We’re traveling through time on today’s Audio Signals. Sam Foster is not just a writer of historical fiction—he’s a storyteller who traces the human condition through past lives, layered narratives, and deeply researched characters.
Guest:
Sam Foster
👉 Website: https://www.samfosterbooks.com
👉 Substack: https://samfoster.substack.com
👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-foster-6b45798/
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
👉 Website: https://www.marcociappelli.com
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🎙️ Thy Mother Is A Lioness: Historical Fiction and the Stories That Shape Us — A Conversation with Sam Foster
We’re traveling through time on today’s Audio Signals.
📚✨ Sam Foster is not just a writer of historical fiction—he’s a storyteller who traces the human condition through past lives, layered narratives, and deeply researched characters. In this episode, Sam and I talk about growing up in the Midwest, writing from lived experience, and eventually leaping into the rich, complex worlds of Renaissance Italy and 19th-century America.
🔍 What makes a story authentic? Where’s the line between historical fact and narrative freedom? And how do you tell stories that resonate across generations, languages, and borders? Sam’s latest book Thy Mother Is A Lioness explores powerful women in a male-dominated world—from Florence to France—and it’s all unfolding exclusively on Substack.
But this conversation isn’t just about the past—it’s about the process: What drives a writer to chase the “why”? Why is storytelling a purpose, not just a profession? And how is technology opening new doors for creatives, even those writing about centuries gone by?
👁️🗨️ This one goes beyond plotlines and timelines. It’s about identity, purpose, creative freedom—and the future of storytelling itself.
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📝 Keywords: historical fiction, storytelling, Renaissance, Medici family, powerful women in history, writing process, Substack publishing, creative freedom, Midwest America, author interview, book launch
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For more podcast stories from Audio Signals:
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Watch the video version on-demand on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnYu0psdcllQvnJ8eHUlVX8AuyhehtexA
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Marco Ciappelli: [00:00:00] Hello everybody. This is Marco Ciappelli. I am back on Audio Signals Podcast after a little bit of traveling and taking care of. My other podcast, which is all about society and technology. But as you all know, my passion beside work, it's uh, storytelling.
And that's why I have Audio Signal podcast, where we talk about storytelling storytellers and uh, the stories that they write. And, uh, the way I like to start is always with the question. Who is the storyteller that we're talking to? If you're watching the video, you already see it there. Sam Foster, welcome to the show, and if you're listening, here it is, Sam, how are you doing today?
Sam Foster: Good morning, Marco. Thank you for having me on. I'm grateful.
Marco Ciappelli: Oh, I love it. And you know what I love? I love that we're here with technology talking to each other on a streaming platform recording platform. [00:01:00] And we are about, depending on traffic, I would say. 40 minutes to an hour and a half because it's LA and uh, that happened.
So you're down in the South Bay in la I'm in the valley. And, uh, well, maybe, hopefully after this we'll get to get a coffee together and, uh oh, I'd like that. And get, and get to know each other maybe down at the, down at the beach. But we've.
Sam Foster: I, I think you used to live in my part of the world. Maybe I can get you down to the beach for that cup of coffee.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, it's not, it's not the first time that I mentioned that. That's where I spent, uh, most of my time in la uh, or most the beach. And you're just next to it. So let's start with my favorite question, and you can go as, as deep as you want. And, uh, and, and as in on the surface as you want, who is Sam Foster?
Sam Foster: Sam Foster is a man who grew up in a 19th century world in the [00:02:00] Midwest. Uh, not, not to be political, I don't mean that, but I think my story is not so dissimilar than, uh, vice President-elect Vance's story and his book about Hillbilly Elegy. I come from a town in Illinois. Which is now about 6,000 people.
When I was a kid, it was about 10,000 people in the middle of the 19th century. It was one of the most prosperous communities in Illinois. It was a riverport, it was wealthy and it was cultured. And over the years, all of the things that created its wealth have declined. The population is less than half of what it was at its maximum, and the industry has left the primary industry being the railroad.
Uh, it had a roundhouse, uh, it had a shop, and when, when the town was about 12,000 people, over a thousand of those were employed [00:03:00] by the the railroad. When the railroad moved, uh, all of those jobs went away. The city has never been able to replace them. It's now a dying little place. I came to Los Angeles to go to college.
