Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 98 | The American Dream - Blake J. Harris Living His...

Episode Date: May 11, 2019

Another Living The American dream segment with Blake J. Harris Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher, our special American dream segment, our Saturday segment. You know how we like to talk to people who are living their American dream? That's the American dream, really, of people living their own life, what they wanted. We're talking to Blake J. Harrison. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. He was the author of Consul Wars. I got it.

He was the author of the history of the future. He got secret emails from Mark Zuckerberg. And we're inside Facebook. he's Mr. Investigator. We find out he's Mr. Sherlock Holmes with the two spaces on the email sentences. I got it. Hey, Blake, how you doing?

I'm loving this. I'm great. I'm great. But I know what you're leading towards. You're leading towards the fact that most importantly, bestsellers aside, I wake up every day and I put on shorts. And that is me living the American dream,

wearing shorts and writing and no longer trading commodities. and I'm living my dream. Okay, so let's talk about that a little bit. All right, no longer trading commodities. When you were, in an earlier interview, you mentioned Palmer Lucky, who's in the book, The History of the Future. Right.

And I mean, that's the basis of the book. And when he was 19, he decided that he was going to figure out virtual reality because he wanted to play inside a game. and that meant that he's now a billionaire and he's doing whatever he wants to do, living his dream. And the line that you said was, what were you doing when you were 19? I mean, I know what I was doing at 19 and it wasn't that. At 19, I mean, you're obviously bestselling author. You're involved in screenplays and you've written stuff for Hollywood and television.

And, you know, now you're basically, you're just writing. writing books now? Is that what your plan is? For the most part, and I'm sure we'll get into why I'm doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I was doing at 19 was I was a freshman or sophomore at Georgetown in Washington, D.C. At that point in my life, I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I had no idea how to make a living doing it. You know, I was writing what I thought was the Great American novel at the time. I was writing short stories, but how do you make a living writing?

you know, it's not a career path like lawyer or doctor and a lot of the other stuff at Georgetown, which is part of the fun of it. But, you know, and so for me, who grew up sort of wanting that safe career, my parents wanted me, like good Jewish parents wanted me to be a doctor, lawyer. I got news for you, that ain't all just Jewish parents.

Okay. Well, and like, you know, I'd be like, oh, guys, they're great parents. I want to be a writer. Sure. What's the past? And I'm like, you kind of have to just keep writing and try to make connections.

And so at least there seemed to be more of a past trajectory to screenwriting, more so because there was just film school and there was something that you could say that you're doing. So I applied to a lot of film schools out of college. I didn't get into most of them. I didn't get into most of the writing MFA programs, though I did get into a couple, like the new school offered me a nice scholarship. But I realized that one of the main reasons when talking to people who went to screenwriting school or creative writing MFA schools, they said that the biggest,

values that you're writing every day that it's sort of regimented. And I was already doing that. So I felt like I didn't need to go into debt to do something that I, you know, whether or not I was talented, I was always very good at setting aside the time and doing it. Right. And so screenwriting was what I sort of thought was my aspiration for for so many years. And since I was not making money doing that, I got a day job trading commodity futures when I was working with seven Brazilians. The boss was a great guy, Michael McDioux. Google, one of my mentors. He was an American who had lived in Brazil, was married to a Brazilian, and we had Brazilian clients who were, you know, they actually owned the mills in Brazil,

like, like Hopersuker and Heizan and Petrobras. Futures commodities are, that's a tough business. I mean, I do actually know another person, aside from yourself who broke into that. And the next thing I know, you know, he's got four computer screens in front of him and he's up at, he's up at four o'clock in the morning, and he's delving in. And I'm like, okay, no, I'm going back to bad. So I was doing all that. The one caveat that I think makes it a little bit less impressive is that I was a broker. So I was basically executing orders for clients.

I wasn't a strategic quant genius behind the scenes. But I was dealing every day with four computers. I wasn't up at 4.30, but I was up at 6. And part of the reason I liked that was because I was done it too. And so that gave me the whole afternoon. Time to write. Screenwriting and stuff. Okay.

So when you started screenwriting and you started creating that and you realized that you weren't going to make any money, at the same time, are you? you writing other stuff? You know, you're doing the screenwriting. It was there, did you find time to be able to say, you know, I really, I'm a writer. I'm just going to write. That's what I do. It's such a, it's such a disciplined thing.

