Podcast appearances and mentions of will what

In 2006, Angie and Will Scott, COO and CEO and co-founders, started Search Influence as a technically oriented search, social, and digital marketing agency, supported with tracking and attribution, and demonstrating value across very complex systems. Challenged at the beginning to find people with the needed skills, the agency outsourced its production work and developed an intensive training cycle and “robust” documentation for new hires. Will claims that, to this day, the agency's internal-facing superpower is training and education.  For the agency's first six years, SEO required seeding web content with relevant keywords. Will says that today's content has to be more nuanced . . . that SEO is now “more about meeting the customer where they are in the buyer's journey.” The agency concentrates on three verticals: midmarket healthcare (driving patient visits to individual practitioners on up to regional medical centers and, on the practice side, generating more leads), higher education, and tourism – market segments where the strategically complex buyer's journey is characterized by “multiple systems between a customer's first interaction with the brand and actually closing the sale.” When the real estate market crashed in 2008, two years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and decimated the region's small businesses, the national economy took a downturn. New Orleans was still rebuilding. Tourism was booming. Medical and – in particular, elective medical – remained strong. At a time when many companies were failing, Search Influence . . . grew. Unlike many agencies, Search Influence does not try to “do it all.” Outsourcing work that is not in its areas of concentration (SEO and paid advertising) and bringing on partners to provide services complementary to its quantitative efforts keeps the agency focused and nimble. Client websites are built by a cadre of website development partners. Early on, the agency built a process, an internal editorial team, and platforms to manage external freelancers who produced as much as 10,000 pieces of content monthly for a large direct-to-SMB digital marketing company. That creative management arm is still in place today. Angie questions whether it makes sense to try to develop “side skills” when the agency can so easily partner with “top talent.” With its practice built around content, the Search Influence developed an internal tool, UpScribed, that morphed into an external-facing platform. Through UpScribed, other marketers (including those who are not Influence clients) get direct access to the Search Influence content team. When Covid “shuttered” a lot of New Orleans's small businesses, the purposely overstaffed agency went to work for its clients . . . for free. That's taking a rare, long-range view on things. The same clients they keep afloat today will be tomorrow's even-more-dedicated customers. In this interview, Angie, who has an accounting background, talks about maintaining organizational balance. Will identifies a valuable list of free business development networks and ecosystems available to help small enterprises. They can be found on their agency's website at: searchinfluence.com or on their blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I'm joined today by Angie and Will Scott. They are the COO and CEO and co-founders at Search Influence based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Welcome to the podcast, Angie and Will. ANGIE: Thank you. We're excited to be here. WILL: Thanks, Rob. ROB: It's a treat to have you here. We don't always get a little tag team like this, so that is an exciting change of pace. Why don't you start us off by telling us about Search Influence and what the agency's superpower is? WILL: Search Influence, Angie and I started it together more than 15 years ago. We started rather technical. I had come out of a position where I was very focused on SEO, so that's what we started with. Over the span of time, though, what we have decided our internal-facing superpower is, is training and education. Because we started in 2006, it wasn't really easy to go out and find folks who had the skills we needed, so we did do a lot of training. And to this day, we remain robust documentation and a training cycle for all new hires. Externally, we feel like the things that we do really well are still more in the technical realm. Our name is Search Influence, so search is a big part of where we spend our time. But we've also spent a lot of time thinking about tracking and attribution and how we actually demonstrate value across very complex systems. Our top verticals in which we work are healthcare, higher ed, and tourism. And in almost every one of those cases, there are multiple systems between a customer's first interaction with the brand and actually closing the sale, in whatever way that happens. ROB: I can certainly think that through. We're talking about healthcare – what part of healthcare? Obviously, it's a journey. We're not going to the ER here. What segment of the healthcare market is representative, would you say? WILL: Our focus has historically been on the midmarket, so think a handful of practitioners up to say a regional medical center. Very much about driving patient visits, and on the practice side, more leads. ROB: This is I'm coming to an area, I'm trying to figure out where I should go, or it might have an existing doctor and it's an evolution over time of where my loyalty is going to go. There's a journey there. There's a journey in travel. All of that makes sense. I can certainly see – you talked about 2006; there was I would say a lot of science around SEO, and it has evolved into art and science, to an extent. How have you thought about evolving your team and the documentation as there has become more of – I would almost say Google and the search engines have moved more towards searcher satisfaction with what they found, which is kind of an art. WILL: Yeah, in the early days, say 2006 through probably 2012-2013, it was easier to be a little more heavy-handed, to think about content primarily as a vehicle for keywords to correlate to what people were searching for. I think in the time since then, we and any company that tries to practice SEO in a serious way have learned that the content actually has to be more about meeting the customer where they are in the buyer's journey. And that's a much more nuanced piece of content than one where you're trying to have an appropriate keyword density and blah, blah, blah, and highly targeted internal links and that kind of thing. ROB: Right on. You started in 2006; a few years in, we hit a weird economic spot and the market of search was rotating at that time as well. How did you think through and evolve through that transition to emerge healthy on the other side? Maybe it was always healthy to an extent, but I don't know. The tourism thing was probably down a little bit if you were in that market at the time. WILL: New Orleans is interesting on a lot of levels. In 2008, when everybody else was suffering from the real estate market crash, we were booming because it was two years after Katrina. Where everybody else was seeing people drop the keys off at their mortgagor and walk away, we were still in a heavy rebuilding phase. Also, with the focus on medical, particularly elective medical – that was really a heavy piece for us at that time – there wasn't much of a downturn. We actually grew through that recession. ANGIE: Right. Our largest focus, though, at that point was medical. We were – I don't know, lucky or saw something coming, I don't know. WILL: I prefer brilliant. [laughs] ANGIE: [laughs] We almost felt bad at that time, I remember. It's like when your baby is sleeping through the night and no one else's is and you don't want to say that they are. I think we would talk about if somebody asked, but we just didn't talk about it because we felt bad. It was like, “We're growing.”  ROB: And that's been an echo for this year for a lot of people. This past year, this COVID, 15-16 months now, some people – restaurant industry, they're just scrapping to get by. A few restaurants figured out how to nail takeout and delivery, and they're doing better than ever. And then some folks in the digital realm are just doing great, growing. But it's hard to talk about. WILL: Totally. Sadly, we are not among them, because we did have a bunch of revenue in tourism and attractions leading into COVID. ANGIE: But they're starting to come back as the recovery comes. WILL: Yeah. And we did this thing where because we were intentionally overstaffed – we didn't cut nearly as much as we should have if we were trying to meet revenue. So we had staff and we reached out to our customers who were paused because of budget, and we created this thing – our core values spell CHARGE. We marketed it as the “Recharged Fund.” We put our team to work for free for those clients who were effectively shuttered because of the pandemic. ROB: That's a pretty bold move, and I wonder, when you first started doing that, how long did you think it was going to be before things echoed back, and when did you start wondering again? WILL: A handful of weeks. [laughs] ANGIE: Like everyone else. WILL: I was actually out of town and Angie was responsible for shutting the office down on March 13th. I don't think at any time until many, many weeks later we thought that it was going to be more than a handful of weeks that we were out of the office. ROB: That was a rude awakening for a lot of us. “Oh wait, this basement setup I'm in? This is a lifestyle.” That's when I went back to the office and I grabbed some tables and chairs and I said, “Okay, this is going to be for real. I'm bringing home a screen, I'm bringing home anything I want to see for the next few months.” ANGIE: Right. I think everybody had that happen. We did the same thing. We plotted out a very careful schedule for everybody to be able to come one by one and meet me at the office to get any equipment or furniture or anything that they needed so that they could set up some sort of workspace once you realized this may be life. [laughs] ROB: If we rewind a little bit, we mentioned earlier that you are co-founders. Talk about the journey that let you both into a place at the same time where you're like, “Hey, let's start Search Influence and drop whatever we were doing before.” What did that jump look like? WILL: At that time, we had come from working together – we actually met at work, which is I think part of what makes it so effective for us. But what happened was we found ourselves at the beginning of 2006 still in that Katrina hangover, if you will. I had actually just exited another company, and we were looking for what we were going to do next. We had the good fortune that Angie and I don't have the same skillsets. Angie is a businessperson. She has a degree in accounting and has spent her whole career in that side of the businesses, whereas I, oddly enough, have a degree in architecture, but I've spent my whole adult career on the more creative and development side. We saw this opportunity, especially post-Katrina, that there were a lot of small businesses that were decimated. It actually wasn't too much unlike right now, except that the infrastructure didn't exist for these companies to go online as they had to after Katrina. Angie's family runs a chiropractic clinic, and we saw them as sort of a prototype. They had been located in a place called Chalmette. They were the Chalmette Chiropractic Clinic. Chalmette is a New Orleans suburb that you really don't hear enough about in the context of Katrina, but it flooded from two directions, and one of those directions came through an oil field. So it wasn't just wet; it was wet and oily. We really had to restart their business online. For a little while, the Chalmette Chiropractic Clinic was practicing out of our garage. And then, because it was 2006, we were able to build their brand rather quickly online, rebuilding them as New Orleans Chiropractic and ultimately the Maple Street Chiropractic Clinic. ANGIE: And making sure that their patients could find them. At that point in time, it wasn't just about cellphone service and so forth. People were searching online for where did they go, where did they set back up. Thankfully, Will had exited; I still had my current role, an accounting and HR role at a business, so we were able to not only have the time, because I had moved into consulting, but also have the funds and also the time to really get it going and truly focus on the business between both of us. I think we were lucky and we also had an agreement that we would only start a business that didn't require going out and finding investors or getting loans. So we were able to get it going just between the two of us and devote everything we had to it. ROB: What sort of business were you working in together when you met? WILL: That business morphed over the time that we were there. It was originally a website business, and then we moved into online Yellow Pages. You remember Yellow Pages, right? ROB: I do. I sure do. WILL: We actually put them online so that they looked like the book, which was –  ANGIE: Weird. [laughs] ROB: It reminds me a little bit – I had a friend in the agency business who exited his agency, and what they used to do was take the corporate earnings reports and he would put them on CD-ROMs and make it look just like the real thing, but on a CD-ROM and maybe a little bit interactive. He built a good business of it. So you can never underestimate what that looks like. You can see how that would lead adjacently, then, to the search side where you would have some of those technical chops of how to do that right. I can see the transition there, for sure. ANGIE: Right. WILL: It really was. I remember having a conversation with a guy who was at Yellow Pages. It was shortly after I'd exited that business and I was thinking about maybe going to work for them, and I said to him, “What's your biggest priority for these phonebooks?” He said, “Anti-scraping technology.” He turned it around and asked me the same question: “What would be your biggest priority?” I said, “Making our data as accessible to Google as humanly possible.” So clearly, I didn't get that job. ROB: Yeah, there's a little bit of a strategy delta there. But somehow those businesses managed to wander around. I knew some folks here a few years ago who were working for YP.com, which is YellowPages.com. I don't know if they're in there selling to car dealerships and TV stations or what they're doing, but those businesses remain around. There was obviously at some point a step where it made sense, Angie, for you to join full-time as well. What did it look like when you started growing the team? Who did you need to join? At some point I'm sure it came from “We're doing this, we're not taking investors, we're not taking on debt” to “Hey, this is kind of a good business. We can grow it.” ANGIE: Right. If I had to guess, looking back, I maybe spent six more months consulting within the other company. Having two of us full-time devoted to it was not necessary when you only had – we weren't even employees; we weren't even getting paid. So once we started having employees, you start to have to build all the processes, the handbook, the payroll. I was bookkeeping sitting at night for an hour, no big deal, super easy. But once we started having employees and growing that side of the business, that's really when I think it took over for me. Our first employee was actually somebody who stepped in and worked with Will really closely on what we now would look back and probably call account management, because it was strategy, and then we had – at the time we were outsourcing all of our production work. They would basically strategize with our production teams outside of the company. ROB: Got it. That's an interesting little strategy there. Different people still recommend, even at scale, having different percentages of the work go outside the firm and then have some burstable capacity outside of there. I think probably one part of your journey where you've had to make a lot of decisions is what to add and what not to add. You mentioned you're in three verticals now, but you could be in 12 or 20, and there's probably some services you've added over time and some you haven't. How have you navigated that decision of “We're going to add this line of service; we're not going to add this line of service. We're going to add this vertical; we're not going to add this vertical”? How have you navigated the temptation to do everything? WILL: I think it was about 10 years ago that I coined the phrase, “If we really want to lose money, we'll take a website client.” The thing is, there's a very different skillset there. What we do instead is we have partners that we work with to build websites at different scales for different clients if they need them. But the things that we do really, really well are much more quantitative. We also developed a practice around content, so much so that we built an internal tool that we ultimately turned into an external-facing tool that we call UpScribed. It's a platform that other marketers can use to have direct access to our content team. We had a period in time where we were the backend for a company that has been acquired – and they may still have the same name – Yodel, who was one of the big direct to SMB digital marketing companies probably between 2007 and 2013-2014. We were doing as much as 10,000 pieces of content a month for them. ROB: Wow. WILL: As you can imagine, we didn't employ the writers and editorial staff to do all of that, so we built a process where we had an internal editorial team and platforms to manage external freelancers for the actual creative of that. ANGIE: That we will use today. WILL: Yeah, that we still use today. And UpScribed has clients using it external to Search Influence as well. ANGIE: Because it turns out that is an agency problem. [laughs] Which is probably not a surprise to anyone. I think right now – it's funny; I was actually chuckling inside my head that you maybe were a fly on the wall in the last few weeks, because we've been discussing literally writing out the services that we are going to spend all of our focus and time on. We do quarterly planning, we do annual planning. These are the services that we should be planning around, and that's SEO and paid search. Sorry, SEO and paid advertising. I have to get my words right. Then those other services that we do still offer, like website builds and PR and so forth, we would find really good partners if we don't already have them. A lot of it we already have a great partner for. And to your point of what things we outsource, we outsource and partner with different people who are really good at that stuff. There's people out there who are very good at video production. Why would we build that? That would be silly, because there's some really great video production companies out there that we can use, and use their strengths. WILL: And it turns out that somewhere in the last decade, people have forgotten how to do SEO. I think as everybody's gotten on the whole inbound content marketing bandwagon, we've forgotten the basic blocking and tackling of SEO. Oftentimes, we'll come across a site that has great content that's completely inaccessible to search. I think of myself as having grown up in SEO because back in 1999, we were using GoTo.com to try to figure out what keywords we were going to stuff into the metatags. So really, for us, when we think of the things that we've trained our team on historically and where we feel like we're adding a lot of value, it's in those places that are technical and quantitative and ultimately that we're able to demonstrate very good return on those investments because of that tactical focus. ROB: Has there ever been a service area that helped teach you some of these lessons? Like you dabbled in it and you realized – maybe it was websites, maybe there was something else. Sometimes our eyes get a little bit big for our appetites and we say, “Oh sure, let's do that too,” and then we get our hand smacked one way or another. ANGIE: I think maybe it wasn't services and it was more so certain clients, probably, that led us down “Yeah, we can figure out cross-domain tracking for this and that,” and then you get into it and you're like, whoa, this was a much bigger thing than we thought it was. But then you're there and you've got to figure it out. So I think it was probably more the client side that drove us down some of these more technical areas. ROB: That makes sense. If we broaden that a little bit, what are some bigger picture lessons you've learned along the way that if you were picking up the phone to yourself 15 years ago, you'd be like, “Hey, you're going to want to do this. Don't do that. Do this differently”? WILL: This is one of those things – and I think time and maturity allow you to really look at these things in the right way. Almost all of those lessons helped us to better understand the kind of company that we want to be. A great example is we spent about five years with a single reseller representing way too much of our business. The kind of work that they needed was much more fulfillment, much more high throughput work, and it was not as satisfying for our team to execute on. It didn't make for the greatest work environment for some of our team for a while. And then after all that, they decided to take that business in-house, which meant that they were taking a really big chunk of our revenue with them. I think that was a really good lesson learned. When you find yourself with too much concentration in one customer, you've really got to get busy making sure that you're doing the business development work that makes them not so monolithic. I think anybody who's ever worked with customers knows, when a customer comes to you and says, “Hey, I want to give you five times as much money,” you don't say, “Hey, sorry, we can't take that because that would screw up our customer concentration.” ANGIE: Right, because a lot of people do talk about that. They say, “Don't let a single customer get to X percentage of your revenue.” It's like, don't let them? So, say no? Who's going to do that? No one's going to do that. So really, the answer is not that. It's when they offer that, you go and you find more of that in other clients. ROB: Notoriously – I'm here in Atlanta, and one of the bigger agencies here for a good while has been Moxie, and they're owned in a holding company now. But when they were acquired, at least if the street reports are to be believed, they had 200 or 300 people and 70% of their business was Verizon. Every time a new iPhone launched, they had to do all the in-store collateral, just fire drill. Are you going to say no to that? You've got 150 people you can put on the payroll to serve this client. You figure out how to grow out of it. I think what is often the case with some of these reseller, these channel relationships, these subcontract relationships, is sometimes they're selling a deal that you haven't quite figured out how to sell yet. Was that your experience? Or did their business look a lot like business you were bringing in yourself? WILL: It actually didn't look like the business we were bringing in ourselves. In fact, we found ourselves with two account management teams, one that was serving our direct clients and one that was serving this reseller. And there were a couple of other smaller resellers as well, and their lived experience day to day was very different, and their understanding of the work that we did also was very different. So it was hard to move somebody from that partner account management team to the direct account management team or vice versa and have them be Day 1 ready. ANGIE: The reseller was selling packages because you could sell them – you didn't have to understand everything. If you have a large sales team, it is much easier to hand them a package that says, “This is what you're getting on this month in Month 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,” whatever it is. It was the same work over and over, whereas our direct clients were much more about the marketing funnel and creativity and so forth. ROB: So even some of those clients may have been – would it be fair to say they were a little bit smaller where the direct engagement might not make sense? Was there a delta in deal size, or was it just a matter of the relationship? WILL: I think generally speaking, those that were coming in through our reseller partners were smaller than we would've approached directly. ANGIE: Yes. WILL: They were much more true SMB. The other thing that we talk about as an opportunity and that we try to tell new business owners about when we encounter them is that we didn't know how many services were available for small businesses when we started this up. Things like SBA's Small Business Development Center and all of the different networks and ecosystems. We literally had a meeting with one of those organizations, the local big entrepreneur ecosystem entity, and we sat down with them and we were like, “Hey, you guys are doing great things here. We'd love to get engaged. How can you help us out?” As we were talking to them, they started asking us questions like, “How many people do you have? How much revenue do you have?” At the end of the conversation, they were like, “You seem like the kind of people who could really help us out.” ROB: [laughs] Wow. WILL: Yeah. Not the plan. But I think there are so many of those services available that smaller entrepreneurs who are coming up in that classic startup ecosystem don't really have a sense of. ROB: What are a couple more of those that you would say someone should at least take a look at and not miss out on? Maybe New Orleans driven, maybe more national in scope. What should people pay attention to? ANGIE: Later on – probably much later on, I went through the 10,000 Small Businesses program, I guess you would call it. It's put on by Goldman Sachs, and I would say that's a really good one. And it is everywhere. They're all over the place. They do a really great job of walking through – you don't have to go there with questions. They assume you don't know anything and you're going to learn it in the classes. So that's a really good one. WILL: I was going to say we have a number of purpose-driven organizations that I think are opportunities as well. There's one called the Good Work Network that tends to work mostly with smaller businesses primarily in marginalized areas, and I'm sure that there are sort of sisters around the country. There's one called Vet Launch, which is focused specifically on veteran entrepreneurs. I would say that there are going to be dozens of these, and if you can find one that you can plug in consistent with their affinity, the resources are going to be invaluable. ROB: That's a great thought, to think about plugging into the affinity. It creates that extra link. Sometimes it's hard to ask for help, it's hard to ask for mentors, it's hard to ask for advice. Sometimes that linkage can be a relationship you incubate over time, but it sounds like a great shortcut you're talking about there, about navigating through a shared interest. That's a really great thought there. Angie, Will, I'm sure when people want to find Search Influence, I'm sure they can search for you and find you pretty quickly. But if people want to connect to you, how else should they go about finding you, connecting with you, and keeping track of what's next for Search Influence? WILL: Our website, searchinfluence.com, and our blog are really great places to start. We are pretty active as a company on Facebook and LinkedIn, and Instagram as well. Those are all great places to connect with us. ROB: It's not to be missed. LinkedIn in some ways seems to continue in effectiveness, even though – you probably have this worse than I do – the random connections. I don't know how you handle them. I get a lot more than I'd like to get, I'll put it that way. WILL: What's funny is that I've been getting a lot of them – a lot of my random connections lately have actually been somewhat relevant. So if I do choose to connect with folks, I'll say, “Hey, I connected with you because I'm interested in this thing that's in your bio. I'm not a buyer today, but I wanted to have you in my list of connections.” ROB: Nice. WILL: Especially when you're working B2B. When we're approaching folks who work in higher ed or who work in hospitals and health systems, they're on LinkedIn and they're paying attention. So from a cold outreach to start a conversation perspective, I find LinkedIn to be the most effective. ROB: Makes so much sense. Angie, Will, congratulations on building, growing, sustaining a meaningful business through making it through some challenging times and some good ones. Thank you for sharing your journey with us. It's really helpful. I think it's motivating, and there's great little tips all along the way to learn from. Thank you so much for sharing. ANGIE: Yes, thank you for having us. WILL: Yeah, Rob, thanks for having us on. I was glad to be introduced to your podcast because in prepping for this, I came across a number of episodes that I thought were really useful. ROB: Well, thank you. We all need to get outside our head sometimes, and that's part of it as well. Thanks for coming on. Be well. ANGIE: Thank you. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

