This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Amanda Stacey (Snowed In 2025)

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Amanda Stacey is a fantasy writer based in Joplin, Missouri.  She was kind enough to join us during a massive winter storm that left us Snowed In.

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Can't you see there's so much more? Laughs and tales you can't ignore A journey that will leave you floor In the night or in the day Just press Hi everybody, welcome to the podcast go ahead and introduce yourself, please. Hi, I'm Amanda Stacey.

I'm an indie author of South West Preserve. All right. Glad you could join us on the podcast today. So first off, how are the roads down there? They're icy. We got more ice than we got snow. We got a lot of rain yesterday. And then it snowed in the afternoon.

Right. So not going to get anywhere, for sure. Yeah, neither am I. Neither am I. I'm in Kansas City. We had a big, we had all of our ice on Saturday. You probably saw the eclipse of trucks and cars just slipping and sliding all over the streets. I'm lucky I got home on Saturday evening.

And then we got all the snow. yesterday and we currently have a 10 feet of 10 inches of snow where I am and uh and no one and no one has bought my street soon my street's usually one of the last to get bowed but like I got to be safe from panic shopping I was like I don't need bread milk and eggs like I'm good on those things right I did manage to buy a few things before I going into work on Saturday. So Yay. All right. So, yeah, writing.

Let's jump right into it. You do science fiction writing if I'm not. I just, I had seen that you said that you were a big sci-fi guy. I actually, my book is in fantasy. But I feel like there's a lot of crossover between sci-fi and fantasy anyways. So, like, I was a big, I was really big into Star Trek and Star Trek Next Generation. and like the amount of fantasy that's actually in those shows is kind of astounding so yeah yeah that that's um my big franchise is a star trick so and the tos and t and g were my uh intro into it's uh we had all the

VHSs of like the first i think the first and maybe part of the second season of Star Trek next generation so i used to watch the VHS is and we had the box set of the Star Trek movies. Right. But yeah, I because I've always kind of been one of those people, I will read almost anything. Like, I'll give anything

a shot. But when I really decided that I wanted to write, my inspiration kind of came from social media. And at that time, there were a lot of things about the mythological woman Lilith. And, like,

everything that I would see about her on social media I was like it just it kind of grinded my gears because I was like this sounds like a story that like a guy that's been burned by a girl would tell and so I was like I want to rewrite it kind of from a female perspective

instead of the male perspective and then it ended up being instead of an origin story it ended up being kind of a dual timeline story so it was where she came from and where she is now all right yeah yeah that that's one of the big critiques of the bible is it was mostly written by men yeah i i kind of i tend to because i was raised in the church and stuff but now that i'm an adult and like i've done more studying i think that's so important for people especially if you grew up in the church like really do studying that was outside of like

your church and it's like how much did we not get told because maybe like a woman was like the hero of the story or like maybe the guy was worse than was portrayed and it's like I just have questions right yeah yeah that's that's interesting uh yeah um yeah we get all sorts of a difference uh takes on the bible and everything and uh different takes on how christianity should be practiced and all that's um i i grew catholic and was uh lDS for a time and um so uh so yeah i was raised in a like a one of the really classic christ you know first christian church of this town type situation so the real patriarchal evangelical stuff and then i kind of i really as i got older i started kind of hating the message that i had been pushed my whole childhood right

so whenever i got married my husband he was catholic and he was wanting to go back to church and i was like i couldn't care less which one we go to so i was like sure let's try catholic and I was like, this is surprisingly similar, but it's just more, I felt like the Catholic church was more, um, they, they kind of have a set way of doing things and it's very, you know, kind of traditional, I would say. I would, I would agree there and lots of, uh, well, I don't know how big of a fan to our South Park, but there was a rank joke in that show where, uh, The priest in South Park was the only one not molesting his altar boys. I think I remember that. Yeah. One of my favorites.

One thing that really bugs me about Christianity as taught in the church, especially the evangelical take on it. And the Mormons kind of shared this as well. Well, they think Jesus would be okay with what's going on in our country today with the poor being Nourge and everything. And all this talk that, oh, Jesus was a conservative. No, he wasn't. Yeah, it's such a big pet peeve of mine. Like the guns Jesus baby's thing. I live in Kansas City.

