of my mates faced with injustice within the VA or the medical system and be unable to deal with it. So I wanted to come up and write a story about that. But then the Harker series, that was a lot to do with, you know, human trafficking and the hiding of that and and pedophilia. We were involved in the Epstein cases and the Nygaard cases and seeing that constantly being swept under the, you know, the carpet and no one talking about those things made me want to, you know, take all this factional stuff and bring it to fiction. But I think part of it, there's something else that underlines that is I know that when I write, it's always about dark, broken heroes and stories of redemption.

Okay.

And I think that's a life arc myself. And I think you always write from where you come from. So regardless of what the capsule is, it's always going to be about these dark, broken heroes that are always seeking some sort of redemption because I think that's a life arc. I think all of us are wanting that. And I think there's very little of that left in fiction writing. It's got really political, it's got really tropey, and there's just nothing like a good old-fashioned beach read where the good guy wins, he gets the girl, you know, he gets to shoot some bad guys.

There's resolution at the end.

Resolution at the end.

He becomes a better person because of what happened to him. Yeah.

And he could be a total dick, but it doesn't matter, you know, it's just great. So yeah, I'm simple in what I like to read. I like to read complex things, but I'm still, if I'm gonna sit at a beach and read something, I want to just really enjoy it. And that's the sort of fiction I'm trying to write.

That's great. And do people that you know appear in your books?

Oh yes, you do.

That's great.

So does my whiskey. Cheers. This is a great Irish whiskey. We should get them to sponsor us.

Oh yeah, right. I, I did want to mention that nothing that we mentioned on here as far as products is sponsored. We would tell you if they were, but I wanted to say—

All your art supplies are sponsored by bloody me. What are you talking about?

Yes, I do have patronized a wonderful patron in my husband. This week he bought me a watercolor journal to use It's got beautiful paper. I have not used it yet. It is called Lightwish. This is what the little thing looks like. Watercolor journal from Lightwish. That is lightwish.com, I think. So we will see how that goes. And then these are my professional crayons he bought me. They are actually considered oil pastels, but they have a lot of wax in them. So, uh, this is what I use mostly in my sketchbook. So, um, there are those.

So how important are your tools to you when you create? Do you need all those fancy flash things that—

That you buy me?

That I buy you?

I think I probably need a lot less than what I have, but you don't know that when you're starting out. And so when you're watching a YouTube video, you think you have to have exactly what that person has. And so there are a, I probably have enough supplies to last me for quite a long while.

I think so.

But, um, and John does buy me, I will say the very best supplies, like he buys a lot nicer things than I would pick out for myself, which is wonderful.

And that's what you should be like. I think that's how, I think that's, I think that goes back to what we talked about last week is supporting each other's art. And the difference between buying, you know, an entry level and a professional is sometimes just dollars, right? Not talking thousands of dollars difference when it comes down to pencils.

Right, right. And I think, I think you have to be a little ways down the track in your art journey to realize that you can get a lot of thinking done about art with literally just a pencil, And a piece of paper. You can get a lot of thinking done. I— you don't have to have, you know, the 64-color set of the oil pastels or, or whatever it is to, to get some real thinking done. You can think about composition, you can think about— you could plan a painting, you know, um, and whatever it is. But, um, I, I— it took me some time.

Yeah.

To learn that.

So, yeah, it does, but it's like anything. And I think anything with your craft and your art, you've got to give yourself time. And I think with writing as well, I think, you know, you hear these stories about these people that get writing and they write, you know, in their 20s. I don't know if you've got anything to say. Like, I really don't. I think you've got to put some miles on the clock. You might be able to tell a good story, but you certainly haven't lived a good story. And, you know, I think writing is one of those glorious things like painting. You can start it at any time in life.

Yeah, I would agree. It's never too late to start and start where you are.

Yeah, start where you are. And in fact, the older you are when it comes to things like writing and art, the more stories you've got to tell. And all of those stories have crafted your, your live is not eligible for recommendations, restricted in search results. This is in line with for the UFE. I don't understand what that is.

TikTok thinks we're trying to sell you guys, like go out and buy things. We're not, we're not trying to buy, make you buy anything. Yeah.

So why don't you give us a favor and piss TikTok off and tell your friends we're on so they can come on and TikTok can go fuck itself. Maybe it'll slam me for language.

So yeah, we're definitely not saying you have to buy products, just telling you what we use.

Um, except Irish whiskey. Buy some of that.

So that's funny.

I gotta rebuy your book. Hey, Joshy, how you going, mate? Yeah, feel free, mate. Go on to drjohnaking.com, drop me an email, we'll sort something out. But thanks, man. Appreciate you. Any questions, man, you got for us?

Anybody have any questions out there? Thank you guys so— oh wow, look at all the Instagram.

Hey, Instagrammers, how you going? Wes, Maurice.

Hi, Try Unique.

Try Unique, LeBlanc 13, MJCM125. How you going?

So if you guys have anything that, um, inspired you in your creativity this week, Feel free to drop that in the comments. We'd love to know.

Josh says, I appreciate you all and help you've given me by your book. Well, you're welcome, man.