⌁ Music Select Away for Too Long - Torii Wolf - 0:00 前言 04:17 Will葛格護照被英國移民局弄不見？ 07:32 特斯拉前陣子股價掉到500多美金的時候有All in嗎？ 09:36 有辦法接受自己的另外一半是成人影音的明星嗎？ 12:52 社群推出全新單元：Will What's going on 幫大家更新全球熱門時事 15:57 不要忘記！除了英國留學生活還有Will Walker日常跟WAKETHEFUP YouTube頻道呦～ 21:32 特斯拉投資群組，大家有興趣嗎？ 26:35 Will葛格畢業後會回台灣當牙醫嗎？ 27:54 英國Glasgow搬新家？ 32:09 Podcast暫停更新？ 35:30 鳥事分享： 礦機價格該如何定義？ 38:41 以後挖不到以太幣？ 40:01 台灣之光圓剛提供支援4K的webcam 超棒！ 42:09 礦場的定義？小型礦場預算就要兩、三百萬！？ 45:05 Will這次回台灣的體悟，開了一間影音公司？ 50:19 每個人都該有獨立判斷的能力：CNBC - 官方 Instagram｜wwakethefup 官方 Facebook｜https://reurl.cc/Z75Njg Will's Instagram｜willwalker96 Vivi's Instagram｜voffair ✉️ 合作請洽: wwakethefup@gmail.com 贊助鼓勵: https://pay.firstory.me/user/wakethefup Powered by Firstory Hosting

Tuesday's #OTBAM podcast - Rugby with Ruaidhri O'Connor, Football with Mark Lawrenson, Phil Egan and John Duggan, plus the directors of the new Pele documentary and Paul Kilgannon on keeping kids active. Timestamps below. Catch OTB's sports breakfast show LIVE weekday mornings from 7:30am. - 01:00 - LIVE with Eoin and Will - What does the UK re-opening plan mean for Irish sport? - 13:00 - Sports Bulletin and Football - Phil Egan - 22:00 - Rugby with Ruaidhri O'Connor. - 45:30 - Sports Pages - 46:20 - Merseyside fallout, West Ham ruling London, European Super League - Mark Lawrenson - 1:09:10 - Sports Bulletin and Spurs - John Duggan - we hear from Vera Pauw and Mike Catt! - 1:22:30 - Keeping Kids Active - Paul Kilgannon of Carver Coaching. - 1:44:00 - Directors of the Pele Documentary! Have you got anything for the OTB AM agenda this week? Let us know in the live comments or Whatsapp the show at 087 9 180180, or email AM@offtheball.com! SUBSCRIBE and FOLLOW the OTB AM podcast. #OTBAM is live weekday mornings from 7:30am across Off The Ball, in association with Gillette | #MadeOfWhatMatters

Dr. Wayne Grudem joins Michael to talk through difficult questions we may have or face in our Christian lives. These questions stem primarily from Dr. Grudems new booklets: What the Bible Says about How to Know God's Will & What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and end-of-life decisions. Click Here for timestamps for each question asked and answered. Our thanks to Dr. Grudem for sharing his time and wisdom!

Who Can Contest a Will? --------------------------------------- What is Estate Planning? --------------------------------------- We do estate planning. We do probate. And we do it well. Our firm rests on three core pillars: 1. Family protection 2. Family opportunity 3. A plan that works when it’s needed If you need estate planning or probate help, we should talk. The easiest way to do that is to click the link below and choose a date and time that work for you (over the phone or in person). https://www.buckeyeestateplan.com Scott Hoberg is the co-owner of Dever Hoberg LLC. He created it with one goal - help YOU live a great life and leave a great legacy. You’ll find information here on estate planning, probate, revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, life insurance trusts, charitable giving, wills, trusts, power of attorney, medical power of attorney, trustee selection, and everything in between. ----------------------------- How to find me out there in the world...  Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/DeverHobergLLC/ LinkedIn = https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotthoberg/ Website = http://buckeyeestateplan.com

Why Do You Need a Will? --------------------------------------- What is Estate Planning? --------------------------------------- We do estate planning. We do probate. And we do it well. Our firm rests on three core pillars: 1. Family protection 2. Family opportunity 3. A plan that works when it’s needed If you need estate planning or probate help, we should talk. The easiest way to do that is to click the link below and choose a date and time that work for you (over the phone or in person). https://www.buckeyeestateplan.com Scott Hoberg is the co-owner of Dever Hoberg LLC. He created it with one goal - help YOU live a great life and leave a great legacy. You’ll find information here on estate planning, probate, revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, life insurance trusts, charitable giving, wills, trusts, power of attorney, medical power of attorney, trustee selection, and everything in between. ----------------------------- How to find me out there in the world...  Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/DeverHobergLLC/ LinkedIn = https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotthoberg/ Website = http://buckeyeestateplan.com

What is a Will? --------------------------------------- What is Estate Planning? --------------------------------------- We do estate planning. We do probate. And we do it well. Our firm rests on three core pillars: 1. Family protection 2. Family opportunity 3. A plan that works when it’s needed If you need estate planning or probate help, we should talk. The easiest way to do that is to click the link below and choose a date and time that work for you (over the phone or in person). https://www.buckeyeestateplan.com Scott Hoberg is the co-owner of Dever Hoberg LLC. He created it with one goal - help YOU live a great life and leave a great legacy. You’ll find information here on estate planning, probate, revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, life insurance trusts, charitable giving, wills, trusts, power of attorney, medical power of attorney, trustee selection, and everything in between. ----------------------------- How to find me out there in the world...  Facebook = https://www.facebook.com/DeverHobergLLC/ LinkedIn = https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotthoberg/ Website = http://buckeyeestateplan.com

Breakthrough ideas with Will: What is the process of designing the life that God dreamed of you? What does it mean to be co-creators of your life, with God Because we have been saved, we are not just freed from sin; we for living a life of good work. God has a dream. And he … Read More Read More

What's a Will? What's a Trust? Do you need a Health Care Power of Attorney or a Living Will or both? These questions and more answered by our esteemed guest Attorney Ryan Gordon, a lawyer who focuses his practice in the area of probate law. An episode loaded with information and suggestions on how to properly prepare for the final chapter.

