The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Eternal Nights: Arrival by Richard Spegal

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Eternal Nights: Arrival by Richard Spegal Richardspegal.com https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Nights-Arrival-Richard-Spegal/dp/1970703512 The Time Has Come. In AD2019 they met their Progenitor and ...finally learned the truth about not only their origins, but the origins of all vampires. They also learned the horrible truth of the beginning of everything, and the scourge that was unleashed throughout the universe. A force that had gone unchecked for billions upon billions of years. They vowed to stop it… assuming it still existed. In AD3325 the enemy was no longer hypothetical, and the human race was no longer alone. The coming force is an enemy unlike anything the races of the galaxy had ever faced. A living hunger, capable of consuming entire galaxies. Sentient locusts with numbers that could blot out the stars. When they enter a galaxy, it is a sign that the End of Days has begun. This is not an enemy that can be fought from the shadows. Having lived for thousands of years, they have changed. Their entire family has changed. They will still stand in defense of the mortal races, but it will be on their terms. The mortal races will accept them, or they will disappear forever and let the galaxy burn. The Shakeeth have arrived, and in order to face the coming darkness, Johnathon and Danielle will have to take their family into the light. About the author I’ve been writing for years, but only started publishing about 3 1/2 years ago. I pride myself on adult oriented entertainment. The relationships, the language, the complicated plot threads, and a lot of the situations are geared toward an older audience. Honestly, I think anyone would get enjoyment from the reading, but the more life experience you have, the more you will be able to relate to what is happening. Regarding relationships, for example, my characters tend to be married or have a family. This isn’t the kind of romance that younger audience members can relate to. I also pride myself on brutal realistic detail. The characters talk like real people, act like real people, think like real people, and make the decisions real people would make. No one goes “suddenly stupid” so that the plot can happen. No, my characters are the one driving the plot. That is how it should, but that’s been forgotten by creators over the last decade or so, which is why so much of everything fails now. There are old editions on Amazon, because Amazon refuses to take listings down. I hate that because it can be confusing, but at least the old editions are marked as unavailable, or are otherwise obvious. The new stuff tends to be at the top. My 5th book should be out within a couple weeks of this posting, and number 6 is scheduled for Spring 2026. Beyond that, it’ll be my publisher’s decision as to how fast the books go live.

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Starting point is 00:01:11 necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the chris fos show some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast but it's not endorsement or review of any kind to say an amazing young man on the show we're talking about his book series he's got at least two and a whole mess he's working on we're going to get into with that all those deeds he's the author of the latest book to come out eternal night's arrival by Spiegel. We're going to find out more about what some of the details are that go into this and what his outlook is and why he started writing. He began writing as early as high school when he noticed to his great displeasure the lack of true or proper adult-oriented and realistic entertainment in the panorama or fantasy genres coming into the market. After high school,
Starting point is 00:01:52 he began serving with the 82nd Airborne Division and writing became a simple hobby. He left active service in order to start a family, became an officer in the PA. National Guard until he was medically retired from military service. He now lives in Landensburg, Pennsylvania, as a disabled veteran with his wife and four daughters. He decided to finally turn his hobby into a full-time career and began publishing his works under his own brand. He currently has several works published, aimed at an audience with more mature tastes, including the Wolves and Ravens trilogy and the Internal Knights series.
Starting point is 00:02:26 His work spans several genres, including dark fantasy, supernatural, romance, adult action, serious, or I'm sorry, science fiction and others, and intends to continue publishing one to two books per year. Welcome to the show. Richard, how are you, sir? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. Give us dot com's websites, where do you want people to find you on the interwebs. The best place is always my website, richardspeagle.com. There's no I in my last name, S-B-E-G-A-L, but that's where the primary content, all the video trailers and everything like that are. Awesome sauce. So give us a 30,000 over you.
Starting point is 00:03:03 What's inside this book? Arrival is the first book of the main Eternal Night series. So it's the first science fiction novel that I purchased. Produced. So it takes everybody from the prequel, but it fast forward is about 1,300 years. To not give anything away, it's everything that they're waiting for with the cliffhanger at the prequel. That's when it shows up. So that's when everything gets serious.
Starting point is 00:03:28 That's when everything gets serious, as they like to say. Yeah. Now, you've already published the two prequels to this book. Is that correct? Yes. Redemption and Origins. Yes. And this is the one that's on the way to telling the story the prequel set up and all that good stuff. Yes. I mean, prequels, a lot of world building, introducing the vampires, tackling some of the common issues for vampires just because I had to get it out of the way. I couldn't ignore them. I had to deal with it one way or another. And then origins, as the title suggests, they find a lot of answers.
