Christopher Clay - Renegade Immortality

In this episode, the Big Tex Ordnance team sits down with Christopher Clay, author of "Renegade Immortality." Clay discusses his journey from military service to law enforcement and writing, sharing insights into his creative process and the inspiration behind his characters. He also talks about his experience with hybrid publishing and his love for firearms.

Find the book  here https://www.amazon.com/Renegade-Immortality-Christopher-Clay-ebook/dp/B0CY2YSSBL?ref_=ast_author_dp


00:01:00 - Clay's background in military and law enforcement
00:08:00 - Inspiration for writing "Renegade Immortality"
00:11:00 - Clay's experience with naval special warfare and law enforcement
00:15:00 - Discussion of the book's plot and biblical concepts
00:19:00 - Clay's supernatural encounter and its influence on his writing
00:23:00 - Discussion of characters based on real-life people
00:28:00 - Clay's alter ego "Cody Willis" and its origin
00:32:00 - Clay showcases his Hodge rifle, discussing its features
00:35:00 - Detailed discussion about rifle components and preferences
00:38:00 - Behind-the-scenes look at the publishing process
00:42:00 - Explanation of hybrid publishing model
00:47:00 - Anecdote about Jim Hodge receiving Clay's book
00:51:00 - Clay's approach to independence in writing and publishing
00:54:00 - Clay's social media presence and where to find his book
00:57:00 - Teaser about Clay's upcoming second book
00:58:00 - Mention of Cornerstone Performance training

Find out more about Big Tex Ordnance at bigtexordnance.com

Transcript

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It was like a death sentence. I was, I remember standing there at attention and our command master chief comes up to me and he's like whispering stuff to every individual person and giving them, whatever piece of advice he thinks is important and he gets to me and he looks at me and he's pinning my, what they call the crows my rank on, he's pinning my rank on and he goes, you're a company man. Now, when they say they, they mean you. Slaps me on the shoulders good luck. I was like, Oh, my, I have messed up, like this is not good. Welcome to the Big Tech Sordids podcast. This is season three. Now, I think episode one is season three, depending on when this airs. We'll call it season episode one. Yeah. Season three. I'm Ike. We have Ian here. And today we're joined by Christopher Clay. He's an author amongst other things. And he's here chatting with us for a little bit, made the drive down. And. Yeah. If you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and have, I'm just happy to be here. Christopher Clay, I am a cop at a major agency in central Texas by day and in my spare time. I like to write fiction. I was in the military for several years before that. Been a cop for eight years, actually this month on the 23rd of this month over half my life. We'll have been spent in government service. So wow. Yeah. At 20 years. And I turned 39. So it's pretty crazy to think about. If I'd stayed in, I would have been retired this year. It's pretty wild. I don't feel that old, but. Yeah, I was in the military for 12 years in the Navy. First half of that was, uh, trying to get into mostly naval special warfare. And then the last half of it was spent in the law enforcement context. That was like a mastered arms, the Navy's version of military police. So get tired of pretending to be a cop. So that was real P in the army. Oh, very nice. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Y'all's program is a lot more robust than the Navy's for sure. But it was fun. It provided a really good, foundation for me moving on. And some of the people that I'll talk about later, like meeting those people really Was instrumental in getting me to where I am now. So it was good for me. I had fun with it. Nice. So what made you transition out of the Navy into law enforcement? What drove that? Oh man a whole bunch of different things. So I had been in I'd put on E six. I went to a full time training job where I was training firearms and tactics, what the Navy would call an anti terrorism training supervisor. And I was like, Oh yeah, this is it. This is going to catapult my career and I realized going from E5 to E6 in the Navy, it was like a death sentence. I was, I remember standing there at attention and our command master chief comes up to me and he's like whispering stuff to every individual person. And given him, whatever piece of advice he thinks is important. And he gets to me and he looks at me and he's pinning my, what they call the crows my rank on, he's pinning my rank on. And he goes, you're a company man. Now, when they say they, they mean you slaps me on the shoulders. Good luck. I was like, Oh my, I have messed up like this is not good. And sure enough, like right after that. And every branch is different. Like the army, that transitionary phase is at E five. But for us, it's E six moving into E seven. And when you're in E seven in the Navy, you're like a made man. You can't do anything wrong. But you also sell your soul and become. Less than human, in my opinion. So yeah, all those like Navy chiefs not all of them. There was several that I came across that were good, but I didn't want to do that. And once I realized that was on my horizon, I was like, I got to make a change. Yeah. And. This is going to sound conceited, but it's really not. And there's several military people out there right now thinking the exact same thing. Like I realized I'm better than this place and I can do better. And there are other places doing way more high speed things than I'll ever get a chance to do here. So I got out and applied at a major agency and was, but truly by the grace of God picked up immediately, had no problems getting in and truthfully, I just like at my core, the way God made me, I just wanted to smash bad guys. So that's why I just wanted to go smash bad guys. Do it for real. Nice. So coming out, did you go straight to the agency without here in Texas? Yep. Sure. Did what brought you to Texas? You're not from here originally, are you? I'm not, I was born in I was born in Tennessee outside of Nashville and Franklin. Okay. Funny story about that in George Jones, but moved and we were like, when I was about 10 to Southwest Missouri, a little tiny town and joined the Navy out of there. Asked me not to use his name, but my partner that I've been partnering up with for about 12 or 13 years who I'll just call is actual or renegade actual. You could, it's in the book. It's in the book. I met him in Florida and he worked for the military, not in the military, he's a DoD civilian. And about my time, about when my time was about to be up for that enlistment and that duty station, we're gonna have to break up the band. And and he's dude, why don't we just leave? I was like, okay. I'll leave where though? I just went to this job fair and this agency is saying they'll pay us this much. I'll let, yeah. I bet you believe your army recruiter too. And so I started looking at it and I sat on it for months and. It, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was like I got to do something because I'm not going to stay here and started really paying attention to what they were doing and like looking into it. And I was like, holy crap. Like they this agency pays a lot and they got a lot of movement, like laterally with specialty units and let's just roll the dice. Like I got nothing to lose. I had no family at the time, like just take a leap of faith. Yeah, that worked out pretty good. What got you into writing? What made you sit down and try, start writing that book? That's a good question. I always tell people when they ask me this, I was like, I'm not really a