I, I'd never been here, but I knew when I left home. The truth of the matter is Marco. That I never even thought about going back, and it was not animus just as a child growing up, I saw no place for me there. I saw no opportunity to really make any sort of life. And so I have stayed in Los Angeles since then.
Uh, as per your creative question and I'll, that, that gets in here with me. But because I didn't grow up with money, um, I worked three to 11 loading trucks in Vernon to work my way through college. And because I didn't grow up with money when I got [00:04:00] outta school, even though all I wanted to do was read, even as a young man.
If you put me on a couch on a Sunday with a book, I was apt to read until bedtime and get up early in the morning to try to finish the story. And some of your readers will understand that and some won't. But that's just the nature of the beast. But I was unwilling to starve for art. I was unwilling to live in a cold water, flat in a Garrett apartment and starve to put out words into the world.
And so I went to work in a business that simply made money. I didn't hate it. I don't remember having ever woken up and thought, oh shit, I have to go to work today. But I had no passion for it. It was just something that paid well and I was good at, uh, what I had my mortgage paid off, and both of my kids' tuition paid through private schools.
I started to indulge myself. I started to write. And I, I, I [00:05:00] tease with people a lot in this question, but the only thing I have in common with Raymond Chandler, aside from the fact that we're both authors, is that both of us wrote our first two books while we were executives in downtown Los Angeles firms.
And I did write my first two books while I was working and I had the good fortune to find a publisher. I never did find an agent, but I found a little publishing house that took me on the world's different than that. Now, you don't get to a publishing house without an agent, but that's the way it was.
This was, um, in the very late nineties. They published two books for me. Um, and it was not until I retired 10 years ago. That I took up writing on a full-time basis, and when I say full-time, Marco, I think I have fulfilled my childhood position. But I do not require writing [00:06:00] income to live on. My work. Life has given me enough of a retirement to live on.
So for me, writing is what I do because I have passion and I don't know how many of your, your audience listeners are retirees, but my experience with men, and I can't speak for women, but with men, is. That we all need purpose. I think women are perhaps a little more balanced than we. My sense is that women can go through life being content and happy with the routine of the day they put in front of them.
But I don't know many men who cannot live without a purpose, something they want to do, something they're striving for, something they're reaching out to. And so for me, writing gives me a reason to get up in the morning. It is my life and it is my passion.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, that, that's really cool because I feel like, as they say, if you do what you love, you [00:07:00] don't have to work it in your life.
On the other hand, you did work, you didn't mind it, but it wasn't, as you said, it wasn't the passion, the fire that you had inside. Now, my question is, when you were doing this day-to-day job, was it always in the back of your mind? Was it a burning. Hm. Sensation, the fact that, uh, I can't wait to really have the time to start writing.
Were you writing on the side? Were you noting about, uh, when I can I will write this book about this? I mean, or, or were you just Okay, we just putting on the back burner.
Sam Foster: The latter. Uh, I think Marco, and this is probably my temperament, I don't know this is humanity, but had I let myself indulge that fantasy too early on, uh, it would've, it would've taken too much out of me.
My life was simply simpler if I didn't [00:08:00] indulge myself with that fruit that was hanging, not low, but somewhere far in the distance. So I was able to keep my focus on what I was doing. And in truth, when I was in my fifties, uh, I started to realize that if I got fired tomorrow and nobody would ever hire me again, my life was gonna be okay.
Marco Ciappelli: Hmm.
Sam Foster: And then the fantasy started to take me. I have always been two things my whole life. One of them is, I've always been a storyteller. My conversation, if you and I were to meet in a bar. Or you and I were to meet for a cup of coffee, I, I would mostly listen to you because when you ask me a question that you wanted me to answer, it would take me five minutes to answer.
I was going to tell you a story, not give you a short answer. [00:09:00] That's always been one affirming aspect of my personality throughout. And the other one was that I've always written, well, a lot of young men at work would come to me and ask me if I would read this memo that they were putting out. Mm-hmm. My answer to them always became the same.