Starting point is 00:04:01 But then they see the truth of what's coming. They don't know if it's real or not, but it's possible. So they decide they're going to do something about it. And then 1,300 years later, it shows up. 13,000 years later, it's here. I guess that's the way things kind of work in these environments these days. You've got everything going on and whatnot. Now, what's the plan for this series?
Starting point is 00:04:23 I think you mentioned in the pre-show. You got a length about 30 books you're planning maybe. Probably at least that many. the scale of the series is massive. So you've got the main story, but when you have a scope that large, it leaves you open for all sorts of side novels. Orange stories, side novels.
Starting point is 00:04:45 The characters are thousands of years old, so I've got millennia of time to work with. So you could basically just keep writing forever because the opportunities are there. And I imagine being vampires, they don't grow old. Correct. Maybe. At least they don't think they do.
Starting point is 00:05:03 There's a lot of interesting, there's not interesting questions that get answered. You have some ways you address that there. Yeah. Yeah, the great thing about that is if your character is, like I had somebody on last week who was an author, and I was like, do you see any future books coming out of the series? And they're like, no, I pretty much,
Starting point is 00:05:18 they're pretty old when I wrote about them, and they're pretty much ready to die off. And so I don't think I can make a continuing series. And I was like, you could do prequel. But, yeah, so there's a note for you aspiring authors out there in the audience, make sure you don't make your characters tool so you can survive future sequels.
Starting point is 00:05:39 That or don't kill OB-1 in the first scene. The first movie. I was just thinking of that because you got a big giant planet or something on your thing. Tell us about some of the protagonists that are in Eternal Knights. Who's up to what? The primary protagonists in the very beginning in the first book, it's a pair of vampires who are like 900 years old, but they're married.
Starting point is 00:06:03 And I don't know. They've been married for 900 years? Yeah, it seems so obvious to me, but nobody's done that before. They were born in the 11th century. They got married, and they were ripped from their beds and turned into vampires on their wedding night. Oh, wow. It makes them into interesting characters because they've had to adjust to everything.
Starting point is 00:06:24 They've built an entire secret empire, a huge, family of minions and things like that. And they're just trying to hang out. There's no vampire infrastructure. They're just trying to hang out and live their lives. But people keep stopping them. Yeah. Keep stopping them and showing up with those steel bullets and the wooden stakes and stuff at
Starting point is 00:06:44 their house. Yeah. And the adventures that they go through during the prequel are primary there so they can be established. You know what their powers are. You know what their abilities are, et cetera. But then the biggest problem in writing the character, is they don't know what they are.
Starting point is 00:07:01 And since I focus on realism and organic growth, if an intelligent person doesn't know what they are, they're going to start asking questions. So I need to figure out the answers to these questions or my books aren't going to make any sense. So I have to figure out ways, I have to figure out ways to explain scientifically what a vampire is because the characters wouldn't stop,
Starting point is 00:07:22 they're not going to stop asking until they figure it out. Yeah. Anybody has had grandparents that have been married for 50 or 60 years, they're quite contentous with each other. They kind of, I don't know, they have this weird sort of sometimes abusive combination and how they deal with each other. But sometimes they make it work, they're just grown weird together. But I can't imagine being married the same person for 900 years.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Oh, wow. Completely agree. That's why it's one of the facets of the book that maybe a younger audience might not appreciate or get bored. But the fact that no matter how old they are and how. powerful they are, they never shut up. They're bickering constantly, needling each other, bickering, even at the cost of ignoring the enemy. Just because they, yeah, that's marriage. That's marriage right there.
Starting point is 00:08:09 That's marriage for you. That sounds just like it. Yeah, lots of arguments. And I imagine the vampires are the same problems we do. Who's going to clean up the bloody bodies and the blood that's left over and bury them somewhere? Those kind of problems. Who put the dishes away? from the blood, from the blood bath feast, who didn't wipe the counters down of blood. These are problems every common mirror chance, right? Yeah, exactly. And why ignore them? Why just have vampires in the story, but ignore that they're in the story.
Starting point is 00:08:43 Focus on them, give them a chance to grow and show what they are and things like that. Yeah. Now, I think you alluded to this little bit in your bio. You were unhappy with some of the competition, not competition, but some of the, these genres and how they maybe portrayed vampires and the characters. And just like an entrepreneur, you went, I think I can do better than this. And so you did. Is that correct?
