What Then Must We Do?
Is there any hope at all of building and maintaining a free society? If so, how? If you are among "the remnant", this might be the show for you. See blog & discussion at: https://bretigne.substack.com/
What Then Must We Do?
Fostering Virtue in Boys: A Tale of Ethics, Technology, and Publishing with Samuel Bornman
I speak with Samuel Bornman, author of "Of Wizards and Warriors", the first in a fantasy adventure series written from a Christian perspective, with boys in mind. We talk about what boys need from fiction that they're not getting, some of the problems with modern children's literature, transhumanism and our relationship with technology, and why Samuel has had trouble getting his book into Christian bookstores.
You can find "Of Wizards and Warriors" on Amazon.
Samuel writes on Substack, here.
And if you sign up for his newsletter, here, Samuel will send you a free short story that he has written!
Welcome to the podcast that's all about solutions. If you're tired of complaining about tyranny and you want to take action to create a freer world, this is the place for you. Join us as we ask what then must we do? Right? I'm here today with Samuel Bornman. Samuel is the author of Wizards and Warriors. It's a children's book which we're going to be talking about today. Samuel is a Christian. He's a Christian author who writes books for boys to give them the healthy starts that they need to grow into healthy men. You're living in Mexico you actually grew up in Mexico, I believe and you're living on a mission helping natives who you say are very, very poor. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that as we get into things, but first of all, welcome to the show. Let's just start out by talking about your book. What drove you to want to write this?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you for having me. Yes, my book. I wrote it because I wanted to write a fairy tale for boys and girls, but mostly targeted to boys, who struggled to find healthy fiction, because I've seen a lack of healthy modern fiction. You get all kinds of books that are promoting socialism or homosexuality or other messages that their parents may not really want them to learn when they're eight or 10 years old.
Speaker 2:I'm not at all encouraging hiding your children from the reality of the world, but I would say that preserving the innocence of a child is important. So I wrote a book that I wanted to be healthy, that pretty much any grandmother would approve of giving to her grandson and would start the process of getting the child to realize that there is evil in the world and that there's good in the world and you have to choose a side. And so it's a fictional fairy tale that I'm using to get the child's brain thinking about good, evil, what is right, what is good, what is human, what is not human and what is, yeah, difference between good and evil.
Speaker 1:And what age is this aimed at?
Speaker 2:So I wrote it for 12 and 15 year olds primarily, but I have been told that there was an eight year old boy who devoured it in the same day that it was given to him for Christmas. So that warms my heart, because I want little boys to read books that they find entertaining and are thought provoking and will encourage them to be courageous.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, I think there are a lot of precocious readers out there, so that's nice to hear, and you say that you're aiming this specifically at boys. What do you feel is the problem with much of children's literature today from the perspective of boys? What's missing for them, yeah.
Speaker 2:So let me bash here on a movie that some people really like. I dislike the how to Train your Dragon movie, the cut. It's not so much the dragons, it's not so much the adventure or the action, it's the fact that the main character, hiccup, is effeminate. I mean, he's a weak kid who never actually really has to mature in order to become the hero of the story. All he has to do is find a dragon in entertainment. And I think that kind of points to what our society expects from boys. They expect them to behave like little girls.
Speaker 2:And the other thing about how to Train your Dragon that bothers me especially the movie is Astrid, the female character. She is expected to become this very masculine character and that's what she's pursuing. She's pursuing being the greatest dragon flying Viking, and so that also tells you what our society is expecting of girls. They want them to become strong, courageous and masculine, and I would agree with strong and courageous. But I don't want little girls to become men. I want little girls to grow up to be women who are productive and can raise the next generation, because there's nothing wrong with a woman being strong, but she should still be feminine.
Speaker 2:Because I'm a Christian and I believe that God created these two very distinct roles of male and female and I think both have equal value before God equal worth. But they don't all have the same function or roles in society and I don't think that we should rebel against it, because what we're seeing today is families falling apart, especially when you have the father and the mother both working full-time jobs and the kids are off in school and they're not getting the attention that they really need to grow into good, moral, healthy, productive people that will make their society better. And if you actually look at the numbers of how much profit a second full-time job with a $50,000 income, what that adds to your bottom line is only $10,000 a year. And so if you can find.
