Writing a 20 Year Epic Space Opera

Speaker A: This week on the Futurists, Kevin J. Anderson.

Speaker B: Somebody asked the question, well, how do you know who the main character is? And I said to me, the story itself is the main character. It's this,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: it's like this piece. It's this, this plot line that is propelling all of these characters into doing what they're. What they're doing. And sometimes I put them through terrible paces, and sometimes I let them have happy endings, and. And you just go through from there.

Speaker A: Uh, welcome back to the Futurist. I am your host, Brett King. And, uh, today I'm in the studio with that Rob. I, um, am traveling. I'm in Cape Town today, but, uh, had the opportunity to catch up with an old. An old, good friend or a good friend who's not so old. Um, Kevin J. Anderson, who is. Is, uh, welcome back to the show. You've been on the show like, I don't know, so many times, Kevin. I can't. Yes, yes,

Speaker B: but that's all. You're the Futurist, so.

Speaker A: Well, you know, I have a really good colleague in the space, JP Rangaswamy, who told me, to be a good futurist, you must be a good pastist. You must understand history. So I think that that's fair to say that we have to respect the past. But, um, it's great to have you back on, Kevin. Um, I'm sure everybody who listens to the show knows who you are. Um, but you've published, uh, uh, what is it, 150 odd books now. You've got more than 23 million books in print worldwide. Yes, yeah, 190. Um, but who's counting? Um, you've got, uh, um, over 50, you know, 60, 65 plus books. Ah. That are international bestseller lists. Um, you currently work as a professor at, um, Is it Western Colorado University?

Speaker B: I teach a master's degree in publishing. And that. Boy, there are some major dramatic changes in that publishing industry, which we'll be talking about, but

Speaker A: we definitely got to talk about that. And you're. You're also a regular at, uh, um, events like Comic Con. Um, and you're. You're about to head off to, uh, Comic Con in Stockholm. You were, you were just. Yeah, you were. You were in, uh, Comic Con in

Speaker B: New York. Comic.

Speaker A: New York. Yes, I saw that. Um, which it must be cool to go to those big comic Cons with, you know, um, uh, do you get to hang out with other talent, you know, at the event? Or is it.

Speaker B: In fact. One of the interesting things is that Comic Cons have become, like, tremendous business. Um, when I was a kid, I mean, it was like little gatherings of nerds, and there was maybe one woman in the entire population of the conference. But now New York comic con had 250,000 attendees, and San Diego Comic Con is even larger. And, um, the Stockholm one won't be that big, but I think it'll be close to 100,000. I'm not. I was at Copenhagen last.

Speaker A: Big events,

Speaker B: they're huge. And pop culture has become a tremendous industry. And I feel it's very great justification for those of us who were nerds and got teased for reading comic books and things. And my entire career has been writing science fiction stories. I mean, I grew up watching Star Trek, and I saw Star wars when it was in the theater. And now I'm sort of, uh, My career is sort of a fanboy's dream come true because I've worked with George Lucas on, um, more Star wars stuff, and I'm working with Frank Herbert's son on more Dune stuff. Uh, uh, just yesterday, the brand new trailer for Dune Part three dropped, and I got to see that. Looked

Speaker A: amazing. It looks amazing, doesn't it? Um,

Speaker B: so it's really exciting. And I've been through huge numbers of changes in publishing. I mean, my first short story was published over 40 years ago in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is kind of an old stalwart, uh, pulp or Digest magazine. That was kind of a milestone for writers to get published in Fantasy and Science Fiction or Analog magazine. But now it's all so totally different. My first book was. In fact, next year will be the 40th anniversary of my first book publication. And, man, the tremendous upheavals and changes that have gone through the entire industry. And I think they're for the better. Cause I'm really riding the new technology and, um, the new ways of doing things. And I think a lot of your viewers will be familiar with, like, the old record business, that if you weren't signed to a record label, you could never get your music out any, anywhere, and you'd never get played on the radio. And now everybody's sort of crowdfunding their albums or they're putting it on streaming platforms and they're producing it themselves. And we've all heard the horror stories of, um, Creedence Clearwater Revival, where they signed a really terrible contract and they made a pittance on their music, even though the record label made millions and millions. And, you know, it was sort of a similar situation with, Well, I mean, they weren't crooks but the publishers kind of kept everything and took care of everything and they said they're there. Dear author, just write your books and we'll take care of the rest. And that was great if you didn't know what you were doing and didn't want to take care of it. But I'm sort of a uh. I like to get behind the scenes and interact with things and I began to learn how to do things I thought in a better way and I liked. It was like 2008 or so that I forged my own publishing house and my own imprint and started following the indie publishing movement and taking care of it myself. And uh, one of the reasons that I asked to join you today is that I've got a really big campaign going now to, to crowdfund people have maybe heard of Kickstarters or other crowdfunding where um, I am re releasing my biggest project of my entire career. It's a giant science fiction epic.