writer. I'm a storyteller. And I'm You're like, Oh yeah, that's just something that people say since I was a little kid, I was always telling stories about and then Roy Rogers, cause I watched old Westerns and stuff. And I'm like, and then Roy Rogers and Zorro like they teamed up and like telling my mom all this stuff and whatnot. So I've always had an interest in stories. And then writing just became. The mode in which I tell the story after I became a full time real cop. And because I was always writing really lengthy reports about, he said, she said this because of that. And they drilled it into us at the time. Listen, these details matter, like you want to put real bad dudes away. These details matter on why you did the thing. That you did and why this person did that and like very descriptive. And I took that to heart. And so I started, uh, just writing really good police reports and I read a lot growing up, but I one day I was on a, I was on a, um, like a vacation trip with my wife and my daughter at the time, we went down to Galveston and she's Hey, we were with a group of people and we're like, Hey, we're going to go to this place called moody gardens. I don't know, maybe you'll like it. And for those that haven't been down there it's an attraction. That's really cool. It's really worth seeing. It's really neat. Yeah. And they've got these, a couple of glass pyramids, like huge, like they're quite large. One of them's an aquarium and the other one's a fully contained. Rainforest ecosystem. And then some other stuff there and like riverboat rides and whatnot, and like water park or whatever. But so we go into the the rainforest one. And I was like, Oh yeah, this is cool. And I'm not a gamer, but I play video games. And so walking around, you see all the different levels of the rainforest and they've got wildlife like flying over you and interacting with you and all that. And at the bottom they have some like fake ancient ruins and a little like waterfall and big deep pool of water And it really reminded me of Tomb Raider or Uncharted. Yeah, and I like those games super popular for good reason and I was like, yeah, Those are cool but I wish they leaned a little bit more heavy on the like gunfighting side. Yeah. They're like 40 percent gunfighting or shooting or, and then 60 percent the other stuff, archeology and whatnot. So I saw that. And on the way home, I got to thinking, man, I wish someone made a movie like that. Can I make a movie? How do I get a movie made? I was like, I can't get a movie. I can't get a movie made on a police salary. Yeah. I was like, I can't do that because I'm a very visual person. Go Napoleon dynamite. Yeah. Yeah. Just make it yourself. OG trailer park boys. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like a, three or four hour ride back and my wife's listening to some like murder podcast, I don't know why they love that stuff, but women do. And in any case I'm just like inside my own head thinking about. This developing story and I was like, I bet I could write something though. I could write a book. And I had no idea how much, like I was literally towing the edge and I was about to step off and what a cliff. Yeah. So that's where the idea came from. I wanted Tomb Raider, but more tactical. Yeah. So since we're on the topic of the book the name of it's Renegade Immortality. Correct. When did it come out? March 26th. I was going to say, yeah, I remember pre ordering it a while ago. Yeah. And then it finally showed up, I think in April 1st. And I showed up right as soon as Amazon had it there. Like as soon as the release dates. There were some hiccups like in the first week or so, but. I started writing in 2019. That was my next question. I was like, how long did it actually take from conception to, I start on, I got back from that trip and I called up one of my really close friends who I'll get into that a second. So I called up one of my really close friends who was in college at the time. And I knew he was writing a lot and I was like, Hey man, I've got this idea. What do you think? And before I could even finish, he's I'm in, let's do it. So we started storyboarding for weeks of what we wanted and how we wanted to frame the world. And then we just started writing in like May or April of 2019. And so we were both writing at the time. And he had to tail off because of obligations with school, he's trying to finish up his degree. And we had talked about it so much I knew what direction I wanted to take it. And so just went from there and it took me, I gave myself a year. I was like, I'm going to these big authors can do it in a year. I can do it in a year. Not knowing what I was getting myself into and so it took me to, I finished like the story was done, more like in six months in my head, but getting it on paper ended up taking another year and a half. So I finished it in two years and then sat on it and didn't know what to do. And typically what happens is. You submit it to all these people and then they just tell you yes, no, or you never hear anything back at all, which is what happened a couple of times. And yeah, it took me a little while, but it all worked out, it'll end up happening. Ian has his copy here. We'll show it to the camera real quick here. Actually, you're closer if you want to. Oh, wait, we got to hold it back. I'm not going to focus. We can put a link. We'll put a link. We'll put a link. We have the technology. Yeah, we do. Yeah. It's 2024. Yeah. It was really, I was telling you earlier my, Amanda's a super big fan. Book person, she's on, I don't know, book 30 for the year or some, something outrageous like that already. And I've been trying to read more and I just picked it up after you read it. And I was like, all right I'll get a copy. And it was really like, I didn't want to put it down. It was like, all right, I got to the action stuff. I'm like, oh, this is like right up my alley. I'm reading it. And I was like, I don't want to like burn through it cause I'm enjoying it. So I'm like, I got to set it down and read, a couple of chapters a night and when we were getting winded down for the evening, but it was good if you're a gear person, if you're like a gun dude, it's right. It's very technically proficient. Like you can tell somebody with experience writing the scenes and stuff, it's not just like the typical. book gunfight, he had a rifle and he shot the guy, but yeah, they do more than just like gunfighting. You've got your gear and your comms and all the logistical support that, um, there's, you can tell there's some thought that went into it. I appreciate that experience. I appreciate that. I really did try To be authentic with all of that. And it's funny you should see my notes my notes from when I first started and like the things that I wanted to get out of this. And one of those was very detailed, descriptions of that stuff to be very specific because it always bothered me as a reader and then he picked up his rifle and what kind of rifles is dude carrying, and then he, he holstered his pistol. What was he got? Is he got a Glock or is he got a, a high point was this guy got, and so I wanted to be very specific and detailed as much as I could be because details to me matter. And then I discovered like about a year into writing, like I didn't know who Jack Carr was or anything. And I discovered. He just, I think releases his second book and he was super popular, like almost immediately. I was like if he's successful let me just see what he's doing. So I picked up a couple of his copies and it was funny. I have not a love hate relationship, but just a, I like what he's doing, but I'm also envious because he's one step ahead of me of certain things. So like little quirks for characters. Like