Jeff Norton, Author of ALIENATED: GROUNDED AT GROOM LAKE
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and this is Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:12]As a mom of four kids and a writer myself, I know all too well how short everyone is on time.
[0:16]So I'm here to help. This episode of Momstone Have Time to Read Books has been sponsored
[0:21]by Nini's Treats N-E-N-E-S Treats Nini's Treats.com.
[0:26]An amazing family owned and operated crumb cake business based in Charleston, South Carolina.
[0:31]You can buy their delicious crumb cakes at niniestreats.com or on goldbelly.com.
[0:36]Nini's Treats you won't leave a crumb. I'm really excited to be talking to Jeff Norton today.
[0:41]Jeff is the award-winning author, writer, producer, and founder of Awesome, a UK-based
[0:46]production and publishing company. He has written many books from the Metawore series and the
[0:50]children's book, Stom School, to his latest release, alienated grounded at Grim Lake, a graduate of
[0:56]Queen's University Canada and Harvard Business School. He currently lives in London with his wife
[1:01]and two sons. The Welcome Jeff to Momstone Have Time to Read Books. Thank you very much.
[1:07]It's such a pleasure to be here. And we are joined today for the first time ever by a special
[1:11]guest interviewer Owen Wright age 11, one of your biggest fans. So I've brought him along to help
[1:17]me ask you some questions about your amazing new book. I love that. I love that because I'm very
[1:22]much right. I win for yourself and people your age in mind. So this is such a treat that you are
[1:28]part of the interviewing as well. It is a treat. I am a treat. So Jeff, how did you come up with
[1:37]the idea for Ellie needed grounded at Grim Lake? That's a really good question. I mean, I think
[1:42]in a weird way, you know, books for me and stories stay with me for a long time. So I think in a way,
[1:50]the concepts started way, way back when I was in high school. So I definitely remember going from
[1:57]middle school to high school where I felt like a total outsider. I didn't know how anything worked.
[2:04]And it's daunting. You know, that move from middle school to secondary school is really daunting.
[2:08]And you know, the funny thing is like, it's the same no matter what you do. Because then you go
[2:12]to university and there's that same thing all over again. You know, I went to business school and
[2:17]same thing all over again where you get to sit in the cafeteria and the whole thing. And one of the
[2:21]things I love to do with my books is I love to take the ordinary and make it extreme. So I think in a
[2:28]way, probably a lot of the idea and the gestation came from just the ordinary everyday experience of
[2:34]feeling like a new kid at school and then taking it to its hyper extreme. So, you know, what if,
[2:41]you know, what if it was not a normal school, but it was a school completely populated by people
[2:46]you didn't understand who weren't even people. So aliens, what would that be like? And I just
[2:51]ask a lot of what if questions and sort of drill down and ask about, well, what would that actually
[2:56]be like? And what would that experience be like? And why would Sherman be there? And I should
[3:00]probably mention that the story briefly, the story of the ladies. It's a story of two siblings,
[3:06]Sherman and Jessica, who find themselves to be the only two human students, the human kids,
[3:13]at the high school, for aliens, at Area 51 in Nevada, which is called a groom like
[3:18]Nevada. And that's why the first book is called Grounded at Groom Lake. And it's kind of a fish
[3:24]out of water, bit of a comedy, bit of a science fiction adventure, bit of a love story, I guess you
[3:32]would say. But fundamentally, it's just about feeling like an outsider and feeling, you know,
[3:37]what it's like to go from being an outsider or a misfit to trying to find your people. And even
[3:43]even if your people are people at all. I feel like you did such a good job of really portraying
[3:48]that feeling of not knowing where to be, just that whole unease in your own skin, even with other
[3:54]types of skin now in that cafeteria. So you did a great job. That skin has scale. It would have
[3:59]been skin has scales in their preheads or tongues. So we wanted to know, will this be a series,
[4:07]are there any future plans for these characters? So I would like to do more with them,
[4:12]having just put the book to bed, like the final copy edits and the final proof a few weeks ago,
[4:19]I haven't started a sequel yet. I've started an outline for one. And I think one of the things I would
[4:24]love to do is sort of follow the academic years and the experiences that kind of punctuate the
[4:30]academic year. So in this book, we basically land German and Jess in Groom Lake in the spring.
