Comcastrodors, please welcome Jennie Goloboy. Jennie, an author of both fiction and non-fiction, has a PhD in the History of the American Civilization from Harvard and works as a literary agent selecting new manuscripts for publication through Red Sofa Literary. On the podcast, Jennie and Max take a deeper look at some of the worst tropes in writing, speculate on the state of science fiction, and discover the virtue of hysterically bad movies. Her book, Success to Trade: Charleston’s Merchants and the American Middle Class in the Revolutionary Era will be published by University of Georgia Press in 2016. Jennie also writes fiction under her pen name, Nora Fleischer, and her novels Over Her Head and Zombies in Love are available on Amazon.
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Just in from the Ministry of mine in the kingdom of God You don’t know what will become making big brother look like a ginger step So here is Maximus girls today in the Internet. Comcast You know my name is Maximus Grove and I’d like you to please welcome the gullible also known under the pseudonym Donna Fleischer Jimmy as a Ph D. in the history of the American civilization from Harvard is an author of both fiction and non-fiction and works as a literary agent selecting new manuscripts Republicans and through red sofa literary. Together we look at some of the worst strokes and writing speculate on the state of science fiction and discover the virtue of hysterically bad movies. A recent novel zombies and love is now available as an audio book. You can find it on Amazon. Let’s have some fun Saturday gone. Actually really well yeah. It’s just gorgeous and sunny. So I live up in Minnesota right. And for most of the year most of the winter it’s like dark and cold for like twenty hours a day and then suddenly it’s summer and the sun comes up at five in the morning and it’s sunny at nine at night and everyone comes alive. So yeah really well. Well it’s yeah I can hear like ten percent of a Minnesota accent inside. How do you like working to suppress it for like public relations or something. No Actually here’s a deal I’m from I was born near Boston. My my family moved probably Oh gosh every five years when I was a kid. So I my accent will shift depending on who I’m talking to. And yeah so you probably hear a lot of accents coming out of me as this goes on. OK Well that’s. What seems to work perfect for you because you seem to be living two lives as an author right. Well yeah we used to at least so we have the scholar academic non-fiction writer Jenny is it’s all a boy got a boy versus the I don’t want to say trashy but like fun populus fiction nor of pleasure. FLEISCHER Yeah. Is there any of us wanting to represent both sides as like other between putting out Pirate Material versus more fun stuff. Well you know that’s a really good question. It’s it came out of a couple of things first of all it’s the fiction appears to be something I can’t stop right. I am I have to I just have to do it otherwise I’m just not happy. And the non-fiction is something I just I’m so curious about too. I mean the late eighteenth early one nine hundred century America is just incredibly weird. Are you from Georgia are you actually asked my parents met in U.W. Madison and oh wow that’s right OK that’s Midwest right and they moved to Georgia. Set up shop and I was born after you know Georgian history is just incredibly odd right there is there’s this whole period where it’s going to be they they decide it’s like in the seven hundred it’s going to be all great farms and they bring in all these people from Greece and to do great farms and it’s a horrible failure just all kinds of crazy. Yeah like I thought the because the latitudes recall that it would match the climate which exactly it really make any sense based upon like the structure but I guess right to get a great seven hundred science. So yeah I you know. For me there are things you can do and nonfiction that you and you can do in fiction and vice versa. I think you can do a non-fiction is you can just show how profoundly weird the world is and how everything could have ended up differently. I mean that’s a great part of history just really surprising people. And for fiction sometimes it’s just a relief to be able to make stuff up and and just go for it and try to figure out how people work from the inside in a way you can’t save a life as a real historic and you can’t just sort of make up how these people felt. I suppose not like I can keep loving you. So that’s the dramatic take on the war of the roses that’s becoming a game of thrones taking over everybody. I have to admit I have not read Game of Thrones and I don’t have the you know so I’ve had the joy of watching it through other people’s eyes and just seeing how everybody reacts and it I have to say Are you a big fan. I got my first glimpse of it in the first episode of season two and then instantaneously read all five books that I could not sick myself away. They’re beautifully written. For me it’s just too much bad stuff happens to small children for me to actually enjoy it. OK so it’s just. But I agree they’re beautifully written and every per every character is lovingly illuminated you know them all and then they’re killed horribly. Just watching this fandom react as one awful thing happens after another and feel like oh I remember that the whole theme of the Callon teary at the beginning of this year is this. It’s going to be Jon Snow and there’s we’ve got this theory about John Snow and what he’s going to do this really setting people up for the most heart wrenching destruction ripping Los Yeah and it’s interesting to me because I’ve always thought that what when I’ve sent my stories out into the world and you know Senate submitted them I’ve always