[00:00:00] my biggest thing as a writer is I just really want people to feel emotion. If my words on these pages are able to evoke emotion out of people, that's the number one thing that I could possibly hope for. 

Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.

Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.

welcome back to the Classroom Narrative podcast, where today I'm joined by Lincoln James, your favorite author's, favorite author, who's known for his haunting love of stories, vintage thrillers and slow burn suspense.

[00:01:00] And his characters feel they ache, they bleed, and often feel trapped between the past and the people who won't let them forget about it. And when he's not writing, he's a communication professor in New York City and cherishes moments with friends and family proving that the most thrilling tales lie in the love and laughter shared with those closest to them.

So Lincoln, welcome to the show. 

Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. 

Such a pleasure. So Lincoln and I are actually colleagues at one of our New York City institutions together, and I just finished one of Lincoln's texts last night called, written Just For You. And Wow, without giving away the ending, it was such a wonderful story about being seen what it means to have visibility in the world.

Lincoln's work spans multiple decades and emotional terrains. So before I dive into the deeper themes and how they connected to his own classroom, I wanna start with the worlds where these stories take place and how they were born.

 first of all, tell us about your new text coming out this coming week, November 11th. 

Absolutely. [00:02:00] So , my latest book coming out is, We Are Human. And the way that I like to describe it is it's almost a modern take on Frankenstein. And so essentially it takes place in 2040 and it follows a scientist who is just so incredibly obsessed with immortality.

And so because of that, he ends up kidnapping three individuals and the story told from the perspective of one of the taken. And so it's about his journey to survive the experiment and what happens to him when he is on the other side. Outstanding. 

And you know, with the upcoming novel, thinking about just that title, We Are Human.

When we think about humanity, it even feels like the sense of urgency based upon where we stand as a nation and as a culture at this time, especially in terms of the climate that we all exist in. So in the moment where empathy itself is fractured and the narratives that we've worked to tell can be sometimes weaponized, what is We Are Human trying to say that your other past works either [00:03:00] haven't done yet or didn't do yet, or even couldn't do just yet?

No, that's, uh, a really great question because I would say that We Are Human is really my most intimate book. Even though it's said in the future, it's brutal, it's raw and emotionally it's. A bit about trauma and identity and how we try to reclaim control when the world has essentially taken everything from us.

So really my past work, it's explored grief, memory, love, but this one, it really just stares directly into the aftermath and it asks what happens when you survive something you weren't meant to survive. And whether being changed by that makes you less human or possibly more. 

Tell us about your past books as well. , This is your fifth book that you're coming out to publish with. Tell us about the other four as well and what those have served. 

Yeah, so I would say that each of those stories have definitely served in their own way or world.

So for example, the Vanishing eight was my very first book. I started writing it when I [00:04:00] was a teenager and it took me eight years to write. And with that one, in addition to teaching myself what even means to be an author and finding my author voice and everything like that, which I definitely feel like I've grown more into as I went on.

But with that, it's more so about. Essentially establishing yourself in a world where the people you thought were, that were always gonna be in your life are no longer there. Whether you just grow up and maybe one goes off to school, another one gets married and has kids and just vanishes altogether.

It's essentially a slasher about what it means to lose people. And especially with this book, it takes place in 1979 and follows a group of eight friends who thought that they would be friends forever until one mysteriously disappears. 

Tell us about some of the others as well. 

Yeah, so devils like us. Uh, so that one is a bit more of a [00:05:00] chase thriller and that one is super near and dear to my heart.

And it really, that one dives more into the aspect of trying to come to terms with. Just something chasing after you and you having to face your demons no matter what. And so it takes place in 1997 Los Angeles, and within the stewards of Los Angeles, it actually goes on for 40,000 miles. It just keeps looping in on itself.

And these two killers, they decide to make a maze down there. So they kidnap people from above ground, set them free in the maze, and then hunt them down. So it's from the perspective of one of the people who's taken. And so that being said, he's trying to outwit and outsmart the people that are chasing after him.

But during that entire time, he is also trying to deal with his own demons and come to terms with them so that he's able to overcome , the threat at hand. 

And then we have all the time, right? 