I mean, every writer that we talk to or that I talk to, you know, that joins us here and we talk about their, you know, the way they knock out things. I mean, it's a just right. I mean, it's just every day, every day, every day. So, so fortunately I was disciplined enough that I was getting, I was writing every day and obviously some part of the back of my mind was saying oh the reason you're not successful is because you still have this day job

because you're tired or because you're not writing 20 hours a day instead of date. And there's a number of people that would tell you that you're right on that. Right. And I always thought I would quit my day job if there was a reason to do so other than just this devil's advocate voice. Like if someone offered me a great opportunity even for no money, I would take it. But my original plan was out of,

to college. I got this job. I started the week after college. It was then called Femat Brokridge. It's now called, it was then called New Edge. I don't know what it's called now. But I was my grandfather, who was one of the biggest role models and people I love most in my life, he passed away the week before I graduated. And so, yeah, so that was tough. But the silver lining, if you were to call it that, was that my grandma was, you know, no longer had a roommate and I was wanting to move to New York. So I lived with my grandma for a year and that was awesome, especially because I'm sort of an introvert recluse and she just like kind of let me have my space and she was happy to watch TV and I was happy to watch TV and we maybe pass each other one

in the morning. That's just Blake. Yeah. So that was awesome. That's great. And I saved money. I was living in New York in a very nice place and paid no money for that for a year. And I saved up all this money that I was going to use to go to film school. I could at least thought that was a better investment than a creative writing MFA. And I had this money, you know, I'd saved up like $30,000 over the course of a year because I really just saved everything. Right. And then during that time, you carpet beggar. It's living off your grandma. I know. I was super lucky. And again, if you're looking for a good roommate, Mimi Fazzari might be the perfect roommate for you. And so during that time, I was writing what I thought was the Great American novel, Part 7 or whatever.

And I also partnered up with a high school friend of mine, Jonah Toulis. And we started writing a screenplay about competitive rock, paper, scissors. And part of this was inspired because him and I knew each other, because we were on a slow-pitched softball team with our fathers in Chappaquin, New York, where we grew up and where the Clinton family now lives. And him and I were the young guns, 19, 20 years old on this team of 45-year-old professionals. And it was so funny because Chappaqua is a wealthy town. So you had the doctors, the lawyers, the investment bankers.

And these guys, when we played slow pitch softball, they'd act like kids. They would act so unprofessional, take it so seriously. And we loved that. And we wanted to find a way to convey that. We thought rock paper, says, there's a silly sport, but people take it seriously. And we wrote the script for like a mockumentary style movie, you know, sort of inspired by the office and arrested development in Christopher Guest movies. And then Jonah, who's a filmmaker, said, we should make this.

And I thought, that's cool. but, you know, I'm planning to go to film school, and he said, no, you know, it'll only, we'll put in a couple thousand dollars each. And I was like, okay, well, a couple thousand dollars each turned into $150,000 over the course of a few years, which is anyone who's made an investment in anything, probably knows that money pit feeling where, you know, at first it's like, well, do we want a B plus actor or an A plus actor? Okay, we'll pay the extra $4,000. Do we want this or that? We'll pay, you know, it adds up, but then at some point you've put in so much, it feels like a sunk cost and you're putting in more money. And so that was what I did instead of film school. well, you know, in retrospect, I don't know which was the better option. Obviously, this worked out well for me, but it wasn't like that experience directly led to anything. I learned a lot of lessons from it, but it wasn't, you know. Are we able to see the rock paper scissors anywhere? Yeah, it's called the flying scissors. I feel bad that I have not seen this.

No, well, you like everybody else in the world have not seen this. No, it's called the flying scissors. And I encourage you, if you have, if this sounds interesting to you at all to check it out, you know, I think, and that kind of gets to my realization of what did help it become somewhat successful was, you know, it's not the godfather, obviously. You know, it's a silly movie. And so for a while, because we got rejected from every film festival we applied to, I was sort of embarrassed by it, thought I was so stupid to put all my money into this. And then I realized, you know, after enough time, I was able to step away from the baggage and just watch it and say, this is a funny movie. It's not the greatest movie ever. It's not as funny as a rest of development.

But this is a good movie. I'm proud of it. And, you know, who else I think would like it would be the college version of me are college kids. And so Joan and I put together a trailer. And when I was at Georgetown, this was back when movies came out on DVD. And so in between the theatrical release of a movie and the DVD release, Georgetown would have like a weekend where they would show like Oceans 11, you know,

in between Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I contacted that committee at Georgetown and said, hey, you know, I just graduated from there. I made this movie. Here's a trailer. Do you think that you would ever show it? And they were like, oh, yeah, this is great. And then, yeah.