[4:37]The countdown is on to the end of the school year and it's a big problem is coming up and it's
[4:42]the War of the Worlds theme. Importantly war the Worlds the book, not the movie or any of the
[4:48]derivative films or the plays, but the book. And so in the summer, I think what's going to happen
[4:56]is Nevada is very, very hot and it's far too hot for students to stick around. So they're all
[5:02]going to get shipped off to some sort of off-planetary sleep-away camp. They already will ensue.
[5:08]Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. I can test that out in a year. Yeah. He likes it. He likes it.
[5:13]It's the same kind of space. Some kind of space camp. Space camp. That's cool. That's cool.
[5:20]So tell, tell me more about awesome media and this latest venture Awesome Reads. Will you be
[5:26]writing all the books in the series? Are you getting outside authors? Yeah, that's a good question.
[5:31]So awesome media. So it's funny because I wear a few hats, right? I'm an author, but I also
[5:38]run a production company and awesome media and entertainment really is the production company
[5:44]that grew out of the effectively the right to my first book. So I wrote a series a few years
[5:51]ago called Metawars and Metawars is like an action adventure tech thriller. Oh, and I think you'd
[5:57]probably dig it. It's not really funny. I wouldn't say it's more thrilling and a little bit scary,
[6:02]but it's a good, it's a good read. And there's four of those books. Is it so scary that it will affect
[6:09]bedtime type of thing? Or it has been known to keep people up past their bedtime. Okay, we are not
[6:14]going to read that quite yet. I'm going to give you another year or two. I'm ready for that.
[6:19]Okay. Thank you for that for the, for the work that you did. Just being honest. Yeah, yeah,
[6:23]I got one of those parental advisories on it actually. And it's not, it's not scary scary,
[6:28]but it is an addictive read. So it's less about nightmares and more about when you would probably
[6:34]like your mom would come in and say, hey, why are you still, why are you still reading?
[6:38]Like I want to find out what happens. And then she'd like walk out of the room and you get
[6:43]your flashlight and then you'd keep reading because to be probably turned off the off the light
[6:47]room. And it's like that kind of compulsively addicted read. Anyway, so I'm digressing. The idea,
[6:54]so the idea behind awesome media entertainment was not only to start partnering on the books that
[7:00]I've created, but also sometimes I come up with ideas for books and other people write them. So
[7:06]myself and a woman called Julie Sykes. We write this series called Princess ponies under a pen name,
[7:13]which has become really popular. And there's 12 of those. There's soon to be 16 of those.
[7:19]And bizarrely, I'm sort of published now by lots of different publishers, which is great
[7:25]and it's a real honor. But one of the things that drives me nuts is how slow the publishing world
[7:31]goes. And so we've launched this initiative called Awesome Reads, which is our own imprint.
[7:38]So now we'll be able to publish basically publish ourselves using all the same tools and techniques
[7:46]as the big big publishers, but probably be able to do it in about half the time. And alienated is
[7:52]first of those titles. But no, they're not just me. So we're working with different authors and
[7:58]talking to all sorts of different agents. And many of them are authors I've worked with in the past
[8:03]who have also similarly been frustrated by the publishing process. And we're trying to do something
[8:07]a little bit different kind of you know, we've between the legs at the big guys, but offer things
[8:13]that are the whole idea behind Awesome Reads is to make reading really fun. So we're trying to put books
[8:18]out into the market that are just unabashedly fun. And I'm very aware that our competition with
[8:24]books, you know, our video games and Fortnite and films and television shows. I'm getting a big nod
[8:31]from Owen. And you know, I love, I love screen media. I love all that stuff. I don't see them as
[8:38]bad necessarily. But I am very aware that there's only 24 hours in the day. And if you're spending
[8:43]time on one thing, you're not, maybe you're not doing them reading. So I'm trying to make books
[8:48]as competitive and as compelling as those screen-based media. That's great. I would even say that was
[8:54]awesome. So I heard you a little earlier say you had a partner named Juliet. Is that one of
[9:03]the reasons why you choose the play Romeo and Juliet? Or is it like a different reason? Or why
[9:08]do you have a question? That's a really good question. So my writing partner on Princess Pony's
[9:13]her name is actually Julie. Yeah. Julie Sykes. But when I was in grade, when I was in grade 9,
[9:20]same as Sherman, he's in ninth grade, we studied Romeo and Juliet when I was in high school.
