The Big Tex Ordnance Podcast
This is the official Big Tex Ordnance Podcast where we talk about gear, training, and all things related to firearms and firearm accessories. The crew at Big Tex Ordnance is uniquely positioned to be able to interact with individuals from all corners of the firearms industry. Join us!
The Big Tex Ordnance Podcast
Aaron Cowan - Sage Dynamics - Bridging Military, Law Enforcement, and Firearms Instruction
Join us for an enlightening session with Aaron Cowan from Sage Dynamics, as he shares his remarkable transition from the military to law enforcement, and finally to the world of firearms instruction. methods, enhancing self-defense shooting techniques for his students.
Discover the challenges and triumphs Aaron faces in revolutionizing advanced firearms training. Our conversation sheds light on the Red Dot Sight (RDS) instructor class he teaches, detailing the initial resistance from law enforcement students and the gradual acceptance as technology evolves. Aaron shares invaluable insights into the potential liabilities associated with inconsistent red dot adoption across departments and the impact of advancing optics on training methods. We emphasize the significance of foundational skills over complex maneuvers, backed by real-world feedback on the reliability of various firearm optics.
In a shift to personal reflection, Aaron shares his journey into the world of writing, detailing his experiences with self-publishing and his passion for the Rushing Winter book series. Learn about the creative process behind his writing, the challenges of the publishing industry, and the thematic intricacies that make his series unique.
Find out more about Big Tex Ordnance at bigtexordnance.com
I would explain him and they're like we're getting these for our SWAT team and I'm like that's not who needs it. I mean, yeah, swat guy is cool, but SWAT guy, your handgun is a secondary weapon. Unless you're the shield dude, the guys who get in gunfights are on patrol. They're the ones that need this technology first.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the BTO podcast. I'm your host, Ike, we have co -host Tara and then, making his debut, Beto Debut appearance first time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:First time on the BTO Podcast, so welcome aboard. Thanks for having me. He's doing ATF compliance now here at the warehouse side of things at the Big Tech Store, Moving on up, moving on up, and a couple podcast appearances too, probably in his future, but anyways, I hope so. Our guest today is Aaron Cowan, sage Dynamics. So I think you've been on a couple of times, so I think people kind of already know kind of your background and whatnot. But just for those that might be tuned in for the first time, if you want to just give us a little quick background on who Aaron is and how, you got here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I run Sage Dynamics. I'm the lead instructor. I've got a couple of adjuncts that work with me, but it's pretty much, if you're taking a Sage Dynamics class, it's me. My background military, I was in the Army infantry, went in in 99, pre-911. Got out in 06. And then private security for a little while, contracting into law enforcement.
Speaker 1:Got out of law enforcement, started Sage Dynamics as kind of like a weekend job when I was still on the job and my goal was like, hey, I'll do my 20 years as a cop and then retire and have something established to kind of move into. But then I just kind of got fed up with the job Not the actual work. I got fed up with the politics of it and I decided I'm like, well, you know, I'm making pretty decent money on the side teaching, so I wonder if I could just do this full time. And it's actually a funny conversation. Me and Will Petty were on the phone. I'm walking into Kroger and I'm telling him like, hey, man, I think I'm going to quit, I think I'm going to resign and teach full time. And I remember Will Will was still full time at the time and he's like do you think you can make a?
Speaker 2:living.
Speaker 1:This dude's got like Porsches and fast cars.
Speaker 1:Not long after me he went full-time teaching and just blew up. He's got like three. Like his business sense is way better than mine because I'm doing okay but he's doing real well. A whole other level. But it's just interesting to see like how quickly. Because it was scary, yeah, I bet.
Speaker 1:But what I did is I looked at the calendar and I'm like let me schedule a bunch of classes six months from now and if they fill, I have to quit, Because I can't take like a bunch of vacation time to teach all these classes. I can't, and they weren't like on my days off or anything like that. So about two months after that they were all full and I'm like I got four months to quit. So when that four months, when it came, instead of quitting cause I didn't have enough time to retire, oh, but I and and working in the, I worked for the federal government at the time, so I had all this sick leave. I'm just going to use that. Yeah, so I started using my sick leave and the policy where I worked was if it was more than three days in a row, you had to have a doctor's note. Oh, yeah, Unless you were self-medicating, like if you had a cold, yeah, so I just had a four and a half month cold. I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that it was hilarious because I had, but the only bad part about it is I had to call in every day oh, yeah, yeah, I'm not making it, I can't make it, I can't make it yeah, still feeling, and some people are like, man, this messed up. I'm like, no, it's not, that's my time. Yeah Right, I paid for it. Yeah, I had a bunch of vacation time too, and a half months, and I called in one morning and I'm like, hey, I'm not going to make it in today. I'm not feeling well.
Speaker 2:Yeah Day 165.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my supervisor he's like you don't sound sick. And I'm like you don't sound like a doctor. Mark me down. So he's like no, seriously, there's people who work here now who have no idea who you are. Right, uh, your desk is empty. Like no, you're not here. Um, what are you doing? And I was like can you tell me how much sick sick time I have left? And he's like you got 24 hours of sick leave left or something like that. And I'm like you can keep it, I'll be in.
Speaker 1:There are guys it's funny because I still I still keep in touch with a couple guys I worked with there. There are guys that work there now that talk shit about me and I they didn't work there when I did I'm like how do who? Well, they find out you used to work here. And then they run their mouths and I'm like are they what? Like, who does that? What kind of? That's a weird hobby. Um, I guess what, what? Like I started doing very I hate the term tactical because I feel like it's just overused. So I was I was really focused on realism based training.
Speaker 1:So I did a lot of focus on UTM, force, on force and taking the square range and trying to make it more realistic. And that's very difficult. But what really helped me was I got in on the concept of, because I'm kind of cerebral when it comes to, like, the focus in a self-finished shooting. I want to focus on internal as much as external. So I wanted to know about, like stress. What does stress do to people? What you know? How does the sympathetic nervous system work? How does it affect it? How can we replicate on the range? How can we safely induce stress in a training environment? And you really can't, you know, on a square range, because the more realistic you try to get, the unsafer the class becomes. So you can have people do pushups, not the same thing. Shot timer is probably the best thing you got, as long as you don't ever use it. But I put a lot of focus on three-dimensional shooting, tactical anatomy, knowing where to put the bullets, why and how long it takes to incapacitate someone, and that kind of got people's attention to start with.
