Podcast appearances and mentions of jeff right

Badass Digital Nomads is back after a holiday break! Kristin shares behind the scenes of the podcast after an action-packed 2023. Then, she shares and life and personal development themes she's been thinking about over the year. She also offers practical tips, exercises, and resources for how to apply these topics in your life.   Thank you for listening this year and for being a part of the community.    Thank you to the Badass Digital Nomads Team for their work on the podcast this year: Kayla, TJ, Gaston, and Penny    Special thanks to you! Thank you to everyone who downloaded the podcast this year, left a review, donated a (decaf) coffee, joined Patreon, or shared Badass Digital Nomads with others. We appreciate you!   Special Offers: Apply for moving overseas support Buy Kristin a Decaf Coffee Join Patreon Travel to Portugal with Kristin   Episode Resources:    Top Podcasts of 2023:  How To Find or Become a Virtual Assistant in 2023  Becoming a Self-Made Entrepreneur and Creative with Niklas Göke The Best Places To Travel in 2023 How to Improve Your Health & Wellness By Moving Abroad   Related Podcasts: Ep 91: How to Overcome Loneliness While Traveling Ep 215: The Easy Way to Live a Better Life Ep 232: Simone Vincenzi Mental Health and The Great Resignation   Books/Articles Mentioned: Article: The Busy Trap (NYT) Digital Minimalism How to Break Up with Your Phone Smart Phone, Dumb Phone Time and How to Spend It  War of Art Walden (Life in the Woods)   Additional Resources: Live to 100 - Secrets of the Blue Zones (Netflix)   Thank you to our 2023 Patrons! Alex Duffy, TheTravelingHatter, Alejandro Martin, Julie D'Angelo, Stephen L. Bainton, KatTraveler12, Eric Kwang, Dawn Davis, Jim Chadwick, Em Winn, Ron Sokol, Dave M., Francis, DJ, Michelle and Joel Hartz, Stephen Weeks, Andy, Netdtek Tor, Chip Pierce, Mike Ramsey, Christopher Copley, Dave Bowman, Jenopolis, Phil Ratzloff, Gary Bridges, Daniel McCutcheon, Stephen Williams, Mike and Mary McCombs, Isaac Medrano, Scottman895, Karen Espig, Richard Yanda, Shawn, Walt Magnado   Special thanks to Jeff Right for being Kristin's #1 donor on BuyMeaCoffee.   Connect with Kristin and Support the Show: *   Become a Patron *   Buy a Coffee *   Follow on Instagram *   Join the Facebook Group *   Leave a 5-Star Review *   Subscribe on YouTube   See the show notes pages on BadassDigitalNomads.com or TravelingwithKristin.com/podcast  for time stamps, transcripts, and more resources from this episode.

Jeff Morris, VP of Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss Couchbase's new columnar data store functionality, specific use cases for columnar data stores, and why AI gets better when it communicates with a cleaner pool of data. Jeff shares how more responsive databases could allow businesses like Dominos and United Airlines to create hyper-personalized experiences for their customers by utilizing more responsive databases. Jeff dives into the linked future of AI and data, and Corey learns about Couchbase's plans for the re:Invent conference. If you're attending re:Invent, you can visit Couchbase at booth 1095.About JeffJeff Morris is VP Product & Solutions Marketing at Couchbase (NASDAQ: BASE), a cloud database platform company that 30% of the Fortune 100 depend on.Links Referenced:Couchbase: https://www.couchbase.com/TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode of Screaming in the Cloud is brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. Also brought to us by Couchbase is today's victim, for lack of a better term. Jeff Morris is their VP of Product and Solutions Marketing. Jeff, thank you for joining me.Jeff: Thanks for having me, Corey, even though I guess I paid for it.Corey: Exactly. It's always great to say thank you when people give you things. I learned this from a very early age, and the only people who didn't were rude children and turned into worse adults.Jeff: Exactly.Corey: So, you are effectively announcing something new today, and I always get worried when a database company says that because sometimes it's a license that is going to upset people, sometimes it's dyed so deep in the wool of generative AI that, “Oh, we're now supporting vectors or whatnot.” Well, most of us don't know what that means.Jeff: Right.Corey: Fortunately, I don't believe that's what you're doing today. What have you got for us?Jeff: So, you're right. It's—well, what I'm doing is, we're announcing new stuff inside of Couchbase and helping Couchbase expand its market footprint, but we're not really moving away from our sweet spot, either, right? We like building—or being the database platform underneath applications. So, push us on the operational side of the operational versus analytic, kind of, database divide. But we are announcing a columnar data store inside of the Couchbase platform so that we can build bigger, better, stronger analytic functionality to feed the applications that we're supporting with our customers.Corey: Now, I feel like I should ask a question around what a columnar data store is because my first encounter with the term was when I had a very early client for AWS bill optimization when I was doing this independently, and I was asking them the… polite question of, “Why do you have 283 billion objects in a single S3 bucket? That is atypical and kind of terrifying.” And their answer was, “Oh, we built our own columnar data store on top of S3. This might not have been the best approach.” It's like, “I'm going to stop you there. With no further information, I can almost guarantee you that it was not.” But what is a columnar data store?Jeff: Well, let's start with the, everybody loves more data and everybody loves to count more things, right, but a columnar data store allows you to expedite the kind of question that you ask of the data itself by not having to look at every single row of the data while you go through it. You can say, if you know you're only looking for data that's inside of California, you just look at the column value of find me everything in California and then I'll pick all of those records to analyze. So, it gives you a faster way to go through the data while you're trying to gather it up and perform aggregations against it.Corey: It seems like it's one of those, “Well, that doesn't sound hard,” type of things, when you're thinking about it the way that I do, in terms of a database being more or less a medium to large size Excel spreadsheet. But I have it on good faith from all the customer environments. I've worked with that no, no, there are data stores that span even larger than that, which is, you know, one of those sad realities of the world. And everything at scale begins to be a heck of a lot harder. I've seen some of the value that this stuff offers and I can definitely understand a few different workloads in which case that's going to be super handy. What are you targeting specifically? Or is this one of those areas where you're going to learn from your customers?Jeff: Well, we've had analytic functionality inside the platform. It just, at the size and scale customers actually wanted to roam through the data, we weren't supporting that that much. So, we'll expand that particular footprint, it'll give us better integration capabilities with external systems, or better access to things in your bucket. But the use case problem is, I think, going to be driven by what new modern application requirements are going to be. You're going to need, we call it hyper-personalization because we tend to cater to B2C-style applications, things with a lot of account profiles built into them.So, you look at account profile, and you're like, “Oh, well Jeff likes blue, so sell him blue stuff.” And that's a great current level personalization, but with a new analytic engine against this, you can maybe start aggregating all the inventory information that you might have of all the blue stuff that you want to sell me and do that in real-time, so I'm getting better recommendations, better offers as I'm shopping on your site or looking at my phone and, you know, looking for the next thing I want to buy.Corey: I'm sure there's massive amounts of work that goes into these hyper-personalization stories. The problem is that the only time they really rise to our notice is when they fail hilariously. Like, you just bought a TV, would you like to buy another? Now statistically, you are likelier to buy a second TV right after you buy one, but for someone who just, “Well, I'm replacing my living room TV after ten years,” it feels ridiculous. Or when you buy a whole bunch of nails and they don't suggest, “Would you like to also perhaps buy a hammer?”It's one of those areas where it just seems like a human putting thought into this could make some sense. But I've seen some of the stuff that can come out of systems like this and it can be incredible. I also personally tend to bias towards use cases that are less, here's how to convince you to buy more things and start aiming in a bunch of other different directions where it starts meeting emerging use cases or changing situations rapidly, more rapidly than a human can in some cases. The world has, for better or worse, gotten an awful lot faster over the last few decades.Jeff: Yeah. And think of it in terms of how responsive can I be at any given moment. And so, let's pick on one of the more recent interesting failures that has popped up. I'm a Giants fan, San Francisco Giants fan, so I'll pick on the Dodgers. The Dodgers during the baseball playoffs, Clayton Kershaw—three-time MVP, Cy Young Award winner, great, great pitcher—had a first-inning meltdown of colossal magnitude: gave up 11 runs in the first inning to the Diamondbacks.Well, my customer Domino's Pizza could end up—well, let's shift the focus of our marketing. We—you know, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball this year in the National League—let's focus our attention there, but with that meltdown, let's pivot to Arizona and focus on our market in Phoenix. And they could do that within minutes or seconds, even, with the kinds of capabilities that we're coming up with here so that they can make better offers to that new environment and also do the decision intelligence behind it. Like, do I have enough dough to make a bigger offer in that big market? Do I have enough drivers or do I have to go and spin out and get one of the other food delivery folks—UberEats, or something like that—to jump on board with me and partner up on this kind of system?It's that responsiveness in real, real-time, right, that's always been kind of the conundrum between applications and analytics. You get an analytic insight, but it takes you an hour or a day to incorporate that into what the application is doing. This is intended to make all of that stuff go faster. And of course, when we start to talk about things in AI, right, AI is going to expect real-time responsiveness as best you can make it.Corey: I figure we have to talk about AI. That is a technology that has absolutely sprung to the absolute peak of the hype curve over the past year. OpenAI released Chat-Gippity, either late last year or early this year and suddenly every company seems to be falling all over itself to rebrand itself as an AI company, where, “We've been working on this for decades,” they say, right before they announce something that very clearly was crash-developed in six months. And every company is trying to drape themselves in the mantle of AI. And I don't want to sound like I'm a doubter here. I'm like most fans; I see an awful lot of value here. But I am curious to get your take on what do you think is real and what do you think is not in the current hype environment.Jeff: So yeah, I love that. I think there's a number of things that are, you know, are real is, it's not going away. It is going to continue to evolve and get better and better and better. One of my analyst friends came up with the notion that the exercise of generative AI, it's imprecise, so it gives you similarity things, and that's actually an improvement, in many cases, over the precision of a database. Databases, a transaction either works or it doesn't. It has failover or it doesn't, when—Corey: It's ideally deterministic when you ask it a question—Jeff: Yes.Corey: —the same question a second time, assuming it's not time-bound—Jeff: Gives you the right answer.Corey: Yeah, the sa—or at least the same answer.Jeff: The same answer. And your gen AI may not. So, that's a part of the oddity of the hype. But then it also helps me kind of feed our storyline of if you're going to try and make Gen AI closer and more accurate, you need a clean pool of data that you're dealing with, even though you've got probably—your previous design was such that you would use a relational database for transactions, a document database for your user profiles, you'd probably attach your website to a caching database because you needed speed and a lot of concurrency. Well, now you got three different databases there that you're operating.And if you're feeding data from each of those databases back to AI, one of them might be wrong or one of them might confuse the AI, yet how are you going to know? The complexity level is going to become, like, exponential. So, our premise is, because we're a multi-modal database that incorporates in-memory speed and documents and search and transactions and the like, if you start with a cleaner pool of data, you'll have less complexity that you're offering to your AI system and therefore you can steer it into becoming more accurate in its response. And then, of course, all the data that we're dealing with is on mobile, right? Data is created there for, let's say, your account profile, and then it's also consumed there because that's what people are using as their application interface of choice.So, you also want to have mobile interactivity and synchronization and local storage, kind of, capabilities built in there. So, those are kind of, you know, a couple of the principles that we're looking at of, you know, JSON is going to be a great format for it regardless of what happens; complexity is kind of the enemy of AI, so you don't want to go there; and mobility is going to be an absolute requirement. And then related to this particular announcement, large-scale aggregation is going to be a requirement to help feed the application. There's always going to be some other bigger calculation that you're going to want to do relatively in real time and feed it back to your users or the AI system that's helping them out.Corey: I think that that is a much more nuanced use case than a lot of the stuff that's grabbing customer attentions where you effectively have the Chat-Gippity story of it being an incredible parrot. Where I have run into trouble with the generative story has been people putting the thing that the robot that's magic and from the future has come up with off the cuff and just hurling that out into the universe under their own name without any human review, and that's fine sometimes sure, but it does get it hilariously wrong at some points. And the idea of sending something out under my name that has not been at least reviewed by me if not actually authored by me, is abhorrent. I mean, I review even the transactional, “Yes, you have successfully subscribed,” or, “Sorry to see you go,” email confirmations on stuff because there's an implicit, “Hugs and puppies, love Corey,” at the end of everything that goes out under my name.Jeff: Right.Corey: But I've gotten a barrage of terrible sales emails and companies that are trying to put the cart before the horse where either the, “Support rep,” quote-unquote, that I'm speaking to in the chat is an AI system or else needs immediate medical attention because there's something going on that needs assistance.Jeff: Yeah, they just don't understand.Corey: Right. And most big enterprise stories that I've heard so far that have come to light have been around the form of, “We get to fire most of our customer service staff,” an outcome that basically no one sensible wants. That is less compelling than a lot of the individualized consumer use cases. I love asking it, “Here's a blog post I wrote. Give me ten title options.” And I'll usually take one of them—one of them is usually not half bad and then I can modify it slightly.Jeff: And you'll change four words in it. Yeah.Corey: Yeah, exactly. That's a bit of a different use case.Jeff: It's been an interesting—even as we've all become familiar—or at least junior prompt engineers, right—is, your information is only going to be as good as you feed the AI system—the return is only going to be as good—so you're going to want to refine that kind of conversation. Now, we're not trying to end up replacing the content that gets produced or the writing of all kinds of pros, other than we do have a code generator that works inside of our environment called Capella iQ that talks to ChatGPT, but we try and put guardrails on that too, right, as always make sure that it's talking in terms of the context of Couchbase rather than, “Where's Taylor Swift this week,” which I don't want it to answer because I don't want to spend GPT money to answer that question for you.Corey: And it might not know the right answer, but it might very well spit out something that sounds plausible.Jeff: Exactly. But I think the kinds of applications that we're steering ourselves toward can be helped along by the Gen AI systems, but I don't expect all my customers are going to be writing automatic blog post generation kinds of applications. I think what we're ultimately trying to do is facilitate interactions in a way that we haven't dreamt of yet, right? One of them might be if I've opted into to loyalty programs, like my United account and my American Express account—Corey: That feels very targeted at my lifestyle as well, so please, continue.Jeff: Exactly, right? And so, what I really want the system to do is for Amex to reward me when I hit 1k status on United while I'm on the flight and you know, have the flight attendant come up and be like, “Hey, you did it. Either, here's a free upgrade from American Express”—that would be hyper-personalization because you booked your plane ticket with it, but they also happen to know or they cross-consumed information that I've opted into.Corey: I've seen them congratulate people for hitting a million miles flown mid-flight, but that's clearly something that they've been tracking and happens a heck of a lot less frequently. This is how you start scaling that experience.Jeff: Yes. But that happened because American Airlines was always watching because that was an American Airlines ad ages ago, right, but the same principle holds true. But I think there's going to be a lot more of these: how much information am I actually allowing to be shared amongst the, call it loyalty programs, but the data sources that I've opted into. And my God, there's hundreds of them that I've personally opted into, whether I like it or not because everybody needs my email address, kind of like what you were describing earlier.Corey: A point that I have that I think agrees largely with your point is that few things to me are more frustrating than what I'm signing up, for example, oh, I don't know, an AWS even—gee, I can't imagine there's anything like that going on this week—and I have to fill out an entire form that always asked me the same questions: how big my company is, whether we have multiple workloads on, what industry we're in. And no matter what I put into that, first, it never remembers me for the next time, which is frustrating in its own right, but two, no matter what I put in to fill that thing out, the email I get does not change as a result. At one point, I said, all right—I'm picking randomly—“I am a venture capitalist based in Sweden,” and I got nothing that is differentiated from the other normal stuff I get tied to my account because I use a special email address for those things, sometimes just to see what happens. And no, if you're going to make me jump through the hoops to give you the data, at least use it to make my experience better. It feels like I'm asking for the moon here, but I shouldn't be.Jeff: Yes. [we need 00:16:19] to make your experience better and say, you know, “Here's four companies in Malmo that you ought to be talking to. And they happen to be here at the AWS event and you can go find them because their booth is here, here, and here.” That kind of immediate responsiveness could be facilitated, and to our point, ought to be facilitated. It's exactly like that kind of thing is, use the data in real-time.I was talking to somebody else today that was discussing that most data, right, becomes stale and unvaluable, like, 50% of the data, its value goes to zero after about a day. And some of it is stale after about an hour. So, if you can end up closing that responsiveness gap that we were describing—and this is kind of what this columnar service inside of Capella is going to be like—is react in real-time with real-time calculation and real-time look-up and real-time—find out how you might apply that new piece of information right now and then give it back to the consumer or the user right now.Corey: So, Couchbase takes a few different forms. I should probably, at least for those who are not steeped in the world of exotic forms of database, I always like making these conversations more accessible to folks who are not necessarily up to speed. Personally, I tend to misuse anything as a database, if I can hold it just the wrong way.Jeff: The wrong way. I've caught that about you.Corey: Yeah, it's—everything is a database if you hold it wrong. But you folks have a few different options: you have a self-managed commercial offering; you're an open-source project, so I can go ahead and run it on my own infrastructure however I want; and you have Capella, which is Couchbase as a service. And all of those are useful and have their points, and I'm sure I'm missing at least one or two along the way. But do you find that the columnar use case is going to disproportionately benefit folks using Capella in ways that the self-hosted version would not be as useful for, or is this functionality already available in other expressions of Couchbase?Jeff: It's not already available in other expressions, although there is analytic functionality in the self-managed version of Couchbase. But it's, as I've mentioned I think earlier, it's just not as scalable or as really real-time as far as we're thinking. So, it's going to—yes, it's going to benefit the database as a service deployments of Couchbase available on your favorite three clouds, and still interoperable with environments that you might self-manage and self-host. So, there could be even use cases where our development team or your development team builds in AWS using the cloud-oriented features, but is still ultimately deploying and hosting and managing a self-managed environment. You could still do all of that. So, there's still a great interplay and interoperability amongst our different deployment options.But the fun part, I think, about this is not only is it going to help the Capella user, there's a lot of other things inside Couchbase that help address the developers' penchant for trading zero-cost for degrees of complexity that you're willing to accept because you want everything to be free and open-source. And Couchbase is my fifth open-source company in my background, so I'm well, well versed in the nuances of what open-source developers are seeking. But what makes Couchbase—you know, its origin story really cool too, though, is it's the peanut butter and chocolate marriage of memcached and the people behind that and membase and CouchDB from [Couch One 00:19:54]. So, I can't think of that many—maybe Red Hat—project and companies that formed up by merging two complementary open-source projects. So, we took the scale and—Corey: You have OpenTelemetry, I think, that did that once, but that—you see occasional mergers, but it's very far from common.Jeff: But it's very, very infrequent. But what that made the Couchbase people end up doing is make a platform that will scale, make a data design that you can auto partition anywhere, anytime, and then build independently scalable services on top of that, one for SQL++, the query language. Anyone who knows SQL will be able to write something in Couchbase immediately. And I've got this AI Automator, iQ, that makes it even easier; you just say, “Write me a SQL++ query that does this,” and it'll do that. But then we added full-text search, we added eventing so you can stream data, we added the analytics capability originally and now we're enhancing it, and use JSON as our kind of universal data format so that we can trade data with applications really easily.So, it's a cool design to start with, and then in the cloud, we're steering towards things like making your entry point and using our database as a service—Capella—really, really, really inexpensive so that you get that same robustness of functionality, as well as the easy cost of entry that today's developers want. And it's my analyst friends that keep telling me the cloud is where the markets going to go, so we're steering ourselves towards that hockey puck location.Corey: I frequently remark that the role of the DBA might not be vanishing, but it's definitely changing, especially since the last time I counted, if you hold them and use as directed, AWS has something on the order of 14 distinct managed database offerings. Some are general purpose, some are purpose-built, and if this trend keeps up, in a decade, the DBA role is going to be determining which of its 40 databases is going to be the right fit for a given workload. That seems to be the counter-approach to a general-purpose database that works across the board. Clearly you folks have opinions on this. Where do you land?Jeff: Oh, so absolutely. There's the product that is a suite of capabilities—or that are individual capabilities—and then there's ones that are, in my case, kind of multi-model and do lots of things at once. I think historically, you'll recognize—because this is—let's pick on your phone—the same holds true for, you know, your phone used to be a watch, used to be a Palm Pilot, used to be a StarTAC telephone, and your calendar application, your day planner all at the same time. Well, it's not anymore. Technology converges upon itself; it's kind of a historical truism.And the database technologies are going to end up doing that—or continue to do that, even right now. So, that notion that—it's a ten-year-old notion of use a purpose-built database for that particular workload. Maybe sometimes in extreme cases that is the appropriate thing, but in more cases than not right now, if you need transactions when you need them, that's fine, I can do that. You don't necessarily need Aurora or RDS or Postgres to do that. But when you need search and geolocation, I support that too, so you don't need Elastic. And then when you need caching and everything, you don't need ElastiCache; it's all built-in.So, that multi-model notion of operate on the same pool of data, it's a lot less complex for your developers, they can code faster and better and more cleanly, debugging is significantly easier. As I mentioned, SQL++ is our language. It's basically SQL syntax for JSON. We're a reference implementation of this language, along with—[AsteriskDB 00:23:42] is one of them, and actually, the original author of that language also wrote DynamoDB's PartiQL.So, it's a common language that you wouldn't necessarily imagine, but the ease of entry in all of this, I think, is still going to be a driving goal for people. The old people like me and you are running around worrying about, am I going to get a particular, really specific feature out of the full-text search environment, or the other one that I pick on now is, “Am I going to need a vector database, too?” And the answer to me is no, right? There's going—you know, the database vendors like ourselves—and like Mongo has announced and a whole bunch of other NoSQL vendors—we're going to support that. It's going to be just another mode, and you get better bang for your buck when you've got more modes than a single one at a time.Corey: The consensus opinion that's emerging is very much across the board that vector is a feature, not a database type.Jeff: Not a category, yeah. Me too. And yeah, we're well on board with that notion, as well. And then like I said earlier, the JSON as a vehicle to give you all of that versatility is great, right? You can have vector information inside a JSON document, you can have time series information in the document, you could have graph node locations and ID numbers in a JSON array, so you don't need index-free adjacency or some of the other cleverness that some of my former employers have done. It really is all converging upon itself and hopefully everybody starts to realize that you can clean up and simplify your architectures as you look ahead, so that you do—if you're going to build AI-powered applications—feed it clean data, right? You're going to be better off.Corey: So, this episode is being recorded in advance, thankfully, but it's going to release the first day of re:Invent. What are you folks doing at the show, for those who are either there and for some reason, listening to a podcast rather than going to getting marketed to by a variety of different pitches that all mention AI or might even be watching from home and trying to figure out what to make of it?Jeff: Right. So, of course we have a booth, and my notes don't have in front of me what our booth number is, but you'll see it on the signs in the airport. So, we'll have a presence there, we'll have an executive briefing room available, so we can schedule time with anyone who wants to come talk to us. We'll be showing not only the capabilities that we're offering here, we'll show off Capella iQ, our coding assistant, okay—so yeah, we're on the AI hype band—but we'll also be showing things like our mobile sync capability where my phone and your phone can synchronize data amongst themselves without having to actually have a live connection to the internet. So, long as we're on the same network locally within the Venetian's network, we have an app that we have people download from the Apple Store and then it's a color synchronization app or picture synchronization app.So, you tap it, and it changes on my screen and I tap it and it changes on your screen, and we'll have, I don't know, as many people who are around standing there, synchronizing, what, maybe 50 phones at a time. It's actually a pretty slick demonstration of why you might want a database that's not only in the cloud but operates around the cloud, operates mobile-ly, operates—you know, can connect and disconnect to your networks. It's a pretty neat scenario. So, we'll be showing a bunch of cool technical stuff as well as talking about the things that we're discussing right now.Corey: I will say you're putting an awful lot of faith in conductivity working at re:Invent, be it WiFi or the cellular network. I know that both of those have bitten me in various ways over the years. But I wish you the best on it. I think it's going to be an interesting show based upon everything I've heard in the run-up to it. I'm just glad it's here.Jeff: Now, this is the cool part about what I'm talking about, though. The cool part about what I'm talking about is we can set up our own wireless network in our booth, and we still—you'd have to go to the app store to get this application, but once there, I can have you switch over to my local network and play around on it and I can sync the stuff right there and have confidence that in my local network that's in my booth, the system's working. I think that's going to be ultimately our design there because oh my gosh, yes, I have a hundred stories about connectivity and someone blowing a demo because they're yanking on a cable behind the pulpit, right?Corey: I always build in a—and assuming there's no connectivity, how can I fake my demos, just because it's—I've only had to do it once, but you wind up planning in advance when you start doing a talk to a large enough or influential enough audience where you want things to go right.Jeff: There's a delightful acceptance right now of recorded videos and demonstrations that people sort of accept that way because of exactly all this. And I'm sure we'll be showing that in our booth there too.Corey: Given the non-deterministic nature of generative AI, I'm sort of surprised whenever someone hasn't mocked the demo in advance, just because yeah, gives the right answer in the rehearsal, but every once in a while, it gets completely unglued.Jeff: Yes, and we see it pretty regularly. So, the emergence of clever and good prompt engineering is going to be a big skill for people. And hopefully, you know, everybody's going to figure out how to pass it along to their peers.Corey: Excellent. We'll put links to all this in the show notes, and I look forward to seeing how well this works out for you. Best of luck at the show and thanks for speaking with me. I appreciate it.Jeff: Yeah, Corey. We appreciate the support, and I think the show is going to be very strong for us as well. And thanks for having me here.Corey: Always a pleasure. Jeff Morris, VP of Product and Solutions Marketing at Couchbase. This episode has been brought to us by our friends at Couchbase. And I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment, but if you want to remain happy, I wouldn't ask that podcast platform what database they're using. No one likes the answer to those things.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

About JeffJeff Smith has been in the technology industry for over 20 years, oscillating between management and individual contributor. Jeff currently serves as the Director of Production Operations for Basis Technologies (formerly Centro), an advertising software company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Before that he served as the Manager of Site Reliability Engineering at Grubhub.Jeff is passionate about DevOps transformations in organizations large and small, with a particular interest in the psychological aspects of problems in companies. He lives in Chicago with his wife Stephanie and their two kids Ella and Xander.Jeff is also the author of Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions with Manning publishing. (https://www.manning.com/books/operations-anti-patterns-devops-solutions) Links Referenced: Basis Technologies: https://basis.net/ Operations Anti-Patterns: https://attainabledevops.com/book Personal Site: https://attainabledevops.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-smith-devops/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarkAndNerdy Medium: https://medium.com/@jefferysmith duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored by our friends at Fortinet. Fortinet's partnership with AWS is a better-together combination that ensures your workloads on AWS are protected by best-in-class security solutions powered by comprehensive threat intelligence and more than 20 years of cybersecurity experience. Integrations with key AWS services simplify security management, ensure full visibility across environments, and provide broad protection across your workloads and applications. Visit them at AWS re:Inforce to see the latest trends in cybersecurity on July 25-26 at the Boston Convention Center. Just go over to the Fortinet booth and tell them Corey Quinn sent you and watch for the flinch. My thanks again to my friends at Fortinet.Corey: Let's face it, on-call firefighting at 2am is stressful! So there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that you probably can't prevent incidents from happening, but the good news is that incident.io makes incidents less stressful and a lot more valuable. incident.io is a Slack-native incident management platform that allows you to automate incident processes, focus on fixing the issues and learn from incident insights to improve site reliability and fix your vulnerabilities. Try incident.io, recover faster and sleep more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. One of the fun things about doing this show for long enough is that you eventually get to catch up with people and follow up on previous conversations that you've had. Many years ago—which sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but is increasingly actually true—Jeff Smith was on the show talking about a book that was about to release. Well, time has passed and things have changed. And Jeff Smith is back once again. He's the Director of Product Operations at Basis Technologies, and the author of DevOps Anti-Patterns? Or what was the actual title of the book it was—Jeff: Operations Anti-Patterns.Corey: I got hung up in the anti-patterns part because it's amazing. I love the title.Jeff: Yeah, Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions.Corey: Got you. Usually in my experience, alway been operations anti-patterns, and here I am to make them worse, probably by doing something like using DNS as a database or some godforsaken thing. But you were talking about the book aspirationally a few years ago, and now it's published and it has been sent out to the world. And it went well enough that they translated it to Japanese, I believe, and it has seen significant uptick. What was your experience of it? How did it go?Jeff: You know, it was a great experience. This is definitely the first book that I've written. And the Manning process was extremely smooth. You know, they sort of hold your hand through the entire process. But even after launch, just getting feedback from readers and hearing how it resonated with folks was extremely powerful.I was surprised to find out that they turned it into an audiobook as well. So, everyone reaches out and says, “Did you read the audiobook? I was going to buy it, but I wasn't sure.” I was like, “No, unfortunately, I don't read it.” But you know, still cool to have it out there.Corey: My theory has been for a while now that no one wants to actually write a book; they want to have written a book. Now that you're on the other side, how accurate is that? Are you in a position of, “Wow, sure glad that's done?” Or are you, “That was fun. Let's do it again because I like being sad all the time.” I mean, you do work Kubernetes for God's sake. I mean, there's a bit of masochism inherent to all of us in this space.Jeff: Yeah. Kubernetes makes me cry a little bit more than the writing process. But it's one of the things when you look back on it, you're like, “Wow, that was fun,” but not in the heat of the moment, right? So, I totally agree with the sentiment that people want to have written a book but not actually gone through the process. And that's evident by the fact that how many people try to start a book on their own without a publisher behind them, and they end up writing it for 15 years. The process is pretty grueling. The feedback is intense at first, but you start to get into a groove and you—I could see, you know, in a little while wanting to write another book. So, I can see the appeal.Corey: And the last time you were on the show, I didn't really bother to go in a particular topical direction because, what's the point? It didn't really seem like it was a top-of-mind issue to really bring up because what's it matter; it's a small percentage of the workforce. Now I feel like talking about remote work is suddenly taking on a bit of a different sheen than it was before the dark times arrived. Where do you land on the broad spectrum of opinions around the idea of remote work, given that you have specialized in anti-patterns, and well, as sarcastic as I am, I tend to look at almost every place I've ever worked is expressing different anti-patterns from time to time. So, where do you land on the topic?Jeff: So, it's funny, I started as a staunch office supporter, right? I like being in the office. I like collaborating in person; I thought we were way more productive. Since the pandemic, all of us are forced into remote work, I've hired almost half of my team now as remote. And I am somewhat of a convert, but I'm not on the bandwagon of remote work is just as good or is better as in person work.I've firmly landed in the camp of remote work is good. It's got its shortcomings, but it's worth the trade off. And I think acknowledging what those trade-offs are important to keeping the team afloat. We just recently had a conversation with the team where we were discussing, like, you know, there's definitely been a drop in productivity over the past six months to a year. And in that conversation, a lot of the things that came up were things that are different remote that were better in person, right, Slack etiquette—which is something, you know, I could talk a little bit about as well—but, you know, Slack etiquette in terms of getting feedback quickly, just the sort of camaraderie and the lack of building that camaraderie with new team members as they come on board and not having those rituals to replace the in-person rituals. But through all that, oddly enough, no one suggested going back into the office. [laugh].Corey: For some strange reason, yeah. I need to be careful what I say here, I want to disclaim the position that I'm in. There is a power imbalance and nothing I say is going to be able to necessarily address that because I own the company and if my team members are listening to this, they're going to read a lot into what I say that I might not necessarily intend. But The Duckbill Group, since its founding, has been a fully distributed company. My business partner lives in a different state than I do so there's never been the crappy version of remote, which is, well, we're all going to be in the same city, except for Theodore. Theodore is going to be timezones away and then wonder why he doesn't get to participate in some of the conversations where the real decisions get made.Like that's crappy. I don't like that striated approach to things. We don't have many people who are co-located in any real sense, nor have we for the majority of the company's life. But there are times when I am able to work on a project in a room with one of my colleagues, and things go a lot more smoothly. As much as we want to pretend that video is the same, it quite simply isn't.It is a somewhat poor substitute for the very high bandwidth of a face-to-face interaction. And yes, I understand this is also a somewhat neurotypical perspective, let's be clear with that as well, and it's not for everyone. But I think that for the base case, a lot of the remote work advocates are not being fully, I guess, honest with themselves about some of the shortcomings remote has. That is where I've mostly landed on this. Does that generally land with where you are?Jeff: Yeah, that's exactly where I'm at. I completely agree. And when we take work out of the equation, I think the shortcomings lay themselves bare, right? Like I was having a conversation with a friend and we were like, well, if you had a major breakup, right, I would never be like, “Oh, man. Grab a beer and hop on Zoom,” right? [laugh]. “Let's talk it out.”No, you're like, hey, let's get in person and let's talk, right? We can do all of that conversation over Zoom, but the magic of being in person and having that personal connection, you know, can't be replaced. So, you know, if it's not going to work, commiserating over beers, right? I can't imagine it's going to work, diagramming some complex workflows and trying to come to an answer or a solution on that. So again, not to say that, you know, remote work is not valuable, it's just different.And I think organizations are really going to have to figure out, like, okay, if I want to entice people back into the office, what are the things that I need to do to make this realistic? We've opened the floodgates on remote hiring, right, so now it's like, okay, everyone's janky office setup needs to get fixed, right? So, I can't have a scenario where it's like, “Oh, just point your laptop at the whiteboard, right?” [laugh]. Like that can't exist, we have to have office spaces that are first-class citizens for our remote counterparts as well.Corey: Right because otherwise, the alternative is, “Great, I expect you to take the home that you pay for and turn it into an area fit for office use. Of course, we're not going to compensate you for that, despite the fact that, let's be realistic, rent is often larger than the AWS bill.” Which I know, gasp, I'm as shocked as anyone affected by that, but it's true. “But oh, you want to work from home? Great. That just means you can work more hours.”I am not of the school of thought where I consider time in the office to be an indicator of anything meaningful. I care if the work gets done and at small-scale, this works. Let me also be clear, we're an 11-person company. A lot of what I'm talking about simply will not scale to companies that are orders of magnitude larger than this. And from where I sit, that's okay. It doesn't need to.Jeff: Right. And I think a lot of the things that you talk about will scale, right? Because in most scenarios, you're not scaling it organizationally so much as you are with a handful of teams, right? Because when I think about all the different teams I interact with, I never really interact with the organization as a whole, I interact with my little neighborhood in the organization. So, it is definitely something that scales.But again, when it comes to companies, like, enticing people back into the office, now that I'm talking about working from home five days a week, I've invested in my home setup. I've got the monitor I want, I've got the chair that I want, I've got the mouse and keyboard that I want. So, you're going to bring me back to the office so I can have some standard Dell keyboard and mouse with some janky, you know—maybe—21-inch monitor or something like that, right? Like, you really have to decide, like, okay, we're going to make the office a destination, we're going to make it where people want to go there where it's not just even about the collaboration aspect, but people can still work and be effective.And on top of that, I think how we look at what the office delivers is going to change, right? Because now when I go to the office now, I do very little work. It's connections, right? It's like, you know, “Oh, I haven't seen you in forever. Let's catch up.” And a lot of that stuff is valuable. You know, there's these hallway conversations that exist that just weren't happening previously because how do I accidentally bump into you on Slack? [laugh]. Right, it has to be much more it of a—Corey: Right. It takes some contrivance to wind up making that happen. I remember back in the days of working in offices, I remember here in San Francisco where we had unlimited sick time and unlimited PTO, I would often fake a sick day, but just stay home and get work done. Because I knew if I was in the office, I'd be constantly subjected to drive-bys the entire time of just drive-by requests, people stopping by to ask, “Oh, can you just help me with this one thing,” that completely derails my train of thought. Then at the end of the day, they'd tell me, “You seem distractible and you didn't get a lot of work done.”It's, “Well, no kidding. Of course not. Are you surprised?” And one of the nice things about starting your own company—because there are a lot of downsides, let me be very clear—one of the nice things is you get to decide how you want to work. And that was a study in, first, amazement, and then frustration.It was, “All right, I just landed a big customer. I'm off to the races and going to take this seriously for a good six to twelve months. Great sky's the limit, I'm going to do up my home office.” And then you see how little money it takes to have a nice chair, a good standing desk, a monitor that makes sense and you remember fighting tooth-and-nail for nothing that even approached this quality at companies and they acted like it was going to cost them 20-grand. And here, it's two grand at most, when I decorated this place the first time.And it was… “What the hell?” Like, it feels like the scales fall away from your eyes, and you start seeing things that you didn't realize were a thing. Now I worry that five years in, there's no way in the world I'm ever fit to be an employee again, so this is probably the last job I'll ever have. Just because I've basically made myself completely unemployable across six different axes.Jeff: [laugh]. And I think one of the things when it comes to, like, furniture, keyboard, stuff like that, I feel like part of it was just, like, this sort of enforced conformity, right, that the office provided us the ability to do. We can make sure everyone's got the same monitor, the same keyboard that way, when it breaks, we can replace it easily. In a lot of organizations that I've been in, you know, that sort of like, you know, even if it was the same amount or ordering a custom keyboard was a big exception process, right? Like, “Oh, we've got to do a whole thing.” And it's just like, “Well, it doesn't have to be that complicated.”And like you said, it doesn't cost much to allow someone to get the tools that they want and prefer and they're going to be more productive with. But to your point really quickly about work in the office, until the pandemic, I personally didn't recognize how difficult it actually was to get work done in the office. I don't think I appreciated it. And now that I'm remote, I'm like, wow, it is so much easier for me to close this door, put my headphones on, mute Slack and go heads down. You know, the only drive-by I've got is my wife wondering if I want to go for a walk, and that's usually a text message that I can ignore and come back to later.Corey: The thing that just continues to be strange for me and breaks in some of the weirdest ways has just been the growing awareness of how much of office life is unnecessary and ridiculous. When you're in the office every day, you have to find a way to make it work and be productive and you have this passive-aggressive story of this open office, it's for collaboration purposes. Yeah, I can definitively say that is not true. I had a boss who once told me that there was such benefits to working in an open plan office that if magically it were less expensive to give people individual offices, he would spare the extra expense for open plan. That was the day I learned he would lie to me while looking me in the eye. Because of course you wouldn't.And it's for collaboration. Yeah, it means two loud people—often me—are collaborating and everyone else wears noise-canceling headphones trying desperately to get work done, coming in early, hours before everyone else to get things done before people show up and distracted me. What the hell kind of day-to-day work environment is that?Jeff: What's interesting about that, though, is those same distractions are the things that get cited as being missed from the perspective of the person doing the distracting. So, everyone universally hates that sort of drive-by distractions, but everyone sort of universally misses the ability to say like, “Hey, can I just pull on your ear for a second and get your feedback on this?” Or, “Can we just walk through this really quickly?” That's the thing that people miss, and I don't think that they ever connect it to the idea that if you're not the interruptee, you're the interruptor, [laugh] and what that might do to someone else's productivity. So, you would think something like Slack would help with that, but in reality, what ends up happening is if you don't have proper Slack etiquette, there's a lot of signals that go out that get misconstrued, misinterpreted, internalized, and then it ends up impacting morale.Corey: And that's the most painful part of a lot of that too. Is that yeah, I want to go ahead and spend some time doing some nonsense—as one does; imagine that—and I know that if I'm going to go into an office or meet up with my colleagues, okay, that afternoon or that day, yeah, I'm planning that I'm probably not going to get a whole lot of deep coding done. Okay, great. But when that becomes 40 hours a week, well, that's a challenge. I feel like being full remote doesn't work out, but also being in the office 40 hours a week also feels a little sadistic, more than almost anything else.I don't know what the future looks like and I am privileged enough that I don't have to because we have been full remote the entire time. But what we don't spend on office space we spend on plane tickets back and forth so people can have meetings. In the before times, we were very good about that. Now it's, we're hesitant to do it just because it's we don't want people traveling before the feel that it's safe to do so. We've also learned, for example, when dealing with our clients, that we can get an awful lot done without being on site with them and be extraordinarily effective.It was always weird have traveled to some faraway city to meet with the client, and then you're on a Zoom call from their office with the rest of the team. It's… I could have done this from my living room.Jeff: Yeah. I find those sorts of hybrid meetings are often worse than if we were all just remote, right? It's just so much easier because now it's like, all right, three of us are going to crowd around one person's laptop, and then all of the things that we want to do to take advantage of being in person are excluding the people that are remote, so you got to do this careful dance. The way we've been sort of tackling it so far—and we're still experimenting—is we're not requiring anyone to come back into the office, but some people find it useful to go to the office as a change of scenery, to sort of, like break things up from their typical routine, and they like the break and the change. But it's something that they do sort of ad hoc.So, we've got a small group that meets, like, every Thursday, just as a day to sort of go into the office and switch things up. I think the idea of saying everyone has to come into the office two or three days a week is probably broken when there's no purpose behind it. So, my wife technically should go into the office twice a week, but her entire team is in Europe. [laugh]. So, what point does that make other than I am a body in a chair? So, I think companies are going to have to get flexible with this sort of hybrid environment.But then it makes you wonder, like, is it worth the office space and how many people are actually taking advantage of it when it's not mandated? We find that our office time centers around some event, right? And that event might be someone in town that's typically remote. That might be a particular project that we're working on where we want to get ideas and collaborate and have a workshop. But the idea of just, like, you know, we're going to systematically require people to be in the office x many days, I don't see that in our future.Corey: No, and I hope you're right. But it also feels like a lot of folks are also doing some weird things around the idea of remote such as, “Oh, we're full remote but we're going to pay you based upon where you happen to be sitting geographically.” And we find that the way that we've done this—and again, I'm not saying there's a right answer for everyone—but we wind up paying what the value of the work is for us. In many cases, that means that we would be hard-pressed to hire someone in the Bay Area, for example. On the other hand, it means that when we hire people who are in places with relatively low cost of living, they feel like they've just hit the lottery, on some level.And yeah, some of them, I guess it does sort of cause a weird imbalance if you're a large Amazon-scale company where you want to start not disrupting local economies. We're not hiring that many people, I promise. So, there's this idea of figuring out how that works out. And then where does the headquarters live? And well, what state laws do we wind up following on what we're doing? Just seems odd.Jeff: Yeah. So, you know, one thing I wanted to comment on that you'd mentioned earlier, too, was the weird things that people are doing, and organizations are doing with this, sort of, remote work thing, especially the geographic base pay. And you know, a lot of it is, how can we manipulate the situation to better us in a way that sounds good on paper, right? So, it sounds perfectly reasonable. Like, oh, you live in New York, I'm going to pay you in New York rates, right?But, like, you live in Des Moines, so I'm going to pay you Des Moines rates. And on the surface, when you just go you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, but then you think about it, you're like, “Wait, why does that matter?” Right? And then, like, how do I, as a manager, you know, level that across my employees, right? It's like, “Oh, so and so is getting paid 30 grand less. Oh, but they live in a cheaper area, right?” I don't know what your personal situation is, and how much that actually resonates or matters.Corey: Does the value that they provide to your company materially change based upon where they happen to be sitting that week?Jeff: Right, exactly. But it's a good story that you can tell, it sounds fair at first examination. But then when you start to scratch the surface, you're like, “Wait a second, this is BS.” So, that's one thing.Corey: It's like tipping on some level. If you can't afford the tip, you can't afford to eat out. Same story here. If you can't afford to compensate people the value that they're worth, you can't afford to employ people. And figure that out before you wind up disappointing people and possibly becoming today's Twitter main character.Jeff: Right. And then the state law thing is interesting. You know, when you see states like California adopting laws similar to, like, GDPR. And it's like, do you have to start planning for the most stringent possibility across every hire just to be safe and to avoid having to have this sort of patchwork of rules and policies based on where someone lives? You might say like, “Okay, Delaware has the most stringent employer law, so we're going to apply Delaware's laws across the board.” So, it'll be interesting to see how that sort of plays out in the long run. Luckily, that's not a problem I have to solve, but it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out.Corey: It is something we had to solve. We have an HR consultancy that helps out with a lot of these things, but the short answer is that we make sure that we obey with local laws, but the way that we operate is as if everyone were a San Francisco employee because that is—so far—the locale that, one, I live here, but also of every jurisdiction we've looked at in the United States, it tends to have the most advantageous to the employee restrictions and requirements. Like one thing we do is kind of ridiculous—and we have to do for me and one other person, but almost no one else, but we do it for everyone—is we have to provide stipends every month for electricity, for cellphone usage, for internet. They have to be broken out for each one of those categories, so we do 20 bucks a month for each of those. It adds up to 100 bucks, as I recall, and we call it good. And employees say, “Okay. Do we just send you receipts? Please don't.”I don't want to look at your cell phone bill. It's not my business. I don't want to know. We're doing this to comply with the law. I mean, if it were up to me, it would be this is ridiculous. Can we just give everyone $100 a month raise and call it good? Nope. The forms must be obeyed. So, all right.We do the same thing with PTO accrual. If you've acquired time off and you leave the company, we pay it out. Not every state requires that. But paying for cell phone access and internet access as well, is something Amazon is currently facing a class action about because they didn't do that for a number of their California employees. And even talking to Amazonians, like, “Well, they did, but you had to jump through a bunch of hoops.”We have the apparatus administratively to handle that in a way that employees don't. Why on earth would we make them do it unless we didn't want to pay them? Oh, I think I figured out this sneaky, sneaky plan. I'm not here to build a business by exploiting people. If that's the only way to succeed, and the business doesn't deserve to exist. That's my hot take of the day on that topic.Jeff: No, I totally agree. And what's interesting is these insidious costs that sneak up that employees tend to discount, like, one thing I always talk about with my team is all that time you're thinking about a problem at work, right, like when you're in the shower, when you're at dinner, when you're talking it over with your spouse, right? That's work. That's work. And it's work that you're doing on your time.But we don't account for it that way because we're not typing; we're not writing code. But, like, think about how much more effective as people, as employees, we would be if we had time dedicated to just sit and think, right? If I could just sit and think about a problem without needing to type but just critically think about it. But then it's like, well, what does that look like in the office, right? If I'm just sitting there in my chair like this, it doesn't look like I'm doing anything.But that's so important to be able to, like, break down and digest some of the complex problems that we're dealing with. And we just sort of write it off, right? So, I'm like, you know, you got to think about how that bleeds into your personal time and take that into account. So yeah, maybe you leave three hours early today, but I guarantee you, you're going to spend three hours throughout the week thinking about work. It's the same thing with these cellphone costs that you're talking about, right? “Oh, I've got a cell phone anyways; I've got internet anyways.” But still, that's something that you're contributing to the business that they're not on the hook for, so it seems fair that you get compensated for that.Corey: I just think about that stuff all the time from that perspective, and now that I you know, own the place, it's one of those which pocket of mine does it come out of? But I hold myself to a far higher standard about that stuff than I do the staff, where it's, for example, I could theoretically justify paying my internet bill here because we have business-class internet and an insane WiFi system because of all of the ridiculous video production I do. Now. It's like, like, if anyone else on the team was doing this, yes, I will insist we pay it, but for me, it just it feels a little close to the edge. So, it's one of those areas where I'm very conservative around things like that.The thing that also continues to just vex me, on some level, is this idea that time in a seat is somehow considered work. I'll never forget one of the last jobs I had before I started this place. My boss walked past me and saw that I was on Reddit. And, “Is that really the best use of your time right now?” May I use the bathroom when I'm done with this, sir?Yeah, of course it is. It sounds ridiculous, but one of the most valuable things I can do for The Duckbill Group now is go on the internet and start shit posting on Twitter, which sounds ridiculous, but it's also true. There's a brand awareness story there, on some level. And that's just wild to me. It's weird, we start treating people like adults, they start behaving that way. And if you start micromanaging them, they live up or down to the expectations you tend to hold. I'm a big believer in if I have to micromanage someone, I should just do the job myself.Jeff: Yeah. The Reddit story makes me think of, like, how few organizations have systematic ways of getting vital information. So, the first thing I think about is, like, security and security vulnerabilities, right? So, how does Basis Technologies, as an organization, know about these things? Right now, it's like, well, my team knows because we're plugged into Reddit and Twitter, right, but if we were gone Basis, right, may not necessarily get that information.So, that's something we're trying to correct, but it just sort of highlights the importance of freedom for these employees, right? Because yeah, I'm on Reddit, but I'm on /r/sysadmin. I'm on /r/AWS, right, I'm on /r/Atlassian. Now I'm finding out about this zero-day vulnerability and it's like, “Oh, guys, we got to act. I just heard about this thing.” And people are like, “Oh, where did this come from?” And it's like it came from my network, right? And my network—Corey: Mm-hm.Jeff: Is on Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit. So, the idea that someone browsing the internet on any site, really, is somehow not a productive use of their time, you better be ready to itemize exactly what that means and what that looks like. “Oh, you can do this on Reddit but you can't do that on Reddit.”Corey: I have no boss now, I have no oversight, but somehow I still show up with a work ethic and get things done.Jeff: Right. [laugh].Corey: Wow, I guess I didn't need someone over my shoulder the whole time. Who knew?Jeff: Right. That's all that matters, right? And if you do it in 30 hours or 40 hours, that doesn't really matter to me, you know? You want to do it at night because you're more productive there, right, like, let's figure out a way to make that happen. And remote work is actually empowering us ways to really retain people that wasn't possible before I had an employee that was like, you know, I really want to travel. I'm like, “Dude, go to Europe. Work from Europe. Just do it. Work from Europe,” right? We've got senior leaders on the C-suite that are doing it. One of the chief—Corey: I'm told they have the internet, even there. Imagine that?Jeff: Yeah. [laugh]. So, our chief program officer, she was in Greece for four weeks. And it worked. It worked great. They had a process. You know, she would spent one week on and then one week off on vacation. But you know, she was able to have this incredible, long experience, and still deliver. And it's like, you know, we can use that as a model to say, like—Corey: And somehow the work got done. Wow, she must be amazing. No, that's the baseline expectation that people can be self-managing in that respect.Jeff: Right.Corey: They aren't toddlers.Jeff: So, if she can do that, I'm sure you can figure out how to code in China or wherever you want to visit. So, it's a great way to stay ahead of some of these companies that have a bit more lethargic policies around that stuff, where it's like, you know, all right, I'm not getting that insane salary, but guess what, I'm going to spend three weeks in New Zealand hanging out and not using any time off or anything like that, and you know, being able to enjoy life. I wish this pandemic had happened pre-kids because—Corey: Yeah. [laugh].Jeff: —you know, we would really take advantage of this.Corey: You and me both. It would have very different experience.Jeff: Yeah. [laugh]. Absolutely, right? But with kids in school, and all that stuff, we've been tethered down. But man, I you know, I want to encourage the young people or the single people on my team to just, like, hey, really, really embrace this time and take advantage of it.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: One last topic I want to get into before we call it an episode is, I admit, I read an awful lot of books, it's a guilty pleasure. And it's easy to fall into the trap, especially when you know the author, of assuming that snapshot of their state of mind at a very fixed point in time is somehow who they are, like a fly frozen in amber, and it's never true. So, my question for you is, quite simply, what have you learned since your book came out?Jeff: Oh, man, great question. So, when I was writing the book, I was really nervous about if my audience was as big as I thought it was, the people that I was targeting with the book.Corey: Okay, that keeps me up at night, too. I have no argument there.Jeff: Yeah. You know what I mean?Corey: Please, continue.Jeff: I'm surrounded, you know, by—Corey: Is anyone actually listening to this? Yeah.Jeff: Right. [laugh]. So, after the book got finished and it got published, I would get tons of feedback from people that so thoroughly enjoyed the book, they would say things like, you know, “It feels like you were in our office like a fly on the wall.” And that was exciting, one, because I felt like these were experiences that sort of resonated, but, two, it sort of proved this thesis that sometimes you don't have to do something revolutionary to be a positive contribution to other people, right? So, like, when I lay out the tips and things that I do in the book, it's nothing earth-shattering that I expect Google to adopt. Like, oh, my God, this is the most unique view ever.But being able to talk to an audience in a way that resonates with them, that connects with them, that shows that I understand their problem and have been there, it was really humbling and enlightening to just see that there are people out there that they're not on the bleeding edge, but they just need someone to talk to them in a language that they understand and resonate with. So, I think the biggest thing that I learned was this idea that your voice is important, your voice matters, and how you tell your story may be the difference between someone understanding a concept and someone not understanding a concept. So, there's always an audience for you out there as you're writing, whether it be your blog post, the videos that you produce, the podcasts that you make, somewhere there's someone that needs to hear what you have to say, and the unique way that you can say it. So, that was extremely powerful.Corey: Part of the challenge that I found is when I start talking to other people, back in the before times, trying to push them into conference talks and these days, write blog posts, the biggest objection I get sometimes is, “Well, I don't have anything worth saying.” That is provably not true. One of my favorite parts about writing Last Week in AWS is as I troll the internet looking for topics about AWS that I find interesting, I keep coming across people who are very involved in one area or another of this ecosystem and have stories they want to tell. And I love, “Hey, would you like to write a guest post for Last Week in AWS?” It's always invite only and every single one of them has been paid because people die of exposure and I'm not about that exploitation lifestyle.A couple have said, “Oh, I can't accept payment for a variety of reasons.” Great. Pick a charity that you would like it to go to instead because we do not accept volunteer work, we are a for-profit entity. That is the way it works here. And that has been just one of the absolute favorite parts about what I do just because you get to sort of discover new voices.And what I find really neat is that for a lot of these folks, this is their start to writing and telling the story, but they don't stop there, they start telling their story in other areas, too. It leads to interesting career opportunities for them, it leads to interesting exposure that they wouldn't have necessarily had—again, not that they're getting paid in exposure, but the fact that they are able to be exposed to different methodologies, different ways of thinking—I love that. It's one of my favorite parts about doing what I do. And it seems to scale a hell of a lot better than me sitting down with someone for two hours to help them build a CFP that they wind up not getting accepted or whatnot.Jeff: Right. It's a great opportunity that you provide folks, too, because of, like, an instant audience, I think that's one of the things that has made Medium so successful as, like, a blogging platform is, you know, everyone wants to go out and build their own WordPress site and launch it, but then it like, you write your blog post and it's crickets. So, the ability for you to, you know, use your platform to also expose those voices is great and extremely powerful. But you're right, once they do it, it lights a fire in a way that is admirable to watch. I have a person that I'm mentoring and that was my biggest piece of advice I can give. It was like, you know, write. Just write.It's the one thing that you can do without anyone else. And you can reinforce your own knowledge of a thing. If you just say, you know, I'm going to teach this thing that I just learned, just the writing process helps you solidify, like, okay, I know this stuff. I'm demonstrating that I know it and then four years from now, when you're applying for a job, someone's like, “Oh, I found your blog post and I see that you actually do know how to set up a Kubernetes cluster,” or whatever. It's just extremely great and it—Corey: It's always fun. You're googling for how to do something and you find something you wrote five years ago.Jeff: Right, yeah. [laugh]. And it's like code where you're like, “Oh, man, I would do that so much differently now.”Corey: Since we last spoke, one of the things I've been doing is I have been on the hook to write between a one to two-thousand-word blog post every week, and I've done that like clockwork, for about a year-and-a-half now. And I was no slouch at storytelling before I started doing that. I've given a few hundred conference talks in the before times. And I do obviously long Twitter threads in the past and I write reports a lot. But forcing me to go through that process every week and then sit with an editor and go ahead and get it improved, has made me a far better writer, it's made me a better storyteller, I am far better at articulating my point of view.It is absolutely just unlocking a host of benefits that I would have thought I was, oh, I passed all this. I'm already good at these things. And I was, but I'm better now. I think that writing is one of those things that people need to do a lot more of.Jeff: Absolutely. And it's funny that you mentioned that because I just recently, back in April, started to do the same thing I said, I'm going to write a blog post every week, right? I'm going to get three or four in the can, so that if life comes up and I miss a beat, right, I'm not actually missing the production schedule, so I have a steady—and you're right. Even after writing a book, I'm still learning stuff through the writing process, articulating my point of view.It's just something that carries over, and it carries over into the workforce, too. Like, if you've ever read a bad piece of documentation, right, that comes from—Corey: No.Jeff: Right? [laugh]. That comes from an inability to write. Like, you know, you end up asking these questions like who's the audience for this? What is ‘it' in this sentence? [laugh].Corey: Part of it too, is that people writing these things are so close to the problem themselves that the fact that, “Well, I'm not an expert in this.” That's why you should write about it. Talk about your experience. You're afraid everyone's going to say, “Oh, you're a fool. You didn't understand how this works.”Yeah, my lived experiences instead—and admittedly, I have the winds of privilege of my back on this—but it's also yeah, I didn't understand that either. It turns out that you're never the only person who has trouble with a concept. And by calling it out, you're normalizing it and doing a tremendous service for others in your shoes.Jeff: Especially when you're not an expert because I wrote some documentation about the SSL process and it didn't occur to me that these people don't use the AWS command line, right? Like, you know, in our organization, we sort of mask that from them through a bunch of in-house automation. Now we're starting to expose it to them and simple things like oh, you need to preface the AWS command with a profile name. So, then when we're going through the setup, we're like, “Oh. What if they already have an existing profile, right?” Like, we don't want to clobber that.SSo, it just changed the way you write the documentation. But like, that's not something that initially came to mind for me. It wasn't until someone went through the docs, and they're like, “Uh, this is blowing up in a weird way.” And I was like, “Oh, right. You know, like, I need to also teach you about profile management.”Corey: Also, everyone has a slightly different workflow for the way they interact with AWS accounts, and their shell prompts, and the way they set up local dev environments.Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. So, not being an expert on a thing is key because you're coming to it with virgin eyes, right, and you're able to look at it from a fresh perspective.Corey: So, much documentation out there is always coming from the perspective of someone who is intimately familiar with the problem space. Some of the more interesting episodes that I have, from a challenge perspective, are people who are deep technologists in a particular area and they love they fallen in love with the thing that they are building. Great. Can you explain it to the rest of us mere mortals so that we can actually we can share your excitement on this? And it's very hard to get them to come down to a level where it's coherent to folks who haven't spent years thinking deeply about that particular problem space.Jeff: Man, the number one culprit for that is, like, the AWS blogs where they have, like, a how-to article. You follow that thing and you're like, “None of this is working.” [laugh]. Right? And then you realize, oh, they made an assumption that I knew this, but I didn't right?So, it's like, you know, I didn't realize this was supposed to be, like, a handwritten JSON document just jammed into the value field. Because I didn't know that, I'm not pulling those values out as JSON. I'm expecting that just to be, like, a straight string value. And that has happened more and more times on the AWS blog than I can count. [laugh].Corey: Oh, yeah, very often. And then there's other problems, too. “Oh, yeah. Set up your IAM permissions properly.” That's left as an exercise for the reader. And then you wonder why everything's full of stars. Okay.Jeff: Right. Yep, exactly, exactly.Corey: Ugh. It's so great to catch up with you and see what you've been working on. If people want to learn more, where's the best place to find you?Jeff: So, the best place is probably my website, attainabledevops.com. That's a place where you can find me on all the other places. I don't really update that site much, but you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, from that jumping off point, links to the book are there if anyone's interested in that. Perfect stocking stuffers. Mom would love it, grandma would love it, so definitely, definitely buy multiple copies of that.Corey: Yeah, it's going to be one of my two-year-old's learning to read books, it'd be great.Jeff: Yeah, it's perfect. You know, you just throw it in the crib and walk away, right? They're asleep at no time. Like I said, I've also been taking to, you know, blogging on Medium, so you can catch me there, the links will be there on Attainable DevOps as well.Corey: Excellent. And that link will of course, be in the show notes. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I really do appreciate it. And it's great to talk to you again.Jeff: It was great to catch up.Corey: Really was. Jeff Smith, Director of Product Operations at Basis Technologies. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice or smash the like and subscribe buttons on the YouTubes, whereas if you've hated this podcast, do the exact same thing—five-star review, smash the buttons—but also leave an angry, incoherent comment that you're then going to have edited and every week you're going to come back and write another incoherent comment that you get edited. And in the fullness of time, you'll get much better at writing angry, incoherent comments.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

