The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Amal the Thirsty Gamal: A Christmas Tale by Robert A. Schorr

Episode Date: December 11, 2021

Amal the Thirsty Gamal: A Christmas Tale by Robert A. Schorr Amal the Thirsty Gamal is for every child who might be struggling with how he or she is perceived by others. (Oh yes, camels care about that, too!) Our little hero has spent too many years listening to all the wrong voices and thinking all the wrong things: about his hump, about his appearance, about himself. But―oh!―get ready! Because “wise men” have joined this particular caravan journey, and when one of them speaks up around the campfire one night, everything changes for little Amal the Gamal!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming over to the Grand Agree Podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Have I ever told you that before? We just love you guys. We love you, but it's not like a family love. We love you, but we don't judge you. You can be who you are with us. We still care.

We still love you, as long as you're a good person. I don't know. Be good people. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com, Forge, Ask Chris Foss, hit the bell notification. There's no bell notification on Goodreads. Go to goodreads.com. You can see everything you're reading or viewing over there.

And if you can find a bell notification, let me know because there is one. But the bell notification is on the YouTube, YouTube.com, 4ChessChrisFoss. You can go there and hit that bell notification over and over all you want. Actually, just hit it once or whatever you do. Make sure it's turned on. Now you get all the notifications of everything we do and you get those dings lots of really cool gifts that we'll be talking about different reviews of product we got some new jbl stuff that was in and a bunch of phones that we've got to post gift giving guides for the big christmas that's coming here you may have heard of it

happens every year about this time and the kids like those gifts so we'll be talking about a gentleman today it was an amazing children's book too on top of that go to all our groups facebook linkedin twitter instagram we can find us everywhere we're just not on snapchat for the most obvious of reasons but tiktok all those places the cool kids are at we try and keep up with them anyway guys we have an amazing author on the show with us today he is the author of the book, Mall of the Thirst Gamal, A Christmas Tale. Look at that. We're already in Christmas tale stuff. Robert A. Schroer is on the show with us today. He just put out this book, July 6, 2021, and it's great for children. So this is something you can, it might make a good stocking gift

if you can fit in the stocking or order that up for a gift for the kids and they can enjoy it. Robert is the author of this new book, and it offers a delightful and traditional Christmas tale story. Let's call it a Christmas story from the perspective of its westward journey. And let me pull this down here. Westward journey plus themes of shunning, self-image, and personal empowerment. He spent 17 years in the Republic of China, Taiwan. He is fluent in Mandarin.

That's pretty good. That's hard to do. Proficient in Hakka. And he's one of the few Westerners to earn a master's degree in Chinese literature from the highest prestigious national Taiwan university, where all his coursework, exams, materials, and thesis work were done in Chinese. Holy crap. Welcome to the show, Robert. How are you? It's really good to be with you, Chris. Thanks a lot. It's a great privilege for me to be on your

show. Thanks for coming. Wow, Mandarin. I've heard Mandarin's really hard to learn. Well, I really should qualify that. I came back from the States in 1994, fluent in Mandarin, but getting rusty now. Yeah? I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't put me to the test. I think the way that our nation's going, we're about to, we'll probably be overtaken by the Chinese Navy. Oh, boy. I'll be

ready for translation. At least you're ready for our overlords. So, give us your plugs so people can find you. I'm really grateful to be on your show, Chris. I listened to yesterday's podcast, and that was a fabulous show. I'm a little nervous about doing this one because it's going to be a hard one to follow up on that.

