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It's the 250th episode of The Pulp Writer Show! To celebrate this occasion, this episode takes a look at the expectations people have of a full-time writer's life and contrasts them with the reality. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: TALONS50 The coupon code is valid through May 27, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 250 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 2, 2025, and today we're looking at what it is really like to be a full-time writer. This is also the 250th episode of the podcast, so thank you all for listening to the podcast over these last six years. Before I started recording, I totaled up the total length of previous podcast episodes and came to about 78 hours, give or take. That's like three days of continuous talking, which sounds less impressive when you realize it was recorded over the last six years.   Thank you all for listening and here's hoping you can stick around with the next 250 episodes. Before we get to our main topic, which is the expectations versus reality of being a full-time writer, we are going to do Coupon of the Week, a progress update my current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. So let's kick off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book Six in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is TALONS50. As always, you can get that coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through May 27th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.   Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 60,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which puts me on chapter 13 of 21, so I'm about two thirds of the way through. I think the rough draft will be between 90-100,000 words long, so hopefully I can have that out before the end of May, if all goes well. I also just finished Chapter One of Shield of Power, which will be the final book of the Shield War series and that'll be my main project once Ghost in the Corruption is finished. I'm also 87,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, and that will be my main project once Shield of Power comes out. I expect Final Quest should come out pretty soon after Shield of Power just because I've been chipping away at it for so long and I'm getting close to the end.   In audiobook news, recording is almost done for Ghost in the Assembly and that'll be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. Recording is totally done for Shield of Deception (as narrated by Brad Wills) and that is working its way through processing at the various audiobook platforms, so hopefully we'll not be too much longer before we can get that to you.   00:02:26 Question of the Week So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite Jonathan Moeller book? The reason for this question is that this is the 250th podcast episode, so it seems like a good topic for that particular milestone. And as you might expect, we had an array of different opinions.   Joachim says: You are kidding us! By the end of the week? How long did you think about your own answer? Let me mirror you: for my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I spent money on all your books, which meant I thought all of them a good buy. So let me split my answer into male and female protagonists. The best female book was Ghost Exile: Omnibus One because it prompted me to continue with Ghost Exile and fill in the Ghost series later. The Ghosts Omnibus One and Ghost Exile: Omnibus One were my first two books from you. The best male book was the one with Jack March where Thunderbolt said, “males are ogling breasts which never existed”, especially as such AI generated videos are now all over the place on YouTube.   I have to admit that I first came up with the character of Thunderbolt back in early 2021 when I was working on Silent Order: Rust Hand (that was before the AI boom really took off), so she turned out to be a very prescient character for the AI era in a number of ways.   Joe B. says: That is a tough question as there are many contenders. I'm going to go with one that is a little different, Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation, but now known as Stealth and Spells Online: Creation.   Justin says: I nominate Soul of Swords, an excellent end to an excellent series.   Perry says: There can only be one! Demonsouled. Paul says: For me, I think my favorite female protagonist  book is Cloak Games: Truth Chain. Such a dramatic change to Nadia, sets up the series in her struggles with self and enemies so well.   Brad Wills (who as you know narrated the Frostborn, Dragonskull, Malison, and Shield War series for me) says: Does a three book arc count?  Excalibur, The Dragon Knight, and The Shadow Prison made for a fantastic lead-up and finale of the Frostborn series.   Hollis McCarthy (who as you know, narrated the Ghosts and Cloak Mage audiobooks) says: Ghost in the Storm, when Caina and Kylon meet in the Battle for Marsis. Nonstop action, incredible chase scenes, and a great intro to their combative relationship.   Fred says: It's hard for me to say which book is my favorite. All your book series were all great.   Juana says: Frostborn: Excalibur with Ridmark. I happen to love stories about Excalibur, odd but true. Caina in Cloak and Ghost: Rebel Cell because Caina and Nadia are an incendiary team. So there! Randy says: Frostborn: The Dragon Knight. This whole series is great, but that is one of the high points.   Dennis says: I couldn't name my favorite as I enjoy everything you write. I probably enjoyed the Frostborn series best at the time, but having bought and read every one of your books it's now impossible.   Kevin says: There's no way on earth that I could put one book above another, so I would've to take the coward's way out and say Frostborn: The Gray Knight simply because it has a book that drew me to the worlds of Jonathan Moeller back in the spring of 2017, since which time I have bought 117 of his books, including a few omnibus editions, so a few more actual books, I suppose. I avidly read them all as they're published these days, except the Silent Order series (just doesn't grab me and pull me in like the others). Jesse says: Cloak Games: Sky Hammer. Damaged Nadia at her best, epic action the whole way. And yeah, the chapter The Last Death of Nadia Moran was viscerally cinematic and probably the biggest emotional payoff you've written in my opinion, tied her entire journey together. In my head, I cast Castle-era Stana Katic as Nadia, and it worked better than I expected it might.   Morgan says: I can't narrow it down to just one. So top three in no particular order, Sevenfold Swords: Swordbearer, Dragontiarna: Gates, and Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling. That being said, I think Niara might be my favorite character of all your books I have read.   Jonathan T says: I too am torn though only between two books, Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife and Frostborn: The Shadow Prison.   [Side note/addition from The Transcriptionist: My vote is for Half-Elven Thief!]   So thank you everyone for the kind words about all those books. For my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I've written them all, which meant I thought all of them were good idea at the time. I suppose the glib answer would be the one that made me the most money, which was Frostborn: The Iron Tower, but it really depends on the category, like my favorite heist book, my favorite mystery book, my favorite dungeon crawl, my favorite first in series. So I think I'll go for the most basic level of categorization and split it up by male and female protagonists.   My favorite book of mine with a female protagonist would probably be Cloak Games: Rebel Fist, since it's such a turning point for Nadia and starts the trajectory of the rest of her character arc. It's the first time she really has to save the day instead of just trying to save herself and shows that her brother Russell can also handle himself, which as you know, comes up again later. My favorite book of mine with a male protagonist would probably be Dragontiarna: Defenders, since it has the Battle of Shadow Crown Hill, which was one of my favorite sequences to write. Four different characters have plans and they all crash into each other at the same time, which was a lot of fun to write and set up, which was a real highlight for me in 2020 because as we all know, 2020 was a fun year.   00:07:35 Main Topic of the Week: Writing Full Time: Expectations Versus Reality   So that is it for Question of the Week. Now let's move on to our main topic this week, writing full-time: expectations versus reality (admittedly from the perspective of a self-published author). If you spent any time around the writing community on the Internet at all, you know that many people dream of becoming a full-time writer, and sometimes people think that the only way to be successful as a writer is to write full-time. There are many expectations that people have about what it means to be a full-time writer. Now that I've been a full-time indie writer for nearly nine years at this point, I can provide some lived perspective. In this episode, I will talk about five of those expectations that people have about full-time writing and the way those expectations might be skewed.   So before we get to those, I should mention how I actually became a full-time writer. In 2016 (which seems like a really long time ago now), the Frostborn series was doing really well, and at the time I was also working full time and I realized that summer I was going to have to move for family reasons. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea of moving at first, but I decided to embrace the idea and try to make the best of it. This would involve moving a considerable distance to a different state and all the different problems that entails. So I thought about it and I thought I could look for a new job, but any job I would be qualified for in the area I was moving to would make less money than I was actually making from writing part-time. So I thought, why not try and make a go of full-time writing and see what happens?   Since that was nine years ago, I think I can safely say it's worked out pretty well. And I will say that it's been a pretty good experience and I am very fortunate and very grateful and very blessed to have been able to do this because not everyone has the opportunity to pursue a full-time creative job like I have been able to for these last nine years. That said, while it has been pretty great, it comes with a lot of flexibility and I've gotten to write a lot of great books that many people have enjoyed, it's not always all wine and roses, so to speak, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode to let people more in what the reality of being a full-time writer for this long has been like. So with that introduction out of the way, let's move on to our five expectations versus reality.   Expectation #1: Full-time authors make a lot of money. The reality is that even full-time authors generally don't make that much money. A survey from The Author's Guild showed that the median amount that full-time authors make was just about $20,000, though full-time romance writers had a higher median income of about $37,000. Remember that this amount is before any health insurance costs, benefits, retirement contributions, and of course taxes that a traditional job might be able to provide or help with. In the United States, buying even fairly basic health insurance can easily be a thousand dollars per month for a family, and that doesn't include any costs related to deductibles, prescriptions, or additional dental or vision insurance. Authors are either on their own for healthcare in the US or have to rely on a spouse or partner's healthcare coverage. In other words, you either have to pony up a lot of money to buy your own health insurance or you have to rely on your spouse or partner's healthcare coverage.   And at least in the US, taxes are also much higher on the self-employed. Uncle Sam really does not like the self-employed. If you are self-employed, it is in your best interest to essentially form a small corporation and work for yourself (though for details on how to do that, you should consult with an accountant licensed to practice in your region). Now all these costs can add up pretty quickly, and they make the amount of money that you'll earn from writing much less than you think based on raw earnings before taxes and all the other expenses we were talking about. You also have business expenses like cover design, site hosting, editors, narrators, advertising, et cetera, that take even more pieces out of those earnings. You can duck some of those, but not all of them.   So it boils down to that you have to make a significant amount of money as an author to make an actual living after taxes, healthcare costs, and business expenses are taken out of your earnings, which is one of the reasons that writing part-time as you have a full-time job is not the worst idea in the world and can in fact be a very good idea.   Expectation #2: My next book will make as much or more than the last one did. The reality is that your next book or series might not make you as much money as the previous ones did. In fact, you can reliably predict that most book series will have a certain amount of reader drop off as a series goes on, which is why these days I tend to want to keep my series under nine to ten books or so. Budgeting based on your current income levels is not wise, especially with the current economic climate (which for a variety of reasons is very unpredictable) and with increased competition in the ebook market. Most authors have a peak at some point in their career. For example, Stephen King is still obviously making a great living as a writer putting out new books, but his new books don't sell nearly as well as the ones he put out in the ‘80s. J.K. Rowling's novels for adults (she writes as Robert Galbraith the Cormoran Strike series) don't sell anywhere near the number of copies as her Harry Potter series did at its peak.   For myself, my peak years in terms of writing income were 2016 and 2017, and I've never quite been able to recapture that level. In fact, in 2024, I only did about two thirds of what I did in 2017 (my peak year), which can be a little nerve wracking as you watch those numbers move up and down. That is why it is important for a writer (like many other creatives like actors) to anticipate that they might only have a limited window of peak success and to save aggressively rather than living large on the amount you're earning in that peak era. And I am pleased to report that I was fortunate enough and sensible enough to do that, so that even if my income has varied from year to year (2017 onward), it hasn't been a crippling loss and I haven't been out in the street or lost the house or anything like that.   Expectation #3: You will be happier if you write full-time. The reality is that is not true for everyone. Some people actually do better creatively and emotionally with the time restrictions placed on them by having a full-time job. Many famous writers, including Trollope and Kafka, kept their full-time jobs. Even Tolkien was never a full-time writer. He was a professor of philology until he retired. That was interesting to me because personally, I haven't had much in terms of emotional trouble being a full-time writer. I've always kind of had the ability to hyperfocus on a task, and I've been doing that for almost nine years now, and it's worked out well for me.   I've since realized that is not true for many people. One of the things that demonstrated it to me, believe it or not, was insurance actuarial tables. One thing that I tried to do after I became a full-time writer was try and get disability insurance in case I had an accident or severe illness and could not write anymore. I learned that it's extremely difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance due to their high rates of substance abuse and mental illness. I was astonished by this because I've never had problems with substance abuse or mental illness myself, but given the number of writers and other creatives I've known who have had those issues, perhaps that's not that surprising, but I was still baffled to learn that.   For example, in my area there are a number of tree management companies (because it's a heavily wooded area) and it's a lot easier for an arborist who works with a chainsaw all day to get disability insurance than it is for a writer, which is somewhat crazy to think about because as a writer, I'm mostly sitting in a chair all day pressing buttons on a keyboard while an arborist is climbing a tree or in a crane with a chainsaw, which is a much more physically dangerous thing. But because of the rates of substance abuse and mental illness among full-time writers, apparently it is very difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance. Some people struggle with the lack of structure and outward accountability that comes from being a full-time writer and find that actually decreases their productivity and leads them to fall into substance abuse or sink deeper into mental health problems. Very few people have the self-discipline and mental resilience required to be a full-time writer for years on end. And that's not me tooting my own horn so to speak, but apparently it is just the facts. Some writers even go back to full-time work just because they find it less stressful or better for their wellbeing. So I think this is an excellent example of having to know yourself and know what is best for you. For example, if you're a very extroverted person who enjoys talking to people at the office, becoming a full-time writer where you spend most of your time by yourself typing might not be the best for your long-term mental and physical health. Expectation #4: Writing full-time will make me more productive. The reality is having more time does not necessarily mean that you'll be more productive. Writers are notorious for falling prey to time wasters, such as social media scrolling, research spirals, and writing adjacent activities (of which there is a whole series about on this podcast already). It does take a lot of a self-discipline, focus, and determination to be a full-time writer. If you are a full-time writer, especially a full-time indie writer, you also have to balance writing time with various administrative tasks, marketing and ads, social media, fan correspondence, and the various tasks involved in the self-publishing process. Writing is not the only thing that writers actually do, and the other tasks often make finding time for writing more difficult than you might expect. Even traditionally published writers still have to carve out time for administrative work and assisting with marketing and social media work.   As your writing career scales up, so does the behind the scenes workload. This is true in my case. Up until 2023, I basically did everything myself, but I did have COVID pretty badly for a while in 2023 and it just knocked out my energy for a while and I realized that I can't keep trying to do everything by myself. I basically had a choice, either cut some tasks or get some help. So I have some people now, some contractors who help me with things like listening to audiobook proofs (I used to do that all myself), doing the podcast transcript, and Excel record keeping (which I used to do myself). While that is an expense, I don't regret it because it really has taken a lot off my plate and freed up more time for writing, which of course is the entire point.   Expectation #5: I admit this one made me laugh. I will have more free time as a full-time writer. I can attest firsthand that that is not true. What you have as a full-time writer is flexibility. The reality is, although there is flexibility on the job, the hours can be more than for a full-time job. There's a joke that full-time writers can work any 12 hours they want every day.   Most indie authors are putting out far more than one book a year in order to make a full-time income, and that requires a fairly demanding pace that most people don't have the self-discipline to maintain as a lifestyle for years and years on end. The majority of full-time writers right now are either romance or erotica writers who are putting out at least a book a month, sometimes even more. As I mentioned in an earlier point in the show, the administrative task can take far more time than most people would imagine. They could, depending on the circumstances, be easily 40 hours a week on their own before you have time to do a single word of writing on the page. I found you really have to guard your writing time well and find ways to keep administrative tasks, distractions, and necessary tasks such as home maintenance or childcare separate from writing.   Anyone who has ever worked from home is familiar with how difficult that can be because home comes with a wide set of distractions. Granted, that's often fewer distractions than the office, but home can have its own set of distractions. I've mentioned before that you need a bit of tunnel vision to produce the quantity of writing I do month after month. I do keep to a pretty rigid schedule. I have daily word count goals I always try to meet and I use the Pomodoro Method to make sure that I'm prioritizing my writing time.   If you are self-employed and working for yourself, that means there are no allocated vacation or sick days and no paid sick leave in the writing world. Taking a couple of weeks off usually means anticipating a loss in income, such as a month without a book being released. Sometimes, especially in the case of illness, family emergencies, and so forth, that just can't be helped. However, the long vacations people imagine writers being able to take mean either a loss of income or a couple of weeks beforehand of working extra hours to make up for it. For example, Brandon Sanderson, who is probably the most famous fantasy author right now, still works and writes on his vacations and does extra work before leaving for a vacation (such as pre-recording videos).   So as you can see, most of the expectations people have about what it's like to write full-time come from the hope that it will change their productivity or make it easier to write. In reality, if you manage your time well, you can often meet all your writing goals even while working another full-time job. Some people are even more productive under the time pressure of only having an hour or so available to write each day. You don't have to wait until you are a full-time writer for your writing career to start. I wrote for decades and published for years before I was a full-time writer.   Frankly, the idea that you need to be a full-time writer in order to be taken seriously or make money exists only in your own mind. Whether you are a full-time writer or not, what matters is having the discipline to shut out distractions and write with absolute consistency regardless of the circumstances. Even writing 250 to 300 words every single day can add up very quickly, even if you don't do it in 15 minute bursts like Anthony Trollope did.   Finally, I suppose this makes it sound like I'm painting a very bleak picture here, but I'm not. As I said before, I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do, and I'm very grateful to all my readers that I'm able to write full-time and even hire on contractors for narration and behind the scenes work. I appreciate and am very grateful to all the readers who have supported me by continuing to buy my work and access it through subscription services like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus or library options like Libby and Hoopla.   So that is it for this week. I hope it provided some insight into what it's like to be a full-time writer. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show and all 250 episodes. I hope you found the show and all 250 episodes useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