A Florida Native and graduate of University of South Florida, Jeff Wills is an accomplished Tampa Bay Area agent who brings a strategic yet personable approach to the home buying and home selling process. Drawing from years of experience as an agent in the Tampa market, he has built a solid reputation for himself as an industry leader with a solid track record that specializes in attention to detail in commercial and residential transactions. Investors are buying homes in Tampa at a record rate. Between July and September 2021, one in four homes that sold had an investor as the buyer. According to a report from the Tampa Bay Times, Tampa Bay ranks as the 7th hottest metro area for investors nationwide. Today, Jeff talks about the Tampa Bay market: neighborhoods, price to rent ratios, economic drivers, geographic considerations, and more insights that investors will want to know before making moves there. Episode Links: https://sefair-inv.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and joining me today is Jeff Wills, our certified agent out in Tampa Bay, Florida and Jeff's gonna be talking to us today about all the things we as investors need to know and should be aware of, if we're investing in that market. So let's get into it.   Really quickly, before we get into the episode today, I want to encourage everyone to go check out roofstockacademy.com. Roofstock Academy is our one stop shop for real estate education, independent of whether you're just getting started or a seasoned investor looking to scale up or get involved in a different asset class. We've got lectures, we've got coaching, we've got one on one slack access forum and a plethora of other financial benefits, as well as money back on your marketplace fee credits. If you're transacting on Roofstock. So come check us out at rootstockacademy.com look forward to seeing you in there. Jeff wills thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today, man really appreciate you coming on.   Jeff: Absolutely, man. Love to do it and thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. So   Michael: Yeah, of course. So we're just gonna like jump right into it and we're talking today about Tampa Bay, Florida. I want you to give all of our listeners why Tampa why now.   Jeff: So why Tampa why now honestly, I've been hearing that a lot. However, it has been very, very popular as of late. A lot of the big things that people are hearing, actually, just yesterday, Goldman Sachs bought 305 units in downtown Tampa for 168 million, setting another record price per unit and a crazy valuation for cap rates right now and so there's just there's a lot of synergy. The biggest thing behind it has been Water Street water streets about halfway through its 10 year growth plan. They've got phase one out of the way, phase two starting, and that has really brought a lot of life and vibrance to Tampa that was kind of growing and burgeoning there prior to COVID prior to all the popularity we have now, but I think it's really hit its peak and honestly, it's probably got a good you know, 10-20 30.50 years stride to soon looking like Miami, although personally I hope not. I'd like there to be a little bit less people and, and keep the enjoyment that we have here and honestly, you know, Tampa is a big town, it's a big population. But it really does have an extremely small town feel with the micro communities inside the neighborhoods inside the certain you know, sectors and where we are on the map and near the water and so I think Tampa has a lot to offer, both from an investment standpoint, from a long term hold appreciation standpoint, and especially, especially a rent gross. I don't know what that's gonna look like now, just because you know, kind of has hit a very, very high mark. However, we're not seeing any vacancies. We're not seeing, you know, any kind of rent concessions. I was just talking to a very big property manager yesterday for a different reason. But they were saying, yeah, we're barely giving written concessions. We're hitting full market rent. Everything's at 95% occupancy or above and there's no signs of stopping. So I love it, I I've always thought Tampa was a hidden gem before COVID and before things got crazy, but you know, kind of very lucky to be here now and enjoying every minute of it.   Michael: Right on, Jeff, that is that's super interesting. So I'm wondering, what was that cap rate that they got for the Goldman Sachs purchase, do you recall?   Jeff: Honestly, I don't have that in front of me, I can almost guarantee it was probably sub four. Even after tax adjustment, it's crazy. I actually lived in that building. When it first opened, I got a I snuck in with some written concessions and realtor bonuses and stuff like that. So I kind of skated in a bit but I mean, it went through a lot of challenges. I mean, management was horrible. Two years, they had the same management then fired that one and then fired another one and they've had problems left, right and center what that building just knowing because I've got friends that live there and stuff still and it's still selling for that price given I mean there's a bar across the street that has so much drama tied to it. It's insane, that the publicity from that sale has anything to do and so backing up from that Goldman Sachs has long been rumored to be taking a very, very big piece of the pie in the Waterstreet office space and so while that hasn't been announced Goldman Sachs buying that building to me just sounds like corporate housing instead of them having to go and give all their employees stimulus, oh, we'll give you a 5000 monthly allowance. They'll say hey here, we've got a block of rooms, pick one enjoy yourself. It's paid for and I think that might be how they're skating that market rent because some of the stuff and water St. Tampa is going up. Actually, I just talked to my friend yesterday 966 square feet with a big balcony 5000 a month and it's it was exactly what I did you have 550 a square foot. Yeah, um, it's, it's insane and I mean, once you set that, once you set that standard, I mean, they do. I mean, okay, the Heron is the best multifamily building I've ever seen. But I mean, setting that precedent, all people have to do is just be nearby and just enjoy the overflows, people who can live there and by the way, they have zero vacancy, and they have a weightless for that unit. That's coming up down hole, it's crazy.   Michael: Holy smokes. So Jeff, you clearly an expert on the area, give people a little bit background, who you are, where is it that you come from and what is it you do in real estate today?   Jeff: Absolutely, so I grew up about an hour north of Tampa and a county called Pasco, a very small town and to me growing up, Tampa was a big city, a really big city, I had been there three, four times the aquarium a couple of times, and I just every time staring at the top of the skyscrapers and that was just the biggest thing to me and growing up, went to college, didn't really know what I was doing there. When for finance, I was like, yeah, let me kind of figure stuff out. My dad one day was like, hey, why don't you just, you know, pop into real estate, see what's going on? I'm like, yeah, sounds fun, should be pretty flexible. I like people, like, give it a go. Seven years later, here I am and it's just been, you know, from top to bottom, you get to help people with something that's extremely difficult, extremely stressful, and very nuanced and I mean, you know, from deal to deal, there's always something different. There's always a different backstory a different why and even growing up prior to all that I've always kind of felt that I was a good listener. You know, I, of course, I have my own, you know, opinions and desires and stuff. But I was always able to kind of peel back, what is somebody looking for? What does somebody want to do? You know, what they're, they're telling me one thing, but what do they actually mean and I've always, you know, of course, ask them, hey, you know, you're saying this, but what do you want this, and it's just been very enjoyable and, you know, the client feedback is the same, I've got a ton of referrals, a ton of repeat customers, and it's just, it's very, very enjoyable for me to be able to, you know, simmer it down to its the parts that they can control and make sense of, and then I just handle all the other legal mumbo jumbo stuff on the back end and it's just been very, very enjoyable.   The first three years, I was very retail focused, you know, end user not very investor friendly, and kind of got bored with that and I was like, you know, I, I've always enjoyed numbers always been pretty good at numbers, like, why can't I get to the investor side of things and that's when I joined my current brokerage see fair investments and from there, it just kind of skyrocketed. Our offices set up extremely streamlined and efficient, to the point where in the past 13 months, just me and my broker together have done about 137 million in business, and 98% of that was investors and we're just, we're just masterfully efficient, fine-tuned and, you know, we know how to strike valuations from, you know, Jacksonville down to Fort Myers, it's, you know, it's a few things we know how the appraisers operate, we know what a tenant is going to do to it as far as evaluation what people are paying, because we've got 30 under contract that we can look at and say, oh, you know, hey, a cap rate is this based on this or like, we just have a ton of insight and ability to help our investors and you know, even just last week, you know, we have, you know, I guess it's kind of our, our secret sauce, but it's very simple. Every Friday, all of our clients get an update, regardless of status did nothing happen, hey, nothing happened today, you know, that just wanted to let you know, have a great day and yet again, I had another client last week said, hey, you know, honestly, we haven't even spoke on the phone. Once. It's been all email. I just wanted to say thank you. You were exemplary and you know, he even brought up the Friday things like every Friday, I had an update, I didn't need an update. I didn't you know, I didn't ever had a question about what you were doing, how the property was going and so while those compliments don't always come, I mean, it's always 9 to 10 with that, we haven't had very many upset people at all and they always bring us their next listing or, hey, I'm trying to buy in here and buying has been very challenging right now. So a lot of the investors are on hold being patient, seeing what rates are doing. But all in all, it's been really, really great, especially on the sales side, and we're just, you know, happy to help people while we can while the market is doing great.   Michael: Right on. Well, it sounds like if you ever transition careers whenever you're done to be ready to be done with real estate, you'd be a great therapist. good listener.   Jeff: Oh my gosh, I joke about that all the time. I tell people sometimes like, man, I've done so much marriage counseling, I'm good to go. We need to like do one deal. You'll know you'll get one and I'm saying, oh, that's pretty, it's, it's a lot, but it's just very easy. You know, I mean, the end of the day, people want a couple of things. They want to be comforted, they want to be, you know, they want to know that you're honest, and they want someone reliable and if you can fit those buckets, while being a joy to talk to and to interact with, I think that's really all I needed to do.   Michael: Love it, love it, love it. Well, Jeff, let's dig into the kind of meat and potatoes of the Tampa market a little bit and give listeners some insights into other than this Goldman Sachs transaction, which set new record highs and the buying being a little bit difficult. Let's educate people about the Tampa market. So who are some of the major employers in the market and are you seeing people moving to the area or maybe moving out of Tampa?   Jeff: Definitely a massive influx, I'm not sure the exact daily rates, but I know Florida, pre COVID was about 1200 people per day. After COVID, we're at about 2400 to 2600 people per day from out of state moving to Florida and while that's not always Tampa, that really is the only place that has had affordable housing, affordable rents, especially compared to Miami. Compared to Orlando, Orlando is a relatively higher price than us just because it was more pocketed it was hard to find an actual community over there. While there are a handful. It's very spread out and sprawling, and Tampa is extremely concentrated. Some of the larger employers in Tampa are, I wouldn't say there's one or two, the majority are a lot of health care providers, hospitals, doctors, stuff of that nature, a very big presence with attorneys and then honestly Tampa is becoming a very, very big tech hub. Reliaquest is a very big cybersecurity firm, they signed in Waterstreet for the top of their class, a class A office tower and so it's been rumored I've seen a couple articles that Tampa is the next Austin as far as a tech hub and you know, we're tax friendly. We don't have any state income tax, we have homestead, there's a lot of things that were already here and then now as other states like California are being, you know, more tax even more stricter on a lot of things. It's just it's increased that flow and I don't think that stops for a long, long time. Because Florida has so much land, we have so much room for stuff and while you know, even though you might not be right in the heart of Tampa, a 3540 minute drive is no big deal and you are close to a million different things inside that span. So just you know all of those things and then one underlying factor too, that I like to tell that nearly no one knows that I mentioned is pre COVID. I haven't checked these numbers after the Port of Tampa. Probably Never heard of it does 3 billion in revenue every year, if not more and so that has been a very silent provider. Actually, one of the biggest companies in Tampa is mosaic. They own right over 400,000 acres, and they're a fertilizer company. So they are huge in Tampa, as you know, from ground all the way up to politics and everything else. So they are very big employer and advocate for the port and everything else that's going on there.   Michael: Right on and Jeff, you give folks a sense of like, what is a traditional typical three, two, single family home cost and what would the rent look like and maybe you can give people an idea of some of the different neighborhoods in which they could be considering?   Jeff: The median home price now is right around 335,000 today, and we have about less than two months of inventory, scroll back to 2019, we had about six and a half months of inventory. So we've reduced that by about 300% and days on market, three to five days max, if it's even close to move in ready and that that median price. I mean, I'm looking at the chart now it's almost it's very, very close to 350,000 as of today, and it's just it's very, very challenging, but some of the better neighborhoods. So if you're in Tampa, South Tampa is really where you want to be, but those price points are honestly million dollar homes for a three two and so those rents and cap rates just won't sweat. They won't crack the code for what we're looking for and what honestly any investors should be looking for. So that's not really where we want to be. But I would say that Brandon is a great area. It's just outside of Tampa. It's about 30 minutes east, very sprawling tons of land, tons of nature, tons of trees and that area is a great neighborhood. Same very roughly same median price per square foot, you'll probably be able to get rents around anywhere from 1900 to 2200 for that size home depending on the condition and that's honestly a pretty savory return. Of course, you're now seeing foreign 450 be the norm there too but the rents are following. You know, I mean rents for those are 26 to 2800, all day long and sometimes that makes the cap rate, it maybe the cap rates a little more compressed and the overall return, but the cash flow is higher, and you know, the appreciation is going to be there.   Another and it's really hard to find a great cap rate neighborhood right now, because it's just, it's getting nipped up so much. If you go west of Tampa, north to the west Chase Oldsmar area, that's a great little area to that has very, very, very, very quickly start to price up as everybody's moved there, to where they couldn't afford South Tampa to where they couldn't afford north of Kennedy and West Tampa and so that's an excellent little pocket there great schools, great golf courses, you've got all ages that enjoy that area, which is, in my mind, for somebody that's looking for a renter, always, that's a good market to be in and then if you go north of Tampa, you've got Carolwood up there and greater Northdale. So all that area, there is also a great pocket of Tampa, the price points are going to be pretty high on average as well. But you can still find that starter entry level home and if you can get it at a good cap rate buy it, the every growth that I've seen is coming north of Tampa, in waves and this cheval Lutz area all the way over to Keystone in an East Lake. This actually has the highest concentration of wealth in the Hillsborough County so it's actually not in South Tampa. It's not in downtown, it's not on Davis Islands, which is a phenomenal honestly the best part of Tampa but a home there's you know, 4 million for 1500 square feet so those prices are crazy, but this area is excellent very equestrian, tons of lakes, tons of lake homes, tons of golf courses, nature trails preserves, an excellent up and coming area to be in and then one last area I'd like to highlight is the Ybor City and Seminole Heights area.   So this area is directly north of downtown Tampa and if anybody on here is familiar with St. Pete and fourth Ave, fourth Ave, stretches out of downtown St. Pete and goes north and that stretch is probably a 10 mile stretch of the most golden real estate I've ever seen retail shopping centers, storage homes, but that's been there for 20-30 years and then north and east where you see that Columbia restaurant is Ybor City, historic Ybor ton of culture there a ton of background ton of history, an excellent place to be but it is very, very pocketed and very hard to find land there, but would be an absolute killer. The next best spot is going to be Tampa heights and Seminole heights. If we see the Hillsborough River here, that's kind of the cutoff point for Seminole heights and then everything south of the Hillsborough River to about 15 Street is both terminal, Tampa heights and Seminole heights. Those areas are fantastic. People love to be there. There's a whole bunch of you know, farmers markets and pop up shops and just cool boutique II stuff that is not you know, another McDonald's and Taco Bell that people are bored with. So this that's another great neighborhood, and that also sprawls out into a sea wells wood, and then West Ham over here by the airport.   Michael: That's a super great overview. Jeff, thank you so much.   Jeff: Absolutely.   Michael: I'm so curious if you can give people an idea of how property taxes work, because I think that can often be and I'm sure as you see, one of the biggest maker breaks of a real estate deal. So give folks a walkthrough in the Greater Tampa area. Of course, it varies county by county, but how should they be thinking about property taxes?   Jeff: Excellent questions. So obviously, we all know taxes based on a millage rate, every county, like you said is different county by county. But based on that, I mean, there's really not much else we can do to kind of guesstimate and or further understand it besides going to the Property Appraiser website. But plugging in the property and estimating the taxes. A good rule of thumb with that though, is that I found is anywhere between 85 and 90% of the purchase price, and then take the millage rate, then we can kind of skip the step of you know going in there and directly estimating it but that is that will get you within 99% accuracy of the taxes when they become reassessed after closing and so again, that's 8085 to 90% of the purchase price. So if it's 400 it's gonna be about you know, 375 380 and then take the millage and then that'll be your that'll be your new annual tax roll. And that is very, very, very, very important to take into account because I've seen a lot of investors in the past, go into a property and just pull the current taxes without any idea that they're gonna go. If that person's owned the home for 30 years tax you're going to have Got 1000 a month on a $400,000 home after you close, they're going to be closer to about, you know, five to 6000. So that that alone can easily skew a deal. So you always want to make sure that the taxes are, you know, properly at least estimated going in and then double checked while you're going through the process.   Michael: Jeff, you said 1000 a month for that 30 year old 30 year old hold, but I think he made 1000 a year, right?   Jeff: Correct. Yeah, absolutely, 1000 a year for sure.   Michael: Okay, okay. So is there like a good rule of thumb, if someone doesn't know the millage rate like 1% of the sale price, or one and a half percent of the sale price,   Jeff: I would I would inch to one and a half percent of the sales price because I'm seeing more and more than a $400,000 home is any anywhere between 5500 to 7500, depending on their tax district and while it is county by county, there are some overlays in some certain neighborhoods and CBDs that we'll have some effect on that. So I would I would definitely lean to one and a half percent and then if you want to be real conservative, just go 2% and then it'll always be below that.   Michael: Okay, right on. Now, anyone who's ever listened to the news ever, or who follows any kind of climate or weather has heard about that Florida has hurricanes. Talk to us a little bit about some of the weather and climate, things that are unique to Tampa that someone from California might not be aware of.   Jeff: Right, well, I will say anything that you've seen from not being in one, it's always way crazier, that are way less crazy than what they say it is obviously…   Michael: People hanging on the palm trees, you know, getting strung out.   Jeff: Oh, yeah. All, all extremely oversaturated. In my opinion, the biggest thing with Tampa Bay is flooding. And that really only happens in South Tampa and waterfront properties. So honestly, I would say any investor in Florida should really avoid waterfront properties because of hurricane insurance and flood insurance. They're just too high and they're gonna kill your returns not on not including any liability insurance you have. For the tenant that's there, I would say waterfront would work excellent in a short term rental, because that's kind of a hotel experience. But a long term tenant really is not going to do great there. I would certainly avoid it. Overall, if you're in the mainland and not in the low lying area, hurricanes aren't gonna do just about anything to you. As long as the home is up to code and you have a you know, Hurricane Preparedness step do you have the metal covers for the windows and just, you know, it's simple Google search will show you how to get hurricane ready, but it's really, it's really way more than they hype it up to be.   Michael: Okay, awesome and that's a really good point that you bring up. If the house is up to code, you expect it to withstand a hurricane or not became a drone? How should people be thinking about older housing stock or does Tampa even have older housing stock, like in California, we've got a lot of 1950s built ranch style homes. That's just a lot of the bulk of the inventory, what are you seeing there in Tampa?   Jeff: Exactly the same, the bulk of the inventory is probably going to fall in the 1970 range, a ton of homes and that 1950 to 1980 and then honestly, in Ybor you'll see a whole bunch of homes in 1912, 1915, where the area is very, very old, and has a ton of homes with crawl spaces. So what you want to avoid is homes on a crawlspace. If it doesn't have a slab Foundation, honestly, just avoid it. Can you get around it? Can you figure it out, can you have a foundation inspection? Absolutely but those are all things they're going to tack on to the cost and your whole period. If you're a five year holder, maybe it's not a big deal. But if you're at 1015 20, you are going to be dealing with foundation issues, at least at some point and it is not cheap. So that is one thing I would avoid with the age of the inventory and then one other special thing that kind of gets talked about a lot in Florida is sinkholes and so sinkholes are extremely common. They're not as bad as again, as you see on the news 99% of the time. But what happened back in, I would say 95 205 a couple people had a sinkhole that was relatively bad, you know, the home was falling in and unsafe living conditions and then insurance companies and engineers that were working with them came into the entire neighborhood and said, oh, you've got settlement cracks. This looks like a sinkhole and so you'll see 85% of homes maybe even higher than that that have had a sinkhole remediation done with no significant repairs or need for that at all and once the sinkhole home has been remediated with either a chemical grounding a underpinning or a another. They actually insert concrete under the home once you do either of those three things. Your risk for a sinkhole after that is slim to none because once you solidify all the Lime Rock and silt that's under the home you're done, there's nothing to worry about, just check for warranties, and make sure that engineering report gets to your insurance provider and I believe there's still only two insurance providers in the state of Florida, that will insure a single home. So it's going to be a little bit more expensive as well. So just keep that in mind.   Michael: Okay, good to know and, Jeff, I just want to go back to the foundation, you said that to avoid slabs or avoid crawl spaces?   Jeff: Avoid crawl spaces. I mean, you don't have to avoid them at all costs. But if the house looks a little wonky, even on the photos, just go on to the next one. I've seen 95% of every home that I've been that has a crawlspace has some sort of issue, you can drop a marble in the kitchen, and it ends up in the living room every time. It's just Florida. I mean, Florida with sinkholes, and still homes horrible mixture and there's not a ton of those. But you'll see him a lot in Ybor City a lot around some of the older areas of Tampa, but just stick to the easy stuff, you know, slab on frame or slab on block and you'll 9 times out of 10 you'll be good to go.   Michael: Okay, right on and from a kind of hurricane perspective, what are your thoughts and what should people be looking out for in terms of roofs?   Jeff: You want as long of a life expectancy on the roof as possible, um, shingle roofs are great, every roof made in the past, I think from 2010, or maybe even earlier, since we had that one bad hurricane that came through all of the code is updated. The majority of the roofs have roof strapping that straps the trusses down to the block and that helps tremendously during hurricanes and just about every home has that and when you get an inspection, you do your wind mitigation and that is a very, very, very big piece of the pie to save you money on insurance, especially if you're considering hurricane coverage. So I would say maybe one out of every 100 to 200 clients gets hurricane protection. But it's available and honestly, you really just want to make sure that it has up to code roofing and those standards and it'll be just fine.   Michael: Right on and kind of in the same vein as insurance. What are you seeing or do you have a good kind of ballpark estimate for clients and listeners about what insurance costs are in Florida?   Jeff: Absolutely, to keep it simple, like we did with the taxes, I would probably say that's very close to the 1% rule and probably even a little bit below that, a $400,000 home. I've seen quotes anywhere from 2800 to 3800. So if you use the 1%, it's going to be less but you know, as long as you're not in a flood zone and don't you know don't have any hazard or wind additional add ones, then that should be a perfect, perfect metric to keep track on.   Michael: Right on. Jeff, this has been super awesome, man. Any final thoughts, things tips tricks that folks should be aware of as they're investigating the Tampa market?   Jeff: Absolutely don't wait, don't sleep if you want something, get it now get it while it's hot, because it's only going up. I think we've been undervalued for a very long time. I think we're at market value now. But I think the you know, honestly, the 10 to 30 year window and long range gross of Tampa I think is going to pay massive dividends for whoever can get in there.   Michael: Right on and I guess my last question you, are you seeing stuff go over asking or are you still seeing things come under list price or how are you seeing that?   Jeff: The market right now is very weird. Only because I've been used to just stuff flying for 18 months now. With the rates kind of adjusting the way that they have been everything has slowed to a tolerable level instead of 20 offers on a home we have three to five, so it's still chaos, but it's controlled chaos and something we can all deal with a little bit. But yet if you're not offering asking, you're not getting the house, if you're not offering 10 grand 15-20 above the house, you're probably still not getting it if somebody else's cash. So it's, it's extremely competitive. You have to be willing to push that cap rate on your own and be ready for the appreciation and the rent growth next year to kind of float you to where you want to be.   Michael: Okay, so good to know, Jeff, our certified agent out in Tampa, and folks have questions for you want to get a hold up? Where's the best place for them to do that?   Jeff: Absolutely. Um, you can visit our website at any time https://sefair-inv.com or feel free to reach out to me directly. My cell phone and email will be left in the podcast notes and I'll be happy to do whatever you like.   Michael: Right on. Thanks so much Jeff, can't wait to hear from you to chat soon.   Jeff: Absolutely, buddy. Have a great day, thank you!   Michael: Thanks, take care. All right, everyone. That was our episode A big thank you to Jeff for coming on and hanging out with me. It was a lot of fun, super interesting and clearly he is jazz about the market. I think a lot of us should be too. As always, if you've liked the episode I would love, love, love to hear from you all check out some ratings or reviews from you all and just hear what you have to say about the show. We look forward to seeing on the next one and happy investing!

What kind of expat or digital nomad are you? Find out what the four main types of expats or nomads are and the pros and cons of each. Plus, why you decide to be any of them (or none of them) at any time. Location independence is a mindset and a spectrum - you get to decide and design what your life of freedom looks like on your terms! Free Resources: Apply for a free relocation strategy call with Kristin to learn more about the Ready to Relocate private coaching program Show Notes: NEW: Leave a rating on Spotify! NEW: Leave a review on BadassDigitalNomads.com Related Podcasts:  Your Perfect Day-in-the-Life as an Expat Abroad The Best Things About Living Abroad What is a Digital Nomad?  How to Become a Digital Nomad (Expat Money Show) *Every Episode* about Living Abroad in an Expat Lifestyle ........................................................................................... Connect with Kristin:  Follow on Instagram Subscribe to Traveling with Kristin on YouTube  Subscribe to Digital Nomad TV on YouTube Join the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook Group ........................................................................................... Support the Badass Digital Nomads Podcast: Thank you to Jeff Right for the 15 coffees this month!  Buy Me a Coffee Become a Patron Leave a 5* Review: https://lovethepodcast.com/digitalnomad  Buy Official Merch  Search All Episodes: www.badassdigitalnomads.com ........................................................................................... A special thank you to Kristin's Patrons: Walt, Shawn, Richard Y, Heather, Karen, Kiran, Scott, Michael J, Isaac, Mike M, Yasmine, Erick M, Yohji, Ron, Gary, Annie, Henry L, Keith, Stephen, Warren, James, Daniel, Gary B, Emily, Rich, Phil, Anthony, Jennifer, Kathleen, Natalie, Dave B, Brian, Christopher, CJ, David G, Mike R, Chip, Shelly, Ron, Paul, Andy, Jeffrey, Paulo, Stephen, Michelle, DJ, Mark D, Francis, and Dave M.  Special welcome to our newest Patrons from December 2021 and January 2022: Francis and Dave M. ❤️ Become a Patron for $5/month at Patreon.com/travelingwithkristin ........................................................................................... Podcast descriptions may contain affiliate links of products and services we use and recommend at no additional cost to you. 

What does your ideal "day in the life" as an expat living abroad look like? Find out in this visualization exercise from Kristin's relocation coaching program, Ready to Relocate.  Download the video and PDFs for with this lesson at TravelingwithKristin.com/ExpatLife. Free Resources: Free downloads for this podcast Apply for a free relocation strategy call with Kristin Show Notes: Kristin's New DJ Instagram Page Abracadabra on Twitch Kristin's Twitch Channel Related Podcasts:  Life is Short. Seize the Day. No Regrets.  Tulum, Mexico Digital Nomad Lifestyle ........................................................................................... Connect with Kristin:  Follow on Instagram Subscribe to Traveling with Kristin on YouTube  Subscribe to Digital Nomad TV on YouTube Join the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook Group ........................................................................................... Support the Badass Digital Nomads Podcast: Thank you to Jeff Right for the 15 coffees this month!  Buy Me a Coffee Become a Patron Leave a 5* Review: https://lovethepodcast.com/digitalnomad  Buy Official Merch  Search All Episodes: www.badassdigitalnomads.com ........................................................................................... A special thank you to Kristin's Patrons: Walt, Shawn, Richard Y, Heather, Karen, Kiran, Scott, Michael J, Isaac, Mike M, Yasmine, Erick M, Yohji, Ron, Gary, Annie, Henry L, Keith, Stephen, Warren, James, Daniel, Gary B, Emily, Rich, Phil, Anthony, Jennifer, Kathleen, Natalie, Dave B, Brian, Christopher, CJ, David G, Mike R, Chip, Shelly, Ron, Paul, Andy, Jeffrey, Paulo, Stephen, Michelle, DJ, Mark D, Francis, and Dave M.  Special welcome to our newest Patrons from December 2021 and January 2022: Francis and Dave M. ❤️ Become a Patron for $5/month at Patreon.com/travelingwithkristin ........................................................................................... Podcast descriptions may contain affiliate links of products and services we use and recommend at no additional cost to you. 

Kristin reflects on the passing of one of her first YouTube subscribers and patrons. She analyzes the concept of "regret" in life and how to keep things from holding you back in 2022.  Show Notes & Resources: Sign up for Kristin's weekly e-mail at https://www.travelingwithkristin.com/subscribe  Book: Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing Article: "Why Do Scientists 'Cite' the Top 5 Regrets of the Dying?" Scientific Papers and Sources: What We Regret Most... and Why Why We Have Regrets How to Overcome Regret What Makes for the Most Intense Regrets? Comparing the Effects of Several Theoretical Predictors of Regret Intensity Related Podcasts:  On Life, Death, and Coping with Grief How to Overcome Your Fear of Anything ........................................................................................... Connect with Kristin:  Follow on Instagram Subscribe to Traveling with Kristin on YouTube  Subscribe to Digital Nomad TV on YouTube Join the Badass Digital Nomads Facebook Group ........................................................................................... Support the Badass Digital Nomads Podcast: Thank you to Jeff Right who bought Kristin 8 coffees on January 2! Buy Me a Coffee Become a Patron Leave a 5* Review: https://lovethepodcast.com/digitalnomad  Buy Official Merch  Search All Episodes: www.badassdigitalnomads.com ........................................................................................... A special thank you to Kristin's Patrons: Walt, Shawn, Richard Y, Heather, Karen, Kiran, Scott, Michael J, Issac, Mike M, Yasmine, Erick M, Yohji, Gary R , Ron, Gary, Ray, Henry L, Alejandra, Keith, Stephen, Warren, James, Daniel, Gary B, Emily, Rich, Phil, Anthony, Jennifer, Kathleen, Natalie, Dave B, Brian, Christopher, CJ, David G, Mike R, Chip, Shelly, Ron, Paul, Andy, Paulo, Stephen, and Michelle.  Special welcome to our newest Patrons from November-December 2021: Mark, DJ, Francis, and Fer ❤️ Rest in Peace, Teklordz

My guest today is Dr. Jeff Johnson. Jeff has been applying his background in psychology towards designing better human-computer interfaces for over forty years. He teaches computer science at The University of San Francisco, and has written several influential books on UI design. Among these, he co-authored with Kate Finn Desiging User Interfaces for an Aging Population, which is the focus of this conversation. Listen to the full conversation Download episode 46   Show notes Jeff Johnson UI Wizards Cognitive Psychology Cromemco Xerox GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Dont's and Dos by Jeff Johnson Designing With the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding User Interface Guidelines by Jeff Johnson Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design by Austin Henderson and Jeff Johnson (My notes on Conceptual Models) Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population: Towards Universal Design by Jeff Johnson and Kate Finn Tesla Model S Interior Google Maps Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: All right, Jeff. Welcome to the show. Jeff: Thank you! I'm glad to be here. About Jeff Jorge: I'm very excited to have you with us. For folks who don't know you, can you please tell us about yourself? Jeff: Okay. Well, I have a degree in psychology — not computer science — from Yale University and then I went on to Stanford in graduate school in psychology. So, it was Cognitive Psychology and my research at the time focused on understanding human problem-solving and human memory. But I found that after graduate school, I could either become a professor of psychology somewhere or I could go into the computer industry and help companies make their products easier to use, easier to learn. And that's what I decided to do. I worked for a small company in Silicon Valley named Cromemco and then I moved from there to Xerox, where I was working on document preparation systems. And then I worked for a series of companies in Silicon Valley and around the country, essentially doing human-computer interaction. While I was doing that, it became fairly clear to me that companies keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. And they were design mistakes that were causing their products to be not usable. And so, I eventually quit working for companies and became a consultant. I started working for myself, as a consultant, but my clients were companies. And so, I'd go from one company to another. And I continued to find that they were making the same mistakes over and over again. And it got to the point where I could start to categorize the mistakes. You know, this is mistake number 47, this is mistake number 19, et cetera. And so then eventually, in the late nineties, I wrote a book called GUI Bloopers, which was basically a catalog of all of the common mistakes that companies make in their design that cause their products to be less than usable. And that book was very popular. It basically made me well known in the field as the guy who wrote GUI Bloopers. People started calling me “Dr. Bloopers,” which I at first thought, “well, that's great.” But then I started thinking, “well, I don't want to be stereotyped as ‘Dr. Bloopers'.” So, I wrote another book, which came out in 2010, called Designing With the Mind In Mind, which was the psychological basis for user interface design principles. You know, where do user interface design principles come from? And that book was fairly popular. And so now, that book is in its third edition. The second edition came out in 2014 and the third edition has just come out now, in 2020. Since 2016, I've worked as a professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco, teaching introductory computer science, introductory programming, and also human-computer interaction. In particular, I focus my human- computer interaction course on user experience design. And, so that's… that kind of brings us up to the current day. Jorge: I want to call out that you've also authored a few other books. Among them there's one that's been particularly influential to me called Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design. Jeff: Right! Yeah, I neglected to mention that book. So, when I was working at Xerox, they had an approach to design that involved understanding the conceptual model underlying a user interface design before starting to draw screens and figure out what the appearance of the application on a screen or on a device would look like. And I very much agreed with that approach… their approach. And so, I, and Austin also — Austin Henderson, my coauthor — also worked at Xerox, and so, later the two of us started pushing that approach — the conceptual models approach — throughout the rest of the industry. We would give talks here and there, we wrote articles for magazines and at one point, a publisher approached us and said, would you be interested in writing a book on this topic? So, we did. And so, in 2011, the book Conceptual Models came out, as a result of that work. Then, also around that same time, I became interested in how do you design for older adults? That is, the technology doesn't seem to work as well for older adults. And there are a number of reasons for that. And so, I started doing some research on that and reading and understanding, and then a colleague and I formed a consulting firm that was called Wiser Usability, as in older, but wiser. And we would help companies make their products more friendly for older adults. And then we eventually wrote a book about that, that is called Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population. And that book came out in 2017. Designing for an Aging Population Jorge: That book is part of the reason why we're talking today. Tell me about designing for an aging population; what is different about folks who are aging and other folks in the groups of people that we design for? Jeff: Okay. Well, number of things that make designing for older adults challenging. But first let me mention the irony in this situation, which is that older adults are in a sense the population that is most in need of technological assistance, because they could benefit greatly because of limited mobility, because of limited eyesight, because of limited other things, from technological assistance of various sorts. You know, the ability to shop online, the ability to do their government businesses online, getting a driver's license, and things like that. But the irony of course, is that the technology doesn't support them very well, and they struggle with using the technology — I should not say “they,” because I am myself over 60, and therefore I should say “we” older adults — but, that's the irony: they're the population that would benefit from it the most, but it actually is least usable for them. The question is why and how can we fix that? And there are a number of reasons for that. One of them is a whole collection of things that have to do with the fact that as we age, we experience certain disabilities of various types like failing eyesight, failing hearing, failing hand-eye control and other things like that, and therefore products and services that don't take that into account can become difficult for us to use. Now, the interesting thing about that is that, of course there are people of all ages who have difficulty with vision, difficulty with hearing, and difficulty with hand-eye control. And so, really making things and products more accessible to older adults actually helps them for all of us. One of the examples I like to give is that when you're on a bus and you're riding from someplace to another place, or in a car and you're riding from someplace to another place, and you are trying to use your phone to either get the weather report or to text somebody or something like that — and I'm not assuming that you're the driver, let's say you're a passenger in a car or even a bus — and you're trying to do that while the bus is shaking, now suddenly you are like a person who has hand tremors. If you've ever tried to text someone while you're in a car, then the is driving over a bumpy road, you know what I'm talking about. Those kinds of things are one of the family of reasons why older adults have trouble with technology. We just don't take them into account. But there's another set of reasons that are perhaps in my view almost more important than that category of issues that I would call accessibility issues that I've just discussed. And that is, issues that are more about how do they think? How do older adults think about the world and how do they think about doing things and accomplishing tasks? What are their models of how the world works and how the technology should work? And that is something that's quite interesting because that problem is not going to go away. The first set of problems isn't going to go away either because people are going to continue to age and experience age-related disabilities. But the second category of problems is going to remain with us too, and for a different reason. But let me back up for a second and say something: there is an argument floating in the computer and technology industry that the problems of designing for older adults are going to go away and that we don't have to worry about them forever because, they argue, that today's older adults are “digital immigrants” rather than “digital natives,” right? So, digital natives are kids of today who've grown up with technology all their lives and they know this technology and they're comfortable with it, and, it's not a problem for them. But the digital immigrants who are the current generation of what you would call “boomers,” and people who are older than that, are going to have trouble because they weren't used to this technology. The argument goes that once all the digital immigrants die, everything will be fine, and we won't have to worry about designing technology for older adults because everyone will be digital immigrants. So, that argument is false. That argument is wrong. Because technology does not stand still and people tend to get… they grow up in whatever the dominant technology is, as people are, let's say between ages 10 and 30, is the one that they become used to, and then they got stuck in that way of thinking about the world. But the world moves on. The technology moves on, okay? One way you can think of it is that the current generation of baby boomers, they grew up when the technology was analog electronic and mechanical. There were mechanical objects, and they were analog-electronic objects. Now, these boomers were born from between 1945 and let's say 1965. That means that they were 10 through 30 in the time between the sixties and the late seventies and early eighties. And so, the technology that was prevalent then was mostly analog electronic, and some mechanical technology, not so much anymore. And that's what they got used to. And that's where they got stuck. And so, the technology that came along afterwards, which was personal computers and the rise of the internet and digital electronics, was new to them. And so, they were not natives of the digital technology world. And so, today's kids… people who are born after that, the children of the boomers… I don't remember what the name of that generation is… Jorge: Maybe Gen X? Jeff: Gen X, yes. They grew up in a world where there were personal computers and the internet was just getting born. And there were online discussion groups, and AOL had become a thing and it was popular, and the web started during their maturation years. And so, they were natives of that. But the Generation X is not natives of social networking and Google and all of that. And so, basically everyone is natives of some technology and immigrants of the next wave of technology. That affects what you know, and that's going to keep going on. You know, my students at USF don't believe that they're going to get stuck in any particular digital age, but I keep telling them they're wrong. That their kids are going to be saying to them, things like this: “Mom, why do you keep Instagramming me? Nobody uses Instagram anymore. I use Brain Link. What are you talking about? Instagram?” And then the mom is going to be saying, “Oh, this Brain Link thing. I just can't get used to it.” And my students don't believe that's going to be them in 20 years. They don't believe it, but it is. They are digital natives and they're social networking natives and they're digital music natives, but they are not quantum computing natives. They are not neural-network-driven computing natives. Those are coming along, and they will be immigrants to that technology. Empathizing with Aging Users Jorge: I want to reflect back on what you've been saying here, because there's a lot of really interesting and important ideas that I want to follow up on. One is this distinction between a set of challenges that has to do with the usability of these artifacts that we're dealing with — I use the word accessibility — and the other set of challenges has to do with trying to bring a mental model that no longer fits the reality of the ecosystem that you're dealing with or the products that you're interacting with. And the thing that strikes me about those two is that the challenges for designers in both cases have to do with an ability to empathize with the people who are unlike them, who have a different set of physical or… I don't know if to say their motor skills are different and their perceptual skills are different. And also, what I'm hearing you say there at the end with the Instagram example, is the younger folks, who predominantly I see as representing the demographic that is actually designing these products, is unable to conceive of themselves operating in a world where their mental models aren't dominant. How do you overcome that? Jeff: Well, first of all, you have to teach methods, right? Methods for design that involve building empathy into the process. The methods for design should include having older adults on your team, or at least within easy access of your team. Your design team should be able to talk to a lot of older adults and run focus groups with them and show them examples of products, in fact, even before the products are designed. You know, storyboards and things like that. Or even just have discussions about what the older adults are having challenges with. That's one way to bring empathy into the design process. Another way is kind of interesting, and some companies have used this method — and in fact, this method I'm about to mention is actually called “empathic design.” What you do is you give prosthesis to the young designers that impair their perception or their movement in various ways. Some car companies have actually done this: When they're trying to design a car that will be bought by aging boomers of today, they actually will give the young car designers clothing to wear that impairs their movement. So here put on this jumpsuit that's got straps built into it that make it hard for you to turn and twist your legs and turn your head and get in and out of this car five times in 10 minutes. Please do that. And then the designer goes, “Oh yeah! These seats are too low.” Or, “This door doesn't open wide enough.” You know, things like that. So, you can do that in the physical realm relatively easy. Perceptual realm, what you can do is you can give designers glasses that blur their vision or that darken the world. One of the interesting things about older adults is that our eyes become less capable of taking in light over our lifetimes. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is that your cornea and your lens become yellowed over time with exposure to ultraviolet light, and therefore let through less light to your retina. Now, the retina also loses light sensitive cells over the course of your lifetime and therefore becomes less sensitive to light. And so, the upshot is that the average 80-year-old needs light to be three times as bright in order to perceive the same brightness as a 20-year-old. I may not have those exact ages right because I haven't memorized them, but they're in the book. So, in the perceptual realm, you can give your designers prosthesis, or artificial impairments that will affect their hearing or their vision or their touch. For example, the example I gave earlier, right? You put someone and tell them, “Okay, you got this phone and the buttons… we think the buttons are too small, but you think they're fine. Okay, here. Get into this car and we're going to drive over a bumpy road and you try to text somebody.” You know? So, you can make people situationally impaired, and that can bring empathy. Put somebody on a camel and tell them to use their iPad. Jorge: On a camel? I love that. I'm going to try to find out where we can procure a camel for a usability study. These all seem like good methods to use for the accessibility part of the equation. I'm wondering if there are similar methods we can employ for the mental model part of this. Where these folks like you said, they might have grown up in a world where the technologies were very different, and now they're being asked to somehow operate in this world where a lot is taken for granted that just isn't available to these folks. Aligning Mental Models Jeff: Right. Well, think of it this way: When I was 15 years old, all the user interfaces I used were right there in front of me. They didn't require any kind of a concept of navigation. I did not have to navigate to the function that I wanted to do. Whereas now, starting with, personal computers, but continuing through the web, continuing through social networking and continuing through the use of cell phones, navigation through a user interface became an important concept. It's part of the design, right? There's no way a cell phone with its small screen can provide all the functionality right there on the screen that you need at any given time. But the old telephones, there was no need to navigate from one function to another. You just pick up the phone and start dialing the number. Interestingly, the concept of dialing a number… we still use that word, even though nobody has dialed a phone for 30 years. But anyway, so I guess what I should say is that our terminology often gets stuck even though the technology moves on from that, right? I keep hearing people on the news say, we have film of this politician committing bad stuff. We have it on tape. We have it on film. We captured footage. Those are all words that apply to actual physical film. Some of my students have no idea where does this term “footage” comes from and why do we apply it to movies. But anyway, that's just a little aside. So, the concept of navigation is a new thing for many older adults. It's something that happened after their maturation period, after they got stuck in their technology. And so, when I'm driving in my Tesla and I want to use the radio, I actually have to navigate from the map screen, which is showing me where I am right now in my neighborhood to the radio screen, right? And in the old days — when I say the old days, I mean, the days that baby boomers were used to, they grew up in — I didn't have to do that. There was no map on the screen. I had a map maybe on the passenger seat next to me, unfolded, that I got from a AAA. But the radio was right there on the control panel — the dashboard — all the time, and so was the ignition, and so was the air conditioner, and so were all the other functions. They were right there. I didn't have to navigate from one function to another. So that's a confusing concept for many older adults. And yes, eventually, those older adults will eventually die, and tomorrow's older adults won't be confused by that, but they will be confused by other things that will change. Jorge: I was really intrigued by these methods that you called out like the bus example earlier for the physical challenges involved… what I think of as the UI challenges. And I'm wondering if there are equivalent methods for us to use for this more conceptual challenge. Are there like the dark glasses that I can wear, but for the conceptual models that have become part of my world? Jeff: Yes and no. It's easier to impair someone's vision and hearing and physical movement than it is to impair their brain function. I mean, you can impair the brain function by giving them a bunch of whiskey to drink, but that's not the right kind of impairment, right? What you need to do is to be able to make it so that certain concepts don't make sense to them. So, that is difficult. But there are some design techniques that one could use. For example, suppose I want to make a map app and I want to make it easier to use for a wider range of people, including people who don't have the mental model that involves a lot of navigation. Well then, I just build what's called a one-screen app — and those are actually becoming fairly popular, right? So, there are lots of companies that are going with this idea of everything should be on a screen, and I shouldn't have to keep moving around in the app from one place to another. Google maps is a good example of a one-screen app, right? And there are some others that are coming along. I'm having trouble remembering them right now. But the concept of one screen apps is actually becoming more of a thing and it actually is quite useful for mobile apps on phones. Now, the problem with a mobile app on a phone is that your screen is really small. So, a one-screen app is really challenging design-wise. But what you're trying for is to eliminate the notion that people have to find their way to the function that they want, right? When I buy an airline ticket on an airline's website, there's a whole series of pages I have to go through to get that ticket. And some older adults find that quite challenging, because just when they think they're close to getting their ticket, they see a link that says, “bargain prices here” and they click on it and suddenly they're nowhere near their goal. And they go, “Oh! This is crazy. I thought I was going to get a bargain price on that flight I was just about to buy!” There's an interesting design pattern that was invented actually maybe 15 years ago, by some colleagues of mine, I'm trying to remember their names. But the design pattern is called Process Funnel. And what Process Funnel is, is the idea is that once your app knows — once your website knows — what a user is trying to achieve, guide them strictly toward that goal, do not distract them. Don't put up ads. Don't put upside links. Don't put up little bargain links that take them away from that path. Once you know what they want, guide them to their goal. Because you make money when they get to their goal, and they are satisfied when they get to their goal. And if you distract them from their goal, you've lost them. You don't make money. So, process funnel is a very useful design pattern. Try to figure out… Yeah, offer a lot of different choices for them at the start, but once you know what they want, take them there. Make sure they don't get off-path. Benefits for the Young and Old Jorge: I love what you're saying here, and I have so much that I would like to follow up with you about this topic. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. But I just want to say that the things that you're describing — the methods, the processes, and just the mindset of empathizing with folks who have different abilities than your own — sounds like something that might be valuable not just for making your products sell better, for example, among older adults, but also would bring benefits to everyone. If you do what you're describing there of optimizing the path to completion of a goal, other people — younger people — are going to also derive benefit from that, no? Jeff: Yes. One of the things I have to say since I teach introductory computer science at a university, is that I don't think it's the case that all younger adults are tech-savvy. I have lots of students in my classes who don't know the difference between WiFi and cell service. “My cell phone's not working. Why not? I have WiFi!” “Well, people can't call you on your WiFi. Don't you know the difference between WiFi and cell service?” Okay? So, there are lots of young people who are not technologically savvy. But what we're trying to do as designers is to build essentially the equivalent of curb cuts. You know, curb cuts were put in for a specific purpose: to comply with laws that people with wheelchairs needed to be able to get around in cities. But actually, more than 90% of the users of curb cuts are not people in wheelchairs. The people who actually benefit from curb cuts are… the overwhelming majority of them are people with skateboards, and pushing shopping carts, and pulling roller bags, and pushing strollers, right? So, the curb cuts actually helped everyone, even though they were mandated for people in wheelchairs. And that's what we need to do in technology, is design not strictly for older adults — because that makes no sense — we need to design so that older adults and everyone else can use the technology. Closing Jorge: That strikes me as a great summary of the topic and a fantastic place to wrap up the conversation. Where can folks follow up with you, Jeff? Jeff: Well, I have a consulting firm called UIWizards.com. So, they can look me up there. I have these books, Designing With The Mind in Mind, GUI Bloopers, Conceptual Models, and Designing for An Aging Population. They can check out those books and, you know, get in touch with me that way. I teach at the University of San Francisco. You can get in touch with me that way. Jorge: Well, fantastic. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for making the time. Jeff: Thank you for having me.

