The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Church & State -Illusions of Trust with Author Jeffrey S. Stephens

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Caleb is joined by author Jeffrey S. Stephens for a conversation about fiction, current events and his new book. https://jeffreystephens.com/Church and State is brought to you by,  YOU!  Visit us at: https://churchandstate.media where you can support us by donating directly and find links to shop with our affiliates.Get our merch at https://standupnowapparel.com/partner-church-and-state/   Support Church and State today by shopping at www.MyPillow.com using our coupon code: “CHURCHANDSTATE”.Our links are on link tree: https://linktr.ee/churchandstate                    Subscribe to our Locals Community (churchandstate1.locals.com)   Follow us on Rumble (@ChurchandState1776) https://rumble.com/user/ChurchandState1776    X(twitter) (@1churchandstate) https://x.com/1churchandstatefacebook (churchandstate1776) https://www.facebook.com/ChurchandState1776   SubStack (churchandstate.substack.com) https://churchandstate.substack.com/     *Help fund our fight against tyranny: Buy from our affiliates and tell them Church and State sent you. *Tune in on NRBTV Tue-Fri 1:30 PM Pacific! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/prepper-broadcasting-network--3295097/support.Support PBN and become a MEMBER of the PBN FAMILY! Free courses, Members only videos, reviews, and podcast! The Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyJoin the Prepper Broadcasting Network for expert insights on #Survival, #Prepping, #SelfReliance, #OffGridLiving, #Homesteading, #Homestead building, #SelfSufficiency, #Permaculture, #OffGrid solutions, and #SHTF preparedness. With diverse hosts and shows, get practical tips to thrive independently – subscribe now!Newsletter – Welcome PBN FamilyGet Your Free Copy of 50 MUST READ BOOKS TO SURVIVE DOOMSDAYSupport PBN with a Donation 

Spokane Valley could become a sanctuary city of a different kind. Maying Councilman Caleb Collier says that this proposal. I'm proposing that the city of Spokane Valley issue of proclamation stating that our city is a Second Amendment sanctuary. Today on Church and State, modern noir meets legal power with Jeffrey Stevens. Hello Christian patriots and welcome to Church and State where we drive morality and religion over tolerance and apathy. And I'm your host, Caleb Collier, once again, your favorite far-right shock jock. And the show that talks about politics and religion, Jesus Christ is our referee. so it's always nice and clean.

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Monthly donations in particular really help support us. Lastly, if you want to get hold of us, church and state 1776 at Proton.com. With that, let's go. I'm going to tell you, most of you know I'm a prolific reader. I'm reading every single night. And oftentimes I find myself, like every six months, maybe a year, I typically read nonfiction, but sometimes my brain just needs a reset, and I love a good fiction book. And so I'm so happy to bring on Jeffrey Stevens.

He's Amazon bestselling and Pencraft award-winning author of the Jordan Sander thrillers, targets of deception, targets of opportunity, targets of revenge, a lot of great books. We're going to be talking about a new book, which I absolutely love noir. It's just such a great thing, kind of that grittiness, the black and white. And so, Jeffrey, thank you so much for joining us on Church and State. Thank you for having me. My publisher love you already. I aim to please.

If you gave that rundown of the books, that's fantastic. All right, well, excellent. Well, you know, tell us a little bit about this. Well, before we get there, tell us just a little bit about your story, your background, where you grew up, and how you became an author. Okay. So I grew up in the Bronx in New York City. We were poor. I grew up in a tenement.

My parents, my two sisters, and I. This is not a sob story. this is just how it was. I mean, I grew up sleeping on a pull-out sofa until I went off to college. But everyone in the neighborhood was in the same situation, so nobody knew we were poor. You know how that goes? I mean, it's like, you know, it's like nobody was going to Europe for the summer. Nobody had ever been on a plane in the whole neighborhood. And it was great. And then I went off to college. I went to Penn State, happy to have done that. And as it happens in life sometimes, you say, hmm, there's something bigger than the Bronx. And so,

you see these other opportunities and I became educated and I came home from college to cut to the chase and my father said so you're the first person in our entire expended family to go to college what are you going to do and I said I'm going to be a novelist and my father like his entire if an entire face could fall in one shot he's did and he said let me explain somebody to you about novelist son with the exception of maybe 10 a generation they're all failures drunks and they're all broke. So here's what we're going to do. I struggle to put you through college. You find yourself something to do with a profession and then you could write in your own time. What's your second choice? So I said, well, I always thought being a trial lawyer would be fun. And so I went off to law

school. I worked my way through. I've had a wonderful career. I've met great people, terrific people. I've also met a lot of creepy people because it's the law and there are lawyers and there are bad people and whatever. But in the final analysis, I had a good time, and along the way, I continued to write. And so to get to my writing career, about 25 years ago, I was out one day with a couple of different guys, and one guy I didn't know, and this friend said, Bob, do you know that Jeff writes books? And he said, no.

