Via the magic of technology. We are the Sun Raiders. So welcome.

We’re here with founding member, actually the founder, Josh Naman. And they’re in the Naiman Creative Studio. Josh, welcome.

Good to see you. Great to see you both. Right next to me is our author of this Sun Readers book.

So what we do with Sun Readers, we cover a book every quarter. We cover local authors to this Tampa Bay, St. Pete region. And it just happens that next to me is my wife.

She wrote a series of books and we covered her book for the fourth quarter of 2024 on the screen with this attractive person we do not know. So the name of. Well, that’s Lila.

Okay. So you know the name of this book is Hurricane. Let’s just start right there, Diane, with the COVID First of all, Diane, hello.

Welcome to the big program. How did we come about this cover? I went to Shutterstock, I found a beautiful picture, and we actually doctored it a little bit. There’s an eyeball.

I see the eyeball. You were so Alfred Hitchcockian. Yeah.

My brother actually did the whole cover. He did all the designs and he added that thing to her shoulder and kind of cut some, Some. I don’t know, kind of shave some things down so that we could have it fit and everything.

And so in your mind, finding this image, this is actually a character in the book. Yes. That is the first person who’s having this affliction happen to her.

And her name is Lla Blue. Okay. So.

And there’s a series of three books. Each cover features an attractive young woman. Yep.

And each of those is a character in your book. You’ve connected that too. Yes.

With your preconceived idea of what the character is supposed to look like. Did the pictures, did the images override the preconceived idea? I chose the pictures because that’s what they look like, so. No, the pictures were better.

I mean, I kind of pictured everyday normal girls. But you can’t sell books with everyday normal girls. Girls across America don’t listen to that.

No. So, I mean, she’s got a point. It’s like casting a movie, right? Yeah.

So you kind of cast your own. I cast my own movie? Yes, I did. And I think every author thinks about.

Oh. Seeing this on screen. Yeah.

You have a kind of ideas of that, right? Absolutely. And is there a part for Josh and myself? Yes, there is. Absolutely.

You guys can be professors. We’re going to Hollywood. Teachers.

Hey, I. I have like six years of practice in that, so. Good. I have.

No, no, really. Experience at all. So let me turn it over to you, Mr. Naiman.

Do you have specific questions that you have for our author? All right, well, first, I just recalled when you reminded me of her full name that I had a dream last night that my name was Josh Bluey. I kid you not. I swear to you.

I swear to you. That’s so weird. I’ve never had a dream where my name is different.

So, yeah, that’s weird. Second, I just got off the phone with my buddy out in San Antonio who is into production and doing all sorts of cool stuff and he’s working on us, one of his companies, to do film filmmaking. He wants to do like two films, get them funded.

So who knows if they need a story. Yeah, here’s the second one. Oh, you see the picture? Oh, yeah.

If you look, if you, if you read the books, that’s Harley. That’s the second book. And you added some color to that.

Yeah, the second book has a little bit of color. Third book has all color. I’m not progression.

Yeah, we don’t get a sneak peek of the third one. I will not show the third one yet, but. Well, I think we have an image of it somewhere.

I don’t know where. I’d have to. I’d have to sit on my phone for a minute.

So this is a. Currently a series of three books, and in the author’s mind it’s going to expand into another world after these three books. Yes.

So talk us through the progression of the three books. All right. So the first three books are mainly witches.

I mean, we’re not calling them witches. We’re not calling. They’re just people with some powers and they don’t say a lot of spells, but they have a lot of things they can do.

Then the third book morphs into a progression of going into fairies and where they come from, who they are. But the third book actually starts out with them and they’re actually intertwined in this, this world. And so the third, the third book has you walk in and you’re kind of like, what’s going on? I mean, I don’t understand.

I mean, you’re kind of expecting it to be the witches and they’re looking for her. They’re. They’re looking for her because in the second one, one of them goes missing.

And so that. That group of people are looking for that girl because they need her. And it’s, it’s a, it’s an explosion.

I mean, it’s, it’s. The third book is all about the Trauma of the third character, which is. I can say Kayla Tremaine.

Kayla Tremaine. No, it’s Harley Tremaine. Cute.

Yeah. Kayla Tremaine. She is the one that is the third one.

And she has an explosion. She’s. She’s been damaged.

And so the. The fairy. The fairy world is looking for her because they need her and the other people are still in the picture and they’re looking for her as well.

