[00:00:01.490] - Sunyi Hi, I'm Sunyi Dean. [00:00:03.690] - Scott And I'm Scott Drakeford. [00:00:05.900] - Sunyi And this is the publishing Rodeo podcast. In 2022, we both launched debut novels in the same genre with the same publisher in the same year. But despite having very similar starts, our books, and subsequently each of our careers went in very different directions. [00:00:21.970] - Scott That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? [00:00:30.570] - Sunyi In this podcast, we aim to answer those questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career. [00:00:38.490] - Scott Everyone signing a contract deserves to know what they're really signing up for. In an industry that loves its secrets, we'll be sharing real details from real people. We'll cover the gamut of life as a big five published author, from agents to publishing contracts, finances, and more. [00:00:59.650] - Sunyi My tattoo artist today, he's a massive introvert. He was telling me how during lockdown, he literally locked himself in the shed in his garden for seven months and just painted. And he was so happy. And his girlfriend is like, you should go outside and, like, chuck in your friends. Not everyone's like, you happy in a shed. [00:01:16.150] - Wayne I can relate to your tattoo artist. I'm like, yeah, my people right there. I never see my people because we don't want to see each other or anybody else, for that matter, because we're introverts, right? [00:01:28.560] - Sunyi And on that note, welcome to The Publishing Rodeo, the podcast for this week. We don't make Scott cry because he is notably absent. Scott is officially on paternity leave for at least one week. We will give him some respite. But I've got with me today r r Verdi. Should I just call you Ronie on air? Is that okay? Because R Verdi makes me think I should be saying R. Tolkien. J. R. Verdi. Yeah. And also with me, see, confusingly named Wayne Santos. Confusing because he's I mean, I was surprised to find out eventually, after we got to know each other, that you were a Filipino Canadian and then learned about the whole colonialism with names thing, which was a whole fun topic. [00:02:06.390] - Wayne Yeah. Thank you. Spanish overlords. [00:02:09.430] - Sunyi Do you want to start and kind of talk about your journey a little bit, Ronnie? Because the thing I was kind of looking at today is the fact that everyone who gets published is like a statistical outlier. I mean, there's no such thing as a typical publishing journey. This is the thing that always amazes me. You talk to every single person, and it's just it's so incredibly different. Both you have stories. I would have said that doesn't happen, or maybe in Wayne's case, shouldn't have happened. [00:02:35.710] - Wayne Tears. Laughing tears. Anyway, let's go, because I love Ronnie's story. [00:02:41.080] - Sunyi Yeah. Go for it, Ronnie. [00:02:42.360] - Ronnie I guess I'll probably start with, like, an anecdote of I was very fortunate starting out that I was going to certain seminars run by traditional authors, even though I was indie at the time. And one of the things I heard was, publishing is like the opposite of Hollywood, where it's always no until someone says yes, it's really hard to get in. And every time someone gets in, they find a way to close that door, like how that person got in, and there's like a new way to get in. So my journey is I started self publishing in about 2013. I missed The Gold Rush in 2012, where if you put a book out, there is a pretty good chance you would just be a supernova rock star. And I kept self publishing for many years, quietly just building my fan base, learning, marketing, until one of my stories, a novelette I wrote with a good friend of mine, Yutanjaya Wijaratani, who's a Sri Lankan author, was up for the Nebulas in 2019. And we actually went to the Nebula convention with the hope of hopefully maybe bumping into an agent, finding a way to start going hybrid. [00:03:33.730] - Ronnie And I don't know if I should say this publicly. Okay, well, this is legal in California. Another author friend of mine, who's very prominent and well known now, brought special chocolates down there that I didn't know contained a special ingredient, and he gifted me some. And I ate a great deal one day during the Nebula convention, and I was stoned out of my mind the day agents started talking to me. Most of them were interested in a project of mine that Audible was really interested in at the time, which is the first binding now Tales of Tremaine, which was originally being written to be a serialized kind of pick, a risk about a traveling storyteller. And I talked to two agents while I was, like, stone, and they just instantly shot me down based on the projected word count until I met who'd become my future agent. Joshua Bilmish, who represents, like, Brandon Sanderson. Charlene. Harris, simon R. Green. And his first words to me after he parted this crowd of other agents just walking through them, dressed, by the way, like Eddie Murphy from the 80s. He was like, in a completely bright red suit with red shirt, red shoes. [00:04:28.670] - Ronnie He doesn't know I thought this. I hope he doesn't listen to this, but I thought he was a Pimp. [00:04:33.750] - Wayne Wow. [00:04:37.190] - Ronnie I was high. And I didn't know that because I didn't realize that's what the chocolate was. I was like, oh, friend brought me chocolate, and this dude comes out of a crowd in all red. Nobody dresses in all red. But he introduced himself very nicely. I kind of shot Joshua down, saying, like, look, man, I don't think I've got the book for you, because I don't know why he was curious about me. Someone else must have talked to him about me. And I was like, dude, it's going to be like 350K. I've been writing for ten years, and most of my books always come in within 10,000 Words Of The Word Count. I estimate it's just a practice thing by now. And his first words were, well, I published Stormlight, so I could probably get that published. And I was like, okay. And he asked me to submit both the first few chapters of that as well as some short stories. I learned later that Joshua, for some clients, I guess, judges you by your short stories. And so I did that, and most of the year went by and Joshua didn't get back to me. [00:05:28.710] - Ronnie And I was at a different convention where I was guesting and another editor friend of mine took me to lunch who would become my editor at Tour. And I didn't know that at first. And we just started geeking out about Wheel of Time storytelling. I'm a huge comparative mythology nerd, which people who follow me on Twitter know. And I was talking about the comparative nature of how a lot of fantasy DNA is built from proto into European stories. Like there's so much of the same beats and archetypes and trips that people don't know about. It's just all the same story. And this guy I didn't know was an editor of them. Just loved it. And at the end of the conversation, he's like, hey, so this story you're working on, like, the one that Audible is interested in, can you send me a copy? And I was like, Why? And he's like, Well, I work a tour. He's like, I'd love to read this. And I was like, well, I don't have an agent right now. And his words were like if I like this, you can go pick your agent. About a month and a half go by, we're looking at November. [00:06:18.310] - Ronnie And he calls me back. This is Christopher Morgan, by the way. And he's like, hey, so that story you sent us don't