Speaker 1:For a lot of people it's just a thing for childcare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Paying for childcare, paying for the extra vehicle, extra insurance. That all adds up and it only adds $10,000 to your bottom line. And if you can find a way to make $25 to $30 a day from home, you earn that $10,000 and add it to your bottom line, and so you can still be just as productive from home, if not even more productive, while raising kids and potentially even educating them at home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, to me I don't want to go too much off on a tangent, but you see, productive. It seems to me that there's such a focus on being productive, like that's the goal of society, and I think that affects both men and women. But it really kind of that's one of the things that I notice in in our culture more broadly is that there is this sort of if you're not being productive, you're somehow not fulfilling your role in life or you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, and I would imagine that's not how you see it.
Speaker 2:No, no, I don't see meeting societal expectations of what is productive as the most important thing, I think, actually adding to your family's economy and value, and that includes raising children who will be a good members of society for the next generation. And so back to the earlier question you had asked me about what is wrong with literature today for boys is that it's encouraging them to see the ideal as feminine, feminine as the ideal instead of masculine, and I think that they're both have equal value and equal opportunity to contribute to society, because without women, society dies, because we can't have the next generation. Without men, we can't have the next generation either, but we also don't. Without men and women, we don't build. We don't build buildings, we don't build culture, we don't build society. And so if we value one over the other, that creates an imbalance which ends up in the destruction of family, society and civilization.
Speaker 1:Are there any like going back to your own childhood? Are there any like children's classics, any books that you think are really good or that are your favorites, that you think sort of do what children's books should do?
Speaker 2:So one that is it's actually an autobiography series would be Ralph Moody's Little Bridges series, because it encourages, it shows a young man becoming a young man at a very early age because his father dies and he has to provide for his mother and siblings, and so it shows me how much a young man can achieve when he's 12 years old, and I'm not certain I could do that. So it's something to attain to and I think every boy should read that series at least once. Another really good series would be the Chronicles of Narnia. I would read the Black Arrow, I believe that's by Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island, robinson Crusoe, swiss Family Robinson. All those phrase courage, discourage laziness and they encourage you to be industrious. So I think those are very good books for young boys to read.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what about things like the book of Merlin or the King Arthur Tales? What are your thoughts on?
Speaker 2:So I really like the story of King Arthur in the next round table, as well as Robin Hood yeah, that's good. I have not read the book of Merlin, I don't know. I think when you start getting into magical tales, specifically about wizards, there's a certain amount of caution you need to have. But I think that in general okay, I'm going to talk about the evangelical Christian world is very skittish of magic, because the Bible forbids witchcraft and we're not supposed to do that. But at the same time, jesus does miracles that are very magical in nature.
Speaker 2:The prophets are given authority to perform miracles. Moses splits the sea clean in two by raising his hands when God tells him to. I mean holding up his arms during a battle, and as long as his hands are in the air, the Israelites are winning. When his hands start to droop because he's weary, they start to lose. So it seems very magical. I think there's also a trend in the modern world to demystify the world and explain everything through science and technology, and so I think magic in tales is really good, because it's very easy to show the difference between good and evil, but it can also be dangerous. So I always read those books before I think about giving them to or recommending them to younger people.
Speaker 1:So and we're gonna talk about your book in a minute, and I think this is relevant because you are writing about wizards I have to ask you what are your thoughts on Tolkien?
Speaker 2:I really love Tolkien, not the movies so much. I like the book. He's a little long-winded when you're reading on your own, but the moment you start to read it out loud as a family it is very different. It is funny. Especially the Hobbit is funny and light humor, you know lighthearted, like kind of this typical fairy tale, just kind of a whole bunch of good froth with some broth underneath. But then you get to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and that's the darker. There's more meat to it. There's more intellectual food there for thought. But it is really really really good. It doesn't get too dark and morbid but it isn't too lighthearted and carefree when it comes to talking about evil versus good. I think it's really good balance there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and he also. There's this dichotomy because there's sorcery, you know, there's Saruman and there's all this stuff that. I think, easily be classified as sorcery or dark magic. But then there's also you got Gandalf, you got the Good Wizards performing acts of, so is that something does that trouble you, or do you think that's a good distinction?
Speaker 2:No, not at all, and that doesn't trouble me at all because if you think about it, you have.