So we all kind of converges at one point. Kind of like a. A big epic ending.

And then my next series is talking about the fairy world and what’s happening there. I’m going to be kind of doing trilogies with the. Well, first ones of the witches.

The third one’s the fairies. And I haven’t quite decided what the. What the four.

The third series is going to be. So. Okay, so for this first series, we have Hurricane, which is the book we covered in Sun Readers.

And then the second book is. I have the Storm. And the third book that hasn’t come out yet is Aftermath.

Why the. Why the storm theme? Because the first. Because the affliction is occlusion.

Right. So. And what’s funny is that it actually is the word occlusion.

I actually looked it up. I was like, okay, I don’t want to take somebody’s name or word or something like that. And it actually means a dental procedure that means eruption.

So. So occlusion in this. In this world means that they’re afflicted with a very heightened sense of their power.

And most of the people die when they get hit with that affliction, but this time they didn’t. So this happens. And.

And it’s like the. It’s. It’s kind of what happens when these people didn’t die because the power is too great.

So, connecting the dots, this is why people are afraid of the dentist. Well, there it is. There it is.

Occlusion. Was that the answer to the question? It’s a good answer. Yeah.

I also. You. You answered my question because I noticed that it’s like, is the fifth book going to be Wildfire and.

Oh, that’s a great question. Are you just going to keep going? I’m just going to keep going. I’ve got actually a series of Trolls for Kids books.

I’ve got. I want to do elves. I’m really very excited.

I’ve been. Want to do sprites and stuff like that. So it’d be really fun to be kind of having people kind of mesh in and out of those worlds and all Of a sudden, be in the.

Maybe the fifth book and see some people from my first book kind of in that world. Kind of like what Marvel did. Yeah.

You know, where there’s just like a world and then they can be their own stories or. Yeah. You can have them come and interact and then at a certain point, nobody cares because it’s just so much fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

That’s the goal. That’s really cool. So we have a few discussions with each book, and in our last discussion, we had all of our sun readers on when we weren’t recording.

And one of the questions was, as for an author, when we’re working with characters and we decide to. That maybe it’s somebody’s time has come and they’re going to pass on or die. Is that hard on an author? So let me ask you this question.

Do you personally have a favorite character in. Just in Hurricane, do you have a favorite character that you connect more with than another? I really. I really like Jaden.

He’s one of my more favorite characters because he’s solid and pines. He pines over the girl. And I really enjoy characters who pine quietly and can’t get there.

And I think he’s. I wanted to really shape his character because he’s all the way through his. He was a solid person.

He was a solid person to chase. He had a great father. He was raised in the whole world.

And it’s really weird for me to say that it’s a guy, but it is the guy that. I just really enjoy his walk in life, in it. I think it’s because you don’t always have solid people in your life.

And if you can draw and draw and write a solid character that isn’t dramatic and toxic, sometimes those are the people that just keep you. They just keep you. They’re the ones that keep you steady through a story.

And you don’t always want the toxic people. Oh, follow up question. Was he modeled after me? He was just modeled.

I mean, he’s just. He was just molded. As a female writer, is it easier to write male characters? Female characters doesn’t matter.

You just write characters. I think it’s harder to write male characters. I just don’t.

I don’t always understand men. And so because. Because coming from the 80s, we were beat into the ideal ideology that men are pigs.

All they. All they want is cleavage in their face. You know, there’s just.

There’s so much that you’re taught as a child and about your. Your. Your world.

And so I’ve had to unravel that for the last 36 years because I’m not married to one of those people that I was told is a pig. Is this. Is this, Is this.

You know, I mean, it takes a lot, I think, for a girl in this world to step back and go, they’re a human being. They’re not what everybody’s projecting a man to be. I think we vilify men more than we do anything else.

And so, yeah, it’s hard for me to write it, because when you’re writing stories, I don’t want to make a guy too girly. I don’t want to make a guy too butch. It’s hard.

It’s hard because you have to stop and double think and double guess. So, yes, it’s harder to write. It’s harder to write men, for sure.

So you mentioned eras, time frame. Does it matter when this. Let’s say that Josh is successful, he’s going to connect this to these filmmakers.

Does it matter when the story is set? What decade? Does that matter? Well, I prefer it not be steampunk, but, yeah, Mole, it doesn’t matter. I mean, if they put it in the 70s, I would really struggle. I’m not fond of the 70s, but it’s meant to be today.