Speaker A: Epic space opera. Yes,

Speaker B: epic space opera. The Saga of Seven Suns, which was seven books. But then I wrote a sequel trilogy and then I wrote a prequel and then I wrote a connector book and now I just wrote a new one. So there's 13 books total and it's 2 million words long. And I've been working on it for 25 years and it's finished for some of those are the people that don't want to start anything until it's done. It's. It's finished. And uh, it was published by a couple of different publishers and they sort of went out of print or got harder to find over the course of 25 years. And I spent two and a half years just doing legal wrangling and contracts and trying to get the rights back and. And I finally did. I got all the rights back and now I'm re releasing them and I'm um. Uh. I'll do a visual aid here. So I'm. I'm producing the whole set myself and. And we have the

Speaker A: beautiful looking books

Speaker B: do really beautiful stuff now that, that uh, uh, you a little color kind of do backwards there printed on the inside. And you know it's. It's this whole big beautiful set that I get to make the books look pretty. And it's a work of art like I like to do. And uh, to me it's just so gratifying to have the ability to bring it all out. Like we for instance the original publisher, there were seven books and they had the same cover artist do paintings for the first five and Then they stopped and just put, like, astronomical stock art on the covers, the last two. And that was frustrating for everybody because we like these. We like these big, beautiful cover paintings. And, uh, and they never matched. And so I went back and hired the same artist to finish the two paintings. You never got to do and. And breaking it out and. But it's. It's a whole, um. It's a whole industry here because I've designed all those. The. The really pretty sprayed edges, like I showed you before, that. That, you know, added flair. And I laid out the books myself, and I worked directly with the designer, and I kind of chief cook and bottle washer or whatever the cliched phrase is.

Speaker A: So, um, tell me about. Let's dive into this in a little bit more detail. Tell me about your support team, because you've mentioned the COVID artist, but you must have, um. Do you use an illustrator, um, for. You know, because you have maps and things like that in the books. Um, you must have, uh, someone doing layout design of the books. Uh, thematically, you like what we would have called typesetting in the past. Tell me about your team that helps you produce the books.

Speaker B: Well, uh, so I have. It's called. Wurtfire Press is the name of my publishing house, and we've published hundreds of books by other authors. But in recent years, I've kind of petered out on some of that and decided to focus on my own books because I write so much and I wanted to just work on that. Um, so we have, um, like an admin team because there's a whole lot of contracts and royalties. In fact, right now we're finishing up this period's royalty statement. So there's 300 different books that all have to be collated. And so that's a big pain in the butt. And I don't do that. We have a team for that. Um, but I have contractors like the COVID artist, Steven Ewell, who did all the paintings. Um, in the past, I have hired illustrators. I've got a wonderful Ukrainian team. They're very talented, and they're not very expensive, and they're very responsive. And I frankly, like to support them in Ukraine, and I hire them to do stuff. I do have some layout artists. In the case of the Saga of Seven Sons, I wanted to be a control freak because I wanted it to look exactly the way I wanted it. So I laid all 13 books out myself. Um.

Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Speaker B: I know how to do that. It's not that difficult. Um, once I set up the template, because I Was able to tweak and fiddle with it exactly how I wanted the chapter headings to look. And you know, there's a lot of. These are enormous books. Each one is 500 pages or so. I mean just the fact of adjusting the line spacing can add an extra 50 pages or subtract it. But if you make it too tight because you want to script the number of pages because it's cheaper to print smaller books, well then you can't read them because they're too dense. And there's a whole balance of all that. And I just like playing with it. So I get the books the perfect way that I want them to look. Because this is not something I do for just any of our books that there are, um, you know, this is something that is my. I think it's my science fiction masterpiece. I've worked like 25 years on

Speaker A: it. Your magnum opus.

Speaker B: My magnum opus. And. But um, I guess to continue. So I do also have a team. So like I said, we're running this as a. It's on Backerkit. It's something like Kickstarter. And we built this campaign. It took us a year and a half just to get all of these pieces ready. And um, what I'm doing, showing you here when I'm holding these up, we instead of just doing a digital image of here's what it's going to look like. We got them all finished and we printed up these prototypes because when people back a crowdfunding campaign there's. Well a lot of them have, a lot of the creators have let their people down that they never actually deliver on what they promise. And I wanted to show that this is real, that it's done and I've got it ready to go. And so that was an extra great deal of effort. And they're not particularly cheap to print up one book with this really fancy things. Um, but we put it out and just putting this campaign together and we have a whole Backerkit support staff that is running um, ads and they're running the campaigns. And we built up a bunch of pre launch excitement two and a half months before we launched and we got people doing reservations. Um, and so uh, we launched and we funded in four minutes and we are now very close to being uh, within 12 hours we had surpassed my best campaign ever. And we still have about a week left and we are very close to being four times the best that I've ever done.

Speaker A: Well that's fantastic.

Speaker B: So I'm very

Speaker A: happy

Speaker B: especially because this is my favorite series. So the really fancy books that I was showing you, we did those in a Ltd. Only 150 copies of the 13 book set. And they're all autographed by me and they're all hand numbered and they're going out and those sold out within like 12 hours. But the regular beautiful jacketed hardcover sets and ebooks and trade paperbacks. But you asked about the team, so here's something that people probably aren't thinking about. So like I said, it's a 13 book set and they're all signed in number. Well, just think about that. That's 13 books in 150 sets. That's close to 2,000 books that are going to arrive in a pallet from the printer in China. They're going to show up here. The truck will put them on my driveway.

Speaker A: Uh, so where do you warehouse, you warehouse them at your home?

Speaker B: In my basement. Yes.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: it's like the whole. Well, I do have a large basement but

Speaker A: Colorado Springs Post office must love you.