Speaker 2:I believe in the real world we have Satan and his demons who are opposing God and his angelic army, and so God gives power to his angels and God gives limited power to do evil to Satan and his minions, so that God can display the difference between good and evil in this world.
Speaker 2:And so he is glorified. And so I really like how Gandalf, when he's facing all these evil, like, especially like the Witch King at Minus Chirith he faces him and he's like, not troubled, he's calm, he's confident, he's on the side of good, and the side of good never looks like they're just powerless and the evil side is all powerful. They do look weak but they're actually really powerful and it's much more balanced, whereas in some tales it's like I can't remember any names off the top of my head but it's like evil is all powerful, it's all knowing, it's evil and it's going to destroy us if we make just the slightest mistake. And there is some of that tension in Tolkien. But I think it's a much better balance, much better view of how the reality is, that good is actually more powerful. But even though it looks really weak.
Speaker 2:Right so yeah, that's so. I'm not troubled by the two views of sorcery there in Tolkien, because he makes clear distinction between good and evil.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk about your book, so maybe just give us a brief outline. What's the basic storyline? Who are the characters?
Speaker 2:Okay, so my main character's name is Stout and he starts out as farm boy kind of character in a small city, in a kind of rural part of this broader world of Enya, and he and his friend Sally break the rules of their town and they enter a wood that borders their town called the Woods of Doom. It is forbidden, they're not supposed to go there, but while they're there, their city is attacked and destroyed by the forces of the Dark Eternals, these beings that can change between man and dragon form. So, and while they're in the woods and their villages, their town, is being destroyed, they meet one of the Dark Eternals disguised as a man, who pretends to be concerned about them and like oh, can you take me to your town, I'll help you get there. And because they're lost. And a another man, who's glowing white, comes and stands between the children and the Dark Eternal, and the Dark Eternal changes into his dragon form and then leaves. And this old man, who's this glowing white figure, tells them your village, your town has been destroyed, and like, shows them the town from the edge of the woods and then he takes them to the Hall of Eternal Light where they will be paired for, because they are now orphans.
Speaker 2:And so, while Stout is at the Hall of Eternal Light, he receives a vision from this being, the who's called the light, and in his vision he sees a wizard who is grafting man and beasts together into these conglomerates to build his armies. He's dissecting children, he's doing all sorts of evil, black magic stuff and he is told you need to go stop this guy. So this young guy he's a kid, he doesn't know anything about battle and he's supposed to go destroy a wizard. So he gets training from the Knights of Eternal Light. It's sent out on the mission, comes face to face with the wizard, rescue Sally, who during the story gets kidnapped, and then at the end of it, he's around.
Speaker 1:I don't want to give everything away, so you know, no need spoilers. If there's, I think that gives us the yeah, I don't want people to not go read the book because you know yes there's a lot I'd left out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure. So that's really interesting the whole, because you mentioned earlier in your show in your notes that you do talk about transhumanism and you know which is obviously it's been a huge theme in fantasy and science fiction even since before it became, you know, a theme in our lives. Why did you do that?
Speaker 2:Well, because I was thinking about some things I'd seen in the science world, things like artificial wombs and artificial embryos to supposedly grow mice. Some people have said that they can get the fake mouse embryo that they grew in the lab. They made an fake embryo in a lab, put it in a fake womb and got to the point where they got a heartbeat. They say I don't know how true that is, it came from a what seems to be a pretty reputable source, but that kind of scares me, because what's the next step beyond mice? What's the next step beyond, say, a cat or a dog? Do we know that people have been discussing for years, especially in the military world, about super soldiers? Right, you know, you want men who don't feel pain, men who can take, get shot a thousand times and keep fighting, right? And so what's the next step? I think probably what they're aiming at is developing a human-like being who does not feel pain, does not die, does not get sick.
Speaker 2:And that is that terrifies me, because I don't think that's where we should go, because God made man the way he did, and when he made man originally he said it is good, he made man good.
