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Overview
G. S. Gerry doesn’t just write books, he creates humorous experiences with the written word. When life kicks you in the nether regions find a way to see the humor in it all.
I am all about Mastering life Experiences Through Humor. My purpose is to share my own experiences to help you laugh at my pain, and laugh through yours.
G. S. Gerry engineers uniquely hilarious concepts that are quirky and utterly unique, geared towards entertaining those on the lookout for that one truly unique experience. Using a visionary approach towards life, laughter & entertainment.
Derald Grake destroys his life the moment he decides to sell the family home. After capturing the American dream, this father of 4 hopes to solve the complex formula of buying low and selling high. Witness one ‘normal’ family embark on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey involving, among other surprises, assassins, meth, murder, and the end of Amazon.
Wrapped inside this intriguing mystery are eye witness accounts and compelling evidence to separate truth from fantasy. Follow the clues, sort through the lies, and put the pieces together of this twisted reality.
From award winning author and visionary creator G. S. Gerry comes the critically acclaimed debut Meth Murder & Amazon.
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Transcript
Stephen: Today on Discover Wordsmiths, I have Jerry. Jerry, how are you doing today?
GS: I’m great. How are you? Thanks for having me. It’s a
Stephen: pleasure. It’s a good to have you on and you mentioned it was raining where you’re at. I live in Ohio. It’s raining here. Also. Where are you located?
GS: Started in Land O’Lakes, Florida.
So 30 minutes from Tampa and I feel like it’s been raining every day nonstop since the summer started every day at some point it rains like it was torrential
Stephen: downpour today. Wow. Okay. We had a like monsoon. The other day I lost electricity for three hours. It was coming down so hard.
I couldn’t see my neighbor’s house. It was crazy. Yeah.
GS: It did knock out the internet here earlier, but not too
Stephen: crazy. Yeah, I felt like we were in Florida. Yeah. All right. We are what, before we talk about your book I love your background, by the way, that’s a great background. Tell us a little bit about you and some of the things you like to do besides writing.
GS: Yeah I’ve actually been only writing for about a year and a half. I never thought I was going to be a writer. I had a crazy situation at work that kind of led me to hey, I want to be a writer. And so I can tell you about that real quick. I was working on a project. I do a lot of technical report writing at work on my new cyber security and credit card compliance. So you select your card at Walmart, Target any kind of store, right? Those customer, those companies have to have a compliance report. And so that’s where a company like the one that I work for come into play. So we write a lot of long reports look at a lot of controls. And so I had a situation at work.
I gave a customer a report and the next day she calls me and she’s Jerry, this report. It’s completely the same as last year. I’m like, Oh, gosh, please don’t tell me that’s the case. This is like a 500 page report, start reviewing the report saying we went on site. We didn’t, there was no on site.
We were in like the pandemic, like early pandemic at this time. So I was like, Oh, she’s right. We have to rewrite this report. So the guy who was on my team, he was the guy who was leading the assessment. And he’s the one who wrote the report. He copied my work. Yeah. Word for word and turn it into the customer, like it was his work.
So we had to rewrite the report. It went from 500 pages to 750 pages. And it takes me like two months to fix the report. And afterwards, I’m like, man, I just wrote a novel. That’s it. I got the story. I’m just going to write a book. That’s just what I did. And so that’s how it even led me to this crazy journey here.
Stephen: Wow. And you still have your job doing the big reports?
GS: yeAh, I still do that. It definitely keeps me busy. It’s always interesting. You get to see a lot of interesting and complex environments and then customers that you get to use all the time. Like you, you remember when Target had that big breach and all the credit card numbers got leaked out, Home Depot, et cetera.
So there’s a company, a third party company that’ll actually come in and say, Hey, this company is secure. They’re okay to take, continue taking credit cards. Or in the cases of like target, right? Because the company that actually does the assessment misses something and there’s a huge breach that leads to fines and all these other things.
So it’s a pretty big deal. We come in and do these assessments. They can take, anywhere from a couple of months to 6 plus months, depending on how big the customers.
