A Geek History of Time - Episode 147 - Comic Book Creator Tim Watts and The Republic

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

You know, Stalin and the Nazis were these welfare state types. One of us is a stand-up comic. Can you tell what it is? Ladies and gentlemen, everyone, brick. Um. But the problem. Oh my god. That's like, I could use that to teach the whole world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect in our to the real world, my name is Ed Laylock. I'm a world history teacher and sometimes English teacher here in Northern California. And in terms of what's happening with me this week, I have actually started to figure out why it is that people turn TikTok into a second job or a hobby. I have actually managed to get, I've broken 100 likes and two thirds of those came from one video that I post the other night after my second beer, which is the only way I'd ever actually wind up getting started posting anything on TikTok. And, yeah, and Damien got to get on my back about, you know, you might want to mention that there's a podcast where you talk about this stuff

in a lot more detail. And so at the end of my rant, I did add another video to pitch our efforts here. So yeah, I can't guarantee, like I'm not going to go out and buy a ring light tomorrow or anything, but I kind of see why it is that people spend time on that hellscape of an app actually creating content now. So that's me. Who are you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin and drama teacher up here in Northern California, as far as what's going on. I have found that my son has a penchant for finding the weirdest ass kind of flower that one could ask for.

I have had to buy in three weeks, buckwheat flour, spirulina flour. Some other kind of flour I don't know of. And, and link a flour? No, actually we haven't had that yet. Coconut flour. Give him ideas and he'll get there. But this week we're making szechuan pasta.

Oh, sorry, flour. Oddly enough, no. What? I know. I, his recipe, I don't mind, but it's actually carnages sesh one powder because Poster and and he's like he called me today and he's like did you get the activated charcoal dad? And I'm like no, I couldn't find activated charcoal at our local store

So we're gonna burn some toast and scrape that shit in there So but I'm excited because he's excited. That's fair. Yeah. And so I'm stoked. All right. Yeah. So that's awesome.

That's me. And we have a guest. We do. Yeah, that's why our screens are slightly shrunk. Yeah. So we have with us a returning friend of the show, Tim Watts, who was there for us for the first time that we did the V for vendetta we had so much fun we did it again. And then I wanted to have him back because he's got something that he is very, very excited about and I wanted to have him on to explain it so Mr Tim Watts welcome to the show meet Ed Blaylock.

Hi. They don't thank you for having me guys glad to be here. Tim Watts, welcome to the show of Meet Ed Blalock. Hi, how you doing? They're doing. Thanks for having me, guys. Glad to be here. Glad to have you. Yeah. So tell us a bit about yourself. The audience may or may not have gotten that far back. Right. And it also, I like that. I like that you say that it was so much fun to have you talk about V that you

wanted to do again, not that I sucked and you had to fix what I did. No, if that were the case, wouldn't have released those. Fair enough, fair enough. I feel much better about myself. Yeah, no, it was good because you came at it from a different perspective than I'd came at it. You different. Yeah, and it was largely because there were a couple of places where I was literally shouting at my phone while I was listening to that episode. Because there were a couple of places where I was literally shouting at my phone while I was listening to that episode, because there were things I needed to get off my chest and unlabor myself of. So yeah, it was much more shouting. Yeah, I got you to be being primarily an

artist. I definitely did come at it from, add it from a different angle than, you know, historians would. So I can understand that. Yeah, I really enjoyed it because it was like Damien Assain. It was a perspective I would never have thought of on my own. So it was awesome. Cool, no, it was a lot of fun. I'm glad to be back. And yeah, so the reason I'm here is because I recently expanded from being primarily an artist and became a multi-hyphenate and added writing to my endeavors and I completed a graphic novel and I'm going to be doing a Kickstarter, starting March 1st to support it. So I thought I would hang out with you guys and talk about it a little bit. That's awesome. Alright, so you are an artist. So I assume, can we say graphic novelist, graphic novel artist? How do we? You're a comic book artist and a comic book writer.

Well, you know, comic book writers find I don't look at that as a negative, you know, I mean, there's limitations within the nerd community or outside of it. And, you know, pop up a writer's fine. I don't I don't look at that as a negative, you know, I mean, there's limitations within the nerd community or outside of it, you know, sure. That's largely there's just cred for it really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, oh, he did that. Right. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So writer artist, I guess, is now my title, where for it previously, it was just artist and just to be clear on this book, I did part of the art. I did the inking, you know, for those in the audience probably know that the difference between a pencil and an anchor and comics most of the time. I learned it from having watched chasing Amy, so mostly you're just tracing. I just traced it. Yes, that's

exactly right. Yeah, my mom is so. So yeah. But so I did do the Anke and I want to keep my hand in the art part of it, although I originally was gonna try to do the whole thing myself, but I realized two things. One, I wasn't fast enough and two, I wasn't good enough. So I loved the story enough that I wanted to be better than I could do. So I decided to reach out and find someone else to help me with that. So through the wonders of the internet, I found an amazing pencil in Italy. Wow, very cool. And she did a phenomenal job

of her name is Alessandra Imperio. And I am regularly grateful to have found her because she had a phenomenal work on the book. Oh, that's terrific. Very cool. I got to say your motivation for getting out of your own your works own way is very similar to why I stopped trying out for the Olympic hurdle team. Very proud. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And my bad old business sacrifice on your part, yeah. It was, it was. I had a dream, but I realized I was not fast enough

or good enough to be on that team. So, exactly. So, okay, so you learned the opposite lesson from Stuart Smalley, and I applaud you for being able to take that to heart. So, that's... Well, the cast aren't people do like him. Well, yes. I mean, come on.

Yeah, absolutely. He's just not good enough or fast enough. Yeah. Sarah does. Yeah. Yeah. I do, but I do really like that you cared enough about this project that you wanted to get the best hands into it that you could.

And you had the humility to recognize that that ain't you. And I guess more importantly, you kind of had the love of the project to bring in. Yeah, absolutely, because the more I work on the story and pictured it in my mind, you know, when I tried to execute it myself, I realized it was nowhere near what I wanted it to be. And it's exactly what you said. I had enough of a love of the story to know that I needed to, you know, let my ego get out of the way

and find a way to make the final product, the best it could be, regardless of what my role was. I'm that way of puns usually, you know, I if yeah, as it turns out, the only time I ever deliver a pun is because I know I'm the best candidate for that pun that it would not work without me. But if I find that it's a pun that would work without me, I tend to set someone else up for it. So I feel you, I feel you. Okay. I'm not even I'm just not going to remark. Not not worthy. I'm not going to rise to the bay. Well, it's a third remark. So we've comments. So, so we've we've spoken about your your love for the project, but we, we haven't

shared with the audience the title of your project yet. Yes. And we're 17 minutes in. So, like, yeah, the title of the book is the Republic. It is a post apocalyptic story, because that is a genre that I have a deep affection and experience with. And also just a little twist for anybody in the Northern California area. I chose to set the events of my book here in Sacramento. So you'll see iconic buildings, such as capital in Sacramento and a few other structures.

So it's not obvious. I'm sure that some people that look and see this capital building go, oh, it's watching NDC and we'll get confused by the rest of the geography. But I decided to do this is a town I know, so I thought it'd be fun to set it here. Yeah, well, and the advice always is right, what you know. So that's good. Where do you know? Where do you know?