It’s meant to be stay. And would it be live action, or would you want it to be animated? I’d rather it be live, but I mean, animated, animate is animated. What does it matter? I love cartoons, so, yeah, I like anime.

It’s really fun. Well, it’s interesting when we think about the fairy world and in fantasy, that certainly does lend itself to animation sometimes, I would think. But with the way we’re.

We’re making things right now, we take any sort of animated film and make it live action. And it’s still animated. Oh, yeah.

There’s so much CG that in visual effects that you can do that. You know, I think of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or anything you could do so much. Well, they.

They have long discussions about how they. They would talk to George Lucas and they would say, listen, I’m. I’m struggling, you know, trying to.

Trying to pretend that somebody’s next to me, you know, could you help me a little bit? And they’re like. He’s like, you’re an actor. Figure it out.

And. And you can see the change in those. I think it was the.

The fourth movie, which was supposed to be number one. You could actually see the difference in the acting a lot. Yeah, but it’s True.

I mean, most. Most everything was green screen. I think George Lucas might listen to this episode.

And if you do, Mr. Lucas, we invite you to interact with us and engage with us. Have that conversation. Oh, yeah, Seth’s.

No doubt he’s gonna listen. No doubt. Can I capitalize on topic before we go too far? Yeah.

Because I think the concept of, like, Diane being a female author struggling to write male characters makes a lot of sense, but I also think that there’s some magic there that. Excuse me. I think there’s magic there because for me, just to use an analogy, when we do websites or.

Or logos or designs for that matter, album art or like a poster design, I. One of my tricks is. And here’s a special sauce. Now, it’s not like it’s crazy special, but one of my tricks is to.

So say we’re doing a website for a leadership organization. I won’t. I’ll look at leadership organization websites for a little.

And their logos and see what’s the landscape is. But then I’ll go to a sports website or a fashion magazine, something different, and see if there’s qualities in those things that I like that I resonate that work with what we’re doing, because they might be going after the same target market or the same kind of feel or style, and it gives a different perspective in visually. But, you know, for.

For writing, I think Diane, you know, like, look at. Look at J.K.

rowling, you know, writing Harry Potter. The main character is a male, and there’s a lot of male characters in that. She’s a female.

And there’s unique aspects, I feel like, that you can inject into the characters being a woman that make it a more unique character and robust male character, because it’s not maybe as run of the mill, you see. You see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I. It’s like reading a Dan Brown book.

You know, his characters are very male, and actually there’s a female. I don’t know. Anyway, yeah, I understand that.

I think it’s a good way to just dive down and just really shape something. And you know what’s odd is that most everything I’ve ever written is male. The male lead characters.

I don’t know why that is. My first book was a. Was a.

A book about a guy who goes on a train. His wife dies, and. Oh, yes.

And I didn’t. I didn’t end up publishing it. I didn’t end up doing anything, but I finished it.

But it was male. It was a male character. And I think a Lot of times I’m trying to discover the male.

I’m trying to understand the male by writing the mail. But it seems to be, it seems to be a theme with me. Even my children’s books are, are primarily male.

So what story have you written where the primary character is a female? And for me, reading Hurricane and then maybe I’m getting hung up in the book cover and then I opened the book and I started reading it. To me, I felt the main character was a female. Really.

I thought it was a group. To me it was a group. It wasn’t just a female, but it was her, her experience.

True. It was hers. Exactly.

It was her experience. So as you turn the pages, I was think, well, what’s next for her on this journey? Yeah. And I’ve had a chance to read ahead into this series a little bit, so I know how it evolves.

Yeah, yeah. No spoilers. I’m very excited about my third book because there’s a, there’s a couple fairies that have an interaction and there’s a lot more magic involved.

They don’t, they don’t do a lot, but they, they have more magic involved and it’s, I was able to get really creative with it because I’m really excited about my, like, series. One of the reasons these discussions are good and why it’s great working with local authors. In our last Sun Readers discussion on this book, we had, you know, I can’t remember how many of us were on five, six people.

We’re talking about writing styles and we’re talking about the, how your writing style has evolved and how you keep. How to work against what some people want and what other people. Yes, yes.

It’s like, it’s like, are you a Lord of the Rings writer or are you a Nora Roberts writer or are you somebody who. And it just, I, I think when it comes down to it, you just have to find your style. What I got from the last group was that they really enjoyed the fast pacedness of my book.

It’s how I like to write. It’s like I don’t like a lot of description until it’s necessary. And I, I did.