Yes, all the time. That one, I would say is a bit of a [00:06:00] deviation. It's not necessarily bloody gory, anything like that.

There is no killer. But instead the main plot point there is time itself. And so following our main protagonist, Carter, he's a teenager from 2015 who finds himself stuck in 1994 with nothing but a broken iPhone. And so if you like, back to the future, it absolutely does kind of give that vibe as almost as if it were just taking place a little bit further in the future.

But anyways, when it comes to Carter, his entire motivation for even setting course on this journey was his parents are separated and he is trying to essentially say goodbye to his dying mother. He drives across country to the east coast where he knows that his mom's house is. When he gets there, the house is nowhere to be found.

And so because of that, he drives around. He asks some local kids that he sees and he says, Hey, uh, where's that house? I think my phone's not [00:07:00] working. I'm trying to figure everything out. And they say, uh, those houses haven't gone up yet. They just got, I think they just started the other day. And so that's how he finds out that he is stuck in the past, but essentially while he's trying to figure out how he got there, how to get back, the main thing that he is also trying to figure out as well is, is my mom already gone?

He doesn't know if time is moving on without him or if maybe he's just a missing person in the future while he is stuck in the past. 

Love that. And that's a very different plot line than from written just for you, which also just came out this year too, by the way. Right. So tell us about written just for you.

Yes. Funny enough, all the time written just for you. And now We Are Human. All came out this year. Yeah, I, uh, I've definitely, over the years I've gotten a bit faster at writing, but the thing is in something that I taught myself and I will never do again, is on the very first few pages, I like to advertise my upcoming books and [00:08:00] written just for You.

The only book that I put a specific date on when it was gonna be coming out. And so you better believe I held myself to that date. Yeah. Um, for better or worse, but Written Just for you, that one is truly one of my books. That just means so much to me as well, because. It's essentially, as you said that at the start of the podcast, it's really about that journey of kind of forgiving yourself for things, but also trying to come to terms with how grief can affect people long after an incident, for example.

So if we look at just Gene's story in itself, so for those of you who don't know, written just for you is about a guy named Will in 1962. He falls in love with a girl he meets on the beach. The only thing is that, uh, everybody in town says that girl, either A, doesn't exist or B, died a long time ago. And so he's trying to figure out, well then [00:09:00] who's this girl I've been seeing and why does she give me this book?

And so essentially, uh, again, the the whole thing here is trying not to be forgotten from Jean's perspective, but at the same time just how we deal with grief and whether or not we feel like we might be. Stuck in our own cycles of blaming ourselves for things that were far outside of our own control. 

I love that.

And so what do you find that thrillers can offer emotionally to writers and readers that other genres don't have a chance to do for us? 

Definitely. So I, I definitely grew up at being a huge thriller and horror fan. Um, my brother used to go to Blockbuster. Well, my brother used to work at Blockbuster, but he would go there and just get me a whole bunch of horror movies and try and scare me when I was a little kid.

But the thing is, is that, of course I loved it and here I am now. But the thing is, is that thrillers really just kind of give you the permission to be scared and [00:10:00] unsettled, but still feel alive. It's, you get those feelings all at once. And for young readers specifically, or just those that are more emotionally raw, they can be this weird, safe place to explore what isn't safe.

So abandonment, betrayal, mortality, shame, all of those feelings all encompassed within the same type of story. So, in a way. Thrillers give shape to more of the unspoken stuff, the stuff that knaws at us. And they do it with urgency. So there's no dragging, there's a lot of stakes there. And they can be cathartic as well, especially with the endings.

And so hopefully through all of my books, you do end up feeling some type of revelation or at least some type of healing that can potentially happen with you just so you know that you're not alone. So like I said, it, thrillers really just give shape to the unspoken stuff. And they do it with urgency, stakes, and especially they just make sure that you know that you're not [00:11:00] alone with whatever you're going through.

I love that. And it reminds me, 'cause when I finished written just for you, I noticed that you had a lot of crisis hotline context at the end of your book for readers who felt a stir of emotions. What do you anticipate your readers could be feeling when they read your text? And have you ever had a reader come back and say, yes, this made me feel this way.

