The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Christmas Treasures: The Greatest Treasure is in the Heart by Bruce J Spohn

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Christmas Treasures: The Greatest Treasure is in the Heart by Bruce J Spohn https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Treasures-Greatest-Treasure-Heart/dp/1470119919 Collection of short stories about Christmas. For any age group that can read from 10 to 100 About the author Bruce Spohn was born March 5th, 1947 in Lancaster, CA near Los Angeles. His parents moved north to the Bay Area and he attended K – 12 in several schools in different cities around the Bay. This laid the foundation of his outlook on life. After graduating from Clayton Valley High School in Concord California he joined the U. S. Air force. After basic training in Lackland AFB in San Antonio TX, he was sent to Germany in Oct 1965. Life in Europe appealed to him and he stayed in Germany for 40 years and finally returned to the United States in Feb 2006. Luckily, he was sent back to San Antonio TX where he works for the Government at Fort Sam Houston. Bruce started writing when he was still in high school but never published. In Nov 1999 he was involved in a near-fatal car accident and woke up in the ICU a few days before Christmas. He felt inspired to write a story to send to his friends as a special Christmas gift. His love of writing has spurred him on the expand his story tellin to include romance/drama. “Lovers by the Lake is a romance between two “Baby Boomers” and how their lives were shaped by the events of the time. Bruce is now working on a series. “Dark Dig” and “Convalited Conswcidences” are the first in that series.

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The Greatest Treasure is in the Heart by Bruce Spahn. We're going to get into it with him and find out all the deets and what he's talking about in his wonderful book he's presenting today. He was born in 1947 in Lancaster, California, near Los Angeles. His parents moved to the Bay Area. And after graduating from high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force. after basic training, he went to San Antonio, Texas, and then Germany in 1965. Life in Europe appealed to him, and he stayed in Germany for, let's see, 40 years.

He finally returned to the United States in February 2006, I should say, and as luck would have it, he was sent back to Texas, where he worked for the government at Fort Houston. He began writing when he was still in high school but never published. In 1999, I was evolved in a near-fatal car accident and woke up in an ICU. A few days before Christmas, he fell inspired to write a lot of. a story to send to his friends as a special Christmas gift. As many Christmases, let's see, as many Christmases, let's just skip that. So welcome the show.

How are you there, sir? Bruce. I'm fine, Chris. How's it going? I am doing excellent. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interweb, sir? I do have a fun author at VWX.com.

I think it. I can't remember. I just click on it. but my books are all available on Amazon. So if you go to Amazon, up in a little search window, that's then books by Bruce Vaughn. They'll all come up. All right.

Sounds good. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's this signed this book, sir? Oh, this book is a strange book, primarily because it was never designed to be a book. Oh. Like you mentioned, I wrote it. A little Christmas story to send up to my best friends at Christmas time.

And they were little short stories. Nothing real first out of it. After the ninth year, one of my friends said, these stories are kind of nice. I want you to put them together in a collection and see what happened. And I said, I'm kind of shy. You're kind of shy. And she smiled.

That means what do you've got to lose. Yeah. I said, I'll put it that way. So it went back and I rewrote all nine stories. and if you read the whole book at the end you understand why I rewrote the stories and each story

there's nine of them they were written once a year for nine years and so you wrote you wrote them once a year for nine years yeah oh wow Christmas only comes once a year right

yeah oh I see yeah okay then each year I wrote another story to send out to the market wow that's pretty wild Each story is complete in its own. It stands all by itself. And how many stories do you have in the book? Nine.

Nine total. Okay. And people can read through the short stories and stuff. Now, the short stories, do I have that right? They're all short stories, and they're needed to read. And you can read them to your kids because there's no dancing Santa Claus. There's no singing Christmas trees. They're not Hallmark Hall of Fame.

cheesy things. These are all stories about people like you and me. They're trying to deal with Christmas. Because Christmas isn't like it was when I was a little kid. Although the first story in the book is about me as a little kid, me and my brother. Huh. And I'm one of the main characters throughout the book.

Now, are you in the main characters of most of these, or is there a main protagonist, or is there different people throughout? There's different people throughout, but I pop up in several different stories. Okay. As my pseudo character, Sam, let me read Sam. That was me. Sam was a little kid playing suitzener of his brother at Christmas time. Sam was an air policeman station in Germany for some ways of all.