[9:27]And it was my first introduction to Shakespeare. And what I wanted to do, so in the book,
[9:34]just for the listeners, one of the things that happens is Sherman and Jess arrive at this new
[9:39]school and they've been kind of ripped out of their old school. Sherman is a rocketry,
[9:45]he's very clever about he's really an introvert. Jess is vivacious and outgoing and she had to
[9:52]lead in the school play in the previous high school where they lived on a military based in Germany.
[9:57]But when it comes to casting the school,
[10:00]play Sherman inadvertently puts his hand up.
[10:03]He doesn't realize he's doing anything
[10:04]he's waving to somebody.
[10:06]But he inadvertently puts his hand up
[10:08]and volunteers for the role of Romeo in the school
[10:11]play of Romeo and Juliet.
[10:12]And of course, Jess has no intention of being Juliet
[10:16]up against playing against her brother.
[10:18]If you just think, I can't do that.
[10:21]And so I wanted to have something
[10:22]Owen that would be an obstacle for the character.
[10:25]So I wanted to show character growth.
[10:28]So I wanted to have him have to do something
[10:31]that's so outside of his comfort zone
[10:33]that he would have to sort of grow in confidence
[10:36]and grow in himself in order to be successful at it.
[10:41]And as he read it, he's constantly tripping things up.
[10:45]And his intentions are really good,
[10:47]but he's often getting it wrong.
[10:49]So that's kind of right.
[10:49]That's good.
[10:50]You accept that answer?
[10:51]OK.
[10:52]Yeah, that's what it's like.
[10:55]So you write really poignantly about Sherman's relationship
[10:58]with his mother, who had recently passed away.
[11:00]In fact, your book opens with Sherman sending
[11:03]his mother's ashes up into space, which
[11:05]was such a heartfelt emotional revelation in the book.
[11:09]And you wrote, I was determined to grant
[11:12]mom the one thing in death she always dreamed of in life
[11:14]but never achieved her astronaut wings, which was so sad.
[11:17]So I was wondering, was this based on an experience
[11:22]or loss in your own life or did you
[11:24]use this more as a literary device?
[11:27]Good question.
[11:28]Luckily, unfortunately, it's not from my own personal experience.
[11:32]I mean, in a weird way, I do think everything,
[11:35]everything every writer writes is a synthesis of their own
[11:39]experiences, or at least the way they see the world.
[11:41]But in this case, it's not something
[11:43]I've had to draw on.
[11:44]Fortunately, my mom's still alive.
[11:46]Hopefully she's listening to this podcast.
[11:48]Hi, Jeff, mom.
[11:50]Yeah, shout out to my mom.
[11:52]Love.
[11:54]Are you there?
[11:56]This is Norton.
[11:59]But as a writer, as a dramatist,
[12:02]you're trying to find ways to make your characters
[12:07]as compelling as possible.
[12:09]And I think with Sherman, I wanted the reader
[12:12]to empathize and deeply understand
[12:16]why he basically did something completely boneheaded.
[12:19]If you think about the mechanics of what he actually does,
[12:23]so we opened the book and they're
[12:27]living on a NATO Air Force Base in Germany,
[12:30]which is kind of a stone throw from Russia.
[12:33]There's a lot of rhetoric going on right now.
[12:35]And even when I started the book, which is a couple of years ago,
[12:38]Russia and the US are adversaries not allies
[12:41]and we're not in the Cold War.
[12:42]But you still don't go watching a missile
[12:46]from an Air Force Base on Russia's doorstep.
[12:49]And that's basically what Sherman does,
[12:51]because his mom always wanted to be an astronaut
[12:53]and the back story is that her parents
[12:56]dissuaded her from going into that line of work.
[13:00]At the time, they would have said something like,
[13:02]oh, that's not what good girls do or something silly like that.
[13:06]I think we're way better now, but that would be the back story.
[13:10]And so Sherman wanted to sort of honor her
[13:13]because she went into nursing and went into,
[13:16]became an army nurse and was killed in action.
[13:19]And so he does this completely stupid thing
[13:23]for the most beautiful reason.
[13:25]And it's the first anniversary of her death.
[13:27]And he launches this, what he considers to be a rocket.
[13:30]But of course, the military would consider to be a missile.