What was that like for you to hear about as a writer? 

Absolutely. So my biggest thing as a writer is I just really want people to feel emotion. If my words on these pages are able to evoke emotion out of people, that's the number one thing that I could possibly hope for. At the same time, because I am covering a lot of the darker aspects, I mean, frankly, some of my books, there is a lot of murder.

And so because of that, um, I just wanna make sure that if people are feeling those emotions, they, and they do feel seen that my books are not something that's gonna put them in a negative place. If anything, as I said, my books should be seen more so as a healing type of area. If you want a spooky [00:12:00] story that still has a lot of heart to it, that's definitely what I aim for.

And so those hotlines are essentially just because I know that I do cover , some tricky material there, whether it's mental health or potentially any type of violence, whether domestic or otherwise. I think that it's super important just to still provide those at the end of the book, just so that once again, those people that are feeling a type of way can be seen.

But my favorite thing that I've ever heard is essentially just that at the very end, whenever either the killer is revealed or mm-hmm this particular character dies. I love the strong emotions when somebody either like slams the book and they're like, ah, or they are crying. When there's this really overt scene of what happens.

It's, it really makes me happy to hear those words just because like I said, I'm sitting here and I, not only am I just happy to introduce all of these characters that have lived in my head for so long to everybody else, [00:13:00] I'm happy that everything that I feel when writing is translating onto the page to all of the readers that are also reading.

Love that. Thank you so much for that. And let's pivot to talk about your role as an educator at the moment. So you teach public speaking for the most part, right? And what has your role as a teacher and a writer done to inform each other? And where do you see them meeting in the middle, but also diverging to make you a well-rounded presenter and thinker

and author. 

Definitely, well, I think that both roles come down to the same type of instinct, so just storytelling with purpose. And as a teacher, I'm constantly trying to figure out what resonates, what sticks with people, what moves people, and what makes something unforgettable. And the same is true when it comes to me writing thrillers.

So I'm not just trying to scare people or make their heart race, I'm, trying to say something. And typically all of my books, they do say something pretty specific and pretty different from one another. But I just hope that no matter what, the message at the [00:14:00] end just still lingers. And I think that can still translate into teaching as well, particularly with public speaking.

But where they diverge, I would say in the classroom, I'm more of a guide, but on the page, I'm often right there with the reader. I like to let myself fall apart a little. And teaching is where I like to put myself back together again at the end. Love that. What does that feel like? So I would say that.

When I teach public speaking, I am able to help people kind of overcome a lot of their fears when it comes to just being in public in the first place and trying to let themselves be heard. And so when I'm doing stuff like that, it really helps me feel better as a writer because I love to be able to kind of guide people on their way and also kind of structure the, their stories alongside them.

But when I'm writing, I would say that it's more so, like I said, I kind of let everything, all the guidelines just almost collapse in a way and [00:15:00] just lose myself in the story, just the same way that the readers would, because I feel like that provides a much more authentic experience. 

Amazing. 

Thank you so much for that.

And what would you say has been the moments either within the classroom as a student or as a professor, where you were unexpectedly shaped by the way we think about human connections? So think about also your roots and what got you into authorship. 

Definitely. Well, uh, there's a few ways to, to potentially answer that because I've wanted to be an author my entire life.

I remember being in fourth grade, and I had a teacher that I, she was probably 22 fresh out of college, and I was just a little 10-year-old. But I used to go up to her with an entire, like, I mean, I would call it a book. It was probably like maybe four pages that I wrote. And I would say, can I read this to the class?

And she would say, yeah, whatever. At the end, like, um, and I, every class I would have something that I wanted to read to everybody, and all of the stories were all Scooby Doo related. Like, [00:16:00] it wasn't necessarily Scooby Doo, but it was a cast of characters trying to fight a monster. Yes. So definitely still the same type of vibe, but growing up, I would say from there.

Funny enough in my public speaking class, so I had a terrible professor when I was a first semester freshman, and he essentially made everybody's speaking anxiety so much worse. And because of that, in one of my, uh, speeches, um, I ended up, I gave a speech on somebody I was really close to who passed away and essentially how that was sudden.