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Jeff Jordan is President and Executive Creative Director of Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Rescue offers a broad range of marketing services for government agencies (public health departments, state and federal agencies) and non-profits seeking to promote positive changes in public health related behaviors.  Jeff started his agency when, as a high school student, he volunteered for his local health department's youth-targeted anti-tobacco program. He transitioned from volunteer to contractor, tweaked the anti-tobacco program to approach teens in an innovative way, and grew the agency through “a lot of referrals.” He opened his first office while he was in college and continued his focus on behavioral change for social good.  In this interview, Jeff tells us that marketing tactics that are used to sell products don't necessarily work in changing “fundamental behavior.” His team has to be expert, not just in marketing, but also in behavior change theory, psychology, and sociology . . . and know how to appeal to different subsets within targeted cohort groups. Jeff says that it can take years for a consistent message to bring measurable change, and although there is nothing equivalent to “sales data” to gauge message impact in “real time,” he has found there are some measurable interim “markers” on the path to behavior change. Tracking and measuring specific behavior-related attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge over time can predict subsequent behavior changes. About 7 years ago, Rescue won a $150 million FDA youth tobacco prevention contract. These funds allowed the agency to increase in size from 50 to 150 employees in 3 years. Today, Rescue's 175 employees work out of 6 offices around the country. They serve government agencies and nonprofits in 30 states. Rescue creates programs for these organizations, but also has a library of campaigns that can be licensed. Over the years, Jeff has learned to say “no” to opportunities that are not right for his agency. Budgets that are too small can limit a campaign's success . . . . and blame for poor results will invariably fall on the agency . . . not on the tight budget. The smaller a client is, the more they tend to demand. Jeff has observed that agencies end up over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them, tie up senior personnel in servicing these smaller clients, and underservice their larger accounts. Jeff warns that really small accounts can hold an agency down. Jeff applauds the move away from condemning people who choose unhealthy behaviors and the increasingly broad awareness of underlying lifestyle situations that contribute to these behaviors. Jeff's agency attracts employees who want to do something good in their careers. He describes the agency as “responsibly rebellious,” and explains that is manifested in the way the agency encourages clients to take risks in a responsible way. Jeff can be reached on his company's website at: Rescueagency.com. The agency runs what Jeff describes as a “pretty robust YouTube Channel” at: youtube.com/rescueagency. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Jeff Jordan. He's the President and Executive Creative Director at Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. Welcome to the podcast, Jeff. JEFF: Thanks so much, Rob. ROB: It's excellent to have you here. Why don't you kick us off by telling us – it's right there in the title, a little bit – Rescue: The Behavior Change Agency. But tell us a little bit about Rescue and where you excel. JEFF: We are a public health behavior change-focused agency. What that means is that we exclusively work for campaigns that strive to change health behaviors for social good. Almost all of our clients are public health departments, state and federal agencies. When we say behavior change, we refer to actually changing a fundamental behavior that a person is performing. So rather than changing what we would describe as a brand preference of someone who drives one car, changing them to drive a different brand of car, we're looking to change that fundamental behavior of actually driving the car and converting them to ride a bicycle instead. Or in other health arenas, things like quitting smoking or eating healthier, etc. ROB: Perfect. Is that something you've actually engaged in? Encouraging people to ride a bike instead of driving a car? JEFF: Not that one. [laughs] But it's an example people tend to understand. ROB: What are some examples, digging a little deeper, of campaigns? You mentioned smoking cessation. There's probably some other interesting things you've worked on. What are some examples? JEFF: We work from simple behaviors like quitting smoking or not using drugs or not vaping and things like that to more complex behaviors like healthy eating, where we're actually promoting specific types of foods, specific changes to what they eat, as well as mental health behaviors that are even more complicated – trying to get people to reduce stigma and recognize when to seek help, when to do something about the feelings they're having, and whatnot. ROB: Very interesting. You mentioned brand preference; in some cases, I think people think of brand preference as being kind of pliable. Maybe it is just as difficult to change as some health behaviors. How do you think about, or how do your clients even think about, measuring these behaviors over the long term? I imagine the feedback loop on one of your campaigns might be rather long in some cases, given the research required to gather those results. Or maybe there's something unexpected I'm not thinking of. JEFF: You're absolutely right. Behavior change, we usually say you need a couple years at least of consistent campaigning to really see a measurable change. Unfortunately, we don't have sales data to look at to see what's happening in real time, so we rely on self-reported surveys and things like that that either our clients perform or that we help them perform to see what people are saying about the behavior. You do have some interim steps that you can measure on the path to behavior change. Whatever your underlying theory is of what you think is changing in order to change the behavior, such as specific attitudes or beliefs or pieces of knowledge about a behavior, you can measure those, and then those can be pretty predictive of a behavior change later down the line. ROB: One benefit it seems like you might have in your industry – is the behavior change industry perhaps a little bit more open about what works and what doesn't than maybe some particular vertical market, like marketing soda or something? JEFF: I think it's a double-edged sword there. It's more open in the sense that you can survive on theory for a longer period of time. In the commercial world, you can have a great theory, but if it doesn't turn around sales in a quarter, you're kind of out of luck there. In public health, you can survive on theory for a few years. So that does allow you to explore more options. But that also allows bad work to remain for a long time. We see that there's a lot of mistakes and common pitfalls that clients fall into, usually when they work with traditional agencies, that just happen over and over again because it works to sell a product, but it doesn't work to change a fundamental behavior. ROB: What about openness in terms of tactics? In some cases you have organizations like the UK's famous – I may be misattributing it, but their Nudge Unit there. You have probably published research in some cases around behavioral change. How much of your work is synthesizing and adapting those things to a community and to availability of resources versus cooking up something completely out-of-the-box and new? JEFF: There's a lot of theory and approaches already within public health behavior change. I think the UK is interesting in that they tend to have movements that occur there within behavior change. 10-15 years ago, they were really social marketing, and then it switched to Nudge, and they seem to all move a little bit more cohesively, maybe because it's a smaller country. Here in the U.S., we don't see as much cohesiveness in the approaches. The latest and greatest CDC strategy or FDA strategy, those do have a big influence on the work, but a lot of states are making decisions for themselves and applying the theories and approaches that they're comfortable with – everything from states that might still be using hardcore scare tactics like the '90s in their drug prevention work, all the way to other states that are more open-minded in realizing things like adverse childhood experiences influence how people make decisions about risk behaviors later in life. That's something that the state of California is really looking at. You have a really wide range of approaches and comfort level with those approaches. One of the things that we have to do that is kind of unique to our industry is we often have to share some of that education and some of those case studies from other states with potential clients so that they can understand, these are your options. You don't have to just do the scare tactics. That's not the only thing out there, and actually it often doesn't really work. So, we have to be the experts not just in marketing itself, but in behavior change theory, psychology, sociology, all these things that go into it. ROB: It sounds like there's a difference of tactics, a difference of outcomes. Are you seeking cessation? Are you seeking some sort of treatment? Are you just seeking a reduction of use in something that is now legal in certain places? It sounds like you are able to pool that expertise and help – in the ways that many agencies are, but you don't think about it so much in public health – bring those best practices and learnings from other clients. That makes me want to pull back and dig in. You're in a very unique area of focus. I think we've done probably 120 or so episodes right now, and we have not been in a conversation with an agency owner who is in public health and behavioral change. You mentioned you've been in the agency, at least, for 20 years. Did you start off with that area of focus? How did Rescue come to be? JEFF: We are definitely a unique agency. I actually started the agency when I was in high school. I was a volunteer for my local health department's anti-tobacco program. That was a youth program. They worked with a local agency, and after volunteering for about a year, I noticed that the kids we were reaching, the teenagers we were appealing to, were not current smokers, and they were never going to be smokers, whether we existed or not. These were good kids. They were leaders. They wanted to put this on their college application. There was really no change I could see that we were causing, even though we were successful from the sense that there was a lot of youth involvement and we were doing a lot of things. Fortunately, we had an advisor at the health department that was also pretty savvy in terms of youth culture. I like to joke that she was a break dancer when she was in high school, and she was maybe 7 years older than me. So, she was still pretty connected with what high risk youth culture might look like versus low risk youth culture. I said, “Why are we spending all our money on these youth?” She was open to allowing me to move from being a volunteer to being a contractor to start to provide some of these services that would change who the program appealed to. That continued for the next year or so in high school, and very quickly we started to innovate in a way that just wasn't happening in public health, particularly with teens. That turned into a lot of referrals. While I was in college, we grew a lot through referrals and got our first office when I was in college and things like that. So, we really grew organically, and from Day 1 have been exclusively focused on public health. ROB: What does the team look like today? What are some of the scale points and key hires to where the team of the agency is now? JEFF: Today we have about 175 employees, six offices around the country. We are the largest marketing agency in San Diego, but most San Diego businesses can't hire us. [laughs] Our work, though, is spread around the country. We don't have a specific geographic footprint. There's not one place where our clients are clustered. We work with about 30 different states and with the federal government, with the FDA, as well as Veterans Affairs and others. Some of the big scale points that have occurred – there's been a few. The biggest one was about 7 years ago, when we were about 40 or 50 people at the time and we won a contract with the FDA to do youth tobacco prevention. That contract was a $150 million contract for an agency of 50 people. We very quickly grew thanks to that contract. We brought on our CEO, Kristin Carroll (who's still with us today), at that time, who helped us grow quickly. Within a matter of 3 years, we went from about 50 people to 150 people. But in that time, we've continued to grow with other clients as well. Some other notable wins are the California Department of Health's nutrition campaign as well as some other states that have brought on larger contracts. ROB: You mentioned that many San Diego businesses probably can't work with you. Does that reflect a change in the overall deal size that you've pursued? JEFF: No, no, that's just mainly because we don't do commercial marketing. You have to be a public health oriented campaign. We work with the local county health department, we work with the local school district, and we also work with the district attorney's office. So, we work with a lot of local government agencies, but we don't have any commercial customers here or anywhere else. ROB: I see. Once many agencies scale, and especially north of 100 people, I think a lot of times they become very focused on just the FDA size deals. How do you manage that different granularity of client size within one organization and not become really fixated on hitting those homeruns? JEFF: That has definitely been a problem of scaling up. There aren't that many FDA size deals in our space, so we're forced to continue our more modest deal size – which we're very happy with. But I think the biggest challenge that has occurred is being careful not to try and apply universal lessons to the entire agency. Some things that we do for our largest client don't necessarily apply to our smallest clients. We've gotten in trouble sometimes in starting to do things for our smaller clients the way we do it for our larger clients and then going over budget and overcomplicating things when they don't need to be. And vice versa, also making sure we don't get too simple with our biggest accounts. We have to operate in this limited budget standpoint for some of our accounts and then a more open budget to explore different things with our largest accounts. That's probably the biggest thing we have to remind ourselves of and be cautious with. Really, we're operating like two different agencies within one. ROB: We are chatting here right in the middle of the spring 2020 COVID-19 epidemic. How has that changed your mix of business? Do you have clients that are working within – do you have some stay home campaigns running and that sort of thing as well? I imagine any work you've done, you've had to learn very quickly. JEFF: Surprisingly, we haven't gotten into any stay at home work, mainly because we tend to focus on long-term campaigns so that we can measure these long-term changes. It does affect COVID because a lot of the reasons that people are passing away because of COVID is because of preexisting conditions that we're trying to prevent with some of our other behaviors. So in a way, they're all connected. But when there's an emergency like this, communications get out pretty quickly and go viral pretty quickly. You don't really need the traditional long-term campaign to figure it out. The one thing that has changed the most for us is the production of new creative and new messages. Right now we're focused almost exclusively on creating animated work and infographics and things like that. Our clients still want to produce the work, still want to put new messages out there. Right now, people are consuming media more than ever before, so we're still cranking away new stuff. ROB: That's excellent. Jeff, you've been at this for a little bit; you've built the largest agency in San Diego, which is quite a thing. What are some things that you've learned along this journey that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting Rescue all over again? JEFF: There's so many lessons you learn, but you almost need to learn them in order to grow from them. I think that one of the things that we learned was not to be afraid to say no to an opportunity if that's not the right opportunity. I have to teach this lesson to every new business development person we bring on or client service person we bring on. It might feel weird to say no to a small client, but keep in mind that if they don't have enough funds for us to do a good job, they won't blame the budget; they will blame us for not doing a good job. And without fail, the smaller the client, the more they ask for. Oftentimes I've seen a lot of agencies get stuck in this world where they are over-servicing smaller accounts to keep them and underservicing their larger accounts, and it's usually top-heavy. It's usually more senior people that are servicing these smaller accounts, who are now not able to go out there and pursue bigger work. So, you really have to be careful of the really small accounts holding you down. ROB: How do you think about positioning and communicating the scope with the small accounts so that their expectations are aligned? Or have you found it's hard to manage them and you just have to pick the right ones and let someone else have the ones that are going to ask for the full buffet for 5 bucks? JEFF: We definitely let someone else have those. [laughs] It's about being transparent upfront and saying, “Look, this is what it takes to do good work, and this is why. These are all the components that need to go into something.” We have found ways of being able to accept smaller accounts with different strategies. For example, something that's completely unique to our space is we actually license campaigns. We have about four different preexisting campaigns that governments can license from us and that are reused over and over again across the country. That has allowed us to open the door to some smaller – not the smallest, but some of the smaller accounts that don't have the funds to create new campaigns, but do have enough funds to implement a licensed campaigns. That's something that could never happen in the commercial world; no one would ever want to share anything. But in our space, the government loves to share, and they actually love the reduced risk that comes with knowing this has already run somewhere else. ROB: Right. I can see you coming with some results, and they can see what the campaign looks like out in the world. They can probably even go and visit and see in some other place how this campaign looks in the wild, which you can't do, to your point, for most businesses. Maybe you could get away with it in – I don't know, if you were just serving one lawyer per market, or one plumber, or something crazy like that. But even then, they probably wouldn't want to share. JEFF: Right, exactly. There's so many things that we do here because we are focused on this space that would just not be possible if we were a generalist agency. And that's part of our argument for potential new clients: look, you can hire your local ad agency that everyone has heard of that has done all the car dealerships and local banks and things like that, or you can hire a specialist in public health. What's going to happen if you hire a specialist in public health is you're going to get all this institutional knowledge about how public health marketing is different from commercial marketing and be able to be more effective, more efficient, and have all this research and tools at your disposal. ROB: Jeff, at 175 people, you're up above that 150-person Dunbar number that many people talk about as that maximum number of people you can be in relationship with, or people might phrase it differently. How have you thought about structuring, organizing, and persisting culture as you break through dozens and then triple digits and then over 150? JEFF: We had a pretty strong culture before I knew that company culture was a thing. It comes from the culture being embedded in the work. A lot of times, folks try to put this layer of culture on their organization that doesn't really have anything to do with anything. That's where culture tends to fail or feel shallow. Where culture is really strong and real is where it manifests through the work. For example, one piece of our culture is that we describe ourselves as “responsibly rebellious.” What that means is that we want to push our clients to take risks within a responsible way. That is manifest through a lot of decisions that we make for our clients, things that we present to our clients, ways that we approach how we work with our clients. Then, when we say that's a part of our culture, it's true. It is a part of our work. It's part of what we do. When we talk about being science-based, we have a giant in-house research team that does presentations for us that is then infused in the creative and in the strategy. So, I think the best way to maintain culture is to just have an identity that is real and that you truly apply every single time you do the work. ROB: It almost seems like some of the culture would be self-selecting. Not to say that people might not view Rescue as a very attractive place to work, but it seems like an odd company to sign up for unless you have a real interest in messages of public health and in helping people and helping communities. Do you find that in the interview process? JEFF: Yeah. This millennial generation that's now dominating our workforce, we are the ideal kind of company to work for. They want to cause social change. They want to have an impact, and we can allow them to have that impact. So, definitely the people that come in are people who have an interest in doing something good with their career. And that helps. Everybody in the agency wants to have a good outcome from that campaign on a deeper level than just simply delivering for a client. ROB: That makes sense. Jeff, what's coming up for Rescue that you are excited about? Or maybe it's even something in terms of either broad messages that you're seeing trends in, or even tactically? JEFF: One thing that's pretty exciting is that we're seeing a broad awakening of the underlying lifestyle situations that lead people to choose unhealthy behaviors. The best example of this is what's happening in California with the new – California has a Surgeon General for the first time, and she is focused on infusing adverse childhood experience understanding, which is this area of health research that talks about if you had these really, really big things happen to you when you were a kid – things like divorce or a parent dying or domestic violence or mental health in the family, these heavy things – those things set you on a trajectory to take on much higher risks later in life. And if you can embed an understanding of who people are and where they come from in your work, you can be more effective with these populations. So, an understanding of that, an understanding of mental health, an understanding that people don't do risky things in isolation. They do them from a complicated equation of everything that's happened in their life. That was just not existent for the past 20 years, particularly in things like drug and alcohol prevention, where it's like “people who use drugs are just making a bad choice, they're just stupid, they're just bad and they need to be told to stop doing bad things.” [laughs] That's just not how it works. It's really nice that a lot of public health is moving away from that perspective and instead moving towards a deeper understanding of the complexity of human identity. ROB: Absolutely. It brings to mind for me – you have a responsibility; the messages you're putting out there are not messages for any particular – you probably work with governments of every political party possible. JEFF: That's right. ROB: But we live in a world where – what you're saying even hearkens back to partisan politics. How do you think about putting messages out into the world that have to transcend politics and party? JEFF: I think we all suffer, across industries, across topics, from talking to ourselves and not understanding someone who's different. One of the things I like to say that I feel makes this so different is applied empathy. It's not just that we have more empathy than someone else, but that we actually apply that empathy to how we create our messages and can articulate, when we're going to create a campaign for rural men, why that campaign has to be so different from a campaign, for example, for African American women. What is different about their life experience, their attitudes, their worldview, their values that will change the way we communicate to them – but also change what we're saying. A great example of this is that we do a ton of tobacco prevention work, still, with teenagers, and you can talk to an alternative teen in an urban area who listens to rock and things like that – you can talk to them about the evilness of the tobacco industry and all the horrible things they've done, and they will get fired up. They'll say, “I don't want to support an industry that's destroying the world and manipulating people.” So, you can motivate them not to smoke just by talking about the tobacco industry to them. But then you take a rural teen, a country teen who maybe is a younger version of the right side of our political spectrum, and you talk to them about the tobacco industry and it just doesn't even faze them. They're like, “Well, that's their right as a company and you have the right to choose what you're going to do, whether you do that behavior or not. It's all about personal responsibility.” If you don't know that difference and if you don't know that they are processing information differently and caring about different things, then you're just speaking to yourself. You're just speaking about what you care about. And that can apply to so, so many different things. Within politics, its' so interesting to see people just yell within their bubbles about things that they care about and are baffled by why no one else cares about them or why the other side doesn't care. All you have to do is just spend a little bit of time on the other side and you'll understand why they don't care about what you're talking about. ROB: It's a great thought for all of us on meeting people where they are instead of where we think they are. Jeff, when the audience wants to get in touch with you and with Rescue, where should they look for you? Where should they find you? JEFF: Yeah, definitely. Rescueagency.com is our website. There's contact information there for different folks. But also, if you're just interested in what I was talking about and learning more about public health marketing and behavior change and things like that, we have a pretty robust YouTube channel, youtube.com/rescueagency. Lots of actual workshops and videos that we've done explaining our approach and research and some examples of the work. ROB: Perfect. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thank you for the thoughtful work that you do. We're grateful for it, and look forward to a lot more of it in the future. Congrats on all the success. JEFF: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Jeff & Will talk about their upcoming trip to New York City for the Romance Writers of America national conference and reveal the news that they will be among the presenters at the RITA Awards ceremony on Friday, July 26. Will reviews The Masterpiece by Bonnie Dee while Jeff reviews a book Bonnie co-wrote with Summer Devon called The Nobleman and the Spy. Jeff interviews Michael Vance Gurley about his new YA steampunk novel Absolute Heart (Infernal Instruments of the Dragon #1). Michael discusses the inspiration behind the story, what he did to build the world it takes place in and what he hopes for the trilogy. He also talks about what's coming up next for him. Complete shownotes for episode 198 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript - Michael Vance Gurley This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome Michael to the podcast, or back to the podcast I should say. Michael: I'm super excited. Thanks for having me Jeff. Jeff: Yeah. We were talking before I hit the record button that we last had you on in Episode 42 and now we are at 198, it's kind of crazy. So like you did the first time we had you on, you've come up with a book that I didn't even know I needed to read when I first got to read it. So you've got this YA book called 'Absolute Heart'. It's the first book in the 'Infernal Instruments of the Dragon' series. Tell everybody what this is about, both the book and the series behind it. Michael: 'Absolute Heart' is above all else a steampunk book. It's an adventure set in a world where clockwork powered England - in 1880s Victorian era England - is at war, a sort of Cold War, when we first pick up the series, against the Magically Powered Ireland who's been kind of besieged by the Brotherhood of the mage. It's a clock. It's a warlock group that is sort of made the queen subservient to them in ways you have to find out when you read it. And it's really the story about two boys. Gavin the high councilman's son from England and his friends, following him when he has these terrible secrets - he thinks they're terrible - and when they're found out he could be executed for them, for at least one of them. So he does what all teenagers do when they have something awful happen and they think they're gonna get trouble, he runs away and his friend, his best friend Landa who's an art officer, which is a mechanic, a computer engineer and she's a powerful female character that I'm really proud of. And she has his back and challenges him and calls him foolish when he's foolish and she goes with him and some other people who have their own agendas on this quest. Then the other side, the Brotherhood, sends Orion of Oberon who is a young warlock of immense power because he's the nephew of the ailing Irish Queen. They send him off to get the most powerful weapon in the world - the dragon stones and there's a lot of mystery and history about the dragon stones and what they are and what they can actually do, but they want them to end this war in their favor. So of course they have a meet cute, or at least I hope people think it's a meet cute. They have to decide like, are they going to get together? Will they/won't they? Of course, there's the will they/won't they thing. I'm really excited about the steampunk adventure and it sets off and is set to be a trilogy so I'm really excited about that, and hopefully people will like it - the inclusion of fairies and the air steamships and all the wonder that is steampunk. Jeff: Steampunk it's so not really anything I read... I dabble in it periodically, but something about Gavin and Orion and the bad ass friend you gave Gavin. Full disclosure to the listeners, I read a very early draft of this. You have a lot going on in book one, what you've parroted back now, into a more condensed story, but how did all this coalesce and come together and what was the inspiration? Michael: You really should pat yourself on the back because your viewers should know that you read an early ARC and gave me notes, and edited, and really kind of dissected it for me - like, wherever it was messy you, like a good editor said, "That's messy." The research starts with reading steam punk books and reading a lots of YA, which is of course a terrible addiction of mine. In reading all of that steampunk and finding those characters that you like, and you want to write about - because I use Scrivener, you have the photo option to put your vision of the characters, the places, the ships - you put photos in there and I work with a split screen so I can always reference that, so I never really lose track of it. But yeah, it was great looking into all that steampunk stuff and going into like Cassandra Claire's 'Clockwork Angels' series or Scott Westerfield's 'Leviathan' series. And if I can get even a little bit of that spirit I'll be really happy. But it starts with loving steampunk. You really should write what you know and write what you love. I've never been an airship captain but I love reading about them and I love that whole idea. And you know, thinking about like 'Leviathan', that series has a powerful gender bending quality to it, with the girl because she has to, dresses like a boy and acts like a boy in order to have a career - and I love that. I hope I've engendered Landa with that a little bit as well. Jeff: What went into creating your world of magic in Ireland and steam power and clockwork in England, because there's so much that you can pull from to create the steampunk universe. What was your decision to make these things your universe? Michael: Steampunk is - one of the amazing things about it is, an amazing thing about worldbuilding as well, is you can go with historical fiction. You know, like my first book and it's wonderfully creative but you're also stuck with... you can't lie. It's historical fiction, you can make up characters and you can make up some things, but really if you get too far away from reality, people stop believing in what you're writing about with historical fiction. At least I think so. I stuck with the roaring 20s pretty well and that kind of thing. Steampunk is like a little bit to where you're in the 1880s Victorian era. But then you have these advances and you can get creative and wild and all of that. A lot of that came from traveling for me too, like I've traveled to Ireland and I kissed the Blarney Stone, which of course means I'm full of B.S. I guess, the gift gab you know. And then I went to England and I went to Stonehenge and I played around amongst all of the hinges there, because that's where they keep them, and how a lot of fun. And the idea of the magic stones and power and Irish magic and castles - and then of course the troubles with the war between Northern Ireland and England - and I just rolled that back 40 years or so, and brought all that magic and the Stones and the power, I brought all that together and that's really where the idea came from. I also wrote a comic book like 20 years ago that had a lot of the fantasy stuff in it and it never got published but I tweaked it and changed it throughout the years. You can almost say that this part of this book- the backstory, the fantasy magic side - is about 20 years in the making, which I guess makes this a labor of love. Jeff: That's very cool that it goes back quite that far. Michael: Makes me feel old saying it out loud. Jeff: You could have had the idea when you were 5 or 6. What do we have to look forward to as the as the trilogy progresses - without obviously spoiling anything necessarily - but what can you kind of hint at about the story arc? Michael: Well, you know I'm a big fan of sci-fi, and Steampunk is really an offshoot of sci-fi in a way, or vice versa I guess. But, you know 'Star Wars' originally was 'Star Wars' and then they added 'A New Hope' to the title when they were like, "Well, you know Darth Vader is still out there." I mean, you know they gave Luke and Han Solo some medals. But, you know, then you get Darth Vader out there. So I love that idea of there's always more. If you look for it, if you see the little bits, like there's actually Darth Vader and an emperor... we're still at war guys, so come back for 'Empire', and guess what, it's going to get darker and worse and that's really kind of what's happening here - the book sort of gives you an ending but - and I think so does every book [in the series]. It has an ending, but it really isn't. If you're reading it, you know there's a lot more that's about to come down, and we might lose some people along the way, and maybe find some new people that you love, who's together might not always be together. Jeff: So with everything, between the magic and the clockwork and the steam and everything, your story, your book bible for this must be huge. Michael: I used this great British author named Ellen Gregory who did some high seas adventure, and she read an early Edit 2 and gave me some criticisms - which I kept calling British-isms - and gave me some pointers in that, and we were joking about that too, that I have one hundred pages on the parts of a ship... hundreds of pages and you could just bore people to death writing about that. It's like giving that little bit to make it believable, and make it feel fantastic or whatever, and then let it go. And then I just use that incredible knowledge about mid ships and jibs at parties. I can talk about all that stuff at a party now, but you don't put too much worldbuilding in, but it is fun. I do have lots of stuff, like when I'm writing, there's fairies in the book and I did so much research about Oberon, the king of the fairies and all that history. And then my amazing editor Dawn Johnson at Dreamspinner/Harmony Ink - I mean the whole team has been amazing, and each person has challenged me. Which is really part of the deal, you have to kill your darlings right? You have to allow some of your characters to change with some of the professional feedback. And so, anyway, I was able to use that research and pull it in and I still miss stuff, and some of those editors were like, "Hey, you know the name of that person? Shouldn't it be this, for this reason historically?" I'm like, "Yep, I don't know what I was thinking." You know, And so it really takes a village, you know. Jeff: What do you hope people get out of this book? Michael: What I'm hoping to get out of it is enough people interested to get a whole trilogy out of it and to get an audio book. I really want to hear this story come alive - the swashbuckling adventure come alive. I hope people get entertainment out of it. I hope they feel empowered and maybe challenged on their beliefs a little bit, which is, you know, a lofty goal. And it sounds like hubris to say it, but I hope people read it and see the LGBTQ+ world is just like everything else. It's steeped in mystery, and history, and great characters with amazing depth, capable of heroic acts and terrible evils, and everything in between. You know, some people will write a character and be afraid to make the gay character or the trans character do something horrible, but that's wrong. They have to do everything that everyone else does in order to make it real. And so I'm hoping people will forgive me if I do something horrible to a character, or make them do something terribly wicked... you know, mustache twirling - and not, of course, hate the straight characters that do bad things as well. Jeff: Right. Now, you kept a lot of this book in your family, in some ways too, because your husband Jason Buren did the cover and interior art - and the cover is gorgeous. Michael: Thank you. I love the art. Jeff: How did he come to get involved in it an what was it like collaborating with him on those elements? Michael: Well, Jason's an amazing artist and graphic designer. We actually worked on the first one together and we worked on comic books together and what I realized through it - honestly working with Dawn and the great editors, kind of makes you realize some things - you have to back up and state your vision. Say what you want. Show covers of things you like, and things you don't like, and then not micromanage it. Because then what you're going to get is my artistry, which I'm a writer you know, not technically a graphic artist. So you really get your best work if you let the artist kind of figure it out and that's what happened. I let go of the reins of both books and I think that the covers are amazing, if I do say so myself. I think this cover is so exactly what I wanted to be, and I was unable to say it out loud. And that's what a good artist should do in the interiors too. I wanted so badly to have chapter art and I know that people don't have to let you do stuff like that, but [my publisher] Dreamspinner was so amazing. I pitched this idea of clockwork meets fantasy with the Dragon Wing and the clockwork gears together So I'm so excited to show some of that together with the dragon wings with the mixture. Anyway I'm so excited and geek about it. I even got a little gears as text breaks in the art, in the books, it's really fun. It's really gorgeous. But you, know let go and see what happens. That's the idea. Jeff: When you were here in Episode 42, we were talking about a historical m/m hockey romance called 'The Long Season'. This is a total departure. Unless you can talk about the fact that you're dealing with historical times. Had you always seen in your career switching genres so completely? Michael: You know that's a great question. I want to challenge myself to do something completely different every time. And so, like being a new writer, writing historical fiction was crazy. That's too much to take on. I said, "Well, whatever. It's a labor of love, you know?" So then for my second novel, a trilogy? Themed like science fiction? Like, "Oh you're crazy, that's too much. You're not going to handle it." And who knows what we'll see. The first one got picked up, thank you Dreamspinner and I'm super excited about it. I want to challenge myself and I love that genre. So I say, let's do something completely different. People ask me about doing a sequel of 'The Long Season'. We're doing another hockey book. You know, I'm really proud of the fact that I wrote a character, Maggie in 'The Long Season' who was Brett's best friend. Turns out Bret's best friend started off with John Paul, which I'm really proud that people want a Maggie story and I think that's amazing. Who knows when that might happen. I might do that. My grandmother certainly, when she read it before she passed away, she said it can't end here and she's right... another story. And I did all that roaring 20s research... who knows, I might go back, but I want to challenge myself to do something different. I could write another hockey book because I love it and I love the whole romance side of it and who knows. Jeff: I was thinking you need to find a way to introduce hockey into the Infernal Instruments universe. Michael: I mean, there might be some sports related in there a little bit, but like medieval hockey? That would be fun. I mean the 1880s isn't too far away from Lord Stanley, so they could theoretically run into Lord Stanley somewhere. You know that can happen. Good idea. Jeff: Do you foresee more in this universe, potentially if the if the trilogy works out and is successful? Michael: Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's set up perfectly for a TV show. That's huge right. But I've even thought about - I have a friend who's a game designer and I even thought about... man, that would be amazing. That whole steampunk idea is a huge world and you'll see in book two, the world's even bigger than you see in book one because it's a world at war. It's a world half conquered by clockwork powered England and half conquered by magic powered Ireland. So everywhere you go France, and Germany, and Africa, and potentially the United States. Are they even the United States? It's a huge world, so the stories could go anywhere. You know I think of like, Gideon Smith books. 'Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl' I think the first is called. They, at some point, they end up in an airship going to the United States, and the Wild West, and Egypt, and all kinds of things. Steampunk is open. Jeff: I hope that just keeps going and expanding. So what's coming up next for you? Are you done with book two or are still writing on the trilogy ,and can you look beyond this first trilogy? What's next? Michael: Well, interestingly enough, it goes back to your last question. Books two and three, the trilogy, has a beginning, middle, and end in my head. Of course there could be more after that, much like 'The Long Season', but in my mind I've already started about halfway through writing a third completely different genre book, challenging myself with something completely different, which is a contemporary YA book built on my travels to Antarctica. So it's a YA, two young people who meet and fall in love on a cruise to Antarctica. Sort of a travelog and what happens, and the interesting things, and people, and penguins that they see. I won't give away too much, meaning - that's what I'm in the middle of now. Jeff: That's exciting. A little something new there. Again, totally disparate, but you mentioned what you want to keep mixing it up. Michael: So yeah. And we'll see how that works out. I'm working with a gender nonconforming character, which is really new for me, it's taken lots of research to get intersectionality in the forefront of the book, you know not as a ploy, but as a reality of the world that we live in, and people that need representation. So I'm really excited about that. Jeff: Hurry up and write that please. Michael: All right. Hopefully, if you're willing, you'll probably see it before anybody else as a proofreader. Jeff: What's the best way for folks to keep up with you online, to keep up is as 'Infernal Instruments' continues and this new contemporary book starts to take shape? Michael: If they go to my full name - MichaelVanceGurley.com. Go on there and there'll be links to my two book sites and to my Instagram, they can go to Captain Rhetoric on Instagram and find me, that's where I write self-involved book reviews where hopefully people care about what I think about these amazing books that I read, and travel pictures, and just little bits like that, not too much of me, just sort of what I see about the world. I like to do that on Instagram and that's the best way to keep up with me. Jeff: Well I wish you the best of success with 'Absolute Heart'. It's been great to talk to you a little bit about it. And when that contemporary is done you'll have to come on back. Book Reviews Here's the text of this week's book reviews: The Masterpiece by Bonnie Dee. Reviewed by Will.The Masterpiece by Bonnie Dee is a makeover story with Pygmalionthemes in a historical setting. Essentially, an irresistible gay version of My Fair Lady. The story centers on a guy named Arthur. He is the well-to-do gentleman in this particular scenario and, one day, he's out enjoying the good life with his bestie, a guy named Granville. Occasionally Arthur calls Granville, “Granny” and it totally cracked me up. Granville believes very heavily in the British class system. Arthur is a little more modern in views. He feels that if a man has the wherewithal and can pull himself up by his bootstraps, he can achieve anything with his life, no matter where he was born on the ladder of social hierarchy. In order to prove their different theories, they set a wager, and that bet involves Joe the shoeshine boy. Arthur must make Joe a gentleman in six weeks. It is there that he will make his debut at the biggest party of the social season. Joe moves in with Arthur who is very glad that to realize that Joe is not only very smart and very kind, he is hardworking and interested in bettering himself. Joe is undertaking this particular makeover because he has dreams of owning his own men's shop one day - with a focus on finely crafted shoes. They get down to work and, after spending several days studying and learning which fork to use, they decide to get some fresh air. So they go for a constitutional in the park where they unfortunately run into Granville, who's like escorting some demure young ladies. Joe does very in his first unexpected like test. Arthur and Joe now realize that they have definite feelings for one another. Their next test comes during an evening at the theater where they unfortunately run into Granville yet again (this dude's everywhere). Granville has befriended a professor of linguistics, and Arthur knows that Granville is only befriending this schlub because he plans on bringing the linguist to the party to expose Joe as some sort of lower-class fraud. Joe handles the situation admirably. He's proving himself time and time again, but Granny is not going to give up. He makes sure that Arthur's family is invited to the big soiree, and his family comes to stay, making it nearly impossible to have any alone time with Joe. Finally, the big evening arrives and everything goes swimmingly. Joe is tested but everyone is really charmed and quite taken by him. When it comes to Pygmalionstories there is usually a point in the narrative where the Eliza Doolittle character has to wonder if the professor is in love with her, or the person that she's pretending to be. We kind of skip over that in this particular story because it's really obvious that Arthur and Joe are like completely into one another. What ends up happening is that Joe feels guilty, his conscious getting the better of him. All these lords and ladies and debutantes are remarkably kind to him, and he feels genuinely bad that he's pulling the wool over their eyes. That guilt eventually leads him to leave Arthur's house sooner, rather than later. Arthur and Joe try to figure out how can they make their relationship work, but they can’t. Even though they've essentially won the bet and they've proven their point, the fact is that the class system is still very much a thing and the two of them are from two different worlds. Joe packs his bags and leaves and Arthur ends up going to India. He has been convinced by his brother and his father that he has to finally grow up and take part in the family business. While he's away, Joe uses the money that he earns from the bet and opens his own shop. When Arthur finally arrives back in England, there's a big declaration of love scene because they realize they are both utterly and completely miserable without one another. And they both vow to find some way that they're going to make it work. I really, really loved this book an awful lot. I loved these two characters that Bonnie Dee created I was rooting for them the entire time. The Nobleman and the Spy by Bonnie Dee & Summer Devon. Reviewed by Jeff & Will.Jeff: Bonnie and Summer are both new to me authors. The Nobleman and the Spy, which I would call a second-chance romantic suspense historical, was a complete delight full of intrigue and some steaming hot sex. Solider-turned-British spy Jonathan Reese is assigned to keep watch over German Karl von Binder. Jonathan knows Karl all too well because during the war Karl spared Jonathan’s life. It doesn’t take much for Jonathan to lose focus on his mission and pay attention to the man who has come back into his life. He’s also aware that he cares too much for Karl to allow anything to happen to him, despite the fact that his orders as the mission begins are a bit mixed if he should allow the man to be killed or not. Karl, despite the forbidden attraction to Jonathan, tries to keep the spy at length, sure that he can protect himself. As evidence piles up though that there’s someone on Karl’s trail, the two end up working together trying to figure out who’s behind it. It’s a tangled web that I didn’t quite believe even as it was all falling into place. The resolution was certainly something I’d never anticipated as I tried to solve it as I read along. It was quite a thrill. I loved the feel of this book. In often reminded me of a childhood favorite TV show, Wild Wild West, which was set in the same time period of the mid 1860s. While this isn’t set in the American west with some strange characters as villains, the time period comes through loud and clear in a rich setting and how the characters carry themselves. I also liked how Karl and Jonathan recognized that they couldn't give in to their attraction but the more they couldn't give into it the more they really want to. And then when they got together it was so intense. Narrator Todd Scott I have to say does a terrific job with the entire story but the sex scenes…off the charts! Will: What really struck me and what I enjoyed the most is that it's essentially a bodyguard trope and it has all the different things that go along with that but in a historical setting. So it was sexy and it was fun and there's lots of adventure and action. I really enjoyed this one as well. Jeff: Calling out the bodyguard trope is really appropriate. But what makes it a little different, at least to me, is that Karl doesn't really want to be guarded. But Jonathan certainly takes that role because he keeps reinserting himself even where he's taken off the case. He wants to keep Karl safe at all costs. So, yes, we both highly recommend The Nobleman and the Spy by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon.

Happy Pride Month! Jeff discusses the awesome Pride Month video from the NHL. He also talks about all the things that happened during release week for Netminder. Members of the Queer Sacramento Authors Collective had a reading this past week at the Lavender Library and will be reading again this coming week at Time Tested Books. The live streams are available on the podcast’s Facebook page. We talk about the Coastal Magic Convention 2020 lineup of m/m romance featured authors. We review the Elton John biopic Rocketman. Jeff reviews Max Walker’s A Lover’s Game. Will recommends books for Pride month: Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders, Stonewall: A Building. An Uprising. A Revolution by Rob Sanders, The Stonewall Riots: Coming Out in the Streets by Gayle E. Pitman, Stonewall: The Definitive Story of the LGBTQ Rights Uprising That Changed America by Martin Duberman and The Stonewall Reader curated by The New York Public Library. Jeff interviews C.B. Lee about the latest book in her Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Backup. We also discuss the origin of the Sidekick Squad, what C.B. hears from readers and what’s coming up next. Complete shownotes for episode 191 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Interview Transcript – C.B. Lee This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Jeff: Welcome C.B. to the podcast. It’s great to have you here. C.B.: Hello, thanks for having me. I’m so excited to be here. Jeff: Yeah, it’s very exciting. We got to see you last year at the LA Times Festival of Books for a little, teeny, tiny interview. But we’re thrilled to have you back as we start to talk about “Not Your Backup” which will come out on June 4th, just the day after this airs actually. C.B.: Oh my gosh, that will be really exciting. I actually got to touch the advanced copies for the first time last week at YALLWEST, which due to this fun time jumps of podcasting… Jeff: Well, actually a bit about a month ago. C.B.: Right, right. But, yeah, it was really interesting just to, like, hold it for the first time and see it in print. Granted, the advance copies have typos since, you know, I went through and did all the pass through the typos. But it’s fun, it’s fun. It’s great that, you know, it exists, it’s in physical form, hasn’t quite felt real till now, but now it’s a real book or will be very soon, or tomorrow for your listeners and readers. Jeff: There is something about holding that physical copy, even if you see it, you know, even if it’s on your tablet as an ebook. It’s like there’s nothing like that paperback when it gets there. C.B.: Yeah. Jeff: Now, “Not Your Backup” is book 3 in the “Sidekick Squad Series.” And, for those who haven’t experienced this series or heard of it, tell us what this series is all about. C.B.: Sure, it is about a group of queer teens that take on a corrupt government superhero agency. And they live in this sort of post-dystopian world where superheroes are kind of treated like celebrities. And there’s, you know, shadowy government organizations and mysterious heroes, league of heroes, that kind of dictates who gets to be a hero and who gets to be a villain. And our protagonists all kind of uncover this huge conspiracy, and then they work together to build a resistance and take it down. Jeff: It’s quite the world that you’ve built here. I mean, you hit so many things that are dystopian, U.S. future, superheroes, villains. What was your inspiration for all of this? C.B.: So I’ve always been fascinated by kind of the, like, post-apocalyptic or dystopian worlds. But a lot of the media that I’ve read mostly focuses on kind of the…when you’re in the middle of the disaster, when you’re in the middle of the catastrophe, when everything is going wrong, how are people struggling to survive. So I really wanted to see a world that was…you know, so this is more of like a solarpunk take where the world has started to move forward, where it’s 100 years after all of these disasters have happened – kind of the impetus for the superpowers. And my book is a really extremely intense solar flare that catalyzes latent gene in people. And then after the flare, which knocks out a bunch of nuclear power plants, also, it starts kind of a chain reaction of a bunch of environmental disasters. So 100 years later the governments of the world have kind of shifted and changed, there’s been wars, there’s been fights over resources, so the United States is now part of the North American collective, which is the entire continent of North America, which is now the habitable places. There’s, you know, 24 regions, which is, you know, kind of what’s left of the states. So there’s different areas all across North America, which are now the regions in which people live and, you know, continue to move forward with, like, their amazing technology, and hover tech, and all this amazing, clean technology. But, at the same time, you have all of these like high-tech cities, but outside of those regions, everything else is like the unmaintained lands. So, you know, the government is claiming there’s radiation danger and don’t venture out, but, of course, our heroes are like, you know, what the government tells us isn’t necessarily true. So a lot of…actually, the fun of writing “Not Your Backup” is one of my working titles was “Not Your Road Trip,” because there’s a lot of road tripping in this book. Jeff: Yeah, I noticed. There’s a bit of a road trip in the sneak peek that I got to read too, that they’re out on this road trip, essentially on a mission. C.B.: Right, right. Yeah, there’s the heist in the beginning of the very first chapter. But, yeah, there’s a lot of fun. We get to see a little bit more of the country outside of the cities in this book, so that’s exciting. Jeff: Now, each of the books deals with one of the main heroes, if you will, or the sidekicks, if you will, given the titles of the book, but they’re really the heroes. In “Not Your Backup”, we focus on Emma, who is really the only one of them without the powers. What’s happening to our heroes this time out? C.B.: So at the end of “Not Your Villain,” we have destroyed the registry, which…the big name of everyone who’s ever registered with powers that Captain Orion was planning to use to kidnap people and use for experiments. At that point, our heroes have been looking for the resistance the whole time. And they find a mysterious group that’s been leaving messages on encrypted channels. But then, at the end of the book, they realize that this is actually like a group of nerds that have been joining together to watch movies like “Star Wars,” and “Harry Potter,” and stuff. So they realize that they need to start the resistance. So that’s where we are at the beginning of “Not Your Backup,” where Emma and Bells are back in Nevada, and they are kind of in the midst of this fledgling resistance group – meanwhile, Jess and Abby are at the villain’s guild hideout in the Rockies and they’re trying to corral all the other meta-humans into taking action. So, the beginning of the book, you know, where kind of everyone has different goals, but then they all come together. It’s more about like building the resistance and finding… For Emma, it’s her journey in finding who she is. And, really, she’s a very natural leader, she loves coming up with plans, and she’s definitely a Gryffindor. She’s the first to jump in and try to take action. Her default is, like, fight me. But she also is, as you mentioned, she doesn’t have powers, and so when she’s trying to take a more active role in the resistance, she kind of butts heads with a few of the other members as they have different ideas about who is and who isn’t part of the resistance. Jeff: She just needs to remind them that Batman didn’t have powers either. He just had a really good utility belt and brains. So she could definitely fill that role. What’s been the driving force behind deciding the type of character that you have at the forefront of each book? Because the three books have very different, distinct character types and personalities, and just everything about them is just…they’re just very different from each other. C.B.: So, from the beginning, I wanted to tell this story about, you know, this fun adventure story with queer protagonists. So each book would center on another one of them in the main four. So there’s…and then after “Not Your Backup”, there’s one more book which will be Abby’s story, and so she will round out the quartet. But each of their…you know, they have very different personalities, but it’s been interesting writing their stories because each of them are on their own journey in what makes them a hero and finding how do they define success, and how do other people see them, and how do they see themselves. So, for each story, because we’re moving forward in time, as we get to see who is really, you know… It’s been interesting, because all four books will fit together as a series, but in each book, everyone gets to have their own journey. Jeff: Which I really like because we’ve been introduced to all of them all the way back, you know, back in the first book, but then they get to their own story, which could essentially be read as a stand-alone, if you wanted to, I guess, although reading all of them together is much better. What was the bigger challenge to come up with the trajectory of these four diverse characters or to build this alternate universe of the U.S., or were they kind of equal challenges? C.B.: I feel like the challenge for me is I’m not like a great outliner or I haven’t ever really been a planner. So I’ve always been more of the pantser in the writing style. So when writing a series, when I wrote “Not Your Sidekick,” I didn’t know, up until I think I was about 50,000 words in when I realized that I could not basically solve the problem in that one book, you know, because when I pitched it, it was one book. And then I was like, “Well, I really love all of these characters.” There’s a huge…there’s a bigger story here that I’ve introduced, and I will need more than one book to solve it. And so, from the get-go, I knew the next story after Jess would be Bells because you get into, like, the backstory of the meta-human training and the heroes, league of heroes. And so, I think, overall, just planning a series is really challenging. Some people are great at it, where, you know, they have very detailed outlines, they know, from the very beginning to the very end, what the key points are going to be. And so, as I was writing book 1, I kind of had a panic attack and I was like, “Oh, no, I have to figure out what’s going to happen in each of the books.” And then as I restructured things and then writing book 2 and then 3, it’s kind of come to a point where I’m working on book 4 and now, like, everything that I… One of the reasons why it took me a longer time between book… So “Not Your Villain” came in 2017 and “Not Your Backup” is coming out in 2019. So I didn’t have a book come out last year because I was still working on crafting the storyline because whatever I did or didn’t do in book 3 would determine what would happen in book 4. So everything had to fall into place, and I had to like figure out a lot of stuff. So it was challenging, but I think, you know, it’s still challenging, but that’s part of the joy of writing is to figure out how to tell the story you want to tell. Jeff: If you do a series again, do you think you’ll try to do outlines more in the upfront or now that you’ve had this experience, do you kind of know how to do it and keep your pantser ways going on? C.B.: I don’t know if I’ll ever… Like, I feel like with each book, I’m like, “Oh, do I know how to write a novel now?” But like every book is its own challenge. I do have a better sense of like, okay, you know, how do I plot as a pantser? And then plotting for pantsers, and like learning how to like… For me, I just tend to think of an outline like a road map where I have these destinations I wanna hit, but I’m not committed to – I don’t have to see everything and if I go off track or take a different route, that’s okay as well. So as long as I kind of get the same…like, it’s all in the journey of how I get there, and then the destinations that I pick along the way, if I get to them or not, that’s cool. I kind of have these benchmarks that I want to reach. But I really like thinking of the framework in which I think about my books as a roadmap. So I’ll try to plan out, you know, all the cities I want to visit, but I’m open to discovering places along the way and kind of building up on that. Jeff: How does the pantser sort of method work while you’re world building? Or do you try to, at least, before you start writing, “No. This is my world. This is what’s happened. This is what the U.S. looks like now, and how all that works?” Or does that come organically as you go as well? C.B.: I actually thought like, really early on established the world and what it looked like. I drew a map of which countries were left and which, how, who, what alliances were made in probably much more detail than you’ll ever see in the books because basically I plotted out what happened in that World War III, and what areas were no longer habitable, and all of these things, and all the different lines of, like… I probably spent way too much time figuring out the socio-economic holes, ramifications of which country is now aligned with what country and which countries refuse to join a union or…and they’re all new countries. So there is this whole political backstory of, like, which country fought….you know, which alliance was at war, which alliance and what’s still happening overseas. Some of which you’ll see, but it is the world itself. I’ve always enjoyed world building, and I think it’s really fun to come up with the…I think once I wrote book one where I established, like, how do the powers work. Every power level is different. For example, like the A class, B class, or C class, depending on how…basically, I wanted all the meta-humans in my world to…their powers basically are dependent on…like, they have a limited number of time per day that they can use their powers. So once they’ve used it, then they can’t use it for the next 24-hour period. So it’s a different sort of look at superpowers and abilities because you have to be more mindful about how you use your powers. And so that was an element that I established early on, but overall, I think for me, world building, there are some details I discovered along the way, but I pretty much plotted the world building which is a funny like…and it’s interesting to think about, even though I do consider myself a pantser, how much of this series I did very much envision out from an early stage. So like some of the confrontations and the fight scenes, and the stuff that… I’ve been planning one particular scene in book 3 since book 1, and I didn’t get to do it until… And, so that was like a fun way to be like, “Oh, yes, I’m finally going to like write the scene that I’ve been waiting for.” But I’d had a lot of these moments in my head, and just planning it out and getting the opportunity to like, “Okay, yes. Now, I’m getting to that chapter. I’m getting to the point in the whole series where we’re getting…you know, it’s coming full circle.” So that’s very satisfying. Jeff: It sounds like you’d have a lot of bonus material too if you ever wanted to release it, if all the stuff that you’ve got of the world itself, and the disaster, and how it’s split up. C.B.: Yeah, I mean, potentially, I have a whole timeline that I could release. And then I did these fun… For “Not Your Villain,” I did all the deleted scenes, well, deleted as far as they were cut for length. But I still consider it part of the story, the cannon. So those are an extra that are available on my website. I’ll probably do something similar for Backup, but I’m not at that stage yet. Jeff: Right. It’s good to know about the Villain extras. I’ll be going to check those out. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, they’re fun. They’re all in one PDF. And my book designer, C.B. Macera, was amazing. And she formatted them the same way as the book because we have a lot of extra art as well because she does these amazing, like, chapter headers for each chapter. She’s so talented and amazing designing the covers and the interior of the book, really, you know, capture that feel. And so, “Not Your Villain” actually, in the edits, went from…yeah, it was cut a lot. So, you know, it’s really sad as a writer to kind of see these scenes go, but, you know, as far as, yes, and my editors are great about, like, “This scene is great. But, you know, it kind of slows down the pacing,” or like, “This scene takes us in a different tone or direction, and, like, while they’re great, they don’t fit in the story at that moment and kind of take us away from the main action.” So I understand why they had to go. And, yes, the story is stronger overall, but I like them as an extra. Jeff: Yeah, we’ve all gotten used to those on DVDs over time, so there’s really no reason books can’t have them too. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s a fun extra to have the deleted scenes. Jeff: So you mentioned one more book in the series, the fourth one, is that gonna be it for these heroes? C.B.: Yeah, I can’t say for sure that the door is completely closed. But for this arc, this storyline, that will be the series. It will be completed with Abby’s book. Jeff: We could treat it like the Marvel Universe. Now, if phase 1 is over, and there could be a phase 2 eventually, once you figure out what that is. What got you started in writing? C.B.: I love telling stories. And think I was very young when I tried, like, writing a story for myself. I had an old notebook that I would scribble this adventure story in when I was in sixth grade. And then I’d kind of start and then every recess, I’d pick it up or I’d work on it when I was supposed to be doing homework or stuff in class. And so I’ve always wanted to tell stories. I didn’t really think of it seriously as a career. And then, after college, I went to school for science. And so I was going to get a PhD and do all this stuff, and I, you know, ended up going a different route. And really writing has been a journey where it kind of comes…it ties back to, and I guess like the “Sidekick Squad Series” and the titles were all, you know, the titles are all about, like, hey, I’m not who you think I am, I’m not the person that you’re claiming that I should be or expect me to be. It comes back to where, as a queer woman of color, I didn’t really see a lot of myself in books growing up. And so what I really hoped to write was, like especially when I was writing Sidekick for the first time, I wanted to write a book for my 16-year-old self. So this is the book that I wanted to read. And I wanted it to exist. And so writing…and then I also just like telling stories. So I wanted the story to be fun, I wanted them to be happy and have, you know, there’s drama in them. But overall, I wanted to see kids like myself, and kids who looked like me, and other kids, that reflect the world that we live in because trans kids exist, asexual kids exist, mentally ill kids exist. And there aren’t enough stories where they get to be part of something that’s a superhero adventure, or something fun and fantastic like this. And so I wish that I hope…and I think there are definitely now, in the past, you know, 5, 10 years, there’ve been a lot more stories, and I think that’s great. So I’m just really excited that now people are writing more and more and reading more and more, and there’s a lot of great books to come. Jeff: And one of the things to not…I don’t want to knock the coming out story because those are very important and very needed. But in these books, that’s not really part of it. I mean, this is a much bigger adventure these teenagers are on that just doesn’t revolve around their sexuality so much, that just, there’s so much more going on, which I think is awesome and gives everybody something different to read. C.B.: Yeah, I love that…like, I want us to have the breadth of different types of genres and stories that there are for, like, able-bodied heterosexual people. Like, I want there to be so many stories to choose from. And so, you know…and I really love…I think there’s a lot of power in having joyful stories as well and stories where, yes, sexuality is a part of it, but, you know, who I am is not just my sexuality. Like, every person is multitudes where who you are is made up of so many things like your passions, your dreams, your hopes, your hobbies, your friends. Who you are as a person isn’t just one thing, and we’re all…I love being able to explore that and getting to see… I want people to see that people in the LGBTQ community are like fully nuanced people that get to be complicated and have flaws and go on adventures, or fall in love, or discover more about themselves in the way that all straight people can. Jeff: Well said. I like that for sure. Who were some of your author influences as you got started on your writing journey? C.B.: So I really love the “Harry Potter” series growing up. That’s a huge influence for me. That was one of the first ways I started writing was “Harry Potter” fan fiction because I loved that world so much. And just a lot of…I read so much fantasy like Ursula Le Guin, Diane Duane, Eoin Colfer, like tons of fantasy, Jane Yolen. I started to read a lot more widely. I think when I was a kid, there was a point when I would like go to the YA section and just read like everything in the library. So I would pretty much read everything, but I tended to love fantasy and sci-fi the most. Jeff: Nice, and now you get to write your own. C.B.: Yes. I’m really lucky. Jeff: Is there a genre you want to branch into as you close up the “Sidekick Series?” C.B.: I’m excited to write more fantasy. So the “Sidekick Squad” is more sci-fi, speculative. So I’m working on some fantasy stuff. I’m excited to share it. I have some contemporary stuff. I have a short story coming out next year in the next “All Out” anthology. So that’ll be fun. It’s like a very fluffy high school romance that’s just set in like… The only magic is the friendship and the romance so… Jeff: Aww, sometimes that’s all you need though. C.B.: Yeah, yeah, it’s fun because when I was writing it, I hadn’t written just contemporary in a long time. So that was really fun to try and explore that. Plus, I got to put a lot of puns in there, so it’s all good. Jeff: You seem to travel a lot. I feel like every time I see you on social media, it’s like, “I’m going to this event” or, “Here I am at this event, come see me over here.” What drives you to be out on the road so much? C.B.: So I like the opportunity to see, meet readers. I live in Los Angeles, and I’m really lucky to have the opportunity to go to a lot of events that are fairly local. I also think it’s really important to travel when I have the opportunity to, and I’m lucky that I’ve been able to, and sometimes I will just commit to doing it out of my own pocket because I want to meet readers in those areas. So I love…yeah, I already said it, I love meeting readers. But, especially in places where you don’t get a lot of, you know, LGBTQ resources, or teens don’t necessarily get to see a lot of authors or books with this content come their way and getting to meet teens in, you know, small towns or getting to meet people even though I do a lot of web chats. And so that’s fun chatting with libraries or classrooms through the power of the internet, which is amazing. But, part of being on panels and having these conversations is important to me just because, you know, I get to share with people that might not have heard of my books before or are just learning about it for the first time. And so that’s always a very special moment to me when someone’s like, “Oh my gosh,” like, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I didn’t know it exists, but now I do.” And so that’s very meaningful. And sometimes I get to meet people who have already read the books, and that’s very important to me. And that’s a part of the most rewarding things to me as a writer is knowing that your work has made an impact on someone, whether it’s just making them smile, or, you know, to the depth of having someone like… I’ve cried over several really long emails just because sometimes people are really sweet and talk about like, “Oh, this is my coming out experience”. I want people to see that they’re valid. And so knowing that someone else has read my work and recognize themselves, that’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I was in Seattle recently, earlier this year, and one of the events I did was with the Seattle Public Library where we went to the LGBTQ Youth Center. And that was really powerful just to, like, hang out with kids and chat with them and what are they looking forward to as far as like, “Hey, what’s powerful to me, what’s fun to me?” A lot of this is stuff that I totally resonate with when they connect with a character on TV or are upset that, you know, that character got killed off in one season or whatever, because of TV. But, you know, it’s always great to chat with people. Everyone’s always going through something. Jeff: Yeah, for sure. So we’ve hinted a little bit about some stuff that’s coming up for you. You’re working on Sidekick 4, you’ve got a short story coming out next year, anything else we should know about? C.B.: I’m also writing the new “BEN 10” original graphic novels with BOOM! Studios and Cartoon Network. So one is already out. It’s called “The Truth Is Out There.” It’s where “Ben 10” is part of the Cartoon Network show where Ben can turn into 10 different aliens. So it’s fun. It’s a fun, middle-grade romp. So I’m doing a number of those graphic novels with BOOM! So those will be available throughout…I can’t recall the dates off the top of my head, but another one is coming out in July, and then one more in October of this year and then the next year, there will be some more coming as well. Jeff: What’s it like writing for graphic novel because, I mean, that’s a different sort of animal, a novel that, you know, is 60,000 or 70,000 words long? C.B.: It was definitely a new experience. It was a lot of fun trying a different medium. Like, definitely writing a script goes differently as far as…and I catch myself like “Oh, I’m being too descriptive. This is literally…the only person who will see this is the artist.” And it’s also a great collaborative process. So it’s really fun to work with the artists and editors and bring together this story that exists in its own medium. It’s not just me, the writer, but what the artist is bringing, and collaborating with them, and getting to like…you know, I’ll write the dialogue and the action. And then they’ll imagine it in a certain way of like, “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” and that’s really fun. I really like the graphic novel format. I’m hoping to do more. I’m really excited to be working on these projects. And, yeah, hopefully, I’ll be able to share more upcoming projects. Jeff: Pretty cool. And speaking of, what is the best way for people to keep up with you online? C.B.: You can always find me on Twitter and Instagram at, C-B-L-E-E_C-B-L-E-E, because it’s double the trouble. My website is cb-lee.com, and then you can find more links to other ways you can connect with me. Usually Twitter and Instagram, where you can find me the most – that’s where you can connect with me. So in my website, it has like fun stuff. I try to update it with writing resources and my upcoming events. And I also have a newsletter, which will have some special tidbits probably like the deleted scenes, which is the very first place I offered the “Not Your Villain” extra scenes. Jeff: Pretty cool. Well, C.B., thank you so much for hanging out with us. We wish you all the success with “Not Your Backup” when it comes out on June 4th. C.B.: Thank you so much for having me. And I really appreciate it. I’m so excited. And I hope everyone enjoys the book. Book Reviews Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: A Lover’s Game by Max Walker, narrated by Greg Boudreaux. Reviewed by Jeff I was so happy that this fourth book in Max’s Stonewall Investigations series released in audio just a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the final installment of the series and I was not disappointed. The series has been working up to the final showdown between private investigator Zane Holden and the Unicorn Killer. The Unicorn has loomed large over the series–a serial killer that terrorizes the gay community in NYC. The killer’s gone after partnered gay men and Zane’s husband was aomng the victims. In the first book we find out the Unicorn’s returned and now in the fourth one Zane’s obsessed with bringing the reign of terror to an end. At the same time, Zane is preparing for his wedding to Enzo, the defense attorney who captured his heart in that first book. Unfortunately, Zane is so occupied with the case, he’s missing things, like cake testing and venue selection, and he hasn’t told Enzo that he’s even back on it. Zane thinks he’s protecting Enzo by keeping his activities a secret, but Enzo feels it puts him more in danger not knowing. And boy does everything hurtle towards a massive, satisfying conclusion. Max had me super stressed in this installment. He always does a great job of creating suspense. Here though I suspected everything. Is the Uber driver a killer? Is that bottle of wine spiked with something? What does it mean that someone looked at them on the street? Is the person providing information or misinformation? I suspected everything and also never figured out who the Unicorn was ahead of the reveal. I love that! While Zane and Enzo have been featured in the middle two books of the series, it was great to see them returning to the spotlight. Their dynamic as the move towards their wedding date was wonderful to watch. The quiet, sexy moments they share along with their wedding planning and time they spend with Enzo’s family shows their strong relationship and amazing friends. And, man, are there some super sexy times in this book. There’s always steamy scenes in this series, but these were the best yet. Max contrasts these happy times with how they handle the increasing threats–they want to be strong for each other and also do what’s necessary to keep the other safe. They find it’s hard to maintain the balance and that only increases the tension. I both hated and loved what Max put them through because it was so realistic. Is it weird to say that I liked the terrible choices were made? Despite being great at their jobs, Zane and Enzo sometimes do things that are terrible choices and what makes those so good in the story is that I could see myself doing the same thing. These two are flawed and make bad decisions like anyone can. It makes them human. It makes you scream at them to not do something. It makes you cheer when it all works out too. Kudos to Greg Boudreaux. He’s done a great job with this series overall but I have to shoutout his work voicing the Unicorn. It’s a creep, calm yet evil voice that made me shudder. The spin off for Stonewall Investigations Miami is set up here too. That first book, Bad Idea, just released last week and I can’t wait to pick it up as soon as there’s an audio version.