And I was like, all right. well, I don't have to just have an in to make this pitch. And so I really spent like three weeks researching the name. Every university. I put together a list of 500 universities. And I genuinely felt like a stalker because I was looking up like 19 year old kids. It was like, what's the name of the committee that chooses the movies? Okay, it's this person, you know, Joe Johnson.

Millie from Kansas City. Yeah. And I especially felt bad when it was like, you know, Laura from Kansas City. And I'm like trying to find out this 18 year old email address. Like, it's not for romantic purposes. And that was such a, in retrospect, that was such a life-changing experience for me because I think that like a lot of people, especially people who grew up in a well-to-do area, like I just wasn't used to hearing no and it made, and I was uncomfortable with it.

But, you know, as you know, from a booking guest or whatever, like you at some point have to just get over it. Oh. And so I work in radio. Yeah. I've been told, no. So I needed to learn that lesson. And so I reached out to 500 places and, you know, whatever, four.

460 of them said no, but 40 of them said yes. And I realized, oh my God, who cares about no? I just got 40 yeses. And that would end up coming in really useful. Well, first of all, this led to a college tour of the movie. And then we ended up distributing it with Warner Digital. And it wasn't like a big payday or anything. And that's why you still-

But you got some back on it. Right. Exactly. Like it was the best fate you could ask for. And it was all salvaged because Joan and I stopped being scared about, you know, like I even, we got into one festival, I think it was a Palm Beach festival. And I was very excited because I thought, wow, at least we got into one. And then Jonah said, no, but if we go to one, it'll look like we got rejected from all the others.

And we were just so scared of perception that we were like, yeah, let's not do it. So that was a lesson in stupidity also. But Jonah and I have, you know, have been through all these downs together. And now here we are 10 years or 15 years later. And we're directing the documentary component of console wars. And so, you know, we've learned some lessons. And in terms of console wars, for me, Like that was a story that I just was curious about and I wanted to reach so I you know at first I went to a Barnes and Noble on 86th Street in Manhattan

Which is one of the biggest Barnes and nobles yeah and I was looking for books on video game history I thought there'd be a video game history section next to the film history and the music history section but no and I thought well that's weird I didn't know too much about gaming but it seemed like an industry in entertainment that was as big as those other two and I asked the woman at the information desk Where's your books on video games and she said she she actually laughed at me because I asked, I asked for the video game history section, and she laughed me. And I was like, okay, well, can I just get one of the books on the history of video games, business of video games? And they didn't have a single thing in the entire story. And I thought that was just so odd. And, you know, in the movie version of the story, that's when I'll go,

aha, I'm going to fill this demand. That wasn't what happened. But I just thought that was weird. So pretty close, though. Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, over time, that was what happened. And I ended up reaching out to people. And, and the hearing no was, I was fine with hearing no. You know, I reached out to a hundred or so people on LinkedIn who I saw were at Sagan and attended to that time. I heard back from, I think, like 12% of them. That was great. That was 12% more than no than zero.

And that's really what got me started on this career. And at the time, I still was trading commodities, but I was curious and I followed that. That's interesting. So, all right. So now you started that and obviously the great, you know, success that you had with that, and that was, you know, a wise move. But at some point, with console wars, you stop the commodity sales? You finally said enough is enough?

Yes. So what happened was during all of this time, going back to Flying Scissors, one way we're filming Flying Scissors, I met my now wife and Katie. She's the greatest person in my life, my wife, my best friend. Which 18-year-old was she that answered the email? Well, sadly, she was not that much older than 18, because I was not that much older than 18. You know, she was 24. I was 24.

She was a temp at the commodities place where I was working. And, you know, I moved in with her three weeks after we started dating. We always knew we were going to be together. It was just a matter of, did we believe in marriage and all that? And we eventually got married. Oh. But so anyway, flash forward, you know, my family is sort of more traditional. I always thought, well, you're living with this girl.

You should get married. And I remember in December of 2011, my family was having a Hanukkah party. and so my grandma was there, roommate grandma, my cousins, Katie, everyone. And I had just found out I'd just gotten some great news from my manager that Seth Rogan wanted to meet with me to talk about potentially adapting this book that I hadn't even written yet. It was just a book proposal into a movie or producing my documentary with Jonah. And so I thought this was the greatest news of all.