Speaker 1:But then I started looking at red dots on handguns and I realized like as soon as I saw it I was like well, it already makes sense, I use them on my rifles and I understand why they're advantageous on a rifle and people were still kind of like I don't know. You know, it seems like a fad or it's going to break or it's fragile. And in the early days they were. You had the RMR, you had Delta Point and you had the Dr Optic. And really that means you just had the RMR, because Delta Point, great optic, but the battery connections were trash and it was fragile. So anyway, I'm looking at the red dot. I'm like, well, that's how the body physiologically wants to fight, it wants to threaten on what is threatening it or wants to focus on what is threatening it. So that made a lot of sense to me. So I was like, well, I'm jumping feet first in this handgun red dot thing and that's pretty much what I'm known for.
Speaker 1:And now, if you go back to the early days, there's a bunch of OG guys that came through my force on force classes and when I was still being able, when I was still able to do those as often, um, I was teaching a lot of citizen response to active shooter and single officer response to active shooter. Um, and that was like one of the one of the last big things I did in law enforcement was was co-authoring a single officer program. That had great success. It got adopted a lot of other places. But now I want to say I'm on autopilot but I'm not trying to come up with. Okay, what can I do now? Like I'm just going to try to keep improving my core classes, because I'm constantly trying to improve my curriculum, but I don't think there's going to be any significant change in technology that's coming um, where I'm going to have to be like let me see if I can adjust something or if I can tweak something, if I can teach something. I see some guys teaching like magnified optic, like, uh, lpvo classes, and I'm like, not, it's not my lane, you know. Like I can teach it, but I'm not going to do a whole class about that. Right, if you show up with a rifle class and you have one, I will talk to you one-on-one about your particulars. Um, I'm not going to do a whole class on it. And there's some stuff that I just don't want to teach. You know, I'm I'm a qual I'm, I'm a twice qualified police sniper instructor Not going to teach it.
Speaker 1:I love shooting long range, very therapeutic. It drives me insane to have to teach it. It is so boring. Yeah, because it's just math. It's so much math and I've been running for math my whole life. Yeah, same. So you know, I worked for an agency and I got voluntold into being. I was on the SWAT team and I got voluntold into being a sniper and then they sent me to these sniper schools and then sniper instructor schools and I was like I got to get off this, I can't. This is so terribly boring, not your thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and as a police sniper you're pretty much just the camera guy. You're like let me look closer at what's happening, and you just collect Intel the whole time. You're not going to get to shoot anybody. I mean, you do, I didn't, uh, but some people every now and then do, um, but you're mainly just like yeah, he's still got the knife, he's still in the bathroom. I can still kind of see him. I hope I don't have to shoot him because it's through a window, through another window, down a hallway into a bathroom.
Speaker 1:So that part was enough, the real world aspect of it. It was enough for me to be like I don't want anything to do with this, because I tried to be a sniper when I was in the Army. And they're like and I'm like, well, why not? They're like well, we have these Bradleys and they have that 25 millimeter gun on top. We, they have that 25 millimeter gun on top. We don't need you out there playing around in the mud with a 308. Like, we can just shoot them with this. And that thing's got FLIR and it's got tow missiles, so we don't really need snipers here. I'm like but they're in the arms room, just give me one. And yeah, they wouldn't send me. Even when there was a local sniper course taken, they were like we're not, we're not sending you. And then, like 9-11 happened and they rolled into like dmr programs and at first there was like, uh, like every unit kind of stood up their own dmr program and I wouldn't even send me to that. They're like yeah, we don't do that here, we're gonna go with war at bradley's. And then, um, iraq happened and they went to war with bradley's and they were like this is a terrible idea, everyone is light infantry now, um, but so that's the long version. I guess where we brought me now.
Speaker 1:Now I'm teaching. You know, I teach about two classes a month, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's about 10 days on the road. Yeah, um, and I'm not slowing down anytime soon. I'll probably do it for about another 10 years and I've always been a firm believer in the day that I wake up where I hate what I have to do, that day I need to stop doing it. Yeah, because this is not an industry where you get to phone in your job. No, at least you shouldn't. Right, some people have and do. But when I show up on the range like I'm at work and I need to even though I've taught this class, like I've been teaching the class I just taught over your range, I've taught.
Speaker 1:I've been teaching that class for 10 years now. Wow, yeah, like I started to. And I started teaching that class in the dark ages. Yeah, I was going to say 10 years ago. Was it kind of it snuck up on me? Yeah, I'm like I'm getting old. So I've been teaching that class for 10 years. I've had I think the last time I checked it the number's higher now because I haven't checked in a while, but I'd had 1500 students through it and conservative estimate, that's 150,000 officers underneath that hundred or 1500 students. So, figure, an average, about 100 officers per instructor and I've updated the curriculum and kept track with things and things like that. But it's like, even though now there's not going to be much change, like I'll introduce some new statistics but the curriculum is pretty sound. But even though I know it, I can't just show up and just put it on autopilot. So what kind of changes?
Speaker 2:has there been over the 10 years in your curriculum?
Speaker 1:So this was RDS instructor, right? Yeah, the RDS instructor class, but it applies just basically the concept of shooting with a red dot on a handgun. The big thing that changed was the technology. The technology got better. So when I started teaching the class, most of the students did not want to be there. Their department sent them. So they're Pouty face the whole time. Face the whole time Wins lunch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like I was a cop. I know what's going on, so I would explain him and they're like we're getting these for our SWAT team and I'm like that's not who needs it. I mean, yeah, swat guy is cool, but SWAT guy, your handgun is a secondary weapon, unless you're the shield dude. Uh, if you're using that, the guys who get in gunfights are on patrol. They're the ones that need this technology first. They're the ones that don't shoot well, because y'all don't do anything to make them shoot better. It's it's it's a functional problem.
Speaker 1:So, with the curriculum adjustment, what I've added is one the technology has improved, but also the mentality has improved. So I used to have to like, get into I actually got into an almost argument with one of the lead instructors for DHS ice, cause D DHS ice brought me in in 2017 to do all of their instructors and the whole room was mostly their, their ERO and their SWAT type guys or sort. I think they call it SRT or sort, I can't remember and then ERO is like a SWAT light. Uh, and then I had HSI instructors or not instructors, um, investigators.
Speaker 1:Uh and that was their whole firearms training unit there at Fort Benning. And those guys were all special forces, former special forces, former SWAT or current SWAT with DHS ice. So their mentality was this is for the cool kids. And I'm like nah bro, this is for everybody, right. And this is something that we see currently, with departments either mandating or authorizing.
