The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Before You Go: A Novel by Tommy Butler

Episode Date: August 23, 2020

Before You Go: A Novel by Tommy Butler A big, rich, life-affirming debut that explores the most perplexing questions of existence: purpose, the pain of loneliness, the desire for happiness, and the price we pay as we search for fulfillment. In the Before, humankind is created with a hole in its heart, the designers not realizing their mistake—if it was a mistake—until too late. Elliot Chance is just a boy, and knows nothing of this. All he knows is that he doesn’t feel at home in this world, and his desire for escape becomes more urgent as he grows into adulthood, where the turbulence of life seems to offer no cure for the emptiness. Desperate and lost, he stumbles upon a support group on the edge of Manhattan. There he meets two other drifting souls—Sasha, a young woman who leaves coded messages in the copy she writes for advertising campaigns, and Bannor, whose detailed depictions of the future make Elliot think he may have actually been there. With these two unlikely allies, Elliot launches into the business of life, determined to be happy in spite of himself. Yet the hole in the heart is not so easily filled. Profound yet playful, Before You Go is a beautiful, imaginative journey into the ache and wonder of being human, and the quest for a meaningful life. Tommy Butler was raised in Stamford, Connecticut, and has since called many places home, including New Hampshire, San Diego, Boston, New York City, and San Francisco. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, he was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and is an alumnus of the Screenwriters Colony. His feature screenplay, ETOPIA, was the winner of Showtime's Tony Cox Screenplay Competition at the Nantucket Film Festiv

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. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly, as always, appreciate you tuning in. Wonderful to have you folks here listening in to the Chris Voss Show on a wonderful, wonderful day. Just pick a day. Today's that day. And we have, of course, the most excellent guests. Be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives. We certainly appreciate when you do. Give it five stars if you can on the old iTunes there. And also go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss to see the full video version of this interview. And you can see all the wonderful other guests we have on there as well. Also, go to our new book club that we just launched about three days ago.

It's on Patreon.com forward slash Chris Voss. On there, we're going to have book giveaways and different things, interactions, talk about some of the guests that we had on, our experience with them, talk about the books, some of our impressions of them, and yeah, it's going to be a whole discussion about books and everything else and what we've been doing on the show, kind of a background on the show, if you will. Today we have a most excellent guest. His name is Tommy Butler. He's written a novel. This is his first novel, but he's written a lot before. This is a novel called Before You Go. Tommy was raised in Stanford, Connecticut, and has since

called many places home, including New Hampshire, San Diego, Boston, New York City, and San Francisco. He's a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and is an alumni of the Screenwriters Colony. His feature screenplay, Etopia, was the winner of Showtime's Tony Cox Screenplay competition at the Nantucket Film Festival. How are you doing, Tommy? I'm doing well. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. Good, good, good.

Did I get that right? You're an alumnus or an alumni? What's the difference there? Because I'm one person, I'm an alumnus. You're an alumnus. I thought we were two or more people. I think I'd be an alumna. I saw that and I was like, I don't know if I said that right, but alumnus, alumni. I skipped college.

I was too dumb for college, so they wouldn't let me in. Too smart. One or the other, yeah. One of the two, but I think we know which one it is. So, Tommy, welcome to the show. Give us some plugs so people can check you out on the interwebs. Yeah, well, you can find out more about the book or about me on Goodreads or on Facebook. Or my website is TommyButlerWriter.com, and that will lead you either to Goodreads or to Facebook.

But those would be the three main places on the web. Awesome sauce. In fact, I just joined Goodreads a couple weeks ago, and people have been liking the reviews. We've got to do more of them, I guess. But pretty cool there. So you've written this beautiful book that is kind of touching and enduring to me so far called Before You Go. It looks like my green screen is going to mess it up a little bit.