And he said, Jeff, do you know that Bob's a literary agent? And I said, no. And that's how it all started. And now I've got nine published novels, and who would have believed it. So that's the story from the beginning to write up to today. Fantastic. And you're writing books that, you know, as I kind of did some research here, you've got that lawyer background. So you've got characters that are lawyers. You also have police characters as well. And listening to an interview that you were doing, and I love that you said this, but you do an emphasis on the villains because you've got to have a good villain. And if you don't have a good villain in the book, I don't care how great the hero is. It's not something I'm necessarily going to want to read. No, that's a great point. I mean, look, take movies because that's really kind of the art form of our age, right?

Movies or television, what have you. I mean, I wish more people read, but we know everyone watches TV and movies. I love James Bond. I grew up loving James Bond. My first books that came out were spy thrillers, and I could talk to you about those and how they came to pass. But if you look at James Bond, what do we know about James Bond, except with maybe this last movie, which was horrendous? but we know about this. He's going to get the bad guy in the end.

He's going to survive. He's going to get the girl. So truly, as much as we love James Bond and we want to be James Bond, James Bond is boring. I mean, we know what his story is from the first page or the first scene. The villains are memorable.

Dr. No, Goldfinger, and all the rest of them all the way down the line, you know, played by great actors, all of them, the man with the golden gun. I mean, there's so many good ones. And so in order for a thriller to be good, I really believe that the villain has to be compelling, which means they can't be two-dimensional.

So I'll just use an example in one of my books. I wrote a book, a second series about spies with Nick Reagan as the hero, and it's called The Handler. And the guy in it, the villain, is a terrorist mastermind. But the reason he became a terrorist mastermind is not just that he was, from the Middle East or that he was a Muslim, his entire family was wiped out in an attack. And so he had a personal vendetta.

So there's texture to his personality. He's not just this two-dimensional guy who's like the incarnation of evil. There's also a sadness to him because he suffered this loss and that's what led him to do these dastardly deeds. So I think that makes things a lot of fun. And I think when I started,

the very first book that was published, was published that you were so kind to mention was the Jordan Sandor series, which was targets of deception. And that book was based on a gentleman that I knew back when, and we would go out drinking together in New York and my single days, and he was just a great guy. And he worked, of all things, I could say it now because he's no longer with us. He worked for Philip Morris, and he was the brand manager for a cigarette brand. I don't even know if it exists anymore, called Merit Cigarettes. You remember those? Not a cigarette smoke. I do, actually. Yes. Anyway, okay, so he was an international brand manager.

Well, what I found out over the course of being his friend was, number one, he had been a green beret. Number two, he was badly injured in Vietnam. Number three, he took a job with a company that gave him a reason to be all over the world. And number four, guess who he worked for? So I found out about it one day, and I could tell you the story if we have time because it's a funny story. And I finally said to him, you know, you're not just a brand manager, for marijuana cigarettes, are you? And he said, look, I can't tell you a whole lot,

but he told me some things, no state secrets or anything. And so when I wrote this novel, I said, wouldn't it be fun, instead of the novel to start with a guy you know as a spy from the beginning, I said, how about you don't know that he's a spy from the beginning?

And that's how the series came into being. And he helped me, you proofread it for me, I'll never forget he was a riot. He said, if they ever find out about this in Langley, I'm going to be in trouble and all this kind of thing. But anyway, turned into four books and they did well and they were bestsellers and it was fantastic and it was a great one.

I love that approach. I got to tell you, because you're right. Normally you pick up a fiction book and you know that you immediately know that this person works for some secret agency within the U.S. government, might even be off the books or something like that. But to lead the reader to, you know, maybe chapter four or whatever in the book, you realize, oh my gosh, this guy actually is a spy. I did not see that coming. Fantastic take on that one. I also got to tell you. as well on the villain thing. You brought up film. And for a long time, I've said this. Any actor can make you love them. What I look for as an actor that can make me hate them. And it's a risky move as an actor, because some people have been so typecast in this. You just always view them as the villain no matter what film you're in. So hats off to you. I applaud you for putting such an emphasis so much work into the villains. Well, let me go back to that for a second, because

yes, you have to have a villain who hate, but let me give you a villain, and this is what made this such an amazing movie, Silence of the Lambs. Now, this guy is a cannibal. He's a murderous cannibal, and yet, you have empathy for him. When he's in jail, you actually feel sorry for him because the jailer is mooner than he is. Now, that's great moviemaking. That's great writing. That's a great screenplay, right? Because here's a guy who you'd think like, oh my God, I wouldn't want to get anywhere near him, and yet when he escapes at the end, you're almost

happy he did because he's going after the guy who was the jailer, if you remember, that's how the movie ends. And so these things, it's interesting how these things play out. But anyway, so I wrote some of these. I wrote a couple of other books. I wrote a father's son,