[13:33]And that's ultimately what leads to them being sent away
[13:38]never to be heard from again.
[13:39]So the idea is that the settlement with the Russians,
[13:42]this family needs to be shunted away
[13:43]in one place where you can never hear from them again.
[13:46]What is that place?
[13:47]Of course, Area 51.
[13:49]So yeah, so luckily not from my personal experience,
[13:52]but it is a device that I think all of us
[13:58]as writers try and create the most empathetic characters
[14:01]possible.
[14:02]You're not necessarily likable, but certainly empathetic.
[14:04]I think we like Sherman.
[14:05]Did you like Sherman?
[14:06]Yeah.
[14:06]I think it's pretty likable guy.
[14:08]Yeah.
[14:09]Yeah?
[14:09]He's thinking about it.
[14:10]He's thinking about it.
[14:11]He's contemplating it.
[14:12]Yeah.
[14:14]In the acknowledgment section, I love reading all the acknowledgment
[14:18]sections of books that I know I would never
[14:21]finish a book and not read the acknowledgements.
[14:23]It's like this little bonus chapter for me.
[14:25]But I don't often see something as kind to the readers
[14:28]as you included in yours.
[14:30]You wrote, and lastly, I want to thank you, the reader.
[14:33]I crafted this story for you to make you laugh, cry,
[14:36]and maybe think.
[14:37]Everything in life is basically high school.
[14:39]Groups of people clustering and clicks
[14:41]trying to get by.
[14:42]And if we're kind to each other, maybe that's
[14:43]the key to peace and the galaxy, or at the very least,
[14:46]in the school of cafeteria, which is great.
[14:48]So what made you think the reader here?
[14:51]We kind of already touched on how high school is everything
[14:54]else in life.
[14:54]But what made you include that?
[14:57]That's a good question.
[14:58]I think it's funny.
[15:01]The process of writing is so solitary.
[15:03]It's this sort of ridiculously solitary experience
[15:06]where it's just you and your brain and your heart
[15:10]and your laptop.
[15:11]And I'm very aware that when a reader reads a book,
[15:16]it's a big time commitment.
[15:18]And I'm particularly aware of that,
[15:20]because I'm really slow reader.
[15:21]And so Owen, when I was your age, I actually
[15:23]wasn't a big reader.
[15:25]It took me a long time to sort of gain the confidence.
[15:28]And I wasn't a great reader.
[15:31]So I don't know about you.
[15:33]But you find when you're not that great at something,
[15:35]maybe you don't naturally want to do it that often.
[15:37]And when you're not.
[15:38]I agree with 100% for everything you just said.
[15:42]Yeah.
[15:42]But as you also know, and the problem with that
[15:45]is that when you don't do something very often,
[15:47]you're not getting any better.
[15:49]And it took me a long time to figure out
[15:51]that reading is basically just something
[15:53]you have to practice at.
[15:55]And so because I was a very reluctant reader at your age,
[16:00]and because even now, to be honest,
[16:02]I'm a pretty slow reader, I'm very aware
[16:05]that it's a big chunk of somebody's time.
[16:07]If they spend that amount of time with my book,
[16:10]it only seems appropriate that I should acknowledge that.
[16:12]And I should thank them for spending that time
[16:15]with my imagination.
[16:17]And to be honest, if readers aren't reading,
[16:20]then if there isn't a demand for the types of stories
[16:25]that all of us as writers are trying to put out there
[16:27]in the universe, then I write because I want people
[16:31]to feel something and to experience something.
[16:34]I don't do it for myself.
[16:35]I mean, it's I'd like the process,
[16:37]but it's also a painful process.
[16:38]I do do it with an end goal in mind,
[16:40]which is to try and move somebody emotionally.
[16:43]And I meant what I said in the acknowledgements with it.
[16:45]And I do think one of the things I'm hoping to achieve
[16:47]with the book is there's a galactic diversity at play
[16:51]that if people can kind of put themselves
[16:53]in somebody else's scales or somebody else's robot suit,
[16:57]and look at the experience that other people are going through.
[16:59]You know, maybe we can just all get along a little bit better.
[17:02]Hopefully they do not get digitized.
[17:05]Like, what's his name?
[17:09]Oh, you know, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
[17:12]Yeah.
[17:13]Yeah, that's also a bit of a sad, slightly poignant story.