sell this to Audible. Tor wants to buy the series. And I was like, what? And then he's like, yeah, I talked to the president. She really likes it. We really like what you're doing. You've talked to me about what your plan is for the whole series. He's like, we want to buy the first three books. And I was like, okay. And he's like, yeah, go pick an agent. Get back to us. So I emailed Joshua. Like, this is what's going on. And he was very blunt. And I haven't told this story publicly. This part. You guys know this, but Joshua admitted he was ghosting me because he didn't like my short story. He actually hadn't read the sample of the first finding. [00:06:57.880] - Sunyi At least he was honest. He was honest. [00:07:00.060] - Wayne Yeah. [00:07:00.970] - Ronnie And that's kind of why I stuck with him. I was like, okay. He's honest. I appreciate that. A week later. I guess he got in touch with people at Tour to verify that the deal was legit. And he also read the sample of the first binding. He's Like, You Know, I hate stories that start in Taverns, except yours. I was like, thanks. He's like, yeah, I could see a future for this. Let's try to get all the books you want to do going. He's like, he sent me a letter of representation that actually arrived during the Christmas holidays of 2019. I signed, and then he told me I wouldn't probably see a contract from Tour until early spring because publishing gets really slow after Christmas and getting back together. And then early spring, we had the contract for the first three books of the series from Tor and a few months later, the UK. We had a bidding war between two publishers and we ended up with Golanx (Gollancz) over there. I think that's how you say it, right? [00:07:47.560] - Sunyi Nobody knows how to say it. I say it Galantz with a flourish. But I've heard galanks from you. [00:07:53.880] - Ronnie The z is A-C-H-E sound. It's Golanchi. It's Italian now. I'm getting so much trouble for that. [00:07:58.460] - Sunyi Why not? Heard some people say Golenzans, which is just adding in vowels for fun, I guess. [00:08:03.770] - Wayne Yeah, I just go with golen's. That's the way it is in my head. [00:08:07.290] - Sunyi If you work for this publisher, I'm so sorry, please do write in and tell us how to say your publishing name correctly because we don't know the big G in the UK. [00:08:17.470] - Wayne Just act like it's an audio pronunciation guide that we're going to need. [00:08:22.030] - Ronnie But, yeah, that's how I ended up here. It was weird. It was seven years of indie, and I never tried to go traditional, door or query because my favorite genre at the time was contemporary and urban fantasy. And I bumped into a very prominent editor in 2016 and I actually wanted to query her, and she flat out said, no one's buying urban fantasy or Contemporary unless your last name is Butcher Briggs, Cadre or Hearn. So that kind of shot down any hope of going traditional at the time anyway. So I was just like, well, screw it. I guess I'm indie until this whole freaky story happened. [00:08:54.010] - Sunyi Just to recap, for listeners, you sold your debut Trad novel, Unfinished 350,000 Words without an agent, right? See, if you told me this story two years ago, I would have said. [00:09:07.020] - Ronnie Jesus, sounds so bad at douchey. [00:09:09.810] - Sunyi It doesn't sound douchey. But listen, if someone had been like, two years ago, if someone had been like, hey, do you think I could sell my 350 word, 350,000 word epic fantasy novel without an agent to Tour? I would have been like, that doesn't ever happen. That just does not happen. But every time I say something like that, I meet someone else who has who's had a crazy journey. But, yeah, thanks. If that's all right. I'm going to ask Wayne to share his long publication story because Wayne is like, my icon for perseverance in Trad with feel free to take off, Wayne. [00:09:44.020] - Wayne Okay. I can 100% confirm that you are absolutely correct and that publishers usually won't buy novels that big because they totally didn't with me. All right, so first things first. Generation X, which actually does at this time and place, put me into my fifty S now, like early 50s. So, yeah, I actually decided that I wanted to write, like, way back in the 90s, like, you know, the mid 90s. So I started writing stuff and, you know, it's like trying to get better. I finally wrote my first novel and finished in like 96 or 97 or something like that. And I think that was about like 380,000 words at the time. Email creating still wasn't really a thing back then, so I was still doing it the old fashioned way and just sending out letters to the agents one by one. And I was living and working in Singapore at the time, so I was like, hey, I'm this Filipino Canadian guy that's not even in Canada or the Philippines right now. I'm working in Singapore and I got this huge novel and you want to take a look at it? And actually I got a bite and an agent asked to look at it and he offered to represent me based on that 380,000 word book. [00:10:51.540] - Wayne And I was like, oh my God, I got an agent on practically my first try, and I did it before I'm 30. This is going to be great. My path is completely laid out before me. I'm on Easy Street now. Leader I was not. So what eventually happened after that was, yeah, he took that $380,000 word novel, and it's like he started shopping around and Tor asked to see it. And then they looked at it and they sat on it for like, three or four years before finally saying, yeah, we really like it, but no, we're not going to go with that. [00:11:26.570] - Sunyi I remember what you're telling me is that the attitude he submitted it to really liked it and he just couldn't get his team on board or something. [00:11:32.370] - Wayne Yeah, that's right. I'm not in the same position that you guys are, so I'm not going to name names or anything like that because there are still he did try. He tried for years, and eventually they were just like, no, there were just way too many arguments going on about it because it was like weird and strange and also contemporary fantasy, but it was the time, so I guess the market might have been bigger, but eventually after that, that didn't work out. So I found myself eventually without an agent and in the querying trenches again, and I kind of just stayed there writing one book after another until about like 2015 or 2016. So, yeah, basically I managed to get an agent in the then, lost that agent in the then, spent the next 15 or so years just querying and writing like six or seven books and collecting about four or five no, maybe 600 rejections. It was a lot of rejections anyway. It's like, yeah, I just kept going and going and going. [00:12:38.310] - Sunyi Ronnie's face. [00:12:39.670] - Wayne I just told myself it's like, okay, I know that I am made of flesh and bone, and I know that this is a wall, but if I treat my head like a drop of water and I just keep banging it against that wall, eventually, on a millennial scale of time, I will eventually break through that wall. If I just keep doing this, So I did. And then 2015, 2016, I eventually got another bite on a cyberpunk novel. I'd actually told myself at the time, it's like, okay, I've been at this for a while and I've been making a pretty good gig as just a freelance writer. So maybe if this last novel doesn't work out, then I'm just going to call it quits and say, okay, I'll just stick with the freelancer writing from now. So this is my last novel. I'm going