Speaker 1:And my belief is, I can't think of any other piece of technology in law enforcement where it's Like when I was a cop, like I had to carry a taser, had to carry a baton I did. I was supposed to carry OC, I didn't. So I get written up for that pretty regularly. Gun handcuffs, this is your stuff. But with red dots and handguns, some departments have been like well, if you want to. And I'm like why is that allowed? Because I think about it from a liability standpoint. It doesn't make any sense, because if I'm a defense attorney, if you have a red dot but these other officers don't, I can paint that a certain way. You can paint it pretty much any way you want. Yeah, if everybody else has a red dot and you chose not to use one, I could paint that a different kind of way. So it just opens you up to liability. So as the technology improved, certain things become. I didn't have to talk as much about different types of slide applications like milling versus factory OEM versus like Duik rear sight mount plates.
Speaker 1:The optics got better. Because it used to be like, hey, which optics should we get? I'd be like the RMR, like just get RMRs because there's nothing else. And now it's you got RMR, rmr HD, rcr. You've got the MPS, you've got the Acro P2, you've got HoloSuns 509, you've got the 508, you've got the. You've got the EPS, you've got the EPS. All of those are good optics. So then it just comes down to what flag do you want to fly? Yeah, they all have pros and cons or whatever. But like I think some people get frustrated with me because they're like, what's your favorite optic? I was like, bro, I don't have one, just give me the gun. Like I'll make it work. Now my carry gun is an RMR HD Conceal carry makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:My teaching guns it could be an—because when I teach LE I'll try to teach with what the students are using. So if it's a department like I taught a class last year where everyone carried a 360 or they carried a 320 with an acro. So I just brought a 320 with an acro. I don't want to teach with fancy guns because cops don't use them. So if they're teaching with a Glock, I try to use a Glock, sig, so on and so forth. So I've got acros, I've got MPSs, I've got aim points. It doesn't matter, I don't use a Delta point cause they break easily. Um, don't care for the SRO cause it's kind of fragile. Great optic, but it's fragile.
Speaker 1:Um, and then statistics. I'm starting to get more feedback from real world uses of red dots in uses of force. So before it was a lot theory based, like I had a bunch of force on force data, but it never was shooting data. And I think a lot of people don't realize law enforcement only shoots about a thousand people a year in this country, which is a lot, but statistically it's not because they hold people at gunpoint millions of times. So if and I've had some officers who've come through the class hey, my chief wants shooting data, okay, we'll put RMRs on your guns or whatever optic you like and eventually you'll get some. I don't know what you want from me, man. Yeah, and it's weird because some technologies they don't do that. Like I had a department out in California that I would teach with and they adopted those bolo shots and I'm like what kind of data did you get on those? They gave us a brochure video. Did it work? If the guy he's like, let me put it to you this way, the bolo shot works in any situation where you wouldn't need it anyway. The guy's standing with his hands at his sides. It's going to work, standing still. You know, the big thing is the actual, the statistical information, the background information, science remains the same.
Speaker 1:I'm constantly going back to make sure the neurology I teach is the same or it's current and correct, because I'm not a neurologist. Yeah, so the danger in teaching outside of your lane in that regard is trying to teach something that that you may understand it, but you don't have the knowledge, the basis, to create with it. So I can only tell people what I've learned and then I have to keep going back to make sure it's still correct, right, right, because sometimes they make new discoveries with new, new ways and and it's all academic anyway. But as a cop I appreciated more when someone taught me why this happens versus just this is going to happen to you. Like I remember the first time I learned about um use for stress. They just told me all the symptoms Okay, so breathing can be affected, vision, hearing, memory, movement perception Okay, why? Well, cause it's stressful. Okay, roger, that what's happening? Um, and the instructor didn't really have. He's like it's not in the book.
Speaker 1:So I keep track of stuff published by, like Joseph Ledoux, david Engelman. They're both neurologists. Engelman is not really law enforcement focused, but his stuff is super interesting. He's written some really cool books on capability of neurological processing in the brain and how effective it can be. He wrote a book called Livewire that if you want to know about like the potential evolution of human psychology, like that's a great. It's a very interesting book to read because he goes into all these case studies about these atypical situations where people have expanded their abilities, and it's not even like metaphysical stuff. They had one example where they built this apparatus with a neural link that gave the guy 360 degree vision, wow, and it messed him up for like a day. But then, like he's like I don't ever want to take this off His brain was like, okay, more data, we'll figure it out. So he just started seeing 360 degrees. That's crazy, that's wild. And then Joseph Ledoux all his research is pretty much fear-based neurology. So he studies cops, fighter pilots, soldiers, crab fishermen, rock climbers, anybody who does dangerous shit for fun or money. So that helps with the classroom portion.
Speaker 1:And then on the range, I've looked for and this is how I teach overall most likely to least likely skills. Can you end up in a situation where you have to shoot on your back support hand only under a car? Yes. Is it more likely that you're going to shoot from the holster? Two hands, three arts. So you've got to start somewhere Right and I'd rather build my foundation with the skills that are most likely to be used, yeah, and then work my way towards the cool guy, combat role, tactical stuff. You got to get there eventually, I guess. But with two days on the range, you put something in, you got to take something out. So over the years I've tweaked a little bit of what the emphasis was. So if you've taken like my Red Dot instructor class like, say, you took it three or four years ago if you come back through it today it's going to be mostly the same, but there are going to be some slight differences on the range. So yeah, I guess that's the long form on that. All right.
Speaker 1:What about your white paper? How's that going? So I still update it, but it's gotten to the point now where I'm just updating it annually. So I'll have an update coming in June or in January. And, honestly, what I found is like I think a lot of people they're mainly focused these days on the testing data they want to know what optics are going, are handling my testing and what I get from my students is real world feedback. So I'll tell my graduates, my alumni, when they finish the instructor class hey, if you have a line of duty optic failure, tell me what the optic is and what happened to it and I'll add it to my information. So when these guys go through this class, they get now six years of data on optic failures in the line of duty.