James: Hey listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth podcasts, a podcast where we focus on commercial real estate operators across all asset classes. And we like to talk a lot about value at real estate investing. Today, I have Will Crozier from Cap X Ventures who started in multifamily investing starting 2012 and went up to like 7,000 units, almost 350 million in assets under management. Right now, I think he has sold a lot of his assets and he has like a thousand units right now in the Dallas area. Hey Will, welcome to the show.  Will: Hey, James, awesome to be here. Thank you for inviting me.  James: Good. Is there anything that you want to elaborate on your past history and ventures in real estate? Will: I guess, I did about 10 years, single-family just grinding away and then moved from California out to Texas to the DFW area, wanting to do more of the same but quickly realized deal sizes were too small in DFW house. To flip a house out there was 60,000 and I was used to doing a $600,000 houses, so I was going the wrong way around. I looked around and said I need bigger deal sizes so I moved into apartments in a hurry, plugged in with some good people and started my multifamily career about seven years ago. We grew as quickly as we could, partnered up with people, raise capital to syndicate deals and just tried our best to do heavy value-add deals wherever possible. The uglier, the better, basically. James: I love that concept, right? That's where the deep value-add comes in. And I used to do a lot of deep value-adds even though now I'm doing a lot lighter value-add just because of the market cycle. And I know you do very, very heavy, deep value-add and you've started doing larger units. So talk about what are the deep value-add that you have done? One of the largest deep value-add that you have done. Will: I did a project, it was 656 units, just a single property alone, drove that one down into the 70% occupancy range. That was not an extremely heavy value add, it was mostly interior innovations but it was the largest one as far as heavy, heavy like, you know, a war zone type properties that a couple of 200 and 400 units that were just ugly. Even drop those down, purchased at 50% occupancy and pushed it down into the high twenties. I mean, just clean up. It was basically a brand new project when we were done with it but turn the neighborhood around in a major way too.  James: Yeah, I think that's where you make the most money, right? I mean, it's always a real estate. Any invest, at least we walked a game and you took a big risk in that kind of deal. I'm sure that reward also must have been tremendous because there's so much of equity built up, right? That's where the deep value-add or even the value add comes into play. That's where the wealth is created. So tell me about why do you like deep value adds versus the lighter call or yield place?  Will: Sure. Well, when I started in multifamily, I had a little money, a couple hundred thousand dollars but it was nothing to really, really brag about, I couldn't retire on it. I couldn't invest it at 10% interest and have it changed my life at all so I had no choice but to really do big game projects. I needed to really change my game. To change my outlook on life to set myself up and so I could go and invest and make 7% or 9% and I was just like, that's not the station I'm in life. I was raised poor, I didn't come in from a lot of money. I needed to just shift my whole reality. So I only focused on deals where I could make a 100% return or a 200% return. And yeah, there are lots of people's money together and just go, go, go. And so I did that serial 10 31, 10 31, 10 31, and then, other projects around it, I flipped them. I mean, I was in and out of some deals in 13 months, 17 months; just get in there and go hard. Usually, it was about a two-year thing where if you double your money and then double that money again and then double that money again, you start to see the multiplication effect, just go crazy. So I went from almost nothing to a good sum of cash through doing these heavy value add deals.   And you mentioned something that everyone looks at this differently, but risk-reward, I always looked at my deals as not risky because they were in terrible condition. They were rundown, there was no one living in them. So there was really nothing I could do to make the situation worse. Whereas the yield deals, you know, they're really skinny, they're really tight. You jump in there and you make a few missteps and you can drop from 93% to 83% in a hurry. And the way the debt set up, like to me that seemed risky, at least at the time. There are a million ways to look at it, but for me, it's like there's nothing I'm going to do to mess this deal up more. And there were 15 other people bidding on it so I can get out of it if I need to and it's a bridge loan. So to me, at the time it just seemed not risky. It's strange.  James: You are right actually. I mean sometimes people just look at cash flow. They don't really look at the debt service coverage, right? Because on a yield play or Copley, your debt service coverage is so thin, you've got no way to increase your NOI. So let's say you're buying at 1.25, if you're not doing anything, you're just going to service that debt at 1.25 maybe slightly more because the market appreciates to 1.3; whereas on a deep value-add play, you may be buying it less than one DSCR but you are pushing up the NOIs so much to 1.5, 2 X. So in case the market turns, you're not going to come back to one, you've got so much a buffer to play. Will: Right. We start cash flowing it 70% occupancy and it's going and going. And so everywhere you go from there, it's really, really nice. James: Yeah. I mean it's a bit hard for me to do yield place, just because I see it as a risk as well because there's just no buffer there. Question for you--so can you hear me?  Will: Yeah, I can. Will: Because you sound to be so quiet. So, I mean, you went up to like zero in 2012 in multifamily and went up to 7,000 units. You did so many 10 31 and you started selling a lot of it. Right? So when did you start selling a lot of your deals? Will: Well, it became a bit obvious to me writing on the wall, but the tide was no longer with us. You know, the winds weren't at the back anymore. There's still deals to be done. There's always deals to be done. But it wasn't this situation or set up where no matter what I do, I'm going to make lots of money. The heavy value- add deals started getting super rare, hard to get into them. The interest rates started ticking up and that's eroding the value of my property when I'm not doing anything wrong, but I'm watching millions of dollars just get wiped off of the table just because of interest rates, you know? And that goes up and down but that was another indicator. The county started playing ridiculously hard with the taxes and that was another thing. It was just like, I'm watching millions of dollars just disappear and I'm not doing anything wrong.  You know, I'm just this part of the business cycle and its part of the politics of the game. So when I saw some of those things, easing and changing and the rapid competition, especially in DFW, from not only coastal buyers but international buyers, we're selling to people in Dubai, UAE, et cetera. So it's just like this is a really different game than what I entered in '12. And so when I entered in '12, I was always all in, just anything I had pushed it in, tell everybody, put your money in this thing, it's going to go, go, go. When I couldn't be that aggressive anymore, it made me start to just to look around a little bit, what are my options in life? I had accumulated big pilot ships and I don't need to do this anymore. I can easily retire and not do anything for the rest of my life and my kids could share that as well.  So I have to really stop and look at my life; what is it that I want to do? What is my risk tolerance? Am I gonna bust my ass really competing for trying to get 7% return? Or maybe find a way to eke out a 10% return. Or for me, it's just hit pause or at least dial it way back, look at my life, what makes me happy? What do I want to do with myself? Let the market settle down a little bit, let it choose a new direction and then decide, do I want to jump back in with this, push everything back in again or figure out a different strategy? So right now, I'm just kind of observing, taking it all in. If a good deal comes my way, I jump on it. I closed the deal a month ago in Abilene, another 120 unit value-add deals. So I'll grab them, but I'm not gonna run around chasing my tail, trying and forcing to put it together when I don't need to.  James: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy out there right now. Right? I mean, you can do deals in a good market, in a bad market. The acceleration of how much you want to buy on a market cycle like this, maybe slow down. I mean you have to just think about it, whether it's a real deal or not. I think there's just so many people jumping into the game as well, I guess. Prices are being bumped up so much and they are value-add deals, they are deep value-add deals, but a lot of sellers are asking for crazy prices, which means that deep value-add becomes like a yield play.  Will: Yeah, it really is. They're charging you the premium to do all the work.  James: A lot of people are jumping saying, hey, it's a deep value-add or deep value-add but it's actually not value-add.  Will: We were buying it at 13 a door, you know, going crazy and the same deals are trading for 80 and 90 and they're in worse condition than, I don't know, it's just nuts. They're still deals, but frankly, I don't want to dedicate the 80 hours a week that I used to when I don't need to in this market cycle. Like that doesn't make sense for me personally to pursue that right now at least. At least with full dedication.  James: Got it. So are you still positive on multifamily or any other asset classes?  Will: Well, as I said, I purchased last month in Abilene. I'm basically kind of a sponsor in the deal. I raised equity for the deal. I underwrote the deal, I connected it, but I'm more happy to be working with sort of the next generation of deal sponsors, syndicator. If they have holes like equity gaps, I can plug that. If they have some experience things or they're not sure of a specific market, like I was already operating 500 units in Abilene so it's like throw this on there, same management company, it's just stamp, stamp, stamp, repeat. So if there are new deal sponsors who want to want to partner up and follow a similar pattern to what I've already established, that's where I can really add value to another team. I don't want to be out there every day. I don't want to live on site like I used to live on site. I'm just past all that, but I can still work with other people and make win, win, wins across the board.  James: Got It, got it. Got It. Let's go into details of what are some of the deep value-adds that you have done. Not really a specific deal, but when you look at the deal, how do you identify this is the deal for me, I want to really do this deal. What do you look for in that? Will: Well, the dream is, of course, the neighborhood. I'm less interested in the specific property than I am, 'can I invest millions of dollars in this neighborhood and have it mean something?' Have it attract the kind of people that will pay their rent, that won't bring crime, that will be a nice safe, habitable place for people with jobs want to live. So I'd always look at the neighborhood and just blue collars, great. If there are work trucks out there in the parking lot, I'm super excited about that. Of course, then property specific things, love of course pitch roofs or individual HVAC. I'm one of the weird guys that love all bills paid. I made more money on those deals than others; it's a hassle but there's money to be made there for sure. What else? Price Point says a lot. The right price point, jump in there and sometimes that's a really, really high price point versus other neighborhoods, but it's still just comparatively low. I love rundown interior units. We got really, really good at renovating interiors and doing it on the cheap. I imported all my stuff from China. I built a company around that, sold that company last year. But we could do an interior better and cheaper than almost anyone could. And that's how you raise rents. And that's how you get the NOI bumps and that's how you make a mini fortune on every deal you do. So those were sort of the criteria I was looking for.  James: Okay. Okay. I want to go a bit more into the underwriting, but before I do that, why do you like all bills paid? Will: Well, I always feel weird, is the SCC watching me, like lying sometimes, but you kind of get to act like a utility broker in a way, a middleman, so to speak. Where I can buy energy for 6 cents a kilowatt hour and I ended up basically selling it for 12 or whatever and I don't remember the specifics on that. And then they love it because they're not having to put these big deposits and run credit checks and all this stuff. So I get a buffer that makes it really, really simple for them, giving them a cheaper rate than they would be able to get even on their own. So again, it's kind of paving a win, win, win and I'm pulling in more cash each month. I'm kind of controlling their major expenditures, which is going to be their rents, it's going to be their utilities. And so, I kind of get to babysit a little bit. I hesitate to use that word. But if you have the right management team working with them, it's just a bigger rent check coming into you each month so your income is greater and when you go to sell the thing, you realize those gains. James: Yeah. And I think you can use your skills to relate the real utility bills, right? I mean, you can do local pilots and all that, which the upside, you get it right.  Will: Yeah, absolutely.  James: Got It. Got It. So let's talk about underwriting. So when you underwrite a deep value-add deal, what do you really look for? Do you just look for really, really low rent, you know, expenses? Or what else do you look for? I mean, let's talk about that. Will: I've never been one to super focus on expenses. Yeah. Expenses matter but they're generally going to be in the right ballpark unless you spot the obvious, water conservation thing or whatever. I always like to focus on income. Income is a lot easier to control than expenses. So you know, look at the submarket, do your market survey, see are you low and why are you low? Are there other factors besides just you have a terrible interior and amenities package? Just chew that up, underwrite that, you know but otherwise, just to figure out why you're low, see if you can plug that gap in that. I was never shy about leading the market. I would like to be a hundred under and come out a hundred over, you know, and I wasn't shy about getting it because we had a nice product and we always had a great management team. So that was probably my number one criteria is just making sure I'm getting something that I can really push and accelerate rents on. That was a lot easier before. James: Okay. Okay. So definitely income is a lot easier to control, where you can just increase the rent compared to the expenses. I know you do a lot of major rehabs, which needs a lot of materials and all that. So what triggered you to go and start importing materials, to reduce your cost in terms of expenses? Will: I did the first deal without any imports. I learned quickly, that was just like 77 units. But even on something that small, I had a hard time controlling the logistics supply chain. I would deal with AZ Parts Master Nationwide MRO, Lowe's, Home Depot, whoever and they would start delivering me different products as like keep trying to order the same thing. They would change the light fixture or the fan. And then one week it's $45 and the next week it's $62 and this was very, very frustrating. And my projects, I want it to be very uniform, very beautiful, started looking like patchwork quilts. And this one looks like this and this one looks like this and this was on a small deal. So the next time around, I bought 244 units and it was half occupied and I was like, well, I'm going to need about 300,000 square feet of flooring on this deal.  I had one of my partners was a Chinese national and she'd done imports for her own business. She's like, let's get on a plane, let's go. So I was like, okay, let's give it a try. And so flew over there and got overwhelmed in a hurry and made a few bad missteps early on, but corrected and adjusted and moved from flooring into anything else we needed massive quantities of. I remember my 1st container, 40 foot high Q container of fans came in, I think it was like 1400 fans. I'm like, what am I gonna do with this? And then before long, they were coming in monthly. And it was a wild run there for a while, to go from one of my one-bedroom units, I had a down unit and I just shoved stuff from Home Depot and Lowe's into it, to having a warehouse and then buying and renting the warehouse next to that and then two more next to that and buying, you know, medium duty trucks and forklifts. I'm like, what am I doing? But it all just made sense for my own projects and therefore it made sense for other people's projects. And that's I think a good foundation for any business is to solve issues and then let other people take advantage of the job you've done there. James: Yeah. Yeah. I would like to make sure that the listeners know, I mean the amount of hard work that I'm sure really have put in to do all that largest things, is huge. Right? So, it's not simple, but the thing is if you do it, you will get the benefit out of it. And I think when you really want to make a lot of money in real estate, that's the extent that you have to go to because that's where you really make the money when you go to integrate your supply chain. And you hop on a plane and go and solve problems. Will: Your right, James, and thank you for clarifying that. Like it's easy to sit here in a podcast years after the fact and make it seem like it was somehow easy or it didn't take that much. It literally was 80 hours a week. Holidays, weekends. I moved into my projects to really watch them because every penny of my net worth was in these projects. I was controlling tens of millions of dollars of assets and yet I was living on like 2100 bucks a month. That's me, my wife, my kids, couldn't afford anything. I was a paper millionaire and then a paper multimillionaire and yet I couldn't pay for anything and I was deeply in credit card debt, just trying to keep everything afloat. It's humorous to me when people come in and say, I want to do what you do, but they're like a doctor and they're used to like pulling down 400 g's a year and there's like, you probably should just be a passive investor. Forget all about what I'm doing because it's not really going to mesh. You're going to be in poverty for the first four years you're doing this thing.  James: Yeah. I remember when I did my second deal, we did like almost one and a half a million dollars. We did it within one year. And I think that whole idea is you're trying to convert all that capital that you have in your cash for Rehab, you're trying to convert it to NOI. So once it becomes NOI, that's equity. Now the building is much more valuable. So you're basically adding all this sweat equity, your ideas, your business tactic, all this into a NOI. And how skillful you are converting this whole thing into the NOI is where the skill gaps. Will: Yeah. And then if you're really good, you're tempted into a 10 31 exchange so you don't realize any of the equity. And then you go ahead and do it again and you're like, I promise I have some money somewhere [21:37crosstalk]  James: Yeah. I like to refi and take out that money. I least I want to quickly do it, refi it, take out, okay, now I see some cash, cash flow, right? Will: And the taxes are a little nicer in that scenario.  James: Yeah. There's no tax on a refi, right. Even on 1031, yeah, you defer the taxes, but this all tax strategy and the amount of NOI that you created to take out your equity. So of all the deep value that you did, what do you think is the most valuable value-add? Will: What do you mean by that, James?  James: Like for example, let's say you have $1 million to do a project, right? But that million dollars become like 300,000. So what would you go in and focus first? Interior. Exterior. And if it's interior, what would you focus? If it's exterior, what would you focus? Because now you have a reduced budget, right? What do you think is the most important value add? Will: I hate exteriors, they have to be done, but you very, very rarely see any kind of rent increase on exteriors. It's more of a cohesive theme of the property that will give you a rent bump on the exterior, but you can throw millions and millions at roofs, parking lot, siding, like retaining, landscaping, that's going to give you tiny returns as far as NOI. So, of course, I loved the interiors. Flooring is like magic. You put in a new floor and people are immediately amazed by it. I love to put in hard surface flooring. I hate carpet. So I mean, just put in the hard surface flooring, it's easy to turn, it's easy to keep clean. It's a fantastic product. So floors are huge. Appliances, I always bet big on appliances. I almost always went to stainless steel, nice packages; once in a while, I would just make it all black or whatever. But appliances and flooring get you a long, long way on interior renovations. So that's the first thing on all of my budgets. James: Got It. So appliance and flooring. Okay. Interesting. So let's go to the personal side of it. Right? So you sold a lot of your assets and you said you don't think so, I mean the odds are on your side right now in terms of market and you want to take it slowly. If you find the right deal, you would go ahead and do it. But why did you move out of the country? I mean from Dallas to the Philippines.  