Marco Ciappelli delves into the intricate world of storytelling with accomplished novelist Gary Braver, exploring the inspirations and nuances behind the art of writing.
Guests: Gary Braver,
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/GaryBraver/
Website | https://garybraver.com/
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Hosts:
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Hey there, listeners! It's Marco Ciappelli, and welcome to another enlightening episode of Audio Signals. As a storyteller, I've always been drawn to the reasons behind the tales. Why do authors choose specific genres? How do personal experiences mold the narrative fabric? Today, we're diving deep into the mind of a seasoned novelist, one who has effortlessly blended the realms of mystery, thriller, and more.
Joining me is the accomplished Gary Braver, a former professor at Northeastern University, now a full-time writer with ten novels under his belt. His most recent work, "Rumor of Evil," has piqued my interest, and I'm eager to explore its origins. From the get-go, it's evident that Gary's stories aren't just figments of imagination; they're culminations of experiences, observations, and an innate understanding of human nature.
Our chat will center around three primary themes:
But there's more than just the art of writing we'll discuss. Gary's journey from scuba diving expeditions to archaeological novels, from medical thrillers to detective series, is nothing short of fascinating. As he rightly points out, stories are born from inspiration, and every writer has their unique triggers. For Gary, it could be a disturbing news article or the historical myths surrounding the Romany people.
So, if you're curious about how a writer's mind works, how real-life events can shape fictional tales, or simply want to know more about the captivating "Rumor of Evil," this episode promises to be a treat.
Tune in, and let's embark on this literary adventure together!
About the Book
A 16-year-old exchange student accused of witchcraft—dark circumstances and sick rumors lead to her brutal death, a cover-up, and more murders two decades later.
Detectives Kirk Lucian and Mandy Wing are charged with investigating a reported suicide of a Cambridge woman in her backyard. The death came as a shock—the woman was considered a pillar of her community and was well-liked by everyone. After further investigation, the hanging appears staged. Once Kirk and Mandy’s suspicions are confirmed, they make a list of suspects.
Clues begin to connect the recent murder to the decades-old mysterious death of a beautiful 16-year-old Romany exchange student who perished when a treehouse she was sleeping in caught fire. The girl, Vadima Lupescu, had done “odd” things among her American peers that stirred up prejudices and suspicions, leading to her brutal death—and cover-up.
As Kirk and Mandy investigate the bizarre rumors—that Vadima had “gypsy powers” and put curses on those around her—they discover a cauldron of dark secrets. Will they uncover the true cause of this tangled web of deaths and horrors before it spirals out of control?
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Resources
Rumor of Evil: A Novel: https://www.amazon.com/Rumor-Evil-Novel-Gary-Braver/dp/1608095932
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Hello, everybody. This is Marco Ciappelli on Audio Signals Podcast. As you know, I recently repositioned the antennas to capture some different stories. And, um, it's not that they're different. I think they are a little bit more in depth because I like now to talk about the stories. And about the storytelling, uh, uh, art in general and, uh, and the storytellers themselves.
Because there is a reason why they write certain things instead of others, there are different kind of authors. And also it's not just about books, it's about writing songs, any kind of art. I mean, we're made of stories. I always like to say that from an anthropological and sociological perspective. And, and today couldn't be any more fitting.
It's very fitting to have, uh, this guest that I'm going to introduce shortly, uh, because he not only writes, he wrote a lot of book, um, almost a movie, but he will tell us about that. And, uh, and he, he teaches how to write. So, I mean, I I can't be happier about the conversation that we're about to have.
So, for those. Watch in the video. You can see Gary Braver is here with me. And for those listening, just one second and you're gonna hear his voice. So Gary, welcome to the show.
[00:01:22] Gary Braver: Thank you, Marco. Nice being with you.
[00:01:24] Marco Ciappelli: It's a pleasure to have you. So let's start from the beginning. Let's start with you. And then we'll go into, into the stories.
