House of Wolves Episode Eleven - JR Handley; veteran, author, publisher and podcaster.

You should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it. There's an intensity to what we're trying to accomplish, and, um, you know, if you want to be truly great, you've got to bring it every day.

Do you enjoy pain? Pain don't hurt.

You blitz all night.

Standing out is a long-term strategy, takes guts, and produces results.

If you care enough about your work to be willing to be criticized for it, then you have done A good day's work.

No, that's totally right. I feel like, um, working out, even if you've been working out for years, decades, like there's always a new plateau that you hit that you have to get over, a new exercise that you didn't understand or realize would be so helpful before. Like I've been working out since I was like 15. So yeah, for a while now. And I feel like I'm still learning today.

So I didn't really work out so much as I just relied on being physically active. So like, I played sports in high school. I was on the wrestling team and ran cross-country, which was, if we're being honest, just an excuse to train in the offseason for wrestling, uh, because we did a lot of cross-country training on the wrestling mat. I mean, we still had to do the runs, right? Like, we had to meet the minimum. But most of my high school wrestling team— like, I mean, most of my high school, uh, cross-country team looked more like a bunch of, you know, we'd more likely to win a bar fight than a street race. Football players and, you know, people like me on wrestling team. So, so I relied on that. And then of course I got hurt, so it was slow going when I got hurt in Iraq. And now that I'm doing it again, I'm like, holy crap, I didn't know what I was doing. And then you find out, of course, some of what you were doing in the military was like, those exercises are horrible for your body.

Yeah, no doubt. I've heard, I've heard a lot of that too. So before we get too far into this, I want to make sure we introduce you. So, J.R. Hanley, you do so much and you've done so much, I feel like any introduction I could give you would be a disservice. So I get down on the key stuff. I know that you're— you were in the military, that you're a great sci-fi author, that you have your own publishing house and you do anthologies. But, um, I don't want to miss anything. So is there anything else you would want to throw into that?

So that was pretty much it. I, uh, did the military thing and, uh, did ROTC in high school. It sounded fun. The Army recruiter told me if I joined the infantry, I could blow stuff up. That sounded even cooler when you're 17 and full of testosterone. So I signed up. I was originally going to go in the Guard, and then 9/11 happened and the world had other plans. And I ended up spending almost 4 years on active duty for my 1 weekend a month, 2 weeks in the summer, which is kind of ironic because I enlisted in late '98 and CNN had done a special that year that world peace might finally be attainable. And I remember my recruiter was like, yeah, don't worry. Like, you're not going to get called up until after the Boy Scouts, but before the Ladies Auxiliary, you're going to be fine. And then of course 9/11 happened and the world changed, and I ended up spending 2 of those 4 years on active duty in Iraq. Um, I ended up— so I went to the infantry as OSUT, which is one-site unit training, uh, and then I went to my original job, which was watercraft operator, because I was basically doing gunboats like your, your dad did in Vietnam. Um, and then when I got there, the unit I was supposed to join, someone forgot to tell them the MEP station shut down in 1974. So I enlisted into a unit that had not existed longer than I had been alive. So they said, well, you know, once I went to boat driver school, I said, well, we got to give you an MOS. So they sent me to truck driver school and they found out I can't drive a big rig to save my life. So it was back to the infantry and I ended up— much respect for those truck drivers. I know a lot of your listeners and a lot of mine are long-haul truck drivers. Like, let me tell you that straight line backing with a rig. I knocked over so many cones, I would have killed like a whole bunch of people if they'd let me do it for real. It was, it was bad. And so since I had the infantry MOS, I ended up being sent back to the infantry. I volunteered for light infantry because stupid me thought that meant I carried less. And no, light infantry means you just don't have tanks and, you know, heavy equipment as support. So I did a lot of walking, leaning over. And then, you know, when we went to Iraq, they ended up putting us on— from light infantry, they put us in gun trucks. So we escorted convoys. It's almost full circle back to the transportation people I started with. And because I had that experience having trained with them, I ended up being the security commander, which meant I led the gun trucks. And we— I spent 2 years rolling up and down the highways in Iraq protecting them from the insurgents and of course the civilians that we were escorting as well. So for every 1 vehicle in the Army, there was like 10 civilians we were protecting.

So I've heard that when you were saying that you spent 2 years kind of like traveling and I've heard so many stories of people in the military, my dad included, who says, uh, basically like by the time he— you get out of the military, your knees and your back are pretty much shot. Was that like your experience as well?

Yeah, but so for me, the problem is I suffered a whole bunch of internal injuries. So we learned a lot in the first Gulf War, and then right before this war started, in, uh, the early war, the Army and the Marine Corps had teamed up with the NFL and NASCAR to come up with better equipment, like to protect So what we ended up with was like, I got shot in the chest twice and it didn't pierce my armor flak jacket and the SAPI insert plates, but I did crack my ribs. So that's the kind of example of like, you get internal injuries, but, but you're surviving things that would have killed me a decade before. And so because I was blown up so many times, they estimated over 27 concussions from my EDs. You know, you're getting thrown around. And then what most people think IED, they think the, the shrapnel is what kills you or what does the damage. It's actually what's pushing the shrapnel that's doing the damage, which is the concussive force, the, the explosion of energy. You could get Josh Hayes— he's an EOD guy— on to explain that part better. But long story short, it was like getting punched by a bunch of invisible fists.