Will: Could have come somewhere a little closer. Right. So just a little background on that. And when I was traveling to China a lot, I really fell in love with travel and I really also fell in love with Asia. My wife is from the Philippines, so I have a direct family connection here. Spending time over here, I enjoyed it. The speed of life is totally different than the US, it's just in slow Mo. That can be infuriating sometimes, you are like, what's wrong with this place? But it's all those things that are wrong that make it so great at the same time. So I try to just accept it, be patient with it, but also got plugged in with a couple of foundations. One that I'm starting, one that I am a currently a board member on and support in any way I can. It's children's surgical outreaches that for some reason is so rewarding to me. Like I'll just do it until I die. If no one else wants to participate, I don't care. But to see how far a US dollar can go and changing someone in the third world's entire life, entire future. Like what we'll spend on an average dinner out, we'll change the entire outlook of one child's life through one simple surgery that takes basically an afternoon. That blew my mind and it made me reevaluate my own expenses, my own material desires in life.  I just sold my house in Texas. A big stupid, huge, ugly, gorgeous house, and then my cars and all that stupid stuff that I love so much, but just change the focus, you know, and tried to move into something a bit more humble and easy, lower expense so I can divert funds to some of this other stuff that's just so much more rewarding at the end of the day.  James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm from Southeast Asia, I'm from Malaysia. Right. So I know a lot of these lifestyles there even though I don't think my lifestyle was slow. It was really fast as well, but it's just a different perspective in life. Did any of these travels and living in the Philippines or even traveling, do you think it changed any of your perspective towards money? Will: Oh, yes, absolutely. I noticed first, right away when I started traveling a lot internationally, besides just having a hotel to stay in or food to buy, I didn't really ever think about money. It was just weird. Like when I was bored in the US and I was kind of building my empire, If I got bored, bored maybe, if I had free moments ever, I would go on Zillow or I would go on cars.com and I would just browse for whatever the next kind of toy was, the next car. Like, look, what's that house in that neighborhood. There's a beautiful neighborhood, I would love to live there, someday. And it was all just sort of focus on the material, a focus on improving the lifestyle, basically. And when I was traveling, I just never really thought that way and when that started clicking in my head, I was like, I'm really happy when I'm traveling and I'm not focused on really the material at all. It's more learning, experiencing things. It all got cheaper. That was one of the weird things was this much happier, more fulfilling lifestyle was way, way, way, way cheaper than the less satisfying, less happy lifestyle. So that was a big Aha moment for me. James: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, sometimes you look at people who are really poor or living in a very small house or hut, you know, in a poor country, they are very happy compared to some people who live in a very big house with a lot of money. I mean, there's so much commitment, so many issues. You have to make a lot of life choices or you may not be happy, but people who have fewer things, maybe they make fewer choices and they're much happier, right? I mean, end of the day, why do we make money? So to supposedly supposed to be happy, right. So it's just so much of a difference in perspective when you're traveling to that kind of places and you experience different lifestyles. Will: I've heard always that thing where it's just cliche almost in the US and I'm sure you've heard it, where people talk about the people that have nothing. And as an American, when someone says they have nothing, basically that means like they drive a 10-year-old car, either their house is less than 2000 square feet. That's what having nothing meant to m,e until I met people who literally don't have anything. They are living under a leaf house, built out of bamboo and you know, they find an old water bottle to go and haul water from the stream to where they're living that month. And it was okay. They actually have nothing and yet, as you said, at the time they're having the smile on their face and the relaxed nature of it all. And poverty is horrible, it's a terrible thing, especially for health. That's what you watch just get destroyed as people who are aging with diseases but outside of the health, everything else to me seems like they're having a better living existence than most anybody I know in the first world. James: Yeah. It's a completely different perspective when you start to travel, right? And I see people here, sometimes they complain the country is bad. Oh, this is bad. That is not right. This is not right. Well, you have never seen the other part of the world. So it's just surprising for me on when people just don't have that 360 perspectives of how the whole life is. I mean I'm not saying that I have when you have it, but you know when you travel and you go really live in another country, you can see a lot more things which you are not able to see when you are living here in the US. There are so many things that have been taken for granted here.  Will: The opportunities in the US are insane, the low cost. Americans think US is expensive. That is ridiculous. The price of cars and of electronics and of anything and the wide availability of anything you want, it's all cheap and it's quality and it's a variety. And you come in most countries and cars costs double like a BMW in the Philippines or in Thailand or anywhere over here, it costs double what it costs in the US. And it's like the cheaper model and it's pretty crazy. James: Yeah. When I was living overseas in Malaysia, I can never afford a luxury car, have to buy a local car. And even that was really good already. So because everything else was expensive just because the governments like to tax the in parts of the car. And also your pay scale really doesn't jive with the cost of living. Here, the pay scale does compensate for your cost of living. So things are much cheaper here in the US. Will: Yeah. In China, it blew my mind. You have maybe lower level management positions and hotels or restaurants or whatever and you find out that they're earning $400 a month and yet that's what rent costs. Rent is exactly what their income is. And you're like, how does this even work? Like, I don't understand the economics and you go visit one of these homes and you realize there are six people in a really, really tiny one bedroom, you know, 400, 500 square feet and it's not comfortable and it's not nice.  We're were very, very lucky as Americans. My wife just became a citizen last month and a smile on her face to have that blue passport. To enter another country with an American passport is a whole different experience than with our Philippine passport where anywhere you go you need a visa. And getting that visa is not like applying online. It's tax returns. It's like bank statements. It's like health records, shots of full travel itinerary of where you're going when you're going to be there. Like it was just a mess. We're spoiled as Americans. James:  Absolutely. Absolutely. So can you name a few things that you think is the secret success, any secret sauces that you think that you want to share with the listeners? Will: Yeah, I could share a few things that have hugely improved my performance as a businessman, as an entrepreneur, the short cuts per se. Partnering has been huge for me. It's not for everybody, but it's for most people, especially when you're dealing with something like multifamily. I'm by far not the smartest person around, I'm the kind of a simple-minded guy. I don't even have that many skills. I just have the determination to make sure I'm getting deals done to land the deals, to execute. I'm a doer, but I've had to really surround myself with phenomenal partners who understand accounting inside out, who understand books or taxation inside and out, people who are super duper organized. These are big failings that I have in my skillset, my personality. So I've had to bring these folks in and show them that I can do something to add value in their life. And then we partner up. And that's been huge for me.  Another thing that's been huge as I've raised so much capital, I mean my returns in all of this would have been tiny compared to what I was able to do because it was easy to go out after a while and some reputation to raise $10 million or $15 million to do a deal. Without that, my returns would have been a fraction of what they've been. But I built the trust, I built the relationships. I performed for my investors. I did everything I could to make them a lot of money and because of that, I made a lot of money, a portion of everything they made, I also made.  Another thing that I think has just been huge was starting this, I wanted to do it all alone. I was one of these guys that just wanted to read on like Bigger Pockets or like hang out online and just read and I could do it alone. I didn't need anyone's help. I wanted to own it. That would've been a huge mistake in multifamily investing. You can kind of wing it in single family, but multifamily, it's a team sport all day long. You need a hell of a team on your side, on your behalf. You trust each other, you lean on them, you rely upon them. And so team building, not only for my immediate advisors but also for raising the capital. It required me getting off my butt, get out from the computer, go awkwardly, shake hands, go and meet people and it was horrible for me. I hated doing that. I lacked self-confidence. I lacked the thought that anyone would be interested in even talking to me just I was, I was kind of low and slow. You had to just be like, I really need this. I need this to work, I need this to be successful. So I'm going to go and do the worst thing I could think of doing and plant myself at a networking event from 5:00 PM until 10:00 PM and not allow myself to leave. I'm just there, I'm trapped. But no matter what, I got to go talk to people and it was horrible, terrible. The dentist is better, tax is better, whatever. But eventually I started liking people at these things and they started knowing what I was up to and I bought that house or I bought that new apartment complex and how is that going? And loosen my tongue. I got my confidence up, my courage up and before long, I really love going to them because those were my pals, those were my buddies. Now, wherever I went to these different real estate meetups and without that, impossible to do the business, I don't have enough money to take down 10, 20, 30, $40 million deals Like how am I going to do that? I need guarantors, I need KPs who believe in me. How are they going to believe in me? Chatting for a while, talking about my business, bringing them out to my property, sharing a meal or a beer or whatever. And suddenly they're like, yeah, I'll sign on your note with you. Some of these were full recourse loans and they're pledging their stock portfolio on me. Blew my mind. But it was just through being sincere or not hiding stuff, just being a hundred percent transparent with them. And I had people who I never thought wanted to talk to me, betting on me with their signature and pledging their stock portfolio to make me get these full recourse bridge loans done on 50% occupied properties. So that was the long answer, but really, really, really network, partner up if you don't have what you need, raise capital, do bigger deals and go, go, go. James:  Yeah. Yeah. Awesome advice. I think so much of advising golden nuggets in what you mentioned just now. Is there any proud moments in your life that you think, you know, you're really proud of that and one day you're going to tell to your grandkids, you know, when you're really, really old, one proud moment that you think, oh, I'm so happy I did this. I'm very proud of that. Can you share that with us? Will: You know, it's, it's probably the moment, the sort of make or break moment. When I was in southern California and I had a good thing going, I understood how to flip houses. I was making some okay money at it, paying the bills, accumulating. I had more than anyone I knew, but it was 300 grand or something. It was nothing but it was more than anything I knew. So I had a comfortable life and I had a pattern and I had a sort of figured it out and it was really just stepping back and saying, I want more opportunity and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get it.  So I didn't know anyone in Dallas, not a soul, zero people there. I looked around the whole country, looked at Florida, I looked at Arizona and Nevada like anywhere there was supposed to be opportunity and I really zeroed in on Texas as hey, strong economy, great wages, low cost of living, low taxation, they seem business friendly and I just pieced this together off of Internet research. I drove around the country and the old piece of crap, 91 Buick with 200,000 miles on it and I was like, where is it? And I picked Texas and it was really just a twin costs on Dallas. I think I visited there in April and it was pretty that day or something and I just moved there.  So I just loaded up my car with all my junk and then dropped it in a storage facility and lived in a motel six as I tried to figure out what's next, what's the next play. People looked at me like I was a bit crazy, but to me, that was the only move. Like how could I start a business in California? There wasn't friendly for businesses down there. Rent was absurdly high, not only to live but to rent anything for an office space or just to build anything. Costs were really high for real estate. So basically to answer your question, what am I really proud of? I took a leap, a calculated risk. I really calculated a lot. I really studied the thing, but then I made that leap. There was nothing comfortable about it. I didn't have any safety net. I had nothing. I had like six grand in the bank.  I lived, you know, expendable. I had my nugget but that was for business. It was forbidden to touch that. But I had six grand in the bank that I could actually do something with. And, you know, living in a motel six is humbling. Your friends by this point, they are 10 years into their career or five years into their career and they've got the three series beemer and the nice condos sort of by the beach kind of in California. And here's, Will, doing this weird stuff. But I just saw the future. I saw the writing on the wall and I took that gamble and I'm really, really glad I did it. It stacked the odds in my favor, it put odds behind me and I was able to set myself up to use those odds to roll the dice.  It didn't work immediately in Texas. It took several years to get going, but the odds were on my side. So then I just needed to play the game then. And I did and I played it as much as I could. And then it resulted in a fantastic past seven, eight years here.  James: It's a big leap of faith, right? And just so many people are scared to take the leap of fate or they just say, oh, I'm going to do it later. People give so many reasons to make that big jump and it's something that, you know, you have to do it if you have to do it, sometimes you have to make that choice. And is there like a daily habit that you have that you think has contributed a lot to your effectiveness in your success? Will: I guess this will sound a little controversial. I think there's maybe two things. One, I got good at that networking thing I talked about, and so probably more than a lot of people, you will find me out at five drinking a decaf coffee somewhere or grabbing a beer with people that I've never met before. I don't know who these people are, they just messaged me on Facebook. I'm like, okay, that what's happening here in Manila, people I've never met. They're like, you're in Manila. I'm going to be in Hong Kong, I'll meet you. But that's been huge to just keep doors open. Every time you meet a new person, you never know what door that's going to open up and even if they're humble and starting, they have ideas or a work ethic that you want to be part of or some new partnerships or new source of deals, some new source of equity, whatever.  So I do a lot of people are like, are you working? You know, sitting there just kind of talking at a bar or whatever. Yeah, that's been huge to keep some momentum going for me, a little controversial maybe. And then on the flip side of that, I try to stay sharp by every morning waking up and going for a jog and without fail, I've got my earbuds in and I'm listening to some podcasts. I'm listening to some audio book. I'm listening to something that's just drilling further understanding, intelligence into my mind, shifting my perspective. That's been huge for me to not maintain, but to continue to grow and expand my mind and where I'm going to go in the future. That's been huge for me. And the exercise combined with the knowledge is amazing.  James: Awesome. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience, the listeners that you have not shared in any of the podcasts that you think, hey, I should mention this in some podcasts? Will: Interesting question. I think I haven't mentioned this just because it's pretty new in my mind, but it's really easy to get locked into the idea that going from having $2 million to $4 million is going to do something for you. It won't do anything for you. Like you won't even notice. It's so obnoxious that adding $1 million to your balance sheet will go unnoticed, but it gets to that point in a hurry to where you really have to shift and I was lazy about it. It's like, oh, there's another deal. I'll grab this. I'll do this one, do this one. What's really changed my life for the better has been reevaluating, stepping back and saying, okay, literally adding a few more million will go unnoticed to me but what will be noticed for me is I dramatically shift my schedule, how I'm living my life, who I'm interacting with, and that's kept me out of the daily grind of business a lot.  I'm still doing it. I still check in, I still email, I still call, but it's become a third of my day instead of 133% of my day. I do a lot more reading. I'll do more traveling, I'll focus more on cooking or I'm a musician, then I focus on that and this is maybe the wrong topic for a real estate show or whatever. Maybe you frame it how you want, but it's been hugely rewarding for me to make that transition to enjoy life daily. Don't procrastinate life till later. I'm 39 and I feel very, very fortunate to be in this spot now to where I'm expanding and I'm learning and I'm studying language and philosophy and it's making me so much better person than throwing another several million dollars on the balance sheet. So that's a new thought for me. I haven't said it on any podcast but that's really what I'm thinking about right now, a lot. James: Awesome. Awesome. And I have to say thank you to you, Will, because when I started in real estate, when I started doing multifamily, I have a lot of ideas and thoughts and I started writing my own blogs and I think you are one of the one who read one of my blog and you say good things about my blog and I was thinking, huh? Not bad. Will:  I remember that well. I'm like, who's this guy? This is really great.  James: I was like, Huh? Somebody like real, I mean, I think, at that time you were well known in the multifamily space and I was thinking, oh, not bad by somebody commented me. So that's why I started writing more blogs and I say, I need to write a book. English is not my first language but I mean, putting everything that I have in my mind into a book or on my blog helps me a lot because I don't know, for some reason I have to write it down and share it with others.  And especially when you have the knowledge, you know, what's the point of keeping it to yourself. Right? So you have to share it and I'm proud of all your work that you've been doing in with the children's treatment in the Philippines, which is, I think it's very, very fulfilling. I think that's something that nobody can take away from you. I mean, you can lose the money, you can lose the real estate, you can lose your entire life but that's something that, I don't know whether I'm talking for you or not, but for me, it feel like it follows you because that's Karma, right? You do good, things are going to go your way. Do you want to tell the listeners how to get hold of you? Will: Sure. I'm a big Facebook guy, so my id is  Will Crozier. I'm friends with James, but just hook up with me there. Two websites that are relevant for me is capxventures.com. That's kind of my multifamily arm. I am also hanging out @angelcapitalist.com. That's where I put some of my boring, boring blog posts; things that I cook up once in a while when I'm really bored. There's some of that there. How to connect with me is there. Some of the humanitarian projects. I'm also doing some angel investing in businesses that I really believe in. I loved not only real estate but any business, small business or larger so I've been investing in small businesses lately. There's one's called Propelio, maybe some people have heard about it so subscribe to that. Make me some more money, please. It's a great group of free real estate, especially single family educational content. Totally free. They're not selling you anything regarding that. So check it out. They're having a great academy there. I think those are the best ways to connect with me and kind of keep tabs on what I'm up to. And I love people to pitch. So if you have deals that you want to partner up with me on or a business that you need equity sometimes that, usually I like equity, but, yeah, reach out. James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's a clue, guys. I mean, if you want to pitch your business to Will, I mean, I can bet you he can look at financials and quickly tell you whether the deal works or not because it takes a lot of skill to really do deep value -add, and, you know, not many people can do it as well, but I think Will is a really good resource for that. So. All right. Thank you very much for coming on the show and happy to have you here. Thank you. Will: A lot of fun, James. Thanks.