Yes. Yes. Yeah, I, I, I noticed there were some, because I, I got an advanced copy, gonna brag here. This is what happens when you're on a sixth rate podcast as you get advanced copies. Uh, but, uh, but I got an advanced copy and, uh, there was one, uh, one, what's it called

when the image goes across to two, two a two page spread, a two page spread. Okay, I was going to say splash. And I don't know where I got that from. But that was the time page. A splash page is one panel takes up the entire page. Okay. Often in conventional comics, the first page, but not always, but a lot of you know, often the 80s, you know, the very first page is just one single image

taken up the entire page. That's a splash page. Okay. But it went across two different pages is called a spread because it spreads across the middle of the book. There you go. So there's a two page spread, and I'm not going to give too much away. But I it was a overhead shot. And I was like, that place looks familiar. Like I know how that river goes, like right a minute. So that was cool, because I've taken my kids there a number of times and there's. Yes, and thankfully for my Italian artist,

there is a thing called Google Earth. So she was able to spend a lot of time wandering the streets of Sacramento to figure out where to place things and get her orientation right. So yeah, it made things actually surprisingly easy. Yeah, I bet. So just logistically, speaking of technology making things easier, something occurs to me, since you kept your hand in by doing the inking, did she send you digital documents that you printed out and did the inking on or did you digitally ink

or did she actually send you physical paper pencil drawings and you inked on those? The entire project was done digitally. Oh, very cool. There is no paper art for this book at all. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, she drew on a tablet in Italy. We put the files in Dropbox. I retrieved them. I would ink them and then I would send them onto the colorist who would do his portion of the work. I also found a wonderful gentleman named Michael Woods in Texas who did the coloring for the book.

And then beyond that, the pages would go on to another gentleman who did the lettering. So it was a, wow, quite a production, but yeah, it was a 100% digital. There is no physical art for this book that exists. Wow. It made it very easy, but as an old school comic book guy, it kind of is, it hurts my heart a little bit. It's not original art because I like original art. And I was getting asked about that. Like, yeah, how does that feel? Like you've made this magnum opus. Right.

And it has no, no sketch pad. Yeah, there's no, there's no physical art to, I mean, there are saved files of preliminary sketches and things like that. But yeah, you're right. There's not an art board that has paper, you know, it has pencil and ink on it. And that's different for me because that's not what I grew up with. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's funny speaking as a, as a, you know, small age historian. You know, I find it fascinating. The, the, the kind of the overarching historiography that's involved in the fact that this project does not have a physical object. Other than the final product?

Well, yeah, in terms of the creation of it, one of the issues that I try to bring up to my students is there are going to have to be people who figure out how to archive the files that we now have electronically as technology marches on because there's so much data out there right now that it's important historically that there is no physical, you know, object connected to. And as somebody who like you is, I really, I have never managed to fully adopt a Kindle or nook, you know, because I just like having the pages in my hand, you know, and the kinesthetics of an actual book are something that I am attached to.

Yeah, there's a sensory experience. Yeah, yeah. And so yeah, I think it's on the one hand hearing you say that brings all of those things up, but at the same time, it's just so fucking cyberpunk it hurts. It is. But I'll tell you, it was so incredibly convenient, rather than, you know,

her packing up 118 pages of art, you know, yeah, keeping it halfway across the planet to me, whereas she could, you know, finish drawing something and I could have it in 10 minutes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, go ahead. When we, yeah, when we, when we sacrifice something, we hopefully gain a lot for that. And clearly you did. I would also kind of just piggyback on what Ed's saying, though, as an historian, medium age historian. So don't, don't have the, the extra letters,

but, but in terms of like, I'm always worried about having everything just be digital because that predicate everything's existence on the continuance of electricity. Absolutely. And that there's a part of me that worries about that. Like, I still mail my bills out. Well, I haven't done that in 20 years. Jesus, yeah, I do. worries about that. Like I still mail my bills out. Well, I haven't done that in 20 years. Jesus. Yeah, I do. I still there's there's four bills that I always still mail out. How is it? How is it that I'm the Catholic, but you're the Luddite that way? Like wait a minute. Hold on. Because because probably probably

because I find great sympathy with men and nights. Okay. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Well, I would argue that mainly, mainly physically you risk other things happening with it as opposed to digital. You know, digitally, you get immediate confirmation that it was received as a problem. You address it. Yep. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, in all seriousness, I do love that you are going to print a, eventually a physical copy of this. Like you said, the finished product. Yes. And so that. Oh, my God. Oh, pretty, pretty. Yes. I don't know if this is going to be going at audio only or visual, but for the people who are just doing the audio, I did print up some sample copies

of the book. So there is a physical addition of it. And one of the reasons was that when I did the Kickstarter, I wanted to be able to show people that it was done. Because doing my research on Kickstarter projects, specifically comics, right, there were a lot of comics where people would do the beginning of a project. They'll do a Kickstarter campaign to get the funds to actually complete it. And often you would fund something and it would be six months, nine months, 12 months before you got the product. Right. Yeah. So I wanted to remove that hurdle from people committing to the project. And so

show them, no, it's actually done. So when the Kickstarter is over, if we're successful, I'll have to do is tell the printer the quantity to print. And then people will get their books relatively quickly. And that was important to me because I know that, you know, I don't have name recognition like some other creators that are on the Kickstarter platform. So I wanted to remove as many obstacles to getting people to back the project as possible. I very much appreciate that as somebody who got in on the ground floor of the return to dark tower kickstarter which I don't I don't know if you're in in the know. I know I signed up for it back in I want to say 2019 thinking I was going to get my game in 2020. And I just got it. Wow.

Well, you know, and there were there were a whole raft of legitimate reasons, you know, first and foremost being, you know, global pandemic, you know, but but it was it was kind of frustrating to watch because I, I, you know, bought it as a birthday present to myself and I watched that birthday go by. And then the following birthday. Could I just, could I please have my game? And it finally arrived. So I very much appreciate having, having the end product, you know, prepared beforehand. And the other thing is there's, there's, you know, I don't want to say a long history,

but there have been any number of instances where, you know, projects get funded, and then they turn into vaporware. For sure. You know, legitimately or not, legitimately, but it does happen for sure. Yeah, yeah. I'm still awaiting my dragon egg candles that have a D20 at the center. dragon egg candles that have a D20 at the center. Oh yeah. That's I had four years going about yeah four years. Wow. It's not going to happen. Like yeah. Okay. That's point. 75 dollars I lost. That's my gone. Another another very notable example is Kevin CMB Ada and palladium games tried to do a Kickstarter project for a Robotech tabletop work game that could just completely fill apart. It turns out the management style that Kevin C. Mbada, and I know I'm

probably mispronouncing his name, but whatever. The owner of the leading games likes to engage in is not really compatible with trying to do something like a kickstarter. And yeah, the whole projects went up in a ball of purple flame. So, yeah, that sounds like it would have been fun. It would have been in the models actually looks really awesome But anyway, I'm I'm bird walking. I'm pulling us way off topic. So I apologize for that We all roles to play. Yeah, there we go So okay, you have a physical copy already made up that is I mean, I'm gobsmacked and and I believe you even told me that But to see it in your hand was was pretty damn cool

It's yeah, it's pretty cool. It was all of a mid, a little bit of an emotional experience to open the box and hold it in my hands. I bet. Oh yeah, no, I can believe it. I bet. Yeah. Cause I mean, it was three years of work.

That's a lot. Yeah. A year to write it and two, over two years to do the art and finish out the actual book itself. Wow. Yes. That's cool. All right. So I got to ask you mentioned that post apocalypticocalyptic? What have you done in the past regarding post-apocalyptic? And why do you keep coming back to post-apocalyptic as Aisana? As you go back to the beginning, we're at first caught my eye. We've been the early 1980s because I'm a man of that age. And discovered a film called Road Warrior with Mel Gibson,

which I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with. Yes. But also at the same time, most people who have roleplay, their first experience was Dungeons & Dragons. My first roleplay experience was also a TSR product called Gamma World. Oh, seriously? Absolutely.

Okay. Oh, that's freaking awesome. Yeah. Oh, okay. Both early 80s, like I'd say, 83, 84, 82 to 84, somewhere in there. And those both came into my life about the same time. And I realized that it was fascinating to me. And over the years, and I'll get into other things

that I've done. But the main reason that I focus on that genre is because I'm fascinated with the potential stories or avenues that things can go when humanity has the security blanket of civilization yanked away from them and how they react. And I really love that phrasing. Yeah, it's a thank you. And it's something that story tellers, there's infinite options that you can do. You know, my book, for example, it's post-apocalyptic, but for people who post-apocalypse mean something like the walking dead, well, my book doesn't have zombies,

or if they're a Fallout player, which I've lost far too much of my life to those teams. They're absolutely gorgeous, I love them, but my book doesn't have mutants and monsters or things like that. The aesthetically the closest that I would compare my book to is Book of Eli, the Benzell Watch film.

