Podcast

Transcript

John Goodwin (00:06): Hello, and welcome to the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Podcast. This is John Goodwin, your host. This podcast is dedicated to the aspiring writer and artist and will provide inspiration and tips from top professionals in the field. If you’ve been listening to this podcast or are new to it, I thank you very much. I would also appreciate if you took a moment to follow it on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts.

Writers of the Future is one of the longest running writing competitions in the world now celebrating over four decades of providing a helping hand as initially conceived by L. Ron Hubbard. And this past year we just announced over 1,000 writers and artists celebrated in the anthology.

Today’s guest is Neo Edmund. Neo has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade as a film writer, animation writer, comic book writer, film development exec, and novelist. We met at the Writers of the Future Gala a few months ago. And this interview is based on his hat as a writer. It was really interesting that he knew a lot of our guests and just now that we’re meeting here, it was so many different people that we have in common and just only recently met, which is the weirdest thing. But anyway, we finally met. So welcome Neo.

Neo Edmund (01:20): Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

John Goodwin (01:24): It’s what’s really exciting about this is I go for providing inspiration tips for all types of writing and art and then all the different adjunct, different activities connected with it. And so for you, your journey has gotta be a great story which I’m anxious to share. So we met at the Writers of the Future Gala. So let’s just start off with that. So how’d you that? What was it like coming to that Gala?

Neo Edmund (01:52): It was amazing. It was so much more than I expected. I knew it was an awards banquet for a short story contest for a book. And, I’ve been to some of those. I did not expect it to be as grand as you guys make it to be. I mean, the venue is beautiful, the production is beautiful, the people, so many incredibly cool people there. I mean, I met so many cool artists and writers and scientists. There was an astronaut, you had an astronaut there, you know.

I mean, this is so cool. And so just even the leading up part of it and just meeting all those people and having all those great conversations was fantastic. And then the presentation itself was kind of magical, seeing everybody was so engaged with it. Everybody who was there in the audience was so engaged with everybody already knew who won. But it was seeing them all go up there and make their speeches and being sort of mystified by this moment, it was just, it was really kind of inspiring. It made me actually feel a little better about the industry because being in this industry, especially trying to break in, it’s sometimes it can be very lonely. You’re just on your own. It’s you against the world. And to see all these people at the beginning of their journey having that moment, it’s incredible. So quite a gift.

John Goodwin (03:14): Yeah. What’s really great about it too is some these people have been entering for years. We have entries from over 175 countries. And we have thousands of entries every quarter. And as people bubble up, they start getting Honorable Mentions, which means you’re in the top ten percentile. And some people when the… Honorable Mention isn’t a reject anymore. It’s an actual win. If you win an Honorable Mention, then you’ve got Finalists, Semifinalists, and then the actual win. Three every quarter that actually wins both the writer and illustrator contest. So it’s these people have all just worked in their own little room, on their keyboard or with their pad doing their art by themselves. Like you said, it’s a lonely profession. And so this is the first time for many of them they’ve gone out and found like-minded souls.

Which is which is really cool.

Neo Edmund (04:15): Yeah, it’s really helpful to have that. So where you start meeting people who are on similar journeys that they’ve had different experiences and you’re like, okay, I’m not alone in this. I have my little my clique here, my group, you know? And we can inspire each other and cheer for each other as we go.

John Goodwin (04:31): Yeah. And they create their own little sub stack, which they’ll keep writing to each other for years. Some of these people just, with the advent of the internet and email, then that made it a lot easier to facilitate them maintaining relationships. But even the earlier volumes, we maintain relationships with winners going all the way back to the beginning. Nina Hoffman, who was there, she’s the one whose story we had the opening music. Those are two stories those are two songs from her story.

And so that’s what inspired. But she was winner in volume one forty-two years ago. Forty-two exactly. Definitely a while. So I’d seen your book being served in my social feed for some time. It was   I love the cover. The cover was just so cool. So I learned you were the author. I became excited to do this interview.

I guess to begin with, tell about yourself and your history with screenwriting, animation and gaming that led to becoming a novelist.

Neo Edmund (05:31): Well, yeah, it’s an interesting thing because when I was… I sort of fell into acting when I was a child, which I didn’t really intend to. It just happened. They were literally shooting a commercial at my school for some, I don’t know, school board political ad or something. And I was one of the kids in the classroom, raise your hand and look excited. And there was a manager there that was like, we rep kids and my mom’s like, What? Go away. You know. But then it turned out they were legitimate and actually started acting work, just little stuff kid in the classroom. I became basically a day player of Hollywood. And I got a couple of commercials and that was cool. And then by the time I was 17, I ended up on Power Rangers. I worked one day doing this monster suit character. And then I was there for four years. Because it was, you want to come back tomorrow? Sure. You want to come back tomorrow? Sure. And then and then that became four years. But what I really wanted to do that whole time was be a writer. I wanted to be a screenwriter.

I grew up here in Hollywood, LA. That’s the dream to be a screenwriter. And I was writing scripts and I was sending them out, querying. And I was really good at writing query letters and getting responses. And then I would send out my scripts and I’d either get the nice, friendly rejections, thank you, thank you, but no, thank you, or never hear anything. And after a couple of years of that, I’m like, Well, this isn’t working. And then a friend suggested, maybe you should get a job in development at a studio or something. And a friend hooked me up with a company called Platinum and they develop a lot of comic book properties. And I grew up reading comic books and loving comic books and reading pulp science fiction and stuff. So it was   I worked there for a couple of years. I learned a lot about the industry. It was a huge learning curve. I learned why my scripts probably weren’t getting well received because suddenly I was reading those scripts. I was the person on the other end.

But a after a couple of years of that, I’m like, I wanna be a writer. I’m never gonna get anywhere that way. I kind of went off on my own chasing my screenwriting dream. So naturally my first paid writing gig was for a graphic novel for Animal Planet called The World’s Ten Most Dangerous Animals. And it was a kids educational book. And it was, what? Okay, but I wrote the story, I turned it in and they liked it.