Speaker 2:And then we broke God's commands and we took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 2:We ate and we became aware of good and evil and that we had chosen evil. And God cursed mankind with sickness, pain in our toil or in our work, and multiplied pain in childbearing, for women said that men would earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. And so I think that we need to accept that, that punishment, and but look to Christ, who provided a way for us to have eternal life. You know, christ came as the Son of God, as God himself died for us and made a way for us to have eternal life through him, and so we can have eternal life. But what transhumanists want to do is they want to have eternal life apart from Christ. So they want to find a way to cure all of mankind's diseases, make man immortal, get rid of pain, so that because they know that that's what's wrong with the world, but they want to do it apart from God, they want to do it apart from Christ, and that's hubris, that's prideful, that's wrong it sounds like their concern is with our physical existence, and that's it.
Speaker 1:You know they've left out the whole spiritual side, and that's not yet. I don't think that's what Jesus was talking about.
Speaker 2:No, Now Jesus does say that when he returns he will resurrect us and give us new bodies.
Speaker 2:So we will have what we have now, but perfect, perfected, and so I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I'm pretty certain that we'll have a physical body and we'll be much more like Adam and Eve were in the garden before the fall, but we won't have to worry about sin anymore, because God will have separated us completely from sin, separated us from the ability to sin, and so that will be, I think, a great relief and glorious.
Speaker 2:But so I think that this, this, this trend in transhumanism, is very, very dangerous. And so in my book I make the evil wizard Calculo do these kind of transhumanistic surgeries to like augment men into super warriors through the use of magic and some kind of science, like terminology and some of the things that are actually going on, like the murder of infants in the womb, to then use their tissue for science, to then perfect man or change man or all these other things that they're doing with those fetal cell tissues, and that's like that's evil, that's witchcraft, that's ungodly. So I have to reject that, and that is a large part of has is a large part of what this science and transhumanist community are doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again, I don't want to go too far down this, but this is just a really interesting angle here, given that we're not we haven't reached the point yet where we're without sin. In the meantime, what can our relationship with technology be? It seems like, if you go back to the Adam and Eve story, we just we blew it. Basically, even engaging in technological progress or pursuits goes against God. Is that right? I don't hope so, okay.
Speaker 2:I don't think so, because God told us to take dominion over the world Right, and so I think it really has to do with why you want to take dominion over this, this thing that you want to take dominion over. So, like in the medical field, we want to take dominion over sickness and pain, and I think that's fine, as long as we don't try to become immortal, become gods, become permanently separate from pain. I think controlling pain is fine with drugs. I think maybe we could find safer drugs, but I think controlling pain through with drugs is fine. I think helping a person who is paralyzed from the waist down to walk again through surgery, that's fine.
Speaker 2:I don't really want their brain connected to a computer, because I think that's that goes a little bit too far, unless we find some sort of ways to do it where there's no possibility of them being hacked, which, so far as I understand it, that's not a possibility, because I so I think that taking dominion over the world, over pain, creating systems of communications like what we're using now with zoom, of doing a video call we're thousands of miles apart and we're talking as if we were almost in the same room, and so I don't think that's wrong. I think that's where my Amish friends make the mistake, because they view technological advancement as worldly and leading to sin and evil. And while I understand their sentiments and I can in some ways agree with them, I can't agree fully, because I think we are supposed to take dominion of the world.
Speaker 1:Interesting. We talk about the necessity for good role models for boys. I know you're also very concerned with fatherlessness and I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about how does your story, how does this help to address that?
Speaker 2:So I think little boys need to hear that being masculine is good, it can be good. They just need to control their masculine drive, their masculine tendencies, and direct it towards productive and good goals. So, like my characters, my male characters are all very masculine. My female characters are all very feminine and I don't try to make one do the others role, be the other, and so I want them to hear that this is good, this is fine, this is how the world works.
Speaker 2:And being told that you need to sit still like a little girl, you need to be calm, you need to be quiet, you can't run and shout and jump off the couch. I think that's a mistake for boys, because they need to learn how to move their body, they need to learn how to be active. And then the modern tendency in schools to put them on drugs to sedate them so that they learn better I think that's horrid. I think that little boys should maybe have maybe more time learning outside, playing hopscotch and doing math that way, than being forced to sit still in a class like they're 20-year-olds in college. I think that's unreasonable. So this book it's supposed to teach them that masculinity is fine, having goals and wanting to achieve them is good, being brave is good, not being a little girl is good. So that's some of the things I'm trying to address.
Speaker 1:And what kind of response have you gotten?
