Podcasts about Cloak

Actress Betsy Borrego (Insta: @itsbetsy) joins Dean to kick off Season 2 with a raw, funny, and wildly honest conversation about the mindset shifts that took her from theater to screen and into 24+ film and TV credits — even through the pandemic, industry shutdowns, and the chaos of strikes. In this episode, Betsy breaks down the moment everything changed: moving from traditional acting techniques into deeper self-work, identity awareness, and what she calls “waking up.” Dean walks her through the inner rewires, the ego checks, and the toolbox mentality that helped her transition into a consistently working actor. They talk: Acting as self-discovery Why mindset became Betsy's secret weapon How to build characters through humanity instead of “performance” What directors actually respond to Set stories from Renfield, Cloak & Dagger, Daisy Jones & The Six, and more The moment Betsy realized she had to switch coaches, switch strategy, and switch identity If you want to train, grow, and evolve as an actor without dropping $300 a month on classes, check out Tilt Acting Skool— the community built around this entire philosophy. Learn, grow, and level up inside a space designed for actors at Skool.com/tilt. Perfect for actors, creators, and anyone fascinated by character work, mindset, manifestation, or the psychology behind great performances. And you can follow The Dean West Perspective on Instagram: @TheDeanWestPerspechttps://www.instagram.com/thedeanwestperspective?igsh=MTQzeW15c2EzN25pbQ==tive and @TheDeanWest Keywords (SEO): Betsy Borrego, Dean West Perspective, acting podcast, acting mindset, character development, manifestation for actors, audition tips, acting technique, actor interview, acting coach, season 2, Renfield, Cloak and Dagger, self-development for actors, Tilt Acting Skool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode, we take a look at six software tools for indie authors to help them write and improve their workflow. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Blades, Book #4 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: BLADES2025 The coupon code is valid through December 15, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT [This episode's content is not sponsored. Jonathan has not received any compensation for these reviews and has not received any free products or services from the companies mentioned in this episode. He does not currently use affiliate links for the products mentioned.] 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 280 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is a very snowy December 5th, 2025, and today I'm discussing six software tools that are useful for indie authors. Before we get into that, we will have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So first up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Blades, Book #4 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. And that is BLADES2025. And as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code will be valid through December the 15th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for this winter or for your Christmas travels, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. As I mentioned last week, Blade of Shadows is out and it's available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store, and it's been doing quite well and gotten a good response from everyone. So thank you for that and I am looking forward to continuing that series. Now that Blade of Shadows is done, my main project is the fifth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, which is Wizard-Assassin. I had originally planned to name it Elven-Assassin, but decided Wizard-Assassin sounded a bit punchier, so I went with that instead. I am 46,000 words into it, which puts me on chapter 10 of 16. The final draft will have more chapters because one of the chapters is 11,000 words. I'm going to have to cut it up. I've also noticed that readers in general these days seem to prefer shorter chapters, so I've been trying to lean more into doing that and having books with shorter chapters. I think the rough draft is going to be about 70 to 75,000 words, give or take. So I'm hoping I can finish that next week, and I am cautiously optimistic I can have the book published before Christmas. If I can't get it published before Christmas, it is going to slip to my first book of 2026. But at the moment, and of course, barring our old unwelcome friend unexpected developments, I am cautiously optimistic I can have it out by Christmas 2025. So watch my website and listen to this space for additional news. My secondary project is Blade of Storms, which will be the third book in the Blades of Ruin series and the direct sequel to Blade of Shadows. I am about 6,000 words into that, and once Wizard-Assassin is done, that will be my main project. I'm hoping to have that out at the end of January, but if Wizard-Assassin slips to January, then Blade of Storms will [of necessity] slip to February. In audiobook news, Blade of Flames, the audiobook of the first book in the Blades of Ruin series, is now out and you can get that at Audible, Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Google Play, my own Payhip store, Spotify, and all the other usual audiobook stores. So if you're looking for something else to listen to during your Christmas travels this year, I suggest checking out Blade of Flames (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). Cloak of the Embers, the 10th book in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy)…the recording of that is done and it is being proofed right now, so I am hopeful we can hopefully have that out before Christmas (if all goes well). In fact, after I record this podcast episode, I'm going to have to convert the ebook cover of Cloak of Embers into an audiobook cover for Cloak of Embers. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. There is definitely a lot going on. 00:03:40 Main Topic: 6 Helpful Writing Tools for Indie Authors in 2025 [All Prices referenced are USD.] Now we're going to move on to our main topic this week, which is six helpful writing tools for indie authors in 2025. Last year in 2024, I did a roundup of popular software tools for writers and I thought I would give a quick update for it. Some of these tools like Calibre and LibreOffice I use, while others like Scrivener and Notion just aren't great fit for my workflow, I still want to talk about them anyways since just because I don't use them doesn't mean that they're not good and a lot of writers do in fact use them. Many writers also have complex systems for organizing their files and would benefit from tools like that. Without further ado, here are six pieces of software used for writing and writing adjacent tasks. I should mention before we get going as well that none of these tools are explicitly generative AI tools because as you know, if you've listened to the podcast over the years is my opinion of generative AI remains mostly negative. I have and continue to do some marketing experiments with generative AI elements, but I remain overall unimpressed by the technology. So with that in mind, none of these software tools I'm going to mention are explicitly AI tools. Some of them do have AI elements that you can plug in and use if you want to, but they aren't part of the core functionality of the application unless you specifically seek it out. With that in mind, let's get to it. #1: The first one we will talk about is Scrivener. Scrivener is of course essentially a word processor and project management system specifically designed for creative or nonfiction writing, unlike a traditional word processor like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, or Apple Pages. It features tools for outlining, for breaking documents into chapters, tracking word count goals and et cetera. One of the major benefits of it is a one-time cost instead of as a subscription because it seems like everything is a subscription nowadays, but Scrivener is still $60 a pop. They also offer a free trial and student discount and occasionally [it will] go on sale during peak times like the holidays. The downside of this is that Scrivener has a sharp learning curve. For myself when I write, I write either in Microsoft Word or Libre Office and I just sit down and write. When I write an outline, it's one Word document and the rough draft is another document that I write until I'm done. Scrivener is definitely a more complex software application, which I have to admit is funny to say because Microsoft Word is ridiculously complicated and has, in my opinion, far more functionality stuffed into it than it really needs. But Scrivener is a different kind of functionality and therefore the learning curve could be quite high for that. Additionally, this may not be the right software tool to work with your style of writing or how you organize your files. A couple extra thoughts with that is it's important to know yourself. Will you actually use the extra features included with Scrivener or do they just look cool and shiny? Scrivener probably is best for those who take extensive notes on their work, especially if trying to organize research based on chapters where it's needed. So if you're a nonfiction writer or if you're a historical fiction writer or a thriller writer who is very concerned about accuracy in your books, this may be useful for you so you can put in notes about the proper way to address a duke in 19th century England or what caliber of ammunition your thriller hero's preferred firearm takes. It's maybe the best for the kind of people who enjoy curating their Notion and Trello accounts and are able to think about their book in a very visual way without letting that process be an excuse to keep them from writing. I'd also say it's good for people who extensively revise blocks of text within a chapter and move chapters around a lot. #2: Canva. Canva has been around for a long time and it is a platform that makes it easy to create visual content using a drag and drop interface that provides a variety of templates, fonts, and designs to use for things like social media posts. They currently have two tiers for individuals, a limited free option, and Canva Pro, which is $12.99 a month. Some of the pros for Canva are it is well-suited for using templates for writers to create images for social media posts and book marketing material. The learning curve is not very steep, especially compared with something like Photoshop. If you've used PowerPoint before, you can definitely handle Canva. The cons: although some people use it to create book covers, many books have been flagged by Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and some of the other publishing platforms for doing so. I would advise you to avoid Canva for creating book covers because of the potential for issues that could keep your book out of ebook stores. At the very least, read Canva's terms of use and the rules of KDP and the other ebook publishers very, very carefully before you would even begin to consider using Canva for this purpose. Many of the free features have been folded into the pro version such as sharing template links. The editing and design features are basic compared to something like Photoshop, though that may change as we're going to discuss a little bit here. Because Canva is so popular, there's a certain amount of snobbery out there about using its designs without significant modification. You may have encountered on social media or the Internet people who react very negatively to the presence of AI generated images and this exists to a lesser extent with Canva templates. "Looks like it was made in Canva" is sometimes used as an insult. If you want a unique style and look for your images, you'll have to work a little more to achieve that using Canva. Canva is quick for great one-time things like Facebook or BookBub ads, but I wouldn't recommend using it for book creation or book covers at this time because of the potential problems that can arise from that. For myself, I don't usually use Canva. I've had enough practice with Photoshop that I'm pretty confident in making whatever I want in terms of ad images or book covers in Photoshop, and I use Photoshop for that. However, since I organized the notes for this episode, there is a major caveat to that. Recently, Canva acquired a program called Affinity Photo Editor, which is essentially a much lower cost alternative to Photoshop. When this happened, there was a great deal of negativity around it because people thought Canva was going to jack up the price or make it into an overpriced subscription. But what Canva did surprised a great many people in that they made Affinity totally free and essentially are using a freemium model with it where you can use Affinity Photo Editor for free. It used to be, I believe like $79, possibly $69, and then any of the other features like downloading additional content from Canva would cost part of your Canva subscription. So I have to admit, I'm sufficiently curious about this, that when I write the tie in short story for Wizard-Assassin, I may use Affinity Photo Editor to assemble the cover for it just to see if it would work for that or not, because as I've said, I use Photoshop, but Photoshop is very expensive, Adobe frequently does business practices that are a bit shifty, and the idea of a freemium alternative to Photoshop is not necessarily a bad idea. So when I write a tie in short story for Wizard-Assassin later this month, I think I will attempt to make the cover in Affinity Photo Editor and see if that is something that would be good for my workflow or not, and I will report on that later. #3: Number three is Notion, which can be used to organize information, links, calendars, and reminders into one central dashboard. They have two plans for individuals, a free plan and a Plus plan, which is currently $10 to $12 per month (depending on whether you want a monthly or an annual plan). The Plus version offers unlimited file uploads, greater customizations, and integrations with Slack and Google Drive. The pros for using Notion is that it is popular with writers and content creators for being able to have project planning tools, notes, lists, links, trackers, and reminders all in one dashboard. If you enjoy customization and getting something set up exactly the way you want, you might enjoy setting up your lists, calendars, trackers, and notes through Notion. You can add images and adjust the layout and colors for a more "aesthetic" experience. It is easy to find customized templates [online], especially for writers and for things like storyboarding, word counts, and keeping tracks of sources for nonfiction writing. These Notion templates are shared by individuals, not the company and can be free or paid. Now, some of the cons with Notion. It didn't used to use very much AI, but the company is leaning increasingly heavy into AI, both as a company and in its features on the boards, if that is a concern. The amount of customization options and detail can be absolutely overwhelming. Someone who gets decision fatigue easily or doesn't want to customize a lot and might not enjoy using it. Some people are increasingly complaining that the software is getting too overloaded with features and is slow. For people who value being organized and love having complex and highly visual systems, Notion might be helpful. The downside is that maintaining your Notion boards can easily turn into what I call a "writing-adjacent activity" that gives you the illusion of productivity because of the time you spend managing and updating it aside from the business of getting actual writing done. So once again, this is a good example of "know thyself." If this is something that would be helpful for you, go ahead and pursue it. But if it's something that could turn into a tool for procrastination, it's probably better to avoid it. For myself, I am old enough that when I need to make lists and keep track of things, I have a yellow legal pad on my desk that I write things down on. #4: The next piece of software we're going to look at is LibreOffice. It is an open source piece of software that closely matches Microsoft Office, including Microsoft Word. Pros: It's free and open source. There's a minimal learning curve for those already familiar with Microsoft Word. The interface is a little different, but it's pretty easy to figure things out if you're familiar with Word or Excel. Some swear that that LibreOffice is faster than Word. It depends on the kind of document you're working on and the kind of computer you're using. So that's an area where your mileage may vary. It is also the best word processing option for privacy advocates, especially for those who are concerned about Microsoft and Google storing their work and possibly harvesting it for AI because by default, LibreOffice doesn't work with any AI elements. If you want it to work with any AI elements, plugins are available but they are not included. It's great for the writer who doesn't want to support Microsoft for any reason but still wants to be able to easily save documents in Microsoft file formats like .docx. It works. I've written entire books using it. I wrote all of Soul of Serpents and Soul of Dragons in it, and that was 13 years ago now, and the software has only improved since then. I wrote Silent Order: Eclipse Hand [using it] in 2017 and was very happy with the results, and I still use it for various projects every week, and I found a couple times if something was screwed up in the formatting of Microsoft Word, if I opened it up in LibreOffice, I could fix it pretty easily and much easier than I could in Word. It does have a few cons. The user interface compared to Word or something like Apple Pages does look a bit dated, but it's still navigable. It doesn't have any cloud storage functionality. You would need to piece it together with another storage option if you want to be able to backup stuff to the cloud. But overall, if you can't afford the Microsoft Office Suite, don't want to support Microsoft, and value your privacy, this is your best bet for word processing. Some people may not like its interface, but it's still an extremely solid piece of free software. #5: And now let's move on to our fifth software tool, which is Calibre. Calibre is a tool for ebook management. It can be used for file formatting, changing your books' metadata, or changing file formats. Many use it to create a custom ebook library. Pros include: the product is free and open source. It is easy to generate different file formats for book publication. Do you want to categorize and organize your books in a very specific way? Calibre works for that. The cons: some people find the interface a little clunky and it comes with a bit of a learning curve. To be honest, the interface does look like it came from Windows 2000 and some of the features rely on knowledge of HTML and CSS. Editing and formatting of the book itself is better done using other software. Final thoughts on that? The software is trustworthy, reliable, and has been maintained over the years. It does exactly what it says it does, without any real style but plenty of substance. And I've been a regular Calibre user for like 15 years now, and whenever I get a new computer Calibre is usually one of the very first things I install on it. #6: And now for our sixth and final tool, Inkarnate. Inkarnate is a very useful piece of software that is designed for creating maps. I believe it was originally intended to create maps for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder and so forth. But it's also very useful for creating maps for fantasy novels. As I may have mentioned on the podcast a few times before, I really don't like making maps. I find it constraining and it makes the writing feel a bit crabbed at times. That said, I write primarily in the fantasy genre and people in the fantasy genre love maps, so I'm kind of on the hook for making maps. I used to draw the maps by hand and then import it into Photoshop and add all the locations and add colors and so forth. But that is a lot of work, I have to admit. Inkarnate makes it a lot easier, and I've used it for the last couple of maps I've made. The map of the city of Tar-Carmatheion in the Half-Elven Thief books came from Inkarnate. The map of Owyllain for Blades of Ruin came from Inkarnate, and the map of New Kyre and adjoining regions for Ghost Armor also came from Inkarnate. It's very affordable too. The subscription, I believe, is only $30 a year, and I've been using for a few years now and have never regretted it. So I'd say all the pros are all the ones I've already listed. The cons are that the learning curve is a little bit sharp, but there are excellent YouTube videos and tutorials for that. So, final thoughts. If you find yourself needing to make maps and don't enjoy the process of making maps, then Inkarnate is the software product for you. So those are six tools, software tools for indie authors that I hope will make you more productive and make your work easier. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backup episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

The Age of Revelation continues on into its second month and there's a lot to discuss in the Month in X for November 2025. Month in X - November 2025 X-Men of Apocalypse #1 Spider-Man & Wolverine #6 Age of Revelation - Month Two X-Men: Age of Revelation Infinity Comic  #1 - 5 Amazing X-Men #2 Binary #2 Laura Kinney: Sabretooth #2 Iron & Frost #2 Longshots #2 Unbreakable X-Men #2 Rogue Storm #2 Sinister's Six #2 Omega Kids #2 Radioactive Spider-Man #2 The Last Wolverine #2 X-Men: Book of Revelation #2 Cloak or Dagger #2 Undeadpool #2 X-Vengers #2 Expatriate X-Men #2

This week we were subject to the latest Clockwork Torgo: Zardoz. Ugh. We also talk about Cloak and Dagger, The Inevitable Ruin, Child of Light, Stranger Things, Deb and Barry's cooking, DND 2024, Clover Pit, Wake Up Dead Man, Wicked for Good, The Soundtrack Show, Star Wars Fashion, Amazon's God of War, Guinness video game records, Ibelin, Portrait of God, the Helldivers movie, and the Stranger Things LEGO set. So, turn up those burners, it's time for a GeekShock!

Evan, Canty, & Michelle discuss Giannis exiting with a calf strain just hours after reports circulated that he's considering options outside of Milwaukee. Is our view of Chris Paul's dismissal any different after new details have emerged? The Cowboys might have one path to the playoffs and the Lions might no longer have a path to a championship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan, Canty, & Michelle discuss Giannis exiting with a calf strain just hours after reports circulated that he's considering options outside of Milwaukee. Is our view of Chris Paul's dismissal any different after new details have emerged? The Cowboys might have one path to the playoffs and the Lions might no longer have a path to a championship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan, Canty, & Michelle discuss Giannis exiting with a calf strain just hours after reports circulated that he's considering options outside of Milwaukee. Is our view of Chris Paul's dismissal any different after new details have emerged? The Cowboys might have one path to the playoffs and the Lions might no longer have a path to a championship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan, Canty, & Michelle discuss Giannis exiting with a calf strain just hours after reports circulated that he's considering options outside of Milwaukee. Is our view of Chris Paul's dismissal any different after new details have emerged? The Cowboys might have one path to the playoffs and the Lions might no longer have a path to a championship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan, Canty, & Michelle discuss Giannis exiting with a calf strain just hours after reports circulated that he's considering options outside of Milwaukee. Is our view of Chris Paul's dismissal any different after new details have emerged? The Cowboys might have one path to the playoffs and the Lions might no longer have a path to a championship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, Brendan is joined by comedian Adam Gilbert! They talk about making divorce your whole personality, private eye novels, and Chicago vs. New York. Brendan also teaches Adam how to lucid dream. FOLLOW ADAM: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamgilbert__ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamgilbertcomedy YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AdamGilb JOIN THE PATREON FOR BONUS EPS EVERY WEEK: patreon.com/sagdaddydapod WATCH BRENDAN'S SPECIAL "THIN LIPS": https://youtu.be/HpA3u7ZctsY SUBSCRIBE TO THE POD ON YOUTUBE: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BrendanSagalow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Who do you want to see on the show next? Got topic ideas? Email us at sagdaddydapod@gmail.com. FOLLOW BRENDAN: Tickets: https://punchup.live/brendansagalow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brendansagalow X: https://x.com/BrendanSagalow TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brendansagalow Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Brendansagalow4 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BrendanSagalow FOLLOW NICOLE: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicoleclyons/ Produced by Nicole Lyons Productions Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicolelyonsproductions/ Website: www.nicolelyonsproductions.com Credits: Theme Song: Brendan Sagalow and Linds Cadwell Show Art: Doctor Photograph Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this Thanksgiving episode, I take a look at five things I am thankful for as an indie author. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Ghost Exile series at my Payhip store: EXILE2025 The coupon code is valid through December 8, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 279 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 24th, 2025, and today I'm discussing five things I'm thankful for as an indie author for this Thanksgiving themed episode. As you might guess, I am recording this a little early to get ahead of the [United States] Thanksgiving holiday, but all the news and updates should still be current. We will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing and publishing projects. First up is Coupon of the Week and this week's coupon code will get you 25% off all the ebooks in the Ghost Exile series at my Payhip store. And that code is EXILE2025, and as always, the coupon code and the link to my store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through December 8, 2025, so if you need a new ebook this winter as we head into the Christmas season, we've got you covered. Now an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. Blade of Shadows is done and it should be available on all the ebook stores: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my own Payhip store. Initial reviews and reactions have been positive, so thank you all very much for that. My next main project is Wizard-Assassin, and that will be the fifth book in the Half-Elven Thief series. If my math is right, I think I'm about 25% of the way through the rough draft, and my goal is to get that out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited before Christmas 2025, which will make (hopefully if all goes well) Wizard-Assassin the final book I publish in 2025. The first book I hopefully publish in 2026 will be Blade of Storms, the third book in the Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, and the direct sequel to Blade of Shadows. I am about a thousand words into Blade of Storms, so just starting and hopefully that will be the first book I publish in 2026 (if all goes well). In audiobook news, Blade of Shadows…the status of that is pretty much the same as the last time I recorded three days ago. It's available at some of the audiobook stores but hasn't finished processing and gotten up on ACX yet. That was narrated by Brad Wills. We are approaching proof copies of the audiobook of Cloak of Embers, and that will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So that is where we are at with my current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:24 Main Topic: 5 Things to Be Thankful For as an Indie Author So let's move on to our main topic in keeping with the Thanksgiving holiday, which is only a few days away as I record this and was only a few days past when this episode was live, and that is five things to be thankful for as an indie author because I do spend on the show a lot of time talking about the various challenges and difficulties of being an indie author, but there are a lot of things to be thankful for as well. So as I said before, the Thanksgiving holiday is coming up here in the United States and that day always leads [me] to reflect on what we have to be thankful for. And one of the things at the top of my list is my work as an indie author and publisher. Today I'm going to talk about five things that I can be thankful for as an indie author and that other indie authors may be thankful for as well. #1: Creative freedom. As I've talked about before on this podcast, the most immediate benefit to indie publishing is not having to make creative compromises in order to get published. For example, you can make a series the exact length that you want it to be, not what the market can support. You can write in whatever genre, style, and using the themes you want without any interference. As we all know, traditional publishing is pretty trend driven and they seek out books that match trends because they are very risk averse. There's a time about a decade and a half ago when publishers were outright telling authors not to submit books with goblins and orcs and other traditional fantasy creatures, for example. Instead of trying to change your book or writing style in order to get accepted by traditional publishing, indie publishing allows you to create and share the exact book that you want to and then it can rise and fall on its own merits and how well you market it. In fact, what has been traditionally called genre writing (such as categories [like] science fiction and fantasy and mystery and so forth) have flourished without the constraints of traditional publishing. The Internet and platforms like Amazon and the other ebook platforms as well have made it easy for readers to discover books that fit in their preferred genres and styles, not what publishers think they want to read. #2: Freedom from bad deals. The traditional publishing industry is not quite as exploitative as the music industry, but it is not through a lack of trying. Bad deals abound in traditional publishing because they're relying on the fact that new authors want to be published so badly that they're willing to compromise on things like royalty rates, exclusivity agreements, and control over rights. This mindset persists quite strongly even today where if you go on any of the social media platforms, you'll see writers desperately trying to get themselves an agent rather than doing what they should be doing, self-publishing and learning digital marketing. The amounts paid out in advances (which is the amount that publishers pay authors before a book is released) are decreasing and fewer and fewer books are earning out (which means that the author receives royalties beyond the initial advance). Romance writers are especially benefiting from indie publishing because one of the top publishers in that genre is known to make deals that don't favor the author such as low advances and royalty rates, and they don't allow for contract negotiations. Indie publishing gives you the ability to get published and get your book to readers without taking a bad deal from a publisher or worse yet, turning to scammers. And unfortunately, there are a lot of scammers out there. In indie publishing, where you publish is what determines how much you receive. Each platform has their own royalty setup and payment structures, and you'll get paid far more often (usually monthly, sometimes quarterly) and have the ability to review book sales in real time instead of waiting for quarterly statements (if that or sometimes biannual statements) from a publisher that feel like they're written in hieroglyphics. If you're publishing on a direct sales platform like Pay Hip or Shopify, you can get as much as 90% of each sale and you don't have to wait for a book to reach the mysterious point where it earns out in order to get that money because the money is immediately available to you, although usually after a period of 60 days or so. And if you are an indie author, you don't have to worry about your publisher canceling your active series because of sales that the publisher doesn't like, which is allowed in a standard traditional publishing contract. It's becoming increasingly common to have publishers do this even when the next book in the series is ready for publication or even scheduled for publication. Indie authors can always complete a series for their readers, (which I've been able to do with Stealth and Spells Online most recently, for example). #3: Write [and] release at your own pace. There are no, or at the very least, very, very, very few traditional publishers that would let me have the frequent release schedule I currently have. For example, Blade of Flames came out in September, and then Blade of Shadows is coming out right now in the gap of only two months. Publishing still thinks in terms of seasonal releases, especially the fall and spring release seasons. The schedules for these releases are created far, far in advance and don't change all that much. In self-publishing, there is no one bumping your release to another season or telling you that you can't put out a book because a similar book is coming out at the same time. If you want to put out a book monthly like the pulp writers of old, you are completely free to do that. I do that myself when possible because I'm hoping there's less about a month gap between Blade Shadows and Wizard Assassin. #4: Control over your online brand. Traditional publishers like their authors to have a strong social media presence and heavily favor authors with a large and preexisting follower account. They even give pre-written social posts to their authors or require pre-approval from their team before posting on social media. With indie publishing, you are completely free to exist online in the way that makes the most sense and is the healthiest for you, and no one is telling you what you can or you can post. You can post as much as you want or even forego certain media platforms altogether or as many of them as you want. For myself, I like to post about my hobbies like vintage video games, even though that's a not a high engagement topic that the algorithm favors. There is no one telling me what I can post or trying get me to increase my follower count as a condition of getting future contracts. #5: And for me personally, the fifth and final thing to be thankful for that we'll discuss on this episode is the ability to make a living and hire others. And obviously this is a big, big, big thing to be grateful for. I've been an indie author for 14 and a half years now, and a full-time one for over nine years, and I was able to hire people to help me two and a half years ago with many non-writing tasks such as Amazon Ads, podcast transcripts, bookkeeping, and so forth. I have also been able to hire narrators like Brad Wills, Hollis McCarthy, C.J. McCallister, and Leanne Woodward to produce my audiobooks since the majority of my audiobooks are self-funded by me. I don't have to rely on a team that a publisher that has been picked out for me, and I can choose my own team as an indie author, or I can do everything myself, which is what I really did for the first 11 years. Unlike a team that a traditional publisher that has been spread too thin across an increasing number of authors, the team I hire is focused on making the best ebook or audiobook we can, and we're all on the same page. The ability to make a living at my work and even hire others is because of all of you. I am very, very grateful for all of you who have read my books and listened to my audiobooks, and so thank you very much, and we hopefully we will have new things for you to read and listen to in the coming months and in 2026. In conclusion, there is a lot to be thankful for in the world of indie publishing. Although it is hard work, the benefits of being an indie author over a traditionally published one are significant, and I suspect they're only going to grow over time as the traditional publishing industry continues to consolidate into one or two few mega corporations. So for Thanksgiving 2025, I'm grateful for all of my readers who allow me to be an indie author, and thank you once again for all of your support. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review of your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