I will read it if you want me to, but don't ask me my opinion unless you want it. Because if you want it, I'm gonna give it to you. And so I sort of became the editor in the office. Got it. So I, I guess I've always had those two, two things that were fundamental aspects of my personality, but I di I didn't wanna indulge them when I had to focus on doing other things.
Marco Ciappelli: But someone Do you, do you, do you think, I'm gonna pause you there because Sure. Do you think there is a big difference and it, it, it could, maybe it's common from, based on your experience and the people you were working with, between having a good story to tell. [00:10:00] And, and knowing how to tell it now, knowing how to put it in word now, know how to put it in writing.
Sam Foster: There's a huge,
Marco Ciappelli: you know where I'm going.
Sam Foster: I do. Exactly Marco. And there's a huge difference. How many people do you and I know does everybody who's listening to this know that talk too much and they bore you. They, they don't know how they've got something to weave, but they don't know how to weave it. Um, and, and so yes, I think there's a very big difference in that.
And I think in my case, I. I think my education came from reading. I think I have read fiction my whole life.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
Sam Foster: The summer I was 15 years old. I grabbed Mitch Nurse's Hawaii, 900 pages. Terrifying. I'd never tried anything that big in my life and I spent most of the summer reading, laying on the couch, just fascinated with the way Mitchner could put words together and tell [00:11:00] that story.
So I. I think my skill as a storyteller comes from reading. I don't think my skill as a writer comes from my ability to tell stories,
Marco Ciappelli: but, but they go together. I mean, I, if you read many quotation, many stories from famous writer, what they usually tell you is you have to read a lot. If you, in order to.
Create your own style and in order to kind of get inspiration as well, like many people think like, oh, I like this writer and I wanna write that, like that person. I, I don't think that usually happen if you have the writing inside yourself, but you do get inspired. It's like being a musician. You can listen to some music, a riff gets in your head, but then you make it your own.
Sam Foster: I, I'm not musical in any way, but the metaphor works for [00:12:00] me, Marco. I mean, it, it seems to make sense to me even though I don't emotionalize what you just said. The latter part at least. Got it.
Marco Ciappelli: But the, the writing obviously that yes works. Now tell me, tell me about writing about what you know, because I know that your stories, they're based in the Midwest.
You told me that you come from the Midwest. Is there like an experience that about your life that then you put in your fiction as well, or what, what is it you write about?
Sam Foster: Yes, yes, yes, yes. To all three questions that you ask. The first book I ever wrote, and again, I, I will remind you that I said the first two books I wrote, I wrote while I was working.
The first one I ever wrote was called. Alpha Male, A Tale of the Battle of Commerce, and it was about a financial hustle in my own business. Now, I don't mean that that hustle existed, I [00:13:00] made up the hustle, but I knew the business. I was, uh, I was opening a world for people that didn't know commercial real estate.
To see how that world functioned, but doing it in a way that they liked the story. And interestingly, Marco, that book, that particular book, uh, is still in print and it came out in 2001 and, and every commercial real estate person in the country has read the damn thing. I have been in meetings one time in Florida.
I, I'm an LA guy. I don't know anybody in Florida. I'm at this business meeting where we're all wearing name tags and I see some guy walking straight. I mean, he's making a beeline for me right across the floor, and I don't know who he is. I wait to read his name tag. I still don't know who he is. And he stuck his hand out and he said, loved your book, but it never broke out of that market.
[00:14:00] So it became clear to me. That I wasn't telling the story well enough that people who didn't already understand the marketplace in which it occurred could appreciate the story. So it, it was a book about my own world, but I wasn't doing a great job of conveying it. My second book was also a book that I knew intimately.
My second book was about the Marine Corps, and I'm a Marine. Um, as you may know, the the, the motto of the Marine Corps is sra. Fidelis Always Faithful. The title of the book is Non Seper Fidelus. Which doesn't say never faithful. That translation is not always faithful. And it was about my experience in the Marine Corps.
Marco, there's not a shot fired in anger in the whole book. The whole thing is, is stateside. But when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was killed, [00:15:00] I was in a Marine Corps battalion that had race riots. Now the Marine Corps very zealously guards its reputation. That more, they're more PR interested than any other service.