to write everything that I want in it and I'm just going to put it out and I'm not going to care. And an agent finally said, okay, I like this book. Let's try and get it published. It took another year and a half or so before somebody finally came around and said, yeah, we want to publish this book in exactly the same way as I was with my first agent. [00:13:41.740] - Wayne I was like, yes, I finally got a book published. This is it. My path is clear. It's like Easy Street is finally opening for me a second time, but this time it's totally going to work out. I've got a really good feeling about this. And then they told me, so we're going to publish this in 2020. And I'm like, yes, 2020, that sounds like a great year and we're going to make it a summer publication. I'm like, yes, it's going to be a beach read in 2020. This is fantastic. I am set. And then 2020 rolled around and in January we had a little thing called the global pandemic. So all of a sudden everything was closed, including the bookstores. And my publishers were like, so your book launch is going to be when bookstores aren't actually open. So how about if we just do an ebook in the summer and maybe the pandemic will be over by the winter and we'll launch the actual physical book then? Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, really, how long in the pandemic last? Like eight, nine weeks? But surely it's not going to go on that long. [00:14:45.360] - Wayne Reader it went on that long. [00:14:48.410] - Ronnie Shouldn't have asked. [00:14:49.680] - Wayne Yeah, exactly. So yeah, summer rolled around and the ebook came out because all the bookstores were closed. And then winter came along and the physical book came out, but it didn't matter because most of the bookstores were still closed. And so they were like, well, sorry, man. We tried doing what we could, but the pandemic kind of just happened. So my book kind of just launched itself and did a triple lindy and went straight into the toilet and just did this rapid spiral with the flush sound effect, and I kind of just, like, wave bye bye. It's like, we had a good run, didn't we? [00:15:24.010] - Sunyi I'm sorry that I'm laughing at this, but I love the way you tell it. [00:15:28.570] - Wayne I laugh every day. I laugh every five minutes. When I think about it, I have to laugh because otherwise it's just like, oh, my God. The suicidal tendencies. [00:15:39.610] - Ronnie How am I not supposed to feel bad? [00:15:41.760] - Wayne By the way, we must laugh because the woodchipper is the alternative, and we do not want the wood shipper, which is more of a growlery joke, but like, hey, growlery guys, how are you? I told you my voice sounded like a chipmunk, didn't I? [00:15:57.110] - Sunyi Wayne, I love your voice, and I love your humor in the face of the abyss. It has always impressed me enormously. [00:16:04.380] - Ronnie My humor is, it's a coping mechanism. [00:16:06.370] - Wayne Right, exactly. Yeah. So that's it. Holy shit. Oh, my God. [00:16:11.580] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:16:12.710] - Wayne Now, my story is that I am still continuing to write books and giving them to my agent. God bless, after that. And she is sending them out, and I continue to experience many near misses where the editors are always like, we love the writing. It's so engaging, it's so funny. But this book isn't quite for us. But please submit the next one. And I keep doing that. So I'm basically at Wall 2.0, where my forehead continues to bang against it, and I think I may be close to making another dent, but I don't know. I'm writing a new novel. I'm using first person point of view for the first time because some people have said, and I quote, it's voicing as fuck. So we'll see whether that makes a difference. [00:16:55.270] - Sunyi It is. They're very voicey. [00:16:57.760] - Wayne Yeah. So that's my long, slow, terrible, you don't want to be me story. And if I had to give advice to anybody out there, if it is at all under your control, try not to launch during a global pandemic. It does not turn out well for you. [00:17:14.410] - Ronnie Jesus Christ. And I'm not even Christian. [00:17:16.950] - Sunyi That's the perfect time to say Jesus Christ. Mental health advice, guys. How do you guys manage that? Can we broach that subject? Is that dangerous? [00:17:29.230] - Wayne Regular. We can. Regular alteration of state of consciousness. That's a good way to say it. [00:17:34.930] - Sunyi Wow. And it's legal, man. It's legal up there. [00:17:40.770] - Ronnie We all talk in Growlery (discord), that Wayne and I. Yeah. Definitely partake in mental health assistance. Mental assistance. [00:17:47.810] - Wayne Psychodots. And leave it at that. Yeah, we're psychodots. That's what we are. Yes. We're nautically. Exploring the psyche. Yes. That is what we do. Sure. Let's go with that. [00:17:58.270] - Ronnie Also angry weightlifting in my case. That does actually help. Yeah. [00:18:01.980] - Sunyi Oh, I'm in that team. I'm in that team. [00:18:03.950] - Ronnie Yeah. I was at Imperial College London, UK. Sorry. I'm a fitness nerd. And you guys know this because I mean, Clays at times will go off in growlery and talk about this. [00:18:12.260] - Sunyi I learned so much. [00:18:12.990] - Ronnie And you guys do they have shown that long term weight training can help only just because how much it affects cortisol, which does exacerbate when you guys if you have depression like we do, or suicidal tendencies, just stressors of all kind. It's not obviously the cure. Unfortunately, the cure right now does seem to be magic mushrooms. I mean, that's backed up by science. Six months of micro dosing and it way new. Like, this is going to get here somehow. If I was on this channel just. [00:18:41.050] - Sunyi To save my own skin, I'm going to have to say that the podcast does not officially endorse substances, illegal or otherwise. [00:18:48.970] - Wayne Not officially, quote, unquote. [00:18:52.330] - Ronnie And I've been public about this on Twitter. I do struggle with very bad depression and I've just Googled and researched a lot of this. I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying I do or we endorse it. [00:19:02.190] - Sunyi Just yeah, no, that's fine. We've talked about it loads. Because the thing for me has always been anxiety, and I hate that term anxiety, because anxiety makes me think, like, if I have to give a speech to some people who are not very interested, that would make me anxious. Right? To me, that's anxiety. But then the level that I experience it is like, I think the fucking world is ending and everyone's going to leave me right then. That's a whole nother level. It's like if we only had one word for depression and that word, I feel a bit sad, like it would just not cover what you're experiencing. But anyway, yeah, I've tried my share of things. Drugs don't work for me. Two of them have made me extremely ill. One of don't do drugs if you can't cope with them kids, even legal ones. [00:19:48.890] - Ronnie Yeah, that's the scary part, though, right? Like, you don't know how it's going to affect your neurochemistry. It's why I did say with assisted, the best way it works so far is with colleges, with doctors. [00:20:00.850] - Sunyi Yeah. Caveat that one of mine was a prescription and it was the beta blockers that kind of tanked my heart rate. [00:20:09.480] - Wayne Hospital. [00:20:10.030] - Sunyi And the other one was, I think by the time I ended up in Emergency Room, my resting heart rate was 