But through my ability to deliver that speech, I actually ended up making that professor cry. And so it kind of just showed me that storytelling really does still have such a prevalence and is able to connect with a lot of people, even if you might not think that it could. And I think that's something that really helped me feel a lot more confident in my voice as [00:17:00] I got older, is just being able to connect with people and being able to still bring up those emotions and even the emotions that are a lot more tender and people don't normally cover.

I like that even just through storytelling, whether it's in public speaking or through my own work, is able to touch people on that really deeper level. Thank you so much for that. 

And tell us about where you're headed next. So once We Are Human is released, what happens next? 

Absolutely. So funny enough, I am already working on book six.

Yeah. So amazing. Um, right now it's uh, it's called the Ninth Layer and it follows a college geology class. And the appeal of this class is that every single spring semester they venture into the caves beneath the university. The only problem is that for this particular class, when they go down there, they're not alone.[00:18:00] 

And so it's about their journey to escape from the caves beneath the university and once again, survive the entire day. So it's definitely a lot faster paced. It covers a very short period of time, but most importantly, it takes place in 2002. So it's been super fun to, uh, to really research all of the slang terms yes, from when I was a kid.

So, yeah. I'm super excited to talk about flip phones again. 

Yes. So what does your writing process look like? How do you come up with the ideas that you have and how do you execute them with such a precise vision? 'Cause I know myself and other readers on your Google Reads reviews always say that the amount of precision that you offer when you're writing about timelines like within the 19 hundreds is always spot on.

Like, how do you make it happen the way that you do? 

Thank you. I really, what I do is I just do a lot, a lot, a lot of [00:19:00] research. That's the first thing that I do. I'm a planner. When I was taking a college fiction writing class, what I was taught was there's essentially two slash possibly three types of writers where there's a plotter and then there's kind of a word vomiter and, and then finally there's a quilter.

So a plotter is somebody who plans out everything from the very beginning. They make an entire outline with character sheets so that you can get it to the character's head, and that's who I am. I'm somebody that I love to have everything planned out first because it makes everything else so much easier for me.

So for example, a character plot sheet. You put the name of the character that you want first, and then beneath that. You dive into, okay, but what's their role in the story? Why is that their role? What are their three strengths? What are their three weaknesses? But then you put a whole bunch of information that's never even gonna make it into the book too.

So you put what, who were they right before the book started? And also, what are their [00:20:00] parents' names? What are their best friends' names? When's their birthday? What's their Zodiac sign? What would their favorite song be? It just all of these things that can really get you into the character's mind ahead of time.

But in addition to that, I also do the same exact thing with setting. And so I do it with. The exact town that I'm placing it in. I look into the flora, fauna, everything like that essentially. Long story short, just a ton of research goes into the book way before even start writing chapter one. But when it comes to the other two types, there are the word vomiters who are just, as soon as they have a story in their head, they just immediately start typing and they just go to town and that's it.

They don't plan, they just let everything flow through them, and they just make sure that they write everything down and they'll just edit it later. And then finally, the third one, the quilters. Quilters are kind of a mix where they will write one chapter and then they'll figure out where it'll fit into their story.

They won't start with chapter [00:21:00] one. Maybe that one chapter will go into chapter four, and then they'll start writing chapter 10, and then they'll start writing maybe the finale or things like that. So like I said, I'm definitely more of the first category. Yeah. I love to research, especially, I love to research these historical pieces because there's just a mountain of data you can look at specifically for the vanishing eight, because it takes place In 1979, I looked at old Sears catalogs when I was trying to figure out what they were wearing.

Mm-hmm. I was like, well, what was popular in 1979? What are outfits that actually went together? Because just because they were wearing one pattern doesn't mean that it would match this other pattern that was also popular at the time. Right. Yeah. 

And I mean, with the amount of research that you do, your turnaround time for writing is.

Incredible. I mean, you've, I think you said you wrote, written just for you in just a three month window, like a 90 day period. How do you make that happen and still teach on the side or maybe teaching's the main, the main gig and you write on the side, and how do you do that [00:22:00] while still remaining committed and not burning out and losing side of the goal?