Starting point is 00:09:08 Yeah, when I was younger, I loved reading Anne Rice. I enjoyed that. And even the parts that I didn't like, I recognized that they were very well done. That was a long time ago. There's been nothing since that. In all this time, all there's been is just zany nonsense or, action flicks with no substance. How do you think yours, we alluded to a little bit in the run I read the bio, but in your words,
Starting point is 00:09:32 what do you think really makes yours different and maybe excel in the genre, the other stone? The writing style, I focus on absolute realism and organic growth. So it almost doesn't even matter what genre it is. It's going to be a better story because the characters are the ones telling it, as far as the genre specific, because I give them a chance to grow. they're in the story covers thousands of years and in arrival they're not 900 years old anymore
Starting point is 00:10:01 they're 2,200 years old their family is smaller but there's more vampires and then you've got a pure science fiction series with that extra element into it maybe somebody's done it before but I've never seen it done before so that's the direction the characters went
Starting point is 00:10:17 yeah pretty wild and this is what a lot of great entrepreneurs A lot of great authors did. They've told me on the show, they're like, yeah, I was reading a romance novel, and I was like, this, this, romance novel is lame. I can do better. And so they do.
Starting point is 00:10:32 Fun is fun. Now, you have this other series. So this is a three-book series, and is the all 30 books you want to write? Is that the future of this series? Or is it going to be you're writing the two horses of your other series and this one together? Now, all the extra books are going to be for Returnal Nights.
Starting point is 00:10:48 Wolf and Ravens, I loved writing it. I have had so many people ask me if I was going to keep writing it, and as much as I want to, I can't. The story's over. If you read the conclusion, you know, damn, I can't write another book. If I did, I would have to retcon everything. And I will not destroy my work by creating it past its expiration date. I might write a prequel, though.
Starting point is 00:11:13 That's a beautiful thing about prequels. I remember when I watched the first Star Wars, I was like, that's in the can. That's done there. And they're like, oh, it's just story four or something. And you're like, what? I'm confused what's going on. But, hey, I don't have, I didn't get paid two billion from Disney to buy my Star Wars series. He did.
Starting point is 00:11:31 So he can do it every he wants. Yeah, that's right. Tell us about this second series that we have. We've alluded to it here a couple times. Wolves and Ravens. How many books are in this series? Trilogy, three. Trilogy.
Starting point is 00:11:43 So is that cap then from what we've been discussing, I think? Is that what? Is that capped where there's, just going to be the three. Oh, yeah. That's the series I was referencing when I said it's done. Yeah. I would have to,
Starting point is 00:11:55 I would have to retcon the entire thing if I was going to continue writing it. I have some ideas on what to do with some individual characters maybe in the future, but we're talking six or seven years from now. So this first book in the series and the trilogy is called Wolves and Ravens, the first law. And then there's wolves and Reagan, Ravens Choice. And then I'm learning to talk today. And then there's, that's not the title of the third book, folks. The title of the third books is wolves and ravens, broken angel.
Starting point is 00:12:26 Now, what sort of people are in this one and tell us about some of the characters, what they're up to? Okay, the overall style is the same. Like I said, the same as all my writing, real characters, it's organic. It's a fantasy, it's dark fantasy, but I decided that, just like with the vampires, if I'm going to write something, I want it to be original. That's why there's no fantasy races that you're accustomed to seeing. I don't have elves and dwarves and stuff like that. I just invented two different races to use.
Starting point is 00:12:53 The wolves and the ravens. They don't know anything about themselves. The world they live on is broken. They have a history that they don't trust. And the whole trilogy, the audience has very little information, except for a little bit from the prologue. The whole trilogy is then figuring things out. And the audience gets to figure it out at the same time.
Starting point is 00:13:14 Ah. So it's one of those kind of books. Yeah. It's not like, I hate it when, I hate it when the narration tells you the story or the movie in the first 15 minutes, then you have to waste your time watching for three hours as the characters figure out what you already know. So is it set where the Ravens are at in Baltimore at some football field? I just had to do that joke. I'm sorry. The Baltimore Ravens, Ray Lewis.
Starting point is 00:13:39 That whole trilogy, I don't want to use the word accident, but that whole trilogy was an accident. I wrote a like 13 years ago to keep it PC correct. I'll just say I met a woman who I planned on marrying, but two things, she didn't know that, and we did not speak each other's language. So I did the one thing I'm best at. I wrote a six-page short story called The Wolf and the Raven,
Starting point is 00:14:05 had it translated into Mandarin, and sent it to her. A month later, we were planning our wedding, so it worked. Wow. I can get laid right in novel. man. Not to self. I took a break on Eternal Nights after the prequel because science fiction takes a lot of research.