Yeah. Sam played Santa Claus at the local department store. So Sam pops up several times. There's another character that pops up a couple of times. And sometimes they know people, but they didn't know they knew each other. It's kind of like, kind of like, like, you know me and I know you, but you might know somebody if I happen to know. And that's how life is.

We interface with people and we exchange ideas. and we grow and we prosper from other people's points of view and that's what the whole book's about learning the value of the individual superheroes don't wear cakes superheroes take care of their friends and that's a key point of the book the key point of the book

now the stories you mentioned some of the stories were set in Germany I know you spent a lot of time there where they used, how did you define your characters? Do you use compilations, maybe, of people that you knew there, or? Like I said, Sam is me. But other people are people I work with. Sometimes they're just fictional characters.

I said, I need a person to be that person, and I make them up. The thing is, each person has a point of view and they interact with other people in different ways. I never lived in New Orleans but I wrote a book about about Katrina and the damage that was done to the city

and Katrina went away but the damage remained for a long time and people's lives were impacted by that storm for a long time after the storm was forgotten and there's a story about a woman that's trying to get her back with her life back together even though it'd been torn apart she'd lost contact with the family she'd lost her house

she was completely demolished and yet Christmas came and people came together and shared with a stranger to help them celebrate Christmas again oh isn't that wonderful

and so these do all the I imagine all these stories circulate around the idea of Christmas and everything else is that correct it's It's primarily Christmas, but it's a book you can read any time in the year. It's not specifically you have to wait until Christmas on.

But the message is family, tradition, sharing, and caring. Ah, all the important stuff. All the important stuff. That's why it's in the heart. So give us a, do you, are there any future books coming out? or sequels to this book, maybe? Oh, I play around with the thought of putting more Christmas stories together, but that's complicated.

I don't have to add a lot. Are you still writing stories? I wrote a second book called Lovers by the Lake, which is about two lovers that get together late in life. They're in their fifties. They're baby boomers. The girls from California, the guys from Texas. They don't meet each other until they're in their 50s.

and she happens to be in Texas, and she meets him. She was in a bar, and they find out that, hey, they'd like to talk to each other. Yeah. She doesn't know him and she doesn't know her. They didn't go to the same school together.

They have no real common background. So she comes up with the idea, but it's kind of hard for us to sit here in the bar and communicate. Why don't we go someplace where we can be alone and talk about our past, so we know who each other are. I don't know if you're the Texas chainsaw guy.

Yeah. So they agreed to go to a lake for a vacation and during the time they're supposed to sit down and start talking about their life. She says, I'll make this simple as I can, and

we need to have a starting place. He says, how about 1961? That's the year I started high school. And he laughed and says, the same year I started at high school. And she's, you're two years older than me. It was part of my life story. I was born in Texas, and then Texas football is not just a game.

It's a way of life. And my dad wanted me to be a football star like he was. So he held me back to year. I started kindergarten late. Oh, really? That's a famous trick in Texas. Oh, wow. That's wild, man.

That's wild. you're bigger and better than the other kids in the same grade. Yeah. And then he had to repeat the fifth grade because he flunked out. He made it two years ago. So when he got to high school,

he was a big kid. And he made the varsity team the first year. Oh, wow. So he was probably the strongest kid out of him. That's probably playing in good for him. And his dad made him run everywhere. He couldn't walk. He had his head.

At his double time, or he became a running back. Oh, yeah. I don't want to tell the whole story. Yeah, because people need to buy the book and, of course, novels. That's where his background is. Her background is he's from a very conservative family. His parents met during the war in the Boeing Airplane factory. He got hit in invasion in Normandy.

got blown out of Atlantic craft, survived to talk about it, but he was discharged because his medically got fit. So he went to work for Boeing because he was a metalsmith, and he met Molly Riveter. Oh, really? And they were putting B-17s and doing 29 together. Wow. And they got married. Ah.

And during the war, women were kind of required to go to work. Yeah. A lot of women didn't really want to work. They wanted to be the traditional housewife. They had home cooked meals and be a mom. And that's why she went back to. She did not want to work. And they had discussions.