36 beats per minute and dropping. And it just felt like having a. [00:20:17.060] - Ronnie Heart attack in slow motion. [00:20:20.150] - Sunyi Yeah, it felt like a heart attack in slow motion. So I can't take those for anxiety. I can't take Citalopram. I may or may not. I'm not admitting this on air. Have tried something I shouldn't have done, which made me very sick. And thankfully, we have doctors in our discord who gave me some advice. Otherwise, alcohol and exercise, my drugs of choice. [00:20:38.010] - Wayne I think I remember this moment now. Yeah, this is all starting to sound unpleasantly familiar. [00:20:43.310] - Sunyi Yeah. [00:20:43.970] - Ronnie Publishing makes you do drugs wrong. [00:20:46.510] - Sunyi Take anyone that doesn't have an unhealthy. Like everyone I know who is a writer has some kind of problem. I won't say problem has some kind of relationship with alcohol or other substances. [00:21:00.010] - Ronnie No, but that's because and there was a famous author who god, I'm forgetting who, though, but he talked about this, that the arts usually attract people who are neurodivergent or suffer from mental illness on a higher percentage. I don't know if there's a reason why. Maybe it is because nontypical thinking you might gravitate towards the art already, and then obviously how many people go undiagnosed. Mental illness is getting worse, and there's obviously world contributing factors to that, too. I mean, look at our timeline, right? Everything that can go wrong in the world seems to be finding ways to go wrong. And I think art might be the reprieve for that. So you might have a higher concentration of people like that in there because it's the one place where logically, you have some control with what you're making, creating, saying how you get it out there process. And it kind of is a therapy. Like, I know for me, writing literally saved my life, and then a writer also saved my life. So I have a very if healthy is the actual right word, but I have a very strong attachment to creating. [00:21:50.910] - Sunyi Yeah, but then publishing is different from writing, isn't it? So writing saves your life, and publishing pushes you over the edge again. [00:21:55.960] - Ronnie Oh, God. [00:21:57.970] - Ronnie Yeah. Well, I will say how do I phrase this so I don't get canceled tomorrow? I've never struggled too much Indie Publishing. [00:22:05.510] - Sunyi Everything's in your control. [00:22:06.590] - Ronnie Everything's in your control. Well, I think also the transparency. Like, if a book doesn't work, I know it could have been like, all right, I didn't have the resources to market, and I could feel bad about it. But some authors come in a lot later in indie publishing with what they call war chest. They're retired, they're wealthy, they can invest. This isn't a criticism, but I started when I was in my early 20s. You have no money when you're 20. So I had to do mine from grassroots scratch and build it up so my early books didn't blow up. I kind of felt bad about myself, but I was also like, okay, why didn't have the money? And then slowly things actually started working out, and I could see the control, and I could see the sales and the money coming, and I knew how much I was going to get in two months, so I can portion a part of it. Yeah. And I was like, okay, if I keep writing these books and I portion, like, 20% of every month's income back into ads or building my mailing list, it will scale up, maybe not as much as I'd like, and it would, and that's kind of what happened. [00:22:52.530] - Ronnie Traditional is really hard for me to adjust with after seven seven years of indie because nothing's transparent like you and I are still waiting on our royalty reports. [00:23:04.010] - Sunyi Yeah, wayne goes like the other way, I think. And he's always telling me he prefers to believe that everything in Trad is in his control. [00:23:11.380] - Wayne Oh, yeah, I 100% blame myself and just kind of wallow in existential crippling despair about the whole it's because the book sucked, that's all. So if I just wrote a book that didn't suck, then it'll be fine because that way I can at least tell myself the reason that this failed is something that I can change. If I say it's like, oh, no, your book was good, it just didn't get picked up for reasons, then I'm like, well, what am I even doing this for? So I'm just going to blame myself until something else happens. I'd rather deal with the crippling existential despair of you fail, but you can do better, as opposed to the crippling existential despair of this had absolutely nothing to do with you and therefore you can do nothing about it. [00:23:53.980] - Ronnie What's going to happen to the listeners is what I'm worried about after this episode. [00:23:57.460] - Sunyi Now it's bleak, right? But I guess it's something I've been. [00:24:00.860] - Wayne Thinking my story wasn't. But I laugh at it though, you see, it's like I can smile about it now after it's like years of recovery. [00:24:10.050] - Sunyi Everybody's got bleakness somewhere in there. [00:24:12.530] - Wayne Exactly. Some of us are just more outward about it than others. Like this guy [00:24:19.490] - Sunyi I was just thinking about it in terms of... sometimes I read reviews. Reviewers are like, if the author just put in a little bit more effort here and I always think, do you not know? They don't know. But most people are writing under crap circumstances, like just really grueling mental, financial, whatever circumstances, we can't do better. [00:24:41.710] - Ronnie familial stuff... if we want to get dark. You guys know my personal family history and upbringing that might be too dark for the show, but yeah, there's some shit circumstances in writers lives. [00:24:50.810] - Sunyi And then on top of all that, there's the enormous pressure to get everything right. And that kind of brings me to something that Wayne had suggested talking about, which is the landmine of diaspora writers, which is all three of us writing cultural stuff in quotes and how that can go sideways both ways. From western readers wanting authenticity and people back home who think you will never get it right. Because that causes me a lot of stress and anxiety. I don't know how you guys feel about it or what that landscape is like, especially in social media where we're constantly seeing all sides of the fence and all sides of the fence hate us. That's the wrong way to phrase it, but, you know. Yeah. [00:25:27.030] - Ronnie Oh, absolutely. Do you want to go start, Wayne? Or do you want me to just. [00:25:29.920] - Wayne Go. I guess I could at least start with one thing, which is that I did want to point out for everybody here that if you are diaspora and you're telling diaspora stories, your writing is going to be like you, it's going to be mixed, it won't fit in, and nobody is going to know where to put it. And you just have to deal with that if those are the kinds of stories that you want to tell amen. That's the harsh reality of it. [00:25:59.970] - Ronnie I got very fortunate with the first binding in that, at least as far as I've seen, I haven't had South Asian hate. My biggest advocates have been South Asian readers and reviewers. Weirdly. I've had Western, and I don't want to say white necessarily, but there was one who was criticizing my lack of South Asianness in this. And I did want to pop off on social media. Like, my parents were fresh off the boat in America and raised me South Asian. Like my first languages, plural, were all South