And they, the word of that never got out. That never appeared that the, it was Quantico, Virginia, which is only 30 miles from Washington DC and that story never got in the Washington Post. They didn't know it happened, and so I thought it was an interesting story to tell, but again. It was a world that I had lived and so you're absolutely right.
I found it much easier to to tell stories about things that I understood intimately than to tell stories about things that I had had to learn to tell the story. And it was not until my third book, which I wrote when I had nothing but time, I was [00:16:00] retired, I was away. I had time where I reached into a world that I didn't know to write it.
It was still staged in the Midwest. It was still staged in the area where I grew up, but it was a story of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Uh, so some, some of the woof and warp of that story. I did grow up with hearing stories around it and so forth, but mostly I didn't know it. Mostly it was, it was two weeks in the Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois.
Uh, that was the first time I learned to sort of reach out for myself. But my first stories were exactly as you described them. They were of my own experience.
Marco Ciappelli: Is that on the third book, which is also a trilogy that you step into more of a fiction world like Yes. I'm understanding is historical fiction, which is, which is something I want to talk about before we get into your present book, which is, there is always that line when [00:17:00] I talk to people that do write historical fiction.
Where do you, where, where do you draw a line? Between the reality and the fiction, the non-fiction and the fiction world, how? How do you get in between and make the story sing and real, but also bringing people in a world that may not ever existed?
Sam Foster: I have a rule that I self-impose. Can you share it on exactly that, exactly what you just said.
And not all historic fiction writers agree with me, and not all historic fiction readers agree with me.
Marco Ciappelli: Mm.
Sam Foster: But my view is that as an author of fiction, and it is fiction. I don't owe obedience to individual facts, but what I do owe absolute obedience to is the arc of history. I'm not writing an alternate history.
If, if I'm going to write what happened, if the [00:18:00] South had actually won the Battle of Gettysburg, I'm gonna label it. Alternate history. I'm not gonna measure historical fiction, right? So I I I never change outcomes. Well, I shouldn't say never. I did one time. Uh, I could not resist putting, putting Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln.
I. In the same room when they were young men. But I put a historic fix note, note at the back that said, I made that shit up. That didn't actually happen.
Marco Ciappelli: Let's make it clear, right? Yeah. Yeah. And what, what drives you to, to do that? Is it ex It is in a way exploring an alternative reality, but it's not alternative fiction or alternative history.
So again, uh. Where, was this something you read that inspired you to do this? A movie you saw or, or just stories that you had in your head as an experience from the people that told you where you were growing up?
Sam Foster: That your question for [00:19:00] me was a very interesting little personal journey. The third book in that series.
Are all stories that I grew up with. Now, I shouldn't say all. I mean, I did a lot of research. I added in a lot of fact that it, but the, the fundamental stories in that book were stories that I learned at my grandfather's knee, and that had been his home his whole life. The other two books are precursors to that.
And I guess Marco, it's the way I think and process information, but it wasn't enough to tell the stories as I understood them. I kept wondering why, why did that happen? Mm-hmm. Why did people think that way? Why did they behave that way? And it wasn't my intention to get pushed back two centuries, but there kept being linkages between somebody did something, but why did they do that?
Somebody [00:20:00] and they would do something that didn't make sense. Why did they do that? I just, my mind is in endlessly curious, I'm 80. But you go from the, from questions,
Marco Ciappelli: you went from the, the point of arrival, but then you wanted to figure out. How did they get there?
Sam Foster: Right. That's exactly right. And so that pushed me back all the way until the time that white settlers started rushing into the Midwest.
And that was after the war of 1812. That's when it happened. I. Um, and until then it had been almost entirely indigenous population with indigenous Jews and indigenous conflicts and indigenous ways of life. But after the French and Indian War, Caucasians came flooding down the Ohio River, uh, and so that's really when my connection with it started and I went all the way back.
I went all the way back to that. I didn't mean to, it just happened.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, it sounds like, uh, you know, like, like kids, you know [00:21:00] why that. And then you give an answer and uh, yeah. Yeah. But I get it. But then why that? And I was asking questions. I was
Sam Foster: that little boy in second grade class. You've got,
Marco Ciappelli: yeah. And I, and I can, and I can picture you 'cause I'm very visual sitting on your, on your grandpa, uh, laps and listening to, to this story.