Starting point is 00:14:22 So I had to take a long break to research stuff. And while I was on this break, I'm like, I think I can do something with that short story. And then it just went crazy. I had so much fun with it, despite how horrific it gets. I had so much fun with it. And I wrote all three books a year and a half. So did you end up marrying the gal? Is that the one you married and have children too?
Starting point is 00:14:42 We've been married. I've been married 11 years. We have four. Folks, if you're single out there like I am, write some books to win the, woo the hearts of women. I have yet to see another writing competition where the prize is a woman. I probably shouldn't say that that could be taken the wrong way, but I still think it's funny. That's probably, we're going to get mail now.
Starting point is 00:15:03 No, I'm just kidding away. We're just joking around. But now there's lots of things that men have done over the ages to woo women. What was it, that one guy cut his ear off or something, Van Gogh or something? Van Gogh or something. And the statues have been built to women in cities and I think Rome. I don't know. Men have done all sorts of things.
Starting point is 00:15:22 We're the great romantics that we've done to celebrate women's beauty and their virtuousness. And yeah. So, man, I'm going to, I, for some, I wrote a business book and sent a couple of girls that I liked, but I didn't seem to do as well. So maybe the key is that I shouldn't do a leadership boardroom book to pick up the chick. See the wrong genre there. See, I like your thinking here because the chicks, they really like that Twilight series with the wolves and the vampires and stuff. So you nailed it there, buddy.
Starting point is 00:15:55 You could get your, you moved to Utah. You get yourself a whole heron of wives. Yeah, except that mine only makes sense if you're a little older. My target audience is not, my target audience is not 12-year-old girls. No offense to Twilight. But that's the reason why the genre has been destroyed. A lot of those women, a lot of older women, they love the romance novels. We probably have 300 romance novels on the show, and they love all those wolves and the vampires.
Starting point is 00:16:23 It's the beauty and the beast. But it's a different kind of romance that they like. Is it an adult sort of scenario of? Well, the husband and wife thing, there's romance. There's romance there, but a 14-year-old is probably not going to recognize it. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? So the majority of the romance is focused on long-term stuff.
Starting point is 00:16:45 Now, in a rival, there is more romance because I had more characters to work with. And the prequel, I avoided romance only because I did not want to overshadow the John and Danielle marriage. I wanted to drive home their husband and wife first, Vampire Second. Everybody's had a chance to figure that out now so I can bring in more characters and more romance and things like that. Huh. Our vampires have been married for 90 years or 900. 900 years. I'm having a brain seizure today. For 900 years, is that the same as most of my friends have been married for five? They just have hallway sex?
Starting point is 00:17:27 You know what marriage hallway sex is, don't you? Yeah, yeah. I don't know if I could really describe it. It's where you want. It's where when you pass each other in the hallway, you look at each other and go, F you. And she goes, F you, that's always sex. Oh, I was thinking of a quickie while the kids finally went to sleep. I thought that's what you meant. Yeah, we're probably still young in your marriage.
Starting point is 00:17:48 Wait until you hit that 900-century mark. What do you have to buy for it at year 900? I don't know. You'd be running out of tennis bracelets by then and all those doodad shiny hickies, whatever, elbows or necklaces and stuff. I think at that point you'd have to just break down and buy our car. or something, one of those ones with the bow on it or something of Christmas. They pretty much have more money than God, so they just buy whatever they want.
Starting point is 00:18:17 I suppose you just go find a good virgin blood, is heart to a person, tear out their heart, rip it, wrapping a plastic bag, and then put a bow on it and give it to your loved one. If you're a vampire, that's probably a vampire's role. I know for in arrival, when they're the 2200 years old in the future, their net worth is over 600 trillion credits. Wow. Man, maybe I should look into this becoming a vampire, man. It sounds kind of profitable. When you think about the time, after a certain amount of time, money just makes more of itself.
Starting point is 00:18:49 Yeah, that's true. You're dealing with thousands of years. They have over, by that point, they have over 100,000 fake personas to hire all of their money. So, and with the rival, it's not really a spoiler because you can figure it out by reading the back cover. But in order to do what they want to do, they can't be secret anymore. They have to introduce themselves. And it kind of doesn't go so well because they get instructed to hide their assets because people, nobody cares about vampires anymore. Vampires are exciting because it's new.