Thanks, Josh. It's really nice to—

It's nice to get feedback from that. I think especially when you work in the trauma space, you know, PTS recovery, anti-human trafficking, you're spending a lot of time working by yourself and, um, you don't know if you're touching and you're helping. You know, you pour your life into it and you really want someone's life to be touched and benefit. Well, you wouldn't be bloody doing it. You know, we got better things to do, you know, and we do. Everyone's got better things to do, but you pour your heart into something because you think it's worthwhile and you think people are worthwhile. Then someone like Josh who turns up on TikTok and says thanks means a lot. Appreciate you, man. How you going, Wino226? There's a name. Dr. Hannah, how you going? Good to see you, love. Been a while. So what else for Finally Friday? I was trafficked by 4 at 4 by 4. Without your book, my PTSD would have had me here anymore. Yeah, I know what it's like, man. It's tough, but good you're here, brother. You got lots to go, man. Yeah, I have to go. Lots of life to go. If I can make it, so can you, man.

Glad you're here on Finally Friday too.

Yeah, finally it's Friday. It's a good day.

Hey, go on drjohnaking.com and, um, just reach out to us and Hey, Josh, we've got something coming up next Thursday, mate, too.

It's a free seminar for anybody to do with trauma. And, um, go on the website and sign up for the Phoenix Collective. Come along, mate. Once every 6 weeks we do these free things just to help people with life. Love to have you. Hannah on Instagram. Dr. Hannah, good to see you. That lady helped me with shoes. Oh yeah, she's great. Yeah, she's a lot of fun. Good to have you here and I hope your Friday is good. So anyone got plans for the weekend? We do and it's not doing the deck.

We finished the deck.

I'm writing tomorrow and you are working on websites for a big client of ours.

I am. I am working tomorrow and I will be painting, uh, on Sunday afternoon.

Yeah. Yeah. After church.

And probably Monday morning I might paint a little bit too.

Yeah. It's good. What else? Any other questions? Any other thoughts? How you doing, Joseph Robert Clancy? I'm here. Any other thoughts on Finally Friday? We've got this event coming up in May and we're gonna do that in Tennessee. And it's going to be, we've got a lady who's got a farm and they've got a house and we're gonna be having an event there. We bring out all these biohacking stuff like iridology, frequency, voice reporting, um, Avison machine, Aceman. And we've got— we're there with 2 other friends, business partners that are naturopaths, and it's free. It's a thing. We're going out there. We've— someone has given us, uh, $10,000 worth of product. Hey, Quaker Mama, good to have you here. Great friend of ours. Um, and we're going to go there in Tennessee and we'll be having this thing for a week and we'll let you know about it. And, um, how you going, Greg Jones on TikTok? Um, so we'll let you know about it and come along. Like, if you're in the area, come along. Um, and it's some of the best biohacking naturopath stuff you'll be able to get your hands on.

Tennessee and Indiana.

All right. Nowhere where I said Tennessee and Indiana.

I think it's 2 days each place.

I did have the best sandwich I've ever had in my life in Louisiana.

Yes, Louisiana.

At Sam's.

Sam's.

I don't know, called Sam's.

It was a, we stopped to because they wanted po'boys.

And I've never had something called a Reuben. My, it was life-changing. I'm a better human being for having a Reuben po'boy at Sam's in Louisiana.

Indeed.

I'm just telling you straight up, ladies and gentlemen, it's very much worth it. They should sponsor Finally Fries. I should get them to do that.

That's great.

Any questions, Quaker Mama?

Any, um, other questions from last week? Did we have anything?

No. Don't be hesitant to learn and don't be hesitant to make inquiries. With, with publishing books, I not only read books by authors. I read books by authors on writing and now I'm reading books by authors on the publishing industry because if you're passionate about the space, you have to know about the space overall. And we did something even today, we were watching something on art forgery in Australia because it was, hey, thanks for the likes, Josh, we love you, man. Because it was— it's just interesting to hear about it. Our friend Quokka Mama is about to call Michelle after she's watching us. Well, good on you. Go get them. We told them you were going to. And we've got this event in— where is it?

It's Tennessee and Indiana.

Tennessee and Indiana coming up. So I don't know how close that is to you. That's next year. If you want to come down, Quagmama will sponsor you in. Come on down and hang out for 4 or 5 days. And I thought, well, 2 or 3 or however bloody long it is.

We'll have more information coming.

You can hang out with her because I'm not gonna sit around with people for too long anyway. I'll be smoking a cigar somewhere. And, but that'll be good. And I'm gonna go to do some book signings. We're gonna go to little bookshops and Mrs. King's gonna set me up some book signings here, I'm sure, between now and then. We're about to redo Deal With It. We're going to re-release it. That's coming up in about 3 or 4 weeks' time. We've had it out for a long time. We're going to make some changes in it. We want to tell people about the Phoenix Collective, which is— Phoenix Collective is a trauma-based recovery program that you can watch on your phone. We took 15 years and $300,000 worth of, you know, life, lifetime learning.

Learning.