Asian languages. I didn't learn English or anything American until I was in Montessori, which is like a preschool before preschool, and I had to learn English there. Yeah, I was watching Bollywood movies because my dad personal story was actually in Bollywood for a little while and that was like his big aspiration he didn't make it. I guess that's how he relives. Like the almost I almost made it thing. And it was all Bollywood movies all the time. That's what I grew up watching until he finally let someone else use a TV. And then it was like Western stories of Power Rangers and Wishbone and Fable stuff and mythology. [00:26:54.550] - Ronnie But linguistically I grew up very South Asian cuisine. We never ate out. The first time I ate out ever was like 1998, and our neighborhood got a subway. So I have an emotional attachment to a subway because that was the very first time I ever ate out. No. Yeah, I'm not complaining. I'm just like it is weird to see the hate that I've gotten from non South Asians telling me about the lack of South Asianness in the story, but it's like what you talked about. At the same time, I'm also writing something very in the middle. Like people don't know the colonization history of South Asia because it's been colonized by a lot of different empires and cultures. And my story specifically starts off in a place called Itanya, which is an analog amalgamation of Spain and Italy that's closer to Portugal. The Portuguese conquered parts of South Asia. They brought Catholicism there. Goa, which is a colony. It was a Portuguese colony. And I don't think people realize that one of the places that has a lot of South Asian influences now in return is Goa. There's like there's Catholic South Asians there. It's a very interesting thing. [00:27:53.190] - Ronnie I'll... go ahead. Sorry. [00:27:53.830] - Sunyi No, you've totally right. There's a lot of that in Hong Kong as well because it was just owned by Britain for so long and I'm all over the place. Like, I went to they call it local school in Hong Kong when I was about kindergarten age and learned Chinese and was there. And then we moved back to the States and we moved back without my mother because she was still working. I lost all the Chinese. We moved back later and I went to high school in Hong Kong and then now I live here. So I haven't written a story set in Hong Kong yet. Like, I'm writing one now and I'm awaiting. I'm terrified of the backlash. I watch the arguments between Dice Four and non diaspora people on Twitter, and I think this is going to be so bad. My whole plan for that is to turn off Twitter when this book comes out. [00:28:36.610] - Ronnie Honestly, oh, yeah, Twitter is so toxic. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that. But it is. [00:28:41.260] - Sunyi No, it is. We all know it is. We're all terrified of Twitter, and it is so bad. It's like everyone is. [00:28:47.210] - Ronnie So I don't have a reddit. It gets progressively worse, I think the more you get into these microcosms or microcosms where you can create, like, group homophily, it just concentrates and it gets worse because I don't have reddit, but I have some loose idea of how it works. But I know you can build, like, subreddits right there's, like a subcommunity of a subcommunity subcommunity. And that's only ever going to lead to an exacerbated group think. And that's never good in any kind of community. I mean, it's already bad enough in publishing, and we've seen this and we've talked about it personally and stuff, and it just magnifies, like, intensity of one opinion. That's not how writing works, because our whole thing is we've talked about this with commerciality. We're supposed to first try to be as accessible as we can, if that's what you want to sell. And that also means accessibility of thought and experiences in your books. Like, I tackle societal hierarchy in my book, but it's through the lens of castism because that's a real problem in South Asia still to this day. I've know people in my life who want their kids to marry certain people of certain castes, and it's horrible, but it's quietly still talked about colorism. [00:29:45.630] - Ronnie But that boils down to it's a kind of bigotry and prejudice to talk about. But my entire book has these themes showing up in it, but they're accessible. I think Americans will realize that people in the west will still get regardless of it not being here in terms of castism. Maybe it's still kind of prejudice. And we understand prejudice. [00:29:59.890] - Sunyi I do think we get scrutinized more as well. I mean, book eaters are set in Britain and it's a very kind of tribute to Britain book. I remember one person, it's a positive review, and they'd written like my only complaint is the author clearly doesn't know how people talk here because no one in this country says crikey. And I read that and I thought, Crikey? Who's she been talking to? It's funny because every single time I meet someone that says crikey now in this country, I think about that fucking review. [00:30:25.160] - Ronnie Oh, absolutely. [00:30:25.930] - Sunyi And part of me thinks, but if my name was John Smith, would they have said that or would they have questioned that? I know this country. I've lived here 18 years, for God's sake. Anyway, yeah, I'm all over the place with this interview. [00:30:39.710] - Ronnie No, but this is valid. [00:30:41.490] - Wayne You're absolutely right, though. You're right. It's like once they see that name, certain assumptions are going to come in. And it's one of those things that I wrestle with because it totally gets confused with me living in North America where it's like santos Spanish. But the only reason it's Santos is because of the Spanish colonial overlords. So the descent in the Philippines is actually more like southeast Asian Pacific Islander. But Santos just conjures up all kind of like automatically wrong assumptions about where my familiarity is supposed to be because, no, I'm not from Mexico or Central America or any of those other places. I'm from Southeast Asian. They're like, okay, so what do you know about the Philippines? And it's like, not as much as somebody that was actually born there and lives there because I grew up in Canada, so sorry, it's like I can't actually go super in depth about that either. Well, I mean, I guess I can now because I actually have spent more time in the Philippines. But one of the things I actually find fascinating about all this is the expectation when you're writing diaspora literature that the west has certain tour guide expectations. [00:31:49.570] - Wayne They think that if you're writing this and you're diaspora, you are going to make it more, quote unquote, accessible to them. Yes. And you're going to explain this stuff like a tour guy going, they want Epray love. Yeah, exactly. They want you to explain the terminology. They want you to explain the customs. They want you to put them on like it's a small world after all, and just give them this quick TV dinner version that they can rapidly digest and feel like they've been someplace. [00:32:17.970] - Ronnie This is something I got. And it ticked me off the way you talked about Sunyi, because I realized somebody wanted my novel to be like a monolith of just South Asia. And the whole reason I wrote it was to explain that South Asia at no point was ever a monolith. Because the amount of languages spoken there, the cultures that came out of there, the religions it stems out of both the proto Indoeuropean and