So who is Gary for the people that haven't read your book, which I know there, there are many, uh, so hopefully somebody in the audience will be familiar with who you are for those that aren't, who is Gary?
[00:01:47] Gary Braver: Well, Gary is a professor, uh, actually a former professor at Northeastern University. I retired last year to write full time.
Uh, I have written 10 novels. This is the 10th novel, uh, Rumor of Evil. And, um, most of the earlier books were stand alone medical thrillers. Even though I don't have... I have a background in medicine, I have a background in physics, uh, and I know how to, I knew and know how to ask questions to get me from point A to point B and make me sound like I know what I'm talking about.
So, um, I have for 40 years been teaching Frankenstein, uh, in a science fiction course, which is one of the... First, uh, taught in a college level and, um, it is essentially the theme of so much science fiction, watch out what you wish for. So I had written a novel, um, uh, called Rough Beast, which, um, was really focused on a town nearby where I lived that had, um, Carcinogens in the water and it affected people.
It ticked up the cancer rate in the area. So it gave me the idea to write a book. My wife and I had had children and didn't want to have anything poisoning our our kids bodies. So I wrote a book called Rough Beast about something bad getting in the water and a cover up that goes right to the White House.
And that did quite well. So the publisher said give us more of the same. And I said, more of the same what? They said, high concept scientific breakthrough novels that focus on the family, have strong female characters. And that, a sidebar to that, Marco, is that about 70 to 80 percent of all the books, fictional novels, fictional books in America are purchased by women.
So women like to read about strong women. So that gave birth to a lot of other books and, um, and this one is the first. of a detective series. Rumor of Evil is the first of a detective series that I just started. The second one is done and the first one just came out last week, Rumor of Evil. So now I'm writing detective series.
[00:03:58] Marco Ciappelli: Wow. That's, that's amazing. And I already have a few, a couple of questions and I'm going to start with this going back to how you started. Sure. And, and I was reading your, your bio and yes, the teaching part, but you also went through some Scuba diving and research in the ocean.
And that's kind of like how it got you started. And so you wrote archaeological novel and then medical inspired novel. And then, thriller, you teach horror. So where I'm going with this is when somebody is a writer, people. May think, you know, you can write anything. I'm just gonna go there and say, write more of these or this is the new fashion, the trend in the book nowadays.
So why don't you just go ahead and write that? But you gotta write what you're writing. Comfortable with the one you're inspired by. Right, right. So let, let, let's start with that. Like how did you feel inspired to start with that? Was it connected of course, with your life? Okay. I guess what you were doing right.
[00:05:02] Gary Braver: Uh, I had known from college that I wanted to write fiction and, um, the only way to write fiction was to teach college. So I got advanced degrees in English and uh, I started. Teaching at Northeastern, and I was, you know, enamored of many books, many short stories, and I was chomping at the bit to write my own.
But I did not have a story. So, um, in the, uh, late 70s, I went, I signed up for a scuba diving expedition, a scientific expedition, to Mallorca, Spain. And we were there for three days, because of reports of 2nd century BC Roman wrecks, and maybe Phoenician wrecks. And we were about a mile offshore and a, an ancient shipwreck, there's no wood left of course, but there are ballast stones which rolled around the belly of the ship to keep it stable.
And we were fanning away amphoras. large pottery that held seeds and beans and and olive oil and wine. And we were clearing away the sand and pulling up these artifacts and our boat was 30 feet above us with a red and white diver flag and a speedboat cut across our our bubbles. Once, it's an accident.
Twice, you're not paying attention. Three, four, five, ten times, we're in danger. And the boat came at us. He was dragging anchor hooks like this at 20 miles an hour, trying to hook us and pull us out the seat of the drone. Uh, I said, if I get out of this alive, I'm going to write a book about him. And what we found out was that a local godfather on Mallorca was diving on ancient wrecks and selling the booty.