In this week's episode, I take a look at some of the historical influences & inspirations that went into my new book GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY. This coupon code will get you 25% off SILENT ORDER: OMNIBUS ONE at my Payhip store: SILENT25 The coupon code is valid through April 7th, 2025. So if you need a new book to read for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 244 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 21st, 2025, and today we are looking at some of the historical influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and an update my current writing and audiobook projects. And then Question of the Week, which we did have time for this week.   This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Silent Order: Omnibus One at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SILENT25. I'll have the links and the coupon code in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 7, 2025, so if you need a new book to read for these spring months, we have got you covered.   Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 44,000 words into Shield of Battle, the fifth book in the Shield War series. I'm hoping to have that out towards the end of April, if all goes well. A reminder that the Shield War series will be six books, so Shield the Battle will be the second to last one. I have also started on the sequel to Ghost in the Assembly, and I am 4,000 words into that, give or take. I had originally planned to call this book Ghost in the Assassins, but I thought that sounded too similar to Ghost in the Assembly. So the fifth book in the Ghost Armor series will be called Ghost in the Corruption. A reminder that Ghost Armor will be six books long and Ghost in the Corruption will be the fifth of six books, so the second to last book in that series as well.   In audio news, recording has started for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. Shield of Deception will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and Hollis McCarthy will excellently narrate Ghost in the Assembly. I expect both of them will probably be out sometime towards the end of May if all goes well, given how long it usually takes to record an audiobook.   In Stealth and Spells Online news, I am 68,000 words into the third and final book in this trilogy. Once Ghost Armor and Shield War are complete, then I will hopefully release the final book in the Stealth and Spells Online because I've been working on that as a tertiary project for quite a long time now. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.   00:02:17 Question of the Week   Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is of course designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite style of fantasy setting (like a more high fantasy, one like Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms, urban fantasy like the Dresden Files or Kate Daniels or more steampunk like Everon and so on)? No wrong answers, obviously.   And as you can imagine this inspired quite a few responses.   Perry says: Hyperborea! Lankhmar is up there as well. Setting where magic is rare, and usually dangerous or evil. The first edition of the Forgotten Realms (the grey box from the ‘80s) was great. Enough detail to let you use the setting, lots of room to make it your own. Then all the Forgotten Realms novels started to appear with the release of the second edition in the ‘90s and everybody in the world suddenly had powerful magic at their fingertips. Elminster, the Seven Sisters, Drizz't, and others took the appeal right out of the setting for me.   Joachim says: I like the Spelljammer Campaign setting best. A lot of great modules. It seemed it was not overly successful. A shame. I had a campaign running in this setting with some people who liked it. In addition to the Spelljammer modules, you can easily transfer any normal module centered on a small town onto an asteroid.   Evan says: A huge Sanderson Cosmere fan here, especially Stormlight Archive. I like the magical progression tied in to character development, with a bit of mystery of how things work or an unknown that takes time to unwind or tease out.   Justin says: My problem here is separating the settings from the authors. Given that near impossibility, I would cast my vote for high fantasy with a bit of techno/steampunk mixed in. Example – Andre Norton's Witch World.   Bonnie says: I seem to gravitate towards the swords and sorcery genre like Frostborn, but I also enjoyed the urban fantasy/Nadia and the other genres. I have to thank you for introducing me to all of these.   Michael says: Okay, Jonathan, that's the second time I've noticed you indicating a preference for sword and sorcery saga where a barbarian hero travels between corrupt city states and now I really, really want you to write this. And yeah, that's definitely my favorite type of setting too.   Simone says: Definitely urban fantasy. Even in your books, which offer an unusual variety of fantasy settings, I find I enjoy the Cloak series the best.   Roger says: Being an old fogey, I prefer high fantasy always. Can't seem to get my head around urban fantasy. It jars with me.   John says: While I enjoy all settings, I'm also a traditionalist and want a non-industrial, non punk setting without some sprawling empire, more like the aftermath of empire with multiple successor states.   Jonathan T. says: Personally, Star Wars has always been fantasy in a science fiction setting, and that remains a personal favorite. Other than that, I suppose I'm for high fantasy, although I'm not opposed to high fantasy slapstick either such as the Wuntvor trilogy. At some point I must try again to surmount the obstacle known as The Wheel of Time.   Catriona says: Epic and high fantasy are my favorite, enjoy Dark Fantasy, too. Urban fantasy is a hard pass for me.   Juana says: Sword and sorcery, parfait gentle knights, medieval societies, historical fiction like Doyle's The White Company and Sir Nigel. Wherever Nadia lives.   Justin says: Sword and sorcery, magical creatures/beasts. Definitely needs different environments like cities and wild mountains and forests. Not sure what genre that is, but that's what I like.   MG says: High fantasy.   Brandy says: I like ones with a clearly defined map. Sometimes it seems like the world wasn't thought about clearly, so it makes it hard to imagine and I find those stories the least successful. The ones I go back to repeatedly, the ones I read over and over or pimp out to other authors or groups are those I feel like they have a great structure and map, even if it's added on to later. So high, low, or middle, I just really just want the author to tell a great story and make it a great one.   Speaking as an author myself, I really dislike drawing maps, but fantasy readers really like maps, so that's why I have been doing more and more maps lately.   Pauline says: Urban fantasy is definitely my favorite.   Jeremy says: High Fantasy is my favorite. However, my favorite fantasy author is Terry Brooks. His series is Low Fantasy based on Earth. I found out years after reading the series LOL.   For myself, I think my favorite would be a pre-industrial setting with a lot of city-states and various dangerous magic, like you have a barbarian hero wandering from city-state to city-state with monster infested ruins and wilderness between them. When he gets to the city states, he can fight corrupt sorcerers, arrogant nobles, and thieves guilds, and then move on to a new adventure in the next book. So basically a sword and sorcery style setting. So that's it for Question of the Week.   00:06:30 Main Topic of the Week: Ghost in the Assembly: Inspirations and Sources (Note: Spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly!)   This week and now onto our main topic, Ghost in the Assembly inspirations and sources that went into the book. I should mention that this episode contains mild spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly. So if you have not finished reading Ghost in the Assembly yet, stop listening and go finish reading Ghost in the Assembly.   So I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the ideas and influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I have to admit, it took me a few years of thinking between Ghost Night and Ghost Armor to figure out how to write more Caina stories because Caina had become a political figure by the end of Ghost Night and political figures typically do bad things for personal advancement and then lie about it. That is in some ways the essential definition of a political figure. This of course, is hard for a writer to use as a sympathetic protagonist.   Of course, I eventually realized the way around this, the success of a political figure cannot be judged by their personal morality or even their political morality, but by the results of their decisions. Did they do the most for the greatest good of their people? Therefore, I just needed to write a political figure who did somewhat sketchy things (like subverting the Kyracian houses via buying up their debt) in the name of the greater good of the people (defending them from the impending attack of the Red Krakens).   I frequently said that if you want to write a good fantasy novel, you should try to stick to about 15 to 25% of the actual harshness of the past. I don't think you want to go full Grimdark, but you don't want your fantasy world to be indistinguishable from a typical 21st century parliamentary democracy because I think that kind of defeats the purpose of fantasy where you want to visit a world that is eldritch and strange and at least somewhat different than our own. So for Ghost in the Assembly, I went to about 15 to 25% of the experience of ancient Greek democracy. For the entire time that New Kyre and the Kyracians have been in the series (Ghost in the Storm was way the heck back in 2012 and the Kyracians were mentioned before that), they've always been very loosely based on the democracy of ancient Athens. In fact, the very name Assembly of New Kyre comes from ancient Athens, where the gathering of voting citizens was called the ecclesia, which translates into English as assembly. Interestingly, this is also the origins of the word ecclesiastical in terms of a church since one of the first words for the church was ecclesia in the sense of the assembly of the believers in Christ.   Athens wasn't the first ancient Greek democracy, but it was one of the most successful. It was also one of the democracies that self-destructed in the most spectacularly dramatic fashion possible. The Athenians decided to convert the Delian League from an alliance of city-states into their own private empire. A demagogue convinced them to waste enormous resources attacking Syracuse and Sicily, which ended disastrously. The Athenians were eventually defeated by the more militaristic Spartans.   People have debated for centuries whether or not this means democracy is inferior to the Spartans' harsher system, but that overlooks the key fact that a few decades later, Athens, Sparta, and all the rest of the Greek city-states were conquered by the Macedonians anyway. I suppose the actual historical lesson is that a city-state, regardless of its government, is no match for a larger centralized state with better leaders and better military organization. In fact, historically city-states tend to eventually get subsumed into larger political entities. If they last for a long time, it tends to be because of geography (like in ancient Greece) or because of weak and or remote central authority like the medieval Italian city-states, which were ostensibly under the authority of the Holy Roman emperor but in practice tended to do whatever they wanted. Places like modern Vatican City tend to be special exceptions.   Caina's criticism of the assembly of New Kyre in the book is that it is not as egalitarian as it pretends and is easily swayed by both demagogues and bribes. The Athenian assembly of citizens had both these problems, but far worse. You needed to have a substantial level of property to be allowed to vote, and there were numerous examples of the votes swinging on bribes or last minute orations. The Athenian assembly was easily swayed into making bad decisions, such as supporting the disastrous attack on Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War that was the start of Athens' downfall.   In Ghost in the Assembly, Lady Eirenea Tritos is one of the nine chief magistrates of the city, but in an Athenian democracy, women were not allowed to vote and most definitely were not allowed to hold political office. The ancient Greeks in general did not have a very high opinion of women. One Greek orator said that men had wives to produce legitimate heirs, concubines to attend to the body's “daily needs”, and prostitutes for pleasure.   Because of things like that, I thought a setting with a hundred percent of the harshness of ancient Greece would be off-putting to the reader. So as I said, I shot for between 15 and 25% of the actual harshness. New Kyre is definitely richer, better governed, and less elitist and chauvinistic than the ancient Greeks. That said, New Kyre isn't an egalitarian place. Nobles have vastly more rights and money than commoners, and both nobles and commoners own slaves and only the poorest commoners own no slaves themselves. Indeed, slavery is so common in New Kyre that the other nobles see Kylon's decision that House Kardamnos will have no slaves as a sign of malevolent and sinister foreign influence.   Kalliope's fear that she could be dispossessed and Kylon simply take her children is very real. If Kylon wanted, he probably could keep Kalliope from seeing Nikarion and Zoe ever again, though that would inevitably put him in conflict with Lysikas Agramemnos and Calliope is charismatic enough to powerful allies to her side. If Kylon did in fact refuse to allow Kalliope to see their children, he might well set off a civil war. But Kylon, who lost both his parents when he was young, doesn't want to deprive his children of a loving mother.   Of course, the ancient Greeks never had to fight the Red Krakens and orcs. The Red Krakens, the Caphtori, are kind of written like snake-worshipping Vikings. In fact, Caphtori are inspired by the “Sea Peoples”, pirates that seem to have contributed to the collapse of Bronzes Age civilization. Historians argue endlessly about the impact of the Sea Peoples or whether they existed at all, but if they did exist, they might well have been proto-Ancient Greeks, perhaps Mycenaean in origin.   Since having one ancient Greek-esque group fighting another would've been confusing in the book, I made the Caphtori/Red Kraken more like Vikings, which I suppose is a bit of historical anachronism, but Ghost Armor is a constructed world with elves, orcs, and sorcerers, so it's not like I'm writing period accurate historical fiction here.   So these are some of the influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I don't have any grand concluding point here. Those were just some of the ideas I thought about and went into the story. Though I should mention that for a while I was a graduate student in medieval history and I hated the experience so much I left and went into IT instead. That said ,decades later it has proven a useful source of plot ideas for fantasy novels, so it worked out in the end.   One final note, a reader suggested that Kalliope Agramemnos and Mardun Scorneus might hook up in later books. And I have to admit, I laughed at that suggestion. Kalliope would react with dismay at the thought of marrying anyone other than an extremely high ranking Kyracian noble, and at the prospect of marrying Kalliope, Mardun would think about it, fake his death, and flee back to the Empire, preferring to take his chances with the Magisterium rather than Kalliope. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read Ghost in the Assembly. I am very grateful that so many people have enjoyed the book.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes of the show on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Dr. Neal Lonky, CEO of Histologics and an OBGYN, discusses his revolutionary tissue sampling method for cervical cancer screening. Dr. Lonky shared how his invention, the Kylon fabric, is making colposcopy procedures more compassionate and effective. The Kylon devices significantly reduce patient discomfort compared to traditional metal instruments, while providing high-quality tissue samples for pathologists. Timestamps:(00:56) Dr. Neal Lonky developed Kylon, a medical fabric for compassionate tissue sampling in colposcopy and cervical biopsies.(16:15) Studies show Kylon devices cause less pain and provide better tissue samples than traditional biopsy methods.(27:21) Kylon fabric contours to surfaces, removing and storing tissue samples that can be easily sent to labs.(36:58) Clinicians can contact Histologics for free Kylon samples, with about 60 US labs now processing these samples.(41:30) Histologics expanded Kylon technology to wound care, creating glove-like devices for gentle debridement.Host Bio:This podcast is hosted by Sheree Dibiase, PT ICLM. She is a nationally recognized women's health physical therapist who owns seven private clinics — one of the biggest networks in the US. She has spent 30+ years practicing in the oncology, pelvic floor, and prenatal postpartum healthcare spaces. She was also a professor for seven years at Loma Linda University where she taught kinesiology.Brought to you by...https://lakecitypt.com/ - Women's health physical therapy.https://pelvicfloorpro.com/ - Pelvic floor physical therapy from home.Keywords:colposcopy, cervical cancer screening, Kylon fabric, compassionate tissue sampling, biopsy. HPV testing, wound care

