The World of Catholic Science Fiction (Guest: M.R. Leonard)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. So I written. As the listeners of this podcast know, I've written a science fiction book that just came out recently called Shard of Eden. I have it right here. And so I wanted to talk to another author, science fiction of one of my favorite books I've read in a while. And I. Before I even get Michael on here, I just want to kind of mention how I. I think. Okay, actually, correct me if I'm wrong. I think you just replied to a Crisis X post about your book that. That and said you'll send it to me or something like that. And it was intriguing enough that I did. Isn't that. Isn't that how you told me how I. I think that's how I first heard about your book Pilgrims. Is that. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Do you remember that? I definitely did the reply guy thing. [00:00:52] Speaker A: Yes, right. [00:00:53] Speaker B: It worked. And somehow I connected it to, hey, if you think that's interesting, check out this book about Catholic aliens. And I guess that was enough to get your attention. So. [00:01:03] Speaker A: Yes. And it was. It was hilarious because. Yeah. Because you were the reply guy. And I admit, like, I really don't read a lot of replies a lot of times because there's just too many and stuff like that. But, like. But I was saying before we got on live that you had the best, like, you have the best elevator pitch for a book, and least for me I've ever seen, which is basically, aliens arrive, they go to the vacant, they speak Latin, and it's just like, wait, what? Like, what the heck? And I remember even reading the book, like, kept on thinking, like, how. Because you didn't, of course, reveal immediately, like, a good author. It wasn't until later you found out. And I'm not going to spoil it here, people go buy the book. But, like, I remember thinking the whole time I'm reading, I'm like, I just want to know what the heck? How do these aliens know Latin? And how are they Catholic? Like, what the heck? So anyway, so we'll get to that. We'll get to the book in a little bit. But. But welcome. But first of all, to the podcast. Appreciate you coming on. [00:02:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Eric. I've been a fan for a long time of Crisis magazine and what you guys are doing, and I'm deeply honored to be on your podcast just now. So thanks for having me on. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And you actually were just recently at a conference, Doxicon, I believe it was called, at Catholic University, that was about Catholic fiction, and I think fantasy and science fiction like that. And gave a great Talk. Now, you sent me a video of the talk. Will that talk actually be online for the public at any point? Do you know? [00:02:27] Speaker B: The audio will be. I think that organizers want the video or for the late keynotes and the other presentations, kind of an incentive to go in person to see the people and be able to ask Q and A. So. But they do make the audio available so people could listen to my speech, which is a bit of a call to arms for those who love the genre of science fiction but are sick of the rampant materialism that's imbued through all of it. [00:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's why I want to talk about it. That's why I loved your talk and I want to talk about that here. Because some people might be like, oh, I don't really care about science fiction. And I get that. I might not even care that much about fiction. But the fact is, is that fiction, it impacts our world, it impacts our culture. Science fiction does as well in a lot of ways. And like you mentioned, there's a lot of atheistic materialism rampant in science fiction. And so it's great to see there's some pushback to that. Now, before I. Before, I really want to get your thoughts on that. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about your background? Like if I assume I don't know this for sure, but I assume this is your first, your first book and kind of what were you doing before that? Or have you written other books before this? [00:03:38] Speaker B: No, this is my debut novel. As you sussed out, I would characterize myself as a revert to Catholicism. I was raised Catholic. I fell away somewhere in my mid-20s and returned in my mid-30s at the most unlikely of places, MIT. So when I was getting my graduate degree there in business, I went to the business school. It just happened to coincide with a lot of life experiences that got me asking the hard questions about my faith or my lack thereof, I suppose, at the time, and how I conceptualized the world around that same period. And it was really interesting to juxtapose these questions I was asking with some of our leading minds who either came to the opposite conclusion shallowly or were flagrantly unwilling to address some of these big questions like it's it. These brilliant people who were shockingly kind of anti intellectual, at least in this one domain. So professionally, I never had writing really in the background. I've always been interested in it. It's always something that appealed to me, fiction. But I graduated Boston College in 2007. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I went to work in a law firm before I went to law school, which was great because I discovered that the practice of law is less appealing than like, my frame of reference was TV dramas like Law and Order and stuff. And that is, you know, not the most realistic depiction of what the day in the life of a lawyer is. So I got to see that firsthand and I actually switched gears and went to work for one of our clients who was basically a China consultant. He was just crazy guy from Boston, just doing business deals in China in the. In the mid 20 odds, into the 2000 teens. So now that I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer, I just asked him, hey, do you need another pair of hands? So I did that for about a decade before going to MIT and doing startups. But during COVID our startup, that we actually had quite a bit of success leaving mit, But Covid kind of arrested all of that. So I was at this other crossroads and I'd had enough successes in my life that I finally decided to indulge this idea that had been festering for decades of trying to take these stories that have been in my head and putting them into the world. And initially I was going to hire a ghost writer and have them write it, and I would just kind of be like the director because I just wanted the ideas out for people to engage with. I really was not keen on doing it myself or taking on that literary mantle, but I ended up doing it on my own. And I'm very glad I did because this is my new path in life. So that's kind of the short summary of how I got to here. [00:06:20] Speaker A: So were you always a fan of science fiction? Like, growing up, did you watch Star Trek, Star wars, things like that, and read science fiction? [00:06:28] Speaker B: Yes, definitely. I always. Some of my earliest memories are Star Trek, the Next Generation. I was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s, and I don't even think my parents are science. They're not very science fiction aligned. But for whatever reason, when that came on, I think that show was just. Just palatable enough for a child. So they're like, oh yeah, this is tv, that's not too objectionable. Like, let him watch it. And I was just stunned. So Star Tech the Next Generation was probably my entree. But I loved all that stuff. I even loved, like, Unsolved Mysteries, that. That show that was on at the time. I remember me and my younger brother used to watch X Files, probably way too young at that time to really watch it. But I just fell in love with the genre. To me it was like this is a window into our actual future. I don't think I had that kind of, I didn't make a distinction between the plausibility of it or not. And so it was just wondrous to me. And I didn't understand people that weren't as enthused as I was. [00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm a little bit older than you and I remember in the early 80s, I was born in the early 70s, in the early, watching Star Trek, the original series on reruns after school. And so the, the local like TV station would run a Star Trek every day, Monday through Friday at like, you know, four o' clock or something like that. And I'd watch a lot. And it's kind of funny because like my kids would, I never let them watch as much tv. I literally had TV in my room when I was a kid. I mean, it's just like I would never let that for my kids. But anyway, so I watched Star Trek and I still remember reading the announcement in like the newspaper that they're going to make a new Star Trek, Star Trek, Next Generation. And I was just like, this is the greatest day of my life, I can't wait. And I remember being kind of disappointed because I don't remember the first two seasons are pretty mid, pretty rough and then all of a sudden they just get great. I mean, the Borg show up, everything, you know. So anyway, but the point is that I loved it, you know, Deep Space Nine. I actually got my wife to be a Star Trek fan and she was not a science fiction fan before we were married, you know, and so like definitely I, I, you know, I was, I like Star wars, it's not Star Trek, but you know, I also like Star Wars. So yeah, so I remember Next Generation very well. And, and yeah, we watched 29 and then we watched Voyager. Yeah, you know, it was okay. And then I, I, I stopped after Enterprise. It was, it just wasn't that it got too like, I don't know something about and then of course, but I still acknowledge that as legitimate. Like it's part of track. I don't acknowledge this new stuff as even that's my opinion is I don't even acknowledge it as part of canon. I don't care what they say. Yeah. [00:09:02] Speaker B: And I think I've lived long enough. And I wonder if you share this opinion, Eric. It was like when I was a fan, you were in your own subgroup of kind of geek or nerd culture. But I've lived long enough that this has gone totally mainstream. I mean, even if you just look at Star Trek when they rebooted it with Christopher Pine and that was a blockbuster four tent pole movie, that was not for the nerds out there as like an homage. That's for the whole viewing public to come in. If you look at even the Marvel movies that are out now, like when we were kids, it was like this own little corner of content that you liked. But it's become incredibly mainstream, which is why I think it's much more important for people in general, but Catholics in particular to recognize because they might have this old idea that, oh yeah, that's for like that small group of people who find Star Trek interesting. But the, the map needs to be updated because this is influencing like everything nowadays. Yeah, I wonder if you see that the same way. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I mean I was a comic book collect, you know, fan when I was a kid as well. I collected, I was Marvel Comics. And so when the Marvel movies came out, I was super excited about them. And they're the biggest movies of the past, you know, 15, 20 years are the Marvel movies. And then they've, of course, and we're going to talk a little bit about how it affects culture in a minute here because of like how they've gotten very woke and things like that. I do want to say something that might sound a little bit heracular. Some hardcore stu Star Trek fans. I re watched the Christopher Pine three and I was like, I don't know if I'm getting old or what, but I was like, you know, those aren't that bad. I, I, I, I actually enjoyed them the second time around. Like I remember watching them the first time around being like, but maybe it's just because I'm comparing to some of the crap that they're putting out now that I was like, they weren't that bad. I mean, yeah, there's some things about them that weren't great, but you know, so I don't know. But anyway, but like, and also like. [00:10:50] Speaker B: I confess to feeling similarly. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Okay. [00:10:54] Speaker B: I wouldn't even call myself a Trekkie. Like, I just liked the show and I also enjoyed those movies and I, I didn't know enough to feel bad about if I was betraying anyone in doing. [00:11:04] Speaker A: Yeah, and I never get hardcore enough in my fandom. Like I don't go to conferences and things like that that I, that I, I think that's probably why I don't care as much. But like, and you know, talking about though how you Know, the science fiction, but also fantasy. I mean, obviously the Lord of the Rings, the, you know, the books still have a huge impact, but then the movies were the biggest movies of the, the early 2000s and, you know, had a huge impact on people. And so, yeah, definitely. And it was very mainstream, like you were saying. It wasn't just for, you know, nerds and things like that. So I think that that kind of just leads me to. Then how do you see like the state I'm trying to think which I should ask first. I think I want to ask first, like, how do you see the state of kind of science fiction fantasy right now, like you mentioned about materialistic, atheist, materialistic writing and stuff like that? How do you kind of see the whole state of the industry right now kind of from a Catholic perspective? [00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, just to clarify, I wrote Pilgrims as a sci fi fan first, and that's going to become really relevant as I answer this question, because I think it's important for Catholics to understand this science fiction is not really a new genre. You could point to Kepler's Somnium if you wanted to, written in 1634, as that's what Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan called the first sci fi novel. So, like a lot of science practitioners and science fiction, the Christian worldview was infused throughout it. But around the mid 20th century, which often is kind of what people think of when they think of science fiction, they locate it in that period of time. We're obviously going through immense technological change. We're starting to actually get into space as a species. And meanwhile, there's a school of writers who are writing a very particular type of story, largely influenced by the editor Campbell, which I forget exactly what magazine he was at. But all the great writers of that time kind of went through and they had a very atheistic and materialist worldview. And I think they just imported that into their fiction that they wrote. And so it's easy for people to assume that the atheistic materials worldview is a fundamental part of science fiction as a whole, but it really isn't. It was just kind of an historical contingency that really infected a lot of sci fi. So where we are today is, I think, a lot of the fans, Catholics in particular. I mean, if you're Catholic and a science fiction fan or Christian of any kind, you've spent the last 75 years just getting kicked in the teeth repeatedly. So there's kind of a meekness of like, oh, did you. Did you know in that one book where the character did this Thing, and it's kind of an homage. Like, we're. We're kind of gotten used to being satisfied by scraps at this point. Yes, put that in a corner. But more generally, the fandom is starting to notice that the world building and the story lines that are being discussed in a lot of these pieces of fiction that are coming out are just becoming repetitive because so many writers have shown up to this genre and just taken all the tropes that you'd expect an atheistic materialist to have, which is, you know, religion is just a tool of social control. There is nothing transcendent. It's all matter in motion. There is nothing grander, even though our hero is going to kind of allude to greater morals. Kind of like how John Luke Picard has this really rich moral code that fundamentally is based on, I don't know, vague, human, you know, humanistic thought and, like, honor. But, like, not. Nothing deep. Like, he's completely unconcerned with what happens after he dies, and he thinks that question is silly because he's John Luke Picard. But I think the fandom is just kind of sick of this repeated things being recycled over and over again. So I call it the. The boring, the bad, and the offensive. And so even secular readers are kind of know, something's rotten in Denmark. Like, there's something that's just being neglected in terms of the worlds that are being built and the stories that are being told. And I think that makes it a ripe opportunity for evangelization to tell great stories and do it with just bringing in the worldview that we know is way richer than the atheistic worldview, but honestly has been a success throughout Western civilization for a long time. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel here. So I think that's what Catholics should know, that this battle is going out. And it's not just bringing the. Making the Catholics happy. They've gotten used to scraps over the years. It's all the other hungry fans out there that don't know what they're missing that are a great target for our work. [00:15:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember as I was getting older and watching Star Trek, I wasn't sure which offended me more about Star Trek's, like, kind of their. Their presupposition? Was I more offended as a Catholic, their complete materialism in, like, rejection of religion and the transcendent, or was I more offended by their terrible economics with the no money? You know, that whole thing, like, somehow people and like, this misunderstanding of, like. Like this rejection of original Sin like somehow when in the Star Trek world for people who don't know, like once warp drive is discovered somehow original sin seems to go away among humans. I mean, because now we live in peace and you know, we don't have money and we don't have these desires. It's like, no, we're still fundamentally going to be people. But I still enjoy the stories, don't get me wrong. But it was, but it shows like Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek was very much in that in fact he was not just like kind of non religious, she was very anti religion religious. And it was interesting when like Deep Space Nine came out in the 90s, how they started to weave in religion and people who were actually positive characters who were very religious. I mean Kira probably is the most famous example from Deep Space Nine. And so it was like that, that was of course after Roddenberry died that they started doing that. But I do think though, like, I just know, like, I'll be honest, I stopped reading most science fiction a number of years ago and I've only picked it back up again in recent years because I just got tired of every book that was recommended to me or I looked decent on, you know, I went to the library or whatever was just like, it just ended up having such a fundamentally anti, like transcendent as you put it, but you know, anti Catholic, whatever you want to say, worldview. And it was always the same thing where in the future there'll be no religion, people will just look like that's a relic of the past. People will be smart enough now usually the, the any traditional moral code is thrown out the window and just, it's in fact usually what it is, whatever you know, what year the book was written based upon the morality they set for the future will be whatever the fad is of that week. I mean it just, it's hilarious. It's like, okay, now we're going to have trans everybody in you know, 300 years, something like that because that's what everybody's, it's like, it just is kind of ridiculous how much that is. And so I do think though I think you're right because I was talking about the scraps because I was talking to a Catholic friend and he was praising like all this pro life aspects in, in Star Trek I'm like, yeah, okay, but they almost stumble into it rather than like really have it there and you're kind of like, well why are they even pro life at all? Based upon the whole worldview of everything. So it really is something that permeates science fiction. And I do think a lot of Catholics are turned off by just the genre itself because they look at as an anti, you know, God, anti religion, anti morality, traditional morality genre completely. [00:18:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think they're, I think they're kind of right too, historically speaking. I, I would say in my Doxicon talk, I actually allude to that. I mean, science fiction was played no small part in my deconversion. Like, it just, it just created this paradigm where if you were, if you thought of yourself as intellectual or smart or a little bit sophisticated and you consumed all this sci fi. There were some literal anti gospel sort of things in sci fi, but just by implication, all of it more or less said religion is for children. Are you going to grow up? Like, are you just going to grow up like, it all says that? And, and so I know that kind of straightened my path out the door. I know other people who. It has too. And to the extent that Catholics are kind of shunning it or just kind of writing it off, like, fair enough, I, I appreciate that. But I think if we, if we want to be honest about the Great Commission, like, this is a problem that not only. I don't think we solve it with like, counter propaganda. I think we solve it by just the good, the true and the beautiful. And I think people are going to love that when they finally get a hold of that. And we can turn this medium that has been a very good steward of deconversion into, I think, quite the opposite. And we're blessed that Tolkien kind of got in front of the fantasy genre and laid down these chips early and kind of claimed it for God so that everything's being compared to him. We didn't have the same thing in sci fi. It was, it was actually kind of the reverse. It was. The atheists kind of got in and kind of were able to claim the terrain originally. So there's a huge advantage there. But I, I just keep, I want to stress the Catholics, like, this is not something to be. It's. This isn't like a trivial thing to just, oh, that's interesting. Science fiction. Like, I really think this should be a focus of evangelization, at least much more than it is. And so you kind of have a lot of independent operators like me that are showing up and yourself, Eric, that are showing up to the scene and trying to fight the good fight. But I would like the Catholic community more broadly to say, yeah, we can't just be surrendering giant aspects of art to the atheistic, materialistic, we are the origin of many of the. Of much of the great art in the world. Let's not accept this one thing because it's for nerds or geeks. It's way more popular than that. It's not niche. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And it. And Catholics have historically always been ones who. We evangelize through culture. We evangelize through art, through writing, through. Through music. I mean, that's what we do. I mean, if you. And so I do get a little bit frustrated sometimes. I don't expect somebody's not a science fiction fan. That's fine. You know, nobody's required to be that. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Fair enough. [00:21:13] Speaker A: But I do get frustrated when Catholics are like, basically, they give up on a whole cultural, you know, part of our world just because the atheists, the enemies have kind of taken it over. And they're like, okay, we're. [00:21:27] Speaker B: We're not. [00:21:28] Speaker A: We're too pure or something like that to even get involved. It's like, no, we have to reclaim it. And it's interesting what you said about how Tolkien, that was so beautiful, what he did, but he did kind of establish the benchmark for fantasy. And I kind of wish the space trilogy had been as big that it could have. But, you know, I actually mentioned the space trilogy as one of my influences in kind of dedication of my book and stuff that I wrote. And it is. But the truth is, it's not of the level of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It's not even of the level of Narnia. It's a. It's very. I'm not even trying to dismiss it, because it's far greater than anything I'll ever write. But at the same time, it didn't have that cultural impact that Lord of the Rings or even that Chronicles of Narnia did, which is too bad. But I was just this. Really what you were saying, though, this is where I think the real crux of the matter is. So, as Catholics, we need to baptize the culture. But one of my big pet peeves is I don't want to imitate the kind of evangelical Protestants who do, like fiction, movies, whatever, and they're just so over the top. The message, as they say, you know, as we kind of make fun of the woke message, it's like a sermon that they put a few storylines in with it, and, like, that is the big. So what. How do you see the balance between, okay, you want to write stories that, like you said, the good, the true, and the beautiful, but, like, it's it shouldn't be an over the top. Like that's the problem with all like the new, the new movies, like the Marvel movies, stuff like that. They're so over the top the message and they're actually makes them terrible, you know, artistically. But how do we balance as Catholics in our storytelling that we, we tell them there might be a message in there, but we're not shoving the message down somebody's throat. [00:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the most difficult part of this. I mean in order to win back the imaginative terrain that's been taken over in the science fiction realm by that atheistic materialistic worldview, we have to be 10 times better. Like it's not good enough to just be equally as good. And how do you do 10 times better? It's hard when you're talking about Dune, when you're talking about some of the sci fi that comes out of the big publishers now. It's not that hard to do 10 times better because when we say the message you're kind of what, what someone, let's say a non ideological person. They're just a picture pictured. I don't know, an average American who's probably not religious at all, but they just pick that up. They know when they know they're being preached to by the characters in say a woke Big five publishing sci fi novel that just came out. It's because the characters are not acting in a realistic way. You're just forcing them to do things that promote a message. And I think if we can keep the idea of realism and take it very seriously, we can actually do a lot. Because the thing is in a lot of the science fiction books the religious aspect has just been written out of the characters and in other ways they're real or they're interesting. So we kind of go with it. But we all know from living, even for non religious people that religion is a clearly a large influence on how people act. So merely depicting that is. Is probably enough. But I do think we need to be pretty ruthless with. With one another. There's a group of writers out there, the incense punks. Have you heard of this? [00:24:54] Speaker A: No, I have not. [00:24:55] Speaker B: So there's like a. Andrew Gilsmith is, is one of the writers. [00:24:59] Speaker A: He. [00:25:00] Speaker B: He actually self published a novel that has been picked up by Trad and so it's going to be re released. So I actually don't know the current status but it was Our lady of the Artillex. Andrew and I have become friends in the process of. Of Writing these stories. And it's essentially about in the, in this future that he writes, there are robots everywhere. They're androids. And then all of a sudden about 20,000 of them have what seems to be a Marian apparition at the same time. And in the world they're like, was this hackers? Was this a malfunction? Obviously a lot of people think there's no chance that this could actually be a Marian apparition. And meanwhile the church is very skeptical. But they're like, but if it is, I mean, is that even possible? Does that like how does our theology align? And it's, this is a plot that could have been written in 1962. And there's nothing that. It's not like technology has happened in the last 50 years that you suddenly think of that like the pad. We've had robots for a while. We've had them being like humans and discussing if they're like humans, why can't they have a religious experience? Why can't C3PO prey? Like, how come we haven't seen that? Well, the answer is historically contingent reasons. We can't show that. So right now there's a lot of opportunity for us to just pick up these, or pick these low hanging fruits that have been ignored for a long time. I think if we stick to realism, we try not to be kind of that over the top. Like we're delivering a message and like the incense punks kind of have kind of like a punk rock type of attitude, like kind of an insurgency that's trying to like, oh, you want to see the real sci fi, the, the kind that they've been too scared to show you for, for a long time. I think that's one way we can get around it. I think that it's not going to be easy. And I, everyone I know and maybe you can tell me if yourself included, like we don't want to be pigeonholed as Christian sci fi authors. We're sci fi authors. We write science fiction. Okay. We're just unlike in the past, how they just ignored this thing. We're going to include it and yeah, I'm going to be upfront a little bit about my worldview the way Gene Roddenberry was. Gene Roddenberry did not sit around wringing his hands about how he's. I mean he was very clear. In the future we have outgrown religion. Religion is primitive, that that's something. When humanity transcends its current discord of the 20th century and looks great in the future, it'll be because in no small part, they got rid of this. I will, I will drive that down the middle of every episode like a Mack truck. And I won't be ashamed of it. So sometimes I think we can be a little bit too pulling our punches because we've been kind of indoctrinated to think, oh, no, you're not allowed to talk about religion here. Well, what was Gene Rodberry doing? He was promoting his own anti gospel with just as much proudness as a street side preacher. [00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I remember, like, one of the number one rules for an author is you write about what you know. So you know, when you're writing fiction, you know, writing about something you have no experience with, know nothing about, that's going to be a lot harder than writing about what you, you know. And, and the fact is, I know Catholicism. I mean, I've lived it for over 30 years. I've, I've like studied it so much. So my characters in my book are Catholic. And, and it's like, because I know how a Catholic kind of thinks about things and how it looks at things. And I tried not to make them all cookie cutter Catholics, of course, but the point is, is like, that's, that's. And people do that. And that's why, you know, like Gene Roddenberry's characters, they're going to be this, these materialistic people, because that's what he was. And so it's important, like, I think you're right, that we can't be afraid to like, be like, oh, if we bring up something explicitly Catholic, people will think we're preaching to them. No, that's life. In real life, Catholic things come up. I mean, our vice president talks about being Catholic just naturally. It's not like all of a sudden it's like you can't talk about in a fictional book because people would never do that in real life. [00:28:51] Speaker B: I was. [00:28:52] Speaker A: One of the things that always drives me crazy is I remember after 9 11, I was actually living in D.C. so not too far away from when the Pentagon got hit and everything like that. I remember the Friday after it happened. It happened on Tuesday. Friday everybody went to mass and everybody. And Protestants went to church. And it was like one of the most. I remember going to Mass because there was a special thing that day, like noon or something. George Bush called for something like. And they had Mass at a parish down the street from where I was working. I went to the noon. It was a noon on a Friday Mass and it was a huge church and it was 100 packed. I mean, standing room only everywhere. It was like this because that's how people react in real life to a major thing, like 9, 11. Yet you read any science fiction book or any fictional book and some major tragedy happens and not one person brings up God, not one person prays or anything like that. I mean, and when they do, every once in a while you'll have one character, maybe they'll pray, and it's like, well, thank you for giving me that scrap. But it's like, that's not how people react in real life to. So if you had a science fiction book, for example, where aliens arrive or something like that, guess what people are probably going to do? [00:29:54] Speaker B: They're going to go to church, you. [00:29:56] Speaker A: Know, and so it's like that's just, that's just the way it is. So I think that's. That's great. What you were saying about, you know, you're not. You just, you write realistic. And I think people will appreciate that and you don't. And if the character is realistic, it's okay to have a realistic religious person in your book because those people actually exist in real life. So it's okay to do that in a book as well. Now, relayed this, though, and this is something, I think you did very good in Pilgrims, by the way. There's a line between when characters are immoral. Like, obviously the book is not going to be good if every character is like a perfect cookie cutter saint or something like that. There's just no tension. Like, I remember, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but like, there was a movie made years ago about St. Therese. I love, absolutely love St. Therese. I mean, she is one of my favorites. She's one of my top 10, easily. I do not think you can make a good movie about her life in general because, you know, it's not like she had a lot of action and you know, because it's. Most of it's internal, it was maybe a very good filmmaker could, but most people couldn't. But like, in real life, you know, you have characters there that do things that they shouldn't do. They commit immoral acts. And I. But at the same time, I don't really want to read a book that kind of glorifies immorality either. And so, like, how did you. And I thought your book