Stephen: Wow. Wow. That’s a, that’s an investment. That’s time. That’s do you enjoy doing that? Does writing help you with the stress, that type of
GS: thing?
The writing does help with the stress. I’ll say that. That’s why I started writing in the first place. It’s a lot of learning. I’ll say that. So I feel like I learned a lot. throughout the job. No two environments are the same. Even if they use similar technologies, it’s always different.
I like it. It’s different. Definitely pays the bills.
Stephen: So you needed to relieve some stress and you wrote a book that is very interesting title, meth, murder, and mayhem. How’d you come about the title and tell us a little bit about the book. Yeah.
GS: So it’s a, it’s meth murder and Amazon.
Stephen: Amazon. Yes. I’m sorry. You’re right. And I just started a minute ago. Didn’t I?
GS: You did. That’s okay. So yeah, meth, meth murder and Amazon, you can actually buy it on the Amazon. And so this is a true based on true event story about the worst home selling experience of your life. And so as I was going to sell my house in Colorado, that’s my first house, by the way, so my first time selling a house.
And along the way I actually get accused by my own real estate agents of murder and making mess while I’m not even in the state. And how many real estate agents does it take to sell houses? It sounds like a running joke, right? And so most people would be like, take one. And I was, I usually say, you would think but in my personal experience, I actually took three real estate agents.
One of them the guy who actually sold me the house, he wasn’t even living in Colorado. He moved out of state and was in Arizona. So he wasn’t marketing my house, really doing anything to sell the house. So I fired him. I’ll go to the next real estate agent. She’s, I think she’s okay.
She’s a good person. We go on vacation to go visit my mom. My mom is sick. She has, early stage cancer. So I was like, Hey, let’s take a vacation. We’re going to have an open house. And so I’m on vacation where it’s me and my wife and my four kids at the time, we’re sitting in like Panera bread parking lot.
And I got a call and my real estate agent is Jerry. There’s someone inside the house. I was like, excuse me. What do you mean? There’s someone inside the house. She’s yes, there’s someone inside the house and they’re hiding under the bed. No one’s supposed to be there. I’m like, absolutely not.
No one’s supposed to be there. She’s great. I called the cops. Cops are on their way. Cops show up all of a sudden body’s gone. A few days later, they have a meeting at the real estate agency and they’re like, Oh, by the way, when we were at the house at the open house, we went around and we checked everything and we were in your garage and it smelled like burning plastic in there.
I was like, Oh, no, it was something burning right it’s like they’re an electrical fire and something catch on fire real estate agent goes no burning plastic means math. And so we think that someone could be smoking meth or making meth on the premises so we’re going to need you to get a meth test done.
Or we’re going to flag your house on the MLS for suspicious behavior. I’m like you’re absolutely not going to do that. I will sue you. So you can just consider this to be another relationship. So that’s two real estate agents that I finally find another one. And the book essentially was just this crazy rollercoaster of, from the time I actually decided I’m going to sell my house until I finally sell it.
And so it takes six months, three real estate agents and just a whole slew of just. Nonsense that kind of occurs throughout the process. And so I take you on an interesting little journey along
Stephen: the way. Wow. So it’s based on real events. But it’s not nonfiction. It’s a fiction story. No,
GS: it’s nonfiction.
I really tried to keep it true to how the story unfolded. Now I will say I changed all the places, all the names, right? Everybody has funny names. Everyone has like a funny location they live in. But the actual events that happened did really happen. And so one part I go to talk to the news and so I’m I’m on Denver seven news.
This is really happened. They come, they do an interview. I tell them the whole story. And they screw that up. So this whole thing is in the book, but I go on news, right? It airs at 9 PM. Not even 12 hours later, my realist, my new real estate agent. So real estate number three calls me and she’s Jerry, what did you do?
I’m getting people calling me the nastiest names, asking me, how can I do this to your family? Like you’ve got to take this down. And so what happened was the the news agency. When they started the on air broadcast, they, pan out to the curb appeal, they show the house wall and the front yard is the new real estate agent sign.