The little girl heard them talking about. And I said, they were very conservative. And a woman working outside the home was like a slippery slope to divorce. Mm. That's interesting. All kinds of athletes. So that was her background. And the fun thing is when you see you get together

and they start talking about their past and the concept of the things that happened during your life have a tendency to bend you and shape you to become the person that you end up as later in life. Oh boy, that's true, isn't it? So you see, how each one of them, they take turns.

They took a while and they I can't talk anymore. It's your turn. And they switch back up forth. So each chapter is one person's tale about a certain part of their life. And it's sort of like Christmas strangers in many ways. Oh wow.

Because you're talking about two people that have different life experiences. They're getting together and they're trying to figure out why do I like you and why should I like you? and why do you like me? And as a football player in Texas, he was raised with the idea that anything that wore skirts

for the long of the time. And he was hesitant to bring that up because he didn't want her to think he was a typical job. Okay. And she just chuckled and says, I had a football team in my high school too, and he says, had you been in my high school, I would have talked to you.

You weren't the kind of guy I wanted to go with, and I definitely wasn't the kind of girl he wanted to go with. But we're not teenagers anymore, and you're not acting like a football player, and I'm not acting like the little goody teachers anymore. Let's get on with the story and tell me how you got to be who you are, and I'll tell you how I got to be who I am. And it touches some, in order to give people a roadmap, I use historical events. We all know and can remember, like when the novelists sailed in San Francisco Bay the first time. You may be too young to remember that. I was in high school, and there's a lot of protests. A lot of protests because it was a nuclear-powered submarine.

Oh, okay. And there's still a lot of argument going on about nuclear energy, nuclear bombs, nuclear war. And there were big protests in Berkeley. Big protests. And then one thing that came out of this, and a lot of people don't realize it came from there, but the thing we call the Peace Medallion, the circle with the kind of starbursts in the middle. That's a symbol that was used.

the circle is an ancient symbol for unborn life. Okay. That figure in the middle, when it's turned the other way around with the arms, that's life, that's a living man. And you turn it upside down, it symbolizes death. Oh. So the symbol represents the unborn child is dead.

That's not very good, is it? I was not considered concerned about nuclear energy and the fallout and what happens to you. And to this state, they really don't know how much radio-awak could fallout is really dangerous. It's still hard enough about that.

But that's one milestone. Another milestone is Kennedy's death. Another milestone, there was a shooting at the University of Texas from the Big Bell Tower. He was a student at the University of Texas at time, and he was trying to figure out What the hell is going on?

Kennedy was assassinated and then this idiotic step in the bell tower shooting students. But he was a football player and he didn't really pay too much to attention to what was wrong. But this is bugging him. So it's a constant environment of different historical events that shape people's lives. And then some trivial ones like Sweet 16 parties, senior prom. We've all been there. We've all done that. but even some of those occasions have an impact.

And like I said, the Christmas book was inspired by a lot of my personal experience. Believe it or not, when I was in the Air Force, I was an air policeman, and I had a few foot patrol in the back of the PX to guard the presents that people were putting on layaway for Christmas.

Oh, wow. And I was, it was snowing, it was cold, it was the first time I was never away from home. I had only been away from home a couple of months and I was lonely. I was cold. I was miserable. And then off in the distance I heard young voices

singing chingles up. Oh, wow. Because this is one thing that people don't really understand is how the military really takes care that it's a married people going to Germany brought their wives and children.

They had their own schools, and had their own theaters. It was like Little America. And they had their own Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops. And here these girls are out on a cold winter night, marching around, marching up to my guard shack, singing jingle bells. They stopped in front of the gate,

and the mothers that were separating them, opened up a box, had a big thermos of hot chocolate, a little bag of cookies gave me hot chocolate cookies and then the girl sang a couple of Christmas songs

for me Oh wow That's really sweet That's really sweet Why do you like short stories Over long stories Short stories they don't have to have A great amount of

drama And real deep meaning They're just fun stories They're easy to write one or two days it's done I don't have to go back I remember

what did I do on page 5 but I'm not writing about page 400 now uh huh yeah it definitely makes it a whole lot easier doesn't it one of my instructors