And because I'm kind of a jerk, I gather, you know, I tapped the glass. I gathered everyone around at this Hanukkah party and I said, you know, everyone I have some incredible news and I put my arm around Katie and I said, after you know, after seven years of dating, I have some great news to announce that I'm going to L.A. on January 6th and meeting with Seth Rogen. And my grandma was like, wait, you're not getting engaged? What's happening here? So that was a, Katie didn't know that I was making this joke. So she wasn't the happiest about that. But fortunately, I was able to make up for that error because in, you know, Seth Rogen,

I met with him in January. Him and Evan immediately called back our reps and said they wanted to produce the movie. He eventually wrote. the forward to the book. They were producing this documentary that Joan and I are directing. And then six months later, Scott Rudin, who had adapted some of my favorite books, like the accidental billionaires and Moneyball into great movies, came on board and they brought it to Sony. We sold it to Sony. Then we sold the book to Harper Collins. And finally, you are living large, my friend. So I'm about to live large. And I finally, I tell my boss that I'm, that I'm going to be leaving. And they were obviously, you know, they were sad to have me leave,

but they were always so supportive. They knew I wanted to write. And that was good, because it could have gone another way. And so on my last day of day job, my last day of working at Femad or New Edge was my 30th birthday, December 14th, 2012. And so I said goodbye. And because I was not going to be coming back to the city anytime soon, I was now going to be working from home.

And I had a trip, I actually had a trip prepared to go to San Francisco to celebrate with Tom Kalinsky, the main character of the book, who had been the CEO of Sega from 1990-96. And I was planning to propose there to Katie. And I actually, so I had picked out a ring with my father. And I thought, oh. And I was like, well, okay, I'm in the city. I should try to see if it's ready today and pick it up

because I don't want to come back in the city. So I picked up this ring. Then I went home. And there was everyone yelled surprise. And Katie had organized a surprise party for my 30th birthday. I was genuinely surprised. It was amazing. And then my uncle, Uncle Brad, he said,

said, he said, how does it feel to be the center of attention? And I said, I was like, honestly, I don't like being the center of attention. He said, well, too bad, buddy, it's your birthday. And I said, well, I think I have an idea how to not be center attention. And I got down on one knee and I proposed to Katie. And she said, yes. And then five years later, she got married. Pretty slow with that whole thing. But, but, you know, that all of that really was just me living the dream. Finally, being professional writer, I was always, you know, as long as I had Katie in my life, I was always going to be living some version of the dream. But to actually be able to support us and then also be with someone who she supported me through a lot of

writing this new book because I turned it in two years late. I was not making money for two years and had her supporting me. My God, man, you're living off your grandmother and you're living off your girlfriend. Basically, I love you now. If you take away one, if you have one takeaway from this conversation, it said Blake J. Harris is a leech and he lives off his grandma and he lives off of his girlfriend. But no, it's because I've been fortunate to have these wonderful people in my life. And also they've supportive. They took my writing seriously. They didn't think it was just a hobby. My grandma, especially, was always very supportive. So now the latest book, the history of the future, it took how many years? So I signed the contract with Harper Collins in July of 2015.

With an idea. Yeah, with an idea. I wanted to write about virtual reality. I like writing narrative nonfiction books. Speaking of grandma, my goal is always to write a book that my grandma can appreciate. And she doesn't know the first thing about tech. So to me, it's how can I make a good human story out of this, like the social network or like moneyball? And so I wanted to write about Oculus and about Palmer and about his CEO, Brendan Reed. And my only, the only reason I didn't fully commit to that was because I need to tell the kinds of stories I want in a way that my grandma could enjoy. I need the access. So I couldn't fully tell my publisher I had that. I could do that because I didn't have the access.

I ended up getting that access in February of 2016. And so originally the book was due to my publisher in September of 2016. So they had given me like 14 months to write the book, which was going to be a little tight, but I sort of imagine I can get it done by like December. And meanwhile, September of 2016, the month when it was due to my publisher, was also the same month.

It was actually four days before the deadline that the articles came out calling Palmer Lucky, the worst person in Silicon Valley, because he was supporting Trump and allegedly was running this troll organization, which wasn't true. So the tower was starting to fall. Right.

Yeah. And so I ended up turning the book in in September of 2018, so two years later. And the way most book contracts were, basically I was paid some money up front and then I would be paid the rest when the book was done. So I basically delayed getting paid for two years because I thought that the story was worth investigating.