had much more luck with stuff where it’s hard fought but there’s a happy ending not where it’s a happy happy all the time where the year your hero starts out with some kind of awful position ends up in a better one like the first Avengers movie and I think like the reason people haven’t liked the second Avengers movie as much is because you know it’s the one where the Avengers fall apart. And and you’ve suddenly got all these horrible New Avengers that nobody cares about. And but the whole success of Game of Thrones has sort of primed that theory for me. Well to me Sir George doesn’t really finish these books they just kind of stopped at some weird plot point and then pick up later. So you’re always somewhere between a happy ending terrible ending I’m not quite certain where you are. So do you think people are watching in the hopes that it will eventually resolve itself and everyone will be happy again and I think they’re just excited. I think they’ve never been to before and now it’s like they don’t want bad things to happen but it fills and such a thrill it’s almost a truck now right. Oh you know it’s like no I’m not going to take another hit I’m not going to take another hit I’m never going to watch again I’m not going to get out of this depression from it was like OK just one more just one more. I mean there you go you know personally having read the book has been an incredibly sadistic reaction. Like knowing who’s going to die and just preparing for the heartbreak of everyone around. Because I wasn’t myself it was very traumatic. And now it’s people who have not seen this yet and it’s like perhaps I should feel sorry for you but instead I’m just going to revel in this terrible moment. I will admit that does appear to be part of the fine you know it’s like everybody’s like oh this wedding is going to be so great and more ha ha ha ha ha and well I said Geoffrey wish something really awful would happen you know I start to hate people more than anything else and then bad things do happen to them. But you start to get bad for wanting it to happen to them when you see that it really was not fair. But like George is interesting because his career I don’t know exactly where it started but before he wrote those novels he was writing screenplays for television and that really seems to inform his medium writing novels now and that a kind of spread some too. I suppose a kind of emotional connection to expect from a television show as opposed to this or novel because you know that’s that’s interesting. He’s a guy with a huge track record and in fact I was thinking of Intel a few years ago people seem to know him more for wild cards than they did for the whole Game of Thrones series that was incredibly popular so well I’m I’m looking you have a Ph D. of the history of the American civilization. Yes I do as well as questions about the program but also I want to know what you thought of the basically the future of graduate school especially in the arts. Well you know it’s it is not frankly pretty at this point and I think we’re up to about seventy five percent of the people teaching in college classrooms are adjuncts. You get paid. Need something like oh between two and three thousand dollars a course and you have no job security so you have to think at some point that’s going to have some kind of blowback and people are going to start thinking yeah I need to have some kind of other plan after graduate school. I don’t know. Ed some ways what helps me. When I was graduating in two I hadn’t realized how bad the job market was. I don’t know why I was so oblivious but in my particular specialty unemployment is running like seventy to eighty percent that way. It’s a well known as is hiring like they will News’s is hiring like Masters and the essays of writing just headline articles so that wow so that people will click on it and then immediately close it and that’s good enough to them for the revenue they want. Wow So the odds are in the shoes of the top four. You know it. But one thing that helped with this whole thing is they don’t they don’t reclaim the education. When you if you don’t get a job in the field immediately they can take that back. Right. So but it’s an interesting problem and it’s something that I don’t know that anyone has come up with a solution to. I feel like there’s there have been several people who’ve been out there saying you know you really should go to graduate school and less. Do you expect to get a job at the end and. No one seems to be listening so I don’t know how this is. Going to affect the academy and it’s a different. I. I would never tell someone to get a Ph D. in the liberal arts and expect to get a job from it. No matter where they went is this phase going to be part of the legacy of the history of American civilization. What will be the legacy. Yeah I don’t know. I was imagining like what the PAP is. Yeah. Most of the people in my program went on to do different things I think they’re all still writing in one form or another. But it’s it’s a variety of paths. So making a career as a writer like this is becoming very much a self driven process like trying to prove the following through to find your calling. You know one of the things I was interested in with your pod cast is you. You seem to talk a lot about how do you how do you find the people who are interested in what you do. And it’s interesting it’s like there are so many different paths to do it and no one can really tell you ahead of time what’s going to work. Actually a trick because I’m secretly asking for help how to make the show because there is an issue no. So the one thing you haven’t mentioned is the my my other job my my my main job actually is being a literary agent. You know the other place I see that I read so for literary