Starting point is 00:19:21 People are going to get freaked out if they know how much money is. Yeah, free bites. Because when you figure, if we're going that far in the future and you've discovered a dozen alien races, what's a vampire? Just a new exciting thing you've discovered. I think, too, what we need to do is we also need to tax the vampires because this is, this has gotten out of control between the billionaires and the vampires. And I'm pretty sure Elon Musk is one of them. We need to raise taxes on these people.
Starting point is 00:19:49 That's all I'm saying, folks. They certainly, they definitely pay their taxes. Ah, well, that's good. You got to blend in. Yeah, well, you got to. People do not write immortal characters very well. They don't think it through. A lot of times if you see, I'm not just talking about vampires.
Starting point is 00:20:06 A lot of times if you see a TV show or a book where there's a character that for some reason they're like super old, they'll talk different, they'll act different to get across the fact that they're old. That's not realistic. You want to hide. You want to blend in. You're going to adjust your speech and your actions to the world around you so you can blend in. Like my vampires talk like 21st century people, not like 11th century people because that would draw attention. to me that makes perfect sense, but nobody does it that way. So you put a lot of thought into this?
Starting point is 00:20:38 Yes and no. It's just, when it's organic, you don't have to think about it at all. The characters do it for you. It's just that when you really think about it, yeah, there's a lot of thought behind it and everything, but the characters do all the work. I'm insane. So they basically just do whatever they're doing, and I just see it happen and I write it down. I'm more of a reporter than I am an author.
Starting point is 00:21:00 I was going to, that's one of the question. I always ask people in the show. How do your stories or your characters come to you? Some people get harassed and drop aside the head by their characters going, hey, man, writer, story, or else? And then some people, they have to create a whole cloth. So it sounds like you might be one of those people that you got the characters stalking you until you write their story.
Starting point is 00:21:19 Yeah, a lot of artists over the last couple hundred years that we celebrate today shared the one thing in common that they were not normal people. They were tormented. They saw things, heard things differently. but they were able to put it down on a blank page, a blank canvas, a block of marble, and it allowed other people to experience what they did. It didn't help their torment, and most of them ended badly, and it's no different for me. Now, I have two advantages that they didn't have.
Starting point is 00:21:46 We have medication these days, so I have that, and then the outlet to where I'm not stuck in a little village trying to show five people something. You know what I mean? These days the Internet allows us to market and to destroy. and I can show my work. I don't have to wait until 50 years after I'm dead to be appreciated. Yeah, yeah. Probably. Hopefully. Hopefully. It's very exciting. These are great genres. Now, why did you decide to cap off this first series that you wrote, Wolves and Ravens? Were you just more interested in the characters and storyline of this new one?
Starting point is 00:22:23 That was always, when I decided to sit down and work on it, it was always intended as a trilogy. So the entire story was based on only having three books. And I am very, very happy with how it turned out. The story is perfect, but it does end. It ends at the end of the third book. A lot of the character arcs end at the second book. People see wolves and ravens, and they assume that the protagonists are the Raven Queen and her protector, the wolf. And that makes sense for you to assume that.
Starting point is 00:22:55 They are very important characters. but the actual primary protagonist of the entire trilogy is an angel named Gabriella. But in the first book, she's got four pages to her name. She does important things, but she's only got four pages. In the second book, she's a main character. And the third book, it's all her show. And the main characters from the previous books
Starting point is 00:23:16 are basically just tagging along for the ride. It's kind of her story. So you move the characters around. There's not any one set character through the whole series of the book. It develops different aspects of some of your other side characters. Correct. I cannot, I cannot write a single character protagonist, but that type of story. I cannot do that.
Starting point is 00:23:40 I'm just, I can't because I, like I said, I believe in realism and organic growth. Everybody has a weakness. Like Superman. I love Superman. Love Superman. But if I was writing him as a character, he'd be dead by the second book and he would never come back. because he's he's on his own,
Starting point is 00:23:58 kryptonites his weakness, the bad guys would have killed him off. I can't write that kind of character very well. So I have to write characters like they're couples, their families, they're not perfect, but they're perfect together. I think that's more realistic.
Starting point is 00:24:14 I was talking to one of my friends about, he's a funky guy, he's really funny. He's a great man and a great husband and a great son to his mother. He takes care of. And he's like, He's like, he could do anything.