Speaker 1:So you get an idea of what optics are going down, frequency breakages and stuff like that, and some of it's really surprising. So, like the Delta point pro and the SRO have the highest frequency of breakages. While it's still in the holster, is that rolling over and crushing it in a fight? Yeah, so sometimes it's like body weight on top of body weight on top of holster and sometimes it's just the officer is suddenly knocked down, yeah, lands on his holster, and I don't think safar is going to be like oh yeah, we'll do something about that. Um, because it's a good optic, but it is more fragile than some of the others because there's pros and cons. Um, like, you got the new hollow sun, the 507 comp, yeah, and I just recently had a guy email me from a department in Illinois and he had a 507 comp on duty and he had somebody hit him with a door. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because people just be hitting cops. Yeah Right, so this guy hits him with and it wasn't like an interior door or anything like that, it was like a municipal, like heavy steel door, like knocked him down. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it just cracked it, yeah, so it was still usable, but kind of interesting situation like that. And then Vortex, because it seems like a lot of people they gravitate towards the biggest window possible. Yeah, which makes sense because it gives you a greater opportunity to get your dot. And the biggest problem that people have, especially people on drained, is acquisition. Um, and if you're not going to take the time to take a class or take the time to seek out, okay, what do I need to do to get the dot every time? Um, then you're just going to keep having that problem. So if you get a bigger window, but of of the bigger window optics that are out there, the vortex XL is the only one that's like super, super sturdy, like I personally have have.
Speaker 1:It's gone through my testing and passive flying colors so far. I'm still evaluating it, but I'm, I'm, I think I'm 3,500 rounds into one and that's a drop test every 500 rounds. Oh, wow, it's fine, that's a lot of drops. Yeah, yeah, a lot of drops, yeah, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. Going back on it, I should have done a drop test every thousand rounds. Yeah, I think that's a little bit more. And some people are like that's not realistic. I'm not going to drop my gun. I'm like well, yeah, you are. Yeah, but also it's to simulate stuff like that. Exactly no-transcript, uh, but I'll have.
Speaker 1:There's been optics that have passed mil spec testing that I've just completely destroyed. So sometimes it's just chaos, it's just got to hit just right. But I've seen a direct correlation between what optics fail my testing and what optics fail more frequently in the field Interesting. So for me that's validation. Yeah, I was going to say that's like, but you know, people want perfect. There's no such thing. So there's that frequency bias or there's that sample size of one, and I try to tell people that. So I'll be like well, this optic has battery issues. I'm like how many cases? Well, I know one guy, yeah, that has battery issues. I'm like how many cases?
Speaker 1:Well, I know one guy yeah, then don't buy it, there's plenty of other good ones out there. You got to see, like, because especially in gun culture, we're very negative focused. Oh yes, so if a gun breaks, nobody ever follows up. So, like, the 509 had that striker issue. They were mem and then they replaced them later. So the original release of the five not even the 509 mrd like we're talking about the original iron sight only 509 had a striker issue. This was 20, 2017, 2016, 2017, something like that. So a while ago, long enough ago, like 10 years, yeah, uh, almost 10 years they fixed it within like six months.
Speaker 1:But people still bring that up and I'm like, did you circle back? We're past that now. Um, so I I find that that's. You know, that can be kind of aggravating. But like on the on the testing aspect side of it, like nowadays with teaching the red dot instructor class, the majority of the students come to me ready, their departments are sure what they're doing, they've got their budget allocated and usually it comes down to some of the instructors are kind of taken aback with some of the presentations for liability.
Speaker 1:So I'm talking about like, okay, are you going to be compliant with your state. Does your state have a policy? Will your state ever have a policy as far as law enforcement standards? And then it's the issues of how many hours are you going to provide for transition? How many rounds are you going to provide for transition? Because I recommend 16 hours and a thousand rounds per officer.
Speaker 1:Most agencies are not going to do that. I had one guy. He's like hey, my agency gave me four hours. What should I do? I was like rub a lamp, try and get 12 more.
Speaker 1:If you've ever been around like like end user cop classes, four hours is more like two. Yeah, cause there's lunch and then there's waiting for people to come back from lunch after lunch was over and then there's 10 minute breaks that turn into 35 minute breaks. So you got about two hours. If you got four, if you get 16, you're going to get 10, 12 hours a good range time out of that. Um, but I'm like it can potentially open you up for liability. So I was like if you approach your risk averse administration from a liability standpoint, you're more likely to get what you need. If you approach it from we just want to shoot more, that's usually not going to work. You say, hey, this agency over here does 16 hours. We don't. If we have a shooting and it's not great that could be used against us and that usually helps push things in the right direction.
Speaker 2:So you just taught RDS instructor there at the range. What else do you have? Are you done for the year or do you have any else?
Speaker 1:This was my last class for this year, but that doesn't mean anything because I'm immediately, two weeks from now, teaching in January. Yeah, I have a low light handgun coming up in Georgia. Oh, nice, down, well, about two hours South of Atlanta. Speaking of that, how are you like in Tennessee? Oh, I love it. Yeah, I'm so glad we left. Oh, you spent like 10 years in Atlanta. I was in Atlanta for about 14. Oh, wow, yeah, so, um, I, I, I moved to Atlanta when I got out of the army because I, I was stationed in Georgia and I looked at the map and I'm like that'll work, cause I didn't want to go home.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to go back to California because I don't like it there. So I moved to Atlanta and Atlanta used to be great. And then when I went into law enforcement I left when I worked for the department of defense, left for a couple of years but then I transferred to a different agency and I came back and then I met my wife. We bought a house and the property value went up. The crime rate went up with it. Oh no, yeah. And after about the third time they tried to steal the car. Steal my car, um, out of my driveway. Was that the charger and the other hellcat, yeah, try to steal it. They tried to steal it three times out of the driveway and once, once from airport parking, really the actual parking garage, not like the distance, like the connor parking garage, not like the distance like the conical parking I was in, like your, five minutes from your plane parking. Oh damn, the more pricey parking yeah, the expensive one.
Speaker 1:They almost got it too. They broke the window out. They'd rip the dash. The guy knew what he was doing. Yeah, but what saved me is I just recently gone and got service done and they put some new anti-theft patch in it. Nice.
Speaker 1:So it locked the car up, which sucks, cause if you've ever had to try to tow a vehicle out of a parking garage cause I couldn't drive it, yeah, I couldn't turn it on, I couldn't do anything and I knew it had happened. Cause I'm like do you get alerts on your? Well, no, the alert never went off. But I hit my location and my car was like can't find it. And I'm like not again my car. So when I get out of the I and I remember I, you know, I get off the plane, get my bags, I go to the parking garage, I walk around, my car looks fine. I'm like, oh, thank god it's still here. And then I go to open the drivers that, but it won't unlock and I'm like that's weird. And then my window's gone, like gone, there was no glass. Oh, like it's just. I'm like where did the whole ass window did? Did this guy vacuum? Like what the heck? Well, it was tinted, so he probably just pulled the whole thing oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll film over it. And at that point my wife was, she was tired of the career she'd been in for 12, 14 years at that point and she's like, well, I want a career change. And I'm like, well, here's how much money we're going to have. I want as many acres as possible. And you just got to figure out cause I don't need, I just need to be near an airport. It was like, try to find a property within an hour of the airport. Um, and that's how we ended up where we're at, cause she found she kept finding like seven acres here, six acres here, all closer to Nashville, but they do long acres. So it's like I have five acres but I have a neighbor like right here, yeah, you can see the house.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be making a lot of noise Like I don't, I don't want to get into that. So it's a little bit further out. We're. We're 60 miles from Nashville, but it's like an hour and 20 minute drive because of country roads. But I don't mind that at all. So now I live in a holler and a 22 acres. I got a big hill. I got two neighbors on my road that live there full time, a couple of hunting cabins. I know the guy who owns most of the land around me. So I have 22 acres but I have access to more. Yeah, because he's a pretty cool dude Built my own range. My wife's got her barn, her horse, her pasture.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's nice, we're good to go. That's awesome. You say you're doing about two classes a month, kind of traveling all over, or do you like gravitate to one?
