Show Notes:
Today is part two of two where we are talking to Will Grey about his novels. After today you will have heard about storytelling as a teenager, starting with being a dungeon master, becoming your character, going from being signed to a publisher, to that same publisher teaching you how to do it yourself, promoting yourself, writing and publishing in dyslexia font, plotting an entire world worth of books, and writing the story you want to tell.
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Will Grey is a lifelong gamemaster and an eloquent storyteller. The Dalen Pax series is his magnum opus.Representing over 25 years of consistent personal and collective world-building and encapsulating his unique and compelling philosophical system.he lives in Citrus Heights California with his wife Rhiannon and their children Billy, Jareth, Madison, and Zoey.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s.
Speaker A: Fairy tales.
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Speaker A: Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
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Speaker A: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
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Speaker A: Today is part two of two where we are talking to Will Gray about his novels.
Speaker A: After today, you will have heard about storytelling as a teenager, starting with being a Dungeon Master, becoming your character, going from being signed to a publisher to that same publisher, teaching you how to do it yourself, promoting yourself, writing and publishing in dyslexia font, plotting an entire world worth of books and writing the story you want to tell.
Speaker A: Dalen Packs in the Heart of Stone.
Speaker A: The Chronicle of Time.
Speaker A: Last time, Dalen was alone, but this time, Becky, Ben and the brothers Adam and Travis have come with him to seek out a way to save their friend David, who was attacked by a dagger containing a terrible curse.
Speaker A: They seek out Dorne, a magical tavern keeper who is rumored to have created the world in hopes that he may be able to show them the way.
Speaker A: Once they arrive in Vinger City, they quickly learn that the city knows them well as saviors from the distant past.
Speaker A: Dorn tells them the answers they seek are 2000 years in the past, and if they’re going to save their friend and fulfill their destinies, they will have to seek out the pillar of time.
Speaker A: Along the way, they will have to help the vengerian queen in her quest for the earthblade and face ferocious goblins and a pair of oracle pixies.
Speaker A: Most importantly, Dalen will have to decide if he’s strong enough to cast aside great power to stand as his true self to claim the Heart of Stone.
Speaker C: Also with mine okay, I’m sure there’s a term for it.
Speaker C: I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure there is a term for it.
Speaker C: Okay, movies that have it that I can just name are things like the 6th Cents Fight Club that you watch the movie once and at the last few minutes they give you a new piece of information that changes the whole thing and when you watch it the second time, it’s a completely different story.
Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t know what that’s called either, but I know what you mean.
Speaker C: But, yeah, I’m sure there’s a term for that.
Speaker B: I’m sure of it.
Speaker C: I don’t know what it is.
Speaker B: Oh, I have to go watch it again, like, right now.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: My series works this way, all right?
Speaker C: If you read book one all the way through, you can read book one again, and it’s a different book once you read book two.
Speaker C: Book one changes again when you read book three.
Speaker C: Book one and two change when you read book four.
Speaker C: Book one, two, three, change.
Speaker C: When you read book five.
Speaker C: The whole series changes every time through the first five books.
Speaker C: And I built it that way on purpose.
Speaker C: And so if you read book three first, you don’t understand what’s going because you need these revelations to understand who people are and why people are the way they are.
Speaker C: Without this information, you’re like, oh, wait, he’s dead.
Speaker C: What?
Speaker C: He’s dead.
Speaker C: Bush, Rollins is dead, type of thing.
Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker C: No, go ahead.
Speaker B: I was going to ask so we’ve talked about so book one came out last October.
Speaker B: Book two is coming out this October.
Speaker B: You’re doing the signing in October as well.
Speaker B: Are you planning on just each October you’re going to release a book?
Speaker C: No, not even a little.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: The first book was to see if we could do it as a publisher.
Speaker C: Book two was, okay, now can I do it without someone holding my hand every step of the way?
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker B: Can I remember most of the steps myself?
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And also we had to make enough money back to be able to do it again.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Because just buying 100 books so you have books for signings is expensive.
Speaker C: You got to buy $100.
Speaker C: And yes, you get deals and so on and so forth, but you have to make that money back.
Speaker C: I have to put in money to do the farmers markets, to buy a booth at a con or buy a booth at a book fair or whatever.
Speaker C: So we had to wait until we made enough money to do it again.
Speaker C: Right, and that took a year.
Speaker A: But then once you get two books.
Speaker B: Now you have two books out there selling to hopefully, I think that’s the general idea.