That’s me. I got so much joy out of that last discussion. I think I was nervous about this, my book thing reviewed by some business people.

So I know they’re, I know they’re human and everything and they read too and everything, but I was nervous. That’s interesting. Yes.

We are, we, we’re four books in and Sun Leaders is a relatively new group. We Just celebrated one year, which means Sun Readers is about one year as well. So we’re only four books in.

The first three books were in fact business or help self help related books. Non fiction said, hey, this is, you know, the holidays. Let’s take a break from that.

Brett, wasn’t that your thought process, Josh? Yeah, also for me, I think we can get just as much out of fiction as non fiction at times. I think it’s good to take a break. It’s healthy.

You know, that’s why we watch film or enter go into entertainment because it, it opens up different doors of the mind and you know, I think that’s a great exercise for business people. Entrepreneurs, anybody. Yeah.

So I think that maybe we’ll try to find a fiction book for 2025 as well. And if we can’t find another one, we could just read book number two. Well, I know some people were asking for it already, so that’s encouraging.

Yeah. As well. They want more.

But Diane did want to talk a little bit about the business of self publishing. And I work with a company, Jared Moses oba One Brilliant Arc. And they’re really focusing on helping authors like Diane get published, develop their story, that sort of thing.

So what are you currently looking at? I’m trying to find the third book. Oh, she’s trying to find the third book. But I wanted you to talk.

Okay. I wanted you to try to be able to talk about your thought process on self publishing versus traditional publishing. And isn’t that some of this you wanted.

It is. It is. It is.

It is. I definitely wanted to dive into that as well. Before we go too far, can we really quickly mention about style? Yes.

And finding your style? Because I think, I think, you know, I’m in, I’m in the creative field as well, visual arts and a musician. And I just wanted to comment that I think it’s. I don’t think anybody just is starts with here’s my style.

You know, for instance, you mentioned that you have unpublished work. I would imagine that J.R.

tolkien has unpublished work and Stephen King does and that it was not his style throughout. And in fact, styles change. You can think of bands, think of a band that you love in their various albums.

It’s not like, oh my gosh, I love that album and their next one is the same. And in fact that dynamic is an indicator of, number one, the humans at the other end, that they’re going through something different in life which affects their style. And that’s not such a bad thing in a way because we Get a different take on these musicians capabilities and same with the author.

You know, from book to book it would be almost impossible to keep like the exact same style because you’re progressing and you’re in different spots in your life. So I just wanted to point that out that, you know, I resonate very deeply on, on that and that to embrace stylistic changes in a way because that’s okay for anybody listening in the arts. It, it doesn’t have to be so defined.

And Diane, I think from, from what I’m gathering, you, you’ve allowed yourself to find a style and play jazz over it and not be so confined because you’ve got a good story, you’ve got good characters and you, you play with them and, and you let that determine the path. It’s taught me. Maybe I’m wrong.

No, no, no. It’s taught me a lot because suddenly you’re going, oh, I’ve got some characters that, you know, maybe I’ve, maybe I didn’t finish up with that character. Maybe I need to build this character a little bit more.

And it’s really taught me because I find myself writing the names down all the time, at least to see in view because you start with a bunch of characters and you’ve got to do something with them. So that’s so true. And J.

K. rowling was told her first book was not well written, which I just can’t even believe. But I enjoy, I enjoyed it.

Who’s reading it? Everybody can be a critic. Some people don’t like the Beatles or Muse or you know, bands that are great. It’s at, at the end of the day, I do think it comes down to taste.

There are people who are not fans of Lord of the Rings, love Harry Potter or whatever it is, you know, connect with Star wars but not Star Trek. Yeah, it’s, it’s subjective at the end of the day. And also when you’re talking to publishers or filmmakers or, or labels, they’re also looking at it through a lens depending on who it is of like, how much money can we squeeze out of this? And is this style appropriate for our target demographic? And yeah, money, money, money.

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One of you said something that triggered a thought in my mind. And we were going to kind of segue into the business of writing. But as a creative person, writing is not necessarily your business right now.

It is a maybe a side business, but it’s. Talk about the craft of writing. How scary is the blank page? Do you find yourself, like, do you put yourself on a rhythm where I’ve got to get writing every day, I’ve got to write every week.

When you’re trying to finish a book, what’s that rhythm like? When I’m trying to finish a book, I’m making time for it every single day. And when, whether I’m reading something in it, whether I’m trying to flesh out characters, but I have to make little tiny bits of time, I’m just, I’m so busy and it’s re. It has been really hard to finish that third book.

