what is up everybody it's
the chairman of the united
states department of nerds
where we are for the people
by the people and of the
people and on tonight's
episode I got a very
special guest but first we
got to play that very
special theme song you are
listening to the usbn on the dfpn
Bye.
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
let's get into it and bring
on our special guest for tonight.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is Nicholas Keaton Casparo.
Did I get it?
You had it the first time, yeah.
I had it the first time, all right.
So we're going to call him Nick tonight.
Nick is good, yeah.
It's nice to see you, man.
How are you?
Good to see you, too.
I'm good.
How's everything going on your side?
It's good.
Busy as hell.
You're in California, right?
Say that again?
You're in California?
No, I'm in Florida.
Oh, what part?
Right now in Bradenton.
Okay.
Yeah.
Down in the southern part.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
I spent a lot of time in the Panhandle,
so.
Oh, nice.
You know what?
I mean, it's such a big state.
I really haven't spent a
whole lot of time in the Panhandle.
I've been meaning to, like,
make a trip up there.
I got some friends who
really love that area
you're good dude I enjoyed
it I I really did I I was I
was stationed out there so
I really enjoyed it a lot
and I got to be there with
my family so that was
always a that was always a
good thing so always a good
thing to be with family
yeah so I got I got my family
downstairs and we actually
had to give the
two-year-old a bath early
today to make sure she
wasn't making too much
noise next to this room
because right next to my
office is the bathroom where we usually,
you know,
we get her ready for the night
and she can,
she's almost two and she's
starting to get real vocal.
Uh-huh.
I got a very vocal
two-year-old next door to me,
but it's a four-legged kind
and it's a cat that my
daughter just brought home, so...
Yeah.
We've got loud family members.
Hey, we're surrounded by the good people,
right?
That's right.
Whether they're furry or not.
That's right.
I got a couple of dogs, too.
I got some furry guys downstairs.
I got two downstairs that are chilling.
And then right now,
my daughter is in
quarantine until we can get
him to the vet tomorrow.
So...
She brings some strange animals whenever.
Gotta love it.
And she's home for college, so I'm like,
you know what?
It's yours.
You take care of it.
Hey, that's fair, though.
That's fair.
Yup.
But let's dive into it, man.
Let's...
How did you come up with the concept of,
I'm hoping I'm gonna pronounce this right,
is Vita Taylor?
I'm stuttering tonight.
Vitilarium.
All right, I was close.
Most people say it that way
the first time.
It's a stigma I may be
forever working to break, but...
Hey, we'll get it there.
We will get it there.
So yeah,
Videlarium started as a book and
then graduated to a comic book series.
And I don't plan to stop there.
I'm already trying to work
on turning it into a short animated film,
or at least create a short
animated film based on one
of the chapters in the book,
somewhere between like
eight to twelve minutes long.
More for, like,
proof of concept and to
give people a little bit of
a teaser of what I really
plan to do with this series.
But, I mean,
I'm describing it as a budding
franchise because, like I said,
I'm looking to penetrate
essentially all outlets of
media with Videlarium.
And, like I said, I started with the book.
I'm approved for seven now
with the publisher.
Oh, nice.
So, are we talking seven, like...
books are we talking how the
comic books oh yes seven
full books like okay and
that's the novel series
that's that's what I spend
you know a good majority of
the time on and then book series and
For instance,
the first comic book that I
think I sent you,
just one chapter from the
book of which there are
thirty one chapters.
So I did start diving into
the book the last couple of days.
I didn't get very far
because I actually got busy
at work today.
But I was like what I when
it's not often you see sci
fi books or any books
really turned into a comic book.
So this was a first for me,
and I was really happy to get both.
That way I can kind of put
them side by side and kind of go, okay,
where did the comic book
pick up versus the book?
It wasn't quite that far
into the book when you picked up.
Because in the comic book, Roman,
your main character is Roman.
But in the book, he's a younger kid,
if I'm not mistaken.
yeah yeah so he's he's um in
the book I really I wanted
to make a note of um or
make a point of I guess
really building out that
character and showing how
he was built um giving the
backstory going into detail
about you know what type of
scenarios would actually form this
kind of hardened freelancer,
basically a mercenary for
hire that you meet when
he's an adult and that you
follow for the vast majority of the book.
And to be able to create a human like that,
it's gonna take a pretty dark story,
a pretty dark backstory.
I'm not sure how far into it
you've gotten so far,
but it- I gotta feel it,
I'm right there on the cusp
of getting into that.
So, yeah,
but I don't want to spoil it for
myself either.
So I will refrain from
giving out any spoilers today, I promise.
But but yeah, so the comic book,
I wanted to follow him
starting as an adult,
at least in the beginning,
because I feel like I chose
that chapter because that's
literally chapter six right
from the book.
I chose that chapter because
it's a good indicator for
what's to come in the series.
It shows you who he is, what he's about,
the world that he's living in,
and the types of characters
that he's having to deal with.
And I felt like it was a
good chapter to really
bring that to life and give
people just a snapshot of
what this series is going
to be all about.
No, that first book was done very,
very well.
I was talking to your artist, Francisco,
a little bit about it.
The way he did it had that
Borderlands vibe to it.
I was like it kind of was
like it started out like
boom he's back from a
mission and you could tell
he has like this no
nonsense type of attitude
he's like you're gonna pay
me or you're gonna face
your consequences of not
paying me yeah so it was
like a big bang and I like
when a book one does that
big bang it does that big
introduction of the
character and then you know
The next book,
you can kind of mellow him
out and see who he really
is when he's not this this
hard cut character.
Yeah,
you'll you'll see a lot of different
sides of Roman because, like I said,
the second one,
the second comic that I have,
which actually comes out
this coming week.
We're going to get there.
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
I know it was in production.
It was a production.
So I know you talked to Francisco.
Big shout out to Francisco Nilo,
who's my illustrator, and my colorist,
Chandran Panusamy.
Both phenomenally talented.
They've been a dream to work with,
and I made sure to contract
with them for at least the
next five issues to make
sure that I could grab their time.
Yeah, you want to lock them down.
Exactly, exactly.
And like I said,
they've been amazing to work with.
It's a very collaborative
process between the three of us.
And we actually just
recently planned out the
canon for the entire series.
So there will be,
when you're dropped in in the first comic,
you're basically following
Roman as an adult through the, I guess,
the storyline that he goes
through in the book.
There's going to be a time
before the book where I
follow him as an adult before all of this,
which is going to allow me
to basically send him on
lots of different missions
and just explore the world,
have him meet different
characters so that the
reader of the comic book can
discover different parts of the,
the worlds.
I can really flesh out some
of the world building, um,
some of the interesting
elements that you run into on planet Dior,
which is the planet that
this entire comic book takes place on.
And, uh,
then I'm going to have a time when
he's a teenager and that's
going to be a little bit closer to,
you know, when, uh,
when you're first
introduced to Roman and,
In the book, the novel, the novel.
So,
and then I also have an opportunity to
basically take,
because it is a multi-narrative book.
So you are following
multiple different
characters from all walks of life.
So you, once again,
my goal was to give
everyone a feel for
basically how much effort I
put into the world building in this,
because I designed everything from,
you know,
the factions that are kind of the
big players.
I did like the way you did on the book.
When you, like, as you're, you know,
you start to scroll and you
do have the different
factions and then you kind
of get to like the intro with NASA,
which I thought was really
cool because you didn't
just throw us into a book.
You kind of gave us a little
background of the different
factions and that kind of stuff.
And then we get how we came about this.
the source of power or energy,
I should say.
And then we get into who, you know,
Roman as a child or a teenager,
And to me, I was like,
that's how you do it.
You kind of lay a simple
foundation like that.
That way,
as you start getting into the actual book,
you're not going like,
who the hell is this organization?
You gave all that up front.
You didn't have to send the
reader through another
chapter or skip ahead a few pages to go,
oh, that's who they are.
So I really enjoyed that
aspect of how you started that book.
Yeah,
I wanted to give readers and fans and
people something that they
could really immerse themselves in.
And to be able to do that,
you need to just be endlessly building.
And that's literally what
I've been doing for the
past three and a half years
is just continuing to build
this whole universe.
It's funny,
I started basically planning
out the universe after I
started writing the first book.
Because because the book
that I don't know if you
picked up on this,
but the whole book was
written at thirty six thousand feet.
So in my last position,
like my last day job was on
a plane three to five days a week.
So I was.
Yeah.
So that's a lot of plane time.
You eventually get to a
point where you've
basically beaten Netflix.
You got to the end of Netflix.
Exactly.
So I was just kind of wasting my time.
And I was like, all right, well,
what can I do with this?
So I had a few ideas that I
wanted to try and flesh out.
And so I said, you know what?
Let's give it a shot.
So I sat down on a long
flight from Miami to Hawaii.
And when I got off the plane,
I was on flight number four.
And I was like, all right.
Whoa,
like it poured out of me at that point,
because I mean,
that was the first time I'd
really written anything
other than a professional
email in over a decade.
So I basically said, all right, well,
I'm really enjoying this,
but if I want to do it right,
I'm going to have to make sure that I am,
you know,
bringing people into the world.
I had all these questions
about a world that I was writing about.
And I said, well, all right, well,
let's start answering them.
So I sat down.
I basically opened up an
Excel spreadsheet.
And I started with the
themes I wanted to talk about.
And that eventually led me
to the factions.
Who are the factions that we
want to explore?
Who are the characters?
What's their back story?