[17:17]Yeah, everyone in that parking lot and me and my mom
[17:19]are like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[17:21]Yeah, it's actually really, whoa, that's beautiful.
[17:24]So tell us more about your writing process.
[17:26]You said it was sort of painful.
[17:27]How do you do it?
[17:28]When do you do it?
[17:29]How long does it take you?
[17:30]It's good, you know, I generally write in the mornings.
[17:35]I like to start as early as possible.
[17:38]Sometimes life gets in the way a little bit.
[17:40]This book, I mostly wrote between the hours of 730
[17:44]and 1030 every morning.
[17:47]I was pretty disciplined.
[17:49]I was pretty disciplined.
[17:51]I got earned a lot of stamps on the loyalty card
[17:56]at the local coffee shop at this level.
[18:00]But this one's been a long time coming.
[18:02]This has been a really long, just dating passion project.
[18:06]And that's why sometimes it's painful.
[18:08]You want to get it right.
[18:11]So I'm a big believer that writing is rewriting.
[18:14]So there's the kind of words on paper draft.
[18:17]And then there's the next draft and the next draft.
[18:20]Until you finally feel, I don't know that it's ever, ever
[18:24]finished.
[18:25]And there's the sort of writer's cliche book
[18:28]has never finished.
[18:28]It's just abandoned.
[18:30]At some point, I have to say, this is the best
[18:33]I can do with my skill set right now.
[18:37]One of life's cruel tricks is that maybe in 10 years time,
[18:39]I'll be a better writer.
[18:41]And if I had the chance to go back and do it again,
[18:44]maybe it'd be better, but you don't really get that chance.
[18:46]So it's kind of locked in time.
[18:48]But yeah, I start early.
[18:51]I like to have an outline, all my books
[18:54]with the exception of memoirs of a neurotic zombie.
[18:58]I wrote with an outline.
[18:59]Because I'm big believer in endings.
[19:01]So hopefully you guys, and we won't give it away
[19:03]for your listeners.
[19:04]But hopefully you guys really like the ending of the book.
[19:06]Oh yeah.
[19:07]Did you want?
[19:08]Yeah.
[19:09]Don't give it away.
[19:10]I won't.
[19:11]Don't say anything, but I'm a big believer
[19:15]in the endings, the payoff for the reader
[19:18]that you ask them to go on this journey with you.
[19:21]And then you owe it to them to give them
[19:23]a really fantastic spectacular ending that's
[19:26]emotionally satisfying.
[19:28]And so with this book, I absolutely began with the end in mind.
[19:32]I knew what those final scenes were going to be.
[19:34]I knew roughly what was going to happen.
[19:36]I didn't know exactly how I was going to tie everything up.
[19:39]But I knew where I wanted emotionally the characters
[19:42]to get to.
[19:43]And I knew the experience that I wanted the reader to have
[19:46]going on this crazy roller coaster ride.
[19:50]So I do write to an outline.
[19:51]And then in this case, I actually wrote very, very detailed
[19:55]sort of chapter by chapter breakdowns, basically.
[19:58]What was going to happen?
[20:00]that allowed me to think about,
[20:01]because there's so many characters,
[20:03]right, there's 38 different races of aliens,
[20:05]and there's lots of things happening.
[20:06]It's told through Sherman's point of view,
[20:08]but there's lots of things happening
[20:10]that he's not privy to.
[20:11]So I needed to make sure that the logic always held up,
[20:14]that the logic was internally consistent,
[20:17]and that at any time the reader couldn't go,
[20:20]ah, that could never happen.
[20:22]And I think, oh, correct me if I'm wrong,
[20:24]but I think I've done a pretty good job with that.
[20:26]I think I've got all, I've hired out all the wrinkles
[20:29]of the logic.
[20:30]Exactly, correct.
[20:31]After I finished, I asked, like,
[20:34]did you have your own wrote any comics?
[20:36]And then I looked at my on the website with mom,
[20:40]and then I saw that you had help produce cortex,
[20:44]and I was wondering,
[20:45]what else do you have in the pipeline?
[20:47]Yeah, that's a great question.
[20:48]So you've done your research, I love it.
[20:51]So Cortex is a new project.
[20:53]It's actually, I've written that as a script.
[20:56]It's a television pilot,
[20:58]and what I've now started to do
[21:00]is I'm now writing it as a graphic novel.