Starting point is 00:24:26 He's like, the world's Renaissance man. And I was teasing about how him and his wife, they've stayed together all these years and they get along. And how they grow on weird together. I'm like, I'm like, what is the secret to your relationship? He goes, we're just both weird and we're the same weird. And we just, we know we're just meant for each other because we're both just weird. So basically what you're saying is I got to somebody, find somebody who's his
Starting point is 00:24:55 cripplingly weird as I am to marry. So good luck with that, Chris. Ah, that's a low bar. That whole saying, opposites attract. That's a really intelligent saying. And then the other reason is my writing gets incredibly dark and brutal because it's organic. And that's the real world. And I don't stop.
Starting point is 00:25:17 I will cross all of the lines. The characters cannot survive on their own because it's not realistic for them to do. Nobody's immune to stress. Every time they win, they still lose because that's what real life is like. And then after all the stress builds up, they suffer for it. Some of the characters have psychotic breaks. Some of them develop disorders. I have characters who go through suicidal situations because it's realistic.
Starting point is 00:25:42 It's organic to the story. And if they didn't have another friendly character to lean on or to save them, they'd all be dead. Yeah. It's pretty interesting, all these different things. So when did you start writing books? We mentioned in the bio that you had kind of done some writing in the military, and you found that you kind of had a knock for that. Tell us how that developed and to the point that you went. I think I'm going to take a crack of being an author.
Starting point is 00:26:10 I started in high school, and I was actually writing my first book in high school. It was a science fiction novel. It was going to be called Means of Vengeance. I loved writing it. It was so much fun. I got halfway through it, and I realized, there were too many similarities between that book and one of the books from my favorite authors. Now, the publisher would say, who cares? It'll obviously still work on the market.
Starting point is 00:26:35 But if I can find that many similarities between my work and somebody else's, I deleted it, threw it in the dumpster. And after that, I just kind of doodled around. The whole vampire thing, I was just kind of messing with it for a while. It didn't really coalesce until maybe after my first term of military service. and that's when things kind of got a little crazy, which is not an accident since the stuff that, the disorders that I have that allow me to do this had not manifested until about 2007. So 2007 is when I was suddenly writing like a crazy person.
Starting point is 00:27:11 Oh, wow. Wow. And you got into it and stuff. It helps if you can pick up chicks too with the writing. I'm going to. I was 15 years before that. I often joke about how I really have so many great fiction authors and you guys have so much stuff you guys can build characters in one book and you can take them the 30 plus books and then you can have different character tree thread branches sort of things and stuff and I'm like geez what a what a great deal here I am writing fiction or nonfiction business books that have to be real stories I can't just make them up and people seem to like fiction better so I'm like maybe I should do that but now you got me convinced. I'm going to, I'm going to go, I have picked up some dates. There was a few big dating groups that I had where I brought my book and was signing books and giving them out and got some dates
Starting point is 00:28:02 off that. Didn't the marriage, though? I think she got to know me better. That was the kind of problem. So that seems to be the consistent problem. Now that I found out how horrible you really are in spite of what everyone all knew. Yeah. Anyway, anything more we want to promote? Well, we have you on the show. That's all the works I have that are actually live right now, the Wolves and Ravens trilogy, the Eternal Knights Prequel and Arrival. I'm looking at the next book for Eternal Knights maybe by the end of the year. It's done. It's just it's bad business to publish immediately after one another.
Starting point is 00:28:37 Yeah, you got to get that editing part and then I think give them, I don't know, man, the folks we have on from Jack Ryan and all those series, the military season, I think a lot of them, The big publishers make them wait. There's a wait time. Exactly. And editing takes a year and final book production or whatever. But yeah, they pump them out nine months, every nine months or every year or something like that. In fact, a lot of times we'll have those guys on.
Starting point is 00:29:03 And the book that they're promoting the book two months from now from the release. But I'll look online and there's another book that they've written that's already up for sale on Amazon. This is the next one. And it's like, wow. And so they'll put them up. In fact, there was one time with the folks we had on the Tom Clancy folks. I was like, I was like, no, which book is? There's this other new one that comes out six months.
Starting point is 00:29:28 And they're like, that's not supposed to be up. And I go, I'm looking at the cover. And they go, yeah, that's not even supposed to be up. What are you seeing? I showed them. I go, it's on Amazon. It does get confusing sometimes to remember what book we're talking about. because there's the books that are out.