But Woody Holton's study of the American Revolution and the Liberty is Sweet. Great, great show. Thanks for letting me be on this one. Yeah, my book, I'm real excited about it. It's a great great show so thanks for letting me be on this one yeah my book um i'm real excited about it's a christmas book so it's a sweet story it's got a beautiful sense of rhyme and rhythm to it it's got beautiful pictures to it watercolor paintings here's one of the pages page 24 and 25 beautiful who'd you have do the watercolor picture that was christina coons wonderful

illustrator and she did a fabulous job with that actually we worked together on it during the covid times and got a lot of free time to work on it then finally so i'm pretty busy until then but it's a delightful story yes taken from the perspective of going westward from the east the christmas story in the in the Bible, for example, just takes place in Bethlehem and everybody arrives at the scene, but not much consideration for what was the journey like, going westward, following a star and following a light and that kind of thing. It's been fun to include that in the story.

Oh, wow. It's a children's story. It's a little trinket for kids is what it is. I hope they find it delightful. children's story. It's a little trinket for kids is what it is. I hope they find it delightful. There you go. Nice Christmas stories. That's what we're always looking for and stuff. Did you give us your dot coms where people can maybe find you or get to know you better?

Yeah, you can find me. I'm on Facebook. Amal the Thirsty Gamal. That's a G-A-M-A-L. That's just the Middle Eastern word for camel. So Facebook, you can find me by just searching that. Amal the Thirsty Gamal. And also Instagram, same thing.

Oh, wow. If you want to look for me on Twitter, which is not a real big account for me, but you can just do Amal the Gamal, leave the thirsty out. Yeah. And I have a web page called The Morning. It's just www.themorningfrigate.com. It's a literary web page, and I write things on there, translate Chinese poems and that kind of thing,

and discuss literary topics. And there is no frigate like a book, as Emily Dickinson says, playing on that beautiful poem she wrote. Oh, yeah. Reach me on that. The book is available on Amazon and also through the publisher, Mascot Press. You can get it at Barnes & Noble's out here in Southern California, where I am. They're in over quite a few dozen Barnes & Noble stores, but you may have to call your store and order it if it's not out here in the West Coast, but also available through any independent bookstore. I've got students over in Taiwan that got my book through the Boca Live bookstore.

They had a few copies on hand, and now they're just ordering it now. But that's the way bookstores do it these days. They don't get a big inventory unless you're famous. Yeah, it's interesting how the whole thing is working, especially with the, what do they call them, the distribution channels. Like every time I order a bunch of my books to sign, it takes two or three weeks to get them.

I'm like, wow. Yeah. It's crazy. So what made you want to write this book? What motivated you? Let's see. I've got a little spiel I usually tell the kids in answer to that question. You mind if I share that with you well yeah and i tell kids i tell them that

just sheer compassion chris is what motivated me to write the book and that's because i'm actually convinced that my my little character amal the thirstyal, is the saddest, most downtrodden, rejected, belittled creature in the entire animal kingdom. And I know that sounds a little bit overblown, perhaps, but bear with me a few minutes and think this through with me, and I think you're going to agree. First of all, we have camels at large. They themselves are terribly lowly and humble things as far as the animal kingdom is concerned. Yeah, I'm talking about the entire species. Are they not belittled by all the others? Think about it. A hump? Lions have manes and tigers

have a roar and eagles have wings and elephants have hoses and kangaroos have pouches and tigers have a roar and eagles have wings and elephants have hoses and kangaroos have pouches and turtles have houses and even the firefly has a charming lantern that lights his way in the dark of night but let a camel walk by and every animal in the kingdom is about is bound to shake his head and go like, dude, what is that? It's a hump. Okay, what's it for? What's the point of it? He doesn't know.

Does it have a purpose? He doesn't know. He can't explain it. It was there when he got here. And so whenever the rest of the animals come by, that hump is a source of embarrassment for every single camel, not just my little camel. And that's why they have such stern, anxious-looking faces. I suppose you've noticed that.