and passed on Frederick we all specialize in things near and dear to the hearts of like geeky art. That’s that’s our kind of thing. So what. So I’ve kind of seen how different people work on publicizing themselves and sort of building their record. And I would say that there are some things that really seem to work. I have an author who is a writer for cracked crisper cults and he published a book through apex last year and it’s you can still every time he publishes a column the sales go up on his book. People think oh I like his writing. I should go check out his book. And so having some kind of consistent platform does seem to help. I say I would say being somewhere consistently seems to help. Then you can be known as the guy who does this. I would say but not everybody is good at everything right. I have some of my clients are very shy and don’t enjoy doing con which is a big thing in the science fiction community how do you get people to know you you go to cons and you talk to the people there and you don’t like and buy my book Buy my book but then I think oh it’s this lovely person I met at the kind O. book they have a book right. But some people hate that and well but I think there are good ways to do it and bad ways to do it but you have to know what your personality is are you the sort of person who you you will go to the the Condit people will remember you was that friendly helpful person who you know maybe volunteered at the at the desk and and it was really nice at the end of their panel or are you the sort of person who thinks Oh God Too many people and would just be miserable doing that then you have to find some other way to get known. I know one of my class. Since pas meddles is just awesome on social media. And does she has a really really popular blog that Tumblr thing and just does essays here there and everywhere and that has been great her she’s she’s a friendly soul to I’m not implying that she doesn’t like cons but because she does. But you know so you have to kind of figure out what’s right for you you also kind of have to figure out OK why are people going to talk to me. Great and that is what do I know about that is cool and I can talk to people about this. Or are you going to be sort of a facilitator of other people’s conversations. Or so you can have to know your and your talents and what you have to offer and that kind of analysis is kind of hard and not necessarily the sort of thing you inherit we know from writing a novel. So as a nation do you have coming through the system. Yeah actually it’s. Well I’ll tell you sort of what I’m looking for more broadly and I’ll tell you what I see a lot of is kind of more difficult for me. I see what I’m always looking for is science since I do science fiction and fantasy. I’m looking for something with a an appealing view of the future something that makes me think hey I want to live there or. Or a fantasy world that makes me think hey I want to be there. This is this is kind of inspirational and I want cool characters and I want them to have interesting adventures and I want things to be different and new and fun. Which is a tall order right. Because And some of that is execution right where you can say what does. We’ve been talking about Game of Thrones one of the things that elevates that is the series is not the fact that oh man it’s it’s another medieval fantasy with dragons. It’s like which when you say ten zillion times before but the writing is so good and the flooding is an intricate and the characters are interesting and and really push the boundaries. And so. So there’s. So these are sort of the the big things I’m thinking about. What do I see a lot of I do. Why and for me the pain of why A is the book about the young woman who is boring as can be and a guy shows up and tells her she’s special powers is not a popular thing and that’s yeah. Yeah. And sometimes she’s an alien and sometimes she had a lot of young girls with psychic powers. These are for me. These are for me really tough sells because it’s not that the the young girl is faced with a whore or faced with a difficult situation and pulls and deep from herself and and resolve the situation and set up in a better place no magical people give her things. And the trope of magical people give you things is something I find totally unappealing and anyway because life just works much better. Yeah. Scape for me is one of the least. Well let’s see if I can I can parse this more clearly. It’s not that I hate novels where you get to go someplace really cool and see what it’s like there and it feels really lived in and embodied. I love Terry Pratchett’s and more pork and I would I would visit there if I could. But it’s that escapism in the sense that I imagine a world where I didn’t have to do anything to make magic happen is really an appealing idea to me which is again why I like Terry Pratchett because his emphasis was always like OK this world has problems go fix them. Yeah yeah. Oh one time I was the first and I watched her partners were frustrated that like just maybe it’s from a child not really knowing your own potential or what but like I guess my favorite moment was when they learned the actual killing curses because it was impossible unless you complete emotional focus was on that idea as you have to really kind of show them I guess what the difference between powerful one novice magicians were but so yeah I admit that Harry Potter is sort of that’s the other sort of it looks like magical things are going to be given to him but I think there’s enough pushback that it doesn’t become magic. And it’s I mean then it would be one book long and Voldemort would be dead at the end of Book one. Of course you can also always side by side you could also have just far too many technical details