[21:03]It's a kind of high-tech pull,
[21:05]it's basically what they call a police procedural,
[21:07]but it's got a little bit of a high-tech twist.
[21:10]So the closest thing in tone that's probably been
[21:13]on television lately would be something
[21:15]like person of interest.
[21:17]So a bit high-tech, a bit fun, crime, solving crimes,
[21:21]that sort of thing.
[21:23]So that's, I'm really excited about.
[21:25]And then the next book I'm writing,
[21:28]which I'm almost done, I'm not quite done,
[21:30]but I'm almost done,
[21:31]is a little bit younger.
[21:34]I think you've probably still dig it,
[21:35]but it's target readership.
[21:37]It's probably a little bit younger than you.
[21:39]Oh, it's cool.
[21:40]It's called, well, Staunceville's much younger.
[21:42]Yeah, Staunceville is a picture book,
[21:45]although I still love reading a picture book.
[21:47]So I don't think you're ever too old for a picture book.
[21:49]Exactly.
[21:50]But it's called Dino Nights.
[21:53]And Dino Nights is a group of medieval teenage nights
[21:57]who write into action on the backs of dinosaurs.
[22:00]I think we're able to like that.
[22:01]Yeah.
[22:02]If you could read.
[22:04]How old's that?
[22:05]Three.
[22:06]I think.
[22:07]I think.
[22:08]Yeah, so this is something that young.
[22:10]I don't think it's true that you're not sorry.
[22:13]That was a little bit offensive.
[22:14]I mean, it's a good idea.
[22:17]It's a good idea for people to zage.
[22:20]Yeah, you might be able to zage.
[22:22]But definitely, he would dig Staunceville.
[22:24]So Staunceville is perfect for sort of three to five year-old.
[22:27]Staunceville is daycare for the world's biggest city
[22:31]stomping kaiju monsters.
[22:34]You would like that, just reading in the morning?
[22:37]Yeah.
[22:37]So we met, obviously, at HBS.
[22:40]How do you think business school has helped you produce books?
[22:44]Do you, do you, words, sort of the product
[22:47]that your business is making similar to, you know,
[22:49]could be perfume or it could be shoes
[22:52]or something that the words are just the product that you produce
[22:55]or do you view it in a totally different way?
[22:57]Or do you think that business school in this realm
[22:59]has not been particularly helpful?
[23:01]Yeah, the HBS alumni folks who are lovely
[23:04]are probably going to hate me for this,
[23:06]but I'm not totally sure it's been that helpful.
[23:09]We won't send this a long to them.
[23:11]No, we don't.
[23:12]That's it.
[23:13]I'll give you a more nuanced answer.
[23:14]So I think when I'm in the zone of creating,
[23:18]it's no help at all.
[23:19]Right.
[23:20]I don't think about business.
[23:22]I don't think about the market.
[23:24]I just simply think about character.
[23:28]I'm really, all I care about is ultimately all I care about
[23:31]is the emotional reaction of the reader,
[23:33]but the three ingredients that I feel I can put into the potion are
[23:39]character, you know, these characters that you want to spend time with
[23:42]the story itself and the story world,
[23:46]so the world or the setting.
[23:48]But I'm a big believer in world building.
[23:50]And that's one of the reasons why alienated is so much fun.
[23:51]This is the really rich world.
[23:56]Now, that being said, I think when I stopped writing and I think about
[24:02]where could this book live, how should it be presented?
[24:06]I don't know that I'd try to be that smart from a business perspective,
[24:10]but I definitely try not to be stupid.
[24:14]So I think I do probably have a lens of how is this,
[24:21]going to live in the overall marketplace of ideas,
[24:25]which is a competitive marketplace.
[24:27]There's only so many apps on the day.
[24:31]But in terms of like actual, you know,
[24:33]I'd probably be better, you know, better served than my HBS.
[24:36]I've been running a hedge fund and running it all.
[24:39]So you wrote in a lot about like the lunch room
[24:43]and at the beginning of the book,
[24:44]you were talking about the tables in the high school,
[24:47]like the cool seniors, AKA the jerks, the table,
[24:52]table, the cool juniors, jerks and waiting,
[24:56]the yearbook committee, harmless, but plugged in,
[24:59]and the cafeteria monitors, or were you a mere more,
[25:04]the cafeteria Mars or were you just a mere model?