Indoiranian culture first, and then South Asia actually has the second oldest genome where there's people that still descended from the original Africans there. It's two different cultures that over time sort of homogenized sort of didn't. But you have Vedic Epics out of there, and then Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, so many different religions, but it was also the heart of the Silk Road. Everybody passed through there. Like, South Asia is not one anything food, culture, the amount of microclimates there. It has jungles to freezing parts of the Himalayas. You have beautiful beaches. It's literally a world. That's why it's called a subcontinent. And everyone's traded through it. Everybody slept with the South Asian at one point in history. Sorry. It's true. [00:33:17.520] - Ronnie This is why I had to do the story of South Asia as a Silk Road story. It's almost like, why isn't this just set, like and I guess what they wanted of India. And I'm like, because that's not a self contained area. It never has been. [00:33:28.310] - Sunyi Stupid. Everything everywhere, all at once was winning Oscars. And I have lots of middle aged kind of British poets on my Facebook feed, and some of them really loved it, but quite a few of them really didn't like it. And they were all like, oh, it just doesn't make any sense. And this, that, and the other. And I commented, one other person, I said, well, it probably won't make sense to you because it's like a Diaspora film. It makes sense to people who are kind of which is a large proportion of people displaced Asians, right? It makes sense on that level. And it was written for them, so it's not written for you. And this guy, he was like, no, that's not the case. That I don't just understand it. I like Asian Cinema. And I was like, what do you mean you like Asian cinema? Do you like Japanese cinema? Do you like what you've seen Squid Games? What does that have to do. [00:34:14.930] - Wayne Chopsticks. [00:34:17.170] - Ronnie You saw Big Trouble in Little China. [00:34:19.050] - Sunyi That doesn't mean you'll enjoy a Diaspora film for which you were not the audience. Because, I don't know, you saw Squid. [00:34:24.310] - Wayne Game when it's sunny outside. When it's sunny outside, I wear a pointy hat, so don't tell me that I don't like that's all I'm saying. [00:34:31.940] - Ronnie No, but it's like it's stuff we all have to deal with being a diaspora author. We're both too west for back home and we're to whatever color you want to identify as for the west, which means we're going to get shit from every side for things that might not even have to do with the story. Going back to what you said, if someone just didn't like at the end, there's always, like these weird qualifiers people put in, and we've all seen that kind of stuff. [00:34:53.620] - Sunyi Wayne, I remember for your Maria Makilang books, are novellas, I think they're novellas, aren't they? They're a lot of fun. [00:35:00.080] - Sunyi But you kind of took that myth and ran wild with it. Did you ever kind of I don't know, did you worry about that? Because I worried about it so much, playing with myths and gods and things like that in my Hong Kong book. But I don't know if you gave that much thought. [00:35:13.970] - Wayne Like I said, I typically suffer from crippling existential despair. I wasn't going to worry about getting that wrong. But thanks to the crippling existential despair, I also just assumed I'm going to get this wrong and nobody is going to be happy with it. So I may as well just go fuck it and just let the chips fall where they may because nobody is going to be happy and I just have to deal with that regardless. So I may as well make everybody unhappy in a way where I did it my way. [00:35:40.190] - Sunyi Did you talk to family? [00:35:41.550] - Ronnie I like that. [00:35:42.480] - Sunyi Did you talk to family about it? Because I remember Quizzing my mom-- [00:35:45.620] - Wayne No, definitely not talking to family. Because then it's like you're getting the direct verbal criticism about how you've fucked it up. So it's like, yeah, I mean, Maria Makilang is kind of a big folklore deal in the Philippines. She's got her own mountain and just like lots of legends surrounding her, which also means that it's pretty open to broad interpretation. There are lots of different stories about her. I just happened to pick the one where it turned out that she had three romantic interests and two of them were big deals and one of them was just like a farmer fisherman type. So the other two guys didn't like that and killed a poor bastard off just so that they would have a better shot at her. That particular storyline kind of resonated with me and I know I picked it up and ran with it and just turned it into a stupid fun novella that ends up with high speed car chasing like downtown Toronto because that's just how I roll. But yeah, I mean with something like that, it's like everybody is going to be angry with the way you've done it. So all you can really do is just decide what's pleasing to you and what kind of other reader, I guess you want to write for and then just let go. [00:37:02.100] - Wayne I'm doing it for you guys and for me a little bit and everybody else can just go and yeet into the sun. [00:37:09.710] - Sunyi I tried questioning my mother about some specific aspects of ghost lore in Hong Kong and she kept giving me conflicting answers. I was like, so are there not any set rules to this? And she just gave me this look and she was like, it's fiction. Can't you just make it up? And I was trying to explain to her some of the politics surrounding that on Twitter and how people don't see it that way. And she was like, what is wrong with all these people? And it just made me laugh because it's funny. Like, if I was writing a book about question, I would not feel bad. I would be like, oh, here's my version of Zeus. He's like an emo kid. And this is going to be my 90s retelling of Zeus, right? And I wouldn't feel weird about doing that because people just mess with Greek myths, whether they should or not. But I don't feel like any freedom when it comes to Chinese mythology at all. You feel that pressure to be historical or accurate, even when the myths themselves are completely all over the place. [00:38:05.740] - Ronnie You know what that might be due to, though? It might be because of how prolifically Western myths are disassociated. Myths have been retold so much, we've kind of accepted that. But this is a thing with certain kinds of reviewers who, if their introduction to a POC fantasy is through your book, they inherently want, I guess, the accurateness, so they can learn something. Because a lot of times it's them who criticize it not being as accurate. Sometimes it's not the people back home, it's reviewers here in the west who are like, oh, well, I Googled this, and it's not as accurate as it should be, or blah, blah, blah, because they want that. But it also goes to the problem that Wayne talked about, that it's not as accessible if you do it that way necessarily all the time. They want Eat, Pray, Love, but they also want it to be accurate. And that leaves you like, well, what do you do? So you have to go to Wayne's thing, which is, fuck it, I'm going to do what I want. [00:38:50.380] - Wayne I mean, it is just part of that tour guide aspect where if you say it's like, okay, here is like the canon, the traditional folklore, and I'm going to go off on a curveball on that. But they're like, but wait, unlike