on the future of technology itself and how that resolves a solution as opposed to all finding their way there. You know I have to tell you something and this may this. Pod cast may likely totally change all this. I never had enough so I thought ever I and I have no idea why. I I love Saif I I if you are the next John Scalzi just send me something I would love to see it. I have a couple of authors I would say are or so I thought I but it’s it’s hard to find and I don’t know why I think most people who have advanced technical knowledge tend to write that was that are contemporary thrillers or at least that’s what they send me as opposed to like and now we’re going to go to Mars and in our leadership. OK what is a picture of him. All right OK Sure all right so we’ve reached the making use of Google Ad Sense sort of insertion and lives right to the point where it’s now planning your for temporary for you and you just opt in making no actual choice. So just living along with the computers are designing for you so that you come and enjoy yourself more. Going to far to the point where society is led along the virtuous benevolent path of the computer overlords. And we also thank you. All right do you think this is a. All right so that here’s the thing. First of all with the first computers there was sort of the panic over computers right. The sort of. So if you watch do you know an All Star Trek guy. Oh absolutely. Yeah you know I was that. That’s how I spent most of my early teenage years watching. OK So there’s a there were a lot of sort of the evil benevolent computer is going to take us over. And so I feel like it’s a. How do you do this. So it’s new right. And and I think one of the ways you do it so it is you show. I would love a positive take up miss because we’re looking for like what the future greats of the world is right. Imagine all of your teenage writing is found in a says hey I could take this career path for the opportunity for your passion at the same time you know that would be fascinating. I hope my T.V. age rating never sees the magic of standardized testing and sort of being used to limit resources to students models were used to tailor make specific needs in a single student’s educational path and help them reach a different standard that would be interesting. All my ideas are big data that’s all I got right now to say and I think that’s an interesting idea like what if the problem is with the society so you need drama out of this too. And and I’m trying to think of a way to to bring the drama without it making making it look like this is one of those fake fake utopias. OK well could kind of be like well as a stranger in a Strange Land one datapoint offset things that the guy would end up on the ship and there’s a big affair and they don’t kill each other by the time we got to Mars. I forgot that part of it. Yeah all right. And that’s my Martian psychics things. That’s why he was on I K I I can’t I totally forgot the beginning of that. That is a weird and complicated book you know you know the things I love about old science fiction is it’s true. Oh yeah I mean they have no fear of that weird hell. Sometimes Were they forced to take their work story and put it in a side by side and just so it could be changed. That’s probably true. When I got a little weird details about like what the social order of these people and some sort of prototypes were taking a radical twist on the cuffs I don’t know it’s so I think part of it is that if you make the point of the story whether this is a good thing or a bad thing it kind of stalls out the story. What if but then it becomes about is this a real utopia or a fake utopia. Is this the giver is this I just spoiled the giver I’m spoiling so many stories for people like that. So one of the things I liked about Old Man’s War is the the whole thing with the the we’re going to take these old people and put him in new people’s bodies and send them off to fight the robot space battles forever tollway. Yeah yeah yeah. Is that was the premise but it wasn’t the end. And OK what would you do if you use these old people in young people’s bodies and it’s really about the war and I think if you’re going to set something in a world where people are analyzed and told their ideal path that can’t be the end of the story it has to be like part of the the story and the goal is to axe the goal and they’re all on a generation ship and that’s why they’re in this controlled society. And but the problem is that this generation ship the planet they were headed to is no longer suitable So the society is going to have to. Do this or they are attacked by aliens and they will the society will have to respond to that problem so it’s not the it’s not the end part of the promise. It’s the it’s the start of it OK to have plot and also sort of inspiration of the capabilities of mankind as opposed to just damning judgment from some writers very very cool. So so I fire writers pictures of themselves. Of them actually you know Matthew was trying to submit but some people may also have heard something so I thought I haven’t had anything to add in that for ages. Please just show me something to me. Well that’s true and you know I figured that after Guardians of the galaxy I would be getting a ton of things set on spaceships with humans and aliens and kind of you know Farscape slash Guardians of the galaxy kind of space powered adventure stuff and I’m not. Where are those. Come on guys don’t be discouraged just because they did it so well. Your tank can be just a special all right. It’s going to go off and you think that’s the problem I don’t know maybe we’re just like maybe not maybe that’s the effect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It just makes everyone stop trying to say no marvels