Love, Bad Decisions & a Busted Binnacle: Inside the Mind of Spetz | Author Spotlight

SPEAKER_04 0:26

Welcome to another edition of the Author Spotlight series. This is where we step behind the pages to meet the people who create the stories we love. We'll talk about their latest book, their writing journey, and the story behind the story, and probably a few things neither of us plan to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Today we're putting Spetz in the spotlight. Spetz, welcome to Travel Time Stories. We're so glad to have you here. Before we dive into your book, I'd love for you to introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit about who you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Well, I'm Spetz, which is not my real name, as you all know. But we'll go with that for the time being. And I don't know, I'm just a regular guy who can tell a decent story and ended up writing a memoir. You know, I didn't go into this to write a memoir. I was doing some work for the book I'm actually working on, you know, the the real book, which I've actually been working on for like 15 years. And I decided, hey, I should write some of I got some funny stories in the background. You may have read them, they're all non-published, you know, my uh my my treatise on consequences of tradition, A Revolting Holiday. It's perfect for the Burr Months, the prequel, the little cousin to this one here, which is the tale, the ballad of scrubbing Bubba, which if you read that one, will absolutely prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Magnetic North was completely inevitable. And then, and I said, I got these stories and they're funny. And you know, these are the kind of stories you sit around, you tell your friends. Did you ever tell you about that time I, you know, and I said I should write these down because on the book I'm working on, real book, right? I need some backstories for some characters. I said, be able to mine some of this for some for some useful stuff. And so I started writing them down. And then this one came to mind, obviously, and I'm like, do I put that in? I'm not really planning on making that into a story. It's kind of this is the Magnum opus, this is the big one, right? This is like uh don't want to share this with anybody. I said, but I should take a look at it because you know I'm kind of mad at myself here having made this book. The one of the central scenes in the book, or maybe the central scene in the book, takes place on the city dock in Annapolis. And my plan was to use that in the other book. Now I can't. That's like use it in this book. Now I'm gonna be plagiarizing myself. That's great. But I did the therapy, I wrote the things for therapy, and then I wrote the epilogue in it at the end of therapy, and I gave it to my to B, my therapist, who I actually did call B. And uh, and she is well aware of this book, as a matter of fact. She's getting an author's copy and she's all she's thrilled about it. And I I after therapy was done, which is about February of last year, 2025, once in a while. You sit now with my tablet or whatever. Well, let me pop it up and look at it, see how it reads these days, see how it hits. I did that one day, and it was beginning of this year, and it offered me, and this is gonna really, this is gonna really piss off the people over at threads, because it's it's it was a PDF. And it offered me, as Outlook does, because I use Outlook at work, hey, do you want an AI summary of your of this document? And I was about to say no, and I was like, what the hell? Sure. And so my story, my intake document for the therapist, had suddenly become a memoir because that's what it saw. And I'm like, oh, well, that's interesting, you know. It actually was pretty positive about it, which I mean it's an AI, it's supposed to be, I suppose. But and it it focused on the voice. So I said, okay, well, that's interesting. I should just for fun, I should see what another one says about this. And so the next day, since I've got Microsoft Office, what's Copilot got to say about this thing? A lot of similar stuff. Same thing, the voice. Right. Well, you know what? Maybe I'm gonna maybe I'm gonna put this in that little collection of stuff anyway. Maybe I'll do a rewrite. Neaton it up a little bit. You know. I said, okay, I'm gonna rewrite this for myself. And as that went on, I started to modify it and add stuff and remove stuff and change stuff. I was like, you know, maybe I mean it was 16 pages at first, right? So I'm like, let me add a little here, change a little there, slow this down, speed this up. Then I was like, let me add those first three chapters, and that that took some that was a big deal, adding those first three chapters. And next thing I know, it's 170 pages. Wow. I'm like, how did I get this out of it? I said, Well, now I should look into publishing this thing, I suppose, because it's become unwieldy. Yeah. All right, so you know, it's that so I sat around and it took me a couple of months to really sit down every day and took me about I don't know to write it a month, do the rewrite. And then it's you know, every day I come home from work and I'm sitting down, I'm going over stuff and changing this and trimming that and running spell check numerous times and looking, searching in there for overused phrases so I don't say the same thing over and over and over.