And so this is, she’s with Keller Williams, the ones that accused me of the murder and the meth that was remaxed. And so people weren’t even listening to the whole broadcast. They’re not even reading the article. They see the number and they just start calling her up. Calling her out. And so it got taken down.
I talked to the news agency and they’re like, yeah, we can’t edit anything that’s already aired. It’s just coming down. So there’s a lot of events that transpire along the way.
Stephen: So what do you what genre did you put this in to put it out there?
GS: So I decided to make it like a humor slash comedy, but it also has some suspense.
There’s some mystery in there. It has a little bit of everything, even like almost like horror, right? This was like, someone’s like real life nightmare. Could you imagine selling your house and then boom, you get accused of murdering somebody and then you get accused of making that right.
Like you can’t make this stuff up. So I write with a funny twist on it with a funny spin on it. And so that’s why I thought, humor would be the best way. Plus I, I choose really funny character names for my books. And someone was like crappy to me along the way, like the real estate agent accused me of meth and murder.
She got the name Dobby Snobby. And so I’ll make fun of her throughout the book. I’ll make fun of her name. And just all these different things. But if someone was like really good to me, like it was like a positive element as part of the whole story, that’ll get an actual really good name. And I’ll be like, Oh yeah, they helped me out.
Just different things like that.
Stephen: Wow. So what type of feedback are you getting from people reading it? What are some of the comments?
GS: A lot of people would say Hey, this is a crazy rollercoaster ride. If it wasn’t backed up by cold, hard facts, I really wouldn’t believe it. I tell, I would tell my friends this story, like before I even wrote the book, what happened, they’re like, stop it.
You’re making this up. I’m like, no way. I couldn’t make this up if I tried, right? This is so unbelievable. It has to be true. And I get really good feedback. Just Hey, this is really different. This is really unique. There’s really nothing out here. That’s like this. And so that’s what the goal was when I originally decided I was going to write a book, cause I wanted to do something really different and to set myself apart.
Stephen: Nice. Yeah. So it, this is crazy. It sounds perfect for either a movie or a TV show. What would you choose for it to be?
GS: Either or, right? I think it could make a great TV series. I think you could make a great movie, right? I was thinking who could be the main character, which would be me. It’d be like, hey, Ryan Reynolds is a hilarious guy.
He would be, like, a great actor to portray this. And you could definitely make it a whole season but there’s even a lot of stuff that happened before I tried to sell my house. So I could actually write other books about this as well. But I hired, Yeah, a prequel, I could even do a sequel.
And so the prequel I had I was going to finish my basement in this house. And so you think like contractors, everybody know contractors are sometimes shady. I did what I was supposed to do. I’m like, Hey, I want to get my basement finished. So I’m going to subcontract out all this work.
You have to frame it. You have to get drywalling done. Water, electricity, right? All these things. So I would, bid it out. I wouldn’t hire the most expensive guy or the least expensive. I try to go in the middle. Man, I had the worst experience. It was only supposed to take three months. It takes almost a year to actually finish my basement.
And just like anything you can think of that can go wrong from like a contractor’s perspective did. So I was like, I could totally write a book about this. I call it framed, maimed, and plain to blame.
Stephen: There you go. I got some good, interesting with houses. I think this would make a great movie. I, and a lot of times, I go either way, but this particular one, put the right budget in it, get the right actors, and I think it’d make a really great, big
GS: absolutely movie.
And it’s really, most of it happens inside the house or at, at a parking lot or something. So it would be a pretty small budget, right? Like you wouldn’t need a lot to make it happen.
Stephen: It’s one setting, the house,
GS: just the house, things that happen inside the house. But it was fun.
It was fun to write about. And so I do tell people like it’s nonfiction, but it almost reads like it’s fiction because of the way I use the characters and the names, but also teach like the readers about what the different elements are when you try to sell your house, some people might be going through Hey, I want to buy a house or, Hey, I want to sell my house.
So I teach you about staging different things you need to look out for. What all the different showings means open house. So I try to add, a teachable element to it as well.
Stephen: Oh that’s cool. So it’s a fun book that you learn something from. That’s right. Yeah. What not to do sometimes.