And they liked it enough where they’re like, This way you wrote the story should be the model for all the stories for this series. Cause everybody was writing just about the animal. And I sort of created a narrative and added people into it to create it. So they hired me to do more. And then they’re like, you want to do one for Discovery Channel, dinosaurs and prehistoric predators? You want to do one for History Channel? And then suddenly I’m writing all these kids’ educational books, comics, and it was fun, but once again, not at all what I want to do.

And I’m getting invited to educator panels at conventions. And like, this is like, have you met me? I’m not that guy. You know? So then finally I got to write a few kids’ adventure comics, and that was cool. They were still tied to brands Jumpstart Interactive and stuff. But then finally my friend Andrew Robinson, who is an animation writer, was running a show at Hasbro called Kaijudo Clash of the Duel Masters, which was kids summoning monsters and stuff. And it was a super-fun show. And he let me write an episode of that. So that was my first break as an animation writer. And I was still, All right, now I’ve arrived. And I got to do a couple of things and it’s strange. It’s a strange business because my friend Craig Miller was running the show. You might know Craig.

He had the show he was producing and show running it was called Majid and Friends and it was literally a show for the United Arab Emirates, which was like episodes were airing in   Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. And I’m like, this is so odd, but it was cool, but not quite what I was wanting to do. And then I was like, I gotta pitch my own thing. And so I developed this animation pitch.

And I was at the same time in this Dungeons and Dragons group of all young Hollywood professionals. Our DM (Dungeon Master) was Jason Brown, who went on to the producer of The Expanse and The Witcher and stuff. But we were all new at that point. And there was this guy in that group called his name was Jill Ofabi, who was a good friend of mine. And he’s like, Well, if you ever want to pitch anything to Henson, I’m like Henson Studios, Jim Henson Studios? He’s Yeah. and I do have this one thing. It’s called, and I’m getting to the point here, it’s Red Riding: Werewolf Hunters. And he’s like, that’s cool. You should bring that in and pitch that. So I did. And they loved it and they optioned it. And we put it in development. And I was like, now I’ve arrived. This is it. I’m finally arrived. And then three years of meetings and studio meetings and development meetings and writing specs and scripts and drafts and then it just kind of we couldn’t get it over the finish line.

The people at Hansen tried and they were great. And I loved working with them, but we just couldn’t get it there. So after three years of that, I was so beat up by this system, Hollywood, it was literally the definition of development hell. That’s a Hollywood term development hell. It’s like that’s what this is. And so I was feeling just so down about it. And then, for whatever reason, one morning I woke up and I was looking through all of the stuff I’d written, stacks of notes and drafts of scripts and all sorts of stuff. And I’m like, I gotta do something with this. And for whatever reason, I don’t know why. I’m gonna write a novel out of this and publish it on Amazon. I’d never written a novel. I had taken some prose writing classes in college and I took a novel writing class, but really we just wrote a chapter. So I had no reason to believe I could write a novel. But I did, and I kind of locked myself away for a month and just dug in and wrote all day long and I was dirty and not going out and just eating whatever takeout, whatever. But it was a mental health exercise almost where I was getting all of that, three years of   Hollywood beat me up kind of thing out. And after a month I had this 350 pages-ish, 85,000–90,000 words of slop, you know.

The slop draft. But I got it out and it’s there. And then over maybe the course of the next year, while I was working on other things and still getting comic works and stuff, I just kept punching it up and punching it up and trying to get it as good as I could. And then I reached a point of, I don’t know if this is ever gonna get any better. This maybe is the best novel I can write at this point in my life. And if I could work on it for another year, maybe it’ll be 10% better or 15% better, but is it worth it?

And so I just went ahead and sort of quietly published it on Amazon myself and Kindle Direct Publishing. I told a few people and a few friends were you can’t independently publish a book. That’s Mark of the Amateur. They’re gonna think you’re terrible. A lot of my professional friends and I’m… Well, I already published it and I already posted about it on all my social medias and I told everybody I did it. So, I didn’t really think anything would happen.

And then a lot of my industry friends started getting it. I literally priced it at a buck ninety-nine or something because I really didn’t care. I just wanted it. It’s done. I did it. I’ve done something with that thing. And then it started picking up momentum. Friends were reposting it. My friend Steve Sears. You know Steven. He was at the gala. She-Ra Warrior Princess on a bunch of cool shows. One day he told me, I read it and it’s not terrible. And I’m like, from Steve, that’s… Steve is kind of a funny guy. So that’s Steve giving you praise. You know. That’s Steve going, you actually did okay. And then it just started selling. I was getting actual sales on Amazon. One day I checked after a few months, and it was 1,200 sales or something. What’s happening? And if some of my friends are, “You should raise the price on that a little because you’re practically giving it away. But people are getting it, and that’s cool. And then a while passed. I finally made a print book. The first cover was terrible because I did it myself. It was my early attempt at it, I could do Photoshop okay, but it wasn’t very good. And then eventually once it started picking up, I hired a real artist, my friend Vicky Tunkle, who’s a great artist and actually made a good cover. I’ve done a bunch of different covers over because that was 13 years ago now. And then people started asking, you gonna write the sequel?

John Goodwin (14:27): It’s an awesome cover.

Neo Edmund (14:39): I didn’t even mean to write this one, you know. And then you have to figure out how to write a sequel. And funny thing I discovered, you can find thousands of books on how to write a novel. There’s no books on how to write a sequel, which is just kind of a funny thing. So if anybody wants to niche that market, you got the corner.

John Goodwin (14:58): Yeah, it’s interesting with, I mean sometimes people, for you it was, “I gotta take what I’ve got and put it out there.” Some people actually will conceive of a three-book series or five-book series, and they’ll pace it so that they can take… here’s the various, I don’t think you call them beats when they’re a whole novel. But the whole curve and then the bigger curve that’s happening there. But one thing that was why I was interested in talking ’cause I read the first book and obviously it was your first book.

Neo Edmund (15:31): Thank you.

This is my first book for sure. Yes. I have no delusions. You can say the pros were a little rough.