EP 119 BONUS- Nov. 2025 Trek of the Month Welcome to First Flight's Bonus Trek of the Month thematic episodes chat! Chris and Abby love ALL Trek and have given themselves, and the Carrot Crew, some franchise spanning, thematic episode choices for each month.   This month of November the theme is Veterans Day and/or Thanksgiving, and our episode picks are (Forget Me Not DSC S3 Ep 4) and (Under the Cloak of War SNW S2 Ep 8)  Take a listen and hear why we picked them for this theme, a connection to our personal lives and a Grappler Rating. *** Next Month in (December) the episodes are (The Gift VOY S4 Ep 2) and (Generations Movie TOS/TNG) *** Feel free to let us know your thoughts on these monthly episodes and if you have any connections or Grappler Ratings of your own.  (Please note, contributions might be shared on the podcast!) Find Us on Twitter (X), Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Facebook:  @FirstFlightPod Abby: @abbymsommer Chris: @ShelfNerds  Find Us on YouTube: Chris' Channel : Completing the Shelf

Topics discussed on this week's #FlashbackFriday episode from 2018 include: Steve's lack of headphones Kyle's Macy Gray impression is on point! A sad day for podcast snacks Cloak and Dagger Non-Denominational Winter Solstice Gift Exchange Update Steve's review of the A Star is Born soundtrack Kyle cried at another movie And more! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Bluesky! Get show merch here! Please review the show wherever you download podcasts! Wanna send something? The Steve and Kyle Podcast P.O. Box 371 Hudsonville, MI 49426 Opening music: "Malt Shop Bop" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Closing music: "Pulse" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ TAGS: funny, friends, family, kids, comedy, talk radio, talk, radio, pop culture, music, food, garage, sports, relationships, viral videos, social media, politics, fbhw, free beer and hot wings

Just in case you are thinking of getting some books for Christmas (and who wouldn't be?), we're bringing you our eighth instalment of Cloak, Books, and Parchments (2Tim 4:13). There is no book like the Bible but we all learn from the ministry of others, including ministry that comes to us in written form. Mike & Matthew share brief reviews of 7 books for your reading pleasure, and also provide a heads up for the February Reading Challenge.- Let Earth Receive Her King by Allistair Begg (Good Book Co)- Elisabeth Elliot: A Life by Lucy S.R. Austen (Crossway)- One With My Lord, The Life Changing Reality of Being in Christ, by Sam Allberry (Crossway)- Remember Heaven: Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime by Matthew McCullough (Crossway)- I Am David by Anne Holm (Farshore)- Armada: The Spanish Enterprise and England's Deliverance in 1588 by Colin Martin & Geoffrey Parker (Yale University Press)- Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung (Crossway) Visit PracticologyPodcast.com for more episodes.Follow the Practicology Podcast on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MandMsPodcast

In this week's episode, I rate the movies and streaming shows I saw in Autumn 2025. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in The Ghosts series at my Payhip store: GHOSTS2025 The coupon code is valid through December 1, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 278 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 21st, 2025, and today I am sharing my reviews of the movies and streaming shows I saw in Fall 2025. We also have a Coupon of the Week and an update my current writing, audiobook, and publishing projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off all the ebooks in The Ghosts series at my Payhip store, and that is GHOSTS2025. And as always, we'll have the link to my Payhip store and the coupon code in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through December 1, 2025, so if you need a new ebook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now for my current writing and publishing projects: I'm very pleased to report that Blade of Shadows, the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series, is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip store. By the time this episode goes live, all those stores should be available and you can get the book at any one of them and I hope you will read and enjoy it. I'm also 15,000 words into what will be my next main project Wizard-Assassin, the fifth book in the Half-Elven Thief series, and if all goes well, I want that to be out before Christmas. I'm also working on the outline for what will be the third book in the Blades of Ruin series, Blade of Storms, and that will hopefully, if all goes well, be the first book I publish in 2026. In audiobook news, as I mentioned last week, the audiobook of Blade of Flames is done and I believe as of this recording, you can get at my Payhip store, Google Play, Kobo, and I think Spotify. It's not up on Audible or Apple yet, but that should be soon, if all goes well. That is excellently narrated by Brad Wills. Hollis McCarthy is still working on Cloak of Embers. I believe main recording is done for that and it just has to be edited and proofed, so hopefully we'll get both audiobooks to you before the end of the year. So that is where I'm at with my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. 00:02:08 Main Topic of the Week: Autumn 2025 Movie Review Roundup Now on to this week's main project, the Autumn 2025 Movie Review Roundup. I watched a lot of classic horror movies this time around. The old Universal black and white monster movies from the '30s and '40s turned up on Prime for Halloween and I hadn't seen them since I was a kid, so I watched a bunch of them in October and November, which seemed an appropriate thing to do for Halloween. They mostly held up as well as I remembered from when I was a kid, which was a nice surprise. As ever, the grades I give these movies are totally subjective and based on nothing more than my own opinions and thoughts. With that, let's take a look at the movies from least favorite to most favorite. First up is The Other Guys, which came out in 2010 and this is a parody of the buddy cop/ cowboy cop movie along with a heavy critique of the reckless and corrupt culture of late 2000s Wall Street. "Dumb funny" movies I've noticed tend to fall on either side of the "dumb but actually funny" or "dumb and not funny" line. And this one definitely landed on "dumb but actually funny". Danson and Highsmith, played by The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, are two maverick popular detectives who never do paperwork. Their paperwork is always done by Allen Gamble, who's played by Will Ferrell and Terry Hoitz, played by Mark Wahlberg. Gamble is a mild-mannered forensic accountant, while Hoitz desperately wants to be as cool as either Danson or Highsmith, but since he accidentally shot Yankees player Derek Jeter (in a recurring gag), he's a pariah within the New York Police Department. However, Danon and Highsmith's plot armor suddenly run out and they accidentally kill themselves in a darkly hilarious scene that made me laugh so much I hurt a little. Hoitz wants to step into their shoes, but Gamble has stumbled onto potentially dangerous case and soon Hoitz and Gamble have to overcome their difficulties and unravel a complicated financial crime. This was pretty funny and I enjoyed it. Amusingly in real life, someone like Gamble would be massively respected in whatever law enforcement agency he works for, since someone who prepares ironclad paperwork and correct documentation that stands up in court is an invaluable asset in law enforcement work. Overall Grade: B Next up is Fantastic Four: First Steps, which came out in 2025. I like this though, to be honest, I liked Thunderbolts and Superman 2025 better. I think my difficulty is I never really understood The Fantastic Four as a concept and why they're appealing. Maybe the Fantastic Four are one of those things you just have to imprint on when you're a kid to really enjoy or maybe at my age, the sort of retro futurism of the Four, the idea that science, technology, and rational thought will solve all our problems does seem a bit naive after the last 65 years of history or so. Additionally, the idea of a naked silver space alien riding a surfboard does seem kind of ridiculous. Anyway, the movie glides over the origin story of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm and gets right into it. To their surprise, Reed and Sue find out that Sue is pregnant, which seemed unlikely due to their superpower induced genetic mutations. Shortly after that, the Silver Surfer arrives and announces that Earth will be devoured by Galactus. The Four travel in their spaceship to confront Galactus and realize that he's a foe far beyond their power, but Galactus offers them a bargain. If Reed and Sue give him their son, he will leave Earth in peace. They refuse and so it's up to the Four to figure out a way to save Earth and Reed and Sue's son. Pretty solid superhero movie all told, but it is amusing how in every version of the character, Reed Richards is allegedly the smartest man on Earth but still can't keep his mouth shut to save his life. Overall Grade: B The next movie is Superman, which came out in 1978. After seeing the 2025 version of Superman, I decided to watch the old one from the '70s. It's kind of a classic because it was one of the progenitors of the modern superhero film. Interestingly, it was one of the most expensive films ever made at that time, costing about $55 million in '70s-era dollars, which are much less inflated than today. A rough back of the envelope calculation would put 55 million in the '70s worth at about $272 million today, give or take. Anyway, this was a big gamble, but it paid off for the producers since they got $300 million back, which would be like around $1.4 billion in 2025 money. Anyway, the movie tells the origin story of Superman, how his father Jor-El knows that Krypton is doomed, so he sends Kal-El to Earth. Kal-El is raised as Clark Kent by his adoptive Kansas parents and uses his powers to become Superman- defender of truth, justice, and the American way. Superman must balance his growing feelings for ace reporter Lois Lane with his need for a secret identity and the necessity of stopping Lex Luthor's dangerous schemes. Christopher Reeve was an excellent Superman and the special effects were impressive by the standards of 1978, but I think the weakest part of the movie were the villains. Lex Luthor just seemed comedic and not at all that threatening. Unexpected fun fact: Mario Puzio, author of The Godfather, wrote the screenplay. Overall Grade: B Next up is Superman II, which came out in 1980. This is a direct sequel to the previous movie. When Superman stops terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb by throwing it into space, the blast releases the evil Kryptonian General Zod and his minions from their prison and they decide to conquer Earth. Meanwhile, Superman is falling deeper in love with the Lois Lane and unknowing of the threat from Zod, decides to renounce his powers to live with Lois as an ordinary man. I think this had the same strengths and weaknesses as the first movie. Christopher Reeve was an excellent Superman. The special effects were impressive by the standards of the 1980s, but the villains remained kind of comedic goofballs. Additionally, and while this will sound harsh, this version of Lois Lane was kind of dumb and her main function in the plot was to generate problems for Superman via her questionable decisions. Like at the end, Superman has to wipe her memory because she can't keep his secret identity to herself. If this version of Lois Lane lived today, she'd be oversharing everything she ever thought or heard on TikTok. The 2025 movie version of Lois, by contrast, bullies Mr. Terrific into lending her his flying saucer so she can rescue Superman when he's in trouble and is instrumental in destroying Lex Luthor's public image and triggering his downfall. 1970s Louis would've just had a meltdown and made things worse until Superman could get around to rescuing her. Overall, I would say the 1978 movie was too goofy, the Zac Snyder Superman movies were too grimdark, but the 2025 Superman hit the right balance between goofy and serious. Overall Grade: B Next up is Dracula, which came out in 1931, and this was one of the earliest horror movies ever made and also one of the earliest movies ever produced with sound. It is a very compressed adaptation of the stage version of Dracula. Imagine the theatrical stage version of Dracula, but then imagine that the movie was only 70 minutes long, so you have to cut a lot to fit the story into those 70 minutes. So if you haven't read the book, Dracula the movie from 1931 will not make a lot of sense. It's almost like the "Cliff's Notes Fast Run" version of Dracula. That said, Bela Lugosi's famous performance as Dracula really carries the movie. Like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein and The Mummy (which we'll talk about shortly), Bela Lugosi really captures the uncanny valley aspect of Dracula because the count isn't human anymore and has all these little tics of a creature that isn't human but only pretending to be one. Edward Van Sloan's performance as Dr. Van Helsing is likewise good and helped define the character in the public eye. So worth watching as a historical artifact, but I think some of the other Universal monster movies (which we'll discuss shortly) are much stronger. Overall Grade: B Next up is The Horror of Dracula, which came out in 1958. This is one of the first of the Hammer Horror movies from the '50s, starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing and Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. It's also apparently the first vampire movie ever made in color. Like the 1931 version of Dracula, it's a condensed version of the story, though frankly, I think it hangs together a little better. Van Helsing is a bit more of an action hero in this one, since in the end he engages Dracula in fisticuffs. The movie is essentially carried by the charisma of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and worth watching as a good example of a classic '50s horror movie. Overall Grade: B Next up is The Wolf Man, which came out in 1941. This is another one of the classic Universal horror movies. This one features Lon Cheney Jr. as Larry Talbot, the younger son of Sir John Talbot. Larry's older brother died in a hunting accident, so Larry comes home to reconcile with his father and take up his duties as the family heir. Larry is kind of an amiable Average Joe and is immediately smitten with the prettiest girl in the village, but when he takes her out for a walk, they're attacked by a werewolf, who bites Larry. Larry and everyone else in the village do not believe in werewolves, but they're about to have their minds changed the hard way. The transformation sequences where Larry turns into the Wolfman were cutting edge of the time, though poor Lon Chaney Jr had to stay motionless for hours as they gradually glued yak hair to him. I think Claude Rains had the best performance in the movie as Sir John and he's almost the co-protagonist. Overall Grade: B Next up is Jurassic World: Rebirth, which came out in 2025, which I thought was a perfectly straightforward but nonetheless enjoyable adventure film. After all the many disasters caused by various genetic engineering experiments in the previous movies, dinosaurs mostly live in relatively compatible ecosystems and tropical zones near the equator. No one's looking to create a theme park with dinosaurs or create bioengineered dinosaurs as military assets any longer. However, the dinosaurs are still valuable for research and a pharmaceutical company is developing a revolutionary drug for treating cardiac disease. They just need some dinosaur blood from three of the largest species to finish it, and so the company hires a team of mercenaries to retrieve the blood. We have the usual Jurassic Park style story tropes: the savvy mercenary leader, the scientist protesting the ethics of it all, the sinister corporate executive, the troubled family getting sucked into the chaos. And of course, it all goes wrong and there are lots and lots of dinosaurs running around. It's all been done before of course, but this was done well and was entertaining. Overall Grade: B+ Next up is The Thursday Murder Club, which came out in 2025, and this is a cozy mystery set in a very high-end retirement home. Retired nurse Joyce moves into Coopers Chase, the aforementioned high end retirement home. Looking to make new friends, she falls in with a former MI6 agent named Liz, a retired trade unionist named Ron, and psychiatrist Ibrahim, who have what they call The Thursday Murder Club, where they look into cold cases and attempt to solve them. However, things are not all sunshine and light at Coopers Chase as the two owners of the building have fallen out. When one of them is murdered, The Thursday Murder Club has to solve a real murder before Coopers Chase is bulldozed to make high-end apartments. A good cozy mystery with high caliber acting talent. Both Pierce Brosnan and Jonathan Price are in the movie and regrettably do not share a scene together, because that would've been hilarious since they were both in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies in the '90s with Brosnan as Bond and Price as the Bond villain for the movie. Overall Grade: B+ Next up is The Creature From the Black Lagoon, which came out in 1954 and is one of the last of the black and white classic horror movies since in the '50s, color film was just around the corner. When a scientist finds the unusual half fish, half human fossil on a riverbank in Brazil, he decides to organize an expedition upriver to see if he can find the rest of the fossil. The trail leads his expedition to the mysterious Black Lagoon, which all the locals avoid because of its bad reputation, but a living member of the species that produce the fossils lurking the lagoon while it normally doesn't welcome visitors, it does like the one female member of the expedition and decides to claim her for its own. The creature was good monster and the underwater water sequences were impressive by the standards of the 1950s. Overall Grade: A- Next up is The Invisible Man, which came out in 1933, and this is another of the classic Universal black and white horror movies. Jack Griffin is a scientist who discovered a chemical formula for invisibility. Unfortunately, one of the drugs in his formula causes homicidal insanity, so he becomes a megalomaniac who wants to use his invisibility to rule the world. This causes Griffin to overlook the numerous weaknesses of his invisibility, which allow the police to hunt him down. The Invisible Man's special effects were state of the art at the time and definitely hold up nearly a hundred years later. It's worth watching as another classic of the genre. Claude Rains plays Griffin, and as with The Wolf Man, his performance as Griffin descends into homicidal insanity is one of the strengths of the movie. Overall Grade: A- Next up is The Mummy, which came out in 1932, and this is another of the original Universal black and white horror movies. Boris Karloff plays the Mummy, who is the ancient Egyptian priest Imhotep, who was mummified alive for the crime of desiring the Pharaoh's daughter Ankh-es-en-Amon. After 3,000 years, Imhotep is accidentally brought back to life when an archeologist reads a magical spell and Imhotep sets out immediately to find the reincarnation of his beloved and transform her into a mummy as well so they can live together forever as undead. Edward Van Sloan plays Dr. Mueller, who is basically Edward Van Sloan's Van Helsing from Dracula if Van Helsing specialized in mummy hunting rather than vampire hunting. This version of the Mummy acts more like a Dungeons and Dragons lich instead of the now classic image of a shambling mummy in dragging bandages. That said, Boris Karloff is an excellent physical actor. As he does with Frankenstein, he brings Imhotep to life. His performance captures the essence of a creature that hasn't been human for a very long time, is trying to pretend to be human, and isn't quite getting there. Of course, the plot was reused for the 1999 version of The Mummy with Brendan Fraser. That was excellent and this is as well. Overall Grade: A- Next up is The Wedding Singer, which came out in 1998, and this is basically the Adam Sandler version of a Hallmark movie. Adam Sandler plays Robbie, a formerly famous musician whose career has lapsed and has become a wedding singer and a venue singer. He befriends the new waitress Julia at the venue, played by Drew Barrymore. The day after that, Robbie's abandoned at the altar by his fiancée, which is understandably devastating. Meanwhile, Julia's fiancé Glenn proposes to her and Robbie agrees to help her with the wedding planning since he's an expert in the area and knows all the local vendors. However, in the process, Robbie and Julia fall in love, but are in denial about the fact, a situation made more tense when Robbie realizes Glenn is cheating on Julia and intends to continue to do so after the wedding. So it's basically a Hallmark movie filtered through the comedic sensibilities of Adam Sandler. It was very funny and Steve Buscemi always does great side characters in Adam Sandler movies. Overall Grade: A Next up is Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, which came out in 2025. This movie was sort of a self-indulgent victory lap, but it was earned. The writers of the sitcom Community used to joke that they wanted "six seasons and a movie" and Downton Abbey got "six seasons and three movies". Anyway, this movie is about handing off things to the next generation. Lord Grantham is reluctant to fully retire as his daughter goes through a scandal related to her divorce. The next generation of servants take over as the previous ones ease into retirement. What's interesting is both the nobles and the servants are fully aware that they're sort of LARPing a historical relic by this point because by 1930, grand country houses like Downton were increasingly rare in the UK since World War I wiped out most of them and crippling post-war taxes and economic disruption finished off many more. Anyway, if you like Downton Abbey, you like this movie. Overall Grade: A Next up is Argo, which came out in 2012, a very tense thriller about the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. During that particular crisis, six Americans escaped the embassy and hid out at the Canadian Ambassador's house in Tehran. For obvious reasons, the Canadian ambassador wanted them out as quickly as possible, so the CIA and the State Department needed to cook up a plan to get the six out while the rest of the government tried to figure out what to do about the larger group of hostages. Finally, the government comes with "Argo." A CIA operative will create a fake film crew, a fake film company, and smuggle the six out of Tehran as part of the production. The movie was very tense and very well constructed, even if you know the outcome in advance if you know a little bit of history. Ben Affleck directed and starred, and this was in my opinion one of his best performances. It did take some liberties with historical accuracy, but nonetheless, a very tense political thriller/heist movie with some moments of very dark comedy. Overall Grade: A Next up is The Naked Gun, which came out in 2025, and this is a pitch perfect parody of the gritty cop movie with a lot of absurdist humor, which works well because Liam Neeson brings his grim action persona to the movie and it works really well with the comedy. Neeson plays Lieutenant Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the original Frank Drebin from The Naked Gun movies back in the '80s. After stopping a bank robbery, Drebin finds himself investigating the suicide of an engineer for the sinister tech mogul Richard Cane. Naturally, the suicide isn't what it appears and when the engineer's mysterious but seductive sister asks for Drebin's help, he pushes deeper into the case. Richard Cane was a hilarious villain because the writers couldn't decide which tech billionaire to parody with him, so they kind of parodied all the tech billionaires at once, and I kid you not, the original Frank Drebin makes an appearance as a magical owl. It was hilarious. Overall Grade: A Now for my two favorite things I saw in Autumn 2025. The first is the combination of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, which came out in 1931 and 1935. These are two separate movies, but Frankenstein leads directly to Bride of Frankenstein, so I'm going to treat them as one movie. Honestly, I think they're two halves of the same story the way that Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame would be two halves of the same story 90 years later, so I'll review them as one. Frankenstein by itself on its own will get a B. Colin Clive's performance is Dr. Henry Frankenstein was great, and Boris Karloff gives the Creature a suitable air of menace and uncanny valley. You really feel like he's something that's been brought to life but isn't quite right and still extremely dangerous. The movie does have a very pat ending that implies everyone will live happily ever after, with Dr. Frankenstein's father giving a toast to his son. But Bride of Frankenstein takes everything from the first movie and improves on it. It's one of those sequels that actually makes the preceding movie better. In Bride, Henry is recovering from his ordeal and swears off his experiments of trying to create artificial humans, but the Creature survived the fire at the windmill at the end of the last movie and is seeking for a new purpose. Meanwhile, Henry receives a visit from his previous mentor, the sinister Dr. Pretorius. Like Henry, Pretorius succeeded in creating artificial life and now he wants to work with Henry to perfect their work, but Henry refuses, horrified by the consequences of his previous experiments. Pretorius, undaunted, makes an alliance with the Creature, who then kidnaps Henry's wife. This will let Pretorius force Henry to work on their ultimate work together-a bride for the Creature. Bride of Frankenstein is a lot tighter than Frankenstein. It was surprising to see how rapidly filmmaking techniques evolved over just four years. Pretorius is an excellent villain, more evil wizard than mad scientist, and the scene where he calmly and effortlessly persuades the Creature to his side was excellent. One amusing note, Bride was framed as Mary Shelley telling the second half of the story to her friends, and then the actress playing Mary Shelley, Elsa Lancaster, also played the Bride. So that was a funny bit of meta humor. Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein combined is one of my two favorite movies of Fall 2025. Overall Grade: A+ And now for my second favorite movie of Autumn 2025, which as it turns out is also Frankenstein, but Guillermo del Toro's version that came out in 2025. And honestly, I think Guillermo del Toro's version of Frankenstein is the best version put to screen so far and even does the rarest of all feats, it improves a little on the original novel. Oscar Isaac plays Victor Frankenstein as a brilliant, driven scientist with something of a sociopathic edge. In other words, he's a man who's utterly inadequate to the task when his experiment succeeds and he actually creates an artificial human that have assembled dead body parts. Jacob Elordi does a good job as the Creature, playing him is essentially a good hearted man who's driven to violence and despair by the cruelty and rejection of the world. The recurring question of the Frankenstein mythos is whether or not Victor Frankenstein is the real monster. In this version, he definitely is, though he gets a chance to repent of his evil by the end. Honestly, everything about this was good. The performances, the cinematography, everything. How good was it? It was so good that I will waive my usual one grade penalty for unnecessary nudity since there were a few brief scenes of it. Overall Grade: A+ So that was the Autumn 2025 Movie Roundup. A lot of good movies this time around. While some movies of course were better than others, I didn't see anything I actively disliked, which is always nice. So that's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