To collectors and museums all over the world. And that gave me the idea. I just moved the whole story to Santorini, uh, and the, um, a Gian island, uh, where I spent some summers, and that became the first novel called Atlantis Legend that Connect connected to Plato's Atlantis Legend. Um, and that did well, and the other books followed after that.
But then they became kind of medical thrillers, as I mentioned.
[00:07:15] Marco Ciappelli: Right, right. But there's always an inspiration for that, right? I mean, you said that the story about the monster was connected to something that happened there. So, you see that. And how do you transmit this? To, to your student. You teach us about how to write horror or how to write mystery.
But if you don't have it, uh, do you just wake up one day and say, all right, I'm gonna write in horror. I, I, I don't think I could .
[00:07:46] Gary Braver: Well, it depends on your experience too. I mean, it's Right. Um, uh, how I translated that to my students, I mean, I taught fiction writer for a long time. I can, I can take a mediocre writer and make them a good writer by, you know, schooling them and having them practice giving them feedback.
I cannot take a good writer and make them a great writer. Uh, and I always tell my students, you come up with your own ideas, whatever the genre, mystery, thriller, horror, um, mainstream, I can help you as you write it. As a... I, well, as a adolescent, I saw lots of science fiction, horror and, um, cop movies. So that was kind of ingrained in me.
And, um, I taught courses in detective fiction also. So I was enamored of the genre. But the medical thriller part really came out of teaching science fiction. Watch out what you wish for a message. That last novel I wrote, I co wrote with Tess Gerritsen, a best selling author, and it did very, very well. And so it was suggested to me, write my own detective series.
And so that's where Rumor of Evil came from. Um, And it was just, you know, the next one is done, and you keep the same characters. So it makes it a little bit easier because the main characters you continue with. Um, but it's just... That's what I like to read. That's what I like to watch when I was younger, and that's what I like to write, either thriller or mystery, you know,
[00:09:25] Marco Ciappelli: that's really cool.
Now, I do have a question. Now you have an experience I mentioned at the beginning where you were kind of given the option for a movie. So that's kind of like every writer. I mean, if you, if you make that, you, you get an entire different, uh, an entire different industry that may even be, more money speaking, more valuable than, than writing, although writing is a wonderful career.
How does that work and how does the change? You're, uh, the way you write, meaning some people may envision already a movie out of it, and those so they use certain visual that may be adopted. But do you feel like you kind of change the nature of your writing if you have that in mind versus this is a book?
It's a story written. If it works for a movie, good. We'll change it a little bit.
[00:10:24] Gary Braver: Just as you said, Mark, I mean, I, I, from having watched so many movies, I have a cinematic imagination. I see it playing on the inside of my skull and I usually take dictation and I write the scenes. I don't think about, well, I, I, I fantasize about having a movie and when Ridley Scott optioned Elixir 20 years ago and then re optioned it, I thought we were in writer heaven.
This is going to become a movie and all the wonderful things that could happen since then. He passed on it after two, two options to make Hannibal. The follow up to, um, Silence of the Lambs, which did not do very well. And Jodie Foster bowed out of that, uh, in the role she had had in the first movie. So I don't think about that anymore.
I mean, we came close. I can almost smell the popcorn at theaters, but we didn't get a movie out of it. Um, we got enough money to send my two kids to the first years of college. So that, that worked out good. Yeah. But, um, The, in terms of cinematic, it is mostly. In my writing, it's very descriptive, very cinematic, and on a deep structure, it has the kind of architecture and narrative thrust of many good thriller and mystery movies, so in a sense, that's my connection.
I don't have great hope that my books will be made into movies, it'd be wonderful, but there is so much out there, so many projects that go before the producers that, you know, it's hard to compete. Yeah.
[00:11:53] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's not think about that now. Let's, let's talk about the book that you just, uh, it just came out.
I understand a few days ago, uh, Rumor of Evil. So let's talk about that origin. What's the origin story of Rumor of Evil? How'd that come out?
