The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Sceptre: A Jonster the Monster and the Bear Adventure by B.E. Boucher

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

The Sceptre: A Jonster the Monster and the Bear Adventure by B.E. Boucher https://beboucher.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-Jonster-Monster-Bear-Adventure/dp/B0DSPJKWJX Did you ever dream of traveling to an alternate universe? Meet Bear, a high school kid with a life-long wish to find his mother, who disappeared when he was just a baby. Guided by an Indian medicine man, Bear sets off on an incredible adventure to a magical kingdom. With his friends by his side, he discovers a fantastical world where he meets Uriah, a talking cocker spaniel who reveals that Bear is the unlikely hero destined to save this realm from an evil king. In this enchanting land, nothing is as it seems. Bear faces constant challenges that blur the line between illusion and reality, making him question who he can trust—including his own friends. With the fate of the kingdom in his hands and the help of a lovable yet self-centered dog, Bear must unravel the secrets of the ancient scroll and the mysterious Sceptre. Join him on this thrilling journey of self-discovery, friendship, and courage, where the greatest adventures often come from the most unexpected places. About the author B.E. Boucher Motivated by his son’s long battle with brain cancer, businessman turned author B.E. Boucher created the Jonster the Monster and the Bear trilogy to offer escape and encouragement to young people fighting life-threatening illnesses. As they search for the Sceptre, Jonster and the Bear learn that optimism and hope are key to overcoming impossible odds. In the Sceptre, the author weaves childhood experiences with imaginative adventures and humor to create unforgettable characters, enduring memories, and Inspiration. Mr. Boucher also authored the Grosswords anthology of short stories geared to younger readers. In a fun and thought-provoking way, Grosswords focuses on the eternal faceoff between kids and parents as they confront offbeat situations and surprising twists.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks is voss here from the chris voss show dot com all the ladies young and our only things that makes it official welcome to the chris posh show for over 16 years 17 or i'm sorry 16 is the years going on 17 20 6,600 episodes. We've been doing this for so long, I can't even remember how it works. Millions of downloads can't be wrong. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing young man on the show.

Today we're going to be talking to him about his insightful trilogy and other books and works that he's been up to. But in the meantime, we need you to go to goodreads.com, for chestchristch, Fawcithin.com, Fortresschusch, Christfoss, Facebook.com, forces Chris Foss, and YouTube.com, for your friends, neighbors, relatives. Go all around your neighborhood, knock on their doors, and say, we need you to join the cult. No, I'm just kidding. It's not a cult. We don't have sacrifices or anything, at least not yet. Maybe we sacrificed my mental health, maybe a little bit. I don't know. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show.

Some guests of the show may by advertising on the podcast, but it's not. is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today's featured author comes to us from Books to Lifemarketing.co.com. With expert publishing to strategic marketing, they help authors reach their audience and maximize their book's success. B.E. Bouchet joins us on the show.

We'll be talking with Bryce today about his books, his insights, and everything else. He's the author of his trilogy called The Scepter. And it starts with a book called A Johnster, the Monster. and the bear. Actually, the trilogy is the Johnster, the Monster, and the Bear Adventures,

and the first book is The Scepter. Oh, I see. Okay. You were close, yeah. I'm just reading from Amazon. That's all I know. I just read the material. I'm like one of those news people.

I just read whenever it was on the teleprompter. Good plan. On December 23rd, 2024, give us your dot-com's price, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. My website is B-E-Boucher, B-E-B-O-U-C-H-E-R.com. That's where to look for me. I'm on other things like Instagram and all that, but frankly, I don't know what they are,

so it's easier to just go to the website. Yeah. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book and how it launches into your trilogy? Well, the book is, the trilogy is actually a long story that begins with a young man that I call the bear who's actually patterned after my own son, Jeff, who I called the bear.

He is a, in the story, he's a high school student who, when he was just a toddler, his mom disappeared. And he has lived with his hole in his heart for all this time up until he becomes a high school student and gets distracted by all that stuff.