As we sift through the stacks of comics that have come out over the last six weeks, it feels like the perfect time to check in. So many titles! Which ones have stood out? Which ones have fallen to the side? Do you have a top five from the list or are you just sticking to the handful that interested you? We go through each of the last six weeks of comics with reactions, theories and questions! Week 1 Issues - 4:31 Amazing X-Men 1, World of Revelation 1, Binary 1, Laura Kinney Sabretooth 1, Longshots 1 Week 2 Issues - 22:12 Unbreakable X-Men 1, Sinister's Six 1, , Rogue Storm 1 Week 3 Issues - 38:29 X-Men Book of Revelation 1, Omega Kids 1, The Last Wolverine 1, Radioactive Spider-Man 1 Week 4 Issues - 55:45 Expatriate X-Men 1, X-Vengers 1, Cloak or Dagger 1, Undeadpool 1 Week 5 Issues - 1:10:55 Amazing X-Men 2, Laura Kinney Sabretooth 2, Binary 2, Longshots 2 Week 6 Issues - 1:27:25 Sinister's Six 2, Rogue Storm 2, Iron and Frost 2 Thanks for joining us in our ninth episode of an evolving new format. We're trying out different ways to talk about things within continuity that excited us and we'd love to hear what you think! Leave us a review, send us a DM or shout from the telepathic rooftops! It's all greatly appreciated. 

Cloak and Dagger 50-06-25 ep07 Direct Line to Bombers

In this week's episode, we discuss the advantages of digital content ownership for both readers and writers. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: CLOAK2025 The coupon code is valid through November 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 277 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 14th, 2025, and today we are discussing the benefits of owning your own content for both readers and writers. Before we get to our main topic, we will start off with Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Ashes, Book #3 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is CLOAK2025. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through November 24th, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook for your Thanksgiving travels this month, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. I'm pleased to report the rough draft of Blade of Shadows is done. This will be the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. Right now, it is just about exactly as long as Blade of Flames. It may be a little longer or a little shorter depending on how editing goes since there's some stuff I'm going to cut out, but there's also some scenes I'm going to add. I also wrote a short story called Elven Arrow. Newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of Elven Arrow when Blade of Shadows comes out, which will hopefully be before American Thanksgiving at the end of the month. I'm about 23% of the way through the first editing pass, so making good progress there and hope to keep up with the good progress. I am 11,000 words into Wizard-Assassin. That will be my next main project once the Blade of Shadows is published and probably the final book I publish in 2025, because I think the first book I do in 2026 will be Blades of Ruin #3, if all goes well. In audiobook news, the recording for Blade of Flames is done and it's gradually making its way out into the world (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills). I think as of the time of this recording, the only place where it's actually live is Google Play, but hopefully more stores will come online soon, and it would be cool if the Blade of Flames audiobook was available everywhere before Blade of Shadows came out. Hollis McCarthy is still working on Cloak of Embers and we hope to have that to you before the end of the year, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at with current writing, publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:25 Main Topic: Digital Content Ownership as a Reader and Writer Now let's move on to our own topic, the ownership of digital content as both a reader and a writer. As the digital revolution has gone on and on and put more decades behind it, people are increasingly building very large digital content libraries and it's an increasingly tangled point of law what happens to those digital libraries when for example, their account gets suspended, or for example, someone else dies and wants to leave their Steam library of games to their heirs. We're today going to be focusing on digital content ownership for readers and writers, and we'll start with readers. Although the price of an ebook and print book of many traditionally published books are roughly the same at this point (and sometimes bafflingly, the ebook versions cost more), the rights you have as the owner of the ebook copy are substantially less powerful. In fact, technically speaking, you aren't actually the owner of an ebook purchased from Amazon or other retailers. It's more accurate to say that you purchased a long-term conditional lease. As a side note, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States Copyright law and ebook/audiobook stores there. The laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain legal advice by hiring a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. But now back to the main argument. In America, there is something known as the First Sale Doctrine. This section of the US Copyright Act allows physical media to be lent out and resold, among other things. For example, someone who purchases a physical book is considered its owner and the publisher can't take it back from them. The physical version of books can be used in libraries or as classroom materials until they literally fall apart, unlike their electronic equivalents, which face complicated licensing agreements that generally offer far less favorable terms of use for a much larger cost (especially for libraries and academic institutions). In the US, electronic content ownership is covered by contract law instead of the First Sale Doctrine. Although each seller has their own licenses and standards, a few things tend to remain consistent across those licenses: the inability to lend or resell the content, the inability to remove DRM from the content, and the right of the seller to alter or even remove the content. Ownership is not a right guaranteed for digital content. There is an American lawsuit currently challenging Amazon Prime Video and its use of words like "purchase" and "buy" for its video content. The lawsuit accuses Amazon of misrepresenting a heavily conditional license as a purchase, giving the average customer the impression that they own the content in perpetuity. Amazon lawyers argue that the average customer understands the difference, but frequent outrages over content being removed from users' libraries suggests otherwise. Here are four reasons owning your ebook content is important. #1: Keeping access to the content if the company closes or gets bought out. One of the early leaders in the US ebook store market way back at the start of the indie revolution was Sony. When their Sony Reader store closed, they gave readers the option to migrate their libraries to Kobo. Books that were not available through Kobo were not able to be transferred, so some purchased content was lost for readers. A more egregious example comes from, as you might expect, Microsoft with the closing of the Microsoft ebook store in 2019. When the store closed, they offered refunds instead of giving readers an opportunity to self-archive or transfer their purchases. Any margin notes taken by readers were lost, and they were given a $25 credit for the inconvenience. Although refunding customers was a good gesture, it's not a guarantee that readers are able to repurchase the ebooks elsewhere or even that the price would be the same when they did. As an aside, I spent a good chunk of time in 2018 trying to figure out how to get into the Microsoft ebook store and then finally gave up because it was too complicated, which in hindsight turned out to be a good decision. Owning your ebooks outright gives them independence from the store that you bought them from. #2: Keeping content from being altered. Ebooks can be altered anytime. Most of the time these changes are harmless, such as updating a cover, fixing a typo, or adding a preview chapter. I do that myself all the time. Every time I get typo corrections, I upload a new version. Yet there is a potential for books to be edited or censored from the original copy that you purchased. Chapters could be removed, scenes altered, or in extreme cases, the entire book could be removed. Owning a hard copy means that you have a version that cannot be changed without your knowledge. #3: The ability to self-archive. Most ebook stores use a form of digital rights management (DRM) that makes it difficult to transfer or permanently store your collection outside of their collection or library. Trying to do so is a violation of the license you purchased from the store, so I won't discuss how to do that. Amazon recently made self-archiving more difficult by discontinuing the feature to download and transfer Kindle books via USB. Finding DRM-free ebook stores is important if you want to organize and store your ebook collection as you see fit. Two examples of stores with DRM-free ebooks are Smashwords and direct [sales] sites like My Payhip store. Other stores like Kobo have a dedicated section devoted to DRM-free ebooks. #4: Keeping your reading habits private. Companies like Amazon track reading data, mostly out of a desire to sell you similar books or ad space. They track what you're reading, the amount of time you spend reading, your reading speed, and the highlights that you make in a book. Now, most of the time this is generally pretty harmless. It's mostly used for…you look on Amazon, you see that the section "customers who enjoyed this book also enjoyed this". Then if you use the Kindle app on your phone a lot, it has a lot of badges and achievements and it tends to be used for that kind of thing. However, there could be sinister undertones to this, especially if you're reading things you would prefer other people not know about. So if this concerns you, if there are some settings that you can adjust, but if you want complete privacy, outright ownership of your ebooks is the way to go. So what is the easiest way to own your own ebooks as a reader? The easiest way and perhaps the safest way to own your content outright is to buy print copies of books. That said, buying direct from authors or finding ebooks that have more favorable license terms is easiest way to own your ebook purchases. One of the reasons that opening a Payhip store was important to me was I gave my readers a chance to outright own purchased copies of my work and self-archive them in the way that they saw fit, if that was important to them. The price is the same on my Payhip store as other ebook or audiobook stores (and sometimes even cheaper if you're using Coupon of the Week). The ebooks and audiobooks there are DRM-free and untethered from specific stores and companies. You have the option to download files in a variety of file formats and store them in a way that makes the most sense to you. Buying direct also gives a greater share of the sale price to the authors, especially in the case of audiobooks. In conclusion, ebooks lag behind print books in terms of ownership rights for purchasers here in the United States (at the time of this recording). That said, you can be an informed consumer by reading terms of use carefully and educating yourself to make sure that you have the most possible access to your purchased content. Now, we've covered that from the reader side, and let's look at it from the side of the content creators, specifically writers. This can also apply to other content creators such as musicians, and we're going to use a very famous example for that, Taylor Swift. The general public learned about the importance of fully owning your content as a creator during the long and very public battle between musician Taylor Swift and the record company that sold her work to a private equity firm associated with someone she personally disliked. She owned the copyrights to the works (along with her various collaborators), but not the masters, the specific recordings of each song. As long as she didn't own her masters, she didn't have control over song choices for her public performances, the label releasing older content against her wishes, or how her music would be licensed out for commercial use. Swift reasserted control by rerecording old albums (a strategy previously used by the musician Prince), which gave her ownership of these new masters and devalued the original masters to the point where she could later afford to buy them outright. Many artists, including Olivia Rodrigo, credit Swift for helping them to negotiate adding the ownership of their masters into their contracts. As predatory as the publishing industry can be, the music industry tends to make them look like rank amateurs in terms of sheer evil. So it is a testament to her popularity and business success that she was able to convince them to do this. The world's most famous pop star taught millions of fans that owning your work is the ultimate goal of a creative. Why is ownership of your work important for writers specifically and not just American pop stars? We'll discuss six reasons why it's important for content creators and specifically writers in this episode. And as a reminder yet again, I'm talking about this from the perspective of United States law. Laws and standards in your own country may be different. Also, I am not a lawyer and nothing in this episode should be taken as legal advice. You obtain proper legal advice by contacting a lawyer licensed to practice in your jurisdiction. So with that in mind, let's get into the topic. What is ownership as a writer? Writers generally keep the copyrights to works they sell to publishers. Writers are essentially selling the right or a license to produce and distribute their book in a certain format, language, and geographic area. Most of the time, geographic area rights are sold separately. For example, rights for the Harry Potter books are owned by Scholastic in the United States and Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. Sometimes writers will keep the rights in a specific format, like when I signed with Tantor to give them the audio rights to the first five Frostborn books while keeping the rights to my print and ebook formats. What writers lose in the process of selling to publishers is the ability to control how their work is marketed, packaged, and sold. They do not have the freedom to make major decisions such as when a book is released or where it is marketed. Today I am going to share six reasons that retaining ownership is important for writers and what things you generally sacrifice when you sign with a traditional publisher instead of self-publishing or indie publishing. #1: Creative control. It is not standard to have complete control over your book's cover design. Often an artist is able to submit suggestions to the designer, but the publisher has ultimate authority over the book's cover. Sometimes covers end up being wildly inappropriate for the book, but the author has no recourse. The same is usually true with the ability to pick an audiobook narrator or change anything about the narration. At times, writers (especially new ones) are pressured into changes they do not want by editors. The surest way to completely lose all creative control is signed with a book packager like Alloy Entertainment. If you want to hear the story of how L.J. Smith was fired from her own series due to a plot dispute with that publisher, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson covers it in her epic length summary of The Vampire Diaries show. Although a certain paycheck from a book packager is tempting, you'd be wisest not to create any fictional characters or worlds for this type of publisher for that reason. #2: Dead Series Syndrome. If the first book in a series does not sell well, the publisher tends to abandon the series. The next book in the series might be ready for publication, but they're not obligated to publish it if they suspect it will not be profitable. Unfinished series are extremely common in traditional publishing, unfortunately. Writers who are locked into a contract for a series are generally out of luck putting out the books on their own. Even if they put out later books on their own, not having the rights to the first book in the series makes it difficult for a writer to sell and market subsequent books. I had a series (Demonsouled) that I wanted to continue even though the first book was released by my publisher. I was able to get the rights back for it and then was able to self-publish this rest of the series. This was much easier to do 14 years ago than it is now. Modern contracts, especially from larger publishers, are not so generous in letting authors do this. It would be much easier to start as a self-published author and have full control over the trajectory of your series and make sure readers are able to finish it instead of waiting for a contract to elapse or fighting a difficult, hard to win battle to get the rights back. #3: The ability to change. One of the perks of owning your book is the ability to make quick changes that react to data. For example, I was able to retitle the Stealth and Spells series fairly quickly when it became immediately clear upon release that some found the original title confusing. A traditional publisher would likely not have bothered to make the effort unless there was a legal reason for doing so. The ability to change covers, repackaging books in different ways (like omnibus editions), and to make quick changes to the book on the fly (such as fixing typos or continuity errors), is the unique privilege that comes with owning your own work. Publishers are slow to make these types of changes, if they do it at all. #4: Profit. Writers typically only receive an advance (an initial lump sum) when working with a traditional publisher. The complexities of publisher accounting usually ensure that only great successes receive royalties, and often even those that do can take a while to reach that benchmark. Royalties are typically doled out quarterly or semi-annually, for those who make enough to receive them. The earning statements are fairly byzantine. It's hard for the average person to understand them fully to make sure they're being paid exactly what is owed to them. Owning your own work and publishing yourself means that you keep all of the profit after the cut taken by the ebook store and whatever you pay cover designers, editors, and so on. You can see all of the sales as they come in and don't have to wait for those two to four royalty checks each year in order to get paid. It's much easier to make a living as a writer and to feel confident that you can pay others when you have more accurate data on the money coming in. Indie publishing sacrifices the certainty of an advance for a far, far greater share of the profits in the long run. Additionally, agents typically take a 15 to 20% commission on author earnings, and they are an essential part of the process in traditional publishing. It's just about impossible to get foot in the door with traditional publishing without one. Most self-published writers don't bother with an agent, which means they're able to keep that cut of the money and don't have to shape their work around the preferences and whims of an agent. They also spared the stress and hassle of working with an unethical or bad agent (of which they're unfortunately far too many). #5: Professional freedom. The publisher decides when the books are released or if they're released at all. Are you ready to publish a book two months after the first one is released? Too bad. A publisher is not going to put out the next one that quickly. The traditional wisdom of publishing schedules seems wildly out of date in the content-heavy modern world, where algorithms reward recent titles and frequent publishing. Publishing more often also helps fans stay connected to your work, and frankly, it's much easier to make a living as a writer putting out several books a year instead of just one. Additionally, traditionally published writers do not control how a book is marketed. Are you upset that your book is being marketed as a romance when you think it's complex literary fiction? Too bad. It's not your call. In fact, writers may be contractually obligated to post content to their social media pages written or approved in advance by the marketing department at the publisher. You might have to put your name publicly to marketing copy you dislike or disagree with in order to not violate your contract. In a related vein, you might find that if you post heavily on your social media pages about political or controversial topics, you may be reprimanded by the publisher or in some cases, have your contract canceled entirely. Although indie authors aren't immune from social consequences of what they post, no publisher is holding them back from posting what they want just because they're writers and the publisher is scared of what the shareholders might think. #6: The publisher being sold. One of the biggest problems for traditionally published writers is when their publisher is sold to another one. This may mean restructuring that takes away staff they worked with a long time (like a favorite editor being replaced by an inexperienced one). As smaller publishers are eaten up by the larger ones, you might find that your books become an afterthought and you don't have any power to fix that. You might even have to fight to get paid what you're owed in your own contracts, which writers of Star Wars books found out when Disney acquired Lucasfilm. Apparently when Disney bought Lucasfilm, it decided it no longer owed royalties to several writers of Star Wars tie-in novels that Lucasfilm had published and weren't going to pay them until it went public and caused a bit of controversy. Finally, a settlement was reached. This is sort of the shifty behavior that Disney is well known for in certain circles, and it is something you have to watch out for with large publishers and media conglomerates. The easiest way to keep this from happening is, once again, to publish yourself and keep ownership of your work. In conclusion, when traditional publishing was the only way to become a writer, their restrictions and control were something you had to live with because you had no other option. Now that self-publishing is extremely accessible and traditional publishing is shrinking, it's no longer worth making the trade-offs that authors once had to in order to gain readers of their work. Although I never actually listened to a Taylor Swift song all the way through, her career and business ventures are proof that owning your work as a creative is the best way forward. Ownership should be the starting point, not the end goal of anyone who values creative control and fair, transparent payment for their creative work. So that is it for this week. I hope that illuminated the importance of owning your own work, especially if you are a writer or other creative. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this sermon from The Mountain Church, the pastor examines the Elijah-Elisha narrative to reveal how God breaks isolation through generosity and service. He highlights that Elisha—a successful farmer with no religious background—responded to God's calling by immediately abandoning his livelihood, sacrificing his oxen, and humbly serving Elijah before becoming a prophet himself. The core message emphasizes that God's anointing first leads to serving others rather than authority, encouraging listeners to find mentors, gain wisdom through humble service, and embrace Jesus's model of leadership as foot-washing rather than power-wielding.