27 concussions, is that what you said?

Yeah, over 27. That's what they estimated just based on my service record.

I can't— that number doesn't even make sense to me. 27 concussions. So many.

I have like, um, I'm right up there with Mike Tyson on the number of concussions.

I have like 6 or 7 that I can remember, and I can't even imagine 27. Wow.

It's, you know, it was at the time, like I said, you're young, you just, you're full of it. I understand why we send kids to war and not adults, because I look at some of what we did, I'm like, holy crap, I was a moron. What was I thinking, right? Some of the choices we made. But, um, so when I got home, like I had, uh, 3 gun trucks that worked for me— the one I was in and 2 others. Each one had 3 men. So as a fireteam leader, normally that's 3 to 4 men you're in charge of, or people you're in charge of, because women are in the infantry now too, although they weren't at the time. But my gun truck's fireteam was actually the size of most squads, and because of attrition— so we lost a couple people while we were there, more redeployed to Afghanistan and never made it home— so survivor's guilt was a mofo. I'm trying not to cuss. I know your podcast tries to be a lot more family friendly, um, and YouTube changed the rules, uh, and so I ended up doing—

what are the rules with YouTube?

I didn't know that YouTube, if you cuss within the first so, so many minutes, like, they automatically demonetize you. And if you do it too much, supposedly they're going to start pulling things from the air. Uh, it's all up in the air, just like it was with the kid stuff that happened a couple years ago, where like if you had a kid in your stream, you couldn't monetize because I guess families were taking advantage— like, family blogging was taking advantage of the kids. I don't know enough about it. I never— like, that's not something we do on our podcast. We just talk nerdy. So it's all adults, and most of the time we're recording late enough that the kids are in bed anyway, or they ought to be. Um, and so when I got back, the survivor's guilt was, was rough. Um, and so I ended up— first I started— like, I couldn't read when I first got back because they— the concentrating to read gave me really bad migraines. And then the doctor, because my, my, my wife and the doctors and my parents wouldn't give up. And so they found the Kindle. That's when, right when the indie stuff started happening and the Kindle was out and you could magnify the heck out of it. Right. So that's great if you've got issues. And so I started reading and I credit Joe Vasicek. He's a sci-fi author, indie author out of Utah, with saving my life because he was like, I was close to ending it all. And then he wrote a serial novella, Star Wanderers. And it was just like, crap, not today, because I got to find out what happens next. Right.. And before you know it, you know, next and next and next, the therapy started working. And once I got to the point where I was stable, one of the local colleges— and forgive me, I can't remember which one— they did a writing as therapy class for the VA. And so basically the idea was sometimes, just like, you know, sometimes it's just easier to express things in fiction than it is to deal with it in real life. So you can process trauma in a way that's removed.. And so I started doing that, and then they— and some of us ended up staying for a second and then a third course, because each course was like 8 weeks long. And on our final class, because she ended up— she was a Navy wife, so she ended up getting stationed to the West Coast. So the course ended, which is a shame because it was really helpful. But when it ended, she was like, you know, JR, these are pretty good. You should, you should try to publish these. And I'm like, not, you know, I'm not— I can't be an author. I haven't lived enough life yet. Because you think authors have like, you know, like Hemingway, gone all these war zones, and, you know, all the greats who had these crazy wild lives.

And how old were you when this was happening?

I was 23, 24 at the time. Um, and so, um, basically she was like, you know, she bopped me on the back of the head, Gibbs style. She's like, you've been to two war zones, what more do you want? Um, and so I started writing, and then around 2016, I, you know, I was still reading. It's mostly just like my own novel that ended up dying on the vine. Because it was all scenes and no plot. And I, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to save it. Um, maybe someday I'll get there, but for now it just sits in the, in the web file, right? And then 2016 happened, and I was reading Tim Taylor's Human Legion universe. Uh, really good story, I liked it. He's got that dry British sense of humor, which I really dig. And so I kept pestering him. At the time, he had his website I was being really creative, so my name on there was Iron Mike because, you know, Iron Mike is the infantry statue. I thought I was super creative. Um, yeah, it turns out not so creative. And there are like dozens of people. You have to start adding numbers after a while to it because everybody did it.

I didn't know that Iron Mike is an— it's a statue for the infantry.

It's like their symbol. Yeah, it's a statue of a soldier leaning forward. It's a doughboy, uh, the one I've seen, and it's pointing forward and it's the classic follow me. Oh, okay. They call that statue Iron Mike. Um, you know, I know that's what they call it, but I don't actually know the history before it. When we're done with this, I'm gonna look it up because that's interesting. I'm getting curious now.

After I hit my— what they call Mike Tyson Iron Mike as well?

I think they did. I just remember Mike Tyson because I used to play him on Mike Tyson Punch-Out. You know, that was back in the day. Um, but so I, I pestered Tim and I was like, you know, you left this scene open and you could totally do this or you could do that. And I was throwing all kinds of ideas on his blog. And then a guy, Hans and I, who's sadly no longer with us, um, who is also a super fan. We like decided to put together his wiki. Man, those wiki pages, a lot harder than, than I thought for someone who's not technically savvy. But I wrote the book that went to it. Like basically I created the universe Bible that Tim ended up using later. I ended up finding some inconsistencies because, you know, when you, when you're starting, you don't really know what you don't know. So new authors are sometimes all over the place with the internal consistency. And then using what I knew of the military, I was able to give him plausible reasons why the inconsistencies were exactly the way he meant it. And so finally, after a while, he's like, JR, I don't have time to write that. You should write that. Um, and so— sorry, I thought I muted my phone.