the main character in my novel, Cody Willis drinks coffee with honey and that's just. What I do, I drink coffee with honey. I don't remember where I picked it up, but like black coffee with a spoonful of honey. So I'm like, Oh, this will just be a thing that my character has that'll make him unique. I'm reading through Jack Carr and I'm like, hang on a second here. Like coffee with honey. Like I thought that was me. Yeah. And so he beats me to the punch on several things and then I have to like completely change gears on little stuff like that. Cause I'm like. No one's going to believe me. No, really guys, for real. I promise I didn't. Yeah. And so little things like that have, I've just popped up along the way and I've learned a lot with the whole process, but Yeah, like going back to what you're saying about like the details and stuff like, you know Some sometimes in these this genre of book, you'll have like it's just name dropping everywhere You know with brands and stuff you do it enough so that way you can visualize it because like you talk about a hodge rifle or a pistol like a pistol or whatever it is, like it helps the reader that's familiar with that stuff, visualize it, you have barrel links in there, so it's like the rifle. Is it a 16 what are we, is it a bolt action? What are we dealing with here? You've got like the Hodge 12, five or whatever. So it helps you visualize that. But it's not excessive to where it's like a big billboard inside a book, or yeah it's just enough to give you the details so you can visualize what's going on in the scene. But it's not like a, it doesn't feel like you're being sold in the book, that's good. I did have to scale it back and there's multiple editing phases that occur when publishing a book and several of them, it sees several different editors and a couple of it. Can you use like car or just SUV based on the model that they. I forget what it's called. It'll come to me in a minute, but instead of like land cruiser or Toyota and I'm like I mean I can, but sometimes it just helps to know like this guy's land rovers in there. Don't you? I do. Yeah. So that's, that isn't it like the the main as a, sorry, what's the name of the co I don't want to get too much into the details of the bad guys, isn't the main bad guy driving a land cruiser, most of them. Yeah. Cause it fits like that whole, like it is, it brings a lot more realism than just like an SUV. It's like laying for it or land Rover, like that's okay, yeah. I can see him driving that trying to draw a picture. Like literally using a thousand words, to draw a picture in your mind. And sometimes I think those details like a specific model of a car and describing Oh yeah, that's a luxury SUV that is also capable of off road stuff. You get a sense of, okay, these guys got money. And while that might not be the most appropriate vehicle for whatever they're using, strictly off road to do an archeological dig, but you get they're flashy and they, there's more stuff that's subconscious with that than just on the surface. Oh yeah, cool. SUV. It's like a movie, like they're going to have like that, you're going to see it in the movie. So it's you're just describing with words, what you'd see with your eyes, in a motion picture. And most of the time, like if there's any void, Yeah. In the words, the readers will fill that with their own imagination. And so whether, if you're familiar with it or not, at least somewhere, or at least at some point you've got a, like a stepping off point for Hodge. What is that? And you look at it. Oh, okay. That's what he's using. I got it now. Or Oh, whatever Land Rover. If you say SUV, you're going to just put in whatever SCU, like probably my Honda CRV that my wife drives. That's what the bad guys are driving. Yeah. Low budget, bad guys. I feel like ballers on a budget. Chill. They have that one that I figure what model it is, but like when they're I don't want to get too much into the story. So speaking of the story, can you give us a, like a general overview of what it covers without giving away too much? What's the general synopsis of the simplest way I can say it, and I'll go into detail, but when people ask me in a few words or less, because what's the publisher also asked me yeah, in a few words or less, it's okay, it's Indiana Jones meets Tom Clancy Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. And so. It's the story kind of starts off introducing you to some of the main protagonists that work for a private military company. And you can tell these are serious guys they're very well experienced and then some things happen. One of the guys has a sister, a younger sister who is a young up and coming archeologist who is trying to make a name for herself. And some of the topics with in the archeological world that people will not really touch because it. Is too close to like biblical things specifically like giants and Nephilim. She's trying to get some funding for and talking about her theories. In any case she's approached by a shady character who works for a company called North spear who offers, Hey, listen, I've got a spot. I want you to lead this team on this dig specif specifically about Regarding Nephilim artifacts. So she jumps at the chance and her brother, who's, cautious and, been around the block a little bit is yeah, I don't know, this sounds too good to be true. She ends up winding finds herself in a little bit of trouble and reaches out to her brother calamity ensues. Yeah. So cover some biblical concepts that I've been, that are important to me in some biblical history. And I looked at why, like, why are only two of the Indiana Jones movies so successful and the other two just eh and one of the, one of the things those two have in common is it's relationship with biblical. The cup of Christ and the ark of the covenant. And I don't know if you've seen in the other ones but they were not as. Entertaining for some reason. I don't know why. I guess they just weren't as popular. But yeah, I remember as a kid watching the one where like he drinks, he's Oh, this is a cup fit for a King. Yeah. He drinks it. And he's and the other guy's ah, he chose poorly like that, that the arc of the covenant one, two, and the lid comes off and all the Nazis get Oh yeah. They melted like wax. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while since I've re watched those. We started watching those with the kids the other day. Now we had to fast forward this in parts because they're young. I was like, Oh man, I forgot about that. Yeah. I was watching it not too long ago. The players of the lost Ark. Man, there's a scene they're getting in a shootout and I'm like, yeah, whatever. Dr. Jones, he ain't no gunfighter. But he like sends one right through this dude's skull. And it's pretty graphic for, early 80s. Whoa. I don't remember that. They didn't have that on TBS last time. It was nice, but yeah. So some of those principles were important to me. I have my faith is important to me and had been since I was young. And so when I was trying to get into Naval special warfare early on, I had a supernatural encounter. And that was that was very important to show how, show kind of some of the stuff and weave it into the story. And it's my way to, do my job as a Christian, and proclaim the gospel or whatever. But I'm also not, I'm not one of those people like, Hey man, you Everyone's got free will. You can choose to do whatever you want. I, that's between you and the one who made you at the end of the day. So I know that I've done my own thing for a long time, but just thought it was cool, whatever. So I'm not gonna, I'm not one of those guys that's gonna, you need to believe what I believe. Not by any means. You should believe you