Speaker 1:I can't really do local. Like there's a couple of places around me in Nashville and I have a range at the house, but I'm not going to teach on it. Yeah, yeah, bringing everybody out to your house. Well, not only that, but like, if you go for the legal side of things, yeah, in Tennessee, for me to shoot on private property, there's really no rules. Like it's private property as long as I'm not violating a noise ordinance. It's usually civil, so you can still shoot, it's not criminal, you just get a noise ticket. But I live in agricultural zoned area and I now have established range.
Speaker 1:But if I wanted to actually use the range for classes, if I was going to be within the law, I have to have a noise abatement and ADA accessible and like I have to have, like like an environmental impact study done on my burn, like it's not terrible, terrible, but it's, it's going to. It would cost me a significant amount of money. And I'm also like I don't even have anywhere for anybody to park. There's the range, and then there's my house. Like I guess I could just have them park in the pasture. It just feels a little too low rent for me to even try that. So I still, I travel um any classes within like three or four hours. I'll drive everything else. I fly. I flew a lot this year because most of my classes were outside of my, my driving circle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one thing If it's less than six hours.
Speaker 1:If it's, yeah, less than six hours, I'll drive it Anything else you're going to burn that much time in the airport, exactly, especially now, like when I live in Atlanta, I could get a direct flight anywhere. Yeah, because Atlanta, when you die, you have a layover in Atlanta. Like it's just insane. So now, being in Nashville, I fly from Nashville to Atlanta and then Atlanta to wherever. So, yeah, so it adds more time, though. So you figure, drive to the airport, that's an hour, but you got to get there two hours early and then I fly, have an hour, hour and a half, two hour, maybe three hour layover, and then I fly and then I get to a place. I have to wait for my luggage, wait for my guns, go get a rental car. By then time you burn five, six hours easily. Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, if I can drive, I prefer to, and there's some classes that are a little bit further out, but I like the drive to them, like I'll teach in Michigan, but I like the drive. Oh, really, cause there's a section of Indiana, Um, that's just desolate and it's got, for some reason it's got. It's got about a 22 mile median, um, like concrete median, oh, wow. And you know what that means. Unless the cops in front of me or behind me he ain't going to get me, yeah, and I've always been a big car guy, so I'll violate the law a little bit.
Speaker 2:Just a little bit.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit on drives like that Only double the speed limit. Well, you know, I matured. I don't drive with night vision anymore. I'm on, do that. I used to have two IR fronts on a car and I would, and I would, um, I only I only really did it when I was coming back from this place. I used to teach up in Ohio, coming through Cincinnati, cross the Ohio river, and then it was just like it's common Kentucky and there really isn't anything and it's a nice windy road, late at night, there's not really any traffic. So I'd IR up, 15s down, oh that's awesome and I'd just be going. But you know I stopped doing that. What are you driving now?
Speaker 1:I got a Cadillac CT5, the V, oh yeah, yeah, the Hellcat wasn't, it's great in a straight line, you know, I staged one, some of it. I got it up to just over 800 horsepower. I had a lot of fun with it. But even knowing, you know, growing up, driving like I can make that car corner but it doesn't want to. Yeah, you know. So like, when I went and took it I did a, I did an autocross circuit with it and they got mad at me because I was breaking traction on the turns and they're like you can't do that and I'm like I have to, otherwise I'm going to slow down and all these Miatas are going to pass. Can't have that. Yeah, I can't be past. I can't have a bunch of little Miatas zipping by me.
Speaker 1:So I wanted something Marvel Drive. So I have about half the horsepower that I used to and I've always had something. But the Hellcat was the first fast car that I ever bought. Every car before that I'd built and I miss that, but I don't have time for it, yeah. And now with modern cars, there's only so much you could do. And I'm not a JDM guy Like I appreciate JDM stuff, but I'm not going to laptop my car. I'm not going to get in there and do all that stuff. I don't even know how. Um, so I you know I can't really wrench on modern stuff as much as you can with the older stuff.
Speaker 1:So I I'd looked at four door sedans and I wanted an alpha, because Jeremy Clarkson says you're not a real petrol head, you've owned an Alfa Romeo. So I'm like I'm going to get an alpha and the high end one is the Quattro Feligo, which is like one of the fastest four doordoor sedans out there. Can't find them Really. When I went and looked, the closest one was in Denver. Jeez, it had to be black. If I was willing to get a red or a white one, it would have been a little bit closer, but I'm like, I'm not messing with that.
Speaker 1:So a friend of mine was like have you checked out the new Cadillac Vs? And I'm like no, I looked, no, um, I looked at the black wing, but that's like 100 grand. So I'm like twin turbo v6, I'll try it. Um, all will drive though. So it's a nice light, fast car, good features, got good amenities. The wife doesn't hate it. Um, like she's hated. She hated the hellcat. Yeah, she said it was fun to drive because she, I'd let her drive it. You know, I don't care, just if you wreck it, don't come home. Yeah, easy, um. But she hated the big cop doors. Oh yeah, it's like when you open the door it's like a 90 degrees yeah because it's cop chassis and I had a.
Speaker 1:I had a um a 300 before that. So it was same car, basically just different, slightly different. But it was same same car, basically Just different, slightly different. But it was the same chassis, same body, same everything, almost same everything.
Speaker 1:Before that, when we met, I just had a truck because I was in between cars at that point. This is the blue one, right? Yeah, yeah, that blue F-150. Yeah, and then I live in Atlanta. That truck got rear-ended Guy rear-ended me, didn't total it, but so I got another f-150.