Murder She Wrote, Season 6, Episode 2: Seal of the ConfessionalJB meets a priest...and there's MURDER.Watch along with us on Prime (not sponsored).Support us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/mimsandmaimThank you to our Patreons:Morgan WCody HSharon JDeana FElizabeth JAdam PCrystalJessie PSheri SMichelle GEmail Us: mimsandmaim@gmail.comCall Us: 7043800618ASupport us on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=N8H4HPVU8CTNSSpecial thanks to Miss B for her sponsorship of our podcast. You can find her on TikTok @GeektombFind the queens on Twitter:Auntie Maim: @aunitemaimsThe Divine Miss Mims: @divinemissmimsTheme Music Arranged by JDR#auntiemaim #thedivinemissmims #lgbtq #dragqueens #murdershewrote #jessicafletcher #shedidit #1980s #classic #television #podcast #newepisode #peacocktv #rewatch #tvshows #bingewatching #bingeworthy #joannfabricEmail Us: mimsandmaim@gmail.comCall Us: 7043800618Support us Via PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=VNMM8UTK485XQSpecial thanks to Miss B for her sponsorship of our podcast. You can find her on TikTok @GeektombFind the queens on Twitter:Auntie Maim: @auntiemaimsThe Divine Miss Mims: @divinemissmimsThank you to MrMahaffey for our lovely artwork.Follow him on Instagram: www.instagram.com/MrMahaffeyEtsy Store: www.etsy.com/shop/MrMahaffeyOur Theme Song is Composed by JDR #1980s #1990s #auntiemaim #Charlene #comedyqueens #designingwomen #dragqueens #Julia #lgbt #Maryjo #podcast #sitcom #Suzanne #thedivinemissmims #Anthony #Bernice #rewatch #classic #lgbtq #hulutv #tv #newepisode

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Go to http://betterhelp.com/super to get 10% off your first month.Go to http://shopify.com/scb to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. What makes Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak truly special? Sure, it's one of the legendary Deathly Hallows — indestructible, eternal, and able to render its wearer perfectly invisible. But Dumbledore tells Harry that it only ever worked fully for him, its rightful master. So what's the secret power hidden inside the Cloak? In this video, J dives deep into the theory that the Cloak's magic isn't about invisibility at all — it's about protection. From Moody's enchanted eye to the Marauder's Map and even Nagini at Godric's Hollow, every moment the Cloak “fails” actually proves it's doing something more powerful…

Today we talk about a Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan, better known as Dum Dum Dugan, who was a British man (until they retconned him to be from Boston) who fought alongside Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos in World War II and it kinda all goes poorly for him from there. What we were up to this week: Briar got some really good artistic Gothic Horror in with Frankenstein (2025) and the Universal Monsters Dracula Black & White Special Olivia read more Something is Killing the Children (and mentions the Swamp Thing is Killing the Children crossover), and has been reading through a lot of the Age of Revelation comics, including Cloak or Dagger (2025) #1, Omega Kids (2025) #1, and X-Vengers (2025) #1. ALSO READ ABSOLUTE BATMAN ANNUAL 2025 GO BATMAN. Thanks to Victoria Watkins for our icon! Support Capes and Japes by: Checking out our Patreon or donating to the Tip jar Find out more on the Capes and Japes website.

In this week's episode, I take a look at my direct sales for 2025, and consider six lessons for improving direct sales. I also answer a reader question about Kobo Plus. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Battle, Book #5 in The Shield War series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: SHIELD2025 The coupon code is valid through November 17, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 276 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November 7, 2025, and today we are discussing how I had a 300% increase in direct sales for 2025 so far, and the challenges that might pose. We'll also have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing progress, and a reader question about Kobo Plus. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Shield of Battle, Book #5 in The Shield War series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store, which seems appropriate because we're talking about direct sales. That coupon code is SHIELD2025 and as always, links to my store and the coupon code will be in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through November 17th 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing progress. As of this recording, I am 70,000 words [into] Blade of Shadows, the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. That puts me on chapter 16 of 20, so I'm about three quarters of the way through. I think the rough draft is going to land at about 85 to 90,000 words. So if all goes well, I'm hoping to finish that rough draft next week and hopefully get the book out before Thanksgiving, but we'll see how the rest of this month goes. I'm also 8,000 words into Wizard-Assassin, which will be the fifth book of my Half-Elven Thief series. If all goes well, I want to have that out in December, which will make it the final book I publish in 2025. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is working on recording Blade of Flames, the previous book in the Blades of Ruin series and good progress is being made there. And Hollis McCarthy is also working on the audiobook of Cloak of Embers, which was Book 10 in the Cloak Mage series. So if all goes well, we should have both of those audiobooks to you before the end of the year. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing and audiobook projects. 00:02:00 Thoughts on Kobo Plus Let's talk a little bit about Kobo Plus before we move on to our main topic. A reader recently asked if I made more money from sales on Kobo from direct sales on the Kobo platform or through Kobo Plus, which is Kobo's subscription service. And the answer is, well, it depends. My primary answer always is that readers should read my books on whatever platform they prefer and which is most convenient for them (with the exception of piracy). As for the specific details, it gets a little bit more complicated. I suspect at this point more Kobo readers use Kobo Plus than actually buy ebooks off Kobo. Like in September alone (which is the last month I have complete figures for), 75% of my Kobo revenue came from Kobo Plus. So very clearly not having my books in Kobo Plus is a non-starter of an idea. That said, Kobo Plus (unlike Kindle Unlimited) runs off minutes read rather than pages read that KU uses, which makes it a lot harder to game the way some people do with Kindle Unlimited because the system is more opaque. So obviously longer books do a lot better with Kobo Plus and I have a lot of longer books in the form of various omnibus editions. Even a fast reader is going to take a while to get through Frostborn: Omnibus One, so I know for a fact those do quite well on Kobo Plus. So I suspect with individual novels I make less with Kobo Plus than I do with ebook sales, but for the omnibus editions, I make more from Kobo Plus than I do with the individual sales. Overall, I would say if you're a Kobo user and you want to read a book just once, Kobo Plus is probably the economical choice, but if you want to reread the book many times, you're better off buying it outright. For an interesting bit of data, here are my 10 most read Kobo Plus books for 2025 so far. Thanks for reading them, everyone! 1.) Shield of Deception 2.) Cloak Mage Omnibus One 3.) Shield of Battle 4.) Ghost in the Assembly. 5.) Cloak of Illusion 6.) Ghost in the Corruption 7.) Cloak of Embers 8.) Dragontiarna Omnibus One 9.) Dragonskull Omnibus One 10.) Cloak of Masks So as you can see, there were three different omnibus editions in that Top 10 list, so those do quite well on Kobo Plus. 00:04:00 Main Topic: Six Lessons Learned from a 300% Increase in Direct Sales Now onto our main topic, six lessons learned from a 300% increase in direct sales for 2025. By means of some background, in 2021 I started a direct sales site for my books and audiobooks using the Payhip platform. I'd been thinking about this for some time and the instigation was that at the time I was about to publish Ghost in the Vision. The Barnes and Noble site had problems with a ransomware attack that made it impossible to upload new books to the Barnes and Noble site for about three weeks (if I remember correctly). And obviously this was concerning because I had Ghost in the Vision coming out during that time and I wanted to be able to get it to Barnes and Noble readers, but I couldn't because the Barnes and Noble site was having technical difficulties. So that's when I started using Payhip and mentioned that hey, Barnes and Noble readers, I know I can't upload it to the Barnes Noble site right now, but you can get it from Payhip and obviously Barnes Noble restored the website and I was able to upload a book again, but I kept going with the Payhip site. Why did I do that? Well, as I've said before for direct sales, it makes sense for me to have a place that I could fully control since (barring technical difficulties that we talked about) the main ebook platforms can take a day or two before the books are ready to be sold. And as we mentioned before, sometimes oddities happen and a book can get delisted on a site like Amazon or a site could suffer a cybercrime attack like Barnes and Noble did in 2021. Direct sales also give authors a greater percentage of the profits, especially for audiobooks. The highest rate of royalty I get for any audiobook sales is definitely through direct sales. Progress was slow for getting people to use the Payhip site for obvious reasons. People are locked into the platforms where they feel the most comfortable (the Kindle Library, for example). It takes a lot to get people to change their buying behaviors, but over the last year, I've seen a 300% increase in sales at my Payhip store over what I had made in 2024. And there are six reasons why I think that happened that I'd like to share with you in this week's episode. #1: The first reason is it gives people an alternative. For a variety of reasons, many people are frustrated with Amazon or Google and the other big tech companies and are boycotting them for a number of reasons. If you've paid attention to the news at all over the last five years, you can probably guess what a few of those reasons might be. Others are concerned with the amount of tracking data on these sites and having their browsing data sold as advertising info. Having a direct sales platform gives readers who have these concerns a way to support you. Payhip is great for those with privacy concerns because it provides us with very, very little user data and there's no way to put ads on the site or even sell ad space there. The only customer data I get from a transaction through Payhip is the email address, which is obviously necessary since there needs to be a place to send the ebooks and the audiobooks. I don't sell or share that data with other companies or even other authors, so that is a good way to buy my books while leaving a minimal data footprint that can't be used for any kind of tracking. #2: The second reason and one that I think is about 50% of the sales growth this year, is new releases. And that is because my Payhip site is always the first place to find any of my new releases since I have complete control over the uploads there. How fast books appear on other sites is out of my control and can sometimes take a day or two (or in extreme cases, even longer than that). But I have complete control on Payhip of upload time (so long as Payhip is working and my internet connection is working). Consistently having the new releases available on my Payhip site right away also makes people feel like they're not missing out by shopping there. Having someone to help me with my Payhip store has made that a lot easier to do that consistently over the past couple of years. I did hire someone to help me out with that and it's been light years forward in having all my ebooks and audiobooks available on the Payhip store. #3: Number three, which I think is the other 50% of the reason I had a direct sales increase this year, is Coupon of the Week, which we already listened to on this episode. Coupon of the Week only takes about a minute to set up, but it has been an effective way to get people to buy ebooks and audiobooks at my Payhip site. The discount amounts I use means I'm still getting paid roughly the same amount that I would from a sale on Audible or Amazon, but the reader is getting a pretty substantial discount. Discount amounts are usually 25% off for an ebook or 50% off for an audiobook. It's enough of a discount to make it worthwhile for my readers. I've also been experimenting with discounting entire series in a Coupon of the Week instead of only one book. This change has been good for sales. It lets readers stock up on a whole series for a fraction of the price. That kind of whole series discount is also a good response to (only a few) readers who want omnibus editions that cover every single book in the series, which frankly isn't profitable to me for a couple of reasons. One is that if it's on Amazon, a file that size would incur a significant delivery fee from Amazon, which would cut into the profits. Another reason is that the file size for that just gets to be unwieldy. Frostborn is 15 books and 15 fairly long novels combined into a single ebook file does get pretty unwieldy. #4: The fourth reason and one that has consistently been helpful is the free short stories. Switching ebook platforms is a big change for many readers and it's best to give them a good incentive to do that. The old saying that it's easier to draw someone in with a carrot instead of a stick is true in ebook sales, as is in every other facet of life. Free items are a low-pressure way for someone to try out the site and test out the experience of downloading a book through my direct sales page. Direct sales pages are the best way to have control of free content that you're giving out to readers since price changes on other sites can vary wildly in when they occur, which makes setting up promotions very difficult if you're not sure when the price change will be live on all platforms. It's also a lot easier than what people used to do in the early 2010s for this kind of thing, which is directly email ebook files to readers, whereas having them nicely delivered through Payhip and then the Book Funnel backend is much more convenient. Coupon codes can be too much of a hassle for some readers, and setting up coupon codes on multiple platforms is definitely a massive hassle and can't be done on some platforms as frequently as I would like, so giving away free short stories via Payhip is an effective use. #5: The fifth reason is my direct sales page [content] is DRM free. This winter, Amazon removed the option to download and transfer Kindle books via USB for any books purchased through Amazon, which created a stir on social media even though most readers weren't using the feature and weren't even aware that it existed. What the outrage over the change did was make many people aware that they weren't truly owners of the content they bought from Amazon. It might be your instinct as a writer to put DRM in your ebooks and audiobooks in the belief that doing so prevents piracy. As anyone in the music industry can tell you, people will always find a way around DRM. All it does is punish the honest people who are supporting you by buying your content legally and making it more difficult for them to use in the ways to make the most sense to them. Selling books without DRM gives people a chance to truly own the content and archive it the way that works best for them. Everything on my Payhip store is DRM free for those reasons. Because the books can be downloaded and stored without restrictions, they can't be removed from your collection like a book in a Kindle Library can. A book purchased from Payhip is one that you can truly and completely own. #6: The sixth reason that has been helpful I think is honestly simple patience. Direct selling ebooks is a lot harder than just putting them on Amazon because Amazon is very well optimized for getting people to buy things and direct sales are often not. The very first year I did direct sales in 2021, by the end of the year I made a grand total of $10. This year I am probably going to make high three figures (if all goes well), which still is not a lot compared to some of the sales people can report off platforms like Amazon. But if you go from $10 in 2021 to high three figures in 2025, that is quite a growth trajectory. So again, if you were to start using direct sales, be patient and bear in mind it might take a long time of using things like free short stories and Coupon of the Week to gradually build up interest in the site. I also want to talk a little bit about what I think will be future challenges with direct sales and a big one that will happen if my direct sales continue to grow at this rate will be US sales tax. In 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that states can charge sales tax for any purchases online. Previously they had not been able to do so and the law has been changed and challenged and tweaked a little bit since then, but it's boiled down to that for most of the states (it varies by states, and this is not legal advice), the rule is if you are selling more than $100,000 worth of product in their state or more than 200 individual transactions in that state, then you're obliged to pay sales tax on those sales to that individual US state. For me, obviously that is not a problem right now. I believe as of this recording, I have had a total of 95 individual transactions for direct sales. If you divide that out among the 50 US states and UK and several EU countries, I'm nowhere near the reporting thresholds for any individual US state, even the most restrictive ones. That said, it could happen if direct sales continue to grow, that will be a problem I need to address in the future. Payhip collects a VAT for EU countries, but it doesn't do any sales tax collecting for the US. So if my direct sales continue to grow to the point where I'm hitting sales tax thresholds for the individual states, I would probably have to change platforms from Payhip to something like Shopify where there are a number of plugins on Shopify (like Tax Jar for example) that will take care of the sales tax reporting and filing and paying for you. But that is obviously not a problem right now unless my direct sales grow a good bit. But that is something to keep in mind for future endeavors. So in conclusion, Payhip has been a growing source of income for me (although still far from my primary one) because of these strategies. Payhip has been a great platform for direct sales and has given my readers another choice in where to buy my books and audiobooks. And as always, I would like to thank everyone who has bought and read my books from either Payhip or any other platform. And even though I have this direct sales platform, a reminder that my preferred answer to the question "where should I get your books?" is "wherever is most convenient for you" (with the exception of piracy, of course). So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting by form of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

The Enigmatic Cloak of Kamehameha: A Journey Through Mystery and IntrigueThe story revolves around the thrilling narrative of Philip Marlowe as he investigates the mysterious cloak of Kamehameha, a legendary artifact that brings danger and intrigue. The story unfolds with Marlowe navigating through deception, danger, and the rich history of Hawaii, ultimately leading to a revelation about love, possession, and murder.In the heart of Los Angeles, a seemingly ordinary day spirals into a whirlwind of mystery and danger. It all begins with a Dutchman, a hefty sum of $50,000, and a cloak made entirely of golden feathers. This isn't just any cloak; it's the legendary Cloak of Kamehameha, a relic steeped in history and intrigue.As the story unfolds, we follow the footsteps of Philip Marlowe, a character brought to life by the renowned crime fiction author, Raven Chandler. Marlowe's journey takes him from the bustling streets of Los Angeles to the serene yet treacherous cliffs of the Pacific. Along the way, he encounters a cast of characters, each with their own secrets and motives.One of the most captivating elements of this tale is the cloak itself. Made from the feathers of the now-extinct black marmo bird, each feather is a rare treasure. The cloak's history is as rich as its appearance, once belonging to the great King Kamehameha, who used it as a symbol of power and prestige.As Marlowe delves deeper into the mystery, he uncovers a web of deceit and danger. From a wealthy young woman more interested in fashion than history to a poet haunted by his past, each character adds a layer of complexity to the narrative. The stakes are high, and the tension is palpable as Marlowe races against time to unravel the truth.This story is a testament to the enduring allure of mystery and the lengths people will go to possess a piece of history. It's a thrilling ride that keeps you on the edge of your seat, blending elements of crime, history, and adventure.Subscribe now to stay updated on more intriguing tales and insights into the world of crime fiction.TakeawaysThe cloak of Kamehameha is a symbol of power and danger.Marlowe's character embodies the classic detective archetype.The story intertwines Hawaiian history with a modern mystery.Characters are driven by greed and desire for priceless artifacts.The narrative explores themes of love and obsession.Murder is a recurring element in the pursuit of the cloak.The feathered cloak represents both beauty and death.Marlowe's investigation reveals deeper connections between characters.The poem serves as a crucial clue in solving the mystery.The setting of Hawaii adds a unique cultural backdrop to the story.Kamehameha, cloak, Philip Marlowe, crime fiction, mystery, adventure, Hawaiian islands, feather cloak, detective story, Raven Chandler

October is over and the news cycle continues to turn. The conversation covers horror concepts, unnecessary adaptations and the joy of Netflix Christmas. Featuring Craig McKenzie – here on Kneel Before Blog and on We Are Starfleet (Film Stories podcast network) Kat Kourbeti can be found here. Chris Mackrell can also be found on a Sunday between 12 and 2pm GMT live on Black Diamond FM and periodically on Lave Radio. Show Notes TV Reviews Craig's reviews of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 Craig's reviews of Cloak & Dagger season 1 Movie Reviews Craig's review of Crimson Peak Craig's review of The Shape of Water Craig's review of Morbius Craig's review of 47 Meters Down Craig's review of Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City Craig's review of Thunderbolts* Craig's review of Central Intelligence Craig's review of Jurassic World Craig's review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Craig's review of Jurassic World: Dominion Craig's review of Jurassic World: Rebirth Podcasts Craig's interview with Dean Redman Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 Andor season 1 Andor season 2 Pacific Rim Cloak & Dagger season 1 Thunderbolts* Trailers Primate We Bury the Dead Mercy Send Help Eternity The Copenhagen Test Crime 101 Hijack season 2 Playdate Ella McCay My Secret Santa A Merry Little Ex-Mas Jingle Bell Heist Wonder Man Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 first look News Star Trek: United pitch Disney acquires rights to “Impossible Creatures” book series Dakota Johnson's directorial debut Netflix sets Kennedy family drama series starring Michael Fassbender “Magic 8 Ball” series in the works from M. Night Shymalan Bradley Cooper in talks to star in Ocean's prequel Scarlett Johansson circling Mother Gothel role in live-action Tangled Johnny Depp to star in Christmas Carol movie Jim Carrey to star in live action The Jetsons Misc Alan Ritchson's appearance on Inside Of You The referenced video about Marge Simpson's voice Music Niall Stenson's cover of the “Star Trek Beyond theme” and his YouTube channel. If you enjoyed what you heard here, please subscribe to Kneel Before Pod. If you have any feedback then we'd love to hear it. You can find us on Facebook ,Twitter and BlueSky. You can also make yourself known in the comments section below or you can join us on Discord.