Speaker 2:Very positive and very negative.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:So there have been people who have. For the most part it's been really positive. People are like yes, that's great, encourage little boys to be little boys, encourage them to grow up into young men who can then be good fathers and productive members of society. Because I think people do realize that stories form a child's view of the world and stories give them a reserve to fall back on. Mentally. They're supported by this architecture of stories behind them. This is how the world works and then they can look at what's going on around them in their life and be like ah, this story reminds me of that story, which means I need to behave like Frodo, I need to behave like Sam and just persevere, or I need to behave like E Hood and kill this guy who is oppressing the people of God and is destroying us. He's an enemy.
Speaker 2:I don't encourage little boys to be unnecessarily violent either. That's the other side. But I want to give them this architecture and we have it a lot in the great classics. But little boys can't read the classics very well to begin with. They need something. They need baby stepbooks to kind of get them going. And I think we've gotten to the point in society where lots of boys think about TV or comic books, instead of an actual book, as being fun and entertaining, because they're forced to read these classics in school instead of being allowed to discover them. I think that takes some of the magic out of them, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what's the negative feedback that you've gotten?
Speaker 2:I was particularly one lady who was upset that I wouldn't write a female Jesus character, that I would think that that would be a problem, because if you look at stories, there's characters like Gandalf is a very Moses-like character, frodo and Sam are like persevering saints, kind of like the apostles I don't want to get weird with that, but just kind of like people and characters and stories are archetypes, they're personalities, and a Jesus character, in my opinion, is a powerful figure who comes and lays down his life for weaker characters so that they can win, and I think it's wrong for us to expect women to die for men. I think that's one of the problems with the US military encouraging women to serve in militaristic combat roles. I don't think that is for women. Now, I also don't believe that women should never defend themselves Absolutely. Women should defend themselves. They should learn how to be violent when they need to be. I don't want them becoming soldiers, though, and so I think making a character that is sacrificial and powerful in the feminine form can be right, but I don't want her dying for men Maybe for some children, maybe for other women, but not for men, because I think that is twisted to think that women should expect that of women, men should expect that of women, or boys should expect that of women.
Speaker 2:Because that's your job, jimmy. I mean, if there's a snake in the room, you're supposed to go crush his head. If there's a spider on the wall, go grab an alchemy and throw him outside or crush him. That's your job. And it starts there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also just find that's some of the negative stuff. Yeah, I find it annoying when people offer up criticism based on what they would want said as opposed to you know, this is your book and you should be. You know you're putting out your message and to me it's not really a valid critique to say, well, you didn't get my message out there.
Speaker 2:She wasn't actually saying that I hadn't put that in the book and that she was upset about that. She was upset that I would. When she suggested, oh, you could write a story about a female Jesus character, I'm like no, no, no, that's wrong. And she was upset by the idea of me putting women in strong female roles without them becoming masculine. Because she's a feminist who wants women to. You know, she's talking about equality, but she's talking about equality and sameness in roles.
Speaker 1:Right, it's so interesting to me how that's kind of what feminism has become. It's, in a way, it's a repudiation of women and it's or of, I guess, of femininity. It's, you know, and at least in this point in our lives I feel like it's more, it's more about elevating masculine values for everyone and that it's sort of, to me, I see it as a very sort of masculine movement, which I just think that there's an irony there, you know they're becoming.
Speaker 2:They're trying to become the thing they hate. They claim to hate most, which is odd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. How have you? I mean, I see how the publishing industry is and there was an article recently about, I think, quoting someone in a big publishing house saying that it's near impossible to get fiction published if you're a white male, and I don't know how true that is, but that was sort of the headline. But I you know, you see, how much political correctness there is in publishing, and so I'm just wondering how you self-published? Is that right? How do you get it out? How do you get the word out? How do you get people to read your book?
Speaker 2:Well, this is where I really like Amazon. Well, I have some disagreements with Amazon. I like the fact that they make it very easy for anyone to publish.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well you do. If you go to self-publishing route, you have to overcome some of the stigma against self-published books that their junkie editing process wasn't done properly, that the coverage bad, that they're bound improperly. But if you do your job as the author, Amazon gives you a good product. I like the copies I've gotten. They look great. Other people have been satisfied with them and in the more traditional publishing world I pitched my book to a couple of people and I got zero responses.