Speaker C: We now know how to market better.
Speaker C: The first book had zero arc readers, all right?
Speaker C: I wrote the book, I put it out.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: This one, we had time to have a couple of people beta read it.
Speaker C: I have 15 arc readers and so on and so forth.
Speaker C: And we believe that we can put out book three in six months.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: Our goal in the end is to be able to put them out once a quarter.
Speaker C: So once every three months.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: That’s goals for the business eventually, right, is to be able to put a book out every three months, whether it’s.
Speaker B: Yours or someone else’s or just yours every three months.
Speaker C: It’s my goal, but it’s my goal based off of listening to people who’ve been doing this for a while, right.
Speaker C: And when they are asked that question, we have put out 350 books.
Speaker C: 100 of them are mine.
Speaker C: But I am an indie publisher who has 300 books under their belt.
Speaker C: And after doing it for this long and learning the success rate, if you’re going to put out a series, you should be able to and prepared to put out that series every three months type of information.
Speaker C: And overall, this is the echo that comes back at me.
Speaker C: I put out the echo to the community, to anyone I can talk to.
Speaker C: The echo I get back eventually is when we’re up and running and we got this.
Speaker C: I’m now not just an author, but I am also the CEO of this publishing company.
Speaker C: That’s what we’re doing.
Speaker C: Our goal is to try to hit a book every three months, but not just mine.
Speaker C: That’s the whole point, right?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I was thinking I was like, man, for you.
Speaker B: So I know my husband who’s Dyslexic, who’s writing.
Speaker B: He writes very slow because he’s Dyslexic.
Speaker B: And he goes back and he edits.
Speaker A: It all the time to make sure.
Speaker B: That it makes sense.
Speaker B: And so he’s having his iPad read it back to him and doing all of these things that are not things that I have to do because I’m not Dyslexic.
Speaker B: And so it’s a whole different process.
Speaker B: I’m thinking with you being Dyslexic, I’m like, how are you going to ramp that up for your own books that fast?
Speaker C: Well, the first answer is I have all seven books of my first series written.
Speaker B: But then for future books, eventually you run out of the pre done books.
Speaker C: Well, it takes me three months to draft and edit.
Speaker C: Yeah, but if I have them set up in line, I can have this book being edited and prepared for publication while this book that I’ve now finished now can go to the editor.
Speaker C: And we’ll just keep running them like a construction line, an assembly line.
Speaker B: Overall, in his too, he keeps getting distracted and working on other books at the same time.
Speaker B: He’s not like, writing in a line.
Speaker B: He’s writing like, multiple books where, like mine, I went from beginning to end before.
Speaker B: I’m like, we’re going to focus on this one, and we’re going to get it done.
Speaker C: I wrote the first five books, and I got down to basically I was writing two chapters a week done.
Speaker C: And after five, my sister, who is my continuity editor, basically I read her the chapters because I do a lot of time travel.
Speaker C: There’s a reason why my series is called The Chronicles of Time, all right?
Speaker C: And I do a lot of time travel and time jumping and so on and so forth.
Speaker C: So I need one person to make sure that I’m keeping it all straight, right?
Speaker C: And after I wrote five, she went, you might want to consider writing horror because this is the darkest, scariest stuff I’ve ever read.
Speaker C: And I’ve actually had nightmares about book five.
Speaker C: And so I went, neat.
Speaker C: That was my goal.
Speaker C: That’s what I wanted you to feel.
Speaker C: I mean, I did originally, Dale and PAX and the beach of Fire was going to be ya.
Speaker C: And we’ve changed it.
Speaker C: It’s no longer ya.
Speaker C: And part of the reason why is what happens in five.
Speaker C: And and it’s not I don’t write spice up until this.
Speaker B: Okay, so we’re many books in at this point, right.
Speaker C: And it wasn’t what I was aiming at.
Speaker C: There’s too many things going on.
Speaker C: We don’t have time for a love affair type thing.
Speaker B: Fair.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: And so I had two other characters because you have Dalen Paxton is posse.
Speaker C: His posse has a love affair going on on.
Speaker C: The only the closest thing, despite I ever put in was that they made love on the beach.
Speaker C: And I just left it at that.
Speaker C: I moved on.
Speaker C: They worshiped each other as gods because it wasn’t the flavor that I was writing.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: But I always try to invoke emotion.