And fortunately, I had to support my wife. in the publisher too. So at what point when you're in this, almost like the other story, you know, when you made your movie, you know, at some point you've invested so much time that I'm not getting out of this, right? I mean, there's no, I'm not giving up.

I'm not stopping. I'm not letting this, I'm not letting this hit this wall and just, okay, well, that's good enough. Right. Because I've invested this time and energy. I got to go through that. I got to get to the other side. Yeah.

And at, at, and at, at, and at what point do you think, do you think to yourself and you tell the people who are, you know, around you, I got to keep going. I can't stop this. You know, I just, I, it fascinates me because so many people give up at that time. You know, you're totally right. Or, you know, even if I didn't give up, I could have said, okay, I haven't made money for a year. I need to take other jobs and I'll keep doing this on the side. And I think that for me, one of the biggest reasons I didn't do that. I don't know there was an actual point.

It was more of like a gradual thing. But it kind of comes back to, I've been asked over the years by my reps or by fans, you know, will I be writing any fiction or screenplays again? And, you know, I'm a storyteller at heart. And so I'm open to any good idea. But it really does feel like I don't know that I could write fiction because nonfiction is not only usually stranger than fiction, but you're dealing with real people. And so for me to delay or to not get to the other side,

I knew Palmer lucky. That would be like an insult to him to not tell this story, insult to all those people involved. And so I felt the responsibility to them to do it. And so I don't know that there was ever a point where I really questioned not doing it and not doing it the right way. I kind of didn't really care what happened to me. I wanted to get this story right at any cost. And fortunately, like I said, I had my wife there to support me. And then I also, in addition, I think that's just, you know, every artist would like to

believe that they would say that. And then part of what actually helped me maybe turn in the corner was that I knew that this story was really important. You know, Council Wars was a really fun story and it was like a behind the scenes look at so many people's childhoods. But it didn't involve the CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world, illegally coercing an employee to lie about their politics. And so that is, you know, something that's actually newsworthy.

And that made for an interesting change too. In addition to the whole political element, you know, this. there's a current events aspect to this book. And that, because I'm always trying to write books that my grandma would enjoy, or I always try to write books that I think 10 years from now people will still enjoy, I also wanted to balance that with, there's a lot of stuff that I've uncovered that is newsworthy. But I didn't want the book to live just on the fact that it was newsworthy,

because it's a great story, a great entrepreneurial story. But, you know, so that balancing act was tough. And actually, at one point, my publisher did cancel, the book and I was still committed to doing it. Wow. Yeah. I will differentiate between publisher. No, yeah, I'll differentiate between publisher and editor because, you know, the publisher

is the person who pays you the money and it sort of is this abstract support system and then your editor is the person that you're actually dealing with. And you'll know why I'm making this distinction because my editor at the time, she had me come in in mid-2017. We were talking about the book and I'd been working on it for two years. at that point and she said, who's the hero of this book? And I was kind of like, we've had this conversation. I'm both times.

I said, it's Palmer, it's Oculus, it's the underdog story. And she said, but Palmer's a Trump supporter. Nobody's gonna buy a book about, nobody's gonna buy a tech book about a Trump supporter. And I just could not believe that because, as you know, I'm not a Trump supporter, but who cares first of all? Right. Second of all, if you really do care,

then market it like he's a villain for being a Trump supporter. I mean, I don't think I would have let that happen, but there's a, there's a capitalist reason why you can actually see this as an advantage. And I thought that was shocking that she said that. I was also really glad that I had been recording all my conversations at that point. So that, you know, I just was like, I wanted to confirm that I really heard that right. And I did.

And then a couple months later, they canceled the book. I should say, reiterate that I was very late with this book. So I don't think their reason was, oh, this is the Trump's border that's cancel. That wasn't what happened here. It was, that was probably one component of them not believing in the book. book and I was already very late. But on December 15th, 2017, they canceled the book. Oh, they said they were canceling the book.