Treasure Hunt, called Fool's Errant, and that was very dear to my heart. And And my most recent book, to bring it up to date, I went in another direction. I used my legal background, and I've written a book called Illusions of Trust. And as you say, it really kind of harks back to the noir days. You know, it's like I can almost see Bogart in it if they made a movie. But it's really great because it starts, I shouldn't say it's really great.

I mean, the critics say it's great. It starts with a high-end celebrity divorce and this young lawyer who gets tapped to represent this very beautiful woman who's in the middle of. of this medium maelstrom, but it turns out there's much, much more to this than that. And the book operates on a lot of different levels. And so it's gotten a great reaction, and I've had a lot of fun with it, so I'm writing the sequel. Yeah, and I want to dive into this book, but let's first talk about Noir, because this is such

an interesting, you know, what's the word I'm looking for, just not subject, but area that unfortunately I feel like Hollywood and even a lot of the authors have kind of moved away from but you brought up Bogart you know and I grew up watching Humphrey Bogart movies I loved like the big sleep and and I also watched the

Thin Man series if you remember those they were great oh my God I love it at the end I don't want to give anything away at the end of illusions of trust Pote Interruption there's an illusion in the final scene to the Thin Man series and one of the other characters doesn't know who Nick and Miller Charles is

And that's for people like you who, when they see that, I hope it puts a smile on your face because that's what that's about. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the question I want to ask you on this is, why do you feel that so many authors and Hollywood are not tapping into this? I mean, we did just have Spider-N-War, which I actually watched with Nicholas Cage, and I thought it was great. And you had the opportunity to watch it in either color or black and white. I chose black and white and made it even better to me. But why have they moved away from this? Okay, so this is great because now we get to go into a real two topics here, which is politics and religion, but here we'll go into politics. And I think it's really simple. I think they don't make those movies anymore because the left doesn't like them.

I think that's it. I mean, you know, let's use a couple of phrases that we hear all the time. Toxic masculinity, white supremacy, you know, all these things that suddenly became evil. You know, you could just imagine they're going to ban the movie Casa Blancel. or something because Rick gives up the girl at the end or something. They'll come up with some idea. But the idea is that when I write these books, it gives me the opportunity without preaching, I hope, because I have a couple of friends who help read these books for me and they just smack me and they say, that got too preachy, take that scene out. But through the actions of the characters to make

it clear that there are things that we need to fix in the society or things we need to address, And trust me, folks, if you've ever read my books or if you haven't, and I hope you do, they're not preachy that way. They're fun. They're entertainment. But at least it gets people to think about certain things that the liberal media, the liberal establishment, will not let them go in that direction. I mean, I haven't seen the movie yet, but I understand that they destroyed Supergirl because they tried to make it woke. I mean, come on. She's a superhero. How is she going to be woke? You know, is she going to play in men's sports now? But anyway, But the idea is that I love these things.

I love when I did the two books just before Illusions of Trust, it was another espionage thriller pair. The first was the handler, which I've already mentioned, and then the second one was enemies of the state, which really resonated with a lot of people of my political persuasion, because it talks about what's really going on in the government, what's really wrong there, and so on. And the main character's name is Nick Reagan.

And, of course, I got slapped around for that one. But in any case, that's too bad about it. I happen to like Reagan. But anyway, but it gives you the opportunity then to examine what's happening. And, you know, that's what noir does. Because it gets, you look at the underbelly of people. That's film noir. That's what it's all about, right?

It's looking at the underbelly, the evil side and how people try and cheat other people and how they betray them and so forth. And that's what makes it fascinating to make. as you said it is to you. The Nick and Nora Charles series, by the way, I have to throw another shout out to them because I love the Thin Man series. But what's brilliant about that is

they do it with a comic twist because they're alcoholics to begin with, Nick and Nora, and Nick is always tipsy, and yet he's brilliant, and he's always smarter than the police, and he's always smarter than the bad guys, and so that's what makes it fun.

However, again, it gives you the opportunity to look at all these sides of people, you know, you can't just have polyana out there. There's got to be other things that you're looking at. And so that's my, I'm sorry for the long-ended answer, but I think that's what's going on in Hollywood, which is why they don't have an original thought anymore. They keep coming up with sequels and remakes. I mean, you know everything you need to know about Hollywood when they remade the in-laws,

which was one of the most perfect comedies of all time, and then they remade it with Michael Douglas. I mean, seriously? What was the point? but they did. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I love your explanation there. You know, that woke side trying to ruin it.