Congress will you know that’s a good point. I mean because one of the things he’s inspiring me to write and I think a lot of people frankly is that the stuff out there. When I was a kid I was crap. I mean just utter crap and you know I love Dr Who but seven. I haven’t I should back up. I love old Dr Who I love Tom Baker a Dr Who and what I love about it is that it’s funny and. And that actors are real. Gauging and characters are fine and they were whipped all over the universe but it always looked like it was filmed on a small sound stage somewhere in the U.K. with people who threw a purse up their back and it’s like I can make this better I can do this but I can make this better or you know Star Trek had its moments and it had a lot of bad moments too so when you see something that’s kind of broken the impulse is to fix it when it’s really polished and well done. Yeah I mean I’ve written I’ve written paranormal romance and why. Because I watched Forever Knight. No I have not. I don’t know. So you know it’s set in Toronto. It’s about a vampire policeman and I can’t I can’t call it good anyway but it’s got this weird weird funky charm to it because it doesn’t know how goofy it is. It really doesn’t and every so often there’s this flashback to Medieval France which involves all these people really a boat while wearing big rocks and things and and then there’s yeah it’s it’s kind of all areas but it’s like you watch that and think yeah I could do something like that and I couldn’t I couldn’t write something like that better. And though maybe you’re right. Marvel is messing us all up. We have to we have to have more crap. That’s what we need we need some more really crappy science fiction which really paid off the same time. Because well OK So Star Wars comes out in Star Wars a spot right it’s got the best special effects of the like the original. I’m not talking about the prequels. The one nine hundred seventy eight region. All Star Trek Star Wars comes out and changes people’s minds about what you can do with special effects hokey but amazing. So keep it amazing and at the same time. Whole bunch of people think oh my god space is big. What we have to do a space movie and and if you watch a lot of the other stuff that came out at the same time the sort of Mystery Science Theater power going down like black hole or something. Right now you know stuff that they poured buckets of money into but I can’t even remember there’s one I want to name check and I can’t remember the name of it but it was one of those things. It was more of the quality of old Battlestar Galactica Battlestar Galactica is a good example or space one nine hundred ninety nine or I mean just sat there like people who didn’t act like people and you know romance written by people who had never actually interacted with other humans but cheap sets and like that so many have a story right not to talk about wish fulfillment as a story not having an actual romance for writing love stories. But you know what I’m saying is sometimes you need a lot of bad crap to inspire people. So I was thinking though so I think J.J. Abrams is a really great director however I feel like it’s sort of homogenize of science. If he’s going to regular Star Trek and Star Wars right. Yeah well yeah. So it shouldn’t be like built in for natural animosity between the different fan bases right. Yes you know just be like pivot points of a fight that just creates more hell have a street fight at the Con You know it’s going to be you know more you know Disney style big fun universe movies that do the same. Yeah. So what should we do take back so I fight for crappy crappy literature. HOLY SHIT I THINK I think you’ve just set it up spelled it out because it’s like there is a calling like a professional responsibility to the future to write the worst fire we can for all kids around and to inspire them to say fuck that. I’m going to be the visionary to fix this garbage. Exactly. Wow All right we get it all out. Yeah I think I finally understand the subtitle Birdman. Oh I have not seen Bergman was again it was the subtitle The unexpected virtue of ignorance. Oh yeah. Birdman is I was really astonished by it in that if you look at each scene by itself it’s so over melodramatic but because the movie is so seamless and like you’re so impressed by how seamless because every scene appears as if it’s uncut right. So it’s like a stitch all the composite together to be a one flowing movie. You don’t pick up that it’s so overdone as if it was on a stage right now. Yeah you just it’s just something you kind of sit back. Meyer more than you will even try to piece apart because it’s honestly amazing. I should think that I always feel like I’m on movies particularly but OK I reckon we should recommend some crap now for people who are interested like what would be really sort of a really good bad movie. Yeah. Well I’m really good at. I mean I just I just binge through twenty six. I mean those good vocal Storch one that’s not bad but it’s meandering it’s kind of trying to fall. It’s not paid. Yeah. And so you’re sort of like I think it’s one of those things that memory contracts to a really tight bit of weirdness as opposed to the experience at the time of people saying OK come on come on I want to know who killed Laura Palmer. Yeah and yeah. And so it kind of contracts to the specific scenes that were awarded the endless interminable waiting with and the scene where they’re all talking backwards I feel I’m twenty five years. Yeah your favorite dramas about to come back in style. That’s just so what does it mean when oh yeah let’s see. Look for patently bad shows we have not to call our guest directors bad directors but they know that they’re trying to make a bee movie you know one of what’s written by Dave shared in