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

Stories from Franchisees & Founders    In this episode, we are with professional athlete and founder of D1 Sports Training, Will Bartholomew.  D1 Sports Training was founded 18 years ago and has sold their 100th franchise. Prior to starting D1 Sports Training Will had two other successful businesses.     Through Will's experiences, he was able to make choices that brought him to where he is now but above all, his passion for what he does made him and his business successful. Erik and Will talk about insights that will open your mind and get you thinking about what you want to grow or do next.   Tune in now and let's join them and get some very good wisdom for our entrepreneurial as well as personal journey.   What we talk about: Introduction for Will Bartholomew Will's experience playing with Peyton Manning Will's entrepreneurial background What is D1 The changes of the business model throughout time The importance of relationships Networking and giving back Having an injury and getting out and finding a new passion Being very specific on what you want Who does D1 want Working with millennials People and their characteristics that stood out to Will What we mention:   D1 Sports Training The Coaches Summit Peyton Manning Chick-Fil-A, Dan Cathy Tim Tebow Chris Paul Al Wilson Energy Buzz book  

All star snubs, Will "What up dog?!" Myers and his progress... or lack thereof, Yates as a possible trade chip, Hayden introduces us to a new face on the farm, and we play a new game called "Ask Ro!"

3PP 29 Curating Your Portfolio New class that launches this month! Gina Lee’s Art Licensing Class: Part 2. She has artwork that she is still making money from, thousands of dollars, that she made in college, that is getting printed on bags, shower curtains, etc. If you want to learn how to do that, check that out at SVSLearn.com! Because Will has his Youtube Channel, does this podcast, and teaches for SVS Learn, he often gets asked a lot to give people portfolio reviews. Handout: A list of 100+ things to include in your children’s book portfolio, at the bottom of the show notes. Portfolio Reviews The main thing that Will will ask people when giving them a portfolio review is: “What type of work do you want to get?” And he will normally get one of two responses: I don’t know, I just want to work as an artist in some illustration market. More specific: I want to do [comics, children’s books, graphic novels, or animation.] Advice for people who don’t know: if you don’t know what market you want to go into, then there is no way you can make a portfolio that will please an art director and make them want to hire you. Art directors are pretty literal. If you think that you are good at rendering, then you may think that you could draw anything well, and that the art director will recognize that because you showed your rendering prowess. That is not the case, you have to show it! It really is so specific. Whatever you show, literally, that’s the thing you will be asked to do. If you have a couple of illustrations with chickens in them, then you may become known as the chicken guy! You as an artist know that if you can draw a human figure well, then you can draw just about anything. But that’s not how art directors see it. Art director’s have to protect their reputation. This is their career and they want to be well known and respected, and someday become creative directors. They don’t want a curveball. They will usually go for the sure bet. You Need a Business Plan Lee often asks the same question as Will: “What type of work do you want to get?” That question says: How are you going to be in business? It drives the image and everything else: who the market is? how the market pays? how you get paid? how many illustrations you have to do in a month? how images are licensed? how the pay structure works? do you know how the business works and which direction you want to go in this business? Etc. This is important stuff to research and know ahead of time. So essentially, when asking, “What type of work do you want to get?” We are asking, “What’s your business plan?” This is a business and you need to have a business plan. If you are at the point where you are trying to get work, it is vital that you understand this. For example: You need to be able to say, “I’m going to work in editorial illustration, focused on these markets..., I want to work with these magazines…., and this is the type of work that they are doing.. Here’s my work and how it fits in there...” And then as a critiquer, we could tell you, “I would recommend, you take these 4 images and make them into post card mailers and send them out, and then alternate them monthly with this email marketing plan…” The more focused and specific you are, the better advice and critique you will be able to receive. A business plan is an evaluation of the current market and your particular direction. Who’s getting work right now? Where is the majority of the work being hired? Are the rates going up or down? Who are your main competitors? What do you have that they don’t have? What’s your competitive advantage? What will help you get hired instead of them? You need to be able to answer those questions. This is a very smart, logical way to approach your work. To the person who says,“I don’t know what I want to do, I just want to work somewhere.”: You can always change it, but you will be treading water if you don’t have a plan. You need to have a definite plan. So let’s get rid of the art side of this for a minute. Let’s say you have a $100,000 and your friend has a business plan that they want to pitch you. So you go and meet them at a cafe and say, “Okay, pitch me your idea.” They say, “I want to open a pizza place.” You say, “I’ve got $100,000 that I could invest in your place. Okay, where’s it going to be? How are you going to compete? What’s your secret?” “Oh, I don’t know.” “How much is it going to cost?” “Oh, I don’t know.” “What materials are you going to need? What’s your advertising plan?”? “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t have an advertising plan.” Would you give that person $100,000? With what we are talking about it’s even worse: “I want to open a restaurant.” “Okay, what kind?” “I don’t know.” We have got to be smarter than that. Artists do that, here is most artist’s 3 Step Business Plan: 1. Make an image, 2. Post image, 3. Sit back and pray that something happens and that they get hired. We’re only half joking. Any other business would die with that model. They have to know their product and their customer. We do have a product. With art, sometimes we get too attached to it, and it is really personal. People can get so personally attached to their work. However, ultimately if you want to make an income from it, it is a product and you have to look at it as such, as a product. That’s what it is and you need to think about, “how much it’s worth, where it’s bought and sold, etc.” There’s nothing wrong with making art but you aren’t going to make a living at it. If you just want to make art for the sake of making art, or just for fun, that’s totally fine and good, but you aren’t going to make a living with it. To The Person Who Wants to Do Everything Sometimes Will still gets the comment, “You keep telling me I need to pick a market to work in, but I just want to work in all of them. I’m just excited, I love comics, I love illustration, I love licensing, I love animation, I just want to get hired anywhere, I don’t care.” Pick one as your main, and then dabble in the other ones. Then if you see success in one of those other areas then maybe you can start to lean there more. Pick the one that you know you can actually make some money at and can support yourself in. Nothing else will exist if you can’t support yourself. You need to have some sort of financial engine to support yourself. It’s like a Venn Diagram, one circle: the thing I’m good at, and the other circle, where there are opportunities. You want those to overlap as much as possible. For example with concept art, The technical side of it is so difficult, but interest is high, but usually a person’s ability to do it is low, and it is also very, very competitive. How many musicians are good at all types of music, how many restaurants are good at serving all types of food, how many karate studios teach all types of martial arts? If you don’t know where you want to go, and you’d be happy anywhere, and art directors won’t hire you based off of your work, then do a focused project to help build your portfolio. For example, let’s say your subject matter is all over the place, you don’t have any sequential art in your portfolio. However, comics, children’s books, and graphic novels are all based off of sequential art. So you create a project, i.e. write and illustrate a graphic novel, it could be a section or part of a graphic novel or a children’s book. It could be as few as 3-5 pieces of sequential art. Do that 3-4 times with a particular market. And then you have a portfolio that could attract an art director. You can focus on classics like your spin on Little Red Riding Hood, something that’s in the public domain, that the art director will recognize and have an emotional connection pre established with that story. Make new images for portfolios, no matter where you are in your career. Do research: i.e. List 5 people or companies that buy this type of work, look at how much these jobs pay, who are the art directors that work at these companies that do this type of job? I.e. Concept board book, go to Chronicle in San Francisco, would start to look at what they had done in the past and art directors that worked on those projects. You are in a sense, preempting what you want to do. You are doing research beforehand to tailor what you want to do. A lot of people do scary stuff but it doesn’t really work for children’s books. Editor, wants to see if you can carry a character from one page to the next, can you draw kids that are cute and appealing, can you draw different ethnicities and genders, can you demonstrate that you can use a variety of compositions, etc? So if you show up with a Friday the 13th Portfolio, it won’t be a good fit for children’s books. Phases of Your Art Career It takes a long time to develop a portfolio. Phases of your art career: Phase 1, “Wow, I can make something look realistic!” Being able to make something look like it is jumping off the page. Phase 2, “Wow, I’m better than my friends and family, I might be able to do this as a career” Phase 3, “Wow, I’m even better than some of my art friends.” Phase 4, “I’m not getting work yet, I need to get some critique.” That’s the stage where a lot of students that come to Will are at. Phase 5, “Man, I have so much work to do to develop a great portfolio” Start to become humbled because they realize where they are weak and where they need to improve. Phase 6, “I need to start publishing my own work, to get seen.” At this stage, a lot of people are really good and have great portfolio’s but aren’t getting noticed yet. In publishing in the last 12-15 years there has been a pretty dramatic change, this has allowed people to skip the line. Before there were basically 2 lines, the authors, and the illustrators. But now a 3rd line has emerged: the author/illustrators. I.e. Mo Willems, Dan Santat. It seems that the other two lines have slowed. While the 3rd line has sped up. It’s cheaper to work with a writer/illustrator. When Lee graduated he had a hodgepodge portfolio. Lee did a set of paintings his senior year of 10 people who set weird world records. But no one really asked him, what market they were for. Lee went to New York with some stuff that was children’s books, his world records paintings”, some landscape paintings, also a series of the Grimm Fairy Tales (darker stuff) that were all done in a children’s style. Basically it was hodgepodge of images that he liked. He is glad that the people he showed work to could see potential in him, and he got some work and found his agent there. Batman Syndrome Batman Syndrome: some people want to be all Batman and no Bruce Wayne. They want to spend all their time having fun, fighting crime, and driving a cool car. But Batman doesn’t exist without Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, spends time in the real world, he foots the bills, and does research, networking, protects Wayne enterprises. All of that needs to happen for Batman to be able to go out and have fun fighting crime. That’s how Jake was at the beginning of his career, he just wanted to have fun doing illustrations, graphic novels, working in animation, dabbling with 3D. But in order to really succeed you need to learn to embrace both the fun art side (Batman) and the less fun business side (Bruce Wayne). That’s what we are asking of you. The fully actualized version of you is the person who can kick butt at art, and also kick butt at business. There is only one Batman, there is only one version of you as a fully developed “Batman”. You may not be there yet, there is no one who can compete with you because you have your own unique style, once you’ve arrived there. To go with the Pizza thing, if you are trying to compete with all of the restaurants in the world, then that is hard to compete. There is this Pizza chain in the South called, Mellow Mushroom, it’s got this giant mushroom everywhere, it’s a very psychedelic feel, the servers wear tie dye, it’s still pizza, but they stand out with their presentation and branding, they attract a younger more hip crowd. As an artist you have a better chance of separating yourself because you have your own unique voice. It takes a while to come up with your business plan, and it takes a while to build your style and the quality of your work up to where you can beat someone out. If you put your head down and work then it’s only a matter of time. It takes a lifetime commitment to being an artist and if you work hard you can do it. Some people come out of school and a few years later they have already bumped people out of line. For others it can take a decade or 2. Recommendation: stop drawing for a little while, not a month or anything like that. Sometimes artists are constantly moving the pencil, and feel a need to keep creating images and posting to Instagram. That’s great to always draw. But back up and ask, why am I drawing? Back up, look at the whole picture, why am I creating art. Do research and try to step back and be a little more informed. Trap with social media, “You need to feed the beast”, ultimately at the end of the day. Sometimes we spend so much time worrying about social media that we miss out on other things. Jake used to struggle with this, and we probably all do in one way or another. What have I created or not created because I spent so much time focused on my Instagram account? Take a step back, take a break from social media, do a dive on business and seeing how business works in illustration Go and see how business works, how it works with illustration. You’re art is going to grow but this business stuff is just as important. Where do you want to be in 5 years, 10 years? Be Deliberate A good example of pencil mileage and working smart is, Piper Thibodeau. She has worked for Dreamworks, Scholastic, and other publishers, it is all because of her daily paintings. But it wasn’t random. It was apart of her business plan and she was very deliberate and did her research. She has been doing this for years now. Pencil mileage is a real thing but being business-oriented is also vital. Sometimes people just create so much and don’t take time to think about and pilot their career. Take Work That Aligns With You and The Work You Want to Do Eventually you will be hired. But sometimes it’s not what you want. How do you decide what work you will take? Will turned down a dream job yesterday, for a board game, they wanted 10 character designs, and they had a small budget, but the deadline was just too tight. He told them if they gave him more of a heads up he would love to work with them another time. Lee has turned down more work than he has accepted. Will has a specific direction right now, SVS. This job would have pulled him away from that. We’re redesigning and reshooting our children’s book class, and expanding the sections, it will have better design, better filming ,better audio, better lessons, Jake and Lee will be teaching a lot more of it. We are going to be rolling this out starting in September dropping one course a month for a year. We will really parse what goes into it. We would like to think of it as the most comprehensive children’s book class in the world for illustrators. Anna Daviscourt, who Lee is working with as her mentor, she’s starting to get work and offers and Lee is helping her parse through everything and it’s easy to decide if it’s worth doing or not by seeing if it fits her artistic goals and style. Making Your Children’s Book Portfolio “Your work is a little too commercial for the children’s book market.” If you get that comment it’s probably because they don’t feel like your work will fit in with the styles that fit with the market. It’s probably a little too slick or cartoony compared to what you might see in children’s books. Want to do children’s books? Spend a lot of time at the library. What are your favorite 10 children’s books? Consume children’s books. Can you imagine a college basketball player who wants to play in the NBA but can’t name any of their favorite players? Go to the library or the book store, make lists of what the best books have in common? What do they not have? You really need to be familiar with the different styles. Will’s best advice, create an amalgam of your top 5 children’s book styles. Animation has a very specific look to it that isn’t a very great crossover, it wouldn’t work as well. There are people who are in this no man’s land, between animation and illustration, they are not really desirable by either industry. Not enough structure for animation, and not enough playfulness or approachableness for children’s books. Mixture of not understanding illustration vs. animation. Usually a student sketchbook, 95% of the sketchbook: faces and heads or bodies. Need character in an environment. And Characters interacting in an environment. Action and emotion that’s probably at the top of Will’s list for all pieces. Especially if you are wanting to focus on narrative illustration. Recently, Will had a portfolio where it was obvious that the first piece was the best piece and there were a lot of awesome things about it that were missing in the rest of the work, it’s time to bring the rest of the work up to par. Will knew a guy, Carry Henry, who redid his whole portfolio in 2 weeks. He went to New York, and the art director, told him that his work looked student and showed him what they were looking for. Carry spent 2 weeks in New York working on a portfolio, in a crappy Motel. He didn’t sleep for 2 weeks and was really serious about getting a job. Have you ever had a time when art was the only thing that you care about for a certain period of time, and you put aside everything for your art career. Have you ever tried that? Go to children’s book publishers websites, they show you what a successful children’s book illustrator portfolio looks like. When you are new, your whole portfolio should cycle every 6 months. Portfolio Perfection 100+ Things you need to include in your children’s book portfolio. Formats and sizes: spot illustrations, vignettes, full page, spreads, room for text, covers Color schemes: full color, black and white, monochrome Ages: adults, teens, children, baby Gender: girls, boys, men, women Race: asian, Indian, Hispanic, Caucasian, African Groups Activities: families, friends, classmates, co-workers Character Consistency: animals, humans, creatures Animals: anthropomorphised: amphibians, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, birds Creatures: robots, dragons, monsters, aliens, ghosts Vehicles: cars, trucks, busses, boats, planes, construction equipment, submarines, space ships Props: household items, garage, kitchen, farm, office, food, bathroom, attic, school, games, toys Environments: interiors, exteriors, modern, vintage, ancient, houses, apartments, land, sea, earth, outer space, dessert, forest, tropical, arctic Seasons and weather: winter, spring, summer, fall, rain, lightning, wind, snow, fog, cold, hot Lighting: morning, noon, evening, night, spotlight, fire, ambient, on camera, on camera hidden, off camera Surfaces: shiny, matte, textured, furry, translucent, rough Action: falling, breaking, sliding, moving fast, running, jumping, flying, rolling, skidding Emotion: anger, excitement, happiness, sadness, fear, confidence, curiosity, love, sleeping, pain Scale: huge objects, tiny objects Camera Angles: establishing, close ups, medium, distant, high angle, low angle, profile, dynamic, POV. Complex Images: multiple figures, multiple objects LINKS Svslearn.com Jake Parker: mrjakeparker.com Instagram: @jakeparker, Youtube: JakeParker44 Will Terry: willterry.com. Instagram: @willterryart, Youtube: WillTerryArt Lee White: leewhiteillustration.comInstagram: @leewhiteillo Alex Sugg: alexsugg.com Tanner Garlick: tannergarlickart.com. Instagram: @tannergarlick If you like this episode, please share it, subscribe, and we’d love it if you left a review! These podcasts live and die on reviews. If you want to join in on this discussion log onto forum.svslearn.com, there is a forum for this episode you can comment on.