was good because I'm not gonna give you spoilers, but in Pilgrims, the main character, let's just say he's not a saint, you know. You know, that's probably the Best way to put it. He does dumb stuff, he does bad stuff. But I never felt like it was some gratuitous thing. Like I could, I, I have to admit I haven't read since last year, so I don't remember. But I remember thinking of time, like, my teenagers could read this. Like, I didn't think, like, okay, this has got something where. So how do you do that line between, okay, realistic character people in real life, they do bad things. But, like, I just can't stand when I'm reading a book, a fictional book, and all of a sudden it's just like, kind of glorifies some, you know, immorality. [00:32:03] Speaker B: I think that's the key word. I think the verb you're using. English is all about the verbs we use. You use the word glorify. That's the difference. So my book is a sci fi retelling of St. Augustine's Confessions, which is not to put it in the same category by a long shot. And not to say that you could read my book instead of reading the Confessions. That would not work. But if, if you've read the Confessions, I, I more or less just my main character is Austin DeSantis. So St. Augustine, if that's not on the nose enough, is most readers with no religion don't know that reference. But for the Catholic readers, I go, oh, I see what he did there. I more or less just kind of updated for a modern audience and turned up the dial a little bit. The stories of St. Augustine's life, I, I, you know, instead of the Roman brothels, he's, you know, looking at the women online, which is what you would expect in a modern kind of interpretation of that. And so I, I went with realism. And, and the glorification is the key thing. I make it very clear, at least I like to think that I did, is to show that this behavior is not great, even though my character, my protagonist, is suffering from it. Because the reality is you have to start low to end higher. And I think I can see how it might be a pitfall for us with, in the Catholic and Christian writing community that were kind of afraid to go there. But I think art has to be a mirror, a mirror to what is really lived. And there is a lot of sickness and badness in the world. There's no denying that. In fact, you can get that in the Bible. The Bible's got a decent amount of drama that, you know, it wouldn't be fit for G audiences if you put it on screen. It's. [00:33:54] Speaker A: It's Right now I'm teaching a homeschool scripture class for high schoolers. And basically we. We finished Genesis not too long ago. And like, I even said to him, I say, you guys would never be allowed to watch a movie about Genesis if it was exactly what. What the book said. You know what Genesis says? It's got some really bad stuff in there because there's a point to that. There's a reason it's in the Bible. So. Yeah, so it's not like you, you. You just can't say any of those things, but just. It's how you do it, I guess. Right. [00:34:20] Speaker B: So that's kind of how I justified it. I mean, there's the reason that we receive this scripture that is humanity and sin, warts and all. The difference is the Bible is very clear about not glorifying it. Right. So it's. That the glorification is the aspect where, where you kind of tighten it up. Like, for example, let's take a modern movie, the Wolf of Wall Street. It's. It's a very entertaining movie. Leonardo DiCaprio does a great job. I actually had read the book years ago about Jordan Belfort, this, this kind of Wall street trader who has this crazy life. He essentially just scams people out of money. Like, that's his career. And you can't really look at it as morality detail against addiction and theft. Like, the. [00:35:08] Speaker A: More. [00:35:08] Speaker B: The movie is kind of designed to glorify. Like. [00:35:11] Speaker A: Right. [00:35:12] Speaker B: Eventually the protagonist has to kind has some comeuppance and tries to amend his ways. But no one watches that movie for that part. They watch it for the beginning parts and kind of being titillated by the kind of glorification of this wild lifestyle. So that's an example of where it's glorified and people will consume that. There's no illusions there. But I think you can write a lot of horrible stuff without glorifying it. And I think if you're too scared to show the reality of what people are like, you might be preaching to the choir. You might not get a big audience. I remember when I. I did get the book from Matt Fradd. So he. I did. He did read it. And his first response, like a few chapters in was like, I love how you made Austin like a despicable person. Like, I just, I love that. And it just felt real to me. And I. It made me want to keep going. And he had the same things as you. He said, I was afraid that, you know, you're a Christian author, you're going to write Something and it's going to just be like, Hallmark, I'm not going to buy it. And like, you didn't go in that direction. And me and the other incense punks, the other people who are in this genre, believe very strongly in depicting humans as they are, warts and all, because we would. Salvation wouldn't really make sense if you didn't see the depths to which humanity plumbed. Right. [00:36:33] Speaker A: And I think what probably bothers me the most isn't like, obviously, like I've always thought, like, for example, when you're talking about intimate relations. This is a family podcast. Intimate relations between two people. You can. It doesn't really further the story any to get detailed about that. You can, you can it. Because what matters for the story is they have intimate relations. Like, you know, that might matter if, for, for, for whatever reason, if the person's committing adultery or whatever. Like, that, that matters that you, that you let make sure people know that. But you don't have to give the details in a book or on a movie format. It never really helps any, in my opinion. It just ends up being a titillating kind of glorification of it. And I think people do it on purpose because they know that's going to get more viewers, that's going to get more readers having that in there. And it's like a lazy. It's a lazy trick is what it ends up being. It's not, you know, just. Yeah, it's not like if you're a good writer, you don't need to do that. [00:37:29] Speaker B: It's a shortcut. And you're. You're totally correct. What's really awesome too, is that when I say fans are bored of it, when you talk to like a. I, I have some Gen Z guys that are fans of mine, which is just great because I'm 40 now, so that's like. I mean, I was 20 when you were born. It's like, wow, like, I wasn't like a kid when you were. I was like kind of an adult at that point. So they're, they're sick of the atheistic world building because they've. It's been done to death and they're just bored. They're looking for something new. So I guess I'll pick up your book. But also they're so tired of like, everyone from advertisers on the super bowl to the stuff that's on Internet has taken that shortcut and it's refreshed. We're blessed to live at a time where to actually not show it is more interesting to a lot of the readership out there. But you're totally correct. And I would actually point you in the direction of a series called the Sun Eater by Christopher Rocchio. Have you heard of this at all? Because you're. You're list. Ah, yes. [00:38:28] Speaker A: I literally just started this. So. Okay, so I would kind of put some stuff out on X about like, let me know what you think science fiction, you like stuff like that, you know, particularly for a cat and stuff like that. And this one got the most, you know. And so I, you can see here's my bookmark right now I'm on the first book. There's six or seven. How many are there? [00:38:49] Speaker B: The seventh is about to come out. The seventh and final is about to come in. [00:38:51] Speaker A: Okay, and I'm on page. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Make it through one. [00:38:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm on 494 of book one. And actually I want to bring this up. I know he, the guy. How do you pronounce his last name? [00:39:02] Speaker B: Rocky. Okay, he did. And Christopher has just blown up in the sci fi world. I think he's, I think that series is essentially the reply to Frank Herbert's Dune, which is arguably one of the most iconic science fiction works ever. [00:39:20] Speaker A: And I love the first book of Dune. But like a lot of people say then it was like, what the heck happened? I mean, I feel like. I know I've met others who feel the same way. Like Dune, the first book is great, but. And this does remind me of Dune. Okay, I want to go ahead and bring it up. I mean, he endorsed your book. So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not wanting you to throw him under the bus or anything like that. But like, and I'm not going to spoil anything but like in the first book at least. And don't spoil anything for me, please don't. Because I'm only on the first book. But like there's two dudes who are married, you know, there's definitely homosexuality, like, you know that. Gay marriage in this future. This is set, by the way, for those who aren't. Don't know. It's set in a very far future, like tens of thousands of years in the future, I think, or something like that. And so like. And there's no real like, you know, and, and so like, you know, I feel like I will admit. Okay, first of all, I love it so far. I'm not like putting the book down, but I feel like in today's world, like I don't want to do anything that supports gay marriage because it's so much a cultural issue for today. And so I was a little bit like, do I. Is this really. I mean, maybe it will come out later in the series that, you know, kind of shows some problems, but, like, I don't know. What do you think about that? Am I being too prudish on that? But I. I don't know. That just kind of how I feel like, because it's such a cultural issue today, anything that normalizes gay marriage, I admit, I get my hackles up. [00:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Fair enough. I. Okay, let me give you the pitch on Sun Eater in general so you can kind of put it in context because you said you. You talked to your ex, you know, followers, and they recommended the series. Yes. [00:40:52] Speaker A: And these are, I mean, priests and, like. And everybody was. They were. Yeah. So I. That's. I was like, okay. Which made me a little surprised I had this in there. Not that I'm. I know I come across as a prude and maybe I am a little bit. But I don't mind. Like, I understand you're going to have characters that aren't, like, they're not living a Catholic life. I'm not asking for that, but I was a little bit like, I'm not. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Sure about that part. Yeah. So what you're gonna find. So just like a little bit of history. Christopher Rocchio is younger than me, and you can tell from his writing he's. He's immensely talented and that. [00:41:21] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh, is he talented. [00:41:23] Speaker B: It's unbelievable. It's Tolkien level talented. Oh, I would really. Yeah. Generationally good. [00:41:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I hope to have, like, you know, 1% of his talent. I mean, and I've only read 500 pages of one of his books, and I already can tell. [00:41:36] Speaker B: And generally, people regard the first book to be his worst in the series. Wow. So it. He got a publishing deal senior year of college. So this is all he. He did work at a sci fi imprint, Bane Books, for while he was writing. Now he does this full time. And so just remember he. This is a traditionally. Mine is not traditionally published. I formed my own press to put out Pilgrims. His is traditionally published by a. A major science fiction publisher. Right. So just bear that in mind. There are. There's a gatekeeping industry. Eric. [00:42:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That I want. And I want to talk about that in a minute too. The whole self publishing versus, you know, independent publishing versus the. The traditional. But go ahead. Sorry. [00:42:17] Speaker B: So. So this. So why would people recommend the series? I think in. With just book one had book One just exist that it wouldn't be remarked upon. But what you're going to find as you, as you read along in the series is that he manages to basically infuse a full blown Catholic Catholic apologetic into a piece of fiction that is being madly consumed by a wide section of the fandom he's blown up. And this is, this is like a Hollywood movie level that is deeply catholically infused, written by a. He's also a revert to Catholicism, deeply devout Catholic now. And so just as you continue, hopefully if you continue with the series, I would love to talk again and we can maybe talk full spoilers and be like, this is what this is doing. Because it's introducing people who would normally be so hostile to Christianity at all, they would throw the book at the wall if they had any idea that there was something positive to say about Christianity. They get so invested in this story. And by the time as the series goes on and he gets more overt about things, he's got them along for the ride. And it's, it's been amazing to watch. [00:43:29] Speaker A: And I want to be clear, I'm not, he's not glorifying it or indoor. I'm not saying he's endorsing anything like that, but I just admit my antenna are up. And honestly, the reason I kept reading was simply for two reasons. One is because people I trusted said, oh, just, just, you got to read this. I was like, okay. And good Catholic, faithful Catholic people said, yeah, just read it. I was like, okay. And two, is it really just really good? You don't want to put it down. So it's like, it kind of was like, well, okay, well I gotta keep reading now for that reason. And so I appreciate you saying that. And I kind of felt like that might be the case. But you know, so that, and that is a great example though of what we were talking about was, you know, in this world, you know, you have these people who are, you know, in these gay marriages and stuff like that. Like I said, that's the world we live in too. If I wrote something that was set in today's world, there might be, you know, a gay marriage couple in it somehow, because that's what exists. And so it doesn't having. It's like, well, in a way it's like polygamy in the Old Testament. It's there and God never endorses it. But yet it, it also isn't like, like, here's the problem I see with like evangelical Protestant books sometimes in films, it's like you feel like you have to. And some Catholic books do this too. You have to make sure it's condemned and obvious. Well, if you read the Old Testament, polygamy isn't obviously condemned as like, oh, this is some terrible thing. It's not like it just is there as kind of a. Just the reality. And so I feel like that is the same sun eater so far. It's like, it's just, it's there. It's not saying this is good or bad, which is okay, you know, but still, I, I will admit I was a little bit like, okay, we'll. We'll see about this. So. But like I said, I'm. I'm almost finished with the first one. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Have some off the record conversations with Chris Jo, and he could probably give you more color on how things wound up the way they did in the book, which is really cool. But, you know, again, this is what we're. The deck is stacked against us. I mean, do we. Do you want to talk about the hurdles of getting. There's a reason no one talks about the stuff that is like big publishers are publishing sci fi. It's coming out, it's winning Hugo awards awards, which is supposedly the highest award in science fiction. And no one has heard of any of these books. Like you're. [00:45:41] Speaker A: Well, that's what I wanted. That actually is my next kind of topic I wanted to bring up, which is the world of like, Catholics trying to publish fiction in general, science fiction in particular. Because, like, I was just talking to somebody recently. He's written a book, it's good enough. He's gotten an agent and he's Catholic, and it's. It's not like it's set. It's a fantasy. So it's not set in, you know, our world with our, you know, specific religion, but it's clearly Catholic and kind of like a Tolkien type thing of, you know, Catholic themes and things like that. And he said, I was asking about it, you know, his, his trying to get published. And he said he's just getting no success from traditional publishers and there's almost no Catholic. I mean, this is something I know for my own in my own world because I've been published by Catholic publishers, Catholic publishers of non fiction. They just simply don't publish fiction. I mean, there's a few that Ignatius do, Michael o' Brien and a couple others, but other than that, Catholic publishers. And like, I keep meaning to ask, you know, actually I'm, you know, Sophia Institutes, who publishes a lot of my books, keep me and ask Them, why don't you, what's the bit? I, I, I'm guessing it's a business proposition that's simply not profitable for them because you know, they're not going to do if it's not profitable. But it's the reality. If you're a Catholic and you write a book, a fictional book that has Catholic themes, either explicitly or implicitly, boy is there a hurdle. And so like you said that you know, Christopher Rocchio, is that right? [00:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:14] Speaker A: Okay. [00:47:15] Speaker B: Made it to the gauntlet. [00:47:16] Speaker A: Somehow he got out, he got there. [00:47:18] Speaker B: You went, got too popular before they realized he's a hard, hard headed, you know, unrepentant Catholic. [00:47:25] Speaker A: And you, you with Pilgrims, you, you set up your own. And I did the same thing with Shard of Eden. That's what I did, the same thing there. And so like, because, so what do you think? Like, you know, explain that world for people a little bit and the hurdles and like what are the benefits and downsides to kind of each, each of those worlds? [00:47:50] Speaker B: Well, so I, like I told you, I didn't come from a writing background, I came from like a business background, like doing cross border transactions and then doing a startup. So when I went to write the book, that's kind of the artistic endeavor. But once you finish writing the book, you start the business endeavor. Oh yeah, in theory you should be doing them in parallel, but I kind of did them in sequence and that is a whole separate skill set as, as authors will say. Like I, I thought writing the book was the hardest thing I ever did, but marketing my book was ten times harder and I kind of had a little bit of a advantage in the sense that I've always been commercially minded and I have a business background. And so when you show up with just like a generic business background and look at the publishing industry, it is insane. None of it makes sense. The whole, like, it's almost, they're, they are so allergic to updating what they do with the times. It's like it's an anachronistic from the moment you, you encounter it. Its incentives are all wildly misplaced such that, I mean, if you're Harper Collins, is there like, why publish a new book ever? I mean they have so many books in their backlog, they're basically living off the royalties of these. I mean most people when they go to buy a book will actually not buy a book that was published this year, but buy a book that was published a long time ago. I have little kids, I've bought like seven copies of Goodnight Moon. I mean, the Goodnight Moon estate is probably just rolling in cash for Barron's. Buying the Same book for 75 years. It's over and over again. So you have a business that really doesn't have an incentive to do new things. It's kind of just cashing checks from all the old things that they have the intellectual property rights to. So insofar as they do new things, they can just be completely divorced from business. It can be purely ideological. And the presses now and the large publishers, I mean, they will, if I were to have a publisher sitting here, they might admit to this or an editor. But I mean, they think that their job is to get great books, put them through their editorial process, publish it and sell them for a profit. Like, check. Sure. But HarperCollins is really just living off the backlist, and they're all living off a backlist. So what, what do the new books do? They basic, if you're not profit motivated, how are you motivated? And I'd say they tend to be ideologically motivated, whether they know it or not. Now some, I'm sure many people in the publishing industry would throw tomatoes at me and say, no, I work very hard to put bestsellers out there. But it's like, sorry, I disagree. I actually, I think the incentives are so misaligned in your industry, you're never going to be able to do that. So. So it's really become a, a generative mill, almost like a fountain of whatever ideology happens to infect the New York publishing world, which is small, Byzantine and very inbred. And so that. And you could say, well, that's just some niche industry over there. Like, who cares what they're up to? But they still have massive cultural purchase. Like, you'll go on Apple TV and there'll be some new show and you'll be like, oh, this is a great new show, but it really was a novel that was published a few years earlier. Like, this is the wellspring from which a lot of our cultural thought really comes from. So despite being this backwards, weird, not very profitable, anachronistic industry, it still has this massive cultural cachet that goes unseen by most of the people who are living their ordinary life and not anywhere near it. And because publishing new things does not actually need to be a profitable venture, it's just become an ideological propaganda machine. And I don't think I'm understating anything here. I think, I think that is actually what's going on. So they're not going to change. So what do you do if You're a Catholic author or you're. Or you're just writing a story. I had agents request my manuscript. I tried to go the traditional route. And just as a quick primer, the. The publishers have these things called imprints. Those are the places that actually will buy your book at the end of the day. But they don't take just anyone off the street sending you book. I mean, I'm sure people try it, but they need a filter because they're overwhelmed with potential books. So that what they have is they have agents, or they don't actually have agents. They just know agents. And the agents sign up with an author to say, hey, I like your book. Let me try to sell it to these publishing houses, and if they do, I'll get a cut of it going forward. So these agents end up becoming the gatekeepers on the front end, and the agents are trying to infer what the