Okay. Okay. That's the quote unquote real world setting. Right. And that's what's most fascinating to me because I want to feel people react to this new reality. And all the window dressing of mutants and monsters and zombies is fun and you know,

glass of the V8 interceptors and all of that is super cool. And I love it. It's just for me, when I sit down and I want to play in that playground, I go more for the, how do people deal with this? So let me ask you this, how is that different than dark fantasy, like Conan the Barbarian fantasy? I would argue that Conan and dark fantasy, like Conan the Barbarian fantasy. I would argue that Conan and dark fantasy and things like that, there are entities that

could be called governments. There is some infrastructure of a sort. And there's some, you know, there are, I mean, you know, post apocalyptic books have leaders, you know, tribal leaders or things like that. And you can have much smaller scale government, but still there's somebody trying to create a social contract of sorts. Well, that gets into, you know, another thing that I did for several years, I co-hosted the podcast, analyzing the genre called post apotheclyps. Oh, and five years over 100 episodes, wow, going over movies, TV shows, books, video games, all that. Nice. And doing that, I came up with, and there's variations and exceptions, of course, but usually in most post apocalyptic entertainment, you find

people fall into one of three main categories. And that is out of the apocalypse happens. You have a group of people that immediately want to rebuild what they've lost. You have a group of people who see this as a reset button where they have a clean slate to do something better. And then you have the people who I kind of combined that either just can't cope with what's happened and they lose their mind or they lean into the chaos and just, you know, go crazy and, you know, give over to their id to the nth degree. And there's always exceptions and subcategories that things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, the most part if you watch, if you watch most post apocalyptic films, TV shows, whatever it is, people broadly fall into one of those three categories most of the time.

Yeah, I mean, it does strike me as as three different leaders that we've seen through the walking dead, for instance, you had what's his name, Rick's partner. Oh, Shane, yeah, Shane clearly leaning into the chaos. You had what's his name, Rick's partner. Oh, Shane. Yeah, Shane clearly leaning into the chaos. You had Rick trying to, you know, we need to have civilization still, grabbing to the past and fairness, he just woke up.

And then later on, you have the king, who's like, I'm a king now and I have a pet tiger and you're like, pro, what were you before? Like, you know, right? But I'm a king now and I have a pet tiger and you're like pro what were you before like, you know Right, but I would argue that he's not trying to build something better He's even reaching further into the past than Rick was Rick was reaching in you know reaching back to his immediate past Just to get the modern world, right? You know the you know Z equal. Yeah, Z equal was Looking at the situation deciding that there was a different structure that was better for this current.

You know, world that we're living in, it was a more of a futile setting. Yeah, and you know, it worked. Sure. You know, for him, but they're you didn't really find too many people that were trying to create a new type of society out of it. Yeah, no, I think I think, oh, and I'm forgetting the title of the TV series because it only lasted like three quarters of a season. Oh, hell, and it had the bad, Twilight spin off from, yeah. Cheers. Yeah. Well, we'll play horrible, horrible man. I'm so glad somebody else sees it. At one point, do we say good day, sir? Usually that's tied specifically to a pun, which this was not.

But it is an example of him being a horrible human being. Different genres. But yeah, but damn it. I don't remember which network it was on. It was about it. Give me some. Give me some. It was the dad from Twilight. Okay, you lost there. Okay. But the central, the central premise was one way, it was all of a sudden electrical, anything electronic just stopped working. Yes, that John Favreau was a producer on it and now the name is escaping me as well but no we talked about

revolution. There we go. Yes, there we go, nice. Yeah, no, that. No, it's no way. I'm sorry. Yes, all. But no, revolution. I think kind of wanted to try to go in a direction of somebody's, you know, of, of their being, you know, individuals who wanted to try to build, you know, a new kind of utopia. If I remember clearly, but it didn't, it didn't, yeah, it didn't last long enough for a reason about a season and a half, I think.

Oh, wow, that's longer than I thought. Yeah, it got a full first season. And I actually, that is one of my favorite examples of world building in the genre. That is one of my favorite examples of world building in the genre. Because they did a fantastic job of showing the main area where the characters lived, but they would have allude to other parts of what used to be the United States and make references to the state that they were in. And we would see little glimpses like a map or something like that and be told there is a whole lot more outside of where we're at right now. And we might show it to you one day. And that's one of my favorite things,

about these things of, you know, if we have the time and ability, we'll show you, we'll go here, we'll go there. And there's other stuff out there, which is why I like the Fallout games, because you just get them wander and explore. Yeah. Yeah. The world building and revolution was amazing. It's kind of ashamed that so much of the writing was so deeply, deeply tropey and kind of limited. It's first season of something though. You have to get on the art tip of the stuff. I mean, look at the first season of mash.

It's super tropey. Yeah, yeah. And it's rare. It's rare to have a series not do that quite honestly But it's also that happens in 2012. I think The revolution came out in 2012 that would have been right after the bubble collapsed and things were really bad People didn't gonna want to see that so I mean ultimately society said that well, yeah, it's a piece of advice Good day, sir.

There we go. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So you, you love the idea of a society, like you said, having the safety blanket ripped away, ganked away. And kind of what it's all says.

Which is a very love craft, which is a very love crafty and kind of outlook on civilization versus barbarism You know because you mentioned Conan which is Robert E. Howard right who who was you know basically anti-civilization And he was as we've mentioned before you know best buddies with lovecraft who was like, no, no, no, the, the, the, the, the blanket of civilization is the only thing that prevents us from literally eating one another and being devoured by monsters from beyond the stars. You know, sure. So. I have an affinity for survival movies. Movies where a bad thing happens and then your people are trying to survive the thing that happened.

Because, and I think here's where we have that overlap, what does it tell us about ourselves? Exactly. Yeah, when all the shit that you get, oh, you're a TikTok influencer? That's great. We need water. Right.

Do you know how to do that? Right. No, you don't. Okay, stand here in the shade so we don't have to worry about you and I'm going to go dig something. You know, and stuff like that and just how people's natures and or their reactions to stress guide them into altruism or savagery. Well, and also stuff like that. Pregmatism, you know, okay, you're a TikTok influencer and you don't know how to do anything. Well, you're not worth the limited amount of food I have. Sorry. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And I just want to plug this here because I'm a huge fan. This conversation reminds me of a song by Canadian musician Corb Lund getting down on the mountain. I don't know if either one of you are at all familiar. Sounds like a sex thing. It sounds like it, but it's totally not. Yeah, like a fan-fix, sex thing of Game of Thrones. Getting really hot.

There you go. Actually, yeah. I'm going to do Grizzly Adam Slash for that, Fick. Okay, there you go. I might actually have to go on to a a o3 and actually like write both of those now. I hate I hate you both. That's why he's telling me to leave at the end. He's like, hoed door. But the song literally mentions, water ain't running into the city no more till you're holding precious metal.

Can you get the fish? Can you read the stars? What's that? What did you have to offer? Yeah, I didn't quite hear your answer. Even the book. Yeah, what you have to offer, you know, can you contribute? That's such a departure from like the gleeful approach of nothing but flowers by the talking heads, you know, this, this, this was a parking lot.

Now it's nothing but flowers, you know, this, this, this was a parking lot. Now it's nothing but flowers, you know, this was a pizza hut. The idealized, you know, when nature reclaims things, it's, it's a utopia and, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. But he's actually talking about it as though it's an awful thing. He's like, you know, it used to be a 7-11, you know, I, I can't get used to this lifestyle, you know, David Burnt, kind of inverting it. So yeah, okay, you dig on that for that reason. Do you find that it's easier or harder to write a story when people are stripped down on that level?