[00:12:09] Gary Braver: Sure. Um, As do many writers who write crime novels. I have a file of real life crimes that are disturbing or unusual or just plain bizarre.
And one of them that stuck in my mind, uh, came out of 2014, um, out of Waukesha, Wisconsin. You might have heard of it. Two 12 year old girls lured a 12 year old girlfriend into the woods where they stabbed her 19 times. Luckily, she survived, but the two assailants... are still in psychiatric institutions. I became fascinated, how could children do this to another child?
Such brutality. And, that got me doing some research, and it connected me with studies of bullies. Bullies and the bullied. And, I was looking for a backstory to this novel. And, um, because the, the, the, the opening scene, you have a woman hanging in her backyard, and the cops think, This looks staged to me. So we have a potential murder investigation going on, but I want to connect it to a cold case from nearly 20 years ago.
So the story of Slenderman gave me a profile of bullies who are kind of those alpha kids who want to appear smart, strong, and powerful to their friends. Uh, and they pick on someone who is kind of an outsider, someone who looks, appears soft or looks different. She's, um, um, too heavy, too thin, walks with a limp, um, and maybe from a different socioeconomic stratum, or they speak with an accent or from a, a different ethnic or religious background.
That is the outsider. And so I designed for me, an outsider, a 16 year old. She's an exchange student from Eastern Europe of, she is of Romani or Roma extraction, you know, from the dark skinned Northern Indian migration that came down four or five centuries ago and spread out through Europe. Um, and she comes to affluent Lexington, Massachusetts, which is right next door to where I live in here in Arlington, Massachusetts.
And she's going to stay there for four months. Uh, and, uh, she, she doesn't have cool clothes. She does not, she has strange kind of braids in the side of her head, but the kids have fun Americanizing her, introducing her to hot dogs and backyard barbecues and Mexican food. They take her to a rock, rock concert.
And because she is of Roma extraction. They think like gypsies and one at a pizza party, she begins to read palms and then things turn very weird and a few days later, friends and family of friends experience bad things and the rumor as in rumor of evil in the title begin to spread. Isn't she a gypsy?
And didn't the gypsies carry bubonic plague a long time ago? And don't they pray to Satan and drink the blood of Christian babies? And aren't they witches in disguise? So what I had done was tapped into all the derogatory myths about Romany people. And she became the victim in this novel. And she is mysteriously, she mysteriously dies.
In a fire, in a treehouse, in the backyard of that Lexington home, and that connects to the current story that, you know, the woman was, her suicide was staged, um, as, as a cover up to that, uh, strange event 20 years ago, you know, but it was, came from the Slenderman case in 2014, you know, out of Wisconsin. So that's where it came from, yeah.
[00:16:18] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, that's that's interesting. You never know really where an idea can come from, you know, one is watching something, one is leaving something like in the case of your first book, you went through something there, you were doing that. Um, When you get something that historically happened, what's your tendency to stick to reality as much as you can or twist it as much as you can in the, in the fantasy world of creating your own world, like that balance, right?
But you can go into create the Tolkien, you know, middle earth, or you can just stick with the urbanistic, uh, the reality or urban reality or what you write. What's your balance there?
[00:17:01] Gary Braver: Um, don't let truth get in the way of good fiction. I love, I love that. Uh, exactly what you said, Mark. I let, I, I let it go through my squeeze box in my head and my imagination.
And I took it from there. Because 12 year old kids, there's no motive that is clear. It's irrational what they did. And, um, the adolescents in this novel, as in conspiracy theories, send out rumors. To put down this outsider kid. So I just imagined what it'd be like and I have two sons and they passed through the adolescence and I got to know their friends and how they talked.
And having taught college for 45 years, I had freshmen who are just two years older than the The victim in my novel and the other adolescents in the novel. So I got to know how they talk and how they think. And I just, you know, used my imagination to create the scenarios of that story. Of that poor young woman who was consumed by flames in a tree house.