Tell us an overview of this book, what it's about. Yeah, so this book, I guess it starts with kind of, I'll start it with kind of the theme of the questions that brought it, got it going. And then I'll talk about where that, where the book came from that. I think there were three kind of fundamental questions that got this book going or spurred this book on. One was, why does life sometimes feel so hard, even when it seems like it shouldn't? And two, is there anything we can do about it? And if not, then what? And I really thought about those questions long and hard, first as a human and then as a writer. And then as a writer, I started thinking kind of beyond the classic normal quick answers and started getting a little more creative

about it, a little more open-minded about it. And the idea started to flow. And really what came first in this book are what I call the vignettes, which are shorter little vignettes, little stories that are interwoven through the main story. And these vignettes are a little more fanciful. They're about the afterlife and the before life or in the future. And they talk about kind of how we got here, why we are the way we are, what may have gone wrong or may not have gone wrong, and what we can do about it. And so they're a little more abstract, a little more, again, fanciful.

And then the main story is a story about Elliot Chance, who is a boy. We meet him as a boy in the 80s. And then we watch him grow up into his 20s. And we see most of his life as an adult. And Elliot is kind of a particular instance of struggling with those abstract questions. You know, why does life seem so hard? Why does it feel so hard? Why is he struggling?

What's wrong? And in his case, it's really about kind of the desire to connect, both to be himself, but also to connect with others and the struggle there. And so we follow him into New York City where he gets a job and he's part of the dot-com boom. And the people he meets and the characters he meets uh also kind of struggling with similar questions in their lives and and kind of this

empty space that that that rises up which is not spoiling anything there it's in the first very first chapter so this empty space and all of humans and and kind of how they deal with it and and what's making what makes life worthwhile for them it it really captured me at the beginning as i mentioned the pre-show uh and the opening lines i mean would you mind if i read them oh please that's some clutter and i'm not going to get too far in the book i'm not going to read you the end at the end no i'm just kidding i won't do any jokes about uh but uh in the beginning you know i i don't read a lot of novels so I want to make that clear because I don't know I'm

unread inbred or something I don't know but what captured me was I opened up the book and I was like okay let's get a feel for what's in Tommy's novel and the beginning was in a room that is not a room with walls that are not walls and a window that is not a window

Miriam considers her handiwork the finished form that is not a room with walls that are not walls and a window that is not a window. Miriam considers her handiwork. The finished form lies on the table. That is not a table illuminated by divine light that Miriam dialed to peak radiance so that she could tend to the last delicate touches. I won't go into the rest of it, but that captured that captured me. I was like, what the hell's going on?

That's all I can ask. That's, that's just what you really did. I was like, what the hell is going on? That's all I can ask. That's just what you're asking. It really did. My brain went, I got to find out what's going on here. Yeah, that's perfect. Because it comes across like a, oh, what's it called? A riddle, a bit of a riddle, where you're like in a room that is not a room. And you're like, what the hell is it a room and you're like what the hell is

like i was sitting around going where the hell is it's not right i'm so glad to hear that really if i can get you kind of intrigued and then that's wonderful uh hopefully hopefully it pays off for you as you go i think it will i i have enjoyed it so far um what and like i said uh in the pre-show i've been i've been i like the character of ell Elliot because it reminds me a lot of what it was for me growing up. I don't know for a lot of young people nowadays, but it will probably be romantic for them to see what it was like to grow up in those days. You know, when you're born at two years old, they hand you a cell phone or iPad, That's all you know. And so, you know, I grew up in that area of going into the yard and playing and, and a lot of the stuff you talk about with Elliot and his brother and his family and, uh, you know, sitting around the dinner table and stuff like that. But it's,

like you say, it's interesting how you've placed these, uh, vignettes in between the story and both are incredibly insightful and, um, uh, and they're very beautiful the way you write is very um i lack the proper words but it's just very descriptive very beautiful um you you get it you paint a beautiful picture where you get a good feel for for what's happening um and and it just feels very detailed if you you will, I suppose. Yeah, thank you so much. That's really nice to hear. Thank you. Thank you. So how much of this, how much of Elliot is you in this book? Yeah, the short answer is none. Elliot's not me. It's not my story. But having said that,

you know, to get a little more nuanced, I mean, certainly I grew up in Connecticut. I've lived in Manhattan, and that's where Elliot's story takes place. And so, of course, I steal from my own experiences here and there to kind of give it texture, give it flavor. And probably more importantly, more to the point, on an emotional level, Elliot is not me, but I certainly have felt like a kindred spirit, not just to Elliot, but also to the two main characters of Sasha and Banner. In Elliot in particular, I felt his sense of wonder, which you're already seeing in the very first chapters, and also his sense of disconnection, his desire to be himself,