What do they represent in the story?
all the way to what's the
flora and fauna look like
on planet Deorum.
Let's make a whole slew of
different species that I
can basically pull from,
be able to use in the book.
What does the government
structure look like?
What do the other planets look like?
Because Deorum,
where the story takes place,
it's the seventh colonized human planet.
so what do those planets
look like how many moons do
they have uh what language
do they speak what's their
government structure like
what are people like there
and I just kept answering
all these questions and I
still find even today as
I'm thinking about and
beginning to you know get
through the second book and
think about books three through seven um
I'm still coming up with
questions of things I need to answer.
So it's been an absolute blast.
I actually usually take like
a day a week to just sit,
sit down and answer
questions that I have about
my own world and just start to,
it really gives me an
opportunity to kind of flex
that creative muscle.
So it's a lot of fun.
I can tell you're having,
you're oozing the passion
for your project and I love it.
And shout out to CJ here,
says a seven book deal is amazing.
Sending you a big congrats on that.
CJ runs Nightmares and Nerdscapes,
another podcast here on the
DFPN network that I am a part of.
Shout out to everybody.
Everybody's had a fantastic
twenty twenty five right now.
So thank you, CJ.
We touched on it a little bit.
If you were going to
describe the world that
you're building to someone new,
how would you describe the world of.
You got it.
Yeah.
So I would describe it as it is a gritty,
dark.
street-level view of a
cyberpunk dystopian future.
And not just the cyberpunk
that... It's not just about
bionic limbs and things like that.
It's a gritty dystopian future.
You're on a planet with an
authoritarian government
that is now going through
some kind of change that you
will learn about in the book.
I don't want to give away any spoilers.
But they're basically
beginning to grab even more
power and more resources,
and it's for a specific reason.
So there is an element of
mystery about the book as
the events begin to kind of
unfold what's to come.
There's, I mean,
you get a little bit of
everything with this.
You get your mystery, you get action,
you get tons of action.
It's a sci-fi, right?
Boom, right into it.
Right off the bat.
You get elements of hard sci-fi.
I take the time to try and
explain the technologies in
a way that's engaging and
it's not like just reading a textbook.
uh I try and explain a lot
of things about the world
through the conversations
of the characters you're
gonna get your conspiracy
elements you know there's
there's it's you get to see
how the politicians act
when they're kind of in
front of the cameras but
then you also get to follow
them when they're kind of
having their backroom
meetings and seeing really
what they're uh
what their true intentions
are and what the true
motives are behind all of
the different steps they're
taking politically.
So you get your political intrigue.
You get a little bit of romance.
I put the protagonist Roman through hell.
I had to give him a little something.
There are moments of comedy,
but generally speaking,
it is not your cozy fireside read.
I mean, it is a dark story.
The idea,
I wanted people to feel like they
were on the edge of their
seat while they're reading this book.
No,
I think you accomplished that very well.
And that translated very
well into the very first comic book,
because as soon as
you kind of knew as soon as
he pulls up in front of the,
I guess it's a bar.
Yep.
You kind of just knew like,
we're about to get some
shit go down right here.
And it's sure enough, you know,
two or three pages later, you're like,
there it is.
Yeah.
And he's, he's not exactly a Roman,
the protagonist.
He's not exactly the, the ideal employee,
so to speak.
He's, he's,
He's kind of when you first meet him.
And if you read the book, you know why.
I mean,
he's got such a traumatic past that
it's scarred him immensely.
You know,
he's kind of a lost soul when you
first meet him.
I mean, he's just, in the book,
he's basically spending
money on booze and whores,
just floating through life
without any real purpose.
So in a way, the story is,
it's a number of things.
It's a conversation about...
authoritarian governments
and some of the tools that they utilize,
like bringing some stuff to light,
some of the tools they
utilize to basically assert
that control and get what they want.
It's a story about
personal growth and
rediscovery of purpose for
the protagonist.
It's a story about leadership.
There are some leadership
qualities that are buried
pretty deep in Roman.
And like I said,
he's basically just
floating through life
trying to reconnect with those.
And certain circumstances
will basically force those to resurface.
And it is a story that has a
lot of philosophical themes
that are explored.
I mean, essentially the whole story arc,
you're basically watching
the emergence of a future
mythological hero.
Basically the person who
becomes the most important
person in future history.
from the very ground floor.
You get to meet him
throughout his traumatic experiences.
You get to see what life was like before,
just a little snippet of it.
You get to see what that turns him into.
And then you get to see his
path as certain
circumstances basically
force him into just an entirely new life,
an entirely new responsibility.
So you have this book.
At what point or what was it that said,
you know what?
I'm going to make this into a comic book.
That's a good question.
Was that always the plan?
It wasn't.
At one point,
I was writing this book and I was like,
this is cathartic.
I don't care if this turns into anything.
And then it got to a point
where I got a publisher.
and they were interested in
it and I was like okay this
is the only thing I care
about right now just it was
like obviously other than
family and things like that
but um aside from family
and you know you know just
uh important personal
things this is like the
only thing I think about
nowadays so um eventually
it graduated to a point
where I had the first book
done it was in the editing process
And I'm having some beta
readers read this and they were like, wow,
man, I this is this was a good book.
Like,
I really hope this gets turned into a
movie one day.
And I was like, shit,
I hope this gets turned
into a movie one day, too.
And then I was like,
how am I going to make that happen?
And the first thought that
came to my mind was, well,
I need a pictorial
representation of what's
happening in the book.
Let's take those words and
really bring them to life
on a piece of paper.
And the next logical step
was to turn that into
either a comic or a graphic novel.
And the comics seemed like a
more financially feasible
option at the time.
And that was the route I went.
And now it actually,
I like that I took that
route because it allows me
to release things in, like I said, issues,
segments.
I like the idea of,
like I remember the days of
like waiting for like
albums to come out on CD.
Like it takes, oh, you gotta wait for it.
Like there's an anticipation.
There's something about that
that just makes, it makes it more fun.
When you cut out the anticipation portion,
it's just not quite the same experience.
And I know I'm having a blast doing it.
I hope other people are
having a blast with the
comic and the book.
The feedback has been great so far,
which I'm very grateful for.
And I'm just trying to keep
this train rolling now.
I'm just looking forward to the next one.
You're nailing it, dude.
I...
For me,
it was one of those where I got the
comic first and then Eve
sent over the book.
I was like, perfect.
And then as I'm reading through, I'm like,
okay, so the comic book,
it picks up a little later
in the story of the book.
And I'm like, okay, I can get,
I like that.
And then I just so happened
to be talking to Francisco and he's like,
oh yeah, you know,
issue two is getting ready
to hit the press.
Is what I,
is he either through with the
press or is it ready to be distributed?
Issue two of the comic book?
Yes.
Issue two of the comic book
will be ready to be sent
out to be pressed.
Okay.
So right now we're just
waiting on the final colored pages.
Gotcha.
Throw that into a PDF after we, you know,
with the digital art, you know,
there's like layers on it.
So we remove the text layers
so that we can color the –
or the Chandra can color
the entire thing.
Then we replace those layers.
We put it all into a PDF.
And, you know,
then I send it off for print.
And typically I release –
and this is kind of a new
thing because it's a new platform for me.
But I just started Patreon.
And I release –
the digital version of the
comic book first on my Patreon.
Okay.
And I release it, um,
on my website and in print form.
So I, I like, I like making sure that,
you know,
the supporters of the Patreon get,
you know, a little something,
something a little bit
earlier because you got to
take care of the people who
take care of you and put
the food on the table.
A hundred percent.
And it keeps that ball rolling.
Yeah.
And it keeps me, um,
it keeps me on task.
I feel like, you know, cause, um, you know,
if I'm not kind of
producing content and producing something,
it's, you know, what am I doing?
I'm, uh,
I'm watching star Wars cause I'm behind.
What's that?
I said,
I'm watching star Wars because I'm
behind.
Anytime I'm not doing content,
I'm catching up.
I got to finish Andor.
Yeah, man.
See, I, I am way far behind right now.
Um,
The last sci-fi movie I saw,
I actually saw it in theaters,
was Dune II.
Oh, no, that's a lie.
I saw the new Alien more recently.
But other than that,
I still have not seen the
final episode of Star Wars.
Which one is that one?
That's not Rogue.
Ahsoka?
Or we have... I'm talking about the films.
Oh, shoot.
Yeah.
Man, I'm brain farting on that one.
I know, I'm brain farting too,
but I still haven't seen it
because I've just been...
Are you talking about The
Rise of Skywalker?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, the newest trilogy.
The newest one.
My mind immediately goes to
the original and then the second trilogy.
No, I've seen those.
I've seen those.
I just, you know,
I've been putting so much
time into this that I've kind of,
I don't know,
I've just been out of the
loop a little bit,
which kind of sucks because
I kind of do miss it.
But it's also,
it's so much time that I
would need to take to kind
of sit down and catch up on
all the things that I've wanted to see.
yeah so how um how are you
translating the book to the
comic book like are you are
you taking the like
liberties with the comic
book to kind of fill in
some more gaps with the
book are you doing trying
to do a one for one and one
for one is always tough um
I would say it's close,
but it's definitely an abridged version.
Actually,
I don't even know if I'd call it
an abridged version, because in the book,
I take a lot of time to, you know,
the descriptive writing,
the world building portion.
You know,
we're basically just relaying
that through the images.
You know, it's just, it's there.
That's more of a discussion between,
you know, me and Francisco and Chandra,
just to make sure that, you know,
it's kind of matching what I'm going for.