Speaker C: It’s one of my goals.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: The biggest compliment my wife gave me while she was editing is that after she was editing a part, she walked in and took my hand and made me wipe away her tears.
Speaker C: All right?
Speaker C: And then she went back to work.
Speaker C: She was just letting me know, yeah, even though I’m editing and it worked, you got me.
Speaker C: I’m like, yeah, but book five is supposed to be this dark piece.
Speaker C: It’s supposed to be the shadow of everything that you have seen up until now, everything that, you know, by the way, there’s a dark side to it.
Speaker C: All right?
Speaker C: And now you’re going to see the horrificness of what could have been, right?
Speaker C: And so she was like, yeah, you should try writing horror.
Speaker C: And so I took a break from book five and after book five, and I wrote a horror story.
Speaker C: All right?
Speaker C: And I liked it.
Speaker C: It was cool.
Speaker C: It was a good palette changer, a good palette cleanser.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: And then I was like, oh, yeah, okay, great.
Speaker C: That worked right on.
Speaker C: I think I’m going to move on and go back to book six.
Speaker C: And it originally was just going to be six books, but then, of course, I got through book six.
Speaker C: And for example, Rogue one from the Star Wars series, everyone dies.
Speaker C: It’s like a Shakespearean play.
Speaker C: At the end, all of the heroes you’ve come to love die.
Speaker B: Yeah, right?
Speaker C: Well, it’s not specifically that, but I left everyone either cursed or dismantled or whatever, but they saved the world.
Speaker C: They saved the world.
Speaker B: The world is saved.
Speaker B: It’s okay.
Speaker C: Yeah, the whole world has been saved.
Speaker C: Actually, not this world, just this world, but every world has been saved at the price of everyone you’ve come to love, right?
Speaker C: My continuity editor was just flat out, if you do this, you’re going to p*** off your people.
Speaker C: They don’t want you to do not have us.
Speaker C: Love all these characters and end it like this.
Speaker C: And so I was like, all right, I’ll write one more book.
Speaker B: I remember the first series that I remember being weird like that.
Speaker B: So I was reading through Akatar, which if you’ve been on TikTok for any length of time, you’ve heard about Akatar.
Speaker B: And so I read through book one, I read through book two.
Speaker B: I read through book three.
Speaker B: At the time, I was in singing lessons to help with vocal health, with narrating and stuff like that.
Speaker B: And so me and my singing coach person would talk about Akatar, just books in general, but Akatar specifically.
Speaker B: And she’d be like, oh, where are you at?
Speaker B: And so I tell her, but I’m like, I just got to the big battle in book three, and how does it go on for two more books?
Speaker B: And she’s like, well, they tie up all the loose ends after the battle.
Speaker B: And I’m like, so they’re cleaning up.
Speaker B: There’s a whole book about cleaning up.
Speaker B: Now that I’ve read it, I’m like, okay.
Speaker B: It’s okay.
Speaker B: But it is necessary sometimes to not leave everybody dead or cursed or whatever, right?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Books one through five has to deal with present and the past.
Speaker C: Book six and now seven, deal with the future.
Speaker B: Okay?
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: And basically, book six, they were cursed for 35 years for points being instead of forever.
Speaker C: But in 35 years, there’s going to be people who come save you, all right?
Speaker C: And then book seven is 35 years later, okay, and you get a new cast of people who are coming to save the old cast, right?
Speaker C: All right, and they do.
Speaker C: And then the camera switches back to the old cast and the new cast.
Speaker B: Goes away, goes away for points being.
Speaker C: Goes back to what they were doing.
Speaker C: But it’s 35 years in the future now.
Speaker C: I’m preset I actually have something like 20 books set up and prepared to write for this world, all right?
Speaker C: And so the next seven books at book of seven happens during six, okay?
Speaker C: All right, during book six, the entire seven book series happens in that time because basically it’s six books that are the backstory of these six individuals, and the 7th book is them coming together as a team, all right?
Speaker C: And then there’s going to be a trilogy that has to deal with this girl going from 15 to 45, during which time these years are passing.
Speaker C: And then the next series starts with the people from seven coming back from seven, and then the series continues on.
Speaker C: All right, but it’s ten books down the road.
Speaker C: But that’s because I had to jump 35 years in the future for book seven to get this through, right?
Speaker C: So I can end this.
Speaker C: But the cool thing now is, instead of a lot of this book has to do with surprises, it has to do with, oh, my God, there’s no way.