Jeff discusses a deleted scene he’s offering this week from his upcoming book Netminder (Codename: Winger #4). He also recommends The Queer Creative Podcast. Will and Jeff discuss the second season of Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power as well as Pose, which has just arrived on Netflix ahead of the new season coming to FX in June. Jeff reviews Queer as a Five Dollar Bill by Lee Wind. Gail Carriger talks to Jeff about her new novel, The Fifth Gender and some of the interesting stories about its creation. They also talk about how Gail went from archeology to writing romance, her process for world building and her travel podcast called The 20 Minute Delay. Complete shownotes for episode 189 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. This interview transcript is sponsored by Dreamspinner PressDreamspinner Press is proud to publish Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth’s new book Murder Most Lovely. Check it out, and all the new mystery and suspense titles from your favorite authors like Amy Lane, KC Wells, Tara Lain, and Rhys Ford, just to name a few, and find a new favorite author while you’re at it. Go to dreamspinnerpress.com for everything you want in gay romance. Jeff: Welcome, Gail, to the podcast. Gail: Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here. Jeff: I’m so glad we finally got you on the show because I’ve been, you know, reading since back with “The Sumage Solution” and it’s like, “We gotta get Gail on. We need to get Gail on.” Gail: I am delighted. I am a devoted listener and so I’m quite honored to finally get to be here. It’s great. Jeff: And you’ve got a book coming out or you’ve just had a book come out actually, “The 5th Gender” just released. Gail: I did. Yes, “The 5th Gender,” it’s my like crazy, ridiculous, silly, happy yet cozy murder mystery on a space station with an alien with five genders and tentacles and purple. Jeff: You don’t often get cozy mystery space station together in one package. Gail: It is…it’s great. It was totally one of those spontaneous, I had like a strange thought/dream/idea to do this. And a bunch of us were joking on Twitter about the craziest mashups of genres we could come up with and somebody was like, “Barbarian noir,” and so on and so forth. And I was like, “Well, I wanna do space station, cozy mystery.” And then I started thinking about it and then it happened. Then I was like, “Oh, okay, I’ll write it, I’ll write it.” I was supposed to be writing something else, of course. But sometimes I succumb to the lure of the ooh, shiny. Jeff: And it was a purple shiny too. So how could you resist that? Gail: I could not. And he’s adorable, the alien character. And I, you know, I have a background as an anthropologist. I have an archaeology…couple of archaeology degrees. And so I just love the way if you’re doing an alien character, you can comment on human social structures and culture and interactions. And so I might’ve had a little too much fun with that. Jeff: Well I was actually gonna get into that. I’ll hold that. Because we should at least tell folks, because I want to talk a little bit more about the origin story on this because you wrote about it. So just like, “I had this idea in the middle of the night, and then I tweeted it, and then it was a story,” which I love, but then there’s the fact that you went away to a retreat and worked on it and had to talk to other people about it while you were writing it. Gail: Yes. So for those…I should preface this by saying that for those who don’t know, I have two names I write under. So I write under Gail Carriger and I write under G. L. Carriger and the G. L. stuff has a much higher heat level. So it’s super sexy. And this book, “The 5th Gender” is a G. L. book. So warning for anybody who doesn’t like nooky because one of the things I realized through the course of that particular writing retreat was that if you’re writing about a species with five genders, human curiosity wants to follow them into the bedroom to see what it’s like down there. And so I thought about trying to kind of clean it up a little bit and it just…it didn’t work. So I was like, “Okay, we are going into that realm.” So I was supposed to go on this retreat and write something else entirely, and instead I just spent the entire week writing this book. And one of the funniest stories from that was me being like, “Oh shoot, what does alien jizz taste like?” Because we all know, at least we do if we’ve been reading my San Andreas Shifter series that wizard or mage jizz is fizzy and werewolf is spicy. And I was like, “Well, what do aliens taste like?” And this meant that I literally had to go and you’re never…on a retreat, you’re never supposed to disturb the cooks in the kitchen. But I was like, “If there was ever a question for cooks, this is it.” There is a crazy author running into the kitchen in the middle of them making shepherd’s pie and being like, “Oh, you guys, what does alien jizz taste like? Debate.” So we had a long debate about it and we finally decided, and you’ll have to read the book to find out. Jeff: Yeah, I wasn’t gonna ask you to spoil that, but I do have to know what exactly did the cooks make of this question? Gail: The cooks were quite game actually. I think they were pretty charmed because normally like they’re doing their art form and we’re doing our art form and never the twain shall meet until meal times. So it’s really rare for one of the authors to actually want the cooks’ help on something. So I think they were kind of pleased to be asked. Jeff: That’s very cool because some of them might have been like, “I’m sorry, what?” Gail: Oh, they know what I write. We’ve been going for a long time with the same cooks for a while, so. Jeff: So this group knew you so they weren’t necessarily surprised by… Gail: No. Well, it was a little out of the blue. I haven’t been writing the super sexy stuff for very long. Like normally my questions are like, “What’s the most ridiculously named, you know, Victorian dessert you can think of,” kind of thing. But yes, it was a little different from my usual questions. Jeff: And tell us what this book is about, this cozy mystery on a space station. Gail: Well, the tagline is an alien race with no word for murder has a murderer aboard their spaceship. And essentially the galoi are the aliens in question. And they are these purple…they’re these adorable sort of purple tentacled kind of, you know, High Elf, slightly looking alien creatures. And they are super isolationist. And the only thing that humans know about them is occasionally they will kick one of their genders. It’s always as one of the examples of the fourth or fifth genders and they’re kicked off and they’re in exile, and those galoi, which is the name of this alien race, go and live amongst humans. And humans actually adore them because they think they’re like sweet and cute and adorable. And they have no…they’re pure exiles. So they have no national allegiance, they have no planetary allegiance. And so they make really great attaches. They’re kind of really kind of comforting and lots of different alien races like to be around them. So they often become attaches to like ambassadors and stuff. So a lot of space stations….space stations consider it really lucky if they get one of these. And the main character, Tristol, he’s one of these aliens and he has a mad crush on the human security chief/detective that’s onboard the space station named Dre. But he doesn’t really get kind of like human flirtation and courting rituals. So he’s sort of…the book sort of starts with Tristol trying to figure out what cats are and why you would wanna keep them as a pet because he’s been asked by some human friends to cat sit. And then, of course, the cat escapes and hijinks ensue on the space station because what happens when the cat gets into zero gravity. Nobody wants to find that out. Anyway, and then the galoi are like super xenophobic, so they never reach out to humans. And then suddenly a galoi ship approaches his space station, which is crazy in many, many ways because they shouldn’t be approaching a space station that has an exile aboard it and they never talk to humans anyway. And they have this incredibly complicated non-pronoun language that kind of indicates status and has to do with all of these different genders. And so the humans are kind of panicking and freaking out. They don’t want a war. They don’t know what’s going on. And the spaceship basically says, you know, “We have a murdered galoi and we don’t know what to do. We don’t have security, we don’t have murder investigations. We don’t. So we came to you, violent humans, to figure this out for us.” And of course Dre, the human love interest is the detective. So he and Tristol have to team up because he needs Tristol’s help to explain how the galoi work. And so the two of them gonna figure out who done it and that’s basically it in a very large nutshell. Jeff: How did you go about creating the galoi? I mean, five genders, no term for murder. There’s like so many things that kind of click into this. Is there like…? Gail: I just, so like I said, I have an anthropology background. I mean, archaeology is blank, so obviously the biology and skeletal structures and things is what I mostly studied via anthropology, but you get a lot of like gender studies and cultural representations of gender and all that sort of thing as part of an education in the United States if you do an archaeology degree. And so it’s always been super, super fascinating to me. I have a minor in classical mythology with a focus on gender. It’s just something that has interested me. It’s really hard to tease out in the archaeological record. It’s prone to misinterpretation by archaeologists and historians and anthropologists. So there’s a sort of storied history with our own relationship from a scientific perspective with understanding gender. And so I just took a lot of that both kind of my education and, you know, how the world now is changing. I spent far too much time on Tumblr, so I have a lot of like non-binary and gender fluid and gender queer fans. And so I’ve just been kind of reaching out to friends and acquaintances. One of my best friends in the world is a bioethicist and a medical ethicist. And so she deals with training doctors in how to talk to people appropriately about gender. And so I’ve had all this sort of stuff messing about, and I was like, “Well, a way for me to explore this and have this kind of conversation with myself and the world is through an alien lens.” And so I just…I love thought experiments, and I was like, “So what if we have a race with five different genders and how would their language evolve? How would their culture evolve? How would they treat each other?” Like all of these, you know, archaeological things to think or anthropological things to think about. And then how would humans, even future humans, react when encountering that? And so that’s kind of where the conception started. And then I just made them purple because I like purple. Jeff: Why not? I’m a big purple fan too. Was there a lot of research kind of building this? Gail: Yeah. I actually have multiple blog posts that either I’m releasing them right now or I’ve just released them recently, speaking from the past into the future. But I have a bunch of blog posts about like a bunch of the research that I did and like some book recommendations and stuff like that, both from a fictional perspective and a nonfictional perspective and different blogs and stuff like that. But I like that. I like researching a lot. I try not to rabbit hole too much because the point is to write the actual book. So mostly what I did is I did that intensive week where I sort of just vomited forth this whole book. And then I went back and like teased it apart and looked into different…almost as…I almost treated it a little bit as if it were a nonfiction piece to go back and see what sources do I need to look up, what like different pronoun terms might be being used in hundreds of years, you know, by humans. That sort of thing. And it’s…since both the humans involved… I try to be complex in my races, whether they’re werewolves or aliens in that like…and to not either dystopian or utopianise either race, either humans or aliens. So both races still have issues. Both are still dealing with how the cultures have evolved and all of that sort of thing. So I’m not setting the galoi up as like the perfect model of a possible future. They have a different evolution, a different model. And they’re merely a vehicle for which we can examine perhaps some of our own biases and prejudices now. And that’s getting very, very serious because mostly what I want my books to do is make you happy and cheerful and be excited, delighted. And if it makes you think a little, that’s great. But really I just want to make everybody happy and hopefully Tristol will do that because he’s delightful. I love him. Jeff: What kind of, I guess, beta reading did you do to see how your various fans handle the gender discussion? Gail: Well, I have trans and gender queer and gender bending characters already, both in my main universe and in my traditionally-published books and in all of my…like my independent and my self-published works and in my novellas and stuff. Some of the main characters, some of them side characters. And so I know that they’re open to it, and I also know that the one that, you know, for lack of a better term, I have like a queer-centered, progressive kind of comfort food brand or business model or whatever, however you wanna explain it. And so I feel like most of my super fans are gonna be excited because what they want from me is that comfort, is that sort of upbeat, fun, slightly fluffy, slightly thoughtful, but ultimately, you know, everything’s gonna be all right. I’m never gonna depress you. There’s never gonna be like scenes of torture. It’s never gonna be angsty, you know, all of those things. It’s always gonna be delicious, I guess. Jeff: I like that as a term for a book. That’s just really fun. Gail: Yeah. It’s just gonna be tasty. Yeah. So they know that and that’s the part that they trust and generally I feel like they’re pretty open minded about how I’m gonna go there and explore that. I don’t think I would’ve done this book, you know, five or six years ago because I wasn’t sure. I had to kind of test the waters with the San Andreas books and some of the other stuff. But I think they’re pretty open to it. I don’t know. You never know. We’ll see how everybody reacts. Yeah, so I mean, and I have beta readers and some of them have read it. I was more careful with this book in making sure that like I had sensitivity, what I call delicacy readers. So people within kind of the gender nonconforming community, again, for lack of a better term. That was more important to me really. I don’t wanna offend, although, you know, everybody’s opinion is their own and everyone is entitled to it. So I’m sure if you come to any book with the idea of being offended, you’re probably going to be unfortunately. So, but I did put essentially a naked purple dude on the cover as a kind of like, “Be aware, there’s gonna be sex in this book. We’re gonna go there. We’re gonna go far out there.” Jeff: It’s cozy with sex and it’s funny and it’s sci-fi. It’s got a little bit of everything in it. Gail: Exactly. Jeff: Do you think you’ll revisit this later as like as a continuing series? Gail: I’d love to. Actually, I have another murder mystery and like I don’t consider myself like a mystery writer at all, but I have this thing as a writer where I don’t write a book until I’ve had what I call the epiphany, which is I need to actually see a scene with characters in dialogue. And it might not necessarily be the first scene or whatever, but until I see that I have that crystal moment, I don’t feel like I can write the book. So I have a lot of books that I’d like to write, but I’ve never had the epiphany with. So they’re just sort of sitting there. And I’ve had an epiphany for a second book in this series with Dre investigating another murder and Tristol still there and everything. But I don’t know how people will receive this one, so I don’t know if I will write that one, but it’s definitely there percolating already. So it’s a possibility. Jeff: It’s a possibility. Gail: Yeah. And the universe on the whole, because it is a science fiction universe, actually does have another, of all things, young adult series that’s set at it that’s kind of been on the back burner for a really long time which kind of has nothing really to do with this series except that the same conceits in terms of faster than light travel. And human…like colonization and planetary evolution are the same. And there’s like a couple of crossover alien races, but that’s about it. But it is the same sort of basic far future. Jeff: If you’ve got the universe, you might as well keep using it. So you don’t have to just keep reinventing the wheel. Gail: Precisely. Yes. That’s my feeling. Jeff: What do you hope readers take away from this romp? Gail: Well, like usual, I just want them to be like… My favorite thing is somebody writes to me and says, “You either humiliated me because I was laughing loudly on public transport,” and I’m like, “Yes.” “You kept me up all night.” “Yes.” Or, “You just left me with a big smile.” So that’s really what I genuinely want is a big smile on people’s faces. But it would be nice if people who read it thought a little bit about…a bit more about gender and how we intimately link biological sex with gender and that perhaps that’s not necessarily the…I don’t know, ethical thing to do – that perhaps gender is in fact a social construct. Or cultural construct. It’s something that anthropologists just accept. Like if you’re an anthropologist, you just accept that as a fact. Like we know, we have seen all of these different ancient and modern races or cultures with varying different interpretations of genders and it just…I don’t think it would ever occur to an anthropologist to like not be like, “Yes, gender is cultural,” but it seems that in the world today that isn’t an accepted principle. And so I guess, if anything, I want people to kind of get it, to maybe think a little bit about pronoun use and all that sort of stuff, I guess. Jeff: Now, as both Gail and G. L., you run across a lot of genres. You’ve got your urban fantasy, you’ve got some paranormal. Now you’ve got cozy mysteries in space. Comedy definitely cuts across all of them. Is there a genre you like most? Gail: I would say I have wheelhouses more than anything else. So there’s a podcast called “Reading Glasses” that talks about as readers we tend to have wheelhouses and if you read heavily in romance, you define those often as tropes. You know, like, “I like the enemies to lover,” or whatever. But a wheelhouse kind of has other things. So, and I would say that there are definitely wheelhouses I gravitate to. So I always write the heroine’s journey. I never write the hero’s journey regardless… Again, this is the gender thing, right? Regardless of the biological sex or stated gender of my main character, they’re always heroines’ journeys because a heroine’s journey, it doesn’t matter who’s undertaking it. So I would say that is one of my things. I always do ‘found family’, and I realized recently I had this big revelation that one of the reasons I strongly gravitate to reading gay romance in particular is because found family is a really popular trope within gay romance for obvious reasons because if you come to the queer community, it’s usually partly found family that brings you there because real family rejected you, at least often did when I was younger. So yeah, and I just love that as a trope, for lack of a better word. And so I have found family in my books all the time. I tend to have extremely strong female main characters except when I’m writing gay romance, of course. Yeah, and lots of queer. I was thinking recently that a slogan I really embrace would be queer comfort because I feel like that’s kind of in all of my books even the books that have heterosexual main couples. It’s really hard. At this juncture, I guess you could say that I trust my readers enough to relax and just write what moves me. I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t think at least some of them would enjoy it. I mean, what a privilege and kind of a blessing and a joy to get to do that. But it has been 10 years. So it did take a while. Jeff: And you mentioned that you’re not known for mystery, certainly. So you’ve taken this turn now to at least explore it once. Are there other things out there like, going after and trying to write a mystery, that are still things you want to do, things you’re looking at towards the future? Gail: Absolutely. There’s always… Like I adore high fantasy. Obviously, I’m really into world building. And so like I have a young adult high fantasy. It’s actually techno fantasy, kind of like the Pern books or “Darkover.” And so, you know, I’d like to do that. There’s a bunch of stuff that I kind of am excited and interested, and I’m a pretty voracious and pretty wide reader. So I think that makes you, generally speaking, a relatively wide writer. I think it’s unlikely I would ever break the trust contract that I have with my reader base and write anything dark. I certainly would never write anything gritty or gruesome. I don’t like to read that, so I’d never write it. And I think I’m out of my dark phase now that I have left high school. I don’t do the really kind of dark or angsty stuff. I was thinking about contemporary recently actually. And I don’t think I could write contemporary. The moment I start to think about writing something that’s just a contemporary romance or like women’s lit or even something, you know, Heaven forfend, like proper lit fic, it immediately just goes fantastical. I can’t, I have to inject. And if I were to describe myself as anything, it is, you know, science fiction and fantasy rooted, I like the world building a lot. And so I think it’s unlikely that I’ll ever write something that doesn’t have at least that as part of the component. Jeff: So how did you go from studying archaeology and getting these degrees to now becoming full-time author, writing all these books? What was that path? Gail: Oh my goodness. So I’ve two master’s degrees and I was working on my PhD and I always thought I would be an academic. I genuinely love archaeology. I’m one of those incredibly lucky people who left one career that she adored for another career that she adored. So, you know, tragedy of choice. And I was about to do my defense and I was about two years out which would have been my thesis years finishing my PhD. And I always wrote. I just grew up on what essentially amounted to kind of like a hippie commune kind of thing, and surrounded by artists. And the only thing I had learned really from that is that artists never make any money. And so being an author was really a bad idea. So I was like, “Okay, I’ll be an academic because, ooh, profitable.” At least it’s quasi reliable, right? But I always wrote, I just had that need. It’s kind of like breathing or something. And I figure if I write, I might as well submit. And so I was submitting, writing and submitting. And then I wrote “Soulless” as kind of a challenge to myself. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have a propensity for rewriting things over and over and over a million times and never actually finishing anything. And so “Soulless” was like, “You will take six months, you will write this weird book.” This was during the paranormal romance and urban fantasy bubble of the late ’90s, early 2000s. And I was like, what I really want from…I want a bunch of things, right? I want women to write funny stuff in genre, commercial genre. And that’s pretty rare. Most of the writers I knew who wrote funny stuff were like Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Jasper Fforde, like a bunch of dudes. And I was like, “Where are my ladies writing funny? Where’s my urban fantasy set in a historical time period?” You know, I wanted all of these things and nobody was writing it. And finally I was like, “Well, that means I have to.” Jeff: Take the challenge. Gail: Take the challenge. And I really did write it as a challenge. And “Soulless” is a mashup. It tends to be what I write, obviously. I mean, I’m here talking about, you know, space, cozy mystery romance. So I obviously like mashing up things. And so “Soulless” is steampunk, urban fantasy, comedy of manners, romance. It’s a bunch of these different things. And I was like, no one will buy this because I had been in and out of the publishing industry and submitting short stories and I was like, “This…it doesn’t have a place in the market. There’s no shelf it sits on, like, no one’s gonna buy this. But I wrote it so I might as well send it out.” And I had one of those slush pile telephone calls from New York where they like…within a month somebody wanted to buy my silly little bit of fluff. And I was like, “No, you’re joking.” And so “Soulless” was a slow burn. It hit the market and it was really word of mouth. The librarians and the independent bookstores were like behind me 110%. They just loved this crazy little book. And I think it was mostly the funny, but you know, super strong heroine and, you know, like gruff, overly emotional werewolves and queer characters from the get go. And it just appealed to, you know, a kind of segment of society. So I was right about to do my defense when “Changeless,” my second book, hit the hit The New York Times and that kind of seed changed everything. It changed marketing, it changed how much money New York was willing to offer me and my partner at the time was like, “I make enough money to support us. Why don’t you see if this…why don’t you take a break from academia and see if this writing thing works?” And I did and I haven’t been back. Jeff: Well done. Ten years on. Gail: Yeah, a lot of it’s serendipity. And a lot of it is good friends. And then a lot of it was also like, I am super…I’m an archaeologist. Archaeologists are like the organizers of anthropology departments. You know, we’re logistics, we get large groups of people into foreign lands and then make them shovel dirt around, you know. We feed them and house them and blah, blah, blah. You know, we’re big on spreadsheets and organizing. So I already had that kind of part of my personality that I think not a lot of authors have. And so when I was successful, I was ready to be like, “Okay, let’s figure out how many books I can write in a year. Let’s figure out, you know, like… I like trad, but maybe this independent publishing thing is interesting. Let me go research that and experiment with that. You know, let’s try this thing.” I’ve always been like that. Even with my traditional publishers, like they would be like, “You sell really good in eBooks.” And I was like, “That’s because I have romance readers.” And they were like, “How do you feel about maybe doing this strange BookBub thing?” And I was like, “I think that’s a great idea. Why don’t we do that?” You know, it’s like I am game. So I think that has also helped is I’ve always been willing to take a risk, partly because I have a safety net. It’s like I can always go back to being an archaeologist. That’s fun too. Jeff: What’s your overall process? I mean, it sounded like, if I understood from our “The 5th Gender” discussion, it almost sounded like you did the first draft of that book at the retreat. Gail: Yeah. I work really well, it turns out, in a competitive environment. I didn’t realize, but if…I really am one of those writers who I’m social in terms of I like to sit across from somebody at a cafe and just type and just the act of having another writer or a bunch of writers around me also typing is really helpful to me. And part of it is kind of looking over and being like, “How many words have you done? Oh shoot.” And then just typing some more, you know. But yeah, so I do this one retreat every year and I know I can do 40,000 words at that retreat, which is either one novella or most of one of the G. L. books. So I usually sort of get prepared ahead of time with that preparation is writing the first 10,000 or just get…I’m an outliner, so I’ll get all the outline ready. I’ll get all the world building ready. And once I hit the ground there, I can just turn out a bunch of words and that’s great. I try to do a couple of other kind of long weekend baby retreats. I’d love to find other week-long retreats. But the style that I like is pretty rare. And the style that I like is just a bunch of writers writing and no workshops or critiques or anything. So I do that and then most of the rest of the time I am not somebody who can handle multiple projects. I learned that about myself the hard way. So I have to be working on one book and then close that book out and then move to another one. And so if it’s an independent project, what I’ll often do, so if it’s something that I’m gonna be self-publishing, I’ll often write the whole thing on a retreat or over the course of a couple of months. And then just put it to bed and then focus on incoming copy edits or a proof pass or writing a completely different project, and let it sleep if I can. I find that that marination really helps. And then I’ll go back and do a reread. And I’m a multiple editor. I think a lot of comic writers have to be because I do passes for like different kinds of comedy. So I’ll do like a word play pass and then I’ll do a sort of a slap stick pass. And then I’ll do like rule of three descriptive passes to try and get as much different kinds of humor back into a book as possible. And so, and then I have an alpha reader or two and they read before it goes either into my New York editor or off to my beta readers. And then I actually hire and use a developmental editor for my independent stuff as well probably because that tends to lean more romantic. And when I first started writing it, I didn’t really think of myself as a romance author. So I wanted to make sure that I was getting kind of the beats right for romance. So I have an editor who specializes actually in gay romance, who reads all of my romances and gives me feedback. And then it goes to beta readers for the Parasol-verse in particular because they’re like, they’re 25 books in that universe and there’s lots of crossover characters. So most of my beta readers are actually just super fans who are obsessed with the universe and have written me like either critical letters about mistakes that I made in terms of like getting character names wrong or eye colors or something. And usually I’ll be like, “You, would you be interested in being a beta reader?” Jeff: Right. Put those people to work. Gail: Exactly. I was like, “If you’re going to do this anyway, how would you like to get everything ahead of time?” And I give them lots of extra perks as well, special editions and stuff. Yeah, so it’s quite a process at this point. But my beta readers are killer. I’ve got just a team of four now and they’re really fast and great. I love them. And then I have a couple of awesome copy editors that I use and then a proof. The Parasol-verse gets a woman named Shelley Adina, who’s a fantastic steampunk author in her own right and a regency and who’s really, really good on the Victorian era. So it gets a world – like historical proofing basically. And then I have a formatter. I’m a big fan of finding people who are really good at what they do and hiring them to do it for me. Like I could change my own oil, I’m sure, but I’d really rather find a good mechanic, you know. And that’s how I feel about the book world as well. So I have a fantastic cover art designer I love working with and I just got to put my team in place and then hope that no one gets sick. Jeff: Right. That’s the key. Nobody can get sick. Not right now. Gail: Nobody get sick. Nobody can leave me. Very floored when that happens. Jeff: So you mentioned that you read a pretty broad swath of stuff. What are you reading right now that you’re loving? Gail: So I just did a reread on Amy Lane’s “A Fool and His Manny,” which because it got nominated for the RITA award and it was one of the few that did that was queer. So I had read it before, I just did a reread on that and I still love it. It’s very cute, and I love Amy. Amy’s one of the nicest human beings in the world. So that was really fun to redo. And I’m a huge fan of Mary Calmes. I don’t know how to say her last name. Jeff: You actually got it right. Gail: Did I? Jeff: You did. Gail: Oh, good. Yes. I will read… Pretty much she’s an auto buy for me. I just find…I know that there are tropes in place that…but I just find her stuff really…she’s a comfort read for me and as somebody who writes what I hope is comforting for others, like I’m always hunting for authors that give me that same sensation. One of my like constant of all things, comfort, reread rotation is Alexis Hall’s “For Real,” which is a fantastic BDSM, but it’s just like, I don’t know what, the writing is so good. And I will reread R. Cooper until the cows come home, the “Being(s) in Love Series,” which I really, really adore. So, which is an urban fantasy basically. Jeff: So you’re a podcaster also on top of all this other stuff. Gail: I am. I know. That is like completely not connected to anything, side project. Jeff: Well, I’m looking at you, I’m reading the website, getting to know kind of what I wanna ask about. I’m like, “A podcast? Wow. Okay.” And it’s about travel hacks called “The 20 Minute Delay.” How did this come about? Gail: So one of the things that happened to me in the course of this career is I went from being an archaeologist, I traveled a lot as an archaeologist, to being an author where it turns out I travel like five times as much. When I was booked, where I’m regularly, I was doing two book tours a year at least. And that was not counting all of the conventions and stuff I was doing. And a book tour is like 10 cities in 10 days. I mean, it’s crazy traveling. So I turned into a frequent traveler and I’m an organizer and I like to hack things and figure out the most efficient way to do everything possible. And I realized I was doing that with travel. And there are two things that I can talk…well, there are three things that I could talk about, books that I love, like literally until the cows come home, food that I love to eat, and travel hacks. And then I met my friend Piper. And Piper has a day job that has her traveling 80% of the time. And she has, if possible, more travel hacks than I do. I was basically like, “Piper, let’s do a podcast. It’ll just be like 20 to 30 minutes and we will just get on and we will chat about a place that we’ve been recently, and some like delicate matter of etiquette when traveling, like whether you recline your seat or not and how you deal with that,” or recently we did a really good one actually on rental cars. I don’t rent a car that often, but Piper does all the time. And she had some awesome tips for like how to get the best rental car and, you know, what apps to use and all that sort of stuff. And then we do a little gadget where we’re just like, we test a gadget, like a new neck pillow or something and then we talk about, you know, what is that little gadget thing. And sometimes it’s just like, I like the snacky bags. Like you should always have at least two plastic snacky bags with you because they just always come in useful. So sometimes it’s a gadget like that, but we have a really, really good time. And I’m a voracious podcast listener. Like when we started, I’m a fan of this show. So I figured, generally speaking, you eventually become a podcaster if you are a big fan of listening to them. Jeff: That’s probably true. And I think for any of our listeners who are, you know, thinking about, you know, their trips to GRL come October, start listening to “The 20 Minute Delay” now to get all your travel situation put together. Gail: Because Piper and I are both authors, like we don’t…we try to couch our tips as much as possible in terms of anybody can use it. But we are both women. We are women who travel alone and we are both authors. So we will tackle things like how to travel with a bunch of books, like how to fly with 50 bucks or what have you. And we also talk about like safety when you’re staying in a hotel by yourself and that sort of thing. Jeff: So what’s coming up for you next this year with the writing? We’ve got “The 5th Gender” out, what’s coming next? Gail: Next, I have the final book in my Custard Protocol series coming out, which is “Reticence.” And that’s book four of the Custard Protocol that comes out at the beginning of August. And that’s actually rounding out the series in the Parasol-verse for a little while, my steampunk universe. I’m not ruling out doing another series in that universe, but I think I’m gonna take a little break. And I’m on proposal for a new Young Adult series. So who knows? It’s traditional, so it could take forever, could suddenly happen. You never know. And then in October I have a special collector’s edition coming out from Subterranean Press called “Fan Service,” which is for my super fans, which has my 2 supernatural society novellas bundled together with an exclusive short story that’s a hardcover fit, super fancy addition that there’s only gonna be 526 of those printed. And so that’s my October release. It’s so pretty. They can be very pretty covers, Subterranean. Jeff: That’s cool. And what’s the best way for folks to keep up with you online so they can keep track of all this? Gail: Well, in addition to everything else, so in case anybody’s in any doubt, I kind of have no life. I just did…this is like what I…like, I listen to podcasts, I read, and I play online, and occasionally I write, you know, because that’s my job. So I am on all the things online. I genuinely like social media. I know. I know, it’s crazy, but you can pretty much find me on any platform that you like. If you google Gail Carriger and then the name of the platform, I will probably pop up. And I try to use the platform in the way that it’s best suited. So, you know, there are pretty pictures on Instagram and there are lots of pinned gorgeous dresses on Pinterest and historical dresses and crazy aliens. And then I also have a newsletter. The newsletter is definitely for super fans. So it’s very chatty and it’s full of like sneak peeks as to what I’m actually writing and not talking about online yet. And I do freebies and giveaways and stuff there. Jeff: We’re going to link to all that good stuff in the show notes, of course, so people can find it easily. Gail, thanks so much for hanging out. It has been so much fun. Gail: Oh, it’s been a real pleasure. I can’t say how delighted I am to be on and I can’t wait to listen to this from the other side.

Jeff talks about the upcoming release of Netminder (Codename: Winger #4) and a blog post he’s written that talks about the impact the series has had on one reader. The guys also talk about the FX series Fosse/Verdon. Jeff reviews With A Kick Collection #2 by Clare London with narration by Joel Leslie and The Whispers by Greg Howard with narration by Kivlighan de Montebello. Will reviews American Fairytale by Adriana Herrera. Jeff & Will interview Adriana about the Dreamers series, including the soon to be released American Fairytale. Adriana also discusses the food that goes into her books, writing diverse characters, how her job as a social worker plays into American Fairytale and what’s coming up next in the Dreamer series. Complete shownotes for episode 188 along with a transcript of the interview are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Here’s the text of this week’s book reviews: With A Kick Collection #2 by Clare London, narrated by Joel Leslie. Reviewed by Jeff.Back in episode 144 I reviewed the audiobook of the first With A Kick collection. Now with collection two, once again the writing of Clare London combines with the narration of Joel Leslie to make a super awesome experience. We’ve got two stories in this collection–Pluck and Play and Double Scoop. In Pluck and Play delivery person Curtis is saved from a homophobic attack by cowboy/singer Riley. It’s an interesting meet cute since moments after Riley dispatches the attacker, he and Curtis fall into some delightful banter. Once they meet, they continually run into each other. Riley occasionally performs on the sidewalk across the street from the With A Kick ice cream shop, which is where Curtis often makes deliveries and hangs out with his friends who run the shop. The difficulty for Curtis and Riley–and I love how Clare handles this–is that they have to decide if the thing between them is just a one-off bit of fun or something more. Riley’s supposed to go back to the States eventually, plus he’s got issues going on with his family. Meanwhile, Curtis is hesitant to let anyone get close to him again after his last relationship was so disastrous. Clare does a wonderful job of finding the moments of tenderness for Curtis and Riley while also dealing with their troubles. I think I’ve developed a thing recently for the bodyguard trope. Riley has a protector streak that I loved so so much. As soon as he finds out what Curtis’s ex is up to, he wants to put a stop to it. The same can be said to for Curtis because he wants to help Riley deal with his family. It’s so clear these two are meant to be together and once they figure how to get out of their own way–and take care of their pasts–to get their happily ever after to they are golden. With Double Scoop, Clare has written my favorite of the With A Kick stories. This one centers on shop owners Patrick and Lee. As the story opens an explosion rocks the shop, injuring Lee and leaving Patrick in a fit of concern for his friend and their business. These two have had an ongoing business and flirty relationship through the series and now they get their moment in the spotlight. Patrick, as the slightly older one, can’t imagine why the younger Lee would be interested in him. He doesn’t feel particularly accomplished, despite the business, or particularly attractive. Lee, however, knows exactly what he wants and keeps going for it even though Patrick doesn’t make easy for Lee to get and stay close. Clare toys with them and the reader in the most delicious way–bringing them together and then causing a rift. It made for a fun yet tense read going back and forth. Luckily the amazing cast of characters that Claire has developed over the series come together to help get the shop reopen and bring the two men together. Their friends know what’s best for them even if they can’t figure out how to make it work. Both With A Kick collections are great for sexy short romances that have the best happily ever afters. You can’t go wrong picking it up on audio either. Joel Leslie does a tremendous job with a large cast of characters, particularly in Double Scoop since almost everyone who’s appeared in the series shows up here. Joel deserves a special shout out for Riley, who is the only American accent and it’s a southern one too. I enjoyed listening to him go back and forth between Curtis’s British and Riley’s southern. So if you’re looking for some fun reads, that will surely make you want some ice cream this summer, pickup With A Kick Collection #2 by Clare London … and grab the first one too if you haven’t already. The Whispers by Greg Howard. Narrated by Kivlighan de Montebello. Reviewed by Jeff.This was a quite an unexpected middle-grade gem that often surprised me with the depths it explored. I’ll caution as I get into this that the end packs a lot of emotional punch and some readers may want to tread lightly on this young man’s journey because it’s heartbreaking while it does conclude in a very satisfying and fulfilling place. Eleven-year-old Riley is missing his mama. She’s been gone for a few months and Riley doesn’t know why. He’s one of the last to see her and he meets regularly with a police detective to try to fill in pieces of what he knows. However, he gets frustrated with the speed the case is moving. He remembers the story his mama used to tell him about the whispers, little blue fairies who live out in the woods. He can’t help but wonder if the whispers might be the key to getting her back. What I loved so much about this book is how strong Greg made Riley’s narrative, keeping true to how an eleven-year-old might perceive the world. Riley already knows that he’s gay. He refers to that is one of his “conditions” that he has to keep secret, and this is not his only one. He also crushes on Dylan who he refers to as the redneck superhero. Dylan’s in eighth grade and he keeps up his superhero status by actually acknowledging Riley, and occasionally defending him against the school bully. Riley convinces his best friend Gary to go on an adventure in the woods to find The Whispers. Again, this trip reveals so much about Riley as he has to deal with a hobgoblin (or was it), the fact that Dylan may not be a superhero (or maybe he is) and the consequences of saying the wrong thing to your friend all the while trying to do the right thing so The Whispers will help him. One of the extraordinary characters in this book is Tucker the dog. Tucker is Riley’s faithful companion, always at the boy’s side to nudge him in the right direction and keep him safe. The dog has an amazing personality that shines through Riley’s narrative. I don’t think I’ve ever read a dog on a page quite like Tucker and I absolutely loved it. It’s a credit to Greg that he had me so invested in Riley that I didn’t try too hard to piece together what was happening. As the plot hurtled toward its conclusion I was constantly surprised and pivoted between sadness and happiness as the revelations came fast and furious. Kudos to Kivlighan as well for capturing Riley so perfectly. It was a very satisfying audiobook experience. This was my first Greg Howard book and I’ll definitely check out his other titles. I do very much recommend The Whispers if you’re looking for a superb read featuring an eleven-year-old who is going through a lot but comes out stronger and wiser on the other side. American Fairytale by Adriana Herrera. Reviewed by Will.When Camilo, a NYC social worker, goes to an absurdly swanky charity event that his boss can’t attend, he’s intent on enjoying the special evening, which includes chatting up the hottie he meets at the bar. After a few drinks and some suggestively flirty banter, he and Mr. hot stuff find a dark corner and make the night truly memorable. The next morning, Camilo’s boss introduces him to Tom, the millionaire who’ll be financing their agency’s major renovation project. Tom also happens to be Camilo’s hot charity gala hook-up from the night before. Aware how awkward the situation is, Tom agrees to keep things strictly professional from now on, but also asks that Milo be the point man on the project, keeping him up-to-date on the renovations. Their weekly meetings begin to look more and more like dates – a meal at a fancy restaurant, a walk through the botanical gardens. Camilo is no fool, but as he gets to know Tom better – he’s certainly not your average philanthropic millionaire, there is more than meets the eye – the pretense of “keeping things professional” begins to hold less and less appeal. When they can no longer deny the attraction, Tom takes Milo back to his place. The sex is amazing (of course), but the afterglow is short-lived when Tom’s ex drops buy with their daughter. Tom shares custody of Libertad, his daughter, with his former husband. Learning of all of this (which Tom failed to mention up until that point) briefly throws Milo for a loop, but it’s hard to resist the precocious the little girl, and Milo falls even harder for the millionaire and his ready-made family. A situation with Milo’s mom has him taking on more work and financial responsibility and, in addition to that, he’s working overtime as the massive renovation project is wrapping up. He’s stretched almost to the breaking point. When Tom offers to help, the fiercely independent Milo insists he has it all under control. Tom quietly takes care of things. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? In this case, no. Camilo is furious. As a reader, it’s hard not to feel frustrated by Milo’s stubborn streak. Your boyfriend is a millionaire for god’s sake! Get over yourself! But it eventually becomes clear that Milo is, of course, right. Tom’s intervention robbed Milo of his own autonomy. It’s Milo’s choice whether or not to ask for help – no one else’s. This is a deal-breaker for Milo and it causes a major rift in their relationship. Tom has to find a way to fix things, by doing the hard work and not using his money to solve their problems. This is a romance, so Tom figures things out, and pulls off a grand gesture that is less grand, and more heartfelt and considerately thoughtful – which is exactly what Milo needed. It all wraps up with swoon-worthy family vacation to the Dominican Republic. This interview transcript is sponsored by Dreamspinner PressDreamspinner Press is proud to publish Hank Edwards and Deanna Wadsworth’s new book Murder Most Lovely. Check it out, and all the new mystery and suspense titles from your favorite authors like Amy Lane, KC Wells, Tara Lain, and Rhys Ford, just to name a few, and find a new favorite author while you’re at it. Go to dreamspinnerpress.com for everything you want in gay romance. Jeff: Welcome, Adriana to the show. Thanks for being with us. Adriana: Thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. Jeff: So have we, to be honest, since we’ve read “American Dreamer” that we loved so much. So, a good first question is, what was the inspiration behind the “Dreamer” series? Adriana: So, basically, I think I wanted to write Afro-Latinx characters. I’ve said this in a couple of other conversations I’ve had about the book. It was really a specific time, a couple of years ago, right after the election when there was just a lot of negative conversation around the place of immigrants in the U.S. And I just really felt compelled to write a story that I felt can honor my identity which is Afro-Latinx, and the Afro-Latinx immigrant experience. And I think representation has also been an issue for me, with romance specifically. There are stories of people of color in gay romance, but I felt like they were either really surface characters or there was like a real, like, toil story. You know, the person had to go through every kind of horrific thing. So, I wanted to write something that could be nuanced and also show the joyfulness and the beauty of being a person that’s Afro-Latinx and all the amazing things that we come with. So, that was kind of where I was coming from. And I also really, really wanted a book literally full of…just like the gayest, most black and brown book I could write. Jeff: That should almost be a quote on the cover. Will: That’s funny. Adriana: Yeah. I wanted it to be super gay, super black, super brown. Jeff: So, right before we did this interview, Will raved about “Fairytale.” Tell us, in your own words, what that story is about, and kind of how it falls in the series. Adriana: So, it’s the second book in the “Dreamer” series and it’s set in New York City, which is different from “Dreamer” which is set in Ithaca. And it’s about Camilo Briggs who’s one of the best friends of Nesto from the first book. And he’s a Cuban-Jamaican social worker. And he works in the domestic violence field, which is the same field that I work in. And he meets this, like, very hot stranger at a gala and he turns out to be a big donor for the agency that he works for, that Camilo works for. And Tom is an interesting character because he’s a billionaire, which we love in our romances, but he’s also Dominican and white-passing, which is something that I really wanted to explore in a book. What it means to be Latinx but also kind of have the privilege of presenting as a white person, and what that means, and how hard that is to navigate. So, I guess, it’s about… It’s a fairytale, it’s a modern-day fairytale but it’s also, again, like a different side to the Latinx experience. And it’s sweet and fun, and cute and sexy. Will: Yeah, it definitely is. First, before we get to the next question, I want to commend you on the sort of…what I found really enjoyable about not only “American Dreamer” but “American Fairytale” as well is the group of friends, the sense of found family that comes across really strong in this series. I think it’s exceptionally well done. And especially in that first book because, like, right at the beginning, from the get-go, you introduce this, frankly, a really large cast of characters. And I think, with a lesser author, that could frankly get confusing. I know when I read a book, I get confused easily if there are five, six, seven people, you know, names and personalities all thrown at you at once. But each of your characters, each of the friends in that group are so clearly delineated and…especially in that first book, in the opening scene, you give us the briefest glimpses of who they are, and we understand right away where they kind of fit in the group of friends. And of course, they’re all wonderful, and interesting, and funny. They give each other shit like good friends do. I love this group of guys so much. Adriana: Thank you. I have to admit, they’re not my friends, but those four guys are very inspired on my, like, really core group of friends in my early 20s in the DR…when I was still in Dominican Republic. My core group of friends were mostly gay men because my cousin, who’s like my brother, who’s 14 months older than I, is gay. We kind of just like started hanging out with this group of, like, queer kids in the DR. Which in the ’90s was kind of an interesting crowd to be in just because it wasn’t really okay to be openly gay. And we had so much fun. And we did so much, like, crazy stuff together. And I just kind of really wanted to kind of like write a love letter to those friendships and those years. And a lot of them ended up coming to the States at the same time I did, in my early 20s. So, I think they feel so real because they are, like, real. Jeff: These books are getting so much praise. What do you think is resonating with the readers? Adriana: I think people are more open now, or I think there were always those that were open to reading about those different experiences. But I think there’s a particular appetite now for reading more characters that are bringing with them a different lived experience. And I think that might be part of it, like why people are interested in the story. And I think everybody can connect to a striving story, you know. I think Nesto, and Jude, and Camilo, Patrice, Juan Pablo, all of them, they’re just striving to be who they know they deserve to be – for the lives that they’re working for. And I think everyone can relate to that and that struggle of fighting for what you want. Jeff: Did you also intend to make everybody hungry with “American Dreamer?” Adriana: Yes. Yes. Jeff: Was that part of, like, your side plot? Adriana: Yes. Yes, I did. I wanted because…also that’s the other piece, like Caribbean food is very similar but very different in many ways. And I talk about that a lot in “Dreamer.” And it’s the…I wanted to just show people, like, all the different flavors and how we’re all connected. So, I think it’s something that doesn’t really get talked about as much, the wide variety of our flavors. So, I did intentionally want people to be very interested in Caribbean food. I wanted people to Google Dominican restaurants and it sounds like I succeeded. Jeff: I think you did, yeah. I haven’t gotten into “Fairytale” yet. Is there food there also or do we break away from the food a little bit? Will: A little bit. Jeff: A little bit. Adriana: Yeah, a little bit. It’s not as much food. It’s more of…I feel like “Fairytale” is more about, like, Harlem and The Bronx. I have a lot of places in Harlem and The Bronx because again, there are a lot of romances set in New York City. Not many of them are set in Harlem and The Bronx. So, I wanted to go to the places where…like, the diaspora that I belong to, came to. So, I think that’s more… I’m hoping people Google places to go in The Bronx and Harlem with this one. Will: That is a good goal to have, most definitely. Now, with this group of characters, they come from a lot of different backgrounds, what is your process for basically ensuring accurate representation? Is it all from your own personal experience or something else? Adriana: Yeah. So far in this series…and I’m sure that as I write more, then I’m gonna have to go outside of that, but so far in this series, I’ve really gone with origin stories that I know of or from people that are, like, my friends or things like that, like Camilo’s mom, for example, is a Marielita, which was a specific group of Cuban refugees that came at a specific time to the U.S.. And I kind of touched upon that because that’s a very important influx of immigrants that came at a specific time. And they’re all particular experiences that I have been connected to through my friends or family. But I do think writing diaspora is something that people need to be more thoughtful about. So, I try to think a lot about like when did this person come, how did they come, what was the political situation in the U.S. at that time, how they would’ve been received. Like, with Patrice, you know, he’s Haitian and he’s black. His experience and the way he was received would be different than, for example, Camilo’s mom who came as a Cuban refugee and had protected status as she came in to the U.S. So, it’s very…like, there’s nuances there in the context that really needs to be thought about because it really impacts how the person can integrate into American life. Will: And speaking of writing from experience, you have a job in social work and advocacy, did you use your own personal experience when writing about Camilo’s work? Adriana: Yes. So, Camilo’s work and my work…I mean, I really drew from what I do every day to kind of build Camilo’s agency. I mean, kind of like my wish list almost. I wish we could have a guy that just wants to drop $2 million on my agency and tell us, “Do whatever you want with it.” So, I think it was like my fantasy of what it would be like to be in an agency that is just being well-funded, and, like, resources are just there to do the work. So, I think it’s like my own fairytale of what it would be like to work, and just have a millionaire just drop money on us. But, yes, it’s very, very connected to my own work and kind of like my philosophy around the domestic violence field and how the work should go. Jeff: I like how you set the books in our extremely modern times too. And I think in “American Dreamer” as Nesto faces the discrimination of the, who I like to call the evil woman, how he deals with it because I think that it tells a story that not everybody necessarily thinks about all the time. Adriana: Yeah. And I really wanted to contrast, even in the book like Jude’s own reactions to the racism and the obvious discrimination and sabotaging and Nesto’s reactions to it, and the reality that there are different consequences for some people than to others. And that that’s a reality you kind of just have to work with. Jeff: And I loved how he dealt with it too, taking that high road. I just like, “Go, Nesto.” Adriana: Right. I mean, it’s a reality, like, it could have a consequence that was like very, very difficult for him. So, he couldn’t just like get into a thing with this lady. Jeff: Right. “American Dreamer” was your first book. How did you come into writing romance and specifically MM romance? Adriana: So, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an MM romance for a long time. I’ve been a MM romance reader for, like, a long time. I was at the first GRL (Gay Rom Lit Retreat). I’m like an OG of MM romance. But I was a lot more involved in the community, and then kind of stepped back. I got busy and I just kind of kept reading, but I had it in the back of my mind. I find that what MM romance brought to my life, in terms of dynamics and relationships, and seeing…like I said, having friends all my life that were gay men, and me being so close to so many men who were like looking to fall in love and not being able to see love stories. I remember when I started reading LGBT books, they were very, like, sad, very sad stories like in the ’90s, right? I mean, I grew up in the ’90s. And so just finding your romance was something that was so incredibly wonderful for me. And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be even more wonderful if I could actually find my particular experience and the particular experience of the people who I love in those books?” So, it was kind of like a combination of going to a place…like the type of story that had been really meaningful to me, and then kind of putting my own experience into the space. Jeff: What was it like to write the first book after having read so many? Was it kind of an easy process or was it crazy and hard and took years or…? Adriana: So, it didn’t take me that long, if I’m honest, but I had been thinking about it for a long time. So, before I actually started writing, I kind of did a whole year of reading a lot of craft books, and going to workshops, and trying things. And I actually started a book set in Ethiopia, which is also a gay romance. And I got through a third of that and I was like, “I cannot write this book. I am not equipped to write a gay romance in Ethiopia right now.” And I decided I wanna do this story, this “Dreamer” story. And then that’s when I started it. But it was like a year and a half before I actually felt brave enough to actually write it. Yes. Jeff: I’m so glad that you found that bravery. Who would you say your author influences are? You say you’ve read, you know, MM forever even before it was truly MM, back in the sadder days? Adriana: Yeah. I have a lot of authors that…I mean, I’ve loved a lot of authors from the beginning that I think, I don’t know if I emulate, but I think about a lot in their…kind of how they render a story. Like K.J. Charles, I think, is a wonderful author. I think she just does things that are like phenomenal in writing. E. Lynn Harris was probably the first queer romance that I ever read. I think it’s really sad that he’s not, like, in the canon of what we talk about when we talk about queer romance. So, yeah, but I mean there’s a lot of writers I like. Amy Lane’s early work was super significant for me. I thought her…some of her early books are really some of my all-time favorites. So, yeah, there’s a lot of authors that I kind of go back to and read just to kind of be inspired by the way that they render a story. Does that make sense? Jeff: But what is it about those books that resonated for you so much? Adriana: I think…well, first of all, it was they felt familiar in a way that was like a discovery almost, because I didn’t really ever know any people…a black man who was really exploring the falling in love and the feelings, and the struggle, and the conflicts of trying to make yourself happy, and to find the love that you have…to keep the love that you’ve discovered, right? So, I think his (E. Lynn Harris’) books thought were just so beautifully written, and so tender, and so heartbreaking. It was just wonderful. I think being raised in Dominican Republic where there’s, toxic masculinity on steroids, like, the tenderness of his books really was something that I hadn’t read before. I think it just was kind of like eye-opening to me. Will: Now, so far in your “Dreamer” series, we’ve had Nesto and Jude’s story, and Camilo and Tom’s story. There is, of course…thank God, there’s going to be a third book. Whose story are we gonna get in that one and what can you tell us about that one? Adriana: So, it’s Patrice’s book. Patrice is Nesto’s friend who is a Haitian-American man, who’s a professor. It’s set in Ithaca. He conveniently gets a job at Cornell in the economics department and moves to Ithaca. And he reconnects with Easton Archer who is a character that we meet in “Dreamer” who’s a prosecutor, an assistant district attorney in Ithaca. And Easton is white, so it’s an interracial romance. Yeah. Jeff: When does that one come out? Adriana: That one comes out in October. I just saw a proof for the cover last week…or no, earlier this week, and it is so nice. I love it. I think it’s my favorite one, and I really love the covers for both books so far. I’m calling it my Black Lives Matter romance, although it’s not super intense, but it’s definitely…like the conflict between Patrice and Easton is definitely revolving around kind of having to navigate both of, like, their positions in life. Will: We got a brief glimpse of Patrice and Easton, like you mentioned in that first book. And then in “American Fairytale,” there was a scene with all of the friends together and Patrice sort of like phones in on Skype while they’re, like, dishing about Camilo’s love life, which was very, very funny. So, I’m genuinely looking forward to Patrice’s story. I think it’s gonna be amazing. I can’t wait. Adriana: I know. I’ve been revising it, like I said, and I think it’s a sweet story. And then, there’s a little bit more of two characters that people have been curious about. Ari and Jin, who are employees of Nesto, and they are in their little tiny young person romance. So, they’re like a little cute element for a love story. It’s called “American Love Story.” It’s the title of Patrice’s story. Jeff: Cool. And then you mentioned before we started actually recording the interview that you’re writing the fourth book right now. Any teasers on that? Adriana: So, that one is not an MM. It’s an MF, actually. It’s Juan Pablo’s story. And Juan Pablo is…it’s like a, I’d say, a second chances story. And the heroine is Priscilla who is Nesto’s cousin, who’s a police officer. And it’s called “American Sweethearts.” So, the book starts with a wedding in the Dominican Republic, but I’m not gonna say whose. Jeff: Oh, such a tease. Will: Oh, man. Adriana: Yeah. I’ll tease a little more when I have…I feel like I can’t tease too much on this book because it’s not even halfway done yet. But right now, I’m writing the first few chapters and they’re all in this wedding in the DR. So, everybody is there. Jeff: But I do like how you…we’ve seen with some traditionally MF series where an MM book ends up in the series. And I like how you’re kind of spinning that around too, you’ve got an MM series so far and you’re putting an MF book in it just to, like, broaden that universe out. Adriana: Yeah. So, my kind of little tagline is like, I write romance full of people who look and sound like my people. And there’s a lot of my people who are gay men, like so many of them. But not all of them are. So, I wanted to, in this series at least, have one story where, you know…like both Priscilla and Juan Pablo are queer. Like, she’s pan, he’s bi. But it’s also like a different type of, you know, experience because they’re both engaging in a straight relationship, which brings in…has its own privileges in terms of how it appears. So, I also wanted to explore that a little bit. Jeff: And I think exploring the pansexuality too will be interesting because that doesn’t turn up in a lot of books, at least the ones that cross my radar. And I think it’s nice to see that representation alongside the ethic background representation that you’re bringing as well. Adriana: Yeah, yeah. And it’s something that I think it’s…because of their age, I’m trying to kind of like engage a little bit in even Priscilla arriving to a place where she’s like, “Oh, actually, I’m pan,” as opposed to like, “I thought I was bisexual,” and how she arrived at that. Because I think that’s something that, for people my age, like I’m 40, it’s something that we arrived because we didn’t even have the language for that. Like, 15, 10 years ago, we were like, “Oh, I think I’m gay.” But then it’s like, “Oh, but there’s a whole spectrum of sexuality, gender identity.” And I think there’s so much that we didn’t know – that we know now – that should be coming up in books. Jeff: It’s great that you’re leading the way to kind of get some of that out there, too. Adriana: Yeah. It’s a great time to be writing romance, I think. Jeff: So, besides the “Dreamer” books, is there anything else coming up that you’re looking to write in the coming…I’ll say years since “Dreamer” has you going for the rest of this year probably, if nothing else. Adriana: Yeah, yeah. So, I do have a couple of things that I’m working on. I’m in the process right now of getting out this…I did write the gay romance set in Ethiopia, and I’m in the process of…like, I should have some good news about it soon. And it’s a romance set in Ethiopia, and it’s a Dominican-American relief worker. I did international relief work for a long time. And I lived in Ethiopia for about five years. And so, I really wanted to write a book set in Ethiopia because I have a lot of love for Ethiopia, and my years there were very significant in my life. So, it’s a gay romance. It’s not legal to be in a same-sex relationship in Ethiopia so there are complications. And it’s a Dominican-American relief worker and a colleague who’s Ethiopian, and they fall in love. Jeff: I am so glad you finished that book. You kind of left that off back there when we were talking about it before, because that will be great to see… I have, you know, no experience in any of those spaces. So, to read a romance set there will be an adventure. Adriana: Yeah. It was wonderful to write. Like I said, I have a lot of love for that country. And I think people’s perception of it is like, you know, people starving. And there’s just so much richness and so much beauty and magic in Ethiopia, that I really wanted to just show a different face to it. And I think it’s like a really sweet romance, too. And the setting is interesting. It’s more like a new adult. They’re in their 20s. Jeff: Do you think it will be out this year, maybe? Adriana: I don’t know of this year, but definitely early next year. Like, for sure early next year, yeah. Will: Very cool. Fantastic. Definitely looking forward to that. Now, you’ve given us a lot of amazing information about all of your amazing books, but if our listeners want to learn even more, where can they find out more about you and your books online? Adriana: So, they can go to my website, it’s adrianaherreraromance.com. I’m pretty active on Twitter, and my handle is @ladrianaherrera. And Facebook, I’m also there, Adriana Herrera. So, those are the places…and I’m on Instagram but not as much. Jeff: Very cool. We will link to all of that, plus all the books in our show notes so that folks can easily click on that stuff to find you. Adriana, thank you so, so much for being with us. It’s been awesome talking to you. Adriana: Thank you. It was so much fun and just as amazing as I thought it was gonna be to chat with you guys.