So you also mentioned, you’ve got a book coming out soon, a second book. What’s that one about?
GS: So I do have a new book coming out September 22nd. It’s called hysterical hangouts with behind legs. And it is a true life reality show, but in a book. And so it follows the time honored tradition of, you meet the girl of your dreams, you fall in love.
And the only thing left to do is meet the family. What happens when you meet the family and they’re a little wild and what you might call crazy? And so along the way, the main character who is the boyfriend that’s dating the girlfriend, he decides, Hey, I’m going to do an undercover reality TV show.
And so he has a undercover camera and he goes through all these different events with her family, whether it’s her mom and dad she has three brothers. And so each episode or each chapter of the book is set up as an episode. They’ll be like episode one, here’s the title. And I’ll actually give it a rating and add in like the TV elements, like rated TV, 14 for language alcohol, suspense, whatever’s in there.
And so I try to really make it like a you’re really watching the reality show, but you’re reading in a book.
Stephen: Cool. And that comes out next month. You said in about a month. Yep. Yep. Next month. Cool. And do you have any plans beyond that for another book?
GS: I feel like I could probably write some books just on crazy things that have happened throughout my life.
So the, this new book coming out hysterical hangouts with the hind legs, I left it open ended for a reason. It’s, it is fiction. This new one is fiction. I’ve been married to my wife for 18 years now and she has seven brothers and sisters. And so this. This first book was only about the brothers.
So I thought I could make a sequel to it of just her sisters. And so I can do then even do a followup trilogy with not only the brothers and the sisters, but what happens when they all have children. And so the different like dynamics that come into play when you have brothers and sisters
Stephen: and then kids of all those people.
Wow. Okay. So do you have a website that people can go to and find out more about you?
GS: I do. So my website is gsjerry. com. On there, there’s obviously information about the book. There’s also some blogs. I also have some free recipes I like to cook. Don’t worry, they’re meth free. But I do have them labeled as meth lab creations.
So someone might see that and be like, oh, heck is this? It’s just free recipes that I’ve
Stephen: come up with. That’s pretty good. I like that. Putting it right in there.
Sorry. I’m sorry.
GS: What? Oh, no. I was just going to say, you just got to take ownership sometimes, right? If someone says you do something, it’s better to just, oh yeah, you got five
Stephen: minutes, right? You need a teacher. Yeah. Something,
GS: so I actually, so there is a shop on there as well. And so you can actually, there’s some merchandise on there.
One of them is a coffee cup and it says, don’t mess with me until I’ve had my coffee. There’s another one. It’s like an apron. It’s I can’t remember what it says off the top of my head, but it’s basically don’t mess with me or you might end up in the recipe or something like that. So they’re finding a little place on meth.
Stephen: Don’t mess with me or I’ll put you in my next book. Yeah, exactly. I see. I would get you one that says follow me to my meth lab.
GS: Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah, I can totally do that. It’s so tough though, right? Because some people are so sensitive, they’ll be like, Oh, this guy’s joking around about meth and all this stuff, right?
And meth’s like a huge epidemic. Yeah. Around the world and I get it. That’s why I got accused of the meth, because Colorado is like the meth capital of the world, apparently. That’s what they told me. And wow. Yeah. So after this all happened, whenever they accused me of this and I fired them, I actually, this isn’t in the book, but I actually went to talk to a lawyer about this and I explained what happened.
And there’s no way they can do that, blah, blah, blah. So I like shared with them the story. Lawyers contacted the real estate agents. They’re like, yep, this did happen. But that’s all we’re going to tell you then they finally go on through the discovery process and they find out that because Colorado has such a problem with methamphetamine, if a real estate agent even suspects Colorado.
That there’s a possibility of meth on the premises. They can do whatever they want, essentially. And there’s nothing you can do about it. So when this happened and they’re like, Hey, you you’re making meth in your garage or someone’s smoking meth. I was like, that’s gotta be defamation, slander, right?
Like something, right? Like you can’t just say someone’s making meth with no evidence. That’s just nonsense. But in Colorado, they can do that.