Welcome to another episode of The Advisory Board Podcast! In this episode, we explore the dynamic world of AI in franchise marketing with two industry experts, David Stein and Kylon Gustin, co-founders of SalesChats and AI Ads. With decades of combined experience in franchising, marketing, and technology, David and Kylon bring a wealth of knowledge to the table, promising a deep dive into how AI is revolutionizing marketing strategies for franchises.But before we jump in, a heartfelt thank you to our sponsor, ClientTether, for making this episode possible.Host Dave Hansen kicks off the episode by introducing his guests, highlighting their impressive backgrounds. David Stein, a veteran in franchise marketing, has been helping brands succeed for nearly 20 years. Kylon Gustin, with his extensive tech background, has been instrumental in pioneering digital transformations since the 1980s. Together, they form a formidable team dedicated to pushing the boundaries of AI in marketing.The discussion begins with a look at the current landscape of AI in marketing. David explains that while AI is often surrounded by hype, the real challenge lies in effectively integrating it into marketing and advertising to achieve tangible results. Kylon adds that successful AI implementation is all about teaching the machine with relevant data. Without this foundational step, AI's potential remains untapped.David and Kylon share their journey of developing an AI platform specifically tailored for franchise advertising. They emphasize the importance of training AI to understand the unique aspects of franchising, a sector with its own set of challenges and requirements. By leveraging their extensive experience, they have created a platform that not only analyzes data but also learns in real-time to optimize ad campaigns.One of the critical insights from the episode is the importance of targeted ad copy. Kylon explains how their AI Add Analyzer tool helps in creating effective ad copy by analyzing hundreds of data points. This tool ensures that the ad content resonates with the intended audience, leading to better engagement and conversion rates. David underscores this by highlighting the pitfalls of generic AI-generated content, which can often miss the mark and even harm the brand's image.The conversation also delves into the future of AI in marketing. David and Kylon discuss exciting developments on the horizon, including tools that can predict market trends and automatically adjust ad campaigns based on real-time events. For instance, a tool that can recommend ad strategies following a local event, such as a hailstorm in Texas, ensuring that the marketing efforts are always relevant and timely.Throughout the episode, the emphasis remains on the meticulous process of training AI. Dave Hansen likens this process to raising a child, stressing the importance of guiding AI through the right resources and giving it the feedback needed to learn and improve continually. David and Kylon agree, noting that this investment in training AI is crucial for achieving consistent and valuable outcomes.As the discussion progresses, the trio touches on the potential misuses of AI. They caution against over-relying on AI for content creation without proper oversight. David shares anecdotes about companies that faced backlash because their AI-generated content strayed from the brand's voice, leading to a disconnect with their audience. Kylon adds that in regulated industries like franchising, improper AI use can lead to legal issues, making it imperative to control the "temperature" or creativity of the AI to ensure compliance.The episode wraps up with a forward-looking perspective on AI's role in marketing. David and Kylon express their optimism about the future, envisioning a landscape where AI not only assists in data analysis and ad creation but also becomes integral to strategic decision-making. They are working on new tools that will further enhance AI's capabilities, making it an indispensable asset for marketers.For those interested in exploring the potential of AI in their marketing efforts, David and Kylon recommend starting with a clear understanding of what AI can and cannot do. They advise marketers to invest time in training AI with relevant data and to use it as a tool to augment their strategies rather than replace human insight.To connect with David and Kylon, visit saleschats.com or email David at dstein@saleschats.com. Their expertise and innovative approach to AI in marketing make this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to stay ahead in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.In conclusion, this episode of The Advisory Board Podcast offers a comprehensive overview of how AI is transforming franchise marketing. David Stein and Kylon Gustin provide valuable insights into the effective use of AI, the importance of targeted ad copy, and the future potential of AI-driven marketing strategies. With their combined expertise and forward-thinking approach, they offer listeners a roadmap to harnessing the power of AI in their marketing endeavors.

In this week's episode, I celebrate the 200th episode of The Pulp Writer Show by asking readers which book of mine they read first. The episode also has a preview of the audiobook of GHOST IN THE VEILS as narrated by Hollis McCarthy. To commemorate the occasion this coupon code will get you 25% off EVERY SINGLE ITEM at my Payhip store: 200THEPISODE That's right, the coupon code will get you 25% off every single ebook or audiobook on my Payhip store, and it's good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT Audio file Episode200.mp3 Transcript   00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 200 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May the 10th, 2024 and today we are celebrating the 200th episode of this podcast by taking a look back at how people have found my books. We'll also close out the show with a preview of the upcoming Ghost in the Veils audiobook. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. To celebrate the 200th episode of this podcast, we're going to have a special coupon code that will get you 25% off every single item at my Payhip store. That coupon code is 200THEPISODE, which is spelled 200THEPISODE and the coupon code and the link to my Payhip will be included in the show notes for this episode. That's right, the coupon code will give you 25% off every single ebook or audiobook on my Payhip store and is good through May 20th, 2024. So if you're looking for something to read or listen to, we have got you covered. Now let's have an update on current writing projects. The rough draft of Cloak of Titans is done, and I am about 2/3 of the way through the first editing pass. If all goes well, I am hoping to have that out before the end of May. I've also written a short story called Blood Walk and newsletter subscribers will get a free ebook copy of that short story when Cloak of Titans comes out. So this is an excellent time to sign up for my new release newsletter. You'll get 3 free epic fantasy novels when you do. Once Cloak of Titans is published, my next main project will be Shield of Darkness, which will hopefully come out towards the end of June or the start of July. I am also about 11,000 words into Half-Orc Paladin, the third Rivah book, and I will make that my main project after Shield of Darkness is done, so that book will probably come out before the end of this summer, if all goes well. 00:01:57 Main Topic/Question of the Week And our Question of the Week is also this week's main topic. It's a question that I can't answer myself, but I asked because I wanted to talk about it for this episode of the podcast, and the question is, which book of mine did you first read, and how did you come across it (since Cloak of Titans will be, I believe, my 152nd novel)? I expected a wide range of responses and we got them. Our first response is from Roman who says: first one was Demonsouled. I looked for free books when I downloaded the Kindle app for my new iPad and have read everything you've written since. I guess your plan of giving away the first book for free worked on me. That is why I give those books away for free. Our next response is from Dave, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on BookBub. The title was intriguing. It was also free. I now have an extensive Jonathan Moeller collection on my Kindle Library. Our next response comes from Joachim, who says: Ghost Omnibus One and Ghost Exile Omnibus One were $0.99, so I purchased both. I continued with Ghost Exile, backfilling the Ghost stories later. You would not be able to answer your own question obviously, but would you be able to answer us the following question: what was the first fantasy book you published? That would been Demonsouled back in 2005, when it was traditionally published and later I got the rights back and self-published it for the first time in 2011 and then later made it free. Our next response is from Mark, who says: I found Child of the Ghosts on Kindle. Sam says Frostborn: The Gray Knight. I was looking for a new fantasy series to read after I finished the Codex Alera. Came across it while scrolling through Amazon and thought, huh, why not? Little did I know all these years later I would have an addiction to your novels. Well, there are worse problems to have. I agree very much. Our next response is from Tarun who says: read Child of the Ghosts first on the Kindle web app. Todd says: Child of the Ghosts. Caina is a great Ghost nightfighter. Mary says: Frostborn. I forget why. That seems entirely appropriate, because I wrote Frostborn 11 years ago now. Yes, eleven years ago now, because I wrote it in 2003, so I can barely remember writing it at this point, let alone how someone might come across it. Our next response is from Justin: Demonsouled. Free book offer. Steve says: Iron Hand. If I remember right, it came up as a suggestion on the Kindle app. Sara says: Frostborn. It was $0.99 and then after I finished that series, Child of the Ghosts on a 99 cent deal. Thuvia says: Thief Trap-finished it on September 14th, 2016. I don't recall how I found it, but maybe BookBub? I know the book covers amused me since they're nothing like how Nadia dresses. I have since changed the Cloak Games and Cloak Mage covers, but the original covers definitely did not reflect how Nadia dresses in the series. Our next response is from William, who says: Iron Hand, which I discovered through William King's blog when you posted your blog post on how to write and publish an ebook at no cost using free software. I remember that blog post. That got a lot of traction, especially because I've written an entire book, Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, in order to prove that point. Our next response is from Kermit, who says: the Ghost Omnibus. I was researching the next fantasy author I wanted to read because David Eddings had died. I came across your Ghosts series and decided to try it. Ann-Marie says: Child of the Ghosts. The title caught me. It was part of Kindle's recommendations for things I should try next. I was also getting off of a mystery genre binge so I wanted something different to dive into. I love Caina. She's so cool. Whoops, forgot to add Goodreads says I read it back in July 2017. Kevin says: the first books of yours were The Frostborn Omnibus One on the 21st of April 2017. I came across it on Amazon search while looking for stuff to read in the car whilst waiting for my son to come out of school. It was £0.99, so throw away money really and worth look. Since then I have, amongst others, read a further 103 books of yours to date. So it seems that making Frostborn Omnibus One $0.99 turned out to be a really good idea. Our next response is from Lee, who says: Frostborn the Gray Knight was the first ebook I picked up to read. I started because of the book description. Since then I have read almost every book you have published. Perry says: Demonsouled with the original public domain cover art (the best of the covers, in my opinion) searching for books to add to my Kobo. And I stumbled across Smashwords. I searched for free fantasy books, and your books were near the top of the results. This was just shortly after you started self-publishing. I originally grabbed a whole slew of your books there. I have since purchased and continue to buy your ebooks through Kobo. I get points for being a VIP plus a free book every year from a select list. All your short stories I buy on Kobo as well. Audiobooks I get through your Payhip store. Ah, that takes me way back because way back. In 2011 when I started self-publishing, I couldn't afford cover art of any kind, so what I had to do was look for classic artwork scenes that were in the public domain since you can reuse public domain art freely. You do in fact see a lot of traditionally published books that have old like Renaissance or Baroque paintings, for the cover. That was the original covers Demonsouled and Child of the Ghosts, public domain artwork from the 19th century. Our next response is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts on Smashwords, but I read primarily through Kindle these days. Nadia is my favorite, but I hope to use the Ghost and/or Demonsouled settings one day in our group's tabletop RPGs. Our next response is from Jesse, who says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I was sitting in an IHOP and I had just finished the last ebook in my queue. Google Books suggested it. It was a dollar for three and half books, so I figured why not? Still had half a plate of food to go. I have subsequently bought and read pretty much everything of yours is readily available and actively tracking all the series. Good stuff. I'm glad that worked out because that is one of the better stories I've ever heard of what happens in an IHOP. Our next comment is from Becca, who says: Demonsouled, when it first came out on Kindle. I can remember waiting eagerly for each book in the series. Still one of my favorites. Thank you for all the writing! Rhion says: Demonsouled. I just finished a bunch of Quantrell and Peloquin books and it popped up under suggested reading on KU. Since then, I've read quite literally your entire fiction bibliography, which is just ridiculous. Our next comment comes from Jonathan (a different Jonathan than me) and he says: first book I actually read was the Frostborn Omnibus, the first three books plus The First Quest all bundled into one. I got them on Google Play because I got a gift card for Christmas and I think the omnibus was on sale. So I couldn't resist getting four whole books for cheap, which of course led into the rest of the series and to Sevenfold Sword and to Mallison and to Dragontiarna. Mandy says: I read the Frostborn prequel and found it on the freebie list on Amazon at the time. I read everything released in that universe, as well as the Demonsouled series and am now working my way through the Ghosts series. Our next comment is from Randy, who says: Child of the Ghosts was my first. I was desperately searching for new authors and it was one of about a dozen free novels I picked up several years ago. Caina's story was so good I finished in one sitting. After I devoured what was available at the time for the Ghost books, I moved on to Frostborn. Then I found you also wrote science fiction. I've read all the different series to date and I haven't been found wanting yet. Well, not true. I'm always wanting the next book. That's why I'm working hard on the next book. Our next comment is from Martin who says: I started with the Gray Knight. I instantly loved it and the rest of the series, at least what was published at the time. When I ran out of them, I looked you up and read the Demonsouled books. After that, moved on to Caina and only recently I moved on to Nadia. I also find they have a lot of readability. Our next comment is from Lauren, who says: Child of the Ghosts, after the third book in the series was out. Found it when searching for a new read on Amazon. Was hooked from there. Marta says: I'm sure it was a Bookbub deal. I think it was the Frostborn Omnibus. Jacob says: The Gray Knight. Came across it after looking for a new series to read after I caught up on the Half-Orc series by David Dalglish. Barbara says: Demonsouled or Child of the Ghosts. It's been so long. I'm not sure which was first. Having been the one to write those books so long ago, I totally understand where she's coming from. Our next response is from Cheryl, who says: the first Ridmark Arban book. Can't remember the name, may have been The Gray Knight? That is entirely correct. It was, in fact Frostborn: The Gray Knight. Our next response is from JKM who says: the first Ghost book and I cannot remember where I came across it. John says Demonsouled on Kindle. Amazon suggested to me way, way back. I picked up a used printed copy I discovered at my local fantasy and science fiction store, Dark Carnival. Shortly afterwards gave it to my son, who enjoyed it as well. That is a deep cut, because Demonsouled was originally published in 2005 in hardback and very quickly went out of print. So I'm impressed that John managed to find one of those copies still floating out there in the used book market. Cathy says: Frostborn Omnibus One. I saw the $0.99 price and thought if I don't like it, I'm only out a dollar. Once I finished it, I started looking for other books by you and have read almost every series you've written. Michael says. I think it was Ghost in the Flames. It was early 2010s (2013 maybe?), and I just discovered the joy of self-published fantasy authors on the Kindle store. As soon as I read it, I was hooked. Bonnie says: Frostborn omnibus. It was cheap, looked interesting, so I gave it a try. Then Tower of Endless Worlds- totally hooked and now I have all the books! Michiel says: Demonsouled. It was free, so I gave it a go and started collecting everything you wrote since then. Jason says: I honestly can't remember. I think it might have been the first Caina omnibus with an Audible audiobook that I played in my car while driving to work. Then the second and I ran out of audiobooks, so I had to start reading them myself. Phillipe says: The very first Caina book, been hooked since. Susan says: Demonsouled. I was searching for something to read, and it sounded good. I have now read everything and am patiently waiting for more. Melinda says Child of the Ghosts. It was free and I was broke and bored. That is why I give away the free books: to entertain people who are broke and bored. Our next comment is from Juliana, who says: the first Ghosts book. Judy says: Child of the Ghosts. I was on Google Play and was recommended. Tom says: The Frostborn Omnibus One, on sale on Amazon. The rest is history. Justin says: The Gray Knight was a suggestion based on what I read on Apple Library. Ashley (who I believe is in fact engaged to Justin) says: My first book was also The Gray Knight and Justin was the reason I started reading this series. So thanks for the recommendations, Justin! James says: Demonsouled on Kindle way back when. It was free and a good name. I mean how Demonsouled isn't a band name yet, I have no idea. The rest, as they say, is many, many series later. I fully understand. Our next comment is from Juana who says: Frostborn: The Gray Knight. It was in a BookBub offering. Shandy says: I was in a book hangover and saw your Frostborn series on sale on Google Play Books. Omnibus got me and like 100 plus books later, safe to say I'm a fan. Beverly says: Demonsouled. It's been so long. I don't know what led me to get it. Most likely just window shopping for next read and I thought it'd be something I would enjoy. Andrew says Frostborn series. Suggested by Kindle. I've read most of what you've written since. Just can't get into Demonsouled, so don't know why. I've got those books. Just doesn't click. Christopher says: Demonsouled. I got the first book free on my Nook, like I found most of my favorite authors. I also read another one of the first book free ones at the same time, but I didn't like it. I don't remember something about a tower and magic. Then I read the Frostborn series. You were far enough into it that by the time I started I was playing catch up as you released books. I may have had to wait a week or two for the last book to come out. Then I started Cloak Games. That is still in my top three favorite series of all time. Probably top two with Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde. I have read pretty much everything you've written by now. David says: Thief Trap. Found via Facebook ad. Venus says: Thief Trap. Found it doing a search for free urban fantasy on my Nook. So those are some of the first books of mine that people have read and the ways in which they found them. I think we can safely say that giving away the first book in your series for free turned out to be a very good idea. I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who has read any of my books as, as you probably guessed, have been doing this for a long time. Demonsouled was first published in April 2011 (for self-published, rather); it was initially published in hardback way back in May 2005. So I clearly have been doing this for a long time and I am very grateful to everyone who has read a book or listened to an audiobook or come along for the ride. I'm also very grateful to everyone who has listened to this podcast over 200 episodes. And here's to more interesting episodes in the future. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes with transcripts (transcripts are available from Episode 140 onwards) on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe. Stay healthy and see you all next week. And now let's close out the show with a preview of the audio book of Ghost in the Veils, as excellently read by Hollis McCarthy: Caina gazed at the wrapped bundle in the back of the wagon. Thankfully, no blood had leaked from it. Though perhaps she shouldn't have worried. Only a few people in Malarae would have recognized the dark green liquid as blood. The wagon itself was nothing remarkable. A bit old and worn, though none of the planks had rotted and the wheels were in mostly good shape. A pair of placid draft horses pulled the vehicle, the animals well-accustomed to the noises and smells of the Imperial capital. The only thing unusual was the bundle resting in the back.It was almost the precise size and shape of the corpse of a grown man. To be fair, it was a corpse. Just not of a grown man. Or a grown woman. Or indeed anything human. Caina didn't know what it was, but she intended to find out. “Will there be anything else, Countess?” said her seneschal, a Saddaic man named Talzain. He wore the formal black clothes of a Nighmarian servant. Combined with his wan complexion, the outfit always made him look a bit corpselike. “No, thank you,” said Caina. “I should be back in time for dinner with Lord Kylon and Lady Kalliope.” “Yes,” said Talzain. He cleared his throat. “That ought to be…interesting.” “You have a gift for understatement,” said Caina. Kylon and Kalliope had their own errands in the city. When Kalliope had fled New Kyre with her children ahead of the Cult of Rhadamathar, she had taken some money and baggage with them, but she had been forced to leave it behind at the Wrecked Warship near the ocean harbor of Malarae. Fortunately, the innkeeper had kept all of Kalliope's baggage on hand. Partly because Anastasios was an honest man and partly because he feared the vengeance of Kalliope's father. Lysikas Stormblade had a formidable reputation, even among the Kyracians living in Malarae. So Kalliope had gone with some of Caina's servants to retrieve her baggage and buy such things as Nikarion and Zoe might need. Kylon himself was keeping watch over the twins. Caina suggested that he take them riding to see the city, and he agreed. The children, in awe of the father they had never known they had, had made no protest. Ardakh, Sethroza, and the other Cultists were still out there, but if they tried to attack the children in Kylon's presence, they would regret it bitterly.