[25:06]What table did you sit at?
[25:08]Wow, so it's funny.
[25:11]I, you know, I drew a map of the cafeteria,
[25:14]like room like high, and I figured out where everybody would sit
[25:18]in the cafeteria, and I do remember my own high school experience.
[25:23]I was definitely a sort of floater.
[25:24]Like I wasn't really part, you know, I could sort of,
[25:28]I can kind of fit in with most people,
[25:30]but I'd never had like a dedicated table or a dedicated tribe,
[25:35]if you will, and so, and I think, you know,
[25:41]it was funny, even today, I find,
[25:44]anytime I'm just going about my normal everyday life,
[25:47]you know, half of me is engaging in your ordinary course of life,
[25:51]and half of me is sort of always observing.
[25:53]And I think when you're wired that way,
[25:56]when you're kind of observing character,
[25:57]or you're even people as characters,
[26:00]and drawing for material, basically,
[26:03]I'm actually, you're always sort of just marginally slightly removed
[26:06]from reality a little bit, and I think without knowing it,
[26:10]I think I was probably a little bit like that in my school.
[26:12]Yeah, it's probably always just kind of,
[26:14]just so being all in, and taking it all in,
[26:17]and I didn't know it at the time,
[26:19]because I didn't think about writing,
[26:20]I didn't really give myself permission to be creative,
[26:23]I didn't think about it, I would ever have a creative career,
[26:26]but probably without knowing it, I was absorbing stuff.
[26:28]So I was, I was probably a mere mortal,
[26:30]and I was probably a bit of a floater.
[26:33]How about you Owen?
[26:33]What table are you at?
[26:35]Um, I met wherever one of my friends sits.
[26:39]I go wherever he is.
[26:40]Cool.
[26:41]So any advice to, um, to ask for an author?
[26:45]Aspiring.
[26:46]Aspiring authors?
[26:48]Advice for aspiring authors.
[26:49]Well, I didn't follow this advice,
[26:53]or I didn't follow this advice until much, much later,
[26:55]but I think a couple things.
[26:56]One is, I think writers write,
[26:59]so I do meet a lot of people who say something like,
[27:03]I've got a great idea for a book.
[27:05]And then I'll ask, oh great, that's fantastic.
[27:07]So what have you written?
[27:09]I'm like, well, you know, I'm just, I'm really busy,
[27:11]I haven't had a chance to do it, and I think my biggest thing
[27:15]for writers is just sit down and write.
[27:18]And it actually doesn't have to be that many hours in the day.
[27:20]It doesn't even have to be an hour.
[27:22]You know, even if you leak out,
[27:24]anybody can wake up a half hour earlier.
[27:25]It's painful as that sounds.
[27:29]Oh, it's like that is painful.
[27:31]Very, it's best to use my dog,
[27:33]so you may have to put it on my bench.
[27:35]Yeah, but I think that's the biggest advice
[27:39]for people who want to write is just to write.
[27:41]And that sounds flippant, but it's not.
[27:43]It's, I mean it very genuinely,
[27:45]which is you just have to,
[27:47]you're never going to find the time,
[27:49]because we all, everybody's got busy lives,
[27:51]and especially if we've got kids,
[27:53]you know, life is busy.
[27:55]There's just always stuff competing for your attention.
[27:58]So the first thing I would say is just write,
[28:00]just write.
[28:01]And the second thing I would say is to read a lot,
[28:03]because I think it's like brain training,
[28:06]you know, for your skill set.
[28:08]You know, the more you read,
[28:09]I think you'll just, you'll have a bigger vocabulary.
[28:12]You'll have a better command of the language.
[28:16]You'll be aware of what works and what doesn't work.
[28:18]And when I read, I read for pleasure,
[28:22]but I also read forensically,
[28:24]because I'm always aware of,
[28:25]okay, how is this affecting me?
[28:26]You're almost doing a sort of meta analysis
[28:29]of your own experience.
[28:31]You're reading, are you enjoying it?
[28:32]Why am I enjoying this?
[28:34]Do I want to put this book down?
[28:35]Why do I want to put this book down?
[28:37]Exactly.
[28:38]What's the author done that maybe starts to bore me?
[28:40]You did exactly.
[28:42]So I think, I think that's what I would say,
[28:43]is write and read.