Speaker B: Oh well, we have a special relationship with them. But we've got um. So it'll be November in Colorado and there's no telling if it's going to be snowing or anything. So this truck might

Speaker A: drop

Speaker B: 2,000 hardcover books on my driveway. And we'll have to get them in the house pretty quickly so they're not exposed to anything. But just remember what I said. 150 signed and hand numbered copies. And it's a 13 book set. So we're going to have to open up all of these boxes and sort out the 13 books and put number one on the bottom of the stack and then number two and then number three and so that they're all a 13 book stack. And then somebody's going to have to go through that stack and number it 22222. And then the next stack will be 33333. The next stack will be 44444. And then I have to go through and autograph them all and then we'll box them all up and it's, it's not going to be a trivial.

Speaker A: I don't think people understand how much time that sort of thing takes. I had to do a thousand book sign, a thousand unit book signing once. I remember I was in Istanbul and I was at it for like five hours. Signing books.

Speaker B: Thousand books is a long time to sign.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a lot. Yeah, it takes you a long time. So you know you're talking about days of work, right? Um,

Speaker B: well,

Speaker A: I'm interested. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker B: No, I was going to say, but also what, what you might not think about is that those two extra words, shipping and handling, so

Speaker A: it's not

Speaker B: just the postage on that. You got to pay

Speaker A: for the labeling. You got a buck, the bucks

Speaker B: for the bubble wrap, and you got to pay the

Speaker A: time

Speaker B: for the person you packed them up and the shipping label. And, uh, I'm not, uh, exaggerating it, but I'm just saying that this is. This. Don't try this at home unless you have a great team. And I have a bunch of really great teams. That also is because you mentioned I'm a. I'm a professor at Western Colorado University. I have a secret weapon. They're called grad students. So they'll come over and

Speaker A: help

Speaker B: too.

Speaker A: And

Speaker B: they can, they can do it. And I also have a lot of fans and friends and, you know, just bring them over and we'll have a mailing party.

Speaker A: Do you, do you ship, um, do you ship units directly for. From China where you print them? Do you ship them directly from China to large distribution hubs like Amazon and other others like that, or do you ship them home first and then distribute them from there?

Speaker B: Well, I have to autograph them, so they have to come here first.

Speaker A: Okay, but do you autograph the ones that are sold through platforms like Amazon or just the Kickstarter ones?

Speaker B: Well, no, Amazon, they go through. Wherever they go through. It's Ingram is called our. Is the name of our distributor. Um, but we also will have. That was just assigned a numbered sets. Like I said, those are sold out.

Speaker A: But

Speaker B: there's also just the beautiful set of just regular hardcovers and, uh, trade paperbacks. Our printer will, once the campaign is over, we will send the printer the addresses of all the people that bought the trade paperback set and they will just print them and ship them out because they're not signed. And, um, it's just, It's a big industry. But the thing, the thing to point out though is that the only place you can get this is by supporting the campaign on Backerkit. You can't go to Amazon and buy it. You can only buy it by supporting this campaign, which is, which is over in a week. But then we will publish them regularly. But it'll be,

Speaker A: of course there won't be the signed, autographed, um, you know, a special box set, editions,

Speaker B: just the regular ones. You will get them probably six months earlier than if you wait for them to go out on. On Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Everything else, that's the, um, I mean, that's, that's the reason people support these crowdfunding campaigns in order to be like, it's like a backstage pass. You, you get early access and you get, you get to have things first. Um, but that's one of the other things that's really exciting about publishing now is that I have, I and many

Speaker A: other creators. This is actually what I wanted to get into. Because when you made the decision to go create your own publishing label, um, and we've heard this conversation, we've heard Prince and Taylor Swift talking about, uh, bad contracts and things like that, but you had a considerable back catalogue. Um, you know, that you were also able to bring in to sort of power that which, you know, is important for sort of overall continuity. But, you know, I'm curious about your grad students who are studying with you to be authors. What do you recommend to them today? Because, you know, I have a lot of people come to me and they want introductions to my publishers and things like that. And I'm like, I'm actually really torn about whether I should advise people to go the place publisher route these days. Because, you know, honestly, I don't get a, uh, I don't get a huge amount of benefit from my publishers. I will say that the team at Marshall Cavendish that I work with, you know, I work with Wiley and Times and others as well, but the team at Marshall Cavendish is my primary publisher in Singapore, have been phenomenal partners for, you know, 16 years now. But, you know, it's really a question, you know, they're struggling with their business, um, uh, they can't have the ware, they can't support the warehousing costs anymore in places like, like the US and so forth. So, you know, it's a tough business to be in. So what do you advise, um, for the grad students and these up and coming authors in terms of publication strategy these days, given the capabilities that we have?