In this week's episode, we take a look at the Praetorian Guard of the Roman Empire, and consider how ancient history can inspire fantasy novels. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Silent Order series at my Payhip store: SILENT2025 The coupon code is valid through November 10, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 275 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 31st, 2025, and today we're talking about the Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome and how that can inspire fantasy novels. Also, Happy Halloween (or Happy Protestant Reformation Day, if you prefer). Before we get into all that, we will have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in my Silent Order series at my Payhip store: SILENT2025. And as always, both the coupon code and the links to my store will be in the show notes. This coupon code will be valid through November 10th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook for this fall as we come into winter, we have got you covered. And now for an update on my current writing and publishing projects. As I mentioned last week, Cloak of Worlds is now out and you get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and at my Payhip store. The initial response has been very strong and very positive, so thank you for that and I'm glad that people are enjoying and reading the book. Now that Cloak of Worlds is done, my next main project is Blade of Shadows, which will be the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series. I'm currently 44,000 words into it, which puts me on chapter 9 of 20, though I'll probably have more chapters in the final draft than I will in the first draft. I found people really do tend to prefer shorter punchier, shorter chapters. Anyway, I'm about 44,000 words into it. I think I'll be about 109,000 words, when all is said and done. So hopefully that will be out in November. I'm also 4,500 words into the next Rivah book, which is Wizard-Assassin. It'd originally been entitled Elven-Assassin, but I decided Wizard-Assassin sounded punchier, so we went with that instead. I'm about 4,500 words into that and if all goes well, it will come out in December, which will make it the final book I'll publish in 2025, though hopefully I'll be publishing more books in 2026 before too much longer. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is currently recording Blade of Flames and we've been listening to some proof chapters of it and are very excited about what we're hearing. Hollis McCarthy is starting work on recording Cloak of Embers. That'll be the 10th book in Cloak Mage, and hopefully we will have both of those audiobooks out before the end of the year, if all goes well. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:33 Main Topic: Praetorian Guard of the Ancient Roman Empire Now let's move on to our main topic this week, which is the Praetorian Guard of the Ancient Roman Empire, and they were very bad at their jobs, but we'll get into that more very shortly. One of the fascinating (if occasionally depressing) aspects of history is how often institutions end up having the exact opposite outcome of what they were intended to do. The late science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle had something called Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which once the bureaucracy got large enough, it will inevitably start turning its main focus to perpetuating the bureaucracy rather than carrying out its actual mission. And we can see examples of that time and time again, and no doubt you yourself can think of many examples: schools that make their students dumber, military organizations that fail to defend, hospitals that make people sicker, bureaucracies that exacerbate the problems that they are created to solve, and so forth. This can also apply to social movements as well. My favorite example of this is Prohibition in America. The Temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th century achieved its goal of banning alcohol sales in the United States during the Prohibition period, but the backlash and the consequences made it unpopular. And today, while alcohol is much more heavily restricted than it was at the end of the 19th century, the idea of banning alcohol in the United States is utterly implausible. The Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome, the personal bodyguards of the Emperor, might be another example of such an institution that utterly failed at its primary goal. For over a thousand years, people have been asking why the Roman Empire fell, and I think that might actually be the wrong question. The better question is why did the Roman Empire last as long as it did, because it sure almost didn't. At the height of its power, the Empire controlled land on three different continents in an area larger than many modern states, and it had to maintain that control without anything resembling modern technology and organization. Think of the difficulties involved in governing a large multi-ethnic state in the 21st Century with modern technology and communications and imagine how much harder it was in the first century AD. Travel was difficult and dangerous even with the Roman road system. The account of St. Paul's shipwreck in the book of Acts must've been an all too common experience in the Roman Empire, given the number of Roman wrecks on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Messages could take weeks to reach their recipients, and there was no division between civilian and military authority. That meant if the Emperors wanted to do anything, they had to use the army to do it because the army was the only pool of skilled men loyal to the state. Since the Empire never really solved the problem of succession and the transfer of power, it didn't take long before ambitious men figured out that the man with the largest army could declare himself Emperor and the Roman Empire actually broke apart into three competing mini empires and almost fell apart entirely in the middle of the 200s AD. So as we can see, there were a lot of reasons the Roman Empire fell apart and the Praetorian Guard, the bodyguard of the emperors, was one of them. The Praetorian Guard certainly wasn't the sole reason the Roman Empire collapsed, but the guard most definitely didn't help. In the last century of the Roman Republic, one of the growing problems was that the armies were less loyal to Rome and more loyal to their general, who made sure they got paid and received grants of land upon discharge. To show their prestige and to guard against the danger of assassination from rivals, generals began collecting personal bodyguards. Since the Roman generals commanded from a tent in a legionary camp called a "praetorium," the general's private guards became called "praetorians." Obviously, the general wanted his best troops as his bodyguards so becoming a praetorian was a privileged position with higher pay and perks. This practice continued as the Roman Republic split apart into civil wars between the ambitious generals of the First and Second Triumvirates. The civil wars of the Roman Republic ended with Octavian, later known as Caesar Augustus, as the last man standing with sole control of what we now think of as the Roman Empire. Augustus is remembered as the first Roman emperor, but the office of Emperor didn't really exist at the time, not the way we think of it now. Rather, Augustus was essentially a military dictator, but after he won, he went to great lengths to conceal his power under cloak of legality by having the Senate invest him with various official powers and offices. In modern terms, it'd be like if the United States was ruled by a military dictator who simultaneously held the offices of President, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, the governorships of the five most populous states, all while claiming to be only the first citizen among equals. Essentially, Augustus invented the powers of the Roman emperor on the fly while being a military dictator and his successors followed suit. Julius Caesar famously pardoned his enemies and went around without a bodyguard to show his courage, which ended up getting him assassinated. Augustus, by contrast, was determined not to repeat that mistake. So after annihilating his enemies, he founded a personal bodyguard in what we know today as the Praetorian Guard. That's a modern term. The praetorians never called themselves the Praetorian Guard, and they always refer to themselves as the praetorian of whichever emperor they happen to be serving like the Praetorians of Augustus or the Praetorians of Claudius and so forth. Augustus seems to have seen some of the potential danger in the institution of the Praetorian Guard, and during his reign, they were scattered around Italy with ones guarding him rotated out every so often. The Praetorians in Italy, when not guarding the Emperor, tended to do odd jobs for the government that needed doing like policing, construction, surveying, settling boundary disputes, and so forth. However, Augustus's successor Tiberius concentrated the Guard in Rome, which made it even more dangerous. It also tied into another problem with the Roman Empire, one that it never quite managed to solve, which was the succession problem. Augustus was a military dictator who assembled a sort of ad hoc legality around his position with various offices and powers. But how would he pass that onto a successor or what if someone else decided they were the proper successor? Augustus had taken his office by force, so why shouldn't anyone else? The Praetorian Guard exacerbated this problem further. Was their loyalty to the office of the Emperor (which was tricky because that office didn't technically exist)? Was it to the man himself or to his heirs? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Praetorian Guard eventually settled on the most practical answer to this question. Their loyalty belonged to whoever paid them the most money. There's a very high chance that Tiberius was murdered by the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, which means that the imperial bodyguard made it only two emperors [repeated for dramatic emphasis] before it started killing them. Tiberius's successor Caligula was famously insane and the Guard eventually got sick of him and participated in his murder. After Caligula's death, the guard declared Claudius as the new Emperor, who repaid them by giving them lavish donatives. That meant the Guard had gone from protecting the emperors to killing ones that didn't like, and then installing new ones. After the Senate turned against Nero and he committed suicide in 69 AD, the Roman Empire had its year of four emperors: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian, who won the civil war and became the new emperor. Each of the potential claimants had their own praetorians who fought against other praetorians. The original Praetorian Guard of Nero did not cover itself in glory, as their comfortable life in Rome did not make them effective as field soldiers and they lost against the toughened legionaries from the frontier armies who came to fight in the civil war. That said, during the reigns of the Five Good Emperors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius) from 96 to 180 AD, we don't hear much about the Praetorian Guard. The most likely explanation is that these emperors were strong and capable rulers, so the guard had no reason to turn against them, and therefore any potential conspiracies that would've involved the Guard just didn't get off the ground. However, part of the reason the 100s AD were the apex of the Roman Empire is that Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius did not have sons, so they adopted a capable leader as their son and heir, thereby creating continuity of rule. Marcus Aurelius unfortunately had a natural son named Commodus, and after he died, Commodus became Emperor. Commodus was a spectacularly incompetent narcissist, nowadays famously known as the villain from the movie Gladiator. If anything, Gladiator toned down Commodus' brutality, though to be fair to Commodus, he didn't murder his father like the fictional version did in the movie. Commodus was eventually assassinated, and the Praetorian Guard hit its lowest point soon after. Pertinax became Emperor after Commodus, and there was hope he would be a Nerva-type figure, a respected elderly Senator who would adopt a capable heir the way Nerva did with Trajan. However, Commodus had used the Guard as his privileged force of personal thugs, and Pertinax tried to impose discipline upon them. The Guard most definitely did not care for that, so they murdered Pertinax and then auctioned off the title of Emperor to whoever would pay them the most. Soon after Septimius Severus seized control of the Empire and he summarily fired all the Praetorian and put his own veteran legionaries in their place. So the Praetorian Guard, which had been intended to guard the emperors, ended up murdering the Emperor on a regular basis and sometimes choosing a successor and even auctioning off the title of Emperor to the highest bidder. Septimius Severus was a brutal ruler and held the Empire together long enough to die of natural causes. His sons Caracalla and Geta were his successors, and Caracalla murdered Geta before he was assassinated himself by yet another plot from disgruntled praetorians. After that, both the Empire and the Guard declined precipitously. This was the period later historians would call the Crisis of the Third Century, when the Roman Empire fractured into the three competing mini empires I mentioned earlier. A depressing pattern rapidly took hold. The Praetorian Guard or the army would kill an Emperor and proclaim a new one. The Emperor would last until he tried to do something the army didn't like, such as imposing discipline and then the pattern would repeat. The Praetorian Guard was never really reformed, but like so many failed institutions, it gradually became obsolete. Part of the reason was that the Empire was subject to frequent barbarian invasions throughout the 200s. The Emperor was required constantly on the frontiers to supervise the defense with the field armies. The emperors developed a different kind of bodyguard called the "scholae palatinae", a mounted group of soldiers that would accompany him in the field as he moved about the Empire. The constant defensive warfare also resulted in a subtle shift within the Empire. Rome was no longer the center of power within the Empire. The center of power was actually wherever the Emperor happened to be at the moment. The city of Rome itself had become in many ways an expensive vestigial relic of another age. Some of the emperors only visited Rome once. Some of the shorter-lived ones never made it there at all, and the Emperors certainly did not rule from Rome. Because of these changes, the idea of the Praetorian Guard, a permanent bodyguard force based in Rome, had become obsolete. The actual end of the Praetorian Guard came after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, the battle where the Emperor Constantine famously had the vision that led him to convert to Christianity. The Praetorian Guard sided with Constantine's opponent Maxentius, and since Constantine had no use for the Praetorian Guard and indeed would move his capital to the new city of Constantinople, he simply had the Guard disbanded and continued to rely on mounted cavalry units for his personal bodyguard. So the Praetorian Guard, after three centuries of frequent treachery and corruption, had come to an end. Amusingly, while the Guard was gone, the title of "praetorian prefect" remained in use in the Empire for the rest of its history, which came to show just how powerful the commander of the Guard could become. In the end, the Praetorian Guard was yet another example of institution that became a hindrance to the very goals it was founded to advance. This seems to be a curse of any organization, and the only cure is constant vigilance and strong leadership, two qualities, alas, that are all too rare at any age of history. Yet you can definitely see why I say history is the best source of material for fantasy writers. You could get like 20 different novels out of the events I discussed above. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe, stay healthy, and see you all next week.

In this special, we look back at the top five half-hour Old Time Radio programs of our 2024-2025 season, and one of our best Old Time Radio Snack Wagon episodes.First up, it's The Falcon in "The Case of the Jumping Jack":A woman hires The Falcon because she suspects that her husband has hired a private eye to follow her.Original Radio Broadcast Date: April 20, 1952Originating from New YorkStarring: Les Damon as The Falcon; Chuck Webster as Sergeant CorbettThen we turn to the Your Playhouse of Favorites production of "The Suicide Club":A bored crown prince, looking for excitement, joins a club of men who want to end their lives.Original Air Date: Sometime between 1947 and 1949Originating from New YorkStarring: Dwight Reese; Walter VaughnSpeaking of Robert Louis Stevenson, we turn to an excerpt from The Orson Welles Almanac wherein Welles reads Stevenson's lesser-known letter defending Father Damien against the scathing remarks of Reverend Dr. C.M. Hyde. This impassioned response, penned in 1890, highlights the stark contrasts between the selfless heroism of Father Damien and the hypocrisy of his critics.Join us as we explore the rich historical context and emotional weight of Stevenson's words, showcasing not only a brilliant literary takedown but also a tribute to compassion and service in the face of adversity. Welles's masterful narration brings this poignant piece to life, reminding us of the enduring legacy of Father Damien.Complete Text of Stevenson's letter:https://www.gutenberg.org/files/281/281-h/281-h.htmThen we turn to a surreal episode of Mr. and Mrs. North, "Call Me Choo Choo"Today's Mystery:Pam and Jerry hear a clarinet being played in the middle of the country near a wrecked car.Original Radio Broadcast Date: December 9, 1947Originating from New York CityStarring: Joseph Curtain as Jerry North; Alice Frost as Pamela North; Larry Haines; Mandel KramerWe will also have a listen to one of our new series, Cloak and Dagger, about the true adventures of the OSS during WWII. Here is "Roof of the World":A husband and wife team of geologists are recruited by the IRS to journey into Tibet to seek the favor of the Dalai Lama. They find themselves in competition with two Nazi officers.Original Radio Broadcast: August 13, 1950Originating from New YorkStarring: Louise Barclay; Grant Richards; Raymond Edward Johnson; Stefan Schnabel; Berry Kroeger; Janice Gilbert; Karl Weber; Ralph Bell; Jerry JarrettThen we conclude with one of our most memorable guest-starring appearances in the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar story, "The Price of Fame Matter"Vincent Price summons Johnny Dollar when a $100,000 painting is stolen from his private collection.Original Radio Broadcast Date: February 2, 1958Originating from HollywoodStarring: Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar; Vincent Price as Himself; Virginia Gregg; Howard McNear; Junius Matthews; Forrest Lewis; Tony BarrettSupport the show monthly at patreon.greatdetectives.netPatreon Supporter of the Day:John, Patreon supporter since September 2016.Support the show on a one-time basis at http://support.greatdetectives.net.Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715Take the listener survey at http://survey.greatdetectives.netGive us a call at 208-991-4783Follow us on Instagram at http://instagram.com/greatdetectivesFollow us on Twitter @radiodetectivesJoin us again tomorrow for another detective drama from the Golden Age of Radio.

The crossover behemoth that is Age of Revelation has officially kicked off. We'll take a look at all 18 issues (plus more) in the Month in X for October 2025. Month in X - October 2025 Imperial War #4 Astonishing X-Men #38 - 42 Emma Frost: White Queen #5 Spider-Man & Wolverine #6 Deadpool/Wolverine #10 Age of Revelation - Month One X-Men: Age of Revelation Overture #1 Amazing X-Men #1 Binary #1 Laura Kinney: Sabretooth #1 Iron & Frost #1 Longshots #1 World of Revelation #1 Unbreakable X-Men #1 Rogue Storm #1 Sinister's Six #1 Omega Kids #1 Radioactive Spider-Man #1 The Last Wolverine #1 X-Men: Book of Revelation #1 Cloak or Dagger #1 Undeadpool #1 X-Vengers #1 Expatriate X-Men #1

Join us as Marshall and I go into another movie totally blind! Will this be another Cloak & Dagger? or a total flop? With a promising cast and a solid trailer, find out if those are the best part of this movie!

In this special, we look back at the top five half-hour Old Time Radio programs of our 2024-2025 season, and one of our best Old Time Radio Snack Wagon episodes.First up, it's The Falcon in "The Case of the Jumping Jack":A woman hires The Falcon because she suspects that her husband has hired a private eye to follow her.Original Radio Broadcast Date: April 20, 1952Originating from New YorkStarring: Les Damon as The Falcon; Chuck Webster as Sergeant CorbettThen we turn to the Your Playhouse of Favorites production of "The Suicide Club":A bored crown prince, looking for excitement, joins a club of men who want to end their lives.Original Air Date: Sometime between 1947 and 1949Originating from New YorkStarring: Dwight Reese; Walter VaughnSpeaking of Robert Louis Stevenson, we turn to an excerpt from The Orson Welles Almanac wherein Welles reads Stevenson's lesser-known letter defending Father Damien against the scathing remarks of Reverend Dr. C.M. Hyde. This impassioned response, penned in 1890, highlights the stark contrasts between the selfless heroism of Father Damien and the hypocrisy of his critics.Join us as we explore the rich historical context and emotional weight of Stevenson's words, showcasing not only a brilliant literary takedown but also a tribute to compassion and service in the face of adversity. Welles's masterful narration brings this poignant piece to life, reminding us of the enduring legacy of Father Damien.Complete Text of Stevenson's letter:https://www.gutenberg.org/files/281/281-h/281-h.htmThen we turn to a surreal episode of Mr. and Mrs. North, "Call Me Choo Choo"Today's Mystery:Pam and Jerry hear a clarinet being played in the middle of the country near a wrecked car.Original Radio Broadcast Date: December 9, 1947Originating from New York CityStarring: Joseph Curtain as Jerry North; Alice Frost as Pamela North; Larry Haines; Mandel KramerWe will also have a listen to one of our new series, Cloak and Dagger, about the true adventures of the OSS during WWII. Here is "Roof of the World":A husband and wife team of geologists are recruited by the IRS to journey into Tibet to seek the favor of the Dalai Lama. They find themselves in competition with two Nazi officers.Original Radio Broadcast: August 13, 1950Originating from New YorkStarring: Louise Barclay; Grant Richards; Raymond Edward Johnson; Stefan Schnabel; Berry Kroeger; Janice Gilbert; Karl Weber; Ralph Bell; Jerry JarrettThen we conclude with one of our most memorable guest-starring appearances in the Yours Truly Johnny Dollar story, "The Price of Fame Matter"Vincent Price summons Johnny Dollar when a $100,000 painting is stolen from his private collection.Original Radio Broadcast Date: February 2, 1958Originating from HollywoodStarring: Bob Bailey as Johnny Dollar; Vincent Price as Himself; Virginia Gregg; Howard McNear; Junius Matthews; Forrest Lewis; Tony BarrettSupport the show monthly at patreon.greatdetectives.netPatreon Supporter of the Day:John, Patreon supporter since September 2016.Support the show on a one-time basis at http://support.greatdetectives.net.Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715Take the listener survey at http://survey.greatdetectives.netGive us a call at 208-991-4783Follow us on Instagram at http://instagram.com/greatdetectivesFollow us on Twitter @radiodetectivesJoin us again tomorrow for another detective drama from the Golden Age of Radio.

Robert Christophor Coppes is a scientist and retired financier, has studied NDEs for decades and has lectured on this topic in the US and Europe. His latest book on NDEs is called “Impressions of Near-Death Experiences” and it in fact is a compilation of hundreds of quotes from experiencers. He considers them the best tutors in life. Previous books on NDEs are “Essence of Religions” and “Messages from the Light”. He never had the intention to write books, but the death of his brother changed that. He strongly felt that he had to write this extraordinary story in a specific way. He had a flash of inspiration during the long ride back home after the funeral. While driving, the structure came to him: the chapters, the contents, the dialogues, the prologue, and the epilogue. The book that resulted was translated in English: “Michael's Cloak”. He also wrote a book based on a war diary of his uncle who became an American citizen: “A teenage boy in war torn Holland”.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-x-zone-radio-tv-show--1078348/support.Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.We are proud to announce the we have launched TWATNews.com, launched in August 2025.TWATNews.com is an independent online news platform dedicated to uncovering the truth about Donald Trump and his ongoing influence in politics, business, and society. Unlike mainstream outlets that often sanitize, soften, or ignore stories that challenge Trump and his allies, TWATNews digs deeper to deliver hard-hitting articles, investigative features, and sharp commentary that mainstream media won't touch.These are stories and articles that you will not read anywhere else.Our mission is simple: to expose corruption, lies, and authoritarian tendencies while giving voice to the perspectives and evidence that are often marginalized or buried by corporate-controlled media

EP 116 BONUS- October 2025 Trek of the Month Welcome to First Flight's Bonus Trek of the Month thematic episodes chat! Chris and Abby love ALL Trek and have given themselves, and the Carrot Crew, some franchise spanning, thematic episode choices for each month.   This month of October the theme is Halloween, and our episode picks are (Genesis TNG S7 Ep 19) and (The Haunting of Deck 12 VOY S6 Ep 25)  Take a listen and hear why we picked them for this theme, a connection to our personal lives and a Grappler Rating. *** Next Month in (November) the episodes are (Forget Me Not DSC S3 Ep 4) and (Under the Cloak of War SNW S2 Ep 8) *** Feel free to let us know your thoughts on these monthly episodes and if you have any connections or Grappler Ratings of your own.  (Please note, contributions might be shared on the podcast!) Find Us on Twitter (X), Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and Facebook:  @FirstFlightPod Abby: @abbymsommer Chris: @ShelfNerds  Find Us on YouTube: Chris' Channel : Completing the Shelf

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp – Go to http://betterhelp.com/super to get 10% off your first month. This episode is sponsored by Uncommon Goods – Go to http://uncommongoods.com/supercarlin for 15% off your next gift. Today J dives into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to ask What If Draco kept the invisibility cloak when he takes it from Harry on the Train.  Could he have used it to unwittingly become master of Death? What does it take to Master the Cloak?  Could Draco have defeated Voldemort if he had united the Deathly Hallows? #HarryPotter #SuperCarlinBrothers  Written by :: J & Ben Carlin Edited by :: Ethan Edghill

Send us a text "Is there something you're holding onto so tightly that it's making it hard to fully embrace a relationship with Jesus?" Support the showBe sure to subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other forums you use. Check out Transformed on FB.