SPEAKER_06 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

And uh next thing I know, I was like, well, this is where we're gonna replace it's either going or it's not now because I'm out of ideas. So let's try it. Let's go. Let me look into self-publishing. Okay, because you know I'm not gonna try to put this out to a publisher. No one's buying memoirs. I don't even read memoirs, okay? It's not even my thing. And I'm like, now I'm writing one. Here it is. I put it up. You know, I went on to Fiverr, I found a great artist, Stooth cover, Olivia Brunner, and I had uh Kate who did my beta reading and my formatting, who has dropped off the platform, sadly. And uh and then and now I made a thing, and now I'm sharing the thing, and that's uh you know, the hardest part sharing the thing was getting out some of the the originals to the people close to me. It's funny, the there is a gap where people close to you, you don't necessarily want to show this because you know, you you read it, you know. And the but the people at the total strangers, yeah, have at it. I don't know you people. Read it all, enjoy it. Right. And then in the middle, there's the other group, there's this other group, and it's like people you work with and stuff, and you're like, well no, maybe, maybe not. And I would send it out. I send it first person to read it was Gina, obviously. You know, she's the only one that's been there for the whole thing. And she was she's been really busy, she keeps really busy, so it took a while, but she did read it and she did enjoy it. She said it was good, and she was the probably the hardest one to send it out to because of those first three chapters, primarily, because I'm like, until therapy, the only person that knew about that was me. You know, that was something I that happened, I buried it 45 years ago and it stayed buried up till therapy. Oh and now and now I'm like, I gotta share this with her. I'm like, what's she gonna do? Is she gonna get the ick? Is she gonna run off? You know, we're uh I've worried about this before, and I'm like, I don't need to worry about this again, but now I gotta worry about this again. And then she got mad at me for being worried about it.

SPEAKER_06 7:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 7:43

Because of the various uh stories in her own life. I'm like, oh yeah, I guess yeah, that's not even a blip on your radar these babe. Right. So you know, I sent it to her, I sent it to my little sister for her to read it. She said she'd read it, and and to Anna, who's mentioned with the phone call and the crab cakes. Kate wanted me to get rid of the crab cakes, and I'm like, no. Crab cakes are load-bearing, they stay. And I sent it to my little sister and crickets. And I asked her about it on the phone. I said, Do you want to read this? And she doesn't have to do. And I said it. Nothing. Weeks. Nothing. Like, okay, she didn't want to read it. That's fine. Not gonna raise hell about it. And I send sent one to Anna as we got near the release, the the actual putting this thing on the Amazon part. And because she agreed to read it. Then of course after that, I'm like, shit.

SPEAKER_04 8:39

And we finally asked her the question in a roundabout way.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

What have I done? And I'd be like, well, yep, I'm asking now, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

I didn't hear from her for a while. And she did tell me she got it, and then she did tell me she downloaded it and was gonna read it that weekend. And then I had sent her a message about something else, because we're still friends on Facebook. We're still friends after all these years. And she mentioned that, yes, she read it and she enjoyed it, and she's got notes and she's gonna send them to me, and then I just saw the notes. And then I started I got my roof copies. And I said, Man, I was planning on the author's copies. I said, I'm sending you one anyway, even though you never gave me any feedback. She messaged me back. She's like, Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Really, I would just rather talk about it than email it. We set up a Zoom call, and it was the nicest call. I haven't talked to her. I only met her the once in person, right, in Philly with the crab cakes. And I've talked to her since a couple of times. You know, we kind of because it and back then, you know, she drifted off to her own life, as we all do.

SPEAKER_06 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

But we catch up with each other here and there. And I've spoken with her since, but you know, to actually do the Zoom now, because we have that now, to see her and talk to her again, it was just like old times. And uh it went really well. And uh and we've agreed to maintain a less than 12 to 15 year gap between check-ins. There you go. I offered six. That was just such a great call. But she told me when she read it, she did enjoy it, and that when she started reading the book, it only took a minute before she knew it was me writing it because it sounded just like the letters I used to write. And that was that was a that was a nice compliment.

