RedPubPod #027 RedPubPod’s End of Year 2023 Wrap-Up Edition!

[00:00:00] RedPubPod, the MESH RedPubPod, the MESH RedPubPod for running on publications. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening out there in podcast land. What time it might be for you right now but you're coming and listening to us live from

[00:00:23] the Pushwater Studios at the Katobov Valley Community College. This is Red Pod Special Edition. Yes, I'm here with Patty Thompson, our person who says yes and no to manuscripts. Here with Angel and Devil. With Melanie Zimmerman, who is the person who takes said manuscripts and makes them

[00:00:48] readable and printable, I'm Robert Knapp and we're also here with the big Huna Richard Eller. When we figure out what it is he does, we will let you know. Actually he holds the whole thing together.

[00:01:05] So we have decided to try to entertain you today. We've got some new publications coming out. We're looking for certain publications out there so we want to talk to you about that. I thought this was the holiday edition.

[00:01:21] Is it the holiday edition? Well, look, all right out there for you folks out there in podcast land it is. It is on holiday edition of Red Pod. So some of shakes and jingle bells are shaking.

[00:01:38] Which actually means we're here to look at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 to let you, the reader know what you should be anticipating and or purchasing for your Christmas holiday list.

[00:01:53] And we're going to give Robert enough time to think about what in the sense of he'll give you in terms of a holiday discount. Not putting you on the spot, Robert, but that's what folks

[00:02:03] are going to want to know. But the other thing is I suspect we're all a little giddy because it is getting towards the end of the year and we have done naturally more than we should have this year.

[00:02:12] But that said, it's been a really exciting year, guys. I'm really, really proud of what we've done and what we still have to do between now and the end of the year. Did we publish a book a week this year as we did here before?

[00:02:25] I'm going to have to check out on that one. I don't think so. I don't think we're still pretty prolific. We did a really, really big job with the Crance Beach Jones book.

[00:02:40] We put it out as a hardcover as a national distributed book and we did two special editions for two different nonprofits. And those were a couple thousand copies per non-profit. So that book alone

[00:02:57] calls this, I don't know who it calls my blood pressure to go up quite a bit. Lots of my hair file out there. Give us a much higher profile in the national press and so yeah. It's been a good book force.

[00:03:11] Put the program on the map and the greatest thing about it is right now at the University of San Francisco. They've got their copies. They're going to teach it in the school. So how many copies was that padding? We mailed out there a couple thousand.

[00:03:27] But she's, you know, you tell me, you ask that? You ask that, you ask that, you ask that. Yeah, I'm sure you ask that. Gosh, I think it in the end it ended up in maybe 2000. Yeah, something like that.

[00:03:36] So the students out there have a special copy of the book just for them that has got a special forward by Dr. Jones in it. And we were able to do that along with everything else.

[00:03:47] So we've got a bunch of books, a bunch of poets that are up for awards. Yeah, it is award season folks and that's one of the things we've been kind of busy on. We've got several books up with the North Carolina, his story. Just how do you go?

[00:04:04] Yeah, no, there's the historical social media. The one that's based in Raleigh, it's actually a state division that gives awards. So we've got of the 12 books that are nominated for the poetry division alone. Six are Red Hawk publications. Wow, we better win something. Yeah.

[00:04:24] Oh, I'm still about it, I'm not sure. That's right. And then Richard, you're well crafted is in the nonfiction category. Yeah. Austin All-Rance novel is in the fiction category. The legend of the art of catch. Yeah, so I keep looking at that.

[00:04:42] I'm wondering when they're going to make their decision. Who wins the various categories, but that's been a big one then. I'm looking forward to getting some results from the poetry division.

[00:04:51] Yeah, and I just mail nominations right before we set out to do this sort of for Michael Voterstead's book. Why we fished and for Joan of Horus Gauvers. Orange two looks. Yeah, it is. So Joan if you're listening, we still love your book.

[00:05:06] Well, I'll tell you what, that Nina Riggs poetry award, which is based out of the Nina Riggs poetry foundation. And Green's poetry foundation and Green's poetry. And I have a very niche award for poems that have to do with family and family dynamics.

[00:05:20] And so Michael Luttershtet, thank you. We brought that to our attention. We nominated his book. And since you can go, you can nominate books going back as far as three years, we know nominated Joan as well because her book Orange tulips is just enveloped in family dynamics.

[00:05:38] So I chose three poems that should make them weep. So again, I think there's several winners in that category and each get a minimum of 1,000 bucks. So hey, that's a good thing. I hope some of the ones on that one from the other.

[00:05:53] And the pushcarp prizes, nominations are going out. Yeah, we're put most together right now. Yeah, and by the way, if you're listening to this and you were not nominated for pushcarp, don't worry about it. And next year, so much more in 2024.