New movie and TV deals are discussed with both Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue coming to Amazon and a Love, Simon series to the Disney+ streaming service. Jeff talks about seeing The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical. New patrons Rhonda and Regi are welcomed. Will reviews the Netflix original Special. Jeff reviews Jay Bell’s Straight Boy. Jeff & Will discuss their trip to the LA Times Festival of Books. They also share the interviews they did at the festival with Julian Winters, Kim Fielding & Venona Keyes and S.A. Stovall. Julian talks about his upcoming book How to Be Remy Cameron. Kim discusses her Stars in Peril series and Venona also tells Jeff about her co-writing with Kim. S.A. gives the origin story of her Vice City series and how she uses caricature to encourage people to read the first chapter (she also did a super cute caricature of Jeff & Will). Complete shownotes for episode 185 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Here’s the text of this week’s book review: Straight Boy by Jay Bell, narrated by Kirt Graves. Reviewed by Jeff. I went into Straight Boy without knowing much about it other than it was a young adult story involving Andrew, a gay high school student, who develops a crush on Carter, a straight (or maybe not-so-straight) boy. What made me buy the audiobook was the fact I’m a huge Jay Bell fan because of Something Like Summer and also for Kirt Graves’s narration. I knew these two together would give me a great read. And they did. With Something Like Summer and its sequels, Jay proved a master of telling a story with many characters and many plot lines that involve an array of emotions. He’s upped his game with Straight Boy. Two things happen right away–Andrew, a recent transplant to Chicago, discovers a boy who lives down the street having an argument with his parents and saying things like “I was born this way.” Andrew thinks he’s found a gay friend. The next day–his first day at his new school–Andrew comes out as he introduces himself in class. This makes him a target of the school bully, Bobby. Andrew goes off on Bobby, despite the bully’s threats and ends up getting sent to the guidance office. Here he meets Carter and discovers that’s the boy he heard arguing. Both of them end up in a special program at the school where learning happens outside a traditional classroom Andrew’s year is now set. Everyone–gay, straight or otherwise–inevitably has that phase where you want a romantic relationship that you can’t have. Andrew longs for Carter but also doesn’t want to wreck their friendship, which seems to grow stronger by the minute. The thing is, Carter seems to be a little experimental too and that only makes things more confusing for them both. In the hands of a lesser writer, this would end up a disaster on the page, but Jay deftly weaves the emotions and circumstances for both guys as they figure out the place they’ve got in each other’s lives as it evolves through the school year. I cheered for the good and wanted to protect them through the bad since my fifty-year-old self could vividly recall how confusing seventeen was. Bobby’s integrated deeply into their year too. He’s a friend of Carter’s and that mean’s Andrew is around Bobby far more than he likes–and he ends up putting up with more crap that he should. Andrew accepts dealing with that because he doesn’t want to lose Carter. It’s made even harder when Carter starts dating Bobby’s ex, Olivia. Along the way another of Bobby’s friends, Jackson, becomes tight with Andrew too, creating more bonds in the group. The evolution of Andrew and Jackson’s friendship is as interesting as Andrew and Carter’s. Things get rough in the last quarter of the book. Bobby doesn’t like the changes happening to his group and he plots revenge. I have to warn here that not only does bullying happen throughout the story at varying levels but as we get into the last act there’s also off-page sexual assault and a pretty epic final battle where Andrew, Carter and the group are in way over their heads. Again, Jay does an excellent job of telling the story, ratcheting tensions and putting characters–and readers–through the wringer. The epilogue was the icing on top of this cake. Jumping twenty years into the future, we find out where everyone ended up. There were some surprises here that made me go “awwww.” It provided the perfect ending. What this book excelled at was showing friendships up close–what makes them grow, what rips them apart, and most importantly, what can make a true friend for life. It also shows, perhaps too intensely for some readers, the lengths people can go to in order to protect a relationship even if it’s toxic. I can’t commend Jay enough for how well he did all of this. Kudos to Kirt Graves too. I know well from TJ Klune’s Green Creek series that Kirt can handle a large cast of characters and high emotional impact. Kirt is perfection here handling the emotional rollercoaster without sending it over the top. His performance adds perfectly to what Jay had on the page. I highly recommend Straight Boy by Jay Bell, just make sure you’re ready for the ride. Interview Transcript - Julian Winters, Kim Fielding & Venona Keyes, S.A. Stovall This transcript was made possible by our community on Patreon. You can get information on how to join them at patreon.com/biggayfictionpodcast. Interview with Julian Winters Jeff: We are at the LA Times Festival of Books with Julian Winters. Julian: Hi. Jeff: Who I’ve just had a major fanboy moment over. Julian: I had fanboy moments. Jeff: Okay. We kinda both had the fanboy moment. Julian: Yes, yes. It is equal. Jeff: Because I had to get him to sign my “Running with Lions.” Podcast listeners know that was one of my favorite books of last year. Julian: Thank you. Jeff: And you’ve got a little sneak peek… Julian: I do. Jeff: Right now of “How To Be Remy Cameron,” which comes out September 10th. Julian: Yes, yes. September 10th, yes. Jeff: Tell us what this is about. Julian: Remy is a very personal book. It’s about an out and proud teen in high school, who has always felt like he’s known himself until he has this AP lit course. And one of the final grades he has to write an essay about who am I and it’s like the make or break essay. He’s trying to get into Emory University, and he needs this course in order to get there. And so, he has this kind of panic mode of, “Okay, but who am I?” Because he’s always been defined by, “Oh, he’s the gay kid who came out at 14,” or, “Oh, he’s one of five black students that go to our school,” or “Oh, he’s the big brother to this character,” and he’s just all these labels he wears all the time. He’s, “This is who I am.” But then he starts to realize, “Is that all I am and do these labels really define exactly who Remy Cameron is?” So, it’s kinda an exploration of what labels mean to us, but it also has a great family dynamic. A couple of secret mystery parts I can’t tell you about but there’s a lot of guessing games going on in it. And of course, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have like a dorky romance in there. So, that’s in there too. Jeff: A dorky romance? I like that because that’s… Julian: Yes, that’s exactly what I promise you. It’s so geeky, it’s so dorky. Jeff: That’s kind of what “Lions” was as well for sure. That’s a good label for it. How would you say that your writing has evolved from first book to second? Julian: Oh, it’s a lot. A lot. With the first book, I just kinda wanted to write the feel-good story, and that was my goal, and touching on certain issues throughout the book. And it also was written in third person and “Remy’s” written in first person. I’ve never, not even when I was like a small child, wrote in first person. I love reading books like that, but I thought, I just can’t do that, it’s just too personal. And so, it was a challenge doing that, but it was a lot of fun. And “Remy,” like I said, it’s very personal, so exploring parts of myself and things that I see throughout, you know, our community and things like that. It really helped me grow as a writer to really say, Okay, you can challenge yourself and you can fail at it, but you can also improve. And that was great. So, to fail, I struggled so much in the beginning, but to have that under my belt now, it’s I think I could write a lot of different stories. Jeff: So, you think you’ll visit first again sometimes? Julian: Oh, yeah, yes, yes. The next book I’m working on, first might be where I’m stuck now. I think this might be my calling. I don’t know. Jeff: Okay. I could tell you, first is a nice place to be. Julian: Yeah, it is. Jeff: What are some elements of this book that are so personal to you? Julian: Growing up. So, I grew up in Upstate New York where I was one of five black students at my school. And then when we moved to Georgia, I was one of 400 that went to my school. So, it’s very personal in the sense of, I went through a lot of phases of am I too gay? Am I black enough? Am I too perfect as a friend? Am I good enough friend? A lot of things that I went through, Remy goes through in the book. It also explores my love for a lot of geeky things and how for a while I wouldn’t let that define me because I thought, “Oh, no, this is bad, people are gonna make fun of me.” And Remy goes through that because he had a lot of geeky moments, but it’s almost like he’s scared to show them now that he knows that these are the things that I’m defined by. Jeff: I love that you point out the geeky thing because I saw on your Instagram earlier today of the comic books that you read into here at the Festival. Julian: Listen, I almost had to leave, you know, our booth just to go, you know, bow down at the comic book booth and just say, “Listen, thank you. I love it.” Jeff: Now, let’s talk about “Lions” for a second because you’ve had an amazing year. I mean, you started out of the gate that the book was blurbed by Becky Albertalli. Julian: Yeah. Jeff: And now, just within the last week or two, you’ve won an award for it. So, tell us a little bit about that. Julian: It’s been a wild journey because, first of all, like, I never thought I’d meet Becky Albertalli, I never thought I’d talk to her, I never thought, you know, I would become friends with her. And then just meeting all the other people along the way that I’ve met and growing in that area… I always felt like I was the kid sitting at the table in the corner where I peek over at all the cool kids and say, “Yeah, I’m never sitting at that table,” but it’s been kinda really awesome being taken in by so many different people and I never thought I’d be an award-winning author. Like, I wanted to write the book for queer kids to enjoy, to see themselves and know that, you know, you’re not some other subcategory, you’re just a normal person. It’s just that…this is just a part of you, it doesn’t define you. And to win an award, I broke down crying. It wasn’t something I was expecting going into this because my journey has always been about the reader but to have something for myself was amazing. It still is amazing. I’m not over it. I guess I won’t be over it until I actually hold the award in my hands and say, “This happened.” Jeff: This actually happened. And the cover too, which was a stunning cover, also won. Julian: Yes, the cover won for best cover. And that was so great for me in the sense that I love our cover designer, C.B. Messer. She’s amazing. She reads all the books cover to cover. And so, she knows these characters, she knows their stories, and what she did with that cover just blew me away. What she did with the “Remy” cover, I’m still in complete awe of just how well she knows these characters. Jeff: When we talked back last year, the book had hardly been out. Julian: Yeah. Jeff: How’s the reader response been to it? Julian: It’s been amazing. Today just alone, just so many people will walk by and say, “Oh my gosh, ‘Running with Lions,’ I’ve heard of that book.” And I’m just like, “What? Of all the books that came out in 2018, you heard of that book?” The response has been amazing. Going to the events and having people walk up to me and say, “Thank you for writing this book because I played soccer all my life, but there was never a queer soccer book.” Or, “Thank you for writing this because there weren’t a lot of books with bisexual main characters, or characters that were gay and Muslim, or black characters, or whatever.” It’s been amazing, the response I get. I get teary-eyed every time. I’m like, “I’m not strong enough for this, we can’t talk about this.” But it’s also been so cool to know that I’m helping someone see themselves because I didn’t always get that opportunity growing up. So, to know I’m getting to be a part of their journey, it’s just been amazing. Jeff: Fantastic. And what have you thought of the fair, of the festival? Because it’s your first time up here. Julian: Yes, this is my first time here for the festival. And I was talking to another friend about it because I went to YALLWEST last year. YALLWEST is this…it’s nice little corner and then this is like a whole city. Like, I get lost every time I go either to the bathroom or get something to drink. But it’s amazing because it brings so many different publishers, so many different books together, so many different genres, so many different kinds of authors are here. And that’s the amazing part to me, just to know how influential books are because there are people everywhere all the time, stacks of books in their arms. And you don’t really get to see that in, like, media, like how impactful books are, how much people really enjoy the art that we put out there. So, this has just been amazing to watch how excited people get when they see the books. Jeff: Yeah, it’s been very cool here. So, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Julian: Thank you. You know, I love you guys. Jeff: Best of luck on “How To Be Remy Cameron,” coming out September 10th. Interview with Kim Fielding and Venona Keyes Jeff: We are at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with Kim Fielding and Venona Keyes. Thanks for being here. Kim: Thanks so much. Venona: Thanks for asking. Jeff: We’re excited to have you both here. And now, Kim, of course, within the past couple of weeks, we’ve raved about the “The Spy’s Love Song” and the new “Dreamspun Desires.” Where did the inspiration for this book come from? Because it was so good. Kim: I think a big part of the inspiration came from my travels in Eastern Europe. So, you know, thinking about the way things used to be in Eastern Europe and how things are changing, plus politics as they’re happening right now. And so, yeah, I think that was the main thing. Jeff: What kind of research did you have to do to develop your spy and your rock star who becomes kind of…along on this mission without even knowing he’s on it? Kim: I didn’t have to do too much research on the spy part or on the travel part, but rock stars and music is not something I know anything or have any talent or anything else about, so that was where I had to do most of my research because I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know what it’s like to be a rock star. I can’t even sing. Jeff: Does that mean you what it’s like to be a spy? Kim: Hmm, I’m not…I can’t divulge. Venona: You have kids. Kim: Yeah, I have kids. Jeff: And you wrote song lyrics too? Kim: I did. Yeah, I know. And it was really fun. And then in the audio version, my narrator Drew Bacca sang them, which was so cool. And it’s like, this is the closest I’m ever gonna get to being a songwriter. And it’s so much fun to listen to. And I can pretend, you know, like, I’m the next thing. Jeff: Which actually raises the question, did you give him an idea of what the melody for it was or did he just kind of make that up? Kim: I had no melody in mind. I didn’t know he was gonna sing. When I write a book, I’m sorry narrators, I don’t think about what I’m doing to my narrators. And so, sometimes I torture them, and I wasn’t even thinking about a narrator singing it. So, that was his idea and I was so pleased. Jeff: And this is a little different in “Dreamspuns” as well and I noted it in my review that you are a single point of view here. Did you go into it deliberately that way or just kind of organically discovered it was the way to go? Kim: It made more sense for this book because there’s some surprises about our spy character and I think it’s a lot more fun if we kinda discover the surprises along with the other character rather than knowing right from the start. So, you know, for some books, the dual point of view works really well, but for this one, I think this works well. Jeff: Yeah, I totally agree on that. Now, this is part of a bigger series that’s happening within the “Dreamspuns.” Kim: It is. Jeff: Tell us a little bit about the series overall. Kim: Sure. So, this series is called “Stars from Peril” and this is the first book in it. The second book comes out next month, and that’s “Redesigning Landry Bishop.” And the third book, I just finished the first round of edits on. It’ll be out in October and that one is “Drawing the Prince.” We went over several titles on that one. And so, what all three of them have in common is the main characters are from the same small town in Nebraska called Peril, Nebraska. And all three main characters have made it big in some way. So, our first guy is a rock star, our second guy is kind of a Martha Stewart type, and the third guy is an artist. And so, they’ve made it big in the world and they meet someone. And so, you can read each of them as a standalone and in any order you want to, but you’ll kind of see the characters appearing a little bit in one another’s story. Jeff: It didn’t even click for me that it was the name of the town too because peril plays into their own peril. Kim: Exactly. And I honestly cheated a little bit on that. There is a real town, a tiny little town, I think there’s like 60 people in it, in Nebraska called Hazard, Nebraska. So, Peril. Jeff: Peril, Hazard, it works. Kim: And it’s a great name. Jeff: Now, people may be wondering, why do we have both of them here together? Well, Venona and Kim also co-write. Tell us about that book. Venona: “Running Blind.” I will tell you this came about some years ago in Portland at our Dreamspinner meetup and she pulls me aside. Now, you have to understand that I was such a fan of Kim. I love “Brute”, I loved all of her stuff. And then she’s talking to me and I’m like, “You sure you’re talking to me because, you know, I don’t, like, co-write. I’m really bad at, you know, doing it by myself.” And she goes, “Oh, yeah, I heard on NPR…” And that’s how it started. Because Peter Sagal who’s out of Chicago hosts, “Wait, wait, Don’t Tell Me.” He is a running guide for blind people for marathons.” So, she had the idea and we came up with “Running Blind.” Kim: And the reason why Venona was such a perfect choice is because, unlike me, she does triathlons. So, I didn’t have to do the research on marathon running. Venona: No, or running guides either. Stuff like, “Yeah. That’s your department,” I’m like, “All right, we can do this.” And it’s a wonderful book and we decided that we wanted to have a second story because in the beginning, and it’s not giving a spoiler away, is Kyle and Matt who have been friends, who went to college together, were friends, became lovers, and now they’re in a comfortable pattern, and they really love each other but as brothers rather than lovers. So, when something happens to Kyle, Kyle breaks it off and he goes, “You gotta go do stuff.” And Matt’s reluctant, but this story is about Kyle and how he deals with the things that have happened in his life. So, the next book that we’re writing, the working title is “Playing,” is Matt’s story about how he finds romance after the breakup. Jeff: And when do we get to see that one come out? TBD. Venona: TBD. Kim: Well, that one is still in progress. Venona: It’s still in progress. It’s now in my hands. And so, we switch back and forth when we write, and I need to get it back to Kim. So, hopefully soon. Jeff: And you’ve got some other co-writing coming too? You’re working with Shira Anthony as well. Venona: Shira Anthony, it is another story. It’s actually about a farmer and a city boy. So, that one is coming up soon and that’s an honor of a friend of ours from GRL. So, we’re writing a story about a farmer which he is and who’s not out and a city boy who is. So, it’s a lot of fun. We already have the outline and we’re just getting started on writing that as well too. Jeff: Very cool. Anything else coming up we should know about? Venona: Yes. “How to Become a K-pop Idol,” I am writing that one by myself. We might get a co-writer on that one, you never know. But that one is, if people aren’t familiar with this, I love Korean culture, a lot of Asian culture, Japanese, Korean. I’m learning Korean. I’ve been a K-pop fan since 2009 proudly with the Big Bang. Jeff: Before it was cool. Venona: Before it was cool. And my bias is right now, because Big Bang, if you don’t know in Korea, you have to go in for military service mandatory by the time you’re 30. So, a lot of the K-pop idols are going in. So, new ones are coming up. So, the third gens right now is BTS, if you’ve not heard of Bangtan Sonyeondan, BTS, they’re really big. They’re the band that I’m following right now. Jeff: Very cool. Anything coming up for you, Kim, a part from the Peril series? Kim: Yes, start of the Peril series at the end of this month, so April 30th. I’ve got a new novella coming out. So, if people who are following my “Bureau” series, there’ll be a new novella in that. And I wanna push that because I give all my royalties for that to Doctors Without Borders. So, this is the fourth story in that series, but you can read them as standalones too. Venona: And they’re awesome stories too, I love those. Kim: Thanks. Jeff: And what have you guys thought of the festival? Venona: You know, this is the first time I’ve been here, and it is awesome. There’s just so many people here, there’s so many different books, and you get to browse them all at the same time instead of in a little bookstore somewhere. So, yeah. Kim: And it’s been a lot of fun just kinda hanging out with everybody, LA is fun. So, it’s been a lot of fun. Jeff: Very cool. Well, thanks for hanging out with us for a few minutes. Kim: Thanks so much. Venona: Thanks for asking us. Interview with S.A. Stovall Jeff: And we’re at the LA Times Festival of Books with S.A. Stovall. Thanks so much for being here with us. S.A.: Well, thank you for having me. It’s super exciting. Jeff: Now, you’re the author of “Vice City,” it’s currently two books in the series. Tell us a little bit about what the series is? S.A.: It’s a crime thriller like a noir style. Ironically, if you’ve ever read “Sin City,” which is a graphic novel, it’s kind of similar to that. I used to work at a courthouse and I got a lot of green, was an attorney and all that. I don’t do that anymore because it’s a little depressing, but I used some of my experience in that to write the series. And I really like redemption stories and like criminals turning it around. That’s what I did in the courts is I helped a lot of drug addicts get to rehab and turn their life around. And so, I’m really into that kind of story. So, the series follows an ex-mobster who like, you know, leaves the mob and then becomes a private detective, and then, you know, shenanigans ensue. Jeff: Shenanigans ensue? S.A.: Yeah. Jeff: And he’s consistent through the series? S.A.: He’s the main viewpoint. There’s a romance a subplot in which he falls in love with like a police academy cadet, and obviously, that’s his in to the police and you know, again, more shenanigans ensue that way. In the sequel book that just came out, one of the subplots is that a police officer suspects the main character’s actual identity, that he had connections to the mob and used to be a mob enforcer. And so, he’s out to prove that it’s him. And so, you know, it’s a thriller story so it’s got lots of thrills. Jeff: Mystery, suspense, thrills, it’s all there. S.A.: Yes, exactly. Jeff: What got you into starting to write these books? S.A.: So, I had a friend who really likes Dreamspinner Press and I used to write just books like short stories for my D&D group, because they really liked, you know, fantasy, all that kind of stuff. So, I wrote short story fantasies and she was like, “My God, you should write me a Dreamspinner-style novel, like, that’s what you should write for me.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know if I can do it as good as all these other people, but I’ll try.” And I wrote “Vice City” for her specifically. I even put that in the dedication. I’m like, “It’s just for you.” I didn’t think that it would go anywhere because, you know, I was just like, “Okay.” But I got an agent after I wrote this and then the agent sold it to Dreamspinner and then they published it for the DSP line because that’s where they do genre stuff. Jeff: It doesn’t necessarily have the romance in it, right? S.A.: Yeah. Well, mine does but it’s not the focal point. The focal point is the, you know, mystery and the mobster story. So, I was very surprised. I didn’t think it would go anywhere but it totally went somewhere. So, every time somebody is like, “Oh, I don’t know if I should write a novel,” there’s a piece of me that’s like, “Man, I just wrote that novel willy-nilly. So, you should try, you should do it. You should try.” Now admittedly, you know, I was writing before I wrote this because I wrote other stories and short stories, but still, if you’re thinking about it, you should just do it, you know. Don’t even think to yourself, “Oh, nobody will read this,” because I kinda thought, “Nobody’s gonna read a crime noir.” You know what I’m saying? Like, I was like, “That’s old school, nobody reads that kind of stuff anymore.” But no, people do, and people like it. So, I was really happy. Jeff: And you noted that the second book just came out. Do you have plans for third? S.A.: Yeah. Jeff: What is yet to come? S.A.: I’m about halfway through the third book and it’s a true series in the sense that it could go for as long as I want it or, you know, that kind of thing. It’s not like a trilogy or a set thing like, “Oh, something needs to happen.” But, you know, as a private investigator, anything can happen, you know, all sorts of shenanigans can ensue. Jeff: Very true, very true. S.A.: But there is a connecting theme. The whole reason that it’s the vice enforcer is that the mob that he used to work for was the vice family, and they’re still around by book three so you can kinda see the, like, he’s trying to take them down one by one. And so, I guess I could be limited to and then it got the whole vice family and then the series is over. But, you know, there’s that connecting thread too. Jeff: Now, that you’ve been writing in this genre, do you wanna expand out to other genres or is noir thriller kind of your sweet spot? S.A.: Well, it’s just a thing that I like a lot, that I thought, you know, nobody likes this anymore, but I like it. I wrote “Modern Gladiator” which is just a pure romance for Dreamspinner. It was a sports romance with UFC fighter. Jeff: Oh, cool. S.A.: I, a few years back, was dating a guy who was in the UFC. And so, I just used all of that experience to write a sports romance. And I know a lot about, you know, wrestling and all that kind of stuff just from him. And I put a lot of that kind of information in the book and it literally just came out about two weeks ago. Yeah, “Modern Gladiator” came out. And then I do a lot of fantasy and science fiction on the side as well. So, I mean, all sorts of things, all crazy things. Jeff: Very cool. Now you’re also an artist? S.A.: Yes, that’s true. Jeff: While she’s been here doing her signings and such, she’s also been doing caricatures of people who get their book signed. And so, we had this one done of us. It is so freaking adorable. How did this get started for you? S.A.: I’ve just always drawn things. I like doodling. I was really into comic books at a point in my life. I mean, so many comic books and manga. I mean, anything that was drawn and kind of that like storybook style with the panel, super loved. But I didn’t really intend for it to go anywhere. I went and got my history degree, I got a law degree. I wasn’t like, “Man, I need to study art.” But I did at least doodle enough that I was like, “I’m mildly good, you know.” And when I went to my first ever book fair, I thought, “I can’t just be the schmoe who’s standing in a booth trying to peddle their book, because I’m gonna be like 50 other people in the road doing the exact same thing. I should try and do something that’s at least enticing or to get people to read my stuff.” And I figured, “Hey, I could try a little caricature, and while I’m drawing them, they can read my book. And if it’s enticing enough, you know, they’ll buy the book, or they’ll feel guilty enough to buy the book, you know, I don’t know, whatever gets them to buy the book.” And a lot of people usually give me comments right away. Like, the first line in “Vice City,” everybody always comments, well, not everybody but like 80% of people. The first line is, “Getting hit with a wrench hurts.” And, so many people either laugh or comment like, “Oh my God, what a good line,” and I’m like, “Yeah.” And the first chapter in “Vice City” is an interrogation of that police cadet. So, Pierce, the mobster, is interrogating this guy who he thinks is a police mole. So, it’s really intense, you know, high stakes going on. I really like that first chapter and it usually hooks people. So, they read that first chapter while I’m drawing them and, bam, that’s my sales strategy. Don’t steal it. I’m joking, everybody can use it. Jeff: It’s all her’s. S.A.: Anybody can do it. Jeff: But the key is, like, I could never draw. There’s no way I’d do this, I’d have to find another hook. S.A.: I’ve been successful with it. People typically like that. And the caricatures are free. I just give them to people. So, even if they don’t buy the book, you know, it’s fine. Jeff: And it’s awesome watching her do them. We watched as she did ours. It’s like, “Oh my God, there we are just manifesting on the page.” It was very cool. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with us a little bit. One last question, what have you thought of the fair? S.A.: It’s good. There are a lot of people here though. I mean, just thousands of people all over the place. Going to the food trucks was fun, although not during lunchtime. There’s like a mile-long line from here to the sun and back. Nobody wants to do that. But the food trucks are good, the people seem to be really nice, and I don’t know, it’s just a good time. Jeff: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with us. S.A.: Thank you for having me again, like, super awesome.

Show Notes Jeff: Welcome back to EMplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta. This month, we’re moving from the trauma bay back to a more private setting, to discuss Emergency Department Diagnosis and Treatment of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Nachi: And for those of you who follow along with the print issue and might be reading in a public place, this issue has a few images that might not be ideal for wandering eyes. Jeff: I’d say we need a “not safe for work” label on this episode, though I think we are one of the unique workplaces where this is actually quite safe. Nachi: And we’re obviously pushing for “safe” practices this month. The article was authored by Dr. Pfenning-Bass and Dr. Bridges from the University of South Carolina School of medicine. It was edited by Dr. Borhart of Georgetown University and Dr. Castellone of Eastern Connecticut Health Network. Jeff: Thanks, team for this deep dive. Nachi: STDs or STIs are incredibly common and often under recognized by both the public and health care providers. Jeff: In addition, the rates of STDs in the US continue to rise, partly due to the fact that many patients have minimal to no symptoms, leading to unknowing rapid spread and an estimated 20 million new STDs diagnosed each year. Treating these 20 million cases amounts to a whopping $16 billion dollars worth of care annually. Nachi: 20 million! Kinda scary if you step back and think about it. Jeff: Definitely, perhaps even more scary, undiagnosed and untreated STDs can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancies, spontaneous abortions, chronic pelvic pain and chronic infections. On top of this, there is also growing antibiotic resistance, making treatment more difficult. Nachi: All the more reason we need evidence based guidelines, which our team from South Carolina has nicely laid out after reviewing 107 references dating back to 1990, as well as guidelines from the CDC and the national guideline clearinghouse. Jeff: Alright, so let’s start with some basics: pathophysiology, prehospital care, and the H&P. STDs are caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites that are transmitted vaginally, anally, or orally during sexual contact, or passed from a mother to her baby during delivery and breastfeeding. Nachi: In terms of prehospital care, first, make sure you are practicing proper precautions and don appropriate personal protective equipment to eliminate or reduce the chance of bloodborne and infectious disease exposure. In those with concern for possible sexual assault, consider transport to facilities capable of performing these sensitive exams. Jeff: As in many of the prehospital sections we have covered -- a destination consult could be very appropriate here if you’re unsure of the assault capabilities at your closest ER. Nachi: And in such circumstances, though patient care comes first, make sure to balance medical stabilization with the need to protect evidence. Jeff: Exactly. Moving on to the ED… The history and physical should be conducted in a private setting. For the exam, have a chaperone present, whose name you can document. The “5 Ps” are a helpful starting point for your history: partners, practices, prevention of pregnancy, protection from STDs, and past STDs. Nachi: 5 p’s, I actually haven’t heard this mnemonic before, but I like it and will certainly incorporate it into my practice. Again, the 5 p’s stand for: partners, practices, prevention of pregnancy, protection from STDs, and past STDs. After you have gathered all of your information, make sure to end with an open ended question like “Is there anything else about your sexual practices that I need to know?” Jeff: Though some of the information and even the history gathering may make you or the patient somewhat uncomfortable, it’s essential. Multiple partners, anonymous partners, and no condom use all increase the risk of multiple infections. Try to create a rapport that is comfortable and open for your patient to provide as much detail as they can. Nachi: And as with any infectious work up, tachycardia, hypotension, and fever should all raise the concern for possible sepsis. In your sepsis source differential, definitely consider PID in addition to the usual sources. As a mini plug for a prior issue, PID was actually covered in the December 2016 issue of Emergency Medicine Practice, in detail. Jeff: Getting back to the physical exam: though some question the utility of the pelvic exam as our diagnostics get better, the literature suggests the pelvic definitely still has a big role both in diagnosing and differentiating STDs and other pathology. Don’t skip this step when indicated. Nachi: Now that we have a broad overview, let’s talk about specific STDs, covering diagnosis, testing, and treatment. Jeff: If following along in the article, appendices 1, 2 and 3, list detailed physical exam findings for the STDs were going to discuss, while table 3 lists treatment options. A great resource to use while following along or as a reference during a clinical shift! Nachi: First up, let’s talk chlamydia, the most common bacterial cause of STDs, with 1.7 million reported infections in 2017. Most are asymptomatic, which increases spread, especially in young women. Jeff: Chlamydia trachomatis has a 2-3 day life cycle in which elementary bodies enter endocervical and urethral cells and replicate, eventually causing host cell wall rupture and further spread. Nachi: Though patients with chlamydia are often asymptomatic, cervicitis in women and urethritis in men are the most common presenting symptoms. Vaginal discharge is the most common exam finding followed by cervical ectropion, endocervical mucus, and easily induced bleeding. Other presenting symptoms include urinary frequency, dysuria, PID, or even Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome, which is a PID induced perihepatitis. In men, epididymitis, prostatitis, and proctitis are all possible presenting symptoms also. Jeff: And of note, chlamydia can also cause both conjunctivitis and pharyngitis. Nachi: This article has a ton of helpful images. Check out figures 1 and 2 for some classic findings with chlamydial infections. Jeff: When testing for chlamydia, nucleic acid amplification is the test of choice as it has the highest sensitivity, 92% when tested from a first-catch urine sample vs. 97% from a vaginal sample. While these numbers are similar, and you’re gut may be to forego the pelvic exam, consider the pelvic exam to aid in the diagnosis of PID and to evaluate for cervicovaginal lesions or other concomitant stds. Nachi: Similarly, in men, the test of choice is also a nucleic acid amplification test, with a first catch urine preferred over a urethral swab. Jeff: And lastly, nucleic acid amplification is also the test of choice from rectal and oropharyngeal samples, though you need to check with your lab first as nucleic acid amplification is not technically cleared by the FDA for this indication. Nachi: Treatment for chlamydia is simple, 1g of azithromycin, or doxycycline 100 mg BID x 7 days. Fluoroquinolones are a second line treatment modality. Jeff: In pregnant women, chlamydia can lead to ectopic pregnancy, premature rupture of membranes, and premature delivery. The single 1g azithromycin dose is also safe and effective with amox 500 mg TID x 7 days as a second line. Pregnant women undergoing treatment should have a documented test-of cure 3-4 weeks after treatment. Nachi: Next up, we have gonorrhoeae, the gram-negative diplococci. Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported STD, affecting 0.8% of women and 0.6% of men, with over 500,000 reported cases in 2017. Jeff: Gonorrhea attaches to epithelial cells, altering the surface structures leading to penetration, proliferation and eventual systemic dissemination. Nachi: Though some may be asymptomatic, women often present with cervicitis, vaginal pruritis, mucopurulent discharge, and a friable cervical mucosa, along with dysuria, frequency, pelvic pain and abnormal vaginal bleeding. Jeff: Men often present with epididymitis, urethritis, along with dysuria and mucopurulent discharge. Proctitis, pharyngitis, and conjunctivitis are all possible complications. Nachi: In it’s disseminated form, gonorrhea can lead to purulent arthritis, tenosynovitis, dermatitis, polyarthralgias, endocarditis, meningitis, and osteomyelitis. Jeff: In both men and women the test of choice for gonorrhea again is NAAT, with endocervical samples being preferred to urine samples due to higher sensitivity. In men, urethral and first catch urine samples have a sensitivity and specificity of greater than 97%. Nachi: And as with chlamydial samples, the FDA has not approved gonorrhea NAAT for rectal and oropharyngeal samples, but most labs are able to process these samples. Jeff: Yeah, definitely check before you go swabbing samples that cannot be run. Lastly, in regards to testing, though it won’t likely change your management in the moment, the CDC does recommend a gonococcal culture in cases of confirmed or suspected treatment failure Nachi: It’s also worth noting that although NAAT can be used in children, but culture is additionally preferred in all settings due to legal ramifications of sexual abuse. Jeff: It pains me just to think about how awful that is. Ugh. Moving on to treatment: when treating gonorrhea, the current recommendation is to treat both with cefitriaxone and azithro. 250 mg IM is the preferred dose, up from just 125 mg IM which was preferred dose two decades ago along with 1g of azithro. Nachi: And if ceftriaxone IM cannot be administered easily, 400 mg PO cefixime is the second line treatment of choice. If there is a documented cephalosporin allergy, PO gemifloxacin or gentamycin may be used. And for those with an azithomycin intolerance, a 7 day course of doxycycline may be substituted instead. Jeff: In pregnant women, gonococcal infections are associated with chorioamnionitis, premature rupture of membranes, preterm birth, low birth weight, and spontaneous abortions. Pregnant woman therefore should be treated with both ceftriaxone and azithro in the same manner as their non pregnant counterparts. Nachi: There is also one quick controversy to discuss here. Jeff: oh yeah, go on… Nachi: The CDC currently recommends the IM dose of ceftriaxone, not IV. And this is because of the depot effect. However, it’s unclear if this effect is in fact true, as IM and IV ceftriaxone levels measured in blood 24 hours later are similar. So if the patient has an IV already, should we just give the ceftriaxone IV instead of IM? Jeff: I think it is probably okay, but I’ll wait for a bit more research. For now, I would continue to stick with the CDC recommendation of IM as the correct route. Nachi: And with the continuing rise of STD’s and the public health and economic burden we are describing here, I think the IM route, which is known to be effective, should still be used -- until the CDC changes their recommendations. Next up we have the great imitator/masquerader, syphilis, caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum. LIke the other STDs we’ve discussed so far, cases of syphilis are also on the rise with over 30k cases in 2017, a 10% increase from 2016. Jeff: Syphilis is spread via direct contact between open lesions and microscopic abrasions in the mucous membranes of vagina, anus, or oropharynx. The organism then disseminates via the lymphatics and blood stream. Nachi: Infection with syphilis comes in three stages. Primary syphilis is characterized by a single, painless lesion, or chancre, which occurs about 3 weeks after inoculation. 6-8 weeks later, secondary syphilis develops. This often presents with a rash, typically on the palms and soles of the feet, or with condyloma lata, or lymphadenopathy. Jeff: Tertiary syphilis doesn’t appear until about 20 years post infection and it includes gummatous lesions and cardiac involvement including aortic disease. Nachi: Patients at any stage may go long periods without any symptoms, which is known as latent syphilis. In addition, at any stage a patient may develop neurosyphilis, which can present with strokes, altered mental status, cranial nerve dysfunction, and tabes dorsalis. Jeff: In early syphilis, dark-field examination is the definitive method of detection, though this is impractical in the ED setting. There are, instead, 2 different algorithms to follow. The CDC traditional algorithm recommends a nontreponemal test like rapid plasma reagin or RPR or the venereal disease research lab test also called VDRL, followed by confirmational treponemal test (fluoresent treponemal antibody absorption or FTA-ABS or T pallidum passive agglutination also called TP-PA). More recently there has been a shift to the reverse sequence, with screening with a treponemal assay followed by a confirmatory nontreponemal assay. Nachi: The reason for the change is that there is an increased availability of rapid treponemal assays. And where available, the reverse sequence offers increased throughput and the ability to detect early primary syphilis better. The CDC, however, still recommends the traditional testing pathway -- that is nontreponemal tests first like RPR or VDRL, followed by treponemal tests like FTA-ABS or TP-PA. The article also notes that emergency clinicians should rely on clinical manifestations in addition to serologic testing, when determining whether to treat for syphilis. Jeff: For neurosyphilis, the CSF-VDRL test is highly specific but poorly sensitive. In cases of a negative CSF-VDRL but still with high clinical suspicion, consider a CSF FTA-ABS test, which has lower sensitivity, but is also highly specific and may catch the diagnosis. Nachi: Treatment for primary, secondary, and early latent syphilis is with 2.4 million units of Penicillin G IM. For ocular and neurosyphilis, treatment is with 18-24 million units of pen G IV every 4 hours or continuously for 10-14 days. In patients who have a penicillin allergy, skin testing and desensitization should be attempted rather than azithromycin due to concerns for resistance. Jeff: For pregnant women, PCN is the only proven therapy. Interestingly, there is some evidence to suggest that a second IM dose may be beneficial in treating primary and secondary syphilis in pregnancy though data are limited. Nachi: We also have to mention the Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction before moving on. This is a syndrome of fevers, chills, headache, myalgias, tachycardia, flushing and hypotension following high dose PCN treatment due to a massive release of endotoxins when the bacteria die. This typically occurs in the first 12 hours but can occur up to 24 hours after treatment. Treatment is supportive. Concern of this reaction should never delay PCN treatment!! Jeff: The next condition to discuss is Bacterial vaginosis, or BV, which, interestingly, is not always an STD. It is therefore critically important to choose your words wisely when speaking with a patient who has BV. Nachi: That is an important point that is worth repeating. BV is not always an STD. So what is BV? BV occurs when there is a decrease or absence of lactobacilli that help maintain the acidic pH of the vagina leading to an overgrowth of Gardnerella, bacteroides, ureaplasma and mycoplasma. BV does not occur in those who have never had intercourse and it may increase the risk of other STDs and HIV. Jeff: 50% of women with BV are asymptomatic, while the others will have a thin, grayish-white, homogeneous vaginal discharge with a fishy smell, along with pruritis. Nachi: To diagnose BV, most use the amsel criteria, which requires 3 of following 4: 1) a thin, milky, homogeneous vaginal discharge, 2) the release of a fishy odor before or after the addition of potassium hydroxide, 3) a vaginal pH > 4.5, and 4) the presence of clue cells in the vaginal fluid. These criteria are 90% sensitive and 77% specific, with clue cells being the most reliable predictor. Jeff: And for those of us without immediately available microscopy, you can make the diagnosis based on characteristic vaginal discharge alone. Treat with metronidazole, 500 mg BID for 7 days, metronidazole gel, or an intravaginal applicator for 5 days, with the intravagainal applicator being better tolerated than the oral equivalent Nachi: BV in pregnancy increases risk of preterm birth, chorioamnionitis, postpartum endometriitis and postcesarean wound infections. Pregnant patients are treated the same as nonpregnant or with 400 mg of clindamycin BID x 7 days. Jeff: Always nice when there is really only one treatment regimen across the board. And that will be a general theme for treatment options in pregnancy with a few exceptions. Nachi: Next up we have Granuloma inguinale, or donovanosis, which is caused by Klebsiella granulomatis. Jeff: Granuloma inguinale is endemic to India, the Caribbean, central australia, and southern africa. It is rarely diagnosed in the US. Nachi: Granuloma inguinale presents with highly vascular, ulcerative lesions on the genitals or perineum. They are typically painless and bleed easily. If disseminated, Granuloma inguinale can lead to intra-abdominal organ and bone lesions and elephantiasis-like swelling of the external genitalia. Jeff: Granuloma inguinale can can be diagnosed by microscopy from the surface debris of purulent ulcers. Nachi: Once you have the diagnosis, the CDC recommends treatment with azithromycin for at least 3 weeks and until all lesions have resolved. Jeff: Next we have lymphogramuloma venereum or LGV. Nachi: LGV is a C. Trachomatis infection of the lymphatics and lymph nodes. This is predominantly a disease of the tropics and subtropical areas of the world. Jeff: On exam, in the primary stage, you would expect a small, painless papule, pustule, nodule or ulcer on the coronal sulcus of the penis or on the posterior forchette, vulva, or cervix of women. The primary stage eventually progresses to the secondary stage, which is characterized by unilateral lymphadenopathy with fluctuant, painful lymph nodes known as buboes. Nachi: Check out figure 11 for a great classic image of the “groove sign” which is involvement of both the inguinal and femoral lymph nodes, and is seen in 15-20% of cases. And actually even more common than the groove sign is a presentation with proctitis. Jeff: Testing for LGV should be based on high clinical suspicion, and NAAT should be performed on a sample from the primary ulcer base or from aspirate from a bubo. Nachi: Treatment for LGV is with doxycycline 100 mg BID x 21 days. Jeff: So, to summarize, for LGV, remember painful lymphadenopathy, especially in those with proctitis. Treat with doxy. Nachi: Next we have Mycoplasma genitalium, which causes nongonococcal urethritis in men and mucopurulent cervicitis and PID in women. Jeff: Unfortunately, there is no diagnostic test for M. genitalium, and it should be considered clinically, especially in the setting of recurrent urethritis. Nachi: Treat with azithro, but not 1g x 1. Instead, M. Genitalium should be treated with a course of azithro, with 500 mg on day 1 followed by 250 mg daily for 4 days. Moxifloxacin is an alternative. Jeff: Simple enough. Moving on to everybody’s favorite, genital herpes. Nachi: umm, I’m not sure sure anybody would call herpes their favorite. Why would you even say that? Jeff: i don’t know, seemed natural at the time… Regardless, primary genital herpes is caused by either HSV1 or HSV2. Though only an estimate, and likely an underestimate at that, it is estimated that at least 1 in 6 people in the US between 14 and 49 have genital herpes. Nachi: That’s much higher than I would have thought. Jeff: Patients usually contract oral herpes from HSV-1 due to nonsexual contact with saliva and genital herpes due to sexual contact with an infected person. Nachi: Keep in mind, however, that HSV1 can and will also cause genital infections if spread via oral sex. Jeff: Localized symptoms include pain, itching, dysuria, and lymphadenopathy and systemic symptoms include fever, headache, and malaise. In women, look for herpetic vesicles on the external genitalia along with tender ulcers in areas of rupture, see figure 12 for a characteristic image. Nachi: Though symptoms tend to be more severe in woman, men may present with vesicles on the glans penis, penile shaft, scrotum, perianal area, and rectum or even with dysuria and penile discharge. Jeff: HSV1 and 2 infections also have the ability to recur, though recurrences tend to become less frequent and severe over time. Nachi: It’s noteworthy that there is also a direct correlation between stress levels and the severity of an HSV outbreak. Jeff: Herpes can be diagnosed by viral culture of an unroofed vesicle or by NAAT. PCR based assays can also differentiate between HSV1 and HSV2 Nachi: While there is no cure, antivirals may help prevent and shorten outbreaks. Ideally you should begin treatment within 72 hours of lesion appearance. Treat with acyclovir, valacyclovir, or famciclovir. In addition, don't forget about adjuncts like analgesia, sitz bathes, and urinary catheter placement for severe dysuria. Jeff: HSV can also be vertically transmitted from mother to child so in pregnancy, treat with acyclovir 400 mg 3x/day for 7 days or valacyclovir Nachi: And because transmission is so easy, babies born to mothers with active lesions should be delivered by cesarean section. Jeff: Let’s move on to human papillomavirus, or HPV. There are over 100 types of HPV with 40 being transmitted through skin to skin contact, typically via vaginal and anal intercourse. Nachi: Most infections are asymptomatic and clear within 2 years. Jeff: Right, but one of the main reasons this is such a big deal is that HPV types 16 and 18 are oncogenic strains and can lead to cervical, penile, vulvar, vaginal, anal, and oropharyngeal cancers. Amazingly, HPV is responsible for more than 95% of the cervical cancers in women. Nachi: Hence the importance of the new vaccine series that most young adults and children are now opting for. Vaccination should occur in women through age 26 or men through age 21 if not previously vaccinated. Jeff: Critically important to take advantage of a vaccine that can prevent cancer! Nachi: And though not as important in terms of health consequences, just be aware that HPV 6 and 11 may lead to anogenital warts, known as condyloma acuminata. Jeff: In terms of exam findings, as you just mentioned, most infections are asymptomatic and self-limited. If symptoms do develop, HPV typically causes those cauliflower like or white plaque like growths lesions on the external genitalia, perineum, and perianal skin. Nachi: For testing, there is a limited role in the ED. Diagnosis should be made by visual inspection, followed eventually by a biopsy. Jeff: And just like the biopsy, which is unlikely to be done in the emergency department, most treatment is also not ED based. Treatment options include cryotherapy, immune-based therapy, and surgical excision, which has both the highest success rates and lowest recurrence. Nachi: Next up, we have trichomoniasis. Jeff:Trichomoniasis is a single-celled, flagellated, anaerobic protozoa, that directly damages the epithelium, causing microulcerations in the vagina, urethra, and paraurethral glands. Nachi: With an estimated 3.7 million infected people in the US, this is something you’re also bound to see. Jeff: Risk factors include recent or current incarceration, IV drug use, and co-infection with BV. Nachi: Note the common theme here - co infection. It’s very common for patients to have more than one STD, so make sure not to anchor when you think you’ve nailed the diagnosis. Jeff: On exam the majority of both women and men are asymptomatic. In women, you may find a purulent, frothy vaginal discharge, vaginal odor, vulvovaginal irritation, itching, dyspareunia, and dysuria Nachi: And don’t forget about the classic colpitis macularis, or the strawberry cervix. Though this is frequently taught and stressed, it’s actually only seen in 2-5% of infected women. Jeff: But to be fair, a strawberry cervix and frothy vagianl discharge together have a specificity of 99% for trich, which is really not bad. Nachi: While many EDs sadly aren’t blessed with a wet mount, the wet mount has the advantage of being simple, convenient, and generally low cost. Jeff: While all of that is true regarding the wet mount, it’s no longer first line, again with NAAT being preferred, as it’s highly sensitive, approaching 100%. Nachi: And for those of us who don’t have access to NAAT, there are also antigen-detecting tests which don’t perform quite as well, but they are much more sensitive than the traditional wet mount. Jeff: Treatment for trichomoniasis is with oral metronidazole, 2g in a single oral dose a or 500 mg twice a day for 7 days. Alternatively, the more expensive tinidazole, 2g for 1 dose, is actually superior according to the most recent evidence. Nachi: For pregnant patients, trichomoniasis is unfortunately associated with premature delivery and premature rupture of membranes, with no improvement following treatment. Still, patients should be tested and treated, preferentially with metronidazole, to relieve symptoms and prevent partner spread. Jeff: We have two more special populations to discuss in this month’s issue - those in correctional facilities and sexual partner treatment. If you are lucky enough to be involved in treating those in correctional facilities, keep in mind that rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, and trichomoniasis are higher in persons in both juvenile and adult detention facilities than the general public. Nachi: In general for patients in correctional facilities, maintain a lower threshold for just about everything. This is just an at-risk population. Jeff: Let’s move on to sexual partners, and expedited partner therapy or EPT. Nachi: Once you’ve diagnosed a patient with an STD, you can also provide a prescription or medication to the patient to give to their partner or partners. Jeff: This practice is critically important to stop partners from unknowingly spreading the STD further which is a real problem. Unless prohibited by law, emergency clinicians should routinely offer EPT to patients with chlamydia, gonorrhea, or trichomoniasis. To see your states’ current status, the CDC maintains a list of the status in all 50 states. Nachi: In terms of specific partner therapies, for chlamydia, EPT can be accomplished with a single 1g dose of azithromycin or doxycyclin 100 mg bid for 7 days. Consider concurrent treatment for gonococcal infection also. Jeff: For Gonorrhea, EPT includes a single oral dose of 400 mg of cefixime and a 1g oral dose of azithromycin. Nachi: For EPT for syphilis, unfortunately the partner has to present to the ED for a single IM injection of penicillin G. While this does place a burden on the partner, it opens up an opportunity for additional serologic testing and possibly treatment of his or her partners as well. Jeff: Routine EPT for those with BV is not recommend as the data shows that partner treatment does not affect rates of relapse or recurrence. Nachi: For genital herpes, you should counsel patients and their partners that they should abstain from sexual activities when there are lesions or prodromal symptoms. Make sure to refer partners for evaluation as well. Jeff: Since there isn’t much data on HPV partner notification, for now, encourage patients to be open with their partners so they may seek treatment as well. Nachi: And lastly, for Trichomoniasis, EPT includes 2 g of metronidazole or 500 mg BID for 7 days or that single 2g dose of tinidazole. Jeff: In general, it is always better to have the partner present to a physician for diagnosis and treatment, but EPT is an option when that seems unlikely or impossible. Nachi: Also, when possible be sure to inquire about drug allergies and provide some guidelines on ER presentation for allergic reactions. Jeff: So that wraps up EPT. Let’s discuss disposition. Though most will end up going home, a few may require IV medications, such as those with severe HSV, disseminated gonococcus, and neurosyphilis. Nachi: Admission should also be strongly considered in those who are pregnant or with concern for complications. Those with severe nausea, vomiting, high fever, the inability to tolerate oral antibiotics, and those failing oral antibiotics should also be considered for admission. Jeff: But if your patient doesn’t meet those criteria, as most will not, and they are headed home, stress the importance of follow up. Especially for those with gonorrhea and chlamydia, for whom a test of cure after completion of their medication is recommended. This is even more important for pregnant women. Nachi: Chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, and syphilis are among the many infectious diseases that require mandatory reporting. Definitely familiarize yourself with your states’ reporting laws, as most of these patients will be headed home and you’ll want to make sure you don’t miss your chance to prevent further spread. Jeff: Perfect, so that’s it for this month’s issue. Let’s close out with some high yield points and clinical pearls. Nachi: STDs are under recognized by patients and healthcare professionals. They can often present with minimal or no symptoms and are passed unknowingly to partners. Jeff: STD’s can have devastating effects during pregnancy on the fetus. Treat these patients aggressively in the ER. Nachi: The rising rate of STD’s continues to be an economic burden on the U.S. healthcare system. Jeff: Patients can present with multiple STD’s concurrently. Avoid premature diagnostic closure and consider multiple simultaneous processes. Nachi: Urinary tract infections and STD’s can present similarly. Be sure to do a pelvic exam to avoid misdiagnosis. For the exam, always have a chaperone present. Jeff: Acute unilateral epididymitis is most commonly a result of chlamydia in men under the age of 35. Nachi: Chlamydia is the most common bacterial STD. The diagnostic test of choice is nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT). Treat with azithromycin or doxycycline. Jeff: Gonorrhea is the second most common STD. The diagnostic test of choice here is again NAAT. Treat with ceftriaxone and azithromycin. Nachi: Gonorrhea can lead to disseminated infection such as purulent arthritis, tenosynovitis, dermatitis, polyarthralgias, endocarditis, meningitis, and osteomyelitis. Jeff: Syphilis has a wide variety of presentations over three stages. For concern of early syphilis, send RPR or VDRL for nontreponemal testing as well as an FTA-ABS or TP-PA for treponemal testing. Nachi: Tertiary syphilis can present with gummatous lesions or aortic disease many years after the primary syphilis infection. Jeff: At any stage of syphilis, the central nervous system can become infected, leading to neurosyphilis. Nachi: Bacterial vaginosis presents with a white, frothy, malodorous vaginal discharge. Treat with metronidazole. Jeff: Genital herpes is caused by HSV-1 or HSV-2. Diagnosis can often be made clinically. If sending a sample for testing, be aware that viral shedding is intermittent, so you may have a falsely negative result. Antivirals can help prevent or shorten outbreaks and decrease transmission. Nachi: Lymphogranuloma Venereum presents with small, painless papules, nodules, or ulcers. Groove sign is present in only 15%-20% of cases. Jeff: Consider Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome in your differential for a sexually active patient with right upper quadrant pain. Nachi: Offer expedited partner therapy to all patients with STD’s to prevent further spread Jeff: So that wraps up Episode 27 - STDs in the ED! Incredibly high yield topic with lots of pearls. Nachi: As always, additional materials are available on our website for Emergency Medicine Practice subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, consider joining today. You can find out more at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Subscribers get in-depth articles on hundreds of emergency medicine topics, concise summaries of the articles, calculators and risk scores, and CME credit. You’ll also get enhanced access to the podcast, including any images and tables mentioned. PA’s and NP’s - make sure to use the code APP4 at checkout to save 50%. Jeff: I’ll repeat that, since saving money is important. APPs, use the promotion code APP4 at checkout to receive 50% off on your subscription. Speaking of PAs - for those of you attending the SEMPA conference in just a few weeks, make sure to check out the EB Medicine Booth, #302 for lots of good stuff. For those of you not attending the conference, just be jealous that your colleagues are hanging out in New Orleans. Nachi: And the address for this month’s credit is ebmedicine.net/E0419, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Lastly, be sure to find us on iTunes and rate us or leave comments there. You can also email us directly at EMplify@ebmedicine.net with any comments or suggestions. Talk to you next month! Most Important References 3. Workowski KA, Bolan GA. Sexually transmitted diseases treatment guidelines, 2015. MMWR Recomm Rep. 2015;64(Rr- 03):1-137. (Expert guidelines/systematic review) 5. Torrone E, Papp J, Weinstock H. Prevalence of Chlamydia trachomatis genital infection among persons aged 14-39 years- -United States, 2007-2012. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2014;63(38):834-838. (Expert guideline/systematic review) 98. Schillinger JA, Gorwitz R, Rietmeijer C, et al. The expedited partner therapy continuum: a conceptual framework to guide programmatic efforts to increase partner treatment. Sex Transm Dis. 2016;43(2 Suppl 1):S63-S75. (Systematic review; 42 articles) 103. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2018 National Notifiable Conditions (Historical). National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS). Accessed March 10, 2019. (CDC website) 105. Carter MW, Wu H, Cohen S, et al. Linkage and referral to HIV and other medical and social services: a focused literature review for sexually transmitted disease prevention and control programs. Sex Transm Dis. 2016;43(2 Suppl 1):S76-S82. (Systematic review; 33 studies)