Somewhere along the line, he meets up with this Indian medicine man named Donald Deer Knows, who tells him that he, in fact, his mother probably is alive, but she's in another universe and had to go there to avoid dying from a terminal illness. Jeff the Bear recruits his best friend John, who is called Johnster the Monster, and thereto what they hope to be, their girlfriends, Debbie and Pat, and also a new friend named Clark, who's an interesting character. He's a bullied kid who they befriend, and they all wind up going into this alternate universe,

which is called Sergal Tuteran. While there, they find that they are not only just showing up there. They are expected by the people in Sergal Tuteran who believe that they are somehow prophesied to come there and save them from this evil king who is destroying everything with his greed and And so forth. In the process, they run across all kinds of strange creatures. They get guided. Initially, they're met and guided by a talking dog named Uriah, who introduces them to everybody that needs to be introduced with. And over a period of time, they realize that they have to join this battle against this guy because he's such a bad guy. And in the process, they learn more about themselves than they ever would have thought they would learn. And what was the premise of why you motivated to write the book and maybe some of the structure of the story you're utilizing there?

Initially, it's kind of funny because the book actually started as just a thought. I was at a soccer game for my son, Jeff, and I always called him the bearer, and I'd be yelling at him, come on, bear, you know, this, that. And I was standing on a sideline with a friend of his father's, and his friend was named John, and he said, oh, you call Jeff the bear. I said, yeah. He says, we call Johnster, Johnster the Monster. And I thought, wow, Johnster the Monster and the Bear. I said, that's a great title for a book. But I didn't do anything with it. I just let it kick around my head for a period of probably a few years. And one day I just said, the heck with it. And I sat down and started writing. The book started out as a title and nothing else. I didn't have the slightest idea where it was going to go or anything else. And somewhere along the line, I came to discover that I really didn't have any ideas. My characters just told me what they wanted to do, and I just had found and write it. So that's what I did. And as I got through

the first two books and into the third one, my son was suffering from brain cancer. As his condition started to deteriorate some, it became more and more important for me to get these done because I wanted him to be able to experience them. And he really loved them. And more than that, he saw them as a way that his struggles could be used to maybe help other kids who may be suffering from not just diseases, but bullying, lousy life, whatever. So that's kind of where it came to where we are now. Ah, that's pretty nice.

Now, your son, tell us about your son, because some of the, I guess, the motivation. He had a long battle with brain cancer. Talk to us about that and how that inspired the story, because I think there's something really beautiful in what you're sharing here and helping others. He was the most wonderful person, and I got my ideas, my, the character Jeff the Bear in the books is very much like Jeff the Bear, the real guy, and that he was a big guy. He was very funny, had a great sense of humor, very compassionate to others. And most of all, he had a do not quit attitude that just did not quit. I mean, you have to understand that the disease that he had is universally fatal. And no matter, no matter what you do,

as sooner or later, it's probably going to get you. And we try. tried everything we could possibly try, but throughout this, he was just an absolute rock. He didn't let anything bother him about it. He just moved on. And so what we try to do in the book is kind of use that as a metaphor for things that happen in the book. These kids, they run up against situations that they have no business running up against or winning. And yet, and yet through their friendship, loyalty, all these kind of things that we try and show are good attributes that kids should have, young people should have, to show them that they can overcome it. Whatever it is, they can overcome it. If they got problems at home,

if they're bullied or whatever, we tell them, read the Joster the Monster stories and take the day off, take the day off from that crap and enjoy your life and realize that you can over. but it just takes some time yeah and sometimes it you know gives you different perspective gives you release you can find out you know how you know you get your mind off of things and I find I tend to enjoy doing that and it helps kind of refill me and reset me and you know it's easy for us to get caught up in our own world and and of course when you're trying to survive and stuff I mean that's a whole different animal of focus and so yeah having something like this or maybe a book the kids can read

This would be a great book to give out to children at hospitals and different things like that. Exactly. And I've actually even considered that. I've run across a couple people that have had, for some reason, it comes up in conversation that their child, nephew, whatever, is in the hospital. And he's suffering from a severe illness. I say, give me your address. Let me send him a book. At some point in time, I'd hope to think that maybe we, I could do that on a bigger scale where I could be at hospitals or whatever,

where they would just look at this as an opportunity. And mainly the thing is because the Johnson of the Monster adventures are like the old-timey adventure. They're just good adventures. They don't have any, they're not hampered by any political or controversial aspects or anything like that. They're just good adventures about kids that get into sticky situations of people and monsters that would like to kill them, for example. And they are able to work their way through it just because of things that are inside them, that they never had any idea were inside them in the first place. Yeah.

And knowing their limits or what their possibilities are. So you have the first book, The Scepter. Tell us about the second book. The Secret City picks up where the Scepter left off. The Scepter goes through a bunch of adventures to where they get to a point where it's a good ending point for that part of the story, but it doesn't tell the whole story. The sceptor is actually what that is, is a magical scepter like kings used to have, you know, that little thing they hold and wave around at their people and everything.

But this scepter supposedly has magical qualities, and it can only be lit up or energized by one person, and that's the bear. And that's because he's been prophesied for years that he's going to come and save the day and he gets there and goes, oh, what? I'm a high school kid. But over time, he gets pulled into this thing.

And the whole thing about the first book, The Scepter, is how they rescue the Scepter from the bad guys. The second part, the Secret City, is how the Scepter and other things that they have are utilized to actually go into battle and defeat and defeat these. It's not just the king. He has lots of very not nice monsters and so forth on his side that are fighting for him. That's pretty what they do. And in the end, it turns out to be really an archetypical battle between good and evil. You've got the ultimate good

on one side, the ultimate bad on the other side. And there's really no in between. And there's no guarantee that ultimate good is going to win, even though, of course, we'd all like to see that happen. Yeah. No, there's never a guarantee that good will win over evil, and it kind of assures us in the movies, but every now and then we find that fate has its way, unfortunately, sometimes. And good doesn't always thrive. But that's kind of, I think, what makes life valuable and what makes it something that we endure and enjoy. What about the third book in the series? The third book is called Elstrom Legacy, and the land called Elstrom is referred to a few times in the first two books, but nobody really knows much about it. The characters really don't know much about it, and then it turns out that one of the characters, who is a major character in the first two books named Crystal, who's a cat, a talking cat, with a magic eyes that can do all kinds of things, finds out that her land in Elstrom is threatened by another land in Elstrom.

And so they once again come to Jeff and his friends, who by then they refer to as the searchers, excuse me, and ask for their help. And Elstrom has actually takes space in a giant cave. It's a giant cave that has several different civilizations within it on different levels. And a couple of these got kind of rowdy and decided they were going to mess with Crystal's family and life. And that's so the other team goes in there to help them. process it actually does there are things that happen that does wrap up all the loose ends that are in the scepter in the secret city you know you leave a few loose ends so that people go what happens

next but at some point in time you got you got to you got to tie them all together and i'm not i don't really like loose ends that much tie it up so do you see a future beyond the trilogy you know actually there there is a fourth book called sergal tuteron which is a prequel to the to the first three. And that is, I'm going to have that published fairly soon. It's just a matter of my friend who does my editing with me and I just haven't been able to connect enough to get the editing done, but hopefully we'll be able to do that soon and then that'll be out. But beyond that, there are other stories that could be brought to bear out of this trilogy that don't necessarily have due with Johnster the Monster. There are just other civilizations and so forth that

have things going on that may have happened before Johnster, the monster, and the bear ever showed up. So because of that, those characters wouldn't be in it. And that's something, I don't know. I just haven't, I haven't done anything yet on it. And I don't know if I will or not. It's kind of interesting what you said, that your characters kind of talk to you and they have their way. I think that's how I heard you say it. It's interesting. I have a lot of authors on the show, and they have their characters talk to them and kind of harass them in her. Is that Kind of the best experience to have when you're writing books because it makes it easier, they kind of become their, they present themselves with their own person.

You know, Stephen King said that said that a novelist should be a secretary and not God. And that's the way I look at it. I don't sit there. I don't do outlines or anything like that. Quite honestly, when I start writing something, I don't have the foggiest idea what's going to happen. I don't plan it. I don't think, oh, this will be cool and I can do this and this character can do that. that it doesn't happen that way I just start and the character does something and all of a sudden the character decides to you know go into a cave and then I go oh shoot this guy went into a cave now I got to do something I got to do something with this cave so what do I do I then then the character tells me what to do and a lot of it too is I you know I feel like Jeff is there with me with a lot of it when I'm writing this just kind of a spiritually spiritually like thing in other words I don't but but it

It just, I look at it from what, what would Jeff do in these situations? And a lot of that is how I, how these things come about. Well, that's interesting. You've got, you've got some support there and some advice. You know, I've always been jealous because I don't have any, the only people to talk to me or my six other personalities. And clearly, that's another thing. There's one that says, kill, kill, kill all the time.

Judges I can't use it anymore. But, yeah, I have authors on and they're like, you know, this is why I write books about business and novel and nonfiction and you guys write fiction and and are great at it and i'm just like no one talks to me but it's it's such a great gift to have i think i'm jealous you know i don't i don't hear them in my head that kind of thing but but it's just like i said it's just that they a character will put him or herself in some kind of situation or somewhere and i'll go oh what do i do now and amazingly enough something always happens I'm always able to write it down.

It's really, really interesting. I'm very lucky because I don't get riders block. I don't think I've ever had riders block a single time where it's just, oh, no, what do I do now? I mean, I might have little twinges of panic where, oh, no, what do I do now? But immediately it comes to me, and the way I get around that, and the way I would tell anybody else, is just keep writing. Keep writing, and the answer will come. Just keep writing. You know, I found that that works, too.

I used to call it puking on the page. We did a, when I got my book written, I joined a accountability group during COVID. And we joined the accountability group. And everyone in it was like writing a sentence and then trying to edit it. You know, they were doing the whole, like, it was the worst of times or the best of times. That should it be the other way around? And, you know, they were trying to short edit everything they were writing. they're writing it and i you know i've had enough authors on that i realized you know you're there's

an editing phase to writing a book at the end and i'm like you know and then you hire usually somebody else to do that so they can write in your voice but also so they can they don't where to put the commas and periods and correct all the crap you misspelled and stuff and i was going through it with them and i would just i you know and unfortunately i had all the stories of my life and so i just puked him out on the page i called it and i would just write stuff and sometimes you know it wasn't it i didn't worry about being the best writing like it was the worst of times or the best times or you know some sort of opening to stevens king book yeah i just i just i just blathered it out and put it on the page and by the time i was done i was like 30 or

50 000 words and i was sitting there with my accountability group of wonderful people and i was like so how you guys doing i got 20 000 words and they're like we're still editing the first paragraph i'm like you've been editing the first paragraph this whole time. They really weren't doing the first paragraph, but they were almost, and they were so involved

with the editing. And, you know, to me, it's like when you've got that flow, when you've got those ideas, the best thing to do is just get them out on the paper. And then you can mess with them

and, you know, muck about with editing. I do that a lot. And I, unfortunately, my biggest Achilles heel is I'm obsessive about this stuff to the point

where I'll, I will, spend sometimes a whole day work in a paragraph or even or even sometimes a sentence. Yeah, I will do that. And my wife always laughs at me for it. But she says, you know, she understands that I just sometimes you just really can't say exactly what you want to say. So you redo it and redo it and redo it.

And I edit the books myself. I have a good friend named Robin who she edits with me. and I hired a couple people initially to edit my books, and frankly, there was one person, had one useful suggestion, and the rest of them were just nonsense. And they just didn't get it. They didn't get what I was trying to say, and they wanted me to do things that would change things. And I said, no, I'm not going to change it. This is what it is. And, you know, I'm just the stupid secretary writing this stuff down.

I can't change what these people are doing. And that's, you know, that's the way it is. Yeah. I found sometimes rewriting stories, again, give me sometimes that different prose that I'm talking, that you're talking about where I'm trying to find how it should be written. And so sometimes I'll be like, okay, here's this version, here's that version, which version is better? And sometimes I find the more times I craft something and I keep rewriting it, I do this a lot on Facebook. I'll fine-tuned stuff.

And that really helps, too, just going over it. And, of course, that's part of the editing process. You go over it 50 trillion times. Yeah, it's hard to find somebody who can write in your voice, too, and get your thing. I never knew how important that was. You know, people, when I was going into editing, people like, you have to find someone knows your voice. I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever.

It's commas and periods, man. And then I had some well-meaning friends send me. They're like, hey, you know, I'm a professional editor. And one of them was female. and I'm like, you know, well, I've already hired an editor and they know my voice. I can see why this is important, but if you want to take a crack, here's a page, and I mean, maybe there's something I don't know. Maybe there's a better way.

And they tried it, and boy, what they sent me was written in a woman's voice and it's written with her voice. And I remember reading it going, this isn't anything I've written. This isn't my voice. This is a woman's voice. And that's when I realized why all the authors say that. You have to find somebody who can edit in your voice and write in your voice and the editing.

And I never realized how important it was until I saw other people trying to write in my voice. And I was like, that's not going to. People were to read that. They can't do it. They can't do it. I mean, some people, I think, just don't maybe have what it takes to do the editing themselves and find all mistakes

and that sort of thing. And I make a million mistakes, a million mistakes. And I hopefully find 98% of them. I'm sure I don't find them all. The hard part about editing is you hand them like 50,000 words, and they come back to you after a month or something, and they give you like a page back, and they go, we threw all that out and we kept this.

So start writing, boy. I met with a literary agent once, a guy with him said they were talking about, these books were really long. The Scepter and the Secret City are at one time, one book, but it was just so long. I had to cut it in half, and I had to cut out all these things. And I just loved the way he put it. And he said, you know, you're like throwing away this, throwing away that.

And he said, it's like eating your children. And that's kind of the way you feel about it. Oh, gee, do I really want to get rid of this character? But you got to because it's just taking up space and not doing anything. Yeah. I mean, that's just sometimes the way you've got to go with it. But, yeah, it's really funny how the whole business. of writing and stuff. What advice would you give to other authors who are trying to write something?

I think maybe some advice for someone who could use, maybe it was in your space with a loved one who was suffering and maybe using writing as a cathartic way to maybe remedy some of it. It is. It is. And I would definitely, I would definitely encourage that. I mean, I don't think I'm a person that really deserves to give anybody else advice. But writing for me is a cathartic experience where Jeff is concerned. And I actually have another book I'm just literally finished a couple of days ago, which is a murder mystery. It takes place in the hospital during the COVID times. So you brought up COVID before. So people run across all these things that happened during COVID and restrictions in the hospital, which are things we actually put up with because my son was in

the hospital during that time. We had to put up all of the visiting restrictions. Yeah, that they put through it. It was just not good. But I definitely think that not only as a cathartic experience, but use that as an opportunity to honor that person is suffering. And I mean, Jeff really did really did love the books and he loved the stories in them and so forth. And it was a very good thing for me to be able to give him that gift. That's wonderful. It's a tough, it's a, it's a, it's a really, really, there's nothing worse than having a terminally old kid.

And it's, it's a really hard road to hoe. So, yeah, yeah, you do, you think your kids are going to outlive you and, and I even have the problem with my dogs. I think my dogs are going to outlive me. And it really is awful when they go for it. We lost three dogs in seven months last year. Holy crap. Yeah, all three. Yeah, it was horrible.

It was horrible. Yeah, it's not fun. I'm glad that there's an homage to your son and a great story in detail you can share with other people, maybe that can uplift them as they're going through pain and suffering and maybe trying to see, you know, get themselves entertained beyond the world that it is. Because, you know, I found that entertaining people, making them laugh, making them smile, taking them out of their things, I told the story a number of times on the show, but I remember one time my dad called me, dad a stroke, and he'd gone really. pale and they'd brought him back. He was gone. It was pretty much. His color was all gone and everything. And they brought him back and got him stable. And he was really scared. He called me and you could hear just the fear in his voice. And you didn't normally hear fear in my father's voice. You'd hear anger. You didn't hear fear. And I remember I, you know, the way I deal with these things is

I start telling jokes. I try and make people laugh and I try and entertain. And, you know, he was talking about stuff that isn't going to matter in the long run of anything and there's no use dwelling on it it is what it is and so i started just telling them stupid jokes like you know what's a nurse like what's that hospital food you know easy low hanging joke fruit and pretty much within a few minutes i had him laughing at first he resisted me and of course if you do that to a comedian they'll keep the guy in the room that you can't make laugh that you focus in on your i'm going to make you laugh But I had him laughing, and by the end of it, I'd lifted his fear, I'd lifted his worry. You know, I didn't make anything go away, but I gave him life.

I showed him the beauty of life for a moment and how he was still here and how you could still enjoy it. And I think when we bring that to other people through means of entertainment or uplifting or stories that give lessons and stuff, that just helps make the world a better place, I guess. I agree with you. I agree 100%. Jeff was very big on humor. He always had the joke of the day. And when he was in the hospital, I swear to God, I'd be in there for hours at a time and thought I knew everybody. And there would be people come in.

I wouldn't know who they are. And they'd say, oh, I just came for the joke of the day. And really, and here's a kid. You know, he's lying in there. He's, you know, is partially paralyzed and everything from this horrible disease. And there's a couple of nurses. They'd come by off their shift just because he lifted them up. There's one wonderful nurse that said that she actually stopped doing what she was doing and went to work for Dana Farber in the Cancer Center just because of her dealing with Jeff.

And it made her want to be in that realm. And that's something that I'm extremely proud of for him. That's good. You know, we never know how much the work that we do and the stuff that we do in good reaches other people and changes the world and changes lives really when it comes down to us. I learned a lot about that from him, just people that he touched in a really positive way. And it's, wow, I never even heard of this person or whatever. And yet they say all these great things. And I think, you know, in the book, there's just a lot of that kind of thing.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of humor, a lot of sarcasm. These are high school kids. And Jeff and John work themselves each other over all the time like friends of that age do. and one of my favorite, it's kind of a secondary story is Clark, who's the fifth kid, who's a bullied kid. He has treated like crap at school, just bullied mercilessly. His mother's an alcoholic, his stepfather beats him up. I mean, he's just the most miserable kid, you can imagine. And Jeff and John befriend him and back all the bullies off. And when they wind up going to Sergal Tuteran, something very interesting happens, and he learns that the very

traits that he has in this world that make him bullied and picked on and everything. In the Segal Tuteron world make him admired and a hero. And so that we try and show like, okay, if maybe if you're bullied or whatever you have these things, don't necessarily throw away those traits, embrace them, embrace them and try and use them to your advantage because they may not be so bad. The weakness is on the side of the guy that's bullying you, not the person that's being bullied very true very true yeah it's and you know a lot of young people deal with bullies is this is angled towards young people for the most part isn't it it is it is i mean personally

you know i'm the author so i think everybody would enjoy it i think adults could enjoy it but basically i'm looking at the 12 to 25 year range you know that for young people that that are really going through these things and you're right i mean i mean kids with the internet and so forth now they really have a lot of stuff to deal with that we didn't have to deal I mean, these kids kill themselves because they're bullied. It's horrific. And, you know, if I could reach one kid and keep him from doing that, I would consider everything a tremendous success.

And it's overwhelming when you're getting bullied. I mean, it really is. It is overwhelming. And you feel lost, and you're right. A lot of kids do self-harm over that because you just feel like you're in a corner. or you don't feel like you can defend yourself. You know, you have to go to school because, you know, your parents want to school. And you're just trying to learn stuff and survive and, I don't know, meet girls or guys or whatever your thing is.

And, yeah, it's hard because, you know, I've dealt with when I was young, I dealt with some really mean bullies. Oh, yeah, there was, yeah, I understand that. Clark is somebody that has, you know, until the bearer came along, he didn't have anything. He didn't have anything, but as he learns, as time goes by and that these other things happen, over time, he learns that the savior to him was not Jeff necessarily. The savior was himself. Everything to save him was in himself all along. He just had to find it and bring it out. And that happens with all the characters in there, Debbie, Pat, all of them.

And a lot of these people are characters are based on people that I knew very well. And obviously the character is the character and the person's the person and they're not the same. But still. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you've been an inspiring book, an homage to your son and his life and story lives on. It'll be interesting to see. Is there anything coming up that maybe we should know about any books or anything you're working on?

Well, the gross words, the gross words anthology book is going to be coming out, probably in the next week. And that's a really fun book, lots of fun little stories that are about, like I said, maybe 8, 10, 12 pages long. And they all have a pretty cute story with a twist with a crossword puzzle at the end

so the kid can kind of relive the story when he does the crossword puzzle. And I hope to have the murder mystery out. It's called Sundowners. And it's going to be coming out probably in sometime around the late part of the first quarter by the time I get it and edit and so forth. But basically, sundowners refers to the fact that when people have brain injuries,

whether it's from a tumor, an accident, dementia, whatever, when the sun goes down, a lot of times they become a different person. They can become abusive. They can become a lot of different things. And that's something that, you know, it makes for an interesting base for a murder mystery in the hospital, I think. Yeah. Oh, murder, you say. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, nothing like a good old serial killer in a hospital to make life interesting when you're in there as a patient. Ah, I like that plot line. That's a book that sounds very interesting to read because, you know, people are dying all over a hospital. I mean, I don't mean to make a lie to that, but people are dying all over a hospital. And it would be, you know, sometimes hard to tell if somebody had mucked about. exactly you know exactly things i don't know you've given me some good ideas here feel free to steal them i might next time i don't know one of my relatives is in the what happened to the court chris i don't know i tripped over it

and i could go back on the wall accidentally unplugged that something yeah don't do that folks that's not nice we if i if i could just give one message on on all of this on the johns of the monster in the book bearer adventures specifically it would be to tell kids. Don't give up. Don't give up. You can find your solutions somewhere else. And even in the worst possible scenarios, keep your chin up because even if you're going to go out, go out with your chin up. And that's exactly what Jeff did. I mean, toward the end, he actually, he was a chef and a really good one. But he came to understand that he couldn't be a chef anymore. And so he actually he wasn't joking he told me he says you know i think i want to do stand-up comic comedy which

he couldn't really stand up at that point but he he wanted me that he could wheel out in a chair and he he said just find some find some improv places where i can go in boston and i swear i mean it's hilarious he was he was unflappable and he even had his first joke which was he said i would come out and say i used to hate having a brain tumor but then it grew on me and And this is the kind of person he was, you know, he would not lie down for this thing no matter what. And for him to use his own trials as a way to maybe help other kids, I think meant more to him than just about anything.

Yeah. And he lives on. He helps other people now. You know, I had that with my dog. It got cancer. And we helped her with a special diet and did certain things. And since she passed, we. We helped so many other dogs live that the doctors had told, like they had told my dog,

take her home for three days and come back. And yet we figured out how to keep her alive for a year and almost two years. Good for you. Just changing her diet and making sure she wasn't getting stuff that would feed the cancer and just making her eat again. You know, it's interesting now you get through these things and you can figure out ways to inspire other people and they live on. When things first blew up with Jeff, they told us two or three months and he made seven and a half. So we were pretty happy about that.

It wasn't the most wonderful seven-and-a-half at all times, but he wanted it. He lived it. And he did, you know, he touched a lot of people and did a lot of good things during that time. So I definitely get it with your dog. One last thing. I think on your guys' website, you guys have an app called the My Seeing Eye, I guess. My Seeing Eye app. That was actually invented by my son, Jeff.

The icon on it is actually a caricature of his face. laughing. And basically what my seeing eye is, one day he was in Las Vegas, he liked to play poker. And that also was part of his never say die thing. I'd say, Jeff, you know, if you ever want to quit this and he'd say, I still have a chip in a chair. And as long as he had that. But anyway, he calls me up one day. He says, dad, I got a great idea for an app, which was not unusual. He had lots of great ideas. But he said, I'm standing here on a corner in Las Vegas. And I'm watching all these stupid people and they're looking at their phones and they're walking along and they're banging around banging into each other walking into trash cans slipping off the curb doing all this stuff and he

says you know what if we just had an app where you split the screen to whatever percent you want and you could you could be reading your news item or your you know your chat or whatever but at the top of the screen a certain amount you'd you'd have your forward facing camera so you could actually be looking at your camera, at your phone the whole time, but while you're looking at a thing, you can always look at your camera and see what's in front of you so you don't run into it. And it took us a long time to get it up. They told me we'd never get it up on Apple, but we did. And now it's up and running, and we're just getting ready to start promoting it. That'll be good then. Your son lives on and his memory and his inspiration is helping others. What a glorious thing to

do. So thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it, Bryce. Thank you, Chris. It was great talking to you. you're my kind of guy. I really, I really enjoyed it. I have a girlfriend. Sorry, bud. No, I'm just kidding. I got to do the jokes. Just the jokes on the show, folks. And I don't have a girlfriend because no one loves me. I think I, isn't that a callback I alluded to a really good show? Okay, okay. You need to read the Scepter. Come out. Okay. I'll help you out. I'll take it on my first date. I'll read it to her, or whoever it is. I don't know.

Anyway, the jokes are there, folks. So thank you very much, Bryce, for coming this show. Give us any dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the Interwibusay.com or the books are all on Amazon, including Audible. We have an audible book for both The Scepter and the Secret City. And real quickly, that's kind of a funny thing. The narrator of the Audible Books is a good friend of my name, Stephen Lloyd, who for many years was the voice of wrong numbers in Chicago. So if you got a wrong number, you'd get this deep, deep, resonant voice telling you you screwed up and you need to, you need to dial another number. So that's kind of fun. So millions of people have heard his voice,

but people just don't know who he is. Yeah. It's interesting. People can pick up the book wherever fine books are sold and the app and all that good stuff. Thank you very much for coming to the show. Thanks for honest for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, fortune as Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss. Chris Foss won on the TikTokity and check out the monster, the monster, and bear adventure series. And watch for more from B.E. B. Boucher. Did I get that ready? Bouchet. I got it right the second time.

There we go. Thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys 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 Walshow 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 bleed. Bryce, we got it out. I'll do an edit on the...