Matson Montilla interviews Clemson Football defensive back Kylon Griffin as they talk about a multitude of topics ranging from his wild recruitment process to his breakout performance against Notre Dame. They also talk about the success he and his team brought to Montgomery Catholic, the excitement of being offered by Clemson, and Clemson's special secondary. Later, they discuss the importance of family and his goals for the season, including doubling his interception total and winning the opener against Georgia.

In this week's episode, I discuss why I decided to return to the character of Caina after twenty-nine novels. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE INFERNO as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE INFERNO for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERINFERNO The coupon code is valid through March 14th, 2024. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 189 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February the 23rd, 2024 and today we are talking about the return of Caina Kardamnos. Before we get to our main topics, we will have Coupon of the Week and then an update on my current writing projects. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Inferno for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: WINTERINFERNO and that is WINTERINFERNO. The coupon code is valid through March the 14th, 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook to break up the winter doldrums and weather, we've got one ready for you. So now for a progress update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling is out at Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, since I have found that LitRPG books tend to do the best while they're in Kindle Unlimited. It is going a little better than expected, which is nice, and if you want to check out the book, you can read it at Amazon. My main writing project now is Ghost in the Veils, hence The Return of Caina Kardamnos title for this episode and I am 25,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 21. I am also 31,000 words into Wizard Thief, the second book in the Half-Elven Thief series and that should come out after Ghost in the Veils. I'm also 3,000 words into Cloak of Titans, the next Nadia book. So the order these will all come out in is Ghost in the Veils needs to come out first because it has recording slot scheduled for the middle of April. So it needs to be done and out by then. I will finish Wizard Thief after that and then Cloak of Titans. In an audiobook news, the recording and proofing for Shield of Storms' audiobook is done, and it's currently working its way through quality assurance on the various platforms, so hopefully it should be available on your audio platform of choice before much longer. 00:02:07 Reader Comments and Questions Now, before we get to our main topic, let's have a few questions and comments from listeners and readers. Reader NK asks: Hi, I would like to know what LitRPG is. Haven't come across it before and also do we need to complete reading the Sevenfold Sword series before Sevenfold Sword Online to better enjoy this story? In answer your question NK, LitRPG is generally defined as a story that uses the conventions and structures of online role-playing games like MMORPGs. They can be either fantasy or science fiction or blend a bit of both. Typically in these stories, either the protagonist is magically zapped into a game world or is playing the game while trying to balance some sort of crisis in both the game and real life, which is the approach I took for Sevenfold Sword Online. In answer to the second half of your question, Sevenfold Sword Online isn't actually connected to Sevenfold Sword. The premise is that it's 700 years in the future and that an evil corporation has built a hit virtual reality MMORPG using the books of a long dead author (i.e. me) as source material for the setting. In hindsight, I wish I had made the setting completely unconnected to anything else I had written, because it seems to confuse some readers, but too late now I suppose so, hopefully that will answer your question. Now we have a question from reader Justin. For context for that question, I recently had to get a new desktop computer after my old one died and this is in fact the first podcast episode I am recording using the new computer. So if it sounds really weird, I blame the computer, or more accurately, I probably should blame Windows 11. But anyway, with that in mind, here is our question from Justin: Good luck to you with your new computer. I switched to laptops for my computing needs. The lower power draw and portability are handy when you're going off grid. I'm used to you working on three series at once. You put that up a notch. Is this to reduce burnout and possibly writer's block? In answer to that question, the reason I got a desktop was because I do a lot of cover design and graphic design, which is not always the greatest on laptops because that needs a lot of processing power, a lot of RAM, and perhaps most importantly, a lot of storage. In answer to the writing question, the only thing that's changed is I'm not doing a Ridmark and Andomhaim book every other month. I am going to keep writing Ridmark and books set in Andomhaim but I've been writing a Ridmark/Andomhaim book every other month pretty much since summer 2013, so I'd like to change it up a little bit and do more of other things. So while I am going to continue the Shield Wars series and I am going to write Shield of Darkness soon, I'm not going to start writing it until after Cloak of Titans is done, if you remember my order of projects from earlier in the show. I don't feel at risk of burnout or getting exasperated with writing. I just have been writing Ridmark and Andomhaim setting for so long that while I would like to continue writing that I would like to write more of other things as I go along. 00:05:08 Main Topic: The Return of Caina Kardamnos Now to our main topic: the return of Caina Kardamnos. As I mentioned earlier on the show, I'm now 25,000 words into Ghost in the Veils, which puts me also at chapter six in the second book of the Ghost Armor Series, the immediate sequel to Ghost in the Serpent from late 2023. I have to admit that when I finished Ghost in the Sun in the Ghost Night series in 2021 (I believe that was), I thought I was done with Caina. The reason for that was I just didn't have any idea of what to where to go or what to do with the character after Ghost Night. Part of that, I admit, was that Caina had become powerful and influential and I am cynically suspicious of people like that and wasn't sure I could write someone like that as a protagonist. Though that was less a concern as I went on since writing Ridmark and Tyrcamber, and Dragontiarna and then Dragonskull and the Shield War gave me a good bit of practice. So I finally had a good enough idea to return to Caina as a protagonist, and I think it was a confluence of four different ideas. The first idea was perhaps the most obvious one: what if Caina found out she had stepchildren? There are lots of potential story dynamics with stepchildren, but I thought the most interesting setup would be if Kylon had children he didn't know about and the mother Kalliope Agramemnos had kept them secret from him, except Kylon loves Caina and Kalliope is in awe of Caina. So Caina, out of necessity, becomes the linchpin holding this family together, since neither Kylon nor Kalliope can stand each other. There are a lot of potential character arcs and conflicts that can be generated in the inherent tension of that situation. The second core idea came from medieval nobles. If you've read any histories of medieval Europe, one of the main themes of the Middle Ages is that men primarily wielded the political and military power. But some women, by sheer force of will, charisma, tenacity, and cunning came to wield great power themselves. There are in fact quite a few examples. Probably the most famous one nowadays would be Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was married to two different kings and the mother to two more or three (depending on how you count and if you include Henry II's eldest son, Young Henry, as the actual king or not). She kept her son Richard on the throne of England during his captivity after the Third Crusade and she was one of the chief architects of his release. Had Eleanor lived longer, and her son John listened to more of her advice, probably King John's reign would have been more successful and he would not be remembered primarily in the United States as the cowardly Prince John from that one animated Disney movie with the anthropomorphic animals. Perhaps the most successful example is Margaret Beaufort, who basically engineered her son Henry VII's ascension to the English throne at the end of the Wars of the Roses, and then served as one of his primary advisors for the entirety of his reign. In fact, she even outlived Henry VII by a year and then lived long enough to advise her grandson Henry VIII for the first year after he became king. A less successful example and contemporary with Margaret Beaufort, would be Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI and mother of his heir. Margaret of Anjou was one of the driving forces behind the Wars of the Roses but lost everything when her husband and son were killed and she died in poverty in France while her enemy Edward IV ruled in England. Blanche of Castile was her son Louis IX's regent when he went on crusade. Countess Matilda of Tuscany helped force the settlement in the Investiture Controversy and the Holy Roman Emperor, the southern dukes of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Pope all wanted Matilda as their ally. Perhaps the most striking example would be Sichelgaita of Lombardy, wife of the rapacious Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard. Guiscard started out as a penniless, landless knight and ended up conquering Sicily and a lot of Italy. He was known as greedy, cunning, and ruthless. His eventual tomb had the epitaph “Here lies Guiscard, the terror of the world.” It seems that Sichelgaita was in every way suited to be the wife of a freebooting warlord like her husband. Guiscard fought a lot of wars and Sichelgaita usually donned armor to battle alongside him. At the Battle of Durham in 1081 Guiscard's troops started to break and run while fighting the soldiers of the Byzantine Empire. Sichelgaita rode after the fleeing troops, berating them for their cowardice, and evidently the prospect of her displeasure was so fearsome that Guiscard's troops turned around and won the battle. It should also be known at this point in her life, Sichelgaita was in her forties and had borne Giscard eight children, so clearly a very resilient lady. So now that Caina is powerful and influential maybe historical events like these can provide inspirations for plot lines. Caina would still occasionally put on a shadow cloak and go out and break into places because this is, after all, a fantasy novel. The third idea was that someone must be in charge. I mentioned earlier that I had misgivings about writing protagonists with power and influence, but I've come to realize that is an incomplete view. The thing about power and influence is that someone is going to be in charge. It's just human nature. No matter how something is organized, someone must be in charge and bear the burden of leadership, and hopefully it will be someone with an eye on the greater good. I've thought about this concept a lot in 2023. I know several people in 2023 who, after much agonizing, left some of the traditional helping professions like medicine and education not because of dislike of the admittedly stressful work, but because the leadership was so stupid and so malicious as to create an unsustainable work environment. Like a leader can be stupid and well-intentioned, and a leader can be malicious and clever and an organization can still function, but stupidity and malice together are unsustainable. Alas, the contemporary United States and United Kingdom have no shortage of malicious and stupid leadership, but that's beyond the scope of the podcast about writing. So in the end, someone is going to be in charge, someone is going to have to wield power and influence. Hopefully it is someone who will act in the name of the greater good (I already did some of that with Caina in Ghost in the Council towards the second half of the Ghost Night series). That can make, in my opinion, for in a compelling protagonist. Fourth and finally, fantasy creatures. Way back in the 2000s when I was originally trying to sell the first Caina novels, all the agents and publishers fulminated on how they didn't want to see any novels with traditional fantasy creatures like elves and orcs and dwarves and serpent men and so forth. So when I wrote the kind of books I wrote them without any of that, which continued when I moved into self-publishing, though I was always a little sore about that, even years later. Now I think I have a firm enough grasp on the setting that I can introduce some traditional fantasy creatures into the Caina books, hopefully in a way that makes sense within the context of Caina 's very well-established world. So those four ideas came together for Ghost in the Serpent, and we shall hopefully see more of them in Ghost in the Veils. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. Our reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and many of them now have transcripts (note: Episodes 144-189 currently have transcripts). If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