Sometimes I’ll take like a couple days off and I’ll just hammer it out. It doesn’t. I mean, it’s true to my personality type that I would do everything quietly without anybody knowing.

It’s like, it’s like it. For some reason, it just seems to be my way. I have to do it my way.

If somebody starts talking about it going, oh, I got to get you time and do that, all of a sudden there’s some block that says, okay, I can’t. I can’t have you involved. Shows a great quote about that that I love.

Really? Yeah. And I heard it and I latched onto it immediately because I feel that it’s work in the shadows and let success be your noise. Oh, wow, I like that.

I’m gonna steal it from you, from wherever you got it. Have it. It’s not mine.

Okay. Well, I guess what I was curious about and you kind of alluded to it, you said block. So is writer’s block real for you? No, you don’t have writer’s block.

You have. I. Sometimes I’m kind of wishy washy sometimes. Sometimes I’m like, I really don’t want to work on the book now.

I want to go work on some other books. I want to start another book. But Stephen King does the same thing.

He has three projects going all the time. He has a whole bunch of projects, and then all of a sudden one will take off. And so then he stops everything.

He’s doing. And he takes off with that one. It’s a very, very normal thing.

And I didn’t know it until I started reading about Stephen King. He is an amazing teacher. The man has so much out there that is, that helps authors.

Um, I, I’m, I think I’d like to look at his masterclass. Even I haven’t done that. But he’s amazing.

I honestly can’t tell you. I’ve read more than one of his books, though. Um, they’re not quite my genre.

But he’s amazing. Absolutely amazing. But as far as, as far as writing goes, I really do enjoy flipping all over the place because that’s where the brain is.

It’s like, if that’s a day that I’m getting inspiration for that book, that’s what I’m going to do. So I think that’s normal for the creative journey too. I mean, think about a musician.

You think they just write one song at a time flowing, or, you know, for me, the projects that I’m working on, the ideas that I have, there’s no way I could just work on one throughout a day. I’m popping around because also, in my opinion, it keeps you fresh. You get, you get stagnant in a story and you, you have to walk away from it and you could at least be productive in this other thing.

And then when you come back to it, you kind of have re. Energized your creative capacities regarding that thing. Yeah.

I rewrote the third book opening so many times because I thought I had to stay within my characters. And finally I just, I was, I had an epiphany and I go, oh, okay. And so I brought the other characters from the other world in.

And that’s when I suddenly got the idea that I wanted to start another series that had all the characters, some of the characters just kind of weaving through it. So, yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s important to flip back and forth to your quote, Josh, and your thought process. Diane.

I wonder if there’s a, you know, a difference into getting back to business and entrepreneurial mindset where I’m in control of my art and I can create as I choose, which is why self publishing is attractive. But I think a lot of self published authors always have this want in this romance of being with a publishing house. Oh, absolutely.

But the problem with the publishing house is now you’re dealing with a hierarchy and deadlines and. Show me the material. Right.

And this is what we’re going to Edit. This is what we’re going to cut, this is what we’re going to fix. And if you don’t like it, maybe we don’t need to have a deal.

And so maybe, maybe that’s where a writer’s block can come in for somewhere somebody else is forcing them to produce a project. Absolutely. I think, I think self publishing is so, I mean, the thing is even with the publishing houses, you have to have a huge marketing plan.

You’re still doing your own marketing, you’re still doing your own social media, you’re still doing everything yourself. The only difference is that you’re going with the big publisher. You have a Penguin on there or Scholastic or something.

You’ll have, you’ll have all the, the big publishers that you’re just like dreaming to be with. Right. But the, the, the truth of the matter is you, you’re not going to get much from it.

You’re going to get probably, I think it’s like a, like less than 3% of whatever the book sells. And unless you suddenly become some fantastical person like Dan Brown, you’re going to get an advance. That’s where you get your money, is your advance.

But if you don’t sell enough to cover that advance, you have to pay it back. That’s scary. That’s a stuff I’m not excited about.

So self publishing is very exciting, I think for me personally, of course. Would I like to have a publisher? Yes. But I think I’d like a publisher for my children’s books.

I don’t, I don’t need it for that. So. It’s difficult though, isn’t it? And with so many aspects of getting a book to market, you self publish writers, authors aren’t necessarily marketing people, they’re not necessarily business people.