For me, it wasn't just because, as I said, you know, doing over a hundred episodes of a podcast analyzing the genre, you see a lot of different takes on it, a lot of different approaches, and over time, I gradually started to think of, you know, that maybe I had a story to contribute to the, you know, environment. And actually what triggered the whole idea, oddly enough, was several years ago when they released artist concept drawings of the new professional basketball arena that was going to be built in Sacramento. I looked at it,

it's a very unique looking building from the outside for anyone that's seen at the Golden One Center. And my brain of course said, I wonder what that would look like in the apocalypse. And they were hanging plants off the side of it too. Like they were doing all kinds of stuff with that. So that would that kind of harkens to two things like Chernobyl, where you see the ivy creeping up the walls of things and whatnot. Right. And I started expanding that to what what other places here in Sacramento look like, you know, you know, the tower bridge that isn't something we have here,

the capital building, etc. Tower records would look like it does now. Right. And then, March Lee. Yes. And then I started thinking, how can I tie all of these images together? Because with me, it always starts with images

because I was an artist before I wrote. So I started thinking, how can I tie this together? And so I started to outline the book. And my process for that, I, I'm not formally trained as a writer, you know, but for me, the way I describe it is I wrote like I drew, like I draw, you know, when you're drawing, say a figure, you start with a stick figure and then you flesh it out a little bit and add shapes for, you know, muscle groups and you go in and add more detail. And that's what I did with, you know, the story for the book. I wrote like a two or three

sentence thing that's told the entire story of the book, the, you know, beginning to end. Then I went back and I expanded it to a couple paragraphs or a page and then I expanded it further and then I got to the point where it was detailed enough that I started breaking into chapters and you know, and I just continued to flesh it out that way until you know eventually I had a book That's cool So it worked out pretty well. So I mean, it's called Republic so and and So there's a couple things that it that tickles my brain on number one historian. So I'm thinking of the world's most famous republic, the Dominican Republic. Exactly. Right. I'm glad you noticed that. I worked hard. I think that in there. Yeah. Despite the lack of baseball bats, I still was able to make that

connection. But no, in all seriousness, the Roman history. So were you taking inspiration from that or are you just a huge soccer fan? No, I was absolutely taking inspiration from Roman history. So were you taking inspiration from that or are you just a huge soccer fan? No, I was absolutely taking inspiration from Roman history and if You know the listeners here know that you've talked about Roman history, you know on numerous occasions, so they probably have it more than a passing Experience with it either an eye role or an interest, either way. But I started seeing parallels of Rome as a city on a river. Sacramento is a city on a river.

Both used to be swamps. Yeah, used to be. Wait, wait, back up. Sorry. It's elevated. It's elevated this city by like 12 feet. We're no. I understand that, but we haven't done it everywhere. It's February and I have mosquitoes in my backyard like no no I'm sorry. I take offense sir Yeah, no, no, anyway, sorry Carrie. I had I had to I had to let that off my chest, but Carrie on but also

In addition to a being a river on a city, a city on a river. Yeah, it works either way. Why are you gonna be picking? Depending on how much snowfall we get, that's true, it could be a river on a city. Exactly. But also Rome began as a monarchy

and new public. And Sacramento has a professional basketball team called the Kings, and they also have professional football club called the Republic. So one other thing that I like in the post-apocalyptic genre is the trope of people discovering things from the past and misinterpreting their meaning. Oh, tell me more. For example, there is a book called Canicle for Leibowitz. Yes. A famous sci-fi post-apocalyptic book that has a version of, actually, Catholic church, you know, like a thousand years in the future. And, you know, there are members that go around, you know, getting ancient technology and preserving things, but they are interping in it through their current world and not necessarily getting it right. It gives options for how people see things. It's options for storytelling.

So in my mind, the people in this city, current and my story, look and they find evidence of kings all over the place and they find paraphernalia that says Republic. And even though literacy is dropped significantly, there still are a few people that can, you know, function at, at a, you know, elementary school level of reading, maybe not, you know, so we have improved. We've improved. Right. But, um, no, there was a line in the comic that I really liked. What's that? I wish you saying that didn't make me laugh that way. I really liked what said. I wish you saying that didn't make me laugh that way.

You'd be giving it a teach English. Yeah. Yeah. There was a line in the book that I really liked, and I hope I'm not giving it away, but it's something like we don't know if we were first a city of kings that turned into a republic or a republic that turned into kings. There was something in there that you said,

it was, you did it much more poetically. And folks, if you want to really read it, you should probably buy the damn thing. But, but it was such a neat little juxtaposition because I come at it from the historian's perspective, which carries with it a layer of inevitability of the past. It happened that way. So it's inevitable that it happened that way, even though there were plenty of, like when they deposed the seventh king, he went and raised an army and came back and tried to get rid of the consuls.

And then one of the consuls got fired for nepotism. I mean, it was really messy right around 510. And so, but I look at it as, well, naturally, you go king, then you go republic, and then you go empire. That's how it went. Therefore, that's how it always goes. And so I love the idea that, like you said, they're seeing old things and not necessarily getting them

right, but also it liberates them from the paradigm that I'm kind of stuck in subconsciously of this is the natural order of things. And there's nothing to say that you don't go from a republic to a kingdom. Right exactly because also they're they don't have the history that we we live with. So like I said, you know, they don't have the guardrails of, you know, oh, this came before. And we know that in the past, this came after. So that means that, you know, the next thing will come after. Right. They're starting from scratch with with no background. So they don't know what comes next. Yeah. I love, I love the child's like innocence involved in you saying that knowing what came before is a guardrail. Because looking at looking at recent history, I don't feel like

guardrail. That's the right. Yeah, having having spent the last I dream of doom. Yeah, I feel you know, I've gotten I've gotten really really comfortable with understanding how Cassandra felt in Troy, like, guys, my people, please, can I just, can I interest you and please looking at how this went last time? Can, like, maybe, okay, cool, carry on, whatever, fuck it, I'm out. You know, sorry, I, sorry, I again had to vent. But yeah, I think I think what you're what you're saying there is is very powerful in us that is a very powerful part of the genre

that you're working in. Do you find that it also gives more, I don't know, gravitas maybe, I don't know, gravitas maybe, to your work, given that you are basing it on some levels in a shared Western civilization history. I'm going to use a broad brush to paint quickly there. Sure. Yeah, I do, because I think because some of those things are influencing the story that I've built, I think that it makes it easier for people to identify on certain things going on. And, you know, with a graphic novel, you are limited in how much dialogue and how much speech you can have because it is a primarily visual medium. It's not pros and it's not like, you know, George R. Martin writing a thousand pages, but, you know, we're not writing a thousand page book. But, um, saying he's writing a thousand page book,

but we don't have pages. Is it something about having two middle initials of R, make it so that you just can't like pair things down. Don't eat what? Not just, oh, virtually in my house, you dare. But for me, it helped me because I knew I had limited space to work with. And leaning on some of those well-known tropes or visuals or institutions helped to tell part of the story that I didn't have to explain. So I could spend more time on my story. And even with that, you know, I'm sure you probably have noticed. And other people that have read the book have noticed that the, you know, the first quarter to half of the book is much more of a boast than the later part of

the book because I did have to explain a lot of things and set a lot of things up because I was, you know, building a brand new world. And so if I hadn't had that imagery and those other things to work on that are part of the collective consciousness in Western, the Western world, it would have been even more worthy than it already was. Make sense, make sense. What drew you to Roman history in general? Just...

Roman history in general, I think, I mean, I always enjoyed history in the broad sense. And you know, when I was young, I went through a phase where I read a lot of American Civil War history. And then later on, I stumbled across a bit of Roman fiction, an author named Stephen Sailor. Yeah, that's my boy. Yeah, did I tell you I've met him? I've met him also. Okay, very nice guy. Yeah. I got a feeling we met at very different

circumstances. Yeah, I met him at a book signing. Okay, yeah, I met him at a I delivered a lecture as to how I yes was warning Dito off. Oh, no, I did a a book signing. Okay. Yeah, I met him at a, I, I delivered a lecture as to how I NES was warning Dito off. Oh, no, I did a completely different lecture. Yeah. Okay. Good. But I delivered to like six to 12th graders and I told the adults. I'm like, at this point, it's turning PG 13 and possibly R. So if you want to shepherd them out, you can, if not, you all chose this. Right. So then I met him and, and yeah, but okay. So you fell. So I came across his book. I discovered that there is a whole, you know, much larger than I thought, yeah, industry of Roman fiction and also Roman mysteries.