should do your own looking into it, come up with your own determination. So that's how that goes. So some of the characters in the book are based on real life people. Can you talk about any about that? Or yes, they, so they're inspired by by real life people. The I got in trouble with that cause I put up a thing and I was like, yeah, this kind of, and you can't. The people at the publisher was like, you can't say that. And I was like they were inspired. That's okay. There you go. That's what you could say. There's the word. Yeah. That's what you can say. And I was like, okay, yeah, they're inspired by people. So most of the protagonists and again, this sounds like I'm being conceited or whatever, but Cody Willis is based on me. That's why he's, you'll never see him as like a superhero. Like he can do anything type of like he's fraught with all kinds of error, right? And he's conflicted with a lot of things and he's troubled and he's not some like Mindless killer dude who can take on anybody. He's just a regular guy who gets put in some weird situations. So like his personality and his choices are based on my choices. And I came up with that. Cody Willis was my alter ego for years when I was overseas. In 2008, after my last time at buds, I was in three different buds classes in the course of three years. And my last time there, when I had my supernatural encounter and, typically when you're at the bottom of the bottom, excuse me, typically when you're at the bottom of the bottom and God meets you there directly after that, he will seclude you from stuff. And that's exactly what happened to me. I went out to sea and was out to sea on a forward deployed ship for two years. I missed all of 08 and 09. I came back and everybody had iPhones. I was like, what's an iPhone? I still have this Nokia. That is for real. That is 100 percent what happened. I was like, an app? What the hell is an app? Like Snake? Yeah. I was like, what? Anyways, I was out there. And my job at the time, I was an operations specialist at OS, which is a fancy way of saying I watched radars did plotting, tracking navigation, and some communication from ship to ship. And so if you've ever seen some nerdy shit, Oh, a hundred percent, I was the worst at it too. I was the worst OS and Naval history. It's, you let us get torpedoed. You're like yeah. Yeah. So the I did have access to secret material and, what they call, it's essentially like, GPS, like Google maps, but now they have it at the individual level with a tack but for ships and stuff. So it was really cool and it was, and it had messenger real life battleship. Yes. And it had like messenger. So you get into a talk group and you can just like instant message your counterpart on this other ship, hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. So I had access to all that stuff. And and you get trained like, what you can and can't say about all that or whatever. Hey, it's not a big deal. In any case, I was in the Philippines and due to the type of ship that I was on at the time, we got to go places that most regular warships did not. I was I was on the USNS Richard Ebert, TAKE4, and it was a supply ship, mostly with civilians and only 11 military, so 120 civilians they were all like retired military. And so we got to go into like cool places like the old Navy base in Subic Bay that was shut down in the nineties. I got to see all that. So in any case we were there at Subic Bay. They get a bunch of really cool bars and they had this one outdoor bar right by the beach and we're hanging out and having some drinks with my buddies and this old, like German couple, mid fifties, early sixties, maybe we're starting talking to, so Oh, it's three of us. And I'm like, Oh, you're American. And look around and It's a bunch of Filipinos, and like some white guys and a black guy, they're like yeah, I can't blend in very well. And of course they hear our accents as well. So they're like, Oh, what do you do? Are you on the Naval ship? And like instantly my radar is yes, and they started asking me, really, what ship is it? How long is it? How fast does that thing go? And they started asking all the right questions. And even, a couple of tiger beers in, I'm like, Oh, these are totally spies. These spies are trying to hit us up. And, I think that I'm even like half drunk trying to like do counter surveillance on them. And I'm like Hey, Jimmy. Yeah. These guys are so cool. Let's buy him a drink. Let's get a picture with them. And so I stand behind them and I've got the man and the woman on each side of me, or I'm like in the middle. And I'm like, looking in the camera going, these are spies. They're spies. We're NCIS in the morning. And so they started asking like super detailed questions about all that. And after that, I realized I needed to have some form of a cover story. Cause if they get this if in my drunken stupor while I'm overseas or whatever, say something like, Oh yeah, I run, I'm in charge or I run these to all the radar, these operations stuff is I'm going to get kidnapped. So I need something to, as a cover. So I'm the cook, exactly. And so my bunkmate was a supply guy and I started telling people, I've always liked the name Cody my name, clay it's you don't hear that very often. In some places you do like typically like country, Western, like Southern especially in mid eighties, like when I was born but I never really liked that name. And I always thought Cody was a cool name. And there was a guy that was mentoring me. He was actually a Blackwater pilot that was attached to our ship and his last name was Willis. He was an old man, dirty old cowboy. And so like he, he took a lichen to me. Is that where the pilot's going to say, is that our pilot guy? That's a different pilot. Okay. And I was like, Cody will, it's Oh, that's cool. I can make that work. And so like for years when we would go out, that was my alter ego, Cody Willis and I worked in supply. I just moved big boxes around on the bottom of the ship. I don't even get to see daylight for weeks at a time. So if that ever happened again, they would be okay, this guy knows nothing. So that was where that persona came from. So did the German couple kidnap you? And no, luckily I was not bounding gag in the back of a, like a jingle truck or something like that, hidden in the Hills of the Philippines. Thank goodness. When I had almost the, like the same thing happened, I was in, in Qatar from 13 to 14 and we were just like walking around the, uh, the market one day and it was me and two other buddies and white dudes were all like six foot high and tights, like all hella pale, like me and this, these two people come up to us and they're like, Oh, are you Americans? And we're like Canadian. It just ran away. What do we do? We're like nope. Yeah. We're Canadians. We're clearly American in the military, in your country. And we're just like everyone panic, run away. There's not much defense there. Yeah, no. We're like, we stick out so bad. Yeah. Yeah. The other the other protagonists. So renegade actual Val Grayson he's the guy that after that. I still stayed overseas. They put me back out in Guam. I had been in and out of Guam for, two years. And then I went, changed jobs to master at arms, went back out to Guam for two more years. So I was gone a total of four years came back to the States in 2012 and then went to Florida. And that's where I met actual. And had a whole bunch of training opportunities that were afforded to us. Just, he is a real people person and he's a networker and I am not like that. I'm not but he's never met a and it's a funny story. Cause it talks about his dad. He's yeah, my dad could sell ice to an Eskimo. He never met a stranger and like he's the same way. And it works out