Jeff & Will talk about their upcoming trip to the 2019 LA Times Festival of Books. They also discuss two series they’ve been watching: Comedy Central’s The Other Two and Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. Books reviewed this week include Kim Fielding’s The Spy’s Love Song, Ari McKay’s Take Two and Erin McLellan’s Clean Break. Jeff interviews Erin McLellan about Clean Break, the second book in her Farm College series, and about why it’s important for her to tell stories based in her home state of Oklahoma. They also talk about her Love Life series, what got her started writing, her author influences and the TV she likes to binge watch. Complete shownotes for episode 182 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. -------- Here’s the text of Jeff’s book reviews: The Spy’s Love Song by Kim FieldingRock star and secret agent on a mission to a foreign country to topple a dictator all wrapped up in a Dreamspun Desires package. That combination pushed all of my romantic suspense buttons and I had no choice but to pick up this book. And I loved it every bit as much as I thought I would. I was in tropey goodness heaven with the rock star thing, a bodyguard vibe plus lovers on the run and some occasional forced proximity. Jaxon Powers is a jaded rock star who’s at the end of a long tour. After waking up in a hotel room barely remembering what happened the night before, he might also be ready for a change in lifestyle. He gets a lot more than he bargained for when his manager brings him to a meeting with the State Department. It seems the dictator that runs the small country of Vasnytsia is a fan and wants Jaxon to perform a private concert as well as a large outdoor one for a worker’s festival. The U.S. wants Jaxon to do this because it’s a chance to improve US relations with the Russia-supported dictator. The only person going with Jaxon on the trip is secret agent Reid Stanfill. Besides keeping Jaxon safe, Reid’s got an agenda that has global ramifications. I fell in love with this book right from the beginning. Kim plays with expectations from the beginning. While Jaxon appears to be the spoiled rock star we quickly find that’s not what he wants to be. He’s a small town boy, doing what he loves to do but he wants more substance to the way he’s living. The trip to Vasnytsia does exactly that as his world view gets a complete makeover. Not only does Jaxon end up traveling without the entourage he’s used to, as Reid’s mission goes sideways the two end up on the run. Reid’s mission is to try to destabilize the country and force elections and that makes him an enemy of the state. Despite his fear, Jaxon won’t leave Reid to fend for himself. Jaxon knows his celebrity can protect both of them and he sticks by Reid even as Reid tries to force the star to safety. Through all of the crazy events that could result in either of them dying, Jaxon and Reid manage to start a romance. Reid tries to keep it from beginning since they’re in a country where homosexuality is illegal but they give in to their passions. That’s just the beginning as they share stories about their pasts, which only endears them more to each other. The mix between the romance and suspense is perfect, giving our guys time to fall in love even while things around them go crazy. I liked that Kim avoided the usual Dreamspun scenario of having alternating points of view. Everything in the story is Jaxon, which works perfectly so we don’t know Reid’s mission or anything else too early. It makes for a very snappy read going on the roller coaster that Jaxon experiences. Kim brings Vasnytsia to life through its people. It starts with the guides taking Jaxon around the country, giving him peek behind the propaganda. As he meets fans who must covertly speak to him as it wouldn’t be proper for anyone to talk with the American he begins to understand why Reid’s mission is so important. Ultimately it’s these people who shelter Reid and Jaxon and help complete his mission–with a particularly awesome assist from Jaxon. Drew Bacca does a great job on the audiobook, including having to sing a couple of Jaxon’s songs. This is the first book in the “Stars From Peril” series that Kim has in the Dreamspun line. The second book, Redesigning Landry Bishop, comes out in May and I’m already looking forward to it.  -------- Clean Break by Erin McLellanI almost didn’t pick this book up because I couldn’t imagine reading a book that included the characters taking care of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I’m not a fan of bugs and the trigger warning page discusses more about the bugs than anything else. However, I’m glad I listened to the re-assurances I wouldn’t be creeped out because this is a terrific book–and the bugs really are a non-thing. This book, the second in Erin’s “Farm College” series, throws together Connor Blume and Travis Bedford–two guys who very much don’t like each other in the aftermath of an awkward, failed hookup. As their final college term begins, Connor and Travis are taking Entomology 101 and because the professor likes students to sit alphabetically, they’re next to each other and end up becoming class partners. Their dislike for each other radiates from them during that first class. Connor’s OCD and anxiety flare up just being near the guy, who he’s still wildly attracted to and wants to have a real discussion with. Travis has the attraction too but carries the anger from their previous hookup. It only gets worse as they get the assignment that they’ll be caring for Madagascar hissing cockroaches for the semester or that they’ll have to answer discussion questions together. It doesn’t take long for the sparks of dislike to turn into sparks of desire and they end up spending time after class in a storage closet making out. Neither of them is particularly happy that they’re giving in to their desires, which makes the scenes cuter and hotter. Travis wants the fussy farmer and Connor very much wants the stand-offish English major. Even as their make out sessions start to cool their hatred, they realize they’re constrained by time. At graduation, Connor is set to take over management of his parent’s farm, even though he doesn’t necessarily want that. Meanwhile, Travis can’t wait to get out of the small town for his legal aid internship and then on to law school. The guys have their futures mapped out and there’s no space for the other. That doesn’t stop them from getting emotionally entangled. Erin does a terrific job of bringing these two together. As they move their hookups to the bedroom, Travis discovers he likes Connor’s controlling side and gives himself over to it. Connor though never takes advantage, making sure that he’s always got Travis’s consent and that Travis enjoys himself. That continues as Travis reveals he’d like to be spanked. Both guys discover this is exactly what they need. Beyond the sex though, their efforts to not get too attached aren’t helped by their post-sex talks. Travis usually wants Connor to tell him a story and it’s here that he opens up bit by bit about his anxiety, his OCD and his pre-determined future. There’s so much going on for him, as a reader I wanted to wrap him in a hug and do whatever I could to ease the load he carried. Travis talks a lot too and over time we learn what makes him so driven–it turns out he lost one of his dreams due to an accident and he doesn’t want to let anything or anyone cost him this one. Just a she was great at bringing them together, Erin tears the guys apart just as expertly. It’s a tough go as Connor and Travis force themselves apart as graduation nears. Erin does a number on the characters as they emotionally hurt themselves and each other as they keep to their plans. Both guys want to talk to the other so badly and yet they’ve promised not too. For Connor, this is particularly bad for his OCD. Of course, this is a romance, so all must end happy. Thankfully how Erin gets the guys back together his as satisfying as everything she did earlier in the book. There is a way for them to be together–it just takes time for them to get there. -------- Interview Transcript - Erin McLellan Jeff: Welcome, Erin, to the podcast. Erin: Hi. Thanks for having me. Jeff: Very excited to have you here. You’re a new-to-me author and I just finished reading “Clean Break,” which I have to tell you, I adored so much. I’m reviewing it right before we get into the interview segment I’ll have reviewed it to kinda tell everybody about it. Erin: Yay, thank you. Jeff: It is the second book in your “Farm College” Series. So before we dive into “Clean Break,” tell us more about what the “Farm College” Series is about. Erin: Okay. So it’s just two books so far like you said and they are set in a fictional college in Western Oklahoma. And I would say kind of the overarching themes are… Since they’re college stories, they’re new adult that’s kind of coming of age and self-discovery, finding your authentic self, finding a home is kind of a big one. I think that’s kind of important at that age. You’ve moved out of your parent’s house or wherever you grew up for a lot of people and kinda figuring out what is home, what is family, that kind of thing. So those types of themes are kind of follow both books. They’re both kind of angsty to be honest though “Controlled Burn,” more so than “Clean Break” actually. Jeff: Oh, my goodness. Erin: So be prepared. But, yeah, and I think in terms of… The setting is really important to me at least as the author and those books is important to me. I’m from Oklahoma. I live in Alaska now, but I’m from Oklahoma. And it’s important to me to write stories that are set in Oklahoma that have, you know, LGBTQIA+ characters in Oklahoma. And I know as somebody that reads a lot of romance, I don’t see that very often. I don’t see romance set there or it might be… I have seen it where it’s, you know, characters that are like, escaping Oklahoma which certainly is the case for a lot of people, but it’s also the case that people live and love, and make their lives there. And I kinda wanna show that. Jeff: Does a farm college like this exist in Oklahoma? Is it based on a real place? Erin: No. Kind of I guess. A lot of the kind of small details mirror Oklahoma State which was my alma mater for undergrad, but Oklahoma State is so much bigger than the college that I created. So Farm College is kind of a smaller college in Western Oklahoma that I’ve created, but in terms of being, you know, having a strong agriculture program, but also kind of having this liberal arts situation that’s going on and a pretty vibrant LGBTQIA community, I’ve kind of made most of that up. So… Jeff: And I agree that we don’t see, I mean, besides books set in Oklahoma, really the more rural settings kinda, it’s always escaping from those places. And I like that you kind of built a place as if this is what you’d like to see even if it doesn’t quite exist there now. Erin: Right. And I think it’s kind of funny when I started writing “Controlled Burn.” It was pre-2016, right? And I kind of had this, you know, I kind of had this idea that it’s getting better, right? It’s looking up for lots of communities and I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the case anymore. I hope it will be and I hope it is eventually. But, you know, there’s good and bad, I think, about places like Oklahoma and Kansas, and Texas. And, you know, Oklahoma is really special to me. It’s really important to me. Kansas is the same, but there’s also problems and, you know, I wanna kinda write those stories. And I also, thinking about Oklahoma or Texas probably more so, a lot of the romances that I’ve read that are set there are like, ranch, you know, the cowboys, the farmers which there is kind of a farmer in “Clean Break.” But there’s a lot of people that live in Oklahoma and in Texas, in Kansas that aren’t cowboys. So I wanted to tell that story too. Jeff: Right. And you really hinted that a little bit with some of the dialogue between Travis and Connor in “Clean Break” too as they kind of talk about the difference between cowboy and more the farmer type that Connor and his family are. Erin: Right. Jeff: And so, as we kinda move this direction, tell us what “Clean break” is about and kind of who Travis and Connor are. Erin: Right. So “Clean Break” is about Travis and Connor. Travis is…he’s the best friend in “Controlled Burn.” So if you read “Controlled Burn,” you see quite a bit of him. He’s an English major. He’s from Houston, Texas, very ambitious. He’s got these kind of life plans and nothing’s gonna slow him down, right? He wants to go to law school. He’s got an internship after for the summer. He’s planning to move to Saint Louis eventually to work at this legal aid charity. He has this very, you know, set goals and he’s also kind of a unique, quirky, funny character to me. And then you have Connor who comes in and I don’t know if I would say at the beginning of the book, it’s more like pre-book before the book happens, they have a little bit of a failed hookup in a lot of ways. Some misunderstandings and so, they don’t like each other very much. And then in the first chapter, they get paired together as class partners in a class. And Connor is a farm boy. He’s kind of a townie, right? He’s from Elkville which is the city that’s it’s set in. He’s expected to take over the family farm and so, he’s got this, you know, he kind of his future plans are set, right? He doesn’t have a say over them and he’s… I have a big soft spot in my heart for him. He’s got anxiety, he has OCD. I really wanted to kind of write against the archetype of the like, lackadaisical cowboy or even like, the kind of the hard cowboy or, you know, that kind of archetype that I had in my head. I wanted to write a sensitive farm boy who’s in therapy and, you know, it doesn’t really match some of the people or the characters that I have seen written that way. And kind of the main issue between them, first is that they don’t like each other, but they’re attracted to each other, right? But the kind of the main two things that I wanted to do with the book is I wanted to write a complex authentic characters that are really well-rounded and hopefully, I accomplish that. And then the other thing that I really wanted to do was kind of write to people that are heading towards their future which is graduation and then, you know, the future beyond. And then their futures don’t mesh. There’s not really a way to come together at the end of graduation. They’re moving in different directions and I think that’s a really universal thing for people in college that are dating and dating seriously… do you compromise your future for somebody else? Do you change it? How do you make it work? So those are kind of the two things that I really wanted to hit on and of course, there’s, you know, there’s some kink that happens in the book and kind of self-discovery with that especially on Connors’ part. So there’s a lot going on, but those two things. The characterization and the conflict there with their futures not meshing are the two things I really wanted to hit. Jeff: And I think you did them both, I mean, really well. This book has so much going on in it and yet it never…the story also never gets way down either with the weight of everything that’s kind of moving around here. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: And really, you started them off as enemies who sort of move to friends to sort of get to lovers. Erin: Right. Jeff: Just that progression was so fun to watch unfold as they both pick at each other and then also help each other grow at the same time. It’s like, they lift each other up and kinda tear each other down at the same time. Erin: Right. And I hope that that is realistic. I think people… Because in a lot of ways they are kind of mean to each other at certain points and people can be mean to each other in real life. Especially, they’re not very old, you know, they’re 21, 22. So they kinda make stupid mistakes sometimes and say things that can be hurtful and then have to figure out how to make it better. Jeff: And I think with Connor too, you talked about writing against the archetypes and just having kinda the anxiety plus the OCD. And being, you know, a young gay man in that setting really just sets up so much for him in that situation. Erin: Right. Yeah. He has a lot going on. He’s bi actually and… Jeff: Right. I’m sorry. You’re right. Yes. Erin: And so, kind of a lot. I mean, it’s just a lot and I think it’s a lot for him to kind of deal with all at the same time. Jeff: What was your research on the mental health side of it to kind of figure out what traits to weave into his personality? Erin: So I did a lot of research and I had some readers too that read it for me. One of the main things that I really looked at was kind of the myths especially with OCD, kind of the myths surrounding OCD. I think a lot of people think it’s just, you know, a cleanliness thing or even an organizational thing where they, you know, people with OCD have an impulse to organize or clean. And that’s not really how it presents for a lot of people. A lot people have intrusive thoughts which he has or, you know, they have checking where he checks the expiration dates on food and he can’t kind of stop doing that even though he knows he shouldn’t be doing it, and it’s not healthy for him to do. And so, I did a lot of research about the myths and the different ways that it presents for people and kind of the hardships that it causes them. And I also really wanted to make sure that I kind of made it clear. It’s something that he’ll always deal with, right? It’s not going away and so, it’s really… I did a lot of research on how to manage it, how, you know, how to kind of continue life dealing with a mental health problem like that. Jeff: Yeah. I just… So often I wanted to just give him a hug when he was starting to lapse into it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry this is happening.” What you did through the black moments and I don’t wanna give spoilers for folks who, you know, need to read the book. But what you did to the black moments for both Connor and Travis as they dealt with their emotions and for Connor how those emotions kinda manifest themselves in his OCD was really just, I really liked seeing two young adults kinda come to grapple with all of that. Erin: Yeah. And I think it’s pretty normal when you’re more stressed, right? Or when there’s more and more stress for, you know, the OCD to kind of build on itself. The same with anxiety like, whenever I am really stressed about my anxiety, it’s gonna be worse about small things, you know, you can kind of blow them out of proportion. I know I do that and so, I was kind of trying to show that how it’s like as things got more stressful for him with graduation moving and with kind of this relationship with Travis, that’s not going away he wants it to go. It does kind of snowball for him and it kinda snowballs for Travis too just in different ways because he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t have anxiety or OCD of course, but, you know, he struggles just kind of the same way. Jeff: Yeah. When you were talking about with this books about you left out one of its major points. Erin: The bugs? Jeff: That is the inclusion of the the hissing cockroaches. Where did that idea even come from? Erin: So I knew I wanted to put them in a class together and I wanted them to be class partners. But Travis is an English major and Connor is agriculture sciences, agribusiness major. And so, I knew it had to be like a gen ed class for at least one of them. And so, I really started thinking about the gen ed class that I had taken as an English major whenever I was an undergrad trying to figure out what class would make sense. And then I realized that I actually had taken an ag class that was Entomology 101. And I loved it, I, you know, I held like, tarantulas and I held millipedes. And I could see myself being that like, weird bug girl a little bit. I just loved it. And so, that’s kinda how I decided to put them in an entomology class. And it’s funny because, I mean, I do think that college is one of those times to take the weird class and do the weird thing. And so, I think it kind of made sense there and I also felt like, I gave a degree of what kind of humor and lightness I thought it would to the story. But I realize now that a lot of readers maybe don’t like bugs. So it’s something that’s like a little distracting to some people. When I had took the entomology class, we had an assignment where we had that exact assignment with the Madagascar hissing cockroaches where we had to take them home and observe them. And so, you know, for an entire semester, I had a Madagascar hissing cockroach in my dorm room with me. I never took it out of its box. I like, you know, I fed it, like, carrots through the little hole that it couldn’t get out and so, that would be fun to put that in the story. And I can tell you for the readers, the cockroaches do not escape ever. They never… There’s no, like, unexpected cockroach scenes. I promise. Jeff: Yeah. And I can vouch for that. There are no unexpected scenes and in fact, I had to check… I had to ask about that before I took the book to read and I’m like, “Bugs, I don’t know about that.” Erin: I know. I have put it in the trigger warnings for the book and on my website, it really does lay out kinda scene by scene where they’re at and kind of the degree that they’re on the page. And they’re not on the page that much. Jeff: No, they’re not and I never got squirmy reading it either because I really don’t like bugs. But I was totally fine with how this turned out. So… Erin: Yeah. I know. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that it would gross people out. At that point it was too late when it, like, finally hit me. I was like, “Well, I can’t do anything about it.” But I kind of thought that they were funny. Jeff: Well, I think it really fits with the whole ag culture of the college that of course, they’re gonna end up with bugs or whatever and have to learn about them. So it all meshed in together and like you said, there’s no point where they’re escaping or, you know, being gross. They’re just kind of there. Erin: Right. And students… Jeff: I like to, you know, those classes sometimes you take in high school where you’re having to take care of the doll for a week or whatever. And in this case you’re hanging out with a cockroach. So… Erin: Right. It’s kinda like a little pet for them for this semester. Jeff: So is there more plan for the Farm College Series? Erin: I have not kind of set plans. I do want to write a story for Alex. He’s in both books. He’s not in “Controlled Burn” for very much though his part is kind of important in “Controlled Burn.” He’s a friend of Connor’s really in “Clean Break” and I do wanna give him a story and I will. I’ll probably start writing that soon. Kind of be on that. I don’t know how much more I’ll write in the Farm College Series though I do wanna do a spin off that’s kind of several years in the future. So they’re not really in college anymore and I want to do an F/F romance for Desie and Lena. So I would start there for them. Jeff: Yay. Yeah. I would totally read that book because one of the things you did in “Clean Break” and I’m sure you established it back in “Controlled Burn” too, was just the tight community of friends that Travis and Connor both have, and even, like, the strong family presence of Connor’s family and how they support him. So it would be great to see more of all of that. Erin: Yeah. So… Yeah. And I definitely… I think I did a little bit more successfully in “Clean Break” for sure where they have very supportive families and they do have kind of a big wide friend group. And so, yeah, I’m glad that you like that, but I do want to do the F/F romance for Lena and Desie kind of. But Lena is quite young in this book. She’s 20 and so, I wanna give her a little bit of time to grow up, I guess. Jeff: Yeah. That’s cool. Now, you’ve got another series out there called “Love Life.” And tell us a little bit about what goes on in that series? Erin: Sure. So that’s also, they’re both male/male romances. Set in Oklahoma, Eastern Oklahoma for the first book, “Life on Pause.” They’re kind of small town romances there. The first one is about a guy that works at a homestead kind of prairie museum. They’re kind of common in Oklahoma where the people that work there have to dress in like, historical costumes of the time. So he works at that type of museum and then he is paired with a high school choir teacher. And it’s kind of them trying to fall in love and figure out how their relationship will work. It’s definitely kind of lighter in tone than the farm college series, but it’s still a little angsty. The second book in the series, “Life of Bliss,” is more novella link that’s a little short and it’s very tropey. It’s kind of two people that don’t like each other very much, but are fooling around kind of behind their friends’ backs. They agree to be fake boyfriends for a family wedding in Arkansas and Arkansas kind of, well, it has this… Historically in the area, it was the only state that didn’t have a waiting period for marriage licenses. Now, most of the states don’t, but back in the day, you know, they made you like, test for syphilis and all kind of stuffs. But extended the marriage license period. So Arkansas is kind of the place where people go for their shotgun weddings historically. So this is going back quite away, but in this book they go to a wedding in Arkansas, they get drunk at the wedding and basically, end up getting married themselves. It’s set in Eureka Springs, Arkansas for the wedding part and I don’t know if anybody would be familiar with that. But you can get married practically anywhere in Eureka Springs. It’s kind of an economy there. So it’s quite easy to get married and that’s what happens. So it’s kind of fake dating to accidental marriage. Jeff: Fake dating to accidental marriage. I like… Those are favorite tropes right there. Erin: Yeah. It’s a fun one, I think. Jeff: So what is your writing origin story? You’ve got these four books out. How did all this start? Erin: Well, I was a creative writing English major in undergrad, but then I ended up going to grad school for library and information studies. And I was a public librarian. And I had… I kind of had a lot of big changes in my life. I just graduated grad school. I just got married, I just moved away from home like, all of these big changes. I had a full time job for the first time and I had… I was living in Houston, Texas and I had this horrible commute. It was like, an hour and a half each way and… Jeff: Yeah. that’s pretty horrible. Erin: I think most people that have been in Houston know what I’m talking about. And I had all this time to kind of think and I basically on my commute started plotting a book. And some of it came from, I missed kind of the creative outlet writing research papers and stuff like that from school. And so, yeah, that’s kind of how I started writing as I plotted this book on my commute and then finally, I decided that I was gonna sit down and write it. And that book was “Controlled Burn.” Jeff: That’s an awesome story. Erin: Thank you. Jeff: What led you into putting this creativity towards M/M romance amongst all of the genres that were possible? Erin: Yeah. Some of it I think is that I was reading a lot of it at that time, I kind of got into M/M romance I guess if we’re going further back by reading Suzanne Brockmann, right? So she has the “Troubleshooters” series and that has Jules Cassidy who’s the gay FBI agent, right? He’s got that kind of the secondary romance through several books and then the primary thorugh a novella. And then whenever I was in grad school, I kind of didn’t have time to read for pleasure very much. So I wasn’t reading very much and then I took a class about reader’s advisory that we had to read like, the books from the best books of the year for “Publishers Weekly” and “Kirkus,” and stuff. And I just kind of… I can’t remember what year it was, but I grabbed kind of a random book off the romance list and it ended up being “Brothers of the Wild North Sea” by Harper Fox and I didn’t really realize that it was a male/male romance. So I just kinda grabbed it and started reading, and then it became quite clear, you know, very early on what it was. And it’s a beautiful book. Harper Fox is, you know, is a beautiful writer. Everything that she writes is really awesome and so, I kind of gobbled up everything that she had written and then it kind of hit me at that time. There has to be other writers that are doing this and, you know, they weren’t the books that were in the libraries. They weren’t in my libraries. So I kind of started searching them out and, you know, read a lot of K.A. Mitchell and Z.A. Maxfield, and some of those authors at that time that were the most prolific. And I was just very excited because I felt like there are all these authors that I had never heard of that I didn’t know about and they were all really, really good. And they were writing, you know, stories that kind of the themes were very important to me. And so, then when I write finally, eventually, decided to sit down and write a book. I think probably the main thing for me is that I wanted to write characters who are LGBTQIA in Oklahoma and it just happened to be that the first book that kind of came to mind, and that I plotted fully was an M/M romance in “Controlled Burn.” So that’s definitely how I got started. Jeff: That’s very cool and some great authors there to get you introduced to the genre as well. Who do you count as your author influences? Erin: Well, definitely, you know, my gateways were Suzanne Brockmann into romance in general and then Harper Fox. Kind of on a wider scale, I really like Alisha Rai. She kind of, she writes the heroines that are the type of parents that I just love. They are raunchy and rowdy, and wonderful. I would say also Annabeth Albert in terms of contemporary romance. Alexis Hall, I think kind of teaches or his books are like a master class on first person point of view if you look at “For Real” or “Glitterland.” And so, I really, really like his books too. Jeff: Now, your bio mentions that you like binge worthy TV shows. So of course, we have to know what are you binging these days or have binged recently that you would recommend? Erin: So my husband and I have been rewatching “Game of Thrones” of course, because the last season was about to come out. So when you binge that show, you just kind of realize how many awful things happened back to back to back because the first time we watched it, we didn’t binge it. We are watching it week to week, but when you’re binge watching that it’s like, “Oh, my God. That’s so awful, these things that keep happening.” Other than that, I really like… I like true crime, but I’m not watching any kind of true crime right now. And I like comedies. So I’ve watched “Schitt’s Creek” recently which I love, “The Good Place,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “One Day at a Time,” all these sitcoms that I think are really good, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” because I love musicals is really good. And then I also watch a lot of like, reality TV. So I like, like, “Tiny House Hunters,” and “Instant Hotel,” and “Project Runway,” shows kind of like that. Jeff: Very cool. Yeah. Some good stuff on there. Erin: You can tell me I watch a lot of TV. Jeff: “The Good Place” is a particular favorite. Erin: Yeah. It’s so smart. It’s so different than like, yeah, it’s very, very unique. So this is a great list for everybody who’s looking for something to binge the spring right here. So what’s coming up next for you in your release plans? Jeff: So I don’t have anything kind of set in stone. I’m not very good at planning. [I”m working on one about] tornado chasers or storm chasers. That’s a male/male romance that I have on submission right now to a publisher that I’m hoping will pick it up. If they don’t, then, you know, it’ll keep going out and hopefully somebody else will want it. I’m currently writing a book about a rec league softball team and I want this to be really, really tropey and kind of fun and light. The first one is using kind of the one bed trope. So I hope that that would be a lot of fun. I’ll write Alex’s story pretty soon and then I have a book that I wrote. But I’m hoping to put out at Christmas, it’s called “Stocking Stuffers.” And it’s a M/F romance with a bi heroine who sell sex toys. You know, like the Tupperware parties, but it’s like the, you know, the sex toy Tupperware parties kind of. And so, she works for a company kinda is the marketing person for a company like that and she’s hosting one of those parties, get snowed in, you know, with a big red bag of toys basically. Jeff: Yeah. That’s like an interesting forced proximity story. Erin: yeah. So it was a lot of fun to write. Jeff: And I’m very interested in the storm chasers one too because I’m kind of a weather geek at heart. So you kind of got me on that one. Erin: It was a lot of fun to write. Growing up in Oklahoma, you know, tornadoes are such a kind of a constant really. I mean, my parents have lost a house in tornado. I know lots of people that have lost houses in tornado. It’s so common. It’s just kind of a part of your life especially if you’re from Central Oklahoma like me and so, it’s… Yeah. It was a really fun one to write because you are just kind of entrenched in bad weather in Oklahoma in the spring all the time. So… Jeff: Very cool. And how can readers keep up with you online to keep track of all these projects? Erin: So I have a Facebook group called Erin McLellan’s Meet Cute. That’s a good one if you kind of… I do giveaways and book recs, and stuff. On Twitter my handle is @emclellanwrites and I’m on Twitter pretty often. On Instagram it’s @erinmclellanwrites and on Instagram, I would say it’s about 70% Alaska stuff like, every moves that I’ve ever seen and then 30% books. Unless there’s a book released and then it flips. But it’s a lot of Alaska if you follow me on Instagram. And then my newsletter which you can get too on my website or through any of the social media too. You would be able to kind of find the link to my newsletter and that’s probably the best way if you just want like, to know about new releases or sales, or things like that without having to kind of trudge through Twitter. Jeff: Well, fantastic. Well, I thank you so much for coming to talk to us about “Clean Break” and wish you all the success on that one and the upcoming releases as well. Erin: Thank you so much. It was so fun.

The video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its tenth birthday so what better time to talk to its creator about the early days of the online games media, the future of games coverage, and getting fired in front of the entire world. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclippodcast Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,638 Patrons. --------------------------------------------------------------   - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about video games, the people who make them, and the people who play them. On today's episode we talk to a guy who grew up a short drive from the epicenter of the online media revolution. As video game website Giant Bomb recently celebrated its 10th year of operation, we decided to talk to its founder about skipping school, hosting podcasts, and getting fired in front of the entire world. Jeff Gerstmann is a name you either know or don't, depending on whether or not you care about the world of games coverage. Outside of the world of games, Jeff is a husband, son, and a grown-up local kid in Petaluma, a city in Northern California that sits on the outskirts of what many would consider a reasonable commute to San Francisco. There he grew up with his mum and dad who operated a tire shop. A small town kid, with a small town life who loved rap, skateboards, and video games. But inside the world of games Jeff is larger than life. He's part of a dwindling older generation of journalists who were there when the magazines died, and the world of internet reporting exploded. He's lead the charge on finding new ways to talk about games, be it on video, podcast or late light E3 live shows. And crucially, his surname became a rallying cry for media ethics when he fell victim to one of the most lamentable acts of brand self-destruction of the digital age. Much of Jeff's story lives in the gaming zeitgeist. Before I met him, I thought I knew most of it. You see, to me Jeff was a hero. He had figured it all out. Growing up in Ireland, years before Twitch or even YouTube had started, I'd watch him host shows broadcast live from the GameSpot offices in San Francisco. His job was talking about games, and he knew more about games than anyone I'd ever seen trying to do it on television. His job became a north star that I'd spend years following. And when I'd eventually find myself working in the same building those shows were filmed in, sitting at a desk a short walk from his, I slowly began to get a deeper understanding of Jeffrey Michael Gerstmann. Equal parts a quiet, contemplative person and a troublemaker, now responsible for keeping order. I recently sat down with Jeff to talk about the 10 Year Anniversary of his career's second act, the video game website GiantBomb.com. But the story of Giant Bomb and the story of Jeff Gerstmann are intertwined. So to tell you how Giant Bomb was founded we have to go back to a small town in Northern California, to the kid of the folks who ran the tire shop in sunny, quiet, suburban, Petaluma. - [Jeff] The first video game console I owned, it was the Fairchild Channel F, which was, it kinda came out around the same time, same window as the Atari 2600 but it had a few more educational games so I think that tipped my parents in the favor of getting that thing, it had this terrible plunger controller, there was like a decent bowling game but it just immediately failed. I had relatives who had an Atari 2600 and would kinda covet that thing and eventually they gave it to me when the video game industry kinda crashed. But we got into computers not long after that. I got an Atari 400 and that was really the first proper like hey, this is a somewhat successful platform with stuff coming out that mattered. And so I mostly started on a computer. - [Danny] What was the impetus for your parents getting it? Were they interested in technology at all or were you crying for it or what was the story there? - [Jeff] You know, my dad played some video games certainly over the years but I think that was largely because that's what I was interested in. We were going to arcades a lot and on the weekends we would go out, there was an arcade in town called Dodge City and we would go to Dodge City. You know, my mom went once or twice, this was like the height of Pac-Man fever so like I would be there, my dad would be there, we'd be playing games and there would just be this huge line almost out the door of people waiting to play Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man. And it was just weird, you know, because it was just another game, like to me it was just like, all right, well yeah, I don't know, Pac-Man's over there and it is what it is and I'm over here playing Galaxian or Vanguard or you know, whatever the heck else, I don't really remember talking to too many people about video games. This was, you know, this woulda been, god, 82 ish, like early to mid 80s really and I was going to elementary school then and just there were like one or two other kids I knew that had computers but most kids didn't and they weren't really into video games per say or if they were they weren't really letting on. So there was one kid I knew that had a TRS-80 and so I'd go over to his place and play Parsec and some other stuff like that. There was a kid near the tire shop that my parents ran that had a VIC-20 and I could go over there and play like Radar Rat Race and some other stuff too. - [Danny] So, I guess, what did you want to be when you grew up when you were like a middle schooler? Obviously games journalism wasn't a target you could exactly aim for so what were you thinking about your future when you were in like middle school, high school? - [Jeff] When I was in high school we saw a posting, so LucasArts was relatively local, they were in Marin County and, you know, this woulda been like 1990, 1991, somewhere around there, and they were looking for testers. And I remember applying for it but like I was 15. Like it was, logistically it would've been impossible for me to even do that job 'cause I couldn't even drive a car yet. And it was 20ish miles away. But also like I remember writing, like they wanted a resume, I wrote an essay and it was like, you should give me this job. It was real dumb, I mean, whatever, in retrospect it was like, that is not a way to get a job. Also, ridiculous to assume that that would've even been possible at 15. But yeah, that was the first time I ever really thought about working in video games, I woulda been like 14 or 15. - [Danny] So how did it actually come to pass then? What was your first gig in the industry and how did you end up getting it? - [Jeff] So, I started going to trade shows, I met a guy a named Glenn Rubenstein who was a year younger than I was and we went to the same school, we went to the same high school. And Glenn was writing video game reviews for the local Petaluma newspaper and also I think he had a column in the San Francisco Examiner which was a newspaper. And so there would be articles about like, this youthful guy writing game reviews, look at this guy, it was like kind of a story or whatever. So we became friends, then he kinda said like, hey, I'm going to CES, do you wanna come with me? And I was like, yeah, I would love to go see video games. - [Danny] How old are you? - [Jeff] This is, I'm 16 at this point, he's 15. - [Danny] Wow, okay. It's in Vegas, right? - It's in Vegas also, yes. He's like, hey do you wanna come to Las Vegas. So I pitched it to my parents and just said like, hey, this thing's going on, I'd really like to go do it and they said yes, for whatever reason they said yes. And so me and Glenn set out to go, he had been to one before, he had been to CES I think the previous CES in Chicago might've been his first and so I went with him to that and just like I bought myself like a blazer and put it on and went to this trade show and went around and played video games and tried to play blackjack wearing a blazer because I looked like maybe I was of age. And that's where we met Ryan McDonald. We needed, honestly, I think we just needed more people to help pay for the hotel room or something like that and Ryan was doing something similar, he was writing about video games for a Healdsburg newspaper, which is about 40 miles north of Petaluma, where I'm now, which, for people who don't know, Petaluma is about 40 miles north of San Francisco, so, you know, Healdsburg's getting pretty far out there. And we met Ryan at the local mall, he seemed like an okay guy and we're like, yeah, you wanna come, let's go to Las Vegas. And so I kind of started just going to trade shows, we all met the guys from Game Informer pretty early on, Andy McNamara and Paul and some of the early other reviewers that were there at the time, Elizabeth Olsen and people like that, and we knew some people that were doing PR for video games at the time and stuff like that so we just kinda started meeting people and getting around. So that led to, Glenn ended up, so Glenn actually got me my first couple of jobs afterwards. We started going to the trade shows, we were doing a local public access show that was not about video games, it wasn't about much of anything really, and basically like barely getting by in high school 'cause we were just doing all this other stuff and not wanting to go to school very much. And so he ended up getting in at a magazine, they were starting up a magazine, they were originally gonna call it Blast, they were gonna call it Blast and it was gonna be like this lifestyle magazine funded by the, I guess the CEO of Creative Labs, so the Sound Blaster people were starting, basically funding a magazine. And so I spent a year commuting to Berkeley working for this magazine right after I got out of high school, so that woulda been like 1994. I was 19 commuting to Berkeley, working for a magazine, having no idea what I was doing, and we were covering Doom and we were covering, what are some fun things you could do with your Creative Labs branded sound card and stuff like that, that place lasted a little under a year before it folded. We made it about three issues, I think there was fourth that was almost done, and then I was out of there and had no idea what to do next. I was 19 and jaded and like burned by how that job went and angry at everything. - [Danny] Yeah, had you dropped out of high school, had you just sorta finished it and then left off or were you thinking about college or were you thinkin', oh shit, do I jump to another journalism gig, what was your head space then? - [Jeff] I finished high school. Between the public access show we were doing and this video game stuff that was still pretty nascent, you know, it wasn't really a job, it was very easy to look at that stuff and go like, man, I don't wanna go to school, like it's a waste of time. And so there was awhile there that like, I'll get my GED which is like so you can kinda test out of high school. And they tell you that it's equivalent to a high school diploma but then in some ways it's kind of not, I don't know, there was a weird. I had missed so much school and also we, so we were doing the public access show and I filmed a teacher, so a teacher at the high school I was going to, our chemistry teacher got fired and I believe the talk was, and I'm not sure, it was sexual harassment from the sounds of things, like to students. And so the first day that they introduced here's your new chemistry teacher I had the video camera that we used to tape the show so I filmed them introducing this new teacher and all this other stuff and like asked them questions like it was a press conference. And they answered, no one said, hey put that thing down. Like I was very clearly pointing a video camera at them. And then like the next day, that day, the day after, something like that, like the principal called me and said, hey, what are you gonna do with that video tape? And I said, well we're gonna put it on television. - [Danny] Oh my gosh. - [Jeff] And he was super not happy about that. - [Danny] I wonder why. - [Jeff] Yeah, and so at that point we realized we had something so we called the papers and said, hey we got this tape and they started investigating it and it became a story, it was something that they, I think they were trying to keep very quiet. Later on that teacher would show up at my doorstep looking for a copy of the tape because he was trying to sue the, I don't know, he was trying to get something out of the school district or something over what happened, this was years later after I was out of high school. So that was very strange. So after that between the amount of school we were missing, I had like a guidance counselor basically recommend that I should go on independent study. Which was basically, at the time it was primarily, it woulda been like pregnant teens and people that like were having trouble in school and that sorta stuff and they were like, oh, we're piloting a new program for kids who don't necessarily fit into the standard curriculum and they pitched it like that but basically it felt like they were just trying to get me and Glenn out of there. - [Danny] Right, journalist at heart it turns out. - [Jeff] I guess, I don't know. And so that led to me getting much higher grades and stuff because I was able to just kinda like crank through stuff really quickly. I graduated early because I just finished the work. I mean, I graduated like two weeks early, not hugely early. But it was great, it felt like I was getting one over on the school district because I was doing a full semester of science while like reading a book in my patents hot tub or, you know, just like stupid crap like that. I was getting like journalism credit for the stuff we were doing going to trade shows and like video production, they were just throwin' credits at me left and right and so yeah, I graduated early, it was great, I was able to take that and go back to the high school that I had stopped going to and go talk to like the one teacher that I liked, Mr. Moore, he was a math teacher, great guy, I think he taught some of the computer stuff also. And I remember telling him like, hey, I just graduated. And he just looked at me and said, god dammit, Gerstmann, you got 'em. He seemed like dismayed that I had managed to get one over on the system somehow but he couldn't help, but yeah, it was a, that felt pretty good. - [Danny] Through his life, Jeff's do-it-his-own way attitude has been both a source of great strength and the catalyst for much drama. He attended a local junior college for a semester, but it didn't stick, preferring to do extra-curricular work like attending trade-shows with his friend Ryan McDonald, hanging out with local bands, and as he put it, learning how to drink. Around this time Glenn, who had gotta him the job at the magazine years earlier, started working for a new website in San Francisco's Richmond district. Just a few blocks from the servers of archive.org on the cloudy avenues of Clement Street, lied an office where a staff of 20 was running the website GameSpot. They had hired Glenn to lead the charge on a new console-focused spin-off of the site that they were going to call VideoGameSpot. - [Jeff] Glenn hired Ryan McDonald not long after that to be like the strategy slash codes editor and then I started freelancing for him because they wanted 100 reviews by launch and they were lookin' to launch like three months, four months from that time. And so I started crankin' out reviews and the way I always heard it was that I was turning reviews around really quickly, really clean copy, and so Vince Broady kinda said like, hey, bring this guy and let's see. And they brought me in as like an editorial assistant which was more or less an intern type role and within two or three months, not even two or three months, within like a month, the launch editor, there was a guy, Joe Hutsko, who would come on, it was one of Vince's friends who had just come on I think to kinda see this console site through to launch and then I think he was gonna go on to do something else somewhere else and I was working late one night and Joe Hutsko walked by and saw me there and he was like, you're still here, what are you doin'? I was like, this work has to get done. And then like the next day I had an offer letter for a full time job at that point. - [Danny] GameSpot would go through several transformations and acquisitions over the coming years. But as the business side of online media was learning how to walk, emerging technologies were creating exciting new ways for people to talk about games. GameSpot led this charge with one of the first video game podcasts, The Hotspot, and a weekly live show, On The Spot. Suddenly these young game reporters were starting to become more than just bylines. For years readers, the folks writing reviews and new articles, were just names at the bottom of a page. But now, for the first time, they were people with voices and faces. People with unique perspectives, opinions and personalities. And Jeff, with his experience doing public access shows in Petaluma, was at the forefront of this new form of media. The idea of streaming video games on the internet now is so blase and normal but back then I think to a lot of people it felt like magical, like a television channel that's broadcasting about games. From your perspective on your guys's end, did it feel weird to be like doing a live show that people were watching while you were just talking about this relatively niche hobby? - [Jeff] It felt like a natural extension of the stuff we had been doing. And it felt like, I don't know, it felt fresh and cool and like the tech was weird and sometimes it didn't work the way you wanted it to but at the same time we were wearing makeup, we had built a studio, we had lights, we had a jib, it was Frank Adams lowering a camera into the shot and all this other stuff and so coming from like these lame public access shows I was doing when I was 16 and stuff, like I had a weird leg up on a lot of other people because I was already relatively comfortable being in front of a camera. - [Danny] GameSpot continued to evolve. It went from indie to being purchased by media house Ziff Davis who then eventually sold it to CNET. By this stage the editor in chief was Greg Kasavin, who you may now recognize as the creative director of Supergiant Games, a studio we're currently running an embedded series on. His two right hand men at the time were Ricardo Torres on previews and Jeff on reviews. But when Greg left to start his career in games production, the role was never properly filled. Instead Ricardo and Jeff sort of ran it together, with increased influence being exerted on them from the powers above. The original founders of GameSpot had come from a editorial background but they were gone and the site was now being managed by people were less seasoned, more traffic orientated, and didn't value the power of editorial independence as much as they should have. - [Jeff] You know, there was an understanding about like this is kinda how this stuff is supposed to work, it's not always supposed to be an easy relationship if everyone's kind of sticking to their guns and doing their jobs and stuff. I don't know that they always saw the value of that, I think that's something that they corrected quickly, it was just kind of, it was a blip, if you look at GameSpot as a 20 plus year institution there was that brief period of time there where it was like, man, this went a little sideways for a bit and I was just in the right place at the right time, wrong place wrong time, whatever it was. - [Danny] What happened to Jeff next has been told a thousand times with new pieces added as time has provided new context. I myself spent years trying to fill in the blanks on how it all went down. Talking to friends and colleagues of Jeff who were there that day. It was a Wednesday in November, 2007 and the office was busily preparing for the weekly live-show which aired on Thursday afternoon. Jeff had just another another brush-up with management, this time over a review of Kane and Lynch which had made the sales department uncomfortable as they had sold a large advertising campaign to the game's publisher Eidos. If you visited GameSpot that week, the entire homepage was taken over by messaging about the game alongside a six out of ten review from Jeff. Jeff had had some run ins with top brass before and felt like he'd come close to losing his job a few times but this wasn't one of those times. It seemed like it had been dealt with, and he was already working on his next review. Later that morning his supervisor called him into a meeting and then called HR. He was told he was being terminated immediately, and as California is an at-will employment state, Jeff had no recourse. He was told to clean out his desk and bizarrely he was allowed to walk the halls for the rest of the day. Saying goodbye to his friends and colleagues, who were cursing the names of those in charge. Jeff drove home that day, the same 40 mile commute between San Francisco and Petaluma he had done thousands of times before. But this time it would be different, it would be a number of years before he stepped foot in the building again. There was no live show that week, the Kane and Lynch review had been taken down and then reposted and slowly over the coming days rumors began to circulate about Jeff's termination. Popular webcomic Penny Arcade ran a strip outlining the pressure from Eidos. Staff from the website 1UP, who were located just a block north of GameSpot on San Francisco's 2nd Street, held a protest outside the lobby of the building in support of the remaining staff. In an age before social media it would be a full eight days before the staff would actually speak up. And it happened on the next episode of On The Spot. The show ran with a somber opening. Ryan McDonald flanked by Ricardo Torres and a wincing Alex Navarro explained the situation. The camera pans out to reveal a full set with previewer Brad shoemaker, new hire Kevin VanOrd, community manager Jody Robinson and reporter Brendan Sinclar among a dozen of other staff. - [Ryan] Obviously we wanted to start today's On the Spot off a little different than we had in the past. The recent events and what happened last week in regards to our longtime friend and colleague, Jeff Gerstmann, being dismissed. It's been really hard on us and the response obviously's been tremendously immense and it's been on both sides. It's nice to see that everybody speaks up and has been kinda pullin' for us. On the other hand it's been hard obviously seein' GameSpot sucks written 100,000 times on forums and stuff so obviously we wanted to address this and talk to you guys today. Jeff was a personal friend to pretty much everybody so it was really, really hard that it happened the way it did. But yeah, we really wanted to say that we love and miss Jeff and give him, honestly, the proper send off that he deserves so that's what today's show's all about. And obviously you can see this is hard for me personally. - [Danny] For Jeff things were equally as bizarre. Tech Blogs like ValleyWag were running stories about the state of the site which were clearly sourced from somebody inside of GameSpot. The LA Times ran a story about the firing. And Jeff's mother received a phone call from a newspaper in Norway looking for a quote. It was three a.m. when the phone rang. - [Jeff] You know, some of it was just like, some of the people I talked to were very like looking for more dirt, they were expecting me to get on the phone and be like, oh, well here's where the rest of the bodies are buried. But like, you know, I was shocked. I was not happy about the whole thing but at the same time I feel good about the work I did while I was there and there were so many great people there that kinda got caught in some of this crossfire a little bit. I wasn't like, oh well here's the other nasty things that happened, there wasn't any. There wasn't anything else. So some people were coming to me looking for like some bigger story that I just didn't have to give. And that was strange, it seemed like everyone wanted something from me for a little while and it was a very weird time. And so at that point it was like, 'cause you know, like I was not an editor in chief in title but you know, we were running an editorial team. And so there aren't a lot of jobs out there at that level. It wasn't like I could walk into IGN or 1UP or, you know, I don't even know who else was even out there at that point, it wasn't like I could walk into those places and say, yes, make me your editor in chief. Like, they already have people in those roles, it wasn't really a viable thing. So at that point I was like, well I kinda need to maybe start something new. The weekend after everything went down or it might've been, it was like the Friday after or maybe it was like a full week afterwards, a bunch of people that I used to work with came up here to my place and we just hung out, like kinda impromptu, just have a bunch of drinks, play some Rock Band, and that sorta thing, and Dave Snider came by, Ryan Davis invited Dave over. And Dave was working on his stuff, I think Boompa was still up, they had a car website, you know, they were running Comic Vine, they were building Political Base which was another kind of wiki focused site for political donations in the run up to that election there, this was November, 2007. And so they were starting a new company and looking to build, they were building websites. And I was like, oh, that's cool, awesome, and nothing really came of it for a little bit. So I went and did a show on Revision3, so I drove into San Francisco, did that show, and then on the way back from or as I was finishing up that show I got a call from Dave and he said, hey, you should come by the office in Sausalito and just come by. I was like, all right, cool. And so on my way back from there I stopped at the office in Sausalito and looked at Comic Vine, the other stuff they were doing, and we sat in a room and ate sandwiches and I more or less committed to them right there. It was kind of like an, oh, we'll think about it and they were very much like, hey, why don't you just take a month and get your head together, like take an actual break 'cause this is so crazy and then let us know what you wanna do. And so we kinda started building a website not too long after that. - [Danny] Over the coming weeks several of Jeff's friends would leave GameSpot. Some were burned out from games coverage, this latest spell just being the straw that broke the camel's back. But others were leaving to work with Jeff. Fellow Sonoma County local Ryan Davis was the first. The two of them set up a blog, and started to a run a podcast which they hurriedly titled, Arrow Pointing Down. - [Jeff] So, every single person at the company that we were, that I was now a part of were people that had worked at that old company. And so we did not wanna give the appearance of people getting poached out of there and like I don't know if there was an actual non compete with some of the people in the building or anything that would've prevented them from doing this stuff but all of it had to be kind of like quiet and so it couldn't be something as simple as like, hey we want to hire you over here. It had to be like, well, if you were, if you were no longer working and you needed a place to work we do have some opening. You know, it was very much that sort of thing. But I knew pretty immediately looking at it and going, okay, we wanna team of about this size and I knew that Alex would not be available, Alex Navarro, I knew that he was not looking to do this sort of work at that time. He was, you know, I think already thinking about Harmonix, he ended up doing public relations for Harmonix for a brief period of time. Like I pretty much had a whiteboard, I knew in my head that I, at that point it was like okay, this is me, it's Ryan, it's Brad, it's Vinny. Which is not how you're supposed to hire people. You know, some people are like, well what are the positions that we're looking to fill and all this other stuff and, but like knowing like what we looking to build and we needed to be a tight team, who were the people that are gonna be impactful in those roles, like okay, Brad has a lot of experience in previews, he is a person that I know, like he knows a ton of people around the game industry. Like, I've worked reviews and so on the review side of things we didn't talk to companies all that often. Brad had that in his role so he left, he left and he had other things that he was maybe thinking about doing, it wasn't like a, it was not a clandestine like, he left specifically to, it was like, okay, he's out and we're gonna figure this out. And then we needed someone to do do video and we had been working with Vinny for awhile and Vinny was fantastic and it was like, okay, Vinny's really funny, this seems like a good fit for him and so we kinda went about it that way. It felt like night and day a lot of ways, but very similar in others. We were able to sit down for the first time, for me the first time ever, like I never thought I would have the opportunity to build something like this, you know. I was always like very respectful or very envious of like Vince Broady as like the editorial lead of the founder of GameSpot and so I was like, man, he took a chance and built this thing and built it from the ground up and look at it, it's this huge, this monument, it's lasted so long. And I never thought I would have an opportunity like that in my career, it just never seemed like it was in the cards. And so being forced into it was exciting. Because it let me sit down and be like, okay, what do we actually want to do? What do we think is actually the best way to cover games with a small team in this day and age? And when we started in 96 on VideoGameSpot, like the videos had to be very low frame rate and very short because no one could download 'em and, you know, it was like we were doing minute long video clips of gameplay and that was revolutionary at the time. You know, you had to install the Real Video Player and all this, you know, all this other stuff. And here we were on the cusp of like, actually we can kind of, we can kinda livestream, you know, the services to do it easily weren't in place, you still had to host it yourself and that got very expensive and all that and YouTube wasn't really there in the way that they are now, YouTube existed but it was, I don't think you could put up videos that were longer than five or 10 minutes at the time and it just was not a viable place for that at the time. And so we had to kinda sit down and say, well with the technology we have available what can we do? And we wanted to be a podcast, the Hotspot was one of the most fun things I had doing in my entire time at GameSpot and we knew right out of the gate that we wanted to have a podcast be kind of one of the main things. And then from there it was like, okay, well, do we wanna write news? Not really, none of us are really news writers per say. And it was like, well, we need to able to capture video of games and put it on the internet. And we need to be able to talk alongside it or something like that, whether we're cutting it together or doing it on the fly. And so Mike Tatum, who was the head of biz dev for the company just went out to the Apple Store and came back with the biggest ass Mac Pro he could've gotten at the time and set it the room with me and Ryan and we looked at it and we were like, neither of us know how to use any of this shit. And we messed around with it long enough to figure out eventually we could capture some footage. We were like, okay, we figured out, first the game we captured footage of was Hot Shots Golf for the Playstation 3. And we were like, okay, we captured the footage, now what do we with it? And we hadn't answered that question yet 'cause there was no website to put it on or anything like that. So those early silly days of just like putting that stuff together. We didn't really know exactly what we wanted to do, it was just a matter, it was very freeing in way to be able to sit down and be like, okay, here are the things that we liked doing before, let's try to keep doing that. And then the rest is up in the air. For a long time there we weren't even necessarily sold on the idea of just covering video games. It was always meant to be bigger than that. We were gonna cover music, we were gonna cover movies, you know, all this other stuff. But at the end of the day old habits die hard, it was very easy for us to cover video games compared to like, calling music PR people out of the blue and being like, hey, we wanna interview this artist that's coming to town, can you set, you know, it was just, we stuck with what we knew and kinda just mainly covered video games and flavors of Gatorade. Really it was the original mandate for GameSpot was we wanna create a site that we ourselves would use. And I approached it that way and said like, well, what kind of game coverage do I actually care about? And a lot of the preview related stuff at the time was just not, it was a lot of like carved up little parts of a game. Like, we're gonna give you assets on these three new guns and this two new trees and it was like, here's the rims and tires of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Outlets used to compete for the exclusive rights to run stuff like that. It was a very different time so we knew we were never gonna matter to publishers the same way the big sites did and that was fine, we wanted to kinda do our own thing and so that led to it being a little more guerrilla. You talked earlier about long footage of games being something of a novelty or a weird impossibility back then but for us it kinda just became a necessity because of the number of people we had and the lack of time we could devote to actual editing. It was like, just stuff kinda came in long out of the gate. And so we first launched as just a WordPress blog and we went to our first E3 in 08 with just a WordPress blog. We could run videos on it but it was pretty bare bones. It was mostly a placeholder, it was like, here's the name of the site, you can comment on these stories, and we were just kind of writing news and reviews and putting up videos here and there. And it was all pretty straightforward stuff, it was like that and the podcast. And then we rolled out the full site not long after that E3, it was like July of that year I think and then that was like, okay, now here's this full wiki, here's all this other stuff. Better user features, full message boards, all this other stuff. And so we went at it that way for awhile and then the premium membership stuff came later. - [Danny] It wasn't just old staff who were leaving GameSpot for Jeff's new project, users were flocking too. Once the full site was launched tens of thousands of profiles were created, a large portion of which were disenfranchised GameSpot fans who wanted to support Jeff and the staff who had left. I was one of them and I remember that time well. The passion and excitement of those days was one of the most powerful moments I've had as part of an online community. And the folks at Whiskey Media used this passion to help fund the site. Giant Bomb had taken the ad-free subscription model that GameSpot had pioneered, and added much more. For $5 a month you not only supported some of your favorite creators, but got access to bonus videos and features. New users signed up in their droves. - [Jeff] The launch of the site proper exceeded our expectations in a way that like wiki submissions were taking a week or more to approve because so many people were signing up and contributing and all this other stuff, it was just, we were staying up all night working on just the community stuff, moderation stuff. And then the premium membership stuff did well out of the gate. We went back and forth on a few ideas about what are we offering here and all that sort of stuff but yeah, it did really well that first day. Advertising was never really a thing for us, we had one in house ad person eventually for a brief period of time but like, you know, advertising's all about eyeballs and we were never gonna be the biggest website in the world, it was we were about, okay, well we want people who really care about this stuff and so, you know, in advertising you're trying to make a case for just like, oh no, this is a smaller audience but they're smarter and they spend more money and you know, at some point you have to go out and educate brands and say like, here's why you wanna advertise here instead of there or spend your money with us because our people are smarter or this and that and at the end of the day advertisers just want eyeballs so like you can go in and pitch that story all you want, it's just not how the advertising model typically works. So we had a few things where like, you know, we had some sponsored achievements on the site and there was a livestream, I was actually against it, but they did a livestream for, NTSF:SUV:SD, I think was the ordering of that, an Adult Swim show. Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. They did a livestream like live watch along with it. And so we were doing a few things like that that were innovative at the time I guess and so you would have people who understood like, hey, the internet is changing, it's not necessarily about just raw eyeballs. We wanna find people who are more engaged with a thing and you know, this was kinda like the nascent form of like the influencer type stuff about like figuring out who are these people we can get that have sway with their audiences and so on and so forth. But, us being an editorial operation, we could never really go fully into that world. So the stuff that I would be comfortable doing in those spaces kinda, we ended up shooting down a lot of stuff, probably more stuff than we signed because it was like, no, I don't think we can do that. So the advertising stuff was never really gonna be for us and for those reasons, it's just, you know, the advertising market just wasn't really compatible with our size and our scope but also kind of our mentality and where we were at with stuff so we wanted to try and find something different. And again, that was another Dave Snider, Dave was kind of the main first proponent about like, no, people will pay for good stuff on the internet, I know it. And I think I was a little more like, I don't know, man, people like to pirate stuff. But he's like, no, this will, he won me over pretty fast and we went through with it, we went on with it. - [Danny] Giant Bomb has been running for a decade and in that time the site has evolved to keep up with the changing desires of its audience. But there are a few shows that have lasted the test of time. Their weekly podcast The Giant Bombcast has had over 570 episodes and is one of the most popular video game podcasts in the world. And their Quick Looks series predated the creation of Let's Plays, still exists today. I asked Jeff to tell me about some of his favorites are. He notes their live E3 internet show, and eventually making the podcast profitable as some of his proudest achievements. As shows have come and gone, so too have staff. Just like GameSpot created a platform for Jeff to make a name for himself. Giant Bomb has become an incubator of talent all to itself. As the sort of captain of the ship as well, what does it feel like to be responsible for kind of what Giant Bomb has become in terms of its, as an incubator for talent, right. You've had people come through the doors and leave out the other side to go on to wonderful careers as well. Do you take a pride in that, especially considering, you know, how you seem to have a reverence for the people who gave you opportunities in your early career. - [Jeff] It's cool, I don't always think about it. Like, I don't know, like I look at it and go like, did I do anything for anyone, I don't know, I'm just here, I don't know, I just do my thing. And I don't know that I always, I used to take it really personally back in the GameSpot days when anyone would leave. I would always think like, man, why would you, why would you go do something else, we're doing great, we're doing all this other stuff, and now I look at it in retrospect and go like, maybe it was people like me in the senior roles for as long as we were that led to people below us wanting to get out for more opportunities, and go like, man, yeah, okay. But yeah, I used to take it really personally 'cause I just, you know, it was great to just, there were times where, you know, man, this is the best team I've ever worked with, this is great. Oh, three people are leaving over the course of six months, what's goin on? And the people that left in the run up to me leaving, at the time I was really bummed out, in retrospect I was like, oh, yeah okay, I get it. And things change and people change and they want something else out of their careers and they wanna take on new challenges and all that sorta stuff and I think that's great. At the same time, like I miss the people that have moved on. Like, there was a time there that there were, we were starting to have conversations, it's like, no, we need to move Danny O'Dwyer over to Giant Bomb, like we have, this should happen. And then he went out and found fame and fortune on his own without us and I was like, well, shit. Let that one slip away, I guess. - [Danny] There will always be a part of me in my professional sort of hindsight that will, I remember when you mentioned that to me at a certain point, I can't remember, was it when I had already handed in my notice or I think it was probably a little bit before maybe, where like, that is like the ultimate dream come true. But now I have a new dream come true which is that I get to just pop into the office and review European sports games twice a year or whatever. - [Jeff] Right, yeah, I mean, I have a code for FIFA that I don't know what to do with so. Might be callin' you for that one. So, it's stuff like that, like it's great seeing people out there doing their thing, and the thing I've tried to be better at this time around that I was terrible at back in the GameSpot days is try to keep in touch with people on a regular basis. Like it can be so easy just to put your head down and be like, I'm surrounded by these people, these are the people I see everyday, these are the only people I talk to because I don't have time for anything else. Discord has actually been really useful at that, honestly. Like hey, let's keep in touch with friends and try to maintain these friendships and stuff like that. So yeah, it's great being in regular contact with people like Patrick and Austin Walker and stuff like that. - [Danny] Giant Bomb lived under the Whiskey Media banner for four years, but the media startup was struggling to grow at a rate required by the landscape of the bay area investors and so the decision was made to fold the company to sell of its assets to suitable suitors. What happened next seemed impossible to anybody watching from the stands. - [Jeff] The process of us selling the company was strange, for a lot of the reasons you would expect. But you know, I think the thing that happened, every start up that sells or fails or anything always like to say, aw, we were just too early. We had the best ideas, too early. But you know, in some cases if we were a year later or something like that and YouTube had been more viable for longer form videos, like who knows what woulda happened. You know, we made the best choices we could along the way but at the end of the day, you know, they had launched a lot of other sites and wanted it to be this big network and when that kinda, I think that wasn't happening at the rate that they needed it to happen so it became a case of just like, okay, maybe it's time to move on and move onto a different business and do a different thing and so we were at that point lucky enough to be something that was sellable, you know. Like you think about the number of start ups now, especially the number of content companies that launched and just went under. And with Giant Bomb with the premium memberships and that sort of stuff we were in a pretty good position there to where we were doing something that people I think were just starting to get a sense of just like, hey, maybe this direct to consumer like subscription type stuff is something we should care about. And so it was something that people were starting to wake up to and be like hey, maybe we want some kind of back pocket plan in case this advertising thing doesn't always work the way it works now. So Mike Tatum, the head of biz dev for Whiskey, asked me one day, he said, hey, would you be open to maybe selling the company to CBS? And I just laughed. And I was like yes, of course, absolutely, go have those conversations, that's the craziest thing anyone's ever said to me, absolutely, yeah, of course. That's the thing, it was a very different time, a very different company, all that other stuff. Like the stuff that happened to me was this blip on this timeline of this multi decade operation that has had good people at the helm of it for almost all of its time, you know. And most of the people that were there when I was there last time and involved in some of that unpleasantness were long gone. So at this point it was like, hey, do you wanna go talk to John Davison about, you know, maybe comin' over there, and Simon Whitcombe. Yeah, they've been around this space for years, it's totally different people, like yeah, of course. And there were other people that were interested, the company that ended up buying tested was like lightly interested but not in a way that sounded all that exciting to me. And so yeah, I had lunch with John and Simon and in, this would've been, it was around the holidays, I don't remember the exact year anymore, it all runs together, man. But it was the holidays, it was like right after Christmas, we went into Christmas break knowing that it was likely that the company was gonna be sold early the following year. And that the GameSpot team was interested, was kind of like what I went into the holidays knowing. And so I met with them and we just kinda talked it out and, you know, like they had a good head on their shoulders and we were, you know, fairly attractive I guess in the sense that we had our own revenue, it wasn't like we were coming in and like, okay, you gotta bolt us to a sales team, you gotta bolt us to this 'cause otherwise we're gonna be losing money overnight. We were coming in doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, I wasn't in all the negations and meetings and all the back and forth for that sorta stuff but, yeah, it was an exciting weird time because we knew it was happening but we couldn't say it was happening. And rumors started getting out there a little bit, it was a very strange time, you know. It was so hectic. My dad went into the hospital as we were packing up the office to get everything out, and we were entering this quiet period where we wouldn't even have an office and we couldn't even say why, which was so unlike everything we had done with our community and all this other stuff. It was like, here's the thing where we are forced to not talk about this deal or act like anything is weird but we also are not in an office, it's hard to generate content when you're not in the studio. And there was just so much going on around that time, it was really, it was bizarre. I came out of it feeling like we did pretty good. For someone who came into that situation with little more than his good name I feel like I came out of it better. Personally better, better at my job, better at more types of things, better at running a, a little bit more respect for what it takes to run a business but also knowing when to sacrifice the business needs for editorial interest, you know, that sorta stuff. I was able to grasp more pieces of the puzzle, I guess. And so yeah, we came back in and it was fun because I had set up Giancarlo Varanini, I set him up real good where I saw him at an event the week before the deal was getting announced and I think my exact words were, hey I'll see you next week. And we left this Microsoft event or whatever we were at and. - [Danny] Did he know, did he twig it or? - [Jeff] He didn't know at the time but he pieced it together and then he was like, oh my god, you were saying what you were saying, yeah. 'Cause, you know, we still talk to a lot of those people that were over there. - [Danny] So strange, I think I told you, we were in the bizarre situation where the UK, I was at GameSpot UK and the UK sales team had leaked the deal to us, I think maybe six weeks before it was announced. - Wow. - We all knew and we couldn't tell the American office about it. - [Jeff] That's GameSpot UK for you, man. One year they tried to give FIFA an 11. - [Danny]Did they actually? - [Jeff] Actually, yes. They turned in a FIFA review that was trying to give it an 11 out of 10. And we had to be like, no, you absolutely cannot under any circumstances do that. - [Danny] For most of Jeff's life his career and hobby have been impossible tangled. And so for much of his life his identity has been too. For years his Xbox Gamertag was GameSpotting. He only changed it when he set up his new site, to GiantBombing. But since selling to CBS he's tried to create more distance between these two worlds. Jeff isn't the most social person you'll work with. He commutes to and from Petaluma every day, a 40 mile drive during bay area rush hour. Perhaps it's why he doesn't socialize much after work. Or maybe it's a convenient excuse to not have to. At his desk, he sits with headphones on, usually working on something. When he talks to you he speaks openly and honestly. When he doesn't want to talk, he doesn't. He's always struck me as a person who's gears are always turning, thinking about the work. Half enjoying it, half burdened by the weight of it all. He's tried to get better at delegating responsibility but in many ways Giant Bomb is his child and he feels like he needs to be in the room when decisions about it are being made. - [Jeff] For me that's the struggle. Like my personal struggle is like the time management aspect of it and like keeping everything going. Because before I had other things going on in my life you could throw as much waking time as you could at a thing and also we owned the company. It was a sick cycle where in the back of your head you could always say like, well I need to work until three a.m. because this could be the video that puts us over the edge and turns this thing into an even bigger thing. And so it was very easy to justify to yourself incredibly unhealthy work habits that didn't make the site better, that didn't lead to necessarily more content or anything like that, it was just it was very easy to spend every waking moment thinking about it. And now I don't and at first that made me feel guilty, yeah, that's the weird struggle of just like, it's all just kind of a weird head trip. And the worrying goes from like, am I spending enough time with my family, am I spending enough time with my job, this seems like stuff that everyone else figured out a long time ago but I'm coming to it over the last few years and going like, man, this is an interesting new challenge. But it's been great, I wouldn't, if it wasn't for my wife I don't think I would, I'm not even sure if I would still be doing this, honestly. I probably would've completely burned out or something by now without her to kinda have my back and all that sorta stuff. Yeah, she's been great. She's the best thing that ever happened to me, totally. - [Danny] Trying to create a distance between life and work you're passionate about can often be a struggle. But it was impossible for the staff of Giant Bomb to do so in the summer of 2013. This July will mark the 6th year since the tragic passing of their friend and colleague Ryan Davis and in recent months it's been on Jeff's mind a lot more. Last year the site launched a 24 hour livestream that plays videos from throughout the 10 year archive of Giant Bomb and users often vote for videos that Ryan is featured in. So Jeff is confronted with the memory of their friendship a lot more these days. - [Jeff] You know, going back to those videos and stuff, the relationship that Ryan and I had was very complicated and changed a lot over the years because, you know, we were close friends, we were in a band, we were inseparable, I got him hired, we became coworkers, I became his boss. And so the relationship changed along the way too. So yeah, I don't know, when I think about Ryan I think about the days before were working together, primarily. Those are my Ryan memories, usually. The videos, the stuff we did along the way, yeah, we did some really cool shit and I like a lot of it just fine, but me personally, I think about the stuff prior to, when Ryan was answering phones for AT and T internet at three in the morning when people couldn't get into their email, that's the Ryan I think of. The Ryan that was living with three other guys in this tiny ass place and we'd just go hang out and he wasn't 21 yet so I was indispensable. Like that sort of stuff, that's the stuff I think about when I think about Ryan. - [Danny] When I asked Jeff about the future of Giant Bomb he's excited, but cautious. Years of working on the internet has taught him to be careful about over-promising before stuff is built. Perhaps his experiences have also taught him not to plan too far ahead. As the site enters its 11th year its been changing its programming to try and bring in new viewers. Giant Bomb has been successful, it pays its own way at CBS, but it's still a website owned by a large media organization, so often the future is planned quarter by quarter, year by year. Perhaps the most surprising thing in coming to know Jeff, is how excited he still is about games. His Twitter profile reads "I've been writing about "video games my entire life. "It would be insane to stop now." So you wouldn't blame him for being burned out on video games after 30 plus years of talking about them. But if nothing else, the thing that strikes me about Jeff Gerstmann is that these days when you can be so cynical about video games he's still a true believer in the power of the medium, whether it be players of Pac-Man or Fortnite. - [Jeff] I think games are only gonna continue to get more popular. If you look at what we're seeing with something like Fortnite right now. Like, it's having a moment that, that Minecraft had before it. It's huge, it's bigger than a Five Nights at Freddy's, it's crazy. But like I'm just trying to think about like, you know, games that have penetrated the mainstream in a huge way. What we're seeing with Fortnite right now feels almost unprecedented. It's Pac-Man esque. You know, like Minecraft was huge, but not in a, like kids loved Minecraft, kids love Roblox, but Fortnite is cut such a wide swathe across society to where it's like all these popular mainstream sports figures are now doing Fortnite dances in actual sports and it's never been like that before. So in some ways like, gaming has kind of never been cooler or less cool depending on your perspective. Because it's literally everywhere. You know, everyone is carrying around a device in their pocket that is capable of feats that like it would've been insane, no console 10 years ago could've done anything like this. Granted, the controls are still bad. The technology is pushed so far forward and it's so pervasive and in so many different places and in so many different styles. You look at like Pokemon Go and the idea of location based gaming, you know, people getting out there and moving around to catch Pokemon, like all that stuff is amazing and it's crazy. But like where we're going on that front, I think if the technology bears out and data caps don't kill the dream and all this other stuff, we're gonna reach a point where anyone can play top level video games on the device they carry around with them every single day. And in some cases they are, I mean, Fortnite's on phones for whatever that's worth. So I think that this isn't gonna go away, this is gaming's kind of big push into the mainstream kind of once and for all. And I think that games coverage, that's a more complicated thing. If you look at YouTube right now with demonetizing videos and everyone trying to stream and everyone trying to have a side hustle streaming or something like that. Kids growing up like commentating games as they're playing 'em because they just watch people on YouTube and they think that's how you're supposed to play games. That's it, that's where we're going, or that's where we are already. And so I think over the next five years it'll be tumultuous because I think you'll see the bottom drop out of ads in a way that makes the Twitch streaming and YouTube and like the kinda hobbyist turned pro streamer, I think that that's gonna have to even out. I think it's only gonna get harder and I think that will keep a lot of people out eventually, or it'll lead to a growth in just the hobbyist streaming and people will have different expectations. They'll just be like, I'm streaming 'cause I like it, I'm not gonna sit here and think I'm gonna make a bunch of money. The same way I made public access when I was 16, it's like, oh, we're on television. Like I'm not making any money off of it the way real people on TV do but I just wanna do it 'cause it's fun. - [Danny] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Noclip Podcast. Sorry it took so long to get this one out, it was quite a long story and it's also kind of an impossible story to tell in its entirety so I had to pick my battles and figure out a narrative that kind of worked. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it was nice piece to celebrate a website that means a lot to me and I'm sure a lot to you as well. Now for the housekeeping, if you wanna follow us on Twitter we are @Noclipvideo, I am @dannyodwyer, we have r/noclip if you're interested in getting on board and talking on Reddit and of course if you're a Patron keep up to date on all the Patreon posts. Podcasts are available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and loads of other places anywhere podcasts are sold basically. We also have a YouTube channel where you can watch the podcast. That's Youtube.com/Noclippodcast. If you didn't know, we also make documentaries about video games, those are available for free with no advertising at Youtube.com/noclipvideo. Patrons get this show early for 5$ a month, if you're interested in supporting our work please head over to Patreon.com/noclip. And that's the podcast for another episode. We are actually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco right now recording bunches of interviews which will be going up on the channel in the next couple of weeks. But we'll be back with another podcast in the not too distant future so make sure you hit that subscribe. We've never actually asked people to rate it, so if you're listening now and you're still listening at the end of this podcast, hey, why not rate us? Thank you so much for listening, we'll see you next time.