But as far as the script, it's very,
it's dialogue heavy, I would say.
It's a lot of, you know,
dialogue between the characters that are,
you know, kind of the main characters.
And so I had to cut that
down a lot to make sure that,
You know, because it would just be a book.
Otherwise,
it would just be a whole page of
text and you wouldn't be
able to see the pictures.
I've seen a few comic books
that way and it was horrible.
Yeah, that's it.
It needs to be an enjoyable experience,
right?
One that flows nicely.
And it really does.
Everything melds together really nicely.
I read a lot of comic books.
I don't know if you can see it, but...
That's this week's comic books.
Granted, it was a huge week.
Exquisite corpses from tiny
onion and image come out this week.
So James Tinian drops a new book.
I'm all over it.
Nice.
So there's a lot of variant
covers in there for that one book alone,
because I'm like, Oh,
this artist did a cover.
Yeah.
I'm going to have to get that.
You know, I'm that guy.
And I, I'm, it's, I'm unashamed by it.
No, why would you be?
That's fine.
Exactly.
I respect that.
Since I've kind of entered
the comic book game,
I've been trying to step up
my game a little bit.
And I'm starting to visit a
lot of the indie comic book
authors and creators at
their booths whenever I get
a second to run away from my booth.
Usually when they're helping me,
it's either my wife or my brother.
I've got a couple of friends
that have helped me in the past as well.
It's always good to have a
second hand at these big
conventions because they can get hectic.
And yeah,
those are also a ton of fun
because you get to interact
with everyone.
But yeah, as far as the comic book,
cutting down the dialogue
has been the one thing I'd
say Francisco has had to
like get on me for.
Like, hey, man,
this is a lot of text for this.
Like,
you want me to fit this into two screens?
And I'm like, shit, yeah.
So I got to figure out how
to make it work while still
relaying the message and
still maintaining the feel
of that conversation.
I've always loved, like,
I love movies with, like,
meaningful dialogue.
Like, I love Quentin Tarantino's movies,
like, because there's always, like,
those big dialogue scenes
that are just impactful.
And I wanted to...
affect that a little bit.
You know, I like those types of scenes.
And so that's why, you know,
basically that this first
comic takes place in this gritty,
cyberpunk, subterranean bar.
And there will be other, you know,
in future comics, I also,
it will be a little bit more dynamic.
I actually just sent,
I don't know if Francisco
told you about the Comic Zero comic,
Yeah.
We're going to get there.
But since you brought it up,
you are doing so.
And I love the fact you're doing this.
You're doing a boom, boom,
taking a step back and
giving us issue zero,
a prequel to what we're currently seeing,
which to me is.
Yeah, dude.
Yeah.
Sometimes you got to do that.
And I think you're doing it
early enough to where it will be.
Yeah.
I, it was,
it was an idea that I had after
a discussion I had with Fran and I,
I basically was like, all right, well,
I already know where the book is going,
where that storyline goes.
Right.
So I'm going to keep that in
kind of chronological order,
but I did want to do a
segment before the book
while he's still an adult and sometime,
you know, in between and,
and that is is stuff that I
don't talk about as much in
the book uh so anything
that basically happens in
the book and on is going to
go forward in chronological
order and anything that
happens before that is
going to go backward so
it's going to be so like
the next episode after zero
going backward in
chronological order will be
episode zero x one
And then episode zero X two.
I love that concept, man.
I really do.
It's just a really dope
concept because that one I
haven't seen before.
So it's very different and
it's very unique to what
you're about to do.
And that's good to know.
So,
so we'll basically have the timeline
going in two different directions is,
is the, is basically how I thought of it.
No, that's,
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And that's definitely going
to require some some intricate planning.
But, you know,
it's nothing I haven't done
before at this point.
It's you know,
it's the stuff I've been
doing for the last three
and a half years.
So you plan on doing the
same thing with the book or
is the book just going to
continue to go forward?
Or will you take a step back
to do a book zero too?
That kind of encompasses
like the entire zero at one type of feel.
So one of the things that I
have contemplated is offshoot series,
which it's,
very early to be
contemplating anything like
that when I still have, you know,
five and a half books to write,
basically.
I'm about halfway through book two now.
I actually just finished
another chapter today.
So what I think I'm going to
do is I'd like to have
a couple of different
characters in the focus for
like an offshoot series following their,
their origin story.
And then I know you read the,
the history portion of it, which was,
you know,
at the very beginning where I
explained how we basically got there.
Well, in that history section,
I described the hundred years war.
Which is basically the war
over planet Deorum,
which is the closest
habitable planet to the
source of Videlarian.
Which I do want to talk
about more because I feel
like I don't talk about that enough,
what Videlarian is.
Because you touched on it in
the beginning of the book.
Yes.
And we know it's an energy
source that was discovered
by a probe that NASA sent out.
And then the probe got lost,
or it just kind of disappeared for, what,
thirty years, I think, is in the book?
Yes.
And then it magically one
day crash lands in Egypt,
which I thought was cool, but that's me.
And then it has this power
source just kind of lodged into it.
Yep.
Which, again, really dope that
just genius, dude.
And then it,
it kicks off the story
basically from there.
Right.
And, um,
I definitely want to do a
series on that war that
ends up getting fought over Videlarium.
Because I feel like that
would be an awesome,
that could be another
really fun story to follow.
And once again, that would be six planets,
each with their own special characters,
different factions within
the government that are
kind of going back and forth,
making deals, breaking alliances,
things like that.
Um, but yeah, but it's all,
it's all for vitilarium, man.
And, uh, I described vitilarium as, uh,
basically like a blue
crystalline element.
Um,
it emits this strange kind of ominous
blue glow and it almost
looks like there's smoke
kind of swirling within the translucent,
uh, I guess, casing of the, the element.
Um,
And it doesn't just act as the fuel source,
but it's also the mechanism
by which we achieve true,
faster than light travel so
to speak now technically
you cannot travel faster
than light but it has
basically the idea is that
if you apply the right
force to this element it
creates a field around it
that essentially allows it
to bend space time and uh
basically shorten space so
that someone can travel
and basically negate the
laws of relativity in terms of, you know,
it would take, you know,
how long for us to travel one light year.
And, you know,
just the time differentiation that is,
I guess,
involved in like traveling long
distance like that at those speeds.
You know, time passes differently for you.
Like you're there,
you're traveling at that
speed for two years,
but like fifty years has
passed back on Earth.
It's it's something that I wanted to make.
Part of it is like my own want.
my own like desire to be
able to go out there and explore space.
But I don't know if I'm
going to live to that.
So I just figured I'd build
a world where I could
create a plausible scenario
that is based in some, you know,
modern physics theory.
I mean,
I based this kind of mechanism on
the Alcubierre drive.
which is, that was Miguel Ocubierre.
He's a physicist who basically,
he's the one who basically
came up with the theory of the,
like a warp drive.
Like a working theory of a warp drive.
Growing up watching Star
Wars and Star Trek,
that's kind of like always
the dream in the back of your head, like,
that would be so cool, you know?
Exactly.
And that's yeah.
So this was me kind of
finding a way to fulfill my
own fantasies a little bit.
But like I said,
it's the vitilarium is so
important because it's not
just the power source.
It's the mechanism by which
interstellar travel is made possible.
widely available for
everyone yeah I mean you
mentioned in the beginning
there when it's discovered
that a small piece has
enabled uh time travel that
way or not time travel but like
you know, interstellar space travel.
Yeah.
Is the word.
I think I,
cause I know exactly the part
you're talking about.
So the way I described it was a,
basically a chunk of vitilarium,
the size of your fist could
be used to power a spacefaring vessel.
That's the size of a football field.
Yes.
That's like the exact line.
How'd you do that?
Yes.
I, I mean, you wrote the book,
but still just to be able
to recall the entire,
just read it like yesterday and I'm like,
oh damn,
he just almost quoted that word for word.
Well,
I went through a pretty rigorous
editing process.
So I went through two rounds
of editing and four rounds
of proofreading.
And that was after I did my
own first round of
proofreading before
submitting it to publishers.
So I almost got to a point
where I was like, man,
if I have to read my own book again,
like I'm...
When you've put this much
effort into creating something like this,
it tends to stick with you, I've noticed.
mean we we're basically like
I wrote this nice long well
not nice long you know you
know list of questions and
like like no as we're
sitting here having this
conversation you're kind of
answering them as we go
it's just like we're
leaving each other into the
next one but I'll ask you
this you said that you're
talking to different people
at cons and stuff like that
who are some of the artists
or writers that you have
talked to and kind of like
pulled you in a little bit and said, Hey,
you know, here's some good advice.
Like who are some of the
ones that you have spoken to?
So I've spoken to a couple of them.
So, uh, there's a guy named, uh, Bowden,
uh, Sarah.
Oh man.
I don't want to butcher his last name.
I butcher last names left and right, man.
Yeah.
But I'll find it for you in a minute.
But he's definitely someone.
He's got a number of comics.
Martin from Cosmic Times.
He's been very helpful.
He's local to the South Florida area.
A lot of people in the South
Florida area have been very
gracious and generous.
very open with it's,
it's a really cool community, man,
because you, if, if you just ask, I mean,
people are happy to share
information with you.
It's a very, it's very much like it's,
it's a feast mentality,
not a famine mentality.
Like, Oh, Hey,
I did this and this worked for me.
Like you should do that too.
Like it,
I think I've gotten back
into comic books and doing
this weekly comic book show
where I drop my recommendations, you know,
as I posted different
covers and the short bids
and stuff like that.