Stephen: Wow. Crazy. And so somebody basically waited till you were selling the house and you went out of town and they. Moved in and took over for probably just long enough to make a batch.
GS: It’s actually even worse than that. So I don’t want to, I don’t want to leave any spoilers, but what’s under the bed and who’s under the bed. It’s hilarious.
Stephen: Let me ask you, Jerry your book sounds hilarious. I think that’s a great situation to turn into a book. Do you have any favorite books and authors that you’ve liked through the years to read?
GS: I do. So I like C. S. Lewis. He has some great books. So it’s funny, right? I’m sitting here talking to you on a podcast, being an author. And I was the kid growing up that. Played a lot of sports. And so we had book reports to do in school. I’m like, all right, what’s the movie I can watch? I don’t have time to read these books.
And so I’d always get good grades. I always get A’s in my book reports. But the older you get, the more you realize reading is just part of life. You have to read for your job. You have to read for pretty much everything. And so when I was growing up, I hated reading. I didn’t want to do it. I just wanted to go play sports.
Now that I’m older, I do C. S. Lewis. My mom passed away a little over a year ago. And someone was like, Hey, you should read this book by C. S. Lewis called A Grief Observed. And it was when he lost his wife. And so I read that, right? I lost my mom. It’s different. But a lot of the elements and the things that he talks about on there, I was like, that’s super relatable.
So it definitely helps. And then he just has great visual descriptions, great elements in his book. So he’s just a fantastic author. As I read more and as I write more, I noticed that there’s some things that he does that I do as well. Like he’ll actually use run on sentences. He’ll actually like, and things abruptly.
And I definitely do that. So I thought it was cool to just see that kind of similarity there.
Stephen: Yeah I work with kids and one of the activities I’ve tried to pass on is. If you read the book to the first lion, which in the wardrobe the end of the book, the battle is all of four paragraphs.
That’s the whole battle, but the movie it’s like 10, 12 minutes long or something, but there are all sorts of creatures and all sorts. I, tell kids that’s, the difference between a plot and a story, here’s the plot. We had a battle, we won and the story in the movie, they expanded and made it much more exciting.
Trying to do an activity using that to, write your own battle scene, that’s better than, that’s how
GS: you get, that’s how you hook them, though, trying to get them to do something that they actually want to do. No one wants to write book reports, and then you have to use the right grammar and the right punctuation and spelling, right?
It’s just no fun. But if you give them a fun thing to create, kids love that, right? It lets their imagination kind of run
Stephen: wild. Yeah I totally agree with that and I have thoughts on that and I’ve talked to several teachers, I’ve talked to other parents, other adults, and everybody I talked to all agrees about the reading and that, but then the people in charge are making all this common core stuff and shoving it down their throats and these books are the ones you should read, I’m like, let them read something they’re enjoy, they enjoy, hit them with the books when they’re older, once they’re hooked on reading, don’t Throw the bad stuff at him early.
GS: Absolutely. You take a lot of the elements males are usually hands on, and of course, boys are going to be hyperactive in their classes. They don’t want to be in class. They want to be bouncing around, playing with stuff, building stuff. Harness that energy and get them outside, right?
Teach them how to use their hands. Learn skills. And that way, but they don’t do that in
Stephen: school. Encourage kids like you tell me a story about a made up baseball player or a fake baseball game, or, use sports and learn how to tell a story, but yeah, that’s a whole nother discussion.
GS: We could talk on five podcasts.
Stephen: I could probably do a whole podcast on education and storytelling. I’m sure. Now that you’re reading a little bit, do you have a favorite bookstore in the area? You said you had four kids. Do you take them to any bookstores? So
GS: I actually have five kids now. So we had four kids when the mess and the murder happened.
I just had a baby last year in November. It’s almost nine months now. And you have to have three boys, two girls. We have a lot of books that our grandparents have given us over the years of, they need a book first. I think we’ll probably go to Barnes and Noble just because that’s probably the closest one.
There are some like mom and pop bookstore I could say, but they’re like not on like the way where I’d be going, so I usually just go to Barnes and
Stephen: Noble. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Alright, so we’re gonna talk a little author stuff before we do though. If you’re out on the street and somebody said, Hey Jerry, I heard you wrote a book.