Jeff Neumeister, Founder and CEO of Neumeister & Associates, joins us today to talk about cryptocurrency taxes, a confounding area of tax law (what isn’t?) and one that you should master if you are an investor in digital currency. Because what you don’t know could have an adverse impact on your pocketbook. That’s what happened to one U.S. college student in 2017 who invested $5,000 in Ethereum and somehow would up owing the IRS $400,000 in taxes. Yes, you stand to benefit greatly from understanding how the IRS views crypto (Hint: It’s in the same category as your house). And you’ll learn the cardinal rule of crypto taxation: The buck stops with you.   This is specially important this year after the 2018 market crash since many investors are selling their cryptocurrency and fleeing the market, without full knowledge of the tsunami of capital gains liabilities that these transactions may be triggering.   A forensic accountant by trade, Jeff brings great credibility to the task of walking us through the minefields of crypto taxes. He offers practical tips on everything from what constitutes a taxable event to what makes crypto taxes so challenging and how mined coins are taxed. That’s just a few of the questions Jeff answers in this episode. You’ll come away feeling a lot more confident about understanding your tax burden as you stagger into your tax prep marathon.     Topics Covered in this Conversation with Jeff Neumeister   What makes crypto taxes so challenging. What constitutes a taxable event? What is the difference between short-term and long-term gains? How are mined coins taxed? What happens if I give some coins as a gift, or someone gives me crypto? Do I have to pay tax on coins that were hacked? What happens if I lose some coins? What are the acceptable ways to report coin gains? What are the biggest obstacles to easily filing crypto taxes? Increasingly, there are charities that accept crypto. Is that something that would be helpful at tax time?  How are exchanges doing in terms of making it easy for investors to file taxes? Can crypto losses be balanced against traditional fiat capital losses. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen or heard with it comes to filing or not filing crypto taxes. Let’s step back a bit and look at the process involved - let’s look at two scenarios: Scenario A: Let’s say you are Sally Fey, a beginner investor in 2017 and you got all caught up in the buying and selling during the Bull Market and you didn’t track all the coins you traded across multiple exchanges nor did you jot down the buy/sell price  for each transaction. Now your taxes are looming and you have your head in your hands. How do you regroup? Scenario B: Unlike Sally Fey, you are Matt Jones -- a beginner investor in 2019 and it’s a Bear Market and you’ve been told now is the time to buy. You’re starting with a clean slate. You’ve set up your exchange accounts, you are ready to trade. What’s good tax hygiene you should follow from Day One and on to Day 365 to simplify your tax headache for the year? Can you get away with NOT paying crypto taxes? What are the penalties for non-compliance? Any closing thoughts on how to make our crypto tax lives easier?   Questions and Comments? chasingunicorns@gem.co   Guest Contact Information Jeff Neumeister Website | LinkedIn | Twitter Resource Links: 3 Ways the IRS Is Taxing Cryptocurrencies Taxes and crypto Turning your 2018 Bitcoin and Crypto Losses into Tax Savings What You Don’t Know About Crypto Taxes Can Hurt You Tax Nightmare: Student Invested $5k in Ethereum & Now Owes $400k in Taxes 4 things to know about your cryptocurrency at tax time Year-End Tax Tips And Strategies For Cryptocurrency Investors IRS Guidelines Transcript: Interview with Jeff Neumeister Interview Recorded On: November 12 Topic: Crypto Taxes Chitra: Hello, and welcome to Running with Unicorns, your portal to the world of cryptocurrency. I'm Chitra Ragavan, Chief Strategy Officer at Gem. It's that time of year again, and your crypto taxes are looming. Here's what you can do about it. Our guest today is going to walk us through the ins and outs of crypto tax filing. Jeff Neumeister is CEO and Founder of Neumeister & Associates, an LA-based tax advisory firm with a growing practice in crypto taxes.   Jeff, welcome to the program.   Jeff: Thank you.   Chitra: What makes filing crypto taxes so challenging?   Jeff: It'd be probably because there are so many different things that are happening in the crypto world. It's not just mining coins or just trading coins, but there are forks, airdrops. There's just a lot happening. Because it's a new space, it's a lot that the taxing authorities are still trying to wrap their heads around.   Chitra: Let's start with the basics. What constitutes a taxable event in cryptocurrency?   Jeff: A taxable event is anything that results in a tax obligation or a potential tax obligation. That could be selling something, it could be generating income, it could be incurring a expense.   Chitra: Is it different than in regular taxes? What are the differences and similarities?   Jeff: It's similar in concept, except with cryptos there's just, again, so much more going on. Normally, if someone is just, say, a W2 earner, they have a paycheck, and that's the sole source of income that is subject to tax. With cryptos, however, if you're mining and trading in the ICO world, there's so many things that are happening that you're constantly subjected to different types of taxes.   Chitra: One of the basic things one needs to know is short-term and long-term gains. How does that work?   Jeff: Short-term gains just refer to anything, anytime you hold an asset or a piece of property for less than 12 months. Long-term is anything above that. Now, they also come along with different taxable rates. With long-term capital gains, it could be anywhere from 0 to 20%, so much better than what most of us pay with taxes for our income earnings. For short-term gains, it's anywhere from 10 to 37%. Short-term capital gains are essentially the same as ordinary income tax rates.   Chitra: Let's look at different types of crypto and how they will be impacted by taxes. Let's start with if you're mining cryptocurrency. How do you account for those?   Jeff: Mining's interesting, because it's kind of two things at once. When you mine a coin, or a fraction of a fraction of a coin, you're generating ordinary income, so whatever the value of the mined coin was, or fraction of a coin was, you have to pay ordinary income taxes on that. Then, that also establishes your cost basis in the coin that you now hold. If you do something else with it later on, trade it or sell it, you'll have capital gains on top of that.   Chitra: Then, let's look at crypto gifts. If you get a gift of Bitcoin, or Ether, or EOS, how do you handle that when it comes to tax time?   Jeff: If you're the receiver of a gift, then you just need to be aware of what the holder's or the donor's cost basis was. If they acquired something for, say, $100 and gave it to you, you need to make sure that you have that down in your records that your cost basis is $100.   There's no tax owed on a gift received. However, if you're the gift giver, you might have to do a informational filing, a form 709. What that is is anytime you gift more, at least in 2018, more than $15,000, you have to file a form 709. You don't have to pay gift tax on that, but if you exceed your gift-giving of $5.6 million during the course of your lifetime, then you have to start paying gift taxes.   Chitra: If only we could all be so lucky.   Jeff: Right. Most of us will never have to worry about that, but make sure that you file a form 709, because there are penalties with not filing.   Chitra: Then, can you give crypto to charity? I see that increasingly, there are a lot of, even the Red Cross and other organizations accepting crypto. When that happens, is that a good thing to do, when it comes to tax time? Obviously, it's a good thing to do in any case, but it probably helps with taxes, doesn't it?   Jeff: Absolutely. It's just like any charitable contribution, except instead of giving clothes, or fiat, or artwork, or jewelry, you're giving cryptos, yeah.   Chitra: It's taxed similarly?   Jeff: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative).   Chitra: Then, if you're hacked, what happens? You're losing a bunch of coins because you got hacked. Do you have to pay taxes on that?   Jeff: No, but you have to make sure that it's documented. It's the same thing as if someone came into your house and burglarized it, right? It's a casualty loss. That would be an itemized deduction. You have to make sure that you record those things. Chitra: What if you just lose your crypto? Like, they're on some exchange, you don't know where it is, or you've lost the password. Can they figure it out that you have this crypto? How do you account for the missing crypto?   Jeff: That's a little bit more challenging. If you no longer have access, say, to your key, and you'll never obtain access, then that could be construed as a casualty loss, as well. If you just say, "I don't know which exchange it's on," hopefully that won't come up if you're audited, yeah.   Chitra: And if you are?   Jeff: Then, as long as you show a good faith effort in being consistent and transparent with taxing authorities, and they could see that you're not trying to hide anything, then you should be okay.   Chitra: Do you hear of people that are trying to hide crypto by claiming losses, that they've lost it?   Jeff: Some folks, yeah, yeah. More egregious than that, though, we've had, there was one gentleman that was seeking out a CPA, who made a little over 2.5 million in cryptos, and said, "No, I'm just not going to file. If they want the money, they have to come after me."   Chitra: Did they?   Jeff: Well, that's what's going to happen over the next couple years, yeah. The IRS has started mounting a task force specialist specifically to investigate cryptocurrency filings.   Chitra: Is that going to be an easy task? Will they find people that are scofflaws?   Jeff: They will absolutely find people, right? It's going to be interesting in the tax world for the next couple of years, and tax courts, people fighting them.   Chitra: You're seeing a lot of new developments in tax filings, in tax law as a result of this?   Jeff: Not yet. Really, they're just kind of testing the waters, now. The last, about a year ago, they started issuing subpoenas to exchanges, and they were winning, to get transaction records from them, so they could see what people are trading and how much people are earning, so they could compare that with individual tax returns, to find evidence of those that are evading their taxes. They're just starting to institute those audits now and will be taking these folks to tax court as needed. There's a lot of things that will come out of it, but it hasn't happened yet.   Chitra: Because I think, particularly in the early days, there were probably a lot of people who weren't filing taxes. Is there like a statute of limitations, or does it matter if like 10 years ago you weren't filing taxes, and now the IRS is starting to think about this and starting to do these audits?   Jeff: There is a statute. It's, generally speaking, three years from the date of which a filing was due, but that's only if it was an innocent mistake. If you're intentionally evading, there's no statute on that.   Chitra: How do you report, typically, gains and losses? What's the process?   Jeff: The process is usually, you want to have everything calculated, all the transactions. Coin for coin, coin for fiat, and those will be itemized on a form 8949, and summarized on a schedule D, which are attached to the tax returns.   Chitra: Having done my crypto taxes this year, it's fairly complicated. It's just, you have to look at every single transaction. Talk a little bit about what that process is like. It's fascinating for me to see the level of detail and how you actually go about finding those records, if somebody hasn't kept those records, and being able to trace the flow of that currency from the exchange to your wallet, or if you're trading, you've got all of these multiple transactions that have taken place, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.   Jeff: Yeah, it could get very complicated. That's why a lot of our clients have come to us, to help them untangle these complex array of transactions, ranging from, if they have a few hundred coins that they're trading across multiple years, you can end up having thousands and thousands of cost pulls, because you have to trace every single transaction to its cost basis. Its cost basis depend on whether you used FIFO, LIFO, or HIFO.   Chitra: Explain that a little bit.   Jeff: Sure, yeah. Those are the manners in which you inventory the cells of different coins. LIFO, last in, first out, that's saying, when you sell a coin, you go to the last time that you had acquired that coin, and you sell it out of that pool. If you're buying and selling coins all day long, go across multiple months, you have many cost pulls, even thousands or tens of thousands of cost pulls.   FIFO, first in, first out, is where you sell your oldest coin. What that does is it will result in fewer long-term capital gains, but you're kind of eating up your tax obligation now, versus deferring it to later on.   Chitra: Let's say I'm trading, okay? I'm on exchanges, and I'm trading. I'm not really thinking about ... It's not something you think during your trading process, right? It's something you do after the fact. I'm not thinking LIFO and FIFO when I'm like, "Let me find what's my oldest Bitcoin, and let me trade that for Ether." I'm just like, trading. Am I doing the right thing? Is this something you go after the fact, and start to look through it and make those calculations?   Jeff: The easiest thing is to maintain good records, so that whoever, whether you're doing it yourself or outsourcing it to a professional like us, then they could go through those records a lot easier, because it does get complicated. As long as you have the information, it could be all untangled.   Chitra: What's the largest number of transactions you've done, filing taxes, that you've seen? Thousands, hundreds of thousands?   Jeff: Probably in the hundreds of thousands. I think our largest client had a little shy of 200,000 transactions across about 2.5 years. It was a lot. It took a massive amount of manpower, because there isn't a way to fully automate it, yet. We've established a proprietary method to semi-automate portions of it, but not the whole thing. There's still a lot of manual touches that have to be done to it.   Chitra: Were you able to do it?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah. We were able to untangle all of it. He had a massive tax obligation, but most importantly, it'll keep him compliant with the IRS. He had the cash, right? If you make a million dollars in cryptos, and if you have to pay a few hundred thousand in tax, you know, you're still coming out ahead.   Chitra: This is true. What are some of the biggest obstacles today for average investors, when it comes to filing taxes?   Jeff: I think having an understanding about how complex the tax aspect is with cryptos, if you're trading, mining, doing anything else. I think just being aware and mindful of that.   Chitra: There's also the issue of documentation, right? For example, different exchanges can give you different levels of information about your trades, so at the end of the year, some exchanges will give you a lot of information. Other exchanges give you virtually no information. How do you start to do the detective work to find all of your records?   Jeff: That's one of the tricky parts, yeah, because there isn't really any sort of regulation about what all the exchanges have to provide users. There's going to be, and it's moving that direction. For now, it's kind of up to the individual to maintain their own records. If the exchange only provides piecemeal stuff, or in the case of Bittrex that just up and deleted people's information, it's still your obligation to make sure that you're tracking things.   Chitra: What happened in that instance where the information was deleted?   Jeff: Well, they up and decided just to remove information.   Chitra: This was an exchange?   Jeff: Yeah, yeah, Bittrex. It's still the user's responsibility to maintain the records. The individuals that were subjected to that, had they downloaded their transactional information, let's say, every week or every month, they would have been okay, right, just in case something does happen to an exchange. That's something we advise our clients to do is don't wait till the end of the year to start pulling your information, even if you're using a CPA like us, right? Pull the information maybe once a month, just in case something happens.   Chitra: That's interesting. That's something I've never thought to do. It's kind of surprising that they're allowed to even delete information. Is that going to change, in the future?   Jeff: Yeah, there's definitely more pressure in regulation around what the exchanges are doing. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these are foreign exchanges, too, right? The IRS and the federal government only has so much control over what they do.   Chitra: Because this is such a global flow of money.   Jeff: Exactly. It's a global thing. Right.   Chitra: How does the US government, or how is the US government attempting to get a handle on this? Do you feel like the government is kind of playing catch up, now?   Jeff: A bit, yeah. I think there was too much downtime from 2014 to now. You know, the last time the IRS issued any formal guidance was in 2014.   Chitra: What was that initial guidance?   Jeff: It was maybe like a five-page notice, 2014-21, which pretty much just said that it's not legal tender, and to pay your tax on it. There really wasn't much guidance beyond that.   Chitra: What happened before then, like 2009 through '14? Was there any guidance?   Jeff: Nothing formal.   Chitra: What were people doing then?   Jeff: I think, at the time, IRS and other government agencies probably just assumed that this is just a fringe thing, it's a temporary thing, it's not going to last, but look at us now. There are industries being built around blockchain and crypto, and they realize that, now, and the amount of money that people have earned in the sector. They see it as, like, it's a huge nest egg waiting to be tapped.   Chitra: Build your highways and all of that stuff.   Jeff: Right, yeah.   Chitra: Now, when you're filing taxes, can your crypto losses or gains, be balanced against your traditional portfolio?   Jeff: Yes, yeah. The way it works is short-term gains and losses get netted against other short-term gains and losses, regardless of if they're crypto or not. Then, the same thing with long-term.   Chitra: Great. Now, what are the penalties for noncompliance?   Jeff: For failing to file a return, it's a flat 5% of whatever your tax obligation is. For not paying the total amount of taxes owed, it's one half of 1% per month. If it's just one month late, half of 1%, it's not a lot, but if a couple of years go by, a few years go by, it can add up really quick, plus interest.   Chitra: Can you go to jail?   Jeff: Absolutely, unfortunately. If it's deemed that it was tax evasion, like in the example that I gave you of the gentleman that was looking into using our service and decided, no, they can just come after me, a couple million dollars, if they find evidence of tax evasion, then it could be subjected to a felony, which leads up to up to five years in prison and up to a quarter million dollars in penalties.   Chitra: Now, there's a lot of money laundering also going on, right? Does that play a role at all in this?   Jeff: Not so much with the taxes, but it is something that they're mindful about, out there. I see that more in the banking sector, that being an issue. In fact, one of our clients in the crypto space, their bank account was just abruptly closed with no notice. They said, "You can't bank with us," because they are concerned about potential money laundering.   Chitra: What is their fear?   Jeff: I think because they don't know where the money is coming from, right? If you have crypto-related money, it's so easy for it to be maneuvered from overseas. I think that's the concern, because there isn't enough regulation out there yet, right? Some people are just distancing themselves.   Chitra: It seems like there's a whole bunch of areas in which the federal government and governments around the world are now grappling with, how do you make people accountable for all of this wealth that they're generating, and how do we get a piece of that action?   Jeff: Right, that's what it is. They want their cut. As long as you give them their cut, they're not going to bother you.   Chitra: Now, let's look at two scenarios. Let's say you're a Sally Fay, you're a woman investor. You're just starting out. You're super excited. It's 2017. The bull market is in full swing, and you've learned how to trade, and you're just buying and selling without any regard for keeping tabs on your cost basis or the proceeds that you're making. Then, come December, you're stuck with having done thousands of transactions, and you have no idea how to go about finding those records, because every trade that you've done is potentially taxable, correct?   Jeff: Correct.   Chitra: What do you do?   Jeff: In those kinds of situations, because it's a lot of cleanup, the best thing to do is consult with an expert like us, so we can get you cleaned up and caught up. Then, going forward, you're on the right path, right? And to be mindful just about all the tax consequences of all that trading activity.   Chitra: Do you just sort of systematically start to go back and look at every trade you've made?   Jeff: In order to calculate all the gains and losses, historically, yeah. We have to kind of start from inception. If someone started trading in 2014, right, we have to go back to square one.   Chitra: That's pretty daunting.   Jeff: It is, yeah, yeah. At least once we get you caught up, then you should be okay, right?   Chitra: Let's look at scenario B. Let's say that I am a young man, Matt Jones. I'm not in the crypto market yet. It's the bear market, and people are telling me, "Hey, now's the time to come in. Buy low, and you can sell high." I have a clean slate. I've set up my exchanges, but I haven't done any transactions. What are the kinds of things I need to put in place to have tax hygiene, so to speak?   Jeff: Some best practices.   Chitra: Yes.   Jeff: I'd say, first, be mindful that you do any sort of trade coin for coin, that's all going to be a taxable event. Have at it, but just be mindful that there could be a lot of tax compliance to deal with at the end of the year. That affects some people's volume activity.   Another thing, to make sure to pull their records on a consistent basis. We usually, we're advising our clients now to download their transactional history from each exchange they use about once a month. Just make it a month-end practice, just in case either they got locked out, the data is deleted, or something is hacked, just in case anything happens, at least you have the records.   Then, outside of transactions like that, if you're trading on an exchange, if you're gifting coins, jot down somewhere on a Excel sheet or a Word document who you gave it to, when you gave it to them, and how much you gave, right? Just in case if there's any gift tax compliance to do, we could do that as well.   Chitra: Is it advisable to have a notebook and a pen, and when you're making these trades, to actually just jot it down, or put it on an Excel sheet that on this date, I bought X amount of Bitcoin, or I sold X amount of Ether for X amount, and to have that? Is that going to be helpful at the end of the year?   Jeff: It could, but like all the transactional data within the exchanges usually is going to have all that information. If someone wants to just separately track it, and if they're not doing a lot of trades during the year, that could be just as efficient and make their process easier at the end.   Chitra: Now, tell us some war stories. What are some of the anecdotes that you tell people about folks having challenges in filing taxes, or cases that you've seen, or what the government is doing to come to terms with this new source of income?   Jeff: Sure. Probably a couple examples. We have clients that were trading back from, the oldest one is 2013, maybe about a little over $4 million, and of course, they never reported any of it. Thankfully, in contrast to the other individual I was referencing, he said, "You know what, I just want to be compliant, right?" He came to the table. We went through everything, all the records, and got him up to speed.   Going forward, if he's audited, or maybe I should say when, because it's a lot, a big amount, we have work papers in place that we could provide in response to an audit. 90% of the time, that'll just make it go away, almost immediately. As long as the IRS can see that you've made a good faith effort, that there's been due diligence in being compliant, and you have work papers and a CPA to back it up, the audit will go away, right?   Another example, well, with the IRS, it's not so much a war story, but it's come to my attention that they've selected around 1200 to 1300 cases already from the 2017 filings that they're going to move forward with audits. Now, I don't know which ones those are. That comes from a source I have within the audit community, but we suspect that those are probably the larger ones, mostly, people that have generated hundreds of thousands, if not millions.   Chitra: Is the IRS not only trying to get revenue back from these taxable events but also trying to set precedence in some way?   Jeff: Yeah. It serves both purposes, yeah. One, it's a huge amount of revenue just sitting there for the government that hasn't been tapped yet. The second is going through this process, and going through these audits, and taking some people to tax court will set precedence, so that it's clear to everyone else that, one, you need to be compliant. Don't play games with them. I wouldn't be surprised if they send at least a few people to jail over this that have evaded their taxes.   Also, it allows them to kind of establish authoritative guidance, because they're going to take everything they find. They will undoubtedly issue some pronouncements about, "Here's how you calculate this. Here's why you file things this way," which right now, we don't have.   Chitra: What about moving out of the US, like just moving abroad so you don't have to pay your taxes, or even moving to Puerto Rico. You hear a lot about that. Is that going to help you or hurt you, in the long run?   Jeff: I think for taxes, temporarily, it would help, right? But, do you really want to expatriate yourself, denounce the US, in order to just save some money temporarily on taxes? I don't know.   Chitra: Depends, I would say.   Jeff: It depends, yeah, yeah.   Chitra: On what the amount is. Are you hearing about people who are actually doing that?   Jeff: No one I know has actually done it. Some folks that we know have been debating it, and they asked to do some research on expatriation process.   Chitra: It's a fascinating area. When you're doing the forensic work, you've been asked to help, I think, with investigations and things like that. How do you go about collecting the forensic evidence on these cases?   Jeff: Really kind of the same way we do crypto calculations for our clients, right? We pull all the underlying third-party documents. In this case, transactional records. We get their narrative about what happened, hear the story, because any forensic case, anything that we do, it's not just the numbers. It's also the context. It's also what happened, the story, if you will.   With forensic cases, there's usually a lot of other moveable parts, as well, particularly like divorce cases, where people are sometimes hiding funds. Partnership disputes, where one partner is embezzling money. We see that kind of stuff a lot more often than what people realize.   Chitra: What happens in the case of a divorce? Who gets the crypto? How do you actually even split the proceeds, if that's what happens?   Jeff: Same thing with kind of like a house, right? If it was community property, assuming it's a community property state like California, then any assets would be split 50/50, unless it was bought with separate property. If you don't want to cash out the portfolio, then usually one partner would buy out the other half from the other partner, just like a house. If you don't want to literally split the house in half, one person wants to keep it, one partner would buy out the house from the other.   Chitra: Well, that actually raises an interesting question, because let's say one partner is very crypto-savvy and the other partner is not crypto-savvy. It probably is pretty easy to hide your assets in the form of crypto, because the other person has no way of finding out how much you have and where you have this.   Jeff: True. Yeah, there's an opportunity there for someone to try to take advantage. Part of the divorce proceedings process is to come to the table and be transparent with both partners. Usually, like, you're essentially signing off to the court that let the partner know 100% of the assets out there. To try to hide it is essentially perjuring with the court.   Chitra: Where do you see all of this going in the next few years, as more and more people get into the space? There is a prediction that you're going to have a billion new crypto investors, over the next five years, entering the market. Where do you see the field of taxation going?   Jeff: Yeah, definitely, I see a second adoption, as well, coming in the coming years. I think, by the time that happens, there'll be a little bit more infrastructure in place with the taxation piece. One, with the exchanges. They'll start being a little bit better about what they record for their clients and what they issue out at the end of the year. I think we'll get to a point where exchanges are very, very similar to brokerage accounts, where you just get a 1089 of, "Here's your cost basis, here's your proceeds, here's what you report on your tax," and make it much easier for folks.   Chitra: Just as the industry is growing up, the tax piece will grow up, as well.   Jeff: Yup.   Chitra: Yeah. Great. Is there anything I haven't asked or anything really important, closing thoughts?   Jeff: One closing thought, just, I think it's good for everyone to remember that almost everything is a taxable event. If the question is, "Do I have to pay tax on this?" 9 times out 10, it's yes.   Chitra: Sadly.   Jeff: Yes.   Chitra: Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people learn more about you and find out more about the work that you're doing?   Jeff: Sure. Our website is neumeistercpa.com, that's N-E-U-M-E-I-S-T-E-R-C-P-A.com. We're a full-service accounting consulting firm, but we specialize in things like cryptos.   Chitra: Great. Thanks so much for joining us.   Jeff: All right, thank you.   Chitra: That's all for now. Join us again next time for another edition of Running with Unicorns. Until then, enjoy your crypto journey, unicorns.  

  Jeff: Welcome back to Emplify, the podcast corollary to EB Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Practice. I’m Jeff Nusbaum, and I’m back with my co-host, Nachi Gupta. This month, we’re talking about a topic… Nachi: … woah wait, slow down for a minute, before we begin this month’s episode – we should take a quick pause to wish all of our listeners a happy new year! Thanks for your regular listenership and feedback. Jeff: And we’re actually hitting the two year mark since we started this podcast. At 25 episodes now, this is sort of our silver anniversary. Nachi: We have covered a ton of topics in emergency medicine so far, and we are looking forward to reviewing a lot more evidence based medicine with you all going forward. Jeff: With that, let’s get into the first episode of 2019 – the topic this month is first trimester pregnancy emergencies: recognition and management. Nachi: This month’s issue was authored by Dr. Ryan Pedigo, you may remember him from the June 2017 episode on dental emergencies, though he is perhaps better known as the director of undergraduate medical education at Harbor-UCLA Medical center. In addition, this issue was peer reviewed by Dr. Jennifer Beck-Esmay, assistant residency director at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s, and Dr. Taku Taira, the associate director of undergraduate medical education and associate clerkship director at LA County and USC department of Emergency Medicine. Jeff: For this review, Dr. Pedigo had to review a large body of literature, including thousands of articles, guidelines from the American college of obstetricians and gynecologists or ACOG, evidence based Practice bulletins, ACOG committee opinions, guidelines from the American college of radiology, the infectious diseases society of America, clinical policies from the American college of emergency physicians, and finally a series of reviews in the Cochrane database. Nachi: There is a wealth of literature on this topic and Dr. Pedigo comments that the relevant literature is overall “very good.” This may be the first article in many months for which there is an overall very good quality of literature. Jeff: It’s great to know that there is good literature on this topic. It’s incredibly important as we are not dealing with a single life here, as we usually do... we are quite literally dealing with potentially two lives as the fetus moves towards viability. With opportunities to improve outcomes for both the fetus and the mother, I’m confident that this episode will be worth your time. Nachi: Oh, and speaking of being worth your time…. Don’t forget that if you’re listening to this episode, you can claim your CME credit. Remember, the indicates an answer to one of the CME questions so make sure to keep the issue handy. Jeff: Let’s get started with some background. First trimester emergencies are not terribly uncommon in pregnancy. One study reported 85% experience nausea and vomiting. Luckily only 3% of these progressed to hyperemesis gravidarum. In addition, somewhere between 7-27% experience vaginal bleeding or miscarriage. Only 2% of these will be afflicted with an ectopic pregnancy. Overall, the maternal death rate is about 17 per 100,000 with huge racial-ethnic disparities. Nachi: And vaginal bleeding in pregnancy occurs in nearly 25% of patients. Weeks 4-8 represent the peak time for this. The heavier the bleeding, the higher the risk of miscarriage. Jeff: Miscarriage rates vary widely based on age, with an overall rate of 7-27%. This rises to nearly 40% risk in those over 40. And nearly half of miscarriages are due to fetal chromosomal abnormalities. Nachi: For patient who have a threatened miscarriage in the first trimester, there is a 2-fold increased risk of subsequent maternal and fetal adverse outcomes. Jeff: So key points here, since I think the wording and information you choose to share with often scared and worried women is important – nearly 25% of women experience bleeding in their first trimester. Not all of these will go on to miscarriages, though the risk does increase with maternal age. And of those that miscarry, nearly 50% were due to fetal chromosomal abnormalities. Nachi: So can we prevent a miscarriage, once the patient is bleeding…? Jeff: Short answer, no, longer answer, we’ll get to treatment in a few minutes. For now, let’s continue outlining the various first trimester emergencies. Next up, ectopic pregnancy… Nachi: An ectopic pregnancy is implantation of a fertilized ovum outside of the endometrial cavity. This occurs in up to 2% of pregnancies. About 98% occur in the fallopian tube. Risk factors for an ectopic pregnancy include salpingitis, history of STDs, history of PID, a prior ectopic, and smoking. Jeff: Interestingly, with respect to smoking, there is a dose-relationship between smoking and ectopic pregnancies. Simple advice here: don’t smoke if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Nachi: Pretty sound advice. In addition, though an IUD is not a risk factor for an ectopic pregnancy, if you do become pregnant while you have in IUD in place, over half of these may end up being ectopic. Jeff: It’s also worth mentioning a more obscure related disease pathology here – the heterotopic pregnancy -- one in which there is an IUP and an ectopic pregnancy simultaneously. Nachi: Nausea and vomiting, though not as scary as miscarriages or an ectopic pregnancy, represent a fairly common pathophysiologic response in the first trimester -- with the vast majority of women experiencing nausea and vomiting. And as we mentioned earlier, only 3% of these progress to hyperemesis gravidarum. Jeff: And while nausea and vomiting clearly sucks, they seem to actually be protective of pregnancy loss, with a hazard ratio of 0.2. Nachi: Although this may be protective of pregnancy loss, nausea and vomiting can really decrease the quality of life in pregnancy -- with one study showing that about 25% of women with severe nausea and vomiting had actually considered pregnancy termination. 75% of those women also stated they would not want to get pregnant again because of these symptoms. Jeff: So certainly a big issue.. Two other common first trimester emergency are asymptomatic bacteriuria and UTIs. In pregnant patients, due to anatomical and physiologic changes in the GU tract – such as hydroureteronephrosis that occurs by the 7th week and urinary stasis due to bladder displacement – asymptomatic bacteriuria is a risk factor for developing pyelonephritis. Nachi: And pregnant women are, of course, still susceptible to the normal ailments of young adult women like acute appendicitis, which is the most common surgical problem in pregnancy. Jeff: Interestingly, based on epidemiologic data, pregnant women are less likely to have appendicitis than age-matched non-pregnant woman. I’d like to think that there is a good pathophysiologic explanation there, but I don’t have a clue as to why that might be. Nachi: Additionally, the RLQ is the the most common location of pain from appendicitis in pregnancies of all gestational ages. Peritonitis is actually slightly more common in pregnant patients, with an odds ratio of 1.3. Jeff: Alright, so I think we can put that intro behind us and move on to the differential. Nachi: When considering the differential for abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding in the first trimester, you have to think broadly. Among gynecologic causes, you should consider miscarriage, septic abortion, ectopic pregnancy, corpus luteum cyst, ovarian torsion, vaginal or cervical lacerations, and PID. For non-gynecologic causes, you should also consider appendicitis, cholecystitis, hepatitis, and pyelonephritis. Jeff: In the middle of that laundry list you mentioned there is one pathology which I think merits special attention - ovarian torsion. Don’t forget that patients undergoing ovarian stimulation as part of assisted reproductive technology are at a particularly increased risk due to the larger size of the ovaries. Nachi: Great point. Up next we have prehospital care... Jeff: Always a great section. First, prehospital providers should attempt to elicit an ob history. Including the number of weeks’ gestation, LMP, whether an IUP has already been confirmed, prior hx of ectopic, and amount of vaginal bleeding. In addition, providers should consider an early destination consult both to select the correct destination and to begin the process of mobilizing resources early in those patients who really need them, such as those with hemodynamic instability. Nachi: As with most pathologies, the more time you give the receiving facility to prepare, the better the care will be, especially the early care, which is critical. Jeff: Now that the patient has arrived in the ED we can begin our H&P. Nachi: When eliciting the patient’s obstetrical history, it’s common to use the G’s and Ps. This can be further annotated using the 4-digit TPAL method, that’s term-preterm-abortus-living. Jeff: With respect to vaginal bleeding, make sure to ask about the number of pads and how this relates to the woman’s normal number of pads. In addition, make sure to ask about vaginal discharge or even about the passage of tissue. Nachi: You will also need to elicit whether or not the patient has a history of a prior ectopic pregnancies as this is a major risk for future ectopics. And ask about previous sexually transmitted infections also. Jeff: And, of course, make sure to elicit a history of assisted reproductive technology, as this increases the risk of a heterotopic pregnancy. Nachi: Let’s move on to the physical. While you are certainly going to perform your standard focused physical exam, just as you would for any non-pregnant woman - what does the evidence say about the pelvic exam? I know this is a HOTLY debated topic among EM Docs. Jeff: Oh it certainly is. Dr. Pedigo takes a safe, but fair approach, noting, “A pelvic exam should always be performed if the emergency clinician suspects that it would change management, such as identifying the source of bleeding, or identifying an STD or PID.” However, it is noteworthy that the only real study he cites on this topic, an RCT of pelvic vs no pelvic in those with a confirmed IUP and first trimester bleeding, found no difference between the two groups. Obviously, the pelvic group reported more discomfort. Nachi: You did leave out one important fact about the study enrollment - they only enrolled about 200 of 700 intended patients. Jeff: Oh true, so a possibly underpowered study, but it’s all we’ve got on the topic. I think I’m still going to do pelvic exams, but it’s something to think about. Nachi: Moving on, all unstable patients with vaginal bleeding and no IUP should be assumed to have an ectopic until proven otherwise. Ruptured ectopics can manifest with a number of physical exam findings including abdominal tenderness, with peritoneal signs, or even with bradycardia due to vagal stimulation in the peritoneum. Jeff: Perhaps most importantly, no history or physical alone can rule in or out an ectopic pregnancy, for that you’ll need testing and imaging or operative findings. Nachi: And that’s a perfect segue into our next section - diagnostic studies. Jeff: Up first is the urine pregnancy test. A UPT should be obtained in all women of reproductive age with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding, and likely other complaints too, though we’re not focusing on them now. Nachi: The UPT is a great test, with nearly 100% sensitivity, even in the setting of very dilute urine. False positives are certainly plausible, with likely culprits being recent pregnancy loss, exogenous HCG, or malignancy. Jeff: And not only is the sensitivity great, but it’s usually positive just 6-8 days after fertilization. Nachi: While the UPT is fairly straight forward, let’s talk about the next few tests in the context of specific disease entities, as I think that may make things a bit simpler -- starting with bHCG in the context of miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy. Jeff: Great starting point since there is certainly a lot of debate about the discriminatory zone. So to get us all on the same page, the discriminatory zone is the b-HCG at which an IUP is expected to be seen on ultrasound. Generally 1500 is used as the cutoff. This corresponds nicely to a 2013 retrospective study demonstrating a bHCG threshold for the fetal pole to be just below 1400. Nachi: However, to actually catch 99% of gestational sacs, yolk sacs, and fetal poles, one would need cutoffs of around 3500, 18000, and 48,000 respectively -- much higher. Jeff: For this reason, if you want to use a discriminatory zone, ACOG recommends a conservatively high 3,500, as a cutoff. Nachi: I think that’s an understated point in this article, the classic teaching of a 1500 discriminatory zone cutoff is likely too low. Jeff: Right, which is why I think many ED physicians practice under the mantra that it’s an ectopic until proven otherwise. Nachi: Certainly a safe approach. Jeff: Along those lines, lack of an IUP with a bHCG above whatever discriminatory zone you are using does not diagnose an ectopic, it merely suggests a non-viable pregnancy of undetermined location. Nachi: And if you don’t identify an IUP, serial bHCGs can be really helpful. As a rule of thumb -- in cases of a viable IUP -- b-HCG typically doubles within 48 hours and at a minimum should rise 53%. Jeff: In perhaps one of the most concerning things I’ve read in awhile, one study showed that ⅓ of patients with an ectopic had a bCHG rise of 53% in 48h and 20% of patients with ectopics had a rate of decline typical to that of a miscarriage. Nachi: Definitely concerning, but this is all the more reason you need to employ our favorite imaging modality… the ultrasound. Jeff: All patients with a positive pregnancy test and vaginal bleeding should receive an ultrasound performed by either an emergency physician or by radiology. Combined with a pelvic exam, this can give you almost all the data necessary to make the diagnosis, even if you don’t find an IUP. Nachi: And yes, there is good data to support ED ultrasound for this indication, both transabdominal and transvaginal, assuming the emergency physician is credentialed to do so. A 2010 Meta-Analysis found a NPV of 99.96% when an er doc identified an IUP on bedside ultrasound. So keep doing your bedside scans with confidence. Jeff: Before we move on to other diagnostic tests, let’s discuss table 2 on page 7 to refresh on key findings of each of the different types of miscarriage. For a threatened abortion, the os would be closed with an IUP seen on ultrasound. For a completed abortion, you would expect a closed OS with no IUP on ultrasound with a previously documented IUP. Patients may or may not note the passage of products of conception. Nachi: A missed abortion presents with a closed os and a nonviable fetus on ultrasound. Findings such as a crown-rump length of 7 mm or greater without cardiac motion is one of several criteria to support this diagnosis. Jeff: An inevitable abortion presents with an open OS and an IUP on ultrasound. Along similar lines, an incomplete abortion presents with an open OS and partially expelled products on ultrasound. Nachi: And lastly, we have the septic abortion, which is sort of in a category of its own. A septic abortion presents with either an open or closed OS with essentially any finding on ultrasound in the setting of an intrauterine infection and a fever. Jeff: I’ve only seen this two times, and both women were incredibly sick upon presentation. Such a sad situation. Nachi: For sure. Before we move on to other tests, one quick note on the topic of heterotopic pregnancies: because the risk in the general population is so incredibly low, the finding of an IUP essentially rules out an ectopic pregnancy assuming the patient hasn’t been using assisted reproductive technology. In those that are using assisted reproductive technology, the risk rises to 1 in 100, so finding an IUP, in this case, doesn’t necessarily rule out a heterotopic pregnancy. Jeff: Let’s move on to diagnostic studies for patients with nausea and vomiting. Typically, no studies are indicated beyond whatever you would order to rule out other serious pathology. Checking electrolytes and repleting them should be considered in those with severe symptoms. Nachi: For those with symptoms suggestive of a UTI, a urinalysis and culture should be sent. Even if the urinalysis is negative, the culture may still have growth. Treat asymptomatic bacteriuria and allow the culture growth to guide changes in antibiotic selection. Jeff: It’s worth noting, however, that a 2016 systematic review found no reliable evidence supporting routine screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria, so send a urinalysis and culture only if there is suspicion for a UTI. Nachi: For those with concern for appendicitis, while ultrasound is a viable imaging modality, MRI is gaining favor. Both are specific tests, however one study found US to visualize the appendix only 7% of the time in pregnant patients. Jeff: Even more convincingly, one 2016 meta analysis found MRI to have a sensitivity and specificity of 94 and 97% respectively suggesting that a noncontrast MRI should be the first line imaging modality for potential appendicitis. Nachi: You kind of snuck it in there, but this is specifically a non-contrast MRI. Whereas a review of over a million pregnancies found no associated fetal risk with routine non-contrast MRI, gadolinium-enhanced MRI has been associated with increased rates of stillbirth, neonatal death, and rheumatologic and inflammatory skin conditions. Jeff: CT is also worth mentioning since MRI and even ultrasound may not be available to all of our listeners. If you do find yourself in such a predicament, or you have an inconclusive US without MRI available, a CT scan may be warranted as the delay in diagnosis and subsequent peritonitis has been found to increase the risk of preterm birth 4-fold. Nachi: Right, and a single dose of ionizing radiation actually does not exceed the threshold dose for fetal harm. Jeff: Let’s talk about the Rh status and prevention of alloimmunization. While there are no well-designed studies demonstrating benefit to administering anti-D immune globulin to Rh negative patients, ACOG guidelines state “ whether to administer anti-D immune globulin to a patient with threatened pregnancy loss and a live embryo or fetus at or before 12 weeks of gestation is controversial, and no evidence-based recommendation can be made.” Nachi: Unfortunately, that’s not particularly helpful for us. But if you are going to treat an unsensitized Rh negative female with vaginal bleeding while pregnant with Rh-immune globulin, they should receive 50 mcg IM of Rh-immune globulin within 72 hours, or the 300 mcg dose if that is all that is available. It’s also reasonable to administer Rh(d)-immune globulin to any pregnant female with significant abdominal trauma. Jeff: Moving on to the treatment for miscarriages - sadly there isn’t much to offer here. For those with threatened abortions, the vast majority will go on to a normal pregnancy. Bedrest had been recommended in the past, but there is little data to support this practice. Nachi: For incomplete miscarriages, if visible, products should be removed and you should consider sending those products to pathology for analysis, especially if the patient has had recurrent miscarriages. Jeff: For those with a missed abortion or incomplete miscarriages, options include expectant management, medical management or surgical management, all in consultation with an obstetrician. It’s noteworthy that a 2012 Cochrane review failed to find clear superiority for one strategy over another. This result was for the most part re-confirmed in a 2017 cochrane review. The latter study did find, however, that surgical management in the stable patient resulted in lower rates of incomplete miscarriage, bleeding, and need for transfusion. Nachi: For expectant management, 50-80% will complete their miscarriage within 7-10 days. Jeff: For those choosing medical management, typically with 800 mcg of intravaginal misoprostol, one study found this to be 91% effective in 7 days. This approach is preferred in low-resource settings. Nachi: And lastly, remember that all of these options are only options for stable patients. Surgical management is mandatory for patients with significant hemorrhage or hemodynamic instability. Jeff: Since the best evidence we have doesn’t suggest a crystal clear answer, you should rely on the patient’s own preferences and a discussion with their obstetrician. For this reason and due to the inherent difficulty of losing a pregnancy, having good communication is paramount. Nachi: Expert consensus recommends 6 key aspects of appropriate communication in such a setting: 1 assess the meaning of the pregnancy loss, give the news in a culturally competent and supportive manner, inform the family that grief is to be expected and give them permission to grieve in their own way, learn to be comfortable sharing the products of conception should the woman wish to see them, 5. provide support for whatever path she chooses, 6. and provide resources for grief counselors and support groups. Jeff: All great advice. The next treatment to discuss is that for pregnancy of an unknown location and ectopic pregnancies. Nachi: All unstable patients or those with suspected or proven ectopic or heterotopic pregnancies should be immediately resuscitated and taken for surgical intervention. Jeff: For those that are stable, with normal vitals, and no ultrasound evidence of a ruptured ectopic, with no IUP on ultrasound, -- that is, those with a pregnancy of unknown location, they should be discharged with follow up in 48 hours for repeat betaHCG and ultrasound. Nachi: And while many patients only need a single additional beta check, some may need repeat 48 hour exams until a diagnosis is established. Jeff: For those that are stable with a confirmed tubal ectopic, you again have a variety of treatment options, none being clearly superior. Nachi: Treatment options here include IM methotrexate, or a salpingostomy or salpingectomy. Jeff: Do note, however, that a bHCG over 5000, cardiac activity on US, and inability to follow up are all relative contraindications to methotrexate treatment. Absolute contraindications to methotrexate include cytopenia, active pulmonary disease, active peptic ulcer disease, hepatic or renal dysfunction, and breastfeeding. Nachi: Such decisions, should, of course, be made in conjunction with the obstetrician. Jeff: Always good to make a plan with the ob. Moving on to the treatment of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, ACOG recommends pyridoxine, 10-25 mg orally q8-q6 with or without doxylamine 12.5 mg PO BID or TID. This is a level A recommendation as first-line treatment! Nachi: In addition, ACOG also recommends nonpharmacologic options such as acupressure at the P6 point on the wrist with a wrist band. Ginger is another nonpharmacologic intervention that has been shown to be efficacious - 250 mg by mouth 4 times a day. Jeff: So building an algorithm, step one would be to consider ginger and pressure at the P6 point. Step two would be pyridoxine and doxylamine. If all of these measures fail, step three would be IV medication - with 10 mg IV of metoclopramide being the agent of choice. Nachi: By the way, ondansetron carries a very small risk of fetal cardiac abnormalities, so the other options are of course preferred. Jeff: In terms of fluid choice for the actively vomiting first trimester woman, both D5NS and NS are appropriate choices, with slightly decreased nausea in the group receiving D5NS in one randomized trial of pregnant patients admitted for vomiting to an overnight observation unit. Nachi: Up next for treatment we have asymptomatic bacteriuria. As we stated previously, asymptomatic bacteriuria should be treated. This is due to anatomical and physiologic changes which put these women at higher risk than non-pregnant women. Jeff: And this recommendation comes from the 2005 IDSA guidelines. In one trial, treatment of those with asymptomatic bacteriuria with nitrofurantoin reduced the incidence of developing pyelonephritis from 2.4% to 0.6%. Nachi: And this trial specifically examined the utility of nitrofurantoin. Per a 2010 and 2011 Cochrane review, there is not evidence to recommend one antibiotic over another, so let your local antibiograms guide your treatment. Jeff: In general, amoxicillin or cephalexin for a full 7 day course could also be perfectly appropriate. Nachi: A 2017 ACOG Committee Opinion analyzed nitrofurantoin and sulfonamide antibiotics for association with birth defects. Although safe in the second and third trimester, they recommend use in the first trimester -- only when no other suitable alternatives are available. Jeff: For those, who unfortunately do go on to develop pyelo, 1g IV ceftriaxone should be your drug of choice. Interestingly, groups have examined outpatient care with 2 days of daily IM ceftriaxone vs inpatient IV antibiotic therapy and they found that there may be a higher than acceptable risk in the outpatient setting as several required eventual admission and one developed septic shock in their relatively small trial. Nachi: And the last treatment to discuss is for pregnant patient with acute appendicitis. Despite a potential shift in the standard of care for non pregnant patients towards antibiotics-only as the initial treatment, due to the increased risk of serious complications for pregnant women with an acute appy, the best current evidence supports a surgical pathway. Jeff: Perfect, so that wraps up treatment. We have a few special considerations this month, the first of which revolves around ionizing radiation. Ideally, one should limit the amount of ionizing radiation exposure during pregnancy, however avoiding it all together may lead to missed or delayed diagnoses and subsequently worse outcomes. Nachi: It’s worth noting that the American College of Radiology actually lists several radiographs that are such low exposure that checking a urine pregnancy test isn’t even necessary. These include any imaging of the head and neck, extremity CT, and chest x-ray. Jeff: Of course, an abdomen and pelvis CT carries the greatest potential risk. However, if necessary, it’s certainly appropriate as long as there is a documented discussion of the risk and benefits with the patient. Nachi: And regarding iodinated contrast for CT -- it appears to present no known harm to the fetus, but this is based on limited data. ACOG recommends using contrast only if “absolutely required”. Jeff: Right and that’s for iodinated contrasts. Gadolinium should always be avoided. Let me repeat that Gadolinium should always be avoided Nachi: Let’s also briefly touch on a controversial topic -- that of using qualitative urine point of care tests with blood instead of urine. In short, some devices are fda-approved for serum, but not whole blood. Clinicians really just need to know the equipment and characteristics at their own site. It is worth noting that there have been studies on determining whether time can be saved by using point of care blood testing instead of urine for the patient who is unable to provide a prompt sample. Initial study conclusions are promising. But again, you need to know the characteristics of the test at your ER. Jeff: One more controversy in this issue is that of expectant management for ectopic pregnancy. A 2015 randomized trial found similar outcomes for IM methotrexate compared to placebo for tubal ectopics. Inclusion criteria included hemodynamic stability, initial b hcg < 2000, declining b hcg titers 48 hours prior to treatment, and visible tubal pregnancy on trans vaginal ultrasound. Another 2017 multicenter randomized trial found similar results. Nachi: But of course all of these decisions should be made in conjunction with your obstetrician colleagues. Jeff: Let’s move on to disposition. HDS patients who are well-appearing with a pregnancy of undetermined location should be discharged with a 48h beta hcg recheck and ultrasound. All hemodynamically unstable patients, should of course be admitted and likely taken directly to the OR. Nachi: Also, all pregnant patients with acute pyelonephritis require admission. Outpatient tx could be considered in consultation with ob. Jeff: Patient with hyperemesis gravidarum who do not improve despite treatment in the ED should also be admitted. Nachi: Before we close out the episode, let’s go over some key points and clinical pearls... J Overall, roughly 25% of pregnant women will experience vaginal bleeding and 7-27% of pregnant women will experience a miscarriage 2. Becoming pregnant with an IUD significantly raises the risk of ectopic pregnancy. 3. Ovarian stimulation as part of assisted reproductive technology places pregnant women at increased risk of ovarian torsion. 4. Due to anatomical and physiologic changes in the genitourinary tract, asymptomatic bacteriuria places pregnant women at higher risk for pyelonephritis. As such, treat asymptomatic bacteriuria according to local antibiograms. 5. A pelvic exam in the setting of first trimester bleeding is only warranted if you suspect it might change management. 6. Unstable patients with vaginal bleeding and no IUP should be assumed to have an ectopic pregnancy until proven otherwise. 7. If you are to use a discriminatory zone, ACOG recommends a beta-hCG cutoff of 3500. 8. The beta-hCG typically doubles within 48 hours during the first trimester. It should definitely rise by a minimum of 53%. 9. For patients using assisted reproductive technology, the risk of heterotopic pregnancy becomes much higher. Finding an IUP does not necessarily rule out a heterotopic pregnancy. N. Send a urine culture for patients complaining of UTI symptoms even if the urinalysis is negative. J. The most common surgical problem in pregnancy is appendicitis. N, If MRI is not available and ultrasound was inconclusive, CT may be warranted for assessing appendicitis. The risk of missing or delaying the diagnosis may outweigh the risk of radiation. J. ACOG recommends using iodinated contrast only if absolutely required. N. For stable patients with a pregnancy of unknown location, plan for discharge with follow up in 48 hours for a repeat beta-hCG and ultrasound. J For nausea and vomiting in pregnancy, try nonpharmacologic treatments like acupressure at the P6 point on the wrist or ginger supplementation. First line pharmacologic treatment is pyridoxine. Doxylamine can be added. Ondansetron may increase risk of fetal cardiac abnormalities N So that wraps up episode 24 - First Trimester Pregnancy Emergencies: Recognition and Management. J: Additional materials are available on our website for Emergency Medicine Practice subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, consider joining today. You can find out more at www.ebmedicine.net/subscribe. Subscribers get in-depth articles on hundreds of emergency medicine topics, concise summaries of the articles, calculators and risk scores, and CME credit. You’ll also get enhanced access to the podcast, including the images and tables mentioned. You can find everything you need to know at ebmedicine.net/subscribe. N: And the address for this month’s credit is ebmedicine.net/E0119, so head over there to get your CME credit. As always, the you heard throughout the episode corresponds to the answers to the CME questions. Lastly, be sure to find us on iTunes and rate us or leave comments there. You can also email us directly at emplify@ebmedicine.net with any comments or suggestions. Talk to you next month!  