And, you know, Noor was like, you know, calling women dames and broads and doll face and things like that. So they probably hated that as well. They'd be marching outside the theater now, right? I mean, they would be protesting. It's just crazy. But anyway, it is what it is. Sure. So let's get into the book here a little bit.

You know, I haven't read it, but I'm really looking forward to. But I watched some interviews and I read through, you know, kind of your bio and things about it. You're bringing in, you know, pharmaceuticals. You're bringing in corruption. There's political agenda there. Tell us a little bit more without, you know, spilling too many secrets. Yeah, no, without giving the plot away, that's right. The thing, it builds lower upon layer.

And I hope for readers, I've done that successfully because, as I say, it begins with this divorce. It turns out that the woman who's very wealthy and very beautiful, and kind of a sort of a demi-celebrity, if you will. She's just famous for the sake of being famous, like, I guess, the Kardashians. I don't know what else they do except be famous. But her father is a congressman. And so that brings that into play. And her husband's mixed up, as you say, in the pharmaceutical industry,

which brings that whole thing into play and the possibilities of corruption within the federal government. And the centerpiece of the story, by the way, is the young lawyer, his name is Russell Palmer, is like in his late 30s and he's an idealist. And let me just say a couple of things about the legal profession. I've been doing it for five decades, and there aren't a lot of idealists left in the legal profession. They really aren't. And I've actually been teased about it,

not only by clients, but by other lawyers about my attitude towards this. I really believe that lawyers owe a certain debt to morality, to religion, if you will. and it's lacking so many times. And I wanted to create a character who really embodied that. And his mentor is a retired police detective by the name of Robbie White, who's 20 or so years older than he is, and he tries to keep Russell on the straight and arrow

because sometimes Russell goes a little too far. But I could tell you, I mean, I won't regale you with all the stories for all these years that I've been practicing law, but I'll just tell you one quick story. When I was a young lawyer, I was still in New York City, in those days and I got this divorce case so I call up the other guy and I say listen here's a situation they don't have that much money and the issues of this and there's two kids involved why don't we do x y and z and there's silence on the other end and he little i will never forget this he was a

court street lawyer from brooklyn he literally said to me settle the case how are we going to make any money that way i swear to you i just i looked at the phone i hung up and i said well i know all i need to know about him, but too often that speaks to the attitude of the legal profession. Not everybody, don't get me wrong, a lot of great lawyers out there. I have lawyer friends who have integrity, but if you're in that position of trust, you owe something to the American public, just like you do if you're in politics. And I'm afraid that it doesn't always work out as we would hope it would. Anyway, I think that's why, just to interrupt real quick, I think that's why maybe there's so many political and lawyer jokes out there with what you just said.

I got a million of them. As Roddy Dangerfield would say, I know a lot of jokes. So, yes, you know, what do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean? A good start. Okay, you know all those. Okay. So in any event, but the book is really about how Russell and Robbie trant untangle this web to protect their client and then to wound up to protect her mother

and these other characters that get involved and you're really not sure until the very end who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and again we get back to that dichotomy of good and evil and not making it too clear I think is part of the fun yeah I would agree now there's certain characters that seem to emerge in pretty much every noir movie or book that I've ever read you know there's always a journalist it seems like

there's always a femme fatale you know, oftentimes a private eye you'll see. But are these characters that emerge in the book as well? Oh, we've got them. We've got the journalist. You're running the money. We've got the journalist who's looking for the story and we'll do anything to get it. We've got Robbie, who's the detective, who's Palmer's mentor.

We have a guy who appears to be very villainous, but then you're not so sure as the book goes on and so on. So, yeah, there are a lot of different roles. And, you know, I hope that that keeps the real. interest and that it gets them thinking about different things. Nothing is as it appears, and isn't that really what life is about, right? I mean, you know, you think, you know, friends betray you and you think, wow, I would expect that from an enemy, and yet it was a friend, so you just never know. That's life.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I really want to encourage the audience to get your book, because I'm really having fun with the interview. I love, I'm probably going to become a fan and just start reading all of your hands. novels, to be quite honest. But I do want to talk about reading with you because you're a published author. And one of the things that really makes me sad as I look around what's going on culturally in our society, and you've already alluded to this is the lack of reading. I love a book. And I got to tell you, I hate the e-readers. I will not use an e-reader. I want the book in my hand. I want to feel

the pages. I want to smell the book. But I'm looking around and I see people that just They're not even necessarily watching film anymore. They're just scrolling on social media. They're watching Instagram clips and TikTok. I wish that society would go back to using their imagination. I read the book and the main character in your book, I'm going to have a perception of how this character looks that could be completely off of how you viewed the main character in your book.