Greek mythology or Norris mythology, I am not intimately familiar with this, so I don't want you taking liberties with it because I want you to explain it to me as it is traditionally. And it's like, well, that's not fair. And they're like, yeah, but I'm not familiar with it, so give me the pure stuff. It's like, don't go off on your own path yet because I don't know what the established path is, and I expect you to define that for me now. And it's like, oh, okay, well, that's an unpleasant expectation that you've suddenly dropped on my shoulders. [00:39:30.510] - Ronnie Write what you want to write, but write it for us the way we want. [00:39:32.840] - Wayne Yeah, exactly. [00:39:35.290] - Ronnie Secondary World, in my case. [00:39:37.360] - Wayne I just trash the Spanish a lot, but I'm allowed to do that because it's like centuries of colonialism. So it's like, okay, [00:39:46.490] - Sunyi all of my heritage is British oppressed or British hating, which is the Chinese, the Scottish, and the Choctaw side. And that's my reasoning for having broken the hearts of three different English men, one for each of the ancestors. [00:39:59.950] - Wayne There will you go. [00:40:02.830] - Ronnie I wrote my novels Secondary World, because I wanted for me it was just like I wanted Tolkien did. We've talked about this, where he just went to recreate, honestly, the German myths, and he went back to Beowulf and disring Denibling, which is like a Danish or Finnish play I always forget it's about the ring of power. And he just retold them and wanted to go pre ethereum. And he's like, he did it in a secondary world, and it was beautiful. And I was like, I want to do that with South Asian stuff, so I don't have the onus of here's your authentic Indian experience. It's like, no, it's Indian ish. It will feel that. And I'll tackle South Asian subjects and languages, and all myth notes will be there. But it's also new but familiar. [00:40:37.830] - Sunyi Yeah. The first time I read Beowulf, that was my first encounter with, like, oh, wow. Tolkien really did just lift the ending of Beowulf and put it in The Hobbit. Yeah, it was still good. I still liked it. He was a formative read, and I will love Tolkien till the day I die. [00:40:53.450] - Ronnie Oh, same. Absolutely. [00:40:54.910] - Sunyi It's a tribute. [00:40:57.010] - Ronnie Well, here's the thing, too, right. He wasn't, like, originally a writer. He was a language nerd, and through language, like, became a lover of mythology. And he just retold, I guess, because I don't know who posited this theory, but it was really well done. And I guess it's sort of diaspora in that he got tired of the Arthurian myths defining Britain because it's older than that and so many other people, again, have been through there. And he was like, well, what's? Like a new mythical story for Britain? And so he went pre Arthurian, which was Beowulf in the German epics. [00:41:25.600] - Sunyi Yeah, he created the whole very big part of the English fantasy landscape that we've inherited. Yeah, you guys talked really fast. That was quite funny, though. [00:41:36.510] - Ronnie Yeah, I forgot what you have to do. Wow. I need to slow down. [00:41:39.490] - Sunyi No, it was good. This is totally, like, a lack of planning, where I was like, yeah, we had rapid fire conversation and then suddenly we're all really quiet. But it was good. It's all over the place. And, yeah, I am for real going to turn off Twitter when my Hong Kong book comes out, because I've thought about it so much and it's so stressful, that whole scene. [00:42:00.330] - Wayne Oh, they're going to pick on you. They're totally going to pick on you with pitchforks, just looking for a direction to go in. [00:42:09.880] - Sunyi But it's so vitriolic out there. I remember someone saying it was very different. You were writing 50 years ago, and you kind of wrote your book and you sent it off and you maybe saw some reviews in a paper or you maybe heard a few things or got letters. But now we are so plugged in. You get Google alerts for your book, tagged and stuff. You get sent DMs by people who expect you to be available, but also want you to not be in reader spaces at the same time. And they want authors to be available, like reviewers and readers like it. They like feeling like you were there, so they want you to be there. Except when they don't, you're sending mixed messages. Publishers want you to be in there. To interact as well and then just combine with that. I feel like we live in this review culture where people have either chosen to do this or we have lost the ability to say, I don't like a book without a moral judgment attached. I know we've talked about this in Discord, but it just feels like so often reviews, someone will read a big book and think, oh, I don't like this, but I don't want to lose followers. [00:43:11.780] - Sunyi So I'm going to say I don't like this because it's problematic and it's very personal and it's very targeted and oh my God, this is going to be such a dodgy episode. I'm so sorry. I'm talking in big generalities. [00:43:26.200] - Ronnie No, but it's like, it's stuff we all have to deal with. It does. Because the thing is, it's also not unilaterally applied because of the internet, though. There's no instant thought repercussion because you can just fling it out there before you can even realize, hey, is this the right thing to do? Or should I actually say this? And where are repercussions on the Internet? People use sock puppets. We've talked about I've been getting harassed through sock puppet accounts and stuff for a while. [00:43:47.480] - Sunyi And death threats, I remember. Yes, it feels weird to talk about. I feel like I shouldn't be talking about my emotional responses to those kinds of reviews, but it's like at the same time, it's like it is a huge part of author life. And I kind of feel like we're we're reaching this point where there's a really toxic relationship between authors and reviewers. It's kind of very slowly getting worse. At the moment. It feels like that anyway. I don't know. [00:44:08.860] - Ronnie Well, look at Twitter with actors, right? Kelly, was it? Kelly Marie tran. I'm so sorry if I got her name wrong. She was one of the Star Wars actors. [00:44:15.010] - Sunyi That was awful. [00:44:15.880] - Ronnie She was bullied off of Twitter. Tom Holland this just recently came out, and it was surprising because I saw it yesterday or two days ago where he announced he was sober and I didn't know what context they meant it in now because it's broadly termed, and it turns out it was actually from social media because of all the Spider Man attention. And I guess he also got weird messages. I don't know how far it got, but there are people who are like, I'm a Toby Maguire supremacist or who's the second gentleman who played Andrew Garfield? Andrew Garfield. He actually weirdly started getting comments about that stuff, and it was like, why would you send it to him? Though, for him, it's just a role. He got the role of his life. It was a studio decision and it's happening now. We see it with Liam's Hemsworth and the witcher. I've seen shit where he's getting it, but it's like, you know, that guy didn't kick Henry Cavill out. You can get mad at studios and whatever else you want, but it gets out of hand and people get hurt or their mental health gets hurt, and that's wayne and I obviously talked about suicidal tendency and crazy people get harassed. [00:45:11.180] - Wayne Yeah. I mean, for me, it's being a Gen Xer, I