  Jeff Bunn, lawyer, wellness expert and owner of the Mindful Law Coaching and Consulting Group, presents the business case for investing in attorney wellness. As he sits down with ALPS Executive Vice President, Chris Newbold, Jeff lays out why making mindfulness a priority in the legal profession makes sense not just from the health standpoint of health, but also the economics of the practice of law. To learn more about all areas of attorney wellness, visit the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being's Resource Page, featuring the report and more information on what is happening in your state. ALPS In Brief, The ALPS Risk Management Podcast, is usually hosted by ALPS Risk Manager, Mark Bassingthwaighte. This episode is hosted by Chris Newbold, ALPS Executive Vice President. Transcript: CHRIS: All right. Welcome. This is Chris Newbold. Welcome to another version of the ALPS podcast ALPS in Brief. I'm sitting here in downtown Chicago with one of the experts in the field of wellness, Jeff Bunn, who is the owner of the Mindful Law Coaching and Consulting Group. Had a chance to meet Jeff a few weeks ago and he's doing some wonderful work in the field. Today we're going to talk about the business case for wellness and why that makes good sense for firms, law firms, and the legal profession in general. Maybe what we'll do is start, Jeff, by just having you just introduce yourself and what gives you an interest in this particular area. I know you've had a distinguished legal career as well. Maybe just a little context on who you are. JEFF: Absolutely. I'd be happy. Thanks very much for inviting me, Chris. It's a delight to speak with you. My focus is really mindfulness, which is a little piece of the wellness pie, if you will. I happen to think it's a great and very important issue. It's an issue that gets a lot of play, a lot of thought, a lot of curiosity. My story very briefly, I started ... I used to be like your Type A trial guy, long distance running. I was walking the dog one day, slipped on some black ice, got my knee scoped, and long story short couldn't run anymore. I was looking for something that was a low impact, no impact alternative to running. Little did I realize that I used to go out ... When I talk about running I'm talking about an hour or two hours kind of thing. It was meditation for me. What I got into, because of my injury, was yoga. A lot of the men and women that I met practicing yoga talk about not only the poses and the practice but also other things that are more spiritual. I just found that that kind of resonated for me. I took a training session, a meditation training session that is, and I just got into it. Now I'm not a proselytizer. I'm not out there banging the drum for being a spiritual guru. Quite to the contrary, I think that there are a lot of aspects of mindfulness, which is a piece of a larger tradition, like the Buddhist tradition in particular, that I think can be ... It's not an all or nothing proposition as a lot of people, men and women who I respect, feel a great deal of affection for and know. They're kind of an all or nothing ... You're either all in or you're not. I get that. I understand it but I do believe that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. There are aspects of that faith or spiritual practice, Buddhism, mindfulness in particular, that can have a business application. My saying is, which I ripped off from Dan Harris who is a great guy, is a news anchor that you or some of your listeners may know of, also the author of a great book, 10% Happier. It's an old book now. He's written more recently. It's about mindfulness and how it changed him. Dan came up with a description of what is mindfulness? Well, if you ask 50 different people you're going to get 50 different definitions. He came up with a great soundbite that just works for me, "Simple, secular, scientific". That's really what it is. To me, it's brain training. Mindfulness, that aspect of a broader practice, can be segmented, can be applied to the business world in terms of helping us focus our attention, prioritize our distractions, and the like. CHRIS: That's the key to it then is the ability? I mean, obviously we know that most lawyers in practice are go, go, go, busy, busy, busy, right? JEFF: Yup. Yup. CHRIS: The value proposition of mindfulness comes in where? JEFF: I think in terms of being able to again focus our attention and then prioritize distractions. There are distractions like emails, telephone calls, partners hanging out with a cup of coffee in the doorway wanting to talk about whatever. Yet we have a filing that we have to get done by such and such a time. Or we have a meeting coming up in 20 minutes and we need to think about that. Or a phone call or what have you. I think that there are a lot of ... I think of it in terms of physical fitness and mental fitness. Everybody gets the idea of physical fitness now. As employee benefits go it's not a stretch at all to have firms or businesses help their employees deal with the ... They'll make contributions towards their monthly gym dues or what have you. Well, let's start taking care of our minds as well as our bodies. I think if you think of mindfulness as not just vague woo woo kind of thing but actually very specific brain training. Attention, prioritizing distractions ... The distractions will come but if one learns to focus one's attention in the midst of all the distractions that come that's going to make you a better lawyer. It'll make you a better professional. Therefore, I think it has ... Those practices, while it might not seem obvious, have an application in the business world. CHRIS: Yeah. We had a chance to be on a panel a couple of weeks ago. I think you've been able to crystallize as succinctly as I've been able to hear it about just the value of mindfulness and the value that it can bring ... If I'm a senior partner at a law firm build the case for me for why this is a good path to pursue. Often times we hear wellness and we think, "Oh, somebody is taking a two hour lunch," which for a lot of senior partners means that's less billable hours, right? JEFF: Yeah. CHRIS: It's a little bit of a ... I think you've been able to turn it on its head a little bit and say, "There are some real definitive business case elements to thinking about wellness, thinking about mindfulness." I'd love for you to present that for our audience. JEFF: Sure. I'd be happy to do that. It really has been a part of my journey. If I was having a conversation with you and you'd ask me, "What is mindfulness?" I'd start talking to you about what mindfulness is but in your mind you could just see people's eyes glaze over. They're just thinking it's all woo woo and, "Oh, Jeff has lost it. He's gone around the bend." I get that. It was very frustrating at first because I felt like I was banging my head against the wall trying to convince people of something that they were disinclined to believe. Then I started thinking, you know, if you can change the conversation ... Don't talk about something that whoever you're speaking to may think of as woo woo, as something vague and ill-defined with a lot of negative connotations. Let's talk about things that we do understand that have real meaning for us. That's how I started thinking about is there such a thing as a business case for mindfulness. I think there is. As I've thought about it I've come up with ... There are five areas that I touched upon that I alluded to when you and I last met ... I'm sure there are more. It just requires more thought. Just knocking them off and here I'm going to call myself out here, I better remember this, recruiting, retention, insurance costs, CLE costs, and basically productivity, which kind of ties all those together. I think in terms of business, hard dollars, the idea of recruiting younger men and women. How does one law firm stand out from the crowd? How does one distinguish one's self? If a recruiter is able to say, "We value the minds of the men and women who work for us, old and young, and we put our money where our mouth is" that's going to help you tell a story that's going to hopefully help you recruit the best and the brightest to your firm. CHRIS: Particularly with this generation, right? JEFF: Absolutely. CHRIS: One that's I think coming into the legal profession with a sense of, "Obviously I want to do incredible work as a new lawyer but I also want to maintain a better work/life balance." JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I have said and I still maintain that a law firm's greatest asset is its lawyer's minds. If you can begin to make a case, a real case, not just lip service, but a real case that we value our lawyer's minds, we want to protect them and the way we protect them is help them be happier, help them live a life that's more fulfilling, then that's a good thing for them and it's good for us as well, which really gets to the idea of retention. If men and women who are at a law firm five, six, seven years out instead of saying, "I'm going to go in-house. I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, but I'm done doing this, the law firm thing." Well, what a cost. The cost to the law firm of replacing the talent is huge. CHRIS: Huge. JEFF: It's huge. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. You lose in terms of continuity, of service to clients. You lose potentially the business of some clients. There's just nothing good I would submit that accrues to a law firm by virtue of a departure of a seasoned professional. I think it behooves a law firm to do what it can to help keep the men and women it has been developing. Recruiting is a big issue but retention I think is a huge issue. I think also insurance costs and kudos to ALPS for recognizing that. I think that both in the area of health costs and perhaps professional liability costs it can be having a real committed, defined program can help deal with both health costs and professional liability costs. Very quickly on the health thing. One might question, "How does taking care of your mind translate into benefits that can accrue to you physically? To your body?" What I mentioned in the talk that you and I participated in recently was a Wall Street Journal article that was two or three weeks ago. Maybe a month at best. That was talking about mindfulness app developers that have begun the process of applying through the FDA for approval of some of their apps as medical devices. Because, now we get into the science that I won't bore you or your listeners with now, the science behind all of this ... If you go to Aetna is a big company that has embraced mindfulness. If you have any interest at all go to their website. Aetna's got a great ... CHRIS: Scientific studies are clearly there now. JEFF: Big time. Big time. On the subject of science too I'm a little bit off-topic here but I'll go there, the idea of neuroplasticity. Relevance for younger men and women in terms of recruiting and retention that's I think something that firms need to pay attention to but what about their older people? People like me? CHRIS: Yeah. JEFF: Why would I care? Well, forget about me but just as an example as a human being who is 65 years old, neuroplasticity, which has driven a lot of the science and a lot of studies, is really the answer. The concept behind neuroplasticity is that regardless of one's age, it's not just babies, it can be 65 year old people, we can rewire our brains. We can learn new things. The brain is a live, malleable, plastic thing. There are good reasons why even older people can and should engage in mindfulness because it relates to neuroplasticity and the ability to learn. Again, back to ... CHRIS: CLE and then productivity. JEFF: Right. Now we've got CLE and productivity. CLE, a lot of states have started ... Well, there are at least a handful, maybe 10, states now that have adopted ABA standards. The ABA did a great service to our profession by appointing the National Task Force on Wellbeing, which authored a report. It's a lengthy report, as you know very well. 70-ish pages including the appendices. It's a great read, by the way. I heartily commend it to anybody who is interested in the topic. Apropos of that task force findings there have been recent changes recommended, not yet adopted by all states but it's just a matter of time, it will be, that include among CLE a requirement that men and women in the legal profession study programs that are either mental health, substance abuse, diversity and inclusion. I would suggest to you that I think in terms of ... Those are costs that are typically borne by a law firm that instituting a program will help a firm qualify and train their people in that area. All of which gets to the issue of productivity, which just makes people who are happier and are better balanced work better. Not longer. The billable hour is still with us. There's going to be plenty of emphasis placed on that by the business people but allowing and putting into place programs that help our men and women work better as opposed to longer ... CHRIS: There's no doubt that to be a good lawyer one has to be a healthy lawyer, right? The more that we encourage those types of cultures I think the more that we're going to see the economic return of that. JEFF: Absolutely. Just in conclusion, it occurs to me ... I think I mentioned this too earlier that I think the airlines really get it right when we all fly for business or pleasure and part of the opening instructions are always, "If in the unlikely event of a water landing or whatever take care of yourself first. Put your mask on first and then take care of other people." CHRIS: Yeah. JEFF: Same concept applies to lawyers. If we learn to take care of ourselves, physically and mentally, we'll do a better job for our clients. CHRIS: Awesome. Well, Jeff, if people want to get a hold of you and want to talk a little bit more about the mindfulness or the wellness things that you are working on how can they reach you? JEFF: Love to do that. Thank you for asking. Probably the best way is to deal with my email address. Right now it's J Bunn Law, J B-U-N-N, Law at Gmail dot com. Just bang me out an email. Whatever is on your mind. I obviously like to talk about this stuff. I'd be delighted to do just that. CHRIS: Good. Well, thank you, Jeff. Thank you listeners. Again, if you have any topics of interest that you'd like us to focus on an upcoming podcast please let us know. Thank you. JEFF: Chris, thanks. Okay.   Jeffrey H. Bunn is a retired litigation attorney, who practiced in both State and Federal courts for nearly 40 years, and was previously member of a three-person Management Committee for a Chicago law firm. “I'm one of us. I've represented many different clients in a variety of civil matters, was a former ethics partner and have managed (and been managed by) others. I understand how lawyers and law firms operate. I also understand business and business people. And I'm a regular meditator, trained in the vipassana tradition”. Jeff was prior chair of the Chicago Bar Association (“CBA”) Commercial Litigation committee, and more recently, the founder and chair of the CBA committee on Mindfulness and the Law. Jeff was the initial vice-chair of the Lawyers' Assistance Program (“LAP”) Illinois Task Force for Lawyer Well-Being (modeled after the National Task Force that was formed by the American Bar Association (“ABA”), which issued a written Report in late 2017). He has led guided meditation sessions for the American Association of Law Schools (“AALS”), and the State Bar of Nevada. In addition, Jeff has presented on matters concerning the incorporation of mindfulness and meditation into the practice of law for the CBA, Chicago Volunteer Legal Services (“CVLS”) and the National Association of Bar Executives (“NABE”), as well as other professional organizations. Jeff was previous blogger-in-chief of the, “The Mindful Law Guy” blog, and has written a book (Canary In The Coalmine) that is submitted for publication, as well as a screenplay (The Meditation Hesitation Blues), that has been submitted for sale and production.

Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? This is Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server, and you are listening to www.ProcessServerDaily.com Mighty Mike: You guys, I'm super excited about today's episode. If you have a story that you want to tell, that you're excited about. Maybe a dog chased you, maybe a guy tried to shoot you with his gun, maybe you had a heart-warming story where you helped somebody in need. Guys, I want to hear the story on this show. Go to www.ProcessServerDaily.Com/BeAGuest.html Find some studio time, go to www.ProcessServerDaily.Com/BeAGuest.html Mighty Mike: I look forward to speaking to you and hearing your story! Let's get to the show. Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? You are listening to Process Server Daily, and I am your host, Mighty Mike the Podcast Server. Our guest today has recently appeared on Vice TV where he has been on the hunt for the most notorious Neo-Nazi of our time. He has been in business for 25 years and he owns and operates Encore Delivery Systems located in Columbus, Ohio. Mighty Mike: Jeff Cremeans, welcome to the show. Jeff C.: Pleasure to be here, Mike. Mighty Mike: Awesome, Jeff. I want to hear from you, Jeff! Tell us a little bit about yourself that wasn't in the intro. Take it away. Jeff C.: Sure. My name is Jeff Cremeans. I've been a process server for about 25 years. I started off, giving my age here, back in 1989 working for a law firm in Columbus, Ohio. Started off as a messenger working in the mail room. Did filings at the court house. Started to do the subpoenas, that type of thing. I'll make a long story short. I had an attorney, of the many duties I did in the mail room, wanted me to go get him a hotdog. So I went and got him a hotdog, I brought it back and he yelled at me, he said, "Why wasn't there mustard on it?" I thought, "You know, I'm gonna start my own business and I'm gonna charge this guy 25 bucks to go get his hotdog." Jeff C.: So I started a company out of law firm called City Wide Legal Messenger Service. Took off really well in Columbus, Ohio. There's a need for that type of thing here. I owned that for a few years. I sold that company to another company. I worked there for 11 years and then I've owned Encore since then. So I've had Encore for about 14 years. So ... Mighty Mike: That's awesome. Yeah, when I was watching the show, it's really cool, your office looks really cool. It looks like you got a pretty good size operation going on there. Jeff C.: Yeah, doing good. In any given time, we'll have eight or nine servers out, serving anything from child support papers to foreclosures. I don't get out as much and serve, certainly on this big case I'm helping out on, the Andrew Anglin case. But, yeah, I have a great group of servers. Very hard workers and do a great job. So ... Mighty Mike: Jeff, one of the most important things as process servers, for anybody, actually, is family. You got a family? Jeff C.: Sure do. I have a daughter at Ken State. Freshman at Ken State University. I've a son that's a sophomore. Yeah, they're pretty much my world, so ... Yeah. Mighty Mike: That's awesome. Jeff, there's a reason why you're on my show. You have a lot going on right now. Full of great experiences. But first, tell me about your worst experience working in the field. Jeff C.: You know, I think a lot of the process servers cross and that start talking about bad stories. Everybody's got a lot of bad stories. I think the one that really stood out to me was one, believe it or not, where I wasn't out in the field. Long story short, I'm sitting in my office, I had let everybody go early. I'm in the office by myself, just doing paperwork and in walks four people. I won't put their description out, but they were not very nice-looking people. I said, "Can I help you?" They said, "Yeah. One of your servers have been pounding on the door at my grandmother's house. We're here to see what's going on." Course, they were not so nice about it. I thought, "Well," I looked up and I saw these four guys. They meant business and they were there to do some damage or something. I thought, "Well, gosh, here we go." I can hold my own, but not with four guys. They were really upset that the server ... Now, how they go to where we were, they did some diligence on finding who we were and our address and everything. I got to give 'em that. Jeff C.: Anyway, I'll be honest with you, I was scared for my life. I thought if these guys want to start one me, there's not a whole lot I can do, but I explained to them. I calmed 'em down, I said, "Look, I'm sorry. This is not the way we do business and I apologize that your grandmother was scared," and all this stuff. Turns out that the server that went out, he was a newbie. He was trained and everything, but he had it to where he thought he could pound on doors and maybe even intimidate people, scare people to come to the door. Boy, did I have a long talk with after him that. I told him, "Hey, look, you're gonna go out, you're gonna go looking for trouble. You're gonna get it." Jeff C.: Fortunately, the trouble came to the office and it affected me. Nothing ended up happening. I talked to these guys and they end up not hurting me, which is a good thing. So the moral of the story, and for everybody out there, whether you're training a server or you're serving yourself, you don't have to ... there's times you have to get creative and aggressive. We can talk about that later in the podcast, but the big thing is, I explained to the server, "There was an old lady in there. You were scaring her to death. She had her grandkids come here and threaten me and want to know what's going on. Take it easy, man. You don't have to do that. If they don't answer the door, you don't have to pound on it." The lady wasn't even avoiding servers, so he learned a big lesson. He learned from that and turned out to be a great server. Not so aggressive anymore after that. Mighty Mike: I've recounted an experience that I've had too in a previous podcast about knocking on a door and being really gung-ho, and then realizing it was a 14 year old girl in there, terrified! She's told not to answer the door and it really helped correct my perspective that you never know ... I just had one yesterday. They told me she's an elderly lady and I've been there at all different times during the day. So I decided to come at night. Sure enough, her car was there, but she wasn't answering the door. The neighbors said, "Oh, she's in there." But I thought, "Man, I'm just gonna come back again at night and maybe she won't be in the shower or in the back room or wherever. Whatever she's doing to keep her from answering the door, giving her the benefit of the doubt- Jeff C.: Right. Mighty Mike: That she might actually answer the door if I come in a different time. Jeff C.: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Yeah, what I take from your story is prudence. Have a little bit of prudence when you come to the door. It's one of the most valuable asset in any industry. Mighty Mike: Jeff, tell us about your greatest experience working in the field. Jeff C.: Well, as many as there are bad, there are some good experiences out there. I think one that stands out to me is, and this is back in my City Wide Legal Messenger Service days, I was young and I was just new to the industry and learning, and doing stuff. I got a job to serve a wealthy person in a domestic case. Long story short, I had attempted many times. Pulled out all the tricks. I dressed up for Halloween, did the whole pizza delivery thing. Nothing worked. This guy, he was a dodger and he knew the game. He had been served before. Jeff C.: I pulled up one day, I just happened to be around the neighborhood. I thought, "Let me go try this guy again." I got there and he was out back, washing one of his expensive cars with his brother. I pulled up and he looked at me and started to run. Then he stopped and he's like, "You got me." He put out his hand and he shook my hand. He's like, "Congratulations, man. You played a good game." He was serious, very nice. We ended up talking there for a minute, so it was kind of ... never had that happen before, but it was nice to know that old game of hide and seek, he was not a sore loser, you know? So, yeah, that's kind of a good story. Mighty Mike: That's cool when they're like that. Some people just have a habit of dodging and ducking and hiding under couches, and things like that. Every once in a while, you'll get that guy that's probably like you would be when you're retired or something like that, or if someone else was trying to serve you. Ultimately, you're gonna accept the responsibility for your own problems, but you don't mind giving 'em a little run for his money. Jeff C.: Sure. Mighty Mike: That's a great experience. Mighty Mike: Jeff, tell me what you're working on right now that you're most excited about. Jeff C.: Well, in the past few years, we've gotten accounts with the Children's Services and the child support. It's a lot of work. It's lucrative, but dodging has increased with the child support papers as everybody knows, especially at that end of the stuff that we serve. So I've been able to hire more servers, it's broadened our horizons as far as learning more about the industry and finding people, the skip tracing, that type of thing. Jeff C.: Then, of course, there's the case we're trying to serve, the famous neo-Nazi. That has been the most challenging serve in my career in 25 plus years. So the reason why this case is so challenging to serve, this guy, he's a national, if not worldly-known neo-Nazi. He's got his own website, the Daily Stormer, that's been very controversial, but he has so much help hiding out. I've never seen anybody have so much support in hiding out. Anything from his father with all his property he owns, and people putting him up in places, this type of thing. But, yeah, it's been a very challenging serve. Worked very hard and done all the skip tracing. Done everything we possibly can to this point. Right now, we're relying on tips from a lot of different people that have maybe spotted him or know where he's at. We had a pretty good tip, as you saw in the Vice show. That's probably our best tip and missed him there. But, so, yeah. Jeff C.: There's a lot of things going on, a lot of good things. Growing at a steady pace and, again, I think any processor out there will tell you each case is different, each server's different. You don't want to get too emotionally involved, especially when someone's dodging, but there comes a time where, "Ask us for help," you know. One person can't do everything. If you feel like you've exhausted all your efforts in getting the serve, get somebody else on it. Get a fresh face, that type of thing. So ... Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's good, Jeff. I'll tell you, when I was watching the video, and you were going over the footage in the store where you were watching him with his protein powder, I got this feeling, almost like that's happened to me before where I've seen someone I was hunting for three months. He was a pot farmer up in [inaudible 00:09:36] Creek. Anyone knows you go up there, you gotta go up there with the AKs and [inaudible 00:09:40] dogs, and ready to go. Mighty Mike: I saw him in a park. He was apparently getting visitation with his kids, and I didn't have the papers, so I ran back, I drove back to my house. By the time I got there, he wasn't there. I was so mad at myself. How did you feel when that- Jeff C.: First, it was just shock and awe seeing him there. My son and I were just walking through the store and it was one of those things, when I first saw him, I thought, "Oh, man. That guy looks familiar," and I got closer. As I got closer, I thought, "Oh my gosh, that's him." No doubt in my mind whatsoever. In fact, I submitted a declaration to the court for the attorney's request to explain that I saw him. I got up, I was watching him. I was standing there as you could see in the video, watching him. Very nervous. He was kind of looking behind his shoulders and just kind of looked really, really paranoid, that type of thing. I thought, "You know, I don't have the papers. They're not even in my car. They're at home. By the time I get it and do that, it's not gonna happen." Plus, I had my son with me. It was really not a whole lot I could have done, like I couldn't leave him there. Jeff C.: As he was checking out, I proceeded to go through the store, past self check out lines. I looked over and I just thought, "You know, I gotta say something to him. I gotta go talk to him. I just can't" ... So as he was walking out, I pulled up right in front of him with my car. My exact words to him was like, "You know, you look like somebody I know. Is your name Andrew?" "Nope." He was gone. He was not gonna hang around. It was him, it was definitely him. Now- Jeff: He was not going to hang around, and it was him. It was definitely him. Now, people, especially his attorney ... What are the odds? What are the odds of tracking somebody down for almost a year and you see them at a grocery store? I don't know, but it happened and it was ... Needless to say, I have the papers with me every time. I have them in my briefcase, I have them in my car, I have them at work. I have other people that have them. All my servers have a copy of this stuff [inaudible 00:11:24] just in case something like that were to happen again. Don't think I'll ever get that opportunity again, but you never know. Mighty Mike: Yeah, I actually keep a bucket now, because of that experience that I had. I'll tell you one fun experience. I was in the courthouse and I'd been hunting this ... trying to serve this professor of Chico State University. He was retired. And so, I had served him like three times before and then he moved. We go to court every day to file papers at the courthouse. And so, I was in line at the courthouse and I heard this voice, and I was like, "I know that voice." And I listened and I heard it. He's just shooting it with a couple guys, "Yeah, no, I'm a professor down over at Chico State." And I thought, "That's him." And I didn't have the documents, but I was at the courthouse. So I said ... I looked it up on my phone, and I bought a copy of the paperwork at the courthouse. I checked the box individual and said, "Here you go." Jeff: Oh, nice. Very nice. Mighty Mike: I felt like such a ninja when I did that. It was cool. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: So I mean, if I would have saw him at the store I would have been in trouble. What I wanted to know, and I'm sure other servers are the same, is what's the next step? You can only skip trace them so much, right? Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: You can only- Jeff: Yeah, there's a lot of people looking for this guy for one reason or another. It's not just to serve him papers. As you can imagine, he's made a lot of people upset with his comments and his viewpoints. Hey, you know, I believe in the first amendment. I think everybody can believe in whatever they want to believe in. You believe clowns should make more money when they go to parties? Fine. Just the fact that threaten violence and harass people I don't think bodes well. Jeff: So anyway, with that being said, a lot of people look for him. We're all trying to put feelers out there and we're all going off tips, whether it be the media, reporters, and other process servers. And from here, where do we go? Waiting on a tip. There's been rumor that he claims he's in Cambodia, then he was in Nigeria, then he was in Russia. Personally, my opinion, I think he's right here, whether it be in town or the state of Ohio, at least in the United States. He's not overseas. So it's going to be off a tip. It's going to get lucky. Somebody's going to see him, he's going to show his self somewhere. That's pretty much all we can do right now, just sit back and wait. Mighty Mike: Yeah, you just have got to post somebody up over by the protein powder. That's what you have got to do. Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Mighty Mike: Okay. So I hope you get him and when you do get him, maybe we'll have you back on the show or even we'll do a Facebook Live so that'll just be [inaudible 00:13:49]. Jeff: I look forward to the day, believe me. Mighty Mike: Now dreams of the day. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, Jeff has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself, because we are headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, I know you're with the times and you want to do whatever you can to have all of the resources for your client. That is why I created 123efile.com. As a process server, attorney, or even an improper you can visit the website and file your documents in any of the Tyler courts in California. With it's easy to use one-page operation, you can have your e-filing done in a matter of minutes and get back to what really matters. If your time is important to you, visit 123efile.com. Mighty Mike: Welcome back to the show. Jeff, are you ready for the rapid fire round? Jeff: I think I am. Mighty Mike: If you could recommend one app, what would it be and why? Jeff: I think Road Warrior's a good app. I'm not a humongous app fan. I kind of do a lot of things old school. I think if you're diligent enough and you really want it bad, you can find the right app and it'll get you where you need to be. Mighty Mike: Very good. Road Warrior is ... I swear by the Road Warrior. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: I mean, if another one came out I would try it, but I haven't found any other app like that. Jeff: Yeah, it's a good app. Mighty Mike: And if you have it set to go straight into the Waze app, it works really good in the city. You can pick different navigators, but yeah, Road Warrior's a great one. What case tracking software would you recommend as the best? I would take you as a Process Server Toolbox guy. Jeff: Yeah, yeah, Process Server's Toolbox or like Serve Manager. Again, I don't even ... To be honest with you, I don't use them. Again, I'm- Mighty Mike: Really? Jeff: Yeah, I'm a firm believer in the old fashioned way of doing things, and my customers seem to like it. I've tried to offer them the different softwares and the Process Server's Tool and everything, and my customers like, you know, "Just use the court's return. We don't want this. We don't want that." And I've just kind of been doing that for years, and it works for me so far. Mighty Mike: No, I'm intrigued, Jeff, because, let me tell you something, there's a beauty in simplicity. So I'm just curious, we don't have to go too far into it, but you have like a service request form? Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: And they fill that out. And is your return or your field sheet, if you were, is that a part of the same form? Jeff: No, that's a different form in fact. And that's the thing, we kind of create our own affidavits and our own returns of service if they want. For anybody that has just your federal district return of service, we'll start off with that. If somebody wants something different, we've created so many different types of affidavits and non-serve affidavits and returns of service. We've had people say, "Yep, we don't want this notarized. You don't have to notarize it," so we'll just make it a simple proof of service. Mighty Mike: Yeah. Jeff: Of course, as you know, in California they have their own and New York wants certain things. A lot of the different states and people want different things. Mighty Mike: Definitely. Jeff: So we kind of have a variety of affidavits and stuff we use. Mighty Mike: That's cool. Yeah, that's cheaper. Jeff: Yeah, it is. It is. Mighty Mike: I tell you, there's beauty in simplicity. When I first started out, I had a form and I thought I was a genius because I had my service request area on top where I gave the customer's info and special instructions, and then at the bottom it had four spots for first attempt, second attempt, third attempt. And I only did four attempts because most of my customers were for unlawful detainers. In our local area, you had to get three attempts for diligence before you could post or subserve. So yeah, there's beauty in simplicity. I appreciate that. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite skip trace tactic? Jeff: I think what's worked for us over the years are the neighbors. Knocking on the doors next to it. I tell you, there's ... We have had more nosy neighbors help us get people served than anything. It's a simple skip tracing tool. There's a lot of ways of skip tracing, but, boy, just I don't know how many times ... And I'm sure a lot of servers have experienced this. The neighbor's out washing the car, you go over, "Hey, is so-and-so here?" "Oh, you know what? No, they're down the street at this park at the baseball game." "Oh, really? Which park is that?" "You know, blah, blah, blah park." You go down there. Now, if somebody's been dodging for a few weeks and you really want to get them served, I don't mind going to a park at a ballgame and getting them served. It may be the only opportunity to get them. So yeah, I think neighbors are very informative, and can be very helpful for getting somebody. Mighty Mike: Yeah, and actually, you can skip trace a specific address, not a person, and it'll give you the people that live in that general area. Or you can go on Google and find out what the nextdoor neighbor's address is and skip trace them and get the phone number. And then call them up, say, "Hi, is this ..." So if you're looking for Jill, you call up the neighbor and say, "Hi, is this Jill?" And then she's going to go, "Oh no, Jill lives nextdoor." "Okay. Oh, sorry about that." You know? Jeff: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Mighty Mike: That's a good one that works a lot. Jeff: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Jeff, what is your favorite tool for defense? Jeff: I think there's weapons and there's this and there's that. I firmly believe in being human with people, talking to them. One thing that taught me about that bad experience, I think if you're there and you're calm and you hear them, and you're honest with them, say, "Hey, look, I got these papers," well I think that's worked more than anything. To be, for lack of a better word, aggressive or cocky or pushy and doing too much, I don't think that's going to help you out. I think really trying to talk to people. And there's a lot of different ways of doing that. Jeff: My biggest thing is somebody that's wanting to avoid service, I try to tell them, "Hey, look, I'm going to come back. I'm going to keep coming back. I'm not going to go away and this is not going to go away." I'm not a lawyer, I can't give them legal advice, but I try to tell them, "Hey, look, you're best off taking this now." So things like that and that nature, that to be me has been the best tool. Call it a tool. Call it whatever you want. I think it's a really good tool to use. Mighty Mike: Yeah, I did a poll on Facebook and, "What was the best tool for defense?" And people came back ... And actually, I gave some options and I gave like a gun, and a knife, and all these things. And then, I gave a few options. It was like common sense ... Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: Those things that are inside of you, like in your brain and in your habits, and the way that you treat people, the way that you talk to people, those are the things that had the most hits. I think one of them had like 64. Common sense had like 64, and the next one had 30. And the actual gun I think only had like 16. We all like to talk about the guns that we own, but the truth is, when you're out there serving, using your gift of gab or your ability to control a situation with your words is way more powerful than a gun. Jeff: Absolutely Mighty Mike: A gun is an immediate ... It's not an answer. It's not a resolution. It's a tragedy if you did have to pull it out. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-gun. I'm just saying I agree with you. That's absolutely correct. Jeff: And yeah, guns can be dangerous and they can promote ... get you into a situation where somebody could get hurt or killed. Again, I'm totally not anti-gun either. I totally believe in that, and a lot of people should have one for their protection. I've never been a really big badge guy. Again, I'm just kind of human, old fashioned way of doing things. Mighty Mike: Yeah, in California it's actually become quite a ... most of the server companies, it's quite anti-badge, because a lot of people are getting convicted and charged, and potentially convicted for impersonating an officer. Jeff: Yes. Mighty Mike: Throwing around words like, "Officer of the court," and things like that. Jeff: Mm-hmm Mighty Mike: You know, I used to do it when I first started because that's what they said in my training class, and really we're not. Joe down the street could serve papers, but he can't serve more than 10 in California. I know it's different in every state, but ... Jeff: Mm-hmm Mighty Mike: Jeff, what book would you recommend? Jeff: Anything John Grisham. I'm a huge John Grisham fan. In fact, the older I get, I'm doing a lot more reading. And I love to read, it's just like a lot of people, you just don't have the time. But John Grisham, really just the fact ... You know, he's mentioned process servers in his stories and subpoenas being served. I always kind of liked that part of it, but just his work is just I think is amazing. And the legal aspect of it, I'm really interested in that part of it. http://www.jgrisham.com/books/ Mighty Mike: That's really cool. I'm going to have to check it out, John Grisham. I'm actually writing a book. It's going to be done here in about 90 days is my goal. And it's going to be on process server safety and best business practices. It's going to be great! Jeff: That's awesome! Mighty Mike: Yeah, you can get a free copy at www.processserverdaily.com/freebook.html when it comes out. Mighty Mike: Jeff, did you have a mentor? Jeff: I started off at a young age. I’m the second youngest of 10 children. Growing up, it was one of those things where, as you can imagine, you either go off to college or go get a job. You're not going to hang around the house, that type of thing. My mentor was no doubt about it my father. He was a hard-working man, raising 10 kids, him and my mother. To me, they’re the most awesome people in the planet, but nevertheless, he said, “Work hard and be nice and don’t ever give up.” He was always supportive of all my brothers and sisters, whatever road they took. He was so excited for me when I started City Wide Legal Messenger Service. He loaned me $1,000, which I had to pay him back by the way. He wasn’t that nice! Jeff: He was truly my mentor. Did he know anything about filing stuff at the courthouses, doing certain papers? Absolutely not. Just his life lessons taught me, even to this day, I still use them. It has really taught me a lot and just got me far. Mighty Mike: That’s great. You answered one of the questions. What’s the greatest advice you’ve ever received? Jeff: The greatest advice I’ve ever received is definitely from my father. Be humbler. Be nice. Work hard. I taught my own kids that. I’d tell you. If you're nice … Don’t be too nice. You're going to be taken advantage of. I’m not saying that, but I’d say being nice, being compassionate, being humble will get so you much further in life. I truly believe that, and that’s the way I try to live my life and do my work. Mighty Mike: To provide an abundance of value without expectation just as a business practice, but also just as a person. There are many examples of that, whether it’s in your love life or with your family. If you provide value without expectation, it will come back to you. Like you said, don’t be taken advantage of, but sometimes it might feel like it and then the next day, you're like, wow, I didn’t expect you to do all these nice things for me. Jeff: Right. Mighty Mike: That’s the idea. Jeff, what would you do if you woke up today, had all the same skills and knowledge, had no clients, a smartphone, a car and only $100? What would you do in the next week? Jeff: I would definitely do some work reaching out to other people, advertising to a certain extent. I’d tell you. The best thing that I would do is to get out there and do a good job for folks. I think word of mouth advertisement has been a key for me to my success. It’s one thing to go out and say you're a process server or say you're going to do this and do that, but if you do it, it takes that one paralegal that you do a great job for. You communicate the whole time. You're doing everything you need to be doing. That paralegal could be involved in a group that tells another paralegal and so on and so forth. Jeff: I think part of doing that good job is communicating. Somebody sends you a paper. Don’t take three days to get back to them if it’s a rush and what’s going on. Certainly don’t take another week to send them back to return a service, that type of thing because again, that word of mouth could also hurt you too. It could be a very valuable factor. It could also hurt your business. I would pound the pavement and get out there and try to talk to as many people as I could, talk to paralegal groups, bar association, that type of thing. Mighty Mike: That’s good. One of the things that I take from your story is that, from your methods, is that be diligent. Get out there. Sometimes it’s nice to have a little hand-up, not a hand-out, but the truth is in this example, you only have $100. You have a car. You have the knowledge that you already have, and you have a smartphone so you can give the internet … You can search things. Guys, anybody can do this. You get out there and go after it. I say anybody can do it, like anybody who wants to build a business. Some people, they’re not cut out for serving papers, and if that’s the case, build the business; have someone else serve the papers. There’s a lot of really good husband and wife teams out there. Jeff, what is a parting piece of guidance you want to give to the servers out there? Jeff: Again, what we’ve talked about previously. Stay humble. Treat people with kindness. You have a job to do and certainly do it. In doing so, just remember this thing is bigger than you. Don’t go out there thinking you're Captain Bob, the process server and think that you're better than everybody, that type of thing. Just go out and communicate with your customer. Take good care of your customer. Communication is key. Jeff: I touched base on it earlier. I don't know how times I’ve used servers across the nation where they do 75% of the job. What I mean by that is, hey man, I got this rush. I need to serve right away. This is a big customer, blah, blah, blah. By gosh. They went out and they got it served right away, did a great job. A week later, hey, where is my return of service? I got to get this filed. The attorney is screaming at me. They got to get this filed. Follow through on your job. Do what it all right, not just half of it. Definitely get in the network groups. Meeting new guys and get involved with this and NAPPS members and stuff, a great, great tool. It’s great to get advice to people. Jeff: Again, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. I still seek advice. I’ll call a server that I’ve been dealing with for 20 years and say, “Hey, man. How would you do this? What’s your viewpoint on this?” Never stop learning because I’d tell you. There’s a lot to learn in this industry. Mighty Mike: You're right, Jeff. There is. A big part of the industry for process servers, what I find most often is that they find themselves in a chasm alone by themselves and the way that they think that every other processor is their competition. The truth is that many process servers out there have too much work and they would be more than glad to give you the work if you can give them a discount. Jeff: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: If that’s what you need to get off the ground and to get your business rolling so you can raise your prices and have some more customers, more attorney clients come in, then that’s what you got to do. Jeff: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: I started out making $20 a paper. How about you? Jeff: When I worked at the law firm, I think I made about $4 an hour. Whether that’d be filing at the courthouse or serve a paper even add to that, yeah, it’s … I think then after that, as time went on, I think I was getting $20 a paper at that point. It’s been a long road. I certainly charge more for that these days. Mighty Mike: Jeff, I appreciate your story. I want to personally thank you for being on the show. I’ve been really impressed with your story and the whole situation with the neo-Nazi. That’s just a side thing. Watching the video and seeing your operation going on, it’s definitely worth being excited about. I’m excited to share it with the world. Jeff, what’s the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say goodbye? Jeff: Sure. You can reach us via email. Our email address is jeffENCORE@sbcglobal.net. Definitely a phone a call away, (614) 414-0730. Mighty Mike: Excellent. You can get that information in the show notes at www.processserverdaily.com/jeff.html Until next time, server nation, you’ve been served up some awesomeness by Jeff, the Nazi hunter and Mighty Mike, the podcast server. Mighty Mike: Server nation, I know that you know all about directories and that you know the importance of getting yourself on the web in as many places as possible, but it’s more than that, server nation. It’s about putting yourself on the websites that get ranked on Google, Yahoo and Bing. I’m excited about a new program that I’m starting. Really quickly, let me tell you. As a process server, I don’t cover the whole country, right? We send servers out to other process servers and we call that affiliates. My new program is going to incorporate a system. When my customers come on to my website and they do a location search, try to find a process server in a specific location, many times, I do not serve that area and so I might hire an affiliate in another area and manage to serve that way. That takes time and effort away from my local customers and the local efforts that I have here in Northern California. I want to personally invite each and every member of server nation to add themselves to my directory on my website. This is what’s going to happen. My customers who come to me loyally will search a specific location. If I don’t cover a specific location but you do, guess who shows up? You do. How great is that, server nation? I’m going to share something that means so much to me, my customers. I believe that this will benefit my customers because they will have a resource to go to, to find process servers and to get the best rates nationwide. Oh, but there’s a catch, server nation. There’s always a catch... My directory is free for an affiliate to sign up and get the basic affiliate level. If you do not perform when my customers come and they see that it’s not me or one of my employees or contractors and they see that it’s you, they’re going to see a rating next to your name. If your rating falls, you may not get any business. Server nation, give it a shot. Sign up for the free listing, but please, take care of my customers. I love them like they’re family. Visit www.processserverdaily.com/affiliates.html Mighty Mike: Until next time, server nation, stay safe out there!

Episode 107: Cross-Curricular in the Drama Classroom   Teacher Jeff Pinsky will embark on a new cross-curricular journey with his drama curriculum this year. He'll be incorporating the holocaust into drama exercises, reflections, projects, and more. How do you include such an intense subject into today's classroom? How do you get students to connect to cross-curricular? What if the exercises fail? Show Notes Jeff's Theatre Department website Canadian Society for Yad Vashem (Educational Seminar Page) Yad Vashem world center - educational resources Writing Your Research Verbatim Theatre Speeches From History Episode Transcript Welcome to TFP – The Theatrefolk Podcast – the place to be for Drama teachers, Drama students, and theatre educators everywhere. I'm Lindsay Price, resident playwright for Theatrefolk. Hello, I hope you're well. Thanks for listening. So during the month of December we're looking back on some of our past podcast episodes. Episodes that will get you thinking toward the new year. I know, I know, how can you think about January when the holidays haven't even happened yet? But I know teachers and teachers always have something percolating in the back of their brains. And at the end of this interview there are some great resources and classroom links. This is a replay of Episode 107 and you can find all the links for this episode at theatrefolk.com/107. Back in August I talked to teacher Jeff Pinksy about cross-curricular material he was about to take into the drama classroom. So let's dive into the interview! Lindsay: Okay. So, I am really thrilled for today's conversation. I am talking to Jeff Pinsky. Hello, Jeff! Jeff: Hi, Lindsay! Lindsay: How's it going? Jeff: I am doing very, very well this summer. How are you? Lindsay: Ah, pretty good, pretty busy. But, you know, it's better to be busy than not, I think. Jeff: It is, what with Drama Teacher Academy launching as of Wednesday and everything. Lindsay: Aww! Nice plug there! I love it. I love it. I didn't even say that. Jeff: Happy to shell for you! Lindsay: Jeff, tell everybody where in the world you are. Jeff: Right now, I'm in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and I teach at Beaconsfield High School which is about ten minutes from where I live right now. Lindsay: Ah, nice close commute. So, how long have you been a Drama teacher? Jeff: I've been teaching Drama exclusively for about eight years now, and this year coming out would be my tenth in the business, but I've been involved in Drama teaching – in one way, shape, or form – for the last, I'd say, maybe fifteen years or so. Since Summer Camp, I started up a program at one of my old Summer Camps. Lindsay: Ah, awesome, and what drives you specifically to teaching Drama? You know, as opposed to performing or backstage or what. Jeff: Because I get to go to work every single day and it doesn't even feel like work. I mean, one of the best advice I ever got is that, if you truly have a job that you love, then you never have to work a single day in your life. And so, I loved the fact that I'm surrounded by creativity and my job is to teach kids how to channel that creativity and to turn all these crazy ideas bouncing around their head and funnel it into stories and characters and moments and scenes and plays and the works, and I love it. No two days are alike and that's probably the best part of my job; I really don't fall into any kind of routine as far as that goes. Lindsay: Well, that enthusiasm must help when you have students in your class who maybe aren't so engaged with Drama. Because we all have those classes, right? Where you've got the students who love and then the students who aren't so excited. How do you deal with those kids? Jeff: With those kids, it's just Drama is, you know, very personal and I love getting to know my students and just trying to find in talking to them just that one thing tha...