But that's what makes it beautiful. That's such a brilliant observation because that's so true. People ask me, like, who would you like to see play this character in the book? I see, I don't want to say, because the point is for you to read it and imagine who that character is for you in your experience. But you're so right, the reading thing, we all know what the answer is, is that what's become ingrained in us in the last two generations is a very short attention span. I mean, we've gone from, you know, from books to movies to short videos to TikTok.

I mean, that's, you know, that's what's happened. And it's really a shame. And I know young people who read, I do, but I know a lot of them who, who just don't have the patience to sit down with the book. And it really is a shame because they're missing a really great experience. And, you know, sometimes it's tough to do. My sister, this is an interesting thing. My sister and I have completely different political views,

but in terms of spiritual issues, we're pretty much the same. And she recommended a book to me called Life. I don't know if you've heard of this book. It's a Bible study book that you do on your own. It is endlessly long. If you think the Bible is long, this is the Bible on steroids because it's got the Bible and then it explains everything. And so it's not something you're going to sit down and read over a weekend, but I find

myself and when I'm reading it, I say, wow, I can't believe the information I got in 20 pages. It's just amazing, but you have to have the willingness to sit there and read that rather than watching another sitcom. And that's really, really great to do that because it gets your mind going and you think about different things and, you know, some things you accept, some things you question. That's all great. And that's what makes the reading experience so unique as opposed to even movies, which, by the way, I love movies. But we pretty much are manipulated in movies to all feel the same way.

I mean, we all laugh at the same moments. We all cry at the same moments. That's how movies are designed. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I got to tell you a personal story here, Jeffrey. As anybody who loves books, we collect them, right? I can see in the background of you. You've got a lot of books over there.

My wife came into my office recently, and she was looking at my bookshelf, which is just overflowing. I've got way too many books, right? And she goes, you know, you've read most of these books. Can we get rid of some? And I said, get out. You get out of my office right now. Like, how dare you?

You know, these are treasures to me. And I think anybody who loves books views it the same way. It's amazing. You're saying that because my wife and I were older than you are. And so we have been going through this lately. And, you know, we've got grown children. And so we've been, you know, there are places in the house where they're just piles of books. There's no room on bookcases anymore.

And Nancy will say, you know, you read, are you going to read this again? And some are great novels. You know, some of them are like Hemingling, Fitzgerald and Salinger, my favorites, from when I was young. And then there's nonfiction, like I've got all these books about Winston Churchill. I'm not giving them up. I'm just not giving them, but you're not gonna read them again.

I said, it doesn't matter. They're like, you know, they're like pieces of art. It's like just because I've looked at that painting on the wall for the last five years, and we're gonna throw it in the garbage. No, I'm sick of looking at it. But I can't believe you're saying that because we've had the same conversation lately.

I said, find something else that throw out. even if it's me, right? I love that, absolutely. We're kind of getting down to the end where we're up to hit a hard break. We're going to come back, though. But I want to push everybody over to where they can watch your book. Read your book.

So we'll bring that up, Chris. Bring up, I believe it's on Amazon here, but illusions of trust, you can see it. Chris is going to bring it up real quick. Are you nice? Yeah, is there anywhere else that people can grab your novels? Well, listen, I always love them people support their local bookstores. So even if it's not there, they could order it in no time.

But it's on sale now on Amazon. I have to tell the truth it is. And it's also on sale, Kindle. They're having a promotion. As you could see there for $6.99. You and I don't like e-books, but people do. And so, yeah, I mean, it's so easy. You get it from Amazon the next day.

And you have my money-back guarantee. I have a website, jeffrestevens.com. If you don't like it, get in touch with me. I want to know why. Yeah, there you go. I love that. I love that you're very approachable here. And I think Chris is going to look up your website real quick here. Because jeffrestevens.com, can you order all the books through the website as well? You know, I believe you can. I hate to say this. I don't want to go against my website. The easiest place to get them is on Amazon. One neat thing that my marketing guys are doing right now is if you go to my website and sign up to follow my website, you'll get a free copy of my very first book. targets of deception. So that's kind of a nice gig. So you get it for nothing and then you see if you don't, you don't have to buy the next one. Oh, see, there it is. Wow. And then there's

something about it is. She claim your free thriller. God, you guys are really, you guys are technologically advanced. It ain't me. It's, it's Chris over here. He's taking care of all this. Now, that's a genius. He is. Yeah. That's a great deal, though. Is that only through the e-reader that you get the free book? Yes, I believe so. Now, we are giving out, Then we're doing the whole thing. We're going to give out some hardcover copies of illusions of trust as well. But, you know, just check out the website. Excellent.