John Goodwin (15:39): Yeah. But the thing that really impressed me, because I was going through, as I was reading the book, okay, this is his first book, but I was pulled along by story. And that’s the thing that I really wanted to be able to address in this as the senior thing in the in this interview is the importance of story. You’ve got a lot of experience in Hollywood with all these different aspects of script writing and creative and comics and graphic novels and all that stuff there. But the importance of story and how that’s so much the senior datum on putting something out there. You’ve got to have something that makes you want to turn the page and forgive the first book syndrome.

Neo Edmund (16:19): I think I got a lot of that forgiveness.

John Goodwin (16:22): Yeah, I was totally willing to forgive. I was just so, wow, what a great idea. I loved the story. So, without giving away, just describe your book that you wrote, and then we’ll get into some of the questions I’ve got on it.

Neo Edmund (16:38): Well it’s basically it’s the story about Red Riding Hood, but she’s this orphan, she’s lives far away from…  She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she’s from. That kind of classic story. And then she gets the letter from this woman that says it’s her grandma and it’s time for her to come back home to Wayward Woods, and she has no idea if this is even real, what is this? But something compels her and then she jumps on her little motorcycle. And then goes speeding off into the woods, having no idea which way to go or how to get there. But she just somehow knows she can get there. And then when she finally does get there, all this stuff happens along the way. She encounters this other guy on a motorcycle. They have a race through the woods, a speeder bike chase almost, which is how I felt when I wrote it, you know. And then she finds her grandma and then she’s like, “You’re gonna be the alpha huntress of Wayward,” you know.

You have to rise up and save the town from this evil werewolf that wants to bring eternal night and all this stuff. And she’s, wait, I just wanted to find my family and find out who I am and now you’re telling me I have to do all this and she’s really not about it. So that’s basically the setup of the story. So the first four or five chapters maybe.

John Goodwin (17:59): So now you wrote it as sometimes it was written more a children and then sometime YA because how you, it’s interesting how an author will deal with death and deal with harm and with threat, and how you dealt with it when they were fighting and stuff.   And where she wanted to make sure they were just knocked out and not killed.

Neo Edmund (18:26): Yeah. I think I want my writing to be accessible to everybody. And I’ve had people as young as seven years old read that book and then people ask me, is it okay? And I’m, Yeah, it’s kind of cartoony version of violence, which is kind of the stuff I grew up on. You know, even in Star Wars, the stormtroopers got shot, but nobody really thought anything of it,   ’cause it didn’t seem violent or something. Laser gun or something.

And they’re just sort of guys in white masks and we didn’t really see them anyway. So they just were foot soldiers. But yeah, I feel I want my stuff to be accessible and I really don’t write gory stuff, you know. I just I want it to be fun. I want there to be action. I grew up in the eighties when action movies were so hyper violent Rewatching some of those now, you’re my gosh, they’re, wow, we watched this?

And that was kind of the stuff I grew up and I’m looking back on, no, I’m glad I didn’t do that,   but I feel if you can make yourself, make your stuff approachable and give yourself the broadest potential audience, because even though I was writing a book unintentionally, I still grew up in that mindset of maybe I can sell this thing, or maybe I can do something with it down the line. I don’t know. So I just I kept it safe. And then that actually ended up leading me to getting to write other things for Penguin Books. I ended up writing a bunch of Power Ranger books, which had nothing to do with me being on Power Rangers. I met an editor at Comic Con. I think I was with my friend Joe Lafobi, who had helped me go to Henson and he introduced me to this editor, Rob Vallows, Penguin Young Readers and a year later he emails me and he’s, “Hey, you wanna write stuff for me?” And at first I couldn’t I’m…, “Wait, is that the guy I met here?” It’s a random email from an editor of Penguin Books. We wanna hire you. And so I messaged my friend Joe and he’s, “No, you gotta call him right away.” And then we’re doing a line of Power Ranger books, you interested? I’m, Yeah. And he’s, “Do you know much about Power Angers?” I’m, “Are you kidding? I did four years. I was on a hundred and fifty episodes of that show or something,” you know? It’s wait, what? But I had gotten hired to write those. Those were middle grade books. And I got hired to write those because they had looked at my Red Riding Book and thought that was the right tone of action. And actually the first books they gave me were the two female Power Rangers, the Pink Ranger and the Yellow Ranger. which some people are Why’d they give him the girls? And I’ll be, “You’ve seen his stuff, he wrote that Red book and we thought it was cool.” And those are just so fun to write. And then they had me write a bunch of other stuff in this middle grade stuff. I ghost wrote a bunch of stuff, but had I went really violent on those red books, that wouldn’t have happened.

John Goodwin (21:29): I mean there’s a lot of stuff out there and movies, especially because there’s so much that the computer can do now. CGI who needs an imagination anymore? You can just, everything’s right there. It’s so graphic, so detailed that you can just be totally a spectator. Whereas when I read a book, reading your book there, you invited me to be a participant, so I was able to envision.

Which is why I enjoy reading. I don’t watch TV at all and watch a few movies. But ’cause with this podcast, I’m reading a book a week and that’s what I do. But then I enjoy being able to appeal to my imagination for what’s happening and connect the dots and just it helps me too, just as a cognitive thing, just to be able to track with stuff and I can appreciate an author and then helps me to ask questions. Right. Wow, they did that and did that.

You had all these different characters. You had totally different disparate beingnesses, and you have your bad guys and you have so many characters you don’t know, are they good or are they bad?  You’re not sure of that and then you find out, well, this person is a special relationship to right to the Red Riding. And as she continues to uncover what she is, ’cause she’s fast tracking to become Riding.

Neo Edmund (22:56): It’ll happens really fast.

John Goodwin (22:58): So that’s fine on that. And that perhaps now, however many years, thirteen years later, you could have taken that book and pulled it out, but then you really made a good introduction to this character and this whole story. You crammed a whole bunch of story into a little bit so that there’s at no point did you give the reader time to lose interest.