Speaker 2:I didn't try super hard because I realized I was researching it and I was like, okay, I set myself this deadline for getting published. It's creeping up on me. I'm not getting any responses from any publishing houses, from people that I thought were a little more conservative, would maybe be more open to me publishing with them. So I said, okay, I'm publishing on Amazon, I'm just going to see how it goes. I can always take my book down, do a second edition and publish with the publishing house later on down the road if I choose to do that. So I definitely want the self-published route instead of the traditional publishing route, and so I can't really speak to the traditional publishing world. But the self-published world is amazing. It's great as long as you do your job, find a good artist to do your cover and you do the hard work of modding it yourself.
Speaker 1:And how have your sales been?
Speaker 2:Not great, but I'm just getting started. It was published in July of 2023. So it's not that old. But I am doing podcast episodes. I was able to get on a radio show and I'm doing some writing on the side substat. I have my own website so I can publish some other stuff on the side to catch people's attention. They're like, oh, what else is this guy written? And then direct them to my Amazon sales page.
Speaker 1:What about Christian booksellers? Have you sent it to any Christian bookstores or websites?
Speaker 2:That I've had. The Christian publishing world is also interesting. They tend to publish books that are really touchy-feely, books that are kind of much more along the lines of what the world wants to see instead of what the church really needs. As I've said, evangelicals are really skittish of magic, and my book is very openly a fantasy adventure novel with magic in it and I've had a couple of people who are like, well, I really enjoyed it, but I'm not giving it to my kids quite yet. And one of them was my aunt, who I really love. She read it. She's like I would like your book, but I couldn't go to sleep after I read it Because she's like it has some really dark themes and I'm like, yes, if you're old enough to understand what those dark themes are pointing to, if you're a young child, you're going to read it just like OK, this guy's a bad guy.
Speaker 1:Right, it's very different reading those things as a young person. It is very different.
Speaker 2:A lot of it just goes over your head.
Speaker 1:A lot of the meaning of what's going on in the world.
Speaker 2:Right, they don't make those connections one because they're probably not seeing the news, they're probably not paying attention to what's going on in the broader world. They read this. They're like, oh, he's a bad guy, this is an adventure novel. This is a good guy. Oh, the good guy beats the bad guy, right, yeah yeah. The parents reading it are like, oh my gosh, this is hit. This is terrible, right, this guy is killing children and he's using them on his expense.
Speaker 2:They're like this is the real world. I don't want my kids to know about this yet. And you're like, well, they're not going to get it, but OK, if you don't want them to read it until they're 18, 19, fine, that's not my choice, that's their choice, it's their kids.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that's interesting. I would have thought that there would be a place in the Christian bookselling world. I would think they would be hungry for something like this.
Speaker 2:Some evangelicals won't let their kids read the Nairniah Chronicles Because of the magic. Because of the magic Right. Aslan does magic, yeah, but you're like, wow, yeah, so that's. That's how sensitive some evangelicals are to magic, and my book goes in terms of discussing magic. It goes a step beyond how openly that CS Lewis talks about it on the good side, on the side of good, but I wouldn't claim to be on par with his writing style yet.
Speaker 1:But no but he's.
Speaker 2:He's an amazing author and he writes some really amazing books.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's one of the most well-known Christian authors ever. You know, I know.
Speaker 2:And some there I have met some people who they only heard about the Chronicle series, or they only heard the Nairniah Chronicles series, they only heard about screw tape letters. And so they're like is he even a Christian? I've had people ask me is this guy even a Christian? Like yes, you need to read some of his other works. Some of his more theological works and also another book that really scares you in Jocles off by CS Lewis would actually a trilogy is the space trilogy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I've just started reading that myself. I haven't. I never finished it as a teenager.
Speaker 2:I can get ready for that hideous strength.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can, I can see that one's dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting, though, to me. I also I write children's fiction too and I'm just really interested in the question of, you know, those of us who don't fit into the mainstream narratives, where is our place in the in as far as just marketing it, as far as getting it out to the world and I would have thought you know that, christian booksellers but you're saying not, not necessarily. So that's a big question. You know where, if you're not going along with sort of the mainstream PC woke World view, where do you fit?