[00:06:08] The bottom line is you just never know. They say, what is it Robert just being nominated for a pushcard? Yeah, it is an almost a just be nominated. All 16,000 people nominated for pushcards. More given to the shot that maybe some, this year maybe someone,

[00:06:25] the six poets that we've nominated hopefully, one or two of them will be picked up for the anthology. So congratulations to those of the nominated. You know, we are once we put them in the mail, we can make that official. That's been a busy year.

[00:06:39] Not only would I have other things you've worked on this year. What do you think is the most? What do you remember the most, which will which project? Well, Jim and I correct it. Well, working on your book in the road his book were pretty good.

[00:06:53] And the road his book is still quite doing quite well. I'm just worshiping our 30 copies today, Sam. Yeah. And then finding working with some of the poets and I found a new author accidentally in front of a pet store. Yeah, I'm not here.

[00:07:10] Well, Dave, my husband and I were going to pets plus and if you want this a plug for pets plus, if you want to give us discounts, give us a call. And she was outside with her husband with her books. And I just walked right past her.

[00:07:23] I didn't even think anything about it. And Dave stopped and talked to her husband. And he said, let me go in and when we come back out we'll stop at BAH. Well, Dave didn't even think about it and started to walk away.

[00:07:32] And he said, hey, don't you want to come look at the books? And we turned around and she was telling somebody, Terry, Pirate who is the author. Said, was telling some of my yels. I'm really looking for a local publisher and I said,

[00:07:46] I work for a local publisher. And so she gave me a copy of her book and she signed it for me everything. And she wasn't treated very nicely by the people who published it and it cost her a lot of money.

[00:07:59] And I said, give me your book and send me your files and let me see what I can do with it. And we fixed her, fixed her up. She's got a proof right now. Galilee proof right now that she's going over and Angel,

[00:08:12] I work studies student, read the book and love it. And even gave me her notes on it. So now we found out that Angel has a second career as an editor. And a proofer. And it's a really good book.

[00:08:27] It's called Frankie and it's about a teenager growing up who finds out that she has a father somewhere in the father. Maybe her English teacher, but she doesn't know. Oh wow. Okay. Now is this a series? Hmm. It's a series from the Holly Springs.

[00:08:41] This will be the first. And then the second one is called today in tomorrow. And today in tomorrow happened to be her cousin or her friends. I think it's her cousins. Of hers that one was their twins and one was born before midnight

[00:08:54] and one was born after midnight. So there are mother named them today in tomorrow. And so the second edition is going to be about them. And then the third one is supposed to be everybody comes back together for a Christmas special.

[00:09:09] I'm kind of my parents didn't name me, whoops. Yeah. That sounds interesting. And also two out there in podcast land. Always remember that if a press wants to charge you a lot of money to publish your book,

[00:09:24] you need to run in the opposite direction, run right to red hoc publications and talk to one of us. All of that stuff of layout and distribution and all that stuff doesn't cost the author of thing through this program.

[00:09:39] And it should never cost anything through a standard or a traditional publisher. You need to be interested in the community press who have menus. So avoid them, don't let them take your money, bring your stuff to us and let us help you with it.

[00:09:53] I got a phone call today guys from a woman who attended Bethlehem Library had a reading with veterans and Ken Harbert who wrote our lives and lives. He mentioned to a young woman that read publications is here. She called me.

[00:10:10] She's interested in us doing her children's illustrated book. And she asked the first thing she asked is how much does it cost? Yeah. It's just surprising to me how many people think it should cost the money to publish. And we've had that so many times.

[00:10:24] I mean, think about reinvented it when he first pitched his book to us that he'd already been considering that. And so many of them. I mean, that's kind of in the local press world throughout the United States. That sort of becomes standard.

[00:10:40] There's people making money on would be authors. Yeah, and I guess that's one of the reasons why we may sometimes have to turn a book down. I mean, we can't do it all because we're not charging.

[00:10:52] But that said, yeah, it is kind of scary that people might just think, oh, this across the money to publish. Well, it could if you'd want to go in that direction, but that's not what a... Yeah, we're not paid to play right there. No.

[00:11:05] Yeah, it's one of the biggest differences in putting somebody into it with an editor. Or somebody in touch with his graphic artist to design a cover and that cost, you know, a couple hundred dollars. There's a big difference between that and several thousand dollars to do those things.

[00:11:20] And then they not be up to par in the quality. I mean, I've seen some of the quality of some of these these books. And that's just sad. Yeah, it can just kind of break my heart. Well, it did break my heart.

[00:11:33] I know how devastated she was because she bought like a hundred and two hundred copies of it. And she's selling them herself. She's out for making herself. But they were, you know, they... Justification wasn't right. They didn't prove it.