his upcoming Halloween party one nine hundred eighty six. Oh yeah and the monsters actually played by like the guy who played Michael Meyers and they also the guy points and some room to home I remember. That sounds really fun to be with a shock and actually know he is joined he’s still doing his episodic series I was about to do a graphic novel. Oh yeah that has been top on my list of things to say. That looks really really fun. OK I can read it recommend one of my favorite bad movies. OK. I’m not proud to love in this one but I do. Universal Soldier. Oh OK Oh yeah yeah. Man. And often read. Yes there’s a lot of kicking in this movie. Dolf longer and that’s like that’s a caliber of action hero we deserve as a public good guys get like engineering master’s degrees here he shows up trying to act like some evil Russian boxer like morphed by yeah well gee do you think he’d be a fantastic interview. So as we can get reach I’m from Sweden or something I don’t know. I would totally I would watch that that you know it’s it’s actually a very long slug a movie but I love it’s got this sort of intensely felt quality that it’s like we’re going to we’re going to talk about the how awful war is by having this you know eighteen wheeler riding around the backwoods of of America with these dude strapped in it with green glow and stuff going in and it doesn’t really work as a metaphor but they’re committed and it’s kind of awesome you know. And you may fall back to the same problem because apparently Mad Max was also too good likes. Oh and it’s a caution to say things like the mindless crazy action movie right because our chase thing sucking your blood and this is how everyone on my Facebook feed is universally positive on Mad Max which is kind of fascinating. Like people from all walks of life seem to love Mad Max. What I want to expose I love is that if you write the most like ignorant opinion of something possible twenty people will write you rebuttals and it’s like collectively we all get upset we see something that’s stupid but it’s life. We just spread the stupid right. When we keep having that guy out so like one guy asked is this secretly feminist propaganda Mad Max and. No one has like a thousand words and why it’s not when it’s like should we be entertaining something that we’re wrong. You know in a conversation I hear Well I don’t know I have not actually seen it so I cannot talk to bad neck. Also we’re not actually being we don’t know yet so it’s not bad at sea that you know all I can say is everyone seems to love this one. And yeah I I try really hard not to get him in internet arguments too. But it’s like it was actually my new year’s resolution either this year last year not to get in arguments on the Internet. Wow And you do write a pretty good plan. Just comments on everything. Web site you go to. I will read other people’s comments but I just I realized that I was spending so much energy getting angry about stuff that it was time to stop. It was just becoming an issue and I was like you know I’m just not going to do this anymore I’m just going to I people don’t really need to hear my opinion. And there are things I have opinions about and actually I did. It turns out I do have things that I still have to argue about on the internet and somebody I got in a fight with somebody about the civil war. Yeah so it’s unavoidable that no one probably has close just from the process from the complete academic professional interest right. So yeah but. But anyway I try not to anymore. I did remember some more insane movies I heard of one to No one. Did successfully funding to extort or was titled the call girl of. Oh yeah that’s a title there. OK there’s somebody who just followed me on Twitter where I have to look up this one. It’s called wolf cop and it’s it’s about a cop in small print but says it all sets. And so you just know what’s going to happen right time because you know the next day or that one is hilarious. Yeah I think pretty much everyone is a great idea. So OK And you just disappeared. Oh I’m sorry. I may be getting a call up my other line. I’m sure it’s a it’s the University of Texas at Austin asking for me to donate to their amiable sub. Oh yes. So we can we can let that one go. You know I have friends whose policy is they’re still collecting my student loans are going to hold off the actual donation. Yeah. But yeah you had a you said you had other questions. I had a close friend who when I was telling him some real work he was he wanted to know what is the most attractive feature of a zombie to enter into a romance. I think part of that is I just wanted to see if I could do it you know. I I always I can’t watch The Walking Dead right because I feel sorry for the zombie is I think you know really. Yes I know that’s nuts. But because my first zombie exposure was actually return of the Living Dead which is and I can’t remember if it’s one or two but it’s the one with. Her and and I you know Tina I love you I want to your brain. It’s an awesome movie have you seen this. So that’s that’s out of my history repertoire I need to see this movie. I know there’s another student like tried really hard to be serious in the last one was like steroid. This is basically a comedy to it like John King or something and let’s go. Exactly covered or he’s awesome. But I loved the whole. I so you know my first introduction to zombies is actually there. There are people with an issue that they’re going to have to figure out a work around to. And so that’s where it kind of came from. And like I said at the time I was writing it there was an awful lot of paranormal romance out here and a vampire once and I was thinking you know actually sucking on somebodies neck and second album Blood Out is a little gross. What happens if we push this a