And I like,
I tagged the artists and the writers, uh,
the guys who do the
lettering because to me,
lettering is one of the, you can have the,
the sexiest comic book in the world,
but if the lettering is all
over the place and hot garbage, uh,
just killed the whole book
you know so I I I show them
appreciation by tagging
them in my post and you'd
be surprised how many reach
out and just go hey dude
I'm glad you enjoyed you
know this he's like I'm
just a letter we don't get
a lot of people who reach
out I'm like dude lettering
meets the book you know yeah
it's all about placement.
Like,
are you really going to stick that
box over that dude's face?
Come on.
And I've seen it.
I've seen it.
You know, it's, it's important,
which is why I have so much
respect for the guys who are, you know,
who are doing it right.
Like it's,
I can't tell you how thankful I
am that I found Francisco and Chandra.
Nathan Zerdy lives down there.
He's down in your area.
Nathan Zerdy.
I don't know him.
He does a lot of covers for
DC and a few others.
He's really, in the last two years,
he's all over the place doing some really,
really nice covers.
I'll have to keep an eye out for him.
I do think he's down in the Tampa area.
He'll probably be at Tampa Bay Comic Con,
which I'm going to.
More than likely, yep.
Yeah.
Nathan Zerdy, you said, right?
Yep.
S-Z-E-R-D-Y.
Gotcha.
Okay.
All right.
I'll keep an eye out for him.
So...
Is Francisco doing your covers as well?
Is he just doing your art?
He does my covers as well.
Cool.
Yeah.
Do you mind if I bring up the cover?
Oh, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
Let's let me see if I can
get this to work.
I always like to hear other
people's feedback on it too.
I want to hear what's, what's cool,
what works, what you like,
what stands out, all that kind of stuff.
Here we go.
Of course,
it's just going to bring... You
know what?
It's irritating.
Because now I've got to
figure out what page it's on.
Here we go.
Hey, there it is.
There it is.
I hate the fact that it came up this way.
I thought I had it pulled up
separately already, but I guess not.
But that's it.
really really dope cover I
mean as soon as you see the
cover you have these full
cyberpunk vibes and the
dude just looks like a
complete badass walking
through the middle of town
with the gun on his back
that says hard ass
everything about it yeah
and you can you can tell in
the comic that he's he
really doesn't give a
The very first book, I will attest,
the very first book says he
doesn't give a shit.
He doesn't have time for this shit.
He literally told a guy he
was going to blow his
finger off and feed it to him.
did it yeah yeah that's um I
I saw that cover when at
first basically when it was
in black and white form and
I was like oh this is
exactly what I was looking
for um we I've I've got a
good like I said kind of
working relationship now at
this point with the uh my
illustrator and my colorist
to the point where I feel
like I can explain things
to them on like a fairly
cursory level and they know
exactly what I'm going for.
It's like they're pulling it
out of my brain now at this
point with the help of the script.
And yeah, they've done just an amazing job,
so.
um would you be okay if I
scrolled a couple of pages
yeah yeah you can scroll I
don't want to give a whole
lot away because I do
honestly want people to go
and actually purchase the
book or and read the book
because I thought it was
fantastic and um but I just
wanted to give people that
idea that cyberpunk slash a
borderlands type of feel
that you get like right
there that's like
borderlands everything
about that screams
borderlands the video game
It's funny you say that
because I was trying to
find a way to relay what I
wanted at the beginning.
And I listened to,
I don't know what kind of
music you're into,
but I listened to a lot of metal,
metalcore, dark electronic.
And this is all the stuff
that I was listening to.
That's my gym music.
That's my go-to gym music is
that right there.
Hell yeah, man.
And I'll listen to Taylor
Swift in the car.
I have no shame.
I will listen to Taylor
Swift in the car on the drive home.
Hey, whatever gets you through traffic,
buddy.
And I will sing it loud.
I have no shame.
With the windows down and the top off.
Don't care.
My voice is horrible.
I'm from Alabama.
Yeah, so.
All right.
I don't want to give too
much of this away.
We're going to stop sharing.
All right.
It's all right.
I mean, a little teaser is all right.
You know.
We'll do one more page.
One more page.
The helmet was dope.
I love the concept of the helmet.
Yeah.
That came out really,
really cool in the comic book version.
Yeah.
And I love the pops of colors.
The way he did pops of
colors on the suit was amazing.
Yep.
All right.
We're going to stop.
I don't want to give too much away.
Well, like I said,
I was trying to figure out
a way to describe what I
wanted it to look like.
And I basically said,
I want the cyberpunk elements,
but I want it to be almost
geared toward like a more
metal kind of future.
That was what he came back with.
I think you get to see it
even more so in some of the
upcoming comics.
That is the music I
literally listened to when
I wrote the thing.
I listened to Sleep Token
and Parkway Drive and all
these white noise in my ears.
Then I'm just left with that
feeling as I'm writing.
I know you listened to the new album.
Oh, I know.
I listened to the new album.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I listened to it.
I was listening to it at the gym today.
Emergence is still my
favorite song on that album.
I was listening to it while I was...
like thinking of stuff I
want to ask and do all that.
So I'm very simple.
I'll write out my questions
and I will drop it into
ChatGPT and be like, hey,
clean it up for me.
And ChatGPT cleans it up, you know?
Fair enough.
And I'm like,
less brain cells used that I
can put forth towards something else.
There's only so much time, right?
Exactly.
So I know you have...
Francisco in your art.
Yep.
And then you have another
person doing the color.
And what was his name?
Chandran Panusamy.
Oh,
I'm not even going to attempt that one.
My Alabama education will
not allow me to butcher that.
But shout out to him because the colors.
Yeah.
Amazing.
So how did you get in
contact with these guys?
Like,
how did these two individuals become
your guys?
Funny enough, I kind of got lucky.
I was talking to a friend
who had a friend who had
basically tried to create
this comic website at one point.
So I said, well,
can you connect me with him?
Because it was someone who I
had met kind of in passing, you know,
at a party once or twice
back in the day when I was
still living in Boston.
And I connected with him.
Boston, that's the accent.
Yeah.
What's that?
That's the accent is the Boston.
You're about another half a
shot away from being in full Boston.
Oh, yeah.
It starts coming out after these.
That's why I quit drinking
because I would speak so Southern.
Nobody could understand me
except my folks back home.
It's even worse when I'm
around some of my friends
from back that way.
It's like I just fall right back into it.
Yes.
Yeah.
I go home to visit my folks
for a couple of weeks.
I come back to work and they're like,
slow it down.
What the hell are you saying?
Like, oh yeah,
I just got back from Alabama.
Hang on.
He fits that for you.
That's the hometown resurfacing.
That's what it does.
But but yeah, anyway,
so I met up with this dude and I said,
you know, I'm trying to get this done.
Do you know any comic book artists?
He said, yeah, I know this.
I know a couple,
but I know this one guy I
used to work with.
He's out of Argentina.
He's fantastic.
And he connected me with him.
And that was that was Fran Francisco.
And then Francisco was the
one who actually introduced
me to Chandran because I
guess they had worked
together in the past previously.
Because he basically said, look, you know,
I'm an illustrator at heart.
Like, that's what I do best.
I can do the coloring.
But I know people who could
really bring this to, like, the maximum.
And that's everything that I put out.
my goal is like I want this
to be the best looking
thing it can possibly be
I'm not trying to skimp on
I'm not trying to cut
corners to try and make it
more profitable I'm not
trying to do any of that I
want to make the best
content possible so are you
printing on cardstock
covers and then like the
normal like really nice
pages are you doing like
the actual paper style
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm printing it on the nice paper.
I got to send you a physical copy,
by the way.
Yeah, I sent Eve my address.
Yeah, I'll get you a physical copy.
Once the new comic is out,
I already have a virgin
variant cover planned for the first one.
You knew where I was going.
I was walking you into it.
Oh, dude,
I'm going to have variant covers.
I'm going to have CGC-graded comics.
That's a new thing.
I actually just opened up my
artist account.
Perfect.
So I'm going to have lots of
different things available
for basically anyone who wants anything.
Yeah, so when Eve contacted me,
the interview that she
watched was the one with,
I think it was Bruno.
I think.
And Bruno has worked with
the same couple of guys on all his books.
And they're very good with
colors like your guy is.
Because some of his books
were about in outer space as well.
And the way he built the
artists and the colors and
stuff did these worlds.
You gotta know how to do the colors.
And your guy, dude.
He's the man.
He can blend the colors perfectly and
Like I said,
that's one of those make it or
break it types of things
with the lettering.
When everything goes well together,
it produces a good book.
And your first book, top notch,
up there with some of the
bigger stuff that I read on
a daily basis.
Even though I'm an indie guy at heart,
a hundred percent indie guy,
there's some guys out there
that do work for Marvel and DC that,
you know, Jim Lee, for instance,
like to me, Jim Lee's, you know,
little jesus of dc yeah so
I've I've I listened to a
few of your podcasts before
this one I heard that name
thrown around a couple of
times yeah huge fan of of
him um I've been thinking
about putting my comic book
recommendations on um
spotify and everywhere else
as well just that'd be cool
just to see how well
they'll do I don't really
know I normally keep it to
youtube and then I chop it
up and I share it everywhere else
But it's one of those where I'm like,
you know what?
I may start doing that just
to see how well they'll do
on the streaming side of things.
So I don't know how familiar
you are with other artists
and that kind of stuff.