But hold on. We're not quite done yet. In the midst of this sad, humble, belittled group, very much like another breed of creatures I know, there is belittling and shaming going on. Are you ready for this? Among themselves, against each other. Yes. You see, right there in the camel family, we have Bactrians with two humps. And do they ever sneer at the camels with one? Dromedaries, those are called. And they walk around with their heads hanging down, ashamed to admit that they're missing out. But at least they have one. That's something anyway. And if they could just find someone worse than themselves,

more flawed perhaps, someone else that they could look down upon, someone a little lower on the ladder, someone they could make fun of themselves, wouldn't that be quite a relief? And so behold, enter Amal, our sad little Gamal, who hardly has any hump at all, which means he was thirsty most of the time. And out in the desert, that's not a good sign. Amal is made fun of by the dromedaries, who have all been belittled by the Bactrians, who in turn have been teased by the lions and the eagles and the other privileged elite ones in the animal kingdom. So let me ask you, does it get any lower than Amal the Gamal? I rest my case.

We can safely assume Amal the Gamal is the saddest, loneliest, most pitiful creature in the entire animal kingdom. That's a spiel I give my kids when I get asked that. I was in seminary learning my Hebrew with Dr. Curtis and tuning him out after I learned that the word for camel was gamal. And I thought, well, that would be a cool story to put together. I tell a story about a gamal. And, of course, he'd have to have a problem of some kind, and so

thirsty was it. Yeah. At least they got their own line of cigarettes. They got that going for them. Sorry, I didn't mean to check in. You couldn't leave that out. They've got good sponsorships, I don't know. Maybe that's why they are depressed. They're smoking. They need to quit. Yeah, that's right.

That's always bad for you don't do that kids yeah i can't do that yeah thankfully we just have parents that watch this show otherwise youtube's gonna have it out with me on that one so let's get into some of the details of the show or details of the book i should say what are some of your readers the little readers gonna learn from the book what do you think there's gonna be some there's lessons to learn here evidently yeah there's gonna be different levels of that little readers are going to learn here, evidently. Yeah, there's going to be different levels of that. Little readers are going to learn to enjoy rhyme and rhythm. And the rhyming and rhythm of the book is a lot of fun. They're going to enjoy watercolors, too.

The pictures are just beautiful. Christina Kuhn did a marvelous job describing the scene and describing. She's got a picture of my camel on his knees praying. However you can do that. Good luck trying to draw a camel on its knees praying. However you can do that. Good luck trying to draw a camel on his knees praying, but she did it. She pulled it off. And they're just going to enjoy the visual effects and the audio effects of it too, the rhyme and rhythm. It's not a regular rhyme. I don't like regular rhyme. I don't like constant predictable sing-song rhyme, but the rhyming and rhythm

is really fun in this thing. It's fun to read. I love reading it. I'm doing a reading tomorrow night in the barns up near here. Oh, nice. And it's just going to be a lot of fun to read that thing. I've got it memorized actually. There you go. Others, but other things, it gets deeper

and that's what I like about the book. I've enjoyed doing it. It's not just a children's tale, just a shallow thing. And even the rhymes are not shallow. It's not quite like Green Eggs and Ham where the rhyme is just fun, but it's captivating, I think. Everyone who reads it says the same thing about it. But the other things that kids are going to take away from the book is they're going to learn not to judge others by their appearances and definitely not to judge a person by his defects because a black camel has a defect. They're going to learn not to listen to the voices of prejudice or rejection or exclusion, not to tolerate that in their life, but rather listen to the voice of wisdom.

There are wise men on this caravan journey that is going from the east to the west. They're on their way to a destination far to the west, and there are wise men going with them. And at one point in the story, a real piece of wisdom sort of delivers my poor outcast camel. They're going to learn that there are beautiful mysteries to the Christmas story. And I don't really go into detail about it, but I hint at it. And it's neat because I think later on in their lives, when they get a little bit older and look back at the book again,

it's going to dawn on them, this thing's deep. There are things alluded to in the story that are rather profound. And I can explain some of those if you want. Yeah, let's do. And they're going to also learn, I think probably the most important thing they're going to learn is that they themselves, my readers, my little readers, they themselves are beautifully made and specially made and made for a meaningful purpose in life. I hope they get that message. And there's also a little science lesson about camels and humps. So I won't want to spoil the story by explaining all that,

but there's faulty science running through the whole book that's one of them all's problems. It takes a wise man to correct that and it becomes a complete revelation in his life. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, there's lots of cool stuff that kids can learn. It's a great book that not only the kids can read themselves or they can have a parent read to them, you know, and all that stuff and interact with them? Yeah, I'm a real advocate of reading aloud to your kids. You'll get perfectly fine to read it on your own too.