very well. He's a big picture guy. I'm a detail guy. We took off immediately, he had a small tactical team that that I got on and then quickly rose up to his two IC which is why in the book it's all coming together. It's all coming together, putting pieces together over here, which is why you see that Cody is a renegade zero two. And not the guy in charge is cause I'm reflecting these relationships that occur in real life. And my coauthor he's Frank Pierce zero three, we're going to get zero three is, is, based on him and our relationship. He's another guy that I met in Florida. And then Tom Laurie is one of my oldest friends that I grew up with, met in sixth grade. And we went to a real small high school. He ended up joining the army. And deployed a couple of times or whatever, and we're still friends to this day. I, we just went and did a run and gun like two weeks ago. And we've been friends, I don't even know, like almost 30 years now. Cause we met right when I moved there. So it's 10 or 11. Yeah, almost 30 years. So I've been friends. Yeah. So he's yeah he read the book, right for Kim. I was like, ah, thanks for not killing me off, man. I really appreciate it. I know. I didn't look like a sissy either. I'm like, dude, do you think I'm really going to do that to you? Like we've been friends 30 years. You look like a wimp in front of everybody. A little, no. Chapter two. Already dead. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, those those characters are based on. Inspired. That's correct. Yeah. Thank you. Inspired by people that I know. And my older sister the character of Tessa, the archeologist is based on her as far as her personality, like my sister is a very spitfire. Yeah. She gets that from my mom, she's very independent and strong which I think it's cool. Like growing up with all the eighties heroines, Ripley from aliens and Sarah Connor, like I'm down with that. But yeah. So you brought something for show and tell the day I see I did. I don't leave home without it anymore. Tell us about what you got there. So this is my Hodge mod two. This is, I've wanted one of these guns. A long time, like right after I got to Texas and like most people Going around online, like primary, secondary Hodge starts to come into the picture about 2017, 2018. I like, I'm not going to lie. I like nice things. I didn't have nice things growing up and now I'm a real sucker for it. So when like the words like lightweight, materials and. Something better than the average deal in space age. This, I get real interested in my ears perk up and as exclusive as it was and how many small batches I just, I couldn't get one. And so right after the book released Made some, strategic connections and was able to put one together. And this is when I did it, I was like, all right, if I'm going to do it, I'm not just going to throw any Hodge 12, five together. I'm going to do, I'm going to do it just like he's got it in the book. Cause at the time I didn't have one. Oh, okay. And I was just writing about. What you want. Yeah. Yeah. I had a much, if I had a hodge, this is what it would look like. And now like after the book was already done in release, I was able to put one together. So I was able to like, really think about how I wanted it. So this is it. When you're reading if you end up reading renegade immortality, this is the one that Cody's using. So, surefire mini two suppressor pick 15 mod light. 18350 T2 on unity riser and a point. Three X magnifier. Oh, that's pretty much it. A little, some little tan accents. Yeah. Sprinkled throughout. Almost black upper receiver, a little flash of gray. I dig that. Is that an Edger Sherman sling? That is a sheriff of Baghdad sling. Oh, they're B sling. I've been through every sling on the market and this is my favorite one. Yeah. Not many people know about John McPhee, the sheriff of Baghdad. Yeah. He's not as I guess popular as the word maybe five or six years ago, it seemed like he was pretty in it, but it's like, it seems I haven't really heard that name in a while. Yeah. He, He's a no nonsense dude. It was like, Hey, this is the information and he's not going to make it flashy just to. Just for the flashy. Yeah, exactly. And but his stuff is very effective. I went to a class of his back in 2018. And the dude is top notch. He's killed more people in smallpox probably. He's got a lot of experience. And he'll tell you that he's not shy about that, a good dude. So I really liked that sling. They're inexpensive. They're pretty cool. So I dig that. I don't know about y'all. I don't know if this SSA X is like really worth the money, but. I sure enough like it. That's my favorite trigger that they make. A while back I got on the super dynamic enhanced train and that's what I found that tried a bunch of different guys. They once found that one and I just stuck with that through everything. New stuff's getting LaRue's though. If I'm doing a new one, it's got a little, that's what was in this one. I first got it just because it's like a hundred bucks and it's, yeah, it's, I don't know. I really liked the LaRue, but I think most, I have more guns with STEs than without. So I tried, I tried just the SSA E I had a, not a precision gun, but like a kind of a gamer ish gun. I wanted something that I could just nice and accurate. And I could not for the life of me prep that first stage like enough to not have, I'd be lining up my sites, prep it, bam. Yeah. I had to go back to just like the regular SSA, whatever. That second stage in the E models for me. I don't know. My big dumb fingers. I got one of through a buddy, through Nick It was the super dynamic, like three gun. Oh yeah. Oh dude. That thing was scary. Yeah. That's no for me. You're like, Oh, I meant to do that once. Yeah. So I had a, so when I was in Florida gun gallery there in Jacksonville they are, it's a little like shop. It doesn't look like anything. It looks like they sell math out of there. But inside it is God. It is awesome. They've got every little thing that you would ever need. They had at the time you could only get them in a gun and I guess somebody didn't want it, but it was a super V tech. So it was the super dynamic. No. I'm sorry. It was the super three gun, but with a pound or a half pound added up front. So it's single stage, but it's supposed to be like, yeah, Yeah. It's duty rated. Yeah. Yeah. I think they just changed the label. I don't think they changed anything in the spring. Yeah, I was behind it like a lead sled and had everything and hand on the one side of the pistol grip and trying to be real precise about with one gun that I had and do that thing. Let off a five round burst. Yeah. They're just like, there's like bump firing in the sled. I was like, Holy this, yeah, this trigger's gone. I'm taking it out. So how was it working through, so I guess you finished the book in a couple of years, but then it took a couple of years to release. How was the process with the publishers and shopping it around and working through edits and all that? Can you give us a little bit behind the scenes? Look at that. Yeah. I was really fortunate. I'm a full time firearm, full time firearms trainer at my agency. So I see a bunch of cadets and some of the guys were like joking around, we do our introductions and guys are always messing with each other in the office and they're like, yeah, tell them about your book. Yeah. You're going to be a famous author. If it's just like pages on a document at that point. One of the cadets later, who's a good dude and a friend of mine now. Pulls me aside and he's Hey I understand they were messing with you and all that, but I've got a, my dad is in the publishing world and he's got connections. And so obviously nothing's ever for certain