Speaker C: And that’s the reason why the books change from book to book to book to book, is you find these revelations.
Speaker C: The next series is going to be you already know what happens.
Speaker C: You already saw it happen in book seven.
Speaker C: You know what’s going to take place now.
Speaker C: You get to watch it develop.
Speaker C: I make one reference to these kind of clockwork spiders during book seven, and then six books later, you get to meet a guy who’s trying to figure out how to make clockwork spiders, and you’re like, oh, that’s the guy.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: That’s going to be the guy.
Speaker C: Eventually, it’s the reverse effect, which I’m hoping will work.
Speaker C: Well, we’ll have to see.
Speaker C: I’m very unorthodox.
Speaker C: I’m very unorthodox.
Speaker C: I p***** off my editors so much in the beginning.
Speaker C: My editor, my narrator, is not the main character, and he’s not a floating head that never shows up.
Speaker C: He’s a character who eventually shows up, like in chapter seven.
Speaker B: So he’s telling the story of what they’ve all related to him when they meet him.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Well, he was there.
Speaker C: He knows the story.
Speaker C: He’s telling you the story of something that happened 500 years ago for points being or 50 years ago, but he’s the one telling you the story.
Speaker C: Right, but he was there for part of it.
Speaker C: So this floating head narrator, halfway through the book, starts using who’s.
Speaker C: All past tense.
Speaker C: All past tense.
Speaker C: And then when we get to this one scene that he’s in, that character who also happens to be the narrator, is saying things as I and using present tense.
Speaker C: But it’s just the narrator quoting this character who happens to be him, but having a floating head narrator start using the phrase I for anything.
Speaker B: Is weird.
Speaker C: Is weird.
Speaker C: I actually had to write something called chapter Zero, which is basically the prologue, which is, Hi, I’m the narrator.
Speaker C: My name is Will Gray.
Speaker C: I’m going to be showing up in the story later here, we know type of thing, just so you can expect it.
Speaker C: I have characters break what I call the fifth wall, not the fourth.
Speaker C: They don’t turn and talk to the reader.
Speaker C: They turn and talk to the narrator.
Speaker C: Because my book involves a genie, is an enslaved gen.
Speaker C: They’re trapped.
Speaker C: They have the bracelets on.
Speaker C: They can’t make wishes for themselves.
Speaker C: A gin is what they originally were before they were enslaved.
Speaker C: And we deal with those guys so they can say no to your wishes.
Speaker C: I wish this no.
Speaker C: But also I used the original concept that was originally in the Muslim religion, because, like angels or Cherufim or seraphim or Cherubs, these are religious concepts, but people write them in books all the time.
Speaker C: And so I wanted to go back to the original concept of these things.
Speaker C: And it is so you ain’t never had a friend like me?
Speaker C: Not it’s not that at all.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: They are considered neutral demons or neutral angels.
Speaker C: If you put a sliding scale where on one side is positive and that’s angel and you sliding scale and it’s negative, that’s demon.
Speaker C: And these things are what’s known as divine beings, negative or called demons, positive or called angels.
Speaker C: Jinn are the thing exactly in the center.
Speaker C: So you make a wish and they agree to it.
Speaker C: They often possess you.
Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
Speaker C: And then enact the wish.
Speaker C: Because they don’t have a body, they have to use you to make the wish happen.
Speaker B: Makes sense, right?
Speaker C: And I’m like, oh, that’s good.
Speaker C: Let’s play with that.
Speaker C: Anyway, these powerful creatures are so powerful, they are aware of the narrator god.
Speaker C: And so from time to time, they’ll just talk to they’ll just, hey, why don’t we do this from now on and then go back to what they’re doing?
Speaker C: Oh, my editors hated well, I’m sure.
Speaker B: Most people you’re not supposed to because it’s not marketable switch between the tenses that you’re using or whatever.
Speaker B: So yeah, I can imagine them being like now, I have seen if there’s a very good reason for it, do it.
Speaker B: And there is not a very good reason for or I should say in personal preference, because I have read books that were done that were not done well.
Speaker B: If you can do it well and there’s a reason for it, then do it.
Speaker B: If you can’t do it well and it doesn’t make any sense, don’t do it.
Speaker B: Don’t do it.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: Overall, but I’m probably cutting off my own foot here, and I know this, right, because it goes against the very first rule I ever learned, which was about art and marketable products.
Speaker C: If you go by all of the hubbub that’s going on in book talk these days, I’m a terrible I use dialogue tags.