If there was an artist that
you would want to work with,
like if somebody just said, hey,
pick your artist and you can have them,
who would you go with?
I know you don't want to cheat on your guy,
Francisco, because he is amazing, but...
I don't, and he's my dude for sure.
I don't know.
Like I said, I'm a little newer.
I think I mentioned this earlier.
I'm a little newer to the book game,
and I'm trying now to start
really getting into it.
So I'm not as familiar with
all of the names as some of
the guys who have been
reading comics for a while.
But right now,
it's all about discovery for me.
Going out there and seeing
what's out there and seeing who is who.
If I may.
Oh, yeah.
If I may.
ghost machine which is a
substitute of so you have
image who does a lot of
indie publishing under
their umbrella then you
have jeff johns who does
ghost machine they have
geiger um junkyard joe the
rocket fellers they have a
whole list of titles all
done by the same team of guys
And they're phenomenal,
phenomenal work anything by
James teeny and as well in
his tiny onion company.
They do House of Slaughter,
something is killing the children.
exquisite corpses that just
come out yesterday.
Just so many titles like I
sit here and name but I
know if I'm at the shop,
and it has their name on it.
You're getting
notch quality with the writing, the colors,
the lettering, you name it.
Those are my guys.
Right, right, right.
Well, that's it, man.
I wish I had my notebook with me.
I'd be writing names down right now.
I can send you whatever you want.
Any recommendation you want,
I'll shoot them to you.
We'll talk.
Definitely, definitely.
But, yeah,
so my short answer to your
question is I don't know yet.
I need to do some research,
and I need to just explore
a little bit more.
And I'm going to continue that.
I mean, I'm going to, like,
twenty Comic-Cons this year.
Holy shit.
Oof.
Yeah, I'm not fucking kidding, man.
I'm trying to make waves, man.
That's a schedule.
That is a schedule, for sure.
And I literally just...
maybe February opened up my
own medical device distributorship.
So I'm running two businesses now.
So it's been busy.
It's been busy,
but I'm still- I was gonna
ask if you had like a
regular nine to five, man.
Yeah, so I was in medical devices for like,
eleven years.
And I was traveling all over the country.
My specialty,
was the traumatic burn injury,
which is kind of a subsect
of wound healing,
like advanced wound healing.
And it's a very small community,
but all of these burn centers,
they're not just like right
next to each other.
I mean, usually,
uh they could be pulling
from like a tri-state area
so I'd have to fly out to
like augusta georgia or uh
columbus beautiful area or
to you know like all over
the place so I was
traveling the country
that's why I was on a plane
so much and so I just I had
met people all over the
place and it just got to a point where um
I was getting kind of sick of, you know,
working the corporate nine to five.
I wasn't I didn't have as
much freedom and as much
time to be able to fill it
right here on this.
I definitely feel that.
Yeah, I hear you.
So I just said, you know what?
I have the contacts.
I know what I'm doing now.
I know what the process is.
I know the protocols.
I can do this on my own and
maybe even make more money.
We'll see.
We're still building the
business right now,
so we haven't gotten quite
to that point yet, but it's going well.
Good, good.
It's always...
anytime you can take that
step back and focus on
something that you really
want to focus on that, you know,
is still going to provide
for what you're really
wanting to focus on.
That's always a good thing.
A hundred percent.
This is, this is my, I'm,
this is me trying to write
my way out of my day job.
Eventually.
I feel it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So one day, one day I'll get there,
but I'm,
I'm just running around like a maniac.
That's the way to do it, though.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's been good.
It's been a good run so far.
So, when it came to, like,
the character designs for the comic book,
did you, like,
how involved were you with that?
Like, Roman has to look a certain way.
These characters have to
look a certain way.
Or did you go...
Francisco, this is what I think,
and then he just run with it.
So I already had basically
all of the characters fully
rendered in three-D.
Okay.
I have a phenomenal graphic designer.
His name's Ahmed Gittar.
He's actually in Egypt.
And he... We were just
talking about Egypt.
I know.
I want to go visit Egypt at some point,
man.
I got to see those pyramids.
Pyramids are on my list.
Coming out lately?
Yeah,
the pyramids are definitely on my list.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I want to get down into those caverns
beneath.
I want to see what's going
on with those pillars.
Yeah.
I read the same article.
I know there's tons of articles.
It's been all over the news.
But yeah, so I had basically,
I'd been working with this
guy to get my book covers made.
And so I already really had
a feel for what I wanted
Roman to look like.
And I already had worked
extensively with Ahmed to
basically get it fully
completed for all the characters.
And I did that for a very specific reason.
I mean, I'm a huge gamer.
I love- Assassin's Creed?
Hell yeah.
your book cover, your,
I think it was your audio
book cover that was sent over.
Yeah.
That's what I thought.
Like the moment I seen it, like,
cause his back is to us and
it kind of looks like the snow almost.
I mean, I know it's not snow,
but I was like, it's funny.
You draw that, uh, comparison.
Cause that's,
it's really not what I was thinking of,
but, but yeah,
it kind of does a little bit.
Um, but yeah, uh,
I basically said, hey,
I want all of these
characters fully rendered
in three day full three
sixty degree views,
because eventually this is
something I'd like to turn
into a video game.
So that would be dope, actually.
Yeah.
Give me a few years on that,
but I promise you,
if I have anything to do with it,
it's going to come to fruition.
But yeah,
so when I pull up the audio book cover.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me see if I can get it
to come up the first try.
And the audiobook cover is
the same as the regular book cover.
Okay.
There's also the limited
edition book cover,
which I might... There we go.
Oh, yeah.
That gave me Assassin's Creed vibes,
like hard Assassin's Creed vibes.
Yeah.
Yep.
And you'll actually
recognize that scene later
on once you get to a
certain point in the book.
Okay, bet.
Yeah, I'm actually,
as we talk about it more, I'm like,
I know what I'm doing the
rest of the weekend besides
catching up on Star Wars.
In between, I'm reading.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it, man.
But, yeah, so, like I said,
I already had a basis for
what I wanted all the
characters to look like.
And I basically just sent those to Fran.
And I said,
this is kind of the vibe I'm going for.
We made some tweaks, you know,
just conversations between us.
Like,
I want his armor to look a little
different here.
You know, little small things.
So, is he wearing armor?
Is that like a full exosuit?
Or has he actually got
biomechanical as well?
No.
So,
he doesn't have any biomech because
he's basically...
You can't afford it.
And on planet Deorum,
normal citizens are
restricted to basically
only medically necessary bionic implants.
It's like, once again,
authoritarian government,
lots of restrictions,
lots of regulations.
And unless you're kind of
some high-flying business
mogul or a politician or
something like that,
you're not getting access
to the higher end.
Or you're...
you know, in the underworld,
basically paying for it
under the table and getting it illegally.
Gotcha.
So that's kind of the,
that seems to be kind of the, the,
the result of these like
big authoritarian, um, um,
like massive regulation
type government is,
it always creates a space
for like an underworld.
Just like, I mean, anytime you have, um,
prohibition of anything.
I mean,
look at prohibition with alcohol here,
created a whole underworld
of crime around alcohol as
an illegal business.
And so that's kind of the
world that you're in.
That's, that's, and that's not a,
that's not a new theme either.
That's what, I mean, William Gibson,
who is like the father of cyberpunk, he's,
he,
I'm actually rereading his book,
Neuromancer, right now,
which is basically the book
that the cyberpunk game was
based on loosely.
Because like I said,
he's the one who created
that cyberpunk kind of feel.
And he was an author.
He wrote a book series.
So I'm rereading those books
right now just on audiobook
whenever I have a little time.
But it's a gritty, dark future.
And it's not pretty.
You know, you have all this technology,
but it's not evenly dispersed.
And it creates like these
kind of pockets of crime.
And it's not pretty.
You know, the neon lights,
that whole look is
basically to kind of mask the, I guess,
the filth of the surroundings, really.
That's kind of what the cyberpunk vibe is.
And yeah,
it's one that I was always
fascinated with.
So I wanted to affect that a
little bit in my writing as well.
But I also plan to explore a
lot of different types of idol makeups,
especially as we start to
go to other planets in future books.
Because once again,
there are six other planets
that have yet to be explored.
in the book series.
So we're gonna take trips to
each of those planets at some point,
and we're gonna get to see
what their society looks
like on that planet.
You know, like there's one planet,
it's gonna be basically
like a complete corporatocracy,
because it's called Planet Ventura,
and Planet Ventura is
basically completely owned
and operated by two corporations.
The Cyrenos, no,
the Cyreax Corporation and
Grazix Industries.
And they are going to be
like kind of the main power
players on that planet.
And we're going to get to
explore that planet a little bit.
That's actually going to be
a fun one to write.
I've already been kind of messing around.
I've already sold on it.
I've been messing around
with a little bit of a
chapter breakdown on that one already.
And I have one of the
characters modeled after
one of my good friends, John Alvarez.
And he's going to be a wild
trip of a character.
That's a great thing about
having your own world
within this book is you can just be like,
hey, my friend John over here,
he'd be perfect for this one character.
And that's kind of like the
character you put in is like,
like you pull pieces from him and go, yep,
that's perfect.
You know, it's funny.
I, I, I basically,
I jumped into this knowing
nothing about the writing world,
the comic book world.
Like I just, I,
this was a completely like
one hundred and eighty
degree turn from what I was
doing on a daily basis.
And, uh,
The thing I'd always heard was, you know,
write what you know.
Right.
And I was like, well, I know these people.