And they stayed with you. I mean, I feel the same a lot of the way I am. It's because story told by. My grandfather in Italy. And, um, and with that, unless you would like to add something to, to the trilogy, I, I want to take the, the last 10 minutes to actually get into your new book because I feel it close to home.
'cause it's, uh, you say you, you can travel to Italy to do your research. I am assuming you, you enjoy that and you choose to talk about. Women from the middle age or the Renaissance and, uh, I, I am curious about that being a, [00:22:00] coming from the crowd of the Renaissance myself.
Sam Foster: Okay. For, for the sake of your audience, I wanna say something that you and I both already know.
The title of the book is Thy Mother is a Lioness. It is the story of three women and one little girl. So four females in 15th and late, 15th and early 16th century Italy. And it is a story of women's use of power. Um, and, and all of the women, every, every one of them are real. The story is, again, fictionalized, but I did immense amounts of history on these three ladies.
Four ladies. Actually, they're all related. Uh, two of them married into the Medici family, but the Mechi family is the, the linchpin of the whole thing. Two of them married into the Medici family and the other one, a, a little girl who grew up in France and lived her [00:23:00] life in France, but her mother was Catherine De Medici, and so she learned all these stories at Mama's Knee, just like I learned my stories and I, I'll tell you, the way I got fascinated with them, and they came to my attention.
You're a Los Angeles guy, so, so you'll get this. But fifth, and it's also part of our discussion about the creative process. 15 years ago in the Sunday Times, there was a full page story about some Italian woman I'd never heard of named Maria Silvia. And the thing that caught my fascination is the Walters Museum.
Baltimore Maryland owns a portrait of this woman. The portrait wa was painted by a guy named Pontormo, who was the Medici house painter for about 50 years. Not all Medice are painted by him 'cause there are too many generations, but in his lifetime, he was their guy. And there is a picture of her, um, in, in a Dominican habit.[00:24:00]
She was a third order Dominican, which meant she was never lived in a cloister. She could live outside and still call herself a Dominican, and the bottom third of the painting is painted out with black paint just painted over. And, uh, nobody knew what was under there and the paint was so thick they were afraid to try to take it off.
They were afraid they'd ruin what was under there. And it was not until 1937 when Fluor fluoroscopy became, uh, a science that somebody was able to look under that black paint and see what was there. And what was under there was a little seven or 8-year-old girl who clearly had Negro features, clearly mixed breed negro features, and Maria sti this, this [00:25:00] the SDI family.
And now I'm gonna talk Italian history. The La Marco knows, but they were part of the Posse conspiracy. They got killed afterwards because they tried to kill off the Medici. And, and to, to try to make nice Cosmo de Medici married one of his daughters into the Salvia family to say, come on, we don't need to do this.
You know, we're, we're, we're, we're not gonna have street warfare between your sons and mine. And, and what the heck is she doing with this protective glare? Looking straight at the camera, if you will, protecting this little girl saying, don't you touch her.
Marco Ciappelli: Hmm.
Sam Foster: And that was 400 years ago. And originally nobody knew why and when they backtracked on the history, they found out why.
And that that story that [00:26:00] sat in the back of my mind for 15 years. And just percolated, Marco just percolated slowly. It would go away. It would come back. I would ask why, and I wanted to know. It's back to the question we had about creativity. Why, why, why? Why teacher? Why teacher. I don't know if you've ever heard that.
Louis CK bit on his daughter saying why. It's one of the funniest things you've ever heard, but that was me. Why teacher? Why teacher, and I couldn't get rid of it. Uh, so I started reading and I started finding out, and what I came to understand was that there were three women over three generations in the Met chief family that were tough as nails in a man's world, and Maria Sti in particular, use gentleness to get her way, but she got her way.
And she was. She was a [00:27:00] Medici. She was a Florentine. She was all political and she was a conniving bitch who wanted what she wanted, but she knew the best way to get it was to put on that habit, smile and go through life with everybody thinking she was the sweet as could be. And it just became a story. Um, I don't, I don't need to say anything about Catherine De Medici.