But the kids are amazing. I'm quite amazed at how children pick up the vocabulary and the language of their parents just by sitting around the dinner table, no one's teaching them idioms at all, but they're picking up idioms. One day I was walking with my granddaughter back from the beach, and I think she was three years old, and she prefaced one of her sentences with, frankly, Grandpa, and she went on to launch about something.

And I cut her off and said, Evie, do you know what frankly means? No. No, what does it mean? She used it perfectly. She knew exactly how to use it. And my book has idioms in it like that, too. And I just leave them in there because the kids are going to know how to use them and how to put them into the right context and get a lot of meaning out of the book because of it. I would agree with you.

Reading is so important, and it develops the mind. Every great author I know and people that write well, they're big readers. There's something that just teaches your brain to do the stuff. It's quite amazing and everything that goes into it. Let's see, what are some other things? You've got an underdog theme in there and an outcast theme. There's lots of books,

children's books have different themes. What makes yours very different? Yeah, my camel has a very negligible hump and he's been told all his life, then it means you're not carrying much water. And so he's told he'll never survive in the desert. He'll never make it on a caravan journey. He'll never be able to pull his load. He's going to be always inferior.

They call him flat top. They call him flat as a table, things like that. But, and that's, yeah, he's an underdog. He's like an outcast at the beginning. Quite apropos to your themes, Chris, for your show and your books of leadership, is the fact that in the story, my story, the outcast actually does become the leader in the end. That's a fun little twist to it. Yeah, I would say some of the things I just listed that the kids would learn are making the book different, but especially those beautiful mysteries of Christmas. Let me just give you an example.

During one of the nights on the journey westward, as the caravan and the wise men and the merchants are lounging at rest, an exotic old traveler comes in from the west and says, a king has been born in a manger of hay. It's a strange way to come, if you ask my opinion, with no palace or splendor or signs of dominion. But that's what they say, a manger of hay. And one of the wise men goes, said the wise man,

wouldn't this journey get stranger the further we go? Yeah, it is strange. It's a strange story. Christmas stories, he's born in a cattle stall jesus was born in a cattle stall and laid in a hay rick a manger is just a box of hay that's all it is but there's a mystery to that and the book of isaiah actually mentions mentions that manger in there and and in reference to to the fact that man doesn't sometimes doesn't even rise to the level of the beasts of the field who know where their manger comes from and know who their creator is and

things like that. Another reference is the gifts of the wise men. One merchant speaks up and says, aren't your gifts strange if you don't mind my saying? Do you really consider them fit for a king? Oh, the gold, of course, is perfectly fine. But incense and myrrh, I can only presume, are bound to wind up in some temple or tomb. What precisely did you have in mind? Those are mysterious. Myrrh is a very interesting substance. And myrrh becomes an issue in the story.

But the word myrrh comes from the Hebrew, which means bitter, and it is a bitter perfume. It's an intense, astringent perfume. It's actually a medicinal substance, but the most intriguing thing about it is always used for embalming it has something to do with the tomb and of course the tomb and the messiah are tied together in the scriptures there's hints in the book about these these mysterious things that who gives a who gives embalming fluids to a baby on a gift, right? That's creepy. I never really even knew that. I learned a lot just now.

Yeah. The word marach is a Hebrew word for bitterness, and mur is the word for myrrh. I think that was the name of one of my ex-wives. But there are things kind of prophetic going on in the story, but I don't really get into it much. I just touch upon it and toss it out there and let them mull it over. That's pretty darn cool.