SPEAKER_06 10:19

I like that.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

I gave it to a friend at work to read. She got one of the proof copies and read it while she was getting her hair done. And uh I got a message from her, yeah, you need a reality check. Uh-oh, I've done alienated her. That's not good. But uh a little bit later on, she actually was very positive about the book itself, though. She's like, yeah, it was really she was actually on my side. She's like Gina. She was she will be mad about it on my behalf, you know, so which is nice.

unknown 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

She's like, it's not your fault. She was scandalous. Scandalous. That's a great word. I didn't I never thought of it that way. And it's it's it's it's funny, and it's nice to have somebody that has my back that allows me to offer more grace in the store because I don't have to get mad. It can get mad for me.

SPEAKER_05 11:10

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Always and then now we're here. That's so far who I know has read it, and they've all liked it. And I actually also left a uh review on Amazon for it.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

So now you can add me to that list of people who read it and enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

It's funny, your your review didn't show up for like Wednesday.

SPEAKER_04 11:31

It's weird. Every time I leave a review on Amazon for a book, it takes days. It takes days before it actually shows up on there. I'm like, what is going on with their system that it takes days?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

They check for things, they look for they want to make sure it's not a paid review or something like that, because they're real fussy about that.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

I've read a lot of author bios preparing for this series, and yours may be the first one that basically picked a fight with Christopher Hitchens. You say you have a repressed author, the book wanted out, and then you tell Hitchens to eat it. So clear, so clearly, we need to begin with the important question, which is how long was that author repressed and what finally calls the jailbreak?

SPEAKER_02 12:19

That author, that author has been repressed probably since the my high school days. I had a teacher in ninth grade and tenth, who absolutely drove me up the wall. Now, if you've read the beginning of the book, you know that a lot of things bothered me from that time. And really, you know, a lot of when you're bullied, when you're constantly it was a constant thing. It really makes you into a real little asshole. It does. And I was. I didn't mean to be. But I know I was. Because I just wouldn't trust anybody. I don't even remember now exactly what drove me a bull. I think it was just because, you know, I was enough of an asshole and I didn't want to be told what to do all the time. Nevertheless, she continued and she did her job. And by the end of 10th grade, I realized something. He was like that because he believed in me. Yeah. Now I didn't appreciate this until years later. So he's been repressed for many, many years. The pen pal thing brought it out. You know, I had pen pals, I had Anna in New Jersey, and I had several in England. Anna was the only one here in the States. And I'm still friends with one of the English ones, too, Barron. So obviously I don't write letters these days. No one's writing letters anymore.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

It's kind of a lost art. And I used to write these 12-page, poorly, really poor penmanship. Yeah. It's like now signing a book. I hope people don't want me to sign the book. I'll sign my name to it.

SPEAKER_06 13:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

My real name. I'm not even going to use Speath. But my handwriting is so bad that I'm just not even going to show it to anybody. I'm not going to inscribe the book, sorry. It's like for um for the handful of author's copies that I'm giving out to my friends and all, I'm actually making little fake tarot cards.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Oh, I love that idea.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

And I love that. And then I'll sign it under that. I'll try to make a funny one for everybody. And I'm not going to do that for everybody either, because that's I'm going to run out of ideas when I don't want to.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

Yeah, exactly. That could get a little overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

So but yeah, so that that's that's where that kind of started. And there's always been this little piece of me, especially this story. I remember back probably maybe in the 90s. I want to say when we were living in Pennsylvania, I started to write this. And I wrote like wrote it differently. I wrote what I was remembering about the second break up. And I started writing that at the beginning. And I'm like, I looked at that and I read that, and I'm like, yeah, no, we're not going to write that. There are numerous problems with this. First off, that is just cringy. And two, it's hitting way too close to home right now.

SPEAKER_06 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

It's not time. Now was time for that, I guess. I figured this is something I could share. But life was spent, a cautionary tale.

SPEAKER_04 15:14

I also love when you describe that uh memories are rising out of the ground like the zone.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Right. They were just going, and they're like rings and all. And they're coming and they're like, we're gonna starve, guys. He's a good guy. We can't buy. We're already dead. What do we do now? Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 15:37

So they're more they're more like running up and going, we got plenty here.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

I love that. Okay, so we have to go back to 1987 because you made what what may have been a historically consequential decision to join the dating service, and you and you took it a step further and told them you wanted surprise.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

I'd like to say it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't think I thought that either. I just it just came out. I did a reel, and you may have seen the reel about that, about the wanting surprises part. I don't know, did you did you happen to see that reel?