Neo Edmund (23:25): I think that’s because I kind of have a TV writing background and TV moves really fast and scenes are quick and they always end kind of on a cliffhanger and stuff. I knew kind of the first time that I had exhibited at a convention, my friend Martha Donato, who on Long Beach Comic Con, early on, she’s, “You want a table at our convention to sell your books?” And I’m, I don’t I wasn’t even taking it seriously enough at that point. I barely made the print book and I’m, okay.

And so I did, and I went there and a woman had bought a book from me on Friday. And then she came back on Sunday and I saw her walking up to me and she was carrying the book. And my first thought was, she’s kind of, get my money back. How dare you? But she walks up and she kind of slaps the book down and she’s, “I need the second one.” And I’m, You need? What are you talking about? I didn’t. I was. She’s, “there’s a lot of nuggets in there of what could be a second, there’s a whole thing.” And I’m, Yeah, I did definitely put that in there, you know. And I set that up, but there was no intention, you know? So I had of course figured that out. But once that started happening, then I was well, maybe I do need to do something. And then I was really trying to figure out why are people connecting to this book? The writing’s kind of, I would look through it and be, my pros are kind of weak and repetitive at some points. And I was really trying to figure it out for a long time. And I really came to, I think it was because where I was when I wrote it, I was kind of, I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t mad. I was just sort of, I guess, emotionally compromised, maybe after the whole three years of Hollywood thing. And I think sitting down and writing that story and getting it all out, it’s all that emotion kind of winning. And it’s that old statement, how do you write a book? You sit in a chair and you type and you bleed. I don’t know who originally coined that.

John Goodwin (25:20): I haven’t heard that before but I can attribute now to Neo Edmund.

Neo Edmund (25:23): Yeah, I heard it. I heard Rod Sterling once say it on a Twilight Zone episode. So I think he precedes me.

John Goodwin (25:29.902)
He does a wee bit, yes. So now on story. So for somebody who’s listening to this, an aspiring writer, because we’ve got listeners in almost–across the planet–175 countries that are listening that listen to this. And so with the writing, so there’s some people get, first all, you do need to read this book, y’all.

Neo Edmund (25:32): Thank you.

John Goodwin (25:59): On your story that you wrote then.

The thing that A Tale of Red Riding, so you’re just talking about you weren’t really planning on a sequel when this girl came up to you at Comic Con and said, Where’s the next book? slamming it down on your table. So because your book definitely does have at the end, it’s all right, so where is this going to go now? Because it totally goes you know.

Neo Edmund (26:22): Almost as the Empire Strikes Back ending and it’s yeah, they’re standing on the deck looking out and they’re… There’s something left to do.

John Goodwin (26:29): Exactly. There’s definitely something left to do with what you did there with this secret stone. So in terms of now going back to the PG, PG-13 maybe is more what it is, as the book has some violence in there, is well it’s definitely not G. And some paranormal guys, but you’ve got some fighting, but it’s because you have werewolves for crying out loud. And werewolves are not like patting you on the back. There’s definitely the claws and all that stuff coming out and jumping and whatnot.

So, on the magic system that you’ve got in your book. I’ve talked to a lot of fantasy authors and I’m always fascinated. How do you develop your fantasy system as compared to some other one? Because yours is maybe it’s inspired by something, but it’s unique unto itself.

In just at the beginning when she rides her motorcycle and she’s like, I’m gonna crash in this tree and she says, Okay, just trust the force, Luke. But she drove through and all of a sudden she’s into this other universe.

Neo Edmund (27:42): It was kind of almost that where the voice speaks to her and tells her you need to get only one willing to risk everything can gain anything on the path ahead is what the spirit says. Which is very use the force, Luke, or trust, you know. And so yeah, that’s kind of that portal world sort of thing story. Which people say portal world stories, those are so played out. But people still like them, ’cause it’s that fantasy of going into another world, you know, that’s sort of like ours, but not quite, where there is magic and there are things that aren’t normal, you know.

John Goodwin (28:18): ‘Cause you got crystals, you’ve got otherworldly demigods or gods on the moon. And they’re coming through this portal. And then you’ve got transformative, they’re people, then they become werewolves. And you got the different levels of werewolves. And then you’ve got all the types of, which I’m sure there’ll be more of in the other books. But you’ve got grandmother, she’s a certain type of spiritual person.

Neo Edmund (28:48): Kind of a magical witch, but not.

John Goodwin (28:52): So, how’d you come up with this, or what was the method to your, what was your methodology to come up with?

Neo Edmund (28:58): I think initially it was figuring out what serves the story best and I feel building a magical system or something for a world that it needs to serve the story. And not because you can just sit there and come up with all kinds of cool magical systems. I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons, and we could sit there and do that all day, and build those and get all the books with all magic systems and stuff. But it’s what serves the plot, what fits the story world because it’s these werewolves. And there’s this event in the history of that town where there was a big catastrophic explosion on the moon and all these moon rocks rained down all over the forest. And so there’s pieces of the moon all over the forest, which allows werewolves to transform in the daytime because the moon is always present in wayward. And so it’s that kind of a thing that serves the story. Because then werewolves don’t have to be only on a full moon night. They don’t have to be at night, right? And the werewolves aren’t really, you don’t lose your mind and go crazy. You’re still you, and you don’t really turn into a hairy beast or anything. You just get, it’s almost more of a superpower than a monstery power. So I feel all of that stuff, it’s all there to serve the story and sort of the plot and serve the journey of the characters, you know? And to figure out ’cause everything, it all comes down to story and telling a compelling story.

And, if you can tell a really compelling story, people will read over your bad pros I have proven. Cause the pros in that book I know aren’t good. But really, I think everything that you put into it should serve the story, serve the plot, to move it forward and to make it work. So it’s sometimes you’ll have a really cool idea, this whole magical crazy thing, but is that bogging the story down, you know? Big complicated explanation of how the magic works or something, or why it works or what it’s tied into. And then suddenly you’re, okay, but can we just… What’s happening here? You know?

John Goodwin (31:05): I mean it seems important that as the author you know how the magical system works. You don’t have to go in these big expository dissertations, but as long as throughout the book it’s consistent.