How do you, how do you deal with that? A lot of research. A lot of research. A lot of research.

A lot of research. And you can go with a company, it gets to be where you’re spending a lot of money out of pocket. The most I spent was a thousand dollars.

To get books? No, to get my book formatted. So I took the book and my brother had done all the designs, we sent it to them, they put the whole book together, did all the designs on the inside, put the, put the book, made it look all pretty and everything and got the book together and then I was able to send it somewhere to have it printed and then I. So I think the total cost out of pocket was like fifteen hundred dollars to do all of that for the first book. And you’ve had a return on that
investment? Oh absolutely, almost, Almost tenfold.

Right. I think you did good with that budget. Yeah, yeah.

That’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work.

And nowadays they have, the software’s changed so anybody can do it. I still have an advance, like I still have some money with the people I did it with. And so my third book will be published through them.

It’s. Well, you’ll still be considered 52 novels. You’ll still be considered a self published novel.

Yeah, 52 novels is responsible for the formatting, the formatting, the putting together the entire book to the way it’s laid out on the page, the designs down through the, the, the, the book and then I’ll get it back as a whole unit all put together to go onto Amazon. And so if there are authors out there who have not published yet, that’s one of the challenges is getting your work formatted for these different devices or a print on demand sort of format. And that’s a, that’s a, a challenge that
authors have too.

Do I print on demand? Do I print? How many copies do I print? Why would I have a handheld book? And it’s, we still have, the numbers will probably change here as the years progress. But right now people still read more handheld books with the pages than electronics. Absolutely.

So that’s interesting too. I’ve listened to a lot of books still. Oh, then they have audiobooks too.

And audiobooks. And here we are in a podcast format. Audiobooks make up a very small really percentage of units sold.

I mean it’s still multi millions of dollars. But as far as the percentages go, it’s not the way people are, are consuming their literature still. And I don’t have those stats in front of me.

But personally it was really rough not to have my second book published. It’s really hard. People say I want the book, I want the book, I want the book.

And I probably could have sold so many by having the second book already in hand. Well, that done that. That’s really interesting too.

So when you’re self publishing or self creating, doing anything, there’s a cadence that keeps the market interested and if you disengage from them, then you start to lose your audience. That’s tricky. Yeah.

Like when I, when I get ready to release. Four, three. Sorry, three.

I’ll do it. I’ll do a promotion for the first book and I’ll let that go for about two and then I’ll do A promotion for the second book. And I’ll let that go for two weeks and then I’ll release the third one.

And the third one, you’ll actually put it up for some money. Like the first two you’ll go not$99.99.

And then the third one will be for like, I don’t know, $8 or something. And that. Or you do the other, you do the first one and make the other two.

But there’s a, there’s a method to the madness of it. You. To, to be able to have the next book for somebody to get because you like the first book.

That’s, that’s kind of like you, you want them to, you want them to, to, to be able to see the, I don’t know, the trickle down. And then as we think about marketing and just Amazon alone, depending on how you release your book, you have this opportunity to be a bestseller. Yeah, and I was a bestseller once.

It was very exciting. Really. I was, I, I would look every single day and all of a sudden there was one day I got it.

So that was really fun. So all of a sudden you’re a best selling author and you slap that on everything and that’s how that, you know, comes about. Well, haven’t we been saying we’re working with best selling author and there we go.

That’s where it goes. Turns out I gave myself the award, but still, I, I love that. And I’m a Doctor of Creativity now.

Technically, I’m a master. That is why I earned that. Master sounds better than doctor anyway, so I don’t have to get a PhD.

I’m a master doctor. So, Mr. Naman, what other questions might you have as we kind of work towards the top of the hour here and conclude our work with Hurricane and Diane? Yeah, well, I appreciate you talking about the process because I’m helping a client publish a children’s book and through this process. Holy moly.

It is a lot. It, you know, I thought, I thought I knew enough. But it has been so much learning and there’s so much nuance to it, but I love it and it’s very powerful and I want to continue to work with clients.

Clients to publish their books, like for, you know, not children’s books, but for their businesses. But anyways, I digress. You and I share that conversation in regards to oba.

There might be some opportunities there. Yeah. Without bumping off course and without you divulging too much.

What are the hopes for your client? What is, what are their ambitions? Do this. They Want it to be this huge explosion and reach millions of kids. Is it, is it, is it work for kids? Right? Yeah.