Speaker C: Other than said, that guy.
Speaker B: Oh, my God, that guy drives me crazy.
Speaker C: The last edit I did on book one, the very last thing that we did is we sat down and either erased or changed 245 uses of the word set.
Speaker C: Oh, gosh to sneer or interject it or whatever, right?
Speaker C: That was the last edit.
Speaker C: My editor was like, no, you can’t use said all the time.
Speaker C: Yeah, that was what I was told.
Speaker C: And now it’s like, oh, you’re only supposed to use that.
Speaker C: That’s not what I learned at all.
Speaker C: I was in trouble for that.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: There’s a whole thing, though, about not like, one of my beta readers, okay, my book is based at Christmas time, so she is helping her parents set up the house with Christmas decorations.
Speaker B: And so one of my beta readers started making a joke about we’re going to make drinking games with these repetitive uses of these words.
Speaker B: So decorations got reused a bunch in a very short time.
Speaker B: And then there was snowflake and just flake by itself.
Speaker B: She’s like, we’re going to make another drinking game for that.
Speaker B: And then at another time, there was Benefactress got used, like, a million times, and she was like, you need to include in your PR box a little shot glass with a little thing of whiskey or something for the drinking games.
Speaker B: And I’m like, you guys all commented that I use the words too much, so I have now fixed it.
Speaker B: You’re not supposed to have repetitive words.
Speaker C: My word was power at one point.
Speaker C: Yeah, because this guy had a power, and this power allowed him to be powerful.
Speaker C: But if he gave up that power, would he be powerful enough to be able to do what was next?
Speaker C: Oh, boy.
Speaker B: All right, so last question I’m going to ask.
Speaker B: What was the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten and the worst piece of writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
Speaker B: Answer in whichever order you want, but best and worst.
Speaker C: I think the worst one was the said thing anytime.
Speaker C: The worst piece of information of advice that I’ve been given has to do with a conglomeration.
Speaker C: It’s a concept, and I’ve been told it numerous times in numerous ways.
Speaker B: Okay?
Speaker C: That the answer, is that the goal is to write like everyone else.
Speaker C: You need to have this particular percentage of adverbs.
Speaker C: You need to only use this.
Speaker C: You need to only put it this way.
Speaker C: It has to be done like this so we can crank out another piece of petrified plastic cheese the way that everyone else does it, because that’s what the big companies want.
Speaker C: And so you have to make it like everyone else the way that they want.
Speaker C: It was probably the worst advice I’ve been given up until now.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: You have to have it be grammatically correct, and you have to spell words correctly.
Speaker C: There are things that you need to do, but to change everything about what you’re doing so that you can make it like everybody else.
Speaker B: How boring would books be if everybody wrote off the same template?
Speaker C: Oh, my God.
Speaker B: That’s what I always think with all of these.
Speaker B: You have to do this and you have to do that.
Speaker B: Every time I see any TikTok or anything come across that says you have to do it this way or you have to do it that way.
Speaker B: I’m like, you do realize that it would be very boring if we all used the same template for our books.
Speaker B: You have to have this at 20% and this at 30% and this at 40% and this at 50%.
Speaker B: I’m like, if every book was written the same way, it would be boring.
Speaker B: Because you know what?
Speaker B: Some people like me.
Speaker B: I will read pretty much anything that.
Speaker A: You put in front of me.
Speaker B: As long as I am in the mood for that genre right now, I will read it.
Speaker B: I will probably enjoy it.
Speaker B: And I will also forget what I read a day later, and then I can read it again if I so choose.
Speaker B: But you know what?
Speaker B: I’ve read a wide range of things that were definitely not written like each other.
Speaker B: Might there be a reason that I prefer some books over others?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: Am I going to dissect it down to the percentage that the main plot points happened?
Speaker B: No.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker B: And I’m not going to write that way.
Speaker B: It sounds like that would be incredibly limiting.
Speaker C: Was demanding it, and I had to switch headers.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: No, they were telling me to the percentage, you are 14% over.
Speaker C: It’s like, I’m so sorry.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: No, the best advice, though, was that this story was entrusted to you and you are the only one who has the authority to say what it is.
Speaker C: That’s the best advice I’ve ever given.
Speaker B: So yours are almost the exact opposites of each other.
Speaker B: Write based off of a formula or you write the story that was given to you almost the exact opposites of each other.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And I’m willing to change stuff.