Okay. So for the audience, jeffrestevens.com, we're winding down here. We're going to do another 15 minutes, though. So if you're enjoying the conversation, and I got a great question I'm going to ask after the break. Are you aware that the Holy Word of God tells us to eat beef? Romans 142 says one person's faith allows them to eat anything, but another whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. Look, it may sound kind of foreign the idea of meat being an investment, but as you go to the grocery store, you can see that everything is increased. This is including beef.

So buy something that's got a 10 to 15 year shelf life and make sure that your family is okay and that when there's a crisis, that you're not in the breadline waiting on the government asking, please, sir, may I have some more? Have you read the ingredients and the meats that are now in the grocery stores these days? There's all sorts of synthetic products in it. We've got MRNA, they've got vaccine technology in it. Not for me. I don't want to eat that garbage. I know that I can trust the people at griddown, chowdown.com because it is one ingredient, and that one ingredient is beef.

The process is so simple. All you do is go down to your basement or your bunker, if you're so lucky, grab the vacuum sealed package, go upstairs to your kitchen, open it up, add a little bit of water, wait a little bit, and boom, it's rehydrated, and you can make anything you want. tacos, lasagna, hamburgers, whatever you'd like with the beef, your family is going to be happy and you're going to be well-fed. I need you all to go to griddownchowdown.com and put in an order for this storable beef. They got lots of different options for you. Buy the $750 one, and you're going

to be set for a year's time. Remember, griddownchowdown.com, promo code church and state. And we're back and thank for staying with us. You're over at church and state. media. We're going to go right back to the author, but real quick, let me plug one of our great affiliates, and I'm thinking coffee. I've had a long night. I got back from Vegas, about two in the morning, and then my wife got called into the emergency room for an emergency, go figure. So not a lot of sleep here, what keeps me going? Coffee. I'm not drinking Brondo here, ladies and gentlemen. This is Hunter's Blend Coffee. They are Patriots. They are Christians. They have some of the best blends out there. I'm currently drinking the gunpowder. That's just, just making it.

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So please hit the donate button for us. With that, let's go back to our guest, Jeffrey Stevens. We've been talking about all of his books, all of his novels. Had a great conversation so far. And Jeffrey, as I bring you back on, I want to ask you a personal question, but I think one that will resonate very well with the audience. They say that every single person has a novel or is capable of writing a book or a novel. Do you believe that? You say two different things.

I think everyone has a novel in them. Not everyone's capable of writing it. It is really the thing about writing a novel, I'm not saying I'm so terrific as they do. Writing a novel is all about rewriting a novel. As Hemingley said, writing a novel is about killing your darlings, because you may write the best scene you ever wrote, but it just doesn't work and you've got to edit it out, and you've got to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. But yes, people come up to me all the time, and they, you know, cocktail party, and they say, Jeff, I've got this story. It's unbelievable. It's about, you know, I think I saw the abominable snowman or whatever it is.

And I say, terrific, go write it. I have enough of my own stories to write. If you think you can do it, right. I'll help you anyway I can. I help a lot of writers. I have a lot of fellow writers who help me. They read my things and everything, but you've got to have the commitment. You've got to have the belief that your story is worth telling. And I'm going to say this to you, folks, anyone is listening to this. It is worth telling. If nobody reads it but your family, think how valuable that is. Really, one of the best books I ever wrote was a book for my future generations of grandchildren to see what my ethics are, what my morality. was and everything. I'm not publishing that for the world. I did that for my family. Or if you

write a story, let's say I have a friend of mine right now, I've known for 50 years, and he's writing his autobiography. Is he famous? No. Is he hugely accomplished? Not even a little bit, no offense. But he's writing the story because he wants his heirs, his family, to know how he grew up, how he came to be, what his service experience was, all that sort of thing. and I think that's a great thing for people to do. It's highly encouraging. Now, I have published a book, and I'm actually working on the second one, but they're just, they're just goofy ones. The first one's called political incontinence.

It's just stupid quotes from politicians. So I'm not trying to, it wasn't hard to write something like this. But I have a book idea in my head, loosely based off of my own life. EMT politician dealing with two corrupt politicians, one that he doesn't know is a corrupt politician. You know, what would the advice from somebody who is an accomplished author? What would be your advice on how to start something like that? Where to go with it, how to edit it. Okay.

I've got great advice for you on this. I really do. And it just doesn't come from me. It comes from a lot of writers and books I've read on writing. Number one, if you really believe in this, don't get too excited in the beginning. take time and write the outline. And I say that for the following reason. Pardon me, people talk about Writers Block.