Is it a hard, is it a hard copy book? Is it. So that’s the hard thing is it’s only 28 pages because it’s a letter book and all the letters are a character. And so on Amazon you can’t publish less than 76 pages hardcover from all the research I’ve done.

So we had to go back reformat. We’ve got to go to Ingram Sparks to do the hardcover. And it only can be paperback on Amazon because of that.

I don’t understand it. It’s like Amazon, how wouldn’t you allow hardcover to be less than 76 pages? So you’re eliminating most all children’s books. Yeah, because I thought I bought five page kids books.

You know, they’re hard. You know, they’re going to Barnes and Noble or five pages, I mean, and the kids read them over and over and over again. Yeah, the Amazon doesn’t, must not see value in like the printing process of that.

It’s crazy to me, but that has been a hurdle. But this client, she would love the world of it. And I believe this has huge potential because it’s not just this first book.

The first one is Meet the Alphabet Heads. But then the following ones, we want to do themed Alphabet heads, you know, for holidays and different things. We want to make trading cards and figurines from them and make this entire world animations eventually.

So it’s just getting, we’re laying so much groundwork and it’s taken a lot of time to like do that. Right. But you know, I think, you know, I’ve kind of like, I feel like I’ve done a good job like keeping things realistic while also being like this, this will pop off.

We just keep at it. And she’s pretty well connected in Indiana. So, you know, my hope is that it gets a good enough traction for this author to go.

Let’s keep going. Because I know that if you keep going, whatever it is, Hurricane and your series, whatever it is business, if you keep going and you’ve got a good idea in something, people will resonate with it. If you’re passionate about it, people will, will be attracted to it.

There’s, there’s something to that, in my opinion. But it’s exciting and it’s very hard. I have the new respect.

You know, every time I do something that I haven’t done, I get a new respect. Like one time I took an acting class in college. Whole New respect and outlook and perspective on acting.

It is very difficult. Very difficult. Yeah, it’s one of those things where you only know what you know, you perceive what you don’t.

And now we come up with these little challenges. Like 76 pages. Who would even know that? Why would that even exist? Yeah, why? And you know how long it took me to like, get a straight answer, you know, because there’s so much information out there and like finding the page where it’s that answer.

Because, you know, we had formatted the book one way because we thought we were going to be able to do it that way, and now we can’t. And then we had to reformat the book into a different, you know, ratio dimension because of, you know, certain factors and. Yeah, it’s just, it’s just a lot of work.

But, you know, it’s worth it. You know, the juice is worth the squeeze. Is she trying to get it with a publisher? No, she wanted to do self publishing because, you know, she, she, she realized how difficult it is to get through to publishers.

It was going to be a hard journey just to like get published. And then when you get that, the margins are even thinner. And so, you know, at least for now, we get that, the foundation laid for that, that enterprise and maybe then it’ll make some noise and get picked up.

And that’s probably the, you know, the thought process there because then they could help us take it to the masses, do the figurines, do the trading cards, all sorts of stuff. Because there’s a whole world that we’re building and I see it, it’s just making it a reality. It’s a lot of work.

I recently picked up a hardbound kids book from that an associate wrote about his journey with adopting a dog. And that was only 20 some odd pages hardbound off of Amazon. So I’m gonna.

Off of Amazon? Yeah. I’m gonna put it in your hands and let you take a look at it and, and see if you can see where the consistencies or gaps are. Maybe that’ll help.

Help you. Yeah, I would be interested because I’m. I guess maybe I’m wrong and.

Well, not as a better. I, I went through the submission process and, and sizing and getting the spine and you can’t generate a template from Amazon for a spine of a hardback book that is less than 76 pages. So it won’t give you that template.

You need that template to design for exact, you know, millimeter, you know, for the formatting. So this author’s Randy Katz. Maybe he did a workaround.

Maybe he did something on his own. I mean, and we can. Well, from.

From what I understand is we go through Ingram Sparks, publish the hardcover, and then publish through Ingram Sparks onto Amazon so that I think it’s the process, which I’m working on sorting through now. Gotcha. So I think that’s.

That’s the way I think I found the. The loophole. Okay.

So England. Ingram Sparks publishes it and prints it on demand, but Amazon facilitates that it. It is listed on Amazon.

You know, I’ve never thought of a. And of course, it makes sense that it existed. Never thought of a hard band, a hardbound book on demand.

Yeah, that’d be hard. Yeah. So let’s get.