Speaker B: In fact, that's kind of a key point. Just your question, because you actually do have a Choice now, whereas 15 years ago there was no choice. You had to only go through a publisher. There was really no option for. I mean, there were vanity presses that will print your book for you, but there really was no way for the regular author to get their books out unless they found a major publisher. And what I really love about this way that I'm talking to you guys about is that there's this direct and intimate connection between the creator and the audience that instead of, in the old way or what still happens to, um, authors that go through a traditional publishing house. The author writes the book and sends it to the agent, and the agent sends it to the editor, and the editor takes it to the marketing team at the publisher, and then the publisher decides to issue the contract. And then eventually you'll work with the editor, and the book will come out, and then they'll send their sales reps out to go to the bookstores, who will. To convince them to order the book, who will then put it on the shelves, who will then have it sitting there for a random customer to walk in the door and hope that they find your book on the shelf. That's. I didn't count that, but that's, what, eight or nine buffers in between the author and the reader. Whereas here, with this backerkit campaign for the Saga of Seven Sons, it is me with the readers of the books. That's just a direct connection. And I'm. Yeah,

Speaker A: but, I mean, you've been. You've been at this for 40 years, so you've got a large audience, you've got a following. But, you know, for. For an author that's starting out, that may not have a, uh, audience like that, you know, um, what's. What's the. What's the dynamic there?

Speaker B: Well, and that's. That's the main piece of advice that I tell my students the first time they walk through the door is I say, start building your platform now. It's networking, making connections, and finding people who are interested in your work, who are interested in you as a. Whether it's just an author, whether it's as a futurist, whether it's as a musician, whatever. Uh, and Taylor Swift is a perfect example. She doesn't need any record company. She's published books. She doesn't need a publisher because she has so many fans that will buy whatever she's gonna release. So my point is that it's this. Well, we mentioned I'm going to Comic Cons. I'm meeting fans there. They're signing up for my newsletter. I'm building my platform with. I'll have a whole bunch more fans in Sweden after I come back next week. And I got more in Denmark when I went to Copenhagen last year. It is a constant process. And for you, Brett, you have a platform that you have an audience that you can reach with all of your futurism, your banking, um, followers. There are people that are interested in what you have to say, and you could reach them directly by. If you did a. If you did another finance book or

Speaker A: something. Look, I, I think that that's, you know, look, it's definitely, it's definitely been on my, uh, my mind for a while now. And um, you know, I am definitely looking at potentially, uh, publishing my own stuff in the future for sure. Um, using, using the power of the crowd. I think it's worthwhile.

Speaker B: Well, and that, and that's your platform if you wrote a fantasy novel about horses? I'm not sure your audience would follow you over to that. But I mean, that's.

Speaker A: You haven't read my horse fantasy, bro. You know, it's pretty compelling. I'm just kidding.

Speaker B: I'm sure. I would love to, Brad. I'm sure it's

Speaker A: horses

Speaker B: balancing their checkbook or something like that. But

Speaker A: listen, I do want to get into the campaign. I want to talk about the world building for, uh, the saga of the seven Sons. And I want to sort of talk about how you maintain that over the, the length of time because you've been writing these books since the 2000s. Um, but I am mindful of the fact that we need a quick break. So let's take a quick break and then after we get back, let's dive into the saga of the seven Sons, the world of that. And I want to really talk about the elements of hard sci fi, because it's one of your more hard sci fi, uh, uh, series, but it also has fantasy. Right. So, uh, I want to talk about that blend as well. So you're listening to the Futurists. I'm with my good friend Kevin J. Anderson. We'll be right back after this break. Provoked Media is proud to sponsor, produce and support the Futurist podcast. Provoke FM is a global podcast network and content creation company with the world's leading fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks. For information about all our podcasts, go to Provoke FM or check out Breaking Banks, the world's number one fintech podcast and radio show. Welcome back to the Futurists. I'm with Kevin, uh, J. Anderson, um, international best selling author, 23 million books in print, almost 200 books that he's authored. And today we're talking about his, uh, magnum opus, his uh, epic space opera that he started publishing in 2002 and is just now released. Singh, um, his special, uh, Kickstarter campaign. It's not Kickstarter, actually. It's, uh, called Backerkit. Uh, is the site where you can find out more information about that. We'll put the link, uh, up on the socials as well. Um, but um, these books are ah, set in the future. Um, uh, I grew up on um, uh, sci fi of Arthur C. Clarke and Asimov and then progressed to your books, those of the likes of David Brin and Kim Stanley Robinson. And I love a good hard sci fi, I love that. Um, they were able to reverse engineer some alien technology from the clickless uh, race. Clickless race, Clickless. Um, and uh, they were able to um, um. Turn a gas giant into a Novostar. And you know there's some really cool tech that comes out of this as well as we have some um, we have genetic engineering and genetic manipulation for um, enhancing um uh, uh, cognitive uh, and um, um telepathic uh sort of capabilities in the book. So there's um, definitely some sort of hard sci fi elements to this. Tell me about. Because you have done fantasy, you've done the sci fi stuff. But if I'm talking about some of your contemporaries, um, um, you know, more recently maybe someone like Alastair Reynolds or um.

Speaker B: Peter F. Hamilton is one of my favorites.

Speaker A: Peter F. Hamilton with um, the Commonwealth saga and things like that, which is very epic space opera and um, um. Obviously some really cool uh, um, um tech stuff. But where do you go in terms of the hard science stuff to sort of um, to ground yourself when you're preparing for something like this or is it more organic? You go looking for a plot device and um, you know, and then you do the research on that.

