Behind The Scenes: A Chat About New Segments and Ideas for the Podcast

We are still on break, but we wanted to share a behind-the-scenes conversation we had about new segments and ideas we had for the podcast. Tune in and share your thoughts and feedback. See you soon!

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jonathan

Host

Slava

Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

Jonathan: 00:00

Slava, we wanna grow the podcast. We do. I've been thinking about this this week. I know that we've gone back and forth on how we could add to the show. But what if instead of adding to the show, we just did a second show that was shorter?

Slava: 00:14

I like the idea. I've thought about this, and we've talked about this. How do we get an extra episode a week or an extra episode a month to get something a little bit off the beaten path, to use my favorite term, to the audience.

Jonathan: 00:31

Sorry. Your wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Jonathan: 00:33

Sorry. Your favorite term? Your favorite phrase is okay. Off the beaten path? That's your favorite phrase?

Slava: 00:40

Yeah. I've used it or a variation of it when describing stories that a little bit weird are not mainstream. I've used that term extensively or a variation of it.

Jonathan: 00:51

Oh, alright. It must be because we were recording earlier, and and you mentioned beating people off.

Slava: 00:56

So I've just continue. We could do a segment once a month where we play the plagiarism police.

Jonathan: 01:04

We just try and out people in Twitter threads?

Slava: 01:07

Yeah. Yeah. Just say, hey. This is suspiciously similar to a book I wrote. What if we

Jonathan: 01:12

what if we just read fan bad fan fiction?

Slava: 01:15

As long as there's nobody having sex with dragons, I'm okay.

Jonathan: 01:19

That's not fan fiction. That's a

Slava: 01:20

real book, buddy. No. Wait a minute.

Jonathan: 01:23

That's a real book.

Slava: 01:24

Maybe it's maybe I wrote a book.

Jonathan: 01:26

I I've actually thought about asking you to read I don't know if there's sex in this book. A Court of Rose and Thorns, which is, like, super popular by Sarah J Maas. Sounds like there might be at least

Slava: 01:39

some making out in that book.

Jonathan: 01:40

It's something. Yeah. But it's it's wildly popular. Two guys commenting on romantasy genre. I don't even know if it's technically romantasy, but based on the, like, TikToks I've seen about it, it Mhmm.

Jonathan: 01:55

Strikes me as romantasy. But I know that you would hate that, which is kinda why I wanna do it. So Well, if

Slava: 02:00

you wanna torture me in response and some sort of revenge tactic against me making you read the city in the city, I guess I'm okay.

Jonathan: 02:10

It's not a single book, though. It's a series. I read a lot of series. You you should know this by now. I don't read like one offs.

Jonathan: 02:17

What I want, is more Stragotsky brothers. That's what they really want.

Slava: 02:21

We can do that. We've had to find English translations of them.

Jonathan: 02:24

I'm sure there are. I thought you said they only wrote one book.

Slava: 02:27

They wrote a couple of books. Only one got translated into English from my understanding.

Jonathan: 02:32

Oh, interesting. Alright. But back to how do we I don't think either of our schedules can can maintain, like, doing a an additional episode a week, but I think we could do, like, an episode a month.

Slava: 02:45

We can name it Jonathan's emotional weather report. You you give us, you know, a thirty minute monologue describing your mental state using only metaphors and wild imagery, cursed analogues, cursed analogies.

Jonathan: 02:59

Mhmm.

Slava: 03:00

Whatever. Yeah. I'm sure people would love ramble on

Jonathan: 03:02

Actually, my my wife continues to razz me, and she'll just like, you know, have you heard small dog syndrome?

Slava: 03:09

Yeah. I think so.

Jonathan: 03:10

Anyway, my wife's shorter than me, and so she'll just, like, do things to try to get me going, get me riled

Slava: 03:17

up. Yeah.

Jonathan: 03:17

And she's like, I do that because you're too stoic. Thanks, babe. Appreciate that. So I I do that enough. I'm I'm good.

Jonathan: 03:26

Next idea. What's your next idea? We should oh, we could read children's books.

Slava: 03:31

Only if they're dark German children's books.

Jonathan: 03:34

I'm actually would love that. But I was thinking we could read children's books, you could just add the add the word to them. I will not eat it, Sam I am. I will not eat these grain eggs and hams.

Slava: 03:44

Oh, says poover. Instead of a bother.

Jonathan: 03:47

Oh, bother. That's I don't think that that'll go over well. I do think that the Germanic folklore would be fun though. Fairy tales or original, yeah. Original folklore.

Jonathan: 03:58

Mythology would be fun too. I know we've talked about that.

Slava: 04:00

From different parts of the world. I like Japan. Their stuff is jarring.

Jonathan: 04:04

Japan's got the oh, man. Their stuff's awesome. There's actually a lot of unknown folklore and mythology from Africa that I did, like, a a world mythology course on Audible years ago.

Slava: 04:18

Boys trip? What? Boys trip to Africa? Maybe. Make our own folklore?

Slava: 04:24

Yeah.

Jonathan: 04:26

But it was really, really fascinating. It it it resembled actually quite a bit of Norse mythology.

Slava: 04:32

Interesting.

Jonathan: 04:32

Yeah. It was super interesting. One of the ideas we got. All of these seem like way more time commitment than you and I have currently.

Slava: 04:40

Yeah. And some of them are just silly. But I think if we're being serious, we can do short stories. Once a month, pick a short story and dissect it with we really don't do fine tooth combs, but we do dissect in some degree stories.

Jonathan: 04:56

Sandbox. We we Yeah. It's like each story is a sandbox, and we kinda go digging for treasure.

Slava: 05:02

Very good analogy. So we do that with short stories, and I propose to you we do a series of authors. So you like doing series. So we've done Stephen King two years ago for spooky October. This new season, we do Neil Gaiman short stories or pick your author short story.

Slava: 05:23

Somebody who's known to be a short story writer

Jonathan: 05:26

I've got an idea. Discover them. I got an idea. Let's not do big name authors. Let's do independent authors.

Jonathan: 05:33

Because

Slava: 05:33

Okay.

Jonathan: 05:34

It although you and I audible a lot of things, you know, we we wanna have more guests on the show. We could solve two birds with one stone. So if we do independent authors and read their stuff the thing is, I don't know if it can be just short stories. I propose we do just independent authors, and we bring them on the show after we've read their book.

Slava: 05:53

We can do that. I'm done with that. And have they written a short story?

Jonathan: 05:57

Yeah. It could be it can it can be a short story, but independent authors as a as, like, the next show.

Slava: 06:04

Alright. Well, audience, if you know any independent authors, if you are an independent author, Instagram is still the best way to get us. YouTube as well. You can do YouTube, But I'm constantly on Instagram, so it's more accessible. But either place is good.

Slava: 06:19

YouTube or Instagram is the place to write us a message. Give us some books to read.

Jonathan: 06:24

Yes. Alright. Let's do it. That's the that's the new segment. I don't know when it'll come out, but I think that that's the direction we

Slava: 06:30

can move toward. Well, that sounds good. We'll have one or two more announcements coming up as we move into our new season, and that's about it, guys. See you

Jonathan: 06:41

on the next SideQuest book club. Give us your stories.