That's pretty darn cool very much. So let's see. What else do we want to touch on about your book that you think will really entice people to want to go get it? I just think it's a beautiful book. I think it's going to be a Christmas classic. Every child who's read it so far wants to hug this little camel and befriend him and protect him and defend him.

He's very vulnerable. He's very afraid as he sets off on the journey and ends up becoming wonderfully, gloriously delivered in the end. So it's quite a little triumph. I think there's a lot of sometimes as a child you feel that way because number one everyone's taller and bigger than you so you feel and you're like these people scare me which you know describes my childhood clearly the but you know you feel downtrodden you're trying to find your place in the world you're trying to

find your footing who am i and why am i here and what the hell's going on if you're experiencing the program of life for the first time, you're just like, this is a bit daunting. Yeah, there's an element going on in the book that all kids face. They're so preoccupied with their appearance. And it's a big issue with kids these days. They get teased about their appearance. They get teased about their appearance. They get teased about their bodies.

And every parent and every adult wants to take their little ones and sit them down and say, listen, don't listen to this. Don't listen to these wrong voices. The kids you hear at school or the snide things you hear at your upperclassmen at school.

Just you're beautifully made. You're especially created. And you have a purpose too. And there's just, we long to impart to them a good positive message about who they are, and all the world just seems to be shouting condemnation and criticism at them so often. It's really sad. So I'm glad the book gets to address that issue a little bit. That's pretty good. It's interesting, a lot of the books that you read as a child really shape you. I can still remember a lot of the books that shape me.

I don't know if they shape me, but they gave me comfort where the wild things are. Oh, that's a great book. The Dr. Seuss books were cool. What are some of the rabbits of NIMH or something? The Tolkien books, of course, were popular. Something of NIMH. I don't remember what it was, but it was basically a rabbit community that was interesting. Watership Down, I think, was another rabbit book.

What the hell was with the rabbits and me growing up? We actually bred and had rabbits. That was a thing to do. So I don't know. Maybe that's why I was into rabbits. But there were popular books that we had there. But yeah, those are the books. I can read. I've probably read a billion we had there. But, yeah, those are the books that I can read. I've probably read a billion books in my life.

But, yeah, those are the books I remember. Yeah. Very important to us. Yeah, they definitely have an impact on you. They shape you. They give you something to experience life with, a bit of a security, two blankets. Sometimes you go to your books and stuff. I remember growing up, and I would get lost go to your books and stuff. I remember growing up and

I would get lost in books and writing and stuff. And stories are such an important thing for kids to learn. Anything more you want to plug on your book or talk about? I just want to encourage everybody. Yeah, there's a plush toy that goes with it. Oh, really? Also available on Amazon and it's a really cute plush toy. We had a

really good time getting that ordered and brought it into the equation. It's a real cute little... I should have sent you a picture of that. I had a really good time getting that ordered and brought it into the equinox. He's a real cute little – I should have sent you a picture of that. I have a picture of it before me. Yeah, that's really cute. He's got a canteen. He wears a canteen. There's a point in the story where – maybe I'll read that to you.

Sure. That little portion about the canteen. And he's just – he looks real beleaguered. Hasn't quite been delivered yet. So that's a lot of fun. And my grandson hugs the plush toy every night when he goes to bed and wants to have the story read to him. I feel ripped off.

I didn't get a plush toy with Where the Wild Things Are. I'll send you one, Chris, okay? I'll send you one. I think that's really cool. I had seen it here on Amazon, and it said frequently bought together. And so it presented that to me, and I just made the assumption that was some sort of algorithm from Amazon. Just like they found a camel. I'm glad they did that.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's nice of them to do it. Yeah, I'm like, so now I know what the camel is. But yeah, it's a cute camel. It's a little sad. Yeah, I actually wanted to bundle the two this publish this publishing business is not is not easy to do oh yeah you know it's a i'm a hybrid publisher so it's i have to do some of the work myself and that's been that's been a really neat experience for me but i tried to get them the two bundled together on Amazon, and that took quite a bit of work.