[00:18:08] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, because that's sometimes is the is the risk when when you're not telling a story that is where you are or a projection of you as a male professor writer who you are and you get into the mind and you create another character that there is, you know, a different gender or a different age is that's I feel like it's a really challenging part, especially nowadays when people are Oh, Maybe not so forgiving about certain things and be how do you know?
How do I think it's a challenge?
[00:18:44] Gary Braver: It is a challenge. I, I often draw from people I know, particularly my wife, uh, for the major female Um, and, uh, you're right, I mean, things have changed in the last novel and in this novel, uh, we had the publisher hired, um, sensitivity editors going through the book and making sure there are no insults.
To women, to minorities, to, we had, I had one scene where I described a, a, a student in a class as being chubby, and they said, take out chubby, use a different word, because the chubby people out there might be insulted. You have to, and this is, this is only the last 20 years, you have to know your audience quite well, you have to know your readership, and what might be acceptable, what might not be acceptable, so, so there's, one has to tweak one's own, wording sometimes in a book.
Um, I think that, you know, changes I've seen. Yeah.
[00:19:48] Marco Ciappelli: I mean, it's, it's, it's a humble process too. I feel like you, you get to put your, as I say, walk in some other shoes instead of depicting a character the way that is in your head. And I, I talk a lot about, Artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence, and the biases that come with, you know, the, the training of the algorithm.
And I always like to say, it's human. That's why it's, uh, it has faults. It's, it's, it carries all the biases that we carry from our culture, our history. And many times we, We don't know we have those, and there is no evil, just to connect with the title. You know, you don't wake up in the morning and you say, yeah, that's what I want to, that's what I want to do.
It's the culture and we are revising many things. Even when you look at Disney cartoons, now they need to add certain things. And I think it's completely fair and it's a way to look inside ourself and who we are and, and be better. As much as, uh, as we can, um, during your, uh, you're retired now from teaching, but is teaching shaped somehow the way that you write?
[00:21:02] Gary Braver: Yes. I learned how to read when I became a college professor of English. That means I learned how to look at another writer's work the way a carpenter looks at a house. When you're teaching a book, you really have to have it wired because you're the one up in front of the room and you're sending stuff out to these students and hoping they connect to the book.
So I learned how to read by looking. By not reading other people's books, but studying how they get in and out of scenes, how in a strip of six inches of, of, of dialogue, they're able to distinguish characters by the vocabulary, by the way they look, by how they pronounce their words or, or express themselves.
I learned how you can, in an In an action novel, you alternate how writers alternate an action scene with reflection scene, an action scene, you know, fast and slow, as in movies that there's a very A robust kind of dramatic scene is next time, next scene they have is the cops or somebody talking about what happened.
So it's like you, you have this kind of up and down, um, architecture in books. Um, how they, how authors in the scene with a cliffhanger. Um, and this is what I tried to, this is what I learned in teaching other people's books. And that's what I, uh, try to pass on to my students.
Look at the house the way a carpenter looks at it. See the angles, the agreement, the themes, the um, and the economy. Um, and so that's what I learned while teaching, uh, teaching college English. How other writers did it. And in many ways, uh, I tried to emulate
[00:22:44] Marco Ciappelli: So now I'm going to think if it was Picasso or Dali or one of those guys, probably Picasso that said, in order to break the rules, you need to know the rules. So you, you become yourself and you, and that applies to playing music. To do a lot of different kind of art. So connecting with what you said, um, how does somebody develop and you developed your own, your own style, but still trying to do it the right way.
I was following the rule of writing that, you know, they worked. I mean, they work for many, many writer before. So you, you want to do that. But you want to keep your own speed. How do you do that?
[00:23:34] Gary Braver: Well, I know my own voice. I know what I think works as a sentence or what works as a paragraph or what works as a scene.
Um, the other stuff that I pick up from other people's writing is now instinctive. I mean, I know If a scene or a chapter is working, I know if there is too much exposition or too many technical details that might turn, uh, turn the readers blind or turn their blood into ink if you get too much, you know, technical stuff.