Let’s kind of go around the horn and get some final thoughts and final questions out of the way. Josh, do you have any final thoughts on this? Yeah, well, you. You had.

You had asked me if there was anything lingering, and I just wanted to get out. We had. We had touched on it, I believe, in the last talk.

But, you know, just maybe hint at your inspiration for, like, how this came about. What birth? Like, where did the aha moment go? Oh, there’s a story for me. I have a story that hit me, like, five months ago in a dream, and I can’t wait to write it out and have it play out, and I want to make it like a TV series or book.

And did you write. You know, so I’m wondering, did you write that dream? Did you write the dream out? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. It wasn’t last night’s dream. It wasn’t last night’s.

But maybe I could use the name Josh Bluey. Okay. So not fair to Diane.

So the question is, what was my inspiration, this particular story? There’s a scene, actually, in the book of the inspiration. It’s a scene where she goes up and kisses the guy right there in the. Like, It’s a.

It’s. It’s some tornado drill. And I had a dream, and I was watching this, and I had the.

The actual dream that. That I was the girl, and I was. I was going into a gymnasium, and I went up somebody and I just kissed them, and it was just like.

And then I left. And I thought. I thought, well, that’s.

That’s a fun little thing. I mean, what’s. What caused that in my dream? And I thought, well, let’s just write that down.

And I wrote it down, and all of a sudden, this whole story came out, and it just. It was fun. It was just.

It was Just really. It was fun. It was a simple.

It was a simple dream. Those are fun dreams. Yeah.

I mean, plot twist. We’ve been married for 35 years, so she’s dreaming about kissing other people. So we write about it.

I keep telling you that. Okay. Faceless people.

I don’t know who they are. That makes it so much better. Oh, it’s.

It’s. I think. I think sometimes dreams are the best way to get some of your thoughts, like, worked out.

So we gave. Oh, yeah. We gave sun readers two challenges.

One was if you could find the first. If we accidentally gave out the first print, which was not necessarily clean, ended. There was a phrase that said peeing around the corner instead of peeking around the corner.

Nobody’s come to us with that. And, Josh, I think your question. Question was on point for the second challenge, wasn’t it? Didn’t you.

He said, what was the inspiration? Wasn’t that our second challenge? I said we’d buy them an adult beverage or a coffee. I did. Nobody.

Only one came to me. Was that the. The challenge? What was the inspiration? What was the.

What was it? What was the scene? Yes, there was a scene, and it was the fixing. I think it was, I don’t know, page 17 or something like that. But.

But there’s a scene that. I said, if you can find the one scene that was my inspiration. So I don’t know if you necessarily found it, but you asked the question, so we owe you a beverage.

I’ll take it, and I’ll buy your beverage. And I do believe that David Pavone, in our last conversation, he said he did find. He has a book with peeing around the corner.

Does he realize. Yeah, so. So the.

The Easter eggs were found. Ish. That’s fine.

All right, cool. What final words, questions, thoughts do you have? Keep writing, people. If you’re.

If you’re even close to. To wanting to do something, just. Just start doing little bits every day.

Just. Morning. Um, get a book called the Artist’s Way.

It really. It really helped me kind of open me up a little bit and not. Not giving all of your stuff over to somebody.

I gave my book to my mother, and my mother, she doesn’t. She won’t listen to this. She’s Alzheimer’s.

But I gave the book to my mother, and she. She discouraged it. One of my books, not this one.

And I didn’t write for five years, so it’s really, really, really, really, really important. Protect yourself. If you do something, don’t just protect yourself.

Let your artistic world shine. Let it go, let it go, go completely. Just let it be out there.

And when you make your first edit, find a person who’s safe to read it. Don’t send it to a family member like I did with my sometimes with my world, I’ll get it out and let other people see it. And it’s not always the best option for me.

Find your community and embrace your community and embrace your style, which really connects to that quote. Josh one more time. That quote.

Work in the shadows oh yeah. Work in the shadows Let success be your noise Best be your noise Work in the shadows Let success be your noise. Sun leaders, sun readers, we’re here with author Diane Nutting, author of Hurricane Aftermath and Eye of the Storm, with hopefully actually the other way around.

Hurricane, the Storm, Eye of the Storm and Aftermath with hopefully many more books to come. I am Eric Nutting so much, Diane. Thank you, Josh.

Thank you, Eric. Yes, of course. It’s really, really fun.

And unless you have final words, until next. Sa.