We live in a world filled with both light and darkness, and it is in our darkest times that we need the greatest compassion. Written by a Buddhist monk from Medieval (Heian Period) Japan, this horror story brings us a woman who transforms into a demon known as an Oni. Yet the demon-woman's story challenges us to find hope, even in the darkness of her life.Mosaic Family Services is dedicated to serving survivors of human rights abuses from around the world and within the community of North Texas. https://mosaicservices.org/Mythos & Logos are two ancient words that can be roughly translated as “Story & Meaning.”Support the channel by subscribing, liking, and commenting to join the conversation!Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/mythosandlogos00:00 Introduction & Charity Announcement00:29 Screen Map of Japan00:39 Tsuina of Yoshida Shrine00:49 Dōjōji by Kōgyo Tsukioka01:20 A Woman Scorned01:37 Map of Japan, Jotokuji Temple, Momoyama Period02:10 The Demon of Mount Togakushi by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi02:46 The Demon Within02:50 Kyōri no bijin by Mizuno Toshikata03:09 Yamanba by Itō Seiu03:33 Companion In Solitude 閑居友 2:3 A Deeply Resentful Woman Becomes A Demon While Alive04:26 Apologies for the missed edit! The text leaves whether she receives the memorial unclear. Ironic considering when the sound cuts out!04:28 Transforming Suffering04:52 Jien, Collection of Portraits of Famous Writers in Chinese Literature05:06 Chapter 27 of the Lotus Sutra, Arthur M Sackler Museum, Harvard University05:31 Buddha and Bodhisattvas, Mogao Caves05:47 Lotus Sutra, Chapter 206:42 Chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra, Jigage E Shō Zokuhen06:46 Devadatta Falling Into Hell by Katsushika Hokusai06:51 Chapter 12 of the Lotus Sutra, Metropolitan Museum of Art07:15 Wild Mountain Woman in a Cloak of Leaves by Hokkei07:58 Zhiyi Statue, Mii-dera Onjo-ji, photographed by Hyppolyte de Saint-Rambert, licensed under Creative Commons08:05 The Profound Meaning of the Lotus Sutra08:14 Compassion in Darkness08:24 Oni Chanting the Name of the Buddha by Shibata Zeshin08:49 Kujō Yoshitsune by 菱川師宣09:22 Namanari Noh Mask, photographed by Takiyama Ichiemon, licensed under Creative Commons09:25 Ooeyama Emaki09:29 Chapters 12 and 14 of the Lotus Sutra, Metropolitan Museum of Art09:52 OutroAll works of art are in the public domain unless otherwise noted.Ambiment - The Ambient by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

We Like Shooting Episode 633 This episode of We Like Shooting is brought to you by: Midwest Industries, Gideon Optics, Medical Gear Outfitters, Blue Alpha, Night Fision, and Mitchell Defense   Welcome to the We Like Shooting Show, episode 633! Our cast tonight is Jeremy Pozderac, Aaron Krieger, Nick Lynch, and me Shawn Herrin, welcome to the show! Krampus is LIVE. Deadline for signups is 10/30 9:00 pm EST, Names drawn 11/1.  Didn't get the invite? Check your cult status first. welikeshooting.com/my-account/subscriptions  Not active? Go to - theguncult.com to join! Then email automated@welikeshooting.com for an invite to Krampus. - Gear Chat Shawn - Five Star Alterations Field Cloaks https://fivestaralterations.com/collections/field-cloaks Shawn - Bye Bye Scar https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/a-farewell-to-scar-was-it-really-that-amazing-44823379 The Cloak? https://www.thefirearmblog.com//blog/potd-cabot-guns-cloak-pistol-44823283 Jeremy-Forced Reset  https://atrius.dev/atrius-forced-reset-selector/ Bullet Points - NJ bans flare guns. https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2025/10/20/albany-county-ny-restricts-safety-device-access-n1230314 Gun Fights Step right up for "Gun Fights," the high-octane segment hosted by Nick Lynch, where our cast members go head-to-head in a game show-style showdown! Each contestant tries to prove their gun knowledge dominance. It's a wild ride of bids, bluffs, and banter—who will come out on top? Tune in to find out! WLS is Lifestyle Glocks Betrayal https://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2025/10/14/nra-saf-fpc-file-suit-against-californias-glock-ban/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY_kIV_T1ZE   Aaron's Alley Going Ballistic Court Ruling Fires Back at Gun Control Nonsense A recent court ruling in Reese v. ATF has overturned previous regulations, reinforcing the privacy rights of Second Amendment supporters. This decision is a setback for gun control advocates seeking greater oversight and tracking of gun owners, while bolstering the argument for individual rights in the gun community. NSSF Hits Back: Bloomberg's Hit Piece Exposed as Anti-Gun Nonsense The NSSF is rebutting claims made by Bloomberg's The Trace, defending the firearms industry against what they perceive as unfounded attacks. This ongoing clash reflects the tension between gun advocates and those promoting tighter gun control, further polarizing discussions around firearm regulations. Supreme Court to Decide if You Can Pack Heat While High The Supreme Court is set to evaluate the intersection of gun rights with drug use regulations, a move that could reshape existing laws surrounding firearm ownership for those using substances deemed illegal. This case may challenge gun control advocates and further solidify the Second Amendment's stance against restrictions tied to drug use, potentially emboldening gun owners and the broader pro-gun community. When Anti-Gun Advocates Finally See the Light In a surprising twist, Don Lemon has called on Black Americans to arm themselves in response to concerns about ICE. This statement may resonate within the gun community, emphasizing individual rights and self-defense, while also stirring the pot among gun control advocates who typically oppose such rhetoric. CCRKBA Calls Out Newsom for His Glock Grabbing Shenanigans The CCRKBA criticizes Governor Newsom for his proposed ban on Glock handguns, arguing it infringes on Second Amendment rights. This move is seen as part of a broader trend of gun control measures that the organization believes alienates responsible gun owners and threatens individual freedoms. https://soldiersystems.net/2025/10/17/sig-sauer-responds-to-new-jersey-attorney-generals-latest-attack-on-firearms-industry/ https://www.theoutdoorwire.com/releases/1c87bd3e-f7cd-4a3d-8d7d-fc64795eb0bb https://www.

In this week's episode, we interview narrator Hollis McCarthy, who has narrated over 300 audiobooks, including many of THE GHOSTS and CLOAK MAGES. She is also co-author with her mother Dee Maltby of the MAGIC OF LARLION series, which you can learn more about at https://deemaltbyauthor.com/. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store: DRAGONSKULL25 The coupon code is valid through October 27, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT Introduction and Writing Updates (00:00): Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 273 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moller. Today is October 17th, 2025, and today we have an interview with audiobook narrator Hollis McCarthy. Hollis has narrated many audiobooks, including numerous books from the Ghost and Cloak Mage series, so we'll talk with her about that. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing projects. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragonskull series at my Payhip store, and that coupon code is DRAGONSKULL25. The coupon code is valid through October 27th, 2025. So if you need some new ebooks to read for this fall, we've got you covered. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my store will be available in the show notes. Now for an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 80% of the way through the first round of edits in Cloak of Worlds, so making good progress and if all goes well, the book should be out before the end of the month. I'm also 14,000 words into Blade of Shadows, which will be my next main project after Cloak of Worlds is published, which means I also have to write the outline for Elven-Assassin soon, and that will be the fifth book in the Rivah series. In audiobook news, recording will be underway next week for Blade of Flames. That will be narrated excellently by Brad Wills. Ghost in Siege is now out. It should be available at of all the audiobook stories (except Spotify) and it should be available there in a few days. And that is the final book in my Ghost Armor series that is excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook and publishing projects, which makes for a good segue into our main topic, our interview with Hollis McCarthy, which begins now. 00:03:56 Interview With Hollis McCarthy Hi everyone. I'm here today with Hollis McCarthy, who is a classically trained actor. Hollis has played leads in regional and off-Broadway theater, specializing in Shakespeare. On CBS. she's been a recurring guest star judge on Bull, the president of Ireland on Bluebloods, and a senator on Netflix's House of Cards. She's narrated more than 300 books for a variety of publishers and is the proud co-author of her mom Dee Maltby's epic fantasy series, The Magic of Larlion. Hollis, thanks for coming on the show today. Hollis: My pleasure. Jonathan: So to start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into acting and performing? Hollis: That's a great question. I think it all started with doing my little brother's Sesame Street finger puppets. He's 10 years younger than me, so I mean, I got to reread all my favorite books with him and I started voicing the finger puppets to Burt, Ernie and Cookie Monster and all those guys in the backseat of the car and playing all the characters. And then my brother went into theater. My other brother's seven years older than me, and I used to go see his shows up at the college when I was in high school and kind of fell in love with it there. I absolutely meant to be an aeronautical engineer/physicist like my dad, but it didn't end up working out. I fell in love with theater and went to Stratford. I had a dual major because I was in an honors program, so I didn't have to declare a major until my fifth year of undergrad. But then I went to Stratford up in Canada and I saw two Shakespeare shows in one day and that was it. I had to do that. That was what I loved. Jonathan: Well, since we've had many audiobooks together, I'm glad it worked out that way. Hollis: Me too. Yeah, so I got my BFA in acting, and then I got my MFA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in performance, and I was lucky enough to have some great coaches from the RSC and did a bunch more Shakespeare, and I've done that regionally a lot. And then I fell into audiobooks because I got tired of traveling, and I love to work from my home in my jammies. Jonathan: That is the dream. Speaking of that, could you tell us a bit more about how you sort of got into audiobooks or ended up doing a lot of that? Hollis: Yeah. Well, again, it starts with my childhood. My mom, who was a writer and an artist, she had, there were five of us kids and she would read out loud to us in the kitchen to keep us from fighting when we were cleaning up. So she started with Tolkien and Watership Down and Narnia and all of that. And then I got to, like I said, read to my little brother all my favorite books. And so I started doing all different voices for the characters and I always thought that was normal until, of course I volunteered to read in class in high school and people thought I was some sort of freak, but I always loved playing all the characters. And so when I started looking at staying home more and what could I do to work from home instead of being on the road for work, which was great for a long time, but then at some point you want to stay home and have a life as an actor as well as doing what you love. And audiobooks seemed a good fit. So my husband, who's also an actor, took a class from Paul Rubin here in the city in New York. We live in the New York area now. And he got a bunch of good tips from that that he passed on to me. And then my agent got me an audition with Audible and Mike Charzuk there. I came in and read a couple of pieces for him and he came back to the booth with a book he wanted me to start on. And from there I just kept building and got a lot of great indie authors through ACX like you. I don't know how many books we've done together now. Jonathan: It's over 30, I think. Yeah, 30 over the last seven years. So it's been a while. Hollis: And you're seriously, I mean, I'm not saying this because I'm on your blog, but your series are absolutely my favorites, especially because, yeah, the two series that I do, one is Nadia from the Midwest like me and then the other one with Caina, the epic fantasy world, which uses all my British and Irish bits and I absolutely love them. So yeah, I've just kept building up, getting in with a few more publishers now, which is harder to do and I just love it. Our first booth, when the pandemic hit, we had to build a booth at home and I had been going to studios in the city up until that point, but it hit pretty suddenly. It was obvious on St. Patrick's Day when it was like us going to the studio and people who were absolutely desperate folks were the only other ones on the street. We had to stay home. So my husband took our rapier blade (we fight with swords. We're actor combatants, like you said). He took two broadsword blades and a rapier blade, and he's handy with carpentry, fortunately. That's how he worked his way through school. He bracketed those to the wall and we ordered through Amazon before they kind of shut down too. We ordered packing blankets to hang over them and I ordered a new microphone and a new interface and it was trial and error for a bunch of days. And we had an engineer on call who talked us through how to run the software programs and stuff, how to set them up. And from there I've just kept recording at home. I sometimes still go into the studios when they have a budget where they can spring for a studio, but mostly they want you to work from home these days. So that's mostly what I do. Jonathan: Oh, building a recording booth out of swords. That's very Caina. Hollis: It's very Caina. I love Caina. Caina is me as a young woman. If I had been a superhero, I would've been a Caina. All my favorite roles in Shakespeare were the girl as boy ones. You asked, one of my favorite roles in theater was when I was at Alabama Shakespeare and I was playing Queen Elizabeth in Richard III and dressing in gorgeous gowns and being very seductive and very powerful and manipulative and all that. But in the earlier scenes, we did the three plays and in the Richard III and the Henry VI we did all three. And in the earlier scenes where Elizabeth wasn't in, I got to dress up and doublet and hose and I like stippled some stipple of beard on my face and climbed a siege ladder with a sword in one hand and did a spectacular pratfall running away from the bad guys and would slide on my stomach on the deck of the stage and I would come out into the lobby and the other guys who were playing my fellow fighters would be holding up rating cards for how far I'd slid that day. Jonathan: Sounds like very practical cardio. Hollis: Yeah, very. It was a lot of fun. That was probably my most fun I've ever done, though I also loved Beatrice and Much Ado, which I got to do twice because she's just so funny and witty and passionate. She's great, and Shakespeare, you know. Jonathan: Very good. So after all these audiobooks, what goes into preparing to record an audiobook? Hollis: That's a great question, too. It depends on the book, really. And I'm lucky enough to do a lot of series now, so when you're doing a series, it gets easier as you go along. I remember with the first ones I did for you, the first Caina, it probably took me an hour of prep to get through the first chapter. There were so many made up place names that I needed to figure out how to say, and then you have to be consistent. Even if they're made up, you still have to be consistent. So I really used my theater training there because I learned the international phonetic alphabet when I was in school, and so I can write down phonetic pronunciations and for each book, I'm old school with my prep, I'll keep a legal pad and I'll write down phonetic pronunciations, the word, page number, and the phonetic pronunciation for each word, so I have a record. You don't retain them from book to book. Pronunciations is a big part of what you do. Also, character voices, because again, you want to be true to the author's intent and you want to stay consistent. Again, for Caina, it became very complicated because you had to have Caina's basic voice, which is this [speaks in Caina's voice]. She started out a bit higher because she was younger. And then as she aged, she's gotten more medium pitch-wise, but then she was in disguise as various people. She was disguised as a cockney guy for a while, and she was an Irish guy for a while. And so for each of those personas, you have to notate for yourself in the script. Oh, now she has this accent. Now she has this one. And really for each chunk of dialogue, every time a character speaks, I'll put the initial of their name and if there are a lot of characters in the scene, I will have to differentiate between them pretty frequently. If it's two characters and I know them both very well, then I kind of have the shorthand in my head. So the different character voices I also put on my legal pad so I have a record, so Calvia sounds like this [speaks a line in the character's voice]. And sometimes I'll write down physical aspects of them so that I can just kind of feel the character. And after I do them for a while, the feel of the character will give me the voice and you write down everything that the author says about the character too. I'll just notate for myself that will oftentimes give you the voice. If it's a good author, which thank God you are, you write in different voices, which makes my job easier. Jonathan: The joke I sometimes say is I didn't do audiobooks for the first seven years I was publishing, and people would ask me, how do you pronounce this? I say, I don't care, pronounce it however you want. And then suddenly we started doing audiobooks and suddenly no, it matters very much how it's pronounced. Hollis: Yeah, exactly. It's funny, I'm just looking at my tablet. I have your Shield of Power up on my tablet. I've been reading that on the treadmill and at lunch. But yeah, we have to keep tabs. And when we have so many books now, I've started special folders just for the Ghost series and the Cloak series because a lot of times a character will show up from several books previous and I go, I remember them, but I don't remember what they sounded like. So I will have notated forward alto, slightly Irish or something like that for them. I have shorthand for all of it, and so I'll do that. Jonathan: Yeah, I spent a lot of time with Control + F searching through Word documents, trying to remember the first time I wrote this character and what they looked like. Hollis: Yeah, I bet you do. Some writers I guess do, well, if they don't do it all themselves. And if they have somebody who's like an administrative assistant, they have somebody who gives you, I've gotten these from authors before. Their assistant will send me a story log of characters with everything that's said about the character. I'm like, oh, well, that's very organized and helpful, but I would think it would be massively time consuming. Jonathan: It is. I did hire someone to help me with that this year. It was getting to be too much to go back and search through things and it is a very time consuming project, but once it's done, it's very helpful because it's quite easy to find things and look things up and refresh your memory. Hollis: I bet so. When I was working on my mom's books, we hired an editor and she did a spreadsheet, a database kind of different terms and characters and what was said about them. And I go back to that and amend it all the time now that I'm trying to write book eight. Jonathan: Yeah, that kind of thing is very helpful. But on a related topic of preparation, since you've done audiobooks, stage, and TV, how would say narrating audiobooks is different from the experience of doing theater or TV? Hollis: The major thing and the hardest thing for me when I was starting out was you can't move around all the time. I had an engineer at Audible. It was just, and a lot of times the chair is very important because if you move, what you're bound to do, if you're producing your voice correctly, you need to sit up and you need to use your hands to express yourself, and you have to have an absolutely silent chair. And the chairs at Audible at that time, were not absolutely silent. So every time I moved, the chair would squeak and we'd have to stop and start again. So that was very, very hard for me. In fact, I've been doing so much audiobooks now, and I also do TV and film, but that's gone to all for auditioning for that. It's all self tape, which means it's just like head and shoulders, so still you're just kind of using a little part of your body. And I had a theater callback for Pygmalion in the city the other day, in person, in a studio, in a rehearsal room. The day before, I used to do those all the time, and that's so rare now for them to do in-person auditions since the pandemic. But I put on my character shoes and my skirt and I practice just being bigger, opening my body up and doing all this stuff I learned to do in school and that you do when you're on stage to own the space because the space is the back wall of the theater. And that's a big difference between theater, film, TV, and audiobooks is the scope of it. When I did Beatrice, I was in an 1,100 seat unamplified stone amphitheater outdoors in Colorado. So you can imagine the scope physically and vocally is so big. And then for TV, film and you have to what they say, reach the back wall of whatever space you're in. Well, for film and TV, the back wall is the camera. It's right in front of your face a lot of the times. And the back wall is really kind of the inside of your head. It's almost like you have to have internal gaze so that the thoughts are just happening. You don't have to project them, you don't have to project your voice because all the equipment comes right to you, and all you have to do is feel the feelings and think the thoughts and the camera and microphone picked that up. Similarly with audiobooks, I'm just in a little tiny padded booth. My microphone is just a few inches from my face, and so I could be very, very intimate and everything gets picked up, and you have to do a lot less work for the emotion to come through. Again, really all you have to do is kind of feel the emotion. And for me, that's always for me is being in the moment and feeling the moment and letting that dictate the pace and the vocals and everything. I guess I'm pretty Method. I'm very Method, but that's how I trained. It's what works for me. Not every narrator is like that. There's a million different proper ways to narrate, and that's just my take on it. But everything is right there. So it's just kind of keeping it much smaller and more intimate. And in fact, when you want to be big like [character name's said in the character's] voice and he was yelling a lot, and I would have to pull back from the microphone to let his scope come out. Jonathan: Well, after 30 audiobooks together, I can say that method definitely works. Related to that, as we mentioned earlier, you're now at over 300 titles on Audible over the last 12 years. Congratulations for that. What would you say is most surprising or unexpected things about audiobooks you learned during that time? Hollis: Oh, well, it was very surprising that we could make a booth out of sword blades and blankets. That surprised me. Yeah, that's a great question. It's surprising to me how simple I can be. I went back and I had an author recently who wanted me to do a new chapter to begin and end a book that I had done like 2014, something like that, shortly after I started. And I thought at the time that I was really filling these voices and what I did was fine. You're always your own worst critic. But what I've discovered now is the more you do it, the more you record, the more you use your instrument every single day for 300 some books, the more effortless it becomes and the more depth you can bring to it. And as a young actor, we always resist that. My acting coach used to say, age and experience. There's no substitute for it. I'm like, yeah, yeah, but talent and hard work, that's something. But it's really true that just the repetition, there's no substitute for it. Those chapters that I did, they were the same voices basically. But when I went back and listened to the original, I was like, oh, it surprised me how without really changing anything mechanically, the work has just gotten deeper, more effortless, but it sounds better at the same time. Does that make sense? Jonathan: It does. Because you've probably noticed I've redesigned the covers for the Caina series like seven times over the last 10 years. And every time you think this is it, this is it. I'm done. This is good. And then with more practice, you look back and think, well, maybe I can improve this again, though. I suppose that's not often something that happens in the audiobook world where you get to go back and revisit something you did previously. Hollis: That is one of the hardest and most surprising things about audiobooks. And I've heard people say that this happens to every young narrator when they're starting out, you get through the first two chapters of a new book and you go, oh God, now I get it. I want to go back and start again. Well, there's no do overs with audiobooks. With audiobooks, “done is good” is what they always tell you when you're starting out. So even in film and TV, which you don't get much rehearsal for, you get a couple of run run-throughs, but with audiobooks, you got your prep. Not everyone does, but I always read the whole book before I start if possible, because otherwise you get surprises. But you get your one read through, your prep, and then you go and yes, you can stop. You can punch and roll, edit over. If you make a mistake, you go back half a line, you start again there. But there's no evolution of the work, which is what's great about series too, I think, because with the series you get, yeah, Caina was here last time I did her and now she's going through something new. And then the character grows and it becomes less and less effortful, but it also becomes like someone you really know so that it gets so much deeper and it's so much more fun to play with. Jonathan: That makes sense. 12 years really is a long time to have done audio narration or anything. So what do you think is the key to sticking it out for audiobooks for the long term? Hollis: Well, a lot of things make a difference. I didn't do it before this interview, which is why my voice is kind of rocky, but I always warm up in the morning when I'm setting up a session. I always do a vocal warmup. You got to get a good night's sleep, you have to drink water every couple of pages. I have a tea that I drink that keeps my stomach quiet because stomach gurgles is another bad thing about audiobooks. You have to eat very carefully and drink tea to keep your stomach quiet. You don't want to have to stop every time for that. And a lot of training, a lot of vocal training. I had Linklater training and the Lavan training, and Linklater to me is the most useful. And a lot of the stuff that applies to Shakespeare applies to audiobooks too. You warm up, you get yourself breathing, you warm up your resonators, your sinus, your mask resonators, the back of your head, your chest resonators. For the men [imitates male voice], you really have to have your chest warmed up, get the vibrations going here. And so I get all that kind of going before I sit down in the booth. And that also keeps you, then you keep your throat open so you're not hurting yourself. You have to have good posture so that the air can move from your diaphragm up to your throat and have it be open. And then optimally, like with Caina, Caina has a lot of mask resonance. Brits do; they are very far forward. So you really have to have all that warmed up and then that has to have no impediments between the front of your face all the way down to your diaphragm where the breath originates. And if you can do all that, then you could be an audiobook narrator. Also diction. I warm up my diction to everything from [imitates several vocal exercises] in just to get your mouth moving. You don't want lazy mouth with, there's a lot of enunciation in audiobooks that's important. But I also don't like, I really hate when you hear people enunciating. I don't like that. And with Caina, even though she's upper class, she's not like that. She's not pretentious. And certainly Nadia, you want to be able to understand what she says, but you don't want her to be enunciating. That be weird. So all of all that stuff I worked on in grad school and did all the Shakespeare plays, I would always get to the theater an hour early. You have to be there half hour for makeup and check in, but I would always get there an hour early and do at least 15 to 20 minutes of physical and vocal warmups. And so those habits have really helped me. I think I have pipes of iron, fortunately. I'm very lucky. So all that stuff really matters with audiobooks. Jonathan: It's amazing in how many different fields of life the answer seems to boil down to do the things you're supposed to over and over again forever. Hollis: Exactly. That's really true. When are we going to get old enough that we don't have to do that anymore? [laughs] Jonathan: Just one side question. What is Linklater training? I don't think I've heard that term before. Hollis: Oh, Kristen Linklater is, she's probably the biggest American vocal coach. She has a lot of books out there about voice and the actor and all of her training stems from allowing the breathing to drop in as she calls it, not forcing it to drop into the diaphragm, and then creating a pool of vocal vibrations that go from the diaphragm through an open throat to the resonators. And you can use every resonator in your body to project that sound. When I was doing Beatrice and Gertrude at Colorado Shakes in that unamplified stone amphitheater in the foothills of the Rockies, there was winds that would come down out of the mountains when we were on stage, and that theater was known for eating women's voices. And I had to thank God the vocal coach that summer was a Linklater coach, which is the method that I trained in, and he helped me work with even resonators. If you can imagine in your back, just using the whole chest box and shaking the vibrations through your body so that basically you're making your whole human skeleton an amplifier for the vocal energy coming from your breath. And that's Linklater. She's fascinating. If you ever want to study voice, you can't do better than Linklater, to my mind. Cicely Berry is another one I studied. She's the British guru for the RSC and the Royal Shakespeare Company and all those people, and she's great too. Jonathan: Well, that's just exciting. I learned something new today. Hollis: That's always good. Always learning from your books too about Medieval combat. Jonathan: We always want to learn something new every day, whether we like it or not. Hollis: Right. Jonathan: So to turn it around a little bit, what advice would you give a new indie author who is working with a narrator for the first time? Hollis: Oh yeah, I actually, I made some notes. I thought that was such a good question. Make sure that your narrator knows what you expect from them upfront. If you go through ACX, they have this great thing called the first 15 where your narrator is, if you're new to this author, you record the first 15 minutes of the book and you put that on ACX for your author to listen to and approve. You don't have to approve it if you don't like it. And in fact, if you don't like it, it's very important you don't approve it and you tell your narrator specifics about what you need them to change before they go on with the book. Because what you can't really do is once a book is recorded, say, oh, I really don't like it. I'm not going to pay you for it. I need you to go back and do it again. That's not acceptable and it will make narrators never want to work with you. But what's great about the first 15 is you have that chance to say, well, this voice was, she was a little higher than I wanted. I hear her in my head more as an alto because for me as a narrator, what I want to do is I want to take what you, Jonathan, hear your characters being as you're writing them in your head. I want to take that and translate that into an audiobook for you. So the more you give your narrators information about your characters, the better they're going to voice it. Also, if there's a style in your head, like with Nadia books, there's a little touch of noir there. It was a dark and stormy night kind of feel. If there's a style you kind of hear in your head, that would be a good thing to give them. But ACX has also, I think a character sheet where you can tell them about the different characters. You can fill that out for your narrator. That's tremendously helpful, age of the character, if you hear a vocal pitch range, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, any dialects, they need to know that. The narrator's nightmare is you finish up a book and you shouldn't do this, you should read ahead, but you get to the last line: “I love you, darling,” he said in his beautiful French accent. Jonathan: It explicitly shows up there for the first time. Hollis: Exactly. And then for the narrator, it's like, oh my God, I have to go back and rerecord everything this guy said, which is hours and hours and hours of work for you and your editor who will kill you. But yeah, let them know about all the character traits that you can and just, I think it's on the narrator too, to, I've been lucky with my authors, we always have a good give and take. I come from a theater background and you want to collaborate. You want to realize the author's vision and you want to be a partner in creating that. So try to be partners and give them more information than you think they need and use that first 15. It is totally acceptable to send it back and say, I'm going to need you to do this again, and I'm going to need these changes. And then once you get that ironed out, then you'll probably be ready to go ahead and have a book. And when you get the book, you won't be shocked and you'll be happy (hopefully) with the read. Is that helpful? Jonathan: It does. New authors, if you're listening to this, listen to that advice. Hollis: Yeah. Jonathan: Now for a slightly different topic, can you tell us about the Magic of Larlion books and how you ended up publishing that series? Hollis: Yeah. The Magic of Larlion is an epic fantasy adventures series seven, almost eight volumes. I'm working on finishing book eight now. The first book, Wizard Stone, my brilliant mother Dee Maltby started years and years ago, probably, gosh, maybe 20 years ago now, I think when my little brother moved out from home and she had an empty nest and she had more time to write, and she wrote Wizard Stone, and she sent it out a few places, and that was the only way you could get published back when she wrote it and didn't pursue it, she got discouraged, I think, by rejections from publishers, sat in her drawer for a while, and my sister-in-law, Dana Benningfield, who's also an actor, and she was my best friend even before she married my brother. I introduced them. So yeah, that was all me. She was an editor professionally for a while, and when she moved to Ohio where I'm from and was living with my brother and my parents lived right across the orchard, I told her about this book. And she wasn't editing at the time, she was kind of done with it, but she asked mom if she could read it. So she read it and edited it, and then it became a much better book and really encouraged my mom to keep writing, which I had been telling her to do for years. But hearing somebody who wasn't family, somehow giving her that input that it was really something special, changed her perspective. So she kept writing and she and I started, I was on the road doing Shakespeare a lot. We started trading chapters. She'd send me a chapter a week and I would edit it and send it back. And so Wizard Stone evolved from there into its current form, and then she started the next book, Wizard Wind and Wizard Storm. And we went that way through five and a half books. And my dad finally, when he retired from being a physicist, said he was going to, I always told you I'd get your published Dee, I'm going to take it down to the print shop and get a hundred copies made. And by this time I was working with you and a bunch of other great indie authors who were letting thousands of happy readers read their books through an independent platform. And I said, well, wait a minute. I could do better than that. So I convinced them to hire an editor that I had worked with, and I did the rewrites and got it through the pre-production process and hired a cover artist, very talented artist. And you and Meara Platt, another of my authors, gave me so much information and help. And we got it published in 2022, I believe. We had three ready to go. And we published those all within a month of each other. One a month for three months, and then four and five, and then six came. And I co-authored five, six, and seven because my mother was losing her sight and her hearing at that point. We got those done. We had six out and a lot of people reading them and loving them and reviewing them before my mom passed. And I think it's probably one of the most satisfying things I've done in my life, because not only do I love the books, and they're just a rip roaring, fantastic adventure-filled epic trip through this incredible world my mom invented. But when she was about to, one of the last things she said to me was, I told her how many people had read her books. I just went through the Kindle numbers and thousands of people in different countries and all over the world were reading and loving her books. And I told her that, and she said, that's all that matters. And she felt such a sense of pride in herself and accomplishment because they were being received for what they are, which is a brilliant creative flight of fancy, this magical world in the tradition of all the books she loved, always Tolkien. And so I promised her I'd finish it. So after she died, I published six and seven and I've got eight about 90% written now, and I'm hoping to bring that out by the end of the year, although I've been too darn busy with narration to really spend the time. I've got the big climactic Jonathan Moeller type battle at the end sketched in my head and on an outline, but I got to write that. And then we can get that out there and finish that too. Jonathan: Will you stop with eight or keep going after eight? Hollis: My feeling is that this series will culminate with book eight. It's been a long saga of Beneban, this young wizard who kind of gets flung off a mountain by his evil wizard master and has to master his fledgling wizardry powers and his magical sword to win his love Laraynia, a powerful sorceress, and save the kingdom. And that's book one. And there's ice dragons, and then they have kids, and then the later books have become much more about their kids. And the more I write, the more it's become about young women fighting with swords. Jonathan: Well, they say write what you know. Hollis: Defeating the bad guys. Plucky young women, overachieving, competing with men. And so I think that's all going to come to a head with book eight, and that will be the end of that series. But I do think I'm going to spin it off into possibly more on the younger characters. I don't know if it's going to be YA per se, I think it'll still be for adults, but more of a YA feel to it, the younger characters of the ice dragon riding school of battle and the wizarding school. I don't know if I want to make it schools necessarily, it might limit you too much. And that's kind of been done too. But I do think the ice dragons are going to figure largely in it. Oh, and I don't know, there's a plot point I probably shouldn't give away, but my mother's full name was Willa Dee Maltby. She writes under Dee Maltby and there is a character, a very magical character named Willa that shows up in this book eight. So I think Willa will be a big character going forward and the younger generation of women and some boys too. I like boys, I do. Jonathan: Well, I suppose if people want to know more, they will have to read and find out. Hollis: Yes. And please go to the website is deemaltbyauthor.com and everything you want to know (well, maybe not everything), but everything you can know for now is there. Jonathan: Well, I was going to ask you what you would say was the most rewarding things about publishing the books, but I think you covered that pretty well. On the flip side, what was the biggest unexpected challenge in publishing them? Hollis: The PR is hard. You seem to be great at it. I even did PR professionally to work my way through undergrad and then in between grad school and undergrad and after I graduated and I had an assistantship in it at my university. But the book world specifically is a whole different kind of PR and learning Amazon ads and Facebook ads and it's a lot. It's a lot. And again, you have been so helpful with it. And I mean, there are a lot of online resources out there too, which is great. But what I'm really finding, trying to do it part-time is overwhelming. You really need a full-time block of time to not only write the books, but then to publicize them the way they deserve to be publicized. Jonathan: Yeah, the tricky part is, as you said, book advertising is very different from anything else. I was talking with a guy who is an Amazon reseller for various toiletries and hygiene products and makes a good living doing that. I was telling him how much I pay per click on Amazon ads. He's just appalled. It's like, you can't make any money doing that. And then the flip side of that too is that Internet marketing is so different than any other form of PR, so it's just sort of constant challenge there. Hollis: I know, and I know I actually signed up for a TikTok account and I just don't, again at the time. Plus every time I turn it on, I'm like, I don't want to watch that. I'm allergic to the format. You'd think being an actor, being used to being on camera, I could come up easily with little things to do for the books and I probably could for TikTok. But again, just learning the platform and then applying yourself to it is just such a big time hack that I don't have that amount of time. I know that narrators are now more and more marketing themselves by recording themselves on camera narrating and putting that out there, which I can do, I guess. And that's why I got this ring light and everything. I can do that now. I haven't done anything with it, but I guess if some of the book work dries up, I'll be more motivated to do it. Jonathan: Well, that's how anything works. You try it and if you enjoy it and it works, keep doing it. And if you don't enjoy it and it doesn't work, no point in carrying on with it. Hollis: I think that's true. And you just have to keep learning too, as we know with everything. You got to keep learning new things. Jonathan: Well, this has been a very enjoyable interview and thank you for coming on the show. Hollis: My pleasure. Jonathan: Let's close out with one last question. You've obviously done a lot of theater, so what, out of all the productions you've done was the one you would say was your favorite or that you enjoyed the most? Hollis: I think I have to go back to Beatrice probably. I mean, the Alabama Shakes getting to play a man thing, that was a lot of fun. But Beatrice, we did a Wild West Much Ado about Nothing at Colorado Shakespeare. The premise was that I was the niece of Leonardo, who is the tavern keeper, the bar keeper in this Wild West world. And there was a bar fight opening this Wild West production, and I entered through a swinging tavern door with a six shooter in one hand and a bull whip in the other. And I shot the pistol and cracked the bull whip and broke up the fight and then got to do Shakespeare's incredible Beatrice and Benedict story from there. It was so much fun. Jonathan: It almost seems like the soundtrack could have been “I Shot the Sheriff.” Hollis: Yeah. Yeah, it really could. It was a heck of a lot of fun. Jonathan: Well, speaking of fun, it was good talking with you, and thank you for taking the time to be on the show. Hollis: Yeah, I am excited to start the next Cloak book soon. So I was going to offer to do a little snatch of you want the introduction for Cloak here? Jonathan: Oh, I think we'll save it for the Real Thing. Hollis: Oh, okay. All right. Well thank you, Jonathan. It's been a pleasure. Jonathan: It's been a pleasure. And see you soon for Cloak Mage #10. Hollis: Alright. So that was our interview with Hollis McCarthy. Thank you for coming on the show and giving us a very informative and entertaining interview. A reminder that the website with the Magic of Larlion books is deemaltbyauthor.com. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.