Starting point is 00:29:48 My brain, my brain has already written another. Oh, yeah. And then I'm writing the next one. I'll sit down to write and I will be so confused as to what book it is that I'm actually writing. I will usually have to reread the entire book to remember what it was I was supposed to write. Or somebody will ask, because Wolves and Ravens concluded last year. So somebody on a podcast, we might be told me to Eternal Nights, and they'll throw wolves and ravens question out there.
Starting point is 00:30:17 I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Oh, yeah, I wrote those. A couple of the people we've had on her show, they've written 50 or 60 books, and when they go to book signings, people come up and tell them stuff that they didn't even realize about their own characters. One of the famous authors we have on,
Starting point is 00:30:32 she wrote about this detective, and he drank a bit. That's part of that noir sort of genre of detective, black and white era. And so one of her readers came out to her to book signing, And they go, do you know that detective's an alcoholic for real? And she was like, no, he's not. He just drinks every now and then.
Starting point is 00:30:51 And then she got thinking about it and talking to him. And holy crap, he's an alcoholic. Her first husband had been an alcoholic. And so she'd be written him in the book. And, you know, it's knocking him around. She tends to put a lot of people that she hates in a novel. If you make her anger, you'll end up dead in one of her novels. That's how she rolls.
Starting point is 00:31:13 Can't blame her. I kind of like the idea. idea. Really. That's another reason I might start writing fiction. I had somebody email me the name of their ex-wife and requested me to have them being eaten by her being eaten by a vampire in one of the next books. That's some weird feedback, but all right. Dude, yeah. Dude, this might be a new way to finance books, right? And get paid. Hey, I'm going out with my third book in the series. Would you like to have someone you hate, kill off in my book? Throw in 10 grand. We'll knock him off and we'll make it as You can help write it in making it as gross and disgusting and painful as possible
Starting point is 00:31:49 to live through whatever fantasy you're living through. I'm pretty sure that was probably somebody who was also married for 900 years. So there's that. Fun is fun. So give people a final pitch out to pick up your books where they can find them. Oh, one thing I was going to ask you about, I know it's on your website. Sorry to switch gears. There's podcasts.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Is that podcast you've appeared on or do you have a podcast? No, I do not have a podcast. Those are, the publisher does the website for me, thank God, because I made a website for myself, and I thought I did a good job. Then I saw what the publisher did, and I was like, wow, I suck. The publisher's website is a hundred times better. They mush everything on there, all the content. I didn't even know, I didn't even think about books having a video trailer, but all of my books have video trailers. They did a great job.
Starting point is 00:32:35 Dude, you got a, on your Instagram, you've got only 23 posts and 73.5,000. followers. I have a social media manager. I don't really know what to say. I don't, I don't do that stuff. I don't know how. That's great. 23 pub, you know, you make hundreds of posts to get that kind of following. So people love you and your work. And it looks like you do some talking about your books in there so people can check that out. And I think you're on, is it thread you're on as well here? Is that what this is? Yeah, it's with threads. I think you have a thing over there. So are you on TikTok yet? TikTok's really, popular for moving stuff. No. I know
Starting point is 00:33:17 that TikTok is actually safe to use now, but it was never really my thing. I've got used to so many years of knowing that it was well, essentially illegal, but it's hard for me to get back into doing it. I'm not sure it's safe though. I got herpes the other night just from watching some
Starting point is 00:33:32 videos. Be careful. It's kind of weird. There's lots of weird chicks dancing and doing stuff and I'm not sure it's totally safe. I'm just saying for the kids. It's no longer a shill for the Chinese government. That's true. That's true.
Starting point is 00:33:46 But I wear a condom anytime I watch that now. Watch TikTok for my doom scrolling because I don't want to pick up any more diseases and stuff. It's wondering people's hands don't get disease from all the swiping they do on. I also, my Facebook page also is pretty popular with the followers. I think a lot of it is age bracket. A lot of people in the age groups that like my books, They will watch Instagram. They might watch TikTok, but they don't trust anything they see on Instagram or TikTok.
Starting point is 00:34:17 Whereas they're familiar with Facebook, so that has more credibility. I don't know. That's what the manager told me. Yeah, that makes sense. Sometimes being on all these platforms sometimes gives you credibility where they're like, he seems to be somebody who's got it going on. It's not some idiot who just wrote a book and he's trying to shell it. It kind of gives you credibility.
Starting point is 00:34:39 Yeah, stuff like that. this definitely. Random posts, maybe not. Maybe not so much. Anything that they get to see an interview where the person's really talking and being themselves, that's always helpful. Are we supposed to talk and be to ourselves on this thing? I may have been doing it wrong in 16 years. I'm just kidding. I hope it's me, because if it's not, we need to have that looked into. I'm possessed by a demon. Probably another one of your vampires in your books.