And that was devastating. But at the same time, I knew that I had a valuable, important story here. I knew the next six months were now going to be messy because I'd have to pay back that advance, find a new publisher, figure out how to survive, figure out how to tell my wife that this thing that I kept saying was, I was always done with. You need to find another woman. Maybe find another wife to help support me. Maybe find another grandma.

and then, you know, and then unfortunately, very sadly, in the December, I think, 29th, my wife's mother passed away, you know, suddenly passed away. It was totally unexpected. And so, and I do remember thinking that her mom lived in St. Louis, that's where all her family's from. And I remember thinking, like, well, the one good thing here is that I no longer am on a deadline. Like, you know, they've canceled the book. I can just go with my wife to St. Louis, and whether it takes a day, two months, or whatever,

I can just be there and be a good husband. and and I did that. But one week after we're out there was the end of winter break, and my agent called me in St. Louis, and he said, hey, you know, your editor wants to know what's the status of the book? And I said, well, the status is that she canceled it. What do you mean? And he's like, oh, yeah, I think that she brought it to the higher ups at Harper Collins,

and they didn't take the cancellation. It reminded me so much of, you know, Seinfeld is what probably made me want to become a writer. I love Seinfeld, and it reminded me of George Costanza, quitting on a Friday than just coming back in on Monday. Like nothing happened. Like guys, my mother-in-law just passed away. I'm in St. Louis. What's the status of the book? But, you know, like I said, I want the difference between my terrible editor and my wonderful publisher Harper Collins. They've believed in the book. They've been super supportive

of the book, even with the controversial political aspects. And then I got back to work. And yeah, so I don't know that there was ever a point where I seriously thought about not doing it because these are real people, the story needed to get out there. And I'm also just an obsessive sort of person. So I've been going down this rabbit hole for a few years. And like you said, there's sort of like a sunk, you know, like I've gone so far down. And the other interesting aspect of this too is that, like I mentioned earlier, for me to do the kind of writing I want, I need to have good access.

And so in February of 2016, Facebook and Oculus gave me what was essentially unlimited and unprecedented access to their employees. And so during all this terrible stuff, stuff that happened with Palmer, I was in touch with him every day. There were certain things he was not allowed to talk to me about, but just hearing the state of mind of someone who's going through one of this, this traumatic experience, a terrible experience. And then also the fact that because I had this access, Facebook could never really know where the information came from because my sources were not one or two people. It was dozens of people. It was everyone. It was everyone. And so I also,

you realize I was in this unique position where after all these NDAs were signed, I was probably the only person who could ever legally tell this story. So that was a good burden to have. And that was part of what also propelled me forward and made me feel like I was doing something important. Well, the book, The History of the Future is tremendous. And it's well worth to read. All right, so what now? Where are we at? Are you working? Have you decided what's next? Are you working on what's next? Are you just getting up every day going, I'll write something? Yeah, the history of the future too. Sequels work.

No, I think that as I've talked about with Glenn and probably we even talked about a little bit, last time I was on, you know, the media reaction to this book is about what you'd expect, which is either- Unbelievable. Criticism or more so just crickets. And I say that too many times in today's world, unbelievable, because it really is becoming not unbelievable anymore. Right. And that's sad. Exactly.

Like that's why I said we can expect it. I say also like it's insane, but it's not insane because you know. Right. So, so just to recap, I wrote Council Wars. It's the all-time best-selling video game book. And as we know from my experience of Barnes & Noble, there's not that many video game books. So don't give me too much praise. But, you know, it sold over 100,000 copies. Seemingly everyone in the tech and journalism world, love the book. Got lots of coverage. I was named to best people in gaming lists. Flash forward five years later.

the book's now been out for two and a half months. There still hasn't been a single review on any gaming site. There's no mention of the book on any site. I feel confident in knowing why that's the case, but I'm not in these people's hearts and minds. But when it's that many people and there's not a single one, that's weird. Yes. Yes.

Yes. So I was also sort of expecting that to be the case, sadly. And so I wanted to make sure. started with your editor before it was even done. Yeah, and I knew my editor is an intelligent woman, and if an intelligent woman can think so unintelligently about the subject matter, that that just made me believe, okay, that's probably what I have to expect from a lot of other people.

And so I wanted to make sure that I had another book sort of set up and planned where I wasn't going to be reliant on the tech media or much of the media and where I also knew that I would have that access and wasn't going to be based on a tech organization giving it to me. So the next book I'm going to be writing is about the first three Americans to open a hotel in Tahiti back in the 1960s. So you're already on it? I'm already on it.

I've actually been interviewing one of the guys for the past few years. And that's how it works. I think a lot of... Okay, well, this book... So, I mean, if you're already on it, you're already a year in. Yeah. All right?