Neo Edmund (31:16): Exactly. And that’s what I always say about exposition because some people are, How much exposition or something? And I’m there’s exposition for you and there’s exposition for the reader. And those aren’t always the same thing. There may be a lot of things you know as the author that the readers don’t necessarily need to know. And we want to put it all in there because we’re, but we want everybody to know this is really important. And you…

John Goodwin (31:39): Did all this research and look at this cool thing that I created.

Neo Edmund (31:41): And then this whole system and I could explain it and you’re, but does it bog down the story or just keep the story moving, come up with a quick explanation. There’s magic. Why? I don’t know, ’cause there is, you know, ’cause that’s how it works in this world. And I think a lot of characters even say that to her at times, Well, how does that work? And she’s, It just does, you know.

John Goodwin (32:05): Yeah, but you’ve also got an audience, but I read a lot. I’m all over the place with what I read for my podcast. But sometimes I glom onto YA stuff because it’s a lot easier, especially if I have to average a book a week. So it’s fine for me to have simple plot lines that I can follow and don’t have to go into these long evolved, because I’m in the middle of a couple of other books which have multiple different chapters each have a different storyline and they refer back to it and they’re

Neo Edmund (32:39): You have to keep turning back.

John Goodwin (32:41): Okay, so how’s this tie-in here? And then I’m reading something, the story of Red Riding. And it’s a real simple little thing. And then there’s not a whole lot of stuff. You got the plot going in one direction, all of a sudden, okay, now we’re going back over here to this other world. And then eventually they’re gonna weave into each other. I know they’re very popular, but those are more for adult readers that can just lock and load on a story and just stick with it and move through it. But sometimes if I wanna have those interweaving storylines too, I can just keep going with news feeds. And get really convoluted and get all upset and …

Neo Edmund (33:15): Yeah, I know about that.

John Goodwin (33:23): Yeah, so this is, yours is a fun story, but something you can just read and enjoy. You don’t have to be a thirteen-year-old to enjoy the story.

Neo Edmund (33:33): Well YA is definitely the most popular selling fiction right now. We know that. You can just look at all the numbers. And I think that’s because it’s so accessible. And it’s not overly heavy. It’s just, people want that sort of just passive entertainment where you can just sit down and I feel a chapter should be something somebody could just read on their lunch break while they’re eating their sandwich or something, and just fifteen, twenty minutes and you’ve got a piece of a book and you’re, cool, you’re not overly weighed down, but enough happened to be, that was cool or fun. I got the next piece and I want to read more on my next break or something, you know? So that’s why I try to keep my chapters short. Keep them ten pages or fifteen pages or whatever. I learned when I wrote middle grade, they all had to be, chapters had to be six hundred, seven hundred words.  So that really helped me learn to be very efficient and write to the point.

John Goodwin (34:28): Well that’s one of the things too with pulp fiction, it was at a time it was after World War One, you had the collapse of the economy. And people, half America was out of work, the other half were desperate to keep their job going. So they weren’t gonna be out on the street and in the food lines and whatnot. So it was called escapist fiction. You could read it and just for a little bit, you weren’t there in whatever harms straits you’re in the middle of. You could just be there.

But they were written, at least the way that L. Ron Hubbard wrote is they’re a character that you could embrace. I could envision myself being that character. Robert Heinlein said that one of the storylines that you [L. Ron Hubbard] created, which I didn’t know existed until I read your stuff, is the man that learned better. And so there’s always something where he starts off, he’s not necessarily on the right side of the law, he’s not necessarily or she’s not necessarily doing the right thing or connecting the right people, but then come to some type of a crossroads and they decide to do the right thing.

And then it comes out good. They might get up beat up a whole lot, they get shot, they get all kinds of stuff, but they do the right thing at the end and you know it all works out. Which I enjoy in a storyline. ‘Cause you get stuff, which is what you got in your book too. I’m not into the, personally I’m not into the heroes that have to be broken. you know, it’s they can go through what they have to go through, but they can come out…

Neo Edmund (35:37): Works out.

John Goodwin (35:57): …the other end and just still be a hero. That to me, that’s it’s totally okay to do that. Now you’ve read some L. Ron Hubbard books?

Neo Edmund (36:06): Yeah. So my first exposure was in a college lit class. It was science fiction, fantasy, and horror class. And the first thing I read from him was, I think it was a novella. It was called Fear. And I mean, speaking of heavy, heavy stuff, I mean, that was I mean, that’s a psychological sort of mind trip, you know. Some guy trying to figure out he’s losing his grip on reality or is he not? Is this stuff happening or is it not? And I don’t want to give away too much.

People should read it. You know.

John Goodwin (36:38): Yeah, it’s one of the ones Stephen King called one of the really, really good ones and you’ve

Neo Edmund (36:41): Yeah, I think he said it was one of the early important psychological…

John Goodwin (36:45): It was the granddaddy of psychological horror. Prior to that is always the slash and gash stuff. That’s all in the background. It’s all what happened? Why is he doing this?

Neo Edmund (36:48): Yeah.

Yeah, and then I mean, wow, the end just really screwed me up for, not in a negative way, but it really stuck with me for a while. I was wow.

John Goodwin (37:08): Yeah, I don’t know anybody that saw that ending coming. No. Yeah. It was what? I showed you that one letter from Ray Bradbury to Hubbard saying, “I was so impressed by it.” That he turned it into a screenplay and had it performed. He lost the tapes that he had made and where they had it performed for him.

Neo Edmund (37:11): No, I did not know. My, can you imagine those existed?

Then on a more fun story, I read his Typewriter In the Sky story, which is just a fun, whimsical adventure. I think anybody who’s an author can appreciate that one, especially because it’s this guy gets sucked up into his friend’s novel, basically.

John Goodwin (37:48): His friend this friend’s name is Horace Hackett. And he’s totally a hack writer there.

Neo Edmund (37:51): And so he’s… But then it becomes that whole question of am I in somebody’s story or am I just somebody’s typing ’cause you keep hearing the typewriter ding ding ding ding in the sky, or whatever and then reality keeps shifting for him and he’s trying to   “I’m gonna try to change the end of the story” because he’s the villain. Villains don’t end, it doesn’t end well for villains in that guy’s story. So he’s trying really hard and but then questioning what if I get out of this? Am I just in somebody else’s story? You don’t know. It’s almost The Matrix or something, you know? Am I in, is this real? Are we in a simulated reality? Is somebody just writing this? You know?