I think that the most important thing is that I'm writing these all for myself. These are all stories that I've sincerely been sitting on since. I was a teenager. I have such a backlog of stories that I'm just waiting to introduce to everybody. It's just that once these thoughts popped into my head, I immediately wrote them down onto a, a notes pad, or my notes app in my phone.

And I immediately since then, have just been ticking off the boxes, going through my backlog of, alright, this story has to come next, and then this one, and then this one. And so they all take place in the same universe. There's no direct continuation, but at the same time, they definitely do have a lot of connective tissue.

So just because you start with, let's say, written just for you, you can absolutely jump into vanishing eight. Same thing. There's so many Easter eggs within each other that allude to one another that people wouldn't even think about it. If you love Marvel and the interconnectivity of all of it, 100%, [00:23:00] that's what all of my books are.

But when it comes to the quick turnaround, like I said, written just for you, I'll never write a book that fastened my life ever again. That was probably the most burnout I ever experienced. But once again, that was just because I gave myself a very hard deadline. So instead going forward, I've just been saying, fall of 2025, or.

Early 2026 of being a bit more vague, just to give myself more time to really plan because especially once a book is written, you still have to go off to the beta readers and the editor. Then after that you have to plan for publication and all of these different things, and all of these things take time and so we just, for you, I believe I was truly day of its publication, still stressing about it versus We Are Human coming out next week.

I sincerely, all of it's outta my hands, all of it's done. I'm just happy and breathing and [00:24:00] because of that, I've been able to actually design the cover for the ninth layer, which I'm really excited for. Outstanding.

So to wrap up a conversation, what would you say is a goal for yourself and a goal for your readers as you continue moving forward in authorship? Definitely. 

So I would say that my own personal goal is I would just love to continue to learn. I feel like all of my books are so drastically different from one another, and that's because I wanna make sure that I'm always giving everybody something fresh and new, at least from myself.

And so that's why my first book was that. Cabin in the woods slasher while the second was that scream type chase thriller. The third was more so like back to the future, while the fourth was definitely that old sixties black and white Hitchcock type of feel while finally this upcoming one. It takes place in the future.

And this is the first book that I've ever written that takes place in the future. So that was definitely crazy for me to [00:25:00] write as an author, but I'd just love to challenge myself and continue expanding just what I could possibly do. So in the future, I definitely hope to maybe one day write a more lighthearted thriller, what that could potentially be a comedy.

Uh, I think that one that would also be cool is possibly a superhero type story. So definitely keep your eyes out, hint, hint, wink, wink. But uh, then for my readers, I would say the thing that I challenge them to do with all of my pieces is definitely look out for all of the Easter eggs. I put so much into these books that might not even be hinting to a book that's even out yet.

So if you happen to read something and you're like, huh, I wonder if that's gonna lead into something, keep an eye out, maybe it will. 

Love that. Is there something in our conversation today that we haven't touched on yet, or something that you wish I would've asked you that I haven't done so? 

Uh, I think [00:26:00] that you've really done an amazing job.

I think you've covered all of our bases, but I guess the last thing that I could say is just that next year I, I am definitely hoping to do a lot more conventions. I've recently been going out and doing all of these signings all across the country, and while doing all these signings, I've been able to meet so many people that have already been connected with all my stories.

When I was in Los Angeles, uh, about a month ago now, I had met. I think close to 70 different people that all knew me from either Instagram or anything like that, just to sign a, get me to sign one of their books. So it was definitely an amazing experience. 

Outstanding. Thank you so much for that. And we will have links available on our show notes for ways to learn more about Lincoln and be in touch with him as well.

So that was Lincoln James and Lincoln. Thank you again for being with us today and reminding us that thrillers and stories are about what hurts, what heals and what it means [00:27:00] to just remain grounded and be human. And both the classroom and the story space can be places where tension can meet with tenderness and where courage can show up as empathy.

Thank you for joining us. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great. . 

Thank you for joining us on the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education podcast. If today's episode inspired you or made you think differently, I'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts and stay connected with us on the at Classroom Narratives podcast over Instagram and Facebook.

Remember, together we can transform our scars into stars and education, one conversation at a time.