[00:11:47] They didn't make any edits on a chapters were broken up with a page in between them. And, you know, she felt like she was just stuck. I mean, she lost almost... It was over $5,000. Oh, my gosh. And I said, give me that book.

[00:12:03] And we'll take it and I'm going to fix it for you. And you took a look at Robert, took a look at it. I mean, this is a book I think that's going to be... It's going to be a movie. I can see it being a series.

[00:12:15] And there's been several times when clients have brought us books that I call rescue books. Yeah, there are books that have either been found up by one of these... One of these five by night pay for play people or books that...

[00:12:30] You know, they paid and they got nothing. I mean, we've had that happen. And we've gone ahead and done those books to... You know, make that client's dreams realized it also too to kind of get back at the... The robbers that would take advantage of these folks.

[00:12:47] Because it's just kind of disgusting in a way that, you know, people are done that way. And I've said it before, but this is part of the college's mission to reflect the talent of the area. And you know, we're going to be here.

[00:13:02] So we're not going to take the advantage of you like some people will because they could... Just as easily go out of business after they've got people's money. We're part of the institution. We'll be here.

[00:13:11] We want to do right by you and make sure that your publication has the best chance of reaching an audience that... That we can give it. Exactly. So if you want to take a look at some of that product, just go to redhawkpublications.com.

[00:13:26] There, you know, as of this recording, there is a fall 23 code on there. Now, you've got to look on the landing page and then when you check out folks, Look right below the buttons for the credit card, whether it's a click for a credit card, click for PayPal.

[00:13:46] Because right below it is a little URL that lets you add that FAL23 or any of the other codes. You'll miss it if you blink. And that's not our fault. We didn't put that in there like that. There's just no way on the equate site to fix it.

[00:14:02] I've written them about it to see if we could make something a little more prominent. And of course, having her bean thing back. But I know if I wanted to discount, I will look hard enough to figure out what to do. Oh, I do it all the time.

[00:14:14] I look on... And sometimes they are hidden. Sometimes you've got to go back a couple of pages even before you put your address in and go like, I, there you are.

[00:14:23] There's the little link and then they're a little bit of the box for you to put the thing in. Because some of them, I think they want you to miss it. But we don't.

[00:14:30] We want you to use those codes because we put those codes out there for a reason. And so if you have a problem just write us. What is that code again? FAL23. FAL23. Capital letters, FAL23. And then two, three. Okay. And that's great.

[00:14:46] Whenever we do another one, we'll always put it out on our Facebook page. What's the media social media? Social media, the news. And we'll always put those codes on there. But finding the place to put it has sometimes been the problem.

[00:15:00] And it's always on that page that you're deciding how you're going to pay. Whether you're going to put in your credit card, whether you're going to use PayPal, or whether you're going to use... I can't think what the third one is.

[00:15:10] I think the third one is stripe or something like that. Right below that is a little URL that you can click and it will open up the box for you to put the code in. So please use that. We want you to... we want you to save.

[00:15:22] That saves you 25% right now. That FAL23. And free shipping? And free shipping. Yeah, I do. How do we do it? Well, we don't. I mean, we do do it. But it's not sometimes it's not... You know, we just had a recent...

[00:15:39] One of our authors featured on the cover of the Hickordau Record yesterday. Gracing... Gracing segment. Gracing segment with his book RPM friends. And, you know, I love making those comics out. But when you sit down and look at it from a business perspective, it's not smart.

[00:15:58] Because the comics five bugs. And it costs a lot to print because it's full color on glossy paper. And then when you do free shipping, we actually don't do very well on that. But it's out of love. But it is.

[00:16:13] It's to get Gracing's comic out there to you folks. So, or it. I give you free media membership and it's $3.62 to ship it. And you use that code and I'll still ship it to you because I want you to Reggracing's work or G.C. Axel's.

[00:16:31] I just put things down this morning as a matter of fact. Because we knew we were going to talk about Gracing's book. And I wanted to know. Does Gracing have any upcoming events and he actually does for those of you that live in the Catapult Valley area.

[00:16:45] Gracing segment will be selling his book at the same Peters Lutheran Church in Conover on Saturday December 2nd. There's a winter festival. So, feel free to come out on December 2nd and join same Peters. Of course, order it from our website.

[00:17:00] Yeah, you can order it from our website. And we will keep you abreast on these type things on our social media on Facebook and Malik. When our authors are appearing live and in person.

[00:17:12] So, you have to do this kind of check that and can you set up an RSS feed that has red Hulk web web web. I do. So things will pop up. Just so you guys know as we were chatting, I went through our pipeline for 23.

[00:17:25] It looks like we'll be at about 32 books by the end of this year. I make sense. Yeah. Because it isn't quite as fringe you the year is 2022. But in those, what do you say? 32. 32. You all mentioned the GKX will run to look.