Silicon Satan author Cregg Lund talks with Dr. Jerome Corsi for another in a series about the book and the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley's. In this episode, Cregg and Dr. Corsi focus heavily on how the Luciferians among the Silicon Valley Elite find, seduce and groom girls and young women into their world.Warning: Aspects of the book and this interview may not be suitable for children under 18. Parental discretion is advised.Find out more about Silicon Satan and Cregg's next book on https://www.corsination.comVisit The Corsi Nation website: https://www.corsination.comIf you like what we are doing, please support our Sponsors:MyVitalC https://www.thetruthcentral.com/myvitalc-ess60-in-organic-olive-oil/Swiss America: https://www.swissamerica.com/offer/CorsiRMP.phpJoin Dr. Jerome Corsi on Substack: https://jeromecorsiphd.substack.com/Visit The Truth Central website: https://www.thetruthcentral.comGet your FREE copy of Dr. Corsi's new book with Swiss America CEO Dean Heskin, How the Coming Global Crash Will Create a Historic Gold Rush by calling: 800-519-6268Follow Dr. Jerome Corsi on X: @corsijerome1Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/corsi-nation--5810661/support.

Comp is in the air, and within a week we ended up with 4 new comp systems (or more)We chat about what makes a good comp, is it needed, rate them and run through some of the latest.[0:04:22] Intro[0:06:58] General Comp Chat[0:37:16] Specific Comps for ToW Currently[1:23:58] Patreon Shoutouts & Questions[1:44:20] Hobby and Josh's mini Cloak & Choppa report[2:07:00] WrapupSquare based - https://www.reddit.com/r/WarhammerFantasy/comments/1o2p951/square_based_comp_the_reddit_post/PANWOT - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jdqp-MQJk61lLk3sbf5ZGy1P-h5yK9so/view?usp=sharingSPC - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1TZZZHahYI8D9xml6lpVA-IsoWGadjrePAussie Comp - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vZbloOQ28UxH0KFA3OXBEcDHeB3upykKmUS9MZT3qXQ/edit?fbclid=IwY2xjawNaP8NleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE4bjJ1aG02dW9rNkNUcEFyAR41nKYY1cqJNYbOtLyAKWLm1FT5S6fCti3oIq4dQE5udHqx73sx-bj1fr74XQ_aem_oNbvTt3XUMf47uMlllzK6w&tab=t.0Shop Old World @ Element Games - https://elementgames.co.uk/wargames-and-miniatures-by-manufacturer/games-workshop/warhammer-the-old-world?d=11247#warhammertheoldworld #warhammer #warhammerfantasy #miniaturepainting  #paintingminiatures #tabletopgaming #warhammercommunity #ageofsigmar #podcast #warhammerpodcastJoin our Patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/OldWorldFanatics You can follow us on* Blusky - @oldworldfanatics* Youtube - @oldworldfanatics* TwitterX - @oldworldfanatic * Instagram - oldworldfanatics* Threads - @oldworldfanatics* and email the show at oldworldfanatics@gmail.comWe are home, in the #warhammertheoldworld #warhammer #warhammerfantasy #warhammertheoldworld #orcsandgoblins #vampirecounts  #minaturepainting #paintingminatures #tabletopgaming #warhammercommunity #ageofsigmar #podcast #warhammerpodcast #battlereport Thanks to our monthly supporters Marc Hurwitz Anvil of Doom Csubissimus Western Sydney Wargamers fued oner nicholas carreau Vinney ASB THE Great Bray-Shaman King Pash and The Moustache Rash NotNotMatt jesse torres tom pickard Adam Lamb The Orange Juicer Matty Firebird7137 Mark Langley Peter Holman Matt Hinton SilverDave SporadicSanity Mark Nick Chris Bowler ShooterLouie Benoît Cam The Dentist James McQuellin Liam Fallon Tommy Kublin JAYE MCBRIDE flatworldsedge Ss Xe Jelley Herald of the Old World Tommydogs Matthew Klein Matt Morris Perfidy Jess Torres Wood Duck ninnanuam Daniel Broadstock Gilthos Drakoniss Robert Xie Lou Skunt OG Whirler