but also belong. I'm very tuned into those emotions. I didn't have to look very far to kind of hopefully bring those to the page. And the same is true for Sasha and Banner. So it's not at all autobiography, but, you know, emotionally, I get it. I'm in their tribe, so to speak. And the before and after vignettes, it was really interesting how you really approached them

because they're kind of, you know, like there's so many different opinions many people have and there's whole governments and religions built of them. And you've approached it in a way that is very, none of that is included in it like there's no by any but you've painted in such a beautiful uh way and kind of an extraordinary way i mean you could almost if you had a belief system to a certain either side i'm atheist but but you could you can certainly paint it well this is you know whatever but you you took it from a really um uh kind of out of the box uh sort of uh build like like that it just struck me really funny

how you did it and i was like well this is really a nice angle at looking at what this experience maybe could be or whatever it is in coming to life and leaving life yeah thank you thank you very much and it was very intentional not to um maybe could be or whatever it is in coming to life and leaving life. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. And it was very intentional not to not only to not promote, but not even to kind of talk about a particular religious view or anything like that. It was, of course, there's a certain divinity to what's happening in those vignettes, but I very much meant for it to be more universal, more global, and just more fundamental,

as opposed to picking a particular creed or view. Now, having said that, as you go, you'll see there's certain angles here or there where we get into that a little bit more, but the goal was to be a little more universal. And in a way, in some cases, as you'll see, kind of blending different views. So I was raised in a way in some cases that you'll see kind of blending blending different views so you know i was raised in a christian culture although i'm not necessarily i don't really follow it at this point but uh that's how i was raised i've also spent a lot of time reading about certain eastern uh philosophies and they all kind of played into uh those before and after things to some extent yeah and it's like they like they can be both kind of random or not attached to anything.

And I could see that if someone had the definition they had before, that it was still play to them in what they did. What's interesting, this is from the PR stuff, before you go is not only a coming-of-age story, it is an exploration of our minds and the emptiness we share, but also often refuse to acknowledge. Butler speaks to the most vulnerable parts of us through Eliot and shows that most beautiful parts of life

often are seen in the midst of the most challenging. And it really strikes me. It's really interesting, especially some of the different things that happened to Eliot so far that I've been able to read in the book. And which part of the book did you have the hardest time writing about? That's an interesting question. Well, I'd say, let's see, which part of the book did I have the hardest time writing about? Well, you know, I guess from an artist standpoint, Act 2 is always

the most troublesome to some extent. I mean, the beginnings and the endings are kind of more interesting inherently and kind of more fun. So Act 2 is always a challenge to keep it going, but I feel like I did and with my editor I did. But I think in some ways also the very first

parts that you're reading now because I think setting a stage for Elliot and showing you who he is and where he comes from and why that matters later in his life was very, very important. So I had to kind of, I wanted to get it right, but also not belabor it. I didn't want to spend too much time in his childhood, because most of the story is about him being an adult. So I'd say those early Elliot chapters may be the toughest. As opposed to some of the vignettes, which those also could be very difficult,

but some of them just rolled. Some of them just came, which was fun, a lot more fun than kind of grinding it out. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I was in the pre-show i was a little concerned that i'm like well maybe i just am predisposed to elliot because you know i grew up in that sort of age i grew up as a young boy the scenes that you said the interactions with his family and stuff um the playing in the art of course as i mentioned earlier and and so uh but but it's really

beautifully set and everything and and uh so it'll be interesting as I pace through the book. As a writer, what would you choose to be your spirit animal? Wow. Okay, you've got to give me a second there. As a writer, not as a human, this is as a writer. There you go. So my spirit animal? Oh, gosh.

I don't know. What's a good delver? Like what digs deep? Maybe like a vole? Beaver, badger. Yeah, badger. Maybe a badger. Yeah.