publishers will want on the other side. And so both the agents and the publishers don't want to take any risks. So I had agents request my full book, which is a big deal because you send your stuff out to agents. You basically have to pitch it and then send them, in some cases, the first page, sometimes the first chapter. And you just have to hope that hooks them enough that they get a full manuscript request. And that's actually a big deal. That means you've made it through the first gate. And so I had actually a decent amount of full manuscript requests. Catholic Aliens. It's very pitchable, you know, like, where's he going with this? How do. Okay. [00:52:57] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Like I said, it's got one of the best elevator pitches I've ever seen. [00:53:01] Speaker B: But so I had multiple agents. This happened to me multiple times, that they said, hey, so I read your full manuscript, or I started to read it, and it seems like you're not bashing Catholics. I thought this would be a takedown on Catholicism or like a satire, like you. You played it straight, which was interesting. But I just don't think that's what the market is ready for. And I'm. I'm sitting across. You know what the market means? Well, like I said, it came from business. And I'm just like, I don't trust that you know how to sell to people better than I do. I. I'm. I feel like I. Like I could see some other person being like, well, I guess that's the expert. But I looked very skeptically, being like, I actually don't think you know what the market is doing. You seem quite out of Touch. So that's kind of the things that I encounter trying to sell Pilgrims. And I think the reality is we just are going to have to do it ourselves. And I did look at the Catholic presses, as you said. St. Ignatius does a little bit of fiction, but you have to. I also wanted to have some control on how the book was put into the world. I did some marketing strategies and things that I don't think publishers would have really supported all that. Well, like I said, it's kind of an anachronistic industry. So even the Catholic presses that are doing fiction, like, are they really going to midwife this thing into people's houses so that they'll read my book and engage with my story? Like, I don't know. And frankly, other than St. Ignatius, there's really not a lot of presses that do it. So in my doxagon talk, I said we need benefactors to step up and start, you know, endowing some great presses and really pushing this out into the world. There are some ARC press is coming out and their goal is to publish things that are. Is basically not woke. I don't think it's necessarily Christian, but some people are starting to do this. But I had to essentially create one for myself to get my book out. And unfortunately, I think the state of affairs for Catholic authors is this is what you need to do. And the nice thing with modern technology and mediums like this where you and I can communicate simultaneously with video, basically the stuff of sci fi that we take for granted as like a normal, ordinary thing. Now, you can do a lot with. If you put some dollars behind your efforts. Like it's never been easier to reach the masses than it is today. So even though we kind of have to, we're going to be stuck not having all this institutional firepower that the woksters have out there. It doesn't mean that we can't be effective. I just think we have to just accept the fact that we're going to have to, you know, pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps for the time being until we start having a lot of bestsellers and the greed gets the better of these institutions and they come around. But unfortunately, that's the current state of play. [00:55:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this, to be honest. I think what you said, that a lot of that was revealing to me about the big traditional publishers. I mean, I think a couple things. First of all, it's funny because anybody who still kind of looks their nose down at self publishing, they don't understand the world we're in today. They just don't understand. Yeah. Is there tons and tons of crap that's self published? Yes, no question about it. But at the same time, it's like you said, there's gatekeepers that are basically ideologically driven. And so the way that we as Catholics and anybody who's outside of the kind of the mainstream, the only way we can do this, you know, to kind of make an impact is to do it ourselves and not be dependent on them and basically realize you're, you're the relic. We're going to be the new. And I did the same thing you did. Basically start up my own press and did it. And the funny thing is I've actually, I'm very familiar with the world of my published. We have. My wife and I wrote a book about the Jesse Tree and we self published it, quote unquote, through this press that I had created years ago. And, and it did very well. And Sophia Institute actually ended up picking it up and we, we improved it for theirs. We, you know, we, we rewrote parts of it and stuff like that. So it's not the exact same book, but it did very well. And, and, and the reality is, so when I was writing this book, Shard of Eden, and I was like, okay, do I want to try go through the gauntlet? I had already heard the chances of going with a non, you know, some secular publisher was basically non existent for what I, for what I was writing, because it was not like you said, it wasn't going to be making fun of Catholics. And then it was like, okay, you know, so Catholic publishers, I mean, basically there's Ignatius and that's about it. And I wasn't, I mean, Ignatius, fine, I have nothing negative to say about them, but they don't publish that many. And I kind of was like, I really, it became a little bit of my baby. I wanted it to be what I want it to be. And I'm like, you know, I, I've published through my own press before. I know it can do it. And the fact is, is that here's some people don't realize authors can often make more money if they, if they post through their own press than if they publish it through a traditional one these days. Because here's something people don't realize is like, Sophia is not. This isn't the case for Sophia. In fact, I've been amazed by them. I've been published though by Catholic publishers where literally they did no marketing other than they put in their Catalog. Every bit of marketing was done by me, by the author. And I, that's my first book was like that. And I realized, okay, the only advantage is it has that name on it gives in. Back when I published my first book 15 years ago, that mattered a lot more. Now it doesn't really, for most smart consumers, but also, like, it went to a catalog. So maybe some bookstores will get. Well, how many bookstores are around anymore? I mean, it's like so really just doing it on your own. But here's the key is you have to stand out when you're doing it. In fact, that's something I wanted to bring up. Was like, when I got your book, so you sent to me, you know, you had that reply guy. I said, well, send it to me. I'll look at it. And I remember getting it. And I immediately told my wife, I'm like, if this guy, if this is self published, this guy knows business. Because you had a hardback version with a nice cover. You. I think you had a nice bookmark wit that came with it. A card. I went to your website. It was like, and here's something that's I'm big on. Like, the inside is very readable, very well laid out. I mean, I spent so much time on mine, Start of Eden to make sure. Okay, is it readable? It's not like, you know, the margins are all too tight or, you know, too small print or too big a print. I mean, I remember getting a book from somebody. People send me books all the time because they want me to review them like you did, but I liked yours. And like, I remember getting one where, like, the print was so big. It was like, you think I'm blind or something. This was the. In a big print thing. And it was just like. And it was like the margins were all messed up. I'm like, come on, people. But I don't know if you paid somebody do it. But the point is, is that it was okay. It comes across as good as the look of it as anything. You get a traditional publisher, which matters. People, I'm saying this not to you, but to, like, people listening who might be thinking about writing a book, maybe you know, getting their own pressing, like that all that stuff matters. I actually have a background where I could do the internal, you know, setup of it. But I, you know, I paid somebody to do the, the COVID because I'm like, I want to be a nice, you know, a nice, cool cover. I'm not gonna, you know, I. I'm not artistic at all so, so the, this is all kind of like. My point is like we're living in a new world where independent publishers are basically that's the way to go. In fact, I was just listening to a podcast the other day by a content creator and he was talking about like the dream of being the next Disney. Give it up. There is not going to be somebody who creates some juggernaut that everybody then embraces. We live in a much more decentralized world. And so like if you think you're going to get, you're going to publish something of your own or you're going to make a movie or something like that and you're going to get millions of people, millions and millions of people embrace it, that's just not happening anymore in our world. What, what you do is you, you publish what you believe in, what you, you know, you, you really love and you put it out there and you build up a, a segment that is really behind it. And I think that's kind of the way, just the reality of our decentralized kind of Internet based world. And so I think this is like, and I, as Catholics, I think we really have to, you know, if you're a fan of sci fi, in this case, find the good sci fi writers that are, that are doing Catholic themes, you know, Pilgrims, hopefully. My book, Start of Eden, this, you know, the, the, the, the, the Sun Eater series, which I'm taking on your word for it. I mean it's great so far, but I don't want to talk too much. [01:01:36] Speaker B: Until you get to book six. I'll tell you, you're gonna be, you're gonna, you're gonna see, I was gonna. [01:01:42] Speaker A: Say you're not the first person to say book one was kind of the, the, the, the weakest of them. And I'm like, I think book one is great, great. So I can't wait. [01:01:48] Speaker B: That's how I felt when I read it too. I was like, this is the weakest. I'm loving this. And then Our lady of the Arex, when it does come out again, I, yeah, it was really important to me for, for what you're saying because there, there are ways if you want to self publish a book where you can go on websites and there are pre formatted covers. I mean the, the barrier to entry to publishing now is, I mean you could just write in Word and then just upload that to Amazon and have a blank cover. I mean it's really free to publish where like 20 years ago you could not publish for free. That's what publishers did. They took a. A manuscript and actually made it a book. And now you can do that for cheap. But I think as Catholic officers, it's kind of incumbent upon us, if we're going to evangelize a thing, to think of it, to take it seriously, you know, so it's. It's not the ideas, but a book is everything that you put together. So in my case, when I decided not to do the. When I went the agenting round and was told that I wasn't making fun of Catholics enough and said, okay, I think I have to do this myself, I was like, well, I want it to be as indistinguishable from a traditionally published book as possible. So I had to hire many editors. My book is. I had. There's three types of editors. I had a developmental editor, I had a copy editor, and then I had a proofreader. And that's, you know, an expenditure. And then I. I also wanted really good cover designers. So I. I did not go for the cheapest option. I went for the one that I thought would do the best. And then I also hired a typesetter. So. Because I can't do that. So I wanted to make sure someone who could actually go through and make the proofs. So that's basically where the pages line up as Eric was showing, by flipping through the book and making sure. Just because we. It's weird. It's subconscious. Like no one really. They would say they've never really noticed. [01:03:38] Speaker A: But they only notice it when it's screwed up. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Exactly. You notice it when it's screwed up. And I also on the audiobook front. Did you listen to the audiobook at all? [01:03:47] Speaker A: No, I don't really listen to audiobooks. And I. People have already asked me for my book and audiobook and everybody's saying, oh, you should get Kennedy Hall. He does like Kennedy. I don't know if you know, Kennedy hall is. But he's a writer for Crisis. And one of the things he does is. And he's written a number of books and published. But he also has this great voice and he does. He can do accents and all that stuff. So people be like, oh, yeah, can't you do the audiobook? And I not yet pursued that. [01:04:08] Speaker B: So. [01:04:09] Speaker A: But go ahead. [01:04:09] Speaker B: I would recommend it because I also wanted my book to be available in all formats. And it's like, I don't know if you have the same experience, but I see everyone from the meter maid to the grocery store clerk, to high powered lawyers, to cops, everyone has These things in their ears, and they're listening to podcasts like this or music. I don't know. I think it's a lot of podcasts, but maybe people listen to music too. I. I'm not sure. But a lot of people are consuming things, you know, audio wise. I was gonna say orally. Orally, whatever. They consume things through their ears. And I did. I wanted those people to be experienced. My book too. And even Christopher Rocchio, who. Who did blur a bit. Like, when you're writing, you tend to find it very hard to read other people's stuff because you're staring at your own for so long that you're like, oh, God, more words to read. And so he actually was able. He only blurbed it because I had an audiobook that he could listen to. [01:05:04] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:05:04] Speaker B: And that was same with Matt Frad. Matt Frad was doing a long drive and he gets asked to do books all the time. But I just happened to catch him and he's like, cool, I'll listen to audiobook. But I really wanted the audiobook to be a standout. So there's this narrator that the Internet is in love with. He's actually the narrator behind Dungeon Crawler Carl. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one, but that is a current. Like there's this sub genre called lit, RPG literature, role playing games. So it's essentially a video game, like an rpg, but in written form. And that's been a sub genre online. But one of those books was a breakout hit and has now been mainstream published. They've sold like hundreds of thousands of copies. It went from not on the Nielsen charts to near the top, which is almost unheard of because the top sci fi books on the Nielsen charts will still be like Dune or older books like that, like Three Body Problems. So you have to out compete all of the classics to get to the top. And one of the reasons that was so successful was Jeff Hayes, the narrator did probably like the middle ground between a radio drama and just narrating the book. And people fell in love with that. They fell in love with his narration. So even though he was in that much different space, I was like, I want one of the top narrators. So I reached out to Jeff, I like begged Jeff, and eventually he did get a copy of Pilgrims and ended up reading it and loving it, even though he's not religious at all. Most of my fans have no religion, like zero. And a lot of people have told me that. I've gotten a lot of people into Being fans of the book, because I had that great audiobook book that Jeff put together and I don't know that I would have reached them otherwise. So I would just recommend in general, Eric, you could, you can do as you like, but the more formats you have, the more people you can bring into your story. And as, as Catholics, if we're going to take this on ourselves, you know, we got to do our best. We got to put our best foot forward. And writing a manuscripts is hard, but it's important that we put forward the best product. I mean four walls in a roof is a church. But there's a reason the cathedrals of Europe and even here in the United States look the way they do. Like this should be natural to us. So we should take that same approach to our, our writing and the other art in that form, the non physical art, I should say. [01:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a big fan of St. Jose Maria Escriva. I actually wrote a book about him and one of the things he was insistent on was excellence in everything we do that that is a means of evangelization and it's a means of, you know, you want to do something. And that's why I took very seriously, you know, in this book of like, you know, the layout, things like that and getting editors. And I had beta readers tell me, you know, what do you think? And I had people saying like, you know, it's very, no, it's not very easy, but you could, you know, anybody can kind of throw a bunch of words and throw it out there on Amazon. Like you said, it costs almost nothing to do that. But that's not really helping anybody. I mean it might be a little vanity project, but really you want to make sure every aspect of book publishing, that's the thing is the traditional book publishers, they do know how to do that. They have the top line people pay them to do that. We have to be look as good. And I will say I was, I was. It's a little thing of mine. I try to figure out if a book is self published or not. If it does, if it's not 100 clear. I try to figure out on my own, like, okay, is this one so bullish? And I remember telling my wife, I'm like, I'm not sure about this one, if it was his own press or if this was, you know, if this was a traditional one. Because I was like, it's so, you know, it's so professionally done. So kudos. And like you said though, you had to pay money to do that. I mean that, that's not. And I did too. I mean, it's like it's not. If you, if you want, if you have a great book idea, but you don't think it's going to cost anything to get out there and be seen by people. Well, you're just dreaming. And you've convinced I was. I admit I listen tons of podcasts. I mean, that's why I just went for a run this morning. I listen podcasts the whole time. I do not listen to audiobooks though. For some reason my brain is unable to. [01:08:55] Speaker B: I. [01:08:56] Speaker A: What happens is I daydream too much. Like in a podcast, it doesn't matter that much. But in a book, if I miss, I'll miss a scene or something. I'll kind of. Because my mind will wander. And then I'm like, oh shoot, I don't even know what they're talking about now. So I've just never. But like, I was surprised by the number of people who asked me as soon as I announced my book, are you gonna have an audiobook? And I was like, oh shoot, I need to do this. And so it probably. I'm almost definitely will. It's just a matter of time now I'm getting, you know, you know, paying somebody to do it and doing a good job. Not just like somebody's like, will you be audible? I'm a terror. I mean, I can barely pronounce my own name. I mean, my goodness, I'd be the world reader. [01:09:30] Speaker B: But for fiction, it's a different talent. [01:09:32] Speaker A: It's different. [01:09:33] Speaker B: Oh yeah, you read your book. I'm like, no, you don't want that. [01:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, somebody want. Somebody did my. One of my books, my non fiction books. I. I was asked, do you want to read it? You know, for the nonfiction, even for that I was like, no, you don't want me to read. I probably can't even pronounce some of the own words I write. But like for a fiction though, yeah, it's a completely different. You know, it's telling a story, which is different than reading a book. And so. Yeah, so I'm glad though, that's a good. And you did a hardcover, which I did not do. And that's what I have and I love hardcover books. So maybe I should teach you how. [01:10:02] Speaker B: To do that if you want. That's also print on demand. So like there's. Okay, yeah, that's a. There's a little bit of a trick to the trade there. But yeah, I just wanted it a version for everybody. And a lot of people like audiobooks. It's the only growing segment of publishing. [01:10:20] Speaker A: And his audiobooks. Or is it almost all just on Audible now? Are they kind of like the, the one place you go? [01:10:25] Speaker B: They are definitely a massive monopoly and this is a huge source of consternation because they're, they're, the amount of royalties they take are quite significant. But. Yeah. So Audible becomes kind of like a love hate relationship. It's open to give it its credit. Odd. There was a. I, I was, I'm old enough to remember when audiobooks were a packet of CDs or cassette tapes. Right. And so auto audiobooks were a complete rarity. They're really more of a tool for, to help the blind more than they were for like general consumption. And Audible has changed all that in the smartphone that can just easily download an audiobook. So. But for Audible, I, I don't know that we have this medium of audiobooks. That being said, they are more of a monopoly than Amazon is with print books. Wow. And so that creates its own. Audible is owned by Amazon. Right. [01:11:16] Speaker A: Right. [01:11:16] Speaker B: It just goes to show like they, they kind of run the whole show and it's, it's not ideal. And they're constantly tinkering with how they reward authors and how they prioritize things. And it's. Jeff, my audiobook producer slash narrator has a lot to say on the subject, but. Because he's made a career out of these audiobooks. But yeah, I would, I'd recommend it, Eric. I think you'll be satisfied. People who would never have picked up your book will maybe take a look at it. And that's, that's, I think what we need to be up to. Just like I want more Catholic fiction books to be adapted into television and movies. Right. [01:11:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:51] Speaker B: There's a whole cat not many people read, unfortunately. So. Yeah, I want these things to get the broadest reach possible. [01:11:57] Speaker A: Absolutely. What I want to ask you one last thing I want to just ask you about. So Pilgrims, is there an upcoming sequel? [01:12:07] Speaker B: Yes. It's going to be part of a trilogy. [01:12:09] Speaker A: Okay. It is. Okay. I mean you made it kind of clear like there would be. But sometimes say that and then, you know, maybe you just go the, the, the Game of Thrones route and just never finish it or something like that. But yeah. [01:12:23] Speaker B: That'S just something