And so I started this
practice of kind of basing
a lot of the characters in
the book on people that I
knew because it allowed me
to kind of breathe life
into that character.
And it allowed me to write
from that character's
perspective more
effectively because I was like, oh,
that's based on this person.
I know what they would do in
that scenario.
Yeah.
Let's see where that takes us.
And I try and keep the
writing fluid because it
allows me to keep the
character interactions and
basically the storyline
feeling more real.
Nothing feels forced.
At least my goal is to have
nothing feel forced.
From what I've read, like I said,
I just started digging into the book.
I love the flow of it.
Like I said,
the way you started with
introducing the different
factions and then you start
into Roman's backstory,
it all just kind of like... Dude,
it's everything you want.
So far,
there's not been a single point
where it's like, you're here.
Oh, wait, we're over here.
You know?
You're like, wait,
how did I get over there?
And that's one of the things
about some books that will
drive you crazy is you're here,
but then all of a sudden you're like,
boop.
Yeah.
And then you're back, and you're like,
wait, no, what?
No, this – what's going on right now?
And then they'll do it throughout the book,
and sometimes you can make it make sense.
But for the most part,
when it just jumps oddly, like, no.
Yeah.
Who approved this?
Yeah.
Well,
thankfully I went through all those
rounds of editing.
So hopefully all that stuff
got scrapped early on, but I, yeah, I, I,
I have major events and,
and thank you for, for,
for the kind words, by the way,
I couldn't be happier to hear that.
You know, I wouldn't,
I wouldn't be SEO on that one.
That's, that's genuine from me.
I've,
from what I've gotten to enjoy of it,
I've thoroughly enjoyed of
it from the comic book and
then digging into starting
to dig into the book.
Yeah.
That's what I look for.
Hell yeah, man.
And it's not overly complicated book.
You're not trying hard to
put big words in places
where big words don't
belong outside of trying to pronounce it.
Right.
Once you have it in your head, you're like,
okay, that's, that's pretty easy.
Right.
But I was like,
I like books that flow well.
They're easy to read.
The writer didn't try to
confuse his readers by
throwing in like big made up words.
Like why?
I feel like some people can
get obsessed with trying to
sound like they're smart by trying to,
and that's not the purpose of,
Especially in any kind of fiction.
It's for enjoyment, right?
You got to... Entertain me.
It's entertainment.
Entertain me with the words.
Yeah.
I know exactly what it is.
Yeah.
So... I'm sorry.
From a creative process,
what has been the one thing
that you've enjoyed the most?
The writing, editing, design...
collaborating building this
amazing world that you're
building what has been your
favorite part so far of
this process uh probably
the uh the world building
and the character building
has been the most how big
is that spreadsheet by the
way like forty fucking tabs dude
it's not it's not I had to I
had to create a religion in
the book what does religion
look like seven hundred
years from now so I had to
write out the tenets of
this religion so that I
could you know put that
into their faction and
everything else and I like
everything from a to z I've
I've tried to think and I'm
pretty sure it's still growing
It's literally weekly, it grows.
I'm changing things, adding things,
you know.
How's your computer set up?
Like,
do you have the big screen and then
another big screen over
here and then another screen over here?
I got a big old widescreen.
It's like,
I can't even show you with my...
I usually have like
multiple different things open.
So I'll have a spreadsheet
open on one side and I'll have my...
my, uh,
the page in the center that I'm writing,
you know, the word document, you know,
like a thesaurus tab open,
just in case I feel like
I'm using words too frequently.
Um, and that's it.
That's, that's,
that's typically my writing process,
unless I'm on the plane and
then it's just the, I don't,
I don't have that.
I actually, it's,
it's nice to be on the
writing on the plane is
nice because I disconnect.
Yeah.
have any of the distractions.
I don't go, oh, did they email me back?
Let me check.
No,
I've got just the music and the writing.
Yes, exactly.
And that's that's probably
why the the writing portion
of the first book went
probably a little a little faster.
But it was the world
building part because I had
I hadn't built it yet at that point.
That was that contributed to
basically it taking two years to
to get the first novel completed.
That's still a really good
time to crank a book out
and build a world around it.
Yeah.
yeah um it's it's because
it's not a shorty it's not
a shorty but but it reads
you know you you your book
though is like the perfect
amount of pages though it's
not obsessive it's not
short it's not like why is
there a thousand pages in
this book right you know
it's perfect like that I
think it was like five
thirty six I've seen or
five eighty six something
like that yeah yeah yeah
and I was like dude that's
like to me that's like
the perfect amount of pages, you know?
Yeah.
Solid, solid number.
It really is.
It's like you pick a number
and you're like, it's five thirty six,
but I was close, you know?
Exactly.
So, yeah.
So I forgot what we were talking about.
What were we talking about?
Oh,
we were just like your favorite part of
the book.
Yeah.
yeah def definitely the like
I said getting to ask
questions like you know
what all right this is
let's let's say one planet
I I have one planet that's
going to be like a water
planet you got to have a
water planet yeah you
cannot cannot have a water
planet and it just it
started to get me thinking like all right
What are the cities going to
look like in this water planet?
What are the creatures that
they're going to find?
What are their exports?
Well, it's a water planet,
so water is going to be one.
And probably, you know,
fishing industry and all
these different things.
And then what are some of
their energy sources going to look like?
Because even though
vitilarium is used as kind
of the major energy source,
it's kind of like the
fossil fuels of today.
I want there to be, you know,
it's that's that's kind of
a one dimensional look at, you know,
a real type of society.
You know,
there's going to be all sorts of
different types of energy sources.
So I basically I found this
recently where it was a it was it was.
not a theory but it was like
a schematic for a potential
uh power source that was
basically powered by wave
movement and it's basically
like these panels from
japan yeah yeah yeah put on
the water and every time
they're just constantly
going like this with the
waves and it's creating
energy and I was like I'm
gonna come they're actually
using one of those in japan right now
Oh,
it's a full prototype built already in
Japan, and it's actually operational.
Perfect.
We're going to have an
updated version of those on that planet.
We're going to have all sorts of stuff.
Fun stuff like that.
When I'm literally like... I
always liked...
Do you remember, like, SimCity and, like,
or even just, like, The Sims?
You know the mode where you're, like,
building all the stuff?
That was part of those video
games because I was like, oh,
I get to decide how this
goes and where this goes.
I would do that for hours and hours.
I would forget all about the
other portions of the game.
I'd find the cheat codes so
I could just jack up my
cash supply so I could just
build the craziest thing I could possibly,
you know, fathom.
Asking mom in the grocery
store for a pin so you can
write down the cheat codes
from the Game Informer.
Yeah, yeah.
Nice.
That was a good move.
I should have taken that move.
I...
uh but uh what was it for
for the sims it was rosebud
colon semicolon yeah yep I
remember that one yeah um
but anyway yeah the
building portion has always
been like since I was a kid
that that seemed to
manifest in uh obviously
that kind of uh rudimentary
way but like here now I get to
really just free reign over
what I get to build.
And I fucking love that, man.
There's something about that.
Were you ever on the plane
and just leaned over to the
person that's sitting next
to you and like turned your
computer and be like, hey,
can you read this?
Does it make sense?
Did you ever do that?
No, I never did that.
I've had some people, you know,
like as I'm kind of typing
away with my headphones and
like nudge me and be like,
what's this you're working on?
Because they probably saw me
start a new chapter or something,
and then start typing.
They're like, hey,
what's this you're writing?
So I've had some
conversations with people about it.
But I'm relatively
protective over the alpha version.
As you should be.
And just because I don't...
It's not ready.
The first draft of everything is shit.
And I forget who said that.
It's somewhat prominent.
Somebody important said it.
Yeah, but that's my point.
I try not to show it to
anyone until I feel like
I'm comfortable with it.
And I have a high standard
in terms of comfort.
I'm a little perfectionist
when it comes to that.
Like, even my wife,
who is probably... She's
usually my first beta
reader and probably my
toughest... Biggest artist critic.
Yeah.
Not afraid to tell me if
something reads like shit and she'll...
Tell me just like that.
She's a keeper.
Yeah.
All right.
She's great.
I mean, you need things.
You need that, right?
You need honesty.
You really do.
And the honesty is good.
And I appreciate that from her.
And she's awesome.
She's a rock star.
But I didn't give her any of
my chapters until I had
gotten more than halfway
through the first book.
And I write a chapter.
I start the next chapter,
I'll write the first paragraph,
and then I leave it.
And then I'll go back and
edit the first chapter.
Okay.
And once that's fully edited
and I basically have kind
of I've had time to sit on
how I started the chapter,
then I go back to that chapter.
And sometimes I'm like,
I like the way I started that.
That's the way that it's
going to flow best.
And then other times I'm like, actually,
I want to start this
chapter this way and I change it.
And maybe I move what I
wrote down further or I
things around a little bit.
Get ahead of yourself a
little bit and have to pull it back.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And that happens when you're
kind of collecting.
You're basically collecting
your thoughts as you're
writing to put them on the page.
And that's why when you
first write something,
it's probably not the best it could be.
You need time to be able to go through it.
So at that point,
I had already edited those
chapters probably twice through.
Mm-hmm.
And I got to a point where I was like,
all right, I'll share this with you.
And she read it and she was like, oh,
you can actually like, you can write.
I was like, yeah, thanks.
Now that's something,
like my wife will watch me
build something or watch me
tear apart something and
put it back together.
And she's like, oh,
you actually know how to do that.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you doubt me?