[00:17:41] What's some others that came out this year that you want people to have a second Look at. Yeah. Because I got one. Go ahead. Pat Vowse, I choose the eagle. Are you sure?

[00:17:53] Now, there was a big splash of that at the Hickory Museum for us this past summer. But I just talked to her and she's sitting out copies because she's got people that go through her That want to know about her art. Because I love the way it's titled.

[00:18:06] I choose the eagle. A lifetime with fringe and art and travel. And it really is a kind of travel wall. This is my experience in art. She's got people all over the US and over the world because she shows in Paris. She's shown in Japan.

[00:18:18] She's shown all over the place who want to copy of the book to say this is how she derives her art. And it's, I mean, we're actually technically sold out of it right now. But we'll be getting more copies in.

[00:18:31] And it's a great book and it's also got color and shows her art as well as her words. And so it's kind of one of those that I'm very proud that we did that one this year. Yeah, if you know how she got the I choose the eagle.

[00:18:44] Title. Tell us. She tells you that story. I'm trying to remember it off the top of my head. I'm going to have to paraphrase it. I'm going to have to be a little bit more confident. There was a teacher that was very her mentor and she loved dearly.

[00:18:57] The she was afraid to go forward and the teacher said, Give her the story about the eagle and she said, You could choose the eagle or you can choose something that was, You know, very safe and she that's the reason she said I chose the eagle.

[00:19:09] And that's one of our two memoirs that Dr. Jones book is a memoir and so is Pat's. So both of them are great reads. I'm a real insight into the personality that we're talking about. And actually, patting I were looking it up this morning.

[00:19:24] There's a new film coming out on by her restaurant who was a civil rights pioneer. Who knew Dr Jones, the Obama's, I think, are producing the film. It's going to be on Netflix and Dr Jones knew by a restaurant because he mentioned it

[00:19:40] almost a dozen times within the book we looked it up on the Indian. We had an index at Killing Handy. That's what I was going to mention too about before we move from Pat Vowels. Pat Vowels project is a perfect example of what goes on inside this program.

[00:19:57] How many months was it that you worked with Miss Vowels to get her material into? It was over a year. Yeah. It was a good long time. But you know, the interesting thing about it.

[00:20:08] And when I thought she brought it up, that the only reason that we did that with us is because Leroy Leo had done his bio with us. And she had talked, he knew she was writing a book and he told her, well, go see the folks at Redhog.

[00:20:26] She says I have no connection with the folks at Redhog and he says, but I do. And introduced her to us. So it really is that networking thing of you can, that's one way to get your product before us. But we also do building coal.

[00:20:40] How many coal calls have you gotten from people who want to produce? Oh, gosh, at least two or three a month. I'm getting emails and phone calls from people that just randomly hear from us.

[00:20:49] And then we probably get two or three a month that find a friend over for them. Yeah. And then Pat did the hard work of writing her text. So she had to herself down and write her chapters.

[00:21:04] She did the extraordinary hard work of going through her pictures, going through her images, choosing what she wants, wanted to use, getting those to us. Where we could scan them and make them perfect. Then I did the initial layout and you know, which was okay.

[00:21:23] Pat said, okay, change this, change this, but then that's when Melanie came to work for us. And I said, I would like to see your take on this because personally, I'm just not quite satisfied with what I did.

[00:21:37] It may all took it and was able to make an entirely different book out of it. It's a work magic. So yeah, and also work magic with the client because she and Pat just hit it off because they've both got artistic.

[00:21:50] A flavors about their personality and their imaginations. So that's one that I was very happy that there's none of my work in that book anymore. And that demonstrates how it kind of happens. It goes through different incarnations we look at it. Yeah, that works.

[00:22:07] That doesn't work and we take it to the next step, next step. And until we get it, what we feel is right. We in the client feel is right and that's what we put it out.

[00:22:16] Because that's what's the most important thing is the most important thing is not what the writer writes but what the reader reads and we want to make sure that the product will be important for the client as well as the reader.

[00:22:29] And the book is very much more reader friendly than it was. And God, Melanie, how many rewrites and how many revisions did we go through on that five? Yeah. Five or six? Yeah, because... And mostly she had diplicated story.

[00:22:44] She was telling stories and then she'd go into another chapter on down the line and repeat the story and things like that that we had to kind of fix it. So we took out some redundancies. We moved some things around.

[00:22:56] We edited the photographs to make them a little bit brighter because they print darker when we print the image she'll print darker so we got to bring it up a little bit exaggerated a little bit.

[00:23:07] Another thing you have to remember, listeners out there is the print on demand system color is more expensive than it is if you're using offset your print 10,000 copies of something instead of just 100. So we need to get the biggest bang for our book when it comes to color.