In this week's episode, I take a look back at my ten favorite scenes to write in 2023. I also discuss how my advertising efforts fared in December 2023. TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 182 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is January the 5th, 2024, and today we're going to talk about the favorite scenes I wrote in 2023. We also have an update on how my ads did for my books in December 2023. This is the first episode I'm actually recording in 2024, so Happy New Year to everyone. If you are listening now, however 2023 treated you, I hope 2024 treats you even better. Before we get to our main topics, let's have an update on my current writing projects. My main project right now is Shield of Storms and I am 71,000 words into it. I'm hoping I can get that out in January. It might slip to February. We will see how the rest of the month goes. My side projects right now: I am also working on Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling and I am 55,000 words into that. That will come out after Shield of Storms, so February or March depending on how long Shield of Storms takes to write. And I am 8,500 words into Wizard Thief, which is going to be the sequel to Half-Elven Thief from December. Not sure when that one's going to come out. I have to write Ghost in the Veils first because I have a recording slot scheduled for that in April that I really need to meet, but so it will probably be late spring, if all goes well. In audio news, the audiobook for Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation is now available at all the usual audiobook stores except Apple, and it should be showing up there later. It's narrated by CJ McAllister, comes to just under 10 hours long, and it's a very good audiobook and worth the listen. So if you have spare credit to or some audiobook money to use, I recommend giving that a chance, and that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. Before we get to the main topic, let's see how ads did in December 2023. Advertising in December is always tricky, both for authors and regardless of what business you're in because every consumer facing business in the world is dumping a ton of money into ads for Christmas and so the cost gets all screwy. But I'm pleased to report some good results for December. First, let's see how the Facebook ads did. For the Ghost series, I got back $4.82 for a dollar I spent, with 16.7% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, I got back $6.42 for every dollar I spent, with 6% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. For Malison and Dragontiarna, I got back $1.82 for every dollar spent. For Silent Order, I got back $1.98 for every dollar spent. I think for January, I will shut off the Facebook ads for Malison and Dragontiarna and Silent Order and let them rest until the next time and get a Bookbub for one of them. Next up, let's see how my Bookbub ads did. As before, I advertised Frostborn on Bookbub and for Frostborn I got back $6.52 for every dollar spent, with 37% of the profit coming from the audiobooks. Complete series of audiobooks seems to do really well on Bookbub. I need to expand my targeting data for the platform so I can advertise Ghosts there as well, and maybe urban fantasy and perhaps science fiction at some point. Finally, let's look at my Amazon ads. This month, I advertised Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire, Cloak Games: Omnibus One, and Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation on Amazon ads. I'm not entirely sure how Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation did, because the audiobook came out and I'm not entirely sure what the per sale rate for that is going to be, but I think that ad doubled its money, but I'm not entirely sure. For the ones I am sure about, here's how they did. Dragonskull: Sword of the Squire got back $3.06 for every dollar spent, with 18% of the profit coming from audiobook. Cloak Games: Omnibus One got back $3.63 for every dollar spent, with 22% of the profit coming from the audiobook. So, overall I think it is safe to say that my December campaigns went pretty well. So thanks for reading the books, everyone and hopefully we'll have more books to come very soon. 00:04:15 Favorite Scenes of 2023 (SPOILER WARNING FOR REST OF PODCAST) Now our main topic of the week: my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. First, I should note very strongly that this podcast episode will have spoilers for every single thing I published in 2023, so stop listening right now if you're not caught up and you want to avoid spoilers. That said, I thought it would be interesting to look back at 2023 and talk about some of the favorite scenes to write from the past year. As an added bonus, when I prepared this list, it turned out to be 10 scenes, which is convenient since all the news sites from their top ten articles in December and January anyway. Reminder: spoilers, and there are spoilers after this point. And here are my favorite scenes of 2023, in no particular order. Number One: when Nadia bursts through the roof with Delaxsicoria in Cloak of Dragonfire. That was a fun one to write. I used to joke that I originally intended Nadia's character arc to be a bad person, reluctantly and against her will slowly turned into a good one. But what her plot arc actually turned out to be was Catwoman slowing turning into Gandalf. Exploding through the roof of an athletic complex to save the day while riding a dragon was definitely one of the more Gandalf-esque things that Nadia has done. The scene immediately after that where Nadia, Delaxsicoria, Varzalshinpol, and Tarthrunivor all chase Ferrunivar through the skies of southern California was pretty great as well. Number Two: Caina deduces who Kalliope Agramemnos is in Ghost in the Serpent. I have to admit, for a while I knew it was likely that Caina would have stepchildren she didn't know about since she's married to Kylon, who used to strive to be a model Kyracian noble and Kyracian nobles in general tend to regard abstinence as something to be avoided at best, and a disgraceful vice at worst. Not their most admirable character trait. But for a while I didn't know how to write that situation in a way that would be interesting. If the mother died and Caina was left to raise the stepchildren, that would be lazy writing. It would also be lazy writing if everyone got along. There is an apocryphal story that for a while in the 2000s, all these newly remarried middle-aged screenwriters kept pitching sitcoms where a screenwriter, his new younger wife, and his ex-wife all lived in harmony together. The studio executives, who as a class are not always known for their firm grasp upon reality, always rejected these ideas because they knew a majority of the female half of the audience would absolutely hate it. So a scenario where Caina, Kylon, and Kalliope all got along seemed likely equally lazy writing. But what if Kylon and Kalliope couldn't stand each other? And Kylon had further grievances against Kalliope because she had never told him about the children? But Kalliope ends up being in awe of and a little frightened of Caina? So the dynamic is that Kylon and Kalliope can't stand each other, but Caina keeps the peace between them? I thought that might turn out to be pretty interesting to write and Ghost in the Serpents sold enough that I think people agree with me. It's also interesting to write because this is happening while Caina is one of the few people who know how dangerous the Cult of Rhadamathar really is. But more about that to come in future Ghost books. Number Three: Delaxsicoria tells Nadia not to be so hard on herself in Cloak of Dragonfire. The unlikely friendship between Della and Nadia has been fun to write throughout the Cloak Mage series and side stories. From Della's perspective of course they would be friends – Nadia caught the murderer of her uncle, and Nadia is wound up tighter than a spring and doesn't relax very much. Nadia, of course, is a little baffled by this, especially since she doesn't really have any interest in music, which is Della's great passion. So they have a great dynamic, and we'll see more of that in future books. Number Four: Sir Telemachus and Niara kill Mharoslav in Dragonskull: Wrath of the Warlock. This was fun to write because Mharoslav always got away from or at least got the best of the heroes in their previous encounters, including nearly killing Telemachus in the process. Telemachus decided that he would sacrifice himself in seeking vengeance against Mharoslav and save his friends in the process. Then he met Niara. Niara comes from the General Patton school of warfare – dying for your country is a fine thing, but it's way better to make the other jerk die for his country. Her utter loathing for all wielders of dark magic played into that as well, allowing her to show the way for Telemachus to defeat Mharoslav at last. Number Five: Myotharia versus Xothalaxiar in Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress. I have to admit Myotharia was originally going to die in the final battle of Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians, but she was such a great character that I felt I could get more narrative mileage out of the poor woman. I always knew from the beginning of the series that Niara was going to have to fight Xothalaxiar for the final time, and Myotharia lost everything to the urdmordar. So I realized that having Myotharia join the fight against Xothalaxiar would give her a sort of emotional catharsis, and help set Niara onto a path other than seeking her own death in battle. Number Six: Thunderbolt. I lucked out with Thunderbolt's character in the Silent Order series. I charted out the rest of the Silent Order series way back in 2021, which is when Thunderbolt was first mentioned in Silent Order: Royal Hand. I originally envisioned her as the sort of classic Star Trek Evil Sentient Computer, the sort of computer Captain Kirk would have to talk into a logic loop every other week. But then in 2022 and 2023 ChatGPT and Bing Chat came along, and they were terrible! For a while, the various insane ramblings of ChatGPT and Bing Chat regularly made the news. So when it was time to write Silent Order: Thunder Hand, I based Thunderbolt's personality off some of ChatGPT's more hilarious public meltdowns, though I left it ambiguous just how insane Thunderbolt actually was and how much of her behavior was just screwing with people to put them off their balance. By the end, Jack March definitely suspected the latter. Number Seven: The Battle of Calaskar. The entire Battle of Calaskar sequence in Silent Order: Pulse Hand was fun to write because I've been thinking about it for ages, since I've had a clear endpoint for the Silent Order series in my head for a while. I liked how it was able to bring back Admiral Stormreel, the Navigators, the Calaskaran Navy, and a bunch of other elements from the series for the Grand Finale. Number Eight: Gareth Figures out the Dragonskull. I also liked the final confrontation with Azalmora in Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods. Azalmora was such a self-controlled and intellectual villain that I wanted her demise to be intellectual, a sort of a moment of revelation that kills her. When Gareth figures out the nature of the Dragonskull itself and the way the xortami twisted it with their dark magic, he's able to use that against Azalmora, and in her final moment she understands the true nature of the Dragonskull, albeit briefly. Number Nine: Riordan MacCormac vs Michael Durst. This was a fun scene to write in Cloak of Embers. Durst had been an arc villain over the last few books. He proudly considered himself a monster, but then he had the bad luck to start working for Maestro, who was just as evil as he was but without any of his self-destructive indulgences. So it was little wonder that Durst found himself dragged into Maestro's orbit, even if he didn't realize what was happening. (The scene where Durst goes to kill Maestro and instead she talks him into doing exactly what she wants was also pretty great to write.) Even if Durst didn't want to kill Nadia, Riordan would still have fought him to the death, because Durst represents a rejection of self-control and responsibility, something Riordan finds utterly abhorrent. And unlike Durst, Riordan knew that a moment of reckoning was coming, which was why he practiced and trained so much with Sir Trandor, while Durst simply went begging to the Dark Ones for power, so the final showdown between Riordan and Durst was quite fun to write. And finally, Number Ten: Rivah and the Magister's Tower. When I plotted out Rivah's heist of Ramarion's tower in Half-Elven Thief, I didn't get too detailed in my outline as to what the inside of the tower would look like. I just knew I wanted it to be as weird and freaky and unsettling as possible, with a lot of Evil Wizard Stuff cluttering up the place. Several people have told me Rivah's venture into the tower was their favorite part of the book, so I think I succeeded. So those were my ten favorite scenes that I wrote in 2023. Thanks for reading, everyone. So that's it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

I sit down to talk to Twitch streamer Kylon about learning Japanese, his family's reaction to it, and of course lots of tangents. You can check him on https://m.twitch.tv/caasik023 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carl-liggins/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carl-liggins/support

Me Personally Podcast crew is back, but this week is a Poolside episode. Immanuel, Jonathan, Kylon, and Ray talk about Oklahoma State's win against KSU, NBA Trade, Dame, Jrue and the Celtics, Cowboys vs 49ers, and much more  Want to send us Takes click on this link below: https://linktr.ee/mepersonallypodcast