Um, and I know, um, and research is very seductive. I mean, you learn a lot of cool things from the experts, and you want to put it in the book, but that's gonna gum up the narrative thrust, the flow, and it's gonna turn off readers and bore them. So, you, you work up these instincts after. I mean, this is the tenth novel, and two more are done, so I, I know after a while that...
How I do it with my own voice and that complies with the best of the genre that I've learned from other folks.
[00:24:35] Marco Ciappelli: Right. So there is that, uh, uh, peers, comparison, inspiration, and making your own stories. But then there is the, the reader, the audience. So I'm assuming that after... 10 book. I mean, when you write the first book, you may say, well, I don't really know who my reader is going to be, or maybe you do have somebody in mind, like coming from advertising, you always think like, who's the target, right?
So, but a true artist, most of the time, as we were talking about before, try to express itself, but do you, as you see the movie in your head, I feel like you also see the person reading the book. So I don't know, maybe it's my imagination, but so now after 10 book did you develop an audience that of readers and fans that maybe wasn't even, did you had idea that it was going to be that one?
And do you know who reads your book now and how does it affect your writing?
[00:25:33] Gary Braver: I, I think I, I do write for myself in many ways too, uh, I have high standards and I, I think I'm appealing to an intelligent reader who has high standards for the genres that I'm writing in, um, and doesn't want just a plot driven novel, but they want a A plot driven novel that has, you know, well fleshed out characters.
Um, because I know friends of mine, including my wife, and people who are in book clubs, they like, they like character. Um, and in fact, um, I think more people who read mysteries... I'm more interested in the character of the detective than the actual detection itself. You're not going to have a dope as a detective because you're not going to have a very interesting book, but you want to have a character of the detective, your protagonist of a novel, that you have sympathy with, empathy with, and someone you'd like to spend Have a beer with her, a coffee, or spend a few hours with.
And so the, uh, the, the, the challenge is to come up with interesting protagonists in one's novel. And that's what I did. And part of that, Marco, is to give the main character, your protagonist in a novel, in the detectives in this novel here, personal baggage. That is, a detective has two quests. The outer public quest is Try to find the person who left that body in the opening scene.
The personal quest, the inner quest, is I have got problems. Give them baggage such as they're addicted to drugs or they're alcoholic or they feel guilty that they're estranged from their lover, their children, their best friend or they feel guilty that their partner in the last murder scene was killed and you got away.
So you give them some personal baggage. That creates an empathy with the reader. They kind of feel for the guide and hopefully that the, by the end of the book, he or she is at a higher place than at the end and got the bad guide too. So, and, and that creates an intimacy with the reader if they feel empathy for them as well as an interest.
And so the, the character is the most important thing in my novels, even though I try to keep up the momentum of a, of a page tour.
[00:28:06] Marco Ciappelli: It's interesting. I think, I think people that are listening right now, they may get a lot of good, uh, good tips from, from this. Um, as we get towards the end, I'm curious, about one more thing.
Cause, you wrote the book before and you mentioned it with, with another, uh, writer. Yes. Yes. And, So that experience, um, I know I was reading that, it's been done like through emails and going and developing. One took one side, one another side. How that works? Because, it's hard to find a book that it's written by multiple hands and brain and make a cohesive story, right?
[00:28:49] Gary Braver: Right, right. I have known Tess Gerritsen, who is an international bestselling author. I think she has 29 books out. Uh, for about 25 to 30 years, and I taught a course in modern bestsellers, and she was a guest several times, and she plugged one or two of my books. So, because she is a physician who has written medical thrillers, and because I wrote medical thrillers, we kind of were in the same genre, and we each respect each other's writing.
We were at a Christmas party four or five years ago, and she said, You want to write a book together? I said, give me a nano second to think about this. I mean, I mean, she's, she's brand name. So, um, I proposed a, uh, a storyline, which she liked. It was at the height of the Me Too movement and, and famous American people were being, um, disgraced.