I'm in southwest Missouri. I am in like the rest. Yeah, you're just down the street for me. Yes. And my gosh, like, like people really believe that he like picked, you know, certain people to like save us. And I was like, you know, that's blasphemous first of like, no, no man can save you. That's, you know, what they used to teach at least. And it really, I was like, you know, there was no.

thing as the USA like when Jesus was alive right you know he was in the Middle East which so he the chances of him being white were slim to none and like and there was no such thing as Republican and Democrat I was like

he does not support a party in fact he'd be anti this like he'd be anti the whole system because none of it's for helping the needy or the poor or the immigrants Like, it baffles me the people that full-heartedly believed. And my mom, she actually got ousted from her church because she was going to a Christian church.

And after the election, they were praising God before communion for how the election turned out. And she couldn't take it. She stood up. She's like, oh, no, no, no, this is wrong to my brethren. The least you have done unto these. You have done unto me. and she walked out and she got a certified letter in the mail telling her not to come back until she apologized to the guy that was running the pre-communion stuff like she had to

apologize to him and she had to do counseling with one of the like members of the church to sort through any mental issue she was having and just like I'm never going back good for her good for her because yeah yeah that's another thing that uh really uh had me baffles uh any reasonable person who's read the about particularly the parts with jesus would uh say okay yeah this guy uh donnie yeah he's the temple he's the uh money changes in the temple yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah jesus would uh not be in favor of that guy in particular and uh let's not forget all the uh all the uh all his uh sins if you will before even going in office in the first place never mind all the loss he broke uh while in while in office or preparing to go into office

including money laundering with which yeah 34 felony convictions convictions yeah and never mind he fomented a terrorist attack four years ago today on our nation's capital oh yeah it is doing my six today isn't it yes it is it is yeah it's yeah it's It's hard kind of because I was kind of a blue dot, a little blue droplet and like we see a red. And I tell you that week after the election was kind of rough because you had a bunch of people around you slapping each other's backs. And I told my mom, because, you know, she used to be a conservative. She was a conservative Republican my entire life until about six years ago. And then she realized she was getting left behind.

in the party. And I told her, I said, because, you know, in Missouri, the abortion issue was on the ballot, the women's health was, and that got passed. And I said, this tells me that it was never about abortion. Because, no, I did not see one single conservative person boohooing that abortion passed in Missouri. Not one person was like, oh, no, like the babies. No, they were like, yay, Trump.

So I was like, you didn't care. Yeah. Like, it showed it was never about it. It was never about the women's rights. And it's unfortunate because a lot of people are starting to feel left behind. And it's one of the good things, like, I'm almost concerned about because, like, in what I'm, like, in what I read, I wrote a very strong woman and she's never been married, you know, that kind of thing. And I was like, the things I wrote could probably get my book canceled in like a crappy version of American future.

Right. I'd be awful. But, you know, I, oh, well. I wrote it how I wanted it. And I'm just going to be a piece with that. All right. Yeah. Good deal.

I guess that's the way I should approach. this podcast is I've gone after Donnie quite a few times on the podcast already but abortion I live on the Kansas side of the stand line and right after Roe was

taken down abortion was on the ballot here and abortion got it's protected in Kansas yeah It's supposed to be protected in Missouri now, too.

Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, congratulations there, but we'll have to win and see, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's kind of a crazy time to be alive. You know what I mean? We're just seeing so much drastic change happen really quickly. And I'm glad we got that one passed because we had so many bad trigger laws that get, went into a vaccine road back overturned.

Right. And they were trying to do away with the no fault, like some of the Missouri lawmakers were trying to do away with the no fault divorce. I was like, so you can't get divorced if you're pregnant. You want to take abortion away and you want to do away with no fault divorce. It's like trap desperate people forever. Like, I was like, oh my gosh. it felt like a predator's dream and like everybody else's nightmare yeah yeah my parents divorced when

i was 12 and uh who knows how they will have gone have they not divorced you know mine divorced when i was an infant i was a baby so i like my dad was never in the picture but like I know enough about him to know that my life probably would have been worse off if they had been. So. Yeah. Absolutely. My dad's still alive. And my mom passed away a few years ago.

And, yeah, I definitely see it with my dad. And if he had raised me, I probably, if it had done more to raise me, I probably would have been a much worse situation, I think. and uh and uh so yeah having never been married myself i i i can't i can't speak to how that would be how that would have affected me or any potential children uh from that point of view because i've never never been through that versus myself mark mark has a bad luck than anything and So, yeah, we should probably talk about your book a little bit. Yeah. It's easy to talk about a lot of stuff with so much about stuff going on.