in high school said one of the worst things you can do when you're a writer is write a murder mystery and then on the last page it says the Butler did it

but nobody but nobody in the neighborhood had a butler because you forgot to put that detail on there earlier. hopes to put the details into things there. Yeah, you have to make sure that this is one thing to always irritations

when I watch a movie, especially watch your movies. Gonson's a good example. See, one scene is about 10 times bigger than he is the next thing. Yeah? Because their special effects guys couldn't get dimensions projected correctly so it kept changing

sizes. For Superman, one scene, he's having trouble fighting some guy. The next scene, he's demolishing a meteorite. Why did they have trouble punching a guy and have no

trouble punching out a meteorite? Little inconsistencies like that kind of catch me. One movie, I really like the movie. It's called a Martian. Guy gets stranded on Mars, and he has to say he passed potatoes and grows them. The thing that I got to him was every time he needed something,

there was another plastic tarp there. He must have gone through 20 or 30 plastic tarps during the movie. Now, on the space program, every ounce of weight is really critical for the mission. How many plastic tarps do you think they're going to tap on a spaceship? and why did he have live potatoes? They would normally put dehydrated potatoes on each other because they're lighter. But, you know, only people like me sit there, I don't make no sense.

But that's how I write the stories. When I write a story, I go back and make sure that I don't put any stupid thing in there. That's what's really great about some of these things, is you can take and really enjoy them from a lot of different formats. Yeah, yeah. What else do we need to know about the book that maybe we haven't discussed, or maybe I should ask you and how you mapped it out, created it, did different things like that. On the short stories, it's really a good idea for a short story. Uh-huh.

One of the short stories is based on a letter to the editor in the Stars and Strives and Newspe. I read it, and the guy was complaining that he was really upset with the Boy Scouts because they didn't have any Christmas trees this year. All I had was holiday trees. Holiday trees. So he was upset, and this was a guy really writing to the Stars and Strauss and Stratz, the editor, complaining about this. So I wrote a story about it.

Oh. Christmas tree, first of all, the original nativity scene, there is no pine tree in the manger. Wow. In fact, the Christmas tree itself didn't get invented, and so much later, in Austria and Germany. Oh.

And when the Pilgrims got to America, they outlawed Christmas. Way, right? Because they thought it was pagan. It was all about packages and everything except Jesus. They didn't like that idea. Yeah. And the Christmas tree itself originally, It got in and migrated to America, and there was one tree set up in the middle of the town square, the Christmas tree.

And nobody had a tree in that house. Oh, wow. But eventually, people thought it was a real neat idea, so they started getting smaller trees to take indoors, and that's where the Christmas tree came out. You have to go to Europe to find out about Christmas. That's a whole different thing there at the Christmas thing. First of all, I tell you that what we call. called Santa Claus is a derivative from a guy called St. Nicholas.

It was actually a real guy. He was a cardinal, and there is a city in Turkey where he lived. And because he was a cardinal in the Catholic Church, he wore red suits, but

he didn't have a floppy psal on top. He had the red hair. Oh, yeah? And he had he went around at Christmas time giving candy just opened and he couldn't carry all the stuff with him so he had this not too terribly bright assistant his name was Klaus

Klaus as in Santa Klaus Santa Klaus Oh hey there we go there's the America got all these traditions that kind of massed them around and came up with oh we got her let's see you have to go to Europe to find out what Christmas is about.

At Christmas, they have a thing called Nicholas Todd. It's on the 6th of December, and the kids polish their boots and put them outside the door. And if they're a good boy, you get a girl, you get candy. If you weren't so good, you get a stick

to get spanked with. Sounds like a pretty interesting story. Yeah, go ahead. And do you have any future release dates for books? I've been working on one for quite a while. And it's really an interesting book. The working title on it is called Yata Hey. Now, give me that to me once again. What was that? Yeah. Ta, hey. What does that mean? That's an Indian word. And it

translated in the English is, how's it going? What's up? Oh, okay. You're like Aloha or Chow. Oh, wow. I learned something every, new every day on the show. If you go to an Indian reservation, and somebody says, Yata hey, hey. Hey. Eho. Oh, last time I liked a reservation, they said that to me, I just said, I held my hands in the air and I hand in my wallet. Because I was like, I think I'm being robbed. I think that's what's going on here. I don't know. This was inspired by a woman I met on Facebook.