Yeah. It was a huge subgenre of that. Yeah. So shit. Hold on. Yeah, the super O'sa series back the truck up. Gordy honest, the finder. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Lensy Davis. There's another gentleman that also writes and these are all, you know, murder mysteries set in ancient Rome. Are they all also former homosexual oratica writers? Because I know sayor no, Steven's only one. Oh, I'm aware of. Yeah. Well, they are writing about Rome. So, and I got to tell you, it would be surprising. It absolutely helps. The scenes between Gordianas and his wife, Hubba, how, how, how was I utterly unaware that this existed until right now? Oh, it's, it's absolutely fantastic. There's a lot of good writers there. There's a lot of good books in there.

It's a lot of fun. I'm so disappointed in myself, but okay, yeah, I'm gonna have to hit you up for for Oh, yeah, recommendations. Yeah, shoot. I'll write you some books. All right. Cool. All right. That's what got me started on on Roman history and then I branched off onto you know, this recreationally reading nonfiction. Like you do things and yeah. Nerd. Well, I'm also a grad school dropout. So the closest I got to Sirius academia was a comparative analysis of four biographies of Julius Caesar. Oh nice. Which ones?

the four biographies of Julius Caesar. Oh nice. Which ones? Sutonius. Sutonius, Meyer. Okay. Fuller. Okay. And oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh right three contemporary or three more moderns and then one one contemporary yeah the the post of a war one was interesting because he was the guy that more blatantly compared Caesar to Christ for saving all of humanity. Ah okay. Ah, very much the great man era of history. Yeah, as I said, the 1800s, what do you expect? Yeah, I mean, even they had the same initials, you know, so they were the same.

Exactly. Yeah, tropey. Right. Okay. I, yes, never mind. Just not I carry on. I have a podcast. Yeah, that's, that's, that's all trades.

That's why it's friends. What I don't have a book to talk about, I would be happy to come back and just talk about whatever. Oh, Jesus. Okay. All right. So that's cool. Okay. So that that kind of looped in and so you just kind of kept a a a finger on that pulse point. And then it's kind of fed into what you do. History. I think um, help me with my world building. Sure. Yeah. Because I think about, you know, what, what came before and where have we been? And, you know, the setting of, of this book is, you know, a group of survivors found the ruins

of a large city. And they started out just hiding in and destroyed buildings and trying to survive day to day. Right. Right. gradually over over, you know, decades, other people showed up that that felt the same way and they could work together and destroyed buildings and trying to survive day to day. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. In many ways, Rome is a post-apocalyptic story. We just don't really have an apocalypse. It's just... Right, well, yeah. The apocalypse don't fall off joy. Well, that's well, I mean... That's for...

But he runs... Okay, I need us to run into several kingdoms that exist. Yes, in his area. I'm like that shit existed. Well, Rome is such a psychic trauma. But the immediate area of Rome is apocalyptic in the sense that the land that they found there was nothing there before. Right.

So they are building from scratch as far as their city. Yeah. So it's similar. But yeah, so that's where we're at when my book starts is they become a regional power. And then they hear rumors and inklings of a large nomadic people moving into their territory. Again, Roman history. Right. Attila. You know, hey, I only steal from the girls. Yeah. Yeah. So that is, you know, the conflict that I thought was interesting because then we get into the topic of, you know, what do people do and is a modern, quote unquote,

morality applicable in an impocalyptic setting, you know, or when you do something, like you have to survive, so you would kill somebody. Is it morally wrong if, you know, if it's you and it's literally you and him and you survive or he survives, or is it morally wrong to say, okay, I have a family, this person has food, my family will die without that food, is it morally okay for me to kill that person and take his food to feed my family? Right. Stovation is a big thing, I've noticed, like in

our discussion of Viva Vindata, you brought up starvation a few times too. That seems to be a recurrent theme for you. Well, just because it's the easiest example to put a moral code up against. True. Because to put to make it to make the stakes that extreme. That's the easiest. That's the easiest example. That's the. I think that would be cannibalism.

If you wanted extreme stakes, you would have cannibalism. Right. Sir, I said good day. But yeah, nothing. You can get nothing. But that is the easiest example to analyze. If someone says, you know, well, under all circumstances, the point that you would rather die,

you know, would you slowly starve to death rather than take someone else's life, you know, and some people are committed enough that they would do that. But a lot of people give the point of, you know what, I'm going to survive first and then I'll deal with the guilt or the moral revivations later. I'll get therapy later. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I go back to coreblund and the song I mentioned before, you ever seen a man whose kids a date for 17 days and counting.

Yeah, so that's a guy you meant for unions. Yeah, you do what you need to do. Yeah, and along those same lines, I'm sorry to jump again, but another film that is one of my favorite post-apocalyptic films and also a fantastic book in the road. I was about to say. Are you getting an invention, Kormann? Yeah, Kormann. Kormann, Korthy. Yeah, that was just doing the podcast.

We did episode on that. And I read the book and saw the movie both. And I would describe the book as something that I absolutely loved. It was a absolutely phenomenal book. And when I was done, I wanted to stick my head in an oven. Yeah. It's really well done. It is so bleak.

And I give immense respect to the filmmakers who adapted it because they did not Hollywoodize it. No, they did. They did an incredibly bleak film. They did something with the film too to make it kind of a almost blackwashed it. Well, and that was, you know, something else that I really enjoyed because it's's similar to the book of Eli with Denzel Washington, you know, it has that, um, desaturated, that, that save and private Ryan desaturated, you know, pale color palette, which is a good fitting for the book. I didn't go quite that far with my book, but I did kind of go with more of a, not seepia, but earth tone palette. You'll notice, it's not a bright,

four-colored pipe thing that people normally think of comics because that doesn't fit to an apocalyptic genre. Right, but there was, there was a bit of flair involved as well. Like it was, it was very obvious. I was like, oh wow, he's going with a lot of reds, but there were little accents here and there. And it's like, well, of course there would be

as as edges, yeah. Yeah, as Ed is often pointed out in Westerns and in Renaissance times, people wore a shit ton of gaudy colors because it showed off something, you know, and so people would still be attracted to that. Absolutely. And sorry, I had a stuff that I would eat rolling like. Yeah, well, yeah. And Tokyo without the neon right yeah And and my my question actually related to the color palette there is that more for you About the tone of the story you are telling or is it part of These folks are living in a primitive environment where they're not going to have access to in a primitive environment where they're not going to have access to,

like is it part of the realism of the environment they're in, or is it more a tonal thing as an artist, or is like, where's the balance point on that for you? Well, answer that by saying yes. Okay, awesome. Because it absolutely is both. Okay. And world building in my mind, it made sense that this color palette would be naturally exist in this environment. But at the same

time, it absolutely is part of the storytelling from an emotional level because, you know, we react emotionally to colors. Yeah. Very much. Everything was, you know, bright and vivid. It would be a more, you know, upbeat and, you know, quote unquote, happy story, which is not what I was telling. Yeah, right. And there are flashes of color, but for specific emotional beats in the story, not because it's bright and shiny and it's neat, you know, so no, that was absolutely intentional. I had a lot of conversations with my colors about the palette for the book. Or it ties directly to that character's sense of themself, even.