Starting point is 00:35:04 Give me your dot com one last time as we go out, sir. We're in a final pitch up. Richardspiegel.com, SPG-A-L, it's actually, it's right above my head. That. It's right above is it. Yeah, everything's on Amazon and stuff, of course, by name. But I always like people to see the website because I'm just really proud of what the publisher did with it.
Starting point is 00:35:25 Yeah, it is a beautiful website. Yeah, I'm kind of jelly. It's got cool colors. I was trying to figure out my monitor has the thing where if it's plugged in for too long, it gets this flashing feedback where it starts getting weird. It's like some sort of electronic overload or maybe a grounding problem.
Starting point is 00:35:40 And so I have to pull it out and put it back in and that reset it for an hour or so two or something. I never have figured out what it is. I've had it for years. And so I was on your website and it started flickering. And I was like, oh, it's a product time to reset the monitor. So I reset the monitor. It kept flickering. And I'm like, reset it again.
Starting point is 00:35:57 And then I realized it was the lightning. It was the cool sort of, it's really soft and you don't notice it. And it was just the lighting that's on the website. I don't know if the new trailer's on it yet. or not. I looked the other day and the trailer for book six was not there. It might be there now. I don't know. I approved it last
Starting point is 00:36:16 week, but sometimes it takes them a while to fix up. And I also do plan on I have a lot of intro videos where I'm in uniform. I'm going to be re-recording and replacing those videos because I do not feel that it's appropriate for me to show up in uniform since I'm retired now. So I'm going to replace those videos.
Starting point is 00:36:32 I don't feel comfortable with them being it that way. It's up to you. It's up to you. I think it's great because you want to support veterans. You want to support people who are in our military. We've had a lot of great military people on. But you've got to do what's comfortable for you. But to me, I'd be more, if I saw a guy in uniform shilling a book,
Starting point is 00:36:51 I'd be more interested in buying it than not. But I've had a lot of military folks on. I keep my primary ad material, my old uniform author pick, but actually doing videos that way, I don't know. I feel like I'm sending the wrong message. I'm not, yes, I'm a veteran, yes, I'm a disabled veteran, but I don't want to shill that, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's up to you. I mean, what you feel comfortable with and stuff? And plus you don't want the military calling you and being like,
Starting point is 00:37:16 hey, man, we need some royalties off your book sales because you're using our copy right there, the military patches. I still always wear this. I wear the same thing in every podcast, my old unit hoodie, because it's comfortable. I love the background on the hoodie, too. I need to get some that has some wings or maybe a blowing cape in the back. Like you, we mentioned Superman earlier. Maybe I could get a blowing cape or something like that or I don't know. The publisher said because of the number of books, you need to focus on a brand instead of the individual book. And I was like, okay, then give me a logo. And this is one of the logos. I was like, oh, that's really nice. You guys know what you're doing. Yeah. Smart. They're making good websites and
Starting point is 00:37:57 making good logos. Yeah, because people remember that. Bands kind of had the same thing. They'd always say, make your, keep your logo the same, whatever the artwork is. Iron Main is kind of the same one for a long time, Judas Priest, and different things. And then sometimes when you see it changed, you're like, ah, they probably change something by that band. Members, I don't know if I got that. So, yeah, sticking with the branding really helps. That's why we call it the Chris Fos show because people go, this again?
Starting point is 00:38:24 Anyway, thank you very much for coming to show. We really appreciate Richard. Thank you for service our country and our freedom. When we had it, no, I'm just kidding. We're all waiting with bated breath to see how voting's going to go. Or if it's going to go, all bets are off. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on the show. Folks, order up our book where his books are sold.
Starting point is 00:38:45 You don't mind if you want, but his books are cooler. They've got vampires. There's not even vampires on my book. There might be one. I think that was Chapter 9, but it was someone I dated. Anyway, thanks for us to tuning in. Ordoin' Book, Eternal Knights Arrival out now. And you can also chase down the rest of his series and get caught up.
Starting point is 00:39:02 He's going to put out 30 books, people. So you better order it up. read up on it now so you can you don't lose track. Thanks for me for us for tuning to go to goodread.com for just Christmas. Chris Wise. Chris Wise is one of the TikTok and all this crazy place. Be good at each other. Stay safe.
Starting point is 00:39:16 We'll see you next. 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 Wall Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead.
Starting point is 00:39:35 You know,

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