SPEAKER_04 16:23

No, I did not, but I'm gonna have to loot for it now.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah. Because in that reel, because I use a lot of music in the reels. If you read, there's a huge amount of musical DNA in this whole story. Yeah. Dead or alive. Now, if you all know the song, you spin me around like a record. The follow-up to that here in the States was brand new lover. And at the very beginning of the 12-inch mix of this, and you'll hear it in that reel. The very first words, I want surprises. And I remember you know, I heard that. And when I'm sitting there with the middle-aged guy waiting for the visions of the demons, and he asked me that, and that's what I heard in my head. It was not a well-thought-out decision. I'm not proud of that. Well, like it says on the back of the book, I'm a little proud of that decision, but I will I can't regret it completely because some good came of it. I met Bambi.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

Yeah, yeah, right. When you look back at it now, do you think that was a request, a mistake, or cry for fault?

SPEAKER_02 17:30

And the universe heard me, and the universe said, Oh my dear.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

I can't live one thing exactly. You say that was the last decision Gina would let you make on your own. So who was Gina and what had you gotten yourself into, Spetz?

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Gina, of course, I met her at work. And Gina, no, but she wrote the foreword for me, which was a surprise. I asked her if she wanted to write the foreword, and she said yes. I never thought she was going to say yes. I'd be like, Are you kidding me? I've heard so much about this stupid book. I'm so tired of it. But not only did she did she say yes, she was said she was honored. And she wrote this thing, and it was a lovely thing, and she allowed me to make some edits to it. Lina has been my dearest friend. He's my ride or die. He really is. And despite how it seems in the book and how the book might be in the book, he knows a lot more about me than you might think. This particular thing, yeah, I never told her all the whole story about. But we've been there for each other many times over the years. And you know, we've seen each other good times and bad. And I will absolutely take a bullet for that woman.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

I understand that.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

And I think that's pretty clear from the book that it is she is important. And so naturally her opinions are important to me. You know, I'm going around doing all the wrong things, you know, and if it was a wrong decision, I can make it. So it's like, yeah. Do I need her to make the decisions for me? Probably. Do I let her? Oh god, no. Do I tell her about them ahead of time? Of course not. She'll stop me. Exactly. She'll stop me from chucking emotional boomerangs at people and stuff, you know, and you can't have that.

SPEAKER_04 19:14

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

That's how I learn.

SPEAKER_04 19:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Chaos is how I learn. And yeah. And it was chaotic. And it's funny. Thinking of the boomerang, the card. I feel like it's kind of a rare thing, and I don't know. I've never done studies. Be able to look back on something. And this is an event. This whole thing is just an event. Much like you know, some kind of geological event that took place like when the meteor hit and took out the dinosaurs. This is a an event. And look at in that event and see one thing that you can go back. If you had a time machine, if I had a time machine, I can go back and change this one thing. And it would change everything. And I don't mean just go back and stop the whole thing from happening. Just don't even join a dating service. Oh God, no, I'm going to do that. It's that card. You know, if I could go back in time, I lived in the apartment, I walked down the street to the mailbox to mail it. I remember that. I could be walking back up the street, you know, old Spetz meets young Spetz and say, you know, hey, it looks like you got a card today. You got to mail it. Let me give it, you know, I'm heading towards the mailbox, I'll do it for you. And then I'll take it and throw it away. And the whole suddenly, that whole tail end never happened. And that would be interesting to say the least. It would be interesting. But at the same time, as many times as I've gone over that in my head, and I have many, many times over 35 years. I'm not sure I'd do it. I'd still let it happen because I'm not really willing to give up the good parts to avoid the unpleasant parts.

SPEAKER_04 20:40

Right. Yeah. So in the book, we eventually meet Valerie. She's funny, green eyed, and apparently she possesses a significant amount of something called boom.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Boom. That was an awful lot of boom, yes. Yeah. You had the va va, and furthermore, the boom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

So tell our audience what exactly is boom.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

There is no way to describe voom. Boom, you either feel it or you don't. It's uh it's there or it's not. She had boom. Probably still got boom. Yeah. I worry that one day she's gonna actually run into this book. And she's gonna be like, yeah, it's what I can imagine reading this thing, and then suddenly you hit that that whole, maybe not even not part of Rocco's, maybe the part of Rocco's. But once you hit the city doc, she's gonna be like, wait a minute. This is familiar. I remembered somebody asking me that about you know, why don't you kiss me then? And or she won't, and that's even worse. You know, she's gonna be like, that's a funny story. Who's this loser? And yeah, so the boom is there. The boom, she had the boom, but I can't describe the voom. It was just she was a whole package, is what it was. And she was a package that was unlike any other package I'd ever received.