[00:23:27] So, Melanie is very, very good at guessing what the printer's print shop will put out. So she can then adjust on our end to make things pop better, look better and that's very, very important too because you want everything to look as good for the reader as it

[00:23:46] possibly can. Yeah, two things about that. Paul Mason and New York University. The other university we were talking about early today. Paul Mason, like that one? No, no, no, no. I'm not going to get to that. But New York University? Yeah, I saw something. So there's...

[00:24:00] Because of color and that sort of thing, some of their books sell at what we would consider exorbitant prices that we don't charge. But the Paul Mason reference is, we will sell just like the other one. We will sell nobos before it's time.

[00:24:14] Yeah, well, that's true because we have, we have pulled things off of the schedule and moved things back before because we just...it just doesn't set well with us. So we will put it off the schedule, send it back to do something else, go back to the writer.

[00:24:32] I don't think Miss Baron is done. Yeah, when it comes to the actual text of that book, I think we help her make that a better book, a better story. We've got G.C., excuse me, G.L. Willis. See so well, isn't it? Yes.

[00:24:51] His book is right now with all the readers, with a proof called Hillbelly Odyssey. It's kind of an action reaction to Hillbelly, L.G. by J.D. Van. J.D. Van. What else have we got out there? Well, we've got quite a few to come.

[00:25:08] Yeah, I'm just going to ask what we've got in the cooker for 24 hours. It's amazing and it's not that I want to ignore my hindsight because we've done some amazing things but what's to come is what's getting me super excited. And Cecil's book is certainly one of them.

[00:25:23] The Hillbelly Odyssey because the buzz has been...and this is interesting. We submitted that book to us maybe a year ago and the readers, our professional readers liked it but there was something quite missing. Just a little something missing.

[00:25:35] We sent it back to him and said, please, we submit and he did the work hired an editor and resubmitted it and the readers remembered it and they're like, he nailed it. This is, you know, especially for folks around here that live close to Appalachia or

[00:25:50] they've got Appalachian roots, they really dig what he's saying. It's a memoir about his resilience of being brought up in a small mill town. But it is a reaction towards JD Vance's Hillbelly L.G., so I think it's going to resonate

[00:26:04] a lot with our readers and folks that live in this area that might have taken a little umbridge at JD Vance's book. So we're super excited about that one coming out and it should be out.

[00:26:15] Maybe the next four to six weeks perhaps, perhaps maybe we'll hold it till early January after the holidays but we're expecting good things from that one. Yeah, we've got a pretty robust spring coming up with a lot of works that are coming around

[00:26:29] that are in their final stages of getting ready. Yeah, the last Brown's book of short stories is one that's coming out after the first of the year. He decided to release it in early 2024 because he wants to be able to hit all of the awards

[00:26:46] for 2024 and also have something to go into the spring with and then he was even planning all the way out into the next holiday with his book. I just can't, I can't remember the name of the thing. Oh, I am a bridge Sunday's. Yes, I have a story.

[00:27:03] I'm sorry, folks out there my memory is going. Oh look, I got my two sheets. I got my two sheets but you know what's interesting? It's slowly drifting into dementia. We actually had last Brown and Joyce Brown. Review Seasold's book.

[00:27:18] I hope you'll be able to see it because we know that they both, you know, less is from Linville, Gorgies, from the mountains and they dug Seasold's book so much that less actually blurbed it. Yeah, I'm sorry.

[00:27:30] And we see a collaboration possibly between less and Seasold because both of them will have books coming out around the same time about the same kind of subject matter. So that could be some really wonderful opportunities for those two gentlemen to kind of tell their story.

[00:27:45] And I see Joyce playing Banjo in the background, that's me. And speaking of less again and the Iron Bridge Sunday, we just added about 16 instances of less is folk art to the book. He's illustrated some of the stories and it's basically just number two pencil on, you know,

[00:28:08] a pad and then we scan those and fix them up and they're going to be in the book too. So all the little artwork that's in the book becomes to less as well as the text. So that's going to be exciting to see how that turns out.

[00:28:21] And speaking of collaborations, we got a good one coming up between two of our authors. Well, our author photographer between Scott Owens and Joe Young. Yeah, that's a pretty book. Yeah, that's got some nice photographs and that's coming out real soon too.

[00:28:38] In fact, it should be here November 20th and you can pre-ordered on the website right now. And just do time for your Christmas shop. And it's a $30 book and if you use that fall 23 code, you will say 25% get it for $24. I thought it was $35.

[00:28:57] Well, that's going to be the retail. Ooh, we special special. Yes, we are special special special. Hi, thank you. We're trying to get it into people's hands. It's a full-cogger and it is high quality paper.