The guys open the show with a discussion of the Netflix original Unicorn Store. Jeff reviews Bad to the Bone by Nicki Bennett. Will reviews LaQuette’s Under His Protection. Jeff & Will interview LaQuette about Under His Protection. They find out about the story’s inspiration and how it ties into LaQuette’s other series. LaQuette also shares details on her upcoming Harlem Heat series, what got her started writing romance and details about what she does as the president for New York City’s Romance Writers of America chapter. Complete shownotes for episode 184 are at BigGayFictionPodcast.com. Book Reviews from this week: Bad to the Bone by Nicki Bennett. Reviewed by Jeff Bad to the Bone turned out to be one of those perfect Dreamspun Desires for me. I’m a sucker for second chance romance combined with friends to lovers and this one adds in a bit from the redeemed bad boy trope as well. It all combined to give me exactly the read that I needed. The story kicks off on the eve of a high school reunion taking place in a small Oklahoma town. Alex Morrison has been back in town for several years, taking over his family’s hardware store when his parents needed him to. One afternoon, while working with his sister at the store, they witness a motorcyclist pulled over and it’s soon revealed that the man is Alex’s high school bestie, Ricky Lee Jennings. Alex hasn’t heard from Ricky Lee since he was expelled and sent away to reform school. Alex regretted he didn’t defend Ricky Lee and prevent the expulsion, but he was scared he’d lose his football scholarship if he did. Sparks fly at the reunion when Ricky Lee shows up without a ticket and Alex gets him in as his guest. What unfolds over the coming weeks is the rekindling of far more than a friendship. Nicki does so much with this rather simple set up. Both characters complexity made me love this book so much. Alex is someone I wanted to wrap up in a comforting hug. He does so much for the community that he lives in between serving on the library board, working for Habitat for Humanity, helping out with the high school reunion committee, and anything else he can do to help his fellow citizens. Yet, all he can see in himself is failure from a lost college football career because of an injury, a failed marriage, and even coming back to manage his family business is something he considers a fail because he gave up his dreams of being an environmental lobbyist. Of course, what he’s done is made the decisions that are right in the moment but he can’t see that. Ricky Lee, on the other hand, subverts every stereotype the town has for him. It’s awesome to watch as people who believe they know exactly who he is after ten years begin to see who he has become. He’s far from the young man who was abused by his alcoholic father and just wanted to survive high school. As both relive their high school times and share what they are doing now, Ricky Lee and Alex are drawn back together. Alex, however, is sure this can’t be more than a fling. He’s scared of revealing himself as bisexual to the town and there’s no way Ricky Lee will move back to Oklahoma since he’s got a life in Portland. The wooing that Ricky Lee does with Alex is outstanding. I love a good date and their weekend trip to Oklahoma City is all that. They stay at a boutique hotel, go to art museums and the botanical gardens and eat delicious food. The sizzling sex made the date all the hotter. It showed Alex in vivid detail what life could be like in if he decides to make a go of it with Ricky Lee. The other depth that Nikki weaves into this book is the town Alex lives in. In particular, I liked the local pastor, who is nothing like what you might expect a southern pastor to be. He turns out to be one of Alex’s biggest supporters in being true to himself. We also see Alex’s work with the library, which is a central subplot for the story since Alex and Ricky Lee’s high school nemesis, Odell, who wants to expand his car dealership by buying the land the library sits on. The goings-on with Odell took some wonderful turns that I couldn’t have predicted and I might’ve cheered just a little when everything was revealed and [spoiler alert] Odell gets his. It’s a great ending for a high school bully. There’s a tremendous cast of supporting characters too. Alex’s sister Alana and his best friend, local police officer Samantha, a.k.a. Sam, both nudge Alex in the right direction. Ricky Lee comes to town with Crae, who he introduces as his friend and assistant although many initially think they are in a relationship. I actually wish Crae had had more screen time in the book as they were a fascinating character. Crae and Sam develop a friendship that might be more and I’d love to see a book that explores that. There are also some townsfolk who have interesting reveals to Alex along the way that were incredibly sweet. And if audio is your thing, certainly pick this one up. Colin Darcy is a new-to-me-narrator and boy did he make me swoon with his voice for Ricky Lee–deep, rumbly sexiness. If you’re looking for a great category romance with some very tropey goodness, I highly recommend Nicki Bennett’s Bad to the Bone. Under His Protection by LaQuette. Reviewed by Will. This book literally starts with a bang when one of our main characters, assistant DA Camden, is nearly blown up by a car bomb. In order to keep him safe, he’s put in protective police custody. Unfortunately, the man watching over him is the memorable one night stand he walked away from five years ago, a guy named Elisha. Sequestered away in Elisha’s Westchester house, our two heroes must come to grips with the attraction that still, after all this time, is still there. As things start to become more romantic, the situation becomes even more complicated when Elisha’s family shows up for a weekend visit. They assume that the two of them are a couple and Cam and Elijah play along since it’s too dangerous to explain why Cam is hiding out at Elijah’s house. Over the course of the weekend Cam can’t help but fall for Elisha and his wonderfully crazy family. You might think things get a little too close for comfort with are two heroes and the family all in one house. Elisha actually has a very small apartment in his attached garage. They escape there every once in a while, for some truly superduper scorching sex. The chemistry between these characters is very real and very palatable. As the weekend winds down, there’s an unfortunate kidnapping attempt by this crazy religious group and Cam sacrifices himself in order to save Elisha’s mom. Camden ends up in hospital and, unfortunately, his father arrives on the scene. Camden’s life has essentially been controlled by his father, who’s had his son’s life planned out from my birth to death. It’s essentially how Cam has lived his entire life. The expectations of his father are actually part of the reason why he walked away from Elisha five years ago. Having a sexy one night fling and living a life with an average guy like Elisha just wasn’t in the plan. After experiencing the possibility of loving a man like Elisha and realizing the wonderful possibilities of a fun and fulfilling family life, he tries to stand up to his father. Cam’s father puts a stop to everything, setting up some genuinely insurmountable roadblocks to our hero’s happiness. But Cam and Elisha are not only charismatic and sexy, but also really super smart. With the help of Elisha’s police chief friend, Cam concocts a way to outwit his father and get out from under his thumb, so he Elisha can live happily ever after. I don’t know if I can adequately find the correct words, or enough adjectives to tell you how much I loved Cam and Elisha’s story. It’s just really damn good. One of my favorites of 2019 so far!   I hope it’s obvious that I really enjoyed Under His Protection by LaQuette and I highly recommend that everyone give it a read. Interview Transcript - LaQuetteWill: We are so pleased to welcome LaQuette to the show. Welcome. LaQuette: Thank you. Will: So I just spent several minutes praising and telling the entire world how much I loved "Under His Protection." Now, you've been writing for a while now, and I freely admit this is the very first book of yours that I have read, and I went absolutely bonkers for it. I love it to pieces. LaQuette: Oh, thank you. Will: Can you give us sort of an idea of where the concept for "Under His Protection" came from? LaQuette: Well, I was encouraged by Kate McMurray to submit a "Dreamspun Desires" concept. And I kind of read the submission guideline, and I really didn't think that the category section was for me, because I'm long-winded in my writing and there's this, you know, 50,000-word count, and I didn't know that I could meet that and make the story make sense. But I just felt like, you know, there's a lot of angst in my writing and a lot of heavy topics sometimes. And I didn't... You know, category can be light and, you know, it doesn't have so much angst to it, so I wasn't sure if it was actually the right fit for me. But she encouraged me to do it anyway. So I thought, "Well, if I'm gonna do it, it has to be, like, LaQuette style. It can't be, you know, the traditional map of a category. I've gotta throw, you know, everything but the kitchen sink in it." And I had this sort of, like, this Prince and Pauper sort of situation in my head, but in Brooklyn. And it worked out really well in my head anyway. I really enjoy the idea of Camden coming from this really, really posh existence, and then clashing with Elijah and his very loud and boisterous family. And, I think, putting those two people together and those two, you know, with their backgrounds and differences in their backgrounds and the differences in their, you know, perspectives in life, it really...it just made for a richer experience for me, as a writer. Will: I utterly fell in love with Camden and Elijah. I think they're two incredibly...they are exceptional heroes, and they're part of what makes this book really sing. But as I mentioned in my review just a few minutes ago, part of what, I think, what makes the story compelling and even more enjoyable is the sort of supporting cast that helps them along in their journey towards saying, "I love you." Elijah's family is amazing, every single one of them. But I was particularly struck by one of Elijah's co-workers, the police chief, who is his best friend, along with, you know, being a colleague. And what I was struck by is that at the beginning of the book, the character seemed, you know, pretty, you know, straightforward, it was a secondary character, and she was there to kind of like, you know, get the story moving along. But as we read further and get to know Camden and Elijah more and more, she becomes a much more integral part of the story. And in fact, she's pretty vital to the solution that Cam comes up towards the end. And I was really surprised to read in an interviewer just, I think, this last week it appeared online. I learned that one of the reasons that this secondary character is so well-drawn is because she's actually already had her own book. LaQuette: She's had three books, actually. Will: Can you tell us real quickly, for our listeners, can you tell us about the origin of this particular character and why you thought she would be such a good fit for Camden and Elijah's story? LaQuette: Captain Heart Searlington is a character from my "Queens of Kings" series, which is all heroine-centered. And she is this...you know, her name is Heart for a reason, because she has a huge heart, even though she really carries it under this gruff exterior. She's a badass, she's all about getting work done. And if you ever get the chance to read her books, you know, she's really out there hands-on in the street. And I felt like Elijah would need someone like that, professionally and personally, to kind of...to get him to the place where he could admit his flaws. Someone that's not... You know, he's a very...he's a large man, he's aggressive, you know, he carries a gun, so he could be a little bit intimidating for the average person. But for her, she's not afraid to tell him like it is to his face. And, you know, when you have that kind of a personality where people might not tell your truth because they find you imposing, having someone who will speak the truth to you, regardless of whatever the situation is, can be vital to you, you know, making the right choices in life. And I felt like having her there would give him that balance, because he needed some really cold truths told to him, for him to get his head together and do what he needed to do. Jeff: Was it always your intention to have the character crossover or did that just kind of manifest itself? LaQuette: Well, the precinct that they work at is sort of anytime I have a police situation, those cops show up in a book somewhere. So one, because, you know, the world is already created, so it's kind of easy for me to draw from that precinct, but it's also because my readers absolutely adore this woman. And so they're always asking for her, and this was an opportunity for her to show up and say, "Hi." And not in a way that overshadows, you know, the main story, which is Camden and Elijah, but just enough to make readers go, "Oh, my God. She's here." Jeff: It's always good to get those universe crossovers and little Easter eggs like that, for sure. LaQuette: It's true. It's very true. Will: Yeah. Now, "Under His Protection" is not your first M/M romance. LaQuette: No, it is not. Will: There's also "Love's Changes," which I believe came out in 2016? LaQuette: Yes. Will: And I wanted to ask you, what drew you to writing in this specific subgenre? I mean, along with all of your other books that are more traditional male/female romances? LaQuette: Well, one, I wholeheartedly believe that everyone deserves a happy ending. And when I wrote the "Queens of King" series, I always knew that Heart's cousin, because the characters, the protagonists in "Love's Changes" are Bryan, who is one of Heart's lieutenants, you met him, actually, in "Under His Protection," and her cousin, Justice. And so they get to have their own story. You get to see them a little bit in the "Queens of King" series, but they're more background. We know that they were having a hard time and they were broken up for some reason, but we don't know why. So they get, you know, readers... Which really surprised me because I didn't really believe that there was a lot of crossover between male-female readers and male-male readers. But people really asked me for a story for those two. Like, "When are we gonna get Justice and Bryan's story? We wanna know what happens to them and how they get back together." And so I that story was actually born out of the fact that readers requested it, and so I gave it to them. Jeff: That's very cool. You know, it's always nice to see as the M/F readers catch the male-male pairing to then want to know more. LaQuette: Yes, it was really a trip for me. I did not believe that they would want it at all. But it was very touching to write their story. I was very happy with how the story turned out. I was very happy with the fact that they get their happily ever after. And it's not...it's connected to the "Queens of Kings" series, but it's not really part of it. So the story kind of takes place outside of everything that's going on in that particular story. Jeff: Do you envision more, I guess, "Dreamspun Desires" books that happened in the universe you've created with everything that's going on so far? LaQuette: I really didn't, but I've been getting a lot of mail recently about this book. And, you know, people wanting to know what happens after this. They wanna see how Camden's family kind of blends with Elijah's family and how that's going to work. I'm like, "Dude, I'm not there. Like, I have so many other projects. I can't right now. But we'll come back to that maybe." Jeff: Just based on your review, I don't see how those families mesh. Will: Two different worlds. Most definitely, yeah. LaQuette: They really are. Jeff: Now, one of the things that I'm super excited about, having recently read about, is your new contract with Dreamspinner for "Harlem Heat." LaQuette: Yes, "Harlem Heat," so when stuff makes me mad, it also makes me really productive. So I was really kind of getting tired of hearing the "not historically accurate moniker" criticism given to African-American romance, especially historical African-American romance. And it just bothered me because it's not that those happily-ever-afters weren't possible. It's just people aren't really aware of the completed history. So a lot of thing...you know, a lot of people who think they know about African-American history, the only thing they know is slavery and Jim Crow, and that's it. And, you know, black people have been downtrodden since we were brought to this country. But that's not exactly the truth because even in all of the horror, there were still moments of triumph. And we didn't just, you know, survive, we thrived. We're still here, the proof that we're still here, you know, the proof that we had happiness at some point is that we're still here. So I decided I wanted to write about a time that was where to be black and to be gay wasn't something that you had to hide from the world. It wasn't something you had to...you had your own pocket of community. There was a celebration of it. And I wanted to speak to that. I wanted people to know that these two intersections of life existed with happy endings. Jeff: And this series, in particular, is gonna go to such an interesting time period in the U.S. when all of the Harlem Renaissance was happening. LaQuette: Yeah, so it's based on three actual people who lived during the Harlem Renaissance. So it's based on Bumpy Johnson, who was the godfather of Harlem for 30 years. It's based on Langston Hughes, who was a great contributor to the Harlem Renaissance as a poet and writer. And it's also based on Cab Calloway, who was sort of one of the most notable faces in jazz and jazz music and jazz performance at the Cotton Club. So we're gonna see... we won't be using their names, but those characters will be based off of those actual people. Will: Yeah, because it was...I think it was like mere moments after I finished reading "Under His Protection." I read about this Harlem Renaissance series that you were doing, and I like lost my mind. I was like, totally doing a happy dance. This is going to be so amazing. I know this is still far in the future. But when do you think we can expect this series? LaQuette: I don't know. And that's the God's honest truth. I'm actually currently writing, finishing up the series for Sourcebooks. And so "Harlem Heat" doesn't...I don't think I'm projected to start it until like the end of the year. So I don't know exactly when it's going to be ready. But I mean, you know, ready for the world anyway. But I think I can talk to someone about getting you a beta read...a copy for beta reading if you'd like. Jeff: Please do. Yes. Will: That would be amazing. Jeff: I imagine the research for that got to be a lot of fun to look at that period in history and figure out what parts you wanna take and use. LaQuette: It is. I mean, I was very fortunate when I was in college. When I did my undergrad in creative writing. I was very fortunate to have a professor who thought outside of the box, and he taught a class on Harlem Renaissance. That was amazing. I mean, it was so rich and filled with culture. And you know, not just the usual things that we see in mainstream history but, you know, getting really down to the nitty-gritty of it. And you know, showing you to...I'm sure that when you when you guys, as gay men, look at the history of the LGBT community, and you get to see it unfold, there's such a moment of connection there. And it's the same thing for black people when we're getting to experience our history because we don't often get to see it through mainstream lens. And so to see it and to see the information dispensed in a way that's positive and celebratory and uplifting, it changes your whole perception of yourself, of who you are and where you came from. And so I'm delighted to be able to dig back into that. I have Piper Huguley, who is a history professor at Spelman College. I believe it's Spelman. And she's also a romance writer, and she's brilliant. So she helps me with a great deal with telling me what books I need to read for this period, and where I need to look for information. But it's so much fun. It really is so much fun. Jeff: That's amazing. Let's talk origin story for a minute. How did you get started writing romance? What led you down this path? LaQuette: I didn't see me on the page. I started reading romance when I was about 16 years old. Way too young to be reading some of the stuff I was reading, but you know, hey. And by the time I was about 18, I probably went through every "Harlequin Presents" that my local library had. And every romance novel I read, it was never about a girl that looked like me, never about places where I lived. So it kind of pulled me out of the romance reading for a while because it was nice to read about those stories, but there was just something missing for me after a while. And I probably, at the time, didn't recognize that I was internalizing that these stories were basically saying, "Romance isn't for you. You don't look like this. You don't fit this mold, so romance isn't for you." And I kind of just pulled away from it. And I think after I finished my undergrad, I just wanted to relax and have some fun and I kind of got back into it. And at the time, I discovered black romance was a thing. And I discovered people like Rochelle Alers, and Brenda Jackson, and Zane. And I'm like, "Wow." Like, it became exciting again. It was refreshing. It was new and yet still very familiar because I could see myself in all of the antics that were going in these stories. I could see myself in those characters. And so I decided I wanted to do that. I wanted to create those spaces, create more stories like that so people could have those connections in reality, you know, reactions when they opened up a book and saw themselves. Jeff: Now that you are writing, what do you think the trademarks of your books are? LaQuette: I do sex and snark really well. Like, I do sarcasm really well because that's my language. It really is my language, and sex, yeah, that's so if you're gonna pick up a LaQuette book, you're going to get lots of sex and lots of sarcasm. Jeff: Did she meet those two in your book? Will: Oh, yeah. Just before we started this interview, we were talking about the possibilities of an audiobook for "Under His Protection." And whatever narrator lands this job is going to, number one, have the time of their life, because Camden and Elijah are very...the banter is very smart and very witty. But also, as you say, the sex scenes are...I'm not even sure what the correct adjective is. It's smoking hot. Yeah, you're gonna need a nice cool beverage after you listen to those scenes, for sure. LaQuette: I don't know that I could listen to that. I don't know that I could. It would be so weird for me. I don't know. I mean, I know I wrote the words, but to hear them aloud, I don't know that I could do that. Will: Exactly. Yeah. Jeff: Yeah, I know, you know, many authors can't listen to their own audio books. LaQuette: Especially those parts. Like I said, I do sex. Amy Lane told me, she was like, "You write sex in such a beautiful concrete way. Like, I just wanna have all the facts when I read your books." I'm like, "Amy, that is the sweetest and weirdest thing that anyone has ever said to me, and I love you for it." Jeff: That almost should be a blurb on the book cover or something. Will: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Jeff: Is there anything you're reading right now that you wanna shout out to people as like a book to grab? LaQuette: Oh, I'm reading a few books. So I just finished Adriana Herrera's...the third book in this "Dreamer" series, and I can't remember the title because it's not actually out yet. I beta read for her, and it is fantastic. I mean, book one is great and I love it. It was so real to me that literally, I had to drive like two to three miles from my house just to go get Dominican food, because I was so hungry after reading book one. Will: Exactly. Yes. Yeah. LaQuette: And book three does the same thing. There's lots of cultural food. And it's part of the tapestry of how these two people connect and share their backgrounds, their experiences, their worldviews. And not to mention, she's so good at writing books that are socially conscious without making you feel like you're being talked down to or preached at, and I love her for that, for being... I don't know that I could do that the way she does it. She's so talented. And I'm also reading...I'm halfway through...I stumble with her name because I know her as Blue Sapphire, but she's now writing as Royal Blue for Dreamspinner, "Kyle's Reveal." Will: Yeah, I've heard of this book, yeah. LaQuette: And I'm halfway through it. And, you know, she's fire, like, she writes hot books. So I'm really excited. I can't wait to get to the end of this book. Will: What was the name of that book again? LaQuette: "Kyle's Reveal." Will: Okay. And that's the...please remind me, is the basketball book, is that correct? LaQuette: Yes. Will: Okay, yes. LaQuette: I mean, it's kind of dark because the protagonists have like a really dark traumatic history. But it's definitely deep and I'm loving it. So I'm really, really, really interested in getting to the end to see if I could just get a minute to stop writing and finish it, I'd be great. Will: Awesome. Jeff: It's such a hard thing balancing. LaQuette: It is. Jeff: "I wanna to finish this book." Then it's like, "I don't wanna read it too fast." LaQuette: Exactly. Jeff: Finding that balance. LaQuette: It's true. Jeff: Are there tropes or genres that you wanna tackle that you just haven't yet in your own writing? LaQuette: I don't know that there are any tropes, because I kind of...I throw a lot of different tropes in my books. Like, "Under His Protection" has second chance romance, it also has proximity, it also has sort of kind of enemies to lovers the way Elijah and Camden started out in the book. And it could sort of kind of be considered like a workplace romance being that they're both involved in different sides of law enforcement. But I don't know. I mean, I've done secret baby before and I love that. That was really fun. And I've done...the only thing I haven't done is like May-December romances. So I think maybe that might be something I'd might want to try. Jeff: Cool. I would read that. I love a good May-December. Absolutely. So beyond the writing, which obviously takes up a lot of time, you also are the president of RWANYC. So the New York City chapter of Romance Writers of America. Tell folks what that entails and what actually led you to running for office. LaQuette: I didn't wanna run. I had no intention of running because I have a lot of stuff to do. And it takes time away from the things that I'm contracted to do. But one of the things that's very important in romance that's happening right now is the fact that romance can be a very whitewashed world, meaning the protagonists that we see, the authors that get the most opportunities are white authors and white characters. And so if you're not white... and straight characters. If you're not writing that, it's difficult to get into the door, it's difficult to find the same resources, the same backing. It's almost impossible to get contracts. And so I ran for president of RWANYC because I wanted, in some way, to help change that landscape, to do some of the work necessary with publishers to try to change that. And it's a heavy task, it's a heavy burden, especially when we get, you know, over the last couple of weeks, we are still reeling from the RITA Awards, which is basically like the Grammys for romance. And every year, it's the same thing. It's a very, very white landscape, and very few authors of color are made finalist. No black woman has ever won a RITA in the 30 years that this award has been established. And people do a lot of mental acrobatics to justify why that is. So "Oh, maybe the writing is just not that good. Maybe that's why we've never had a black RITA award winner. Maybe black authors are not entering." You know, these are also questions that are ridiculous, because statistically, it's just impossible that no black woman would ever have won in 30 years. It's just impossible. And the reason it is, is because the judging pool, there's a bias there in terms of black women and black characters, not just black authors, but black characters. Because you cannot know who the author is, but you cannot...well, I don't write characters who are racially ambiguous. I'm proud of my blackness and my characters are as well. And so I don't try to hide that or trick people into reading my books, or make it so difficult for people to recognize who a person is or what their background is because I feel like that is an important thing. In real life, we don't really get to not know who people are by looking at them. So I don't do it in my books. And because of that, it's very difficult when you know, going into this, "I'm gonna submit this book, and it's not going to final," not because it's a poorly written book, not because I didn't do everything I could to make this book as good as it could be, but simply because my characters, especially my heroines are black. And that is just something that the judging pool cannot handle as of yet. So my work as president is a lot of, you know, being the champion for this cause and taking on this battle because it's not just about me succeeding, it's about any black author who was writing black characters having the ability to write and be supported by the industry. And if I can make any sort of headway in that and if I can help anyone along the way, I'll feel like I've done something positive with my life. Will: With books like yours, and with Adriana Herrera, who you mentioned not too long ago, do you think it's really just a matter of representation that can help build awareness for diversity in romance or is there something else that readers, specifically, should be doing or asking for? LaQuette: Well, specifically, yeah. I mean, readers have a lot of power. So if you're asking publishers, you know, "Why don't we have more diverse romance? Why don't we have romance where...you know, that shows basically the colors of the rainbow and all those brilliant facets of intersectionality in life, like, why don't we have that?" Because your buying dollars is what demands, what makes the demand. Because publishers will say, "We don't sell that. We don't contract black books because they don't sell." One of the things we discussed at Dreamspinner was the cover. That was an intentional choice. I was very clear with them when we sat down and talked about this project that Elijah needed to be on the cover. I would not subscribe to the ideology that a black man on the cover can't sell. And there are...I mean, we've seen in our writing community that some publishing houses have actually made this statement. I don't subscribe to that. So we talked about it. And then we talked about the fact that readership sometimes can have a bias. And sometimes they won't engage with the book if they feel like the person is the wrong color or wrong background. And I said, "I understand that, but we're still gonna work...you know, to work with me, this is how we're gonna work." And they were in agreement. I didn't have to convince them. I went in prepared to battle. And it was like, "Listen, I really need this guy to be black and I really need him to look like this." And they were like, "We agree. We agree." So we need more of that in the industry. And it starts with readers. It also starts with the gatekeepers. People reaching out and specifically looking for these things. It also, people who are gatekeepers also need to check themselves. So when you're reading a book and you're saying, "I can't connect to it. I didn't relate to it." Why aren't you relating to it? Is it that it's a poorly written book? I've gotten rejection letters that literally said, "This is a really well-written book, but I didn't relate to the character, so I'm not gonna buy it." That doesn't really make a lot of sense, right? So what was it that you didn't relate to? If you could see that it was a really well-written book, I mean, if it's that good, why not work with me in terms of editing to kind of get things right, you know, to where it would be something that you feel is that you could sell. But a lot of publishing houses out there don't have that mentality. And it's this sort of...it's insidious. It's not something, you know, you can actually like, look and see. Some people don't even notice it. They just think, "Oh, I don't read those kinds of books because I don't like them." And it's not that they don't like them, it's that they've not actually giving them the opportunity to be great. Jeff: So that is, obviously, great words for the readers. Kind of spinning it back to your RWA role, you're in such a diverse chapter there because you're in NYC. LaQuette: Yeah. Jeff: How are the authors in that particular region banding together to like help RWA move past the issues? LaQuette: Oh, well, a lot of my recent successes, because, you know, allies, colleagues like Kate McMurray and Tere Michaels, are like, "Listen, you're fabulous, and we want you to meet people who will also think you're fabulous. So come here." And that's part of the beauty of RWA, and that's why I fight so hard for diversity and inclusion within RWA, because my success, as I said, my recent success has all been attached to people pushing me in different directions to say, "This is where you need to be. This is the person you need to meet." And if you're not a part of the organization, you can't make those connections. And networking connections will get you further than anything you know, right? So when we cut off authors of color from that source, from the resources, from the networking connections, and the opportunities that are presented to people who are part of the organization, what we're doing is we're disconnecting them from publishing. And we're forcing them to be indie. And this is not an indie versus trad conversation. This is... some people cannot be anything other than indie, because trad will not give them the opportunity. They've been completely marginalized. And so that should not be. People should be able to publish however they choose to, whether they up to be an indie author or whether they decide that the trad route is for them, because, you know, different strokes for different folks. It is different, you know, depending on what your lifestyle is like. I have crazy children and I have to juggle being a mom, a writer, and everything else and try to keep sane. Being an indie author is a lot of work. It's a lot of effort on your end to make a book successful. I don't have that kind of time in my life, or that kind of energy, honestly. So being a trad author is a much better avenue for me and my situation. And if that is the only way that I can publish, but publishing will not give me the opportunities, then it's, you know, I'm losing out. And that's the purpose of RWA to sort of bridge those gaps. But I don't think we're exactly where we need to be yet. So we're still working on it. Will: Yeah, definitely. Jeff: We very much appreciate your efforts towards that, for sure. Will: Now, the Romance Writers of America National Conference is going to be in NYC this summer. LaQuette: Absolutely. Will: And I expect you're going to be there. LaQuette: Oh, yeah. I wouldn't miss it for the world. Will: Yeah, we're actually making a trip for the first time this year as well. LaQuette: Yay. Will: So hopefully we will... I know it's gonna be crazy busy. But hopefully, we're gonna get a chance to say hi in person. LaQuette: It is. Absolutely. Jeff: For sure. Now, we talked about "Harlem Heat." You mentioned a couple other things. What is on your docket for the rest of this year for releases? LaQuette: I don't think I have any other releases this year because I'm writing. So I've been very blessed in that I have landed these two major contracts with Sourcebooks and with Dreamspinner, both for series. So I'm halfway through Source's books. And I need to start on Dreamspinner's toward the end of the year. So there won't be any more releases from me. I mean, if I get a moment where I'm, you know, feeling really creative, I might try to get a novella together. But I'm not making any promises. Jeff: All right, so we'll look for a lot more in 2020, for sure. LaQuette: Yeah, 2020 is definitely...the first book for Source comes out in 2020. I don't have a release date yet. I have delivery dates for Dreamspinner, but I don't have release dates yet. So I'm thinking probably sometime toward the end of 2020, possibly, or maybe the beginning of 2021. Jeff: All right. Well, when "Harlem Heat" comes out, you definitely have an invitation to come back and talk, for sure. LaQuette: Oh, yay. Thank you. Jeff: Now what's the best way for everybody to keep up with you online? LaQuette: Oh, so you can find me on Facebook at, you know, my Facebook page, LaQuettetheAuthor. You can find me on Twitter @LaQuetteWrites, or you can find me on Instagram at la_quette, or you can email me at laquette@laquette.com, or you can go to my website laquette.com. Will: Fantastic. Jeff: She's well branded, and everything is the same. Will: Most definitely. Well, LaQuette, it was a genuine honor to have you on the show today. LaQuette: Oh, thank you. Will: We're so glad that you could take some time out of your extremely busy schedule that you can come talk to us. LaQuette: Thank you for having me. I mean, I was so excited and a little bit nervous also, to come on and talk to you guys because I've seen the show before. And I'm like, "Yay, I get to go hang out with them. I feel special." Will: Well, it is a genuine pleasure. We're so glad that you came. LaQuette: Thank you so very much for having me.