We were chatting. And she pointed out that she was a blooded native of her. Oh, wow. And she was born on a reservation. And she says, a lot of people confused reservations with what you see now with the big gambling. She knows and stuff. Yeah. There's the reservation she was on.

Dogs didn't want to live there. It was terrible. It was in Colorado. She was in Colorado. It gets cold in the wintertime, and we didn't have good houses. She was finding my parents got smart, and moved to California.

They were living just outside of Oakland, California. But she says she still goes to the, the Nalawalas. And they're interesting because that's where their culture is exchanged. That's where they dance, or they sing, where they play the drum. And the drum is not just the drum. It's the soul.

Oh, wow. Yeah, your soul gets into it. Yeah. You know, just any old guy pick up the stick and start beating on a drum. You have to earn your place. Ah. That's really important. And do you have anticipated release date for that, or are you still in the works, I guess?

I got about 250 pages written. Oh, wow. You're coming along pretty good then. Yeah. nothing. Yeah. It goes back to... This book is actually the third part of a series.

The first part of the series is called Dark Dig. It's about an archaeologist doing an archaeological dig outside of Athens. The second part in the series is called convoluted coincidences. A lot of the characters from the first books show up in the Philippines, they're looking for some kids that are missing.

From a missionary. Yeah. And they go through all kinds of convoluting. coincidences. Gollyna coincidences. Yeah, everything is like, how did this guy, why is this guy here?

They all come together. They meet some new characters. Ah. Sounds like a wild time then. Sounds like a wild time. While you're in Athens on this stark big thing.

They link up with a private security forest and they've become real good friends. In fact, one of the characters, Mary's, one of the security guys, it turns out his name was not really silver man. His name was really silver wolf and he was a good buddy as the chief of the Sydneyan reservation that was fighting the fence to maintain their identity as a cultural center trying to get archaeologists come and do some digging to find out if they could prove if they've been around longer than the United States has.

So they'd call up the archaeologist that was doing some research in the Philippines and he brings his friend, the guy from Athens, and the crew gets together again in Oklahoma at the reservation. That's pretty normal. We start exploring some things about common or medicine man, the concept of shape-changing. This old woman, they call her Grandma Bear. She's like a spiritual rock in the reservation. And she knows that a couple of the main people in the council are flying back from Oklahoma City as a dark stormy night.

And she stands at the airport staring at the panoramic windows. And she sits there and concentrates and becomes an eagle. that soars out and puts its wings over the plane, so it makes it safe land it. Oh, wow. That's a pretty wild thing. You have it. The thing is you never know if it's really real,

or it's just imaginary. All you know is the plane landed safely. Sometimes you don't look at a gift horse in the mouth, right? Exactly, that's right? Yeah, exactly. If you believe it, it doesn't make everything that's real or not. It happens. So give us a pitch out to people to order up your book,

whatever.com's website, social media, or e-mails you want them to use to get in touch with you. Just go to Amazon.com type in books by Bruce Fulke J. Spahn. And the list of clop up. Actually, I think there's five of a list of there. I collaborated with a woman and write a book. It's called There Was a Girl. It's based on her life.

but it's there's a lot of fantasy in it but it's a pretty powerful book oh wow that's pretty wild so people can get involved that way they can know all the stuff

and get involved I said you read the books they're fun they're multi-level oh that was a two-story level wow

I never thought about that Oh, wow. You're really something else involved here. You go. It's been wonderful to have you on. Thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate it. I really appreciate your time.

Thank you. I know you're a busy person, and it's really good to have a chance to talk about my books, and you let me give me a chance to talk about all my books. Yep. Thank you. Thank you. We really appreciate it, too. Folks, order up his book wherever fine books are sold.

It's called Christmas Treasures. The Greatest Treasure is in the Heart by Bruce Spahn. taking pick it up now and all that good stuff and keep an eye on what he's up to in the future thanks for honest for us fordress chris fuss LinkedIn.com for chest chrisvoss youtube.com for chest chrisvoss and all those crazy places in it be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time you've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life warning consuming too much of the chris wosho podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter younger and irresist acceptable sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.