Everybody's got their own opinions, knows what her life was, but the other woman in this story is a woman named Katina Forza, and the fors ran Milan for four generations, and Forza was not originally their name until one of the ancestors killed the Duke of Milan and took it over. Forza. Uh, you probably know the Italian translation.
It's simply forceful. And they took that name 'cause they were forceful. Interestingly, all of these, both of these families, whether they were [00:28:00] Marshall or whether they were political, I. Treated their young women the same way they treated their sons. That is to say, these women were educated multiple languages.
They understood politics. They understood everything that was going on in the world. They knew how to play. They were taught how to play. They were taught what the rules were. They were taught how to break the rules. The forces were a little different because the forces, in addition to all of those skills that they taught their women, the forces also taught their women to be warriors.
But when I say warriors, I mean both leading armies and skill of individual arms. And Katarina Forza, you may know her story, but she controlled two of the old pap estates and Pope Borges, one of the Borg Popes, the first one set out to get them back, and she literally went to war with him and trained and led her own army.
And she also married into the Met Chi family. So you've got this succession of [00:29:00] wonderfully powerful women in a terribly male dominated world using multiple different kinds of tools to get where they wanted to go, to get what they wanted. And that story just fascinated me. And so it, it percolated in there for forever.
When I finally decided to get outta my comfort zone and write about something that I didn't instinctively know about that I had to do all the research on, I decided that was gonna be the one. It sounded to me
Marco Ciappelli: that you're, you're always drive by that, driven by that question. Why, right. And, and which makes you research.
'cause trust me, uh, my dad is from Florence. Florence. He has more books about the Medici in his house. That he could, he could honestly be the national library. He, he knows a lot about it. I love your father automatically, don't I, Marco? He's, uh, you know, he is 87, just turned [00:30:00] 87 and that, that's what all he reads about.
He, he don't touch Florence to him and history. And, and sometimes they criticize me because like, ah, you don't know these things. And I'm like, no, I know other things. It's like to reach his own. But my, my point is. Oh, go ahead.
Sam Foster: I was gonna say, your daddy might hate my story because the whole world's take and all of your, all, all of those books your father's got, Maria Salvia is angelic, but her son Cosmo, as you may know, uh, of the two cosmos, he was the most powerful.
He, he actually became the Duke of Tuscany, not just Florence. Mm-hmm. The Grand
Marco Ciappelli: Duke.
Sam Foster: Right. And, and right. And. He was brutal. As you may know, he took over Florence at age 17. He had his cousin killed who was the first Duke of Florence to get there, and I don't think a 17-year-old [00:31:00] kid has those skills. I think somebody that was immensely politically skillful was driving that bus, and I think it was his mother.
And, and so mine is fiction. It's heavily researched, but it's fiction. But your dad is probably gonna say, Marco, give me that man's address. I'm gonna,
Marco Ciappelli: but, but you know, one thing I have to say is that the, there, there is a, a process I think more and more lately, all over the world. But for what I know from my dad too is of, you know, you, you history is being rewritten.
There are things now that we didn't know that were presented in a certain way, but then we find out that the dynamics were not what they looked to be or how they were portrayed. So what you're describing here, you know, it's, it's not unique in terms of rewriting certain piece of [00:32:00] history, especially a very complex.
Family, you know, soap opera if you want, you wanna call it some way of intrigues and the marriage and attempt and con and all of that. But beside what my dad may think about it, which I would definitely have him read it, if you have an Italian translation, 'cause he doesn't speak English, what people can expect from reading your book because you're, you're talking about a lot of research, you're talking about a lot of facts, but then you connect it with what we talked about before, which you add fiction to it.
So are you trying to tell a moral of a story? Don't give it away. I want people to read it, but what will be your elevator pitch for, for telling people Read this book if you're in this kind of story.
Sam Foster: When I, Marco, when I was a junior in high [00:33:00] school, I remember this conversation in an English class in high school, very clearly.
And the teacher was trying to explain to 16 and 17 year olds the levels of writing that there is. The story, there is simply the storyline in the story, but I. Then there is the picture of the world, but behind that, there is always a reason that the writer wanted you to read it. Yep. What he was trying to say about the world.