[28:45]And I'm sure, I mean, there's loads of books out there
[28:48]that tell you how to be an author and things like that,
[28:50]but I would just say, you know,
[28:52]you got to write and you got to read.
[28:55]One last question.
[28:56]No, I would say something.
[28:58]I saw recently that Netflix is going to start doing
[29:04]more shows where you can choose your own ending.
[29:07]And I know that you have adapted
[29:10]the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
[29:12]I just wanted to know what you thought
[29:14]about that new initiative on their behalf.
[29:17]What do you think about that?
[29:18]You know, I have two overarching feelings.
[29:21]One is, yeah, that's so cool because I've long been interested
[29:27]in a concept of branching narrative.
[29:29]And having that as a fun experience
[29:33]for a more engaged viewer is most linear television
[29:38]or film is basically a very passive experience.
[29:41]Somebody writes something and they produce it.
[29:43]You can assume it's very passive.
[29:44]But I like the idea of the viewer being part of the story,
[29:48]telling a little bit.
[29:49]That's my overarching feeling.
[29:51]The second feeling I have is, man, I was just born 10 years too early.
[29:57]Because when I did choose your own adventure.
[30:00]I basically think those are the books that turned me from the end on reader and into a reader.
[30:05]And so back in 2003, you want an option to write to those books and a movie came out in 2006.
[30:12]There was no I've had, right? There wasn't even a blue ray. And so what we were trying to do
[30:19]was to make the technology work on a really dumb self kit, which was DVD. You know, the DVD
[30:27]player is not a very sophisticated piece of technology. And we were trying to do something pretty
[30:32]sophisticated. And I think, and if I could do it today, if I actually, I've sold out of that
[30:39]that enterprise, I don't actually have those rights anymore. But if I had the opportunity to have
[30:44]that brand, you'd be able to wrap my arm around that brand again, something like Netflix or maybe Apple,
[30:51]you know, the ability to do it digitally would just be so seamless. But you know, the DVD
[30:57]still out there, you can buy on Amazon. And it's a lot of fun. You know, it's funny, I do get,
[31:04]I now get a lot of emails from actually some of our colleagues from HBS who will say,
[31:11]oh, yeah, my 11, 12, 13 year old child just finally old enough in the DVD. They love it. They
[31:18]wash it over and over and over. So we might dig it. I see a plan for a weekend here.
[31:24]I have two things to say before we depart from this amazing conversation.
[31:30]One is, I'm noticing when you, like, we show them back. I see all these Star Wars toys behind you.
[31:36]I like your kids like Star Wars fans.
[31:40]So I'm definitely a child of Star Wars. And yeah, my kids do take Star Wars. I'm just looking behind me.
[31:45]So for the listeners, just to set the scene, I'm in my office in London. I've been living in
[31:52]London, England for exactly 12 years today actually. And you're in New York. And yeah, behind me are
[32:02]some of my, some of these are new and some of my figures are from my childhood. My mother has been
[32:08]desperate to try and get me to clear out stuff from my house that I grew up in. There's still
[32:12]in the house that I grew up in my, my folks. I'm looking, this is, I don't know if you can see this
[32:17]Owen, but I've got this framed thing of R2D2 here that says Jeffrey is my space friend.
[32:25]And my mom gave that to me. I was probably five or six. And I think the, the conceit
[32:32]was that it came from R2D2 himself. Now, I now know that that's not true. But I've had that
[32:38]ever since I was about five or six, about 1981. And it's come with me to London. And it's,
[32:44]it's sitting in my office. What's the second thing is thank you for coming to our podcast
[32:50]visit us at ziviowans.com. Thanks for your attention. Thank you for coming on the show. I really,
[32:58]really appreciate it. My pleasure. And I'm so pleased to be the, the first, the first guest
[33:07]interviewed by Owen. Yeah. Good. Unleash to monster here. He's going to be coming in all the time.
[33:13]Definitely. You have your own competing podcast. I'll try. Yeah, that one again. Thank you. Good for the
[33:19]college. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks guys. Bye, take care. Hi. This episode of momstone
[33:26]have time to read books. It's been sponsored by Neemie Streets and E-N-E-S. Streets Neemie Streets.com
[33:31]available. Also, I'm goldbelly.com. Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. Please
[33:36]subscribe and leave a rating. Bye.