Speaker C: The original version of Dalen PAX and The Beads of Fire, they were 13 years old.
Speaker C: It was a coming of age story.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: But as we moved along further and we saw what was going to be happening to these kids, I went, okay, we can’t do this to children.
Speaker C: And so I moved it to 1718 years old.
Speaker C: The next phase of coming of age.
Speaker C: But you’re now more of an adult.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: Originally, the characters were very whitewashed.
Speaker C: All right?
Speaker C: And it wasn’t because that was my goal.
Speaker C: It had to do with these were actually based off of childhood friends who just happened to be worked out that they were.
Speaker C: And so on my third review of book one, I started changing nationalities a little bit here and there.
Speaker C: I was so hyper focused on what I was doing with the gen, which is they don’t have a gender at all.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker C: That’s because they’re a non corporeal being.
Speaker C: They don’t have a body.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: They don’t have a gender.
Speaker C: And in the end, the only gender that they have is how you perceive them.
Speaker C: Your mind has to draw in something.
Speaker B: Right.
Speaker C: So whatever picture it draws in, they’re that.
Speaker B: Sure.
Speaker C: And I was so focused on connecting into this platform, this idea that I forgot to pay attention to some of the background characters and so on and so forth.
Speaker C: I wrote it and it was terrible.
Speaker C: And then I was just writing it for grammar and spelling.
Speaker C: And then third time, when I was actually looking at the characters, really looking at them, I started changing them and fixing them up.
Speaker C: And now, I mean, some of the strongest characters in my story are female, all right?
Speaker C: The Jen itself looks like a female and then at one point turns to the narrator and says, why don’t we just run with this and go with she all right?
Speaker C: And then from then on, the narrator refers to her as such, but until then, it’s an it.
Speaker C: The narrator refers to the gen as an it or the fire Jen, until she declares that she’s a girl, and then I write her as her, which is an ongoing theme about the recognition of that.
Speaker C: The narrator always refers to you of how you see yourself.
Speaker C: And so there’s characters that switch names, even switch mannerisms, and how they’re written, as the story goes, because they’re perceiving themselves different.
Speaker C: But then I really wanted strong females.
Speaker C: I wanted strong storyline.
Speaker C: I wanted strong characters who were of multinational.
Speaker C: So I started resetting that as I was going through my second edit to lay out who these characters were.
Speaker C: It worked out that actually, some of the most powerful characters in my entire world are female.
Speaker C: How it goes.
Speaker C: That’s who they are, but that’s who they are.
Speaker C: I didn’t do it so I could get the women’s vote.
Speaker C: That’s who the character is.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: I don’t know what to tell you.
Speaker C: I’m the smartest girl on the team.
Speaker C: I mean, the smartest person on the team is a girl, all right?
Speaker C: But that’s because the two brothers, one of them is about tactics, the other one is about adventure.
Speaker C: He’s the one that goes, oh, these are the moments we live forward.
Speaker C: And then we have the other one who’s writing in a book, wait, how do you spell that type of thing?
Speaker C: And then there’s the kind of the jock bully that joins the team.
Speaker C: And then the girl who is the intelligent one, the empathic one, the one who goes, wait a minute, you said something there.
Speaker C: That was her part in that story.
Speaker C: So it just turns out that she’s the most smartest.
Speaker C: She’s the smartest of the team.
Speaker C: The Avenger City is a sentient being.
Speaker C: The walls are its bones.
Speaker C: It’s a living thing.
Speaker C: But when it manifests into a person so it can talk to you, it’s a woman.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: But that has to do with how it connects to some of the other characters, and she’s actually the wife of another character.
Speaker C: That’s important.
Speaker C: And it worked out that way.
Speaker C: I didn’t aim towards it.
Speaker C: What I aimed towards that is it doesn’t matter.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: I have LBGTQ community in it.
Speaker C: There’s references to it.
Speaker C: I just don’t spotlight it.
Speaker C: I don’t go, hey, look, you see the thing?
Speaker C: See what I did there?
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker C: It’s a part of the world.
Speaker C: It’s a normal, everyday thing and doesn’t need to be brought up.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: I mean, I talk about it.
Speaker C: Hey, look, the two people that walked out of the movie theater and their hands brushed, and they kind of looked at each other for a moment.
Speaker C: We’re two guys, all right?
Speaker C: But that’s the only time that they’re mentioned it goes on.
Speaker C: And I never mentioned how odd it is that they’re both guys or.