Will Tukuafu is an American football fullback. Will grew up in Salt Lake City with his parents and 15 siblings. After high school, he served a mission in Jamaica for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. When he came back from his mission, he moved to Scottsdale Arizona where he played football for a Junior College. After playing one year at junior college, he moved to Oregon where he played football at the University of Oregon. Will played for the Seattle Seahawks in 2010 and also played for the San Francisco 49ers. Will and his wife Krystal are the parents of three children. You can follow him on Instagram @willtukuafu   Show notes   Will’s gift is to be charitable, his parents were an example him to be giving [2:30] Will and his Dad would cut lawns without people asking. When they didn’t get paid, his dad would say, “This is our Labor of Love” [3:40] “When I do show charity, it always comes back ten-fold” [4:20] Will has learned from his parents that although they may not have much, whatever they have they give. Give love and it will always come back. [4:40] Will always had an attitude of gratitude to be a playing football and being apart of the team [5:35] Will had a particular play where he knocked someone out. This guy was a heavy hitter and known for knocking people out. [7:25] Mark discusses how being willing to block something that hurts is an act of charity. [10:30] Will talks about his family. Will has 15 siblings, not including his first cousins who were taken in by his parents. [11:30] Will house growing up was small and cold in the winter as it lacked insulation, but was always full. Although the house was small and simple, it provided warmth to a lot of people in many aspects. [12:20] Will talks about his parents being examples of working hard and passing on work ethic to him as he learned to work from a young age. [13:00] Outsiders looking in at Will would say that Will’s gift is the willingness to do whatever it takes. [14:05] Will entered the NFL a little later than the average NFL player, so he understood from where he started he would have to earn his way and do whatever it takes [14:50] Will doesn’t really think about what “haters” have to say about him and tries to focus on the positive. “I am who I am. People have their opinion.” [15:30] Mark quotes a reporter that said, “Polynesians players are built for combat, built for football. The warrior spirit is within us, we love contact, we love people… we love the comradery… we are able to do whatever it takes to help our teams win.” [17:10] Will attests to the comradery and spirit of Polynesians on and off the field, doing whatever it takes for family and being faith oriented. [18:00] As a fullback, his job is to protect the running back regardless of who it is. Will tries to give it everything that he can. [18:40] His experience mowing lawns of his friend’s houses when he was younger in order to put food on the table for his family taught him that he needed to do hard things. It grew with him. [19:50] “One thing that embodies the culture is love and willingness to do whatever it takes for those you care about.” [20:15] When you act upon gifts that you are given by God, you are given opportunities to see more of your gifts and traits come out. [21:00] He has seen this in his life as it was unlikely that at 25 he would make an NFL team. [21:15] Losing his scholarship at BYU and starting over was a huge part of his journey and taught him to persist even when things seemed dark and hopeless. [21:40] When he graduated high school, he signed with BYU but deferred to go on a mission. He served in Jamaica [21:50] Will got his associates degree at a junior college in Arizona and got scholarships at division 1 colleges after 1 year. He chose to go to Oregon. [23:00] There were many trials he had to overcome, but there was a lot of blessings along the way. [23:21] During his mission during a study session, he was reading The Ensign magazine and saw a picture of a girl that he told his companion he would date when he got home from his mission. [24:00] When he came home from the mission and was in Arizona he met and started dating Krystal. He eventually realizes she was the girl from The Ensign. [25:00] Will has learned that everything has a rhyme and a reason. [26:10] When God gives us different obstacles and we do what is right, we are blessed, although it may not be immediate. [26:20] Mark asks Will “What is it like to play at a school you are too good to play at?” [27:20] Will says that it was a humbling experience. He had to buy cleats at Ross. [27:50] Will never had a mindset that he was better than his team, he just focused on getting to work. [28:30] The number one recruit was at Scottsdale with Will. There were coaches from everywhere coming to Scottsdale to see this guy. This was another blessing in disguise. [28:50] Getting offers from D1 colleges was big for Will, but having to play at a Junior College put a lot of things in perspective. [31:00] “The way things happen is the way things are supposed to happen.” Going through obstacles and experiencing many cultures shaped him and helped him go into the NFL. [31:40] Will talks about feeling the spirit. “The feelings of the spirit are warm, meek, peaceful.” [33:00] It is not only about looking for opportunities to help other people but allowing other people to help you. [33:55] When Will was at the 49ers, he was on the sideline and a teammate asked him to teach him how to pray.  [34:30] The player and Will go and pray in a back room where Will teaches him to pray. [36:00] His teammate offers a prayer and Will felt the spirit [37:30] Later on, that week they were doing a drill and his friend Vernon asks him to say a prayer on the sidelines. Vernon tells Will, “The Lord will bless you as you offer this prayer.” [38:10] The coach sees Vernon and Will praying. The coach tells them to “make sure you guys pray for the rest of us.” [39:15] Will has had a good relationship with his team when it comes to talking about faith and God. [40:40] His coach started a fund that was donated when they were late to a meeting, and the team would agree on what to donate it to. [41:30] Will felt strongly that the fund could help this boy, Tony, who had a heart condition. A prompting lead him to mention it to his coach as a cause for the fund. [42:25] The coach tells Will that the whole team needs to agree on this cause. [43:15] Will tells the team about the boy with the heart condition and using the fund to help the family. The team unanimously voted to use the fund for Tony. [44:10] Will realized God didn’t put him for himself but put him there to help other people. [45:30] Will agrees with Mark the God may have prolonged his experience in the NFL because he chose to follow promptings. [45:55] “It is not about me.” As long as Will strived to help other people, God would help and bless him. [46:30] “I know for a fact that I would not have made the NFL, played as long as I did, met as many cool people, or helped as many people as I have had I not listened to those promptings.” [46:55] Will recalls a time when he noticed a car broken down and stuck at a crosswalk.Will ignored the prompting to help the man, but because of his wife, he went back to help the man. [47:50] The car was a old heavy car, and Will knew that there was more than just him that was pushing the car. [49:50] Different promptings happen daily, but Will has noticed that you need to act on the promptings you are given. [50:50] Mark talks about maintaining flexibility in life. [51:30] “No one is perfect. We are all striving for perfection, and we all fall short.” [52:10] We are all on this journey to do what is right, and happiness comes as we do the right things. [52:40] Repentance allows us to have clarity, understanding, and love one another. [54:00] Will tries to understand and love people from different walks of life instead of judging them. [54:20] Mark talks about how repentance can change a culture, and further discusses the clarity and love that repentance brings. [55:40]

What is the energy that we call Will? What is its purpose and why is our understanding of this powerful force so important? How is it related to spiritual principles? Join us as we begin a new month and a new topic of conversation, the Energy of the Will.