I think something that digs deeply, I think. I mean, I love light comedy as well, but some of the most profound stuff I've read or the most kind of memorable stuff I've read has been stuff that digs deep and that kind of isn't afraid to go there. And so I guess

if I had a spare animal, it would be one of those that isn't afraid to delve. Yeah. You know, and digging deep, you can definitely see that in the reading because you get into some interesting things with the before and after that are not only descriptive about it, but also give you thoughts to your own experience.

And you go, wait. And it's kind of an interesting way of presenting it where you don't present it as like, you should really think about this. But in the end, you go, I never really thought about it that way. And some of the third-person out-of-body experience of the after, you sit and you think, that would be an interesting ending. And some of the stuff you learn, it makes you reflect on your own life,

which is kind of cool. So what else, what are some of the highlights of the book that maybe you can share with us that. Yeah. Do you have any highlights or let's say favorite parts. Is there any favorite part that you have? Yeah. Well,

I guess I can pick it. I can pick a couple. I mean, I may be favorites, I suppose, or maybe ones I lean towards. But I guess one of the highlights is honestly what you just said, because it was very intentional to make the before and after vignettes in the second person, told in the second person, meaning you, just you. The main character in those vignettes is you along with mariam and jalis and for you to say what you just said like that's a highlight to me honestly because the goal of those

vignettes in part was to make it personal to all of us without kind of trying to bang you over the head with telling you like how you should think or should feel i'm never gonna do it i don't want to do that but it was just proposing something or exploring something. But in the second person to kind of get myself, get the author out of the way, get the main character out of the way and just let you kind of play with it. And so that was, that was one of the special parts of the writing of it for me. And to hear you say that is, is that it's great. But if that was your intent, you nailed it. I guess. yeah. There were some people, too, that I wanted to share this with that I wanted to share and be like, you should read some of this

because it might apply to you, too. I think it makes you think a little bit about your life, and that's kind of what you get from this as you go through it. You start thinking about your life. What have I done, and where am I going, and what does it mean and of course this was the basis for what you uh built on the book um yeah are you planning a sequel to the book i am not i i uh once you're i know you're not quite finished yet but once you get there you'll see that okay probably doesn't lend itself to a sequel so i i am working hard on the next thing, which I'm not, you know, it's still early stages, but it won't be before you go to now. Can we make before and after into a science fiction film of space or

something? Let's make them into seven films. So there's another question I have for you. If this were made into a movie, who would play your characters? Well, you know, we have a great film agent on it um michelle crowe is who hopefully is she knows much more about that world than i do so hopefully she's kind of masterminding those names but um you know i'm sure there are a number of good people the only person that jumps to mind for elliot uh, again, I don't necessarily know. I'm not that up to speed on all the actress names these days.

But the person that kind of jumps to mind for Elliot is Tom Holland. I know he's played Spider-Man well, but he also has shown other, you know, I think he can do much more human character as well, or normal human, I should say. I'm going to pull up tom holland here to see oh okay um was he in the newest spider-man was that it i think well he's been in the other the marvels of the avengers and stuff he's been in the avengers yeah he's a good looking kid

i could see him as elliot yeah his character his the way even the way he plays that role uh i think he'd be a great fit. But I'm sure there are many more. Sasha and Banner, I'm not sure. I mean, Banner, you know, certainly as many of us did. Morgan Freeman, although Morgan might be – Banner's, I think, quite a bit younger at this point. I'm not sure. But Morgan Freeman to me was like – he was one of those idols.

In Shawshank Redemption roles like that he was just would he be good as the guy in the before and after who's got the notepad oh well he has played divinity in one of the I don't think I think he'd be better as Banner but

he could probably play that role too I mean it's your book you know he can do it yeah I mean he's played too. I mean, it's your book. Yeah, I mean, he's played God. I mean, he's always in this. But I don't know. He doesn't seem like how you've written the guy in the before and after. He doesn't seem very Freeman-ish. I don't know.