Speaker C: Nothing.
Speaker C: I just have it be a part of the world.
Speaker C: And I do it also with gender.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: Powerful people don’t have to be female or they don’t have to be male.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: It just so happens that this particular character is powerful.
Speaker C: Because that’s one of the things that I wanted to add to my story to if I’m going to lay out a story, if this story is entrusted to me, the thing that I wanted to put out is that things like age, race, your preferences and all that have nothing to do with who you are.
Speaker C: Who you are has to do with who you are.
Speaker C: The choices you make, the actions you choose, the things you don’t choose, the things you choose to say, the actions you choose to do.
Speaker C: This makes you who you are.
Speaker C: And that is an actual theme of the entire series.
Speaker C: I just never shine a spotlight on it and go, you see it.
Speaker C: It’s one of those things I hope you find.
Speaker C: There’s so much in this book that I hope you find, but I never point it out because like a magician, you don’t go, hey, I’m about to do a magic trick.
Speaker B: I’m going to squirt you with my flower now.
Speaker C: Yeah, it’s so much better to just talk about this item and then just have it be gone and continue on with what you’re saying and have them go, wait, what happened?
Speaker C: You did something there.
Speaker C: And it pushes past the conscious level thought and allows it to sink into the subconscious.
Speaker C: That was my goal.
Speaker C: That’s a lot of my goal for my writing is I put things out directly in front of you and go, you’re not going to see this, not until book three.
Speaker C: And when book three happens, you’re going to go and go back to book one and go, no.
Speaker C: Oh, my God.
Speaker B: It is.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: All right, well, you have a good rest of your Saturday.
Speaker B: Bye.
Speaker C: You too.
Speaker C: Thank you so much.
Speaker C: Say hi to Alex.
Speaker B: I will.
Speaker C: All right.
Speaker C: Bye.
Speaker C: Bye.
Speaker B: Bye.
Speaker A: As Will got older, he liked comic books.
Speaker A: He compared them to the Hercules and Perseus of today.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading how Perseus avenged Deni.
Speaker A: In Greek mythology, Perseus is the legendary founder of the Persid dynasty.
Speaker A: He was alongside Cadmus and Belerephn, the greatest Greek hero and slayer of monsters.
Speaker A: Before the days of Hercules, he beheaded the Gorgon Medusa for Polydectes and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus.
Speaker A: He was the son of Zeus and the mortal Deni, as well as the half brother and great grandfather of Hercules, as they were both children of Zeus and Hercules’mother was descended from Perseus.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading Ley Mort de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the roundtable on our patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker A: We are going to start out this story with an apology about any pronunciations, because these names are all really hard.
Speaker A: How perseus avenged Danae.
Speaker A: With a steady south wind behind them.
Speaker A: They sailed the seraphos and landed and brought their wealth ashore and went to the house of Dictates.
Speaker A: They found him lonely and sorrowful, for his wife had died and his brother, King Polyduc had taken Danae and set her to grind corn in his house among his slave women.
Speaker A: When Perseus heard that word, he asked, where is King Polyduc?
Speaker A: It is his birthday, and he holds his feast among the princes, said Dictates.
Speaker A: Then bring me, said Perseus, the worst of old clothes that any servant of your house can borrow from a beggar man, if there be a beggar man in the town.
Speaker A: Such a man there was.
Speaker A: He came limping through the door of the courtyard and up to the threshold of the house, where he sat whining and asking for alms.
Speaker A: I gave him food and wine, and Perseus cried, New clothes for old, father, I will give you, and new shoes for old.
Speaker A: The beggar could not believe his ears, but he was taken to the baths and washed, and new clothes were given to him.
Speaker A: While Perseus clad himself in the beggar’s rags, indictus took charge of the winged shun of Hermes and the sword Herpe and the burnished shield of Athene.
Speaker A: Then Perseus cast dust and wood ashes on his hair till it looked foul and grey and placed the goat skin covering and the gorgon’s head in his wallet.
Speaker A: And with the beggar’s staff in his hand, he limped to the palace of Polydectides on the threshold he sat down like a beggar, and Polydectes saw him and cried to his servants, bring in that man.
Speaker A: Is it not the day of my feast?
Speaker A: Surely all are welcome.
Speaker A: Perseus was let in looking humbly at the ground, and was brought before the king.
Speaker A: What news thou, beggar man?
Speaker A: Said the king.
Speaker A: Such news as was to be looked for.