Speaker B: Well, it's partly it comes from who I am because I have a physics and astronomy degree and I understand the science and I had a telescope and I kind of, I know people who don't know the difference between a solar system and a galaxy and a universe and I mean they don't understand the scale. And when I'm creating things I can't possibly make, uh, uh, I'm not going to make it so that it's ridiculous science because I don't want to do that. And the Saga of Seven Sons is a huge space opera. It's like Star wars and Dune and the Expanse all had a baby together and it's all kind of mixed up. And Star wars is not all that rigorous as far as science goes. But uh. The Expanse is very rigorous. The Expanse is very, very accurate. Um, in fact my,

Speaker A: I love for that.

Speaker B: No,

Speaker A: I, I thought, yeah, I, I, I love like yeah, the way they configure the spacecraft and under acceleration and the negative G flip and I mean the zero G flip and stuff and the Epstein drive and you know all the uh, like there's good, there's good physics behind, uh, behind this stuff. It's pretty interesting.

Speaker B: Well, and I love their space battles where they're basically calculating. They shoot a projectile because they know it's going to intersect at this point. And it's not like, like the Battle of Endor in Star wars where it's just pop, pew, pew, pew, and

Speaker A: shooting.

Speaker B: But, but, um, so I, I come to it with a, with a astronomical sense, but you also have to tell a good story. And frankly, if you don't accept the fact that there is some kind of faster than light drive, an intergalactic empire just isn't a very exciting story because it takes centuries to get from one planet to the next. Um, so you kind of have to. That's a given that. All right, we're going to say that they've got a star drive, that they can travel from planet to planet so that you can actually make a story happen. Um, and, you know, space battles are exciting if they don't take three years for a projectile to hit a target somewhere. So it comes from that. But sometimes making the science work is what really drove the story. And, uh, in the Saga of Seven Sons, here's the whole start. It's like the spoiler at the beginning of the first book. So it's the human race. They're kind of upstarts. They're colonizing everything in sight because that's what humans tend to do. And there's an old alien, uh, empire. It's kind of like the old waning British Empire in the end of the 19th century. So it's the Ildir Empire. It's an alien empire that's all over the place. And they can't understand why we're just colonizing everything and why we can't just be patient. But they tolerate us. And so when I was getting my astronomy degree, one of the things that I found intriguing was that gas giant planets were like failed stars that they were almost, but not quite enough to gravitationally collapse and burn as the sun. So the planet Jupiter, with all of its frozen moons, it could be a sun if it just had some more mass. And I thought, well, it would be cool if we could ignite these gas giant planets, which would warm up all the frozen moons, which would be a bunch of colony worlds. And so I do that in the beginning of Hidden Empire, the first book, as humans figure out a way to ignite a gas giant planet which is going to warm up the suns. Well, the problem is we don't know that there's this huge and powerful alien race that lives inside gas giant planets and we basically just nuked their capital

Speaker A: and

Speaker B: they emerge from other gas giant planets and declare war on everybody else in the galaxy. And the Ilderan Empire is like, well, wait, you just started a war and we're in the middle of it and we didn't want that. So there's all kinds of galactic politics. So that was the story that I wanted to tell, and it spiraled up from there. But how do you physically make a gas giant planet, have more mass and ignite? Um, I was good friends with a, uh, very well respected hard science fiction writer, Gregory, uh, Benford. Uh, some of you people might have read some of Greg's stuff. And Greg and I were sitting on a rooftop in Los Angeles and we were having some wine and just kind of brainstorming. And I said, greg, let's figure out how to ignite a gas giant planet. And so we kind of sat there and we're brainstorming. And he said, well, all you need to do is just put a whole bunch more mass in it. And they said, yeah, but how do you put a bunch more mass in it? And he said, well, if we made a wormhole tunnel, you could take a brown dwarf star and just drop the brown dwarf star at the other end of the wormhole into a gas giant planet and then it would be enough to just ignite. And I said, that's a cool idea, Greg, but how do we make a wormhole that just does?

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: And

Speaker A: you move a brown dwarf

Speaker B: wormhole generator on each end and you just open this tunnel and the gas giant or the brown dwarf star will fall down and ignite the planet. And I said, well, how do you do that? And he says, we'll find some alien ruins and the alien races wiped out, but they just happen to be really good at making wormhole generators. And so that's, uh, where it comes from. But everything else is rigorously scientific going in there, and it's just a very, very cool way of doing it. And I had a hand wavy explanation for how the star drive worked, and then I never referred to it again. And we just assumed that, uh. And another thing, because it's a big. This is sort of the fantasy element that, um, I've got humans and the human, like Ildirans, the alien race, they can to breed and have children. Well, you know, genetics doesn't really work that way, but it has to for the story to work. You want the humans and the aliens to interbreed and look how many Star Trek half breeds

Speaker A: there are. The Eldrians. Uh, um, they were not, um, early humans, but does this sort of. No,

Speaker B: they're a completely different race. So.

Speaker A: But, you know, if they're genetically compatible, is there some point in the past where maybe humans and Elydrians had common ancestors? And this is sort of the panspermia.