John Goodwin (38:37): Yeah, which is really good. And it’s Mike Resnick was one of our judges. He passed away a few years ago. That was his favorite Hubbard story. And he said that was the first story in that genre, Meta sci fi, and recursive science fiction is what he called it. It’s science fiction about science fiction. You know. And he said it was just so good.

And I’ve known various authors and who are also teachers, professors teaching that in class on how to do that. And at the end, several of the…when he was at the bar after he’s come back and coming going back to New York…several of the people in the bar, those are all those people he was talking, those were his pen names. Because he had fifteen different pen names that he wrote under. I didn’t know that. Fifteen and he wrote…

Neo Edmund (39:23): I knew there were a couple, I didn’t realize there were fifteen.

John Goodwin (39:29): Cause he said the problem he had was because he was, his composition speed was 92 words a minute. And he said “I ran out of magazines to write for.” So he used different pen names. some magazines had three different stories written by him under different pen names. And he had that one fun story too where one of the editor was… because some of the authors would be upset with him because he always commanded top dollar or top penny per word back at the time… and one of the Editors said, you think you’re the best. I’ve got somebody else there. You know. This other guy you gotta see, Kurt von Rocken. He comes in, does this and that, he tears up this and breaks up that and that was one of his pen names.

Neo Edmund (40:16): So you’re, yeah, yeah, I heard that guy’s pretty good. Maybe I’ll be that good someday. And you wanna tell but you can’t. ‘Cause you don’t wanna…

John Goodwin (40:21): Exactly, exactly.

John Goodwin (40:26): Yeah, so now going on, because he was so popular as a writer, he was one of those popular writers in the thirties and forties with his pulp fiction. And then again in to celebrate fifty years he wrote Battlefield Earth, which was a serious…

Neo Edmund (40:42): Giant tome boat. Very serious. And it’s what is a half million words or something?

John Goodwin (40:47): Yeah. But it’s sold upwards of five million copie. It’s a very popular book and the, you saw in there that Saturn Award that was awarded to it and then the audiobook got an Audi Award. It’s won all kinds of awards over the years. But because he was such a popular writer, he’d had a history of helping aspiring writers. A lot of writers he back then in the thirties and forties he helped to launch their careers and help on what to do.

Several of the judges you see up there were his compatriots, compadres back then. But he launched a contest for Writers of the Future in 1983. And the idea was to provide an opportunity for writers to have their work seen and acknowledged and then publish these things. And I said we’re over a thousand people published. We go for the trying to keep it PG-13 or PG-17. Have you had a chance to read any of the stories?

Neo Edmund (41:48): I got the 42 and I bought it that night and it did not make it into the car with me. So I must have left it somewhere. I was tearing the car apart. I may have sat it down while I was talking to somebody and just walked away. But I did get a copy. But I’ve seen previous installments of it ’cause Kevin Anderson always had them at his booth. So at different shows.

John Goodwin (42:04): So I’ll give you a copy before you leave here.

He’s (Kevin Anderson) he entered the Contest I think seventeen times and then he never won, he pro’ed out. Meaning he could no longer enter the contest. When he became a judge, the first thing he did, and I had him write an essay for Writers of the Future, the first thing he did when he got on stage was, (lifting hands in the air) I’ve finally been published in Writers of the Future.

So now in terms of your journey now, how can somebody else, like you started however many decades ago. So now things are a lot different. Things have changed a lot because of AI, because of what’s happening. It’s just you still need to have a basic drive if you’re gonna make it, no matter what.

Neo Edmund (43:02): And so that’s what when people tell me, they want to do this, I want to be an author or something. I always start with and I think this applies to anything in life, is I always tell people to define your expectations. And that means sit down and really think what do I want out of this journey of being a writer? Because that can mean a lot of different things.   For some people it’s they want the big publishing contract, they want their books to be in bookstores and they want to go out and do the book tour and you know and all that stuff. And maybe my stuff will get made into a movie or a show, and that’s some people’s perceptions. And then I’ve met other people. I remember a guy in a writing class I was in one time, and he was working on some stories and I’m, you gonna try to publish this stuff? Cause it was pretty good. And he’s, I don’t know. He’s I think I’m just gonna get a couple of hardbacks bound up and I’ll put one up on my mantle and give one to my brother and I’ll be good. And I was, that’s cool. And, I’ve met other people in the in-between. At this one time I was at a comic convention in Hutchinson, Kansas, I got invited to one. It was one of the first comic cons I got invited to as a guest. And there is this woman, her name was Christine Sylvelle. She was dressed as Dorothy, which is funny in her Kansas. But she’s I want to be an author, but I don’t know what to. I don’t know how to do this. How do I get an agent? How do I get, how do I get a publisher? I’m like do you do you need that?

Is that what you need or do you just want to publish books and have that experience? And she’s  I want to put out my books. I want to write books. And I was well, then just indie publish some and that’ll be what you do, you know? And she’s, Okay. She felt good about that. And then I got invited back to that show a year later and she had a booth and she was selling her first book that she indie published. And she’s now published 10 or 12 books, you know? And she’s literally the PTA mom that’s just having the experience of her life as a local author and just that’s her journey. And so it’s, I always tell people you gotta define what you want out of this. And if you want that big publishing contract version of it, you’re gonna have to do a lot. And it’s gonna be a lot of work and it never ends. There’s no, “now I’ve arrived” as I’ve told my story of now, I’ve arrived. No, you haven’t, and I could say now I’ve arrived today. And I’m, no, I’m still going,   I’m still climbing the mountain and there’s no top. There’s little peaks and little victories and you should enjoy those moments, but you’re just gonna have to keep clawing. So you gotta decide first off, what do you really realistically want?

John Goodwin (45:39): People say I want to be a writer, but I just don’t have time. That type of stuff there and it’s just, it’s an excuse and how do you do that?… And I just… I can’t …and you just… they don’t want to be a writer, obviously.