bizarre about that. Yeah. That's just like you can. And I'm the one coming from a business background, mind you, so I should be like, whatever they paid you, you made a lot of money. You can do whatever you want. No, that's not my attitude. There's something that you have as an author, it's like a contract with the reader and it's, you know, obviously it's unwritten and it's. I don't know what the moral implications are, but most authors I know, including myself, like, take it seriously that they, they kind of owe the reader the story that they promised them. And if you're going to write a series, I think you should try to, and try to complete it. I mean, obviously things come up, you might die before you finish it. Fair enough. But like, if you, if you're implying, like, I have a grand story to tell, wait here and I'll tell it. In my case with Pilgrims, I kind of had a similar attitude as George Lucas with the original trilogy for Star Wars. A New Hope is a self contained movie, right. You can watch the New Hope get to the end and feel like you watch a very satisfying, conclusory movie. Told a story. Obviously people. He wasn't sure that it would get sequels made or greenlit. He. He thought this would be a, like a, a B movie that no one ever saw. And if it's lucky, it made its budget back but obviously became the hit that it became and people wanted more of that world. So not that I'm at Lucas level, kind of claiming, but I wanted this first book to be. If you never picked up another pilgrim's book again, then you would be very happy you read it, you'd walk away satisfied. You can let me know if I succeeded in that. But I. When the book ends, the Catholic aliens are still around Earth. That's not that too much of a spoiler. So a lot of things go wrong when Catholic aliens show up. Despite being written by like, it's, it's. I think of my book as kind of a rebuke to the argument for divine hiddenness. And if you get to the end of the book, you can see why it might not be the best occurrence if Catholic aliens showed up in the sky. But obviously they're still here and that's just rife for storytelling. So we're probably going to pick up about a decade later with the protagonist. [01:14:24] Speaker A: And do you have any idea about when that might get published? [01:14:29] Speaker B: The next 2027, most likely. [01:14:32] Speaker A: 2027. [01:14:32] Speaker B: Okay. [01:14:33] Speaker A: Okay. Very good. Yeah, well, I'm looking forward. [01:14:35] Speaker B: I'm hoping to come up with book three, like right on its heels. So what I'm going to try to do is write two and three simultaneously. [01:14:42] Speaker A: Okay. [01:14:43] Speaker B: So that I can Kind of like rapid fire them out there. [01:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I left my book. My book is self contained as well. Definitely. But it also has a little bit of a purposeful kind of cliffhanger type thing without being like, okay, you could survive. It's not like a, you know, it had to have something, but it definitely leaves open the possibility for future books. And, and I think, and I, I very much enjoyed writing it. I'm enjoying what people are saying so far, but just came out. But I also think I'd love to write another book set, set in the same universe and you know, after the events of this one, so. But we'll see. [01:15:18] Speaker B: Experience. I know this is your podcast, but what's been your experience as a non fiction writer jumping into the future fiction waters. Like, how's. Because I. This is my only published work, but you have quite the corpus. So what's that been like? [01:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that. You know, it's funny, you're not the first person to ask me that. Not on a podcast, but you know, just in general. And you know, this is my 10th book and it's my first fiction, you know, my first nine word nonfiction. Just first of all, there's such a difference between the two as far as like writing it. When you write a nonfiction book, at least for me, I have a very set, like box of what I want to be, what I want to say. And I, when I have everything in that box taken care of and it's well written, okay, the book is ready. And I'm like, okay, I feel very much content. Well, you never truly are, like, with a fiction book, at least for me, like, okay, I'm finished. Because you always could be like, well, I could develop that character a little more. I could do that plot. You know, I could add a little bit here. I could add this backstory. I could. And it's like eventually you just had to tell yourself, okay, is this, you know, am I telling the story I want to tell? And sometimes you even had to cut things out that you, that you put in that you realize after an editor looks out. Like, you know, that was just distracting, which is always painful, but yet you take it. But yeah, so I think that was very different. And then like, but honestly, just now going with, you know, I just had a book about bitcoin come out earlier this year. And so I went through the whole promotional with that and doing all that. As you said, people, you know, if you're, if you want to be an author, realize you have to also be a marketer. It just, that's just the way it is. And so this book is very different because like with the bitcoin book and then my Deadly Indifference and all my other nonfiction books, it's like I kind of know what to expect a little bit with the reception beforehand because like, I've written enough books now. I know my audience. I know like who's gonna. Most of the type of people who are gonna buy it and things like that. This one, like, I, you know, it's got Catholic characters. I did not write it though, like, only for Catholics. I mean, like, I. I'm hoping lots of non Catholics will read it. Enjoy as well. But I really have no idea what to expect from the reaction. I've been very happy that the, you know, the beta readers and the early reviewers so far who have gotten it have said good things about it so far. So I'm like, okay, that's good. But like, it's just a whole different world from, from nonfiction because usually with nonfiction it's like, like I'm confident enough. I'm not, I'm not trying to be egotistical, but I've written for long enough that I know when I write a nonfiction book, it's well written. I'm not claiming to be the greatest writer ever. I'm not, I'm not CS Lewis and you know, making my arguments like that. But I know, okay, it's going to be. Well, I. I know how to write. And so usually it's always a debate about my arguments. Like, okay, like somebody who doesn't like bitcoin might argue with me or my Deadly indifference might challenge my. My thesis about religious indifference in the Catholic Church. And so there'll be that. This is really not going to be that because anybody has a critique of. It's going to be like, I didn't like how you wrote that. And that's like a whole different world for me. And so, yeah, we'll see how it goes. So I guess ask me again in a year what I really think if I never write another fiction book, you might know the answer, but. [01:18:34] Speaker B: Be the only one. [01:18:36] Speaker A: No, I don't. I loved it too much. I'm honestly in my back of my head. I would love to start, you know, just have a publishing house where that publishes books like yours, like mine, stuff like that where, you know, and we. We had some money behind it where it did so. Because I really think like my world in crisis. Now you're interviewing me, that's okay. My world at crisis is responding to the. Reacting to the evils in this world, like our name is literally crisis. And what we do is we expose and oppose. I like to say we expose and oppose the problems in this world, the crisis in the world. We expose it so people know and we oppose it. And we try to present, you know, the alternative stuff like that. But that is reactionary. I mean, I'll be the first to admit that. Whereas I feel like there's. There's. I've always thought there's a place for, okay, let's create Catholic culture as well. Not just say, why this. The dominant mainstream, you know, secular culture is bad. I do think we need to do that. I wouldn't still be a Christ if I didn't think that. But I think that we also need to create these alternative cultures. Like, I, you know, I know people like, who do homesteading, and I think that's great. I don't really. I mean, we have kind of a quasi homestead here. We have some acreage and some. A big garden and stuff like that. But we're not like, you know, the hardcore guy guys. And I love those guys and because they're. They're kind of building a Catholic culture in their lives. And I feel like the same thing is true. Should be. We should be happening in art, in movies, in books and all that stuff where we create this alternative Catholic culture of, you know, that promotes the true, the beautiful and the good. So that's kind of how I've. I've kind of gone about it. It has been a little bit of a shift of my thinking and the way I kind of, you know, marking the book and things like that. [01:20:18] Speaker B: So. Amen, brother. That's. I think we need more of us doing that. I think there is kind of a bubbling movement of that happening, so. [01:20:25] Speaker A: Which I've seen too. Yeah, I've been very happy about it. Okay, so how can people find. I mean, obviously go to Amazon, all that, but, you know, how do we find stuff about what you're doing these days and like, your book and things like that? [01:20:38] Speaker B: So the book is Pilgrims by Mr. Leonard. If you just type pilgrims into the Amazon search bar, you'll probably get Pilgrims from Progress, which is, you know, great book, but not my book. So pilgrims. Mr. Leonard. And then my website is Mr. Leonard Leonard's l e o n a r d author dot com. And there you can sign up for my mailing list. It also has links to my socials. I. I'm not as prolific exposter as Eric. Sometimes I reply, though every once in a while I'm a little bit of a reply guy. So that's where I'm most active. And sometimes I, I put some stuff out on Instagram. But otherwise signing up for my mailing list will keep you up to date about when the next book is coming and any other updates about what's going on with Pilgrims. Very good. [01:21:20] Speaker A: I'll put a link to that in the show notes so people can know. I recommend you get the book. Yeah, get the book. If you're looking a Christmas is coming soon. If you know somebody like maybe of a son, nephew or something like that who's really into science fiction, we have two recommendations here. We have Pilgrims by Mr. Leonard, Shard of Eden by Eric Sammons. You know, go ahead and get those and I think they'll enjoy it. You won't have to worry about your son being deconverted like Michael here was many years ago when reading these books. So, in fact, maybe your son is kind of grew up Catholic and not really practicing his faith. And, you know, this would be a book that, you know, these books would be good for him too, because it's not over the top, like, okay, you need to become Catholic. But it just gets kind of like what they did to you, what. What science fiction did to you years ago to. To embrace their fake, you know, their false religious beliefs kind of we're going to do it the other way around, so. [01:22:11] Speaker B: That's right. Well, Eric, thanks so much for having me on. It's been a real pleasure and I look forward to talking again in the future. [01:22:17] Speaker A: Yep, sounds great. Thanks a lot. God bless you and God love you, everybody.