I noticed in some of your characters, again, without giving it away, but I noticed some of your characters like, oh, it's interesting. He's really theming himself out differently than the others, you know, in these color choices here. And it's since because he's a bit of an outsider and that kind of thing. And also just to make sure that we've been all over the place which I enjoy immensely, but I want to make sure that people are clear on, you know, the book itself,

as I said, it is a group of people that are rebuilding an ancient city, they find out about a large dramatic group coming into their area and those two groups come into conflict, but it's not just a physical conflict, it's also a conflict of ideologies. And one of the things that was very important to me was not to have two-dimensional cartoonish

good guy-bag guy. Because even though the Republic, the city, it is the protagonist of the story, and the nomadic people are the antagonists for disverlably in purposes, that doesn't mean that I view the actions or point of view of the nomadic people as wrong or bad or evil or anything like that, because there's more than one, you know, two people faced with the same obstacle will come up with different solutions. Yeah, and their solution may be more, you know, disduridine by our current moral rules,

but it doesn't mean that it wasn't effective and accomplish what they needed to accomplish and was perfectly acceptable in their arts. Yeah, and there's a couple twin thoughts there. One, we keep forgetting that evolution as they're a viadiology or biology A couple twin thoughts there. One, we keep forgetting that evolution, either of ideology or biology or culture, is aimed at adequacy and minimum adequacy,

just enough to get over the next hump. Who knows if it's well adapted or maladapted for the next hump, you know? And so, you know, not perfection. But the other thing is I really loved about your antagonist and protagonist because they weren't good guys and bad guys. They were two people who had incompatible worldviews,

abrating each other. Absolutely. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. And also on the back here, book on that. I'll do the book here. I'll credit you, of course. But it also goes back to a lot of the hierarchy of needs.

If you need food and shelter and you don't have that, you don't aspire to more than that. True. And that's one of the, when we open the book, and I'm not spoiling anything, when the book opens, you know, the republic has grown to the point that they have done things like, you know,

they have, you know, some agriculture or they're cleaning up the city, trying to make it, you know, more habitable that are building walls to protect themselves. Because they've addressed their most baseline needs. So now they're aspiring to the next level of what else can we do? Yeah.

All right, so I have a series of questions that I think we could probably just rapid fire as we're coming to a close, but before you do. I don't know, you've heard me. I don't know how rapid I can be, but I'll try. But before we do that, I also want to give Ed a chance to ask anything he wants before I start machine gun and you hear. Not really.

Mostly I'm just I guess a big question I have is, have you gotten the kick starter started yet or Ed, you are my new best friend for making sure to keep me on point. So when it comes to the kick starter, it is launching March 1st. So I'm not sure when you're playing on dropping this episode of the show. Right around there, actually. Yeah, actually that's one of the closest points to anybody plugging anything we've actually ever had line up. So you're remarkably fortunate. It'll drop either March 4th or March 11th.

So be after this. Okay, yeah. Well, I, yeah, we'll talk after I don't want to go on air meeting, but we could certainly have no problem moving stuff around. And so yes, it's launching March 1st, and you can either go to Kickstarter and search for the Republic, or you can also just go to Kickstarter and search for the Republic or you can

also just go to the republic novel.com and that will redirect you to the Kickstarter page that might be an easier for people to remember. But yeah, March 1st is when it starts and it's going to run for three weeks and there's some cool options. You know, you can get a digital copy if you don't need a physical one going back to our conversation about, you know, physical stuff That also probably will work best for international people Because shipping being what it is right now in the world that could be challenging You can get a soft cover copy like the samples that I made up that I have here Also the printer and working has the option for a hardcover edition. Oh, so that will something, if people want to pay a premium and they love me a lot and want to support me,

I can get a hardcover version of it. And we're also throwing in some some cool extra rewards and stretch goals, you know, for example, originally the book was going to be a four issue mini series that I was going to try to get a conventional comic publisher to put out through the comic bookstore market. But then the world exploded and things changed. So I decided to go to Kickstarter route and condense it down into a single volume. Well, that left me with covers for four issues of the book that my pencil did a fantastic job on, which I repurposed to be chapter pages, but you only get half the cover because you did a wrap-around cover for every issue of the book. So one of the rewards that we're offering is art prints of the full four covers that she did,

so you can see the great work that she did. And there's a couple other things that we're doing too. You know, we're doing, you know, like a bookmark, you know, with some original art that she did, it's not taken from the book, it's original just for that item, and, you know, cool little things like that. Nice. Very cool. Nice. And and I just I checked my calendar while you two were talking about something that seems kind of important. This episode is actually dropping on February 25th. If everybody checks their calendar right now, it's February 25th. So if you go to if you go to the Republic novel.com before March 1st, it will take you to what they call a pre-launch page and Kickstarter, where you get to put in your

email address, and it will notify you when the campaign launches. Fantastic. So pretty March 1st, you just put in your email address, and you'll get told when it starts. After March 1st, it'll be a live campaign. Awesome. Okay. Very cool. So I've got questions for you now. After March 1st, it'll be a live campaign. Awesome. Okay. Very cool.

So I've got questions for you now. Having read the whole thing, I want to know in chapter two, okay. There are several characters whose names are it. Did you do the names on purpose? I chose names on purpose. Okay. Do you want me to leave it at that? Or? No, because the origin of the names I'm fine talking about. Okay. Why did you choose studio directors

and heads for their names? So that is the nomadic people. And referred to in the book as the Southern tribes. Because in my world building, they were in Southern California. Okay. And as the centuries went by, Southern California reverted to its natural state, which is a desert. Right. And that meant that resources became more and more scarce and forced them north. So it's Chateau and Jake. Yeah, exactly. I just, like I told you, I still from the best.

Right. So, so yes, absolutely, you know, the, the leader of the Southern tribes, the gentleman name Warner. And there also is a character named Griffith, which wasn't, that was more for the observatory. It was more of a geographic poll than the, the, the, a DW Griffith, you know, just like the main character in the on the Republic side, his name, so that was obvious, safe place

names of here being as a commenton cool. Also, you know, there's the fort, so it makes sense that the guy whose job is to keep everyone safe is named for a fort. But yeah, I saw Griffith and I saw the Warner. And I'm just like, wait a minute. Like, is this a harbinger of like tremendous abuse and killing off extras just to make it a better scene? No, they saw something that said Warner and it was a full name. You know, I get very simple and think.

Like I said, it's finding the past and not misinterpreted, but it's yeah, finding the past and you know, not misinterpreted but just adopting things from the past. Right. Very cool. All right. So, uh, now, and I even the next question, clearly the first chapter names were drawn from the area, specifically schools, uh, or because schools have signage everywhere. So I could absolutely see that being schools, but also a few landmarks. The signage of the city. So was it just again, kind of like what we saw in the postman, which I still maintain is a very good movie.

I am one of the few people that actually enjoyed both water world and the postman. Postman more than water world. Me too. But because postman had again, good world building. Yeah, yeahman more than water world. Me too. But because postman had again good world building. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas water world was water world was easy world building. It's all covered in water. Yeah, but it was Dennis Hopper chewing the scenery and it was fantastic. I mean, it was really him on a boat instead of him on a bus. Right. Yeah. Exactly. So if the bus slows, if the boat slows down, right smokers.

So, all right. So did you, did you name them? Because I was thinking like Ford Lincoln Mercury, right? Lorenz Tate's character named himself after the big marquee there. So was it just your pull in names or were you specifically calling back to the historical people? Or were you just saying signage? It was a little bit of everything in the Republic. There's a character called Hopkins, right? Which there's a big ass sign an old sack still painted on a building True, but I got that more from a California history class that I took right about the big four in California You know Stanford and Hopkins and Crocker. Crocker and I was I was picked the fourth one. Huntington. Huntington.

Huntington. Okay. That's by the way, if was with them to begin with, but then he went off to an art school out east instead with his German girlfriend. So. So yeah, that's why I remember, I think it's Hopkins. It has a big read. That's the Beatles never never mind. Oh, never mind me. Yeah, stop it. I'm moving beyond that. Someone should. No, Hopkins, I believe, is the one that has the big red granite crypt down down here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so I was trying to pull regional names.

I thought it would be logical for them to find things scattered about the, you know, debris of society and then just, you know, make use of them. Yeah, absolutely. And some of the other ones are just little things that I pulled from movies or comic books that are just meaningful to me and they don't mean anything to anybody else. Gotcha.