in that, but. He can get you in front of people. And I was like, Oh yeah, cool. Yeah. That's not really appropriate relationship between officer and cadet. And I was like, but I'll hit you up when you graduate. And I forgot about it because we see cadets come through and they could just be saying that to try and win our favor or whatever. So we have to stay pretty neutral, but no kidding. The week that weekend, the day he graduated, he knew somebody that knew me and text me the day he graduated and was like, Hey I got your number from so and so my dad's in town for graduation. He said, he's willing to meet with you this weekend. You want to meet with him? And I was like, yeah. So I met with him and talked to him about everything. And he's I've got some contacts. Let me reach out to see if anybody would hear you out. He provided me some contacts with Brown books up in Dallas. They're hybrid publisher and I'll explain what that means, but he, I sent them the manuscript and they got it and they do, they like, The way that this process works, I thought it was just some person that reads it and tells you yes or no and I, most often a very high rejection rate, like 97%. Oh, wow. Like it's real high. But they do it and they do what's called a a read through. I think a read through a read back. I forget. It's been a couple of years now, but excuse me. They will It is very detailed and he goes through nearly scene by scene of what occurs in the book. It took 45 minutes to get through this scene by scene. Of what occurs and some pros and cons, and then has a whole list of, yeah, these people in the office, like they would have bought it. These people, it's not their thing. They would not have bought it. And yeah, it was a very structured thing that I was not expecting. And my intent was, okay, I'm just going to take this feedback because this is, This is really good feedback for me. I'm going to take it, work on the manuscript, make it better, and then, proceed with like version two or whatever, just make it a little bit better every time. And at the end of it all, he was like what do you think? And his name is Tom. And I was like Tom I don't know, like what happens from here. And he's I've got an interest in publishing it. And I dropped the phone. I was like, he could hear the shoveling. Yeah. And I was like, pick the phone back up. He's hello, you okay? And I was like, yeah, sorry. I thought you said you wanted to publish it. And he goes, yeah, I did. I was like, okay. Okay. Hang on. I got to put you on mute. And I put him on mute. I'm like, Oh my goodness. And I was like, so excited. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. And so I, I decided to, cause my plan originally was to self publish, but like every man who's ever wanted to do anything crazy do I have what it takes? to make it big, right? Do I have what it takes to be a cop? Do I have what it takes to be this or do that? And I just had to have that question answered. So I wanted to, I wanted someone to either tell me yes or no. And I, in the back of my head, I'm thinking it's going to be a, no, thanks for trying to play again. Yeah. But he said that. And I was just shocked. No one was more surprised than me because I decided to do the hybrid publishing. So what that means is I front most of the cost but I also get more of the return. Yeah. So like a traditional publishing model, I essentially sell it to you, the publisher, and you take all the risk on whether it's going to sell. Print the book, make the book, edit the book. You're paying editors. You're taking all that risk. You'll give me some money like, okay, here's 5, 000 and just know that you're not going to make any money back. We're not going to give you a single penny until we make our 5, 000 back in sales. And then you'll get whatever we agree upon on royalties, whatever percentage with hybrid publishing. It works. I share the risk and take most of it. And so I get more of a return depending on where you buy it from. And we do it together and more or less you're paying them. To publish your book that is an attractive way to do it. And it's also insanely expensive. I was going to say, it sounds very pricey. It's like some overtime was in the works. So this is where I think that I don't, people look at me weird when I say this, I don't think, cause I never wrote anything before this. I think that some of this was like inspired spiritually by, by the Lord. Because I also had some money that my grandmother had left me and it was like, you can't touch this. And whatever reasons, and I never had access to it. Like really, it was for crazy stuff, but it was almost like within 1, 500, the exact amount it would cost. Nice. And so I had some of that available. I prayed about a lot, talked to my wife and she's I dunno, it seems like it's meant to be like, let's just roll the dice. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's take a leap of faith with it. I was like, okay, let's do it. So yeah actually once that occurred, there are at least three or four different editing phases. Some of which I was involved, one of which I was deeply involved in at the end of them. I had to sign off on I've read this book seven times. I know everything that happens. Not only did I write it, but I've had to go through there. And first editing phase developmental edits, dev edits they chose to hire an outside for this specifically because of this type of genre and who they thought they want to, they want a good match because if somebody's Hey, I don't like guns at all. And I think you should take all this stuff out of here. It's that's right. And so they try to find a really good match for that. And they put me up with a freelance editor. Her name is Stacey Smetkovsky or something like that editsbystacey. com is who she does. So if you're ever writing anything and you need a good editor, all that she is top notch. She's really good. So she's I love this. I love, she's I love this whole book. This thing is so awesome. I'm like, this is so much fun. It's my favorite genre. And so I worked with her and, That the developmental letters Hey, these story elements, like these big chunks of the story just need to be altered a little bit. Or this guy's relationship doesn't match up at this point with their relationship at that point in the book. And there just needs to be some more linkage to how they got from this point to the other. And so what ended up happening is at the end of it, I realized like, The whole last third of the book needed to go more or less. And it's all my choice, not their choice. These are like, Hey, listen, we are experienced in this. You can do whatever you want. These are some of the these are some of the suggestions and it was like minor stuff like this that occurs here. Doesn't meet up with this, that occurs there. You can remedy that, but I suggest you remedy that and not in a weird way. It's just Hey, like I'm just probably won't do very well, but it's up to you. You don't have to, it's not going to sell exactly. So I had to, I came to the realization, I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to have to cut. All of this, some of this stuff, because what I was trying to do is I was trying to cram too much stuff into the one book when I could make room for it in later projects if I desired. So that worked out pretty nice. Yeah. Like sometimes you'll see books that are like seven or 800 pages long, and it's man, that's a, that's an undertaking to go through. Oh yeah. Yeah. So what are you about two 80, 300? Yeah, I think so. What's your guess? I'm going to say 287. We'll see about that. Do you know? I don't. I finished it in May. I can tell you how many words. Yeah. I'll start counting. 317. 