[00:29:09] It's a trade paper bag and a half-boggling and it is filled with poetry and photographs showing love for a Katoba County in the surrounding area. So if you are from Katoba County in the surrounding area, you will know exactly where these photographs were taken

[00:29:26] and our own melodies are manipulated out with special instruction and oversight by Clayton Joe Young. You don't know what you're doing. Standing over her shoulder going. Nudge that, just a bit. Oh, thank you, Mr. Jennifer.

[00:29:41] If you can't afford his photographs, get the book folks and he'll sign it. Yeah, so we'll Scott and Scott will have it for sale as well as our websites. Scott will have for sale that it tastes full beans because he'll have copies of it down there.

[00:29:56] Where number of rental publications are? Yes, if you want to see them in person there are quite a few of them down there. There's another book that I'm not sure when it will be released but Mel, you've been working with Harold.

[00:30:10] I'm afraid to have them working with Harold. This is new territory for us. The book is working on? Yeah, Harold has written a song book and he used his original artwork and this is all original music

[00:30:21] and his words and everything and he's acing, included all the chords and he's recorded 30 of them for me so we can put it Robert suggested we use YouTube instead of trying to house them somewhere.

[00:30:35] And so you can listen to them and even play along with him and my husband Dave's musician and he's going to go back and re-record them and see what we can do with them as well.

[00:30:47] But they're really easy, I mean I learned how to play ukulele three years ago and I can play them only ukulele. Oh, there are very few four finger chords in this book.

[00:30:56] So I saw it as a spiral bound but Harold wants it to be perfect bound bound like all of our books are bound but it's a really nice and his company also by art is that right?

[00:31:10] Yes, it's all his original artwork that he has in there and it's all going to be indexed so you can find the artwork's going to be indexed in the back and it's got a table content in it. Tell them music.

[00:31:21] Can we talk about some performance opportunities with this too, right? Yeah, and we've also talked about bringing him in and doing a video, you know like doing a podcast but we would have it on video. Video podcast.

[00:31:33] And but when he does his book sign in at tasteful beans and wherever we're looking at doing some performance as there as well. What is the musical style of his songs? It's almost like he's it's country almost. It's not rock and roll it's very very easy music.

[00:31:54] It's not John Prime somewhere along in the world. Yeah, yeah. You know young kind of. Yeah, um a little foky. Exactly. Okay. Yeah, that's what I was thinking because I was thinking you know like Pete SIGER and that kind of thing. That kind of music. Americana. Yeah.

[00:32:11] And when you made Harold he comes from that generation and you get that vibe from him anyway because the first time I saw him he had own sandals and it was like that's unusual for made to make somebody eat. He made some old hippies. He's like me.

[00:32:27] Did that Harold also for those in the Katapa Valley area? You are probably familiar with him for his artwork and he's well known as being a premier sculpturist. So I had no idea that he was also a musician naturally of course he's an artist, right?

[00:32:45] So I think for folks who are familiar with his artwork now learning this other artistic aspect of him and being able to not just see his music and hear his music but also to see his art. Once again it's a full loaded book.

[00:32:59] You know that's an interesting point you make because we are seeing artists stretch into new areas. I mean take Fiela. I mean I know he and Dennis had done theater before but for Fiela to do his book

[00:33:13] and then premier at HCT and the green room when he came during the art of compassion shows them kind of stretching others into other genres that you might not normally think of. And I guess Harold's a good example that too.

[00:33:27] Yeah yeah and I think it's something that he's just pittled around with. Well to use an example we watched interview with Kiefer Sutherland and you would never know that he had his own country band.

[00:33:38] He's a movie star as a TV star and all this other stuff but what he likes to do is play music and he has a band and he goes around and plays these small clubs and stuff.

[00:33:47] I think Harold uses it to put another aspect, another look at his poetry is to put it to music you know because you could read them as poems. You know I have read them as poems. Mike Walker who again local legendary musician in town.

[00:34:05] He is interested in doing something similar so I'm looking forward to Harold's book kind of coming to fruition so that this might be the start of something with other people you know. Yeah because this is something Robert always talked about with creative economy in that there's

[00:34:19] how many billion dollars worth that a year? I was like 7, 7 billion and North Carolina alone. And so it stretches you know poetry can become lyrics which can become you know photography,

[00:34:32] drawing all this other stuff and I think having a publisher like what we do gives people an opportunity to explore that. Yeah it's band and we give them that avenue plus it doesn't cost them anything.