Speaker 1:And then I one day I'm like why do I have a truck? I don't need a truck, right? So I got a car, I got a truck. I use the truck for work, for driving to the range and stuff like that. But I was like I don't need a truck. So I got rid of the truck and I got a. Got the explorer st, so I had an su, a car, which made sense for city Aaron, yeah. Then, like a year later, we moved to Tennessee and I'm like I need a truck, yep, so, but I was smart.
Speaker 1:What I did right before we left Atlanta is I got rid of the Hellcat and I took the Hellcat to a dealership and I'm like I need a truck. And the guy's like, are you trading that in? I'm like, yeah, he's like how much you own. I was like nothing, it's paid for. Do you want, like a nice truck? I was like I want heated seats and a V8, a four-wheel drive, four doors, that's it. So he's trying to give me like King Ranch's, yeah, and like, cause, I'm going to get an F-150. Cause, if I don't, God knows what'll happen to me. My dad will come back from the dead and punish me. I'm sure he was rolling over his grave when I get rid of the truck, because I'd always had an F-150. So he's like trying to upsell me Platinum Edition. I was like, dude, four-wheel drive, heated seats, v8, four doors, that's it. Black. That's a super easy list. So they ended up having to cut me a check and give me the whole truck. Nice, which is pretty nice, because I was like the truck is just going to be for truck stuff. Yeah, it's an actual truck. I mean because the last F-150 I had was like the Lariat Nice, yeah, I had a 2017 Lariat and it had the leather seats and the moonroof and, like all the connectivity, it had a heated and cooled seat oh, fancy, now I have heated seats and I don't have the heated steering wheel oh, dude, the heated steering wheel. But the Cadillac has all that, oh yeah, so now I just have a truck truck.
Speaker 1:But it's funny like right before we moved I ended up living in Tennessee and I had a truck and an SUV. I'm like, well, this doesn't make any sense either. My wife, she's always driven a two-door roadster. She's got a 370Z, which makes no sense. So now she's got a horse and she's got a bunch of chickens and she's like I'm taking the truck. I'm like, well, is your car not going to work for what you have to do? And we paid her car off a long time ago just to get rid of that bill. But now she's like, do I need a truck? I'm like, no, we have one truck. I was like, just don't put hay in your car or the Cadillac and we'll be fine. The truck is for truck stuff. Got a Kubota, you know, to make handle farm type of stuff, and she drives that thing more than I do Pretty awesome.
Speaker 3:Did you keep any of your older cars? You said you built a lot of your first cars. Did you keep any of them.
Speaker 1:No, I took this advice from my grandfather when I was a kid, because he would always get a new truck like every year and I never could figure it out and he never owed any money on them either, and I'm like. So when I was old enough to understand, he explained he's like it'll hurt you the first couple of times you do it, but you get a truck, you overpay on it. You can try to pay it off as quickly as you can. Vehicles are always going to depreciate. They're always going to depreciate Like it doesn't matter what it is he's like, and the more miles you put on it, the more likely. And this is back when auto warranties weren't really a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what he would do is he would take a truck to about 30 to 40,000 miles and flip it so every time and the quicker he flipped it, the less he'd have to pay on the next truck, the less he'd have to pay on the next truck and eventually like so now when I flip it cause I do the same thing Now I'll try to flip a vehicle about 30, 35,000 miles and I'll end up it'll be paid off, cause I did. I took his advice. I started paying more than I needed to so I could pay those vehicles off quick. So almost every time I go in the vehicle's already paid for. Um, so, like with the Cadillac, I traded in the Explorer on that and I ended up. I think it. It turned it. It the wash was I had to get a payment plan or I had to get on payments for, like, I want to say like 8,200 bucks which over the period of a year, throwing your beer money yeah, it's not, it's it, it's a lot, but you think about a four-year, four-year financing on $800.
Speaker 1:Payments are nothing yeah, yeah but I'm still throwing like two, three times what the payment is at it. So my plan, depending on how it works out, is to flip the v for the black wing before they stop making it, because now the only v8s that are still made are GM and Ford and I'm not going to buy a Mustang. I wear my hat the correct way. Have a Mustang and I think the Hellcat's bad in two corners. I've never been much of a Mustang guy. My dad was. He liked Mustangs. I never could get in. I just don't like two-door cars. I think that's what it is. Yeah, I like four-door cars because it can be fast and you can put some stuff in the back seat, even though to date I don't think anybody's ridden in the back of my car.
Speaker 3:You still writing, yeah that's what I wanted to talk about, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Matty got excited about those books. I'm writing a lot. So I I'm writing a lot, so I started writing. I mean, I've been writing my whole life and then I actually started trying to write books and that was my goal was to just be an author. You know, I wanted to like get life experience that would help me with that, and then just write. I was like how hard could it be? Because I feel like people keep telling me my writing is pretty good, like in high school and stuff like that, and I'm like, well, this should be my job, send it.
Speaker 1:There's like this process, this, this ceremony you have to go through in order to even cause you can't, you can't just approach a publisher. You need an agent, and an agent you have to know how to write a query letter, cause you can't just call up an agent and be like, hey, can I send you like two or three paragraphs of my stuff? Do you have a query letter? What is a query, right? And I was going through this. There was a time where I was sending like 30, 40 query letters a month and it's like it's almost like writing a cover sheet. I'm like you want me to write the fanfic for my job, for my resume, like what? So you have to write a query letter that basically explains what it is, what your character is, and like a blurb about what it is. And and most of the guys are pretty cool They'll at least hit you back and be like hey, thanks for sending this, but no, we're not interested, unless you're like Jack Carr, like where you have a higher degree of pedigree, cause a dude with a background like him is going to be more appealing to a publisher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like me. I'm like hey, I just graduated high school. Or I'm like hey, I've been in the army for three years, like my rank. And they're like what's your rank? I'm like E. They're like E. No, uh, were you a seal? Cause we give them book deals, but no, so, um, you don't have hair gel. So, no, I don't have hair in my head for 25 years, um, which has gone well and poorly, depending on where I'm at in my life.
Speaker 1:Uh, so I tried the query letter thing and I never really gave up on it. Um, until I gave up on it, like, I did it for a long time, many, many years. But I realized one of the I think one of the smartest things I realized is like some books were too big for me to tackle, some, some concepts were too difficult for me to write. Because, as a reader, I read the way I do it, as I alternate fiction, nonfiction, fiction, nonfiction, fiction, nonfiction Like I've been following Lee Child, um, jack Reacher, um, uh, uh. Robert Krauss writes the Joe Pike and the and the uh, elvis Cole novels too, but their characters aged, and sometimes you would read and I technically I'm like, well, that's not how that works, that gun doesn't do this or this thing doesn't do that.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to have more life experience and also technical experience, or just not right outside my lane. The cool thing about writing sci-fi you can make shit up. Yeah, thank God for the blah device that we can do this right. But even with sci-fi I try to keep it hard sci-fi. So I started writing when I seriously started approaching like the concept of writing thrillers.