Speaker B: We don't go into that. We just assume that they could have children just. Just the way Mr. Spock had a human parent and a Vulcan

Speaker A: parent. Vulcans. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah. With. With the, you know, 20. 20. 24th century engineering. Genetic engineering. It's possible, right? You know,

Speaker B: sure.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: sure. Very good. Fertility labs, I guess. But. But, uh. But so when I started this, and then I started populating it with the characters, and then each character kind of spun off and had his or her own storyline, and then they interacted with more people, and I came up with more characters, and it just grew and grew and grew into this beautiful complex. In one of the books, the Dark between

Speaker A: the Stars, keep track of all of those characters. Do you have an. Up on a whiteboard somewhere or, you know, like, um. Cause, you know, when you start a new book in the. In the chapter and, you know, I mean, I know you've got this discipline from the Dune days and the Star wars days as well, you know, paying homage to the history that's there. And you have to be accurate, you know, um, in that. How do you bring yourself up to speed when it's been a few years between books and you have to, you know, uh. Cause I'm sure unless you've got an eidetic memory, you can't remember all of these characters that you had in the book that you wrote, uh, back in the early days. How do you bring yourself back up to speed on that stuff?

Speaker B: Well, it really is all in my head. And the first seven books, I just never stopped. I wrote them nonstop, one after another after another for seven years. Every year I wrote another book. And I never took a break from it, so it was always there. But of course, I had the other manuscripts that I could refer to. I. I very often would forget a character's name or what the hair color was or something like that. But then I finished the first seven books in the series, and I took a break to write a fantasy trilogy for a few years, and then I came back to write the sequel, and I went, oh, man, I've forgotten all these details. So I had to, uh, go in and reread the first seven books. And thank goodness for audiobooks I was able to go through and just sort of upload them again. And I don't have the patience for compiling, like a wiki, a story. Uh, I wish I probably could have tapped into the fan base and just say, hey, somebody create a wiki. But it was pretty much all my old notes and all the past manuscripts, and I have beta readers so that they would go, hey, dummy, you killed this character off. You can't just bring him back. And I went, oops. So,

Speaker A: yeah, in terms of the world building and, you know, you've got dynasties involved. You know, got the Lydrians, uh, you know, there's a, um, lineage, uh, you know, um, that's, um, sort of manipulating the genes to bring out various traits and things like that. So, um, uh, do you plan that out or does it happen more organically? Do you map out that in a family tree and you've got that all ready to go as you start developing this out? Or is it just like, oh, I need, need someone to add in here, you know, and, um, you know, you, you slot it in later?

Speaker B: Well, a little of both. I mean, I start out with kind of the, the basics of the family tree and what I want to go with. But as the story goes on, you go, oh, wait, I need another branch over here because, you know, like the soap opera, the long lost twin brother or something like that shows

Speaker A: up.

Speaker B: Um, I try not to do that, but, um, you branch out and, uh, you want to kind of keep the core families because people want to follow their favorite characters. But then you can spin out and what will happen is I'll have like a minor character shows up in a scene, but that person seems a little interesting, so I'll have a little adventure for that person and then that might grow into something even bigger and spiral out. Um, I was on at San Diego Comic Con, I was on a big panel with, um, Brandon Sanderson and Christopher Paolini, who are both big fantasy authors and some other ones. And we were talking about writing these epic multi volume sagas. And somebody asked the question, well, how do you know who the main character is? And I said to me, the story itself is the main character.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: it's like this one at peace. It's this plot line that is propelling all of these characters into doing what they're doing. And sometimes I put them through terrible paces, and sometimes I let them have happy endings, and you just go through from there. And I live in this world and, uh, frankly, I'm a slow reader. And I can write books faster than I can read them usually. Uh, and I just love living in the world with my characters and exploring different places and having a galactic empire. I can go, hey, let's just go explore a brand new planet this chapter

Speaker A: and

Speaker B: I'll make up one. And I learned a lot of that from Star Wars. As you see the swamp planet and the ice planet and the desert planet and all these things, they're interesting places to go. And um, what I like to do is I live in Colorado, I'm in the mountains. I have lots of beautiful forests and trails I can walk on. Um, I'll take a. I have a digital recorder. That's how I do most of my writing, by just dictating.

Speaker A: We've discussed this a couple of times on the show. I find I'm very impressed by uh, this approach. I can't imagine writing like that, but uh,

Speaker B: well, it allows me to get out of my office. Office and have the whole

Speaker A: thing. I was gonna ask you this question because I was watching an interview between George R. Martin and Stephen King the other day. They were having a discussion together and George R.R. martin was, you, ah, know, couldn't understand how Stephen King was so prolific in terms of the number of books he could generate. And um, I found it interesting cause Stephen King said he had a target of six pages a day. So when you were in the midst of writing one of these books, you know, um, and you're doing this while you're hiking, how do you, um. What is your target on a daily basis, uh, in terms of the output or is it more organic than that?

Speaker B: Oh, I very rigorously have a two chapter a day target. And my chapters are about 2,000 words. So that's uh, 4,000 words a day, which is. I don't know what pages that is. That's probably 10 pages, something like that.

Speaker A: That's impressive, dude. I mean on my best days I could do 4,000 or 5,000 words as a writer. But um, I guess my process is a little different because I gotta do the research, uh, um, to support the thesis. So it's a process. But um, yeah, I mean you're a professional writer, right? It's what you do.