Neo Edmund (45:52): Right. Yeah. I remember I think it was Kevin Anderson telling me about Frank Herbert writing Dune, where he literally sat in his car on his lunch break writing Dune while he had a day job, and then he would go back in and work and that’s what he did on his lunch breaks is he just wrote for twenty minutes or something and then eventually he wrote Dune, you know.

John Goodwin (46:13): Yeah. A writer writes. It’s just, and now it’s easier for a writer, but it’s also you’ve got to be willing to do whatever it takes, ’cause last year over five million books were published. Five million.

Neo Edmund (46:27): Crazy. That is amazing.

John Goodwin (46:33): Even if you’re gonna go the traditional route anymore, the traditional publishers aren’t saying, Okay, we’ll give you a contract and you sit back and write, with your cigar, or you just enjoy, reap the benefits. I’m an author now. It’s not that way anymore. That’s not the drill.

Neo Edmund (46:49): And if you meet an agent that tells you they’re gonna set you up in that kind of deal, they’re selling you something. ‘Cause I’ve heard those agents say that and you’re just, dude, that’s not realistic, man.

John Goodwin (46:58): No. Stephen King, he can do what he does right now, but he still does book tours.

Neo Edmund (47:03): Yeah. I know a lot of A-list authors who, oh my god, all the things they used to do for me, now I have to do myself, you know.

John Goodwin (47:11): And a publisher, if you want to go traditional, just as a reality check here, if I said there’s over five million books published, so if you want to say, Okay, I’m gonna go and get a traditional thing, you got all these great authors out there. So I’m coming to you, I’ve got twenty-five thousand followers on Facebook or on Instagram, and another guy goes, Well, I don’t do social media, I’m just an author. Right.

Who are they gonna take? They’re gonna take the guy that’s got the twenty-five thousand followers. That’s a no brainer. They don’t wanna throw money into something that’s not gonna do anything. But now because of well, you said KDP Kindlepreneur and then you’ve got Ingram Spark and all these other platforms you can use.

You make a lot more money. And you also you control the, Rod Serling, you control the vertical and the horizontal.

Neo Edmund (48:05): Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard that a lot of first authors that do get that big publishing contract, the most they may make out of their book is three to five thousand dollars. And that may be you got a trilogy deal and they put out the first book and then it doesn’t hit and then they just kind of throw out the second and third one and nothing. And then it’s all that work and it’s just gone. And to me, it’s more like when people are new, especially, you should probably just publish something on your own and build an audience and prove you can do it before you go to those publishers, because every time I’ve been hired, it’s because I’ve done things, you know? And had I not even published that original Red Riding book, probably none of this anything that happened after that wouldn’t have happened. Because suddenly I was selling books and I was this person on my own and I was getting an audience. And then that got people paying attention to me. Hey, who is this person over here? You know? And I was basically making so much noise on the internet that they couldn’t ignore me, you know. And so when I met an editor at Comic Con from Penguin, he’d already kind of heard of me, and then they Google you and you’re wow, okay, this person’s doing a lot of stuff. They’re out there, they’re doing conventions, they’re making appearances, they’re doing podcasts, you know. And that’s a thing to consider if you want to go that traditional publishing route, you’re gonna have to get out there and learn how to market yourself, almost yourself more than your books.   People almost have to want to champion you and cheer for you, they’re watching you go through your thing and they’re cheerleading for you. And I’ve had that experience. A lot of people are, “I just love seeing all the stuff. You’re succeeding and makes me feel good.” And it’s, cool, that makes me feel good, but you almost have to build that audience that you do.

John Goodwin (49:57): But also some people, it’s a double edged sword, it’s really good. But then also the very nature of being a writer or a creative is that you’re introverted. And so now the idea of, I just feel most comfortable, I’m just in my room typing away or painting away. But now I have to go out and meet thousands of people and do this stuff and talk to people. And it’s my brain just…

Neo Edmund (50:07): I am that person. I’m super introverted when I’m not doing a convention or when I’m at home. I’m just kind of a hermit. And then I have to go out and do a comic convention. Have to… get to, I should say I have to turn it on and be that and I think maybe having an acting background helped me get to that because I have to, I’ve created almost a persona of who I am. As soon as I walk into the convention or the author convention or whatever it is, now I’m this version of me, you know? And then after the three days of this, I’m gonna go home and sit in the quiet and recharge for days. But I will actually give you an example of that because I got an opportunity to do a table at WonderCon, which is a the comic convention in Anaheim. And I was “Do I want to do another convention?” They’re so exhausting. And so I was of course I’m gonna do it. And so I went and I did it. And then my table positioning wasn’t great. And I was kind of buried behind these artists with these big,   towering signs. And I was I just want to go home. But I’m, no, I’m gonna stay. And then I was literally not gonna come back the next day. And then I just of course did because I make myself, I have to make myself I go through these arguments in my head.

And that’s when I met Joni here from Author Services, who invited me to the Gala. And had I not been there, that would have never happened. And had I not gone to the gala, because of course my brain’s: There’s gonna be so many. You have to drive into Hollywood at nine and there’s traffic. And because my brain always wants to do this, coming up with excuses, I’m, no, you’re gonna go and you’re gonna have fun. And then I go there and I have a great time. I meet a bunch of great people. I meet you, and now I’m here doing this, and it’s all that.

You have to show up, no matter what. Even if you’re, I can’t do it, it’s so hard. And people, a lot of my writer friends will come up to my table at conventions and be, I don’t know how you do this. This looks so hard. I can never do this. And I’m I don’t want to do this either, but I’ve learned to enjoy it and make myself do it, you know? And that’s something. So when people are telling me they can’t do it, well, is it that you can’t, or is it that you just don’t want to have to try.     And if you’re gonna do this, then you have to do this, you know. And that’s the tough pill to swallow.

John Goodwin (52:45): And so you got part of the thing too is you just got if you want to embrace success, there is a formula and things you have to do. And the day of I’m gonna put it there, and the Field of Dreams is not, I mean it’s a movie. You know…

Neo Edmund (53:04): Build it and they’ll come, but build it and you have to let them know you built it. And you’re reminding them.