And I always say to them, if I said to you, I was going to take a car trip and I'm in Washington State where Caleb is, what's the first thing you would ask me? What's your destination? Sure, yeah. I say, okay, New York City. Okay, now I got that.

So we're starting Washington State and we're going to New York City. Now, America's a big place. You could take six million different routes to get there. You could stop in small towns, big towns. You could stop in Las Vegas. You could stop in Chicago. Or you could go south and go through Dallas, whatever.

But number one, know where you're starting. And number two, and people don't understand this. Know the finish of your story before you fill in any of those blanks. It's amazing how important it is. Especially if it's like a surprise ending or something that's really going to be dramatic, that's really going to grab a reader. Get those two pieces in place. and then start to fill in blanks.

You don't have to write the whole story, but fill in enough, I would say, I'm not even saying chapters, sections, so that you have an act one, an act two, and an act three. So maybe you've got the beginning, the end, and you've got six big events in the meantime. Don't start writing before you have that. This is your guarantee against writer's block,

because if you wake up one day and say, I don't know where to go next, you say, yes, I do. I knew there's going to go from here to Chicago. That's where the story is going. That's what I'm going to do. So that's really what you do. And little by little, you start to see it come together,

and it's one of the most rewarding things in life. When we talk to people about it, that's that. And it's just so rewarding to put it all together. Last piece of advice on this subject. I read a book by George V. Higgins. I don't know if people remember him, but he wrote some good books, and one of them became a movie with Robert Mitchum called The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It was a noir movie, as we were discussing earlier.

And he wrote this book, and it's not long, it's 100, 150 pages, whatever it was. But at the last page he said, with everything I've told you about writing, here's the last piece of advice. Writers, write. They don't talk about it. They don't think about it. They write. And even if tomorrow, you throw away the 10 pages you wrote today, it doesn't matter. Today's a new day.

Write another 10 pages. I love that. I have to tell the audience something because Caleb will confirm we've never met until today. So I don't want anyone to think I'm pandering. But I have to tell you this, I save this little tidbit that the sequel that I'm writing to Allusions of Trust is called the Second Man. And one of the main characters is named Caleb. But I want you to know, I didn't name him after you. you because we only met today, but he is a main character, and by the way, he's accused of murder,

just so you know. Oh, man. Let it never be the case. There we go. Well, I'm looking forward to reading that one as well. A follow-up to that, you know, of the same vein, there's a lot of people nowadays that are using artificial intelligence to write books. And it's not just books.

You're seeing pastors writing sermons with it. I personally hate that. if I knew that I had picked up a book that had been written by artificial intelligence, you know, with prompts, it was somebody else's idea, but they used AI to write the whole thing. I wouldn't read it. What are your thoughts on this? Well, I hate it, too, for obvious reasons. It's no longer an art form and it's no longer your book. My computer guy showed me this. He said, we sat here in front of my computer and he had some program. I forget which one it was. It wasn't chat CBT. It was something more sophisticated. And he said something like, write me a scene where Jeff is a guest on Caleb's talk show, and they want to talk about the unfortunate death of Lindsay Graham,

and then something unexpected happens at the end of the scene. And I'm telling you, in five minutes, you have a six-page chapter, and it was totally disheartening to me, totally, because I said, oh, my God. But when you look at it, it's very formulaic. It's not what I'm doing, and that's okay. I will say that as an experiment, my marketing guy took the sequel that I'm working on. I'm in about the 12th rewrite. And so he said, why don't you let me have it for a minute?

And I sent it to him. He ran it through one of these AI programs. And in five minutes, it's a 300-page, you know, type script book, right? In five minutes, it gave me a five-page analysis of what's good about, and it happened, I'm pleased to say they like the book, but what was good about the book, what could be improved and everything. So it didn't write anything for me. It just gave me comments like an editor would give me, and you know what was really depressing? It was absolutely correct. There was one chapter, without boring your audience, but there was one chapter that I knew every time I read through the book, this would slow me down.

and it said, you've got to rewrite chapter 25, it stinks. And I said, oh my God, that's my reaction. I knew that's what I had to do. So anyway, yeah, it's a funny age we live in. My computer guy also did something, which I found, like, this is scary. He said, write me a country Western song in the style of Chris Stapleton. This is exactly what he said, about a Barbary pilot, who finds a sunken boat off the coast of Morocco with gold in it.

And that was the instruction. And in two minutes had this fantastic song. And he said, okay, now play it like Chris Stapleton. And that was it. So I don't know where we're going with this. But man, it's in my new novel. It's part of the book. Oh, okay.

There we go. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of the story that's going on with AI. And I can echo what you're saying. I got tricked not that long ago. I heard this great Christian rock song and I was like, this is awesome and didn't realize until like a few days later. That was AI.