Why should I get your book? And I think we’ve already covered that, but what would be the quick pitch you would tell them?
GS: I would say, I would just tell them like, Hey, you want to read something that’s unbelievable and true. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to laugh your ass off. I guarantee it.
And so I think that pretty much sums it up, right? Like my books are always going to be funny. There’s always going to be some humor element to it, but it’s not even just that, right? Like it has so many other elements that just. Make for a great story. And part of it is just being unique, I think, is my trademark, right?
Like I don’t think I don’t do things the same way that a lot of authors do. I don’t write a lot of the same ways that a lot of authors do, but that’s on purpose. And so I figured it gives me a leg up when I get to tell people about the
Stephen: book. Yeah. I haven’t read your book, but it sounds to me like it’s a combination of Breaking Bad meets Dork Diaries.
That’s what it sounds like. You
GS: know what’s funny is, so when this happened and the real estate agent actually called the cops on me and accused me of murder, I told one of my friends about it. He’s dude, that sounds just like Breaking Bad. I was like, I haven’t watched it yet. I was like, that’s it.
I’m just going to watch it. And it’s like the third episode they’re doing the open house and they’re making meth in the basement. I was like, yep, this is it. They had to watch breaking bad before they did the open house. And so it must be, I’m like the reincarnation
Stephen: of buddy. So you’ve written a couple of books now.
Your second one’s on its way. You got an idea for a third one. What are some things that you have learned that you’re doing different now than you did when you first started?
GS: Yeah. So when I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. Let’s be honest. I was like, Hey, I want to do something different.
I want to create a really unique experience for the readers. And part of that is I’m going to just, I’m going to write a way that no one’s ever even comprehended. And so I’m going to, I’m going to misspell words on purpose. I’m going to make up my own words. I’m going to have run on sentences on there.
I’m going to break up the the way that the characters actually have their narration. So it actually forces you to take these pauses. But not only that, I’ll even go a step further and I’ll actually bring an audio element. So there’s like fun little remixes in the book. So like London Bridge is falling down.
I’ll make a remix of that to my own little like rhyme along. And so I just do random things to like, really keep the readers engaged and focused. Not only that I would say marketing so when the book first came out last year I didn’t know what this thing marketing was. I’m like, hey, this is a great title, right?
But they’re just, people are just going to see it and they’re just going to buy it Metford or Amazon. What could be better, right? And but that’s not how it works. There’s a lot of competition out there. I think there’s something like 30 million books on Amazon. And there’s a million books that come out every single year.
So you guys like anybody that’s an author, they’re going to have a lot of competition. So what sets you apart? How do you stand apart? And a lot of that comes from marketing. And so I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even start marketing until after the book came out. Even just to piggyback on that, as I was going through Amazon to release my book, Kindle has the ability to do a pre order, so I’m like, all right, great, I’m gonna put this pre order for 90 days out, and so then I go to start doing the same thing on the paperback and the hardcover editions.
There’s no pre order there, but I didn’t know that and so i’m like filling out this section So i’m like, all right Maybe it’s the next page is going to ask me when does it want to release? And so like I get to the last page and I hit and it’s like, all Do you want to submit a hit submit and be like your book is going to be live in 72 hours?
I’m, like, all right now going back now like i’m not taking it down And so I just let it go so it actually released a month earlier But obviously I didn’t know because I’d never written a book before or never gone into this idea of writing a book Now that I have read it, I actually put this new book on pre order about six months out.
I’ve been doing a lot of marketing and social media posts and everything just to bring attention. I’ve gotten reviews ahead of time as well as I submitted for awards, so I did win an award from Literary Titan a couple weeks ago. So I’m trying to build some positive momentum, right up until the launch date and then I’ll do some different tactics as I go along.
But definitely didn’t have any clue what I was doing the first time. And so part of this, right? Like I would have never done that the first time because I didn’t know what I was doing the second time. Now I have a good idea. I know how to market it, where to go what social media platforms to use, things like that.