Yeah, no worries. I know Tim, like, I know him as, you know, like, as a friend on, um, like, over the internet, but I don't know his background. Does he also have a military background?

No, he's, um, he's just a longtime computer nerd who grew up playing, like, Traveller and all kinds of other RPGs and, uh, and started writing and he used to run a publishing house, Greyheart Press, but there's just more money writing his own books than publishing other people's. And then of course the market changed. But he did publish a really cool— I can't remember the name of the book, but his book about time travel to the Highlands of Scotland during the Jacobite Uprising. And like, my history nerd was all over that. But so I sent him the, you know, all those ideas, and I was like, hey, you know, you should really do this. And so he finally is like, I don't have time for it, shut up and write it yourself. So he sent me a contract. It was supposed to just be a series of like 4 or 5 novellas to bridge the gap between, you know, when his unit left the system they started with and then they went to the other star system. So I was supposed to get them, wake them up, and then move them on. Because he, you know, as authors, sometimes we leave plot hooks that we then forget about. Um, and so I was writing the story, you know, that's when I learned an early lesson. If you're writing someone else's universe, don't try to play with their toys. Take the dark corner that they didn't touch and play in that corner, because then you don't piss anybody off. So you don't anger anybody because you didn't write you know, Bob Smith the right way, because, you know, people have their own idea of how it's supposed to be. And the minute they know you're not the original writer of it, like you're, you're using their character, they get really defensive.

Oh, for sure. I can— yeah, I second that for sure. Like, anytime— I think I've only done it twice. I've only written in other people's universes twice, but, uh, in both times I did exactly what you suggested. I tried to pick a, like, a precursor story that happened, you know, hundreds or thousands of years before their story took place, and that gave me more freedom.

And so what I did was Tim Taylor, in his first world— this is what I learned, was that you play in the corners and you go from there. They left the main system, they started with Tranquility. The implication was they were leaving a lot of people on ice, a lot of Space Marines that were cryofrozen. And then at one point in time, he had a throwaway comment that other military bases were there, because he said there were 3 military bases and he only named 2 of them, and the third one was just gone. So I wrote the story of where that base went and why, and then sort of took it forward. And then of course I emailed him a little bit later and I'm like, uh, you know those novellas? Um, I've got 120,000 words. How do you feel about that? And he goes, oh, I guess we'll redo the contract. And so book one ended up being 160,000 words. Wow. He's like, no one's gonna buy a book that long from a new author. So he ended up cutting the— turning the first part of it into a prequel novella and then book one, and then it ended up a 4-book series with a couple short stories in between. The funny thing is, you'll get a kick out of this because, you know, you're a patriotic American, uh, FedEx lost the contract. At the time, um, there weren't a lot of options for digital signing, so you had to print a copy, sign it, send it to him. Of course, he had to send it to me first with his signature, so they lost the original. So, uh, we reprinted it, I signed it, and mailed it to Tim. And in doing so, because they lost it, they were paying shipping, weight wasn't an issue, and it was scheduled to supply to arrive was the plan from what they told me on 4th of July. So I put a Lipton's tea bag in there with a note, uh, was in Boston, found this at the harbor, thought you might want it back, because he always sends me these jokes about, you know, Americans as traitors to the crown. Yeah. So I was like, that was, that was, that was classic. Tim's got a good sense of humor though, so he rolled with it.

And what's the name of the series that you wrote in his universe?

It's called the Sleeping Legion series, which then, um, I ended up— I had just finished that series and I got a couple of offers from other authors to do the same thing in their universe. Um, my first book sold, I think, like 10,000 copies, which is a lot for an indie. But there's two things in my favor. One, it was 99 cents, and so, you know, it's not a lot of money. And I was a debut author with a, quote, good story. Unfortunately, those 10,000 people didn't go on and buy book two, so I sort of settled back down to normal. But I can definitely appreciate where people who said, I failed in the beginning and I learned so much, I'd rather do it that way than have an instant success? Because I was riding high after the first book and thought for sure 10,000 was just going to be the normal, and it was a little soul-crushing when book 2 didn't, uh, didn't sell as well.

Yeah, that's a good question because I, I, uh, I think I would rather have it that way as well. Kind of like you pay your dues and you work your way up, as opposed to have instant success and then you kind of expect that's the benchmark and then it doesn't do so well. Because I've definitely seen authors And I've seen authors burn out that way.