And it upset me. Like it actually diminished how good the song was to me. And so I appreciate the fact that you're not using that, but I do like the fact that you're bringing it into this next book because when you can rip it from the headlines, you know, to where everybody can identify that. Yeah, we are dealing with that. I think it adds a lot to the novel. Yeah, it's really something. I mean, I had a client not too long ago. They needed a contract for something, whatever, whatever.

And they said, what about this? And it was like a three-page contract. It wasn't complicated. I said, this pretty good. Where'd you get this? He said, chat, CBT. I told them what I needed and spit it out. And he said, what do I need you for anymore?

I said, because they're not always right. But then again, neither am I. So it really, it's going to affect. and I know everyone's been talking about this. It's going to affect a large segment of the working population. It really is. What's interesting is the so-called blue-collar laborer is the guy or girl who's not going to be affected. I mean, you can't have chat CBT fix a leaky pipe under your sink, you know, or a frayed wire in your living room.

You need real people to do that. So that's going to be a very, very interesting sort of change in the balance of power in the workforce, I think. Interesting. I would agree until Elon Musk's robots get to the point where they can take care of all those manufacturing jobs. And then I don't know. I don't know where humanity goes from there. That's kind of a scary thought. We're winding down on the interview again.

So what I want to do is I want to showcase your book one more time. I want people to go to your website, jeffreystepens.com. This is where you can check out all the different volumes that our author has written. And Jeffrey, just tell the audience a little bit more about. maybe pitch some more books, how they can contact you, all of those things. Well, for sure, feel free, and really, even if you don't buy a book, feel free to contact me through my website. It's got my email address there and everything, and it's great.

I loved to hear from people. That's the most rewarding thing. And then you'll see, and I just saw the list there, it had four books that began the Jordan Sandor series. Then there was Foolsern, which is the father-son treasure hunt. Then there was Crimes and Passion, which is a sexy murder mystery. and then the Hamble and Enemies Among Us are two other thrillers. And then the new book is Illusions of Trust.

I know I'm going fast, but just to show you that, you know, there's a progression here, and you could pick one out if you like. And if you sign up, you get a free copy of Targets of Deception. And if you want to read the newest one, it's illusions. And, yeah, gosh, I love to. I really, really love to hear from people. I don't know if we have time for a quick story, but a book came out, and it had not been released yet.

It was almost released. It was in type script form. and they sent it to this guy in the Midwest, and he was former military like you are, and he wrote me back, and he said, you're going to have to rewrite this particular scene that was in the first book, Target of Deception. I said, why? He said,

because he had a Walter P.P.K, and you had him fire eight shots, and that's impossible without reloading. And I said, now that's a sophisticated reader. And that's what I love about readers today. Although we're talking about people don't read enough, but I love readers today because the people who do read are so smart and so sophisticated,

you can't put it over on people anymore. You can't write this junk that people used to get away with. You have to be authentic or they will call you out. And I think that's wonderful. And do that, people, even with me. I completely agree. There have been a number of books that I've read, and either from political experience,

my EMT experience, Marine Corps experience. I've been like, that's not right. There's no base over there. You don't do that in EMS. Yeah, so I like that. And I like that you're approachable to the audience. So once again, I've made mistakes and I've been called out.

So yes, yes indeed. Excellent. Yeah, no, it keeps you honest, right? Yeah, it sure does. There you go. All right, so ladies and gentlemen, jeffrestevens.com, go check this out. Get one of his books. I know I'm going to get one of these. Sorry, wife.

I'm going to add another book to the collection. Nothing you can do about it. But it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on, sir. And I look forward to having you on again. Thank you so much. This has been a lot of fun. God bless everybody. I hope good things happen for you.

I hope you all have a great summer. This is a great country. Just because of the stuff going on, don't give up on anything, folks. Please, this is the greatest country in the history of the world, period. Amen. Well, thank you, sir. Once again, for joining us on Church and State. I'm going to go ahead and close this out.

If you'll hold on one more minute post-production to stare, goodbyes. I'd appreciate it. But again, thank you for coming on the show. Thanks. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. I love books. You know this about me. And I love fiction.

I love nonfiction. But I want you all to go to the show. the website and order a book. I'm looking forward to it. I know you will as well. Church and State is brought to you apart by Colonial Life, Spokane Independent Agents, Finders Insurance, and Mark37.com. I'm Caleb Collier. I was born for a storm. Welcome to the fire. This is Caleb Collier with Church and State. Are you tired of your device spying on you? Ladies and gentlemen, we live in 1984. Your phones, your tablets, your smart televisions, they all are spying on you. And this is why I heavily endorse mark 37.com. This is everything you need for your digital privacy. Phones, tablets,

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