All right, so did you scout locations for your scenes? Yes, I did. In addition to the global earth for my pencil or for things that weren't easily accessible. I took a couple days and I walked around downtown. I took, you know, 200 pictures. That's going to be so cool knowing that you're doing that for a comic book. It was, it was pretty cool.

I took so many pictures of the inside of the capital building because inside the capital is where there's a lot of scenes in there. There's a lot of scenes inside the capital building because they have a city council that rules the area and they meet inside the Capitol because they've pieced together that in the past, this was an important building that created what they consider civilization. So they thought, okay, we're trying to rebuild something. It's a good idea if we do it here

where they did it first kind of a thing. So yeah, there's a lot of scenes inside of the capital building. So I took a lot of pictures of that. And then I just would wander around and take pictures of things that I thought were interesting just to give my pencil options on what she wanted to include, you know, for example, in the first chapter, first chapter, uh, some of the main character, the, the house that he's in is actually the proper mansion. Mead. Yeah. So I just, you know, one of the two things like that. All of that is the, the, the scenes that you've got, I noticed they're all within a five minute walk of each other anyway. Well, yeah, because at that point, I mean, you know, Rome was a huge city population while it's physically not because you had to walk everywhere. Right. So you wouldn't have a city like Los Angeles. Exactly. Yeah, you're gonna get from one end to Rome to the other if you know how to get there because people would just build a building in the middle of a street and be like, it's called the sack now what? Right. And then shit would burn down zoning was not a thing.

Not getting at all. Whereas in Sacramento, they're like no uphousing or upscaling or whatever it's called where you can upzone. But you can cross-rome quickly. And that's my whole point was, and also if you look and you've mentioned an aerial picture, it's an aerial view of the city. Right. And but the walls that you look at, if you look at the closely, they in general align with the free rate three ways that surround downtown Sacramento. Yes. Because my thought is they've made use of the asphalt and road services there as the foundation of the walls that they build. Yeah, because that would be level. Yeah. Makes sense. Whereas if you were to center this on Los Angeles and do an aerial view,

you would find at the center is like a, just a very small circular center. But then around that is a larger concentric circle because it would be an aerial. I was waiting for where you were going. I knew you were going there. And I just sat here and let it go. Feel dirty, huh? Yeah. I feel I need a shower when we're done. If I had a nipple for every time someone told me that,

I tell you. You're right there, Ed. You seem a little clamped up. Okay. So Ed, what would you like to talk about? Oh, look at that. Look at him go. Good evening.

Just again, sir. All right. Now, here I have a quibbley couple of questions. One, did you ever think about incorporating Sacramento Zoo into what you're doing? Actually, I did not think about that. My thought would be this is, you know, 200 years plus beyond the end of the world. So those animals would have- Would the rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebea- The rebe have gone after. No one would have been feeling that a lot of who would have been domesticated, they wouldn't necessarily know how to survive, they wouldn't be fed. So, you know, within

short order, they would be gone. I mean, the environment would be there, but it wouldn't be anything that we would recognize. But as a site, you also did. As a site. No, I mean, there's a lot of sites that I could have chose on. But again, given limited space to work with, sure, my narrative, you know, is it's a four chapter book and it easily could have been a 12 chapter book. But sticking with things like, you know, centers's a it's a four chapter book and and easily could have been a 12 chapter book. Mm-hmm But sticking with things like, you know, centers for the capital the tower bridge, you know There's a number of places that you know, and also I had to tell the story of the other group of the nomads. Yeah Took away from time, you know in the city. So I only had so much Real estate to work with story wise.

Sure. Okay. So next question. And this is one of those ones that I always wonder about when it comes to and Ed will laugh when he hears me say it, because of his and my biases toward weapons. He's already knows. Wait, if I could stop you for a second. Are you I'm concerned about spoilers? Sure. I'm merely asking as to the nature of certain types of weapons. Our story is a Right, right. Why no blunt weapons? Why no baseball bats? Oh, well It's just shaking because they're not visually as interesting swords are sexy or get over it Very, very true My my response would be that You see small windows of a larger world. Mm-hmm. Just because you don't see it doesn't, it doesn't exist.

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. And that's one of the reasons, what I think that we haven't touched on, but I do want to mention is that in the republic, they do have someone they refer to as the librarian. Right. Works in what is the remains of

the main central librarian in downtown Sacramento. And that was a great storytelling device for me because I could pick and choose what books they discovered and what they're able to decipher. And if someone says, why didn't they do this? I can just say they didn't find that book. Sure. You know, because it has one thing being a critic

of the genre for a long time, you know, people often pick apart, you know, we didn't do this. And this wouldn't have been like this. And, you know, for example, one of my favorite gripes about the post-apocalyptic genre is when people are driving around in cars 10 years after the apocalypse when no one realizes that gasoline becomes a nerd after about nine months. That's it. Expired. At most. Yeah.

And unless you have a refinery off camera, you're not driving anywhere. Right. So I wanted to make sure that I had a plausible explanation for why I included some things and why I didn't include other things. OK. OK. And a lot of that, because I had nailed it.

Like, I am a huge fan of blunt weapons because they don't get stuck between ribs. They crew them off of people's heads and you can keep on going. Oh, they're very effective. And you know, in the soon to be netflix series of my book, which I'm sure will happen. Absolutely. I'm not sure.

We're talking about it. For sure. We'll make sure and have some baseball bats for you. Thank you. Thank you. You know what? I to have some baseball bats for you. Thank you. Thank you. You know what? I'll even give up points for that. So I'll go from five down to three. I appreciate that. Sure. But you know, if you really want to hit the Roman history, again, it would need to be table legs, right? Hell, yes.

One of my favorite stories. Because that's what you ultimately always come back to. Yeah, because you know, Latin quarter steps because you're going to, yeah, and you open doors. Exactly. You got to hold them open with something. Yeah. But if you want a revolution, it starts with a table. So that's, I'm going to bundle a sticks. Okay, so why horses not bikes? Okay, so why horses not bikes? Because bicycle tires are rubber. Okay.

And those people over time and no one's making new ones. Good. Okay. Yeah. I like it. Okay. So here's one. And this is something I'm always curious about with the different authors. What got edited out without giving away story, obviously,

but what was your biggest darling that you had to get rid of? To be perfectly honest, there really wasn't anything because of the way that I wrote the story. I started with one paragraph. That was the entire story. And then I added and I added and I added and I kept adding until I filled in the parts that needed to be there to move the story along. But once I got

a beginning of middle end that I was pleased with, I stopped. So I know other writers write differently where they'll have ceasings and they'll have moments and I had a couple of those, but those are in the book. But I didn't have entire subplots where, okay, I need to throw that away because I wrote it with the intent of I knew how big of a story I wanted to tell. So I wrote to that. I knew that I was going to have four chapters. I knew the chapters were going to be roughly 24 pages each. You know, so I knew what I had to work with. So I did

not throw other things. Are there things that I have ideas for? Yes. I mean, I have an outline for an entire second book that is that will that if I get a chance to do it. And again, if the Kickstarter is successful, those funds will go towards a second book, and it would be bigger than this one. Gotcha. The re-re-public. Right. The re-re-public is a poster for you, Williams. Yeah. Or as opposed to re-run. Hey, hey, hey, what's happening? All right. So, all right. So that's cool. I cool. I love that you as, because again, you know, like you were just saying, there's people who think in terms of scenes and stuff does get edited out and there's an old phrase that I learned a long time ago was kill your darlings. Like if something's precious to you, the odds are it is only precious to you because of something that's probably subconscious, it won't translate. So, gave that, put it somewhere nice,

but keep it out of your story. I built the frame first. Yeah. A lot of people start with the dialogue and the character moments and the window dressing that, and that's where they get those darlings that you're talking about. Sure. I started, you know, I might be talking Aaron Sorkin.

He's fine, I guess. For me, I'm much more plot driven than character. I mean, obviously I care about my characters because they look at the book, they talk a lot. They say a lot and they have a lot to say. But my primary goal was to serve the plot and to tell the story that I wanted to tell and it goes back to world building.