Yep. And we were all 16 and didn't get it. We just thought there was a story and she kept pestering the class and, and, and, and nobody was getting. Stories are written to convey a moral picture of the world, and I finally raised my hand and she called on me and I said, the reason he wrote it was because the rent was due.
It took [00:34:00] me forever to understand that in fact, each and every story has got this underlying message. I mean, Moby Deck Dick is not just about killing the biggest, ugliest whale in the Pacific Ocean. That ain't the story. And if that's all you see in, you're amused, good for you. But that's not what he's trying to say.
Marco Ciappelli: There's always underneath the layer.
Sam Foster: Right. And, and it, and it is, it is the sa It is the same way with these, with these books. Uh, but the message I am trying to convey in this particular book is. And I, and I think this is a message from my mother. My mother grew up in the Dust Bowl and she ended up the head of the Department of Education at State University and, and started a, um, a, a community college as well.
She was absolutely driven, driven to get ahead [00:35:00] in life and not be a dust bowl. Okie, and she never gave up on that. Maybe that's what I see in these women, that in a world that is completely male dominated, each of these women in her own and very distinct way found a way to create the world she wanted and display power.
And I, I, I think that's, I, you told me not to give it away, but I think that's what the book is saying.
Marco Ciappelli: I, I, I think it doesn't give it away, meaning, oh, now I don't need to read it. It's not, it's not a mystery that you're telling the Butler did it. You know,
Sam Foster: you know, one of the, I I don't know if I've got a another minute left, but there are two things.
Yeah, go for it. I'd like to say, if I may, the first one is I'd like to give a, a small commercial to the book. And the reason I'd like to give the commercial, the, the, the title of the book is the quote from Ezekiel Thy Mother is The Lions. That's a biblical quote, but I thought it fit these [00:36:00] women.
Marco Ciappelli: Mm-hmm.
Sam Foster: But I, you pointed out that I'm forever asking the question why. And I have become quite dissatisfied with the American publishing business. I, I don't write for the money I, I, my, my world before writing paid for my retirement, unless I live a whole lot longer than I think I'm gonna live. But, um, uh, in my book, Beardstown, which sold for 1695, I made 27 cents a copy.
That just, that process just offends me. I'm not saying I need the money. I'm not saying I'm not gonna pay the light bill. The process offends me and I'm trying to, I, I'm a businessman, so I'm always looking for a better, more efficient, more productive way to do it. And so I have released this book exclusively on Substack, and many of your listeners may not know Substack, but Substack is sort of the modern [00:37:00] American newspaper.
There are columnists that write for it. And it, the last number I saw, it had 24 million monthly page reads. So it, it's not your hometown Gazette, it's not the, it's not the New York Times, but it, but it's doing, it's moving forward. And Substack has a really interesting methodology. There are any number of people who write on Substack and don't charge anything to look at their column.
And if that's the way you do it, Substack will host the platform for free. It doesn't cost the writer a thing. If the writer decides to charge for his column. Substack takes 10% of that, and Substack has got over 17,000 writers who write four fee not for free, and over a million readers who pay to read what's written on Substack.
I have been writing a substack column for free for two years now. And I decided that I would try [00:38:00] to release Mother on Substack for fee. Substack is also very interesting in that the minimum payment they will accept is $5. That's set by Substack, but after that, the author can set his own price and Substack will.
However, when you go in say, what do you want to pay? And you, you have to pay at least the minimum that the author ask, but they allow people to say, this is more worthy than that to me. Mm-hmm. So Substack minimum is $5. My minimum is $5, but pay me what you will. And even if the book doesn't sell, I told one of my friends, there is no dignity in 27 cents.
There is more dignity and gratis than there is in 27 cents. So I'm trying this on Substack. I don't know it's gonna work or not, but it's been released. It started the first of, [00:39:00] uh, the 10th of November. It just came out. I. Yeah. Every new subscriber gets all the previously posted chapters. I send them to 'em by email.