SPEAKER_03 21:55

I wanted to ask, when she came in, did you have any idea how important she was? She was going to become. No idea at all. I mean, you're sitting there, she walks in, you look at her. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

It took another couple of weeks because it was like what three weeks later when the big dock scene. The SDK, the snowy dock kiss, refer to it as that. It's the SDK because Copilot would refer to it as the snowy dock kiss when I was doing that original thing with that. Okay, that's a good name for it. And then you gotta put the trademark after. And then I'm like, this is bad. Good, but it's bad. Good, but it's bad, but it's great. I can't wait till next week. Famous last words.

SPEAKER_04 22:32

Yep. So if you could set across from younger spets in the book for five minutes, what would you tell him? And would he even listen to you?

SPEAKER_02 22:42

There's the thing, right? Would it did I listen then? No. I tell him to be careful. I tell him to think first. I tell him on the first date to ask what you're doing on Thursday nights prior to this. Right. I said, trust me, Thursday nights are key. Matter of fact, if you're gonna have a first date, schedule it on a different night than Thursday.

unknown 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

See what happens.

SPEAKER_03 23:01

And not a good date night.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Right, Wednesday, try it Friday, try it Saturday. No Thursdays. Just see what see what happens. Try it on Thursday. And nobody's gonna know the meaning of that until they read the book.

SPEAKER_06 23:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Which, by the way, please buy my book. Yeah. But you know, it was fun in a lot of ways writing the book and going through some of the old memories. And I there's so much stuff that I had forgotten and didn't start to come back until I really started to write this book. And the whole inner debate with my inner self, that all happened as I wrote the book. That was not pre-planned. That's that didn't really happen back then. You know, what's happening is a distillation of what was going on in my head back then, but that all happened live while I was writing. And it was as difficult to write as it as it seems like it might have been because I was having those arguments with myself live.

SPEAKER_06 23:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

We all end up okay. Still here, gotta mean something.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

Exactly. And I actually love that you included the monologue that you were having with yourself during that that whole process. I mean I don't think I could do that, but I'm glad that you were able to write it in that way and include that in there. But when that first started, the voice actually came on the scene. I was like, wait a minute, is this like the spirit that we're talking to? Or it does this have a supernatural connotation going on? Right. Or or what's happening?

SPEAKER_02 24:33

And I decided to leave it that way because I thought, yeah, let them guess for a while.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

Exactly. You have me guessing, and then then when you find out, it's like, okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

And the funny part about that is it just I was just writing along and I'm like, how do I put this? And suddenly this other voice came in and like argue with me. And okay, I'm gonna argue with you right here, live on the page. And next thing you know, boom, we got this the inner dialogue's happening, and it uh ends up being, I guess, something a bit unique. But I think somewhere, yeah, I think the Chicago manual of style is uh hiring a hitman, take care of me because I am not following any rules in this memoir. You're gonna take care of me the Chicago way. It was a lot, and it might be some of the harder stuff to write was the inter monologue stuff. Because first I wrote it, then I had to add to it. It was like, you know, that and this is uh change this, change this, change this. Then later, as I got towards finishing this up, I started to get a little funnier with things. And this was the hard part, too, was writing the book. You might have guessed, I'm not a serious person. It it took a little bit of time to really get the voice, or not the voice, but the tone of the book dialed in. Didn't want it to be too serious. And really, I wrote it the way I speak, wrote the way I tell a story and conversationally. So I'm hoping that came through.

SPEAKER_04 25:59

It it did, and I like the fact that it was written that way.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

And so yeah, that's because that's the way I work. And I think anything I I write, and even the the one I'm officially working on, is going to sound that way, even though it we're this will this is gonna be my only foray into any sort of biographical or non-fiction stuff. It was unintended, and here we are, but I don't have another story like this to tell.

SPEAKER_06 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Thank God.

SPEAKER_04 26:31

So what's next for Spence?

SPEAKER_02 26:34

What's next for Spence? I'm waiting for magnetic north of the movie. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 26:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

Mag North. Because I just because I want the cameo, I want to stand lead this thing.