In this week's episode, we take a look at some of the fantasy worldbuilding decisions that went into the FROSTBORN series. I also discuss finishing the original HALO trilogy on the Xbox console. It's time for a new Coupon of the Week! This week's coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE STONE, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE STONE for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: GHOSTSTONE The coupon code is valid through September 29th, 2023, so if you need to listen to something while raking leaves, it might be time to get yourself a new audiobook! TRANSCRIPT: Hello everyone. Welcome to Episode 168 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September the 15th, 2023 and today we're going to discuss fantasy worldbuilding in the Frostborn series. We'll also talk a bit about how I finished the Halo trilogy and comments on last week's episode and some updates on my current writing projects. But before we get to all that, let's first have Coupon of the Week for this week. 00:00:28 This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Stone as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of Ghost in the Stone for 75% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code GHOSTSTONE. Again, that's Ghost Stone spelled GHOSTSTONE. It will also be in the show notes. The coupon code is valid through September 29th, 2023. So if you need to listen to something while raking leaves, this might be a good time to get yourself a new audiobook. 00:00:57 What I am working on right now is Ghost in the Serpent, the first new Caina book in two years and the first book of new Ghost Armor series. I'm currently 36,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 8 or 9 of 20. I can't remember which, I'll double check and we will talk a little bit more about that later in the show. Once Ghost in the Serpent is out, I'm hoping to have that out in October and then I will start in the next Nadia book Cloak of Embers. I haven't done a Nadia book since April, which is a bit of a time delay, but I wanted to spend the summer finishing things. As I mentioned with The Dragonskull Series and The Silent Order series and now both of them are done. So it is time to start something new, which would be the Ghost in the Serpent and Ghost Armor series in this case. 00:01:46 In audio book news we are doing audio book proofing for Dragonskull: Fury of the Barbarians right now and hopefully that will be wrapped up this coming week and then we can get the audiobook out before too much longer. 00:02:01 Before we get to our other topics, I wanted to read a comment from longtime reader William about last week's episode about finishing The Silent Order series, and William has to say: It's hard to put a number on it, but writing different series and different genres probably helps bring in new readers. Silent Order was the first of your series that I started reading specifically because of a post on William King's blog about your experiment with Eclipse Hand followed by Cloak Games, Demonsouled, The Ghosts and eventually Frostborn. Even if Frostborn and its sequel series at your best sellers (and they are), I might never have picked up the Gray Knight if I just stumbled across it on Amazon. An example would be Games Workshop, which started out making a lot of odd games and spin offs aside from its two massively popular miniature war games. These both help pick them new players and encourage writers to explore new themes which fed into and enriched the main games. Naturally, they didn't sell as well as the main games, and occasionally they didn't sell very well at all. So gradually the marketing and sales department managed to shut down any such projects, and for a decade or so, their two main games grew staler and sales stagnated, and then they started trying to diversify their offerings again, as well as improve community outreach and other initiatives and sales improved. The post he's referring to was one about Eclipse Hand, where you'll remember if you listened last week's episode, I had written Silent Order Eclipse Hand entirely with free software like Ubuntu Linux, Libre Office, Office Writer, Sigil, and so forth, just to prove a point that it could be done and I did. So it it's funny how there are many different ways that readers can feed into your books. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to persist with that Lit RPG series, which I'm working on the side right now in hopes of, you know, bringing in new readers. But that reminds me of a verse from the Book of Ecclesiastes, where it's cast your bread upon the waters and in seven days it will return to you. There's a couple different interpretations of that passage, but one of them is that sometimes it's good to take chances on things because you don't know how it will come back to you later. And so if you have any other comments or questions that you would like answered on the show, leave a comment or question on my website or Facebook page, and we'll see if we include it. 00:04:18 And now some more information about Ghost in the Serpent. When I mentioned that my next book would be Ghost in the Serpent and that got both an enthusiastic response and a few questions. So let's answer them here. When will Ghost in the Serpent come out? Hopefully October if all goes well and nothing drastic comes up. When in the series' timeline does Ghost in the Serpent take place? Just about a year after Ghost in the Sun, which you will recall was the last Caina book I wrote back at the end of 2021. How many books will the Ghost Armor series have? I am planning for six. Will there be an audiobook for Ghost in the Serpent? We are hopefully planning to record Ghost in the Serpent in November, if all goes well. And do you need to reread the previous Ghost books first, before reading Ghost in the Serpent? The answer is, if you want to. The truth is, I can try to make Ghost in the Serpent as stand alone as I want, and I will try to, but people will still want to read the previous books anyway, like I had to laugh when I saw some of the coverage for the Ahsoka TV show with the show's creators insisting that you didn't need to watch Star Wars Rebels or the Clone Wars first to understand the show. Meanwhile all these content mills are coming out with articles like 27 essential Rebels episodes to watch before Ahsoka. So if you've never read any of the ghost books, the first book, Child of the Ghosts, is free on all ebook platforms, and the bundle of the first three books, The Ghosts Omnibus One, is only $0.99 in U.S. dollars on all platforms at the moment. Next question was when are you going to write another Nadia book?  After Ghost in the Serpent is done. It will be called Cloak of Embers and will hopefully come out in November or December. Finally, what will Ghost in the Serpent be about? Well, you'll just have to read and find out. One preview: we never did find out why the surge someone send Kylon back to New Kyre. 00:16:48 One amusing thing that happened recently was that I accidentally finished both Halo 2 and Halo 3 on the Xbox. I've mentioned before that I didn't play any console games at all from about 1998 to 2019, so I missed out on the entire Halo series, but in 2022 I got an Xbox and after I used it to beat Skyrim, I started in on the Halo Series and I beat the original Halo single player campaign in October of 2022. This year I fired up Halo 2 and started playing through the main campaign. I sort of got distracted for a while in May, but I came back to it in August and picked it up again. I kept plugging away at the main campaign and to my surprise I suddenly beat it. Halo 2 ends on something of a cliffhanger, so I could see why Halo 3 was such a big deal back in 2007. Naturally, I had to keep going, and since Halo 3 is included in the Master Chief Collection, which is included in Xbox Game Pass, I started up on Halo 3. Apparently in its first week of sales back in 2007, the game made more than $300 million, which is like major motion picture territory, and in my opinion, Halo 3 totally deserved it. There are some amazing levels in that game, like the bit where the Master Chief has to take down the two giant enemy next simultaneously or the final level when Master Chief and the Arbiter have to escape the collapsing Halo with Master Chief driving the warthog and the Arbiter running the machine gun on the back, it's like Mario Kart, but with firearms. I think the original Halo remains my favorite because of its relative simplicity. There are only so many weapons and so many enemy types, but the game puts them to good use. I have to say console gaming is a very different experience than PC gaming, I said I didn't play any console games at all, from about ‘98 to 2019, but that isn't to say I played no games, I just spent a lot of time PC gaming in the 90s and 2000s and in the 90s, that meant fiddling with autoexec.bat and config.sys and making sure emm386.exe was configured properly. Oh, and making sure the sound card was configured to use a different IRQ than the other devices on the system. Granted, if you were born in the 90s or the 2000s, you probably have no idea what I was talking about just now, but if you know you know, whereas with the console you just download the game and it almost always works. Very different experience! Though I have to say my favorite part of Halo has to be the parts where you get a tank and start blasting away at the enemy. Very satisfying. We had a couple of good comments about Halo when I posted about it on Facebook. Reader Jeremiah says: My son and I played the Master Chief collection together and of course use the skulls which he had previously collected such as infinite ammo, etcetera. I forget which Halo game it was, might have been 3 but not sure. One of the skulls allowed you to practically fly by jumping and holding that button down. You had a blast on that. You'd crash into a wall going fast and die, or just slide past all the enemies and keep on going. I think that's one of the reasons why Halo is so enduringly popular, much like Mario Kart is because it gives such good multiplayer experience that hopefully you can build some positive family memories around. Our next comment about that comes from JK who says: I used to do PC game phone tech support in the late 80s and had to actually talk people through editing their autoexec.bat and config.sys files. Well my hat is off to you, JK. That sounds extremely difficult. By the time I started doing tech phone support, that was in the age of Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows Millennium Edition, I don't know if any of your listeners out there remember Windows Millennium Edition, but it was deeply terrible and broke frequently, so I spent a lot of time dealing with phone support with Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition, especially Windows Millenium Edition, but that was still less complex and less aggravating than trying to talk someone through fixing their autoexec.bat file over the phone had to have been. 00:10:12 Now on to our main topic this week, a question about fantasy world building in the Frostborn series. This comes from reader Paloma, who asked a question about Andomhaim: A question: The Magistri get married and have families, but I don't remember any Magistrius in the books having any woman or man, though it's hard to think like that with mentality of the Middle Age world with them, I hope not that the men in this situation are like monks because I hope Joaquin has someone amazing in his future. In answer to that question, we're going to talk about it for a while. In the Frostborn world, the Magistri can get married. Minor spoiler if you read the Frostborn: The Shadow Prison, the Magistrius Camorak marries a widowed baker after the Frostborn War after she essentially bakes her way into his heart. The Magistri were founded at a time when Andomhaim's population was low and so everyone of every station of life was encouraged to have children. A few of the first Magistri wanted the Order of the Magistri to become a monastic religious order that happened to wield magic, but there was sufficient opposition to the idea that it didn't happen. They sort of compromised halfway where all magic users in Andomhaim would be required to join the Magistri, but could still have possessions and get married. That said, the Magistri do tend to get married at a much lower rate than the nobles and commoners for three reasons. First reason is that Andomhaim has an overall suspicion of magic. It's much stronger among the commoners than the nobles, but it's still there among the nobility. A lot of people remember that a significant portion of the Order of the Magistri sided with Tarrabus Carhaine and the Enlightened of Incariel during the Civil War, and the Frostborn series. There are many, many stories about Magistri going bad that have worked their way into the folklore of Andomhaim. The evil wizard is as much of a stock character in the songs and tales of Andomhaim as it is in modern day fantasy novels. This isn't entirely fair to the Magistri, of course, but the belief is there, though people who have been healed of serious injuries by the healing spell of the Magistri often they have a much higher opinion of the Order. The second reason is money. Magistri can get a stipend from the Order or from the noble in whose court they serve and they can't hold land. So though the Order as a whole can hold estates to support itself, marriage in Andomhaim, especially between nobles and wealthy merchants, is usually more about property and producing heirs than romantic love. Since the Magistri don't bring any property to a marriage, that's often a nonstarter, especially among nobles. Commoner Magistri like Camorak are much more likely to get married. The third reason is that Magistri frequently becomes so enamored of their studies that they simply don't have time for marriage and very little interest in pursuing one. Magic, to paraphrase an old comedy sketch, is one heck of a drug, which is one of the reasons why Magistri do go bad. They become so obsessed with magical power and learning more secrets that they lose their connection to the rest of humanity. That said, it's not terribly common for male Magistri to have mistresses in the form of “housekeepers” and so forth. It's a bit like the Western Church during the Middle Ages. One thing that perpetually vexed clerical reformers in the Western Church throughout the Medieval period was how many priests had common law wives and concubines. Remember that life in the Middle Ages was frequently very harsh and while the village priests often would work lands and farm alongside the rest of the peasants, he nonetheless had had better income and more prestige than many other villagers. Becoming the priest's “housekeeper” was often a more attractive prospect than the other available options. In fact, in some reasons, this arrangement became so frequent, so common that a frequent effort of clerical reform was attempting to keep a priest from passing his office down to his eldest son via his common law wife. In Andomhaim, the church has evolved to a structure more similar to the Eastern Church during the Middle Ages. Priests could be married, but bishops and abbots were expected to be unmarried and be celibate. While less frequent than the Magistrius with a housekeeper, female Magistri sometimes become the mistresses of the nobles in whose court they serve. It's a frequent enough occurrence that the beautiful young Magistria and the grim Lord whose eye is caught by the beautiful young Magistria are stock characters in these songs of Andomhaim like the evil wizard described above. Though, depending on the personality of the individual Magistria, bard who sings one of those songs within her earshot might gain a lifelong enemy. The Swordbearers, by contrast, are much more popular than the Magistri. Partly this is because they integrate in Andomhaim social structure more easily. Swordbearers can and frequently do hold land. Constantine Licinius is a Swordbearer and a dux of the Northern Land and Ridmark Arban is the Commons of Castarium and the Constable of Tarlion. And they're both Swordbearers. Since Swordbearers are supposed to protect the people of Andomhaim from dark magic and knights and nobles are supposed to protect the people of their lands, the two roles to use rather neatly. While both commoners and nobles have become Magistri and Swordbearers, there's something more aspirational about becoming a Swordbearer, a wandering knight who wields the sword of white fire against monsters. Knights of the Soulblade, of course, can get married even though they are more likely to leave widows and orphans than the Magistri. And consider the Swordbearers and the Magistri from the perspective of common peasant who doesn't know any of this, a Magistrius or Magistri would be a remote, aloof man or woman wielding abilities you don't understand, and that he or she might have gotten them from the devil. You've heard stories about how Magistri can serve dark powers. Maybe they can heal injuries, but at what cost? But then an urvaalg starts, probably around the forest near your village. It kills three of your cows, and it also kills the blacksmith's son and two of the Lord's men in arms. Nothing can kill the monster. And everyone locks themselves in their houses at night, fearing that the beast will come out of the darkness for them. Then a grim taciturn warrior arrives at your village, maybe alone, maybe with a few trusty companions with a sword of white fire. He kills the monster that's been terrorizing your village and leaves its head mounted on stake. And then he also kills one of the village elders. Apparently the elder had been controlling urvaalg with dark magic, using it to attack his rivals' livestock, and in some cases, his rivals themselves. With that done, the sword bear moves on to his next quest. So both the Magistri and the Swordbearers are feared. But the Swordbearers are more respected. However, because of the violent nature of a Swordbearer's career, the Magistri in general tend to live much longer. 00:16:29 So I hope that provides a good explanation of some of the worldbuilding behind the FROSTBORN series, and that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Austin, Ben, Julian, and Kylon talk about comedy

Will sits down with ½ of the current reigning and defending Wrestling Open tag Champs. Kylon King. You won't be able to help but smile as the excitement of living the dream comes through the interview. Kylon displays admiration and respect for the sport and business he works in. They sit down to discuss Where his training started and how he broke into the business. All the way through getting the call and knowing they were winning gold. Prepping for a cage match and in ring psychology? Styles make fights? And of course! 5 random questions! Out Now on All Platforms!!! Remember to Follow Twitch www.twitch.tv/RivetCityRadio Twitter @JustaGirl918 @The_Will_Gray @YellowShoeGuy Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/30uYHFrjpSHoVQYPr5zBn9?si=34db3104e8da47a5 TikTok @JustaGirl918 @The_Will_Gray @YellowShoeGuy --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/botched-spots-and-chair-shots/support

Happy holidays everyone, we have a very special episode for you. We are closing out the year with a 5-3-1 on the worst moments of 2022 in wrestling. And to properly roast the year we brought in Post Wrestling's W.H. Park (@whpark9 on Twitter) to help highlight the lows of this year. W.H. Park is the host of the Long and Winding Royal Road podcast on the Post Wrestling network. You can buy the shirts for his podcast here (https://store.postwrestling.com/). We are huge fans of W.H. and we are excited to bring you this episode. #2022 #wrestling #prowrestling #POSTwrestling #worstof2022 #workingfanspodcast #podcast #canada #usa #merrychristmas #happychanukah #happyholidays #wrestlingpodcast #prowrestlingpodcast #WWE #AEW #NJPW #GCW #ImpactWrestling #BeyondWrestling #LimitlessWrestling #NortheastWrestling #wrestlinginterview Producer Joe and The Man Called Dave sit down with Alec Price (@ThePrizeCityOG on Twitter and Instagram) to talk about his career and fandom, Wrestling Open, how he like to unwind in his free time, and much more. This is an interview we've been wanting to do for a while, and we are honored to bring it to you. #alecprice #beyondwrestling #limitlesswrestling #wrestlingopen #wrestling #prowrestling #workingfanspodcast #alecpriceinterview Producer Joe sits down with Kylon King (@LittleKylon on Twitter, kingkai0610 on Instagram) to talk about the Miracle Generation, Wrestling Open, his career and fandom, and so much more. After their win last week at Wrestling Open over Stetson Ranch, we are excited to talk to Kylon about his year and what he has in store for 2023. #kylonking #miraclegeneration #wrestling #prowrestling #wrestlingopen #beyondwrestling Contact us at: Twitter-@FansWorking Instagram-workingfanswrestling_pod Facebook-Working Fan's Podcast Email- workingfanswrestlingpod@gmail.com Subscribe, rate, and review us here: Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/working-fans-podcast/id1482321716?uo=4 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/6DmVnxHWcURUj8akmwDD9v Google Podcasts- https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9kZDA1MTQ0L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe4jz_jqytm48skZ0CT6gJg Wherever you can Like, Rate, Review, Subscribe, and tell a friend or two!! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/workingfanpod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/workingfanpod/support

In the Sixth Episode, we are excited about Oklahoma State Homecoming and the return of the NBA, testing out Kylon, Jonathan and AJ's skills as a GM. We also discuss the crazy weekend of College Football in ranked teams Oklahoma State, Alabama and Penn State taking their first loss. We talk about how the Broncos are the most disappointing team (coming from a Broncos Fan), the Eagles and Bills are the best teams, and how the NFC appears to look right now. Instagram: Immanuel: @primetime.siafa Kylon: @kylon.d Jonathan: @chaloir_ AJ: bigfoe.rr Me Personally: @mepersonallypod Creator of Intro: @alvinnyema Creator of the Outro: Rico Escobar

NSFW - Spoilers GUI 256 - The Orville SSN 3: Greasy Moclans Moclans, and Kaylons, and Krill... Oh My! Panel: Mike "Hobbit" Bickett (Smack My Pitch Up/Deeply Upsetting}, Scotty P. (Beautiful Disasters, From The Mouths of Madness, Beautiful Disasters), Thandi Woodard (Smack My Pitch Up), and Nick (last name redacted) Subscribe to shows on the GUI Network: https://linktr.ee/GUInetwork _________________________________________________ GUI Home - http://www.guipodcast.com GUI Hotline: (804) 505-4GUI (4484) (Message & data rates may apply) Thanks to our sponsors: www.emilycee.com Support GUI by shopping Amazon -  http://amzn.to/2cg3FF8 Check out the ton of merch for the GUI Network on TeePublic: http://bit.ly/2CzNdyf _________________________________________________ Twitter - www.twitter.com/GUIPodcastRVA Facebook - www.facebook.com/guipodcastrva/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/geeksundertheinfluence/ _________________________________________________ ● Track Info ● Intro-Outro Music: "Dead By Dawn” courtesy of the “Creep-A-Zoids  http://www.creep-a-zoids.com/ Used with permission Geeks Under the Influence is a trademark of Michael Bickett. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. geeksundertheinfluence@gmail.com for sponsorship inquiries

This show will feature host Tiffany interview independent wrestlers/Promoters/Refs from all Welcome to Under The Ropes on the Indie Wrestling Corner. This show will feature host Tiffany as she interviews independent wrestlers/Promoters/Refs from all over! Today special guest is Kylon King Twitter -https://twitter.com/LittleKylon Facebook- Instagram-@KingKai0610 Merch - https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/wrestler-t-shirts/kylonking.html «««« Official Theme Song by This Wolf (Enough is Enough) »»»» YouTube: [http://bit.ly/Thiswolf](http://bit.ly/Thiswolf) # Wrestling #WrestlingCommunity #Sports #IndieWrestling #IndieWrestling #KylonKing #MiracleGeneration

On this episode, Andrew, Trevor, and Kylon roast each other, while talking about work, life, friends, and sports!

LifeBlood: We talked about buying a business that's already up and running, how the process works, who it's a good fit for, and the most important variables to keep in mind with Kylon Gienger, President of Acquira, an investment fund and accelerator for acquisition entrepreneurs.  Listen to learn why your ability to learn new skills and information could be your superpower if you cultivate it! For the Difference Making Tip, scan ahead to 19:16! You can learn more about Kylon at Acquira.com, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks, as always for listening!  If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and subscribe as well.  You can learn more about us at MoneyAlignmentAcademy.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact George at Contact@GeorgeGrombacher.com.

On the 39th episode of The Sign Rip Podcast with Joey G I chat with Kylon King. We chat about growing up a fan of Eddie Guerrero & John Cena, Becoming buddies with The Miracle Generation, Paradise Alley Pro Wrestling, And his recent battle with Dustin Flash Waller against The Firm for The Test Of Strength Tag Team Championships. Wanna keep up to date with Kylon? Follow him on INSTAGRAM at @kingkai0610 & Twitter @LittleKylon

Kylon and Rowan join us to talk about our love of all things music! Tune in for history of jazz and Kylon's obsession with pop punk!