Speaker 1:I wrote the book Rushing Winter and you can, that's like my freshman work, like that's the first book I ever tried to get published. But I have stacks of stuff I wrote in high school and even back to middle school and sometimes I'll go through it and be like any gems in here. So I borrowed characters from stuff I wrote in high school. Oh really, it's like stupid little short stories, yeah. But I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm going to put that up here, I'm going to, I'm going to flush that out.
Speaker 1:So I started with Rushing Winter and I'd finished it, but I didn't know how to publish it. So I'm I'm hitting query letters and I'm trying to figure out how much it would be to self-publish. Self-publish and didn't exist at the time, cause I think I finished that book in, I want to say, like 2006 or 2007. Oh, wow, and it just kind of sat around because I didn't know what to do with it. Yeah, so I'm trying to get a publisher, but I got to get an agent. No agent wants to represent me because I'm not, I'm not interesting enough. Um, cause God knows that they even read what you send them. They probably look is this person marketable? Yeah, and that's a thing. It ain't like it, you know, whatever. So it's, it's a hard industry to break into. So once Amazon started doing self-publishing, I'm like game on, let me do that.
Speaker 1:The most glaring problem with self-publishing is you are your own editor and if you read my books, you're going to find grammatical and punctuation errors Cause I've read it so many times. I'm text blind, exactly so people are like, oh, you need to get this professionally edited. I'm like, do you have any idea how much that costs? No, I'm sure they deserve it, they earn it. But, like my most recent book, it would have been like, depending on which editor I went through, it could have been anywhere between $8,000 and $10,000. Holy, could have been anywhere between eight and $10,000 just to edit the book. And people are always like, hey, why aren't you, why don't you have audio books, bro? That's about four grand or more and they're like read it yourself. I'm like, no, not, not a good idea.
Speaker 1:So I wrote rushing winter. I created that character and my plan was always to have an ending Right, you know. So I'm, I'm, I just finished. I finished book eight earlier this year. It'll be out in January, oh, nice.
Speaker 1:So I published my third book from the Carson Gray series Exodus series that published earlier this year, and then there'll be a new Rushing book in January. And then eventually, I want to say by next January there'll be book nine, but I don't know. Will that be the I? I want to say by next January there'll be book nine. But I don't know.
Speaker 1:I wanted to finish rushing winter before I started writing the sci-fi, right, but it was in my head and I'm like I gotta, I gotta get some of it out. I don't want to forget any of these ideas I have, yeah, so I started, let me just write a chapter. And then I I just wrote a whole book and I neglected my previous book. So there was a usually for a while there I was publishing a Russian winter book every January and then I took a two-year break because I was like, let me go off on a three-book tangent on sci-fi. So I've been hitting the sci-fi writing pretty hard but I've managed to finish book eight and then I'll start working on book nine as soon as I finish what I'm working on right now. So I'm constantly writing. I write, at least you know I'll write four to six pages a day. Oh well, sometimes more Like on the road, like I'll get back from class, I'll teach. We get done at like four or five o'clock. Get back to the hotel, eat dinner.
Speaker 1:And then I will write until two in. I mean, it's either that or watch TV. Yeah, yeah, at least. What else are you going to do? So I sometimes I can bang out 16 pages, do you?
Speaker 2:kind of do it like whenever you like you get like the inspiration or whatever, or do you just like sit down Like I'm going to right now? It's already up there, yeah, I have to get it out. You're just trying to get it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you looked at my like my files, there's like six or seven incomplete chapters and every now and then I'm like, let me, let me see if I can put these two together, cause I'm trying to tell a story, but I'm also trying to tell a story that can't happen like that, yeah, cause life didn't work that way. Sometimes things take time. But I also don't believe in a character that never dies, a character that lives forever, a character that lives forever, a character that never ages.
Speaker 1:So I'm a huge jack reacher fan, but chronologically dude's about 68, 69 right now, but in the books he's still cock diesel early 40s. Yeah, um, uh, elvis cole the first elvis cole books he's a vietnam vet. He's still out there doing high speed thriller detective, private detective shit and he's probably in his and don't get me wrong, dudes in their 60s can still be. But when you think of an action star, you usually think of guys that are like late 40s or late 30s, early 40s, that kind of so sometimes it's like I don't know if a guy in his late 60s who's basically a hermit and a nomad is going to be able to maintain that kind of bulk do you take the same approach, like with your um instructor classes, like how you were saying, through the years you refine them, fine-tune them, the way you think about your curriculum and stuff.
Speaker 3:Do you take the same approach with your writing or is it more of just a natural like I write?
Speaker 1:top of mind. Okay, so I will. I what I'll do is when I like I'm like starting on this book like rushing winter. I always knew how the story was going to end, because all good stories should have an ending. I knew how rushing story was going to end and I knew things that needed to happen to him along the way to develop him as a character. And then everything else is what would be interesting, because the as a reader, if the character is having a problem that I personally could walk away from, I don't want to read the book anymore. Right.
Speaker 1:Like you've got to. But you also can't give them situations that are repetitive or they make it seem like the character has plot armor. Like your main character shouldn't be everything proof, he shouldn't be in. Like with female characters. They call them Mary Sues. For some reason there's no similar term for the male characters that are the same way. But Mary Sue is like a female character that never gets hurt, she always knows, she's always the smartest person in the room and you know some readers are scared of strong female characters, so some Mary Sue characters actually aren't Mary Sue characters, whatever. But there's no version of that for a male character. Like there's no derogatory term for like Superman. They're waiting for you to come up with one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess I got nothing on that and now I'm going to think about it. Yeah, so I'm looking to create, even if the character is grounded in reality, like the story may not be, but you still want people to make decisions that they realistically make. So you try to put them in situations and like, just because I personally wouldn't do something as an author, my character might, and there's like some interesting meta universe stuff you can get into that. You know, sometimes I'll go down a rabbit hole and I was reading all these posts from Neil Gaiman and Neil Gaiman's like if you're telling a story, that's a comedy. Your character doesn't know that and I'm like, oh, shit yeah.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like if you're writing a hardball detective knowledge, your character doesn't even know what that is. Yeah, because there's that suspension of reality a little bit, that that doesn't exist in their world. So with like Rushing Winter, there's a little bit of sci-fi that takes place in it, but everything's grounded in potential reality. Moving into like writing sci-fi, you know like you're taking your world can be so big, you make shit up. Yeah, you can have aliens and planets, but I try to keep things as realistic as possible. But I'm still giving the characters very. Even if the problem sees like super complicated, like from a from a sci-fi perspective, it's still a problem that anybody could have if you just change some of the elements out, like instead of like this genetically engineered whatever, it's just like a guy named Doug, so it's fun.