317. Oh, wow. So I was within. Yeah. You were close. Within 30. Yeah. I was really close. That's a good guess. Not bad. You read a lot too, don't you, Ike? A little bit. Yeah. Yeah, I remember I saw you at the at the Cornerstone class and we were talking about books and you're like, yeah, I've been trying to do this thing. I was like, you read how many good night. That's a lot. I think I'm working on like number 40 or 39 for the year. Nice. I try, that's pretty, I shoot for one a week or like on average, like Yeah, some, I'll be like reading multiple at a time and they'll be sure I don't finish it. I'm on three for the year, yeah. And one of them is running in front of me. That's 33 percent of the books you do work good. It's solid number. Are the, do you split it up between fiction and nonfiction or is it just like whatever comes across? It's probably about 90 percent nonfiction. Yeah. Yeah. I don't read very much fiction at all. Yeah. I try and work some in there. Just like mainly classics like older stuff but then this is, this one obviously is relatively new, a couple of months old. Y'all want to hear a crazy story about this? So me with my affinity for Hodge, because it's a good gun I have never even met Jim and every time I've been at the big, annual conference for Texas law enforcement, TTPOA, either I haven't been there when he's there or vice versa. And so he was He was there this past year and I wasn't there. And some of the guys, I think it was at y'all's booth. And so some of the guys that, and it had just come out, like it'd been out like two or three weeks. And some of the guys in the office, they saw him and they're sending me pictures like, Oh, look who we're hanging out with, and they're like, at their arm around Jim. I was like, you son of a, you're dead. Exactly. They come back with this story and I talked to Jim about it later. On the phone, they come back with this story and they're like, dude he's got a copy of your book. I was like, really? Like he bought one? No. What? And they're like, yeah, we start telling him, Hey, this, we've got this guy, he wrote this book. He's got your guns in it. And Jim was looking at him, he's what's the name of it? I was like, Renegade Immortality. That thought pulls out his phone, starts flipping through it. And he's in his like group chat with his family or what a family chat pulls up. He's like this one shows him a picture. And they're like, yeah, that, that one. And Jim's you just solved like several week long, like month long, like family, like mystery. He's dude, one of these just showed up on my doorstep. And. I, apparently he shares something with Amazon and they got like a family Amazon thing. And so he was like asking the people and kids and all that. It was like, Hey, so and so your books here. I didn't order a book. Asked another family. Hey, your books here. I got it at the house. I didn't order a book. So I started asking around the office. I'm like, all right guys, when y'all was messing with me because like guys on our SWAT team and yeah, I started reaching out to people who would know him or get in touch with him, I was like, Hey man, did you send him a book? No. Do that. Super weird. Anyways, I started building my Hodge like a couple of weeks later. I needed a question answered from Jim. So I reach out the same SWAT guy, I'm like, Hey man, can you just provide an introduction via text? Yeah, sure. I text him. It's 10 in the morning for like on a Friday or something, I don't hear anything back. And I'm like, ah, this guy's not, it's fine. He's busy. I get it. He's got other stuff to do than talk to some person. He doesn't even know. And at 5 PM, he calls me and he's talk to me. Like we're old friends. And I feel like I'm like a kid, like sitting on Santa's lap, talking to Jim Hodge on the phone. And he's he tells me this whole story. And. He swears up and down. He's listen, I forget stuff all the time. I remember I checked the history. I went through my order history. I went through my family members, order history. I did not buy that book. One showed up on my doorstep and I was like Jesus sent it to you, bro. I don't know what to tell you. Jesus wanted you to read renegade immortality. And so we just had it was a really cool moment for me. Just really odd. Maybe when y'all gave it to him or something, I don't know, it wasn't me, but yeah, I thought it was cool. I'm convinced Jesus sent it to him. So yeah, we were talking about guns and gear and this. And another thing, another reason why I really liked like Jim and the way he does stuff is he. He can pull up shot, but he's talked about this in other podcasts. So I think y'all's podcast, the way that he does, the things that he does is for independence sake, like he doesn't owe anybody anything. And I really, I thought that was really cool. Cause that's the same way I did the book. I don't. To do the hybrid publishing model like that. Some people will go into debt, take out loans and, they owe people money. I could not. Do anything with it. And I don't know anybody at dime. I was like, that's pretty cool. I like that independence piece. That's he owns all the dyes and all that stuff. And that's pretty slick. Yeah, we were talking about all that and I don't know, I thought it was really neat, but yeah. So it's always funny when. Jim calls Justin for her stuff. Yeah. He's Jim's calling and just has to like, run away and do stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah. My wife was totally making fun of me too. Like for her. I was like, babe, it's Jim Hodge. He's calling me. I gotta go. Yeah. She's who? Just watch the kids. I'll be right back. I still haven't met him. So I'll meet him one of these days. But I told him, I was like, yeah, whenever you're. Around my area or I'm around yours I'll shoot you the text or whatever. And I'll sign your copy and take you out to lunch. And according to him, apparently this is the first book that's ever been featured to his knowledge with any of his guns. Oh, nice. Yeah. Me. Which is pretty, he's I've been in characters based on him have been in books, apparently. So he says which is pretty cool. But yeah, he's no, nobody's ever had my guns. So yeah. Score. Yeah. Yeah. For me. Nice. So what's next on the author side? Do you have any, are you working on any other books currently or? Yeah, I am. For those that have read it or if you do read it, you'll see that it ends in a certain way, the kind of that. So I'm working on some other things. I would like to make a, I would like to make a series. I'm trying to have being a cop and in the military for, 20 years, I do not. And I'm like, I'm almost 40, so I don't have a big social media presence, but I'm trying to grow that for the authorship. So I'm trying to be more present in. It takes me forever to make a freaking real, because I don't know how to navigate. Like I was telling my wife the other day, I'd made one of like me shooting guns. That's like the author stick there for me. It's not only do I write about it, I actually do some of it, but I was like, babe, did you know that you could do this sort of make a little clip here and then do this part slow mo. That's so cool. It's yeah, everyone does that. You're so old. Yeah. I was like, your daughter could probably do that for you. No, put her on the payroll then. Yeah. I've Googled how to use Instagram before. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. How to like change. Yeah. I don't even get on Instagram anymore. Like I had to figure out how to make a real, make a real, like I was like where's the button for it? I know Facebook. I'm old. Okay. Yeah. And I don't. Everyone keeps telling me, Oh, you need to go to tick tock. I refuse. I can't do it. I just can't do it. I deleted it. Couldn't. Yeah. Especially with everything that's on there today, the state of the nation state of the world, really. In fact speaking of Instagram, where, what is your Instagram handle and where can people find you? Yep. At Christopher underscore clay underscore author. Yeah. I'm also on I'm also on Facebook for old people Christopher clay, LinkedIn. I don't have LinkedIn. I am on, is it Twitter or X now? What is it called? I think it's X. I haven't had it as X. I deleted Twitter, like 2016. Yeah, I'm on it. Excuse me. I have an account. I'm not on it. Yeah. A bunch of bots. I think we have an account. I believe we do. I made one and it's a place. It's I think Aaron Cowan made a good analogy or like an explanation of what Twitter is. He said, it's like a lot of people in a room all talking and then the ones with the most followers have like a louder voice and it's just like a bunch of chatter, just like everybody talking all trying to talk over each other all at the same time. It's a journey. Yeah. Yeah. I, I. I, I couldn't, the format like just did not make sense to me. I'm like, I don't get this. I'm likewise, it's for me, it's not user friendly and so I don't mess with it, but I'm most active on Instagram and then Facebook but I have a website, it's Spartan right now. There's not a whole lot on it. Actually, I need to, that reminds me, I need to hit up the lady that that does it for the publishers to change some stuff, but that's Christopher clay, author. com. If you need to email me, it's clay at Christopher clay, author. com for anything. So if anyone wants to reach out and talk about Nef or. Whatever. Yeah, we'll have some links there in the description for these, for this video and all the podcasts and stuff to the, where can people get your book? They can get it by direct from the publisher on my website from there or really anywhere books are sold online. There's some options to have them in store, but I don't think it's I don't know We'll see how that goes in the future, but it's still so early Amazon books a million Barnes Noble calm Walmart. com pretty much anywhere you can get it. If you just Google renegade immortality, Christopher clay, Amazon will probably pop up first. Some of the others by that, yeah, I can buy like almost all my books on Amazon. That's where I got that's where everyone does their shop. That's generally where I point them the most. Yeah. That's where I've seen the most. Most of the traffic and so leave a review that really helps that really helps with the authorship and kind of statistics and algorithms and all of that. There are people that are all into that, but word of mouth is how it's been spread so far. So haven't had anyone say yet. And I ask everyone, please just be completely honest in your review. I'm not asking for, slaps on the butt or whatever, but be honest with it. But I haven't had anyone yet say Oh yeah, it totally sucked. You didn't know what you're talking about. There's a safety on this Glock and, or, none of that is, there are some errors that always make it through in pretty much any book. Yeah. And there was one, I was flipping through it the other day and about something and it just. It irritates me. It's like with the T2, like a two MOA dot. The publishers and the editors don't know that. So it was like, yeah, the two MOA dots. Oh, two thing in plural. Yeah, correct. And so I didn't even catch that. There was one some sometimes that just Yeah. Little things like that pop out to me. I'm like, Oh man, I missed it. I ruined and so there's little stuff in there every now and again, but correct that in the second edition. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Otherwise we're not reading it now. I would expect nothing less. So but yeah, I'm working on the second one right now. That one's, this one is the intro to the world, of course, and learning a lot. I bet, like it's, I imagine it's pretty overwhelming. Yeah. This next one's going to be pretty, I'm not stretching it, but I'm going to go out on a limb. I'm going to be a little bit more risky with the stuff that I'm writing about. So is the process shorter for the second one now that you already have a relationship with a publisher? I think it will be smoother because I know what to expect. And there were several times it was like, I was waiting for them to like, Hey, come on. Are y'all done yet? Like, all right, listen, junior. It just takes a little time. We'll reach out to you. And so I know when to be. Impatient and I'm a very impatient person by nature. So like I know where to be. I know I need to be more patient in this phase because that's important for these things. So we'll see. Yeah, I'm actually working on a, I've got a, I've got a plan. I'm going to throw a big text in the next one. Oh, hell yeah. If you're cool with that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Got it all planned out. Actually totally nerd out over that. I needed a, I needed this thing to happen. And. And then I talked to you at that and my cousin's course, Eric's course. Oh, he's your cousin. Yeah. Kinda. Oh, so I had no idea. So yes. Cousin from her other brother. Speaking of, so just saying, we're going to shameless plug here. Cornerstone performance. Eric. It's the guy that runs that teammate of yours. Yep. Solid class. I took it. Was it April? Cool. May there was some time this year. It's already warm. I'd say, yeah, it was, but great class. Definitely. Yeah. You want to learn to shoot real good and stuff. Definitely go see him. He's on Instagram cornerstone dot Eric or Eric dot cornerstone. One of those two. Yeah. Just go to my page and I'll tag him in all sorts of stuff. You want to learn to shoot, you want to learn to shoot real good. That's the guy you need to go see. Yeah. So he We worked together there in the office. We're not related by blood, but we look so much alike. And our hair is like similar. People would often. Talk to him, go do something out on the range or whatever, come back, he would be gone or in the bathroom, see me and pick up the conversation. Josh and Justin. Josh and Justin. Justin and I'm like, I don't know who you are. I just talked to you 30 minutes ago. I was like, dude. And so he's a very witty and sharp Yeah, sharp guy. And so he would, he picked up on it immediately and he was like, oh, that's my cousin . And so we just got this thing going now that's great. Where yeah, he's my cousin. And we've got this whole thing planned out. Yeah. It's pretty cool. But yeah, he anyways, yeah, we were, we met there and whatnot. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming on. This is a, thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah. We appreciate you coming on. It was cool to sit down and get the behind the scenes, look at all this and yeah, same. I've been a customer, From a big text for years about, I bought this suppressor from y'all. Thanks to black lives matter with all that overtime in 2020 yeah, 36 hours of overtime in three days. And yeah, I should have bought two, but yeah, so any case yeah, I've been buying stuff from y'all. I'm probably going to buy stuff later today, but it's really cool to see the behind the scenes of what goes on here. So it. Really special. Thanks. Go pick up a book, copy of the book. We'll have links there in the description. I enjoyed it. I've, I read it here a couple of months ago and I think Ian's, you said you're working your way through it. I finished it. I would definitely. Oh, you did? Yes. Yeah. I would definitely recommend it. Yeah. Ian, if you can part us with some words of wisdom, like subscribe, leave a comment, drop a link. Follow Mr. Clay, follow us, change your socks, and call your grandma. Take a knee, drink water. Take a knee, drink water. Be good. Thanks guys. Believe in the Lord. Yes.