Speaker 2:So I have had more success with Manusphere. Manusphere kind of podcasts, so like the movement of men who are rejecting feminism and some guys are really extreme. Some are much more Christian men traditional roles, homeschooling If it talks. When it comes to my book, if they talk about masculinity, godly masculinity, traditional family values and homeschooling, they usually like my book.
Speaker 1:Usually.
Speaker 2:Now, sometimes, as an author, we want to pitch the wrong thing to the wrong person, and that that, really, that really plays a role. When it comes to marketing, I've had a lot of help from a friend of my father's who is basically tutoring me in how to market a book.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Alan Stevo has been very helpful. You can go check him out. You can check his books out. He does not do marketing classes for everyone, so I feel very blessed that he would help me. I also have done some other business classes in the past. My father, when I was still doing homeschooling, was encouraging me to study business, learn how to start my own business so that I can one day provide for my own family, and so that has also been very helpful in teaching me how to pitch, because I think many authors they're really good at writing they're not great at sales.
Speaker 1:Very different.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it's very different. I much prefer writing, but sales is also good and if you study it a little bit you'll do a fine job.
Speaker 1:Any advice for young writers or just writers again outside of the mainstream, any advice for the writing process, for getting it out there?
Speaker 2:So I think one thing that you need to forget about is pleasing people. You need to not worry about pleasing liberals or other people who are already opposed to you just because of your beliefs. Whether you choose those enemies or not, you need to not worry about them. You need to worry about writing the book that you think the world needs. You need to worry about writing. If you're writing stories, just write the story you want to write. Write the role models you want to write.
Speaker 2:Don't worry about other people and don't try to be perfect, because your first novel is not going to turn out perfect, and perfection is one of those things that kills writing, kills publication, because I know a guy he's been writing the book for the last 10 years. He has a lot of good material he keeps going back for oh, this new study came out. I need to include that in the book. And if you're writing a big doctoral tome on how to be healthy, that's great, but you can do a second edition. Or you can write a second book that focuses on weightlifting or on exercise or on eating healthy, but instead he's trying to combine everything into one book and every time a new study comes out that supports his argument.
Speaker 2:He has to go research it and decide where he's going to put it in the book. And he still hasn't given it to anybody for approfrating, not even beta readers before approfator. He's the only one who's seen it and it's really sad because what this guy has to say is valuable. I respect the guy, but he's been working on it for 10 years and I'm not certain where he's at now.
Speaker 1:But yeah, at some point you got to just get it out there and Exactly my book.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, I could fix this, I could tweak this a little bit to make the story plot better or make the character arc better. And if I keep doing this though, I'm never going to publish, so I wrote it in the summer, spent six months editing it and published it.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Nice. Is it a perfect? No, it's not perfect. Anybody who reads it in his red gray classics is going to say this is okay. I can see where there could be some improvement. I could see how maybe, as he matures, he's going to become a better author, but it's not a perfect book, and I think the only truly perfect book out there is the Bible, and I'm not God, so I'm not going to read another perfect book.
Speaker 1:Is this part of a series, though? Are we going to see book two?
Speaker 2:Yes. So book two I am working on it. It's kind of in some ways it's a little bit more similar to the Chronicles of Narnia and where it's spaced out between years, except there's in the second book there's not going to be any traveling between the world or anything. There's not in the first book. Third book, there's a possibility. So if you like people traveling from other worlds stories, you might enjoy this one. It's a little bit more complicated, right.
Speaker 1:But it might go far. Will it be the same characters or?
Speaker 2:Nope, different characters because it's a different time period in the same world, although there are some overlapping characters who are going to reappear, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, this has been fascinating. I will link to your book, of course, and anything else that you'd like linked to. It is on getting it out there, and I hope that this can help get into more people's hands.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, I really appreciate it. For anyone who wants to find out more about me, I have a sub-stack that's Samuel's sub-stack. I also have a webpage, samuelbornmancom. You can go there and receive a free short story. You can read that. You can sign up to newsletter to find out about more free short stories when the next book is coming out and I look forward to having more people reading my books, so don't hesitate to visit my webpage.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to. What, Then Must we Do? The podcast. For those who understand that the state is the problem and are seeking solutions For more episodes, go to bretanysubstackcom that's bretignesubstackcom and subscribe.