Stephen: So I love that you said that and to point out to others, I know. A lot of people have a lot of anxiety about publishing and it will, they’ll go to conferences, they’ll go to author events, round tables, and the quizzing. And I always see people that okay, I’ve got one chapter done in my book, but tell me how do I publish?
Where do I publish? Who do I send it to? What? And I’ve been, as I’ve been talking to people, I’m like, Calm down. That’s like the last thing you got to worry about and figure it out. And most mistakes can be corrected which is what you sounded like you said, Oh, I messed that up. Keep going.
And you lived.
GS: That’s right. Yeah. That was a fight another day. I feel like it didn’t really hurt me overall in the long run. I probably could have sold more bucks originally, but there’s a lot of people I knew that I already told the story to. And so I was like, I wrote a book, they’re like, no, you did it.
Stop it. And I was like, I absolutely did. And I’d tell them about it and they’re like, okay, I’ll get that. And so personally, I feel like word of mouth is going to be always be the best marketing tool that you can have. Yeah. You can post on social media, but. It’s so tough to get people’s attention on social media, especially with so many different things.
We go viral. What’s going on? So I feel like word of mouth, talk to somebody, go to the coffee shop. Oh, what are you reading? Hey, I wrote a book. You want to hear about it? And so there’s all these different ways to get your book out there besides just the normal, like a post on social media, 900 times a month and all these different other tactics that are out there.
Stephen: And you mentioned unique style. So you talked about breaking things up and how you’re writing the characters and putting things in the book. Do you think that’s actually helped you now that you’ve done that?
GS: I think so. And so whenever I was first starting out with this, I’m like, all right, I’m going to use this really unique style if it flops.
Hey, that’s fine. Like I tried something new and it failed. But if it doesn’t I’ve got something to talk about that nobody else is doing. And so I think that’s really played to my advantage because you can go read the reviews and almost everyone has pointed out like writing style, but in a positive way.
And so you don’t have to follow the normal traditional writing style. You have to develop your characters this way. You have to. Write the sentences this way. It has to flow this way. That’s absolutely not true. Like you can write however you want. If it flows, and the readers enjoy it, then you’re going to provide a positive experience.
And it’s just going to set you apart.
Stephen: And usually authors don’t think that way or don’t try and experiment like that until they’re more well established. Have you heard of, or seen the road by Cormac McCarthy? I haven’t. I recommend looking that up sometime, even library or whatever. It is a great, interesting book.
It’s. Post apocalypse the world is basically destroyed and the whole book is written like Without periods and commas and everything’s in lowercase and it’s almost like a big run on sentence. It’s very interesting, but he uses it to help convey the stark feeling, the depressive feeling of the book.
Yeah. I’ll
GS: definitely check that out. Yeah, it’s definitely interesting and that’s just one of the reasons I did it the way that I did it. It was like, hey. This will who can say they read a, wrote a book, right? And then I was like, hey, tons of people write books all the time.
What can I do differently that’s going to really stand apart, maybe stand on its own? And so that’s why I chose the writing style. But I definitely will use wrong sentences. It’s fun. But if you think about how we text, really, this is where the idea came from. Whenever you’re talking with people, like you’re not caring about what your grammar looks like.
You’re not caring about the period here or a comma there. Now, I will use the right punctuation all the time, but I won’t I’ll just run sentences on together. And so it almost read like how you and me are talking right now. We don’t talk in complete sentences. We talk and run on sentences all the times.
And so as you read it, it’ll almost feel like you could hear yourself like reading it out loud and it really flows well.
Stephen: And I think one of the things people have talked a lot about is writing to make sure it sounds good in an audio book, because a lot of people are doing audio books and some of the more structured ways we write, putting, she said, he said, or something gets very monotonous in audio.
So something, if somebody’s talking fast and telling a lot of information, a run on sentence. Makes sense in audio. You don’t see all the punctuation in audio and it can convey that feeling of being, or, Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe I just went into the house and then I went upstairs and there was somebody in the bed and they were just like, that doesn’t have commas and stuff in there when you’re saying
GS: it.