little further. He was it was super fun to write and it was fun you know really going for the gross out factor. Occasionally is it’s going to be I felt like this book got better at the more I pushed it and the more it was just. It wasn’t bloodless the more it was just this is kind of gross but that’s OK because frankly being a person is sometimes kind of gross. Oh yeah I mean and everyone has issues. You know something you have to work around with your partner you know most of all if there’s a call and we all have to make the sacrifices if we want a strong bond you know. Oh absolutely. Yeah I totally agree with that. You know just because you know people who people aren’t necessarily bad people you know it’s you know. Some want to turn this into a criticism of like Trans culture by saying we have to accept zombies. Well I’m actually OK with trans cold I know I am OK. I it’s one of those things I guess I was pulling one of those Mad Max feminist arguments I think there are a lot of people a lot happier when I was one of those crazy mad max is famous arguments. What Federalists if you have to cater Zombie Boy On the contrary what I see I see people saying Mad Max is feminist OK because because the women do stuff and till and until you start noticing it you know you don’t realize how many movies there are where there are there are apparently women walking around on stage but on the screen but they don’t actually do anything except sometimes they die. And and it’s just and I think they’re saying it’s business because here’s here’s a woman who’s got a car and a guy and then she’s going out and doing stuff and she’s not doing it because it’s cute post-apocalyptic wasteland we have to survive and I have my own values and I’m really glad that yeah. So OK so if women are actually people in your feminist as a writer. Exactly and there I think that I think it’s critical I mean I think it’s boring having having books where you know half the people are Meat Puppets and I mean relationships where half the people in the province. Exactly. At some point. Let me against the meat puppets who are a fine fine band going to call yourself that has been you’re doing the job was not to ban. Yeah and if and if that’s your calling in your life you know well maybe there’s always opportunity. Let’s Charlie’s there and show you the way you know maybe. Like even though even with Fast and Furious there’s at least one of the women drivers right. I guess you’d be hard to call that I have not seen the Fast and The Furious. I love when cars drive off things and blow up in movies I think that’s just a fantastic thing for them to be doing. But you know one member how I don’t know I don’t know how much younger you are than I am but do you remember when the second Terminator movie came out and how exciting it was that Sarah Connor was doing stuff. Oh yeah that was that was that if that. And and that’s what all these people are saying more that we’re not just not just chicks with guns but people who do stuff. Yeah that’s kind of a weird criticism on culture. Yes just to describe characters that actually do things suddenly you support women’s rights. Like it seems to be like a non-statement. It just seems to be an instant story is that a low bar probably is a low bar but it’s surprising. OK I will tell you an age of the story. It is surprising how many books there are that people write that only have one character and everything else. Every other character is not real is like a sad meat puppet who either helps the hero in subway or box the hero in some way but has no inner life of their own so that it’s surprising how prevalent this stuff is and most of it doesn’t get published but it’s out there. One it’s true people start becoming good writers do you think you can tell no you know that’s a good question. My clients are a pretty wide range in age. Then I think my youngest It just turned twenty five. My oldest is I think somewhere in her fifty’s. The person who is in her fifty’s has a long track record of writing short stories and switched to novels so I think I do think it takes time. I think they are and I find it very hard to tell a writer’s age from his or her writing. I think a person who’s genuinely curious about people from all different levels of experience is going to be a good or waiter no matter what age if they’re interested in more than people just like them they’re going to be a good writer. If other perspective outside of themselves basically. Right right. So there must be one character in the book surrounded by thirty meat bags. Yeah. Now though the good a robot criticizing everyone’s writing calling everyone you know meat bags because only criticizing him because he doesn’t like human stories when in fact you actually like best or you know and I think that would actually be a great internet persona. You know how like there are there are there are joke. Oh gosh there are there are there are sort of one joke Twitter characters who basically like guy in your M.F.A. trope era when the worst muse I love the worst news but you could do robot literary critic and you know I was like the stupid story had all these humans and none of them ended up dead by the end or something not dirty me bags provided nothing to the plot there were no fantastic explosions were all of mankind is destroyed. Zero stars. We were we were going to something like that with Fidel Castro for the show. So he would find people being villainous from common society and either praising praising them for how Shust how evil they were or recommending ways like twists into a better civil war turning people you know. So ideas are going to build staff to be able to pull it off. Yeah well you know it’s it’s an interesting world the word world of podcasting. So how does a pod casters find