Like, come on, I said I could do it.
With a comic book, how far do you see it?
How many issues do you see
with the prequels and
potentially spinoffs?
Do you see it being very
much like the book,
covering all seven books as well,
plus prequels?
How big do you see the comic
book itself getting?
I'm going to keep making
them for as long as I'm
writing the books.
Like I said,
that comic book that you have,
That first issue is just one
chapter from the first book.
Yeah, you said chapter six, correct?
Chapter six.
The first book is thirty one chapters.
So I have and then I've got
six more books after that.
And that's a daunting task
on how like which chapters
do you want to pull and
make into a comic?
Because you can't do them all.
Ah, yeah, yeah, you're probably right.
But I mean, you can, you can kind of take,
okay,
I like this part of this one book
that goes into this,
this chapter in this
chapter kind of go hand in hand.
So I can kind of split and
do a twenty four issue or sorry,
twenty four page book or
comic book or thirty two page comic book.
Those are more pages you get
the more expensive things
get when it comes to print and stapling.
It can get messy.
Yeah.
So, I mean, there's ways to do it.
And that was my curiosity is like,
are you going to attempt to do that?
Because, I mean,
that's thirty one comic book issues.
Plus the prequels just from
one book alone.
So, so here's what,
here's how I'm doing it.
And that's, that's a good point.
So yeah,
some chapters probably aren't
going to translate well,
or maybe parts of some
chapters could be taken.
And like, for instance, the next,
the next one that's about
to come out is a
combination of two chapters.
And I took kind of the best, most kind of,
I guess the most
interesting parts of both.
and was able to kind of combine them.
And so, yeah,
so it's not going to be a
perfect one-to-one like I
mentioned before,
but as far as what's happening,
that's going to stay relatively true.
Yeah.
At least for now.
Because right now what's
going to happen is the
comic book as it stands is
going to follow only the protagonist.
However, the book is multi-narrative.
So you are going to end up
following other characters
who you'll meet later on in the book.
And what I plan to do is I
plan to do all of Romans.
And then I plan to basically
start doing some of the
other characters and have
him and then be able to
maybe even go back a little
further and explore some of
their backstory that I
don't include in the book.
And so...
I don't know if you're familiar with Spawn,
right?
Oh, yeah.
The movie from Todd
McFarlane in the nineties.
So we're three hundred plus
issues deep into the comic
book right now.
And what he's done the last
two years is some of the
characters that he like,
he introduced new things to us finally.
So we got the Scorched,
which is a team of Spawns.
We got Gunslinger Spawn,
Medieval Spawn just came out.
We have the Book of Nits,
which is someone who's
helped him before in the past.
She's been an enemy.
She's been a friend.
And he just recently did The Violator,
which got a seven book spinoff.
So they went back and kind
of told a history story of
like different cultural and
world events that The Violator caused,
like the plague in Europe.
You know what I'm saying?
That is a dope concept to
grasp into and go, hey,
I'm going to go and do this
five-issue character
spinoff for this one
particular character.
And that's kind of what Todd McFarlane,
the team over at Image and
the Spawn Universe is
currently doing right now.
I love that concept.
So just tossing one up for you.
It's a dope concept to explore.
And I definitely want to do
something like that, because like I said,
I want to make this immersive.
I want to make it expansive.
I want this to be something
people can sink their teeth into.
And this is even though
we're kind of at the ground floor,
like I just I want anyone
who's out there who's maybe
looking for something new
or looking to check out
some some cool sci fi stuff like this.
I'm not stopping anytime soon.
I've got a lot of big plans
for this and I'm going to keep going.
And even if I have to finance, you know,
all of it.
That leads to my next
question is how are you
currently financing the
comic book version of this?
Just myself.
Okay.
That's it.
I don't know if you're using
Kickstarter or something like that.
I haven't yet.
I've been toying around with
the idea of doing a Kickstarter.
If you ever want to do one, let me know.
I know a guy who wrote a
whole basic how-to guide on
how to run a Kickstarter campaign.
Okay.
it's really good I've read
through it even though I
don't have a plan to do a
kickstarter anytime soon
but he sent it to me out of
the goodness of his heart
said hey if anybody ever
wants to know how I did
this and my lessons learned
you get past this to them
so shout out to bruno
catarino who I've had the
pleasure of talking to
twice now who's both his
books got funded recently
which I thought was really
dope I'm always happy to
see people who come on
secede because that's
ultimately at the end of
the day what I want to see
is them secede right and I
got to play my tiny part in
that you know that's you
know you always celebrate
your friend's successes
yeah yeah and so I if
you're ever interested in
it I can shoot that over to
you that's yeah not an
issue I could even put you
in contact with bruno and
he could send it to you and
you could ask him questions
if you ever wanted to
I'd be interested in something like that.
This journey has taken me
down kind of like a whole new,
just a whole new world
where I'm just like,
I'm more interested now
than I ever have been in
like learning new skills
and like learning how
different things work.
And it's just, it's ignited like this.
this new passion for
learning and exploration and, um,
Listening to you talk about it.
You can feel that, you know,
like you could tell how
passionate you are about
what it is that you're
doing and what you're
trying to give to people.
And it, to me,
it shows in the work as well.
So hats off to you cause
you're nailing it and you can feel that.
Thanks man.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, I just, I don't know, man.
I'm basically just kind of
learning on the fly as I'm
doing everything now with this.
And it's a free,
there's definitely a freedom to it.
It's definitely freeing in
some aspects and it's kind
of scary in others.
Like, you know, I don't know.
I couldn't imagine like, kind of like, A,
you stepped away from your nine to five.
You started your own company, two of them.
Yeah.
And then you're like, hey,
I'm going to write a book
and I'm going to spin that
off into this big world.
And we're also going to have comic books.
And, dude, that's like.
I don't even know how to describe that.
Like, that's just that's a leap of faith,
if I've ever seen one, dude,
and putting the faith in
what you what you're doing.
Yeah.
I said, Jesus,
take the will moment for sure.
That's a, yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
I'm just, like I said, I feel like as,
you know, part of me wants to say like,
oh man, I hope it works out.
But then the other part,
there's like a part of me that's like,
just focus on the content,
just focus on the body of work.
Like you have so much,
planned like you you have so
many things if you can just
focus on making sure that
you bring it to fruition in
the best possible form that
it could be um it it it'll
work out and um one piece
at a time that's all you
can do exactly exactly so
I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna
keep grinding away
A couple of more for you.
Looking back,
is there anything that you've
learned during this project
that made you kind of
change how you think about
storytelling as a whole?
About storytelling as a whole.
I've definitely learned, I feel like,
what works and what doesn't work.
Mostly through my beta readers.
They've been immensely helpful.
Just making sure that I have,
and my editor, my editor, John Smith,
most generic name in the
world but great guy um he's
a professor up in uh I
forget where but uh he he
was that was a very
collaborative um scenario
and one of the things that
he told me was like he's
like you've got this big
story in your head and
When I gave him the book,
it had already been through
a few of my beta readers, my own, my own,
you know, perfectionist bullshit.
And he was like,
I see this as like
basically ninety percent done.
And I was like, all right, well,
that's good to hear.
It was not what I was
expecting because I had been basically,
you know,
I'd heard horror stories of like,
you've got to change this.
You've got to change that.
You guys.
And it wasn't that at all.
He could tell I kind of came
to the table prepared and he was like,
look,
some parts need more elaboration and
some parts you're just a
little too wordy.
And for me,
I'd say the biggest thing for me was,
especially in the book,
I probably cut off about
fifty pages throughout the
editing process, which was mostly just me
cutting down the wordiness
of certain areas because I
my goal with this was to
try and put you in the
front seat so that you
could see everything that
was going on with the
characters in every single
scenario almost like you
were I wanted it to be
almost like a cinematic
event through text right oh
yeah yeah no that once I
got to where we started
learning about young roman
You get that feel from it, though.
So you accomplish that wholeheartedly.
That's that's good to hear
because that's the way you
lay your details with the story.
And you can almost in your head,
you get your reading,
but your your brain is
playing it for you.
You know what I'm saying?
Yes.
Yeah.
No,
you know that you definitely know that.
That's that's good to hear.
And yeah,
just making sure that... And a
lot of times it's just kind
of like tedious tweaks and
things like that.
Like I could...
know shorten it by you know
just rewording it this way
and that kind of stuff
that's that was definitely
my my one biggest flaw when
I when I was first writing
and then there were other
parts where you know I've
got it's all up here like I
know exactly what I want to
portray I know exactly
what's going on in the
scene I know you already
have your indian planned oh
what's that do you have
your indian planned
My ending?
Oh, my ending.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Like book seven,
you know exactly how you
want the story to close.
I know exactly how it ends.
Because I've always,
other writers I've talked to,
whether it's a comic book
artist or just people that
I've met at cons who write, you know,
sci-fi novels and that kind of stuff.
They're like, oh, I wrote my ending.
that last chapter of that
book was done before I even
got into the beginning.
Cause that's what come to me
first is how cool would a
book be if it ended this way?
And I wrote that.
And then I went back and wrote the rest.
I was like, dude, that's insane to me.
I get it.
Yeah.
Cause you want that perfect ending.
And I know a lot of people are like,
if you're writing something,
you know where you want to
take it and how you want to end it.
It's just getting to that point.
Exactly.
Like I said,
remember when I said I like to
keep the writing fluid?
Yes.
There are certain things
that are hardwired.
Like, for instance,
the first two books are
going to be on a planetary basis,
happening on planet Deorum.