So it's not like you're hopping in on chapter 13 and don't know what happened. Right, right. I am just trying a different and more contemporary way to, to do it.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, I love that. I mean, I, as you know, my, uh, my other real job, it's talking about technology and creating podcasts, but my past life also is branding and advertising.
So I understand all of these and I understand. How social media have changed the music industry, the, the writing it all the arts, really photography. We're not getting into generative ai now. We don't have time for that, but definitely it kind of, to me says as creativity is still a human endeavor. It's what I believe still make us completely different from technology, real [00:40:00] creative emotions.
It make a close generative ai, but the instrument that we have to play with, the tools have definitely changed and we can stay there and cry that, uh, people don't buy album anymore or people don't buy book anymore, or the industry, it's ruining it for the riders that get pennies. But I appreciate people like you and I know others that they try to move on with, with this technology and, and take some different path.
And, and I, I hope this works. I know people that are on, um, sub stock and, you know, they get, they get a pretty good amount of money and either you do it for the money or not. And that's what I say for you and for any other writer is that we need to recognize the arts. Not just when you pay $6 million for a banana on a tape and then you eat it, but for people that actually write [00:41:00] something, they put their time, they write a music, they write, take photography, paint, whatever.
I think art need to be, needs to be value. It needs to be paid for. The fact that he is on the internet doesn't mean it's free. Mean that we didn't do anything. You know, I mean. I give my podcast for free, but then I look for sponsors. I need to make money somehow. You know, there is different methods to do that.
So I, I invite people to give it a go and, and I think the $5 minimum or more to read a good book, um, it's a good thing. And also because the money goes to you instead of to. Another middleman. Another middleman, and another middleman. So that, that's my support to, to doing.
Sam Foster: It's, and the economics of Substack interests me because it's cheaper for the reader than conventional methodologies.
Marco Ciappelli: Yep.
Sam Foster: And the [00:42:00] creator makes more than with conventional technologies. It's just what you said. All those middle people are cut out.
Marco Ciappelli: Straight and you don't need to spend money in printing books and, and papers and, and all of that. So technology is there and, and, uh, I, I appreciate the fact that you're using that.
And, and paradoxically, you're presenting historic. Books, but you use another technology to do that. So that
Sam Foster: it never occurred to me until you just said it, Marco.
Marco Ciappelli: Well, you know, I, and this is the last thing I said, and then we, we will, we will call it off and uh, maybe you'll come back another time. 'cause I, I really enjoyed this conversation with you.
But, you know, I was in, in Australia and Melbourne and, and right at the convention where I was covering this conference, there was a Leonardo da Vinci immersive. Museum experience, you know, like they did it in Van Gogh here in in la And so I'm like, [00:43:00] oh, perfect, Don da Vinci, you know, go see it. Um, I ended up not having the time for that.
But even that idea to take all the paintings, put it in a way that you experience in virtual reality, you immerse yourself in it. Uh, I mean, I love to go to the ozi, don't get me wrong. I like to sit in front of a painting, but I appreciate different experience.
Sam Foster: Uh, I understand the Ozi has changed dramatically, but the one time I was there, the display was just awful.
They had more beautiful portraits than you've ever seen, and they were all just slapped up on the wall six feet. How,
Marco Ciappelli: how long ago was that?
Sam Foster: Uh, 15 years ago. And I understand that even
Marco Ciappelli: another ago it changed. It changed quite a bit. It definitely makes some, uh, some big improvement. All right, I'm gonna call it off.
We're 43 minutes, Sam, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. I love what you're doing. I invite everybody to check the links in the podcast. Uh, [00:44:00] you'll share it with me and, uh, and I will put it there so people can get in touch with you. Visit your website and if you're interested to, of course, read your book and, and participate in your.
Sub stack channel and, um, for everybody subscribe. I hope we're sharing good stories worth your time to listen and get inspired to either write or. Tell story or listen to story because you know, we need both, right? We need those. That tells the story. We need those that love to read the stories. We need both.
So Sam, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks.
Sam Foster: Thanks for having me, Marco. It was a delight. When you're in the South Bay, I'm buying the coffee.
Marco Ciappelli: Oh yeah, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's on the, that's on the calendar. We'll do that. Okay. Good man. Take care everybody. Thank you for listening.