I love world building, so I wanted to create a world so those people to live in and that was my priority. Yeah, and I wanted to make it the most appealing and entertaining world that I could. And once I've built that, then it makes it easier to put the people into that world. And the world gives you ideas on what they can do, and what they can say, and how they can react. And, you know, all those conversations we had about, you know, morality, and what do you do, and why do you do it?

And once you build that world, you plop someone in and go, okay, well, this situation exists. So how do they react to it? So the environment helps tell the story. That makes sense. And when you do that, I would imagine you have a lot more archetypical characters. I'm not going to say stock characters, because I don't think your characters were stock in any way.

It wasn't like, oh, here's the badass fire with the heart of gold who saves the puppies, you know, but it was they were archetypical, which makes sense if you're telling a contained four chapter story in a world, like it is the world, and these are archetypical characters that will guide us through that world.

Whereas, and I know that you would understand and appreciate this, but we love myth. Yeah. And archetypes come from that, and there's nothing wrong. And archetypes come from that. And there's, you know, nothing wrong. And again, it goes back to a shorthand that allows you to establish the environment quickly in a limited amount of space. Right. And then move on with your story. You know, if you

establish an archetype, even though you deviate wildly from that and make it unique, you still have that foundation that people go, okay, I have an idea of who this person is. And then you can also flip the script and take them somewhere else, playing against that archetype. Right. So it serves two purposes.

It's a shorthand storytelling wise and it's also an opportunity to throw in a plot twist. Right, it's a sense. And the other thing I was thinking is if this was a serialized story, then it would be character based. It would be also plot based, but to draw something into like, you know, Spider-Man, or Superman, where it is completely character based. Right. that's Angolin serialized.

I've never had an intent of this being an Angolin series. I always have to... Because you literally built the frame first. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. Cool. Okay, so my last question for you, and this is the softballist of softballs.

Okay. How did you fund this to begin with? I spent a whole lot of my own money over years. Okay. And that brings me around to something that is in the Kickstarter video that I'll mention here is, I want to make it clear to everyone that everyone that worked on this book got paid for what they did. That's awesome. Because I don't believe that people should work for free for me to realize my dreams. And so, you know, I didn't get anything. I'm hoping to get back

what I put into it, you know, or, but also anything that I get back after the expenses of printing the books or shipping the books and all that is not going to go back into my pocket or anything that's going to go towards hopefully doing a sequel to the book and telling more of this story. You know, because I'm not going to say that. I'm going to let people read the book. I almost said something that I didn't want to say. Sure. So yeah, this has been something that I, you know, scrimped and saved and tightened the belt and all that because for me, long term, it meant more for me for this to exist and have the extra money. That makes sense.

That's powerful. You know, when I die, do I want to have a few extra, you know, a few thousand dollars extra or do I want this to be in the world and I want this to be in the world? That I like that because that starts it. It actually is quite romantic and nice. And also, there's a there's a amount of pride that, you know, it was not a small undertaking and I followed through, you know, I didn't stop partly through, you know, it's done and it's accomplished and there's a certain personal satisfaction to that. Sure, absolutely. So and yeah, I know what you were about to say.

And I think it's probably wise to let people find the Hello Kitty crossover. Exactly. Damn it. Sorry. I mean, the totally non-Henry Hello Kitty crossover. Right. There are no tentacles in my book.

Not. So there's the darlings that got left out. Yeah. That's what I have here. Yes. Right. There are no tentacles in my book. Yeah. So there's the darlings that got left out. Yeah. That's what I have to go. Yeah. So on your next interview, people ask, oh, would you leave out? Well, tentacles. Yeah, tentacles. Lot of tentacles. A lot of tentacles. The porn got cut out of the book. Yeah. Just easier to draw on horses. Really. Right. Or legs, not eight. It's fine. It's better. It's better. Yeah. Oh, that's why that's why Thor's horse was never in because it had too many damn legs. Oh, yeah, it was right. You know, in the Avengers. So, but it is also why he was always very warm. So because he always slept near his horse. It's Odin's horse. Oh, it's Odin's horse. Oh, goddammit.

I was learning my myth from a different valley. All right, so tell us again about the Kickstarter. All the details you want to throw in there, I want to make sure we end with that. I'm going to assume that both Ed and I are going to recommend people read the Republic. Yes. Okay. So now we've covered what you're reading.

We always recommend something for people. And you know, you can actually, I'll do this part first. You can find me at Harmony on Insta and Twitter. Ed, where can they find you? I can be found at Mr. Blalock on Twitter and they're actually, I'm sorry, on Twitter, I'm EH Blalock. I can be found at Mr. Blalock on TikTok and on the other one.

Insta. Insta. And also just to clarify on TikTok, I'm Mr. Underscore Blalock. So if you're looking for me, that's just a little bit of social media cocaine. Well, it's sort of, but yeah, it's a lot.

I see you rubbing your gum. It's okay. I am saying, you're here. What are you talking about? Corporately, you can find us where? At geek history time. Cool. So Tim, tell us where we can find you, this project, your kick

started. We're literally going to let you have the floor until we run, until we're done. And then we'll say goodbye. So fantastic. Well, first off, thank you so much for letting me come on here and hang out with you guys. I enjoyed it and hope I can come back again.

And we can be even more random in our path of conversation. So you can find me on Twitter at TimBWatsWATTS on Instagram at tvw753, a number that Damian would and would recognize. And come on, man. 753. 753. BCE. Oh, okay. Oh, sorry. So that's a Twitter and Instagram for the Kickstarter. You can go to the republic novel.com before March 1st, that will take you to the pre-launch page where you can put your email in and get notified when the campaign goes live. If you're listening to this after March 1st and before March 21st, the campaign is currently live. So if you go there, it will take you to the campaign page. You can see my pitch video where I talk about the project. Oh, and we forgot a little tidbit. I was letting you do that at your leisure.

I had the pleasure of getting an endorsement video from a gentleman, people may know, as director Kevin Smith. So I very cool. Ed had entered the conversation. Talk about talk about Barry. I can lead. I was so engrossed with our conversation. Ed had entered the conversation. Talk about talk about Barry. I can lead. I was so gross with our conversation. I had forgotten.

But yeah, I met him at when he came to town with his last movie, James Holland, Bob Reboot. And I showed him a copy of the first chapter of the book. And honestly, my motivation was nothing more than to say, you know, you always tell people to make something if you want to make something. And I wanted to say thanks for the motivation. And he looked at me and said, how can I help? And that was not my intent at all.

And we went back and forth. And so if you look at the Kickstarter video, there's a short little video from Kevin Smith encouraging people to back the Kickstarter. So I almost got out of this with forgetting that I'm a bad promoter. Oh, I would have I would have asked you, but I genuinely thought you're going to leave that as a surprise. So I was just like, Oh, no, no, I want to, I want everybody to know, if you know, if you know Kevin Smith, come take a look at the Kickstarter. Oh, no, I'm not going to sit on that gem. So also something else that you'll find on the the Kickstarter page that we're working on is a trailer for the book that I'm very proud of a lot of comic book kick starters will do something they call a trailer and it is not to editor or used to be an editor for a new station. We got together and we actually cut together a trailer like a film trailer that tells a story.

We have music, bed, we have sound effects, we have some people that recorded audio, you know, lines of dialogue and it tells a story like a film trailer would. And it's almost done and I'm very pleased with it. So there's some cool things to find out when you go check out the Kickstarter page. Okay, cool. So again, if they get to this before, if they basically get off of this podcast and they want to get to it on February 25th, they go to what's the website again? The republic novel.com. There you go. But if they decide to wait until the first, they put the alert in their phone on the first, they go to Kickstarter and just type in the Republic novel. Well, you can go to the Republic novel dot com either way. Okay. Before March 1st, that page will redirect to the pre launch.

And then after March 1st, it will redirect to the actual Kickstarter page. So you can go to the Republic novel dotcom, whether it's before or after the first of March. Okay. Cool. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm very excited and I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock and until next time, keep rolling 20s. in 20s.