No, they're a little bit more bumbling, as you'll see. And I think I described them later as bumbling. You know, Morgan in his role has always seemed very in control and very poised. And William and Dallas are definitely, they're bumbling around a bit. They're trying to figure things out. Is the bumbling there as a way to keep it light where there's not the push there of an agenda or an idea or a concept of just trying to make it that just kind of a light fluffy feel where you don't really know where it's going but then you're left with you're left with uh well i've got to figure this out make up my own mind yeah partly that's true i mean

i as i started thinking about those questions which are you know pretty heavy questions i told you about i one of the things that jumped into my mind immediately was that as a writer i don't want to treat them in the way that i feel they're often treated which is just as very heavy topics and so i thought how how can we look at this seriously but lightly you know and can we do we sacrifice something by looking at it with a little more um levity and i thought the answer was no in fact i think i hopefully got more out of it than I would have otherwise. And so, yeah, it's intentional. Miriam and Jalis are, they are somewhat bumbling and hopefully very likable.

But, but they're also, you also take their missions and their trials seriously and the questions they're facing seriously. Yeah. I'm going to be, I'm going to, it's going to be interesting to see as Elliot grows up, but it just captured me. I got to the before part, and I got captured by the first of it, and then I got into Elliot, and I really liked Elliot and his little family and stuff, and it reminded me of my own. So like I said, I don't know how biased I am.

And then it went into the after and the other vignette there, and you're like okay so what's going on now and then and then you see it and it does give you a lot of um uh things that you think of introspectively but you you deal with it in such a light way that you're you're left to deal with that on your own you're you're just it makes you think on your own without telling you here's what you need to think about yeah that's definitely have that from Goalie. Yeah. And then it goes back into Elliot, which I, of course, enjoy, and him growing up, et cetera, et cetera. It's a beautiful book and just fun to go through from what I've experienced so far.

What was the funnest part of it for you to read? Or write, I'm sorry. Well, the most fun was some of the vignettes, as you'll see, were very fun to write because some of them are definitely more comedic. So those can be kind of fun to write. You get to crack a few jokes, hopefully make the reader smile a bit or laugh out loud here and there. So some of the vignettes, for sure. There are are a couple of you haven't gotten to these yet i don't think but there are a couple of vignettes that are about they're called in the future uh and these

end up being what i call banners tales which is not spoiling anything but uh the character banners the character banner essentially has told elliot that he has traveled to the future and so he's telling elliot what how things are going in the future. And so he's telling Elliot how things are going in the future, and it plays into the theme of life, what life's about, and so forth. And so some of those, you had leeway to get very creative with those

and be a little more fanciful. So those are fun. And then the Elliot story, of course, is a more hardcore realist, very real story. But the most fun moments of that i think probably for any writer or when you after you've worked really hard to set a moment up and then you write that moment and if it comes out whether it's in the third draft or fourth draft or whatever if it comes out the way you if it lands the way you hope after all that work and

then you get to land that moment that is is, I mean, fun is a word. Yeah, it's not just fun. It's very rewarding. Yeah. So I can't, of course, tell you what those are yet. Darn it. Yeah, I read the PR thing and it says that he gets caught up in the future stories of Bannon. So, yeah, you got great reviews of this thing.

Alluring, magical, and painfully real. Will make your heart ache in all the right ways. A triumph for all of us who suspected there's something missing deep within. Matthew Quick, The New York Times. Let's see. The best-selling author of The Silver Linings Playbook. I suppose we should credit that properly. Hats off to the brave soul daring to write what might be called speculative, speculative literary fiction and willing to venture questions or venture answers to questions even beyond life and death. Um, yeah, it's, it's really interesting how you wrote, especially the

beginning, um, where, you know, the before and after, and then the, there's a, the vehicle that has a hole in it and it has to be filled and as you go through the telling of the story you know you start to reflect on your own experience like what we do in life to fill the hole that we have and and and everything else and and what made you what made you think of that like what, was there a creative thing that you took that from? Yeah. An origin or something like that? I, you know, there very well may have been. And honestly, you know, the joke is nothing is original, right?