In this week's episode, we warn against six different scams targeting indie authors. I also take a look at my advertising results for September 2025. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: WOLVESAUDIO The coupon code is valid through October 20, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Update Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 272 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is October 10th, 2025, and today we are looking at six common scams that target indie authors. We'll also look at my advertising results for September 2025 and some changes I will make because of that. But first, let's start with Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing projects. First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Wolves, Book #2 in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is WOLVESAUDIO, and as always, the coupon code and the link to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes for this episode. This coupon code is valid through October 20th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for this fall, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, I'm pleased to report the rough draft of Cloak of Worlds is done at 107,500 words. I think it's going to end up being about 30 chapters or so once I finish editing and I'm going to start editing very shortly. Before I start editing, I am going to write a short story called False Iron set in the world of Nadia and newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of False Iron when Cloak of Worlds comes out, hopefully before the end of the month (if all goes well). I am also 11,000 words into Blade of Shadows, the second book in my Blades of Ruin epic fantasy series that will be my next main project after Cloak of World is published. In audiobook news, Ghosts in the Siege (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is done and it's processing through the various platforms. I believe as of right now you can get it at Payhip, Kobo, and Google Play and then hopefully it should be available at the other stores within a few weeks. Brad Wills is starting work on the audiobook of Blade of Flames. In early 2026, I believe we should have the final audiobook from the Stealth and Spells series from C.J. McAllister. So that is where I'm at with my current writing and publishing projects. 00:02:18 Ad Results for September 2025 [Amounts Mentioned Are in USD] Now let's take a look back at some of my ad results for September 2025. First, the big changes. I am going to either give Facebook ads a rest for a while or more likely continue them in a very more limited way with a more focused strategy. As I've mentioned before, Meta has been shoving all this Advantage Plus AI stuff into Facebook ads and it just doesn't work. The key for online advertising, especially with books, is to narrow your target audience as much as possible and the Advantage Plus AI stuff all goes for a broad audience. To test that out, I did a couple of experiments. I didn't advertise Frostborn with Facebook ads in August, but I did advertise them with Facebook ads in September. The end result was I actually made $20 less from Frostborn in September than I did in August, but I also had the advertising expense for the month of September, so I made less overall. I also tried the reverse of that experiment. I advertised Cloak Games and Cloak Mage in August with Facebook, but not in September. The end result was that Cloak Games and Cloak Mage made about $200 less in September, but without the cost of advertising, that meant the profit was substantially higher. So I'm not sure if Facebook ads are effective or as effective as they used to be any longer (thanks generative AI), but in the [interest of] full testing, it'll experiment with it a bit more. I did try one ad campaign entirely with Advantage Plus this month and it was objectively terrible. I do not recommend using Advantage Plus for anything if you are advertising anything on Facebook. I probably will end up doing Facebook ads in a more focused way, similar to the way I do my BookBub ads, where I will set a time limited ad for one of my permafree books for four days or so and then shut it off when it's done because BookBub ads tend to work well the first three days and then lose their punch after. So I might end up doing something similar with Facebook ads, but we will report more on that in November once we finish with October's advertisement results. Meanwhile, Amazon ads did a lot better. Here are some of the campaigns I ran. Remember, for an Amazon ad to be successful, it needs to generate a sale or complete Kindle Unlimited read through for every six through eight clicks. For Demonsouled Omnibus One, I got back $2.44 for every dollar spent, with one sale for every 1.41 clicks. For Half-Elven Thief, I got back $1.31 for every dollar spent, with one sale for every 2.48 clicks. For Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One, 48% of the profit came from the audiobook for that one. I got back $10.13 for every dollar spent, with one sale for every 1.26 clicks. For Stealth and Spells Online: Creation, it did really well, with $24.01 for every dollar spent, with one sale for every 0.66 clicks. That was still enjoying the halo result from the release of Final Quest earlier this year. For Cloak Mage Omnibus One, I got back $3.64 for every dollar spent, with 65% of the profit coming from the audiobook and one sale for every 0.61 clicks. For Sevenfold Sword Omnibus One, I got back $3.47 for every $1 spent and one sale for every 2.42 clicks. For Dragontiarna Omnibus One, I got back $13.40 for every dollar spent and one sale for every 1.2 clicks. Out of all my campaigns. I only had one campaign that lost money, but it lost a grand total of $1.48, so that was good. So we can also see that omnibus editions definitely do very well with Amazon ads, especially if they have attached audiobooks. It turns out finishing Stealth and Spells Online made it a lot easier to advertise. A finished series is a lot easier to advertise than an incomplete one (who knew?). Though if I really want to kick up Half-Elven Thief, I need to write another book in the series, which I plan to do later this year. Once Cloak of Worlds is published, I will start on that. As I mentioned earlier, I'm also [doing] a variety of BookBub ads for my permafree books on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple; these consistently do very well since it's a lot cheaper to get clicks through the non-Amazon stores for books when you're advertising them on BookBub. So that's where my ads are for September 2025. As I mentioned, I'm going to experiment a bit more with Facebook ads in October and November, but the end result (even if I have good results) is I'm going to use them a lot less than I used to moving forward because targeting is somewhat harder. That means it's time to start thinking about other marketing ideas. There is precedent. I resisted using Facebook ads for four years before I started experimenting with them in early 2020, so maybe it's time (after dragging my feet on the idea for five years) to start playing with short form video in 2026. That seems to be where all the growth and all the eyeballs seem to be. You may have noticed that the previous episode of this podcast, Episode 271 was the first one that was on YouTube, and it seems to have been a good idea since that doubled the amount of views an episode usually gets. So I may have more video experiments coming soon, but we'll see, and as always, thank you for reading, everyone and it would be pointless to advertise the books if people didn't want to read them, and that is a fact for which I am very grateful. 00:07:26 Main Topic of the Week: Six Scams Targeting Indie Authors Now on to our main (and to be honest, somewhat less enjoyable) main topic this week, six scams that are targeting indie authors. The old saying was, “there's a sucker born every minute”, but in the year of our Lord 2025, I think it's more accurate to say there's an AI powered scammer born every minute. As you might've gathered from my tone about this, I admit to being pretty annoyed by how many scam emails I get related to writing and indie publishing. These days it's pretty constant and they tend to cluster around when I have a new release. Some bot (or more realistically, a whole bunch of bots) is presumably scanning all new releases and then turns out a bunch of scammy emails when it detects a new book. I despise these people because they prey upon the vulnerable for money, which is wrong. Imagine a 75-year-old who just self-published the novel he or she has been working on for the last 30 years and finally decided to finish in retirement. Then they get a ChatGPT generated email from “John Grisham” praising their book in detail and asking for some money for marketing services. A lot of people would have absolutely no mental defense against this kind of scam, like someone from modern earth encountering a wizard who can cast illusion spells. Unfortunately, scamming is endemic everywhere these days. It is a constant debate how much the [US] federal program Medicare gets scammed out of every year. One of the local drug stores where I live has numerous signs warning about gift cards after so many local seniors were getting scammed into buying gift cards. Then there were a recent chain of text messages telling me I owed money for driving on toll roads in the state of Illinois, which was amusing because one, I haven't been to Illinois since 2022. Two, I was a passenger in someone else's car at the time, and three, the last time I was on a toll road in Illinois in a vehicle I actually owned was in 2017. As an amusing aside, when I mentioned this on Facebook, a frequent commenter and reader mentioned that he lives in the UK and he still got a bunch of text messages about toll roads in Illinois, even though A, he lives in the UK and B, he doesn't actually have a driver's license. Unfortunately, it is the truth that the internet makes scamming so easy, that constant vigilance is required these days, and with that in mind, here are six different kinds of scammy emails writers (and indie publishers) can expect to get. #1: ChatGPT. One of the reasons (you know if you've listened to the show before) that I'm very down on generative AI is that generative AI is a scammer's paradise. Lately, a new trend is that a scammer will feed a pirated copy of a book into ChatGPT and then use it to generate personalized pitch letters. These personalized pitch letters will also be littered with emojis and the tone will vary from warm and sycophantic to encouraging and edgy. Here's a quote from a recent one I got for Blade of Flames: “Talembur wakes in a forgotten catacomb, sword in hand, memory shredded, enemies sniffing blood in the dark. That's a hook so sharp it could flense an orc. Blade of Flames reads like classic, grim-and-gorgeous sword-and-sorcery with a hunger for blood, mystery, and very satisfying blade choreography.” In fact, I got two more just like that this morning before I started recording. This is an effective illusion for a scam because it seems like the scammer read the book and liked it and is making personalized compliments about it, even though that's the result of a ChatGPT or a similar bot. However, the rest of the email is a hard pitch for various marketing services that don't actually exist. I admit I fell halfway for this one the first time. I got one of those very detailed emails and I thought it would respond with a polite refusal since it seemed like a lot of work had gone into it. However, after responding, I think I then got five more emails in rapid succession, all of them pushing for the purchase of dubious marketing services, and I realized the whole thing was a ChatGPT powered bot. So watch out for these very personalized emails, especially the ones that appear instantaneously or very quickly after you publish a book. #2: Fake book clubs. This one is sometimes tied in with the ChatGPT scams. Sometimes the book club people use ChatGPT to generate their emails. The way this works is you'll get an email for someone claiming they run a large book club or reader group on Goodreads (or Facebook or whatever) and they think your book would be a good fit for their reader group and have a few questions about it. However, if you respond to this email, you'll start getting pressure for payment. Turns out the reader group or the book club doesn't actually exist and this is yet another scam, so watch out for emails that talk about the “5,000 member reader group” or something along those lines. By good luck, one of these emails arrived while I was writing the notes for this episode, so I thought it would quote it here. “I'm Jason, and I organize Book Club NYC, a community of more than 3,300 readers across New York who gather to read, reflect, and connect through books that challenge perception and spark deep conversation. When I discovered Ghost in the Siege, I was immediately struck by its layered power, a story that confronts truth and deception, morality and survival, within a world both haunting and familiar. It's the kind of book that doesn't just entertain; it lingers, asking questions about justice, humanity, and what it means to stand alone in the face of decay. That blend of atmosphere and insight makes it exactly the kind of story our members love to explore together. We'd love to feature Ghost in the Siege as part of our upcoming event on Wednesday, October 15th. Here's what that experience will look like: Quiet Reading & Reflection: members immersing themselves in your world, letting its tension and themes unfold in silence. Open Discussion: exploring the moral and psychological dimensions of corruption, redemption, and resistance.” And blah, blah, blah. It goes on in this vein quite a bit. You notice that if you actually read Ghost in the Siege (and I'm actually quite fond of Ghost in the Siege as a book), I don't think it would be fair to say that Ghost in the Siege “isn't just the kind of book that entertains, it lingers, asking questions about justice, humanity, and what it means to stand alone in the face of decay.” That is the kind of generic nonsense you can expect ChatGPT to spit out for this kind of thing. Now, as we mentioned, of course this book club doesn't actually exist, and if any of these good Goodreads or Facebook groups or whatever even exists, they'll be full of bots under the control of the scammer, and if you respond, the book club organizer will start talking about fees for having your book read before the group. As ever, if you pay, the scammer will either immediately disappear or continue to pressure you for more money. #3: “John Grisham” wants to promote my book. This type of email is just a straight up catfishing or identity theft attempt. You'll get an email allegedly from a famous author (for myself, I've gotten emails from “John Grisham” and “Colleen Hoover”, among others), and they'll offer to help you promote your books. Obviously, this is very fake. The actual John Grisham and Colleen Hoover (among other famous authors) have better things to do with their time than emailing random indie authors like me for marketing collaborations. If you respond to these emails, you'll get a request for payment, and if you pay, the scammer will promptly disappear and stop responding, or of course, ask for more money. #4: Meta Ads has a new dashboard. I've gotten this one quite a bit this year, allegedly from Meta. This email claims that Facebook is rolling out either a new ads dashboard or a new mobile app for managing ads, and you've been invited to participate in the beta test for the new dashboard or the new app. Just click on the link and start installation. I admit I ignored these at first because there's no way I'm ever installing any Meta apps on my phone because they're so intrusive and halfway to being spyware. Also, the current version of the Facebook ads dashboard is annoying enough and complicated enough to use it as it is, and I don't want to play with any half-baked beta features. So I ignored these emails, but then I realized I was getting surprisingly a lot of them. So I checked the senders and realized they weren't coming from an actual Meta address, but from a variety of different Gmail addresses, which meant they were in fact phishing attempts. Facebook ad phishing, alas, is a serious problem. The basic scam is that a hacker finds a way to gain control of your ads account and then uses it to advertise various scam projects, usually involving cryptocurrency. Since Facebook's customer support is so notoriously bad, it's very difficult to get this kind of situation resolved. So if you are using Facebook ads, be wary of any emails you get from Meta since they could be phishing attempts. #5: Bad tax news or payment failure. This one tends to be common around tax time or the end of the year. You'll get an email allegedly from one of the publishing platforms claiming that there's a problem with your tax information or that one of your payments failed. The email will include a link you can click to resolve the situation, which is of course fake so the scammers can capture your account and personal information. I've gotten a couple of these lately and some of them, to be honest, were quite good. I got one from Spotify claiming that my tax information was out of date, which was baffling because my tax information hasn't changed in the entire time I've had audiobooks with Spotify. I was suspicious, so I logged into my Spotify dashboard and checked that everything was in fact, okay. Then I realized the scam: the email had actually come to a different email account than the one I actually used for my Spotify dashboard. It was an exceptionally well done phishing email, but thankfully, years of ingrained caution against clicking email links served me well. So if you do get one of these, don't click on any links. Instead go directly to the dashboard of the platform in question and see for yourself. If there actually is a tax or a payment problem, there will probably be a notification of some kind on the dashboard, and of course if the notification email comes to a different email account than the one you actually use for that platform or service, it will obviously be fake. #6: Fake publishing services. There are a variety of fake publishing services out there offering a range of alleged benefits like more Facebook followers, more readers, more email subscribers, et cetera, or someone will offer to get your book into Publishers Weekly or something like that in exchange for a payment. Some of these blend over with the scammy sort of vanity publishers. Granted, I think that all vanity publishing (which is “you pay us and we publish your book”) is a scam, but some of them are worse than others. At best, if you engage with these kinds of services, you'll get some new followers from bots or so forth, which is useless for selling books. At worst, nothing will happen at all. The scammers will take your money and disappear. At the absolute worst, they'll pester you forever for more money or find a way to steal more personal information from you. Generally, if you get an unsolicited email from book marketers, it is almost surely a scam. If you're unsure, asking about the company in question in a Facebook group like 20BooksTo50K or Wide For The Win will help identify whether or not they're legit, but they're probably not legit. In conclusion, I'm afraid one has no choice but to exercise constant vigilance in the Internet world these days, especially if you're a self-publisher. Be extremely wary of any unsolicited emails. Never click on a link in an email. If a message claims there's a problem with one of your publishing platforms, don't click on the link. Go to the platform directly in a different browser tab or a different browser and see for yourself. Before spending money on anything, do some research and check that it is legitimate and not a scam. It's easy to fake legitimacy these days, so it's worthwhile to do a little investigating before spending money on anything. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful and a helpful guide against some of the scams you might encounter in the wild. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Today's Adventure: Two OSS Agents go into occupied Norway to blow up a key Nazi-controlled bridge.Original Radio Broadcast: August 20, 1950Originating in New YorkStarring: Berry Kroeger, Raymond Edward Johnson, Jerry Jarrett, Frank Barrens, Karl Weber, Joseph Julian, Ralph Bell.To subscribe to this podcast and, go to https://greatadventures.info/Become one of our ongoing Patreon supporters at https://patreon.greatdetectives.netSupport the show on a one-time basis at http://support.greatdetectives.net.Mail a donation to: Adam Graham, PO Box 15913, Boise, Idaho 83715Take the listener survey at http://survey.greatdetectives.netGive us a call at 208-991-4783Follow us on Instagram at http://instagram.com/greatdetectivesFollow us on Twitter @radiodetectives

Hey Pickles!We hope this finds you well!Here's what's coming up in today's show!This week's Y Files Roadside zoo owner, and circus runner,  Ryan Easley killed by tiger in Oklahoma.Check out the article here: https://www.humaneworld.org/en/blog/captive-tiger-kills-owner-roadside-zooIn our Noteworthy segment, The USDA and other federal agencies posting banners on their websites with propaganda messaging about the recent federal government shut down. Do we really need another reason not to trust the USDA?See for yourself: https://www.usda.govAnd, in Our Main Topic, We're taking to with us to the Cleveland Vegfest!Check out the vendors list! https://www.clevelandvegansociety.orgGet a copy of Devin Staurbringer's Children's book here: https://amzn.to/4ny58KlOur featured vegan spot in our Assignment Restaurant SOS this week is Cloak & Dagger in Cleveland OH.Check out their amazing menu here: https://cloakanddaggercle.comWe also have a new Listener Shout Out. and more!Thanks so much for listening.Much love, Sam & ChristineSend us a text! We can't respond, but we'd love to hear from you!Support the showJoin Our Patreon https://www.patreon.com/CompassionandcucumbersSign Up For Our Newsletterhttps://www.compassionandcucumbers.comOur YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@compassioncucumbersveganpod/videos72 Reasons To Be Vegan *paid link https://amzn.to/3W8ZwsUVisit Our Website https://www.compassionandcucumbers.comSam's Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/CucumberCraftworks

Daily Quote The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) Poem of the Day One by Mary Oliver 　　 Beauty of Words 隐身衣（节选） 杨绛

Have you ever heard the legend of James Luceno the wise? Now you can hear from this brilliant author directly from the source because Jared and Freddy sat down with him for a phenomenal chat at Legacy Expo. He is the author of great Star Wars books like Darth Plagueis, Cloak of Deception, Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, and several books in the New Jedi Order including its epic finale, The Unifying Force. We asked him about the development of the NJO, many mind-blowing behind-the-scenes details, and also what it was like crafting such a dark and twisted tale as Darth Plagueis. You're going to love this one.

In this episode of Your Week with St. Luke's, we launch a new series: Serve Joyfully, reflecting on the dramatic story of Elijah and Elisha in 2 Kings 2. Pastor Jenn and Liz are joined by Dr. Ryan Bonfiglio from the Candler Foundry and together they explore how Elijah's departure in a fiery whirlwind and Elisha's courageous step into leadership illustrate the challenges and blessings of answering God's call. They unpack the role of prophets in Israel's history—not as royal yes-men, but as truth-tellers and checks on power—and highlight how influence often outweighs authority in God's work. Through discussion of mantles, water-parting miracles, and the symbolism of leadership transitions, the conversation draws parallels to modern faith, church leadership, and personal calling, inviting us to see ourselves in Elisha's determination to step forward with courage and God's Spirit.   Find encouragement and connection at https://www.livetherhythm.app/

#devil #magic #azoresIn the first story, a man befriends the devil in order to get the woman of his dreams. In the second story, a pious man is rewarded for his prayers.In the third story, a woman gets bad advice from tradition.And in the final story, death gives a man a warning, but he fails to see it.Source: The Islands of Magic: Legends, Folk and Fairy Tales from the Azores by EellsNarrator: Dustin SteichmannSounds: Birds by Dustin SteichmannMusic:

Jim Marrs joins Freeman for a discussion of Alien connections to the Nazi elite and the rise of the Fourth Reich in America. Also discussed are the Annunaki, ancient Sumer and Egypt. Jim is an expert on Ancient Astronauts, the NWO, Nazi UFOs, Skull and Bones, Bush Dynasty, the CIA, and NSA, Trilateral Commission, Bilderbergers, CFR, Flying Saucers, and the Alien Agenda. This show with Jim Marrs aired on Radio Freeman Nov. 09, 2010 on American Freedom Radio Jim Marrs is author of Rule by Secrecy, which traced the hidden history that connects modern secret societies to the Ancient Mysteries. It reached the New York Times Best Seller list. In 2003, his book The War on Freedom probed the conspiracies of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. It was released in 2006 under the title The Terror Conspiracy. In mid-2008, his book The Rise of the Fourth Reich, detailing the infiltration of National Socialism into the USA, was published followed by a study of mysteries entitled Above Top Secret. Associate Producer: Steve Mercer Send comments and guest suggestions to producersteve@freemantv.com Topics include: Freemasonry, Religion of World - Bureaucrats - Skull and Bones - Perks for Lower Masons - Albert Pike, Albert Mackey - Rosicrucians. Levels, Grades, Degrees - Noble Orders, Old Aristocracy, Knighting, Sirs - Terminology of Architecture and Building - "Building the Temple" - Knights Templars. United States, Founding Fathers, British Crown, Royal Charters - Masonic Lodge Meeting, Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, France. Foundations under Cloak of Charity - Political Group and NGO funding - Demands for Laws to be Passed - Soviet Union. Chemtrails - Aerial Spraying of Prozac, Valium - Weather Modification - Tranquilizing Public - "Brave New World". Hollywood (Holy Wood, Grove) - Giving You Your Thoughts - Subliminals - Royal Institute for International Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations. Worldwide HAARP - Earthquake, Tornado, Drought, Famine, Tsunami Creation. Mystery Religions, "Societies with Secrets" - Masonic Obelisks across U.S.-Canada Border. Hermaphroditic Symbol - Perfection of Human Being - Cessation of All Conflict - Perfected Worker Breed, Ideal Design, Purpose-Made Humans. Dictatorships - Scientific Indoctrination, Bertrand Russell, Experimental Schools - "Contaminated Ideas" - Kindergarten. Total War - British Military Academies, Hitler's Army - Mercenaries, Armies - Carroll Quigley. Project for a New American Century, Wolfowitz - War in Middle East - John Stewart Mill - Peoples, Races to be Eliminated - H.G. Wells.

Mercurio D. Rivera joins us to discuss nine more stories from the book The Best of Larry Niven, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Stories discussed: “Inconstant Moon” (1:34), “Rammer” (18:42), “Cloak of Anarchy” (27:42), “The Fourth Profession” (38:22), “Flash Crowd” (47:59), “The Defenseless Dead” (59:37), “Flight of the Horse” (1:15:55), “The Hole Man” (1:22:29), “Night on Mispec Moor” (1:28:32). Ad-free episodes are available to our paid supporters over at patreon.com/geeks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The players are being buried alive and it’s giving us anxiety!! What did Wells and Dolores tell producers they would NEVER do in challenges?! Plus, Wells opens up about being the first player banished on his season. Who does he blame for his fate?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A psychic detective investigates a Surrey manor haunted by a vicious poltergeist — and meets his match.A 19th‑century ghost‑buster (i.e., a psychic detective) named Flaxman Low is called to a manor in Surrey, England. The estate's owner believes the place is being terrorized by a violent and aggressive poltergeist. When he arrives, Low finds himself going toe-to-toe with this malevolent entity—and things quickly escalate. It's a supernatural showdown in a classic ghostly mansion from CBS Radio Mystery Theater! | #RetroRadio EP0487Join the DARKNESS SYNDICATE: https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:30.028 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Ghostly Private Eye” (September 27, 1976)00:45:22.208 = Adventures of Ellery Queen, “Nick Knife” (August 01, 1945) ***WD01:09:22.450 = Quiet Please, “Words” (August 23, 1948)01:34:05.343 = Radio City Playhouse, “Only Unto Him” (April 18, 1949)02:02:54.967 = Cat, “Audition Episode – aired during “Suspense” (October 21, 1946) ***WD02:18:52.094 = Ripley's Believe It or Not, “World's Richest Heiress” (1930) ***WD02:19:53.277 = Sam Spade, “Cloak and Dagger Caper” (January 19, 1951) ***WD (LQ)02:47:53.410 = The Sealed Book, “Stranger In The House” (May 06, 1945) ***WD03:17:22.840 = The Shadow, “Death In a Minor Key” (September 29, 1940) ***WD03:46:49.006 = Sleep No More, “Death of Olivier Becaille” and “Fishhead” (December 26, 1955) ***WD04:16:09.082 = BBC Spinechillers, “Meatballs Are Murder” (November 08, 2006)04:29:53.324 = Strange Wills, “Girl In Cell 13” (September 21, 1946)04:59:33.281 = Strange, “Capt Robinson” (1955)05:13:18.475 = Suspense, “Most Dangerous Game” (September 23, 1943)05:43:09.796 = Tales of the Frightened, “Don't Lose Your Head” (1957)05:47:40.503 = The Saint, “Tuba” (January 21, 1951) ***WD06:16:48.271 = Theater Five, “Good Samaritans”(October 15, 1964)06:37:35.606 = Theater 1030, “The Thing In The Hall” (1968-1971) ***WD07:06:58.204 = 2000 Plus, “When Worlds Met” (May 03, 1950) ***WD07:36:00.344 = The Unexpected, “Horoscope” (June 13, 1948)07:50:49.757 = Unsolved Mysteries, “Writing On The Wall” (1936) ***WD08:05:31.669 = Dark Venture, “Miser” (December 09, 1946)08:34:36.969 = The Weird Circle, “Returned” (1944)09:02:06.132 = The Whistler, “Black Magic” (September 18, 1944)09:31:32.349 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music LibraryABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.= = = = =#TrueCrime #Paranormal #ScienceFiction #OldTimeRadio #OTR #OTRHorror #ClassicRadioShows #HorrorRadioShows #VintageRadioDramas #SuspenseRadioClassics #1940sRadioHorror #OldRadioMysteryShows #CreepyOldRadioShows #TrueCrimeRadio #SupernaturalRadioPlays #GoldenAgeRadio #EerieRadioMysteries #MacabreOldTimeRadio #NostalgicThrillers #ClassicCrimePodcast #RetroHorrorPodcast #WeirdDarkness #WeirdDarknessPodcast #RetroRadio #ClassicRadioCUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0487