And then, so the other thing I had to learn was because I, you know, they say your first couple thousand words are crap. I don't know if that's true or not. The first fiction I wrote, I, you know, that I completed, I published, that was the Sleeping Legion series. But I also was a history major who double, who was a triple major English, history, and poli sci in college. So there was a lot of papers written. And so I actually think, you know, people ignore that, but I think you learn just as much writing nonfiction as you do fiction. So I did have like a lot of words under my belt, but I did, you know, academic, like those really wordy, a bunch of subordinate clauses and a bunch of extra commas. So the first editor was like, yeah, JR, no more than 2 commas in a sentence or I'm gonna like beat you. And so it was a learning process through it. So Tim was great in teaching that. And then I, of course, I wrote some other stuff since then. And then of course, the last 2 years it was a little hazy. I haven't produced as much because I took a turn for the worse with my health. I hit it hard. We were talking about working out, working out, and I found out some of the exposures from Iraq were being re-released and it made me sick. So of course I had to deal with my health. And then I've got special needs kids, which take time. Well, kids in general take time, special needs or not. But now I'm back at it. And let's see, I produced the anthologies, was really just a way to keep my foot in the door.

I was about to say, you're making it sound like, oh, you took 2 years off. But from my point of view, it doesn't look like you took 2 years off because we haven't even talked about your podcast. So you have a podcast that also goes, and on top of that, you do anthologies. And on top of that, you're also writing. So even though, even though for you, because I know you hold yourself to a high standard, it might seem for you you've taken time off, I don't think, I don't think anybody else thinks you and I've had this conversation off air.

But because of the brain damage, I work twice as hard to get half as much productivity.. And so when I first started writing, recognizing that, and like, it's one of the things you taught me in the beginning, was that you're, you're only competing against yourself. And so I ended up working with Lauren Moore, amazing editor. She's really good at teaching. She was a teacher before she was a, you know, an editor for, for people who write fiction. Unfortunately, she's so good that she's outside of my price range now, and she has a full-time job with, uh, with Galaxy's Edge Press. But one of the things she taught me was like, look, you know, if your brain damage means that you're only going to get be able to get, but so good. The trick is, is to teach the people that, you know, do the backend for me— so my mom is my first, uh, first-line reader and does my first editing pass— is to help them help you get better. And then slowly, with that consistency, you'll get better too. And it's been working wonders. So I say, if you're a new author and you've got the money, like, she's the— she's amazing, um, editor because she teaches you, like, not just— like, I read a lot, I don't understand, like, the, the technical terms of plot structure and all that, but I read so much you start internalizing it. Like, you know, I'm the kid who had his nose in the book since like the third grade, right? Um, and so she— but she starts explaining why you're doing some of what you're doing, which is kind of cool.

So that was really helpful. It's funny that you said that too, because I know who Joseph Campbell is, and I know he created the Hero's Journey, right? Yeah. I never read any of that stuff.

To this day, I haven't. I tried when I first started that way. I tried when I first started, and I'm like, this is boring, I'd rather write my own story. And I just went back to doodling. And that's why I did the short fiction, is because when, you know, life is hitting the bricks, right, you need those little wins, right? Like, I walked today. I only walked, you know, half a mile, but I walked today. And I might not have written a lot of words, but I wrote words. And so for me, that sense of completion is kind of addicting. So that's why I started doing the short stories. It's because it gave me like that sense of completion. So I didn't like lose hope that things would get better. And then doing the math, because before AI covers, and I don't, I haven't developed an opinion on those, but before those were an option, you'd spend more on your covers than you could ever hope to earn on a short story. Um, and so at that point it becomes a vanity project, but if I organize it around an anthology, I can break even at a minimum. And so we started doing, uh, anthologies and I've, I've learned a lot about the anthology business. Since we've started.

We should, uh, I know you mentioned it briefly, but I would like to hear your thoughts on AI art.

I, so I like the idea of it's making art accessible to, to new people to get quality art on books, especially short story. I'm passionate about short content. So I don't know if you know a lot about the Girl Scouts, but my sisters were both in, uh, my older sister was doing Girl Scouts before I was old enough to do Boy Scouts. So I tagged along, right? They even have official title in Girl Scouts. They call us tagalongs. Which is also a cookie they make.

They call you what?

What's— they call you tagalongs if you're the siblings that, you know, have to go. And so while the girls were all doing their girly things, which as a boy I wanted nothing to do with, I was reading a lot of Reader's Digest stories where they would basically take classic novels and they would make them short, almost short stories or novellas. So that's how I sort of cut my teeth reading, was reading short content. And so for me, like, it's a passion project because that's how I got into reading, and I want to give that to people. And so I do the anthologies as partly just a way to give that back and to, you know, like I said, to keep my foot in the door.

And that's a good point about anthologies. Jen and I were just talking about this, how a lot of the famous works that we know from history that have gone on to be, you know, like movies, a lot of those books weren't like full-length novels. They're either like short stories or they were found in an anthology or printed in a newspaper. I think things like, uh, Heart of Darkness is a super short book. I think it might be a novella, considered a novella technically. I know Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is another novella that's really short. Um, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, I think those came out like Conan. I think those came out like almost like episodes in a magazine or a newspaper, right?

Yeah, that used to be the norm. Um, and a lot of those print died down. But so the other part of that is, I mean, most people wouldn't really— if I gave you a novel that was the Hugo definition of a novel, which is 50,000 words, you'd look at me like I was crazy. This is not a novel. This is like the first half of a book because they were shorter back then. You think of the penny novels you'd see at the, on the rack at the, you know, Five and Dime or Dollar Tree General or whatever. Like those were what novels were at the times because paper was expensive.

Right. And then I know, I know we keep on dancing around it, but I don't want to let you off the hook. I don't want to let you off the hook because I don't know where I stand with AI art. So I wanted to get more informed by kind of like your opinion.