Because, I mean, it seems like pretty much everything you write down has probably come from somewhere. And in some cases in this book, I can point to very specific kind of idea sources, whether it's a poem or something that I read or somebody, I had a conversation with someone. But to be very honest, the initial chapter, and again, I'm not spoiling it by saying that, you know, in the initial chapter, Miriam and Jollis are creating humankind. And for one reason or another, Miriam puts a little empty space in the vessel, in the human body, and Jalos tries

to fill it with every single emotion on the rack and fills it and fills it with all this emotion. And I don't think, I just think that came out of just, you know, long periods of rumination. I can't remember a specific source for that, but it seemed to fit with the answers to those questions, which which is you know why are we why is life seems so hard well maybe because we are basically just a bundle of emotions with a bit of an empty space like that would that would explain a lot yeah that's really and we've got this little empty space in us yeah yeah um was there any inspiration that

that came to you from other books you may have read or written or, or, uh, or what you did writing before with different things? Um, or is there any, is there any author that speaks to you the most? Maybe. How about that question? I wouldn't say there's an author that speaks to me the most. I mean, certain books over time, uh, spoken to me quite a bit, but I don't, I don't necessarily follow one author or another. I can't think of the specific influences in this book other than, I mean, there are some random ones, like there's a, one of the before vignettes was very much kind of inspired by a poem by Robert Frost called The Trial by Existence, which is, well, I don't want to

think too much about it, but it's about kind of the before life and how you end up getting into your life. So that definitely came from there. There are some ideas later in the book that certainly come from kind of a westernized understanding of Zen or of Eastern philosophies and kind of the oneness after it all. But yeah, I didn't, and I guarantee there are many other influences that played into it, but I just haven't kept track of them. I haven't, I don't really know. Yeah. It's the, it's the interesting experience of being an artist or an author is you,

you know, you just take, you just take the compilation of everything that you've gotten and and it pours in and out yeah yes really that's true that's me it's very true uh what was your highlight of writing the book what was for you the highlight um the highlight the highlight was there any aha moments where you you learned something from maybe writing the book so many yeah there are so many i mean it was very um i was delighted by how this grew on its own as i went it just uh the idea started to come and i some of them i can't kind of talk about but even um well for example so so for example the in the future vignettes

and there are just a few of those uh that so you know the before and after is about you know but before you were born this happened or after you die this happens the in the future is about in the future this is happening you know um in the future they've extinguished the will to live or in in the future there's a pill for everything. And those vignettes were coming because they very much spoke to the theme I was trying to get at, but I wasn't sure how they fit in kind of plot-wise. Not that they necessarily had to, but it would have been nice. And then one of the aha moments was, oh, this is Banner.

This is Banner thinks he's been to the future or has been to the future, and these are the stories he's telling Elliot. And so when that kind of happens, when it kind of starts to weave like that, and it just feels, it feels amazing. And you just are thankful for it because I, you know, you spend a lot of time thinking and opening your mind and dwelling on this and you hope the ideas come. And, um, yeah, they, they, quite a few came in that way. And I felt grateful. Cool. I noticed there's year dates in the book, in the parts for Elliot. I'm assuming those are years, like there's 1981, 1982.

Was there a reason you chose those years for the setting in the book? Yeah, I think there is. I think one was I guess I was trying to steal from my own experiences to some extent. And I did want to show Elliot in that kind of pre-screen world, that more kind of sense of wonder with nature and so forth. And so in order to steal from my own experiences, I chose a timeline that was fairly similar to my own timeline. And then as you'll see, well, again, I can't talk about the end yet, but that timeline just fit very well with how I wanted this, Elliot's story to unfold. And we also, of course, are following him into his adult life.

So he had to be born in the past anyway, because we're going to be with him now in at some point you know in more recent years let's say um and there was another reason i had work but i forgot how it was um but that was interesting reasons yeah i've skipped ahead a little bit i noticed there's a part one, part two, part three, I think. And then what's interesting is you hop through the years. And so it's not like a story like, okay, here he is at one, and you go through one through five.