[00:34:49] They're not actually losing anything by investing their time and energy into this project they're going to gain a whole lot and we gain a lot from it too because some of their poems

[00:35:00] can be inspirational you know they make us feel good about ourselves and for us to be able to share that and to share that with them and plus we gain a new relationship you know like with Pat

[00:35:13] and you know Harold and how he good in New York with Franny Faces you know I've Terry yeah I just you know she's now a new friend so to speak and it's just my viewpoint of it

[00:35:26] is when I'm meeting Arthur I want to do the best thing that I can do for them because I care about what happens to them and we all care about what happens to them and what their product looks like and

[00:35:36] everything and then it just becomes someone that's in our lives now and we have we've created family yeah we really have and it works with family too because Terry Barra was an early

[00:35:49] exactly for us and now his wife beautiful yeah nearly bar his wife has written a children's book called my buddy my body my buddy and it's about her her dog max and how he listens to his

[00:36:04] buddy his body and we were able to put her with a local artist what I call a scratch artist now days because Robert Russell begins his work with a pencil on piece of Bristol board and

[00:36:21] it's almost it's almost been a year ago that we started this and now we're in the second proof it's a beautiful book Bob's artwork is hilarious it's it's character, chiresk and the

[00:36:35] what nearly has done is basically the narrative is by max and my granddaughter when she read it she says I just love how that sounds like that reads like how a dog would talk yeah

[00:36:47] yeah she's just wondering that yeah she says I just know that that's exactly how a dog would talk my mommy and my daddy remind me that I don't only need fuel from food but I need fuel from love

[00:37:00] because the heart needs fuel just as much as the body you know and my granddaughter's going like that's so sweet you know so this is gonna be a really good book again educational yeah and yet

[00:37:12] it's from the perspective of a dog but it can teach you by the way it taught me I should be more concerned about food is fuel not you know like good times and one of our

[00:37:23] one of our most successful writers Jonathan Howard he's working on a children's book of the same ilk about teaching children about the brain and we've paired him with a local artist the

[00:37:36] same fella Nick Forte who worked with Jason on his comic we paired him with Nick Forte and now Nick's all working with him to illustrate that book and that's gonna be called brains for babies

[00:37:49] and initially Robert and I like are you kidding but then when Jonathan like he gave us the concept he sold us they're actually going to be using real brain scans that Nick is going to

[00:38:01] create illustrations around so again very um educational and I know the parent that will buy this for their toddler but at the same time it's hilarious because there's there's one there's one page

[00:38:16] in the in the markups that Nick did that's got this big giant brain with these big bugging eyes inside of a control room with these tentacles because Howard had written about how the brain

[00:38:29] controls all of this system the function yeah and inside this thing is like this nightmare of a typical brain pressing these buttons and I'm gonna get that's exactly what my brain looks like all these tentacles and crap going on right there's like taking shots and smoking cigarettes

[00:38:51] just like this podcast you never know this stuff brains for people in their 60s that Apple comes next down at the end well that goes back to the old hippies thing so we're talking all this all this stuff together yeah give them all those gummies over there

[00:39:11] but there's the nearly bar book we got Jonathan Howard working on he's and let's not forget the grand poop out and big go to Richard you got a lot coming up so I can give some of the

[00:39:22] great talk I want to give a plug to a new author who has collaborated on a book with me by the name of Claudia War she's she's an interesting you know I find yourself yeah is that

[00:39:38] that woman we threw out of here one day because she was hanging around and she's the one that redlands all your books well she ran on the books and the library I'd have three dozen

[00:39:52] out right man I'm she had her headline she actually was very good to help me on the furniture book go through it and you know say this don't make you excited she got a you got to make make this make

[00:40:02] sense and so after that I began writing on the second I've got the we've got the red heart publication says the first book on the occupants of Harper House the second is the thorns and I didn't

[00:40:13] think much about them until I got into it and it I was gonna write it from the perspective of the man being a man and there was the real reason that he is this famous and in Hickory as he is

[00:40:26] is because of his wife and so what she did was help me pull out Elizabeth because Elizabeth his wife was a hidden figure but she really is the money behind the whole thing and so Claudia

[00:40:38] was very good in like saying all the time when I'm writing about Marcelus because in typical patriarchal fashion we've named it tell us Marcelus but Elizabeth because he's he's the lab now

[00:40:51] but Elizabeth is there and she helped bring her out into more of the open as much as we can because there's no pictures on her for Marcelus there's a bunch of so what this bookie is is kind of

[00:41:03] a collaborative effort to talk about a husband and wife team by a husband and wife team so that will be coming out next year we're doing some partnership stuff with the historical association

[00:41:15] of Katana and that's not the only one there's a guy who gave us I'll show you how this all times together there's a guy who gave us a book of two sisters who wrote a memoir from the early

[00:41:26] 20th century in Hickory the Abernathy sisters and we found out that there was a play written in the 1980s that Lennar on Playmakers did it after by Dr. Mary and love and we were looking at