So I like the idea of it making it accessible. I think there's quality work out there. Author Jamie Ibsen, who we both know— I think he's the Jamie that's from Canada. I know a couple Jamies that are authors, um, but he's got a company, on his company he's doing that. But what he's doing is he's using the AI to generate assets and then photo manipulating them into a single image. So from the many parts, he makes a whole, as opposed to trusting it to get just a single image. I don't know where the AI tech is as far as its ability, because I mean, you almost have to be a wordsmith to get the images you want. The concern people have, from what I understand, is one, they're worried you're going to put artists out of work. Valid concern. The same concern is people that are— Google just announced they're going to do AI narration as well. The other concern of that is supposedly, and I can't speak to this to be true, this is just what I've heard, the way the AI algorithms learned was scouring the internet for art that's out there. So it was essentially learning off of people's proprietary artwork and now it's doing it. And so in essence, it learned by stealing from them. I don't know that that makes it illegal because how is that any different than you as an artist learning by looking at other artists' work, right? Right. Having said that, I mean, I I'm all about supporting the people on the back end, right? Like, that's one of the reasons when people talk to me about internet piracy with regard to digital content, they're like, oh, that's a— it's a victimless crime because it's just digital. I'm like, okay, but if you do that, eventually I'm not earning enough to pay my artist, to pay my editor, and it has a knock-on effect. And that's sort of why I'm kind of passionate about making sure the artists and the narrators and all those people get— and editors get their pay too, because, you know, they're equally as valuable to the process. And so because I— yeah, because I feel that way, I don't know how I feel about AI art. I know I'll probably use it when I release short stories, but I wouldn't use it for anything substantive. I'd rather hire somebody who can, you know, give me a unique piece of work.

And I think too, so if I'm understanding how it works, is that you can put in a command and it's going to scour the internet. I looked hundreds of thousands of images and like Frankenstein basically cover of what you're asking it to create.

Is that right? Yeah. The other option I've seen it do is people will do a really bad sketch and then it takes that sketch and it makes it look good. Suddenly anybody can be an artist. But like I said, I think there's value in having an artist do it. Even better is AI art eventually is going to get too perfect. You're going to get that uncanny valley situation like you get with, um, with robotics. And there's something to be said for those little smudges that are just not quite right that add character, right? That are, you know, that signature of this one author. Maybe he's a lefty instead of a righty, so he smears a little bit when he does this one section of the book or whatever. Like, those kinds of things add character, and you're going to lose some of that if you go to purely computer-generated art.

And I wonder too, like, um As much as I want to say maybe it doesn't matter what you and I want, I almost think that it's going to be inevitable. Like, if this is where it's starting, like, it's going to happen. Like, it's already here, it's happening, it's here. I know it's live.

Yeah.

So I think maybe, you know how like, uh, records, like the vinyl records, are still around and they're still— yeah, they had to come back, right?

Yeah.

And there's people who collect them and there's still a market, not a big market, but I'm sure there's still a market for vinyl records that still get made. Maybe that's what will happen with art. Maybe there will be people who, you know, they only want to support like the genuine thing, and then there's other people who are okay with using like AI-generated art.

Yeah, I think that's, that's probably valid. But the other part of that is, you know, the, the creative process is all about tearing down to build the new. Like, you know, like humanity is a series of phoenixes rising from the ashes.

I remember—

well, I don't remember, but you know, you've read about the people that thought the car was going to destroy the horse industry, um, you know, and all the people that made, you know, their living affiliated with horses. So the guys that made the tack, the people that shoot the horses and all that, and eventually the things just evolved to something else. So I, I think part of it is, you know, we're so far deep in the fog bank that we can't see what's on the other side.

And I've seen the same thing happening with AI-generated, like, writing, like novels. I've seen authors go ahead and give an AI prompts of what they want written for a book or a short story or novel, whatever it is, and the AI go ahead and spit it out. And then what the author does is they go back afterwards and go ahead and clean up what the AI spit out.

I don't know how I feel about that. I wonder if there's ever going to be a Turing test for, like, AI-generated, like, art and fiction?

I think it's already here, man. Like, I think it's already passed. Like, if, uh, so I read that author's work when he came out. Um, I don't want to put him on blast now, but I'll give you his name when we're done. And I mean, I wouldn't say it was great. If I read that chapter, I wouldn't say like, oh, you know, I have to buy this book, I have to figure out what happened. But I, if I read that chapter and didn't know it was written by an AI, I would think it was written by Wow.

Okay, that's— well, it's— the question is, is what was it like before he did the edit, or she, right? Yes, yes.

Now we don't know. According to him, he had to do like a heavy editing pass. So that's—

he's just like a proofreader. Yeah, that's my process when I convert my narration to, uh, because I narrate like, uh, one of the things because I wanted to be more active and my hands, I injured my hands. I played sports, like, you know, you played rugby, you know, wrestled. So I've broken every one of my fingers. So I've got a little bit of arthritis. I mean, it's manageable, no more than any other guy of a certain age that played contact sports, right? So to ease up on the carpal tunnel, like, I started dictating just so I didn't put extra strain. And so when I clean that up, it's the same, like, it's gibberish. And sometimes what the AI, what I say, and then what the dictation software translates it to is not the same at all. So, you know, I, it could be pretty rough if it's anywhere like that.