The next set of books are
going to happen on a galactic basis,
so with all of the
different colonized planets.
which is going to be fun
because we're going to
explore some other planets.
And then in the third segment,
we're going to start getting weird.
And I already know exactly
how I want it to end.
I love weird.
Aside from small details
that may shift and change throughout,
but everything else in between,
I try and keep it fluid,
but keep it moving toward those major,
major events.
So I'm guessing you already
have it stacked and laid out on...
book two I need x y and z to
happen book three abc will
happen and so forth and so
on there's certain events
that have to happen in
certain books and you're
just kind of like writing
the details of those events
to get there I'm connecting
the dots essentially so
yeah yeah that's the that's
the that's what I said kind
of that's exactly what you said
You read my mind.
It was a picture book.
Yeah.
And so.
So, yeah.
So I know how it ends.
And like I said,
it's I've always enjoyed
like philosophy and
especially the philosophy
of like advanced civilization.
And, you know,
as things begin to expand
and what happens.
And I love sci fi for the
fact that it allows us to
explore like potential ways
that we can fuck it up.
But also because it's a
guarantee we're going to do that.
Yeah.
And it's, it's like,
it's a good way for us to
identify pitfalls, you know, as,
as a society,
like there's value to sci-fi
in that respect.
And then it also allows us
to come up with potential
solutions or ways to, you know,
frame a solution,
just different mindsets that could,
you know,
help us get through certain hardships.
And I love doing that,
and so I wanted the ending
to be very meaningful.
And so we're going to
explore a lot of things in
this series arc.
We're going to explore...
I'm going to try to explore
the crux at which...
simulation theory the big
bang theory religion and
kind of like a theory of
everything meat okay so
that's where we're and it's
and it's not it's not going
to be like overt it's going
to be more so like kind of
in this in the subtext uh
but all of the different
all of the different
theories just a way that
they kind of coincided to one okay so
Let me ask this.
I know in the first issue of
the comic book,
Roman was out getting an artifact.
Is that going to be a common
theme throughout the comic
book in the actual story, the book?
It is an important detail.
You'll see more instances of that.
It's not going to be all him.
One of the
One of the things about
Roman is that he's especially skilled in,
you know,
knowledge of the untamed
wilderness of Deorum.
Just kind of the jungles, the forest,
the mountainous regions,
the desert regions.
I have the whole planet mapped out.
essentially he's he's just
he's he has these like
weird kind of like savant
elements where he's just
like oh that's that
creature that's you this is
how you do you know okay
creature this is it because
um one of the things that
you find out in the first
chapter is his father used
to quiz him on the fauna
diorum books which is all
like the animals of the
planet and like all the
different things so and it's a cut throat
kind of planet in terms of
the species that exist
there I mean they are there
are fucking monsters on
this planet um so there
there are elements of that
certainly kind of scattered
throughout um and I I part
of that I I definitely
think I I pull from my love
for the witcher series um I
am a huge fan of that and
yes so this is your do you
uh do you play video games
I do.
When I have opportunities,
I sneak in and get me a
game in for a couple hours.
So this is like if you took Mass Effect,
Cyberpunk, and The Witcher,
and you mashed them together.
That's the kind of game that
this would be like,
and that's exactly what I
want this to feel like,
even when you're just reading it.
So that's kind of where, I guess,
a little bit of my inspiration came from.
That's three classics right there,
and they're all one of
those games where you can
just go back and just play it.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And I love those.
I love a game with a good,
a good campaign storyline,
like a really good, I love,
I love going on and like
put me on the road for a
fucking adventure.
Like that's, that's what I, I,
I will play story mode all day on stuff.
Like everybody's running around GTA,
you know, just killing the NPCs.
I'm like, nah, dude,
I'm in the story mode.
Yeah.
I'm playing the story
through and then I'm going
to go have the fun and run
over people and do all that stuff.
But the story's got to be complete.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's good.
I'm the same way.
I love the story.
And I feel like I also love
games where you get.
like an option to kind of choose,
or you get the opportunity
to make choices within the
game that have an actual
effect on the outcome of things.
Later on in the game, yep.
Yeah,
I think that adds a nice element
because there's value to
your autonomy there, right?
And I think that's
definitely a cool... Our
Cry was really good at that.
Far Cry.
I haven't played the last two Far Cries.
Oh, no?
Yeah, I wouldn't.
Oh, okay.
How do I say it?
What they had in part three, I think,
was perfect.
But then with four and five,
I think it's four and five,
They kept adding more and
more and more and more.
And then you would spend
hours trying to kill some
animals that are hard to
find just to be able to
upgrade your equipment to
where you needed to be to
go into this last mission.
And it got really bad like that.
And then you could talk to animals.
It got way too much.
It got really weird.
It just became way too much
and overbearing to where...
The story was good,
but it wasn't enjoyable
because of all the shit you had to do.
Yeah.
So you could skip the last couple.
All right.
Fair enough.
The one I'm still playing right now,
which I only play very
sporadically because I
don't have any fucking time anymore,
is I've been playing Starfield.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's been a fun one.
I love the sci-fi game.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I love sci-fi in general,
man, ever since I was a kid.
Anything sci-fi.
The first sci-fi game I
actually ever really got
into was a game called Freelancer.
Okay.
It was an old one.
Okay, yeah.
My father,
this was back when I was in like
middle school,
my father was the one who
basically bought the game
because he was a police
officer and he retired
after twenty three years.
And, you know, he had all this free time.
So he was either, you know,
bothering me at track practice or he was,
you know, finding other stuff to do.
So he started getting into video games.
He started buying like nice
systems and things like that.
And he wasn't particularly tech savvy.
So he'd have me play with him.
And in this game, Freelancer,
you're flying a spaceship around,
you know, basically doing contract work.
And he could never find the
button for the missile or
for the nanobots to repair the ship.
So we'd be playing together
and he'd be like, all right, nanobots,
all right, hit the nanobot.
Missile, we need the missile.
Randy,
you got some great bonding time with
your father, you know?
Yeah.
So that was kind of a fun thing.
And then I started playing it myself,
and I was way better than him.
But that was kind of what
really got me started.
That and XCOM.
XCOM was dope.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
The XCOM games were dope.
All right.
Nick, I'd love to continue all night,
but let's bring it home.
Let's give a fun one to the people.
What are you reading or
watching right now?
I know you said you're
reading something right now,
but are you having time to
actually sit down with the wife,
watch some TV?
What are you watching?
We're watching the show
on... It was a show that she found.
I think it's called The Terror.
I've heard of that.
It's about this.
I love...
I nerd out with conspiracy
theories a little bit.
There's a comic book called
The Department of Truth.
What's that?
The Department of Truth.
What's that?
It's a comic book.
The Department of Truth.
Yeah.
If you love conspiracies,
go pick up the trade
paperback of one through
five and give it a read.
You'll love it.
I'll check that out for sure.
But yeah, so I like that stuff,
not in a crazy way,
but more in like some of
this might be true way and some of this.
And then this show is about
this ship in like the,
I think like the seventeen
hundreds or something like
that as they're crossing
through the Arctic and they
get stuck in the Arctic
trying to find this pass
and all this weird stuff
starts happening.
Um, so I love, and,
and I've always been like, you know, I, I,
I've gone down, you know,
some rabbit holes with, uh,
the polls and everything like that.
And, you know, the,
the research facilities and
Antarctica and all that stuff.
And, uh, that's it.
So this was immediate.
Immediately.
I was like, all right, I'll, I'll,
this one I'll watch with you.
So we've been watching that
and that's been fun.
I like anything horror.
Like I loved it.
There are some cosmic horror
elements to the book, too.
I forgot to mention that,
but you probably haven't
come across that yet, but that's... CJ,
who was on here earlier,
giving you the shout-out on
the seven-book deal, big horror guy.
That's what he does.
That's his neck of the woods,
and I'll let him know, like, hey,
you need to pick this up, too,
because it's got horror
elements mixed into it as well,
especially on the sci-fi side.
I love sci-fi horror.
Aliens?
The new Predator about to come out.
It's going to be a good
twenty twenty five for that
kind of stuff.
It's a good year for sci fi all over.
It really is.
So let's close it out, man.
Tell everybody where they can find you at.
Absolutely.
How they can connect with you.
So you can you can get the book on Amazon.
The audio book is on Audible.
It's called Vidalarium
Descent into the Void.
You can find me on my website, Vidalarium.
That's V-I-T-A-L-E-R-I-U-M series dot com.
That's where you can get the comic books,
the limited edition books,
any of the limited edition stuff, merch,
etc.
um I'm on social media
basically every social
media that exists um at
vitalarium series and I
have a patreon called
inside vitalarium where
once again you get inside
access to the whole
creation process um limited
edition stuff you get early
access to everything
including the books and the
comic books and uh yeah
thank you everyone for
their support sounds great so
When you have a chance,
if you could shoot me all that stuff,
that way when I push this
out to Spotify and then I
put it out on YouTube again,
if you can include all those,
shoot me an email with those links in it,
I will make sure all that's
included and how they can
find you on across everything.
Yeah, absolutely.
I'll make sure everybody has
access to the link.
But with that, everybody.
We're going to close it out.
If you came out and rocked
with us for a little bit,
we appreciate you stopping in.
This show will go live next
Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify,
you name it.
They'll get it.
I'll have all the links that
Nick just mentioned below
the description on YouTube.
As always, Nick,
welcome to the Council of Nerds.
Invitalarium is USDN approved.