Speaker B: But I also, and this is where I'm different from George Martin, who is a friend of mine and I've known him for a long time. I outline rigorously like each One of these seven sons books has 130 chapters in it or something like that.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And I have a blueprint that is very detailed of chapter one. This happens that's from this character's point of view. And chapter two, this happens that's from this character's point of view. And I spend probably a month or so beforehand just writing up detail. And even to the point where, uh, like I said, in the dark between the stars, I counted there were 34 point of view characters. And so each one of these characters, it's color coded. Like chapter one, this character, it's in red, and the next one's in green, the next one's in blue. And, uh, I'll stare at that blueprint just over and over again. And I'll move things around until all the pieces fit together just right. It's like choreographing a big musical dance number at the end. Like, everybody has to kick at the right time and everybody has to be in the right spot and hit their mark. And, uh, George Martin doesn't do that. He calls it gardening. He plants the seeds and sees where it grows. And maybe that's why he's.

Speaker A: Well, I like your characterization of the blueprint though, because, you know, I mean, I do book plans, obviously, um, you know, um, but they, uh, like Sun Tzu, they don't survive contact with the process. Right. Often, um, you know, a chapter here or a chapter there will be eliminated because, you know, the research, uh, or the narrative will take me in a slightly different direction. And I'm sure the same is true of you as you're expanding the plot. You're like, eh, uh, I thought that was gonna work. Maybe it doesn't work. Um, what can I do here? Um, but, uh, I love that, uh, process of thinking about the blueprint and the fact that the book planning actually starts before you start writing. At least a month before you're doing the work to plan

Speaker B: a lot longer. A

Speaker A: lot longer. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: And yes, in the writing, something might organically. Oh, well, I didn't think of that connection. Or this got really interesting. And I might add some extra things, um, but for the most part it still stays to the blueprint. But to get back to the blueprint, when you're writing a 500 page book, uh, it's like building a skyscraper. I can't imagine just digging holes and putting up girders and hoping they all fit together by the time the building is done. I really want that blueprint to work before I start investing all the time and effort. Now, the people that don't do the plotting blueprint, they end up having lots of false starts and they throw away a bunch of draft chapters. And they have to do a lot of rewriting. Um, to me, I kind of do all that in my mind before I start putting words down. And I hate to write 5,000 words and go, oh, that didn't work, and throw it away. To me, I m just hate doing that. And so I plan very much, but there is room to grow. But also I had like, a living document where as I would go off on a tangent, I'd go, hey, that's a cool storyline, but it won't fit in this book. So I'm going to write it down and maybe work it into the next book that I've got. And it just kept growing and growing. But I always had like, this seven book. I knew where it was going. I knew what the big conflicts were. I knew that in book five, this huge twist was going to happen. And then book seven would wrap it all up and half of the characters wouldn't survive to the end. And that's something I have in common

Speaker A: with George Martin. Um, I want to sort of understand at the point when you started writing this, and it was 23, 24 years ago, um, when you started that, um, you did plan the seven books from the start. Right. So it was a conscious decision that you made to say, all right, a lot of my other friends have written these epic space operas. I've written within the space opera universes, um, Dune and, uh, Star wars, to mention a couple. Um, and then you're like, I can do this. I can create an entire space opera, an entire universe fictional, uh, universe myself. Um, so that process must have been quite empowering when you, you started out on that process with the first of the seven books. Um, and now, you know, it's 13 books, not seven books. But tell me a bit about, um, that decision that you got to. In terms of the saga and, um, what was the trigger for you in terms of making that investment in time?

Speaker B: Well, and I had written a bunch of, like, standalone science fiction novels before, just the one book. And I. And it's very liberating to write the book you want to write rather than have Lucasfilm or, uh, other constraints trying to hold you in. Um, but I mean, I enjoyed that. I was a big Star wars fan, so I could run off and do a Star wars thing, but, um, obvious. It's nice to have your own children instead of just babysitting somebody else's. So I. But I really liked telling big stories. And I had done a Star wars trilogy, but I had already done, uh, the House Atreides Dune trilogy. With Brian Herbert. And I liked these big stories because they give you so much room to just run with it. And in fact, the irony is I had originally thought of the beginning of this, um, saga of Seven Sons. I was thinking of Star wars stories, that there was going to be a big Star wars story, uh, multi volume story. And if you remember the Empire Strikes Back, Lando Calrissian had Cloud City, which was hanging above the gas giant. The clouds and a gas giant. And I thought, what if there's like aliens that live down there beneath the clouds and they come up with this giant mothership like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind,

Speaker A: Right. What

Speaker B: if the state comes up depths below and blows up Cloud City? And that was the first impetus. And I kept thinking about it and I thought, I don't really want to give this to Lucasfilm. I want to develop it up on my own. And

Speaker A: that

Speaker B: was the starting point. That's one of the big chapters in the early part of the novel, Hidden Empire. And I just kind of read, well, what are these aliens and why are they pissed off at us? And all kinds of things like that. And it just like, uh, when you plot things you ask this question like, well, but then why? You're like a little three year old kid. You keep asking but why? And, but why? And, but why? And you develop the answer to that and it leads you in different directions and then you come to another thing. And then you come to another thing and, and it's just really, I, I just love telling stories and this, you know, like I said, I've, I've done some big books and some big stories, but this is the, the biggest project that I've ever done in my entire career. And, and um, it is finished.

Speaker A: Well, I think you should be like, I think you should be extremely proud of it. Um, it's 20 years of your life that you've put into this project. Um, the success of the um, backer kit campaign, I think is evidence itself that, um,

Speaker B: this

Speaker A: has

Speaker B: worked.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Great at this point of your career to have a blowout success like this, you know, so

Speaker B: congratulations.