Yeah. And I think ultimately, like, the best solution should win. So I think if you're an author and you're out there writing and you want to use AI art, uh, if, and you're only using AI art and AI software because it's easy, I don't think you're going to last, right? Because it doesn't mean you, you don't love to write. You're just looking like for the easiest path and the easiest way to get content out there. But if you really enjoy telling stories and you really enjoy writing, I think that'll come through to the readers and I think you'll last. So I think it's going to, it's going to kind of like work itself out. It's going to weed out the people who really want to do it as opposed to the people who just kind of want to do it.

Yeah, I've noticed that in those. I mean, I started writing my first story in 2016. I am not nearly as prolific as a lot of these people. Like I said, work twice as hard to get half as much. But I've watched a lot of those people fade away because for them it was a quick buck. And when the wild, wild west ended and you had to actually grind at it, it became a real job. They wanted no part in it. Whereas for me, like, I wake up every day, I'm like, what am I going to write today? On days where life gets in the way, and it happens sometimes, and I can't write, I mean, like, I'm like a drug addict feeding. I'm like, no, I need to do this. So I started actually carrying— instead of dictating to the computer, I carry a little handheld recorder so that way I can at least feel like I did something, like I could be creative. And I think to be really good at art, you have to be that passionate. I mean, I'm sure you can find me exceptions, but as a general rule, I don't think you write quality content without being like your biggest fan, right? Like, you can't convince me that Tolkien wasn't his biggest fan of the Shire.

Yeah, no, I'm sure he loved it. He wanted to live there. I'm sure he did live there in his mind.

Yeah. Uh, and it becomes even more impressive when you start learning the backstories. Like, you know, he was at the Psalm, and then you read about what that was like— 30,000 people died in the first couple minutes. Um, it's— it was horrific. I almost said amazing, but that's too nice of a word. And so you start seeing where you come from.

I was just thinking what exactly— what you were saying before, then, when you went through that class that was teaching you or helping you to work through kind of like what you experienced in the military, and you were writing it down. That's exactly what Tolkien did with Lord of the Rings then, right?

It is, although he didn't have the benefit of a counselor, uh, and an English professor over his shoulder. And I know a lot of people actually in the class with me did fantasy because, you know, it didn't have guns. But, you know, fantasy combat, you're talking swords, and that's up close and personal, see the whites of their eyes before you fire kind of stuff. So for me, I went the exact opposite. I went Space Marine, where you can shoot them from a mile away. Because it felt safer. Um, and then you start doing research about what a plasma wound would really look like, and you're like, holy crap, maybe I should have gone swords and sorcery. But I mean, I'm a nerd. I grew up reading the, uh, the extended, uh, books in the Star Wars worlds that are no longer canon. And so for me, that's what I, you know, that's what I want to do. Like, I don't want to worry about, like, you know, getting it too— like, I try to be realistic to a point with the science But if it comes to the rule of cool or the actual science, I'm going with the rule of cool every time.

No, for sure, I agree with you. And I want to make sure too, before we get too far into the weeds with all the AI stuff, that we talk about your podcast, because I feel like that's like a big portion of what you do. You've been so consistent with it. That's one thing I admire about you too. Like, I, I usually measure people with a yardstick of consistency and discipline, and you have both. That's why glad to be friends with you for so long because you've been doing your podcast for so long as well.