Kylon has founded and led multiple businesses in the construction, food service, fitness, real estate and online education industries since 2012 with three successful exits. He is also the founder and host of a popular business and education podcast, Successful Dropout, which was featured in BuzzFeed (as the #15 most recommended podcast of 2018) and the Huffington Post.       CONNECT WITH Kylon Gienger LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylongienger/ Website: www.acquira.com Email: kylongienger@gmail.com     CONNECT WITH Cedric Francis Website: www.lead2greatness.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cedricbfrancis Twitter: https://twitter.com/cedricbfrancis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cedric_francis/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedric-francis-a0544037/   Disclosure: Links contain affiliates. When you buy through one of our links we will receive a commission. This is at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Lead to Greatness and allowing us to continue to bring you valuable content.   Promo:    Try Audible Premium Plus and Get up to two free audiobooks: https://amzn.to/3as87Aw   Recording Equipment    Mic - https://amzn.to/3dHeSAi   Road Castor Pro - https://amzn.to/3aujvvS   Headset - https://amzn.to/2QM2O8a    Mic Cable - https://amzn.to/3dJ9Wec   USB Cable (Mac Book Only) - https://amzn.to/2PbAPy2   USB Cable (Windows Only) - https://amzn.to/3sK5K2h    Cable Compatible with Bose Brands - https://amzn.to/32BpN8j    Camera - https://amzn.to/3ncI7Oz    Mini Switcher - https://amzn.to/3dJGiWy    Micro HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3tISvQK    High Speed HDMI to HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3v3NfaG  

As always shoutout to our sponsor Black & Educated clothing. Check them out @ www.blackandeducatedclothing.com. In this episode we speak on our school "superlatories"(superlatives), Lil Nas X saying "he misses pussy", "Squid Game", Annabel turning 30, Kylon apologizes to the cohosts and audiences and much much more... Closing song: "Scapegoat" - Kota the Friend

You can’t just expedite trust and value. If you’re acquiring a new business, you’re acquiring all of its people too. Have you given a thought to how those transitions will work? In this episode, I’m talking with Kylon Geinger from Acquira. He brings his insight from his unique background when discussing topics on buying established businesses, underestimating the human component of a deal, and the value of ongoing learning. Kylon shares his story of his recent purchase of a plumbing company as an example while we dig deep into understanding acquisition transactions and deals. On today’s show, Kylon and I explore how Acquira does their investing and how it differs from SBA and other traditional investment funds. We’ll share their “gauntlet” method to make sure you’re hiring good people, as well as cover how to build trust so you have their buy-in for any changes you need to make. We will also share some niche planning tips and start building some trust equity. What You Will Learn In Today's Podcast Interview Why it might be your best move to buy an established business instead of doing the startup process The benefit of understanding the human element of transactions leads to advantageous terms and winning deals / Why sellers would take less of a purchase price to sell their baby How Acquira is solving for market inefficiencies through niche investing strategies What the “gauntlet” is and how it’s used to filter the investors Acquira brings on Never underestimate the human component of a deal—livelihoods depend on it Why you should keep on owners in lower market companies you acquire, if you can The difference between on-market and off-market deals How to hire good people—those who match your values as well as have the skills and training you need in the role Why companies that are essentially turnkey and have a good cash flow are worth more What factors Acquira considers when evaluating new businesses to invest in and strategies to mitigate risks discovered How implementing EOS has changed things at the companies they acquire and invest in When you should compromise with established staff rather than steamroll their ideas post-acquisition The value of ongoing learning (even if it’s just-in-time!) The investment landscape of the 10-trillion dollar Boomer rollover Transfer of ownership can be enjoyable rather than traumatic Why it’s important to figure out your drivers and plan accordingly Building trust is vital to making the value creation changes you need How private equity is expanding the multiples in the home services industry Are You Growing The Value of Your Business Take The 2-Minute Assessment To Get Your Intentional Growth Score™ And 1-Page Vision Board. Are your company's current initiatives intentionally designed to increase the value of the business? Do you know what you want from your business long term and why? Do you know what your company is worth? Do you know the differences between Management, Family Transitions, PE Firms, ESOPs and Strategic Buyers? Does the business have a written strategic plan on how to achieve the desired normalized EBITDA and valuation? About the Guest: Kylon Gienger is president of Acquira, and investment fund for people looking to buy small business and an accelerator for people looking to do the same. He is a serial entrepreneur himself, and wants to make others feel empowered as well. When he’s not helping build stronger companies, Kylon

Kylon, Helen, and Annabel talk about the craziness of last week.

The Post and Courier is pleased to present this podcast series featuring “12 Black Leaders to Know in South Carolina.” Launched during Black History Month, the series introduces you to dynamic change agents at work across the state. They are determined to make a difference.This month we welcome the Rev. Kylon Middleton, pastor of Mt. Zion AME Church and a new member of Charleston County Council. Middleton grew up in Charleston among people with high expectations. So he has stepped up.

This episode of the Real Talk with ReZsaun Local Celebrity Spotlight shines on District 6, Charleston County Council Candidate Dr. Kylon Middleton. Topics included: - His history in education and ministry. - His thoughts on raising the minimum wage. - Where he stands on Affordable Housing. - The major difference between him and his opponent. - And much more! Please check out this episode, subscribe to my channel, and hit the notification bell, so you'll never miss an episode (thanks RJ.) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/realtalkwithrezsaun/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/realtalkwithrezsaun/support

Kylon jumps on the mic to share with you 6 things that every person needs to be successful in life. These are tangible things that you should be constantly evaluating. If you find you aren't satisfied with these things, something needs to change! Tune in. 

Kylon shares how to conquer limiting beliefs in 5 steps and what his main limiting beliefs are. He also plays a game of would you rather! Listen in for practical tools on how to shift your limiting beliefs of yourself.    THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. RESOURCES/THINGS MENTIONED Successful Dropout Bible In Demand Career Digital Marketing Course  JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Kylon jumps on the mic to talk about the 10 things you should do during COVID-19. We are in different times but these principles will last through any challenges we may face. Start practicing them today to see massive impact in your life and others around you. THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. RESOURCES/THINGS MENTIONED Successful Dropout Bible In Demand Career Digital Marketing Course  JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Kylon Gienger is the president of KingMakers, an investment fund and accelerator for small business buyers. He founded and operated multiple business investments in the construction, food service, fitness, real estate, online education, and digital marketing industries. On this episode, Kylon talks about investing in small businesses that would potentially grow to a million-dollar business, with the help of his company, the KingMakers. He explains some key points in strategically building industry by starting with leverage and having a partnership to successfully pay the loan and gain the profit. There are more ideas and lessons to learn here, so listen in! Where we are: Johnny FD - Sri Lanka Sam Marks - Barcelona Links: Website: KingMakers.co New Site: Acquira.com Patreon: Patreon.com/InvestLikeABoss Sponsor: DiversyFund.com – Use coupon code BOSS20 Time Stamps: 06:01 – The idea of building over buying a business 09:22 – The start of KingMakers 12:00 – Taking business commission by website’s affiliate links 19:41 – Buying businesses and growth plans 24:48 – How an investor creates profit in buying a business by a leverage 28:57 – “Turn the profit knob and start earning those dollars back eventually and exit for a lot more than you paid for” - Kylon Gienger 30:51 – Kylon explains the minority and majority share to a business 33:50 – “When working with a business partner, you want to make sure that you work well together” - Kylon Gienger 34:58 – Managing and analyzing the business for the best quality 40:57 – Reinvesting in dying businesses and earning profit from it 43:42 – How business partnership operates 49:50 - Eliminating failures in the business 52:29 – The best ways to manage the business If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven't already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here!  Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. Read our disclaimer here.

***Likes determine interest?*** 25:00***Captain Planet speaks*** 41:30***How long should sex last? AGAIN!*** 50:00***HOW DO YOU ACCIDENTALLY LICK AN ASSHOLE?*** 51:50***Once you're married have you won?*** 58:00***Kylon gets phone call*** 1:08:30

We now have a full crew!In this episode We learn about the kink community, get disrespected by the opposite sex, and end on wings. The crew plays a prank on Kylon.

****THANK YOU FOR THE FEEDBACK, I BELIEVE I HAVE FIXED OUR AUDIO PROBLEM****In this episode we discuss Lizzo's choice of clothing, body positivity, self-confidence, Good girls liking bad dudes. A couple of guests share stories, the cast sees an ass tat and we conclude with me speaking lyrics of "Truth Hurts" til Kylon inevitably forgets a word.A couple of guests on the mic this week:DrenieJessicaHelen

Kylon jumps on the mic to answer the most common questions from Successful Dropouts.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. RESOURCES/THINGS MENTIONED What Works Podcast JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Kylon sits down to interview Sam Watt, his partner in Successful Dropout.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them.   RESOURCES/THINGS MENTIONED Life Skills That Matter Strategic Plan Start with Why by Simon Sinek JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Kylon and Te share a big announcement, habits to master that make you superhuman, memory techniques, and more!  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Successful Dropouts Kylon and Te talk about their end of year habits and share ideas for dominating 2019.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

This week Kylon and Te jump on the mic to share what's been happening in their life, and also share a big announcement about the future of SD!  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

This episode features my friend Kylon. We sit back as he talks about all of his antics being a former hoe in the LGBT community. It’s really wild story. Lol --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/montez-jones/support

This week Kylon jumps on the mic to share what's been happening in his life and businesses recently and where things are going in the future.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. JOIN THE SUCCESSFUL DROPOUT COMMUNITY! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram! Support Successful Dropout on Patreon

Kylon is an educational and social change thought leader as well as serial entrepreneur. He has founded and co-founded multiple businesses in the construction, food service, fitness, real estate, and online education industries since 2013. He is currently the creator and host of Successful Dropout, a podcast you should probably listen to that has been featured in Buzzfeed and Huffington Post.

Kylon is an educational and social change thought leader as well as serial entrepreneur. He has founded and co-founded multiple businesses in the construction, food service, fitness, real estate, and online education industries since 2013. He is currently the creator and host of Successful Dropout, a podcast you should probably listen to that has been featured in Buzzfeed and Huffington Post.

This week I decided to sit down with my wife and sister and answer some questions from the SD community.  Between the three of us we all run six figure businesses, manage employees and staff, run podcasts and communities, two of us dropped out of school, we've been broke, had business partners, worked with spouses, siblings and friends building businesses, we've failed, we've succeeded, we've switched, pivoted, or quit things...you name it. We got a great response and you guys asked some fantastic questions that we do our best to answer here. We don't have it all figured out, but we can speak from a lot of experience and the fact that we are STILL in the process of figuring it out.  Here are some of the things we talk about: Benefits of a brick and mortar business versus an online business Business plans Business partners Raising money to start your business How to start a brick and mortar business with a family and busy schedule Being business partners with family and friends How to be a great podcast guest/what to look for in podcast guests Important financial knowledge to learn and keep in mind when starting a business Business and taxes - what to do? How do you build a business or endeavor that attracts people/customers? The importance of culture, customer service, and your product Resources Chelann's podcast (Entrepreneur Before 25) Te's website NUYU Juice Bar Renu Hot Yoga LivePlan.com - for business plans!  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Create a free account in the forum and introduce yourself! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram!

In this episode, Kylon and Teliah talk about their seven years of marriage and what it's been like building businesses and working together as husband and wife.  Some of the things they talk about: How to handle high stress situation with each other...a must if you are building a business with your spouse! How do you prioritize goals and objectives together and stay on the same page? Long distance relationships. Maintaining personal and work boundaries. Sectioning off time to be productive but also not losing time being together and developing the relationship. Tons more! THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Join our private Facebook Group! Follow @successfuldropout on Instagram!

An inside look at a powerful system for success that our family has been following now for about 15 years.  It has helped us expand our vision and achieve dreams that are bigger than we ever thought we could.   It’s a system for success that I’m pretty sure you won’t hear much about in many other places. But this has been a critical process for us individually and as a family. Like many good things in my life, I learned about this process from a mentor who had focused on success in this specific area of life more than I had. I will be forever grateful to my family coach and good friend, Greg Gunn for opening my eyes to this life changing system for success.   In this episode all eight of us gathered around the table for a fun discussion right after we finished our 15th Annual Gienger Family Goal Setting Retreat.  What is that?  Here’s how it works. We all get together as a family at the beginning of each new year to celebrate our successes in the last year and set goals for the new year. We start with a a focusing talk by dad.  Then we spend 3-4 hours in solitude and silence where each family member journals on their successes in the last year and writes down goals for the new year.  After everyone takes time alone to document their successes and work on their individual goals, we come back together to share what we have written down.  This gives us a rich space in time to celebrate each other’s successes and become aware of how we can support each other’s goals. After we finished our time of sharing this January, we all sat around the table, clicked record and reflected on the experience.  As you listen to us discuss the following questions, we hope you will gain insights that could help you create a system like this, in your own way, in your own life.   What are some of your earliest memories of doing our Annual Gienger Family Goal Setting Retreats?   Can you describe what it has been like for you to do this when you were young kids?   How would you describe the actual process we have used in our annual goals setting retreats?   To the spouses who married in to the family (Teliah and Auren): Do you remember when was your first time joining us in an Annual Family Goal Setting Retreat?  What was it like for you to participate in this process? What do you think have been the benefits of doing this for you and for our family?  What’s the value of this from your perspective? What are some of the highlights or most meaningful elements of what we experienced or what you heard or shared in this year’s Annual Family Goal Setting Retreat? How do you see this carrying on into the next generation? Resources: Check out the Family ID podcast by Greg Gunn who was Lonnie's initial coach on this topic.  Kylon and Te referenced their excellent Successful Dropout podcast for young people looking for an alternative to the traditional institutional university education route.  After listening to the podcast, some have asked for a copy of the questions that we have used over the years to guide us through our celebration and goal setting process.  If you're interested, you can check out our Gienger Goal Setting Annual Retreat Questions. As with all systems, we hope you can learn something from our process...but please be sure to customize this system in a way that works best for you.  Thank You! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page.   We'd also really appreciate any feedback or questions that might guide what we talk about in future episodes.    Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and we read each and every one of them.  Join the Systems for Success Community! Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on IOS or Apple Itunes. Subscribe to the Systems for Success Podcast on Android or Windows OS.  Enter your email in one of the email opt-ins on this site for regular emails from Lonnie Gienger or the Gienger Family on additional Systems for Success. Follow Systems for Success on Instagram @systemsforsuccess Follow Lonnie Gienger on Instagram @lonniegienger

Loved having my wife Te on for this one! We sat down with a couple drinks to talk about excuses, "extreme ownership" and several other things.  Te is a serial entrepreneur, health coach, yoga instructor, and author. In addition to owning Renu Hot Yoga and NUYU Juice Bar, she also hosts her own yoga teacher trainings, runs private health retreats, coaches private clients, and sells her book "Choose You".  Quotes that stood out in this episode: "there's no such thing as a good excuse, even if it's a good one." and "that really chaps my ass".   Resources Te's website Choose You by Teliah Gienger War of Art by Steven Pressfield THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Today our expert guest is Kylon Gienger, an educational and social thought leader, serial entrepreneur, and the host of The Successful Dropout Podcast.   Kylon grew up in a mountain cabin, homeschooled with his siblings. He had a lot of curiosity, and the freedom to pursue it. Then, after graduating, he felt the pressure to go to college – it just felt like what people do.   A few months into his Freshman year, in the middle of a marketing class, Kylon decided to drop out.   Over the next few years, Kylon worked as a youth pastor, construction worker, Navy serviceman, and musician, and started three different businesses.   Kylon is still working on a wide variety of projects, including The Successful Dropout, because he truly values freedom with his time and lifestyle – he is a self-described 100% autonomous human being.   There's a concept that Kylon discusses a lot on his show, and he believes it is the one common factor between all of his successful guests: they have mastered the art of “just in time” learning.   Formal schooling, for the most part, is “just in case” learning. You get a well-rounded education that theoretically prepares you for anything, but many people end up graduating prepared for nothing.   Just in time learning means learning in the context of taking action and taking steps forward – in that way, you're always learning in the context of doing, and in the context of something that you're curious about. This creates an incredible retention, and you'll save time and money in the process.   The Biggest Helping: Today's Most Important Takeaway   “One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is just to accept the norms of your time, whatever that looks like, and not accepting the norm is the secret to really big success and changing the world.” --   Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.   Resources: Learn more at SuccessfulDropout.com Connect with Kylon: Twitter | Instagram Join the Successful Dropout Facebook Group