an audience what’s the what’s the secret here. Can you give me the secret sauce because I feel like I don’t get it with I do you know the ideal world it’s kind of a different world then the bloody world. Yeah well we were a little fortunate in that apparently. So we listen to a lot just like you a feel for it. And apparently there’s a hundred million pockets out there and ninety nine million of them don’t really know what they want to do. Or at least on idle conversation. So we’re kind of charting our own path as we go because I can’t really give you any hard information. I’ll tell the whole world. Here we are watching forever because our personalities are fun. He was fun. Well thank you so much. You were fun too. Well thank you. Yeah I’m now going to spam you have a random idea of how you can just say Max Only the good ones please. You can do you know if you know you can I. Oh God I probably shouldn’t say this because going to be a really horrible idea about the heck I am a little. I have actually caught up to my submissions more than I have and a very long time. Probably be a very good time for people to submit to me. I I had a major project I expected to be completing right now and it’s been delayed. So I have unexpected blank. Space So breaking news of the Internet we are of salable for submissions that read so. Oh we’re always available for submissions but now would probably be an especially good time to e-mail me. That is actually great news. And yeah you know I’m going to wake up and there’s going to be four thousand and like that I’m going to go. Why did I have to be such a foolish me back of bags. Oh my gosh that would be. I just see it with one of those mommy actually voices and praying for the prodigal evolution of technology for my decision making. Oh yeah that would be awesome. There’s a local guy out here in Minnesota named Christopher meme who’s done a series of movies that are super fun. He basically films at his house with his friends over the course of a year. And then Hill release him out on D.V.D.’s and they’re awesome by favorite is probably this one about a bat creature that lives in a cave. And it’s they are super super fun anyway. We’re I I think foolishly bags if you’re into that kind of think you should talk about X. How do you think you could think better than this. Exactly. Yes just hits right there at the pleasure center. Perfect. Oh boy. I did have one thought it has been a fantasy of mine to just round up all my friends and try to create some like weirdo camping trip. Lord Byron style where everyone tries create a better monster and the other one. Oh that would be fun. Yeah so that would be off. But that’s all and maybe that’ll be like a convention of them or something. The sleepaway build a better monster. Oh and then you could have a competition at the end. Yeah I love it. You should take that form or in a franchise expand Yeah. Everything everything under the sun or going to make a great idea from. OK this is when a lot of fun talking to you to the next man. It’s always it always works best to have some nice sort of like encouraging question wraps it up and makes people feel good you know. So for new writers to feel like they’re really shitty should they go for it. Right you know it’s right. I mean why not right. And and here’s the thing I should I should also say try to do something new and if you saw something and and like hey let’s try and what we were saying before. One good place to start is with something you almost like can you figure out a way to fix it and that one nagging problem from the past is like that was all games right. OK well take that authors and audiences of the future and submit all of your material to do you have intelligence for submissions or should we just force them to look for it that we know if it’s Jenny with an ID at red sofa literary dot com awesome. Jenny I had read some of the literary taka. All right well thank you so much Jenny. All right. I’ll let everybody know about it. Cool call and I’ll try to stay buddies on Twitter or something with like the robot reviews or whatever. Are fantastic here wait let me follow you right now. All right I can do that. Let me do that and you might see. We have a lot more followers than I do. You might see a few. I got a little too excited in the hashtag games where not when Chris Hardwick had done the hashtag call problems and was like oh boy I know way too much about every religion in the world I can be really mean. Well let’s see. There you are. All right how did you get. Wow you have sixty four thousand followers that’s awesome dude. So well that’s not right or thousands of success. Oh sorry sixty four thousand would be awesome. Actually our producer our producer to me she has seventy five thousand followers. Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. Well that’s fantastic. Yeah yeah. Well hey hey I look forward to seeing this segment. Thanks so much for contacting me really appreciate it. Oh yeah we’ve been with our mission from the stars really going to cast a wide net and our favorite thing is kind of in the know people. So thank you so much for playing playing playing with me today are right. Thank you later. OK thank you so much for listening to come Castro. If you enjoyed this please subscribe rate and review on i Tunes or stitcher or wherever else you heard this from hello to all of them. It really means the world to us. Also visit comcast dot com and register for our newsletter to stay on top of all our exciting guests and developments. It’s happening Internet and it’s all thanks to you. Viva con Castro and Viva to you all.
The post 11: How to Avoid the Worst Writing Tropes with Author and Literary Agent Jennie Goloboy appeared first on The Comcastro Podcast! It's a Daily Geek Culture Talk Show!.