SPEAKER_04 26:45

And and I'm sure either Netflix or Amazon, yeah, stars, they they've been in touch, right, already.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

They they have not, and they are they are letting me down, but you know, I'm thankful Hallmark has not.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Oh, right? Yeah, I I don't think it fits the the Hallmark umbrella.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

You know, because I've already got my cameo written and I just gotta I gotta find Val, and I'm gonna have to ask her if she wants to be in the cameo too. It'd be a great lifetime movie. Oh, please don't. They always have the great ones. No, because I'm not lifetime. I'd have to be more evil to be in Lifetime movie.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Oh, yeah, that's true. That's true. You're not the evil one.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

We're gonna have to add another character. But yeah, so I figured I was I pictured this thing, you know, when I set it up, and then when I hit this cameo where I'm going to observe the SDK. Meanwhile, next for writing, yeah, my next book that I'm may get released sometime. I'm turning into George R.R. Martin here. You know, got two chapters, first draft written. And this we're leaning towards sci-fi. I'm going into sci-fi slash drama slash romance. Awesome. This story that I'm writing is sort of based on something that really happened, but not in a way that you might think. Um, I'll tell the truth, I'm actually a time traveler. There, it's out. No, but seriously, this has to do with that someone I knew died too young, and I found out like 15 years after the fact. And the thing that I felt with this, and it's not a person I knew really well, was really close to, but I knew the person enough to know that this was a decent person. And you know, we all know somebody like this who is gone not only too soon, but shouldn't be gone at all. Right because you know they did not have this coming. No matter what, no matter how they went or what the reason that they went, it doesn't matter. They should still be here. They did not they should not be gone. And so in my head, for many years I've tried to figure out a plot to work around that where we could either explain it, make it a little more dramatic, make there a reason for it, or make it not happen. That's the this the direction I'm headed with it is to make it not happen. And not to save the world or because this person does some amazing thing just because it's the right thing to do and to crack my knuckles at the universe. And the funny part is now that I've written this, and this other book will be written under my real name, but I'm going to bring in little bits and pieces from Magnetic North, those little Easter eggs. Like I'm planning on making these some evil company, I'm gonna make them, you know, Swid Corp. I'm gonna be I'm planning on bringing in a character named uh hang on, route our last name, Valeria, and it's a Russian name that means of the North. Oh, that's suddenly I can't remember the last name I gave Robert. But so, and just to throw those in there, just as little callbacks to this story.

SPEAKER_06 29:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Just for fun. And you know, maybe that one, you know, if that one takes off for some reason, you know, then this one suddenly becomes magnetic north by me writing as spetz, you know, because let's let's let's go pretentious with it. You know, if King can do it with Richard Bachman. Right. And once again, eat it, Hitchens. And I shouldn't say it's kind of rude, but still, you know, it's like and I know he was kidding around when he said you know everyone's got a story in them, but it should probably stay there. Mine didn't. And what do I tell them? And we're glad it didn't.

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

And that's what I wanted. I wanted people to laugh. I wanted people to, you know, like one of my things said, one of my marketing things too, and in my reels, like, you know, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wonder what the hell's wrong with this guy.

SPEAKER_04 30:49

Exactly. So where can everyone find magnetic north and let's let's get you past zero. I know you like zero, but let's get you past zero. Let's see that. And we also want them to be able to follow whatever questionable decisions Spetz is gonna be making next.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Well, you know, it's on Amazon. It's available on Kindle as an ebook, it's available in paperback. I'm on Instagram as Spetz Book. I'm on Threads as Spets Book. I'm on Blue Sky, I think as Spetzbook. I'm on Facebook as Team Spetz. I'm gonna be leaning more into Team Spets. I like Team Spetz.

SPEAKER_04 31:29

Spetz, thank you so much for joining us and letting us go behind the pages of Magnetic North. It's been my pleasure. And this wraps up another edition of the Author Spotlight. Thank you for joining us. We will have Spetz's information in the episode description. And the information will also be on our website, childclaimstories.com, where you can find Spett's dedicated guest page and the book on our book recommendations page with the link to purchase on Amazon.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Yes. And remember, every book has a story. But so does the person who wrote it. Tune in Wednesday for another episode of the Author Spotlight series. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

So join us before we got.