Is that correct? Sorry, one through? Sometimes stories will start at this point, and the whole book is about from that point on to another point. You seem to bring us back in after coming through the vignettes to different times in his life. Yeah, we do. So we start with him when he's 9 and 10 years old,

and that's part one. And then we jump to his early 20s. And that's when we spend the vast bulk of the story. I won't say if and how he gets older, whether you know what happens then. But yeah, certainly some big time jumping because I wanted to cover basically his life. And that was one of the big challenges. I had to kind of work on that and learn and covering the character's entire life in a less than 300-page novel was challenging, but it really made sense for the story I was trying to tell. Yeah. It brings you back in, too, because you're like, wait, it's been a while since I, you know, because you're flipping between the vignettes

of the before and after and you're like okay so what's going on now i gotta find out yeah yeah hopefully we'll get thrown out of the story but i think i think you i think it works it brings you back in like it brings you back in and you're like i gotta read this next like that's what happened when when you uh came on i was i i had gotten to the end of a chapter and then i was like i gotta find out what the hell. That's the biggest sin. I interrupted you.

No, you're no, you're fine. I usually like to kind of sit down with a book and have it before me and kind of be either perusing it or going through my notes or something as I'm talking to the author because, because I can have it right here. But I can have stuff that reminds me, you know, I'll flip through it as we're as I'll usually be interviewing an author um how long did it take you to write the book so um a lot of the ideas and uh kind of a lot of the ideas were percolating for quite some time but from the day i kind of first started really outlining and structuring and taking notes, I did that for a year on the calendar, a calendar year.

And only then did I start to write, after I had very heavily outlined and very heavily thought about so many things, characters and everything else. And then I started to write, and then on the calendar, it was two more years of writing. Wow. And then we had about six months or so of editing with my editor do you think you took the approach that you did in the book and and and gave it that kind of openness because you you had that time to write

you kind of had that space to kind of form it like you didn't have a gun to your head where you're like i gotta do my author contract in six months or something oh god yeah i can't even i i mean for this kind of book or for what i hope to write next, I can't imagine writing under a gun. It would be, yeah, I would just fail. I would just fail. I need a lot of space. I need a lot of space to create. It's a very inefficient process in that way.

You know, it takes a lot of just what look like empty hours but aren't because your brain is working and your mind is working, but it's a lot of time. Yeah, you can see it in the book. It's got a real feel to it that's light, fresh, beautiful, very well detailed. And like I say, it really captured me. I got sucked into it because I'm like – I'm so glad to hear that. And it's just kind of a page turner where you're, you're just like,

I got to find out what happens next. And you get the vignettes and you're like, okay, what's this part of it? Oh, this is interesting. And then you get, and then you get the chapters again. You go, okay, now I got to find out what's going on here. And it just keeps you turning the pages, which I think is really interesting. So do you plan to make more novels in the future or are you thinking about doing some other different things? Yeah, what I'm working on now is a novel for sure. I've also written screenplays and I don't want to let that go.

I mean, I definitely still enjoy that form as well. But my next big project that I'm kind of deep into now and on that long road is a novel. So that's hopefully what's next. It does fortunately or unfortunately take you know a long time but uh but i'm excited about where it's at now so i i definitely see that going forward kind of like a fine wine everything takes time so anything i haven't asked you about the book that we should maybe know there that would be important for readers to get them motivated want to pick it up um Yeah, I don't know. I guess this is my golden opportunity to sell my own book, but I'm such a bad salesman that I don't know. I mean, I think it's, I hope what people find in it is, you know,

when my editor first wanted it, she first read it and she fell for it and she wanted to work with me on it. And she said it was, it kind of straddled both worlds of the literary and the commercial. And that was music to my ears because I really felt that that's what I was kind of trying to achieve and felt like I had. And she agreed. And so I think for readers, I hope that it's very much in both those worlds. And so it's kind of a broad pitch, I suppose, but it's very genuine. I think it's, I hope that it's very much in both those worlds. And so it's kind of a broad pitch, I suppose, but it's very genuine. I hope that the writing is, as you say, the kind of writing that literary readers love to read, just the terms of phrase, sentences, things like that,

but also that it is a page turner, and so that it's more of a commercial piece of fiction where you are kind of very invested in the characters and you're flipping pages because you want to find out what happens next and so i really hope it's both of those things i i personally feel it is and i just hope you guys agree you know i think it is too like i said i'm not a big novel reader and it really it really took me from the beginning and i just kept turning pages and kept going i gotta find out what's going on next and then you know maybe maybe i have a multi-task of issue. I hopefully most people's brains are like me, but the difference of