Absolutely. And so I do have an audio book for the meth murder on Amazon. And I use this platform called ACX and so they have a tie into iTunes, Audible and Amazon. And so part of that, you can actually submit your script to anybody out there. That’s a narrator through this platform. And so you can actually take auditions and that’s absolutely what I did.
And as I said, my book has some crazy elements to it and there’s like funny little word plays and even like songs in there. So I literally spent the most difficult parts. Of the books as a narrator and I was like, Hey, I want a male. I want him to have really good community timing. I really want him to take ownership for it.
And I got like the first five and they were like, so boring. They are like drawn out. I was like, all right, not you. And then this one guy like totally took ownership of it. And every part that I gave them one part was like. From the interview that I had with the the guy from the news agency.
And so he’d be like, Hey, go up the stairs. Oh, no, wait, that’s too fast. Come back down the stairs. And so I literally would write it like that Oh, no, wait, stop, pause. And so there’s all this different back and forth between me and the news journalist. And so I sent it to him and I was like, if this guy can do like these parts good, like he’s going to be great.
And sure enough he nailed it. And so he’s going to be the narrator for the second book.
Stephen: Oh, nice. And when does that is the audio book out for the murder mayhem or
GS: murder? It’s funny. You’re not the first one that’s done that. I think it just goes together. Cause you know, M and M. So yeah. Yeah.
Meth murder name is on. It does have an audio book. We did win an award for that as well. And then we’re in the rank for another book award at the end of the year. The new one, I don’t know when it’s going to come out, but I’m trying to get it to line up like almost identical to when the Kindle releases.
Stephen: Nice. Great. All right. Jerry it’s been really great chatting with you about your book. It sounds fun. It sounds like you had a great time writing it too.
GS: Yeah. Oh yeah. It was definitely a fun time. Like I said, I never thought I was going to be an author, but as I started doing it, I wouldn’t give it to people.
I was like, Hey, read this. If it sucks, tell me, don’t make, let me make myself look like a fool. And no one really gave me any negative feedback. I was like, all right, I might be onto something. Then I like had submitted to my first editorial review. I was like, all right, if it’s going to suck, they’ll tell me.
And I got my first review. And I think they said, I was like Robin Williams on speed. I was like, Oh, that’s a good name shop. And when compared to Robin Williams, I thought it was a good thing. But it was really good review. So I’ve gotten a couple of negative reviews, but they don’t leave any comments are like two stars and they don’t say anything. And I’m like, maybe they thought that was like similar to
Stephen: another book, but You know with the way that whole system works could have just been somebody scrolling through Amazon saw meth I don’t agree with drugs and they clicked on two and you know that they moved on
GS: I do read the reviews.
I actually like reading them. I’ll actually take them. And if I’m like working on the description for the book of someone from something super whittier, it was like, Oh, that really captured like what I was after for the description. I’ll add that in there. So I definitely read the reviews. I think part of it is right.
Like you can’t be too serious, but with yourself, but you also got to have thick skin, right? Not everybody’s going to like what you write. Everybody’s going to like how you write and don’t like the story, right? Tons of reasons why people aren’t going to like your book. So if someone doesn’t like it, Hey, that’s okay.
If you get a ton of good reviews, you’ll be like, hey, there’s always going to be somebody that’s going to be on the other side of the
Stephen: coin. Yep. All right. So before we go do you have any advice you would give to other new authors out there?
GS: Yeah, I would definitely tell them write what you know.
I think Mark Twain said that, write what you know. And I think that’s important. I feel like I’m a funny guy, so I’m going to write funny stuff. But. The reverse of that, right? If you’re not funny, don’t write funny things, right? Because readers, it’s going to come across to the readers. It’s going to sound weird, right?
But if you’re serious serious things, great stories. But just stay true to yourself because that’s, what’s going to make, come across as a reader is just really genuine. If you try to do something that you’re not going to, they’re definitely
Stephen: going to know. Agreed. All right. Jerry, I appreciate you taking some time chatting with me today. It’s been really fun. I wish you luck on your
GS: book. Yeah, thank you very much and thanks again for having me. It was a great time.
Stephen: Yeah, good.