That's okay. I mean, so you've already... You've already got time spent. Yeah. Yeah. And the way that this was brought to me was, you know, initially, after interviewing over, you know, after doing hundreds of interviews for both books,

my manager said, hey Blake how would you feel about you know interviewing only a few people and going to Tahiti to write this thing and I was like I'd be very interested in doing that oh no twist my arm yeah exactly and you know the first two books were stories that I found on my own that I was personally interested in the Tahiti story was one that was actually brought to me by my manager Julian Rosenberg and this producer Jim Croke and their intention or their interest was potentially doing a TV series and I think that there was going to be something along those lines and and their interest was more of like the debauchery,

the fact that these people had had 18 different kids by 10 different women and were living the lifestyle. Wait, you call that debauchery? Is it the word you used? What are you talking about? You know, nice romances. You know, basically that stuff. And that stuff, I think, is...

You can't help where you were able with like. I'm not, as a writer, I'm not interested in that. I'm super interested in three Americans quitting their job and going to Tahiti in 1960 at a time when you couldn't even get to 19... Get to Tahiti. Right. And when Tahiti didn't want you there, you know, the French government didn't want outsiders there.

and so how they built this hotel empire. And so, you know, that's what, that's what that's almost the Cuba story, right? With the mafia trying to go into Cuba. Yeah, exactly. You know, they're doing the same thing in Tahit. Yeah, so no mafiosos, but pretty interesting guys. And I just love entrepreneurial stories. I find them inspiring.

And they also help me because, you know, as a writer, you're an entrepreneur in some way. You have to sell the books. You have to navigate these territories. And so that's what I'll be working on. And also because the history of the future was a book that took, place like in real time and it's like a monetary. I'm still getting new information that I want to include in the second edition of the book. So I'm still, I still, I don't really feel like I'm done with this book, um, per se, which is a good, good problem. History of Future squared coming.

Yeah. Future Squared. Yeah. All right, Blake J. Harris. I know you, I, you know, we'll get you out of here. We've been yapping for a while. I really appreciate it. And I love that, you know, look, you're living your American dream, right? We started off with that way. It's a, it's a great thing when you're able to do that. And you even, uh, you even, you know, talk. You know, you know, talked a little bit about that when you were able to go with your wife to her mother's death. And you're like, I'm just going to spend the time I'm going to do this. And it's so fortunate when you're able to do that no matter who you are.

And, you know, yeah. I mean, working for yourself or at least working with people that you trust. That was always the good thing about working at the commodity place. It was not what I want to be doing. I didn't want to see people looking at four screens at 6.30 in the morning. But I was working with people who respected me and who I respected and we had a good relationship. And the one thing I want to say is that I mentioned that we had Seth Rogen and, Scott Rood on board for this book before it was even written,

or for the movie version of the book. And so we went out to publishers in November of 2012. And at that point, Seth Rogen was involved. Scott Rood was involved. There was going to be a movie, a documentary. They're writing the forward. And still, 22 of the 25 publishers passed on the book because they said video game books don't sell,

which I thought, well, there haven't been video game books as we know from Barredo. And I just thought that was crazy because even if you believe that, and even if you believe that was a terrible writer, having Seth Rogen's name on this, like you'd think that there's something marketable there. And so I hope, I feel confident that the success of console wars has helped make it a little bit easier on the next person writing a video game book. And I just want that to mention in terms of other people on their American dream, if you're out there and you're listening and you're looking to write a book about tech or about gaming, because of my experience, because I didn't really

have someone to talk to. I always make myself available. So you can find me on Twitter or on my website and I'll almost definitely make the time to at least see if I could help you in any way or trying to pass along what I would have learned because I think that it's really important that those of us who have found success and those help other people, especially if they have good ideas. That's great and it's all under Blake J. Harris.

Yeah, it's at Blakejahris.com and Blake Jayharris, NYC on Twitter. But yeah, if you Google me, you'll find me and... Okay. We'll put the links up. We'll have all the links up. And thanks for having me on. Absolutely.

I really appreciate your time. And it was nice to find them meet you in person. Thank you. Blake J. Harris. Thank you. While you're searching for Blake on Twitter and Facebook and his website, you can subscribe to Chewing the Fat with yours truly Jeff Fisher. And you can follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey JFR, Facebook and Instagram Jeff Fisher Radio. But for sure, subscribe to Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher.

Yeah, that's right. You want to be alerted when the daily chewing the fats come out and the Saturday American Dream segments come out. I know. I know what you're thinking. You're welcome.