I started the podcast in 2017. We had a different name then. So I originally started— I realized that when I was spending so much time writing, I didn't have the energy to do a crazy long newsletter. I didn't like trying to keep my blog up. I was one of the many authors like, I'm going to do better at my website next year. And it never happens because you could write on the website or you could write a book you could sell and get paid. And, you know, your mortgage kind of likes it when you pay them.. And so I started, well, I said, well, I can talk. So with the brain damage, like the writing part is what was affected the most. I can still talk. I have word aphasia. So sometimes I get words mixed up. I'll give you an easy example. It's like I was trying to tell my mom the other day that, you know, she had left a coat over at the house or something and the kids spilled on it. So I'm like, it's in the wash box instead of saying the washing machine because I couldn't remember the words. Or, you know, that, that box you put the dishes in instead of a dishwasher. Luckily, because I know that's an issue, like some of them are common enough that I can just do a Ctrl+Find. And then the other ones, my mom just has to read context and be like, okay, this is what he means. And she just edits it. And so I realized though that of the two though, like if I did, if I talked, if I did a podcast, then I'm not cutting into my brainpower to do the words, right? To write the stories. And so we started a podcast, Chris Winder and I, Uh, we called it the Sci-Fi Shenanigans. He was the tech guru because at the time, like, StreamYards wasn't a thing, um, and Anchor FM wasn't a thing. So I mean, he spent a lot of back hours like editing the podcast. It was crazy. Um, but we did a 1-hour show once— well, we started 3 times a week, then we went down to 2, and then at the end 1. And we did 2 seasons of that. We were into our 3rd season when he had some family matters come up. He had to quit writing and get a job with insurance to help out. His family, um, and so he just— he couldn't do it anymore, right? Like, he just couldn't justify the time when it's not a marketing thing for him, um. And so we took a hiatus, and at that time I was approached by Galaxy's Edge to write a Wargate novel, which was basically military— modern military unit fantasy world. So it's like, well, then I don't want just the sci-fi shenanigans because I want to capture my audience, right? So now my audience is potentially going to grow to include some fantasy readers. So we rebranded as The Blasters and Blades and we launched. Now we're on our third season of that, which is sci-fi and fantasy, anything that's speculative fiction. So sci-fi, fantasy, horror, you know, anything basically not nonfiction we can talk about. And season two, we realized that Winder was having some family issues where he'd have to take off or I would. And so I said, well, we need another co-host and we'd like to find another veteran who happens to be female because it's a different perspective, right? One thing you learn is everybody's military experience is a little different based on when, where, and what. And so we found Seska, who also happens to be the— Seska Smalls is the fantasy literature track director for DragonCon, which I'm told if you're into con circuits, it's like a big deal. I don't do the cons, too many people. Uh, and so when Winder had to leave, her and I are not the most tech savvy, so that's when we found StreamYards, and then we post through Anchor FM, and we rebranded, and now we're on season 3 of the Blasters and Blades. That was a little bit of a struggle because apparently we've tried to encapsulate the sci-fi and fantasy and we inadvertently stepped on a bunch of trademarks along the way as we were learning. So we got a few cease and desist letters from lawyers. I hit a few obscure Battletech and a Traveller one that I didn't know was one, you know, Traveller the RPG. So that's kind of like a backhanded compliment though, that these people know who you are and they're invested enough to send you The lawyer for, um, for Battletech was nice enough. He's like, look, like, I know you're trying, I know you're not trying to intentionally do this, and some of it we're just maintaining the, the IP, like, because we have to, because if we want to do something with it later. So he said, send me the next couple ideas you got and I'll run them through my databases and I'll tell you if you're good. And, and I wish I hadn't had to sign a non-disclosure with him because I'd love to shout this guy to the heavens. He was so friendly about it. Like, none of the lawyers that I dealt with. Like, they get a bad rap, but they were all really cordial. They understood, like, you know, it wasn't intentional. Okay, it wasn't like I was naming, you know, uh, you know, McDonald's, uh, I don't know, whatever was coming to America. I forget what it was, McGregor's or whatever with the golden arch. Yeah. Um, so I mean, they were pretty cool about it. We landed on Blasters and Blazed, and we relaunched that 3 years ago, or well, 2 years ago, because this is the start of the third year. And we just do our season from January to December, and we record and we talk to a bunch of people I did 175 episodes that we were able to save under Sci-Fi Shenanigans, and I just recorded episode 222 of The Blasters and Blades.

Wow, good job, man. So that's almost 400 podcast episodes.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. You learn a lot about interviewing people, um, about what makes them tick. I can almost predict sometimes how people are going to answer, um, and that's when you realize there's a lot of commonality in authors. Um, you ask them why speculative fiction, and almost universally the answer is because I can to explore ideas that I couldn't otherwise do in modern world. So the one idea people like to quote is— are you a Trek fan? Yeah. So in the— when the original Star Trek came out, they had an episode where there was an alien race where half of the race was like— of these aliens were white on the left side and then dark black on the right side, and then the other half were inverted. And they were dealing with racialism on our— you know, it's your right— is your black on the right or left. Like, that was the whole point of the episode. And of course, Picard being— or not Picard, uh, Kirk being Kirk— was just like, you know, wham bam, a few elbow chops, and then teach them the error of his ways. But that was, you know, their attempt to confront, you know, the racism that was going on in the '60s and the '70s. And you can do that in speculative fiction because you— if you— unless you get preachy, you can approach ideas that are larger than what you're talking about in a way that's safe for people to digest. And think about because you don't— they don't feel like you're preaching at them. They don't feel like you're attacking them. I mean, everything from racism to, you know, what makes you human. If I create a robot that can simulate emotions, is that enough? Is it real or is it just a machine? Like, where does the algorithm end and the humanity begin?

Yeah, I, uh, totally agree with you. And I feel like, um, my favorite superhero team is the X-Men. Yeah, the X-Men did something similar with mutants during that time, where mutants were different but they were trying to, you know, coexist, and they were people too, even though they were different.

And you do that some in your writing. Like, I, I realized— so when I was writing The Reservists, which is set in the Galaxy's Edge universe, I realized that I don't know enough about special forces to try to make, you know, spec ops special squirrels believable. I was your classic grade A grunt, like, you know, no, none of the whiz-bang schools. I got hurt before I could go to jump school. That was in the cards, that in Ranger School I was supposed— I was slotted to go after my tour, my second tour in Iraq, and I got hurt and discharged. But so like my experience was just a Joe Nobody infantryman, right? And so I realized I like writing the everyman because it makes it more relatable. You do the same thing with your superheroes that aren't superheroes. They're really just everybody and could be anybody. I think readers resonate with that in ways that some of these superheroes don't. Like, we'll give Superman, for instance. Instance, because he's iconic enough that, you know, I'm not hurting anybody's feelings, but he's too perfect almost for me, right? Like, at least in the original iterations. I haven't kept up with, so they might have redone the arc for the billionth time, but like, he's almost so perfect that it's not fun. Whereas, you know, Batman, for all he's a little too grimdark for me as a setting, like, he is the everyman. Obviously he's the everyman with a crap ton of money, but like, he doesn't have special powers, he just has gadgets. Shits, right? With Q, right? Like, it's— it's— that could be me, that could be you. It's the same reason Halo Master Chief, the video game franchise, you never see his face, because they want you to picture that as you in there. And that's the value that I— that I love about speculative fiction, is you can put them in the story.