Stephen Olmon is a business development executive, investor, writer, and was formerly a consultant at KPMG. His current company, SimpleLTC, was acquired in 2016 after seeing significant revenue growth during his tenure. He is passionate about all things finance - he loves the ins and outs of traditional investments, is a self-taught cryptocurrency investor, and is currently writing a book on personal finance. Stephen loves disruption in any market and wants to be at the forefront of that disruption whenever possible. Stephen, his wife Jennifer, and soon-to-arrive daughter are based in Dallas, TX. Stephen is a childhood friend that I've recently re-connected with and it was awesome to have him on the show talking about two of his favorite subjects; finances and crypto. As crypto is becoming more popular, it's important to understand what it is, how it could shape the future, and how to safely get involved. Here are just some of the things we covered in this episode: What is cryptocurrency and blockchain? Is there a bubble? What can crypto and blockchain technology be used for? You've bought cryptocurrency before, you just didn't realize it! You first steps to get into crypto and some general advice Some pointers on how to choose what to invest in Stephen tells us how much money he has made in crypto (no not really, but kind of) Mistakes that Kylon has made in the crypto-verse Crypto terminology And much more! Resources Below are several resources, links and tools relating to crypto. Everything from early beginnings to who to follow in the space. Early Beginnings NSA Document “The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash”, 1996  Weidai’s theoretical b-money (referenced in Bitcoin white paper) Original Bitcoin White Paper Ethereum White Paper Updates and News Coindesk Coin Market Cap Coinbase Blog Recent Thought Leadership Bruce Fenton speaking on “Bitcoin as the Global Reserve Currency” Maria Bustillo’s “You Don’t Understand Bitcoin Because You Think Money Is Real” Ari Paul of BlockTower Capital speaks on the value of cryptocurrency (11/27/2017) Blockchain and Online Marketplaces Blockchain Don Tapscott’s TED talk on “How Blockchain is changing money and business” How Blockchain Works illustrated by Israth Elona Investing Coinbase - #1 platform for retail investors Coinigy - #1 crypto trading and analysis platform www.coinigy.com Intro to Crypto Investing and Analysis by BTCKYLE How to profit in the new cryptocurrency economy by Rocky Darius THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

After asking the Successful Dropout audience what questions they would like answered live on the podcast, Kylon and his wife Te give their answers to the following questions: How do I find people who would be interested in partnering on a business? What are the top 5 marketable skills I should always be working on? What is your spirit animal? Resources: How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

After asking the Successful Dropout audience what questions they would like answered live on the podcast, Kylon shares his top resources, habits, roles models and more in this Q&A style episode.  Resources: Trello Headspace Derek Sivers Discover Praxis John Taylor Gatto  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Kylon and his wife Te get real about the future of the Successful Dropout community.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Some vintage Successful Dropout here! Michael's episode used to be one of the most shared episodes on the show! Here it is again in all it's glory: After deciding to skip college, Michael Fisk founded Photoboxx, an event based photo activation company that released one of the first Instagram printers in the world. Photboxx built it's foundation in the hashtag printing industry and has quickly become a product used internationally by some of the world largest brands including Harley Davidson, Coca-Cola, TGI Fridays, Teen Vogue and Acura. This new startup has inspired thousands of fans to engage with their favorite brands on social media. This guy is a rockstar of a Successful Dropout, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for business and for his wife and three daughters. Time Stamped Notes 00:55 Kylon's intro 01:30 Michael tells us a little bit more about himself 02:33 What is Photoboxx 06:10 Michael shares his dropout story and why he decided to skip college 14:48 Advice for how to communicate with parents about dropping out 16:36 Michael talks about what he did for the first year after skipping college 20:19 No focus, chasing every opportunity 21:00 No money, so panhandled on the street! 23:00 Started to zero in on a career - something to focus on long term 26:20 Committed to photography business for two years and said no everything else 28:00 Transition from photography business to founding Photoboxx 30:00 How Michael generates revenue 33:00 Michael's worst entrepreneurial moment 34:10 AH HA moment 36:24 What current Michael would tell past Michael 40:17 Personal habit that contributes to Michael's success 44:11 Recommended book 44:41 Quality that Michael consider's essential to being an entrepreneur 45:00 Recommended internet resource 46:00 Michael's next big goal 47:00 Advice for those who are considering dropping out 52:00 Advice for those who have already dropped out 54:07 Best way to connect to Michael 4 Key Points No matter what position or job you have, do it to the best of your abilities! Focus is key. Learn to say no to opportunity. Stop committing to multiple things at once and moving on if they aren't showing promise after six months. Define your Be, Do and Have, then commit to one direction for at least two years, saying no to everything else even if it's an enticing opportunity. If you want to build a scalable business, learn how to work with people and build and lead a team. Embrace the low points, because there is a lot to learn during those seasons, and ultimately it's just another step towards success. Also, often times, the best opportunities will come when you are experiencing your greatest challenges. Resources Mentioned Photoboxx - Michael's company Michael Fisk Photography  Start With Why by Simon Sinek - New to Audible.com? Start your trial and get your first book FREE here! Slack - Internal communications app for your team THANKS FOR LISTENING! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast.

Kylon talks about pressure and shares a personal story illustrating how pressure can be used as a tool to take things to the next level.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Kylon shares four business ideas that you can get started on today. These are all businesses that Kylon has built before as well.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

In this episode of FEAR NOT, host of the Successful Dropout podcast, Kylon Gienger shares with us the ways in which he faces all of his fears.

Kylon explores what success really means. Success is relative. Do you really want to be a millionaire? Or do you just want to LIVE like a millionaire?  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

In this episode Kylon explores what to do when you feel like you have too many interests and you are not sure what to pursue. If you are a student, and you are paralyzed by indecision, this episode is for you. Listen to it right meow.  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Man, I really enjoyed this conversation with Brett! I don't often share interviews of myself personally, but I thought this one was really special. This is actually part 2 in a continuing series/collaboration between Brett Veinotte of School Sucks Podcast: The END of Public Education, and myself. Part 1 was me interviewing Brett and you can find that here. In this episode, Brett was supposed to be interviewing me for his audience, but it ended up turning into a lively conversation between the two of us. I enjoyed the heck out of it and so I decided to post it for the Successful Dropout community to enjoy as well.  Brett is such an awesome dude. We talk about everything from religion to budgeting and beyond: What does "living the dream" mean when someone says it with a scowl? Community and accountability through Christianity Shame and judgment through Christianity too The law of attraction!  Self-trust: Kylon was an unenclosed child Comfort zones and glamorizing "failure" Confronting resentment towards success Are you the average of the five you spend the most time with? What does success really look like? What is the right balance of contentment and discontentment? Benefits of marriage Using a cash system for personal finance THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

Kylon dropped out of college during his freshman year in 2009. Since then he has founded and co-founded multiple companies in the construction, fitness, food service, real estate, and online education industries. He is the creator and host of The Successful Dropout Podcast. He joins me again today to discuss his education and his entrepreneurial journey. Discussion: -What does "living the dream" mean when someone says it with a scowl? -Community and accountability through Christianity -but - oh yeah - shame and judgment through Christianity too -the law of attraction! (made less dumb) -Self-trust: Kylon was an unenclosed child -Comfort zones and glamorizing "failure" -confronting resentment towards success -Are you the average of the five you spend the most time with? -benefits of marriage -who I want to spend my life with -using a cash system for personal finance Please Support School Sucks Our Amazon Wish List Donate With Bitcoin Or Join the A/V Club Support Us On Patreon Shop With Us At Amazon Your continued support keeps the show going and growing, which keeps us at the top of the options for education podcasts and leads to new people discovering this message. This subscription also grants you access to the A/V Club, a bonus content section with 200+ hours of exclusive audio and video. If you are a regular consumer of our media, please consider making a monthly commitment by selecting the best option for you... A/V Club - Basic Access - $8.00/Month AP Club - "Advanced" Access - $12.00/Month Sigma Sigma Pi - Full Access - $16.00/Month  

This week Kylon shares a personal story of depression, worry, and anxiety. He uses this story to talk about how to kick the habit of worrying in the a$$.  Resources How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie  THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

This week Kylon chats with Derek Magill. Derek helps people skip college, build a career, and educate themselves. He is also the Director of Marketing at Praxis and the author of an upcoming book on building an unconventional career. Resources Magill.co - Derek's website. Also a great example of a personal website that showcases your value very effectively.  Discover Praxis THANK YOU! Thanks again for listening to the show! If it has helped you in any way, please share it using the social media buttons you see on the page. Additionally, reviews for the podcast on iTunes are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Join the Successful Dropout Nation! Subscribe to the Successful Dropout Podcast. Enter your email on the top right of this page for regular emails from Kylon Gienger on how to drop out, grind, and succeed. Follow @kylongienger on Instagram!

This is the first of two conversations; today Kylon interviews me and next time I will interview him. Kylon dropped out of college during his freshman year in 2009. Since then he has founded and co-founded multiple companies in the construction, fitness, food service, real estate, and online education industries. He is the creator and host of The Successful Dropout Podcast. He joins me today to discuss School Sucks Project, Successful Dropout, college culture, and entrepreneurship. Discussion: - New thoughts my career, college and School Sucks - Above the Snowflakes? the current college culture - the future of higher education - the student loan bubble and the "college is necessary" bubble - aesthetic diversity - the consequences of social engineering in college - live off campus! - Direct vs indirect credentialing - just in case learning vs just in time learning - transferable skills - personal accountability, success is not an option - kids are not defective Help Brett Get To Portland, OR For UNREGISTERED I'm looking to raise $400 towards the cost of this trip. Donate $25 or more and receive "Brett and Andrew's Teen Saga." Please Support School Sucks Our Amazon Wish List Donate With Bitcoin Or Join the A/V Club Support Us On Patreon Shop With Us At Amazon Your continued support keeps the show going and growing, which keeps us at the top of the options for education podcasts and leads to new people discovering this message. This subscription also grants you access to the A/V Club, a bonus content section with 200+ hours of exclusive audio and video. If you are a regular consumer of our media, please consider making a monthly commitment by selecting the best option for you... A/V Club - Basic Access - $8.00/Month AP Club - "Advanced" Access - $12.00/Month Sigma Sigma Pi - Full Access - $16.00/Month  

Kylon shares some insight from entrepreneur and philosopher Derek Sivers on how to make life sized decisions. 

Kylon helps us learn a couple new words he made up that allow us to understand what type of credentialing we are pursuing, and which type is best. Don't get lost in the weeds here. The basic idea to remember is that direct-credentialing is always better than indirect-credentialing. 

Kylon shares one of his worst entrepreneurial moments. A moment when he wanted to just curl up and die. If you've ever wanted to hear a grown man break down and cry on the mic, this is the episode for you (totally joking lol...) Kylon extrapolates some valuable lessons from this experience.  Also, head over to successfuldropout.com and look at the show notes for this episode to listen to a song from Kylon's band. 

Kylon Gienger is a serial entrepreneur and host of The Successful Dropout Podcast (listen to my interview here). Kylon left college to become a youth pastor (we had a great conversation on theology before the recording was rolling...I cover it in the intro briefly) and eventually launched several businesses and has one exit under his belt. Kylon has since interviewed nearly 50 successful dropouts, looking to dissect what makes these people -- rarely credential-praisers or those impressed with fancy titles -- tick compared to other high-performing people.

This week Kylon shares the be-do-have paradigm...which will simultaneously blow your mind and give you a brain twister. So basically you might get a headache. But all joking aside, this is a foundational concept. If you get this right, everything else comes a little easier. #bethesource

Kylon Gienger is the founder and host of Successful Dropout- a podcast where he interviews successful entrepreneurs who dropped out of school. A college dropout himself, Kylon has also founded and co-founded multiple companies in the construction, fitness, food service, and online education industries. He is passionate about building great business, building beyond business, and helping others to do the same.

Kylon shares three lessons on purpose, productivity, and preparedness. Sign up at Audible.com and get your first audiobook for FREE by going to Successfuldropout.com/book

Kylon shares a simple concept: the more novel experiences you have, the longer you will perceive your life to be. 

Teliah is the owner of Renu Hot Yoga, NUYU Juice Bar, and the host of The Balancing Act Podcast, where she interviews women entrepreneurs on balancing personal and business life. Aside from those three, she coaches personal clients on developing healthy habits and yoga practices. She loves every joy, opportunity, challenge and growth moment that comes along with being an entrepreneur and especially loves working alongside her husband, Kylon. She loves being outside with her family and looks forward to building their dream home in the mountains of beautiful Washington State so she can snowboard and work from home every day. What you will learn in this episode: How Teliah started her Yoga studio How to find the right people for your business How to recognize the right person - the one that's the best fit for your business For more click here

In This Episode:  Find out why being wealthy is not all about the zeros Discover how accidental entrepreneurship led to two successful businesses at 27 years old. Explore how a digital detox on a daily basis can change your emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing. Hear two tips to break your cellphone addiction. Guest: Teliah Geinger Teliah is the owner of Renu Hot Yoga, NUYU Juice Bar, and the host of The Balancing Act Podcast, where she interviews women entrepreneurs on balancing personal and business life. Aside from those three, she coaches personal clients on developing healthy habits and yoga practices. She loves every joy, opportunity, challenge and growth moment that comes along with being an entrepreneur and especially loves working alongside her husband, Kylon. She loves being outside with her family and looks forward to building their dream home in the mountains of beautiful Washington State so she can snowboard and work from home every day. Traci Long DeForge Produce Your Podcast

Kylon Gienger took a $1000 investment and turned it into multiple employees at the age of 23. Some mistakes in that business led to near bankruptcy.  He openly shares that experience in full detail.   He made a come-back with more clarity, focus, resilience, and wisdom.  Through owning multiple businesses, Kylon speaks about the roller coaster ride of success and struggle as an entrepreneur.   His Podcast, Successful Dropout, is to change the perception of dropouts. These are self-directed, successful learners who don’t thrive in the traditional educational system .  Outliers.  Innovators.  Rebels.   People who dare to dream and live by that dream.       Kylon can be found HERE Linked In:  HERE Facebook:  HERE Twitter:  HERE Instagram:  HERE   Kylon’s Recommended Resources:   How to Stop Worrying, Start Living by Dale Carnegie 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss   The Lean Startup The Side Hustle Podcast Most popular podcast on Successful Dropout   My mission is to help serve YOU, my listeners, so please submit questions to admin@amycannatta.com. Want to learn how to transcend the daily grind and tap into your most UNSTOPPABLE self? Click here to download the Relentless Resilience Guide and Workbook. www.amycannatta.com/rr   If you love this podcast, I would be so grateful for a rating and a review!   For more information about how I can help you build, grow, or scale your business and be more successful in life, visit http://amycannatta.com/ To inquire about private consulting and coaching, click here to fill out an application. http://amycannatta.com/discovery-call/

Kylon Gienger is a serial entrepreneur and the creator of The Successful Dropout Podcast. Since dropping out of college during freshman year Kylon has founded and co-founded companies in the construction, fitness, food, and online education industries. Seeing the ineffectiveness of traditional education and the rise of amazing alternatives, Kylon set out to create the ultimate resource for young people considering leaving college, or skipping it altogether, and so The Successful Dropout was born. Covered in this episode: - Kylon's morning routine - How homeschool pushed Kylon towards entrepreneurship - Entrepreneurship lessons from youth ministry - Is kidnapping a wedding tradition? - How leaving the Navy launched Kylon's entrepreneurial journey - Starting and growing a painting company, a hot yoga studio, and a juice bar - Systems and risks for hiring employees - Deciding to branch out from one business into other businesses - Why Kylon started The Successful Dropout - Just in time learning vs. just in case learning - What's next for The Successful Dropout If you are a fan of the show, make sure to leave a review on iTunes. Show notes, including all links mentioned in this episode, are available at isaacmorehouse.com All episodes of The Isaac Morehouse Podcast are available on Soundcloud, iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher