The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Yesteryear by Stephen G. Eoannou

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Yesteryear by Stephen G. Eoannou https://amzn.to/3YgSHqA It’s 1930s Buffalo, and the Great Depression rages. Playwright Fran Striker needs to write the pilot for a new radio show but, to do so, he must overcome writer's block, defeat a Gypsy curse, foil a plot to assassinate FDR, and recover stolen diamond rings belonging to an alcoholic boxing champion. Who was that masked man? Based on the controversial true-life story of Lone Ranger creator Fran Striker, Yesteryear takes us on a magical journey leading to an icon’s debut, a show that provided hope to Americans during the country’s darkest days. About the Author I’m a 5am writer. At that dark hour you can find me either writing in bed or writing up in the cupola of my 1865 Second Empire Victorian I’m restoring. No coffee. No tea. No candles or incense burning. Just me typing away with my one-eyed dog close by. I love stories and novels with strong characters and a strong sense of place. The turf I carved out for myself is my hometown of Buffalo, New York, the setting and inspiration for much of my work. I’m trying to do for Buffalo what William Kennedy did for Albany and what Richard Russo did for Upstate New York. I think the three of us should discuss this over drinks. I’ll buy the first round. Some of the books I’ve read recently are Secret Identity by Alex Segura and Fortune Favors The Dead by Stephen Spotswood. I also re-read It’s Superman! by Tom De Haven. Currently on my nightstand is Don’t You Know There’s A War On?: The American Homefront 1941-1945 by Richard R. Lingeman. I like reading fiction and non-fiction set during The Great Depression and World War Two. My mother, who grew up during this period, always told me that I romanticized that time. She was right. When I'm not writing, you can find me working on the house or hunting for antiques and books to put in the house. I’ve been restoring the front staircase for over two years now. Evidently, I write and scrape paint slowly.

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

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. As always, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children alike, welcome to the big podcast, Circus 10 in the Sky. As always, for the show, your family, friends, and relatives,

go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, linkedin.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. All those crazy places like TikTok, we are on the web uh so you can see that there today we have an amazing multi-book author on the show and he's got a new book coming out october 3rd 2023 we'll be talking about the book is called yesteryear stephen g iowano is on the show with us today he'll be talking about his latest book, and we'll get some plugs in for his other books as well.

He's done quite amazing stuff in his life. He's the author of the novels After Pearl, Yesteryear, Rook, and the short story collection Muscle Cars. He's been awarded an Honor Certificate from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Best Short Screenplay Award at the 36-Star Denver Film Festival and the 2021 Islands International Book Award for Historical Fiction. He holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and an Emmy from Miami University.

He lives and writes in his hometown of Buffalo, New York, the setting and inspiration for much of his work. Welcome to the show, Stephen. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Thanks for having me today. There you go. Thanks for coming.

Buffalo, New York. That's where my mom was born and raised. So there you go. There you go. Yeah. How do you guys deal with all that snow out there? Holy crap. It's not snowing today. We're good. Oh, well, hopefully not today. I don't know. There you go there you go yeah how do you guys deal with all that snow out there holy crap it's not snowing today we're good oh well hopefully not today i don't know there you go

uh so give me a c.com where can people find you on the interwebs please yeah i can be found at www.sgewanu.com that's e-o-a-n-n-o-u.com and there's a ton of information out there about my books uh my biography um trailers for the books, all sorts of good stuff's out there. There you go. And how many books have you written then? Three? There's two that are out. Muscle Cars, the short story collection, and Rook the Knob, my first novel, came out last year.

Yesteryear comes out this October. And then After Pearl comes out in 2025. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this latest book, Yesteryear? Well, surprisingly, it all started in a bar, Chris. Somebody told me that the guy who wrote The Lone Ranger was from Buffalo, and I didn't believe him. Yeah.

And so, of course, I Googled it. And not only was he from Buffalo, he was from my neighborhood. He went to high school a few blocks away and wrote The Lone Ranger a few blocks north of me, which was kind of interesting. You know, this is in the early 1930s. But when I found out he sold the rights to The Lone Ranger for ten dollars before the lone ranger exploded i said well there's a story there there's a novel that that needs to be written about this guy yeah ten dollars ten bucks i grew up watching the and idolizing the lone ranger uh and uh when i was a kid man i loved

the little black and white and then i think it went to color somewhere in that whole era yeah i remember they um they ran it in syndication uh when i would get home from school and used to watch it 10 bucks yeah but he wasn't a dumb guy he wasn't a bad businessman yeah um he had he had good intentions um it was the depression and he had a young family and he was supporting about a dozen other extended family members who had lost everything during the depression and he was really contracted to write the lone ranger for a radio station in detroit wxyz and he was getting paid like seven bucks a script and george w trendle who owned that radio station was a pretty extrude businessman and he kind of had a feeling the ranger was going to take off and so he like the godfather he made him off he couldn't refuse he said i'll give you a full-time job uh more money than he ever made

job security for the depression take care of your family but you got to sell me the rights to the Ranger for $10. And so Fran was a good man. Fran Stryker is the man who wrote their own Ranger, and he was put in that position, and he took the deal. There you go. So is there any historical fiction, or is it historical in in nature or how did you frame it? Well, it's a little bit of everything. It's certainly historical fiction, but it's also noir. I've got some gangsters in there.

It's a comic novel. It's biographical fiction. I threw in a lot of stuff. So I'm blending genres in this book there you go and i'm reading the the the the the description here on it and it says uh he must overcome writer's block defeated you know that seems pretty um challenging uh defeated gypsy's curse uh we've all had to do that yeah um foil apply to assassinate fdr holy crap a lot of happens in buffalo man and recover a stolen diamond rings belonging to an alcoholic boxing

champion we do that on fridays around here um the uh there's a lot going on there man i thought the writer's block was hard enough there's a lot of balls in the air with this with this novel a lot of subplots um but it was a ton of fun to write um and hopefully it's going to be a ton a ton of fun for the readers there you go balls in the air that's also what we do around here on fridays i don't know what that means it's exercise balls folks don't write me um those ones you get at the gym you know the big ones um so there you go and there's a lot going on there and so uh do you do you make up a it says something about who was that masked man do you do you uh concoct or do you use historical data on how he came up with the uh lone ranger well not how he came up with it that's where i come in with with with the magical realism uh but it is based

in historic facts um and the you know striker died in the early 60s and he donated all his papers his estate donated all his papers to the university of buffalo my alma mater as well as his so i was able to go there there's like 30 cartons of this stuff old radio scripts his notes really telegrams oh yeah it's really cool stuff i mean i had to put on the white gloves and hold the original ranger script in my hand so there's a lot of facts about the ranger and striker in dealing with george w trendle the the man from WXYZ who bought the rights. But where the fiction comes in was how he came up with the Lone Ranger story. And that's where the magical elements come in,

the boxing champion who lost his diamond rings, the curse, all that stuff comes into play. But that's all my imagination. There you go. Now you said that there's kind of some noir to it and the cover has a picture that kind of you know looks like something on a humphrey bogart's a detective officer noir there's a there's a scotch on the rocks or something and whiskey on the rocks maybe an old typewriter and some books and radio. What sort of noir do you have in here? Just that kind of yesteryear noir?

Yeah. So there was a, for decades, the local mafia head in Buffalo was a man named Stephen Magliano. And he ran the mob here for decades. And so I put him in the book too uh so i got the gangsters i got his his crew um kind of muscling in um and i really just wanted to make it a fun book so i i pulled historic figures who lived in buffalo and i made them characters. So the boxing champion is Jimmy Slattery, who was a light heavyweight champion. And he was an alcoholic, and his career didn't pan out the way it was supposed to.

But he was champion. He did live here around the same time as Stryker did. I have no idea if they ever crossed paths. But I put him in. Same thing with magdiano i doubt fran striker you know a radio script writer ever went up against the mob but i had him in there and fdr was just elected to his first term why not have him in there too and come to buffalo for a visit there you go i mean you know back then everything was kind of small townish sort of

thing everybody kind of knew everybody so there you go and it mean, back then everything was kind of small townish sort of thing. Everybody kind of knew everybody. So there you go. And it kind of creates a thrilling story, I guess, of all these different characters and all the different things they're up to. Well, I hope so. You know, there's the capers involved, you know, trying to get back these stolen rings. There's a man with a very small chin who wants to assassinate FDR.

Stryker has a writer's block, which is total fiction. Franz Stryker never had a writer's block a day in his life. They estimated that in the 1930s, he was writing 60,000 words a week for all the radio scripts. Holy crap. Yeah, comic books. He was doing it,000 words a week for all the radio scripts. Yeah, comic books. He was doing it all, comic strips. So that's like a short novel. Every week he was churning it out.

You know, Pulp Fiction stuff. But still, so he's got to overcome that. So there's a lot going on in the book. But I think something interesting to the readers is everybody knows all the Lone ranger tropes right the mask silver bullets the horse silver um tonto tonto yeah kimusabi so all that's in in the book those tropes and elements are there but striker has writer's block so he doesn't realize it yet the readers go oh silver bullets you know or oh a big white horse strikers kind of clueless until the end of the novel when he starts putting everything together so um i think it's i think it was i had a great time writing it there you go

i think i hear a wagon coming two miles away. Well, you know, interesting. Tonto wasn't introduced until like the 10th radio script. Oh, really? The 10th episode, yeah. And they realize this is radio. We have to have him talking to someone else besides his horse. So come up with a friend.

That's also what we do around here on Fridays. We talk to our horse. Yeah, that's also what we do around here on fridays we talk to a horse um yeah that's interesting you know i i didn't realize it i didn't think about it off the bat here but yeah i remember hearing uh i think you could get them at the library you could get these old records back in the day yeah they would play the old radio shows like uh avon costello and and uh some of the old radio shows they used to do. And, yeah, it started out on the radio with him, huh? It did.

It premiered actually here in Buffalo in 1933 on WEBR, which still broadcasts today. Wow. Yeah, and Stryker was a script writer for them. And as you know, back then at the radio stations, they had full orchestras their own acting troupe uh their own writers um it was the medium of the day and that's where striker was working he was uh um in charge of radio dramas there there you go everyone gathering around the

radio and listen to them and then listen to fdr go on about whatever he did, what he went on about. I don't know. And, yeah, I mean, the great radio airs. When I was a kid, we used to get the records from the library and listen to the old replays of all these shows. Abba Cassell, who's on first, all the radio bits, War of the Worlds from H.G. Wells, just all that craziness. Yeah, I love all that stuff. And on satellite radio on Sirius, there's a station for radio classics.

And that's all they broadcast. Yeah. And they got all those shows, The Shadow. Oh, The Shadow. Yeah. Oh, I love that show. Yeah, that was a great one. Only The Shadow. Oh, The Shadow. Yeah. Oh, I love that show. Yeah, that was a great one. Only The Shadow knows.

They also play the commercials in between sometimes, and those are hysterical. Like the old-timey commercials? Yeah, like from the 30s. They'll work them in there. If you rub plutonium on you, you can get clean today. And glowy skin. Order now.

That's right. Wow, the shadow. We used to listen to Shadow. I don't know where we would get it. I think it was still playing on radio. Who was that old radio host that he used to round up with? And that's the rest of the story. He would set up the ending and be like, no, after commercial break, we'll bring you the rest of the story. He would set up the ending and

be like, no, after commercial break, we'll bring you the rest of the story. I forget who that was. I forget his name too. Someone can write me for the audience on it. But yeah, only the Shadow Knows. Only the Shadow Knows. I'm going to

go back and listen to that. I've got SiriusXM Buddha up here, so I'm going to have to go check out the classics. But the Lone Ranger, only the Shadow Nose. I'm going to go back and listen to that. I've got a SiriusXM boot up here, so I'm going to have to go check out the classics. Yeah. But the Lone Ranger, all the different things that he goes into, what sort of, why did you choose some of the characters in the book, or what were some of the character builds that you

used on him? Did you study who he was and try and form a character of the main character um uh fran striker uh or did you just kind of make it up uh the way you want it no i and there were some basic elements of his life and his personality that i wanted to include so um you know first and foremost you know he was a a dedicated family man taking in all those family members. He was a prolific writer and workaholic. They used to make him stop typing at his house, stop writing because it was keeping everybody up at night.

His wife and neighbors gave him like this time slot where he could write at home. And then he'd go to his in-laws house and type over there and drive them crazy. Wow. So those elements were, I put in there. The financial pressures I put in there. But the rest, his friendships, you know, that was all my imagination. His inner workings of his mind. But a great book, his son wrote his biography

called his typewriter grew spurs and it's been out of print for years uh it's got a great cartoon on the cover and i tracked it down in a little bookstore in texas and and it was a lot of information about about his dad that i i probably wouldn't have gotten from anywhere else there you go uh well it sounds like it's going to be a really fun book to read, and you're planning on issuing in October? Yeah, the pub dates October 3rd, but folks can pre-order it now through my website or anywhere they order or buy books. So yeah, we're excited. We're less than three months away now. There you go. Should we get a plug in for your prior book, Rook? Yeah, Rook came out last year.

That's also based on a Buffalo guy. There's a theme here going on. If you're familiar with William Kennedy's work, he wrote the Albany Trilogy, Legs and Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and Ironweed, which won the Pulitzer. And it was made into a movie with Jack Nicholson. And all those are set in Albany, New York. And I thought that was really cool when I was growing up reading those that he picked his hometown to kind of explore. And that's what I'm trying to do in Buffalo.

So I came across this story. Excuse me. I came across this story about a man named Al Nussbaum. And he lived in Buffalo and grew up in the 50s and early 60s. He was married, had his first child. And I'm going to cough again, sorry. And he robbed about six banks until his wife and the FBI figured out what he was up to and so he's and so he's uh robbing banks and his family doesn't even know he's no he's a small businessman and he tell his wife hey hun i'm going out of town for a couple days on business

and his bob his business was knocking over banks. And I just love that. And he went to the top of the FBI's most wanted list. Reader's Digest offered a $10,000 reward for his capture. Holy crap. So he had to go on the run. They found out who he was. And he kept robbing banks because he had this crazy idea. He'd get enough money and come back for his wife and baby girl.

And they'd escape to South America and start over. So no spoilers. I won't tell you how it ends. But he does go to prison. But while he's in prison, and this is what really hooked me, while he was in prison, he became a writer. Writing pulp fiction. You can't make this up, Chris. Yeah, yeah.

Pulp fiction stuff. Alfred Hitchcock Magazine, Mike Shane Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen, a penny a word guy behind bars. Do you remember Scholastic Books? Yeah, yeah. He used to write Scholastic Books. and so you'd bring home a book it was it was him and leavenworth writing them or just as uh paroled from leavenworth um so he gets out after like 14 years and goes out to california because he wants to work for um movies and tv um but he's got to stop in ve to California because he wants to work for movies and TV. But he's got to stop in Vegas first because he buried a suitcase full of money in the desert.

Unfortunately, they built like a shopping center over it. So either some construction worker went home with a big American tourster full of money or it's still sitting there under sand and concrete today. But he did. he went straight he made a living writing for tv um until he he passed away i think he was around uh in his early 60s when he passed away uh but a fascinating guy and so i had to write about him too that's like a crazy ass story there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting characters in buffalo you got to come visit yeah well vegas grew so much so fast and still does uh yeah that's crazy you're just like i don't know if that money's there or not yeah his start over money wasn't there uh what was really interesting though is his daughter in the book is just an infant

and I got to meet her. I consider her a friend. She lives a couple hours away in Syracuse, New York. We've met a few times and exchanged emails. That was a nice surprise that came out of writing this book. There you go. And it got a lot of great reviews on, uh, Amazon. People really liked it.

Yeah, it was, uh, it was, um, you know, it took me 30 years to get my first book published. Um, so anything is gravy to me, Chris, you know, one star review. Yeah. It's better than not being published, you know? So, um, yeah, we're not ever having. Yeah. It's better than not being published, you know? So, um, yeah, we're not ever having zero stars. That's right. So yeah, Rook was well received and, um, you know, hoping the best for, for yesteryear.

There you go. And then muscle cars too, in 2015 came out. Uh, tell us a little bit about that one. I described that as a short story collection. I describe it as 17 short stories about men making poor decisions. Semi-autobiographical. It seems like there should be more stories than that. Yeah, I had to stop at some point, right? Best men are known for making crazy decisions. Not the best decisions.

So most of the stories, or I guess all the stories, really are set in buffalo even if i don't mention it if you're from here you'll recognize places like uh volkers bowling alley uh which also appears in yesteryear and forest lawn cemetery which also appears in yesteryear um so if you're not even if i don't mention it they're all they're all buffalo stories and that was the first book. Like I said, that came out after about 30 years of trying. I was really happy to see that one in print.

There you go. Did they demolish the Volkers bowling alley? That's interesting that you ask that question because it is up for sale. The owners don't want to reopen it as a bowling alley. And they will build to suit as the sign that's out front, which is a shame because it was a cool bowling alley and it had cool neon signs out front. And I used to play softball for them, you know, back in the 80s. You know, it was one of my favorite places. There you go.

When they outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants in New York, you know, about 20 years ago, I'd go to Volker's and they they still have ashtrays on the bar. You know, it's like the rules that really apply in Volkers. Yeah. You got to love it, man. Well, that's too bad. You know, some of these old classic places are, you know, they're historic and they're cool.

It used to be a speakeasy in the day. And then that was where my imagined Fran Stryker used to hang out, at least in yesteryear in my novel he did. There you go. Well, everyone can pre-order the book. Anything more you want to pitch on the books we've got coming out? You've got the next one coming out in 2025. I'm glad

you got that planned out. I need to plan my book for 2025. It took me so long to get here. I got to, you know, write as many books as I can with the time I got left. But yeah, after Pearl, I call it my pandemic novel. It has absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic. I call it that because I started right when the lockdown started, and I ended it like two years later to the day, which is fast

for me. But when you have nowhere to go, you know, so I was alone in a big house with a little one eyed dog. So I wrote a novel about a alcoholic detective with a one eyed dog. And he, he wakes up on the floor of his hotel room because he's the house detective at the hotel lafayette which still stands and is in existence today and there's two shots have been fired from his gun and he's been on a five-day bender and doesn't remember firing his gun at all and the police want to talk to him about a missing person so that that's when the fun starts. So that comes out in 2025. There you go. That's also Fridays around here.

Please don't want to talk to me about a missing body. How come it's being put out to 2025? Is that your deal with your publisher? Yeah, we didn't want yesteryear and after Pearl competing with each other. So we spread it out over a two-year period so there you go there you go well it'll be exciting to see the anticipation for that and everyone can get their hands on october 3rd 2023 of the new book coming out yesteryear they can pre-order now wherever fine books are sold and of course amazon has it as well uh give us

your plugs steven before we go out any.coms you want people to go look you up at? Yeah, www.sgewanu.com, E-O-A-N-N-O-U. Or you can go to my publisher, SFWP, which is a lot easier to remember,.com. And there you can preorder the books. There you go. Is the one coming out in 2025 based in Buffalo too? Oh, yeah. Yep.

That's my turf. That's my turf. Roll with it, baby. I mean, there's a lot of history there. Yeah, and you know what? There's not a lot of people kind of exploring Buffalo. There's a wonderful crime writer, Lisa Redman, who used to be a Buffalo cop, and she's retired now. And she writes, she's out of South Buffalo cop and she's retired now and and she writes she's on a South

Buffalo and she writes criminal procedures novels but there's not a lot of people kind of mining this this this turf so I'm claiming it there you go didn't Buffalo Wings get created in Buffalo at the anchor bar yep on Main street dude that's a book right there i'm getting hungry thinking about that book yeah and you guys do uh blue cheese and not ranch that's right that's right yeah i learned that the hard way and somebody yeah somebody was telling me they're like hey you don't you don't eat ranch with wings and i'm like i don't know this is what they always skimmy. And they're like, nah,

man, Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, man. No, geez. Yeah.

It's like a religion. Yeah. I was like, wow. Yeah. I was, I was, I was,

I was being, uh, I was breaking the code of the religion. I was being, I don't know, whatever you call it. I mean, they'll serve it to you,

but they just won't think much of you. If you, they'll just be like, give him the bad, give him the bad chicken from the back. So this has been really fun, Stephen, to have you on. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Oh, thanks for having me.

I had a blast. There you go. And everyone, go to goodreads.com, 4Chest Chris Voss. You can see everything in the blog, of course, and the podcast posts up there as well. Go to youtube.com, 4Chest Chrisisfast, linkedin.com 4chesschrisfast, all the crazy places on the internet we are at, TikTok, etc, etc. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll

see you guys next time. And that should have us out.