Speaker A: Whined, Perseus.
Speaker A: Behold, I am he who brought no present to the king’s feast seven long years ago.
Speaker A: And now I come back tired and hungry, to ask his grace.
Speaker A: By the splendor of Zeus, cried Polydactes, it is none but the beggar brat who bragged that he would fetch me such a treasure as lies in no king’s chamber.
Speaker A: The beggar brat is a beggar man.
Speaker A: How time and travel have tamed him.
Speaker A: Oh, one of you, run and fetch his mother, who’s grinding at the mill that she may welcome her son.
Speaker A: A servant ran from the hall, and the chiefs of Seraphus mocked at Perseus.
Speaker A: This is he who called us farmers and dealers in slaves verily.
Speaker A: He would not fetch the prize of an old cow in the slave market.
Speaker A: Then they threw at him crusts of bread and bones of swine, but he stood silent.
Speaker A: Then Danae was let in, clad in vile raiment, but looking like a queen.
Speaker A: And the king cried, go forward, woman.
Speaker A: Look at that beggar man.
Speaker A: DOST thou know thy son?
Speaker A: She walked on her head high and Perseus whispered mother, stand thou beside me and speak no word.
Speaker A: My mother knows me not or despises me, said Perseus.
Speaker A: Yet poor as I am, I do not come empty handed.
Speaker A: And my wallet is a gift brought from very far away from my lord the king.
Speaker A: He swung his wallet round in front of him.
Speaker A: He took off the covering of goatskin and he held the gorgon’s head on high by the hair facing the king and the chiefs.
Speaker A: In one moment they were all grey stones all along the hall and the chairs whereon they sat crashed under the weight of them and they rolled on the hard clay floor.
Speaker A: Perseus wrapped the head in the goat skin and shutted in the wallet carefully and cried mother, look round and see thy son in thine own revenge.
Speaker A: Then Danae knew her son by the sound of his voice if not by her eyesight.
Speaker A: And she wept for joy.
Speaker A: So they too went to the house of Dictes.
Speaker A: And Perseus was cleansed and clad in rich raiment.
Speaker A: And Danae too was appareled like a free woman and embraced.
Speaker A: Andromeda with great joy Perseus made the good Dictes king of Seraphos.
Speaker A: And he placed the winged shoes in the temple of Hermes with the sword Herpes and the gorgon’s head in its goatskin cover.
Speaker A: But the polished shield he laid on the altar in the temple of Athene.
Speaker A: Then he bade all who served in the temples come forth both young and old.
Speaker A: And he locked the doors and he and Dictates watched all night with the armed cretans the crew of his ship that none might enter.
Speaker A: Next day Perseus alone went into the temple of Athene.
Speaker A: It was as it had been.
Speaker A: But the gorgon’s head and the polished shield were gone.
Speaker A: And the winged shun and the sword Herpe had vanished from the temple of Hermes with Danae and andromeda Perseus sailed Degrees, where he learned that the sons of King Proteus had driven King Acreus out of Argos and that he had fled to Bathea in the north, where the ancestor of the great Achilles was King Thither.
Speaker A: Perseus went to see his grandfather and he found the young men holding games and sports in front of the palace.
Speaker A: Perseus thought that his grandfather might love him better if he showed his strength in the games which were open to strangers.
Speaker A: So he entered and won the race and the prize for leaping.
Speaker A: And then came the throwing of the disc of bronze.
Speaker A: Perseus threw a great cast far beyond the rest but the disk swerved and fell among the crowd.
Speaker A: Then Perseus was afraid and ran like the wind to the place where the disk fell.
Speaker A: Nearly an old man smitten sorely by the disc and men said that he had killed King Acreseus.
Speaker A: Thus the word of the prophetess and the will of fate were fulfilled.
Speaker A: Perseus went weeping to the King of Pythia and told him all the truth.
Speaker A: And the king, who knew, as all Greece knew how Acrysteus had tried to drown his daughter and her child believed the tale and said that Perseus was guiltless.
Speaker A: He and Danae andromeda Dwelt for a year in Pythia with the king.
Speaker A: And then Perseus, with an army of Pelestegians and Mermidians, marched south to Argos and took the city and drove out his cousins, the sons of Proteus.
Speaker A: There in Argos, perseus, with his mother and beautiful, andromeda Dwelt, long and happily.
Speaker A: And he left the kingdom to his son when he died.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for T l combs’journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.