Yeah. But my book is called Born Out of Darkness by me, Amanda Stacy. And it is about, like I said, I kind of came across her on TikTok, with the mythological Lilith. And the more I researched her, she was just like the boogie woman of like the beginning of time. And her original story was that she wouldn't be submissive

to Adam and like in bed and stuff and I was like, ugh. Like first off, like for that to be your legacy. I was like, this is just not how I would picture it. And so I kind of reimagined it. And like I said, it's

a dual timeline book. So you get to see her history as well as where she is now. and so for me I wrote the book because I was trying to try to find my purpose in life I was a stay-at-home mom and my identity had become mom and I was actually really falling into depression because of it I was I felt invisible and I just I just didn't know who I was anymore all sense of self was gone and when I finally decided to start writing because it'd always been a passion of mine I really found that I liked it and so

I was able to crank out this book in six months, and then, you know, six months for, like, editing and other stuff like that. But it, it's a, it's about a strong, like, woman, and she's literally been around since before time existed. And she was the first woman in this book. Take it how you will. It's complete fiction. So I went at it from, like, growing up Christian, I understand this is fiction. Like, I'm not trying to say this is how it was. but yeah it's it's kind of the her past kind of explains why she is the way she is now

and her current timeline um she she kind of finds this girl she's you know monster hunting if you're immortal and can do whatever you want why would you monster hunt you know and she finds this girl and they end up kind of being friends and they kind of get stuck together for a while and it is it's kind of a story about her fighting her inner darkness while she's trying to help someone and that person is directly bringing kind of bringing her inner darkness out I guess you could say but um yeah and I'm working on a second one um but after I finished the book I when I one month away from publishing

I found that I was pregnant with another kid and like all my creativity like drained out of me and so I just kind of had to put a pause on writing and once I was kind of out of the sleep deprivation part of babyhood I went back to writing but we're

I'm working on it it takes time but yes it does it really does yeah so I kind of had fun with it and for like you know your mythology and sci-fi people um i i literally threw like everyone in that i wanted to there are vampires there are werewolves lucifer plays a pretty big part i got like galahad the night and merlin the wizard in there and it's kind of a fun like just

just different cameos from mythology because i love that sounds a lot of like, are you in the board gaming at all? Not particular. Okay, so, because this does sound a lot like the apprentice behind my favorite board game, which is smash up, where you take two different decks. One could be vampires, one could be werewolves, one could be the knights at a round table, and just put them together and you see, well, which pairings will do best against which other pairings? That sounds fun. yeah that's kind of sound like this what i did i didn't book form yeah so yeah yeah and book a book form uh version of uh that game yeah so yeah next next you know you'll be writing a cathulu

into the to the thing it is but it's public domain folks so you could do it you could do it if you wanted to yeah yeah and uh you And I guess we could We do have a few more minutes left We could touch Going back to Star Trek Did you ever get into any other series Like DS9 and Voyager

And the newer stuff? I was one of those people I always went back I could have watched the newer stuff But I always went back to my comfort Of like the older ones I don't know why I just loved them so much

Both the original Star Trek And the Star Trek Mentioned generation And they were just like my favorite. I think just because I grew up with them. But it's hard to let go with those. Right. I think, yeah, with Voyager, especially because woman captain. Yeah, I think I've seen it on one of my streaming platforms.

And I just never actually took the plunge to watch it. You should. There's also a great podcast is called the Delta Flyers. and that's two Voyager cast members going back and re-watching all the Voyager and talking about it, yeah. I, a non-related one I really

got into was the Stargate one. That one was, I loved that show because I never actually saw it when it came out. I had seen the Stargate movie. Right. And then like we kind of stumbled across it, scrolling for what to watch next and I found Stargate 1

and that show my mind was like this show's amazing aliens and all kinds of star portals yeah all my family's into like the fantasy

and the science fiction so I'm into everything from like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia to like a Star Trek, Stargate. Firefly was one.

Yes. Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah, Firefly was great. They didn't make more of that. Yeah. Too short-lived, but yeah, great stuff, yes.

It was. All right. Well, I want to thank you for taking some time I have this interesting day, shall we say. and uh well when when the earth decides to just drop a pound you know put a snow on yet doesn't make interesting right all right um thanks for your time and uh look forward to talking soon too

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