Uh, Harvey Weinstein and, um, Matt Lauer from the Today Show, et cetera. And We both agree that there are two sides to every illicit affair. So I suggested a college professor has an affair with one of his students. It's a, it's, it's an old story, but we can put new wine in the old bottle. And, and over the course of 18 months, we wrote this via emails and a few telephone calls.
Uh, and we, we have similar styles and we have similar, uh, strategies and we, we meshed very well, but it's very interesting. Two thirds throughout the two thirds of the book was done and we had no idea who the villain was. We had, imagine that. We had five suspects and we had to pick out one. Who would be the least suspicious to the readers.
And then we finally decide and you go right back to chapter one and you adjust everything. Yeah, like dropping a pebble in a pond, all the ripples go out. Adjusting everything so that the actual villain made sense to the readers. When we finally rewrote the book to the end. But it was interesting and I learned how women think.
And she learned how men thought because I did the male point of view chapter. She did the female point of view chapters. And it did well, did very well. And it got great reviews. And what we loved is the reviewers in a Wall Street Journal said this was seamless. We could not tell who Gary Braver's chapters were or Tess Gerritsen's chapters.
So that that worked out well. Yeah, that's something we got used to each other's style.
[00:31:22] Marco Ciappelli: You just answer an add on question that I was going to have. Did it come out like the great dish because of all the good ingredients or can you still taste the separate ingredient and you just said it came out very good and I love how you kind of let the story develop itself and then.
And then you went back and decide, okay, we don't even know who, who the, the, the, the character is.
[00:31:53] Gary Braver: Part of the, part of the reason, Marco, is that neither of us outlines anymore. When I first started, I had, you know, I had almost a hundred pages of outline and now I just, we just sit down, it was a dark and stormy night and go from there and see where we
developed.
I
[00:32:08] Marco Ciappelli: love it. Yeah.
I love it. I love it. Well, this was a lovely conversation. I have many more questions, but I don't want to take any more of your time. And maybe you'll come back when you have your next book or you want to just talk about storytelling in general. This is what we talk about here on Audio Signals.
Um, as far as the new book, uh, why don't you finish with, uh, ChatGpt. Couple of minutes or a minute of pitch for the book. I know it's a rumor of evil. It already come out on October 10. It's on Amazon and all of that, but I'll let you close. How about that?
[00:32:44] Gary Braver: And it's, I'm very proud of the book. Uh, it just got selected as the Amazon editor's top picks of the month of October.
Um, it's gotten rave reviews so far and book lists and publishes weekly and the others. So it's, it's getting great response. Um, it's a fun book. It is, uh, uh, character and plot driven. Um, and, uh, if readers pick it up, I, Think they might enjoy it. So, um, uh, we'll keep our fingers crossed and I look forward to coming back with you again, Marco.
This was fun.
[00:33:17] Marco Ciappelli: I, I will love that. And I am actually looking forward to get into the book myself. I'm more of a listener lately because I can, I can listen more while I do other things. So maybe the audible and, um, Yeah, this was great. I'm gonna
[00:33:34] Gary Braver: in case people interested, you can find me in Garybraver. com.
[00:33:39] Marco Ciappelli: Yep. I was gonna finish with that. There will be notes on the podcast as usual. The audience know that links to your social media if you want to share it and your website and of course to the book itself. And, uh, As far as the people that listen to me, I'm not writing right now, but, uh, you can subscribe, stay tuned for other episodes on AudioSignal podcast.
And if you're on YouTube, yeah, we're not much to look at, but I think it was a good conversation. So at least we didn't make a movie out of it, but you'd be surprised how many people I hear said, you know. I like to watch podcasts and I'm like, I don't know. I like to listen to it. I'm an old school radio guy, but whatever fits you, subscribe.
Gary, thank you so much. I had a really good time. Thank you.
[00:34:30] Gary Braver: Thank you. Bye bye, Marco. Bye everybody. Thank you.