Yeah, early on too, when I started writing sci-fi, I realized I know what I am and I know what I'm not. I don't have this extensive military knowledge or background or training. So instead of me trying to sound like something I'm not, I leaned the other way. So instead of writing, you know, trying to write Black Hawk Down, like a sci-fi version of Black Hawk Down, I'm going to go closer to Guardians of the Galaxy sci-fi.

It's just like a ragtag group of guys If you want the sci-fi version of Black Hawk Down, we've— the aforementioned EOD guy Josh Hayes wrote that in his Uncommon Valor. Good story, people, you should check it out. But that's come up a lot in the Galaxy's Edge fan club. So when I first started writing, or when I was getting into it, I listened to one of Chris Fox's mini books on how to be a writer type thing that he did. I don't know if he still doesn't, but he was doing them back in the, you know, 3 or 4 years ago. And one of the things he said is the danger is just to go to other writers groups because you're selling to yourselves and it's a circular firing squad, and they're not your audience. So the trick is to go where the audience is and just engage and be a person to them. And at the time, like, there weren't a lot of iconic military sci-fi properties that— with the exception of Weber, and that had its own established sort of cult following. So I started the Galaxy's Edge fan club because I liked it and nobody else had done it. And so one of the things I've learned with dealing with them is there's a lot of people that, for whatever reason in their life, never got to serve, or maybe they toyed with the idea, but life happened. And they always preface when they start talking about the military stuff, well, I'm not a veteran, but you don't actually have to be to write it believable. They actually investigated Tom Clancy when he was alive because they were sure he had spies sending him information because he wrote too accurate. And we interviewed him about it. And what he said, his answer was, I didn't need spies. I had a library card.

Right?

Like, so he was able to just read and intuit. And the same is to be said if you're thinking about tactics. Think about tactics, like, there's not a game that I know of, a sport that I know of, that didn't start as training ground for warriors. Rugby, soccer, football, golf, lacrosse— like, all of these sports at one point in time were training you in tactics that were used on a more primal battlefield. And so the idea of tactics in a, in a military space, whether it's sci-fi or fantasy, isn't that much different than thinking about a play on a football football field. And if you can understand some of the complex stuff the NFL runs, or your high school whatever team runs, like, you can, you can write believable military sci-fi.

I, uh, was reading an article the other day about how the— how football was started to either— it was either to prepare college students for war, or that the military would then, like, go to the football games and recruit them into the ranks.

So I actually— so I deployed my, um, junior year for the first time, uh, to Iraq. And when I got back, I had to quickly get a bunch of credits to finish. Um, long story short, I took a history of sports, um, as one of my classes. It would normally only offer to the football players. I got sort of slotted in for that, you know, easy credit because I was carrying 22 hours my senior year, which, if you know anything about college, that's a crap ton. I did not sleep that year. But, uh, so this— it started with soccer And eventually, boys being boys, one buddy person got angry at the other kid in the city of Rugby in England and said, I'm going to take my ball and go home. So he picked up the soccer ball and someone said, no, you're not, tackled him. And rugby was born, right? Eventually rules came up. That's why it's pretty similar to soccer. When it came to America, there were enough deaths on the rugby field that Teddy Roosevelt, who was all about like sporting life and like being active, you know, he overcame so much in his life. If you want to read a good biography, read the ones about Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, like, they— he shouldn't have lived, and he ended up being the Rough Rider we know him as, right? But he ended up creating what we know as American football in an attempt to make rugby safer. And so that's how it was started. And then because it teaches you, you know, athleticism, it teaches you to think on your feet, critical thinking, it teaches you, you know, teamwork, sportsmanship, all that stuff that's vital in a military unit. Then they started recruiting from the sports team because they saw the value in it. And they've got some pretty famous quotes about recruiting from, you know, like the West Point or Annapolis football team. I don't have them memorized. I didn't go to those schools, so I didn't have to. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so sports are a good analogy for war, and if you can understand that, you can, you can write believable military.

Yeah, for sure. That's some great advice. Well, dude, I feel like I could talk to you for hours on end and still not get enough, but, uh, before we leave, I want to make sure that you have a chance to tell people where find you?

So I am everywhere as J.R. Hanley. I was a Luddite, didn't have any social media before I started writing because the FBI is going to spy on you. Joking, people. Not with you, Alexa, though. And so everything I've got is out there for public consumption. So I'm Sergeant J.R. Hanley on Facebook, jrhanley.com for my website. Pretty much everywhere else it's J.R. Hanley if I'm there. Pretty easy to find. The podcast is the Blasters and Blades Podcast. And we're on Facebook and YouTube if you want to look for us. And we've got— I'm working on book 2 in that series, the Wargate series with James Ward. So hopefully that'll be coming out this year because I know they're not publishing book 1 until book— we're on book 4. Unfortunately, when you fail to deliver a few times because life hits the fans, they want the finished product before they're sold. I'm just happy they didn't fire us, so I'll take it. But we're writing that series of modern striker unit gets stuck in fantasy Egypt and go.

So that's where you can find me. Awesome. Hey man, thanks so much for spending some time with us. Absolutely.

Thanks.