And we We put it all together into this app. So our idea is to give you a hand up, not a handout. And, you know, it's not a subscription thing. It's a one-time fee. It's like $97 or something for life. And, you know, you've got the opportunity to take what took us 15 years and $300,000 and be able to just, you know, apply it to your life and change.

Hopefully, Go a lot faster.

And this will give us another restriction on on TikTok because you know those pricks don't like those pricks don't like anything they can't make money on. I don't think they like saying pricks either.

Well, they should like get on board with the nonprofits.

Fuck those guys.

That's all I gotta say about TikTok.

So um. If you put in 18 and above, they won't restrict you. Oh, Joshie, bro, you need to help me.

Thank you.

You need to teach me how to do this.

Josh is our tech support.

Hey, Josh, where do I put that in, mate? Like when I start the live, I just at the front I say 18 and above. So that's good because I don't want kids on this anyway because I might fucking swear. Oh, it's cultural Tourette's. It's not my fault. You know what I mean? So if anyone's offended, tough. It's Friday, I suppose. So anyway, listen, unless usually, yes, but I gotta figure it out. I think that's how you know it. But let me check in real quick. Hey, cheers, man. And look, message me on TikTok, Brad, when you find out because we're gonna wrap this up in a couple of minutes or on Instagram or drop me an email. And you can get the book, man. We're just about to re-release it. So this comes out in a couple of weeks and I'll sign you one. If you buy one and get another one, I'll sign it and send it to you. My gift, you know, a way we can say thank you to you, man. So any other questions? Any other ideas or thoughts? And if you're interested in things like— here's— that's to TikTok for not approving my appeal.

Oh, great.

If you're interested in frequency medicine, alternative medicine and naturopathy. And so I think, I think you'd be really interested in Wisdom OS on Instagram. And I think you'd be really interested in maybe coming to some of that. They do events every Wednesday night, every 6 weeks, and we do Thursday night. So, you know, really looking forward to doing that. So, all right. Well, I think that's it for Friday. Hope you have a good week. I hope you have great plans and I want to encourage you to expect the best out of life because you're gonna wake up every day and you're gonna be expecting something. You can either expect fear and failure or you can expect hope and possibility. There's a great line in Alice in Wonderland, I think it is, where the Mad Hatter said he got up every morning expecting, what was it? Uh, for 6 impossible things before breakfast. And before breakfast. And we actually did that for a while. We, we kind of still do it, but we did it through a stage where life was very difficult. And we every night would hold hands as we took our vitamin gummies and we would give, we would tell each other what our impossible things were we were doing before breakfast. And we're gonna believe for. And I think it changed the way we thought about life. And we wanna encourage you to think about impossible things because we always think about impossible things that are negative because majority, 95% of everything we worry about never comes out.

Yeah.

So what if you took that energy and you flopped it? And if you're gonna sit there daydreaming about negativity and what's gonna hurt you and harm you, why don't you think about possibility, hope, and love? And because why not?

Because why not?

Because why not you? Like, why can't you be a full-time artist? Why can't you be a full-time woodworker? Why can't you have your own business? Why can't you get healed? Why can't you get whole? Why can't you get married? Why can't you find hope? Why can't you find love? Why not you?

Whatever that thing is that seems like it's impossible right now. Why not?

Yeah. Why not think all things?

In that, like, all things, sit and imagine if that thing came to pass. Yeah, it's a worthwhile effort.

Out of the abundance of a heart, a man speaks, a woman speaks. What's in you is gonna come out of you, and you can determine that. You can determine what comes out of you. Um, you know, I believe I'm a Christian man. I believe God orders my steps, but I understand it's my determination that meets him. It's like bicycle riding. And if I'm gonna determine to pursue hope, happiness, life, prosperity, creativity, passion, joy, writing, then I think that's what's coming my way. And we wanna encourage you to feel and think and do exactly the same because why not? And next Friday, come back with your questions. We would love to sit and discuss them with you. Drop us a DM during the week and we'll bring it up and we'll bring it up for next week. Absolutely.

And if you want to come on and talk about your creative process, yeah, send us a direct message about that as well.

Yeah, if you want to pop on, we'll have other people talk about creativity. Yeah, we've got a couple of people coming on in the next couple of weeks that'll be talking about it. She's got some lady who does some quilting thing. I don't know what that is.

She's my friend. She's an artist and she makes She makes art out of—

Hey, BJ, good to see you, brother, man. And the— and I've got Jessica on TikTok. She's a psychotherapist or something, man. She deals with crazy people like me all the time.

And she has a book.

And she has a book that's just come out. So I'm gonna see if she wants to come on next Friday, actually.

Awesome.

Talk about creativity, writing practice and what she does. So she's a really cool people. Chris, she's a really good people.

Cool person. Good people.

Yeah, it's the whiskey talk. It's Friday. So I think we're having pizza for night. We were gonna go to Burgers and Blues, but I think you're too tired.

We might be able to make it.

I don't know. It's up to you. If anyone else wants to come to Burgers and Blues, let us know.

All right.

Cheerio, you lot.

Happy Friday.

Much grace.