John Goodwin (53:08): Exactly. And and then now where’s the next book? And then next book and the next book.

Neo Edmund (53:16): Gosh, yes, that’s a thing that’s almost I’ll be at my table and I’ll have a brand new thing on, my brand new graphic novel on the table and friends will come up and they’ll be, that’s cool, that’s your new book. So what are you working on? And you’re, it’s almost it used to be you’re only as good as your last hit. Now it’s you’re only as good as your next hit, you know.

John Goodwin (53:35): Yeah. It’s true. But it’s good as you build up fans, they want more of you. So and you got some of these people that are whale readers that just, they’re voracious and once you got somebody hooked on you as an author, What’s next? What’s next? And it’s not something to be taken as a problem. It’s just people want what you have to offer. That’s a good thing.

Neo Edmund (53:56): Right. And they’ll consume everything you wrote in a week and then be, What else you got? And you’re, my gosh, I’ll catch up.

John Goodwin (54:02): But that’s what you want as an author. You want that type of admiration.

Neo Edmund (54:06): That’s the one thing I say is people read authors more than people read books. And that’s kind of a weird thing to say. But if you really think about it, it’s once you find an author you like, you’re I want everything they ever wrote. And that’s also why I’m not that concerned about these AI books and stuff, because they’re disingenuous. They’re kind of fake. And I don’t think anybody’s gonna grab onto them, you know. And there’s nothing around. They’ve been around for a few years and they’re has there been a breakout hit AI book that we know of? No. And there’s millions of them or tens of millions of them that have been generated, you know? And you’re, but there hasn’t been anyone that you’ve heard of that was an AI book, that hit and or even heard of. So I don’t I don’t concern myself with that. Those are just hacks that are gonna, they try and then they fall away. So I’m not worried about the AI thing, by the way.

John Goodwin (54:55): You know as long as you have people yourself creating “story,” because that’s one thing that an AI can maybe do something that’s really proper prose and all that stuff here and the correct use of this and no this and no that. But the creativity of the story is something that it is not able to do.

Neo Edmund (55:17): There’s no substance. There’s none of that soul, that thing where you sit down and you’re, I’m going through this emotional time and I’m gonna write a story and just get out and it may not even be about what you’re going through, but that emotion. AI, it can’t put that into, it can’t even weave a story with setups and payoffs and stuff, you know. It’s just it can write stuff, and it can generate stuff. And you read it and you’re, Okay, it’s fine, but…

John Goodwin (55:42): Yeah. Anyway, that’s good. So we’ve gone through a lot here, so we’re coming to the end of our hour now. It definitely went through a lot of stuff there. So how can some… So first of all, I’ve been saying A Tale of Red Riding. So, what would you as the first book to for people to read?

Neo Edmund (56:01): Well the first one is called it’s A Tale of Red Riding: Rise of the Alpha Huntress. That’s the first one. And the second one is Fate of the Big Bad Wolf. And the third one is Destiny of the Wayward Queen. And they’re all under the Tale of Red Riding banner and everything’s linked on my website, neoedmund.com. or you can just Google Neo Edmund. I just actually put out a thirteenth anniversary edition with a bunch of illustrations I did for the first book which I’d been working on this for two years or something, you know.

And then now I have a graphic novel coming out, an adaptation of, it’s the first half of the first book. And I did it with Storm King Comics, which is Sandy King and John Carpenter’s imprint, which is…, I’ve been writing comics with them. They decided to start a kids line a couple of years ago.

John Goodwin (56:46): Is this under ERB? Edgar Rice Burroughs?

Neo Edmund (56:49): No, it’s no, they started their own imprint called Storm King Comics. So and it’s Sandy King and John Carpenter started it and they’ve been doing it for twelve years now. And yeah, they like five, six years ago, Sandy, I was at a convention. She’s We’re starting a kids line. I’m you guys do really dark horror and stuff and she’s, No, we want stuff that’s appropriate for kids.

John Goodwin (57:13): I know as John Carpenter, that’s Edgar Rice Burroughs character. John Carpenter of Mars.

Neo Edmund (57:19): Yeah, John Carpenter is like Halloween and The Thing, the director, the horror guy. So, I pitched them this project called Grimstown Terror Tales and we did a kid’s friendly graphic novel with them. We’re doing a couple more, and then at some point Sandy’s, We should do a graphic novel of your Red Riding thing. And I was, okay, that’s coming out on June 9th. So, I’m really excited about that. And it’s incredibly beautiful. The art is phenomenal.

John Goodwin (57:46): Well what I’ve been seeing what I saw on your website, the book that I read is just, that’s just amazing art that you got there.

Neo Edmund (57:52): Thank you. So long working on that. That was just a thing I just kept doing. I’m just gonna make another art piece and another art piece. [You created that?] Yeah. I used a lot of different it was all digital art, Photoshop and Blender.

John Goodwin (57:59): Amazing.

Anyway, definitely it made the book that much more fun seeing it. Well thank you. So anyway, how can people find you?

Neo Edmund (58:17): Well, neoedmund.com is my website. Or Google Neo Edmund or type Neo Edmund into Amazon or Barnes and Noble or whatever. I’m very easy to find on the internet. And my email address is neo at neoedmund.com and I say that out loud. People may email me, but I don’t take pitches or submissions. I can’t help with any of that. But if anybody wants to email me and say hi, that’s cool. it may take me a while to get back ’cause I’m busy, but I eventually get back.

John Goodwin (58:46): Good. Well, thank you very much.

And thank you for listening. Subscribe to the Writers of the Future Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We’ve also been syndicated on the United Public Radio Network where you can find these podcasts as well. Writers and Illustrators of the Future are contests created by L. Ron Hubbard to provide a means for the aspiring writer and artist to be seen and acknowledged for over four decades. It is free to enter and open to amateur short story writers and artists of science fiction or fantasy. Again, thank you very much, Neo.

Neo Edmund (59:13): Thank you for having me. This was amazing.