But it's there now. And if you go to Amazon, you can just type in the whole title of the book and put plush toy or plushie after it. Or I've got bit.ly codes too and things like that. If you go on my website, I'll give you a bit.ly link, and you can just get right into Amazon and get it. Or you can get the plus toy from the publisher too mascot books and it even says here on amazon if you order now you

can arise before christmas so that's important you want to order stuff now because they're having lots of distribution problems in fact a bunch of stuff i heard from amazon because of amazon's i think they went out down on what was it monday i did. Yeah, everything I ordered is like coming a day late. They're like, sorry, we had a mess. And so, yeah, there's going to be lots of complications. So you definitely want to order something like this. I can see all these young kids sitting around, a parent squeezing the little plushie toy. That gives it a whole three-dimensional sort of context and aspect.

Yeah, it does. It really does. It's very sweet. Yeah. Maybe I'll just get one just just to for when i get scared at night when the lights go keep it next to your mic yeah i'll pull one next to the mic i think you might have to buy a sponsorship for that but yeah we'll keep one on the show maybe somewhere and that'd be good the only problem is i got two huskies and they might

decide they like it better and that probably won't be a good thing. I do love Huskies. I love Huskies but I can never give them a stuffed toy because I don't know what it is. They'll play with it for a day or two and I'm like, oh, they think it's cute and then I'll come and it's been gutted of all the cotton. That's what Huskies are supposed to do. And I'm like, you just killed your

favorite toy, you moron. It's horrible. They're just being themselves. We don't give them plush toys anymore. Anything more you want to touch on before you go out? I think we're good on that. It's pretty much just a children's book.

Order up the book. It's delightful. Order up the plush toy that comes with it. And that way, when you hand a kid a book, especially when I was growing up as a kid, you're like, oh, great. Thanks, Grandma. This is a great interaction for parents. And then you can had a kid, a book, especially when I was growing up as a kid, you're like, Oh great. Thanks grandma. Brooke, this is a great interaction for parents. And then you can give them a plush toy and then it's a whole big thing.

It's a whole big package. It's not just the thing. And they'll probably, how kids are. They always want you to read everything over and over again. That's how they measure things. It's going to be a, it's going to be a Christmas tradition for a lot of people.

There you go, guys. So it was wonderful to have you on, Robert. Give us your plugs one more time where people can find you on the interwebs. Okay, the book is Amal, the Thirsty Gamal. It's G-A-M-A-L. It's

the substitute word for camel. It's available on Amazon. If you type in the search window, just type that whole name in there, Amal, The Thirsty Gamal, you'll find it that way. I don't know if they have a simpler connection yet or not, but it's also

available on Barnes & Noble on their online ordering, or you can get it in the stores now. Independent stores everywhere will have it. It's through Ingram Books, and Ingram distributes them, so that's almost all the independent bookstores in America, getting their books through Ingram. And Ingram's distributing my book, too.

That's awesome. So I hope you enjoy it. There you go, guys. Thanks for being on the show, Robert. Thank you for letting me be here. Wonderful. Thanks for coming. And let's see.

Order this baby up, guys. What a great thing. It's not just a book. It's a plush toy. And you can send a new Christmas tradition. Read to your kids. Give them stuff to read. We need a smarter generation. It really expands their mind and gives them tales of life,

great stories, or the real fabric of life. Amal the Thirsty Gamal, A Christmas Tale. You can order that up wherever fine books are sold. Go to goodreads.com forward 4chesschrisvoss. You can see everything we're reading or reviewing. Also go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. See the video version of this. Also go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,

and all those great places out there. Thanks for tuning in, folks, and we'll see you guys next time.