the stories, like sometimes when I, when I listen to a story, I want to watch a movie, um, you know, it, it becomes, it plays out from the beginning to the end and there's no real, there might be a subplot in there or something like that. But, but there's, there's, uh, you know, there's no real there might be a subplot in there or something like that but but there's there's uh you know there's just a beginning and end sometimes i can see the incoming because the way it's it's set out i i hate that if i'm watching a movie where where i go i know where this goes i mean i know what happens you know this is a movie that has like a uh i don't know what the correct word has been antithesis descending like seven or something, you know, something, something where the bad guy doesn't win, like no country for old men. Um, but that's the, that's the, that's technically the story.

Life isn't always fair. Um, but, uh, it kind of has, uh, uh, what's the movie Quentin Tarantino. It's not really Quentin Tarantino, but you know, Quentin Tarantino does those pieces. And of course yours seem to be in a semblance of order, I'm guessing, because I haven't finished the book. But, you know, the cutaways, the vignettes, like you say, they keep you more captured to the story because you're trying to keep up. And then you're playing kind of, I guess, a cat and mouse in your head

where you're like, what's going on next? Well, that's great. That's great. That's a great – I mean, I'm very glad to hear that. I think the book does, you know, I do hope that readers pay attention. You know, you want to pay attention to it. It's not necessarily a really breezy beach read. It's more of a book that you want to kind of sink into.

And I think that the Elliot story is such that the vignettes were, I mean, I think they're necessary for so many reasons. But one of them was to kind of give you a breath from that story and get you to the vignette story and then give you a breath from that. And so hopefully it's the right rhythm to keep you moving forward. I think if the vignettes were all gone, it would be a very different reading. So hopefully it's doing just what you described, yeah. Yeah, so far it is, and I definitely like it. Be sure to check it out, everyone.

It's the book Before You Go by Tommy Butler it's a novel and I've been enjoying it quite quite a bit here as we've talked about it's got reviews and everything else Tommy as we go out give us your

plugs so people can know where to pick this baby up off the interwebs and get to know you better yeah well you can at this point I think you can buy it really Give us your plugs so people can know where to pick this baby up off the interwebs and get to know you better. Yeah, well, at this point, I think you can buy it really almost anywhere. So independent bookstore near you hopefully will have it or can get it very quickly. Certainly Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the big stores. Books, Inc. is my local regional bookstore that hosted my launch event. And as far as the book itself, you can find it on Goodreads or Amazon or you can find me on Facebook

or at TommyButlerWriter.com. Awesome sauce, awesome sauce. Well, we'll look forward to your future works and everyone get a chance to pick this up. I really liked it so far and I'm still at the beginning, but I'm just captivated by it. And the story, the way you laid it down,

the way it's not really forcing the story on you. And it's really beautifully written. Like the stories, especially about Elliot and what he's going through, like it just brought all of my childhood back to me. The chasing through the yard. I don't think we ever caught leaves, but we would catch,

when we went to West Virginia at my uncle's place, we would catch the jars of the lightning bugs. Then you'd hold them up at night. Yeah, that could have easily been in the book. It wasn't, but it could have easily been. That brought me back to it, though, the catching of the leaves, that whole experience in being in the yard. I don't know if we ever chased leaves,

but that whole experience that fortunately I grew up with, you know, where, you know, we had one of those moms that was, and I'm not saying she was a bad mom, but they don't make those moms anymore. We had one of those moms that was like, you get out of the house and you don't come back till dinner. And so we go adventuring. And so everything outside was an adventure, you know. Oh, that's magical. Nowadays the parents are like, you get in here, you know, all the crap that goes on in the world might get you if you stay in the house. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, my mom was like, I don't want to hear or see you.

I don't want you in the house. You know, she chased the house with the broom. You guys go. But the adventures that we used to go on, the things that we used to learn and experience, I would never regret for a lifetime. But thanks for coming on the show, Tommy, sharing the book. It's a beautiful book. Everyone go check it out.

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