guess it's definitely an old man yelling at cloud's moment. But I really wish that we could actually roll back the time machine and go back to a time where the audience did not automatically expect and demand instant access to the artists, because it did not happen until the 21st century. And now that it's here, everybody kind of just takes it for granted where, yes, I'm going to have access to the artists and I'm going to be able to tell them whatever I want. And if they don't listen to me and if they don't acknowledge me, then I'm actually going to get mad about that. And it wasn't always like that. And it would be nice to go back to that where it's just like the art, it's doing their own thing, as opposed to, like, I said something to them and they didn't reply to me. And now I'm very, very angry about that. That's just nuts. [00:45:58.920] - Sunyi Yeah. I'm so careful online because I've become the blandest person ever. I've adopted the brand Brandon Sanderson kind of facade because I know that if I start a dog pile, I can't cope with it. I can't cope with someone at a red light behind me getting upset because I started my car too late. Right. That stresses me out. There's this whole thing on Twitter, the whole, like, you make someone mad and then they demand apologies over and over. And that reminds me of unpleasant family behavior for my childhood, which is just like, everyone who's got Asian parents knows this. [00:46:32.800] - Ronnie Oh, yes. [00:46:34.030] - Sunyi The circle of apology that goes on and on and on. And I don't know whether people on Twitter are learning that at home and bringing it to us or we're just being triggered by it, but fucking hell, I can't do that. So first sign of a dog pile, I'm gone. [00:46:47.890] - Ronnie I chose the opposite route. I've just turned my entire brand into shit posting. Or the extreme of like, I just drop entire mythology threads, which I should probably be putting on YouTube, but, like, ten pages of, here, here's something you should learn. Everything else is just shit posting anyways. Or it's just dog piles, and I'm sick of it. Like, I'm going to learn you something, but I suppose we should talk about, like, there is a positive to this. I know my career has been built literally by loving online random strangers, which I guess is most readers, but that I've interacted with one of my earliest fans for my Grave Report series, which they should not have been reading because they were like 13, but whatever, really loved it. And for their birthday, I was like, you know what? Fuck, this kid really loves my series. I sent them like an entire FBI evidence bag with the book inside, signed BOOKMARKS and FBI evidence because there's an FBI agent character in it. And now they're like the biggest diehard fan ever. And it was just that one little interaction that made this person's life. And because of that, I now have a connection. [00:47:37.340] - Ronnie It's like, wow, this is beautiful. And I have fans like that. [00:47:42.370] - Sunyi No, same thing. I think you meet the individual reader. Like, there are people who are looking for the epilogue, and I would just send it to them quietly. Or who wanted they wanted a signed edition and they missed out. So I can send them book plates. You can only do that on social media. And that part of it is really cool. And also, as much as I complain about it, there are times when Twitter is really, really effective. It holds people accountable. That too. Some of the books that have been canceled fucking deserved it, right? I know it's awful to say, and maybe it wasn't done with kindness or nuance, but I was thinking about like that memoir lady. But anyway, was this I'm going to. [00:48:18.540] - Ronnie Get in trouble for? Probably guessing, but is it American dirt? [00:48:21.870] - Sunyi Oh, no, you won't get in trouble. I can't remember her name now. That's why I haven't named her. But it was basically a woman, a British lady who got on Twitter and she was like, oh, reviewers are leaving bad reviews. Or they are making up quotes that aren't in my book. Everyone please help me. And this went viral because everyone felt sorry for her. And then people read her book and were like, but they didn't make up those quotes that's literally in your book. You literally said that. And then your publisher dropped her and all this stuff. And it's like, but if you hadn't gone on Twitter to sick people against reviewers for what was literally in your book and they were actually right, then you probably wouldn't have lost everything. So she totally did that to herself. [00:48:58.950] - Ronnie That wigs me out, though. Here's the thing. We talked about getting judged and stuff. So my cab driver thriller has racist comments, but they're comments that I have received. [00:49:09.630] - Sunyi Well in this case because it's a memoir. It's like her remembering things that she thought about people, where it's like so that's a bit different. But yeah, no, I understand the worry as well. [00:49:20.320] - Ronnie Yeah, supercharged episode. A publishing viral or all canceled. [00:49:26.770] - Sunyi Scott's away, the Asians come out to play. [00:49:32.870] - Ronnie (Choking noises) [00:49:34.150] - Ronnie No, you're fine. That was good. I just shouldn't have drank something, but that was good. Also, the title will probably be some rated R film or rated at. [00:49:41.100] - Sunyi Yeah, it absolutely is. I'm totally out of questions, but I had a good time just talking shit and saying hello to you guys. So feel free to plug your books, both of you, if you want. I know I've been all over the place today. Sorry I rely on Scott to drive episodes too much [00:49:54.140] - Ronnie with his, like, super smooth, silky voice. [00:49:57.490] - Sunyi He just thinks of questions so fast and effortlessly, it's crazy. Anyway, sorry. Plug your books. [00:50:01.890] - Ronnie My latest book is the first binding book one of Tails of Tremaine. Book two will hopefully be coming out next year. That's what I've been told. Don't ask me when exactly, because paper shortages and cris is publishing and I get different answers. [00:50:14.830] - Sunyi Where can we find you, Ronnie? [00:50:16.570] - Ronnie These days, mostly on Twitter, the platform we just spent a long time complaining about or how long it continues to exist. [00:50:24.960] - Ronnie And you can find a way to harass me on my Facebook author page, because that's where most of the harassment happens in DMs. But I do actually respond to people who are like, nice. I actually do take time to answer questions. I have one reviewer that does. Just ask me mythology questions nonstop in Facebook DMs, and I will answer, especially if you want to talk nerdy mythology stuff. [00:50:42.540] - Sunyi Awesome. Your turn, Wayne. [00:50:44.590] - Wayne Well, if you're looking for my books, then you can find the Chimera Code as a print book and an ebook at all Good Bookstores. If you're interested in urban fantasy novellas about Filipino folklore, then you can look for The Difficult Loves of Maria Mackling, which are also available as ebooks or print books at All Good Bookstores. Maybe by this point, if you want to reach me on the Internet, then probably the best way to do it is either at my website, which is Waynesanthos.com, or you can bug me on Twitter for however long that continues to exist @WaynePsantos. [00:51:23.530] - Sunyi Thank you both. You've been listening to the publishing Rodeo podcast with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.