Speaker 1:The mistake I made with Rushing Winter is I didn't make his world big enough, so I started him off seeing the world through a straw, which was kind of my idea. But I wrote the very first book from his perspective only. And this technique and I don't know if any other author has done it I've never seen it in published books like stuff you'd get at like a bookstore. I know other authors who do it, but they don't have published books, they're like self-published or whatever. I started the very second book.
Speaker 1:I started writing first person for my main character, but then I'll write third person for supporting characters, so now I can give different perspectives, but you're really still only following one character and I think that's I think you know that's probably one of the things that I hear the most back from readers is like that's, that's cool to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause you're getting like first person view from rushing's perspective, but then you get to see how other people see him. Yeah, because the problem with first person writing is you technically only get that person's perspective on everything. Yeah, so it makes it hard to flush out other characters. Yeah, and I've had some, you know, I've come up with some, I think, some pretty cool characters through the Rushing series and they, you know, you try not to kill them, but sometimes you try not to kill them, but sometimes you have to, sometimes they got to die. But I try not to kill a character just to give another character development. Try not to. So I don't think I've ever created a character of being like I'm going to make people like you, then I'm going to kill you.
Speaker 1:Now villains. Sometimes they got to die. Yeah, you know you don't want a villain that just keeps coming back forever so you're working on book nine.
Speaker 2:Is there gonna be a book 10, or is nine nine? Is it nine? I don't know why just just three.
Speaker 1:Three and three made sense. So book nine was always the, always the, the end of the story and every book, like, you've always had the two main villains, you've had the school and you've had the corporation, the virtual corporation, and one of them was like defense contractor doing their kind of shit, and the other one is like this, like, as you learn throughout the books, like it's it's way older than anybody thought it was and these guys have been around forever. So, like the most recent book, he, he finds out a lot about where all that came from, um, um, and then he's trying to, but like he doesn't want to do it anymore. He's like I'm tired of living this life where I'm constantly getting shot at having deal with this nonsense. I'm getting older because the book never actually tells you how old he is, and I did that on purpose, but you kind of get a sense. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You get a sense that like, okay, he's trying to, he's trying to like live a quiet, peaceful life and the world won't leave him alone. So into book nine it's going to wrap everything up for the most part, Um, but I also write same universe. So if you pick up, like fortunate son takes place in the 24 hundreds. If you pay attention, you'll catch references to things that happen in the Russian books. Not things, but like places and concepts and companies. So the corporation in the rushing series is called Virtua and they still exist 2,400 years later, Nice.
Speaker 1:So there's some other things that I did pre-COVID. The was it the? I think it was the third rushing book where I had the resolute virus, where they genetically engineered that virus to kill specific people, and then I released that book in like 2018 and 2019. Covid happened and I'm like they're going to think I got this. Yeah, seriously, yeah. So, like those book and like the, there's nine books written over a lot of years, but only about five years takes place in between the first and the last book about five years, Um, whereas you know, I I compressed it too much, so I should have made his world a lot bigger. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, I've been happy with the characters. I've been happy with the flow, um, but I feel like it's kind of time to like. Nine books is a is a good run. You can tell a good story in nine books, and I write long books, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I was going to say like, yeah, they're, they're usually what Six 700 pages.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, unfortunately. But you know, I kind of figured like well, you know, clancy was like hey, I'm going to write until I'm done and you're going to publish it and people are going to buy it and they did so. That worked for him. So some guys get away with it, but you'll see a lot of your thriller writers. Like James Patterson, he's going to bang out. Yeah, he's 300, 350 pages, maybe 375. Robert Krauss, who writes Elvis Cole bro, you're getting like 175, 250 pages, that's it. Marco Cluse, really good sci-fi writer. They're tiny little books. They're great books, but he's a. We're going to one act this thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're going to. It's going to be one act, because he's just jumping like kind of giving you episodes. And I think some writers have gone that way because they say, like people's attention spans aren't the same. Yeah, I'm just going to write until I'm done. Yeah, and I know now I'm limited by how much I can get into a paperback. Yeah, that's what keeps me from writing 90 chapters, 85. And I also know, like with the rushing books, I always knew there was going to be nine, so I don't have to get everything done in one book. So I don't have to get everything done in one book. Yeah, and I use a different writing style in those books too, which Cormac McCarthy has been doing forever and nobody yelled at him about it. But he's Cormac McCarthy, I'm not. So I can't get away with some of the artistic license that some authors do In sci-fi. I use different fonts for, like, humans talk a certain way and AI all have their own little font that they have, and some people are like that's, why haven't people been doing? That, doing that Right.
Speaker 1:It makes so much sense. You think about it from a writer's perspective. That makes life so much easier. So now I don't have to constantly tell you who's talking. Yeah, um, I don't know why that wasn't. I guess back in the old print days that would have been a pain in the ass. You're going to set the print, but since everything's digital now, super easy. Yeah, I'm like. Well, here's and I just it's annoying to write sometimes because I'm constantly changing fonts and Word has never worked right, but it's still the best typing program for some reason. So I just have to remember which font goes to which and it lets you, like, tell a certain secret story sometimes, where only the reader knows what's going on, because they're able to understand oh, that font belongs to.
Speaker 3:Oh, there's some stuff going on. Got to think a little bit while you're reading. Yeah, keeps you engaged. I do like books like that.
Speaker 1:A little bit of mystery, no matter what your story is, is a good thing, and sometimes it's fun for the reader to know something that the main character doesn't know. Yeah, because that's how thriller movies work. Yeah, most of them are based on like uh, you guys remember 24?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, there's other jack bauer, that show would aggravate the shit out of me. Yeah, jack didn't know so much stuff that was going on. Yeah, so they're always showing you this behind the scenes stuff and you're like jack, you gotta be careful going. Um, so like being able to go from first person to third person with the way that I write, I can do that. Yeah, hey guys, brendan here. Editor for the Big Text Ordnance podcast. We're going to go ahead and end this episode there for part one. We will see you next time for part two of this episode with Aaron Cowan.