[00:41:39] a collaborative effort on that too and in that book they write about what a character Colonel Fortin was you know one of the local town guys so there's all these ties that we have with

[00:41:48] the historical association of Katana including a project that will show up in the daily record of a story about this when it's so boxed there we was here and so we're working on some

[00:42:01] visual maybe documentary kind of things as well as something with that but they but to go back to the Thornton story we're also doing that as an audiobook so that'll be coming out next year

[00:42:11] till we have it you know it's it's just so much fun to stumble on these stories and go wow we got to tell that story and that's what leads to the kind of product that we get and we're not

[00:42:22] even mentioning they know tons of tons of Smith who was published with us in the past he's got another book coming out oh yeah her dogs in New York City we've got Stuart Connolly he was the co-author

[00:42:33] of the Dr Jones and he's got a memoir that just kind of kicked all of us in the but so we're looking forward to offered in secret yeah that one will blow you away yeah so again there's just

[00:42:46] a lot more up on deck and we're really excited we are yeah the Thornton stuff is very interesting because we were we were just talking earlier today about the difference between something like the Jones book and we want them infected by Jonathan Howard these things that sale

[00:43:05] thousands and thousands of copies and then we have things that we do because we're interested in the academic subject and you know with the Thornton book we're going to have we've got already

[00:43:15] got the original the publication in our library of the original lady in New Orleans which you can get that on our website or on Amazon right now then we're going to have mail has worked

[00:43:28] slavery to bring us my buddy and my buddy and I'm not in our way but it is a nice little bit and we're going to have that available as a single title they have the Harper house

[00:43:42] then we're going to have lady in New Orleans and my buddy and I as a as a book together along with professor hours I don't know what are you playing on right and for it well I got to think about

[00:43:55] that the other day because you know I put there's whole chapter for each book in more cell tell us more cells but you and I had talked about doing a critical edition that looks at it

[00:44:06] from my side of historical context and you're aside from a literary one yeah and any other academy people out there who might want to get involved in this let us know if you're an English

[00:44:17] teacher I would like to read the books and and write some writing essay please so same thing with his you know history teachers anybody who might mention it we'll have that available and we've also

[00:44:29] got in our that we have we have the original manuscript of the lady of New Orleans in Marcelo Storten's hand fountain pen hand long hand and we're going to include pictures of that

[00:44:44] we're going to include instances of that and talk about that as well so you know this is a dude that lived here in Hickory in Harper House at the turn of the 20th century who wrote these two

[00:44:56] books right here they're about the area they take place in the area they kind of reflect what life was like around here back then so if you want to know what this area was like back then there's no

[00:45:08] better way to do it than immerse yourself through this man's fiction and these things are our iconic as something to study through the academy I mean things that wind up in libraries as reference books

[00:45:22] just like well crafted which by the way your your wife Claudia she goes after my marketing hard because she was screaming at you break that book into two volumes instead of selling the big door shop

[00:45:34] or selling and I was just my own ego that might have been a and might have been a better thing because I could have been got maybe twenty dollars at each one you got forty instead of thirty five

[00:45:45] we know bring it up that twice the price the thorn book and you do in the collaboration thing with the history and literature you know the Thomas Dana Junior fund could be an option for you to

[00:46:01] have that sticker on the front of that book and you know the Thomas Dana Junior fund gives scholarships to our students and then also allows us to be able to select authors and give them this designation

[00:46:13] that they're part of the series of that book series and you can also donate to the Thomas Thomas Dana Junior scholarship by getting in touch with Katopavali Community College's foundation yes you can contact Jennifer Jones at the foundation and she can or hit us up

[00:46:32] yeah or you can contact us as a matter of fact in the description of this podcast I'll have some information on how to contribute to the foundation so that will help folks there and of course if

[00:46:43] they want to give an extra nickel to us we're not going to complain well it'll help fund future books like the actual rod book yeah well ladies and gentlemen we've been yacking for about an hour is anybody got

[00:46:54] anything else they want to cover all minds clear you're just excited about twenty twenty four guys no we bought I know we forgot something really always do forget something we'll do a podcast

[00:47:05] though yeah if we forgot you out there please let us know and we'll do a podcast we're going to try to put together something with Joe and Scott we're going to get that before the end of

[00:47:14] the year that'd be really nice yes and we'll be able to do that but otherwise thank you so much out there for listening and if you have any commentary feedback or anything like that where you

[00:47:24] get your podcast you can contact us make sure you what is it patty you say about clicking oh please make sure you follow like share and subscribe there you go I knew it was something

[00:47:35] so out there in podcast land for patty Thompson Melanie Zimmerman and Richard Eller this is Robert can I say red pub pod red pub pod red pub pod thank you so much for listening take it easy this is a podcast red pub for brain home publications