Speaker A: And one of

Speaker B: the fun things. So in a campaign you have like, they called stretch goals, it's sort of like a milestone. If we get to this point, then I'll give you some kind of reward. And for our first stretch goal, I said, you know, if we get to this point, I will create another whole new book, like a companion to the series. Because I, I had found all these other little items and early on I had hired a Comic artist to develop my aliens and costumes and ships and buildings. Um, I hired him and I just was looking through my own boxes and I found 54 pages of his original sketches and notes and designing all the things. And I went, that's kind of cool. And I found, um, I had written a pilot TV script for a Seven Sons TV show that, that never. Maybe it will go somewhere now, but nobody's ever seen this pilot script. And I said, well, I can include that. And I had written some essays about how I came up with the Ilderan race and how I came up with the Clickis torch to ignite gas giant planets. And I just started assembling these things. And, uh, the COVID artist, Steven Ewell, and I'm going to show. This is one of the new paintings that I. There we go.

Speaker A: One of the new

Speaker B: paintings I had to do. He wrote a whole essay about how he worked on all the paintings for the series. And so we, we put together this companion book that would not exist if the fans hadn't pushed the campaign over. And so now we're off

Speaker A: that

Speaker B: one. Uh, it's just. I love this

Speaker A: video. I hope you do sell, uh, the TV series. But again, uh, coming back to where we started this conversation, it may be very possible with AI in the future to, to take these books and turn them into a TV series generated by AI how would you feel about that?

Speaker B: Well, um, you know, like I said, I'm doing so much of my own publishing by myself. Um, I'm not sure I want to learn how to be a movie maker all by myself too. But I personally, I would. Because the Expanse is now off the air. I think there's a big need for another.

Speaker A: There is a need for good sci fi, for sure. There's always an advanced sci fi,

Speaker B: right? And you and I have talked about, uh, the possibilities of AI And I love it as a tool. But as a creator, I still prefer to let the creating happen with people instead of, uh, AI stuff. And I would rather filmmakers, uh, and script writers and writers use their own brains. But I'll use A.I. you know what I'd love to do? I should have an AI Go through all of these and make the AI do the wiki for me so that I can have it come up.

Speaker A: You could, you could.

Speaker B: That is a useful.

Speaker A: That'd be very easy for AI to do. To be honest, AI could handle that in its sleep right now. So that's something definitely you, uh, can think about. Hey, listen, Kevin, we got a wrap. Um, let's just uh, so if you're interested in, um, in the backer kit, uh, you can go to backerkit.com and search on the complete saga of seven sons, or search on Kevin's name, Kevin J. Anderson, and you'll find, um, the amazing, uh, um, limited edition, uh, series, uh, including the different options that you can back. Please, uh, help Kevin to reach the stretch goal. There's only a week or so left, so when this airs, you're just gonna have a few days. So don't sit on it, don't sit around. Jump on it straight away. Let's help him, um, get all the stretch goals he wants. But in the

Speaker B: meantime, I have plenty of other books if they happen to miss this one.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: there's plenty of other books that I just. And

Speaker A: there'll obviously be more campaigns.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I appreciate it all very much. And what were you going to ask? I'm sorry, I cut you off.

Speaker A: No, well, no, I was going to say, um, where can people find out more about your work as an author?

Speaker B: Well, one Wordfire, um, like, words on fire. Wordfire Shop is where I've got all my signed books that if anybody wants to get some copies. And, um, you can search for me on Facebook or wordfire.com is my main website. And you can go see Dune part three in June, uh, December 18th.

Speaker A: Can't wait for that.

Speaker B: And, um, I hope to be all over the

Speaker A: place. December is going to be crazy for movies. You've got Avengers, uh, coming out. You've got Dune 3. Like, there's some serious, like, there's serious competition at the box office this December. It's going to be amazing.

Speaker B: And the second season of the Dune HBO show, Dune of Prophecy, which is based on one of my books with Brian, uh, that should be out in spring sometime. I don't have any date on that, but, um, lots of stuff going on, and I just. I couldn't be happier. My campaign's going great. I'm publishing the books the way I want them to. I'm writing what I feel like, and I'm about to head for the airport to go to Sweden. So everything's good.

Speaker A: Safe travels. And I, uh, still would love to find a way for us to collaborate on something together at some point in time. So, um, we'll see. But, um, Kevin J. Anderson, thank you for joining the Futurists.

Speaker B: Thank you, Brett.

Speaker A: That's it for this week's, uh, the Futurists. It's great to have Kevin back on the show. If you like the show. Not, uh, only go to back a kid and back his campaign. But of course, uh, promote this on your socials, Leave us a five star review and, um, a shout out to the team at Provoked Media. Kevin Herschen, Elizabeth, uh, Severins and the whole team that help us put together this together every week. You're listening to the Futurists and of course we'll see you in the future.

Speaker C: Well, that's it for the Futurists this week. If you like the show, we sure hope you did. Please subscribe and share it with the people in your community. And don't forget to leave us a five star review that really helps other people find the show. And you can ping us anytime on, um, Instagram and Twitter Futurist podcast for the folks that you'd like to see on the show or the questions that you'd like us to ask. Thanks for joining and as always, we'll see you in the future.