Ron Siegel discusses local and national current events, politics, personal and business finance with a few mortgage tips along the way. A Southern California mortgage expert and bonafide political junkie, Ron Siegel delivers intelligent, entertaining radio that makes the hard news of the week easy to understand! Ron Siegel is joined by Jay Kaplan. Ron Siegel will discuss: Supply & Demand Will Determine Future Home Values; Reverse Mortgage Changes; Living Trust vs. Will: What's the Difference?; Real Time Real Estate; Your Credit Matters; Mortgage Minute; Word on Wealth; and so much more. Ron Siegel, consumer advocate and mortgage lender, discusses anything that affects the roof over your head, your bank account or other items that will benefit you / your family. Reach Ron Siegel at  Ron@RonSiegelRadio.comwww.RonSiegelRadio.comwww.SiegelLendingTeam.com your Anaheim Mortgage LenderMortgage Calculator: www.MBELinks.com/RFToolKit   Your Anaheim Mortgage Lender offers: Conventional Loans, FHA Loans, USDA Loans, Refinancing, and Reverse Mortgages  

Ron Siegel discusses local and national current events, politics, personal and business finance with a few mortgage tips along the way. A Southern California mortgage expert and bonafide political junkie, Ron Siegel delivers intelligent, entertaining radio that makes the hard news of the week easy to understand!   Ron Siegel will discuss: The Wave of Millennial Homebuyers Continues to Swell; Millennials taking their credit building seriously; Parents' credit card tips for college students; Living Trust vs. Will: What's the Difference?; Real Time Real Estate; Your Credit Matters; Mortgage Minute; Word on Wealth; and so much more.  Ron Siegel, consumer advocate and mortgage lender, discusses anything that affects the roof over your head, your bank account or other items that will benefit you / your family. Reach Ron Siegel at   Ron@RonSiegelRadio.comwww.RonSiegelRadio.comwww.SiegelLendingTeam.com your Irvine Mortgage LenderMortgage Calculator: www.MBELinks.com/RFToolKit   Your Irvine Mortgage Lenderoffers: Conventional Loans, FHA Loans, USDA Loans, Refinancing, and Reverse Mortgages

Join us this episode where we talk about the "looming threat of death" and the pressure to plan both Chelsea and Macy's upcoming birthday celebrations. What does it take to draft up a Will? What kind of cake does a future 1 year old enjoy? Should Troy invest all of our savings in Bitcoin currency? All of those questions are asked and debated on this episode of Charm Type. *NOTE: We discovered that the audio gets slightly funky around minute 12... but there was too many great moments to rerecord over it all. We hope you stay on for the ride and get some good laughs!

The boys are back in town......Dial up for coverage of Episode 4 of Stranger Things 2! What's happening to Will? What is the creature that haunts him? Who discovers their lineage? What do Nancy and Jonathan have up their sleeves(or in a backpack)? Why is Billy, well, Billy? What happened to Dart? Discussion of all of this and a seriously HOT TAKE from a listener! If you like the show, leave us a review on iTunes and shoot us an email at CastProtection@gmail.com. We are on Twitter @CastProtection. Facebook, find us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/274523039596769/. Make sure to tune in next time as we cover the next episode of Stranger Things 2!

The boys are back in town......Dial up for coverage of Episode 4 of Stranger Things 2! What's happening to Will? What is the creature that haunts him? Who discovers their lineage? What do Nancy and Jonathan have up their sleeves(or in a backpack)? Why is Billy, well, Billy? What happened to Dart? Discussion of all of this and a seriously HOT TAKE from a listener! If you like the show, leave us a review on iTunes and shoot us an email at CastProtection@gmail.com. We are on Twitter @CastProtection. Facebook, find us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/274523039596769/. Make sure to tune in next time as we cover the next episode of Stranger Things 2!

On this Episode of the San Francisco Real Estate Podcast, I discuss what a San Francisco Real Estate Trust Sale is? How is a Trust different from a Will? What to do if you own a property in a Trust and you live out of state? Listen to find out on this podcast episode if you are an out of state/area property owner in San Francisco.

Adam Van Fleet is a full-time Project Manager who plays Magic in the little spare time he can muster. He was introduced to the game back in 1998, and has played competitively off-and-on since 2012. He Top 25'd Pro Tour Journey Into Nyx, Top 8'd GP Pittsburgh 2017, and Won SCG Philidelphia 2013. Click to Tweet: I got a ton of value from Adam Van Fleet when he shared his story on #MTGProTutor! Listen here: http://bit.ly/mtgprotutor-ep182 First Set Exodus Favorite Set Mirrodin / Theros block Favorite Card Arcbound Ravager Force of Will What makes Magic: The Gathering fun for you? It started as a way to hang with friends. As time progressed Adam came to the competitive aspect. How to Top 8 a Grand Prix from Consistent Day 2 You have to really understand the metagame. Worst Magic Moment At his first Legacy GP, Adam played Affinity and in round one, his opponent blew him out. #feelbad. At another event an opponent rules lawyered Adam and he felt bad about the situation. Proudest Magic Moment Making it to the Pro Tour for the first time. What Have You Learned From Magic Friendships Deepest Thing You've Learned About Yourself Frustrated at inability to control outcomes. Biggest Mistake Players Make Rushing. A lot of players do thing too quickly without thinking of the consequences. Ask yourself " Why am I making this play now?" 'The most important decision is keeping your opening hand.' How to Effectively Prepare for a Big Event Practice at FNM and other weekly local events. Practice Limited on Magic Online.  Adam will save packs from wins and then practice drafting and building sealed pools. Parting Guidance Have fun! At the end of the day, it's a game. Connect With Adam Van Fleet Adam can be found in the MTG Pro Tutor Facebook group. Check Out Magic Story Magic Story brings the lore of the Multiverse to life in an audio presentation never before heard in the Magic community. Listen to Episode 1 here or on www.magicthestory.com   Sponsors

Welcome to the Prayer and Deliverance Hour this Sunday and every Sunday at 8:00 pm Eastern. Note our Summer Schedule for the months of June, July, and August: Sundays at 8:00 until 8:30 pm. Check for your Time Zone: 8:00 pm Eastern and Atlantic during Daylight Savings Time, 7:00 pm Central, 6:00 pm Mountain, 5:00 pm Pacific. Come! Call in during the program at 657-383-1766 to get answers to the questions stirring within you. Topics tonight will be a continuation of last week's program: God’s Perfect Will. His Perfect Will!His Permissive Will!What is it like to operate in God’s Will?What are the consequences of operating in His Will? (Good or Bad?) You'll want to tune in as Minister Kim Dial and Bishop Herbert Hucks share their weekly lesson. We'll be here every Sunday evening at 8:00 Eastern. Looking forward to hearing in our studio line. Tell your family! Tell your friends to join you as you join us! Have a prayer request? Simply pick up your telephone anytime 24/7/365 and dial either of our prayer lines at 502-242-7148 or 502-219-4851. 

Welcome to the Prayer and Deliverance Hour this Sunday and every Sunday at 8:00 pm Eastern. Note our Summer Schedule for the months of June, July, and August: Sundays at 8:00 until 8:30 pm. Check for your Time Zone: 8:00 pm Eastern and Atlantic during Daylight Savings Time, 7:00 pm Central, 6:00 pm Mountain, 5:00 pm Pacific. Come! Call in during the program at 657-383-1766 to get answers to the questions stirring within you. Topics to be discussed in tonight's program: God’s Perfect Will His Perfect Will!His Permissive Will!What is it like to operate in God’s Will?What are the consequences of operating in His Will? (Good or Bad?) You'll want to tune in as Minister Kim Dial and Bishop Herbert Hucks share their weekly lesson during The Prayer and Deliverance Hour. We'll be here every Sunday evening at 8:00 Eastern. Looking forward to speaking with you tonight. Tell your family! Tell your friends to join you as you join us! Have a prayer request? Simply pick up your telephone anytime 24/7/365 and dial either of our prayer lines at 502-242-7148 or 502-219-4851.

Message Title:  God's Will “What is God's will for my life?” 1.     We don't trust God. I ask—ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory—to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing him personally… Ephesians 1:17-18 (MSG) …your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is he is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life he has for his followers, oh, the utter extravagance of his work in us who trust him… Ephesians 1:17-18 (MSG) We can only experience God's will for our lives… when HE is LORD of our lives. 2.     We are aiming at the wrong thing. His SOVERIEGN will (His Works) I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.' Isaiah 46:10 (NIV)  His REVEALED will (His Ways) God's will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin.  1 Thessalonians 4:3 (NLT) Never stop praying.  Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 (NLT) His CONCEALED will The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:29 (NIV) 3.     We are paralyzed by fear. …may He equip you with all you need for doing His will.  May He produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to Him.  Hebrews 13:21 (NLT) 1.  Do what you KNOW to do. His REVEALED will is the path to His CONCEALED will. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Romans 12:1-2 (NIV)Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2 (NIV) When you are walking in His WAYS… you are living in His WILL. So be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise.  Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Ephesians 5:15-18 (NLT)Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.  Don't be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit… Ephesians 5:15-18 (NLT) “God's will is more present than future, but often remains invisible until it's in the past.” – Levi Lusko 2.  Do what you WANT to do. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV) The will of God is what you will miss out on… when you are sitting around obsessing about it.  And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Colossians 3:17 (NLT)Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV) Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this… Psalm 37:4-5 (NIV) “Love God and do whatever you will.” – Augustine 3.   Trust that HE will DO what HE NEEDS to do, to accomplish what HE WANTS to do.  And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will. Romans 8:27-28 (NLT) And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Romans 8:27-28 (NLT)

In the most unique and arguably one of the best Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes to date we are shown Jemma Simmons’ “What I Did On My Summer Vacation” story. It’s hard not to feel for the Science Babies or Will but we understand they all have their side to tell. The episode raises more questions than it answers but we are more than satisfied with the answers we’ve received. Don’t forget the events that unfolded at the end of last episode! We still have plenty to look forward to as Marvel continues to not disappoint. We’ll discuss the whole thing this week so press play to help us help you along this incredible ride. There’s also a full Comic Book Weekly Roundup segment this week with Black Adam, Lauren and Neil all providing their take. And as always the hosts also take time to discuss the week in Marvel news and review all the awesome Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. feedback. THIS TIME ON LEGENDS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.: [01:54]   Legends OF S.H.I.E.L.D. Giveaway: Secret Wars Marvel Crate Giveaway and Start T-Shirt Giveaway! Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. 4722 Hours Weekly Comic Book Reviews: S.H.I.E.L.D. Mission Report, Mutant Musings, and Mighty Marvel Moment. The Weekly Marvel News Roundup YOUR feedback!!!! Highlights From The Live Chat Room LEGENDS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. GIVEAWAYS [02:11]   Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. announced their Marvel Crate Giveaway Winner: Adam!!! The hosts also announce their newest Giveaway- A Large S.H.I.E.L.D. logo shirt in Kree writing. Just let us know the funniest place you would see the Kree writing for you chance at the t-shirt.   AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. EPISODE "4722 Hours" [06:05]   This was NOT the normal S.H.I.E.L.D. episode. Even the title card was different. And SP was right! It was another guy. And the mystery of how the Kree monolith worked was solved – it was the alignment of the moons on the destination planet. Lauren and her husband Scott pick up some similarities to 2001: A Space Odyssey (A.K.A. A Will Odyssey). Was this your favorite Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode? The episode DOES make Lauren and Haley want to go back and watch the first part of the season again to watch Simmons the whole time. There are still lingering questions about just who is Will? What or who is the Grim Reaper? Is Will The Grim Reaper?  Just who sent Will and his team out there? Was it really NASA?? Was HYDRA involved? And never fear. There IS a lengthy discussion about the science behind the wormholes and what to expect on the planet Will and Simmons were sent to. Lauren has a Project Paperclip theory about how NASA got the Monolith to begin with. Of course there’s all sorts of wild speculation being thrown around about when are we going to find out all the answers to all of the questions raised so far.    "4722 Hours”   Directed By:  Jesse John Bochco http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1061992/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1   Written By: Craig Titley http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864471/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 Episode Transcripts: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewforum.php?f=270   WEEKLY MARVEL COMIC BOOK ROUNDUP [28:11] Black Adam continues his archive report covering S.H.I.E.L.D. Issue #11   Lauren returns to the Comic Book Segment with her take on Age of Apocalypse #5   Neil does an amazing job covering the stack of new Marvel comics dropped this week including: Secret Wars Titles Including 1876 #4 Agents Of Atlas #1 Weirdworld #5     Marvel Universe: Ultimate Web Warrior #12   All New, All Different Marvel Universe Karnak #1 Infinity - X-man #1 Uncanny Inhumans #1 Astonishing Ant-Man #1 Amazing Spiderman #2 Invincible Iron Man #2   Don’t forget to check out Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Longbox edition for a specific Comic Book Weekly News Podcast (Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/legends-s.h.i.e.l.d.-longbox/id1048408110?mt=2)   NEWS [38:20]   HIGHLIGHT STORY OF THE WEEK   Phase 2 box set http://marvel.com/news/movies/25329/marvel_cinematic_universe_phase_two_box_set_coming_exclusively_to_amazon_december_8   AGENT CARTER   Kurtwood Smith playing Vernon Masters in Agent Carter http://marvel.com/news/tv/25332/marvels_agent_carter_recruits_kurtwood_smith   NETFLIX SERIES   Jessica Jones motion poster https://youtu.be/JLLEPU2er9E   Jessica Jones trailer https://youtu.be/nWHUjuJ8zxE   CIVIL WAR & BEYOND   Thor: Ragnarok recording in Queensland http://marvel.com/news/movies/25335/marvel_brings_the_thunder_down_under   Civil War trailer either coming out with James Bond or Star Wars http://comicbook.com/2015/10/28/captain-america-civil-war-trailer-to-play-in-front-of-spectre-in/ http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/28/captain-america-civil-war-trailer-reportedly-debuting-with-star-wars-the-force-awakens   GotG Casting News http://io9.com/the-first-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2-casting-news-r-1739295373   GotG Casting Call is kind of… eh (with update from James Gunn) http://www.themarysue.com/guardians-2-casting-call/   Peyton Reed in negotiations to direct Ant-Man and the Wasp http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/ant-man-director-peyton-reed-833708    MARVEL   MCU has crossed 9 billion worldwide http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=avengers.htm FEEDBACK [46:44]    - VOICEMAIL   Adam (Review of Devils You Know) Outro [48:44]   Haley, Lauren and Stargate Pioneer love to hear back from you about your top 5 Marvel character lists, your science of Marvel questions, why Wing is wrong at any time, who would you pick in an all-female Avenger team, or who’s Marvel abs you would like to see. Call the voicemail line at 1-844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-  2871.   Join Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. next time as the hosts discuss the sixth episode of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s third season "Among Us Hide." You can listen in live when we record Wednesday nights at 8:00 PM Central time at GonnaGeek.com/live (Also streamed live on YouTube, Spreaker and Blab). Contact  Info: Please see www.legendsofshield.com for all of our contact information or call our voicemail line at 1-844-THE-BUS1 or 844-843-2871   Legends Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is a Proud Member Of The Gonna Geek Network (gonnageek.com).   This podcast was recorded on Wednesday October 28th, 2015.   Standby for your S.H.I.E.L.D. debriefing ---  

  It is a classic pattern. A castaway gets booted out of a tribe and that tribe's failure at the next challenge appears like it hinged on that choice. Imagine how the No Collar's would have faired if they had kept Vince instead of Nina. The other classic pattern we were treated to this episode is for the dominant tribe to start to self destruct, and the Blue Collars are working hard on that one too. How is it that all the guys are experts at annoying their tribemates? Mike keeps digging his hole, Dan finds new ways to insert his foot in his mouth, and Rodney appears ready to rage at his tribemates in every confrontation. Meanwhile, over at the White Collars, Shirin and Joaquin are making the next choice to be booted from that tribe super easy too. This episode took us through day 8 and it is clear that the elements are really starting to have an impact on this group. Who would you have chosen: Nina or Will? What's the key to keeping harmony in the dominant tribe? Do you think the Blue Collars will throw a challenge just to get rid of Mike? Is a tribe swap imminent or would your rather see them preserve the tribes until the merge? Who do you think is in control of each tribe? Who do you think will be the next to go? Here are the tribes after episode 3. Escameca/Blue Collar:Dan, Kelly, Lindsey, Mike, Rodney, Sierra Nagarote/No Collar:Hali, Jenn, Joe, Will Masaya/White Collar:Carolyn, Joaquin, Max, Shirin, Tyler We've got several ways you can reach us. You can call and leave a voicemail at 206-350-1547. You can record an audio comment and attach it or just type up a quick text message and send it to us via email at joannandstacyshow@gmail.com. Listener Feedback is due by Saturday Noon PST. Please keep it to 3 minutes or less. 00:00 Date 00:04 Ancient Voices 30 Worlds Apart mix by Aaron from Granville 00:31 Introductions 28:39 NToS 32:34 JSFL Update 37:11 Ancient Voices 30 Worlds Apart mix by Aaron from Granville Links for Today's Show Paul's Visual Roster for Survivor Worlds Apart Survivor Fans Podcast Fans group on Facebook JSFL SFP on Twitter Contact Info: Voicemail: 206-350-1547 Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.com Survivor Fans Podcast P.O. Box 2811 Orangevale, CA 95662 Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy